I asked, “What do you mean?”
She had the bed stripped now and was starting to put on a clean set of sheets. She said, “Maybe, like this. But we should ask Clarice I think.”
I stopped Wendy and said, “That’s a good idea. Clarice, can you come in here and talk to me and Wendy for a little while? I need help.”
Clarice said, “Certainly, I’ll be right there.”
I said, “Wendy, we can talk about it when Clarice comes.”
Wendy said, “I think that’s a good idea. I’ll hurry up,” and she began to move much faster, finishing the sheets, and then getting a clean blanket and comforter. She was just pushing all of the used linen through a chute in the wall when Clarice walked in.
Clarice was not wearing her lab coat when she came in.
I smiled and said, “Can we all sit together and talk for a minute? Will you come sit on my lap? Or maybe we should climb into the bed. No, in the chair. Come sit with me.”
Clarice looked concerned and came and sat on my right knee and leaned into me. I motioned to Wendy and had her sit on the arm of the chair on my left, where I could put my arm around her.
I said, “Clarice, Wendy said that she’s happy that I love her now, but that I didn’t love her before. That I treated her like tractor. She tried to explain, but I need to understand this. Was I like Irene in some way? Did I treat you like she treated Brenda? Please tell me I didn’t…but tell me the truth. I’m so sorry if I hurt any of you and I’ll do anything to make it up to you, I swear. I’m different now and…”
Clarice frowned and said, “Shush. I don’t think that’s what Wendy meant. Let she and I talk for a minute.”
Both of them were silent for less than a second and then Clarice spoke again.
Clarice said, “Sweetie, first, no, you weren’t mean. You were wonderful You loved all of us. Wendy, it’s OK. You didn’t do anything wrong. Remember Joshy’s amnesia brain. He just doesn’t remember. We’ll explain it and it will all be fine. Joshua, Wendy was right. When Irene was here, we were all on guard all the time. We didn’t ever walk around the house naked. The nymphs didn’t get to do the housework or the gardening, and they didn’t get to do anything that they were designed to do, the things that they love to do. And, like she said, we were all afraid of Irene and so were you. You and I made love and were happy, but not like we are now. You loved me, but not like you do now. Before you loved me with your heart, but now you love me with your being. Like Wendy tried to say, it was like all of our beings were dim. I loved you, and I don’t love you more now, but I love you freer and fuller and happier. Even earlier, when I was in my lab coat, it was different, but you didn’t know it.
If I had done that before, if I had met you in the lab wearing an open lab coat and nothing underneath, it would have been fun, but we would also have been afraid. There was no way for Irene to come down here and catch us, but what if we accidentally made some reference to it and she got suspicious. I think that she must not have known that I was what I am, because if she had, she would have tried to get rid of me. We were so careful. In some ways, your amnesia is the best thing that ever happened to us. It gives us a fresh start. Wendy still has her memories of how that was. So, today when she was loved openly by you, it was new and very different.
Wendy, Joshua always loved you. Just as much as now. But we were all under a curse, weren’t we?”
Wendy smiled and said, “That’s why she made everything ugly and now we can make it pretty again and have unicorns and princesses and a thousand nymphs. And the tractors will fix the grotto and the hot springs and the hill pool and the hiding places and it will have rabbits and flowers all again.”
The idea of a thousand nymphs took me by surprise and I hoped that I wouldn’t have to put my foot down too much to make sure that didn’t happen.
Wendy exclaimed, “And Sleeping Beauty! In the castle. Our knight in shining armor will go to the castle and kiss her and wake her up and her curse will be broken and she’ll be a real queen again!”
Clarice smiled and said, “You mean Brenda. Yes, our shining knight will break the curse and she will be a queen again. You know, we don’t really know Brenda though.”
Wendy beamed and said, “But she is beautiful, so she has to be nice, and besides, the witch super hated her, and that means that she must be super wonderful. Witches only really hate things that are really wonderful. If Brenda wasn’t wonderful, the witch wouldn’t hate her so much. That’s right, isn’t it?’
Clarice said, “I suppose it must be. I hadn’t thought about it like that. Brenda is very beautiful.”
Wendy said, “She looks like the pictures of princess Buttercup. I think that she must be magical, like they say that princess Buttercup was. She was magical like with lady magic, that’s what I heard in the stories. And because of Brenda’s butt.”
I asked, “What? What do you mean?”
Wendy said, “Isn’t that why Pops named her Buttercup? Because her butt was so nice? Like a flower that you could eat? I think that’s why. Ellie’s mom was Belle and Belle was Buttercup’s little sister and Brenda looks like Buttercup, and that’s why because Joshy needed Clarice to look like Queen Honey and Queen Alice, but he needed a magical Brenda to be like Princess Buttercup and have her pretty butt for us. So go wake her up right now and ask her if that’s why.”
Clarice said, “Joshua, she has a point. From what I knew, Buttercup had mother magic like no one else. Pops probably did make Brenda to have that role in our family. Now, hang on, don’t get weird. Remember, Buttercup was one of Pops wives and he made love to her all the time. And she took care of him in ways that no other woman could. Brenda is meant to be like that for you. A super emotional battery charger. I think that Wendy is right.”
I sat quietly and held the two of them on my lap and then said, “So, I wasn’t mean or cold, I was just scared. And now, we don’t just love each other with our feelings, but with our beings.”
Wendy said, “Right! Like gardens for the tractors to make.”
I turned to Clarice who explained, “Now that the curse is broken, we are free to make everything better than ever. There’s a lot of work to do, but what we’re creating together is what we were always supposed to have.”
Wendy said, “So now I’m glad that you love me like we always were going to be but didn’t because of the witch. Which one is Aspen, anyway? What’s an Aspen? It’s a tree, I know that, but is there a princess called Aspen? How come she isn’t here?”
Clarice said, “Aspen is a very nice princess. I met her and she’s a wild one. We don’t know what she’s really like yet.”
Wendy said, “That’s because she isn’t born yet. She gets born at a magic pool and then she can come here and find out who she is. But, what I want to know is, what about the others? No, not those others, I know we don’t have those others, but with so many princesses, where are the other nymph sisters? Now there’s just me and Ellie and Mandy, and that maybe won’t be fair for them because they won’t all have one.”
I said, “Wendy, which princess is yours?”
She looked at me and said, “All of them. Lark and Raven, both. Oh, we can have more than one, so that’s OK. Wait, no. When Princess Viola comes, she will be mine too. And Mandy says that Princess Viola is so cute and had the best boobs and is really nice. Um, but then this mysterious Aspen princess comes and then we have her too, so don’t we need a thousand more nymphs? I think we might, but is that wrong?”
I said, “We won’t have nymphs for every princess. We will all share each other. We have three nymphs and Clarice and Brenda, so that’s five. And we have Lark and Raven and Viola and Aspen and one more surprise one, and that’s five.”
Wendy whistled softly, “That’s twenty two feet. Oh, we can’t fit more feet in the big bed, so that’s enough nymphs for everybody. But, still, it will take a long time, even for twenty two feet.”
Clarice said, “We do have a lot of work to do. We could make more tracto
rs. Wendy, how do you feel about that?”
Wendy said, “We need a hundred and they have to climb trees. What about robots? Can we make robots. Like Roger, but with hands and feet? Not like real hands and feet, but like Roger hands and feet? Roger likes being Roger and saying ‘All systems will be operational in seventy two hundred microseconds. Tree trimming commencing in an imminent time frame to be initiated shortly’ and stuff like that. Is Roger happy? He seems like he is.”
Clarice said, “I think that he is. We all have different functions and when we are doing our function, then we’re happy.”
Wendy frowned and said, “Wait. OK. We talked it over. Me and Ellie and Mandy, just now. Now we know that the Nogud girls were meant to be happy. That was there function. They were meant to be princesses. That was why they were made. But, the bad witch cursed them and made them not able to do their function. I can explain it.
Brenda was made to function like you, Clarice, but like Buttercup, not Alice and Honey. It was funny because they said that Honey had a nice hiney. But Irene took away her function. Not Honey’s hiney function, Brenda’s bottom function. I mean her primary function, not her just for fun function.
Tractors and cars do their functions and they are happy. Nobody is happy when they are in storage, except for the storage boxes who are happy because storage is their function.
We think that we know the solution. We didn’t want to make others because we thought that they would be like us, but not like us and not able to have names and be loved. But if there is something else that has a happy function, then can’t we have those and make them happy, even if they are different?
Brenda can’t be really happy because she can’t function unless she uses her bottom, and never mind that for now, because maybe I got confusing about that because this is hard to think about. The others won’t be happy because they have the form of a nymph, but not the function. If something is a gardener, it has the form of a gardener. What does that look like? If they have a form that fits their function, then they will be happy. Do you want us to figure it out?”
Clarice looked to me, and I said, “I guess so. Wendy’s right, we do have an awful lot of work to do to get everything really nice again. It’s OK with me if they think about it, if it’s OK with you.”
Clarice said, “We can try it. But Wendy, you can’t make anything until Joshua approves the design, OK?”
Wendy said happily, “Of course. Me and Ellie and Mandy talked about it for a long time just now and we have an idea. Can I show you?”
Chapter 19 Are We OK With Moon Maids?
Clarice and I shrugged and agreed. Wendy took us out into the office space, in front of the glass windows and pulled up two chairs for Clarice and I to sit in.
She positioned us facing a large video monitor and said, “Um, I will tell you what to make and you can make it look right, OK?”
Clarice smiled and nodded.
Wendy said, “First, put a picture of Ellie,” and a 3d image of the nymph was rendered on the screen and started to rotate slowly. Wendy continued, “We found things from old movies that gave us hints about what to do. We paid attention to the function and made the form match. It was fun. So, put a skin suit on it.”
Clarice re-rendered the design and showed it again.
Wendy said, “Make the suit silver. It is always silver. Well, in some pictures it was blue, but blue wasn’t right, so make it silver. If you have questions, just ask.”
The skin suit turned silver. Wendy went on, “Now, make all the skin silver, face too. Make the suit, not so tight. Make it smoother. But make the nipples just a little bit pokey.”
I asked, “Why does it have nipples?”
She answered, “Because it needs to be pretty. It needs to not be ugly. Part of its secondary function is to be pleasant to look at. Not as a primary function, but as a secondary. So, smooth over the groin, like doll parts. And smooth the rear end a little. It should be pretty, but not the same as Ellie when she’s naked. More like in pajamas. Like silver pajamas.”
Clarice said, “I think I see what you want. Like this?”
Wendy smiled and said, “Yeah, like that.”
The image on the screen looked like a silver robot in the form of an attractive woman. Something that you would see in an old science fiction movie or TV show. Clarice made further refinements.
Wendy said, “Now, the face should be different. Not too different, because its function isn’t to be creepy, but so that it doesn’t look like Ellie anymore because its function is to be different than Ellie. It won’t need to do laundry.”
Clarice tried again and left the face more or less human looking, but when she was done, it was distinctly different than the nymphs.
Wendy said, “They need arms and legs because that’s how things work for the best. We could put more arms, but one of the functions is to fit in with us, so only two arms. Make the hair short. Make the suit not so shiny. Make the toes smoother. Make just three fingers, not four. And the toes. I don’t know why, but lots of the examples we found had just three fingers, plus the thumb, and that seems like a good idea. Make the skin strong, like our suits. What do you think of that?”
I said, “They look very functional and very nice in their own way. What about their brains and personalities? Are they like Roger?”
Wendy looked concerned and said, “No. Not like Roger. Maybe this isn’t a good idea, but we think that we should all talk it over, but don’t let Brenda find out.”
Clarice said, “What are you thinking? What about Brenda?”
Wendy came and sat in my lap and looked at Clarice and I and said, “Well, don’t be mad, and it’s just an idea, but we suggest that they be like, well, it’s hard to say because of what happened and everything, but if we just look at the functions, then if we’re thinking about that, but don’t tell Brenda, because we don’t want to hurt her feelings and if it would hurt her feelings, then we don’t want to do it.”
I said, “Wendy, you mean that even though Brenda was cursed and couldn’t be happy because she was designed for a different function than the curse allowed, that while she was under the curse, her personality was in line with her function and purpose. So, since these…what will we call them?’
Wendy said, “Um, maybe we thought that they are called ‘moon maids’. It seemed like in some of the movies that they were moon maids.”
I smiled and said, “OK. For now, we can call them that.”
Wendy said, “Because that’s what they do. They work in the moonlight, and are like maids.”
I said, “OK. Moon maids. Brenda wasn’t meant to be a moon maid. She was meant to be a princess…”
Wendy interrupted and said, “A queen, like Clarice and Alice.”
I said, “OK. Brenda was meant to be a queen, but the curse made her act like a moon maid. But the new moon maids are supposed to be moon maids, so they act kind of like Brenda did when she was cursed.”
Wendy said, “That’s kind of what we think. But it’s maybe complicated and maybe we don’t know for sure.”
I asked, “Do you and Ellie and Mandy think that they will be happy?”
Wendy said, “We think so. They will want to make things pretty and they will be happy if they can. And besides, they will be just one anyway.”
I said, “You mean that we only need one of them?”
She said, “No, I mean, like in the movies. They are all the same, so they don’t have names. Like tractors, but nicer too look at, but they don’t wear bikinis. Because they are all the same, they like to work, but they don’t have campfires.”
I looked puzzled, but Clarice took over and said, “Wendy, tractors don’t have a real brain. I make them work and do what they need to. It doesn’t take much of my brain to make them work. So, moon maids are like that? They work because I tell them to, but they don’t really have personalities and names of their own?”
Wendy said, “Yeah. They have to look nice and have hands and feet to function ri
ght, but like you said, and they don’t have to talk like we do. But they still have to look nice, but not like real girls like us. Is that OK? We don’t have to, but there is a lot of work to do and if we have a hundred years then we can do it, but it would be nice to swim outside and have everything pretty again.”
Clarice said, “Joshua, what do you think?”
I said, “Let’s look at it again. OK. Make the boobs smaller. Smaller. OK. I don’t think that we really do need nipples. Well, maybe very small ones. Put Ellie next to it. Can we make them shorter? Does that interfere with the function?”
Clarice said, “I don’t think so. We are ending up with basically the same things as the pseudo-elves that Pops and Alice made, but making them look more like moon maids. Here, here’s how big they were.”
I looked at the new rendering and said, “I’m not trying to de-sex them exactly…well, maybe I am. I think that they can be cute, even if they aren’t at all sexy. So, smooth off the bottom some more. More like wearing pants. That’s still a nice bottom, right? Wendy what do you think?’
Wendy said, “OK with us, except for the nipples.”
I asked, “What about the nipples?”
Wendy said, “One function is if we want to tease you when we aren’t there. They need to be made so that we can make their nipples pokey when we want to tease you.”
Clarice laughed and said, “That is a good idea,” and she redid the design with nipples that poked out dramatically on demand. She said, “No teasing,” and the nipple disappeared entirely, and then said, “And now in Teaser Mode,” and two hard points popped out in a very cute display of arousal.
Wendy said, “Yeah. That’s a primary function. Teasing is important.”
Clarice said, “OK, if that’s settled, Joshua and I will make some moon maids soon to work in the gardens.”
I said, “But not a thousand of them.”
Clarice said, “But, maybe twenty. We really do have a lot of work to do, and Wendy is right, we never did really live here like we were meant to, because of the curse. I think that we need to really move in and restore this place to its former glory, and then go even farther. Wendy, I think that Moon Maids is a really good idea. They do look cute, and they will be really functional. Remember, our main function is taking care of Joshua, so we have to keep doing that, and that means all of our chores.”
The Wounded Page 18
