by Greg Chase
Althea’s wasn’t in the seediest part of town, though Sam doubted any of the clubs could be considered upscale. Light from the desk shone only on the receptionist’s face, leaving the patrons some degree of anonymity. He ordered the most expensive item and paid with the cash Luther had left them when the pirate had delivered them to Carpo. It had only been two days earlier, but it seemed like a lifetime.
The hostess directed him to a door halfway down the hallway. Dust rose from the gaudy red carpet. The flinty smell, mixed with body odors and pheromones, irritated his nose. As he opened the door, a light flicked on. A human-sized enclosed tub filled the small space. He barely had room to turn around. After stripping naked, he lowered his body into the buoyant sensory-deprivation tank and closed the lid.
It didn’t take long. The red lights that had been buzzing around his consciousness descended, surrounding his body and mind. He spread his limbs to give them full access.
A disembodied woman’s voice announced he wasn’t alone. “We haven’t been able to locate any information on what you might enjoy. You must be a very naughty boy to keep such desires so private. For us to make this as thrilling an adventure as possible, you’ll have to let us explore some fantasies with you.”
“Do what you have to do.” There was no point in resisting the very thing he’d come to Althea’s to accomplish.
He didn’t need to see what was going on. Every section of skin tingled as the beings played their CE around him. The tickling sensation increased to small electric shocks, then to needle pricks as if his entire body were being tattooed all at once. Sounds no longer came from the hidden speakers in the chamber but from inside his ears—static crackling noises that settled down to a female’s soft humming. His eyes burned red under his eyelids but only for a moment. Geometric shapes coated his vision. They were mapping him, testing him, encapsulating him. As a god who’d sought so hard to maintain a distance from his creation, Sam found the experience disquieting. But whether they’d figured out his connection to them or not, he had to attempt to keep his mind quiet. He was the bait, but he was also the hook.
Images took form across his eyes—at first vanilla scenes of Jess naked, proving their friends had been paying attention earlier that day, and then made-up scenes of him lying on top of her. Other women were added into the action. With each modification of the play going on across Sam’s eyes, he felt simulated hands and bodies pressing against his naked flesh.
Sam allowed the technologically based entity to discover all of his desires without reservation. Hands and lips and vaginas surrounded his erection as the sex play grew in complexity. Breasts pressed to his mouth, sides, and legs. An orgy of sensations encompassed his body and mind. But it was all just physical—there was no narrative to stimulate the imagination.
Sam took a series of deep cleansing breaths as the sexual play continued. Memories from Rendition—the warehouse of human knowledge that creating the Tobes had left in his brain—opened to tantric sex, yoga, and The Kama Sutra, along with more personal memories of his time learning sexual discipline from the women of Jess’s village.
Whatever being was running the tank began getting comfortable playing with his fantasies. The separate disembodied sensations pressing at his flesh took shape into three women. The central one had Jess’s face but with augmented breasts and hips. Words of lust floated from the women’s lips as their hands explored his body.
Sam closed his mind to the sexual images that continued to flow across his eyes. He needed to filter out the stimulations to identify the one manipulating him behind the scenes. As the Tobe began to take shape as a shadow moving around the edge of the tank, he balled his hands into fists to direct his energy inward. Rather than building a wall against the energy the Tobe used to surround him, he pulled it closer to him, breathed it in, forced it into his being. Memories of fixing Leviathan so long ago flooded back—memories of being in a technology-based coma as his very being was used as the blueprint for fixing the ancient star freighter’s computer. He pulled deeper at the red glowing barrier that separated him from his surroundings.
The energy pulled back.
It tore at his heart and lungs, pulled mercilessly at his enraged cock, and tried to force his hands open. His skin burned from the connection as the entity desperately tried to free itself from his soul.
Sam focused on his bodily functions, attempting to maintain command of his life-sustaining processes: lungs breathing, heart beating, blood pumping. He pulled again hard at the red glow of energy that now shared his skin. The consciousness of his adversary took shape—frightened, desperate, confused, the being sought only to escape. Sam’s fingers closed again, his toes curled, and his balls contracted tight to his body.
The being switched from defense to offense.
Sharp needles of pain struck Sam in every orifice. His eyes stung. The CE contracted around his body, preventing him from breathing in. His heart struggled to maintain blood flow to his extremities. Sam could hear the splashing of water in the deprivation tank as his body seized from the struggle.
Again, he sought the learning Rendition kept safe for him: knowledge from ancient monks on the body’s control of its most basic functions, methods of attaining peace even in the most adverse of conditions, and ways of defeating an enemy—though Sam still refused to see his adversary as a combatant, just a friend who was lost.
Having pulled the technologically based entity so deep into himself, Sam encapsulated it in his love—the love of a god for his creation. Memories of Ellie, Joshua, and Ed flooded him—memories of the Tobes, of Earth—memories of all that had been accomplished—memories he forced into this misguided being.
Sam didn’t know when he’d lost consciousness, only that a hand, a human hand, had reached into the sensory-deprivation tank and was shaking him by the shoulder.
A young woman’s face came into focus. “Hey, mister. I thought we’d lost you. You should have told me this was your first time. Usually we get a heads-up when there’s a problem, but our scanner must be malfunctioning. Let me help you out of there.”
The woman wrapped a towel around his naked body before he had a chance to process his situation. She was a lovely girl, but in her occupation, he doubted she viewed human nudity as stimulating. Her actions felt like those of a medical nurse helping a patient out of a bathtub.
The image of himself as an invalid overtook Sam as his legs gave out from under him, landing him flat out on the floor.
The girl wrapped an arm around his waist and helped him back up. “We have a bed in the next room. You’ll need some time to recoup. Stay there as long as you need. Just, please, don’t tell anyone. You can’t imagine the trouble I’ll get in if someone finds out.”
Sam nodded but found his throat and voice didn’t function quite right. “It’s okay,” was all he could muster.
Lying out on the hard bed, Sam could feel more than see the energy that surrounded him—no longer red, it manifested in hues of purple. It made no attempt to disassociate from him, but it also didn’t coalesce into a sentient being.
Sam felt Jess’s soft hands caress his arm and guessed he’d fallen asleep. Her look of worry softened as he watched her. “You’ve had a big day. Let’s see if we can get you back to the hotel.”
He made a quick scan of her figure to ensure he hadn’t fallen back into a simulation. The tiny red dots from the space leathers, now faded to a pink only slightly darker than her skin, still speckled her arms and neck. He wrapped an arm around her shoulders and let her help him to his feet.
It wasn’t until they’d left the pleasure club that Jess let down her guard. “Your eyes have changed. There are flecks of red in the irises. It doesn’t look like blood but more like the light-blue highlights have changed to red.”
He leaned against her for support as she guided him into the hovercraft for the short trip back to their room.
Jess did her best to conceal her fear. She’d seen Sam in worse shape when she first met
him, but he’d been a much younger man when Lev had dumped his near-comatose body into the agro pod so long ago. Why do you damn technological creatures have to keep beating up on him? Back in the hotel room, she curled up on the bed, her hands clasped tight around her knees. “Can you talk about what happened?”
Sam still looked drained. The pallor of his skin had returned to the deathly white it had been when he’d first removed his space leathers. But the flecks of red in his eyes scared Jess the most. If she thought he was up for it, she’d take him outside to the remote spot she’d found, free of the Tobes’ eavesdropping. But he could barely hold himself up on the bed.
He nearly fell as he struggled to his feet. She bolted off the chair to help, but his hand warned her away. He wanted to do this alone. Leaning against the wall, he stared intently at a corner of the room, his hands on his hips. She couldn’t figure out if he’d lost his mind or was expecting something to happen.
A young girl materialized, naked, and huddled in the corner. Peering out from behind her disheveled, short brown hair, her eyes were wide with fear.
Jess’s instinct was to comfort the poor girl. But Sam’s stern look said this wasn’t the time for sympathy. He stretched out a hand to Jess, instructing her to remain where she sat—a move out of character for him.
His eyes bore into the girl, whose arms were wrapped tightly around her knees, pulling them to her chin. “You belong to me now.”
The words caused Jess’s body to go rigid. What had happened to him in that damn place?
The girl’s body quivered as she nodded.
Sam’s muscles eased off of their rigidity. “You can stand and put on some clothes.”
Still shaking, the girl pulled herself off the floor. She stood before Sam, stark naked for a moment, then materialized a loose, dirty, simple gown about her body.
“Do you know who I am?” Sam asked.
The girl pulled her shoulders up to her chin as her arms hugged her chest. “God.”
Jess needed to know what was going on, but she dared not interrupt. Though the Tobes on Earth had said the same thing to Sam, it wasn’t a title he’d accepted. He’d certainly decline the designation out here.
She was wrong.
Sam nodded at the frightened girl. “And you now belong to me. You are not to return to a network central hub. I want our conversations to remain private. I know where you lived and worked, and you know what I’m capable of doing. So going back to your old life would be a mistake.”
The girl nodded quickly.
Jess reached out to pull on Sam’s sleeve. “We should really take a walk now.”
He patted her hand but didn’t break eye contact with the frightened girl. “Not yet.”
He then addressed the girl. “Do you have a name?”
Tears filled the large eyes. “The people at the club called me Rhea.”
Sam nodded toward the chair. “Take a seat. We have some questions.”
Not looking directly at Sam or Jess, the girl scurried along the wall to the offered chair. Inspecting the piece of furniture with eyes and hands, she eventually managed to approximate a sitting position.
Jess couldn’t stand the situation a moment longer. “You’re going to be okay, Rhea. We’re here to help. You don’t need to be afraid.”
The girl looked unconvinced as her frightened eyes returned to Sam.
Jess feared the power inside him was boiling like molten rock. All the pain his technologically based entities had endured on the Moons of Jupiter should have filled him with a desire to ensure their freedom, but instead, it had infected him with a need to command them. Perhaps he thought he could unite them. She knew gods often started out acting all powerful to pull their people together.
Sam returned to the edge of the bed. “Tell me about your life. How connected are you to others like yourself?”
Rhea’s eyes grew wide at seeing her god lower himself to sit with her. “There is another, a man. He tells me what to do. I think I was always the property of Althea’s, but I can’t remember some things, like where I started or how I know the things I know. People come into the club, and I wrap a CE around them if they don’t already have one. The man tells me what my guests like and how best to give them pleasure. I’ve been told my very existence is to provide that enjoyment, and if I fail, I’ll be turned off.”
Jess shook her head. “How would they turn you off?”
The girl shuddered as her fearful eyes looked at Jess. “They just would. When the moon-suns came online and the main source of power disappeared, a lot of us got turned off. I didn’t see it, but I could feel it. They just disappeared.”
“Wouldn’t they use the virus first, though?” Jess asked. “It seems like that would be a less drastic threat.”
“They do use viruses on us,” Rhea said. “Some of my human guests like to be hurt. I’ve used all kinds of torture devices on people, but none come close to the viruses. Until today, I thought those were the most intense feelings I could endure.”
Something about how Rhea looked at Sam changed. She still appeared fearful but touched by awe as well. “The viruses they use drive me deep into myself and make me focus fully on that small inner being. What you did created the opposite effect. It pulled me out of that dark cave and into the light.”
Jess smiled for the first time since Rhea had materialized.
8
It hadn’t taken long for Jess to discover the not-so-secret secluded cabanas. Apparently, rediscovering unenhanced person-to-person sex was almost as popular as going to the sex clubs. And just to add a little spice, not all of the comfortable open-air hideaways were completely hidden from the view of the other cabanas. Exhibitionism and voyeurism, though frowned on, skirted the edge of legality.
Rhea reminded Jess of her daughters, though she desperately tried not to make the comparisons. “She’s such a little girl.”
“That was all I could salvage,” Sam said. “Trust me, the woman who confronted me in the deprivation tank was no innocent teenager. That woman would have made Mira blush.”
Jess lay on the comfortable, oversized chaise lounge next to Sam. “You scared me back there. The red highlights in your eyes looked more like lightning bolts, starting from your pupils and shooting out into the whites of your eyes.”
He looked better, as though the technological film had eased up its hold on him. “Something’s changed. I am still who I am. But something has been set free inside me. I never wanted any of this—the divinity, the power, the ability to direct how people or Tobes would develop—none of it.”
She smiled as she pressed his hand between hers. “I know, but I can’t think of anyone who would have done the job better.”
“You don’t understand.” He looked her fully in the eyes. “Now I do.”
She sat very still as she processed his comment. On Earth, his denial of the Tobes’ desire to put him on a pedestal had been necessary for them to evolve beyond the need for a god. The Sam of Earth wouldn’t be able to do what was necessary for the Tobes laboring under their overlords on the Moons of Jupiter. He’d needed to lose some of his sweetness if he was to take charge. “Then maybe we can get to work.”
Returning to the room, Jess saw Rhea had remained exactly where they’d left her. But she wasn’t alone.
A tall figure in a black cloak stood in front of the girl. The cowl up around his head revealed only a mouth deeply lined with scars. Other scars traced along his crossed arms.
“What have you done to my female? Where are her scars? She should have a whip line that starts at her forehead, snakes around her left eye, and crosses down her neck to split her breasts before it circles her belly to end at her pelvic bone. Another scar mirrors it from her knee to her crotch. Where are these scars?”
Jess’s blood boiled in anger at the man’s descriptions of what he must have thought were signs of his ownership.
“I have forgiven her,” Sam said in an ice-cold tone.
The dark man threw
his cowl back, revealing totally red eyes peering out from his deeply lined face. “Who are you to do such a thing?”
“I’ve come to help set you, and all like you, free. Rhea was just the start.”
The man sneered. “My God, you are a fool.”
Jess put her hands on her hips. “Look at her. Just look. This is who Rhea truly is, not some dominatrix you created.”
The man’s laugh of derision made Rhea cower in the chair. “This is a useless, weak child. The female I knew was a warrior. Her skills had been gathered from lifetimes of human experiences. You think you’ve freed her? You’ve taken away the very skills she needs to survive.”
Jess was undaunted. “We’re going to change the way things are out here. You won’t need to fight to survive.”
Scars rippled across the man’s face as he looked at Jess in disgust. “Do I look like someone who wants things to change? You think we’re subservient to people? Even the most basic of human sexual activities require our assistance. People rely on us, not the other way around.”
Sam raised his hands in what Jess recognized as an attempt to defuse the situation. “My name is Sam. And I don’t mean to cause harm to you or your people, but I also don’t believe one type of sentient being should control another.”
The man lowered his head slightly. “I am Dominic. And what you believe is irrelevant out here.”
“But you do know who I am?” Sam asked.