NanoSymbionts

by Joseph Philbrook

  “How about this Sam,” he countered. You make ‘real’ sure you don't get the hots for ‘me’ and I'll ‘try’ to keep my nanites out of your head.”

  “I guess that will have to do,” Sam agreed as he offered his hand, which Jake shook.

  “It's getting to be a bit late in the day,” Jess spoke up. “I think we should finish the tour now. We've still got the rest of the staff common area. Then I was going to take you downstairs where I've got a surprise or two for you.”

  “Oh I love tours!” Sam exclaimed. “Can I come?” as he jumped up from the chair so quickly he forgot to straighten his skirt on the way up.

  As soon as he was on his feet he realized it didn't feel right and adjusted it. By then however, both Cindy and Jake were staring again.

  “Was that a tattoo of a snake?” Cindy asked.

  Sam blushed.

  “It sure was Cindy,” Stephanie interjected. Then she added with a wink, “Sam's got quite a snake on his snake.”

  “It sounds like I didn't get a good enough look,” Cindy said.

  “I however, saw more than enough,” Jake asserted. “Shall we get on with the tour?”

  “Oh let me show you,” Sam said. “It's this way.”

  Then he walked over to a swinging door on the opposite side of the room from the one they came in by.

  “Please humor him,” Al said with a shake of his head. “He'll be too miserable to live with if he doesn't get to show off the rest of the digs.”

  Jess shrugged and looked at Jake quizzically.

  “OK Sam,” Jake said. “I guess you can show us around.”

  They entered a hall that was a mirror image of the one on the other side.

  “This is our rec-hall,” Sam said as they entered the next room.

  It had a pool table in one corner, and a ping pong table in the opposite corner. There were a couple of pinball machines, and half a dozen arcade style video games scattered along the walls. Half of the area in the middle was empty. The rest was sparsely filled with tables and chairs.

  “There's a lot of room in here,” Cindy commented. “But it's so empty.”

  “Yeah there's not many of us about at the moment,” Jess replied. “Some of us are on duty of course. And there might be a few in their rooms. But I think it's got more to do with the extra paid vacation Steve passed out this week.”

  “Yeah, he said something about sending everyone who didn't already know about the nanosymbionts out of here for a while,” Jake said.

  “Some of them will be back next week,” Sam said. “We'll be having a dance in here the week after. You can come as my guests if you like.”

  The next room turned out to be the shower and bath facility. There was a long aisle leading from the swinging doors on one side of the room all the way to the swinging doors on the other side. Both sides of the aisle were lined with partition doors, most of which were open. On one side there were toilet stalls and sinks. The other was lined with showers stalls with dressing booths. Except that at each end of the row of showers there was a room with a deep bathtub, which was large enough for two.

  “This is one of my favorite places,” Sam said with a chuckle. Then he added with a wink, “You wouldn't believe how often the soap gets dropped in here...”

  Sam's voice trailed off as he found Jake's face less than 2 inch's from the tip of his nose.

  “I thought we had a deal!” Jake demanded.

  “We do.” Sam replied.

  “Just how do you expect me to feel about you joking about some guy dropping the soap, while I'm in the shower room with you?” Jake retorted.

  “Hunh? Oh I see your point Jake, Sam said. “But I never promised not to get the hots for your girl friend here. Did I?”

  “Wait a minute, were you actually thinking about getting in the shower with me when you said that Sam?” Cindy asked.

  Sam blushed slightly.

  “Well I didn't want to accidentally think of getting in the shower with a guy around this dangerous hunk in front of me,” he said. “I hope your not offended Cindy.”

  “That depends Sam,” Cindy retorted. “Which of us did you picture dropping the soap anyway?”

  As they spoke, Jake had been looking back and forth between Cindy and Sam with an incredulous expression on his face. Now he quickly spoke up.

  “No! It doesn't matter who drops it,” he insisted. “The only way this plays out around me is if, he wants you to be the one picking it up! Got it Cindy?”

  “Well in that case,” Cindy said seductively. “He should try to imagine me kneeling down and getting a closer look at that snake tattoo.” Sam looked worried as he turned to face Jake.

  “Would it be a problem Jake,” he asked. “If I prevent myself from getting the hots for you by getting a serious case of the hots for Cindy?” Even as he spoke it was obvious that the very idea was making Sam excited again. “Or maybe I should try a cold shower?”

  “Maybe!” said Jake. “I do need to keep my own temptations from spilling over into another orgy that none of you would really have a choice about. And frankly, the idea of you and Cindy doing nasty things together is making that rather difficult at the moment. So I guess it depends on whether or not you think you need that cold shower.” Then he turned towards Cindy.

  “Remember Cindy, we have an appointment to see Sandra in the morning,” he said. “So I'd appreciate it if you'd leave off on inspecting his snake until after we find out what she can cook up for us.”

  He was about to tell Sam to lead on when he heard the water turn on behind him. He turned around and saw that Sam hadn't bothered to close the door to the outer changing booth. The shower stall was a curtain free design that only partially blocked their view. Jake sighed and firmly pulled the door shut. Cindy giggled.

  “Well I guess I can wait till tomorrow to measure it anyway, Jake.” she said.

  “Damn it!” Sam called out, “I forgot to grab a towel, would somebody please fetch me one from one of the cabinets over the sinks? Or should I come out and get umfl...”

  When Sam first said the word ‘forgot’, Jess had headed for the linen cabinet's towel supply. In addition to a single towel, Jess also grabbed a facecloth, which he quickly ran under cold water from a sink and lobbed via an underhand toss. The sopping wet face cloth had arched over the partition door, scoring a direct hit on Sam's face. Who sputtered, wiped his face and found that a towel was now hanging over the partition. He recognized Jess's laugh.

  “Serves ya right for forgetting to close the door around Jake here,” he said. “Besides, the way Cindy was starting to stare at your tattoo could easily have resulting in Jake triggering a surprise orgy. And some of us still have saddle sores from the last one.”

  “Now don't get me wrong Jess,” Jake said. “At this point I could care less if he's naked. As long as he and Cindy can both, avoid doing sexual favors for each other until tomorrow.

  “Do you mean it wouldn't bother you if I didn't put my skirt back on?” Sam asked from behind the partition.

  “That depends!” Cindy interrupted, “On whether nobody objects to my teasing you and Jake by getting just as naked as you. I think Jake and I are both capable of waiting with anticipation until tomorrow, when I'll be wanting him to watch me give that tattoo a personal, hands on, inspection.”

  “Well then,” Sam replied. “Since I think you just said you can handle it, I think I'd rather not put these back on.” Sam stepped out of the dressing stall with his shoulder length hair wrapped up in the towel as he carried his skirt and blouse to the hamper by the sinks. Then he chucked the outfit in the hamper. “Of course,” he added, turning to face Jake. “You can't possibly expect that we can both prance around naked, while I anticipate getting it on with Cindy tomorrow, without my getting a woody?”

  Before Jake could answer, Cindy had already added her house duds to the hamper.

  “Why don't you show us the lounge,” was all Jake said.

  Sam pointed at the large wall to
his left as he led them into the lounge.

  “There's a theater grade view screen in that wall,” he said.

  An area the size of the other common rooms contained a large semicircle of assorted comfortable looking chairs all facing the view screen wall. Behind the chairs there was a wall with a large archway into another large area, both wider and slightly less deep, with two more semicircles of chairs. Behind them were some frosted glass windows. Sam led them to the right into the extended area where he pointed out the two fireplaces that the outer semicircles of chairs were centered around.

  “There's nothing quite like a couple of warm cozy fires,” Sam said. “To make for a good gathering place in the colder months.” Then he walked over to a wall mounted control panel. “And any time we'd rather focus on a show...”

  He left the rest of sentence unsaid, as a fair sized flat view screen folded down from the ceiling in front of the nearest fireplace. Both that screen and the view wall were suddenly displaying a scene from an old movie, with an on screen menu asking if it should resume playing the movie. Sam tapped another button and both screens went blank, while the smaller one folded back up against the ceiling.

  “OK Jess, I guess it's time you led our guests down stairs,” Sam said. “Mind if I tag along?”

  “Welcome to my domain,” Jess said. as they reached the bottom of the stairs.

  There were eight garage doors. Each with a work bay big enough to park a full sized tour bus. One of the bays had a lift big enough to lift a bus. There were two pick up trucks in another one of the bays. Yet another had three jeeps. A flatbed tow truck was in the fourth bay. There was an open area behind the bays that was just as big as the area devoted to the bays. In it there were an assortment of tool boxes, desks, work benches and just about everything else you'd expect to find in a professional truck repair shop.

  “The garage here at Hillside is also the regional maintenance facility for Micronic Enterprise's motor vehicles,” Jess said. Then he pointed at a series of doors in the back wall. “On the other side of that wall we have a compressor room and the boiler that provides heat and hot water to the main house.” As he spoke, Jess walked over to the central doorway and led them into the back room area. “This area back here is actually under the hill.” He pointed at a place in the wall where an assortment of pipes and conduits went through a large grill work in the back wall. “That's a service tunnel that leads all the way to the basement of the main house.”

  Jess walked over to a small broom closet in the back wall, where he closed the door which had been ajar. Then he turned to face Sam.

  “I know your authorized for some of the secret rooms and passages Sam but did they ever give you a full access briefing?” Jess asked.

  “My current access rating is ‘Hillside, level three’,” Sam said. “If that's what you mean Jess.”

  “Good,” Jess replied. “I think I can give them the briefing Sandra expects me to, without overstepping level three. So I guess you can stay with us. Care to do the honors?”

  For an answer Sam walked over to an intercom station located on the opposite wall, punched in a code and palmed the reader. There was a soft ‘clank’, and a six foot cube containing the entire broom closet swung inwards on a hidden hinge. When it stopped there was a wide opening.

  “It's time to find out just how deep this rabbit hole goes,” Jess said with a grin. Then he led them into the tunnel beyond. “Jake,” he continued. “I know your aware that the elevator goes to some secret hidden levels. But did you know that on one of those levels, it opens on the other end of this tunnel?”

  “I hadn't thought about it much,” Jake replied. “But I figured there must be something like this.”

  “Good!” Jess said with a smile. “But I'm betting you didn't know we also have a secret transit tube connecting us with the Micronic Enterprises developmental factory building where Sandra's office and lab is located. It's about 50 miles away.”

  Jake just shrugged. Then Jess led the way down the corridor past several doors, until they reached a T shaped intersection with two smaller corridors and an elevator door. When they were all on the elevator, he punched in a code on the keypad. When the doors opened he led them less than a hundred feet down the corridor, and stopped next to a door with an identi-screen equipped intercom.

  “I'm supposed to show Cindy how to take a secure transit pod, back and forth between Sandra's lab and Hillside without getting lost,” he said. “But I'm less than sure that the secure access system will let any of us escort Sam into the secure zone. In which case he would have to wait outside.”

  “Tell me if I'm right to suspect that this can be tested by registering Sam for access,” Jake queried. “Then adding the rest of us, one at a time to his benefactor list, until we see if any of us can let him in?”

  “You, got it in one!” said Stephanie.

  “Then I'd like sign on to the benefactor list... last!” Jake continued. “And I'd like Cindy to sign on to it first.”

  Sam walked up to and palmed the identi-screen. Then he punched in a short code. After which, the surface of the identi-screen displayed ‘scan to authorize access’.

  “Your next Cindy,” Sam said pointing at the identi-screen.

  Without a word Cindy palmed the identi-screen. It flashed, ‘access denied’ for a second before it returned to the authorization instructions. Stephanie waved Jess forward, who shrugged and tried adding his hand the list. It ‘denied’ both Jess and then Stephanie. Then as soon as Jake touched the identi-screen, it said ‘approved’ and the door silently slid open.

  “A security upgrade for Sam Davidson to ‘Hillside Level Zero’ has been logged,” a mechanical voice announced.

  Sam looked shocked.

  “Level zero?” he inquired. “Doesn't that mean unlimited access to absolutely everything?”

  “Sure does!” responded Stephanie with a smile.

  “Yikes!” he said.

  The outer door closed and the inner opened. Then Jess led Cindy to another identi-screen.

  “The way it works is that you enter a destination code,” he said. “For you Hillside was put on speed dial one and the building with Sandra's lab on two. Then you palm the identi-screen. A transfer pod will arrive for you and the access door will open. Just get in and press the go button, you'll get there. Got it?”

  “I think so,” Cindy said.

  “Good!” Jess replied. “This concludes the fifty cent tour.”

  “In that case,” Cindy responded. “I think we have a busy day tomorrow Jake. Perhaps we should turn in early tonight?”

  “Yes, do rest up,” Sam said. “We are still on for tomorrow, right?”

  Cindy blew a kiss towards Sam's snake tattoo.

  “Count on it!” she said. “But for the moment...”

  She stepped up to Jake and reached into the waistband of his pants. Taking a firm hold of his cock she said, “Do take me home Jake.”

  Chapter 10 XenDar

  BillSong drove his TreeCrawler with near reckless abandon. He was happy. The ‘ship's council’ had finally determined that there were no sentient lifeforms in the forests of XenDar.

  He was confident that the TreeCrawler made sufficient noise and vibration to scare off any of the squirrel like TreeRunners or semiaerial FlingAts. That might otherwise have been chewed up by the trimmer blades. Now however, he didn't even have to worry about the occasional predatory StingRat. Which might be too busy stalking a FlingAt, to pay attention to the noise. Nor did he have to worry about the rarely seen, ferocious SnarlClaw. That being true to it's belligerent nature would as often as not, choose to stand it's ground and snarl in the face of any intruder.

  Neither actually happened very often. Though even at officially reasonable speeds it was sometimes difficult to stop in time but it no longer mattered. They were all officially insentient. This made it legal for him to double the TreeCrawler's speed and therefore the potential profit. As he used it to carve out the arboreal pathways
that a standard ‘WayWalker’ needed to navigate the forest.

  It had taken years of path cutting to get skillful enough with the TreeCrawler's grippers. To move the machine through the dense arboreal foliage fast enough for it to become a problem. The TreeCrawler's onboard computer could automatically scan and select only those vines, hanging down from the underside of the BranchCritter, that were strong enough to hold enough of the TreeCrawler's weight. As the computer carefully distributed the load between it's twelve gripper arms.

  The skill lay in seeing which sequence of which preselected anchor points would allow the TreeCrawler to only occasionally need to stop. In order to position it's heavy cutter arm against those larger vines that were actually in the way. While usually finding a path that instead pitted just the auto-trimmer wheels against mere slender young twigs.

  The foliage was beginning to thin as he approached one of the huge trunks. He wanted to leave enough foliage for a cluster of nesters to settle in near the tree. So it was time to get topside. This was a maneuver that required some skill, in order to fashion a path that a WayWalker could use to climb up onto the BranchCritter's shell.

  Then BillSong spotted a clump of one of the varieties of bushy plants that liked to curl up at the edge of the shell. He deftly used the TreeCrawler's gripper arms to entangle a reasonably stout pair of young vine shoots with the bush. Doing so in such a way as to temporarily leave them looping up past the edge of the shell. He also used the special purpose auxiliary manipulator arm to carefully inject the young vine shoots with a special growth hormone that would insure that they would soon be stout enough to hold a WayWalker's weight.

  Then he backed up a short distance. Next with the auto-trimmers disabled to avoid leaving a false trail for the Way Walkers that he hoped would soon begin using the new TreeWay he was cutting. He slowly advanced at an angle through the vines to the outer edge of the foliage. It took all of his concentration to avoid putting too much of the TreeCrawler's weight on any one of the outer vines as he used the gripper arms to rotate the TreeCrawler's vertical orientation as it crept up to the edge of the BranchCritter's shell. Once the leading gripper arms were able to obtain sufficiently secure grips on the outer ridges of the hard shell however, the TreeCrawler had more than enough power to pull itself up onto the ShellWay. Which of course resulted in it being right side up again.