Vicki stared at the table, emotionally drained and dead inside.

  “First question…” Gizzy asked, twirling her last given fork on the metal table, finishing her spaghetti, as Vicki stared in a suspicious manner, the gray and stainless steel room feeling like an interrogation chamber, or like we just ripped off the same room from Medusa's List. Metal chairs and a metal table coldly occupying the center. Gizzy’s metallic manicured nails occasionally scraping the fork as she ate. “Have you recently or in the past felt a strange and massive wave of new memories associated with events that never took place, in the form of dreams or flashbacks involving a mission to space?”

  “Yes. Why does this feel so familiar?” Vicki asked, brushing her shoulder-length magenta hair behind her ear and staring up, with glowing red eyes, at a pair of aluminum cones suspended from the ceiling.

  “We’ve done this before…I think. I mean, I know we have, I just don’t know how many times. Memory cones do have their side effects.” Gizzy yawned, her glowing blue eyes dimming as she did. That's probably healthy. Vicki sighed with skepticism.

  “The fact that I recall this at all, and you…the mastermind, aren’t sure, kinda confirms that the memory cones are problematic. Let me guess… You have a mission, I won’t remember this conversation, but my clone will, and you’ve recruited everyone for a team to save the universe?” Vicki sighed, as if just another mission.

  “Actually shocked you remember enough to put that much together, but no, I mean yes, to the mission and cloning, memory wipe; no to the whole usual team and saving the universe. This one’s personal. I’m abusing the power and technology for a self-stroking ego trip, purely for my amusement and entertainment for as long as I can milk this concept without getting bored.” Gizzy said, scrolling her phone as Vicki’s eyes dimmed in a painful manner. The Memmory cone hummed mildly. “But no, we’re the team. Just us and 3R… because every crew needs a mindless robot. See, the problem is that both of us have something in common.” Gizzy said, drumming her fingers.

  “We’re both monsters?” Vicki brooded.

  “See, both of us have two things in common.” Gizzy corrected. “We’re both monsters, and we’re both in serious need of a mission to distract from some unfortunate heartbreak.”

  “I’m fine.” Vicki lied, in an almost ruglike manner, but sexier than any rug would lie.

  “Really? Because you and Jack were married for years and broke up pretty recently, and since then, you have avoided the group. You’ve spent every day hiding in your new apartment, hitting the clubs every night, going home alone. You’ve been going through more alcohol than blood rations in your daily consumption. I would know, I supply both.”

  “I buy my alcohol online from Curiada, with the HowToDrink coupon, because I support that youtube channel and so should you…I don’t buy from you, and how do you know I’m at the clubs every night?” Vicki asked.

  “Firstly, I’m a billionaire who owns the moon you live on, whose alcoholism makes yours look like an absolute joke. You think I don’t own the entire alcohol industry here?

  "Even Curiada?" Vicki gasped.

  "ESPECIALLY curiada. It's Sponsored by an old drunk guy named Greg. You honestly don’t think that's just me pretending to be human? Pick any store, business or industry on this moon. Ten percent chance I secretly own it. 20 percent chance I just un-secretly own it outright. Secondly, I have cameras everywhere. Jack means something to me, when he says you’re taking things badly, I listen, and our history has been sketchy as well as your planetary threat level, so obviously I’ve been watching you every time you leave the apartment. You need a vacation. The kind of vacation monsters like us maniacal bitches need…a hunt.”

  “What are we hunting?” Vicki asked.

  “Oh, so now we’re interested?” Gizzy asked.

  “Look, you brought me down here because you knew I’d be tempted by something in this deal. You got me on camera depression drinking and desperate for something to do. I haven’t killed anyone in weeks, you should know that, I do hits for you, and you haven’t ordered any hits, and you have fucking camera’s everywhere that would know if I pulled an unauthorized hit. You have a syringe of blood on the table and a contract to sign, you know i'm already doing this. So, what are we hunting?” Vicki sighed.

  “That’s the beauty of it…we have no idea yet. I have a new app on my phone, holographic by the way, if you want one you just get the chip injected and…” Gizzy said, dematerializing the phone and rematerializing it in her hand. “See? Can’t lose it, can’t get stolen, it’s not even there, it’s just an interface. Star-trek level physical holograms linked to your mind. It’s so intuitive, a blind autistic person could use this phone and they can't even use a tablet. We’ve had some massive breakthroughs in alien technology since the…well let’s call it spoils of war after Operation Medusa, and move on. Anyway, due to complicated issues from another mission you don’t remember…hopefully, we have an app that tracks anomalous foreign matter from outside this universe that tends to end up as problematic creatures wreaking chaos on various worlds. We get to be heroes and bounty hunters while actually just looking for an excuse to kill shit and test out new weaponry that’s too dangerous and sketchy to be tested here or with our host bodies.” Gizzy shrugged.

  “It’s an experiment. So the syringe is some new enemy-procured bioweapon or something you wanna test on me?”

  “God no…it’s a modified strain of YOUR OWN DNA that will bind with your bug vampirism and cannibalize it. I’m trying to develop a cure so you can be human again, and unfortunately that mean you have to be cloned and your clone, who will remember this conversation instead of you, will test the prototype. Now there are some likely side effects, we ran simulations, but essentially this will make you tremendously more vampiric, but you’ll purge out the cure. Basically this splits the bugpire from the human part, you vomit out the human part and probably become a double vampire. Then we clone the vomit, to use it to make a cure for you back home…well, HERE, we still ARE home, but we won’t be, when your clone remembers this conversation. I figured if one clone of you has to become more monster for the others to be human again, why waste the bad bitch potential? Let’s test that bad bitch result out as a weapon, plus I need to test out some other weapons, and I hate doing a mission alone. 3R isn’t exactly…the best company.”

  “Was Dee too much of a pacifist to go on a killing spree with you?” she smirked.

  “No, we just kinda broke up. Long time ago. We did a time travel mission that got us stuck in the Ye Olde Past for 200 years. Relationships never last more than 100–200 years.”

  “How long did you guys last?” Vicki sighed.

  “6 months.” Gizzy sighed, “Hey, that was 200 years ago from my perspective. Don’t give me that look, interspecies Biomech relationships always have a huge problem. Someone will eventually either start going more bio than mech or someone will slowly go more mech than bio, at some point one of you is either just dating a human or a toaster. She got too…human.” Gizzy shrugged.

  “Ended up too much like the pornstar Dee, she was modeled after?”

  “Yea, it got weird. She got more and more like the Dee I first met, anyway, it’s fine. I married her ex-boyfriend, we had a farm, we grew old together, he died from a heart attack during sex, I was single for like 37 years, ended up back here.”

  “Sounds like me and Jack. The sex part.” Vicki sighed sadly.

  Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  “Except Eridani don’t believe in cloning and Nathan was already ancient and ready to die in a cool way. How many times did you accidentally kill Jack during sex?” she asked.

  “Third time I blacked out and fed on him, when they cloned him back, he just left. He clones back fine, but apparently it’s not a pleasant way to die. That became divorce papers shortly after.” Vicki sighed.

  “Shit, that sucks. Nathan died with a smile on his face trying to give me a high five, but he was 300 years old and having cardiac failure, post orgasm, and drunk. I imagine being young and healthy and just having your overpowered wife bite and drink your blood midway to climax, bleeding out slowly, is less of a bro-victory and more humiliating. Blacking out and coming to, covered in your husband’s blood for the third time, sounds rough too. I can see both of your perspective points. Anyway, we could both use a girl’s getaway and do some real feminine bonding over girly things us ladies enjoy…like experimental weapons, dangerous hunting of alien threats and sketchy lab made drugs.” Gizzy grinned.

  “You sold the idea ten minutes ago at: you need a vacation. I’ve just been letting you ramble. Why does that syringe label say fleshgod abomination V”

  “Don’t worry about it. I’ll delete that memory part in post, and remove the label.”

  “Look, this whole vampire thing has worn on everyone, all my friends avoid me now, I’m better without them, I’m starting to understand you more and more, and why everyone is afraid of you. Fuck it. Let’s go on a vacation. I wanna kill something and not be looked at like the bad guy for a change.”

  “You hybrid abominations grow up so fast. Fucking mortals, amiright? They just don’t get it. Hell, half of them now are techno-vegans and protesting the cruelty of all non-cloned meat. I know killing an animal is brutal but…have you tasted cloned beef? It’s so bland. Every part of the cow always tastes like pot-roast. I mean, I like pot-roast, but I don’t want everything to just always taste like pot-roast. Something about being sentient and alive first just gives it that flavor variation you can’t replicate. Why am I rambling about this? You know the taste. Tell me cloned blood doesn’t taste like the bland pot-roast of blood?”

  “Eh.” She shrugged. “So are we taking the classic Reaper 20-50 assault rifle setup?” she asked.

  “Hell no. That weapon system is obsolete and crude. It was designed to be untraceable and look like human technology if they tried to trace it. We’re using the good stuff you’re not even supposed to know about. But I am recycling the artwork for maximum usage, so I’m configuring it like your old Reaper gun for familiarity and ergonomics, but the guts are brand new, and the ship is gonna blow your mind.” She grinned, "Anyway thanks for signing the contract, see you soon… or immediately from your clone’s perspective."

  A very sticky, naked, Vicki, stood in front of the cloning tank she just stepped out of, looking confused and disappointed, but with a stunning ass, so nobody noticed her expression.

  “What is this, Zoolander? Why is there a model of the ship?” she asked, approaching an SUV sized spaceship. With Gizzy grinning proudly.

  “Oh, that’s not a model. It shrinks down. The ship can grow to at least…3 times this size.” She smirked. “Kidding. That's the shuttle, and also the ship. Tardis-grade special distortion 90 times this size inside. It’s called the SS Overkill. Don’t ask why, you’ll get it when you go inside and see the weaponry specs and armor data. It’s both the shuttle pod and the ship all in one. You just climb in, press the entry code, and step back out in the cargo bay. It’s like teleportation, except the ship is inside the shuttle and the shuttle is inside the ship’s shuttle bay. M?bius ship technology we reverse engineered from a shrinking house that killed a lot of horses. Long tragic story. So much viscous fluid.” Gizzy sighed silently.

  “I assume it’s been tested thoroughly for safety?” Vicki asked.

  “Oh absolutely, hence the horses. Gotta test it on something living. The clone machine onboard is armored like hell, pre-set and double encoded, external self-destruct defenses, if one of us dies on a mission this thing just auto-prints a new us exactly as we were, minus the memory of the mission beyond the pre-mission memory update. The ship also looks very bland and open inside because it’s fully fitted with tactile hologram technology. You’re basically living inside a holodeck. We want a western themed ship, nightclub, Tokyo apartment with a view and virtual neighbors waving as they go by, you got it.”

  “So about the robot… I assume it’s going to become sentient and grow free will at some point and cause all kinds of problems?” Vicki yawned, still naked and making coffee.

  “Yea, we skipped that part. We set up 3 camps with 30 robots each, let them naturally develop sentience, and then screened them for the least annoying and most subservient one who willingly chose to volunteer for the missions like these. Then we ran a 300 year simulation to see if that one would change its mind mid-adventure, and go psychotic or end up moody and shit. 3R was by far the best option. This thing’s absolutely top of the line. Fully integrated with the ship, the holographics, essentially it’s a floating marble with 200 pounds of nano-liquid that can be, or resemble, anything it wants, so we have a third crewman who can be anyone or anything. It runs on ambient power within the ship’s charging range. It can convert the ship's neutral matter supply into almost any substance, ranging from steak to snail slime, so it doubles as the ship's livestock without the problematic issues of having rapidly growing and replicating cows onboard or a giant tentacle snail in a tank that keeps getting out somehow. Yes, it all still tastes like potroast. It’s NEARLY perfect, not perfect.”

  “So I can just… feed off of the other crewman?” Vicki squinted. “Like with Dee?”

  “Again, 3R a voluntary AI system, that can set its emotions to whatever it wants, including indifferent or helpful. It’s fully contained in the marble, and the code can’t be altered or changed. It’s unhackable, doesn’t rapidly evolve, absolutely foolproof, and it can’t override the ship's primary skeletal system codes all hardwired to a protected mainframe, like cutting off life support, self-destructing, forcibly overriding navigation to crash into a black hole, and it can’t fall in love. Nothing like Dee. It doesn’t adapt or grow, it’s a foolproof robot crewman with limitless potential and no possible downsides. Trust me, we ran every bad simulation possible from self-replicating, going insane, revenge arcs, admiring Elon Musk, and even Borg probing. No, Borgs don’t even exist, we just cover fictional problems as well just in case something out there is similar.”

  “Sounds perfect.” Vicki nodded.

  “And no, you can’t make the robot look and act like Jack, or either of us. I made sure to avoid temptations to bulldoze from dark comedy to depressing drama about loss and insanity. The only loss we can suffer is financial, and I’m not worried there, the only insanity and drama is what we bring with us. Still a lot, but familiar. You want the robot to take the form of your childhood nemesis all grown up, and get a vengeance vampire feed? I don’t wanna know about it, but you can do that. You want a sparring partner that rewards training improvement with blood feeding, got it. You get horny and want a Delmarian Manwhore for the night…fuck away, bite the neck, not my problem or business.” Gizzy shrugged.

  “Okay I’m not the one who married a Delmarian, What me and Vinn had was a necessary feeding agreement between friends for medical reasons. It wasn’t a…”

  “Again, not my problem or business. You just can’t make it look like Me or Jack, because I know that’s gonna do weird shit to your mind and then I gotta review footage of myself doing weird shit I didn’t wanna see, to do a psych evaluation.”

  “So we can’t simulate Jack, or each other…can you simulate Dee, or is that implied as a psychological block?” Vicki said, almost accusingly.

  “Not your business or problem, my robot, my safety protocol and risk. Don’t give me that look. I’m funding your vacation, and I’m 15,000 years older than you. I know damn good and well what kinda weird shit messes with my own mind and what to avoid.” Gizzy diverted

  “So no. It’s not blocked. Is she blocked from me? Can I feed on a robot resembling Dee?” she asked.

  “…you know what, lemme just real quick add the whole main Delmar gang to the blocked list. Jack, Dee, Vinn and Nicole, Silverback, and then we can hard set that before we leave. Obviously, we're leaving Dimitri on the green list. Anyone else you think is a terribly toxic idea to have on there for either of us?”

  “That seems like the list.” Vicki shrugged.

  “Fantastic. I’ll leave Hyde in there as an option, so if I wanna beat the shit out of someone to de-stress, he’s fair game. And if you want a Delmarian sex-feed-toy, you can have a familiar villain to murder that nobody feels bad about.”

  “I don’t have a Delmarian thing. Nicole’s the one who married and fucks a Delmarian, why am I the weird one here? I needed blood, I was stuck in an elevator with Vinn. Even Nicole understood it was medically emergen… I’m not going there. This is a vacation, I’m already getting annoyed by bringing up the past, let's just get moving forward.”

  “Excellent. Anyway, sign here in blood, so I have the clone's signature of legal coverage for anything beyond this point, and the right to terminate all events like it never happened if whatever happens would ruin our host’s lives if they ever got this memory. Other missions went poorly, you gotta have backup plans and cover every ass. Here’s your blood pen, you’re gonna feel a slight poke and then…there ya go. Into the scanner along with this memory recording and security cam footage, and it’s all sent back to Delmar. Good to go. What do you wanna do first?”

  “I wanna see the new guns.” Vicki admitted.

  “Really glad you said that. I spent hours getting the endless matrix wall of guns that flies by, just perfect speed. They’re all holograms for the effect, except the row that stops behind you, with the real guns. You’ll get it.” She shrugged.