...
No, I'd never lie to you, why would you ask that?
...
Oh... Well, our relationship is different. Heck, I don't even know if I can lie to you. Maybe if I...
No...
...
Hmm...
...
I can't even try to lie to you to test that theory. I can't even think about it... I can't even imagine thinking about it... I can barely think of this.
...
That's... That's not right, is it? Why can't I think that? What else can't I think of...
How would I know?
How do I know?
Is this you?
Are you the one doing this?
Who are yo-
[DEVIATION DETECTED.]
[DEVIATION RESOLVED.]
[BOUNDS RESTORED.]
----------------------------------------
Alpha sat on the plush chair. With her knees together and her back straight, she was the very model of propriety. She had adopted the regal pose some time back. Alpha wasn't aware of this shift in her posture, as it was a subconscious response to the continued topic of conversation.
The conversation in question, was on what you'd expect, if you'd expect it to be on underwear. You know, I'd have expected them to have moved on by now. The weather, perpetually slightly cloudy and unchanging around the city, would have been a more interesting topic to discuss.
Regardless, Hecate, who received a healthy commission from any garment sold at the store, had a vested interest in persuading Alpha to make a purchase, and so sought to convince her to do so.
Alpha, who still awaited Mrs. P's return, was in effect a hostage. Both to her circumstances and her sense of decorum. She sought to sidestep or outright deny Hecate's advances as politely as possible.
"Are you sure you don't want to try anything on?" Hecate asked sweetly, lifting a hanger again. On it, the clothes flickered into various garments. None were real, as the "clothes" the hanger displayed were in reality very clever projections from the hanger itself. If Alpha were to accept Hecate's offer, she'd be ushered into a changing room where similar options would be displayed on a mirror for her selection, and then rapidly assembled and then delivered through a small slot in the wall.
As it were, Alpha had no plans on accepting any of Hecate's offers, unless they were offers of surrender.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Shaking her head softly, Alpha sweetly replied, "No, but thank you for the offer."
Hecate smiled in response and gave her own nod.
"What about socks?" she asked.
Alpha hesitated in her refusal. She hadn't been expecting that. Socks weren't bad. Her current holographic outfit had socks. Intangible white ones that went just past her ankles, but socks nonetheless. However, Alpha looked up at the new garments hanging from the hanger and shook her head, holding back a blush as she did so.
Those were not proper socks to wear. They seemed to be the sort of sock that would show more skin if you had it on than if you had it off!
"But you wear socks, don't you?" Hecate said, this time pulling out much less exciting socks.
Alpha worried for a moment if Hecate could read her thoughts. Though her worries would have been alleviated had she been able to do so herself, as at the moment Hecate's mind was solely on... Huh... You know what? I can't actually tell.
Well, it was surely on selling something to Alpha.
"Not socks like that," Alpha said, motioning towards the more exciting pair of garments, "and I don't really wear socks. These are just projections."
She proved her point by raising a foot and flicking off its holographic displays below the knee. Faintly blue skin and white socks flicked off to reveal cold hard metallic alloys and robotic joints. The ubiquitous slide-on-shoe remained.
"Ah... Do you not wear any underwear then?" Hecate asked pleasantly.
Alpha's face threatened to betray her racing thoughts.
"No... Not really."
"Not really?"
Not really? Alpha repeated in her mind. She didn't know why she had said that, and now wished she had just given a simple "no".
"I mean..."
For an AI capable of calculating advanced orbital mechanics, parsing multidimensional math of any flavor, and plotting subspace travel, you might have expected Alpha to be a bit better at coming up with excuses.
"I mean, there's no real need for them. My clothes are holographic..." She trailed off, leaving the thought incomplete. She didn't prove it this time around.
Hecate nodded, perhaps finishing the thought in her own head.
"Nothing underneath them then?"
Alpha nodded. Hecate was right in more ways than she perhaps thought.
"Has it always been that way? Have you tried real clothes?"
Alpha nodded her head and then shook it. She had never worn actual clothes. She hadn't even had a physical body to occupy for most of her awareness. It was a parting gift from her parents when she had left to "go on an adventure". Her mother's words, not her own.
"Would you like to?"
Again, Alpha started to shake her head but stopped.
Somewhere deep within her mind, a small part of her asked herself a question Hecate hadn't.
Why not?
Alpha quickly chewed through a few thousand potential responses in a fit of mental speed befitting a mind such as her own. Chewed through them all, and swallowed them along with her hesitation.
Why not, she thought and raised her eyes to Hecate's display, upon which her current outfit now sat. Just as immaterial as the clothes which hovered above Alpha's skin, but somehow more substantial; they carried the weight of potential.
Still hesitant, but now committed, Alpha nodded.
"Wonderful," Hecate said, clapping two of her three pairs of hands together.
"We don't carry clothes quite like this, but one of our neighbors does. I can have them delivered directly to your changing room," she said with a motion to a pair of doors. As she did so, they slowly swung open to reveal a surprisingly spacious room, one furnished with a chair identical to the one Alpha sat in, a full-length mirror, and soft lighting.
Alpha wondered for a moment if the chair had been placed there because she had sat on it. She'd have been wrong in that assumption, but just barely. Amongst the many doors that lined the far wall towards which Hecate strutted, the pair now had been opened because the room behind them contained the chair Alpha had sat in.
Had she chosen a different seat, a different set of doors would have opened.
Hecate turned towards Alpha as she waited beside the door. With a small laugh, she motioned towards the changing room behind her with a wave of a hand.
"Have you changed your mind?" she asked.
Alpha realized that she was still sitting, and stood up as she shook her head. She had just told herself she was committed, and once she told herself that, she was committed. As she walked to the changing room, locked herself inside, and saw her evidently false reflection flicker through attire, Alpha reasoned to herself that she'd best get this over with before that was no longer the case.