Sassy

When Maya woke up, she was disoriented and wondered where she was. Then she remembered the insane amount of things that happened in the past twenty-four hours.

"Cassandra, what time is it?" she asked with a yawn.

"9:03 AM, madam. What would you like for breakfast?" the AI replied coolly.

"A slice of cheesecake and a cappuccino with cinnamon on top."

"Certainly. Where would you like to eat?"

Maya hadn't realized that was an option. She had never had breakfast in bed before. That sounded really nice. There was the problem of the desk blocking the door though. She didn't want to get up and move the thing only to go back down again.

"The kitchen is fine," she sighed. There was an island with chairs that swung out from beneath that looked like they were suspending in midair from a distance. She could eat there.

"Yes, madam."

She moved the desk back to its original position with a groan. Maybe once she was surer that she would be safe in her sleep, she could leave it where it was and actually enjoy breakfast in bed.

When Maya blearily made her way downstairs, she noticed that the coffee machine was running on its own. Cassandra really did control everything in the house.

Then she frowned. If Vincent had a coffee machine, why did he bother coming to Queen Bean every morning? Her sleepy brain couldn't fully comprehend that thought until she'd had coffee. But by the time it started kicking in, her mind was entirely focused on cheesecake and she forgot.

Cheesecake for breakfast was a beautiful thing. There should be enough of it that she could do this for at least a few more days. Cheesecake slices weren't very big, after all.

Once she finished both her sugar and her caffeine, she felt revitalized. That left the question of what on earth she was going to do today. Vincent had said he wanted her to design something for him so she should probably go find him.

"Cassandra, where's Vincent?" Maya asked.

"Patching you through to the master now."

"Wait, I didn't mean—!"

Vincent's voice interrupted her. The call had already gone through. "What do you need, Maya?"

"Nothing really. I was thinking about what I should do today and remembered you said something about needing me to design a building for you. Does that still stand or are you too busy to explain what you want?"

She was honestly cool either way. As much as she wanted to design again, there were so many things she wanted to try out in this house that she hadn't had the chance to yet.

"I am in the middle of something," he admitted. "Why don't you entertain yourself for a while and we can meet for lunch at one and get started then?"

Maya was perfectly fine with that. "Sure thing. See you then."

The call disconnected and she figured she should explore more of the second floor. She looked through the library and found an impressive number of comic books and dystopian novels mixed in with the non-fiction. She might have to check some of those out later.

She also made her way to the fitness center and idly tried out every piece of equipment. She did want to increase her muscle capacity, speed, and agility so she would be able to defend herself if necessary.

She wondered if she would need a personal trainer to guide her through this or if there was an algorithm or something Cassandra could run to figure out what she needed to do for her. She asked, feeling rather stupid about it.

"Cassandra, can you formulate a fitness plan for me based on my height and body type?"

"Certainly. What is your final goal? Weight loss? Marathon training? Body building? I would need to know in order to formulate it for you correctly."

Maya blinked in surprise. She hadn't thought of that. "Uh…let's go for stuntwoman. I want to be as strong, fast, and agile as the average stuntwoman. Can you do that or do you need something more specific?"

'Stuntwoman' was the best she could come up with since they always seemed to pull off the intense fight scenes in movies without any problems. She had seen enough behind the scenes footage on her DVDs over the years to believe that.

It was easier to say that than that she wanted to be capable of defending herself against a much larger opponent starting from nothing. She didn't know if the AI was reporting her movements to her creator or not and that would sound worse.

"I will need to take a scan of your body to calculate the workout plan. Is that alright?" Cassandra asked.

"Sure."

"Hold your arms out and spread your legs slightly. Be sure not to move once you are in position."

Maya did as she was told and was scanned by a similar light to the one that took her retinal scan. Less than a minute later, Cassandra laid out her workout plan by displaying it on a pop-up virtual screen. She appeared to have taken bits and pieces from various workouts all over the internet.

"You need to start light. I have compiled an order for you and how long you need to do each one in order to reach your goal. The heavy workout days need to be interspersed with light exercise such as yoga or water aerobics," the AI finished.

"Got it. Thanks, Cassandra!"

Maya decided to get started on basic cardio and strength training as recommended. Once she was done with that, she looked around the gym curiously to see exactly what they had here. She highly doubted Vincent used all of these; he was way too skinny.

She found a jump rope and idly jumped around with it for a bit before realizing there was a miniature trampoline. Her eyes immediately widened in excitement. She had always wanted to try one of these out!

Unfortunately, it didn't bounce as high as she wanted it to. It hardly had any spring at all. Was it because less bounce back required more effort on the part of the jumper and therefore was a better workout?

A bigger trampoline would probably serve her purposes better. She couldn't think of a better way to improve her agility than by learning tricks on a trampoline.

Maya briefly considered asking Vincent before ordering one until she remembered he said that she could buy whatever she wanted and still not put him into debt. He would probably be annoyed at being interrupted for the second time anyway.

She got the house to order one for her with overnight shipping. She wanted to get started on that as soon as possible; it seemed like it would be fun on top of useful. Goodness knows she could use some more fun in her life.

After exhausting herself, she showered off her sweat and got dressed simply in a pair of worn skinny jeans with ripped knees and a baggy emerald green sweater. She towel dried her hair and decided to set up her new electronics that Martin had dropped off in her room while she was working out.

Maya worked on that, moving the few important files she had on a USB to her laptop before downloading all of her old apps back from the cloud. She was dismayed to discover that all of her games had lost their data and she had to start over from scratch.

Determined to get them back now that she had unlimited free time stretching before her, she swiped and merged on her dragon merging game until her fingers hurt. Then she looked up funny nihilistic memes for a while before taking a bunch of selfies with different weird filters just to laugh at herself.

Eventually it was time to meet up with Vincent for lunch. He had ordered sandwiches since he still hadn't gotten around to grocery shopping and was apologetic about it.

"It's fine! I can go do that later if you give me a list of what we need," she offered. "I need to go get my name change paperwork taken care of anyway."

He seemed surprised by her offer. "Thanks! I'll get Cassandra to come up with one. She plans most of my meals."

"Because he won't eat properly if I don't," the AI cut in, making Maya snicker.

She really was sassy with her creator. He had sort of complained about it yesterday but he had probably done it so he would have a friend. This big empty house did seem awfully isolated and he had admitted he didn't have family. He probably didn't have friends either based on those articles she read yesterday.

Maya would have felt sorry for him if she wasn't also fairly certain he preferred it that way. She had gotten that vibe from him since he hardly spent any time with her the day they got married. Not that she minded it; she was the same way.

People were nothing but trouble. She had learned that the hard way over and over again in her miserable life. At least things were looking up for her now.