In a few minutes she went to the bathroom and I was left to peruse the mural around the room. Eventually I checked out the drawers of clothes. Lingerie in one drawer. I felt through some bras and pondered the strange idea of a robot who wears lingerie. I wondered the logarithm for deciding which underwear to choose each day.

While lost in thought, I came across a white envelope hidden underneath the bras. Hm. I looked over my shoulder. The shower water was running. I grabbed the envelope and saw it was open. On the front read:

To: Ventura

From: The Co.

The Co. The hairs on my neck jumped. I opened the letter and read it:

Dear Ventura,

Your mission involves visiting the Mars local space station. Upon your arrival, you will find your doppelganger, Valencia. Please escort her to her launch pod and release her en route to The Hut.

Afterwards, wait roughly three days to send a driving shuttle to The Hut. Valencia will have had enough time to copulate with Jon Clow and impregnate herself. You will await Jon Clow's arrival aboard the driving shuttle and if he indeed arrives like we expect him to, pleasure him for his contribution to our company.

Once you've pleasured him, wait until the next evening. You will receive a phone call. If it rings thrice, take the shuttle with him immediately to Earth.

On the other hand, if you receive a phone call, and it rings five times...

Kill him.

From Earth with Love,

The Company

By the time I read the last line, I knew exactly who Ventura was, and the danger I was in. I heard the shower water shut off. I folded the envelope and stuffed it in my pants. I closed the drawer and raced over to the kitchen. I pulled the drawers. Spoons. Forks... Knives. I grabbed one and held it close to my leg. The bathroom opened and I stepped casually back to the bedroom. She stepped out, a towel around her head.

When she saw me standing there, I expected her to crack a joke. Instead she looked away. She was thinking to herself for once. Something dark on her mind. Something she wasn't happy about. I wonder what could be on her mind!

"What's up?" I said, a bitter taste in my mouth.

She shrugged. She put on her panties, her bra, yoga pants, long sleeve shirt. After three tense minutes of my heart pushing viscous blood through my heavy veins, I could feel the slippery knife inside my sweating hand. I pressed it deeper against my thigh to hide it against my leg.

The longer she looked away from me, the more anxiety pressed down on my body. "You're acting strange," I said.

To this statement, she looked up finally. A forced smile escaped her lips. She shook her head. "I'm fine." Her smile fell slowly as she studied me over. Her face was regret. She admired my face and walked over to me. She tossed the towel on the bed and when she came three inches from me, she stared her green eyes up at mine. The words were hard for her: "I really liked you."

My legs were shaking slightly. I felt cold, a wet snake twisted up my leg. "Why the past tense of like? Don't you still like me?" She was already thinking of me as a corpse.

But to my question, she nodded. She stood to her tippy toes and pulled my face down. She kissed my lips, my nose, my forehead. When she pulled back, her green irises were circled by a red background. Her eyes were watery. Her kisses now seemed like a delicate goodbye.

Saying nothing else, she stepped back and observed me one last time. She looked to the kitchen. I'll be right back, her eyes said. She stepped away and I turned, careful to spin my body to hide the knife at my side. My eyes tailed her.

The knives, I said. She would grab one; that is, unless she had a hidden gun. I was shaking while I watched her cross into the kitchen and grab the doorknob under the archway. She gave a sigh and looked back at me. Those green eyes. Those gorgeous ponds of green... they said to me...

Goodbye, Jon.

She shut the door. When she was out of sight, I felt more scared than before. I stood in the center of the carpet, feet away from the bed. I know your name, I thought. I didn't think you had one. Then again, Ventura is a place in California. Ventura is no proper name.

While I imagined her putting a complicated sniper gun together, I squatted and stepped around the bed. She would shoot it straight through the wall. Right at my head.

When I heard the flick of a switch, I imagined her hoisting a giant bazooka over her shoulder and flipping off the safety. I had a big imagination.

"Ventura," I said, raising my knife. I felt brave saying her name. I know what you know. You fuck me and I'll fuck you, Ventura. "No secrets, Ventura!" I shouted. I could take her. I walked to the carpet. If this was the end, it was only for her.

But when I heard through the wall to the kitchen a quiet ringing of a phone, my flesh inflamed with goosebumps. There came the phone call, and the series of rings:

First ring. Second ring. Third ring...

The phone stopped ringing, but only after ring four and five. The call was the girl's murder mandate. I was a dead man.

I heard her feeble voice through the window. "Hey," she said.

I inhaled deeply, and answered, "Hey!"

"Your name's Jon Clow," she said, "right?"

I took another gulp of air, raising my knife to the mural on the wall. "That's right. I'm Jon Clow, the one and only."

A pause... then... "That's too bad," she said. "I really liked you."

After she said this, the bedroom lights went out. Pitch black. No light in the bathroom either. "Ventura!" I shouted. I heard a loud switch and cranks from above. The familiar sound of air conditioning loudened. When I felt my vision was miraculously recovering, I looked up and saw, like green ghosts, glow-in-the-dark mist drifting out of the vents.

The bedroom had become a gas chamber.

While the room glowed from the gaseous venom hanging overhead and dropping, I lunged back against the glowing carpet. I retreated to the bathroom and slammed the door shut.

This was no way to die. I saw the reaper in my side mirror. I should never have trusted a stranger. Classic scenario: a pretty girl with big round eyes could strip any man of his intelligence. When I arrived on this station, I thought I was on first class to the blue marble Earth. I thought I was receiving some kind of new-age service, one where booze, drugs, candy licorice and life-like robots enhanced your pleasure. I even rationalized that the future must have legalized substances for the sake of open regulation, the type the liberals always sought. I thought prostitution had been legalized; robot sex services especially. I was naïve to make any assumption about the future I had never experienced. My isolation on Mars erased my number of friends, not that I ever had many. But without friends, trust becomes a tougher thing. I thought by trusting this girl and finding hope in my new future, I had revived my spirit and character. But...

When I peered down at the bathroom floor, where a thin green glow sprayed out from underneath the door, I realized if you can't trust man, you can't trust their robots. The green toxin flared up and swallowed me. Whether I breathed or held my breath didn't matter. The noxious fumes invaded my pores and melted my tears through the corners of my eyelids.

Consumed by the poison, I thought no more. The pitch black formed into an abyss. My vertigo in the dark swirled me like faucet water spinning down a drain. I ceased to exist.

While my body suffered on the floor of the cold space resort bathroom...

Ventura, the name belonging to our elegant betrayer with the deep green eyes, flicked the lights back on in the kitchen, and saw her reflection in a mirror on the wall. Her chest heaved and her hair mopped in light strands over her forehead, the sweat on her neck streamed over her shoulders and wetted the tailfin necklace hidden underneath her pink and black polka dot blouse.

She inhaled deeply and flipped the switch connected to the air filters throughout the bedroom and bathroom. The space station growled as she waited for the toxic gas to suck out safely from the rooms. This would take two hours. She checked her watch and sat over at the counter bar and pulled up a puzzle at her feet. The picture on the box was a clowder of kittens wearing cowboy hats and leather boots while they rode a wagon through a canyon in the wild west, the cloudy blue sky hanging over a sandy orange desert, much like the orange soil of Mars.

Two hours later, she had completed twelve puzzles with illustrations of sweet candies and baby animals. She turned off the alarm on her watch and stood to her feet. She walked through the threshold to the bedroom and looked around the carpet. The bathroom door was closed so she assumed he must be inside. Opening the door and hitting me on the head, she sucked in her stomach and slipped inside. When she checked my pulse, her lower lip trembled.

She dragged me by the wrists, and pulled me out of the bathroom and across the bedroom carpet to the garage. Her hand hit the button to open the escape pod. After pulling me inside, she gave me another look, my body looking back at her from behind the grave. She left the pod and shut it closed.

On the monitor, she dialed the autopilot coordinates. Finger hovering over the button for Launch, she shot me another look through the window. A breath escaped her lips, and the window misted to a wet white. The robot bit her nails, and punched the Launch button.

The pod slung toward the distant red planet in the opposite direction of Earth. My body returned to the graveyard world.

But this time... I'd awake with a vengeance.

After sending me off into space, Ventura closed her big green eyes. She took a deep breath then stood up straight, stuck out her chest and put up her chin. She would be strong. She looked around the empty space suite. The only sound brewed from the overhead fans and filters. She sighed and walked through the hall to the bedroom. She grabbed a sweep of chocolate turtles and shoved them in her mouth. Chomp! Chomp!

When she nearly choked and had to pour herself a glass of vodka to chug the candy down, the mural around her illuminated. The brown shaded illustrations on the walls disappeared and a white LED screen appeared. A holographic emoticon erupted from the field of white pixels and swept around the room like a witch on a flying broom.

"Miss Ventura!" screamed the emoticon. "You should NOT be gouging yourself with all that sugar! Put it down at once before you die of diabetes!"

The girl shrieked while in mid pour of a heavy stream of vodka down her throat. The glass bottle slipped from her fingers and fell smack on her face before crashing onto the carpet. Glass cracked and the nail-polish taste of liquid flooded the floor around her feet.

"Elon!" Ventura shouted. Her pink and black polka dot blouse was soaking wet and smelled like bitter Windex. "How many times have I told you! Don't jump out at me like that unintroduced!"

The emoticon shrunk back toward the wall and moped. "Oops, I'm sorry, Miss Ventura. I'm just worried that you're a classic example of a sugar addict!"

"I don't need your help!" she screamed. The mascara was running down her cheeks and her lipstick melted down her neck in a vodka stream.

"It won't happen again, Miss Ventura," said the emoticon. "Just please stop with the sugar, okay? For me?"

"Yeah, whatever," said Ventura, reluctantly. The chocolate turtle in her hand flung through the air and she crept over to the beverage and drug table. She popped a Quaalude.

"Oh, I wish you hadn't done that," said the Emoticon.

"Why not?" said the girl, eyelids lazy over her green irises.

"The company's escort shuttle to Earth is arriving in ten minutes. The CEO and board of directors is onboard." The emoticon flattened into the screen, biting its virtual lips, bracing for the hormonal robot's reaction.

While the Quaalude bounced like a pinball down Ventura's esophagus and splashed into her stomach, she stood still in the center of the room. The company's CEO and board of directors are ten minutes away?

"Fuck." She spun on her heels and dropped spread eagle on the bed. "They'll think I'm an addict or something."