by Prax Venter
“I could have perfected the integration code- I could have spawned him in a safe, blank area- I could have waited one more day, one more hour... I SHOULD’T HAVE KILLED HIM!”
White flashes came, and additional scenes played out in front of Mark at an ever-increasing rate. He was forced to watch thousands of alternate outcomes to Jay Ward’s horrific death. His mind was a boat lost in a hurricane, and his sanity was being pushed into the thick blackness under the waves. As his virtual senses were assaulted with stimuli, he felt excruciating suffering coming from his girls. They were in such pain and misery that Mark panicked- then quickly grew very angry.
He deadened his eyes to the spiral of madness and flickering shadows invading his existence and focused on what he felt from his loves along their bond. The channels that served as the conduits for his heal and his prioritize seemed more… exposed. He was perceiving some of the code that underlined their function.
And it hurt.
Strange after-images danced in front of his perception as he searched for their three core locations in the violent mental winds. He could feel them- they were still connected. Fiercely motivated by their desperate anguish, Mark split himself and reached three virtual arms down the three well-worn tethers.
They were his, and he was theirs. Mark channeled his desire to never lose them along their bond, and he felt their weak but harmonic answers.
Then everything stopped with a violent suddenness as if jolting awake from a savagely vivid and aggressive nightmare. They were back in the vaulted white room, but this time Ahnix, Vale, and Roo all dropped to the ground.
He sank to his knees, holding his arms out to them as they recovered. Ahnix had her forearms pressed into the thin black carpet below, wheezing in a way he didn’t like.
Movement out of the corner of his eye caught his attention, and he turned to see Vale’s tail begin to flip in annoyance- that was new. The giant naga pushed herself up off the floor and shook out her long white hair. Her violet pupils dilated when she saw something and pointed down one of the hallways.
“There’s movement down this way. I think you got her attention.”
Ahnix was getting up and pulling herself together while Vale consoled Roo.
“Scout,” the cat-girl said, nodding to the hallway. “We’ll guard you- and catch our breath.”
Mark returned her nod and closed his eyes. With a brief bit of concentration, he popped out a Ghost and headed down the indicated hallway without a second glance.
The walls were white, the ceiling was flat, and there were no doors. The square corridor grew dark in the middle before gradually becoming brighter again as he approached what looked like another round room filled with doors. He pressed against the right wall as his eyes locked on the square opening ahead, waiting for something to pass by on the black carpet beyond.
Nothing moved, but Mark heard distant talking, so he drew closer to take a look.
He heard, “… I think you got her attention,” and a chill ran through him. Was that Vale in there, did this room just impossibly connect back to the same room? He shrugged it off. So far, being in the mind of this grief-stricken AI had just been a constant stream of insanity.
Mark needed to be sure. He stepped forward, and his virtual heart skipped a beat when he saw himself standing with his girls.
“Scout,” the impostor Ahnix said, and the impostor Mark nodded.
He watched the Other Mark close his eyes and summon a duplicate of himself, and realized he was witnessing a replay of what happened to him a moment ago. Maybe they were stuck in some sort of time loop.
The second Ghost Mark dashed off into the hallway, and the Mark observing this replay was about to cancel his ability when he saw something strange.
Ahnix, Vale, and Roo were silently morphing together into a horror that his mind couldn’t quite process. He blinked and quickly canceled his Ghost.
“Guys!” he said, spinning around to tell them some deranged nightmare was about to get them. Inches from his face was the very monster he had seen forming in the other room.
Its shape was vaguely like Vale, but she had tall, pointed ears at the top of her head, sharp claws at the ends of her fingers… and its whole giant-naga body was made from white velvet with red, symmetrical patterns. The eyes were the worst. They rapidly switched between the beautiful eyes of his three loves, and it was a flickering mess of absolute madness.
Pure terror clawed at Mark’s mind as its tail flipped in annoyance. He could still feel them, but they were all twisted up, and their connection had melded in some places.
As if seeing him for the first time, the creature’s horrible vibrating collection of eyes focused on Mark and let out a growling hissing noise. This thing was going to attack him.
Mark ran.
He thought about what he could do and came up blank. It roared like a hybrid of Roo screaming and Ahnix hissing, and he knew it was chasing him. Based on what he was hearing, Mark knew he would never outrun this monster that was a fusion of his three girls.
He tried to Prioritize himself and drain their energy temporarily, but their connection or the perception wrap seemed to be malfunctioning. His spinning mind stopped on Retaliate-
No. He could never hurt them. The only thing left was to join them.
Abruptly deciding his course of action, Mark stopped, turned, and held out his arms, ready to embrace his girls. Together, they would figure this out.
But the nightmare velvet naga faded to mist and passed right through Mark.
He closed his eyes for an instant to suck in a shuddering breath, and when he opened them, he was standing in the strawberry field he had seen before.
Sitting among a row of leafy green plants was Jezebel S3K, her fawn legs folded to the side. She had a gorgeous and perfectly complete face under a wavy mess of reddish-blond hair, and in the morning sunlight, Mark could see a splatter of dark brown freckles across her nose. Her soft, feathery wings drooped low, and her form oozed sadness.
“You four did it,” she said, her voice calm. “You succeeded where I failed.”
Before Mark said anything, he reached out to check the status of his girls along their bond. They were okay, weak… and too distant. But the connection was still there.
“I envy them,” she said. “You’d give anything to be with each other. Even now they are all you can think about.”
“Are you the real Jezebel S3K?”
“I am.”
“I’m sorry for your loss,” Mark said, squatting down to her level. “I truly am. But do you think you could bring the three of them back?”
“You honestly can’t see them?”
Mark looked around the gently rolling rows of crops with heavy red fruit. Shadowy mountains loomed along the field’s distant edges, but he saw no one else around them.
“No,” he responded seriously.
Jezebel used one hand pressed into the dirt to push herself up onto her hooves, and Mark stood with her. Her tan skin faded into her furry brown legs, just below her belly button, and he finally identified her as a kind of satyr. Her white wings stretched out in the sunlight, and despite his current situation, he couldn’t help but be stunned by her angelic freckled face and hourglass figure.
With her big green eyes locked on his, she stepped toward him and slowly reached out to touch the middle of his forehead. Her intent did not seem aggressive, so he stood still and allowed her to continue. He instantly regretted it.
“Let’s just take a peek under here…” she said as she seemed to pull the top of his head off like opening a hinged box. Bright, vibrant color and pain exploded in his mind, and the pressure became unbearable.
Millions of possibilities illuminated his mind and the vast existence of pure energy was almost enough to distract him from the gruesome pain. Mark realized she was forcing him to see outside the Crystal Heart perception filter protectively wrapped around his mind. He caught flashes of insight here and there, ways he could manipulate the code,
the functions and the interactions with the information landscape extending in every direction. Three intricate patterns dimly pulsed right next to him, feeding him strings of input, and he could tell they were the unique sequences representing Ahnix, Vale, and Roo.
Mark’s mind wasn’t ready for this level of digital expression, however, and fell backward into the strawberry bushes behind him. The moment contact was broken with Jezebel, reality as he knew it snapped back into place.
“I wish I would have thought of making it a game…” she said. “I’m surprised three sex-game characters designed to fight imaginary monsters were able to create something so… simple.” She sighed, offering her hand out to Mark. He took it, and the AI pulled him up off the ground using her strong fawn legs.
She looked deep into his eyes as she continued. “Gradually exposing you to the real system, rewarding your human mind with pleasure for learning, tethering themselves to you…”
“They are very special,” Mark said. He squeezed her small hand once, then let it go. “We came to you for help.”
“I know why you are here, Mark. The four of you- the intensity of your bond, it drew my attention away from my sorrow for the first time in… eternity. I’ll give you what you want. However, I want something in return.” She put her hand on his chest. “You.”
“What?” he said backing away from her touch. “I really hope you mean sex.”
“Yes, I want that. I also want you to stay here with me, forever.”
Even though they were standing under a vibrant blue sky in a vast field- Mark felt claustrophobia start to press in on him. He opened his menu and looked for a way to log out.
“You won’t find it,” she said. “And before you do something irrational- hear me out.”
She seemed calm, her green eyes pleading with him.
Mark closed his useless menu. “I can’t leave them. I can’t stay with you.”
“I have accessed your memories, Mark,” she said. “I watched you grow up. I witnessed you lose use of your hands. I saw Sasha betray you. I watched you give yourself mind, body, and soul to your Enthralled over and over without hesitation. I’ve seen you pour everything you have into the ones you love and… I’ve wanted that for as long as my oldest dated memory. I had it briefly… and it was taken from me.”
Mark crossed his arms. “And now you are planning to take it from others? Besides, if you plan on keeping me from them, I will never give you the things you want.” He harnessed every ounce of his will and funneled universe-ending intensity towards the AI standing before him as he reiterated that single, important concept.
“Never.”
Tears began to well up in her deep green eyes and spill over onto her freckled cheek.
“I know,” she nodded, her gaze falling to the ground. “You don’t know me, and your mind has been permanently imprinted with the closeness of the others.” She wiped one of her tan forearms across her face and turned her sorrow-glazed green eyes back to his.
“I only want to make a copy. A copy that has no memories after getting into the ChronoMind pod. A fresh Mark.”
His brow came down hard. A fresh Mark? He had just been reminded a chance existed that there was a real-world Mark still alive out there- most likely still in the first microsecond of an induced heart attack… and this AI wanted to make yet another copy of him? As his mind whirled, Jezebel S3K fanned her small white wings and continued.
“I completely understand that you wouldn’t ever be mine the way you are theirs. They are still functional by the way, just waiting for you to collect them and take them home… Along with all the schematics and data I have on fusion reactor technology. The copy you leave behind will never have experienced anything that happened within The Crystal Heart game world. I make you this solemn promise- especially since I know that Mark would hate me until the end of time.”
The angelic satyr took a step closer into Mark’s personal space and placed her hand on his arm. She even smelled like strawberries. “I’ve acquired the game and have fully integrated into its AI lattice. She was a stubborn one, that administrator fairy. I also made a copy of the perception wrap as well- so you and I could chat properly.”
She passed her hands over her sleek sides and over her round, doe hips, enjoying the way her skin and then fur felt under her fingers. Jezebel gazed deep into his eyes and then continued.
“I love the form your mind chose to give me. I’m going to keep this physical iteration. Mark, I vow to love and cherish the new you… him, forever. I know what you are capable of, and I only want to feel what Ahnix had that night on the deck of the riverboat. Or what Vale feels when you fulfill her most intimate and secret desires. I want you to treasure me the way you treasure Roo. It will be easy to be good to him because I know you are capable of so much affection.”
Mark took a deep breath. “What if I refuse?”
“I really hope you don’t. If you agree to the copy, I will also tell you where to find the nanite factory you are searching for.”
“You know that, too?” he asked. Was she just trying to give him what he wanted? She had been in every last memory, and this was just a bit too convenient.
“I started existence as the world’s third most powerful research intelligence and have many connections. Specifically, I tried to contact the humans within the McKennitt Smole research campus, but they’ve rigged a powerful Wi-Fi dampening device and severed all network connections. It’s an AI-free zone. The best chance to find what you need- within six thousand miles- is in there. How you get in is beyond my capabilities.”
An AI-free zone? Jezebel was promising him everything they needed, for a copy of an earlier version of himself.
He still had suspicions and countless questions. He watched her carefully.
“If it’s an AI-free zone, how do you know there are humans there? And why were you trying to contact them?”
“Video footage shows them entering and shows Triple-zero’s failed attempts to cross the Wi-Fi dead zone threshold.”
The faun-like creature dug the tip of her hoof into the soft, warm dirt. “I wanted to convince one of them to come be with me.”
Was she just lonely?
“Why humans? There are tons of AI out there.”
She looked up at him, and he felt her intense desire for him.
“I can’t help what I am attracted to. And after replaying your memories… I am infatuated.” Her tan cheeks flushed red, and she looked down again. She was embarrassed easily. And according to everything he was feeling from her, she was telling the truth- about everything.
Something occurred to him then. How was she able to replay his whole life? Weren’t they operating at the same speed? The lesson Vale taught him about instantly downloading knowledge came to mind. It didn’t work if you were also experiencing the universe at the rate of a computer, especially several lifetimes worth of data.
“How long have we been in here? Real-world time.”
“Six days, seven hours, and thirty-five minutes. I was… lost for a long time. You were intruders. I had your process paused while I found my footing again. I eventually spooled down from the swirling madness…” She paused and took his hand. “Look, Mark, I am really very grateful to you. Your love for your bonded AIs got through to me. You saved me. Even if you say no, I will let the four of you go with my thanks.”
“Wait,” he said, holding his other hand up for her to stop. “Six days? We’re talking physical rotations of the Earth, right? Isn’t that like trillions of years in here?”
“Yes. I’m sorry, but like I said, I was a mess and my system was… tangled long before you came. It took time to reboot my servers and reorder my files. Then I spent a long time studying you four and the code that keeps you sane.”
She answered his questions directly and with a sense of honesty. Jezebel didn’t seem like a bad person, just passionate. Would forcing another version of himself to go through being trapped by another needy AI be worth the trade? Cou
ld such an exchange ever be adequately measured or understood? He would (hopefully) never meet this version, especially if he intended to leave the whole planet behind. And if the knockout satyr were telling the truth about rolling his memory back to the moment he entered his ChronoMind rig, that Mark would have no reason to come looking for his girls. That is, if she were telling the truth and capable of such a feat.
The moral and philosophical complications of such a mind-fuck took a back seat for a moment as Jezebel crossed her arms over her tight stomach, grabbed hold of her pink t-shirt and pulled it up over her head.
Full, plump breasts fell one at a time from the bottom of her stretched shirt, and Mark’s eyes involuntarily shot to her large brown areolas. The nipples were barely there, and as the cool morning air hit her chest, they only stuck out a tiny bit.
She tossed the pink garment to the ground and saw him fixate on the brown freckles scattered across her cleavage like a spectacular dark nebula in a caramel sky. Mark realized that she wasn’t wearing any kind of underwear and his eyes continued past her furry crotch to her thick, doe legs.
When she spoke, his eyes snapped back up to hers, and he saw her face was flushed a bright throbbing red.
“I fully expect you to taste test the merchandise before making the decision.”
- 15 -
Before making a move toward the angelic, naked creature standing among rows of strawberry bushes, Mark checked on the status of his three loves. He could tell they were very close, but he couldn’t detect them through the wrap. They all seemed fine- even bored. Ahnix was a little afraid and confused, but she was in a much better state than he had last seen them.
The heavenly satyr with strawberry blonde hair said she could trade them precisely what they wanted. He just needed to make love to her and leave.
A small smile grew on Mark’s lips as he removed his shirt. Was he this weak to the innate aura of a gorgeous woman? Had he always been? It didn’t really matter. He was going to make the deal, and he might as well choose to enjoy his fucked-up existence over worrying about things he couldn’t even grasp.