254. Chapter 254

After The Human Factor, Again.

By

UCSBdad

Disclaimer: I'm sure you don't want me to drone on and on about not owning Castle. Rating: K Time: See above.

"How could you have gotten us into this?" Kate hissed at her husband.

"Me? Do you think this is my fault?" He whispered back.

"Well, whose fault do you think this is?"

"It's Bob's."

Kate glared at him. "How the hell could it be his fault?"

Rick looked around him. "Every time he bluffs, he stops blinking. I just watched his eyes and I knew he didn't have another king."

"You watched his eyes to see if he was bluffing?" Kate said, pushing her face into his. "You don't watch his eyes, watch his left little finger. When the mayor has a good hand, it twitches. How could you have missed that?"

"His finger?" Castle looked shocked. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"In the middle of a poker game?"

"Mister and Mrs. Castle." A skinny young man with long hair and a scraggly beard approached them. He reminded Rick of Pi, which was already one strike against him. "I'm Davey Owens, publisher of Totally Wired magazine. I really want to thank you for volunteering for this."

Kate smiled coldly. "When Mayor Weldon told us about how important this project was to him, we couldn't turn him down."

"Absolutely." Rick said, unenthusiastically.

Owens nodded. "Okay, we're about to go live." He stepped back and looked at a camera. "Hello, I'm Davey Owens, publisher of Totally Wired magazine. Thanks to the help and financial support of Mayor Bob Weldon, Totally Wired's totally wired efficiency apartment, designed and built by the students from colleges in the tri-state area is a reality. To demonstrate the benefits of our apartment we are lucky to have the world famous author, Richard Castle and his lovely wife, Kate, who is a member of the NYPD. They'll be living in the apartment for the weekend." He turned to Rick and Kate and they were on camera. "Mr. and Mrs. Castle, you can just go ahead and live here, just as you would in your own home. There will be no cameras in the bathroom, of course, and the cameras in the bedroom will go off at 9 PM. And with that, we're ready to go." Owens smiled at the camera. "Oh. I forgot to introduce you to AMI, the Automated Machine Interface. Say hi, AMI."

"Hi, Mr. and Mrs. Castle." Said a pleasing female voice.

"Hi, AMI." They replied.

"And now, I'm out of here." Owens left and the Castles were locked in the apartment or the next forty eight hours.

"Well, AMI, "Rick said, "I need to do some writing. Where's my laptop?"

"It isn't here, Rick. I you can just talk to me and I'll record your words."

"Okay, AMI, but I don't want any spoilers, you know."

"Oh! I'll turn off the sound feed then. Actually, Rick, I couldn't help but notice that you are eleven pounds over your optimum weight. Get on the treadmill and dictate from there."

"I'm really more comfortable writing while sitting down."

"Get on the treadmill, Rick." AMI barked.

"Come on, babe, I'll run with you." Kate volunteered.

A half an hour later Kate sat on the couch reading Rick's words and giggling. "Nikki Heat looked into the barrel of Simonov's Tokarev pistol. Pant, pant, pant. Oh, god! I may have strained an oblique. I have you right where I want you, Heat. What was that in my ankle? You think so, Simonov? You don't know me very well then. I didn't know she even had such tight shorts. What a perfect ass. And look at those boobs bounce. Simonov didn't hear the slight scrape behind him in time. Is this damned machine going faster? AMI? Are you trying to kill me? To hell with the rest of the chapter. Seeing Kate like that makes me want Nikki and Rook in bed now. Thanks, Rook. Let's do it right here." Kate was laughing so hard she had to stop reading.

Rick was prostrate and sweating heavily on the small couch. The efficiency apartment was quite small, being no larger than the Castles' living room. "It's stream of consciousness writing, Kate. Like James Joyce."

Kate giggled again, and threw her arms around Rick. "I'm just happy you still like my ass and boobs, lover."

Rick's hand traveled to the bottom of her tee shirt and slid under.

"Rick!" Kate shouted, moving quickly away. "We're on the internet. Millions of people can see us."

Rick blushed and mouthed an "I'm sorry." to Kate. "In that case, I think we need some ice cream. What kind of ice cream is in the refrigerator, AMI?"

"We have no ice cream, Rick. The student nutritionists who created your menu decided that only healthy foods would be included in your menu. How would you like some rice cakes?"

"That's like eating Styrofoam." Rick grumped.

"That sounds fine." Kate said. "We should try to cooperate." She whispered to Rick.

Rick munched on his rice cake, he glanced at the TV. "So what's on TV, AMI? Isn't there a baseball game starting soon?"

"Yes, Rick. I have the times and channels of all thirteen major league baseball games in my hard drive. However, the students in the teacher training college who programmed the TV decided that only educational programs would be on the TV. You can watch, "Our Friend the Leech", "A Night of Bulgarian Folk Music", "An Introduction to Byzantine Architecture", or, "A Speech by Our Beloved President for Life, Nursultan Nazarbayev." That's in the original Kazakh, of course, but it does have Chinese subtitles."

Rick and Kate ended up dancing to folk songs sung by a hairy chested and heavily mustachioed trio. Rick was positive the balalaika player was a woman. Kate wouldn't let him dance close to her since they were on the internet and she wasn't sure he could keep his hands to himself.

"That was fun." Rick said through gritted teeth. "But it looks like it's about dinner time. What's for dinner?" Rick said, with no hope that anything he liked would be on the menu.

AMI replied. "You can have a pizza if you'd like?"

Rick perked up at once. "What kind?"

"It's a very nutritious pizza made from soya based dough with toppings created from krill."

"Krill?" Rick said, grimacing.

"A krill is a very small crustacean, found in all of the oceans…" AMI began.

"I know what a krill is. I once thought about having Derrick Storm get aboard a Russian factory ship in the Antarctic that was doubling as a spy ship, but…" Rick stopped. "I do not have to explain myself to you."

"Is there anything else?" Kate asked.

"Are you by any chance fruitarians?" AMI asked. She assumed from Rick's scream of agony that they were not.

After a pizza that Rick admitted was actually barely edible, they settled down to watch a Japanese Noh musical on the TV. It seemed like a better alternative than "Embalming for Fun and Profit", or, "So, You Want to Build a Swamp".

"Gee," Rick said. Looking at his watch. "Nine at night already. Time for bed, Kate?"

Kate nodded, took his hand and headed for the bedroom and then on into the bathroom. Once inside the bathroom, she hooked her leg around his waist and kissed him passionately. "I am so going to get Bob for this." Rick said around her tongue.

"You'd better get me first, big boy." She replied. "Care for a shower?"

They stripped and got into the very small shower. Actually, the liked that since they had to rub up against each other for the whole shower. Once out, they toweled each other off and got into bed.

"Okay, AMI. Turn off the lights." Rick said, the lights stayed on.

"AMI?" Kate said. "Turn off the lights, please."

"Turn off the damned lights!" Rick roared.

The lights remained on.

"Well, that means we can see each other better." Rick said, reaching for Kate,

"No!" She said, sliding out of bed, taking the sheet with her and getting her sleep shorts and a tee shirt from the closet. "I'm not doing anything as long as the lights are on. We could still be on the internet. I am not doing a porno."

"Kate!" Rick wailed, "They said the cameras would be off in the bedroom after nine."

"I'm not taking a chance." She kissed Rick quickly, then snuggled up to him. "Good night." She said with finality.

Meanwhile in Gracie Mansion, the official residence of the Mayor of New York, Davey Owens was trying to explain things to the mayor. "I realize we should have checked things more closely, Mayor Weldon, but we were in such a hurry to get done…Some things just fell through the cracks. I'm sure we can fix everything." Owens gulped. "I'm just not sure that we can do anything in less than a week."

Mayor Weldon glared at the young man. "More efficient housing units would be a boon to the City of New York. We can't have them looking as uncomfortable and as unpleasant as what we're seeing. And Rick is a friend of mine."

"We'll try, sir."

Owens left in such a hurry, he didn't notice that the Mayor's left little finger was twitching.