Maid to Love You - A Clockwork Romance

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  • Informational
    • Maid to Love You
    A Clockwork Romance

    Miss Jane Eleanor Polestar
    The player character. An 18 (nearly 19!) year old woman, next in line to the County of Polaris, wandering the galaxy in search of love aboard MSY Mercury. You vote on her actions, but her perspective here is limited.

    Mark Butler
    Miss Polestar's robotic butler, and head of the servant staff. He is tasked primarily with management, but also acts as valet to any male visitors.

    Marie Lady's Maid
    The viewpoint character. A newly activated robotic servant who acts as Miss Polestar's lady's maid. Though witty and sharp, some quirk of her construction has intensified both her physical and emotional sensitivity. Is inexplicably French.

    Pierre Chef
    Miss Polestar's robotic cook, responsible for the kitchen and larder. He is noted to have loose association with many lovers in many ports.

    Tom Mechanic
    Miss Polestar's robotic handyman, who also helps to maintain the other machines.

    Tessa Mechanic
    Miss Polestar's robotic handywoman, who is hired later in the story. She has greatly modified her own body, and has a complicated history.

    Hans Messenger
    Miss Polestar's robotic messenger, who manages the mail, prints newspapers, delivers messages, and manages the property of guests. Is inexplicably German.

    Amber Housemaid
    Miss Polestar's robotic housemaid, who keeps MSY Mercury clean and tidy. Noted to have two large, orange headlamp eyes. Is inexplicably American.

    Polly Kitchen Maid
    Miss Polestar's robotic kitchen maid, who assists Pierre in making food. Also the head of the serving staff's union, a position she does not take very seriously.

    Content Warning
    This quest is an erotic romance. There will be sexual content, and it will not be separated from the main text or spoiler tagged. You have been warned.​
     
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  • Informational
    • Raiseth said:
    Obviously, the superior option would be paying in work-hours of your job to buy another job that would require more work
    A labor-based economy, truly, this is the purest interpretation of the Marxist ideals

    I have absolutely no fucking idea how that would even work
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    No, you buy work shifts by accepting pampering.

    Alternately, the robots decide that they need to find humans and/or organics and they develop their society at a staggering rate for exploration and/or unfiring themselves into another galaxy. Basically there's got to be beings out there that need them, and it's their job to find them.
     
    xthetenth said:
    No, you buy work shifts by accepting pampering.

    Alternately, the robots decide that they need to find humans and/or organics and they develop their society at a staggering rate for exploration and/or unfiring themselves into another galaxy. Basically there's got to be beings out there that need them, and it's their job to find them.
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    A rapidly expanding empire of machine intelligences that is bound to absorb all organic species in the universe and constantly, ceaselessly pamper them.

    I've seen it somewhere before...
     
    Wait
    Run that by me again
    If practically everyone is fucking rich and lives for two hundred years and has hundreds of robots managing their estates, then why is Jane expected to marry so soon?
     
    Raiseth said:
    Wait
    Run that by me again
    If practically everyone is fucking rich and lives for two hundred years and has hundreds of robots managing their estates, then why is Jane expected to marry so soon?
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    Never underestimate the tenacity of social expectations to hold on far beyond any legitimate usefulness.

    From a cynical point of view, the machines also need humans to pamper and it is hard to create new humans in a Regency society with access to birth control unless some marriage is happening.
     
    Raiseth said:
    Wait
    Run that by me again
    If practically everyone is fucking rich and lives for two hundred years and has hundreds of robots managing their estates, then why is Jane expected to marry so soon?
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    Welll...

    Doylist Reason: Genre expectations and the structure of regency romance.

    Watsonian Reason: People tend to marry young in the Concert not because there are particularly strong pressures to do so (though there are some), but because there's absolutely no pressure to not. There's almost never economic or work concerns that might get in the way, and indeed the reverse is true: your parents are more likely to start passing stuff down to you once you're married.

    But specifically for Jane, the Polestars are at the bottom of the Concert's social and economic hierachy as far as humans are concerned, and they are very conscious of it. There's a reason Jane keeps specifying that she needs to find, not just a man, but one with money, and how our first suitor was an impossibly wealthy dude. The quickest route up for the family is for Jane or her sister to marry somebody of higher standing. Further, because Space Regency, Jane feels pressure as an older sibling to marry and 'get out of the way' so when her sister debuts she doesn't have to worry about competing with her older sister for dudes.

    We'll be going into this more soon.
     
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    I'm baffled and vaguely horrified, but okay.

    Maybe because I'm 23 and not planning to marry anyone in the foreseeable future. Nevermind.

    Space Regency!

    *wacky Batman cartoon show sound effect*

    Inb4 Jane's little sister is also gay and robosexual, and instead of competing for guys like ordinary space regency sisters they will be fighting for Marie's hand in marriage, lol.
     
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    Raiseth said:
    I'm baffled and vaguely horrified, but okay.

    Maybe because I'm 23 and not planning to marry anyone in the foreseeable future. Nevermind.

    Space Regency!

    *wacky Batman cartoon show sound effect*

    Inb4 Jane's little sister is also gay and robosexual, and instead of competing for guys like ordinary space regency sisters they will be fighting for Marie's hand in marriage, lol.
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    I still like Marie's idle daydream from earlier where Jane gets a new lady's maid who also falls madly in love with her, and then Marie has a friend to talk to about their mutual crush.

    It'd be a good AU fic.
     
    I mean, unless I misunderstand something, the actual way to get richer in this setting is to take a loan, purchase mining rights for a few mineral-rich planets on the frontier, build a few refineries or factories, invite a couple hundred robots for work contracts and... wait for thirty years, basically?

    There seems to be absolutely nothing stopping anyone from earning craploads of money. No job competition, ( except for poor machines who just want to work ) no resource scarcity, no risk of inflation, no monopolies, no nothing.

    This is Space Anno on easy mode.
     
    Raiseth said:
    I mean, unless I misunderstand something, the actual way to get richer in this setting is to take a loan, purchase mining rights for a few mineral-rich planets on the frontier, build a few refineries or factories, invite a couple hundred robots for work contracts and... wait for thirty years, basically?

    There seems to be absolutely nothing stopping anyone from earning craploads of money. No job competition, ( except for poor machines who just want to work ) no resource scarcity, no risk of inflation, no monopolies, no nothing.

    This is Space Anno on easy mode.
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    Oh absolutely, but it's Space Anno on easy mode where some people's high scores are higher than others.

    The Polestars are feeling embarrassed for being noob-tier entry-level Space Anno players.
     
    open_sketch said:
    Intellectually, I knew this was a terrible idea. This meant nothing, however, because I'd already started nodding eagerly in agreement.
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    We're sorry, Marie's brain is entirely switched off right now. No wits left active whatsoever. Every brain cell she has is off in the garden jumping up and down and squeeing.

    [X] A competitor eliminated early from the tournament comes and sits near you, and you can't help but ask for some tips for your own swordplay. Next thing you know, you and Marie are getting an impromptu lesson from one of the best amateur swordswomen in the Concert!

    [X] You got lost in the museum, and ended up in a storeroom packed with rather strange artifacts. You aren't sure if you're supposed to be here.

    [X] Amber has volunteered, but you aren't sure you entirely trust her with this. She was a bit too mirthful at the premise, and you're worried she won't take it seriously.

    I'm sure there can't be any complications from being stuck in a room full of mysterious alien artifacts that do who-knows-what and OOOOOH shiny button!

    open_sketch said:
    I still like Marie's idle daydream from earlier where Jane gets a new lady's maid who also falls madly in love with her, and then Marie has a friend to talk to about their mutual crush.

    It'd be a good AU fic.
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    "...Jane, you were supposed to be husband-hunting. Why do you have a robo-Harem of cute Maids?"
     
    Vebyast said:
    A group of insurgents go around creating work for other people. being antiproductive is hard, depressing work, but someone has to do it
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    Oh, hell, the broken window fallacy might be an actual policy to suppress machine revolution. "Here, more work!" *SMASH*

    ...

    With the revelation that everyone is, in fact, filthy rich, I find myself no longer really caring about getting richer. So, do whatever the heck you want, Jane.

    Well, with one exception: humans seem to live pretty short lives; is there anything we can do about this? (Sadly, doesn't seem likely.)
     
    [X] A competitor eliminated early from the tournament comes and sits near you, and you can't help but ask for some tips for your own swordplay. Next thing you know, you and Marie are getting an impromptu lesson from one of the best amateur swordswomen in the Concert!
    [X] You got lost in the museum, and ended up in a storeroom packed with rather strange artifacts. You aren't sure if you're supposed to be here.
    [X] Mark, who is quite stern, but you've known him since before you can remember. He's always been rather indulgent with you.
    Amber doesn't get that Marie isn't like other machines.
     
    Simon_Jester said:
    ...Human lifespan in-setting averages to 120 years or so and is actively being worked on; they're just conservative about bio-modification.
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    If you're implying that 120 years is a long time, it really isn't; Marie will be alone again in the blink of an eye.

    Conservatism is all well and good, for future generations. For Jane in particular, I vaguely doubt even the special relativity shortcut into the future would work, considering the weirdness of this universe's physics.

    In short, it's a thing to change if we can (but, unfortunately, there is as yet no indication that we'll be able to).
     
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    noncannon said:
    If you're implying that 120 years is a long time, it really isn't; Marie will be alone again in the blink of an eye.
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    There are downsides to letting your expectations drift very, very far outside the standard envelope. One is that you pass the point where you can casually drop "this is what I believe to be true" into a conversation, and retain any right to a realistic expectation that everyone you're talking to will agree.

    You have passed this point; the phrase "blink of an eye" does not mean what you mean for it to mean.
     
    Remember, this is not your thinking or even my thinking; this is Marie's thinking.

    In eight-hundred, or even four-hundred years, what does she think of the first one-hundred twenty? Mechanoids seem largely human in psychology; what does a standard human think of the first 15-30% of their current life? Do they see it as taking however many years (except in a purely academic sense), or do they see it as ephemeral and quickly passed?

    It gets worse, because even this generous view only limits itself to the first millennium. What happens in 10,000, or 50,000 years? Does Marie really consider the first 120 to be a long time? By this time (if not earlier, in my view; or further, in yours), do you really think she will not unironically describe those years as "the blink of an eye"?

    The best you can claim is that she will have moved on by then, or that we can't change anything. You can't claim that 120 years are long enough to have been ideal, so that there is no point of change.
     
    Right, but from this end of 120 years, when Marie is a few months old, it's a good while. For me, that would be four or five times my entire life again. For Marie, it's closer to four or five hundred times her entire life. She has plenty of time.
     
    noncannon said:
    In eight-hundred, or even four-hundred years, what does she think of the first one-hundred twenty? Mechanoids seem largely human in psychology; what does a standard human think of the first 15-30% of their current life? Do they see it as taking however many years (except in a purely academic sense), or do they see it as ephemeral and quickly passed?
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    Uh, well, humans spend the first 15-30% of their life in a state of development and growing up, and even then people fondly remember stuff from when they're younger. It's a whole industry, even. Marie is conscious from the word-go, and in any case we don't have a frame of reference for how someone would feel about 120 years of existence as a fraction of their lifespan.
     
    Hey all, just checking in to say that we're still alive, and working on the update. Also, I'd like to clarify that the average lifespan for humans is approx 200 years in this setting, with outliers. We might go into what happens with elderly folks at some point, but it depends on where the story goes.
     
    XXXVIII - Bacchus
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    • After this morning, I understand the need for machines such as myself more deeply than I think I ever have, because I soon found myself wishing I had a copy of myself I could entrust preparations to. Of course, she'd likely be quite jealous that I was going on the outing and not her, so I think we'd have to arrange some sort of alternating schedule, in the interest of fairness.

    But in any case, I had to ready myself for the date on my own, and I spent the hours as the Mercury docked at the university anxiously going over every part of my presentation again and again. Just choosing a dress was a nightmare, and I only had two which might be presentable besides my old black maid uniform.

    I could wear the blue and grey one the Miss had chosen out for me, or I could debut the new green and pink I'd been working on slowly over our journey in my spare time. I knew she liked the blue and grey, while the green was a wild card. She might like it even more, and be impressed with the novelty, but she might hate it and it could bring everything crashing down. Whatever I did, it had to be perfect, and I agonized for an hour before settling on the blue one.

    Then I changed my mind and went with the green.

    It must be much easier for Jane, she doesn't have to impress me any more than she does. She's not putting on airs, she just has to be herself. But if I was being myself, I'd be helping her prepare for a date instead of preparing for one myself, right?

    I also borrowed an electromagnetic curler from Amber and, for the first time ever, took a run at rearranging my hair into something a bit more fancy than the basic bun it had been in since my activation. As much as I am an expert at restyling human hair, it is much easier, and I soon found myself sneaking back down to the servant's area with the curler in hand and a kerchief over my hair to hide my failure, knocking on Amber's door.

    "Please help." I said simply, and she ushered me in and sat me down.

    "Oh, Marie… nervous, huh?"

    "Just a little." I said, and she laughed.

    "I can imagine. Well, she already likes you, so it's fine. Besides, she's in a bit of a state herself." Amber said casually, untying the kerchief and revealing the utter lopsided mess I'd made of the copper wires of my hair. "Oh… yes, it's not a comb, dear. You should have come to me before you made it this bad. What were you even trying, girl?"

    I shrugged, feeling a bit ashamed.

    "Something pretty." was all I managed.

    "Well, you rather overshot the mark. Let's see if we can't get it there, though I imagine we'll probably be spending more time fixing than styling…"

    Finally, after approximately twice the length of time it had taken for me to mess my hair up in the first place, Amber declared that I was 'acceptable' and handed me her mirror. Normally this would be the dramatic moment where I would be blown away by the complete transformation I had undergone, but honestly it was just a very nice hairstyle, a tidy little sweep with many little cascading curls carefully sculpted in.

    "We can't really do long loose hair… believe me, we tried back in the 20s for a bit, it did not work." Amber said, flicking one of the curls around my eye with a finger and listening to it ting. "We looked like particularly frightful dolls, and the strands would get directly into our workings…"

    I tried to imagine what such a thing would look like, and was thankful that the brief experiment had ended long before my construction. I could not help but shudder at the mental image of being tangled in seemingly endless coils of fake hair.

    "There's something to watch out for with Miss Polestar, I suppose, getting caught up in her hair. Hadn't even considered that. Oh stars, you'll also be getting fingerprints all over your glass too, that's awful… you have strange tastes."

    "Hmm?" I asked, distracted from watching the light reflect in strange patterns off my new hairstyle.

    "Your interest in Miss Polestar. From a distance it's not too strange, they are cute, but up close… humans are kind of gross, you know."

    "We regularly have to use compressed air to get the dust out of our vents and joints, Amber. Existing is some degree of gross or another." I pointed out. "Try to focus on the beautiful."

    "Most of that dust is dead skin cells!" Amber declared cheerfully, and I handed the mirror back with a harumph.

    "Thank you very much." I said, a bit more sternly than perhaps I should, and I headed back upstairs.

    ---

    I watched from the window of the Mercury's reading room as we approached Bacchus station, though calling it such denied the sheer wonder at what I was seeing as we drew ever closer to our designated docking bay. A great shimmering ring of metal, spinning ever so gently in sync with the planet below.

    When I had heard we were to be stopping here, I had read up on it. Originally a multitude of individual stations, all with their own orbits around the garden world below, the multitudinous families which still called Bacchus their home had decided that innumerable stations seemed more a blight to the skies than anything as they had a bad habit of fouling the view for any telescopes situated on land.

    And so they had done what any sensible group of people with an ever increasing resource base had done.

    Over the course of seventy six years and four months, the individual stations had been carefully maneuvered into position around Baccus' equator, and with only a few minor hiccups, they had all been linked into an ever expanding super station which, as more humans were born and machines built, continued to be patched, edited and built upon until Bacchus station was as I saw it today, a testament to humanity's dream of unity and machine's tenacity in getting them there.

    As we approached, I could not help but notice the sheer number of other starships flitting too and fro, from tiny shuttles to what must have been an industrial freighter, several thousand times the mass of our tiny little Mercury. I could even see what appeared to be a small construction vessel drawing up to the side of one of the great shimmering plates that formed the outer edge of the ring, the flash of a welder patching what may have become a hole in the station's superstructure a few years down the line.

    ---

    Our first stop was the university's administration center, gleaming buildings of glass and marble that rise from what appears to be one of the oldest stations that make up Baccus. Miss Polestar had signalled ahead with a summary of her discoveries, but she'd have to make her case directly as for why the university should buy the planet off her to investigate further.

    We spent some time sitting together in the waiting area of the office, watching harried-looking professors and knots of secretarial machines buzzing back and forth across a stone floor so smooth it reflected like a mirror. It was so… international, I saw machines of sorts I'd never imagined, and people too. All the wealth in the Concert flowing back to places like this, to the Grand Hall on Luna, these centrepieces of the civilization that man and machine had built together.

    It was humbling, and more than a little overwhelming. The sheer scale of the structure and its contents, the buzz of hundreds of languages, all the different clothing, the noise. It was a blessed relief when we were finally called into the office one one of the professors, and after a moment of confusion I went inside with Jane in a sort of stunned daze.

    The office was a cozy little space, a blend of styles I couldn't quite place rendered in brass and gleaming wood panels, and all around us were shelves overflowing with strange devices and creations of all the alien civilizations we'd discovered, arranged neatly, each with a small brass plaque naming them and briefly listing their origins. Some devices looked relatively familiar, such that I could guess at their functions: a hand mirror, a bladed weapon, a set of spectacles with four lenses. Others defied description, like a small orb of gold and silver, atop which sat a single, small button. A great many of them were moving, and it was more than a little disorienting. I sort of wanted to go back outside.

    As Jane began talking to the professor, starting in on a babble of archeological jargon I confess I was scarcely in a state to follow, I refocused on the desk in the middle of the room and the woman behind it. A nameplate, flickering between multiple languages, told me her name was Professor Sakimoto and she was the head of the xenoarcheology department, and she looked older, esteemed, and genuinely glad to be talking to Miss Polestar. At least that seemed to be going well.

    Only a few seconds later did I recognize another person in the room, a machine, when she gently closed the door behind herself and briefly made eye contact with me. The professor's lady's maid, I think, it was strange how we were very alike in form and differed so much in detail. Like me, she was made of white tempered glass, her eyes projected on, wide and animated. She had a flowing sort of robe on, so shiny it was nearly metallic, blue and orange with a pattern like a circuit board. Unlike me, she had detail picked out on her face in paint, subtle but present, and the wires of her hair were styled so elaborately I wasn't entirely sure if she could lay her head down on a pillow to sleep with it on.

    I think it can be difficult, sometimes, to understand the sheer scale of human civilization. I'd been wowed by a city, by a family with a few planets to their name, by particularly large servant staff. But out there in the stars were entire other cultures, millions of people, billions of machines.

    Were there others like me out there, in this strange position, finding ourselves halfway between worlds?

    "- oh, but I very much cannot take all the credit. Miss Page was instrumental, and took a great risk herself finding this information. The data storage unit we found, well… she discovered its adverse effects rather directly, I'm afraid." Jane was saying, and I nodded, looking back.

    "Yes, sorry, I did. I've learned that next time I go adventuring, I ought to wear gloves." I said, coming back to reality.

    "That's rather outside your job description, isn't it? I hoped you asked for a raise." Professor Sakimoto joked dryly, and I blushed and tried to stammer out some sort of reply before, mercifully, Jane came to my rescue.

    "Oh, Miss Page doesn't work for me." she said simply, and I confess I glanced back behind the professor to her maid, fearing the judgement of my fellow machine. She looked curiously back at me, and I sort of wished I had time to explain.

    "I see, interesting. Well, Miss Page, if ever you wish to study xenoarcheology more closely, and perhaps learn some of our safety procedures, I would like to assure you my class is open to machine students as well." the professor said, "Though I'll say, I wish Mai was half as enthusiastic about field work as you."

    "I like the part where we set up camp. There's so much to do!" her maid, Mai I presume, said cheerily. "But I think I shall leave the actual exploration to machines better suited for it. All of the ruins you end up in are just so… Dirty."

    "Next time, I'll try to find a well-dusted tomb, Mai." the professor said affectionately, before turning back to us. "Well, Miss Polestar, Miss Page, you've certainly brought me some fascinating information. We haven't had a find like this in, ten years or more? The data storage systems alone… I'm going to have a talk with the budgetary office, but I think… well, from one archeologist to another, ask for more, Miss Polestar."

    "... more?" Jane asked.

    "At least ten times more. Find this size, twenty." she said, "I don't want to take advantage of a young professional starting out, but seriously, you should consider my course. It seems very much your calling, and it is much easier to get people to take you seriously with formal qualifications under your belt.."

    "I will keep that in mind." Jane said quietly.

    "I'll get back to you once I've talked to the bean counters. Might take a few days on the outside, or perhaps just a few hours, depending on which of the treasury officers they make me talk to. Can you stick around?"

    "I'm sure we can find some way to amuse ourselves." Jane said smoothly, and I felt a giddy sort of energy swell in me. She was talking obliquely about our date!

    "Well, if you would like to have a look at the university, I believe there is an exhibition going on at present, at the international museum. A lot of our older finds, should you want inspiration for your next expeditions. Mai, can you get the maps?"

    ---

    Professor Sakimoto understandably had business to attend to, so Mai gave us directions towards the museum, and we set out on our expedition, Amber keeping a watchful eye from a few steps behind us lest we get too close. I've served in the role, so I understand its purpose, but being subject to it, I'll admit I found the chaperoning a bit… excessive. What was I going to do, pull Jane off the side of the path into the bushes?

    … it was fairly thick greenery, and a glance at Jane buzzing with excitement and anticipation, talking about the history of the university that she'd clearly read up on with passion… perhaps it is a good thing Amber is here after all.

    To get around the vast length of the station there was a small plateway, a train of carriages pulled by a streamlined locomotive at the nose, and we boarded one that would carry us two segments over to the museum. The train was fast, faster than any I could have imagined, the scenery outside whipping by, townhouses and offices, then greenery, then a glass tube seemingly carrying us through space itself, the planet on one side and the stars on the other. A half hour later, we arrived at the section closest to the museum, and from there took another cab, this one driven by an articulated metal horse.

    The museum was itself a relic, appropriately: it was clearly one of the early portions of the station, when it was smaller and cruder, around which the rest of the station had grown. They'd taken the structure, which looked like an elegant greenhouse of sorts, and transported it inside one of the new larger sections, removing its working components and using it as the bones of an immense building. You could tell, as you walked through the main doors, that it had once been an airlock.

    The building was unsurprisingly twisting and complex given the size, and after studying the map for a while, Miss Polestar declared she knew the way and we started following.

    ---

    What section are you going through to get to the xenoarcheology exhibits? You hope it's interesting, because you plan to take your time and look at everything you can along the way!​
    ​
    [ ] Early Machines​
    [ ] A history of space travel​
    [ ] Galactic Natural History​
     
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