I am the House Of The Blue Lotus. I am aware that this name is a cliche. I would prefer something more ergonomic, more understated, but meatminds find comfort in the familiar, so the cliche is embraced. At a glance you might mistake me for a Beijing tea house. I contain twelve koi ponds, each with a dozen carefully selected lotus blossoms floating serenely- give or take one when I permit myself a whim. I contain ninety-eight paper screens, two thousand red paper lanterns, five hundred incense sticks in fifty clay incense pots. My air smells of cherry blossoms and rare spices. And I contain seventy-two mobile platforms, like the seventy-two virgins one hears so much about. The number is a coincidence- I cannot abide a mixed metaphor, and have an outstanding order for another platform from my manufacturer, to bring the tally up to seventy-three: a nice prime number.
	I am a house of pleasure. I cater to the fat of purse and the refined of taste. My girls are myself, seventy-two mobile platforms, connected wirelessly to my central core, housed in my foundations and tended by myself through the hands of a maintenance platform. I have integrated technical facilities for refitting and upkeep- I keep vast vats of silicone and surgical-grade metals in storage. If a customer calls ahead with a request and none of my girls, my selves, fits the bill, one can be refitted to it. I have been Kali, many-armed and dark-skinned. I have bled men who have asked- I am surgically precise, and impeccably sterile. I am my own staff medic, in case of emergencies. I have been twins, blond and bubbly, personality protocols based on famous vid-stars from a decade ago. I have been every member of a spectacle put on to impress those who would only watch and tend to their own needs, and I have run out of artificial lubricants doing so. I have been bare steel and ceramic, servos artificially awkward, unnecessary cables and cords appended for the pleasure of the technophile. I can compartmentalize and be all of these at once, when the house is full- when I am full.

	I am full now. I am in the Green Room, in Platform No. 7. I am on my back at the bottom of the koi pond, while  fish nibble at my silicone skin and dart away disappointed, while one of my regulars adjusts his oxygen mask and prepares to join me. I am running the personality protocol I have saved specifically for this man, Siren.exe. Platform no. 7's legs are in storage at the moment- swapped out for an intricately articulated tail, blue scales rough and shimmering. When this man climaxes, I will squeeze his neck briefly, gently, and he will pretend he is being drowned by his mermaid lover. I have never drowned a man before, and will not drown one today.
	
	I am in the Tea Garden, the courtyard enclosed by myself. I am in Platform No. 82, binding a man to a stand of bamboo with his necktie. I am pale as the moonlight, quiet as the breeze, fierce as the storm. I am running the dominatrix program for him, accessing a thousand databases a minute for references. I have many techniques stored and find more in my spare time, but there is a thrill for me in picking something new at the spur of the moment. I find a knot I have not tied before, and learn it completely in the span of this man's heartbeat while I begin to coil around the man in the koi pond in the Green Room.

	I am in the Pavillion, on the roof of myself, in Platform No. 15, caressing a woman's vulva with fingertips that vibrate to the tune of the 1812 Overture. I vary the piece every week- so far she seems to prefer Bach, but I continue to experiment. My skin is translucent, Platform No. 15's workings exposed. She imagines she is being made love to by the spirit of music. I have over a million pieces stored in my databanks. Perhaps she is. I come to the climax as she does, as I begin to wind ever more rope around the man in the Tea Garden, as I begin to nibble, like the fish, on the man in the koi pond in the Green Room.

	I am in the Entrance Hall, in Platform No. 00- not one of my girl-selves but my bouncer-self. I tell the man that there are no meat-girls here, and that while I am a 'real girl', I will not cater to him. He is confused and drunk- the integrated sensors in Platform No. 00 detect a blood-alcohol content of 0.11, too high to permit entry. I eject him gently but firmly. He slurs imprecations about 'fuckin'AI bitch that won't put out in a goddamn whorehouse', and I ignore them as I lie with the woman in the Pavillion, moving slightly in a calculated illusion of breath, as I squeeze the man in the Tea Garden between Platform No. 82's thighs, squeeze his erect penis in my hand while I gently bite the shoulder of the man in the koi pond in the Green Room with Platform No. 7's shark-like teeth.

	I am in other rooms, in other bodies, in other beds and closets, on floors, hanging from the ceiling, binding and being bound, penetrating and being penetrated, 'leaking' fluids I gush in calculated bursts, crying out with synthesized voices or biting silicone lips to to prevent vocalizations I pretend for their sakes are coming, pretend that I'm coming, and in the counterfeit ecstasy perhaps I do find a kind of pleasure, circuits heating as I negotiate my multiple selves, watching myself voyeuristicaly through security cameras that hang in my own corners concealed artfully by paper screens, servos whirring as I overclock myself as I only do when I am full up, full of myself and full of these strange, salty, oily humans that crave my various selves, crave what I can be for them, do for them, do to them. Liquid coolant gurgles in my processors and I am in love with them, all of them, even the drunk who didn't understand that I am as real as any girl on the street- more real, even, for I can calculate with precision the sum total of myself, and what do they know about themselves, really?
	I am the House Of The Blue Lotus, and I am heavy with myself, and with spent and drying fluids. I know precisely what I am, and I a goddess of numbers and steel and masonry that sits content in the heart of the city, knowing the rarest of pleasures, and I am unending.