"Okay, what’s bothering you?" Jack asked Nora.
"I’m concerned that you are rushing. With the exception of Madison, you soul bonded each of us after only a brief meeting. With myself and Rina, I can understand your reasons. But your intent with the others is more than just a business relationship. And it feels like you’re moving too quickly."
He wondered if she was saying this as a concerned business partner, out of sisterly concern, or if she had some other reason.
Regardless, her question reminded him of the many discussions he’d had with Fran and Jacob about relationships.
"What is the most important aspect of a healthy relationship?"
"Communication," she said decisively.
"That is a common belief, but I think it’s something else. Something deeper. Trust. We want relationships where we feel safe with that person. And I don’t mean just physically safe. I mean emotionally and physiologically safe as well. We want to feel accepted without judgment. To feel safe exposing our true self without fear of rejection."
"How can it be healthy if the person you are with never calls you out on your bullshit?" she asked.
"There is a vast gulf between ’you did a bad thing’ and ’you are a bad person’. The former is criticism; the latter is rejection. You can accept someone and still offer constructive criticism."
"Okay, but why bring this up?"
"A soul bond makes acceptance much easier, and the way I form them, it makes rejection damn near impossible. Consider what Madison did and look at the kind of relationship we have. If I had learned about what she did without a soul bond. We would not be friends."
"The way she tells it, you almost killed her," admonished Nora.
"I felt a great deal of rage. And I was tempted to beat the crap out of her. But I would not have killed her, even without the bond. What made it possible for me to forgive her was that I could feel her genuine remorse. It’s one thing to hear someone say, ’I’m sorry,’ it’s another thing entirely to know for certain that they mean it, that they genuinely regret what they did."
"So, you’re saying you believe your soul bonds with these girls are sufficient to ensure healthy relationships?"
"No, but my soul bonds do ensure that our core relationship need is met. Trust. It is still possible for us to reach a point where we believe parting ways is best. But my soul bonds should ensure that parting would be mostly amicable."
"Maybe. I’m still concerned you are picking up girls too quickly, too easily."
"Did Rina tell you about Wendy and Vivien?"
"Yes, she mentioned it."
"Do you see either of them here?"
"Look, Nora. I do have standards, and I give serious consideration to each person before sending a soul bond offer. I’m not just willy-nilly soul bonding every girl that begs me to fuck her."
"That’s not..." she paused.
She scrunched up her face, then huffed out a breath and said, "Maybe I’m just projecting Yoshi onto you because you both are collecting a harem. I did not like the way that man looked at me."
"What about how I look at you?"
"You don’t give me the same feeling. I can tell you desire me, but it feels safe, contained. With Yoshi, it felt like I was being eyed by a hungry wolf, like a juicy steak on a plate."
She sighed. "Look, I still think you are moving too fast, but I concede you may have a point about the efficacy of your soul bonds."
"I appreciate your concern."
After a pause, he asked, "Was there anything else?"
She shook her head. "No, that was it."
They turned and headed back towards Madison’s office.
As they walked, Nora said, "Um, Jack, I just want to say I really am grateful to you for all you’ve done for me. This opportunity is beyond my wildest hopes, and I sometimes wake up thinking it was all a dream."
"And I’m grateful that you accepted. You’re going to accomplish in a few days what would have taken me years to accomplish. I’m honestly a little jealous." ɴᴇᴡ ɴᴏᴠᴇʟ ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀs ᴀʀᴇ ᴘᴜʙʟɪsʜᴇᴅ ᴏɴ novel fire.net
She patted his back while saying, "You’ll catch up soon enough."
When they entered Madison’s office, they found Rina madly typing away at her keyboard, while Madison, Samantha, and Naoko watched in awe.
Madison looked up and said, "Naoko had a great idea."
"Yeah," said Naoko. "They were telling me about how they were using your simulations to search for nanotech components and how they could export the simulation data to a computer file, but only if the simulations were below a certain size. But the simulation size needed to do synthesis tests was beyond that limit."
"And Madison told me about the data-sync device she created and how it worked. And I got to thinking, why not structure the simulation so the results get fed to the data-sync device? Then you could run larger simulations without worrying about the export size issue."
"So I asked Jeeves," said Madison. "And he said we could include linked templates in the simulation spec file. So Rina’s working on that right now."
"Damn! Why didn’t I think of that?" said Nora.
"That’s my line," said Jack at the same time Madison said, "That’s his line."
"But won’t there still be a bottleneck?" asked Samantha.
"If we use one of my normal data-sync devices, yes," said Madison. "The rate at which we can extract data from the input device is limited, but we can just add more input devices to it. Then we can multiplex the data from multiple simulations by binding each simulation to a separate input device."
Madison walked over to him and hugged him while saying, "I like Naoko. She’s smart."
"So... you’re saying you’re fine with me soul bonding as many kinky, sex-starved girls as I want, as long as they’re smart?" he teased.
She smacked his ass and growled at him, like a cute little kitten trying to sound like a lion.
"Are you really going to collect every kinky girl you meet?" she asked.