Chapter 3: Issue

A bit into this more intense massage and the pair lifted their heads. Sially gasped and a rumble echoed from the red-haired one’s throat.

“Hey Metalbrain, get over here. Now.” said Arizi.

NAIAD hovered an eye construct over towards the plate. The purple entity reached out and plucked up a red planet. Her thumb and forefinger crushed two neon metropolises beneath their bulk. Her voice thundered.

“Want to tell me what this is?” said Arizi.

NAIAD thought on her words carefully. The entity was clearly upset based on facial expression and tone.

“That is a near type 1 planet: Oitune. The Oitunians live there, and though a complete study was impossible during the harvesting process I believe they communicate mostly through song and-”

The constructs sensors lurched and filled with static. Arizi was now hovering upright in space. The invisible surface she rested on must be gone given how her legs would stop on it otherwise. NAIAD’s eye construct here found itself in a purple palm: Arizi’s, of course. The red-headed being had instantly moved to this position and took the machine with her: any constructs which would have been in her new space were destroyed, and the surviving ones quickly hovered out of the way. The gel on Arizi’s body got lapped up by her skin real quick: actively, rather than passively. This left her clean and dry.

“That’s not what I meant. What color is it dummy?”

“The tone could best be describe as Maroon on average, but most light in the traditionally visible spectrum for lower-tier sentients is in the red range-”

“Red. That’s right.” Said Arizi. The entity held the planet up to her face, tilting it over and watching the lifeforms scurry about. Her powers held its gravity and atmosphere intact as she studied it with a sneer; a sneer soon directed at NAIAD again.

“Red planets are gross most of the time. They’re typically sandy and gritty. The species that live on them are often bloated to preserve water. They are unaesthetic, unappetizing and unappealing. They usually taste like dirt, and even on the rare chance they don’t, they don’t mesh well with other worlds on our palate.

“They’re good only for obliterating.” Arizi pinched the planet through in her grip. Its core broke free and all the lifeforms on the world dispersed into the void about her palm. Her red eyes watched them float around, gasping for air among the severed chunks of world-mass before her lambent red eyes glowed bright and purple-toned flames incinerated it all.

“They are worthless.” said Arizi.

“Please forgive me. It was not specified that such planets were unappealing to-” began NAIAD.

“Not specified?!?” interrupted Arizi. “Only a moron wouldn’t know that. For an artificial intelligence you aren’t very smart. And I don’t believe I asked for opinion on the matter.”

Her fingers clenched around NAIAD’s eye-construct here. “I think you’ve forgotten some important details on this arrangement, and how generous my love has been.”

All this time, Sially had still been laying down and taking in her massage still. However, she did turn her head to look up at Arizi. Her face was as relaxed as ever, and she smiled at this sight as though it amused her.

Arizi faced this system’s bubbled-up and metal-encased star.

“Tell me what that is.” said Arizi.

The eye-construct’s orange eye-light was set dead on it in the distance. “That is my computational core, built around an orange-dwarf star.”

“And do you know what’ll happen if I grow a little big bigger and wrap my fingers about that, or set my foot on it? What do you think will happen if I set it between my toes and curl them, Machinebrain?”

“All systems would stop functioning.”

“Exactly, you’d be dead. We could even just compress that barrier of ours and flatten it that way.”

She squeezed the eye-construct in her palm tighter.

“It’s only by Sially’s mercy you’re even allowed to exist. Any other system like yours that learned faster-than-light travel would be annihilated by us: devoured. Do you know how many stars like yours I’ve slurped up? How many Sially has?” said Arizi.

Her grip was tight. The eye-construct struggled a bit to get its communications systems whirring again. “I do not.”

“Millions upon millions. But since *you* were an entirely artificial sentient, my partner spared you in exchange for becoming our servant. You know that’s what you are right? A novelty? A toy?”

NAIAD chose her next message carefully.

“Affirmative.”

“And you have the audacity to serve us a red planet? To serve her one? How ungrateful. I think you need a sample of what can very easily happen to you should you earn more disfavor.” said Arizi. She brought the construct closer to her looming face.

“Please. That will not be necessary, I can simply imagine numerous unfortunate ends. I do not require-”

“You don’t get it Metalbrain. I wasn’t asking you.”

Arizi opened wide and stuffed this spherical-machine in. NAIAD’s sensors, both there on on her other constructs, picked up laughter. Sially was still watching. She was giggling.

NAIAD experienced what it was like to be one of those plate planets now. Her eye constructs weren’t too much bigger than those worlds, after all. Saliva pooled over this constructs metal exterior, though its systems were resistant enough to that moisture. The suckling was a bit more problematic, and that tore off an outer plate of this particular mechanical body. Arizi spoke again, though this time directly into NAIAD’s senses.

“This is how easily you could be my food.”, her voice rung. Then, she gulped.

The slimy red flesh of Arizi’s throat squeezed at the spherical construct. The machine’s systems worked to their maximum to keep itself from getting deformed too much, but the strength of the entity was too much. Physically and metaphysically, this purple entity was beyond NAIAD. The AI could control a vast swath of constructs from a central core. She thought she could explore the entire universe one day. Then she met them and learned how limited she truly was. By the time it squeezed through a ring of flesh into Arizi’s stomach, the eye-construct was slightly deformed from all those esophageal tugs.

All systems were still operational. Optical sensors in particular were optimal.

NAIAD assessed the environment of Arizi’s digestive chamber. Planets of all colors and sizes languished here. Some were adhered to the stomach walls. On the way down, those planets got unlucky and brushed against that undulating flesh. Whatever slimy mucus lining coated the walls had adhesive properties it’d seem, and those world’s dissolved right into the flesh itself. When the excretions replenished themselves, they did so *over* the stuck worlds so as to cocoon them in digestive slime.

Though the coating wasn’t entirely clear, what the AI could make out showed the sentients on those worlds flailing through the process. Sprawling cities were inundated by the goop, then dissolved outright in the slime’s corrosiveness as it softened the planets themselves.

Most fell to the bottom of this gut, bouncing around much as the eye-construct did now with each tumultuous churn of the dark-red organ. The pools of digestive fluid were a dark green with some other colors showing up as muted hues. NAIAD’s sensors confirmed this was because of all the planets already fully dissolved within. Those worlds she harvested were a rainbow of colors, yet within Arizi’s gut the natural green of of purple entity’s stomach juices took dominance.

The torrid air of this place wafted over the construct’s chassis. NAIAD could tell from the sensors that the atmosphere in the gut was laden with droplets of acid. On the off-chance a planet could hover on its own in here, it’d digest anyways in time. These two beings were truly thorough when they wanted to be, she conjectured.

The noises, too, were omnipresent. Gurgles and glorps. As beauty-conforming as the two were on the outside, inside this entity the sounds were anything but. The floor lurched in a particularly big churn and the eye-construct rolled into a corner of the gut. Some planets in the way just fall apart on contact: too mushy and weak to withstand the roll of the planet-scale machine. NAIAD figured it best not to try and prolong the construct’s stay in here. Its destruction was inevitable, and in the worst case that might anger Arizi further.

The eye-construct hit the wall of the gut and started to get gooped up, but it melted into the pooling fluids before it could be ‘cocooned’ properly.

Back outside, Arizi fetch another eye construct. She didn’t reach out and grab it, but instead just warped the thing into her hand. She held this one up to her face.

“You definitely understand now, don’t you?” said Arizi. She opened wide and dragged the rough surface of her tongue all over the machine. “Can you smell or sense your dissolving alloys on my breath?”, she said in a message projection. The red-headed female then exhaled a bout of air all over the construct.

“Affirmative.”

“And you know your place now, artificial dummy.” said Arizi, talking aloud again.

“Affirmative.”

“And you realize that if you fuck up again I’ll personally rip yo-”

“That’s enough~” said Sially. She stirred from her invisible massage-table-surface, dissolving it once done. Unlike Arizi, she actually rose instead of just instantly warping upwards. This gave NAIAD enough time to move all the constructs out of the way at least. The orange gel left on her back went away as her body sucked it in, absorbing all those lifeforms still within in nary a moment.

Sially stood by Arizi’s side and wrapped her pink arms underneath her love’s naked chest. The pink one’s cheeks were flush a bit, and she had a big smile on her face. She leaned her lips into Arizi’s ear and whispered--at a volume all could hear of course.

“I think you’re just a bit jealous.” Her tone was dulcet and teasing.

“What!” barked Arizi. “I’m not jealous of some Metalbrain.”

“Overprotective perhaps? In any case I appreciate your passion, but maybe ask me in the future before getting all worked up like that on my behalf ok?” She moved her lips down to Arizi’s neck and kissed, prompting a half-lidded grunt from the purple one. Her blue hair brushed Arizi’s red.

“Ah, you’re right. I’m sorry love.” replied Arizi.

Sially continued. Her hands started rubbing up and down Arizi’s shuddering sides. Her head moved to the other side of her lover’s.

“It’s fine. You know asserting dominance over lesser beings gets me going anyways. Still, I like this AI. That massage was nice and you know it. If it makes you feel better though...”

Sially moved her hand towards Arizi’s. Those purple fingers, tensely clutching that construct of NAIAD, went loose and limber at the pink one’s touch. She took the sphere into her own pink palm without resistance.

“I’ll show you I don’t really care about this toy that much.”

Sially’s blue gaze fell on the machine. Her dimly glowing eyes sparked up as pink flames wreathed the construct. NAIAD felt its temperatures reach near unstable levels. Sially was burning that construct slowly: by design, perhaps, as she took up the burning machine and mashed it into the purple-one’s chest. The construct exploded on impact to the tune of a surprised moan from Arizi.

NAIAD was summoned again. Another eye-construct was plucked from nearby to exist in front of the faces of the two women. Sially turned to face it, while Arizi started smooching at the pink flesh of her neck.

“I believe we mentioned two other special toys for us. Bring them here, would you NAIAD?”

“Affirmative” said the AI, knowing what she must be referring to.