Page 44 of Her Alien Boss

Drak grins at my question. “No,” he says. “There’s nowhere big enough on this asteroid to keep the robot.”

“So it is a robot!”

He laughs, a rare display of emotion other than complete disdain for me. I think he is excited to show me what he has been working on. Secrets like these, ones that are too big to show anybody who matters, are often shown to the household pet. I feel like that’s what my status here is as far as he is concerned.

“Where is it?” I look around, wondering where he has it hidden away. I guess a door will open for a big reveal, or maybe a sheet will fall, or…

He presses a button and a screen lights up, showing us a view of the space on the darker side of the asteroid. It should be bland, devoid of much of anything. This is not a sector of space with very dramatic views.

But there’s something there.

Something so big that the orbiting camera has to pull back in order for us to see all of it.

“What is that?”

At first, all I can see are big shining planes of gold and silver and white panels, and then as the camera slides back those become outlines and take shape and…

“Is that a fucking robot?”

If it is, it is bigger than the space transporter I traveled from Earth on. It is built in the shape of a two-armed, two-legged creature. It gleams with metallic plates jointed to resemble the—I have to say it—human body. The eyes are particularly magnificent. They gleam like brilliant color shifting nebulae from inside a skull designed to look like a sentient being.

It is floating in space, but it does not seem lost. It commands everything around it. It seems to be large enough that it has its own gravitational pull, or perhaps the bright shapes orbiting it are of its own making. Or maybe they’re alien construction tech, putting final touches on. I cannot be sure, but I do know that it is one of the most beautiful pieces of engineering I have ever seen, far surpassing any simple ship.

“Not a robot,” Drak says, a rare note of reverence in his voice. “A goddess.”

“Incredible,” I breathe, more awed than anything. It’s beautiful. A work of art as much as it is a work of science. The camera pans around it, and I see details in every single part of the creature. I can see the influence of the human form in every part of it. I don’t understand why aliens would have decided to make something like this look like us.

“Why does it look… like me?”

“That is you,” he murmurs. He still has that trance-like air about him. He is absolutely entranced by the thing he made, and I know somehow that he made this. As many hundreds or maybe thousands of aliens are here, this creation is specifically and personally his. So when he says it is me there, I know that cannot be true. I know it must have taken years to build, and have been here a matter of weeks at most.

“How can that be me?” I squeak the question in a very mundane, very human way. That is not me out there, redirecting the courses of various asteroids. It cannot be. I am not large. I am not powerful. I am a silly little human who is constantly getting spanked for her misbehavior and trying to sneak poisonous alien food because I believe, deep down, in the power of my gut.

“That is what you have been learning to control all this time,” he says. “All that training was so that you could become one with the goddess.”

“Is that why it only has two arms?”

“That’s right. You can’t map four arms, so neither can she.” He turns to look at me with a mad passion in his eyes. “Do you understand what you are looking at? Do you feel what all this has been building to?”

“It’s the most incredible thing I have ever seen,” I tell him.

“Of course it is,” he says, smirking. “It is the most incredible thing you will ever see, I have no doubt of that. It may surpass incredulity for generations of all kinds of sentient and semi-sentient beings. There are those who will be born thousands of years from now who will know of her, and by proxy, you.”

It’s hard not to get caught up in his enthusiasm.

“Can I try it out?”

His expression collapses into something close to contempt.

“This is not a tricycle with training wheels. One does not ‘try it out.’ This is the engineering project that will define our civilization for millennia to come. She is the Fematrix.”

“The Fematrix?” I repeat the word he uses in sort of hushed tones. It does sound very powerful, if a little kinky. But, given how they’ve trained me, should I be surprised?

“However, now that you ask,” he says. “Actually, yes, I’d like to put you in a more direct connection and see that you are able to operate the various facilities.”

I let Drak escort me to another booth. This one, thank god, does not have any sexy sucker probes. I have to wonder if they were ever necessary, or if Arkon is a very particular kind of kinky boss.

Drak sits me in a chair, which is a luxury I have not often been afforded, and he puts a cap on my head and gloves on my hands. “These contain wireless receivers that will map your brain and physical activity,” he says. “Take a moment, center yourself, and then I will connect you to her.”