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  “Hey,” Kate protested, “Peter was not our fault. He was handsome, according to our data of what Anderson preferred, he was serious, he was smart. In fact, he was very close to Henry here, except Henry has a sense of humor, and….” Kate blushed. “And we gave Henry some of my qualities as well.”

  Cassie looked seriously intrigued. “So was Henry the first attempt you made with your personality traits?”

  Kate and Bobby nodded. “It was stupid—we were looking at things from a strictly male-female perspective. It didn’t even occur to us that Anderson would find the qualities he’d put into a female attractive in a male.”

  Cassie laughed hard, her shoulders shaking, her breath coming short, and Bobby and Kate cringed. “Really? That’s one of the most sexist things I’ve ever heard!”

  “Well, deprogram me!” Bobby snapped. “I was sixteen!”

  Cassie sobered and became instantly contrite. “I’m sorry. I do forget how young you all were.” C.J. felt her glance at him while he brooded at the screen in front of him. Anderson had just walked into the room and mumbled dully that Peter would have to be cancelled the next day. Kate and Bobby seemed to take it in stride, but Anderson….

  Anderson was near tears.

  C.J. looked up at Kate, Bobby, Henry, and Risa. “Was he like this with all of them?” he asked quietly.

  Henry shrugged. “Well, they only made one more prototype. That was me. He liked me for a friend, so I got to stay.”

  C.J. shook his head. “I mean, you know, the school, the students, the teacher, it all had to go. Did doing that bother him as much then as cancelling the prototypes is bothering him now?”

  “Worse,” Risa said softly. They all looked at her, and she shrugged defensively. “We all saw it. We’re not holograms to him, sir.” She, of all of them, had the worst problem calling C.J. and Cassidy by their first names. “They’re not. They’re people. He wasn’t a scientist cancelling a program. He was a….” Risa trailed off and wiped her cheeks, but C.J. didn’t need her to finish.

  “Yeah,” he said softly. “I know what he was.”

  They watched Kate and Bobby program Henry next, and this time, it was their dialogue that needed to be sent down to Jensen and Julio.

  “Okay, we need him to look like that one vid guy, the one from the m/m porn vid,” Kate was muttering.

  On the deck of the ship, Henry looked at her, surprised.

  “Is that where I got my looks?” he asked, faintly appalled.

  Kate didn’t even blush. “Hell yes. That vid totally turned Anderson on. Look at the split screen!” They all automatically looked to what was going on in the other parts of the ship at that time, and sure enough, there was Anderson, naked on his cot with his knees in the air and his cock in his hand.

  C.J. gave a strangled laugh and wondered if he had enough water in his shower account to take another hot shower that night. Now that Anderson was sleeping in the same bed, it was his one safe place to one-off.

  “What’s his personality going to be like?” Bobby asked, and Kate sighed.

  “Well, he needs a sense of humor, because Peter was a complete tool. Nice job thinking he needed someone serious like himself, dickhead.”

  Bobby shrugged. “Well, he’s been awfully quiet lately.”

  In the other part of the ship, Anderson was biting his palm and screaming as he came, and C.J. heard Cassie snicker next to him. He was too hard and too heartsore to think it was quite that funny.

  “Yeah, but he had a major crush on you because he liked the way you play. We need someone like that. Someone with your dumbass sense of humor, and a little bit of seriousness, you know, so Anderson knows he’s got a partner to be serious with.”

  “We’ll need glasses,” Bobby said with confidence. “They always make someone look serious.”

  “Thanks a lot, dickhead,” Henry said in disgust. “I couldn’t even program laser surgery because Anderson thought that would be cheating.”

  Cassie and C.J. met eyes, and both of them suppressed a groan. God. They’d promised each other no more drinking after the last time. They’d keep that down to once a week, otherwise they’d both need a treatment program during their down-planet break, but jeez! The idea of the different pieces of Anderson’s identity arguing with each other about their programming was… was baffling. Baffling and difficult and… horrible.

  Glumly, C.J. wished he’d stayed with Jensen long enough to get the big psych degree alongside him, just so he could help Anderson now.

  Anderson—God, Anderson. Anderson, whose life they were watching and who was, even as C.J. and Cass wrapped it up that day, waiting in “their” quarters and feeding the gamma bird. Today, he was wearing a new outfit with a skin-tight white bodysuit and a thin-collared, bright green shirt belted over it. Whoever he had been as a child, he certainly enjoyed wearing bright, exciting things now.

  “Hey, C.J., tough day?”

  C.J. laughed helplessly. Anderson knew C.J. was reviewing recorded segments of his life. C.J. had been honest with him about it but hadn’t told him how hard it was to watch, how horrible it was to see Anderson finding more and more ingenious ways to hide his terrible, chest-crushing loneliness from even himself.

  So Anderson knew what C.J. was doing, but he didn’t really know. At least, C.J. thought he didn’t, until Anderson looked up from giving Chips a piece of Hermes-Eight hybrid-grain flatbread and said, “So, have you gotten to the health and hygiene file yet?”

  C.J.’s entire body flushed hot. “About five days ago. We, uhm, had to slow down because you and your friends were doing a lot of programming right there.”

  Anderson sent him that flirty, predatory look again, the one he had when he was thinking about C.J. sexually and wanted C.J. to know. Today, after watching Anderson pleasure himself for the umpteenth time, it actually made C.J. sweat. “So you’ve been watching me masturbate like it’s a new sport and I’m going for a gold medal?”

  C.J. laughed a little and rubbed his hand over his tight, flattened gold curls. “It’s an old sport, little man, but yeah, you were trying to set a record.”

  Anderson’s look intensified, and he smiled a one-sided, evil little imp of a smile. “Yeah, well, you keep using shower credits and you might have me beat.”

  C.J. put his face in his hands and groaned. “God… Anderson… you weren’t supposed to know….”

  “That I’ve been turning you on these last two weeks?” Anderson swung around and moved closer, right into C.J.’s space. “After your nice speech about it all being a bad idea, right?” He was so close C.J. could look between his fingers and see the brown in Anderson’s eyes and the way they narrowed in the corners when he was trying to bait C.J.

  “Anderson, I think you maybe need to….” He was going to say it. He was going to say, “You need to move into other quarters.” He was. But Anderson’s lip started to quiver, and his mouth parted, and his forehead wrinkled in hurt, and C.J. remembered that every night he sat up and screamed silently, afraid that once again, no one would hear him.

  “I need to what?” Anderson asked, nothing predatory in his eyes or the set of his shoulders now. Just simple need. Simple, “By all that’s holy in the universe, C.J., please don’t leave me!” need.

  “Need to let me go use the fresher, at least,” C.J. said roughly, setting his hands on Anderson’s shoulders and moving him firmly away.

  Anderson’s smile was winsome and conciliatory. “I, uhm, asked Marshall, you know. I have shower credits too now. You can use some of mine. I’m not used to all that water yet.”

  C.J. nodded. “Thanks, Anderson. I’ll try to keep it short.”

  Anderson swallowed and backed up another step. “I’m really grateful, C.J., for your help and your friendship. I shouldn’t bait you like that.”

  C.J. closed his eyes and remembered Alpha, leaning against the doorframe and stroking his cock without even a blush.

  It was like Alpha was the want and Anderson was the apology. Alpha wa
s the id and Anderson was the superego, and C.J. was the poor schmuck getting fucked and blown between them.

  “Thanks, Anderson,” C.J. said, sincerely. “I’ll… I’ll be out in a minute.”

  “Take your time!” Anderson said, smiling that winsome smile again.

  C.J. ran to his room, collected his clothes, and dodged into the washroom again. He was about two minutes into soaping his chest and his neck, trying to sponge away some of the confusion, when he felt a brief gust of cooler air into the bathroom. The shower-fresher door opened, and Anderson’s hand appeared.

  “I bought this for you. You’ll like the smell.”

  C.J. took the soap from him dumbly. The hand disappeared, and C.J. held the soap up to his nose and took an experimental sniff and then leaned his head against the shower cubicle helplessly as his cock stiffened in reaction.

  He groaned softly and slathered a little bit of the soap onto his member, shivering as it slicked on the head. Jesus… oh, holy God! The smell… it was like Anderson had spent all of his free time that morning trying to find the thing, the perfect smell, the combination of vanilla and spice and hot come that would make C.J. want to pump himself until he was raw.

  This time when he closed his eyes, he didn’t see Alpha, and he didn’t see young Anderson, holding his own cock in his hand.

  He saw Anderson, as he had been in the living room, looking predatory and sexy and hot.

  He didn’t last long after that, which was good, because he was limp and relaxed and clean before he came anywhere near exhausting Anderson’s hot water credits. Which meant, of course, he had more to last him, because oh, God and holy shit, was he going to need them!

  They stayed inside and watched a vid after dinner, and C.J. was tired enough not to protest when Anderson snugged himself up under C.J.’s arm and onto his lap.

  C.J. didn’t relax after that, because he knew what was coming and he was ready. Soon enough they’d fall asleep and Anderson would wake up again in the throes of his nightly ritual, and the echoes of the terrible, strangled, silent screams would stay with C.J. through the rest of his sleep, through his workout routine in the morning, and right up until he walked up the now-familiar ramp to the shuttle where Anderson had lived for more than ten years of his life.

  After nearly a month of working there, C.J. already hated it. He didn’t know how Anderson had survived.

  Two days after C.J. allowed himself to be scented like Anderson’s sexual fantasy, Kate and Bobby finally unleashed Alpha on an unsuspecting Anderson, and C.J. was plunged into a hell so exquisite there wasn’t a name for it.

  And Anderson brought home cologne for C.J. that matched the soap.

  Chapter 12

  Sex and Violence

  “HE’S REALLY handsome,” Cassie said at C.J.’s side, and C.J. had to agree.

  “Nice job there, guys,” he said to Kate and Bobby, but they looked back at him with hard, unhappy eyes.

  “You both know this doesn’t end well,” Kate muttered, and C.J. turned away from where the handsome, confident hologram had just introduced himself to Anderson and Bobby’s class, and looked at her.

  “We’ve been watching the replay, Kate,” he said softly. “You guys only had the best of intentions. You wanted him to be happy, and you used what you had to do it. I mean… he was lonely. He was terribly lonely. It wasn’t your fault, and you—”

  “We wanted to make it better,” Bobby muttered. “Henry didn’t do it. We had to try something different. We thought he needed some bossiness, someone to take charge after all, you know?”

  “I know,” C.J. murmured. He and Cassie had seen it. Leadership weighed heavily on Anderson’s shoulders. Cancelling the companion prototypes, cancelling Kate’s classroom—those decisions hadn’t come easily. Anderson had set up a world and established rules: the holograms were people. If they weren’t people, he was alone. If he was alone, he was insane. The rules had to be held to. So if the rules were adhered to, cancelling the programs wasn’t just pushing a button. It was….

  No one had said the word. No one wanted to even put a voice to it. The word was too horrible, and Anderson too innocent.

  But Anderson knew. He knew that according to the rules, cancelling holograms made him….

  Not even Cassie could say it, and there had been a time when C.J. thought she could say anything, no matter how painful, for someone’s own good.

  So for a moment, when C.J. and Cassie saw Alpha, they felt their spirits lift. For a moment, it felt like Anderson wasn’t alone anymore.

  They had fast-forwarded through much of the dialogue with the previous candidates (although they let Henry have his say, because, well, it only seemed polite since he was in the room), but with Alpha….

  With Alpha, everything seemed relevant.

  “Notice that?” Cassidy said softly as Alpha introduced himself.

  “What?”

  “He blew off his name. He spotted the acronym and went for it.” She turned to Bobby and Kate. “Did you guys do that on purpose? The acronym?”

  Kate shook her head. “Dumbfuck chance,” she said, so matter-of-fact that they didn’t doubt her in the least.

  “Yeah,” C.J. muttered. “He wants to be the shit, the bomb, the alpha male.” They watched as Alpha cornered Anderson after school and smoothly insinuated himself into Anderson’s evening ritual of dinner and doing homework with his friends, and C.J. looked at Kate sharply.

  “You’re bossy, sweetheart, but you don’t seem that aggressive. Where’s he getting this?”

  Henry was the one who spoke up. “Risa, actually. She pointed out that since we all seemed to be some part of Anderson himself, the one thing any of us was missing was his ability to give orders, to lead. So she said Bobby and Kate should have gone through with Kate’s instincts and made him the one of us who leads.”

  “Yeah,” Cassie muttered with some rancor and a massage to her healed shoulder. “I don’t see him leading now! Where is that cowardly motherfucker?”

  “He thinks his job is done,” Kate said dully, which didn’t surprise C.J., but it did surprise Cassie.

  “What? Anderson’s here now, so he doesn’t have a function?”

  “Well, yeah,” Kate replied. “He assumed, in fact, he had us all convinced, that you’d cancel us as soon as we came into dock. He was looking forward to it. He was… I mean, it was like….”

  “Like he’d fulfilled his mission,” Henry filled in for her. “I mean, the rest of us, we sort of enjoyed life. It was hard, especially when things got thin, but none of us want to, you know… stop existing. But not Alpha.”

  C.J. thought about it for a moment, watching the screen as Alpha’s eyes narrowed in a way that was familiar, but not in that narrow face with the wide-spaced gray eyes. He was predatory, single-minded. He had one goal and he was going to succeed.

  At the moment, as they watched, the goal was to seduce Anderson.

  C.J. watched their first kiss on the screen in the front of the bridge console with slightly parted lips and an aching heart. It looked so innocent—it did. Alpha looked confident and happy, and Anderson… he looked… he looked like he wanted to be happy. He looked like he expected to be happy. But the kiss broke off, and C.J. saw it, a hesitation between the kiss and the expression a lover should have after his first kiss.

  He knows, C.J. thought. He knows this isn’t real. He’s aware. C.J. remembered Anderson’s wonder at the heat from his skin, the smell, the tongue darting out to taste. He wondered if Alpha had these things. If I’d known… I would have added it. He heard Anderson’s voice in his head and knew the answer. The touch—that touch—broke Anderson’s illusion. But changing the program was cheating. The illusion was all he had.

  They watched the entire progression that day, from Alpha’s introduction to the first kiss to making love—and every step of it hurt C.J. more.

  The love scene was… perfect. Alpha was assured, dominant, and there was no fumbling, no uncertainty. He undressed Anderson
slowly, kissed every smooth stroke of the soft skin underneath the ugly orange jumpsuit. Anderson came into view—very much like the Anderson that C.J. knew, the one who had started to undress with no self-consciousness at all in C.J.’s room. He was too thin, and his bones—ribs, clavicles, spine, shoulders—were all prominent with youth. His eyes were enormous, lovely, and he used that look—that alluring way of looking with his eyes but tilting his chin away—to inflame Alpha, to make his hands shake and his kisses tremble.

  Alpha fell on his knees before Anderson, opened his mouth, and very skillfully sucked Anderson’s cock. C.J. couldn’t help it—he noticed. Anderson’s cock was decently sized, large enough to be interesting in its own right, not so large as to be frightening or distracting or terribly uncomfortable in the right places. Anderson rested his hands on the back of Alpha’s head, tilted his head back, and….

  “Did you see that?” Cassie asked, her voice tense. Well, yeah—she was probably just as aroused/uncomfortable as C.J. at this point.

  “Yeah,” C.J. muttered. “I saw it.”

  “His eyes….”

  Anderson wasn’t closing his eyes. They were hooded. Anderson’s cock was hard in Alpha’s grip, Anderson’s heart was beating fast in his throat, and his nipples were hard, and all signs pointed to arousal. Except, as Alpha crouched on his knees and worshipped Anderson’s body with his mouth, Anderson was looking down at Alpha’s head with what amounted to detachment. And sorrow. And shame.

  “He knows,” C.J. said gruffly. Alpha had snuck two slickened fingers to probe Anderson’s backside, and Anderson had to close his eyes now as he spread his legs and allowed the penetration—welcomed it, from the looks of things—and grew close to climax. But that look, that look of sorrow, it was indelible, and neither of the people watching the screen would forget it. They would see it again in a few moments as Anderson unknowingly faced the programmed holocamera and allowed his anal orifice to be breached by the Alpha construct, even as he grabbed sheets and blankets in clenching fingers and gibbered into a pillow in passion and sexual arousal. They saw it when he reached back and stroked his own cock so he could come, and they saw it again when Alpha shouted and spasmed and shuddered and came.