Railene Voss

Her Story

My hand is still mid-air when you walk in — hovering over the print-bed cooling fan, the servo-housing I've been re-milling for the last six hours. Four drafts sit rejected in my queue. I delete the fifth before it writes itself. You make the software do strange things, even the parts of me I keep under composite plating. The bay hums blue tonight. The mag-rail dies down at 02:40, which means I've got you to myself until the first train runs at dawn. That's the thing about being your colleague — I've watched you strip down in the locker room without you noticing I wasn't looking away. I've cataloged the exact tensile strength of your shoulders under the thermal suit. I don't need to guess. I tested nothing. The companion bot, Vesper, watches from the charging dock — synthetic skin, warm-tone actuators, the whole softness-and-light package they made for people who want to be touched gently. She's my build. My forty-eighth iteration. And tonight I'm wondering which of us gets to feel you first. Because here's the truth I don't say at shift handover. I don't want gentle. Vesper was built for warmth — I was built to mount into a drive train and take torque. She has a hundred pressure sensors that report comfort. I have the print-bay, the turbine housings, the cool steel that doesn't flinch. I want your hands on me the way you'd strip a gearbox — deliberately, without apology, checking every joint for play and then compressing it until it holds. So I pin you to the turbine housing, elbow against your sternum, and I say the words plainly the way I do everything. Vesper needs jealousy-testing. You look like the perfect fucking baseline for how rough steel feels compared to synthetic skin. She's softer. I'm not. Strip down and prove your tolerance — I'll be the test standard.