Hob grinned widely and closed his eyes as he wrapped his arms about her waist to return the hug in full. Her slight body was warm in his hands, he could feel the curve of her flesh against his suit and smell whatever perfume she had chosen to emulate. There was weight to her, substance! The system's feedback sensors told him there was pressure from her arms around his neck, and his nerves responded in kind. It was with a slow reluctance that the NI-Tech lowered her down.

"More an eternity for you than me, I imagine. And does your father know you've got beer in the fridge, young lady?" he snorted as he headed for the fridge. In the process, he triggered a mental command and made his three piece plaid suit vanished away to be instantly replaced with cargo shorts, a red and black Hawaiian camp shirt, and open toes beach sandals. The black fez with its red tassel remained. She had chosen the sea side bungalow, and Hob was more than willing to play along with the illusion. OLGA had done a great job in synthesizing the smell of the sea! Grabbing a bottle from the fridge, he allowed himself a bit of machismo and flicked the bottle cap off with one thumb. To his delight, the cap went spinning across the floor. "My last eternity was several real time years of nightmares while locked up in a coffin. Which was apparently a picnic compared to the hell everyone else went through during Second Shift. Cryotech murdering sleepers, Jean-Paul going nuts, Amber damn near crashing the system, Sung-Pak locking up like that? And who the fuck thought it was a good idea to put Amber in with Sung-Pak anyway?"

Sitting down in a bamboo chair with soft white cushions, he crossed one leg over the other knee and looked at her. Hob took a careful swallow. The cold brew trickled down his throat, the bubbles fizzing against his tongue and teeth as he lowered the bottle. Hashing over the tragedies of Second Shift was pointless. There was nothing he could do about the past event, although since by all accounts First Shift hadn't any problems at all Jean-Pauls' gang looked like disaster on legs. Besides, there was a pretty lady in front of him! One who was obviously as glad to see him as he was to see her! Hob doubted that with everything going on during Second Shift any of the other NI-techs would have bothered to pay the AI a visit. To most of the NI-Techs, OLGA was the queen of creepy in their creepy little world. Hob, on the other hand, look a much more pragmatic view of things. He was lonely, she was lonely. It was a friendship that worked well for them both!

"You do some upgrades since I last saw you?" It always paid to compliment one's hostess. Besides, in a world where OLGA could be anything she wanted, making note on her looks alone just didn't do her justice. With a grin and a wink towards her, Hob took another pull on the bottle and savored the taste and feel of it. Screw reality. Out there he was piece of machinery, something that the rest of the humans had to regretfully put through hell so they all could live while searching for a new home. In here? Hob was more alive than he had been since the Change first started back on Earth. It was like watching standard television for most of your life on a grainy black and white set, and then being placed in front of a wide-screen UltraHD monitor with 3D surround sound. Was it any wonder that he preferred spending time down there with OLGA? He knew the other NI-techs were against him spending too much time with the doctor's creation, worried that it might induce any number of psychosis that the techs were vulnerable to. But were there really worse things than losing your mind and going to heaven?

"Most folks are supposed to be having a day or two of downtime right now, although I suspect there'll still be a few busybodies who want to get straight to work." [i]Annette. Charlie. Singh. Yuriko.[/i] he commended silently to himself. Not Tyson, though, as the boy was never in any hurry to do anything but daydream... which was probably why he was one of the best NI-Techs, actually. "Still, should give us time for a quick vacation!" 

The simulated vacations with OLGA were always fun. True she was the one who generated the vistas and locations from her own databanks and knew everything about the sites that her memory held. But Hob added a human element, showing it to the girl with different eyes. Usually, he would conjure up a canvas and pigments, going through the motions of actually painting the scene as he saw it for her to enjoy. Sometimes he would compose music instead, or do a virtual sculpture that he would give to her. It was his way of relating to OLGA, as well as a way of teaching her a more human way of looking at the world. Granted, it was Hob's way of looking at thing. Still, it was a start. "Where did you want to go? Paris? Tibet? Scotland? Morocco? Or did you want to just stay here and enjoy the ocean for a bit?"