Page 46 of Alexis

His request was honored instantly.

“It’s very realistic, but a little distracting,” he told Oberon. “I’d rather talk to you.”

“What would you program yourself to do?” the AI asked.

“I don’t know,” Tiago said, suddenly feeling like maybe he was saying too much to a computer. “Control what I eat, my workouts, how much sleep I actually get. Stuff like that.”

“I see,” Oberon said. “So, nothing personal, just physical things?”

“What made you ask me that?” Tiago said, stopping mid-lift.

The hologram girl looked around nervously, as if she didn’t like being suspended halfway up.

“I hope it’s not bad manners to point it out,” Oberon said. “But Alexis was crying this morning. I wondered if that might be on your mind at all.”

“Of course it’s on my mind,” Tiago said, letting the weight down and cranking the setting up too high.

The girl’s image was replaced with the image of an impossibly muscled man with a bull’s head.

“A minotaur,” Tiago breathed, shaking his head.

“You recognize the creature,” Oberon said, sounding delighted.

“Alexis told me about it when we were in the labyrinth,” Tiago said, shaking his head and smiling. “She’s something else.”

“What else?” Oberon asked.

“Oh, that’s just an expression,” Tiago said.

“I know,” Oberon told him. “But what else is she to you? What do you think of when you think of her?”

“I think that I can’t fall for her,” Tiago admitted. “For so many reasons.”

“Like what?” Oberon asked.

Tiago lifted the minotaur-heavy weight to buy time. His muscles strained and burned.

“Like we each have a serious career to get back to,” he said, as he set the cell down. “And like she didn’t come here to fall in love.”

“Neither did you,” Oberon said.

Tiago’s head was spinning. Was there abutimplied in Oberon’s statement?

That was impossible.

Remember that you’re talking to a computer, Tiago.

“Exactly,” he said as lightly as he could.

He got up from the hover bench and headed over to a kick machine, while the minotaur hologram snorted after him.

Climbing onto the weighted platform, he realized that it was actually going to lift him up with each kick, depending on his force and accuracy.

He fooled with the settings and tapped the screen to lift the kick-drones, then turned to give the one on his right a quick front kick.

The drone fell back slightly, and the platform rose.

For a second he felt like he might fall, but then his balance caught up to him.

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