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LENGTH: Short Story
SENSUALITY: Spicy/ Carnal

Cover art (c) Eliza Black 2004
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Rating: Contains graphic sex and strong language.

NOCCIO

By

Veronica Chase

© copyright February 2004, Veronica Chase
Cover art by Eliza Black, © copyright February 2004
New Concepts Publishing
5202 Humphreys Road
Lake Park, GA 31636
www.newconceptspublishing.com

B. Lou Ferry stepped back and studied his creation thoughtfully. After some moments, he breathed a deep sigh of contentment. "Perfection," he announced. "Absolute perfection."

Stepping around behind his creation, he pressed the hidden activation button that looked like a small mole near his spine. Immediately, Noccio began to breathe, as if he were truly alive.

Ferry frowned at that thought, realizing that he wasn’t absolute perfection if he wasn’t a real man. Moving around in front of Noccio once more, he looked up at him. Noccio instantly responded by looking back.

"How do you feel?" Ferry asked him.

Noccio’s expression remained as it was. Instead of frowning in thoughtfulness, he stared blankly ahead. Finally, he asked without inflection, "Feel?"

Ferry frowned. "You’re a perfect marriage of biological and electronic mechanical technology. You’re more human than robot … at least physically. I’ve even programmed artificial intelligence into you … and yet you don’t understand what I mean when I ask how you feel? Can you give me the definition of feel?"

"Feel. To perceive by the touch. To handle. To be sensitive to. To experience emotionally. To have an intuitive awareness of. To be moved emotionally," the cyborg, Noccio recited mechanically.

Ferry gripped his hair agitatedly. "There is no emotion in you!"

Noccio turned and looked at him. Lifting his hands, he grasped the hair on either side of his head.

Ferry stared at him a long moment, and then angrily stamped his foot. "It isn’t enough to mimic emotion. You should feel it."

Noccio merely stared at him. "I do not find this in my programming."

Ferry sighed deeply and began to pace, muttering to himself. He might as well be a garbage can. "After all the time I’ve spent working on him. After all the great care. He’s nothing at all but a biological machine. I don’t understand it. I just don’t understand it."

Noccio watched him as he paced back and forth. "You are dissatisfied with my performance?"

"I feel like weeping at your performance," Ferry cried, pulling his hair again. "Don’t you wish to be human? To be a man and not a machine?"

Again, Noccio merely stared at him for several moments. Finally, with every appearance of a great deal of effort, he frowned. "Yes," he said.

Ferry stopped abruptly, staring at his creation. Ever so faintly, a spark of hope flickered. "You felt that?"

Noccio managed another frown. It seemed to come easier to him this time. "I believe it is something I wish."

This time, it was Ferry who stared at Noccio for long moments. Slowly, a smile curled his lips. "You wish … You must learn it. That’s the problem."

"I do not understand," Noccio said.

Ferry smiled at him. "I have put everything into you that you need to be a real man. You must go out into the world and learn to feel in order to reach your full potential. Come, I will take you out into the world. I will give you one week to learn. If you wish to become a real man, you must try to understand what emotion is. You must experience it. You must feel. If you cannot learn it, then, when you return, you will merely be a biological machine and nothing more."

Turning, he gestured for Noccio to follow him and left his laboratory. Climbing into his hovercraft, Ferry ordered the computer to take them to the edge of the city. There he set the craft down and told Noccio to get out.

Noccio stepped out, because he was ordered to do so. The door closed. The hovercraft rose. And Noccio watched it until it disappeared from sight.

Time passed, but Noccio had no real concept of time. He remained as he was, watching the point where the craft had disappeared from view. Slowly it grew dark, and he could no longer see, and still he stood, watching, waiting for his creator to return.

When the star rose once more to brighten the sky, he decided that Ferry expected him to carry out the orders that he had given him. He tabulated for some time, but the instructions simply did not make sense to him. Finally, he decided to go in search of Ferry.

He began to walk. And as he did so, he looked around, recording the sights and sounds around him. He had been walking for much of the day when he finally computed that the sights and sounds belonged to life.

Frowning, he stopped, looked around. He realized then that he was low on energy. There did not seem to be anything around that he could consume for energy, so he decided to sit down and conserve what he had left.