Free When We Were Real (Author's Preferred Edition) by William Barton Page B

Just for fun, you know? And so I did, just to please him, just for fun.
    I’ll come back for you, I thought then. I’ll come back for you. I swear I will.
    o0o
    In no more than a few days’ time, I began to feel like an old timer myself, bantering with my fellows, playing billiards, swimming in the great, shimmering globule of the zero-gee pool Standard maintained in orbit around the park, going to the park itself, a stunning experience, so much more... real than anything I’d ever done with Styrbjörn inside Audumla.
    You never know how much your heart can pound until you come on a big wild animal minding its own business.
    Mostly though we worked and worked, getting to know Athena , getting to know each other, getting to know ourselves, understanding how important it is not only to know you can count on your mates, on your hardware, but also that you can count on yourself. Get to know at what point you’ll turn tail and run. Make sure the others know it too.
    There’s always a moment of transition for you, that one moment when you turn from outsider to in, when you leave your past behind and suddenly mesh with the new life you’ve joined. Mine came one morning at breakfast, while I sat eating with Dûmnahn, whose biologic components lived off food, same as mine, the two of us chatting about nothing in particular, while, all around us, the room filled with the bustling fliers of Standard ARM.
    As I sat looking into the middle distance, thinking about the day to come, Violet came in through the big double doors at the far end of the cafeteria, doors opening on a corridor leading to the optimod barracks. Watching her walk, I remember thinking that if you looked closely, you could see she was a woman, that you could so easily imagine her without all that lustrous fur, just the same way you imagine a real woman without her clothes. Yes, there’d be breasts here, nipped waist there, just above flaring hips, long, muscular thighs.
    I could imagine the place between her legs without any difficulty at all, imagine myself lying with a girl who had a generous helping of stark violet pubic hair as stage dressing for Goddess’ Altar and Child’s Gate.
    Not far from there to imagining myself worshiping at the altar, opening the gate.
    And then I felt that same stark tingle of anticipation I felt every time I settled on a new girl, told myself, with a little care and dedication she’d...
    Dûmnahn whispered in my ear, “It’s not out of the question, you know. Just behave yourself for a little while longer.”
    Violet went and got her tray, movements so fluid I could see they attracted other men’s eyes, optimods, humans, cyborgs with enough male mammal in them for it to matter—only the pure robots among us seemed immune—came and sat with us, eyes staying away from me as she settled down to eat, flickering my way every once in a while, with something I imagined might be a smile.
    After a while, Dûmnahn said to me, “Sometimes, I regret the rigor of my own functional design.”
    Violet looked up and said, “What?”
    Dûmnahn folded his arms up tight to his sides, a habit I’d started thinking of as his poker face, and said, “Never mind. Just the end of a conversation we were having.”
    Violet glanced at me, then made a tight grin back at Dûmnahn: “Stay out of my business, you old fart.”
    o0o
    Snapshot of a moment frozen in time.
    Violet and I got away alone together, during one of our weekends off from the endless round of training, went for a long walk together in some vast park, up by Telemachus Major’s north pole, a huge, round valley where the North Axis Docking Structure had once been, or so she told me, in the days when this was a more conventional habitat.
    I’d fallen behind her a little bit as we walked across a broad, windswept field of dark blue grass, wind rippling the sheaves, stalks reaching up to mid thigh. Fallen behind so I could watch her walk.
    “How long ago was that?” I asked.
    I