Pretty Electric

Disclaimer: Mobile Suit Gundam Wing is copyrighted to Bandai, Sunrise, and The Sotsu Agency.

Pretty Electric
by Raletha

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Chapter 3: Preparations
Quatre prepares to entertain guests.

Memories of previous forays into my local supermarket eluded me, although I was certain I must have been in it at least once before. However, I\'d rarely been without the services of a personal chef, who would conduct the majority of my grocery shopping. Any other items I required I simply picked up from the deli on the corner, or one of the many greengrocer stalls I passed on my way to or from work. But today, I had a bona fide grocery list of my own and had decided to navigate the formidable aisles of Food Planet myself.

Here I was, entering the cart filled lobby of the place, surrounded by people who moved with the surety and speed of experience, experience which I lacked in this particular environment. It was rush hour in the supermarket; the chaos of milling bodies, babbling children and their scolding mothers, and the metallic cacophony of clattering carts surrounded me. It was an altogether alien world into which I thrust myself.

I could have sent Trowa to do the shopping. He had even suggested my doing so.

Nevertheless, several reasons why he should not do my shopping had immediately occurred to me, the most compelling of which was that he was far too attractive to pass as a domestic model. Given that he would be shopping using my account—my name—it wouldn\'t be long before some shop clerk or other talked to someone who in turn talked to a tabloid reporter. I didn\'t have the energy or inclination to deal with such an affair.

Winner Enterprises was, after all, a bastion of tradition and conservatism, and I remained at the limits of the board\'s patience and indulgence of my progressive business ideas. They\'d not be very tolerant or understanding if my name appeared in the context of such a salacious scandal. It would sap any good will I\'d managed to cultivate over recent years.

Mere contemplation of the prospect wearied me.

I trudged along behind my cart as I navigated my way into the produce department. The cart had a wobbly wheel and kept veering toward the left. Since I was concentrating on maintaining my death-grip on my cart\'s handle and not ramming a precarious looking pyramid of cantaloupes, I did not immediately register the first calling of my name.

When it came a second time, I remembered the primary reason I preferred not to put myself in these sort of public venues: people occasionally recognised me.

The recognition alone wasn\'t so dreadful—at least not compared to the entire problem of being approached by someone who (at least felt that he or she) knew me, but upon whom I had never laid eyes in my life. It bothered me even more when this someone used my first name and spoke cheerfully as if we were prior acquaintances—or even friends.

\"Quatre!\" said the tall woman standing before me. She grinned and ducked her head when I smiled blandly back at her.

\"Pardon me, have we met?\" I asked, politely enough. I had found it a good strategy to put the onus on the one accosting me to justify his or her interruption. Idly I reached for a melon, scrutinising the fruit as if I knew how to tell a good one from a bad one; I glanced back up to the woman for her answer.

She moved closer, steering her cart to parallel mine. For a moment - a brief one—I envied her cart-wielding skill.

\"Yes,\" she said, \"two summers ago when you cut the ribbon at the new wildlife park.\"

It was worse when it was someone I had met before, but failed to recollect.

\"Oh, yes,\" I said without faltering and injected some genuine pleasure into my smile, \"Forgive me,\" I reached for a not incredible name, \"Sarah, was it?\"

The young woman appeared wholly unfamiliar to me, though I had grown accustomed to this sort of thing in my life. In my day to day dealings I met many people: some individually or in small groups for business purposes, but often in crowds—occasionally for business, sometimes for other reasons: for public relations or charity or somesuch thing. Usually, in this latter case, it was the organisation wherein my interest lay, and since I had a poor memory for the faces and names I encountered in fleeting clusters of social necessity, I harboured a small—but not inconsiderable—dread for encounters such as the one in which I now found myself.

This dread I disguised with an easy smile—cultured with care to appear so natural and unaffected—and friendly words. And I experienced an odd bout of empathy for my android. Truly this situation was one in which I acted in accordance to my own programming and conditioning of myself, much like a machine. I did these things because this was what I must do. I functioned in these situations with little pleasure or desire.

I wished only to conduct my shopping and return home in time to assist Trowa with preparing a meal for my scheduled guests.

\"It\'s Sally,\" she corrected me.

\"Of course, Sally. My apologies—you remind me of an old friend.\"

\"Then I\'m flattered.\" her smile broadened; I matched it while I tried to better assess her age. She appeared perhaps older than I, but her energy was distinctly more youthful than my own.

She was smiling; I was smiling—there was altogether a surfeit of smiling.

\"So...?\" I prompted, drawing out the vowel into a pause, allowing her the sound space in which to interject her reasons for greeting me. She did not take advantage of this. \"How are the animals liking their new home?\"

\"Oh, they\'ve settled in very well. We had some lion cubs born this past summer.\"

\"Wonderful,\" I said and I needn\'t have contrived any of my pleasure at that news. My reasons for having sponsored much of the new park\'s construction was for this very reason—they needed more room for the large animals and their related breeding programs. When I was a child, lions had still lived in the wild. Now none remained. \"I\'m very glad to hear it, you must all be quite pleased.\"

\"I\'m sure we could arrange a private meeting, if you wanted to come down and see them.\"

\"Thank you, that\'s very generous of you.\"

\"Ah, but not as generous as you\'ve been with the Park. We couldn\'t have done it without your support.\"

I disregarded my urge to grimace and turn away in discomfort. \"It\'s the least I can do. I respect the work you\'re all doing there.\"

\"It means a lot to us that there are people like you,\" she said seriously, \"who value our work as much as you do. Otherwise, we\'d be struggling to keep any animals, the conservation work would be next to impossible in most cases...\"

I sensed Sally was building momentum in her praise of my donations to the park—and that was all that I\'d done really. I\'d not devoted any substantial time or effort. I\'d given them money, something I had in abundance. If I were as committed as she believed, I\'d quit my job and go to work in Africa.

\"...so really I should be the one thanking you, since-\"

\"You\'re welcome, Sally.\" I offered an apologetic smile. \"I don\'t wish to be rude, but I really must be on my way. I have guests coming tonight.\"

\"Oh, of course, forgive me for keeping you. It was nice to see you again, Quatre.\"

\"Likewise,\" I said with an inclination of my head, let out the breath I\'d been holding, and steered my cart away with as much coordination as the contraption would allow me.


It was disorienting, trying to find the items on my list amidst the crowds and confusion. After some trial and error of different shopping strategies, I ended up pausing at the end of each aisle, studying the sign which informed shoppers of what they would find on its shelves and then perusing my list to make certain I wouldn\'t have to backtrack later. I\'d already had to go back for several items and had received glares from impatient shoppers in whose way I repeatedly placed myself.

I made only one extraneous purchase when I got stuck behind a traffic jam of carts and stock clerks. Waiting, I contemplated the art and school supplies littering the shelves beside me. I picked up a small box of coloured pencils and a sketchpad for the android. He\'d maintained his initial curiosity about art, perhaps he might like to try creating his own drawings. His aptitude for food preparation had been a pleasant surprise, and the dishes he cooked were improving considerably with each iteration.


In the finish my food gathering efforts satisfied me. I was most pleased that (despite any other difficulties I had encountered) I had managed to find each item on my list without once having to resort to asking for assistance. Upon my return home Trowa met me at the door - as had become his habit over the past week—and relieved me of my briefcase before helping me carry the grocery bags to the kitchen.

He didn\'t speak a greeting to me immediately, nor I to him. Yes, it had become a routine, but not the most comfortable sort. I\'d not had to share my living space with anyone else for such a long time, and I\'d never owned an android of any make for any purpose at any time in the past. My feelings regarding Trowa\'s presence in my home remained a tangle of uncomfortable ambivalence.

Part of me enjoyed having the company. Talking to Trowa, answering his occasional questions entertained me. He had a childlike curiosity with (at least some of) the mental sophistication of an adult and the occasional insight of a wholly unique being. Such a convincing illusion he provided, of consciousness, of mind, of genuine feeling, I could easily enjoy interacting with him in many ways.

However, an illusion it was. Of this I was reminded by details both small and large. The first time he\'d gone into my bathroom, he\'d been terribly confused by the geometric tiles, the mirrors and glass panels. It had never occurred to me that this would cause him distress, but his vision was that of a robot, governed by algorithms with weaknesses that could be overwhelmed by too much ambiguity of data.

I\'d discovered Trowa groping the walls and other surfaces like a blind man, and in that environment, until he\'d oriented himself using his sense of touch in co-operation with his visual processors, he had been, effectively, blind. The sight had horrified rather than amused me: to see a machine\'s failings manifest in such a gross travesty of a human handicap.

The contrast between that moment of Trowa\'s limitations and his usual seeming competence continued to disrupt my comfort. I grew more aware than ever that he was an absolute black box—who could tell what functioned beneath the surface of his pseudo humanity? Not even the people who built him understood the entirety of what allowed the android to behave well enough to fool the gullible.

Or at least the people who chose to be fooled. I still did not believe I could permit myself that choice.

I watched Trowa as he began to remove items from the brown paper sack and set them on the black granite counter. His movements as he did so were precise and graceful. It was somewhat mesmerizing to watch the repeated journey of his hand between bag and counter. \"Duo rang a few minutes ago. He and Heero will be approximately half an hour late,\" Trowa informed me.

\"Thank you,\" I replied and let my gaze linger on the android. He had put on some of the new clothes I\'d gotten for him and looked deceptively ordinary in the coffee coloured slacks and cream turtleneck sweater. However, the nubbly texture of the wool contrasted sharply with the luster of his skin, the perfection of which remained a persistent reminder that he was not at all ordinary.

The bags I carried contained cold and frozen items so I opened the fridge and began to unpack. My lonely tub of ice cream soon had company, and the shelves of my small refrigerator quickly filled with fresh vegetables and cheeses, assorted colourful jars and tiny packets.

When I turned back to face Trowa, I saw he\'d found the coloured pencils. He held the slim box and appeared to be reading the back of it.

\"Those are for you,\" I said, folding the paper bag I\'d emptied. \"There\'s a pad of drawing paper to go with them.\"

\"You wish for me to draw with these?\"

\"I thought you might enjoy... well, find the process interesting.\"

\"All right. Thank you, Quatre.\"

\"You\'re welcome. Now, shall we start dinner?\"

\"Yes.\" Trowa set the pencils aside with the sketchpad and proceeded to get out the chopping board and knives.

Strange that as much as I habitually disliked cooking, I had been looking forward to preparing this meal for the past few days, for I knew neither myself, nor the android could do it alone. Where I lacked technical skill and enthusiasm for the chore, the primary limitation of Trowa\'s cooking was his inability to judge the quality of what he prepared. He could taste, but the sense was crude and unrefined. He required a great deal of guidance in this area, and thus for meal preparation, I had consented to taste the food at different stages, answer his questions, give my opinions. It was either this or I should resign myself to the standard of bland meals he had concocted earlier in the week.

For bland was the most generous description of the eggplant fritters Trowa had made that first night. I\'d assumed, based upon what I knew of domestic android models, that when Trowa said yes, he could indeed cook, it implied a degree of sophistication in the skill. Thus I had left the android alone in my kitchen while I retired to my study.

Trowa, it seemed, was not the only one who needed to develop greater wisdom; I\'d discovered this while forcing myself through my first serving of android-improvised cuisine. In retrospect it had been an unwise presumption, but I had encouraged him to improvise with whatever he found in my kitchen.

Truly, I didn\'t mind helping the android learn to cook, for I learned things too. And I also trusted that by helping him, I helped myself. At the end of this learning period, his tastes in food would be tailored precisely to my own, in a manner far more consistent than that which either myself, or any human chef, could attain.

Tonight however, we planned something for Duo\'s tastes: an authentic lasagna. Duo had spent some time in his youth in Italy and frequently bemoaned the particular difficulty in finding a good rendition of this dish. I was eager to surprise my friend.

In the pursuit of this surprise, I wanted Trowa to teach me how to chop onions the way he did. Onions were something I utterly loathed prepping on those occasions I did cook, but Trowa made short work of them, wielding the heavy chef\'s knife with a speed and agility to match the finest of human culinary artists, and I envied his inhuman efficiency.

He showed me first, by slowing down the action and drawing my attention to the way he held the knife—with his thumb and forefinger gripping the blade itself—and the way he held the onion with his other hand—with his fingers curled out of the path of the knife so that his knuckles served as a guide for the blade.

It looked so easy when he did it.

But easy it was not. After a few bungled attempts and an exercise of my less sophisticated vocabulary, Trowa moved behind me and placed his hands over my own. \"Patience is your ally in this, Quatre,\" he soothed.

I was not soothed; my hands trembled under his steady ones. His fingers, his hands were warm—warmer than they should be, warmer than I remembered them.

\"Your muscles have to learn the action, and that won\'t happen immediately,\" he continued in that smooth, rational voice of his. At this moment it both infuriated me and—I\'m embarrassed to admit - aroused me. Artificial or not, the proximity of his body, also warm and perfectly hard pressed against my back, and that silken voice... it was... distracting.

\"Show off,\" I muttered. He ignored me.

\"Like this,\" he said. His lips were so close to my cheek, if I turned my head just a few degrees...

No.

Trowa guided my hands and the knife over the onion half on the chopping board, and I tried to pay attention despite the blood loss my brain had sustained.

Half a bag of badly abused onions later, I opened a bottle of wine and left the chopping to Trowa.

\"So what did you do today?\" I asked him over the edge of my glass.

\"I watched several films in your video database. I catalogued many conventions used in the British spy film genre.\"

\"They wouldn\'t be the same without them.\" I tilted my glass in a solitary toast to the creators of such escapism and took a sip. \"Did you learn anything?\"

\"Women find well-dressed secret agents irresistible, and European car manufacturers would do better business if they installed missile launchers in their vehicles.\"

I laughed. Was the android meaning to be funny? I couldn\'t tell from his expression. \"Those films are pure male fantasy, Trowa, so don\'t take it as truth beyond that.\"

He paused as if to ask me a further question, but then simply nodded and turned his attention to another task.

By the time we moved on to making dessert we had managed to dirty every pot and pan I owned. But the baking lasagna filled the kitchen with mouth-watering smells; a green salad sparkled, clad in a freshly made vinaigrette; and my fruit bowl had been pressed into service as an impromptu bread basket. I was nearly ready to declare our efforts a success, but did not want to endanger dessert preparations so I merely complimented Trowa on his growing skill.

My crisis of onion-mangling confidence had recovered enough that I wanted to contribute something other than my human sensory perceptions of the food, and so I offered to whip the cream. It was something even I couldn\'t botch, I assured Trowa. Nevertheless I took my self assigned task seriously, occasionally bending low over my mixing bowl, intent on catching the cream the very second it reached perfection.

\"Quatre.\" Trowa spoke loudly enough to be heard over the whir of the hand-mixer, and I felt a light touch on my shoulder blade.

\"Yes?\" I shut of the appliance, dipping its beaters in and out of the thickened cream a few times—floppy peaks formed before their shape oozed back into the uniform body of the cream. \"Am I over-beating it?\" I didn\'t think so.

\"Look at me, please?\" the android asked, and I lifted my head.

I watched his hand approaching my face and stopped breathing; a giddy knot of apprehension tied and untied repeatedly in my stomach. It took all my willpower not to pull away as a fingertip flicked over my cheekbone followed by a careless caress of other fingers from my cheek to my jaw. For a scant moment, my body betrayed my mind, and I indulged his touch with a sharp intake of breath and a slow blink.

It was only the second time Trowa had touched my bare flesh—the first had been my hands this same evening. Cool and silky, his light touch felt like satin ribbons on my skin. But I caught myself before I leaned my cheek into his palm. Instead I pulled away, banishing my momentary disorientation with a blink.

His index finger appeared near my lips as if offering me the pale dollop of cream smeared over its tip. I glanced at it, and then at his eyes. His verdant gaze, inscrutable as always, left plenty of opportunity for me to assume amusement on his part. Involuntarily, I ran my tongue over my bottom lip before quickly ceasing that action and biting my lip hard to forestall any further facial fidgeting.

Slowly his finger retreated and he wiped the cream off on his apron. A frown fluttered across his features, and he turned back to stirring the melting chocolate. \"You\'ve not over-beaten it.\"

The next few moments contained many silent reminders to myself that Trowa was not human, couldn\'t possibly be amused or offended by virtue of having only simulated emotions, and that it made about as much sense to feel flustered by or around him as it did to feel flustered by my entertainment unit.

Even with that admonishment, my hands still trembled along with the too rapid fluttering of my heart, but my voice remained even. \"So when I\'ve finished the cream, shall I do something else? Sift the flour?\"

\"You might like to change your shirt before your friends arrive.\"

I looked down at my shirt, and cursed. The dark burgundy was spattered with various sized specks of white. \"Next time, apron,\" I muttered.

The door chime rang.


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