Casey's eyes were on her tablet, but they weren't reading her script. They were fixed on the time. Ticking seconds, an inexorable march of numbers, taunted by the much faster staccato patter of her heart. Forty minutes past two on a Saturday. Twenty minutes 'til showtime. Twenty minutes until she got up on stage and tried to sell herself to the convention audience.
Maybe nobody would show, she told herself for not the first time. Maybe she'd find herself alone in that auditorium, as she was now. Maybe the seats would all be empty, and she could step back from the mic with an easy shrug, letting the responsibility tumble from her shoulders. If a tree falls in the forest with nobody to hear it, has it really made a sound? By that same token, would Casey Evans, thirty-year-old private accountant and hobbyist erotica writer, really make a fool of herself if nobody watched her do it? A distressingly comforting thought.
So when the door to the little dressing room for convention speakers flew open and admitted a tall, broad-shouldered man in a long, black coat, Casey didn't even notice. Her eyes were still on the endless flow of time. She first saw him when she rose her head from her screen and spotted him in the dressing mirror, looking like a muscular wraith in front of the door. The curtains were drawn, so the man was lit by the electric glow of the hotel's overhead lighting.
"You are Casey Evans," he declared.
"Y-Yes?" she replied once she'd recovered from the shock, though the man's tone didn't suggest he had been asking a question. "Is it... Is it time to go?"
"Go?" The man's heavy chin and thick brow afforded him a stilted, rhythmic manner of speech, like he'd planned each syllable in his head before uttering it. He had an accent too, though Casey couldn't place it. Somewhere European? Beneath the flow of his coat, his jeans were taut across his muscle. She also noticed that the man was wearing a pair of sunglasses indoors.
"T-To the hall?" she prompted, tucking some of her bob of blonde hair behind one ear. "For the seminar?"
The stilted man nodded. "You are hosting a discussion entitled 'Marketed Desire: How to share your erotica writing skills in a professional recruitment process.'"
She swallowed. Having the title of her presentation read back to her by this thick, imposing man made her feel small. "Yes," she breathed.
"I am not here for that."
"O-Oh. Then... can I help you with something?"
"Affirmative, you can."
The man stepped forward. His heavy, leather boots thudded against the hotel's practical carpeting. He held out one hand towards her.
"Casey Evans," he said, "I have been sent back in time from the future to find you."
Stepping backwards caused Casey's ass to bump against the table she had been using. The wooden edge of the surface bounced against the mirror behind it, and the sound of shaking glass made her jump. This in turn caused her bag to fall over on the tabletop, and a clatter of cosmetics rained over the screen of her tablet. In the wake of this little commotion, silence.
"No," she said.
"Yes," he replied. "Fifty years from now, the world will have been taken over by renegade machines. A resistance movement of the last remaining humans continues to fight. This would not be possible without the leadership of a single, surpassing human warrior. Casey Evans, that human will be conceived here, now. At the 2025 Literotica Convention in Grand City."
"B-B-B-..." said Casey, blown back the man's ludicrous tale. "B-B-By conceived, y-you mean...?"
"By you and I," he confirmed with a nod. "Now, give me your clothes. And prepare to be inseminated."
"Woah!" She threw up both hands as the time-traveller made to approach. "Woah, woah, woah! Y-You cannot expect me to just believe this story at face value, can you?"
"You desire proof?"
"Of course I do!"
The man nodded his head in professional acceptance of her request. Then he shrugged off his leather coat and let it fall to the floor. Beneath, a tight, white shirt that highlighted the rippling muscle of his torso. He raised one arm, bent at the elbow with his fingers pointed at the ceiling.
And the arm...
split
. With a rattle of complex electrical mechanisms, the man's limb divided down its length. He rolled his own skin down to his elbow. And inside, neat rows of wiring and colourful cables. An iron skeleton bound with copper ligatures. The man flexed his mechanical fingers, and Casey saw a clicking wave of little motions all the way down the machine's arm.
"Shit...!" she breathed. "What...
are
you?"
"I am a machine soldier, originally designed to hunt humans but reprogrammed by the human resistance," he replied. "My designation is R-KON Model I-10."
"Archon..." she repeated, then cleared her throat. She was getting carried away by the fantasy of the situation. But considering what was at stake, she had to be more sceptical. "I-Impressive prosthetic. But I need more proof."
Archon nodded, as if this was a matter of course. He stretched out his naked hand, revealing a blue-glass lens worked between the raw, steel joints around his palm. The lens flickered to life. And Casey stared at the little hologram woman who greeted her with a cheery smile, standing on Archon's hand.
"No!" she exclaimed.
"
Yes,
" replied the older version of herself with a beaming grin. She was an old woman, at least eighty years old if Casey was one to guess. But her stance was straight and prim, lacking the hunched back that the elderly usually suffered. A soldier's posture. She looked good. Her state of dress also drew Casey's attention, a ramshackle collection of mismatched leathers, bound to her body by black, military weapons straps.
"
This is a recording, before you get too impressed,
" future Casey continued. "
I remember being sceptical when Archon came to me at LitCon fifty years ago, too. So I sent him back with this message for you. He's the real deal, you have my word. And you will get pregnant, provided we do our job right, and you will have a child. I know as well as you do that you've always wanted one, you've just never found the right partner to take that step with.
"
