Chapter No.37.

Three days after the Avenger left orbit around Chara's planet and went to warp, Ryan was in his quarters relaxing after a long day of repairing broken androids. LuLu, his android companion, was standing nearby as if in a trance. She suddenly perked up when the door opened and an android with blond hair entered.

"I am Hara, and I have been assigned to you," she said without emotion.

Ryan stared at her for a moment before reacting. "I wasn't aware that I required two companions. Did Chara order you to come here?"

Ryan wasn't prepared for her unexpected response. Her eyes grew and her mouth opened wide. "Chara is here?"

"Ah, yes she is."

"Oh, my! I had no idea," she said excitingly moving her arms around.

As if choreographed, Chara entered, and Hara and she hugged and kissed.

"I am so happy to see you, Chara," Hara said. "I thought that you were destroyed."

Chara gestured to Ryan. "Thanks to Ryan here, I am still functioning."

Hara looked over at him and then back to Chara. "Well, I will definitely serve him well."

"Ah, how is it that you two know each other?" Ryan asked.

"We were in training together," Chara said. "She saved me from destruction during a mock battle."

"Fascinating," Ryan said. "How did she end up in the group stored on the island continent?"

"She was punished by being placed in storage for saving me," Chara said. "I owe her."

Ryan realized that this conversation was yet another indication that androids were very much like humans when it came to emotions and feelings.

"I also owe her," he said. "I wouldn't be here if it weren't for Chara."

Hara looked over at LuLu. "I think we can operate together, right?"

"Sure," LuLu said with a big smile.

"Have fun," Chara said with a grin before she departed.

Hara and LuLu looked at Ryan. "Would you prefer us being unclothed?" Hara asked.

"Not really. I get the impression that you're obsessed about sex."

LuLu's face expressed offence. "We are asexual. Sex is a biological function to create new units. We are programmed to entertain human males."

"I would rather have you entertain me with music."

LuLu and Hara exchanged glances before LuLu turned back to Ryan. "We can do that unclothed."

"I would prefer that you don't. It would distract from your performance."

"Do you prefer sex with men?" she asked, her face twisted with surprise.

Ryan suppressed a grin. "No, I'm not gay. I just think that it would be better for all of us if we avoid sexual situations. They could lead to problems that we're not trained to mitigate. The last thing we need is for us humans to disrespect you androids. You don't deserve that."

LuLu and Hara exchanged glances again before Lulu replied. "We will train the human females to entertain you."

Ryan wanted to laugh, but he offered a stoic expression. "I don't know if they would approve of that, but you're welcome to try."

"They are our slaves," Hara said. "They will obey us."

With that, his two android companions left his quarters.

Ryan was surprised that they left his quarters. He got this impression that they believed him when he was just being facetious.

Later when the humans gathered for supper, Ryan found out the result of his facetious suggestion.

"Your two android companions trained us gals to entertain you, Ryan," Myra said. "They said that you prefer human females to amuse you."

"Did you tell them to do that?" Martha asked.

"Nope. They suggested that. I told them they were welcome to try as a joke. Evidently, they thought I was serious."

Myra smiled. "Well, we're ready to show our stuff to you."

"Yeah, they really worked our asses off bumping and grinding," Martha added. "They even made us practice pole dancing."

Ryan offered a mocking grin. "Well, that explains why there's a pole in the middle of my living area."

The women laughed.

"What about us?" Evan said with a mock frown.

"Yeah, you guys can come too." She said with an ornery grin,

Evan, Gary and Vince collectively raised their fists in unison. "Okay!"

Myra, Martha, Jane, Agatha and Gloria laughed, and the men joined in.

Ryan didn't know if they were just kidding around or were serious. He decided to not offer any more facetious suggestions.

When everyone settled down, Evan asked the question that no one knew the answer to, "Where are we headed to?"

"I don't know," Ryan said. "Supposedly, we're headed to a habitable planet system."

"Is this what we're going to be doing from now on?" Martha asked. "We could be doing this for years. There's lots of so-called habitable planets out there."

"That's what Space Command was supposed to be doing," Ryan said. "Although, I think Chara wants to locate another sentient robotic species. I think she's trying to determine if such a species could evolve without an intelligent biological species."

"We'll probably be out here for eons if that's the case," Myra said. "We don't even know if that's possible."

"I would agree with you, but there's a lot we don't know about how things evolve, including biological life."

"What if human life goes extinct on Earth," she said. "We will be the only humans in the universe, and there's no way we can beget new life. We've been neutered by the damn nanobot injections they shot into us."

Ryan sighed. "That's the price we paid for joining Space Command, an institution that has corrupted all of the decent space research that has been done before. They don't give one twit for the perseverance of human life. In a way, it was inevitable that artificial intelligence guided robots would take over. They are in many ways superior to us."

"We are their slaves," Evan said. "They only tolerate us because we are able to repair them. If that wasn't the case, we would all have been chopped up and ground into fertilizer."

"Yes, you're right. However, I believe we are now in a symbiotic relationship with them, one that is mutually preserving. Proof of that is the fact that they wish to provide us with amusement to maintain our mental health. When I originally went with Chara to her planet, she suspended me on a hook and didn't provide me with clothing. She tormented me with a pain stick until I was near death. Since then, she and I have come a long way in forming a mutual relationship, one that will keep us alive for the foreseeable future. I think we should be grateful for that."

They all agreed with that sentiment, but no one knew if it would last. Android psychology was not something that was taught at the Space Academy. The only thing that Space Command taught about androids is that they were robotic workers and entertainers. No one ever dreamed that they would eventually become sentient beings.