When our lips met, I hadn't realized how much Alyssa had been holding herself back and restraining her emotions until she let herself go. She kissed me hard and her hands gripped the back of my unitard. I wasn't sure what she was going to do, then she made fists in the fabric and pulled. The cloth shredded as if it was one of the tear away unitards they had at the hospital. She let me go and stepped back as she dropped the cloth to the floor.

Alyssa gripped the shoulders of her own unitard and pulled, which shredded it, and she let the pieces fall to the floor. She stepped forward again and kissed me as she pushed me back. I stumbled into the table and caught my balance, and she hit the button to convert it to a bed.

“W-wait... for just a second.” I tried to say, and she tackled me. We fell onto the table as it dropped, then she rolled me over onto the couch part and kept kissing me. The couch folded out slowly and made a loud whirring sound because of our weight on it; but, it finished becoming the bed and she rolled back over to put me on top.

“No more waiting!” Alyssa said and pulled me onto her, and we made desperate and passionate love right there. With no preamble or foreplay to get either of us warmed up, it was a bit difficult at first; but, then we found a good rhythm and neither of us worried about too much after that.

Alyssa came to her senses nearly an hour later when she noticed the bruising start to develop on my shoulder. “Oh, god.” She said and sat up. “Jack, I...”

“It's my fault.” I said and sat up, too. “I forgot that I wasn't a full cyborg and I treated you kind of roughly.” I rubbed my shoulder and looked at it. “It's not dislocated, but I'll be feeling it tomorrow.” I chuckled. “You're surprisingly heavy when you aren't actively trying to help.”

Alyssa touched my shoulder. “When did you do that?”

“When I flipped you over and-mhmm.” I said and she covered my mouth with her hand.

“I remember.” Alyssa said. “Jack, I... we need to be more careful.”

“Hey, I signed the form. We don't need to be careful, remember?”

“That's not what I meant.” Alyssa said, and I chuckled.

“I'm pretty sure neither of us was thinking 'careful' during any of that.” I said. “How sore are you?”

Alyssa reached down and rubbed her belly. “It's a little tender.” She said and looked down at herself. “It's a good tender, though.”

“I'm just glad it worked.” I said and pointed down at my private place with both index fingers. “Way to go, Ginormous Fallic Symbol Numero Uno! You did it!”

Alyssa snort a laugh, then kept laughing as I asked it for a 'high five'.

“Oh, come on! Give me a medium four at least. No? Maybe a low three?” I asked it, and she laughed. “A droopy two?” I sighed dramatically. “A floppy one it is.” I said and pat it, and she laughed and laughed.

After a few more lame jokes, we got out of bed and cleaned up. I had to be extra careful of my synthetic parts, and Alyssa helped me.

“I hope I can get used to doing this on my own.” I said. “I've seen Deloris do this quite a few times now, and I still mess up and try to wash the synthetic parts with the normal soap.”

Alyssa chuckled. “To be honest, I mess it up sometimes, too.”

“You do?”

Alyssa nodded. “You have to be twice as vigilant in cleaning the synthetic parts afterwards, or it'll start gumming things up.” She said. “The first time I saw Crush doing maintenance, I almost threw up.”

I laughed, because Crush seemed to be the prime example of what not to do for cybernetic maintenance. “Please tell me he's been keeping his updates going.”

“He has.” Alyssa said. “What you did to him in your vacation home maintenance bay has changed him.”

“He almost had all new parts.” I said. “I'm glad he's trying to keep them that way.”

We were about to put on new unitards when there was a knock on the door. Alyssa slipped one on and checked the security feed on her HUD.

“It's Deloris.” Alyssa said and relaxed, then went to open the door.

“Hey, guys.” Nurse Deloris said as she entered the apartment and carried a bag with her. “How are...” She stopped talking and sniffed the air. “You should turn up the air purifier if you're going to have sex in such a small space.”

Alyssa's face turned bright red, then she hit the button on the controls and turned the power up to full.

“That's better.” Nurse Deloris said after a few moments and saw Alyssa's face. “Don't be embarrassed. I've been in a lot of confined spaces after someone had fun.” She chuckled. “It's the stuffiness in here that gave it away.”

The redness in Alyssa's face didn't lessen at all.

“Jack, since you're already in the bathroom, bring out the things I need.” Nurse Deloris said.

I gathered up the towels and lubricating fluid she would need for my maintenance check. She put her bag in the closet and took out the portable maintenance kit. I laid down on the bed and she checked me over thoroughly.

“Everything checks out.” Nurse Deloris said and applied the lubricating fluid to seal all the parts again.

“Thanks for coming over and doing this.” I said.

“You're paying me to do it.” Nurse Deloris said and smiled. “That's thanks enough.”

“Then I'll try to be less grateful in the future.”

Nurse Deloris laughed and walked over to the closet to retrieve her bag. “By the way, I made this for you.” She said and dug out a one foot by one foot square container, and held it out. “Come on, now. It doesn't bite.”

Alyssa stepped forward and took it, then popped the top off. “Deloris, is that...?”

“Mama's Homemade Lasagna.” Nurse Deloris said.

I looked at her with wide eyes, and she grinned.

“Before you start flipping out about illegal cheese products, I substituted the brown algenate discs into the recipe.”

“I wasn't going to flip out.” I said. “I would have asked where you got it.”

“Uh huh.” Nurse Deloris chuckled and opened the apartment door. “Have fun, kids!” She said and waved as she left. Alyssa and I exchanged looks, and then looked at the container Alyssa held.

“I'll clean off the bed and you grab the utensils.” I said and quickly moved the towels out of the way and hit the button to convert it back into a couch and table. Alyssa grabbed the forks and we sat down together in the cramped space and dug into the food.

“That's delicious.” Alyssa said after she took the first forkful.

“Now I don't regret letting her take the last slice of pizza yesterday.” I said, and we ate the rest of the lasagna in silence. When it was gone, I washed the container out and set it aside, just in case Nurse Deloris wanted it back.

“She's not going to take the hint.” Alyssa warned me.

I chuckled. “Hey, she might fill it for us again.”

Alyssa shook her head and passed me my portable display. “Get to work.”

“Yes, ma'am! One lazy ass getting to work, Ma'am!” I said and gave her a perfect parade ground salute to make her laugh. She pointed to the table and I went over to it and set the display up, then plugged it into the ports behind my ear. I saw my AI Amanda as she sat on the virtual seat on the other side of the table that just happened to be inside the wall, and I smiled at her.

“Okay, Amanda. Show me what you got.” I said.

“I thought you would never ask!” Amanda said and stood up, then started to unbutton her top.

“I meant my project, not your code.” I said.

“Aww! You haven't checked me in over a month!”

“That can wait until I'm in my immersion chamber.” I said. “I can do it better when I have my full virtual controls.”

“But, Jack...”

“Why else do you think I'm only doing light work?” I asked her, and she sighed.

“All right.” Amanda said and pulled out my new circuit board, then hung it in the air in front of me. “I've already sorted the new pieces.” She said and a workbench with all the trays appeared in front of me.

“Thank you.” I said and popped out the microchip processors and replaced them with above-standard upgrades. I replaced the memory chips with slightly better versions, upgraded the transistors to match the specs on the new power requirements for the replaced chips, then finalized the design by adding my digital signature.

“Can you file the patent for this and send it for manufacturing?” I asked.

“Can a duck swim?” Amanda asked. “What is it, anyway?”

“It's a buffer and signal converter.” I said, and she looked at me with wide eyes.

“For what?”

“You'll see.”

“Jack...”

“You're going to help me write the program to run it, so you'll discover what it's for eventually.” I said. “I could tell you right now; but, I want you to figure it out for yourself... if you can.”

Amanda frowned. “You bet your ass I'll figure it out.” She said and made a digital copy of the circuit board and tossed it out of my field of view.

“What did you just do?” I asked.

“I sent it to the System's filing AIs.” Amanda said. “Patent logged and registered.” She said and made another digital copy. “How many do you want for the initial production run?”

“I'll need at least seven of them, so better make it ten.”

“Ten? That's all?” Amanda asked. “That's not even close to the minimum the factory can make.” She said. “It has to reconfigure to produce it, and with such a low number, your priority will be really low.”

“Hmm.” I thought about it. “I don't want to order too many, in case it doesn't work as well as I hope.”

“I just ran the cost projection, and running ten of them will cost the same as if you ran a thousand.”

“You're kidding.” I said.

Amanda shook her head and showed me the numbers.

“Wow, the manufacturing cost cut-off seems to hover between fifty thousand and a hundred thousand.”

“After you pay for twenty thousand or so, the rest are almost free.” Amanda said.

“I definitely don't want that many for the first run, especially if we have to adjust anything that can't be handled with software.” I said. “Let's do a thousand production models, since it's the same cost as ten. Oh, and reserve a run for an additional ten thousand, just in case.”

“You got it.” Amanda said and added the information and the Points needed to pay for the run, then she turned around and shoved it away. “It's off.”

“Any kind of estimate on the time?” I asked.

“Once they secure the materials and reconfigure the manufacturing plant, which should only take a few hours, the run itself will be done in about an hour.”

“Wait, what?” I said, surprised. “Did you say an hour?”

“After the few hours to get things ready.” Amanda said. “If you're going to write the code for it, you better get started.”

“Geez.” I said and opened a new base program, then started to add in code for basic operations, then started to open a dozen other coding projects and copied and modified the code from them to fill in the necessary gaps.

“You can't use that.” Amanda said and pointed. “Wrong variable reference.”

“Dammit.” I said and deleted the line of code, then added in the proper reference for what I wanted and moved on. I opened another commonly used program that had both basic and complicated protocols, then copied it in it's entirety and spliced it into the program I was writing.

“Hey, is that what I think it is?” Amanda asked.

“Maybe.” I smiled and kept working. Amanda watched over my shoulder as I kept writing and splicing code together, and she helped do a debug as it was progressing. I knew she was building the same program into her virtual space that I always ran test programs in, so that if anything went wrong, it wouldn't damage anything.

“Have you figured it out yet?” I asked an unknown amount of time later. I was just finishing up on the code, and then Amanda ran it in her virtual machine.

“Jack, it's nothing.” Amanda said.

“Ha.” I said. “You made a mistake.”

“I did not! I copied your code exactly, and made the same improvements to yours that I did to mine.”

“It's not the code.” I said and smiled smugly.

“Then what was my mistake, smarty-pants?”

“You didn't add the new circuit board to the virtual machine.” I said proudly, and her mouth dropped open in shock. I laughed at her expression, then heard a mumble. When I turned my head, Alyssa was slumped in the chair she had sat in. I checked the time in my HUD and discovered how late it was. I had stayed up half the night working, and she had sat there and waited for me.

I told Amanda goodnight and unhooked the portable display from the ports behind my ear, logged off and put it away. I hit the button to change the couch and table into the bed, then went over to Alyssa.

“You poor thing.” I said and picked up her small display that she had dropped on the floor. I turned it off and set it aside, then carefully picked her up. “You're exhausted.” I said and carried her to the bed and tucked her in under the blanket, then climbed in myself.

Alyssa mumbled something and held on tightly to me.

“Goodnight to you, too.” I whispered and smiled, then drifted off to sleep.