Android Karenina

“Excuse me, princess,” he said, smiling courteously but looking her very firmly in the face, “but I see that A

A

“I’ll send to him and find out, and let her know,” Betsy whispered to Android Karenina, who received this input obediently and motored after her distressed mistress.

As they left the pavilion, Alexei Alexandrovich, as always, talked to those he met, and A

Is he killed or not? Is it true? Will he come or not? Shall I see him today? she was thinking.

She took her seat in her husband’s carriage in silence, and in silence drove out of the crowd of carriages. In spite of all he had seen, Alexei Alexandrovich still did not allow himself to consider his wife’s real condition. He merely saw the outward symptoms. He saw that she was behaving unbecomingly, and it was his duty to tell her so. He opened his mouth to tell her she had behaved unbecomingly, but he could not help saying something utterly different.

“What an inclination we all have, though, for these cruel spectacles,” he said. “I observe…”

“Eh? I don’t understand,” said A

BE A MAN. SHOW YOUR METTLE, pronounced the Face, suddenly resonating inside Alexei Alexandrovich’s mind. Never before had he heard the Face speak so loudly, and the vehemence and power of the voice scattered his thoughts and sent a vivid shiver down his spine.

“I am obliged to tell you,” Alexei Alexandrovich began again, and then hesitated.

I AM METAL AND YOU ARE ME.

SHOW METAL .

A

“I am obliged to tell you that your behavior has been unbecoming today,” her husband said to her in French.

YES… TELL HER… TELL HER…

“In what way has my behavior been unbecoming?” she said aloud, turning her head swiftly and looking at him straight in the face, not with the bright expression that seemed to be covering something, but with a look of determination, under which she concealed with difficulty the dismay she was feeling. Android Karenina glowed a deep, soothing purple and lay her fingers on A

“What did you consider unbecoming?” A

“The despair you were unable to conceal at the accident of one of the riders.”

THERE. THERE, ALEXEI. TELL HER. CHASTISE HER.

CONTROL HER .

Alexei, agitated by this continuing imprecation inside of him, waited for his wife to answer, but she was silent, looking straight before her.

“I have already begged you so to conduct yourself in society that even malicious tongues can find nothing to say against you. There was a time when I spoke of your inward attitude, but I am not speaking of that now.”

GO ON, GO ON, GO ON. MAKE HER UNDERSTAND. YOU WILL NOT BE MADE A FOOL OF.

“Now I speak only of your external attitude. You have behaved improperly, and I would wish it not to occur again.”

OR THERE WILL BE CONSEQUENCES. CONSEQUENCES!

A

She is smiling at my suspicions, he thought, and the Face eagerly threw fuel on the fire of his anger. SMILING! LAUGHING! HOW DARE SHE? TO HER IT IS ALL A COMEDY, AND YOU ARE CHIEF AMONG THE CLOWNS.

But Alexei could not yet feel so hateful toward her as his Class III implored. At that moment, when the revelation of everything was hanging over him, there was nothing he expected so much as that she would answer mockingly as before that his suspicions were absurd and utterly groundless. So terrible to him was what he knew that now he was ready to believe anything. But the expression of her face, scared and gloomy, did not now promise even deception.

“Possibly I was mistaken,” he said. “If so, I beg your pardon.”

“No, you were not mistaken,” she said deliberately, looking desperately into his eyes, one mechanical, one real, both radiating sadness and anger. Android Karenina tightened her grip on A

“You were not mistaken. I was, and I could not help being in despair. I hear you, but I am thinking of him. I love him, I am his mistress; I can’t bear you; I’m afraid of you, and I hate you… You can do what you like to me.”

Alexei reeled back, shocked, and in the next instant the carriage rocked violently, as if it, too, was stricken by A

As Vronsky had been warned by his engineer, the roads leading in and out of the arena were mined with emotion bombs, among the most ingenious of UnConSciya’s cruel arsenal of terroristic weaponry. In Alexei Alexandrovich and his wife, they had, at this moment, an ideal target. Alexei’s heart pounded with wild emotion in response to A

The carriage was flung high into the air, then landed on its side and spun along the roadway until it smashed into the carriage in front of them, which carried the junkered bodies of Exteriors destroyed in the Cull. The shock and terror of that carriage’s passenger, a Ministry engineer, triggered a second blast; the junkered Exteriors flew up and were soon coming down again, a rain of deadly metal shrapnel pelting the tipped-over carriage of A

All of this A

Alexei Alexandrovich did not stir, and kept looking straight before him. But the telescopic eye embedded in the left side of his face slowly extended outward, and then upward, and as it did, the burning chunks of metal hurtling down toward the carriage halted in midair and hovered there. A

A few minutes later the carriage was once more righted and along its way, its passengers still perfectly silent.