A/N we had a huge amount of positive response to the chocolate episode, which is really fun. We Love your comments keep them coming. This is a book not a sitcom, so finally we get back to bit of action/drama/plot development. You may need a tissue for this chapter. No slaves were hurt in the making of this chapter (permanently).

Photo: hot desert - we mean the hot sandy wilderness not the cooked sweet dish served after the main course of a meal, which our spelling may or many not possibly imply.

Washington 2.0/Rockwood hall/Pod bay (Osprey hanger)

I kind of guess you're either a half full person or a half empty person. I discovered I was a half full person. I mean I have saved 4 billion lives, go me. Do I get a statue? No. Do I have a rosy glow of pride - not visible under this makeup. So it was the morning of a week later, I was walking up the back ramp of Osprey. Rockwood went up front to the flight deck to the pilot the craft. With me was Kayla. Kayla was regarded as a 'roughing it' style e-slave, one you could scratch and not worry about the resale price and I wasn't arguing.

It was odd walking on to a plane carrying nothing for a weekend. I didn't have 'clothes' just a small clothes printer in the back and a portable makeup machine to share. As head handmaiden Kayla carried my water bottle. Our dark grey catsuits were printed onto us with large numbers of tiny holes down the back to stay cool in the heat in region 1 south (formally known as Mexico). To reinforce my 'pet' status in front of Villeria, my suit one had a knee-length tail (I kept fiddling with it why don't cats do that? like all the time?). We walked onto the ramp at back of the Osprey and sat down on chairs which folded down from the wall.

"Where are the seat belts?" said Kayla.

"We don't get any, no one cares if the slave gets hurt during a crash. It's health and safety gone un-mad" I told her.

"hey, being a patronising know it all is my thing," said Kayla. I smiled.

"Sorry, love the new collar, it suits you," I said. As a personal serving staff, Kayla got a shiny collar upgrade.

"A certain tom girl I know couldn't keep his hands off it. It's an iCollar 4S. The sound quality is really good, I now get orders in stereo."

"How much RAM does it have?" I said sadly. Collar talk is such as slave thing.

"The robot who put it on said it has enough space to record your entire life in high definition. Did you know they use poisonous injections rather than explosives to save space and give improved battery life ? I can go for up to two days between recharges?"

"That is so cool I didn't know that," I said still smiling. "Did you pack your charger?"

"No. should I have? The collar didn't order me to - shit AWOW - hay that felt like someone slapped my azz with a flipper" said Kayla discovering the joy of collars 'just-like-real-life' PG13 punishment settings.

"It's OK the plane has a bunch of 5 Volt USB power supplies. You can charge up all over the place" I said. I found the charging cables we plugged ourselves in. As they said in the factory' you can never smile too much or have too much charge'.

At that moment a small squad of semi-drone guards marched onto the open ramp at the back. The bodyguard robots were semi-autonomous TOBOR 1s vaguely humanoid but with four arms. They carried quite long guns dangerous looking guns. They attached themselves to the inside of the plane, nabbed most of the best USB charging ports then shut down. Rockwood started to pitch up the engines. The long distance plane used lithium air batteries apparently so the whole thing was electric and spookily quiet for a jet. I looked around the cargo area, water bottles, rucksacks, parasols, wind breaks, self-erecting tent, picnic rugs, champagne cooler, travel bedroom toys chest, sound insulated pet cage, folding cinema screen, travel barbeque and chest sized travel blood chiller; all the bear necessities for a weekend roughing it down south.

"Please make sure you seat backs are up and put your tables in their upright lock positions," I said to the impassable stone face of Kayla. I think she thought if she took the job seriously, she could get out off the random cleaning duties into being a slightly more upmarket lady in waiting or junior room slave.

"You look nervous," I said

"It's a new collar what happens if I don't transfer from the house Wi-Fi properly?" said Kayla nervously.

"I was just like this on my first trip. Don't worry I've done this before it's totally fine you won't lose your Wi-Fi connection for long I promise. Hey, there's a couple of things I think you really need to know about Villaria,".

"Such as Miss distraction," said Kayla.

"She has a medical condition, we will need to make allowances for," I said.

"My collar didn't tell me that, what medical condition?"

I leant forward "You should know she's on the severely evil spectrum."

"Really? Poor thing. So how far along the spectrum is she?" asked Kayla.

"She is about four billion dead people's worth of evil"

"That sounds like a pretty full-blown evil to me"

"Yes your right" I said " she's so far along the evil spectrum she's gone off one end and come right back on the other end. So you've got to help me here. You see she organised this holiday trip to persuade a certain cyborg that he should vote for the bill which will bring this into new mechanical order law. So we've got to make sure she doesn't get her hands on him okay?"

"This isn't to do with you being jealous of her is it"? asked Kayla.

"Certainly not. my relationship with our owner is purely platonic. I'm little more than a breathing night time security blanket for him, but there are the lives of 4 billion people at risk here so no pressure." I reassured her.

"I'm glad you said that because for a moment I got the impression that if we failed then there might be some smidgen of regret involved," said Kayla.

"Certainly not, don't let the whole painful writhing deaths of 4 billion people influence your decision to help me in any way."

It was going to feel odd not sleeping with him, not that I would admit that to anyone including myself.

I knew Rockwood would find out about this after he watched the slave cam streams later which is why I hadn't mentioned anything to Kayla before now. Given his 'preferences' I sure he wouldn't punish us too hard for interrupting anything between him and Villaria. I was willing to do what it took to stop them and was willing to take any punishment her sevals would hand out. I know what your thinking easy to be brave when your right or stupid, preferably both, and I was.

The plane leapt up like an eagle taking to the wing. Unfortunately, this left my stomach on the ground still fiddling with its seatbelt.

Rockwood pumped the plane south. Later I looked out and we flew over the remains of Albuquerque. Rockwood tilted the plane so we had a good view of the bulldozing of the city. I could understand getting people to move out of the city being put into into reservations. It seemed a little strange to go to the effort of actually in erasing humanities footprint. As we went I keep looking out and being amazed at the number of solar farms and wind turbines that were under construction. I guess a robot civilisation needed electricity. We changed direction and headed to the Chihuahua reservation.

"I thought you would be impressed with the trip" I said to Kayla. She wasn't talking, I wasn't sure if she was password protected or not.

The outside was nothing but boring desert.

"When do we get the in-flight drinks? What's the movie? Which one of us should be kneeling to the other for the insult of giving them peanuts in a bag. 'Ha you lack of plate peanuts is an insult to my dignity! '" I said. Kayla couldn't help giving me a short smile.

"Do you think Joe will love me?" said Kayla she said looking into my eyes.

"Joe does loves you.. There are certain unalienable truths which we hold to be self-evident. It's like saying does gravity get you down? Is the new mechanical order a bunch of digital tyrants or does my bum look big in this? You don't need to ask, just know it is true. Joe's love for you is self-evident. I mean he's dating a robot to get you chocolate, what more evidence do you want?"

"Not does he, WILL he?" said Kayla. It was at that moment I realised one day Joe would have some reason to look at Kayla's slave stream and then he would find out. I could bet he would say more than "It's OK".

"What do you think?" I said.

"Well..."

Suddenly we lurched to the left. Someone screeched it might have been me.

"We are being fired upon. Evasive action. Hold on" Rockwood said through our collars.

In seconds, I am hanging from the ceiling with Kayla on the floor. I think there was an explosion outside. I feel like a pea in an empty tin can. It all flashed by me quickly. Emergency breathing masks dropping from the ceiling. Weirdly the only thing I could think was 'this is the last time I'm leaving the pyramid with him again'. The plane lurched to the other side. Then I got another message "Lighten the load droids to detach". The back door opened and I saw of the battle robots dropping off and shooting at something at the same time before hitting the ground hard. I wondered if Kayla would do the same thing if ordered. She looked deadly scared.

"Brace for impact" came on my collar. Why is it that every time I flew before the Apocalypse I always paid attention to the safety announcement and always made sure I had my seatbelt on and nothing happened. Yet every time I fly without one, then I really need one? The Big Karma llama was smiling at me going 'now it's your turn'.

Then I just had this odd feeling someone wasn't coming out of this alive.

***

22 seconds into the future: Area formally known as Vermilion Sands New Mexico.

I looked around me. I was dazed but that was one mother of a fairground ride.

"Warning lost the Wi-Fi signal. You have 30 seconds to read gain signal lock" my collar told me. Kcuf I had survived the crash only to be killed by my collar, just my luck.

"Rockwood Rockwood!" I shouted. It was dark. I could hear coughing. I looked around it was black I started scrabble around looking for a USB connector.

"Warning lost the Wi-Fi signal. You have 20 seconds to read gain signal lock"

"Rockwood you Azz hole !" I added coughing from the dust. I found a cable then scrubbed around looking for an empty port. I found one but it didn't work.

"Warning lost the Wi-Fi signal. You have 10 seconds to read gain signal lock"

It this really how it was going to end? This one did work I looked around for another USB connector but the plane looked upside down.

"BlueTooth link made" my collar told me.

"are you alright #160A? " I heard coming to my collar.

"Yes, yes and thank's for introducing me to a completely new experience," I said.

"What surviving a plane crash?" said Rockwood.

"No being glad to hear your voice. Are you OK?" I said.

"Yes for now. I'm getting erratic signs from 1066. I'm stuck in the flight deck. Look for her" said Rockwood.

I remembered my collar had a small light. It was intended to do flash photography but it could be used as a small torch.

"Siri- turn the flash light on" I told my collar. I looked around. As far as I could tell we were upside down. I looked around with my chest, moving the collars light around. It was very dusty. I heard coughing and found Kayla on the floor.

"Siri Message to master from #160A I've found her" I said getting down.

"Hold still I'm looking at her on your collar cam" said Rockwood over my collar.

I looked at her. She was still and bleeding.

"She's bleeding we need to stop it" said Rockwood on my collar.

I jumped down to Kayla.

"Kayla, Kayla are you OK?" I said.

"Do I look OK? I can't move" she said in a croaky voice.

"You're going to be OK," I said wondering what to do.

"There is a medical kit behind you. I'm stuck, so you're going to have to do this yourself" Rockwood said.

I struggled for a moment then found the kit. Rockwood talked me through the process.

"She's losing blood we need to stop that. Can you see the bolt? I think it went through her, feel behind her. " said Rockwood. If Firefly and Matrix Revolutions told me anything it was being pierced by long pointy things during crashes isn't good.

I did there was a huge amount of wet blood on the 'floor'.

"I'm feeling cold Jenny." said Kayla.

"You're going to be OK," I said.

"Tell Joe I love him. Tell him to find someone. Tell him.." said Kayla fading out.

"Kayla! DONE YOU DARE GIVE OUT ON ME NOW. JOE WOULD NEVER FORGIVE ME!" I shouted.

"Shit her heart has gone," Rockwood said monitoring her vital signs from her collar. I kind of felt this was it. I'd see my share of people die during the apocalypse to know what I was looking at. Tears welled up in my eyes.

"Don't just sit there. Put your hands together, on her heart. Push" Rockwood ordered.

Kayla looked up her eyes open, not moving. I pumped for a minute like my collar told me too.

"Compress ",push,"Compress ",push

"She's dead," I said. I knew what death looked like.

"I don't care what you think. Pump her!" said Rockwood.

"I'm pumping a corpse," I said.

I got a level 2 kick from Rockwood.

"I said pump!" he said.

"Don't you understand she's dead," I said tearfully.

I'd never had a level 4 shock before from him. It was like having your inside burnt out with flames.

"KUFFFFFFFFFFF" I said in pain.

"I *said* PUMP, you will OBEY ME. Disobey be again and it will go up to level 5, Jenny" said Rockwood. Level five that was supposed to be worse than listening to Michael Savage with your finger nailed to a board inches way from the off button.

These machines can be very persuasive when they want to be. He wants me to be a human life support for the former remains of Kayla then fine. Rockwood then made me do the kiss of life on her and hold her wound shut with my other hand. All the time I heard this loud metal banging from the flight deck. My mascara tears mixed with the blood, the sweat, dirt and lipstick. I did what I was told.

"I'm hacked into her collar. It will inject her with some poison from her collar auto destruct to get her heart going" said Rockwood over my collar.

I heard a ticking noise. A slave rumour was that if a collar activated you heard a special message from Steve Jobs the instant before death.

"No change," I said this was futile, tears formed twin black rivers down my cheeks. I wanted to crawl into a corner and die.

"Stand clear," said Rockwood.

I think Rockwood sent a real electric shock to Kayla from her collar. Her body twitched then jumped up in the air.

"Keep her breathing," said Rockwood. I heard metal twisting and huge bang from the flight deck.

"Yes Master," I said and started doing the kiss of life again.

"Her heart's going keep it up" said Rockwood. Kcuff he saved her! Another bang it was like a monster was breaking the doors of hell it's self down. He was serious.

Suddenly the metal door of the flight deck bursts open and Rockwood minus one leg and the other leg missing below the knee crawls forward. His face is bloody and he's a worse mess that Kayla or I. He crawls over on his stubs. I knew as a cyborg he had artificial legs and one arm was to, but to see them in the raw like this was pretty freaky and that was on top of the shock fest of the crash.

"Kcufff Rockwood what happened to you?" I said.

"I chewed my artificial legs off and you can learn some respect and call me master," he said give me another level 1 reminder. Looking at them I saw his legs were metal and black carbon fiber. A gossamer of tiny sensor wires finer than silk hung beneath the shards of skin. He saw me looking at my legs.

"Don't worry I'm all flesh from the balls up," he said getting back to Kalya.

He knew what to do and started work. The medical kit has a long black tube which was a tiny flexible robotic arm. He pushed that into her to see her internal bleeding and start to laser it shut.

"Get my thinking blood supply. Pods 6,9 and 12 are good for her. In fact 12 is her blood. Ironic huh? Then give me pod 1 I need to use it"

I asked my collar and followed directions. He used parts from the kit, blood pod 6 and ran some into Kayla. Then he took pod 1 from me and bit into it and drank it. Either he was losing blood or he was doing some heavy thinking. We carried on for ages. I kept breathing for her. While I did that, Rockwood set up a drip feed.

"You can stop. OK you did good. The next few hours are the worst. Get some water and try and get some rest for half an hour, then we will swap" he told me. I did as I was told ( I still smarted from the level 4, I wasn't arguing again ) and sat back with a water bottle. I was flat out. He kept going. Why was he pushing so hard what was she for him, his daughter or something?

Instead of 30 minutes I crashed out and woke up several hours later. Dawn was coming in through the cabin windows. He had been up all night looking after her. He looked as bad as I felt. All the pain which I hadn't noticed was coming back to haunt me.

"A couple of tricky moments but 9901 here started breathing on her own. How are you feeling pet?" he said cleaning his hands.

"Kuff ! You did it. She's a live! Oh and your reading her collar upside down she's 1066 Master" I said I was so glad it was like I had been brought back from the dead.

"Is it ? Yeh I don't have a slave 9901. Not if you don't count the one I rented in Moscow. I must be tired. It doesn't matter she's stil alive. We'll take turns looking after her," Rockwood said.

"Yes master" I said. "Will she make it?..Master" I asked. I came over and with a damp cloth began to clean some of the blood from her and then began on Rockwood's face.

"She's stable. If we can get her to a hospital. I think she will be OK." said Rockwood holding Kayla's hand.

I took over sitting with Kayla.

"She doesn't look to be in any pain.. Master" I said.

"The pain inducer on the collar works both ways. I can block signals coming in as well as induce fake ones to her brain." said Rockwood. He had pulled his top off bearing his desirably muscled physique and was using a spray on bandage on himself.

"The good news is the plane runs on lithium air batteries - so no chance of fire." said Rockwood assessing the bigger situation. "Some water, some food, power but it's going to get hot tomorrow under the sun".

"Why did you do that? Athelue" I asked.

"What?"

"Save her life?" I said

"Well that's a new collar. It's really pricey. These iCollars are really expensive, they clean up because they know you have to buy one for the slave. She wasn't cheap either. Anyway she didn't ask permission to die and even if she had done I wouldn't give it. No one gets away without permission, zero runaways and all that. She tries that again I'll transition her." Rockwood lied.

I liked the way he could threaten someone with eternal life. I sat there and realised I had a new problem. I couldn't hate him anymore, not properly. He was arrogant, obnoxious , lazy and a smart arse and he could also drag me off the top of a sky scraper without a parachute. See him rip his own legs off to save Kayla meant he couldn't be the utter b@stard I could easily object too and it was my objecting to him was the basis for my internship. I asked my collar to play back the intern conversation. Yep - I couldn't fake hating him, he hated artifice. I wondered what to do, my heart was no longer in it. I convinced myself that while I might no longer hate him perhaps I could just not like him. It doesn't have to be either or does it? Perhaps rather than black and white it was a scale and his act simply pushed him to the dark grey perhaps.

"When we get back from this we got to discuss punishment," said Rockwood.

I looked at him my eye brows forming a tent shape.

"You disobeyed my orders and I really don't like it when a slave does that during an emergency. I think some punishment is in order. I know the new KCK machine has a simulated spanking mode. The brochure claims it feels just like the real thing but no one has yet taken the punishment challenge. So I think you're going to get both and tell me if there's any difference" he threatened.

My bottom inadvertently clenched while he said that.

"Don't think I don't know what you're trying to do," I said . "you think by punishing me and then I will start to dislike you again. It's too late for that, Athelue" I warned him.

"All it's simply a matter of keeping house discipline, you'll call me ceyalisu one day" he said. We stood in silence for a moment."More important things first. I want you to climb outside. It's getting light. Use your collar can get a GPS fix."

"OK Senpai ," I said. I wondered how long he would keep this master business up. I went to the escape hatch and opened it up.I kicked the door open ( if you think it's easy you try it in high heels) and a warm breeze came into the cabin. I looked outside.

"Oh shit" I said looking out getting a level two PG13 reminder "Master we have a problem. "

*****

A/N: what did you think about our changing the pace and putting in some drama for once? I mean this is dystopian/romance/scifi/comedy we have to have a little drama otherwise the film would end up with Tom Hanks playing Rockwood and Sandra Bullock playing Jenny. Then the Hollywood agent would be all it would be 'does it have to be in outer space? It would be cheaper if Rockwood is a billionaire with a hearing aid and Jenny is an unpaid intern who's a bit clumsy? I mean it's going to be the cost of a large house to pay for all the CGI to do that stupidly big ending of yours' then we would have to get all stroppy about it saying that the whole point of the book was as an engaging warning of the impending rise of strong A.I any way being an intern with a name badge and nice necklace isn't really dystopian enough. Then Reb would be all 'it's not set in space moron and you wouldn't treat Suzanne Collins like this', anyway it wouldn't go well. This way with this chapter the script agent thingy thinks more 'Star Wars' and less 'This means war'.

Any who lets us know. We like hearing from you ( ouch that makes us sound both needy and like your mother which isn't the intent, well the sounding like your mother bit any way, we might be needy ). If you're too busy to compose some of your signature astonishing witticisms a vote will do. Thanks for reading anyway. Unless you've started from the bottom and are reading backwards in which case SSA TRAMS POT EHT MORF GNIDAER TRATS.

Don't forget to join us on Monday/Tuesday for the next thrilling chapter

**Surrounded by the Killer Robots from hell**