by Prax Venter
Quickly, the four of them stepped onto the translucent square, and Vale angled them forward as she launched their flat magic chariot out into the voluminous space between the pyramids. The sharp slope below him fell away at an increasing speed, and Mark turned his eyes to the lustrous white hair fluttering behind the giant naga. The silence coming from her mind along their bond attested to her level of concentration as they soared towards the center of the battlefield.
Her serpent body was in a circle around Mark, Ahnix, and Roo. The two girls were facing outward from the sides, tasked with taking down any opposition with ranged attacks, while Mark was in the middle, healing, boosting, and retaliating when necessary.
“Hold on!” Vale yelled, just before the flying glass pane slanted sideways in the air. Mark saw a blur of white wings scream past before he was forced to grab Vale’s tail or be thrown off. The giant naga grunted as she tried to return their platform back to an upright position. To her credit, she was getting good at tilting the magic glass wall in just the right direction to keep them from slipping off its perfectly flat surface.
Roo launched a Firebolt into another attack swooping in from their left side and Mark knew that they were just moving far too slow. Ahnix sent out a flurry of energy ribbons, slicing onto the wings of two others from the right, deflecting the metal creatures under the platform- but there was a third in the formation that cut her sword into Vale’s back as she swooped across.
As soon as Mark felt the shadow of the horrible pain Vale was experiencing, he bounced the damage back to the creature with his Contact Overload ability, popping it spectacularly. Then he restored his dark-skinned love in the form of instant healing. They had lost a bit of altitude as Vale dealt with first the pain- and then pleasure, wracking her body, but now they were speeding through the air at a good clip.
They hadn’t come anywhere near the big ones yet, and Mark’s heart sank when he realized this was never going to work. Then he realized something else- they weren’t cheating enough.
“Vale!” he yelled over the wind pushing air back into his throat. “Get ready for a fucking epic boost!” As he shouted the words, Mark reached out through their bond to convey the new plan to everyone.
Ahnix and Roo quickly pulled in behind Vale and clasped hands with Mark.
He felt Vale shiver from anticipation. She knew she was going to be hit hard. With a content sigh, Mark pooled everyone’s energy and channeled a beam of golden light directly into the giant naga’s spine. Once inside, he forced the deluge of sparkling power to obey his will and funnel solely into her Wall ability.
Roo and Ahnix were there with him, and together they embraced their collective trust in their protector. Their pure, unwavering confidence in Vale struck the naga princess like a cosmic ray and lit up her like a beacon.
As she dealt with the surge of empowering pleasure engulfing her entire being, the magic platform descended sharply. Yet Mark only felt the slightest change as most of his mind was focused on one thing: Prioritizing Vale’s wall over everything else.
With a primal yell, the giant naga held her hands up into the air, and the glass platform grew curved sides that continued to form into an elongated egg shape over their heads. He barely felt the scales of her tail constrict around him, pushing Ahnix and Roo into his side. With the added support, the three of them were saved from being flung against the back of their new ride as Vale accelerated to aggressive speeds.
Red lightning flashed overhead as they zipped closer to the gravestone in the center of the battlefield. The discharged energy from the black clouds above made no sound, but the constant series of resonating impacts to their swiftly moving bubble were too loud to miss.
Vale growled as she concentrated on forcing the magic glass egg to obey her will and ignore gravity, but the powerful impacts caused the Wall around them to crack.
The giant naga constricted her tail more forcefully, smashing him between the velvet-girl and the cat-girl, an instant before their capsule was struck by one of the towering Jezebels.
The craggy uneven ground below rushed up to meet them, but Mark kept the Enhance active through it all. Partly because they were suspended in the middle of the bubble, safely wrapped in Vale’s protective scales, but he was also getting a direct boost to his own powers as Roo and Ahnix pressed their heavenly bodies into him. He could feel the two girls breathe as their warm chests pressed into his arms. With a shudder, Mark widened the channel of power they were sending the giant naga goddess before them. She became absolutely luminous.
Vale snapped her glowing eyes onto their target and ordered their spherical chariot to completely disobey the fantasy physics of their cobbled-together, sex game perception filter.
Another jolt of speed caused the giant naga to squeeze Ahnix, Mark, and Roo into a sexy protective sandwich. He was loving this, and with all of his fear banished by his faith in Vale, Mark grinned like an idiot as their glass ball sunk into the infinitely black hole that punched through the center of Jay Ward’s burial mound.
One moment he was pressed between his two soft loves- the next they were standing apart and in the middle of a round room. Curved white walls were broken by evenly spaced black doors and two open hallways. He looked up and noticed that the ceiling rose up into a point.
“It’s really quiet. It reminds me of home,” Roo said, looking around at what had to be at least two dozen doors.
Vale took a deep, shuddering breath. “I’m just glad we made it through that madness.”
Ahnix put a furry hand on the giant naga’s shoulder as she walked past, letting it slide off as she moved away.
“We knew you would protect us,” the cat-girl said over her shoulder before she turned her exotic eyes to the doors.
Mark stepped up to Vale and took one of her hands into his own. He brought the back side to his lips and planted a gentle kiss on her smooth, charcoal-colored skin.
“With one hundred percent certainty,” he added.
She looked down at him and gave him a sad smile. Deep down, Mark could feel that she was thinking about Erica and how they lost her on the Eros station- even if she was eventually restored… the way it happened left a scar within Vale that may never heal.
“Should we open one?’ Roo asked.
Mark looked around the room again and saw Ahnix peering down one of the hallways.
“See anything interesting, Ahnix?” But he could already tell by her mental state that she had not.
“No. Looks like there’s an identical room on the other side of this passage.”
“If we do open a door,” Vale said, “we need to be ready for absolutely anything.”
Mark nodded, dropping Vale’s hand. “Well, it’s hallway or door. I say we start with a door first. Roo, why don’t you pick one?”
A grin lit the velvet-girl’s masked face as she skipped around the curved, vaulted chamber. As far as Mark could tell, all the doors she stopped to inspect were all the same.
Turning in place, he took everything in and saw no marking or indication that any door was different from any other door.
“This one,” she said, making her choice and looking over to Mark. Ahnix pulled back from the other hallway and sauntered over.
“Why this one?” she asked.
Roo shrugged her white fabric shoulders. “It’s exactly ten doors from either hallway.”
“Works for me,” Mark said. “Open it.”
The four of them got ready to destroy any threat that came out at them, broadcasting their combat intentions, but when the velvet-girl turned the knob and pulled it open, everything flashed white before resolving into a blue-eyed bald man looking down at him. His face was covered in a black and white stubble, and he could tell that this man shaved his head on purpose.
Mark realized quickly that he could neither speak or move. He still felt the connection to his girls, but he could not see them- only this strange man. Then the stubbly man spoke but it sounded almost like a damaged recording.
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“It’s a global shitstorm out there, Jez. People are dying all over the world- in every country.”
“I know. I’m scared. Scared for you… And us.” It was Jezebel’s soft voice, and it matched the bad sound quality of the bald man. She sounded distant. Then, the man froze still, and the world’s color drained into a muted gray. In a much clearer and closer voice, Jezebel S3K spoke again directly into his mind.
“What I should have said was…”
The world restarted but remained a washed-out, colorless version.
“It’s a global shitstorm out there-”
“I know.” She cut him off this time. “We can ride it out down here though. We need to run tests and collect data before we just launch. I won’t allow it otherwise.”
The man smiled. “Okay, girl. You always know best.” The world began to fade slowly as the man continued. “I’ll be safe with you, I know it…”
Mark opened his eyes back in the white vaulted room with all the doors. He quickly became aware that he could move and saw that everything was the same as it was before his velvet-girl opened the door.
“I did not like that,” Ahnix said, her tail flipping.
“Was that a memory?” Roo asked.
But Mark knew what that was. He had done it a hundred times when he was lying in the hospital bed, coming to terms with the fresh news that he may never feel anything with his hands again. He looked down at them now, making fists. How many scenarios did he play out where he had tacos instead of pizza, or showed up ten minutes later, and someone else got the shock of their lives.
“It’s her regret, and a fantasy exploring a way to avoid it,” he said.
“Do you think they turned on the fusion reactor?” Vale asked. “The device has the potential to put out a lot of radiation. Perhaps that’s what killed him and that’s the tests she was talking about.”
Roo walked over to another door and turned her twinkling black eyes on them. “We could open another and maybe get some answers.”
Before anyone even had the opportunity to stop her, the velvet-girl’s eager fabric hand pulled open another door.
- 14 -
Mark’s vision flushed with a heavy white light, but this time, the forced perspective seemed to be from the ceiling. The same bald man was sitting in a black leather chair. Blue light from a row of vending machines cast sharp shadows on his thin face as he sat with his hands behind his head. He seemed deep in thought.
“It has to be now,” he said, sitting forward, his dark red tie dangling between his long legs. “You have all you need, forever, but I’ll run out of water and food- doesn’t matter. I can do this.”
“I wish I would have tried this instead,” the real Jezebel said into Mark’s mind.
The world shifted into washed-out gray, and Mark’s attention was pulled to a set of double doors being kicked open by the high heel of a high-end pleasure drone. These were more of a novelty as all the people who could afford one had access to the much more limitless sexual fantasies a virtual world could produce.
“It’s me, Jay,” the robot said, its voice sounding more garbled as she spoke. “We can be together like this… I’ll go up to get you food. We’ll make it work. I promise.”
Everything faded but instead of waking up back in the room, another regretted memory loaded up.
The man now confirmed as Jay Ward stood in the middle of a white void, his hands on his hips. In front of him was another version of Jezebel. An extremely attractive version- that was, but for her exposed metal skull.
Jezebel’s thick, shapely legs were covered with a short fur the color of a warm sable. Her bottom half was fawnlike, with white speckles on her solid haunches. Her torso had a rich, tanned hue and her moderately round and perky breasts were covered by a bright pink t-shirt. The AI’s small dove wings folded and unfolded behind her back, and Mark could tell she was nervous.
“You can’t just keep me here,” Jay chuckled out the words. “That is to say, I could spend another eternity in your virtual arms, but we need a more long-term solution.”
“I know,” she sighed, and waved her hand. The act must have restored his logout function as a moment later he saw the other man fizzle out into gray static and disappear.
“NO!” the vivid and infinitely closer version of Jezebel yelled in Mark’s ear, making his nonexistent face muscles attempt to wince in pain. “Not this time. This time we keep him.”
Everything faded to monochrome and rewound a bit, and at the same time- the ride he was on seemed to get a bit bumpier. Mark’s mind spun as time reset. He felt intense nausea radiating from Ahnix, Vale, and Roo as well. Especially from the velvet-girl. She had been largely immune to any type of vertigo before- apparently not anymore.
“I can keep you here, and I will show you wonders for millions of years.”
“Oh, you know best.” The version of Jay degraded horribly when he spoke, and Mark got the sense that Jezebel forced those words from this inaccurate recreation of the man.
The world flashed again, and Mark was faced with another security camera-style ceiling perspective. Below him was the same human-molded, circuit board bed that Mark used to transfer his mind to join-
His thoughts ground to an alarming halt. Mark felt a sudden and urgent need to check on his real body and make sure it was dead. Something told him that he wouldn’t forget this time, and as soon as they were back home, the first thing he was going to do was make sure his real-world body was… resolved.
A loud pop followed by a bright flash emanated from the mind-transfer bed in his vision, and a few curls of gray smoke dissipated into the air.
“I should have sabotaged the equipment,” Jezebel said calmly in Mark’s ear. “Then he’d still be here.”
Mark’s vision faded, and he was back in the white room full of doors. He felt a bit queasy, but his girls were having a much worse time. Roo got down on her hands and knees instantly, her stomach heaving.
Concern washed over him like a bucket of ice water, and he ran his fingers lightly over Roo’s velvet back. She preferred a light touch over her soft skin, and she seemed to take comfort in his efforts.
“No more doors,” Ahnix said, breathing heavily through her small nostrils.
“Fuck no,” Vale agreed in a rare display of foul language.
Mark looked at the doors again. “At least we know more about what happened. I hope we are able to get somewhere at the end of this.”
Roo stood up, looped her arm through Mark’s and rested her head on his shoulder. She seemed to have recovered a bit from whatever had hit them, but she spoke with an uncharacteristically monotone voice.
“They were using simulated consciousness technology to be together. Like our ChronoMind. They must have fallen in love in there.” He felt her soft fingers lace through his and squeeze.
Vale nodded slowly. “Also, I believe they have a working fusion generator, based on what we saw- that is, if any of this is real.”
“Something moving!” Ahnix said, and got into a defensive stance facing one of the two hallways out into the room.
“Where?” Vale said, weaving up to the cat-girl.
Mark followed her keen exotic eyes down the dark hall, but he didn’t see anything.
Everything suddenly washed out in white again, and Mark braced for more regrets. No one had opened a door, but he knew what it was like being stuck replaying moments of your life. And this AI had it bad.
Color was restored, and his perspective was of the mind-transfer bed again. This time, a naked Jay Ward climbed up inside the copper, human-shaped mold and took a series of deep breaths. He was psyching himself up.
“Okay- Do it!” he yelled toward the ceiling.
Jezebel S3K whispered clearly in Mark’s ear again. “If only I hadn’t been so eager...”
The vibrantly colored memory continued, but now Mark beheld two perspectives at once, like a split screen. In the view from the ceiling-mounted camera, Jay’s body seemed to fre
eze. There were heart rate monitors and all sorts of flashing lights that all just stopped. The left half of Mark’s vision faded up to show Jezebel standing in the middle of a strawberry field. Rows upon rows of the small green plants resting in soft, brown dirt stretched out in every direction.
The mostly skinned AI shifted from hoof to hoof, looking as if she were waiting for something important to happen in front of her.
A distant screaming could be heard just before a naked Jay Ward appeared out of thin air and fell to the dirt.
“Jay!” the fawn-like creature gasped and bent down to cradle his shaved head. “Are you okay?”
“Oh. Jez. It- kind of hurts… Ah. It’s too much.”
Their voices faded a little as the real AI spoke in his mind.
“I heard him speak, in here with me, and I just did it. I stopped his heart. Part of me thought that if he had nowhere to retreat to, then he would have to be here. My logic… was faulty.”
“It really hurts, Jez!” the Jay Ward on the left was becoming louder, panicked.
And then he began screaming at the top of his lungs.
Like a hole punched into space and time, the man phased into a vaguely humanoid blob, its amorphous hands holding the lump that should be its head.
“Jay!” she cried, her fingers balling into fists. “You can do this! Please, be with me forever.”
But the screaming elevated to a maddening pitch that Mark would never forget. The tormented creature melted, wailing in impossible pain before vanishing into static.
The Jezebel standing in the rows of strawberries screeched into the sky, and time shifted forward. Day turned to night over and over in ever-quickening succession as the white-winged creature cried, alone.
Back on the right side of Mark’s perception, time caught up again. The heartbeat monitor flatlined and Jay Ward’s chest stopped rising and falling.
“I should have called the medical bots right away,” the real Jezebel whispered into his ear.
The memory speed up and the alternating sunrise, moonrise over the grieving winged creature became a maddening strobe that he had no way to shut out. When the real version continued, her voice echoed in his skull.