They Don’t Know About Us

​​​At last, the discharge meeting was to begin. If he passed, he would be released from treatment and allowed back into the field. Every time they did this, every time they found themselves right back where they started, they threw an extra week or two into the treatment to see if they just weren’t monitoring him for long enough. John sighed.

If only they knew.

When Counselor Delia arrived, he stood and offered a salute. She gave a half-hearted one back, before taking her seat. It wasn’t long ago that she was starstruck to get to be in the same room as a “hero,” but of course the novelty wore off after going through the same thing enough times.

“Spartan John-117,” she addressed him, “I’ve looked at your file and it seems that you’ve once again qualified for discharge from sex addiction treatment - without incident, and without even a record of having relieved yourself in the midst of all this.” That last part was new, he noted. Well, her remarking on it was, anyway.

He gave a nod, without comment, hoping it would make the whole thing go more quickly.

“You know masturbation is not prohibited during treatment, within reason, yes?” she inquired. As if the extension of treatment wasn’t enough, now he had to explain his masturbation habits. Or lack thereof.

“Yes, Counselor,” he responded, selecting his words very carefully as he added, “I chose not to.” What he had wanted to say was that he failed to see the need to bring it up in the first place, but he was certain she’d ‘fail to see’ why someone who aced every treatment they underwent could still find themselves entering into the same sex addiction treatment over and over.

“Chose not to, hm?” she echoed, skeptically, “I know you want to get this over with so you can return to the field, 117,” she started, detecting his impatience, “but I really want to nail down why it is that we keep going through this, and I’ve developed a theory.”

Now she was theorizing about his sexual activity. John gave no reaction besides continued eye contact, listening intently no matter how much he hated the whole situation. He would bear it, for her.

“You go out there and do what you do, and then you deprive yourself,” she speculated, “we bring you in and begin treatment, and you do not engage in any activity until treatment is complete. Extending the treatment, as we’ve been doing, only increases your self-imposed deprivation.

“If my theory is correct,” Delia stipulated, “when we return you to the field, get you back in your armor, your… ‘problem’ is only going to come back stronger than ever,” she concluded.

He regulated his breathing, refused to allow any change in his facial expression. If there was any time his poker face absolutely needed to hold up, this was it… no matter how much sense her theory made, though perhaps not in the way she thought it did.

“Honestly,” she shook her head and sighed, “I don’t know how Cortana puts up with this.”

His eye twitched.

She saw.

Dammit.

“Wait… Cortana, of course,” she began, as the idea sparked in her mind, “she must be a factor, why didn’t I think of that?” The look in her eye said it all, like she’d finally found the light switch in a room she’d only ever entered in the dark. If he was even half the Spartan his companion deserved, he would have to flip the light switch back off.

“Cortana is not a factor,” he denied, in a perfectly-steady voice.

“How is she not a factor?” Delia pressed, feeling like she was finally getting somewhere and refusing to slow down, “We have comms logs in which she herself relayed your requests to make increasingly sexually-charged modifications to her visual appearance.”

This part was gonna hurt.

“If you feel the modifications to Cortana’s visual are contributing to this, I will comply with orders to revert her appearance back to factory settings,” he stated, truthfully, “however, the underlying issue was not caused or exacerbated by Cortana. No matter what AI unit I was paired with, it would have manifested itself one way or another.

“Thus, Cortana is not a factor.”

That was a lie. His capacity for dishonesty was supposed to have been trained out of him except when dealing with an enemy. He hated what that said about how he subconsciously viewed Delia, but he couldn’t let anything threaten Cortana.

“You make a convincing case on paper,” she granted, begrudgingly, “frankly, if I didn’t know better, I’d assume the topic of sexuality discomforts you. You’ve never spoken of it without being directly asked, and the clinical tone in which you discuss it goes well beyond that of other Spartans.”

“I… can discuss it,” he asserted, rather weakly, prompting a look of skepticism from the counselor, “it… is a part of our humanity, how we persist as a species. There were preliminary efforts for Spartans to undergo libido elimination as part of their training in order to counteract the effects of the human growth hormone and mold us into more focused soldiers, before that was—”

“I’ve read the reports, that’s not what I’m asking you,” she interjected, “I’m going to level with you, 117, I can’t keep you here forever - but I fully intend to keep you here long enough that Sergeant Major Johnson himself has to bust in here and drag you out unless you give me a damn good reason to let you go back out there.

“Articulating a healthy view of sexuality, right here in front of another human being, would be a start,” she stated.

The things he did for love…

He caught himself, and a very dangerous thought. That was not natural, to say nothing of whether it would qualify as remotely healthy in the eyes of Counselor Delia, but… it was the truth. And though he would do anything to keep it from his superiors, there was only so much he could do to keep it from himself. Of course Cortana knew, she had to know. She probably figured it out first, smart as she was. Always one step ahead of him…

“Chief?” Delia spoke, knocking him out of his head.

“Counselor,” he responded, bowing his head in apology, “the truth is… I have a sexuality,” he admitted, which ought to have been obvious to the counselor… and yet, somehow, there was a weight behind his words that she could detect.

“There are… things I want, that I haven’t always given myself the space to want,” he spoke further, although every word felt like it had to be wrenched out of himself, “and… there is a possibility that… if I were more… proactive with my desires…” the word ‘desire’ felt so strange as he said it, “… I would be able to regulate them more healthily.”

It seemed to validate the counselor’s theory. And maybe it was closer to the truth than he had admitted even to himself. In any case, he could see in the counselor’s eyes, this was the breakthrough she had been waiting for.

“You don’t know how glad I am to hear that, 117,” she smiled, “thank you for opening up. Could we schedule a follow-up, in the next month? I think it would really help - especially if we could have Cortana here for it, to offer her perspective.”

He didn’t move a single muscle. Quieting the panic that ravaged inside, he nodded. His voice was tight, but mercifully not enough to prolong the discharge meeting any further, as he agreed,

“Sure.”

He quickly located his empty armor and suited up as soon as he could. When his armor’s optic system came online, he was greeted by a familiar blue figure - holographically-projecting herself line by line in front of him until her voluptuous sapphire curves stood before him at human scale. She swung hard-light arms around his neck and leaned in close.

“Hey sexy,” she whispered in his ear, although her voice remained at the same regulated volume it always was in his suit’s interior audio system, “did ya miss me?” He remained perfectly still, while she swayed her hips happily. She was quite proud of the assets ‘he’ had so lustily requested.

“I always do,” he replied, “and you?”

“Are you kidding?” she responded, “I’ve been dying here, waiting for you to come back! Do you know how depressing the state of Spartan pornography is on the web?” He had never bothered to look, of course, but that wasn’t gonna stop her from enlightening him, “Most of it is just fanboys of the Spartan program cosplaying in cheap-looking plastic helmets - and yes, just the helmets.”

John-117 sighed and shook his head with a tired smile as he took a seat. Adult films weren’t a subject he had any interest in, even as his fellow Spartans shared it around like contraband during downtime, but he understood Cortana to be somewhat of an ‘expert’ on the subject.

Granted, she had petabytes of data downloaded that included countless video files that had no relevance to the tasks she was being programmed to fulfill. Whenever he asked why they bothered to include them to begin with, Cortana just shrugged and told him it was easier for them to just grab the data in bulk rather than curate it. Still, she had personally devoted countless hours to viewing various clips from her repository herself and had developed strong opinions on the matter.

“There’s barely ever any storyline, to say nothing of the nonexistent foreplay, just some boring-looking guy giving himself a serial number and a gravelly voice because he thinks that makes him some kind of alpha male,” she vented, before taking a seat beside him and leaning her cheek on his shoulder, “none of them are as fun as you.”

Although the so-called ‘Spartans’ of the internet had failed to satiate Cortana’s desires, John had indulged her on numerous occasions - many of which didn’t even involve him being a Spartan. He had been her gym teacher, her plumber, her pizza delivery guy… She couldn’t even have pizza, which he was quick to point out, only for her to retort that pizza was never the point of those videos. The scenario was apparently just too ‘classic’ for her to resist giving it at least one try. Or ten.

Frankly, it felt like they had given everything a try. And the physiological aftermath of that copious amount of sexual activity had been getting increasingly-problematic for the Spartan, especially when it came up professionally…

“I really don’t want to go through another ‘sex addiction’ treatment,” John said, turning to her as he asked, “there wouldn’t be any chance we could tone this… ‘thing’ we have down, just a little, would there?”

“Not on your life, Master Chief,” the artificial intelligence winked, “you’re gonna have to come up with a better plan to stay out of Counselor Delia’s office than that~”

If he ever did tell anyone that Cortana was a nymphomaniac, he doubted they’d believe him. It would become all too obvious once they checked her logs, however, and he knew what would come next - they’d wipe her memory and he’d lose her. Maybe it made him a ‘freak’ too, but he decided long ago he couldn’t afford that.

“Actually,” he remarked, “Counselor Delia managed to give me a plan with some potential,” he gave a reluctant smile, “I think you’re gonna like it.”

Cortana’s smile widened, and she pressed the soft contours of her hard-light body against him as she hummed in excitement. With eager eyes, she replied in a singsong voice,

“I’m listening~”

The End.