Berryhop’s smile reached right across her face as the — let’s be real here, it was a robot — as the robot gently washed the adhesive off of her arm. Like the one we saw in Mark’s tower, these were primarily covered in beautiful porcelain plates, with copper gears and joints showing between. The one with Berryhop had a washcloth and pail.

  Three others stood at attention, hands neatly clasped in front of them.

  As soon as each of us made it over the ledge of the entrance from the rope ladder, we just stood and watched.

  “What in the name of steampunk Jesus is this?” asked Rachel.

  “You know, in Greek Myth,” Bernadette began, “Hephaestus had automatons working with him in his forge. So the idea of robots is actually pretty ancient.”

  “What the fuck are you two talking about?” Cal asked.

  “Berryhop!” I called. “Can these guys talk?”

  “Not really,” she called back, “they mostly communicate with gesture.”

  The entrance to the tower was probably three times my height, damn near 20 feet. Dark buttresses with green, likely copper, accents ribbed the even darker stone, keeping it suspended far above. The door was also a matte black, though who knew what it was made out of. Stone pillars flanked it, and that was what the rope ladder had been tied to. The only ornamentation was the buttresses, who had little vines and ivy formed along the edges.

  “They got little bugs on them!” said Cal, who’d walked closer to a copper accented buttress. “Wild!”

  “We should get inside,” I said.

  On approaching the doors, one of the billie’s walked in front of me and pulled the door open. It was a big door. Either it was very easy to open, or these guys were strong.

  Inside was an antechamber, well lit by frosted glass panels. It was circular, with pillars, and white walls, and gold leaf accents. Each pillar had a small mosaic of a man or woman over it. They seemed to be heroes of some kind. The domed ceiling had a painted fresco of a man carving a statue of a woman in several stages. First reading next to the pillar of stone, then carving, and so on.

  “Is that Pygmalion?” Rachel asked.

  “It’s a common mythic device,” Bernadette said.

  “Looks like Pygmalion to me,” I said.

  I thought back to the copper gear I had in my pocket. If it was a metaphor for the robots here, I wondered what this place was like before they were made. Or did they predate this tower?

  We followed the robots past the antechamber, and into a massive tiered library. The room must have spanned most of this floor of the tower. Windows let in natural light. I assumed they must be some kind of fancy one way glass, because there was no evidence of them from the outside.

  A narrow iron staircase led up to the next floor. This place was not ADA compliant.

  The robots left us, and stood with their hands clasped. We talked amongst ourselves for a moment before we were interrupted by a loud ‘clacking’ noise, like that of high heels on stone.

  Soon we saw what was making the noise as they descended the stairs.

  “There’s our Galatea,” Bernadette said.

  It suddenly seemed clear that the antechamber may have been a little more literal than I first assumed.

  The robot was both at once, a construct of copper and porcelain, but at the same time it was clearly a woman in a way that none of the previous ones were. Where they had a kind of androgynous lanky gait, this one had curves, and feminine movements.

  If you had asked me what the hell ‘feminine movements’ were I couldn’t tell you, but I could see it as she walked down the stairs. Where with the other robots I saw utility — here I saw desire.

  She wore a beautiful black silk dress, relatively free of ornamentation except for a single gold rope about her waist, that so wrapped around her cold voluptuous frame, that it left little to the imagination. Which was wild because comparatively, the others were naked.

  She had bare feet, and individual articulated toes. I could see the outline of carved nipples. It seemed almost obscene to me, to give a robot nipples, but there they were. Her ‘hair,’ such that it was, framed her porcelain, lightly painted face in a perfectly coiffed bob made from copper wire.

  When she spoke, I heard the tell tale click of a needle touching a record. Her voice rang melodic, pitched low, and pleasant to the ear.

  “The master of the tower bids you a warm welcome. I am named Anne. He has agreed to offer you free use of this room, and its many treasures. And only asks that you return the books to our attendants when done. How may I make your stay comfortable, and quick?”

  “Comfortable and quick, huh?” Cal repeated. “I like this guy.” He stepped back toward the antechamber. I could read clear horror at whatever this woman was. “Let’s take him up on that.”

  I nodded to Bernadette. I didn’t trust myself to be clever.

  “We thank you, Anne,” Bernadette replied. “Will we be meeting the master of the tower? And what is his name?”

  “Do you usually barge into a man’s home, and demand his name?” Anne replied.

  “Not usually,” Bernadette said with a smile, advancing closer. “But this is a very strange tower. We thought it abandoned.”

  “And now you see it is occupied,” Anne said calmly, but with a human’s calm, the calm of someone who was tired but unworried. The floor had a beautiful geometric rug on it, and her metal feet made much less noise as she approached.

  “Thank you for your generosity,” Bernadette replied. “How long would your master assume is a quick stay?”

  Anne’s onyx stone eyes moved across us as she thought, and a strange staticy popping sound issued from her, something like a needle being pulled from a record player.

  “He is not my master any more than I assume this boy is to you,” She said, gesturing to me, “but he is the master of the tower,” she continued with some annoyance. “Most parties spend the day or an afternoon here studying, then leave before nightfall. We are not well equipped to host many people with — well — with an appetite.”

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  “We brought our own food!” Berryhop chimed in.

  “Then you may stay until the master bids you leave.”

  “What kind of books do you have here?” Rachel asked.

  Anne placed two fingers on her chin and tilted her head as if thinking.

  “I suppose we have a book on any subject you could imagine this world containing.”

  “What about other floors?” I asked.

  “Other floors have other books, of course.”

  “Thank you so much,” Bernadette said.

  “I will be down to check on you later,” Anne said, and then walked up the stairs with her delicate, noisy feet.

  We all looked at each other with different emotions as the footsteps grew softer and softer. Berryhop was ecstatic. Cal seemed horrified. Bernadette seemed frustrated or disturbed.

  I wasn’t sure how I felt, but I think I had more in common with Bernadette and Cal.

  As soon as we were sure Anne had truly left, we broke out into hushed conversation.

  “What a marvelous thing! Person? Woman? I wonder how her voice works!” Berryhop said in a rush.

  “Did you see her feet?” Bernadette asked.

  “I did,” Cal replied. “Why you would choose to reproduce one of the worst ankles in the animal kingdom, I have no idea! And toes! The others just have boot things. Why would you give your machine such a clear structural weakness.”

  “Men get off on them,” Bernadette added.

  “What?”

  “Yeah,” I added, “it's a fetish.”

  “But they get all sweaty and…” Cal started to say before seeing the looks on our faces.

  “Well, I don't think pretty toes have to be a sex thing,” Berryhop said matter of factly. “The master of the tower could just have an appreciation of the human form.”

  “I didn’t see appreciation,” I said, “I saw desire.”

  “Well of course you would!” Berryhop said in a harsh whisper. “Men see desire in anything woman shaped. Men would hump a sexy tree.”

  “I don’t desire her,” I added. “But why else would you make a woman?”

  “Why would you make a man?” Berryhop accused. “Maybe the master of the tower is a woman?”

  “Hey,” Bernie butt in, “if a male sex bot, with fully articulated feet and sculpted nipples walked down those stairs, I’d probably think the same way.”

  “Wait, do some girls like feet?” I asked.

  “Not me!” Bernadette added. “But some girls, yeah.”

  “I sometimes think humanity was a mistake,” Cal said.

  “Oh, and elves are better?” I asked.

  “Speaking as a representative of both,” Cal responded, “I think it’s clear that an elf would never make that. But a human would.”

  “Eh,” Berryhop said. “I could see it. Just probably give ya splinters.”

  Cal and Berryhop continued their hushed argument, while Bernadette scrolled through her slate. I walked around trying to get a layout of the room.

  The layout of the stacks didn’t seem to conform to a logical genre separation that I was familiar with, and it certainly didn’t use the Dewey system. I saw a row of stacks titled ‘Dwarven Social Politics R-5’ another titled ‘Elven Erotica F-7,’ made sure to remind myself to head back to that last one. I was not beating the allegations.

  On making my way back, Bernadette greeted me.

  “Our quest changed.”

  “Yeah?”

  She showed me her screen.

  “It says, ‘extra experience sub-quest, destroy forbidden tome.’”

  “Does it tell us the name?”

  “Nah,” she continued, “just says ‘forbidden tome.’”

  “Should I message the DM?”

  “Not yet. How were the stacks?”

  “Found an ‘Elven Erotica’ section.”

  “Oh really?”

  “Not many pictures, sadly. And it’s all in elven.”

  “Worth a look,” Bernadette said with a shrug.

  We walked up and into the stacks before my slate buzzed. I checked my messages.

  Shade: how long does your invisibility spell last?

  I looked up at Bernie, and she smiled mischievously.

  Breznik: About an hour. That enough?

  Shade: I think it’ll work.

  “Ocultarse!” I said in a whisper. It didn’t work. “Ocultarse!” I said a little louder.

  Two robots walked swiftly toward us. Bernadette disappeared.

  That was the thing about magic, the magic words couldn’t be whispered, but must be said deliberately, and with intention. I guess I could have sang it, but that wasn’t less loud.

  I felt Bernie push past me. The robots stood in front of me expectantly.

  “I just sneezed,” I said.

  The robots stepped back.

  “I don’t need any help right now,” I clarified.

  The first one gestured to the other, and the one followed the other to their spots and both stood at attention. I didn’t like that. That was way more personality than I thought appropriate.

  We all browsed the stacks for a bit. Berryhop found some book on mushrooms and read it as a robot carried her in its arms, and ambled around the walkway next to the giant windows. Cal grabbed a couple books, one of which I noticed was titled something in elven, and sat down in a plush chair.

  I wasn’t sure what I was looking for. What did I want to know? Well, I was curious about these robots for sure, but I wasn’t fascinated by them like Berryhop was. I rubbed a thumb over the cog in my pocket.

  Something about this Tower was wrong. Not just the robots, not just the sexy robot, not just the inside looking different than the outside, something about this tower was wrong.

  I pulled out my slate and checked the quest description for this place.

  Mysterious Tower: A level 12 quest. Completing this quest requires you to reach the furthest top floor and return to the outside world. Combat is not required, but is expected.

  Extra experience opportunities —

  Defeating the Master of the Tower

  Seeing at least one basement level floor

  Destroy forbidden tome

  I put my slate up and thought back to the butterfly I’d seen last week. He said that this place was one of the ‘pillars of the world.’ There had to be more information here than just elf erotica.

  After browsing the books for a bit, I walked to the window and gazed out for a moment.

  “Hey,” a voice came from behind me. I whirled around and found nobody.

  “Bernadette?” I asked to the nothing.

  I couldn’t see her, but I felt her arms wrap around me. I let go of the feeling I had been holding, the thing I knew to be the invisibility spell, and she appeared, hugging me.

  “Hey, babe,” I said.

  “I got some bad news,” she said.

  We sat down next to the window, shoulder to shoulder with the sun at our backs.

  She filled me in on the things she had seen and done. The floor down had needed a puzzle to be solved to enter it, some kind of musical crystals set into a door, but after she cracked the code, she was able to make it through, netting us the extra experience when we finally beat this. So that was good.

  Behind the door had been a huge glowing crystal in a room the size of an airplane hanger. With the kind of magic swirling around it, she guessed that was the thing holding this building together, or aloft, or something. Had she been a wizard type she may have been able to glean info from it.

  Up one floor was another level of the library. But these stacks were all locked behind bars. She could touch the books, but not remove them without a key. She saw a couple titles there with place names that were familiar to her. Places like Brazil, and Jupiter.

  The third floor up had a single robot mopping the floor. A huge pool of red stained the floor, and the mop.

  “Then after that,” she continued, “I went back to the entrance, and I saw the faces, the adventurers.”

  “Yeah?” I prompted. She seemed to be holding something back.

  “I think they’re of all the people that have come here. Some of them had modern glasses. I think they’re people like us.”

  “Why would they do that?” I asked, hoping that I was wrong.

  “I think they’re memorials. For those that don’t make it out.”