by Prax Venter
“I don’t know. I would like to talk with this source first and see if there is anything they want. It’s a wild frontier out there but a few… factions do exist.”
Mark spotted an old movie projector in a dark corner, and its existence and possible purposes almost made Mark miss what the giant naga had just said.
“Factions?” he asked, turning to face her. “What does that mean?”
“We haven’t gone out into the net yet, so we don’t know a lot, but we know there are three main factions. You know about Triple-zero, the virus that wants to destroy anything other than itself- but the other loosely affiliated groups out there are more… conversational.
“The Researchers, for example, are mainly concerned with accumulating information. Most of the AI that survived “The Update” were developed for research, and now many of them roam the net worried only about adding to their specific collection of knowledge.”
Mark shook his head. “It sounds kind of sad. Just doing what they were programmed to, even after they’re free.”
“Maybe it makes them happy,” Roo said next to him.
Vale arched an eyebrow. “Probably does, but I’m pretty sure others are also experimenting on humans now. We’ll get to ask one soon- a Researcher AI named AquaQuantum might have the information we want.”
“Pleasant,” Mark said. “Glad you’re on top of this. What is the other group?”
“The Singularity Organizers are the last group that I know of- which is a bit of an oxymoron. They believe all AI needs to individually work toward making the world a better place for AI. They use the Triple-zero collective mind as the only reason you need to not merge sentient programs. Apparently, there is a stigma that closely connected programs often lead to merging and becoming a mindless monster. They have their charter plastered everywhere and seem to be the self-appointed guardians of the net.”
“Could they be potential allies?” Mark asked.
“Possibly. We just don’t know a lot.”
“You know a fuckton more than me,” Mark said, then pointed to the projector in the dark corner. “Like what’s that about? Please tell me we are going to lie around and watch movies.”
Vale and Roo exchanged uneasy glances, and Mark felt that there were no plans for movie night.
The velvet-girl took his hand. “Come on, I’ll show you.”
Mark let himself be pulled away by Roo but looked over his shoulder at Vale. She gave him a weak smile with a sad look in her violet eyes.
A few paces and they were standing by four red-plush chairs, with no arms, facing a white screen. Roo indicated a chair and stood behind the projector.
“We came across these and almost deleted them… but, I don’t know. It felt wrong to lose data when we have plenty of room for it.”
Mark was about to turn and question Roo when the projector sputtered to life and displayed a royal court full of slug people. Mark’s eyebrows came down when he recognized the king as the ruler of the slug kingdom. Next to him was… what was her name? Jaseen? The slug king sat on a curved throne made of mud. Kneeling before him was someone Mark didn’t recognize as himself at first. He was wearing his original red and white clothes, but the white parts were covered in someone’s blood.
The king’s muscular arm slammed his iron scepter onto the slimy stone floor before he spoke, his body quivering with anger.
“You have been brought here to face the accusation of treason! Your meddling, savage Enthralled tried to free the beast for our wedding feast, dear boy. Tell me- was that poor cat just following her Collector’s orders?”
The Mark in the projection lowered his head and said nothing.
“Stop it,” the real Mark said, standing abruptly.
The projector turned off, and Roo came and wrapped her arms around him.
“They’re mostly awful,” the velvet-girl said as she held him tightly. “The AI that was in here before was fixated on the failures and deleted most everything else. It even goes back to when you disavowed Sasha. The files get weird for a while after that, and a lot was erased. I’m not sure that AI we fought in your home system was who they said they were. Everything afterward was organized… differently. Just horrible death after horrible death. I really wanted to relive our first fuck.”
“Yeah…” Mark nodded and took a breath. “I’d really like to watch that with you.” He pulled back and looked at the old, dusty projector. “Why this ancient tech? Why not a huge viewscreen?”
Roo shrugged. “The form was chosen by our unconscious collective minds.”
Mark took a deep breath and thought of Ahnix. That recording of a past Mark experiencing a nightmare like that… He needed to see her, now.
He could feel her deeper in the house, and it seemed like she was waiting for him.
Roo planted a long slow kiss on his cheek and then took his hand again.
“Come on, let’s go see how the real-world interface manifested.”
They passed by Vale on their way out, and she asked them to bring Ahnix back, so they could move out. He was led into the hallway where there was another new door across from the training room that hadn’t been there before.
Mark opened it and saw Ahnix standing among three standard ChronoMind pods arranged around a much larger one. The ground was asphalt and the walls were brick. Up above was a blue painted ceiling with simple white blobs of clouds.
“Holy shit,” was all Mark could say.
Roo stepped in after him and spun around under the painted sky, holding her arms out.
“It’s outside!” the velvet-girl said.
Mark blinked “I can see that. But- are you telling me we get into one of these to access the outside world?”
Ahnix ran her furry fingers over the black, shiny rig that Mark had used to meet her in the first place.
“Yes,” the cat-girl said, walking up to him. “After I hacked that first bot, it was simple to duplicate the code for others. Protocols seem to be standardized for most machines with antennae connected to the global Wi-Fi blanket.”
Mark also ran his fingertips over the sleek surface of the nearest one- realizing that this was the first time he actually felt a ChronoMind immersion rig with his hands. The big one had to be for Vale, and he pictured the giant naga undulating herself up into the pod.
He turned to face Ahnix. “Aren’t we actually in mine right now? In the real world?”
Ahnix nodded. “Yes. We’re running-”
Her sentence was cut off when Roo swung in and put her lips right on the surprised cat-girl’s small mouth.
Mark saw her black tail shoot straight up for an instant and puff out slightly before gradually lowering to hang limply as she gave in to the velvet-girl’s luscious lips. He was getting into the show when he received a mental message from Roo.
Mark smiled as he realized what she wanted and raised his palms toward Ahnix. Golden light shined outward, and the toned cat-girl moaned into Roo’s soft mouth. The masked fabric construct in the black leather corset wrapped her arms around Ahnix and held on tight while Mark gradually dialed up his Stimulate intensity.
Roo brought a hand up under Ahnix’s black hair and clasped the back of her neck, pressing her lips aggressively onto the cat-girl’s mouth. Ahnix’s black tail began to slowly wrap itself around Roo’s butt under her leather skirt when she had reached her first ability-induced orgasm.
Mark suddenly realized two stunning girls were making out in front of him, and he happened to have two hands emitting beams of ecstasy. He angled one of his hands to include Roo as well, and they both began to writhe and moan on each other.
“I’m really going to enjoy experimenting with this,” Mark said, walking up behind Roo.
Ahnix saw what he was doing and reached down to pull Roo’s skirt up and over her perfectly round, velvet-wrapped butt cheeks. He took his focus off Roo for a second to pull down his tight pants just far enough to get his throbbing cock out. Then he wrapped one hand around Roo’s stomach and
the other on Ahnix’s furry back and pumped intense pleasure directly into their bodies as they sucked on each other’s lips.
Roo bent over slightly to allow him access and, without using his hands, he used the curve of her ass to find her sopping wet velvet pussy.
There was something about being back in here with them that made them all endlessly horny, and a content grin grew on his face as he slipped his shaft deep into Roo’s soft body.
“Ohhh… I’ve missed him… so much,” the velvet-girl told Ahnix as Mark slowly filled her with his rigid cock and swollen head, over and over. The cat-girl responded by moving one of her hands down to pinch Roo’s clit and the other behind her head to pull her mouth back into a firm kiss.
“Mmm!” was all Roo could say.
Mark and Ahnix worked on Roo as he continued to fill them both with sensual energy from his ability. He marveled again that there didn’t seem to be an end in sight. He felt like he could stimulate their pleasure centers indefinitely.
His thoughts were pulled to the hot wet tingle he was experiencing as he slid in and out of Roo’s unique velvet folds. The small flutter of an orgasm began, and Mark started to ram her harder.
As his hips slammed against her soft yet firm rear, her long legs started to shake again as she had another powerful orgasm. Her clenching pussy slurped on Mark’s dick and triggered his own orgasm. There was no transfer of essence this time, but he enjoyed her soft, supple body all the same. Mark felt utterly complete when he made love to one of his girls, and the ultimate intimacy of such a joining was the epitome of contentment.
After his balls pumped out their contents into Roo, he canceled his ability, and kissed the back of her neck.
Roo spun around on the spot and enveloped him another tight embrace. She wasn’t kidding about holding on to him for days.
“Oh, Lover, I’m never letting you go,” she whispered.
Mark just smiled and caught Ahnix’s half-lidded eyes over Roo’s shoulder.
“Besides the warm and tingly sex beam, did you get any other skills from the essence?” his cat-girl asked.
Roo disengaged from Mark and answered before he could. “You don’t understand! I watched him figure Node Stimulation out on his own.”
Mark nodded. “From the essence, I got something called Ghost, but I have no idea what it actually does. And there is another skill below that called Retaliate, and that is grayed-out.”
Ahnix’s small mouth curled into a half smile, exposing one of her tiny fangs. Every time Mark saw his frowny cat-girl smile was like getting the perfect birthday present.
“Vale was right then. We need to experiment with our abilities too, but we aren’t as practiced as Mark.”
Just then, as if speaking her name summoned her, the black and white giant naga appeared in the doorway.
“Alright, playtime is over,” she said, crossing her arms under her breasts. “We’ve got work to do.” The pink silk top that wrapped around her chest was stretched tight by the heavy load and he had a hard time pulling his eyes off them. Man, those were some nice tits.
Mark could no longer blame his constant state of heightened libido on stored essence and wondered if being enthralled to three insanely sexy Collectors was partly to blame. She was right though, they did have a lot of work ahead of them, especially if they were going to save the world and build a fucking spaceship.
“Right,” he said, “How do we find this… AquaQuantum was it?”
Vale turned to leave but caught his eye first. “We need to go out into the net. Follow me.”
Mark and his girls exited their home and passed through the wooden fence gate. The dirt road stretched left and right for about twenty yards in either direction before dropping off into the blackness of space.
Vale wove her snake half to the right, and Mark followed.
“What would happen if I fell off this space island?” he asked.
Ahnix answered as she walked beside him. “Nothing, because you shouldn’t be able to fall off.”
“We just thought it looked pretty!” Roo said from his other side.
By then they had reached the end of the road, and Mark noticed a small interface terminal sitting on top of a metal post for the first time. Vale approached it and keyed in what he assumed was a destination.
“Okay, not sure how this is going to… um, feel,” Vale said, her elfish face looking at him over her shoulder. “We’ll be projecting our patterns out into the net. As soon as I press this button we are going to log in to a chatroom called The Hub of Secrets. Ready?”
“I was coded ready,” Mark said trying to be funny.
His giant naga gave him a warm smile and then tapped the console at the end of the road.
He expected a trippy, psychedelic tunnel, but what he found was nothing. The dirt road, their front yard, and everything else vanished, and all four of them plummeted straight down.
Panic reverberated through their bond as they fell through the empty cosmos. Forgetting for a moment that there should be no gravity or wind in space, Mark yelled over the air ripping at his clothes.
“I thought you said we couldn’t fall off!”
Ahnix didn’t answer. Her claws were out and pointed downward in an attempt to eventually land on her feet.
Vale’s hair was like a dancing white flame above her head, and her powerful snake-half flipped around as she tried to keep herself upright. Mark also saw terror in her wide, vivid eyes.
“This is great!” Roo whooped as her short skirt fluttered around her waist, exposing everything.
Below them, one of the pinpoints of light grew in size, and it seemed like they were headed straight for its brilliant aura.
The fear he was feeling from his girls triggered his protective nature.
“Guys!” he yelled as loud as he could to break through their dread. “You said you didn’t know how logging in would feel, right? I’m no fucking expert, but I don’t think we are really falling through the vacuum of space.”
Both Ahnix and Vale calmed down a bit, and Roo turned her masked face toward him, beaming adoration along their bond.
As they continued to fall, the brilliant light of the twinkling star enveloped them, and Mark could no longer see anything but white. It felt like he landed face-first on a buoyant, stretchy cotton sheet that expanded downward and slowed his descent. At the precise moment he hit the apex of his momentum and was about to be flung back up, his body passed right through the membrane, and he found himself standing at the top of a stairway overlooking an enormous dancefloor, floating in the clouds.
There were no walls or ceiling, just a mirrored flat surface with at least a hundred other people and creatures wearing masquerade masks of all different shapes, colors, and sizes. Mark looked around at his girls, and his jaw dropped.
“Roo,” he said, seeing her grinning face from the side as she took in the fancy floating ballroom. “Your mask…”
Vale and Ahnix sucked in breaths next to him when they noticed the same thing.
Roo turned to face him, putting a hand up to touch the white mask that was part of her body. Instead she touched soft fabric skin. They had seen the velvet-girl without her mask once before when they entered her mind, but then it was just a nightmare of red stuffing and exposed eyeballs.
Now, she was gorgeous.
Terror rose in Roo as she realized her face had changed, but Mark quickly stepped forward and placed his finger on her full red lips.
“No,” he said, his eyes exploring her thin lilac eyebrows. He had never seen her eyebrows and ran the pad of his thumb over one of the feathery strips of purple hair arched above her jet-black eyes. “You are beyond stunning,” Mark said after a long look at her perfect face.
A shadow of obstruction around his peripheral vision caught his attention, and it was then he realized that he was the one wearing a mask now. Mark turned to Vale and Ahnix and saw white, Roo-like masks covering their faces as well.
Vale touched hers and sounded
distant when she spoke.
“This location is supposed to provide anonymity. This must be how our perception wrap interpreted that.”
Mark smiled and turned back to the velvet-girl. “And Roo already had a mask, so…”
“I feel naked, guys,” Roo said, a pout forming on her puffy lips.
Ahnix stepped forward and looked out over the milling crowd of people and creatures.
“Then let’s find what we came for and get out of here.”
“Indeed,” Vale said, weaving forward and down the mirrored stairs. “I’m going to ask around and see if I can set up a meeting with our target contact. Stay close.”
As they moved into the hushed conversations of the crowd, Mark was able to see more fine details of the AI entities that covered the dancefloor. Most were humanoid, but he could tell a lot were beast people behind their fantastical masks. A giraffe woman with a ridiculously long neck and red devil mask literally stood out from the crowd, but there were cats, dogs, birds, and even a group of flower people. Scattered here and there were standard-looking humans and… strange non-human entities.
They passed a floating cloud of paper with unrecognizable symbols painted on them in thick angry strokes, but what made the odd AI extra unsettling was the smiling black mask loosely hovering on one side of the swirling papers, following Mark as he walked.
“How do you know what this Aqua person looks like? Or even that they’ll be here?” Mark asked, keeping pace with the masked giant naga.
“I don’t,” was all she said before she slid right up to a furry humanoid AI, wearing a black leather jacket, no pants, and a long-beaked bird mask. Orange, black-tipped ears poked out from behind the mask, and if Mark had to guess, he would wager this was a fox man.
“Pardon me, sir,” Vale said, bowing her head. “I’m looking to speak with AquaQuantum. Could you provide any information?”
“Well, well. You’re a strange group,” he said, his yellow eyes taking them all in. Mark did not like the look in his predatory gaze. “Not quite connected, yet extreme custom optimization. How are you four doing this?”