statue, she too looked like a goddess-one stripped of all her power, perhaps, but not of her divinity.
“It used to terrify me,” D_Light said. “That.” He pointed up into the starry night.
Lily squinted as though looking for something specific. “When I was little,” D_Light said, “I slept by myself in a tiny, windowless room away from the other children. My bedroom was out on the roof of our nursery, and so on the clear nights I would gaze up at the stars before going to bed. I continued this routine until one night, as I lay in my bed…” D_Light paused because he was not sure how to explain. “As I lay in my bed, I felt infinity.” He looked into Lily’s eyes to see if he had already lost her, but she appeared focused and intrigued, so he continued. “I realized I was a speck in time, a time that went on forever without end. I felt like I was already gone and that my life, me, the person I was, my soul as it were, had no meaning on such a stage-in a universe without end.”
Lily placed her hand atop D_Light’s, and the two returned their gaze upward to the stars.
“It terrified me,” D_Light said, his eyes still fixed on the night sky. “It terrified me to be nothing.” Then he chuckled.
“So I stopped looking up on my way to my bed, and I started sleeping with the light on.”
Lily smiled at his solution. “I always slept near my sisters and daughters until that was no longer an option. Why did you sleep alone?” Lily asked softly.
“My naga did not allow any of us to sleep together.” D_Light recited a hymn: “In the Game of Life, we all play alone.”
“What a strange thing to say,” Lily declared. “I don’t think that is even true. Sure, we are born alone and we die alone, but as we live, we live together. It seems like the living is the important part.”
D_Light did not bother to explain that the meaning of the hymn was more subtle than that. Sure, players gained by cooperating, at least as far as such relationships were beneficial, but in the end only individuals received salvation. One had to make one’s own way.
“Anyway, it isn’t about whom I slept near,” D_Light said.
“This fear was deeper than that. Maybe the distraction of others would have stopped me from realizing this truth-”
“The truth of your oblivion?” Lily questioned.
“Right.”
“And you found solace in the OverSoul’s promise to make you timeless?”
D_Light’s voice rose. “It’s more than a promise, more than a myth. I mean, you see them-the immortals. They walk among us. You ate dinner with one of them!”
“Dr. Monsa? You want to be like him?” Lily asked.
“Maybe not like him exactly,” D_Light replied, and they both laughed at this.
The two fell silent for a short time. Smorgeous had observed where the servants kept the nectar wine and suggested D_Light acquire some for his company. The familiar reminded him that alcohol had, historically, served him well with the ladies. D_Light told his familiar to shut up.
D_Light crossed his arms and rubbed his shoulders as though to keep warm, causing an undesirable slithering sound as his hands ran across the microlenses of his skinsuit, breaking the dense but pleasant silence. Lily looked over and put her arm around his shoulders and pulled him close. It was not the jerky, awkward, or hurried motion of someone making a sexual advance, the way Lyra had come on to him the night before. Sitting so closely, their bodies gently touching, he could feel the slow and steady rise and fall of her breath. He let his head tilt down and rest on her soft shoulder. She wrapped her arms around him tighter, and he could feel her heartbeat, which was steady and strong. It was hypnotic, and he allowed himself to listen for the longest while. In that moment, D_Light was feeling something that he had never before felt, and it was both exciting and terrifying at the same time.
“Someday I would like to take you sailing,” he announced.
“Sailing? Ah, I’ve seen the little white sails of the boats on the lake near our…near my old home.” She paused. “It looks very peaceful. Like birds in flight.”
“Ha, everyone I know thinks it’s pointless-a waste of time.”
Lily nestled her warm face into his chest. “I would go sailing with you, D.”
“We could go anywhere, you know. I’d rent us an old-fashioned sloop, one with a cabin that we could sleep in. So many islands for us to anchor off of. We could just keep going and going.”
Lily nodded.
“We could take your nubber. We could train him to work the deck.”
Lily laughed. “I don’t know what ‘working the deck’ is, but I’m sure he would look adorable doing it.”
They both looked over at the nubber. It sat as though mimicking the humans; however, sitting forward was difficult for a pudgy bear, and so it rocked back and forth, always threatening to fall backward. When it noticed it had the humans’ attention, it crawled over and joined in the snuggling, which set off a series of coos and awws from everyone.
Eventually, Lily spoke softly. “There is a lake nearby.”
“Yeah, we’re sitting under a giant lake,” D_Light said.
“Yes, but I mean another smaller lake, here, in the inner sanctum. BoBo showed it to me yesterday. If we have time tomorrow, would you like to go for a swim? You humans are all competitive, right? We could race, if you prefer.”
Time. All this talk of infinite time and he suddenly felt like he did not have any to spare. Lily, apparently thinking along the same lines, asked, “Why haven’t they come for us? Come for me, I mean? They must know we’re here.”
D_Light just turned his head, found her cheek, and kissed it. Her skin was warm and pliant to his lips.
“Let’s take that swim now,” he said with a comforting smile.
It was not long before the companions found a small lake that shimmered subtly under the soothing colors of nearby photoflowers. They swam, laughed, and raced to the point of exhaustion. Naked and entwined, they fell asleep atop a soft mound of moss as they dried in the warmth of the inner sanctum’s night air.
D_Light awoke again to find PeePee staring at him with a blink request from Lyra, which he accepted. Good morning, Dee. Her thought signature was amused.
This isn’t exactly what it looks like, D_Light stammered. We took a swim and then-
Forget it. I think it’s great that you’re getting along so fabulously with all of your teammates. A real morale builder you are. Unnervingly, the ferret simulated Lyra’s laugh, and its little snout snapped open and shut as it did so.
There was little D_Light could do but take her teasing in good humor. Lily awoke also and was predictably unhappy about yet another voyeur robot making her business its own.
The rest of the day went on in a similar manner as the last. The girls whisked Lily away, and D_Light, Lyra, and Djoser went on their own excursion.
First on the trio’s to-do list was to visit Amanda, who was recovering on a bed atop an immense boulder that overlooked much of the sunken English garden. With Lyra at the lead, they made their way up a set of stairs that snaked around the girth of the boulder. Once at the top, they could see a medical bot tending to the patient, along with a pink-bowed clone daughter of Dr. Monsa’s, presumably the only clone the group had not yet met. This girl did not introduce herself or pay the visitors any attention at all until Djoser, nearly shouting, demanded Amanda’s health status.
The girl sighed and directed her attention to the visitors. “The damage to the product’s body was significant, as you can see by the number of skin grafts on her body, but she is making excellent progress in her recovery and is already walking.” Djoser caressed the white artificial skin that held his servant together. It was oily to the touch.
The group would have chatted with Amanda, but concubine bodyguards were not conversationalists. She simply said that she hoped to be fully functional within a day or two. It only took a few minutes for D_Light and Lyra to become bored and want to move on, but Djoser lingered. After all, he had been away from his concubine for two nights now. Lyra and D_Light left him to her. Descending the stairs from the boulder, D_Light was not sure if he was disgusted or mildly impressed that the coddled nobleman was willing to perv with something in that state; he quickly realized that it was disgust. The clone would have stayed as well, perhaps for some research purpose, but Djoser insisted that she give them a few minutes alone.
