What the hell's wrong with me? Taura leaned back in her chair and sighed. She hadn't been able to keep her mind on her work all evening and she couldn't figure out why. She wasn't tired or ill, as far as she could tell. She just couldn't stay focused, whatever the reason.
She shrugged and saved the video she'd been editing, stood and stretched. Her hands touched the ceiling and she moved her arms into a horizontal position until she'd finished. She wasn't quite as tall as Corona, yet she still had to duck when walking through doorways to avoid bumping her head.
Maybe if the people running Biotek hadn't started off with a "bigger is better" policy, Corona and I would've been closer to human size, like newer "models" are now. But then, she reminded herself, she and Corrie could've turned out a lot worse. The earliest genetic experiments had produced some real monstrosities. Compared to some of the things Biotek and other corporations had brought to life, being a seven-foot-tall, bipedal bovine wasn't really that bad.
She walked into the kitchen to make a cup of tea.
Oops, forgot to close the curtains. She'd been so absorbed in the stuff Jack had recorded yesterday that she'd lost track of the time. In a way, it was a pity that tonight was Jack's last night on his pizza-delivery job. The videos of his customers had certainly been entertaining and had brought in a small but steady income from Otto and Shakira.
She glanced at her watch. Ah, he should be coming home soon.
That made her smile. She enjoyed having him around, though she ended up feeling like a fifth wheel whenever he and Corona started getting frisky.
She caught a glimpse of her reflection in the window as she reached out to close the curtain. She paused for a moment, pondering her face as she often did when she saw herself in a reflective surface. Humans usually described her as a minotaur, which was accurate enough. She assumed some of the geneticists had been inspired by that myth, no doubt expecting to create fierce, powerful soldiers for the military.
Which was what they had gotten, in most cases, but not with Taura. She could fight as competently as any other chimera, but she'd always preferred to work with her brain instead. That had prompted her to delve into electronics and programming, writing code and building gadgets from scratch.
Some chimeras had chosen to join the military after the ban on the production of chimeras and the order to release the ones they'd already cranked out. And why not? Fighting was all they really understood.
Not Taura. Once she'd gotten her first taste of freedom, there was no way in hell she would give it up.
She sighed and pulled the curtain over her reflection. Corona had a sort of exotic beauty and a vivacious personality, so it was no surprise Jack had fallen for her. Taura, on the other hand … More often than not, humans assumed she was slow in the head because of the way she looked, and they also found her huge muscles off-putting at best. Most of the time she could shrug it off, but occasionally it got under her skin.
She filled the teapot with water, put it on the burner, and shook her head. It wasn't like her to be so preoccupied with her appearance. Yet here she was, letting it distract her to the point where she couldn't concentrate on anything else.
She growled softly. Stop feeling sorry for yourself. She turned the burner on and opened the cupboard that held the coffee and tea. She selected cinnamon, pulled one of the little bags out, and took a mug from another cupboard. She waited for the pot to heat up, filled the mug, and returned to her desk in the corner of the front room.
Her gaze settled on the gloves resting beside the keyboard, and a slight frown crossed her face. That was something else the geneticists had buggered up -- each of her hands had only two oversized fingers and thumb, which made it impossible to use a keyboard designed for human hands unless she poked at it with a stylus. Before she'd acquired her deck of cards-sized supercomputer with its holographic interface, she'd used HUD goggles and a pair of input gloves she'd made to fit her hands. Rather nifty, she liked to think, but even though her new device had made it obsolete, it annoyed her that she'd needed to create this setup in the first place.
I really need to put those things away. I have enough reminders of my shortcomings as it is.
She grumbled and took a small sip of her tea. There was nothing she could do about her hands or anything else about her body. Nothing she could afford, at least.
I could try a few minor cosmetic changes that don't involve expensive, risky medical procedures. She glanced down at her loose T-shirt and cargo pants and noticed how plain and unflattering they were. Maybe she could try dressing more provocatively like Corona usually did -- when Corrie bothered to wear clothes at all. Maybe showing a little more skin would at least distract people from her more inhuman features. If nothing else, it might help her feel a little better about herself.
Or, more likely, it would have the exact opposite effect.
What the hell? Why am I so obsessed with this, all of a sudden? You are what you are. Just accept it and move on. And get back to work! Jack could sell the raw footage he'd recorded on his deliveries, but then Otto or Shakira would have to edit it to blur out the customers' faces and add spiffy transitions and other effects, and the clips tended to fetch a higher price when they arrived polished and ready for uploading.
She took another sip of her tea, put the cup down on the desk, and reached into the holofield projected by her pocket computer. The sooner she finished editing these clips, the sooner Jack could sell them and the sooner Taura could focus on finding a new gig for herself. Maybe if she kept busy, it would keep her mind off all the little things that had been bugging her lately.
The sound of the TARDIS dematerializing suddenly came from the device, indicating an incoming phone call. She twitched and yelped. She took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and shook her head. When she'd regained her composure, she reached into the holofield and touched the phone icon. Corona's caller ID popped up and Taura smiled. As interruptions went, this was a most welcome one.
"Hello, Corona. What's up?"
"Hi. I just landed a gig, and was wondering if you could help out with it."
"Sure. What do you need?"
"Just some info on a stalker. I'm sending you a photo of him. He's a twisted little bastard, from what I've been told."
"Okay." Taura opened a new window in her holofield and waited for the file to come in. She picked up her tea, leaned back, and sipped. It was cooler now, so she took a longer drink as the file transfer finished. Taura moved her mug from one hand to the other, opened the image, and pondered it.
"Hmm. Yeah, I can tell already this guy is a little off. There's something about his eyes. And his …"
"His smile."
"Yes, the way he's smiling is quite unsettling. What's his name?"
"Patrick Henderson."
"Okay, I'm on it." Taura took one more sip and put the mug down, reached into the holofield, and tapped another icon. "First thing to check is the police records and see if he's been arrested for stalking anyone else."
"Just what I was about to suggest." Corona giggled, and Taura couldn't help laughing softly as her friend's infectious affability began to dissipate the dark cloud that had been hovering over her all evening. Taura began typing on her hard-light keyboard, entering the guy's name into several law-enforcement databases and searching for a match, as well as running the photo through some facial-recognition software to see if anything came up. She struck gold a few seconds later, opened the file, and skimmed it.
"Here he is. He's had a number of complaints filed against him, but it never went any farther than that. He hasn't been convicted of anything, or even formally charged, but the police have 'talked to him' for remarks he's made to women, attempts to grope them, and so on. He's also been caught downloading porn at work and has been witnessed masturbating in public restrooms." She read on a bit farther and grimaced. "According to the reports about the porn downloading, he's into some rather … odd material."
"Do I wanna know?"
"Well, the gems he was caught downloading included rape fantasies, incest, and even worse." Taura shook her head at the text in her holofield. "Several of the complaints cited pictures and erotic fiction which showed the victims enjoying being raped." She shuddered.
"Ah, shit!" Corona sighed. "Right. Okay, I'm definitely gonna have a little heart-to-heart with this asshole." She paused and then added, "I have an idea. I gotta call Jack and see if he can meet me here. If he can record this guy harassing my clients, it'll be just what they need to put him away."
Taura smiled. "Excellent idea."
"Thanks for your help, Taura."
"My pleasure."
"See you soon." Corona giggled and hung up.
Taura smiled again and drank some more tea, then she pushed Henderson's file aside and pulled the current video clip forward.
"Okay, back to work," she muttered as she resumed playback on the latest clip she'd been watching. The guy in the video wore a pair of very tight briefs -- and nothing else. Taura grimaced. His breasts are bigger than mine! Granted, that's not saying a whole lot, but still.
"Uh, how ya doin'?" Jack's voice said, sounding tinny because of the cheap microphone he'd clipped under the collar of his black duster.
"Good, good. You?"
"Could be worse. I think. Forty-nine ninety-seven, please."
"Just a minute, I gotta get my wallet." The nearly naked man turned and walked -- no, not exactly walked, Taura realized, more like pranced -- to the coffee table and picked up the wallet, jutting his enormous hindquarters directly toward Jack as he did so.
"Poor Jack," Taura said under her breath. I'll never understand how he got through each day without snapping like a twig. She watched the rest of the clip and chopped off the bit at the end, Jack having kept recording in case anything weird happened on the way to his car. She saved a backup and added the file to the folder of videos she'd already finished, and then she moved on to the next one.
The sooner she got through this freakshow, the better.
Comments (0)
See all