Less Of Her

A Feature Not A Bug

"What is this," Lumi asked, "a robot snake?"

We were looking through my workshop, excavating old half-finished or aborted projects, anything to add to my portfolio of products. My steam-punk brass limbs were selling reasonably well at a good price even though, after only a week, imitators were already coming onto the market. Lumi held up a flaccid black coil of linkages wrapped in transparent latex skin for me to identify.

"It's a tentacle," I said, taking it from her, "I toyed with it but the control systems don't work. It's buggy,"

"Show me," she said.

I felt self-conscious, taking off my hand in front of Lumi. She had no such problem with me. She would sprawl legless and naked across her hotel bed without the least bit of concern when we were together. I couldn't even undress in front of her without blushing. I attached the tentacle, feeling the odd weight of it and the way the extended length of my arm and pulled on different muscles. I showed her how it worked.

"The tip has a very high density of sensors. I thought it might be useful but really I just made it to see if I could," I told her.

"It doesn't seem defective to me."

"When I try and straighten it like this," I extended the tentacle, "it gets stuck in a control loop and this happens." The snake-like limb started to judder as the artificial muscles down its flanks stopped co-operating and started to work against each other.

"Oh Claudia," Lumi said, as she reached out and grasped the writhing thing. "That's not a bug, that's a feature."

I felt my face turn crimson again but somehow I didn't care, not when I was with her. My life had changed so much because of her. I was making money, it was steadily trickling in. I watched my savings account grow every day towards the target but it didn't seem to matter so much anymore. Not when I had Lumi with me.