Total pages in book: 68
Estimated words: 61287 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 306(@200wpm)___ 245(@250wpm)___ 204(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 61287 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 306(@200wpm)___ 245(@250wpm)___ 204(@300wpm)
I had never expected that the most important thing I would learn at bed girl school would be how to breathe. Very frequently during my training, though, Master G’s simple lessons in taking air in, holding it inside, and then letting it out had seemed to work miracles for both my body and my mind.
“Breathing mindfully creates little moments for self-acceptance,” he had told us, over and over, as we, his training group, sat kneeling before him on the mats with our names on them. “I want you to remember with each mindful breath that you would not be here if you did not belong here.”
I realized that I had been panting for the last minute or so—that I had actually come close to hyperventilating. I opened my mouth and let out a long breath that way, trying to empty my lungs. then I tried to take in the air I needed slowly through my nostrils, feeling them flare with the effort, fighting the flash of irrational panic that I wouldn’t get enough oxygen.
With my inhalation came a warmth in my chest, a wave of helpless affection for Master G. I loved him, because he had taken such care of me, even if the care had involved more shame and discomfort than I had ever imagined my body could feel—as well as more pleasure. I wasn’t in love with him. I told myself that he simply scared me too much, though really I didn’t feel any fear of him now. The thought of leaving him, of leaving Miss Charlotte and the Institute itself, filled me with even more fear than the idea of his disappointment in me and its painful consequences.
As I took that breath, and found inside myself a tiny bit more clarity as to my thoughts and feelings, the world had seemed to slow around me. I remembered Master G talking about that, too: about how mindful breathing could help so much with panic, simply by making things happen at a pace easier for the mind to deal with. A way to hack your nervous system, he had called it.
To my surprise, Miss Charlotte said something that intersected oddly with that idea, of hacking your body’s systems.
“Mr. Vanderbruggen,” she continued, “is one of the first owners of an artificially intelligent concubine.”
I had just started to let out my first mindful breath, from my diaphragm, through my mouth. I stopped involuntarily and the exhaling action changed to a sharp inhaling one. I felt the alarm rise inside me, but for a moment I couldn’t seem to do anything about it.
An artificially intelligent concubine? For a strange instant I thought Miss Charlotte meant me—after all, Mr. Vanderbruggen had just purchased a bed girl for himself. How could I be artificially intelligent, though? Did it just mean I wasn’t very smart? I felt my face go red—I definitely wasn’t a genius or anything, but I’d done pretty well in school, after all.
The murmur that went through the audience at the dean’s words, though, seemed to mean something else. I honestly wouldn’t have expected these billionaires and trillionaires to murmur at anything at all: they seemed so well-heeled that the end of the world wouldn’t faze them—they’d just get in their escape pods or something and go off to another one, where they’d built their fifth vacation home or something.
“Selecta’s AI concubine,” Miss Charlotte continued, “is currently only being marketed by invitation, so of course Mr. Vanderbruggen had an advantage there.”
It wasn’t me. AI, like in the movies. My eyes went wide. Like, a sexbot?
Miss Charlotte and Master G had finished binding me to the horse. They stepped back and to the side, stage right, to allow the audience to watch as my new owner disciplined me.
“So,” the dean said, her voice conveying an air of finality that suggested Mr. Vanderbruggen had chosen his implement and stood ready to use it on me. “Renee will have another girl at home to help her please her master.”
I tried to take another mindful breath, but my body had other notions. Not meaning to in the slightest, I turned my face back over my left shoulder and saw him closer up than I had yet seen him—very much too close for comfort.
Yes, the man I must call Master Hendryk from now on was devastatingly handsome. His golden hair fell in loose curls around his square-jawed face. His blue eyes narrowed as he looked at me, and the smile that again curved his lips suggested that he knew how he frightened me, and liked knowing it.
My heart beat wildly, and mindful breaths became impossible, when I saw what he had in his right hand. A rattan cane, long and thin, its length resting on his left palm as he walked slowly closer.
Desperate, my brain tried to think through what Miss Charlotte had just said, as if it could offer me any help.