Page 18 of The Planetary Systems Preservation Committee Decided We Needed a Nanny

“Your endocrine system isn’t inside here. Your body will feel your emotional feedback, but the virtual setting doesn’t include the support for full body functionality. We discovered that educating people is easier if their emotional feedback isn’t available to them until after.”

I turn, studying his virtual form as it appears and starts filling in slowly. His red eyes peer at me, but the real Lora has black eyes… and now they’re black. Weird. “What just happened? Your eye color went from red to black.”

Lora’s arched brows rise on his forehead, and I finally notice that he’s not as big in here as he is out… no never mind. He’s the right size now.

“Your mind is filling in the details,” he explains. “We are in your mind. You are in your mind and a virtual representation of me is here with you. I am not here as such; what you are experiencing is a digital mirror of me. I won’t know what happens in your virtual simulation when you wake up.”

Makes sense. Sort of.

I turn my attention to the console. “What does this do?”

“Press the big red button,” Lora suggests, and a big red button appears ripe for the pressing.

It reminds me of that meme. “Learn what your new job is” but “you surrender to the alien invasion.”

Meh. I’ve already surrendered.

I push the big red button, and a tiny little robot pops up from the console and gives me a little wave with its front pincher arm.

“Hello there. What are you?” I might be using the same baby voice I use with Bee’s dog, but I would never admit that aloud.

Another voice joins me, and this one sounds a lot like a training module voice in the 1950s era style except remastered and digitized for the modern trainee. “This is bot model 7907. It is designed for and tasked with the sterilization of medical environments. As a janitor, you will assign bots like this one to tasks and oversee their maintenance and system upgrades. In this education module, you will learn everything you need to know to work with these AI bots…”

So school has started.

Cool. I’m here for bot-driven sanitation services. Now, how do I get a couple of these for my residence?

***

Time really does lose meaning in the education VR. It feels like I took a couple of weeks to get competent with the robotic hardware and about eight months of intensive training for the software. I could confidently build my own AI at this point, and one of the last projects the module required me to do was exactly that.

Now, I’ve graduated from the training simulation, and Lora’s smiling at me, holding out a little bouquet of multicolored roses. “Well, done, Ollie. You’ve graduated.”

I take the flowers from him, and knowing that this isn’t real doesn’t really change that I think the gesture is sweet. I would feel happy, but emotional feedback isn’t part of the training sim, so I just have to settle for knowing that I am happy with getting flowers from him. “Shouldn’t I be back in the real world then?” I ask curiously.

Lora nods. “Yes, you will very quickly return to your body, but first you must review your memories of the events of the last few real time hours to remind your brain that only a few minutes have passed while you were training.”

“Oh, right.” That makes sense.

The VR replays the hours of my life before getting educated, and I watch in fascination while my brain remembers all this with the same clarity as if it happened just moments ago. I guess it sort of did.

In my memory, Lora reaches out to finger my robe, and I see something I don’t think I really caught the first time. The look in his eyes is reverent. I can’t even misinterpret it. If I saw that look on the face of anyone looking at my cousin, I’d spend the next week teasing her about her not so secret admirer.

“Oh my god, you like me.” The words erupt out of me, and if I was capable of being startled, I would be by the sound of my own voice.

“Yes, of course,” Lora’s VR sim agrees.

“No, I mean, you like-like me. Romantically.”

Lora’s sim chuckles softly, crouching behind me as I watch our interaction again because it’s going to be a core memory for me forever. “Yes, of course,” he agrees again, pulling me against him.

“Oh,” I whisper as the replay ends.

I blink, disoriented for a moment as Lora appears in front of me and I lose the sensation of him at my back.

“Whoa,” I breathe, Lora reaches out to steady me. I grip a strap on his uniform as he wraps his hands around me. All the way around me. Like a belt. A flush of arousal just about takes me out, but Lora has his hands on me, so I don’t fall. “I fucking love being tiny in your arms.”

I probably shouldn’t have said that. It’s not that the words are problematic. It’s the breathy and obviously aroused way it comes out that might give me away.