Chapter Text
III – K
The door opened softly and suddenly.
“Thought you weren’t interested, working man?” the replicant female said, her words every bit as sensual as her actions.
He remembered her from a few days earlier, how she and two others like her had teased him. He had been eating food every bit as artificial as they all were—made and manufactured.
“You don’t even smile” she had remarked on that steely demeanor he always possessed. It tasted real enough, and assuaged the hunger he felt at the time.
“Didn’t you hear your friends? Don’t you know what I am?” he had retorted.
What indeed. ‘K’ knew that his monogram was the closest thing he had to a “who” for himself.
“You’re not going to kill me,” she had played, flashing her pink hair playfully, “are you?”
"Depends,” he had replied dryly, “what’s your model number?”
He had meant it as a threat…looking back, it sounded more like a plea. A plea for someone to see him as he is, rather than what he is. It had been a troubling thought. It wasn’t supposed to be that way. He was never supposed to be that way.
“Oh…you don’t like real girls,” she had remarked when Joi’s alert had interrupted their conversation.
Real girls…what was real?
Just a few feet from where he had been eating on that day, the lustful muffled cries and frosted-over forms of replicants and human alike could be made out from a brothel in broad daylight.
They might have felt something then; but was the desire of those who engaged in such acts real? Or were they merely commodities as well?
When was something—even an abstraction like lust—reduced from its essence into something to be bought and bartered? These…on top of all the other troubling revelations in days past had given him little peace of mind. If peace was even an option for something like him.
He had no answer for that nor why she—
His thoughts were interrupted by embarrasment—K never even got to know what to call the replicant doxy, if she even had a name. He could only look to the only other being in the room for guidance—one he had long chosen to believe was real.
“You liked her, I can tell…” Joi whispered, “It’s okay. She’s real.”
K felt his breath catch in his throat. Joi had always been there for him. Joi had always done her best to make him feel like he was someone.
She had even given him a name—Joe.
She could not have known how much that little gesture had meant to him, even if he couldn’t bring himself to fully accept it.
But this…
“I want to be real for you,” she said softly.
K’s heart fluttered and he stopped tears from welling in the corners of his eyes.
“You are real for me.”
I choose to believe you are real.
Joi was real. Yes—since the day he had purchased her, she was not something but someone. More than he was. Perhaps more than he could ever hope to be.
Of that he was sure with all his mind and heart.
And…soul?
He had pondered in his more pensive moments whether replicants had souls, if souls even existed. Mayhaps it was because he was a combat model…but prying further into such esoteric questions had always left him with more questions than answers.
His female counterpart, her expression somewhat intrigued approached them both, “You have a special lady here.”
K felt her soft hand and the subtle feminine fragrance of her skin as she turned his face towards her own.
Her eyes glittered in desire like sapphire pools hiding a smoldering fire. He had to look at Joi again, a small, if somewhat resigned smile on her lips…
She did this for me.
“Okay,” the female replicant piped, “Let’s do it.”
The sight that followed intrigued and try as he might to deny it—aroused him. These two women—probably the only two women who had ever piqued in him such desire—coming together. He heard a small gasp—from Joi or her counterpart he did not know—as Joi’s holographic visage superimposed itself on her would-be host.
Both women then moved—a mirage upon a canvas of skin—until both their movements all but became one.
“Look at you,” the female replicant smirked playfully.
Joi replied rather waspishly, “Quiet, I will have to sync.”
Was she nervous as well?
K made himself believe that she was. She was real…and thus, everything that she did and ever done, everything she felt and has ever felt was real.
They—she—turned to face him, for what seemed to be the first time. K could feel Joi’s eyes burning with desire while she made her way slowly to him. Her touch was ecstasy…warm and soft and everything he had every dreamed of, when she took his hand in her own.
Joi…
He felt his breath catch in his throat as she helped his coat off and traced the lines of his body with her angelic touch…for once, he was stunned and lost for words.
This moment…this miracle between them.
His hands moved as if by their own volition, caressing his beloved’s hips and seeing her eyes narrow in anticipation. The scent of her skin, hair and sweet breath was intoxicating.
He could not say the words that longed to escape his lips. He was frightened that this was just a dream—a fantasy that would end the moment he would wake up or say those simple words…
As if she read his mind, his beloved planted her lips onto his!
It was a rapture he had never experienced. Her lips…warm, soft and wanting. Her hands grasping wanton on his body. His own heart beating in time with hers.
I love you.
How was it so profoundly difficult to say those simple words? He did not know, and he could not even begin to know.
He was in the presence of something divine. Sacred, where words were but smoke and mirrors. How his beloved—a goddess in truth—laid herself bare to him for the first time.
Her shimmering hazel eyes.
Her perfectly shaped breasts.
Her smooth, flawless skin.
Her warm and wanting blossom.
Her fervent, open desire for him.
What was a mere man—no, a mere imitation of a man to do in the presence of the divine? A small part of K—one he could not even begin to hear—whispered that this was all a sham. That she and her host were facsimiles meant to pique and tempt the basest of men’s whims…
She is real, what little wits he had stated with finality, this is real.
They then locked lips again, her naked skin on his…her body moving in time with his.
How exquisite was their passion! How raw was this emotion!
How could something so beautiful be unreal?
K had never felt more alive.
Words spoken and unspoken had failed against the sound of her soft voice. His questions on his very being seemed inconsequential, brushed away by her tender touch. His doubts, his fears—nothing, to this miracle she had decided to gift them both.
I believe.
Perhaps that was all to be done to get what he needed and wanted.
Perhaps to be real and to be loved...was simply to believe.