by Anna Mayle
Jacobi held his hands up in a bid for peace. “She came up with that all on her own; it was one of those ‘mouths of babes’ things.”
He didn’t believe it for a second, but all the arguing would do was egg the girl on, and Jacobi didn’t need help. He was mucking up Enoch’s existence just enough on his own. “I need to check the power hub before we leave tomorrow. Cora, I’m going to give you your injection and leave you here with Jacobi’s monitor. Jacobi, if you want to track my progress, I’ve fitted my maintenance goggles with an outward camera as well as the inner lens Network visual and diagnostics.”
“Did you just give me permission to act upon my stalker-ish tendencies?” Jacobi sounded happily amazed.
Cora looked confused.
“Since Jacobi isn’t physically with us, I made it so he can see what I see and I can see him through the goggles as if he were here.” Enoch explained to here.
Awe replaced uncertainty. “Can mine do that?”
He carefully cleaned the needle, readied her last dose, and shook his head. “Yours are too small to hold everything, because you’re smaller. I don’t have time to fidget with it now, but when we get home, I’ll work on creating something similar for you.”
Jacobi was looking at him sappily.
“Do I amuse you?” Enoch challenged.
“Home, huh?” the hacker smiled.
Enoch ignored him completely. Cora stared at the needle forlornly. She knew she needed the vaccination, but the process of receiving it… Enoch concurred. He hated the injections as well.
He sat down and motioned her over. “Up,” he invited and patted his knees. She scrambled into place and turned around, her little back tense against his stomach and chest. Carefully, Enoch encircled her with one arm and held out his hand for hers. “I know it’s unpleasant. I have to take them, too.”
She looked up over her shoulder at his face, “But you have to take yours forever?”
He nodded, “and this is your last one.”
Small face determined, she nodded and looked away, eyes squeezed shut even though they were facing in a completely different direction.
“Done,” Enoch announced.
Cora scrambled down and hid in her hammock. Probably so he wouldn’t see her eyes tearing up. She wanted to be a big strong Angel after all. If her parents had been buried, they would have been turning in their graves.
Taking up the larger of the needles, Enoch dosed himself with his pain killer and stood.
“Where is the place you’re going?” Jacobi asked from the console.
“Underground,” Enoch fished around in his pocket and recovered an ear piece. He slipped it into one ear and tapped the side of the glasses. “Turn off the monitor sound and say something.”
“Do you love me, Beauty?” Jacobi teased.
Enoch heard him clearly. “Cora, I should be back sometime tonight. There’s food in the box by the console. Get a lot of rest. We’re leaving early and it won’t be an easy journey.”
The hammock bobbed a bit.
“Jacobi, I need you to monitor the kid, use the ear bud to contact me. It’s about a six hour trip by cyc, and I have to go more slowly than above ground.”
“I’ve never heard of the power hub before.”
Enoch readied a second syringe of his serum, capped and cased the needle and stored it along with a satchel of tools and the solar panels he and Cora had retrieved from the angel’s cycs. “That’s because it’s out of Network reach.” He tossed one last, “be safe” at Cora’s cocooned form and took up his wrench. The large bulkhead door opened with difficulty, but it closed just fine after he and the cyc were safely behind it.
Enoch would have requested that Jacobi speak, to test that his audio signature would travel so far from the signal tower. He decided it would be a redundant command seeing as his true test would be getting him to shut up.
“What’s outside of the Network’s reach but only hours aw…” the curiosity in the hackers voice slipped into realization and fear all in that one sentence. Impressive.
“The power hub is in Nomans.”
* * * *
“That’s why you’ll need another dose in the same day,” Jacobi spoke quietly. “Being there is going to hurt you.”
Enoch didn’t seem to think that mattered at all, that nonchalance bothered Jacobi to no end. “I will heal. It’s the reason I placed it where I did. I made one hundred and two attempts to create the hub in a more habitable if less inhabited place. Each time the solar panels were stolen or destroyed. For years the Network was at 35% capacity because the only source I could protect was geothermal, underground. I had to use a signal refraction produced from bouncing a stream off of the ionosphere to make the Network’s because the same thing kept happening when anyone discovered my lines. Even the signal antenna that sends the data up has to be just below the surface. One mile in circumference to get the force needed and I had to bury it. You have no idea how annoying sentient life is.”
Jacobi didn’t manage to hide the snort that escaped him. He could see a young and idealistic Enoch staring time and again at the place he just know he’d left his project, cursing at the people he was trying to help, fetching his tools and starting over.
“This one I can’t bury, so where else was I supposed to put it?”
He was right. Unfortunately power sources and transport were in high demand to human and Angel alike. “Well at least I know why you didn’t bring Cora.”
Silence settled for a while. The only visuals Jacobi could get were the ten or so feet ahead lit by the headlight on Enoch’s cyc. Attention split, he played with Cora, gathered and compiled information for their journey, and monitored Enoch’s vitals as best he could with his limited connection. He knew the instant the other man crossed into Nomans. His temperature pulse and blood pressure all spiked, a fight or flight response but with no visible external stimuli.
In the meager light he watched the parchment pale skin growing pink. Enoch’s jaw was tight, teeth grit together. Jacobi ran some music through the transmission, it wasn’t much and didn’t manage to do much, but at least it was something. “Why does he put himself through so much for people if he hates them?”
Cora touched the screen where she’d found another hidden object in her game. “He doesn’t hate us, he misses us,” she responded to the rhetorical question. “He hates what people have done and gets scared they’ll keep doing it. Maybe he hates himself for not hating them.”
Jacobi wished he could reach out of the Network and ruffle the tiny fuzz of new growth that she called hair. “Never say that to Enoch,” he advised.
She smiled a sad smile. “I wish he could have met my people, beyond business. They would have liked him. I like him.”
“He’s an Angel though.”
“Wasn’t there a time when that wasn’t a bad thing to be?”
Jacobi shrugged and brought of the next seek and find image for her. “There are some documents that mention them in a more benign light. Servants, messengers, protectors maybe, but they’re so old I can’t make true sense of them.”
Enoch’s voice joined the conversation and Cora and Jacobi both jumped. They looked at each other with the sheepish guilt of the truly busted. “Those angels and modern Angels are not the same thing.”
“How long have…” Jacobi trailed off, unsure that he wanted to know.
Enoch ignored the question. “There was a group of Cyc enthusiasts before the war and the plague. A large number of children were born after with abnormalities, deformities. A lot of parents didn’t have the strength to care for them. They were abandoned everywhere. The Cyc group went around collecting them, helped to raise them. It was rumored that someone high up in their ranks had lost their child to the plague, but it’s been too long to uncover their true motivation. It’s been so long no one remembers their name, it was shortened to Angels around the same time that the Walls were erected.”
Jacobi was confused. Enoch’s library, his m
echanical, structural and chemical knowledge, the history of their race, he had learned more in his little time with the Angel than he had in years of searching the ancient and forgotten corners of their primary hub of information. “Why is none of this data available on the Network?”
“It was, once.” Enoch’s voice trailed off on that last word.
Jacobi left Cora to her game and turned all of his focus to Enoch’s visuals. He was standing in front of another giant metal door, like the only in the lake room. The giant wrench had been wedged in the wheel shaped handle. All he could see of Enoch were his thickly muscled arms as he strained against it, slowly turned it.
“How much farther?” Jacobi asked in a worried tone.
“This is the last door. There’s another half mile after this.”
Light glinted off of something just out of the clear image when Enoch backed up. A tube of some sort, no, multiple tubes, running along the entire wall of the tunnel. “What are those?”
“I can’t see you until you step into your window, Jacobi. If you’re pointing it isn’t very helpful.”
He looked at the window dubiously. This was a tech he’d never tried before. Reaching out, he watched his arm disappear into the glowing screen instead of pushing at aside as usual. “You really made a portal.”
“My father programmed this place. I took over when he passed. It isn’t rocket science.”
“What’s rocket science?”
“I’m sure I have a book on it.”
Jacobi could see why Enoch hadn’t wanted to talk to his disembodied voice when they’d first met. It was kind of creepy. “Can you see my arm?”
“Yes.” Enoch waited a moment before asking, “Will the rest of you be joining it?”
“Nah, I’m the babysitter, sort of.” He pointed again, “Those, what are those?”
“Vacuum tubes,” Enoch turned his cyc so the full force of its headlight was upon them.
They were shiny metal things. Some had windows riveted into the side, groupings of cords colored red, yellow, blue and violet were bound inside each surrounded by sets of clear, incandescent threads, almost like glass. They glowed. “Beautiful.”
Enoch grinned, Jacobi couldn’t see it but the pleasure was there in his voice when he said, “Yes.”
Jacobi pulled out of the screen and brought it into the corner of Cora’s game window. “Look Cora, look how it glows.”
Her eyes went wide and she touched the screen gingerly, as if she thought she might break the thin crystalline fibers. “What are they?”
“Light,” Enoch explained. “It’s one of the power sources for the Network.”
“You caught the sun!” Cora squealed with glee.
Jacobi sobered at that description. Put like that, he could understand why most thought of such skills as forbidden. Harnessing the power of the sun…thank the skies Enoch was using it to create rather than destroy.
Enoch must have caught the implications too, because he clarified quickly. “No, I just…borrowed some of her hair.”
Nice save. Jacobi gave a soft sigh before light filled the end of the tunnel. Enoch slowed to a stop at a wide archway reinforced with woven steal and strong stone. Through that opening the world opened up for a least a half mile, maybe more before the ground rose again. The walls of the pit were coated in prisms and mirrored structures catching and redirecting the light from piece to piece, white to rainbows to four shimmering shades of red, yellow, blue and violet. They crisscrossed each other and spun off from each other like a massive luminescent cobweb before being focused into the myriad solar panels lining the ground and lower walls of the crater.
“Wow,” Cora breathed, breaking the spell of the moment.
Enoch began to unpack his equipment and Jacobi continued to stare. Wow was right. He made this! Those big, rough hands, the hands that made me want…he made this. “Wow.” Jacobi echoed, body nearly vibrating with the need to put those hands back on his body. He focused audio to the ear-bud, and for Enoch’s ears alone he whispered. “Apparently I find beautiful science to be very…exciting. Hurry home.” His voice was breathy, tremulous, and he hadn’t tried to sound that way.
If Enoch fumbling his tools was any indication though, apparently it had been just the right tone.
Chapter Nine
Enoch cursed and began gathering the tools he’d dropped. The comment, as most of the hacker’s comments, had come out of nowhere. Though eventually he imagined he would build up a resistance to the spontaneous sexuality, today was not that day. The breathy promise of that voice had sent a current of lust instantly to his groin. Enoch was at least as charged as one of the solar panels before him.
Working with a hard on was not going to be fun. It had been so long since he’d been active in that way, that he’d forgotten how annoying it could be. He would have thought the discomfort of Nomans would help cool him off, but it didn’t. If anything, it made every nerve feel more raw and desperate.
A quick visual diagnostic at least told him it wouldn’t be a long job. A couple of mirrors had fallen and destroyed one of the solar panels, a little wall climbing and soldering after the sun set and everything would be back to full function again.
Which meant he had some time to wait, and a chance to take care of his predicament.
“If Cora’s still watching, you should let her get back to her game,” he suggested.
“Why?” Jacobi was clearly unaware of what he’d started.
Enoch set one of the replacement mirrors against the wall opposite him, “little eyes.”
A whir and click followed by a chirped, “Done,” brought a smile to Enoch’s face.
He trailed his fingers slowly down the front of his coveralls, flicking a clasp loose here and there to give a glimpse of the skin beneath. Jacobi’s breath quickened in his ears and Enoch watched his own smile grow into a teasing grin. How long had it been since he’d teased? Played? He almost didn’t recognize the man in the mirror before him.
“Aren’t,” Jacobi gasped and tried again, “Aren’t you in pain?”
“Agony,” Enoch confirmed and popped the remaining clasps. The coveralls pooled around his ankles, trapped there by heavy boots. He leaned so only his shoulders touched against the earthen wall to his back, his legs spread and hips jutted forward to give an excellent view of his proud member, long, thick and veined before him. The blush of pink to the excited shaft held it in stark contrast to the rest of his parchment skin. Enoch found himself feeling a bit unsure. He hadn’t just looked at himself for…a very long time. Tight muscles coated in a glistening sheen of sweat in the heat of Nomans, too long limbs, too small waist, hairless and white as ash. His only clothing, the boots and pool of brown round his ankles and the round lensed brass goggles over his eyes, he looked every inch the monster people thought him to be.
Jacobi’s need filled groan broke through his tide of self-loathing. “Oh skies! You…ah…are you in love with me yet?” he nearly begged.
Enoch smirked again, confidence restored effortlessly by the artless young hacker. “Heavily in lust, but I’m not in the Network, am I? Consider this an integrated live show. Look but don’t touch.”
“You are so mean,” the hacker panted.
“Step into the screen, Jacobi. Let me see you.”
From the corner of his eye, the young man cautiously walked into view.
The goggles worked perfectly. Jacobi looked so solid that if Enoch hadn’t programmed them himself, he would have suspected a hoax. The Network bound hacker was soft and nude and breathtakingly lovely. His slight form was willowy, perfectly proportioned. The musculature was there, but not overt, he looked like the porcelain figure of a man. An exquisite life sized doll. His smooth oval face and full sculpted lips might have been feminine if not for the strong set of his jaw and the soft curve of an Adam’s apple evident in his neck. Most striking of all though, had to be those eyes. Staring almost timidly out at him through the thick fall of pale blond curls, Jacobi’s eyes gl
owed pale electric blue, the exact shade of the solar filaments rushing power to the Network that cradled him.
“You…” Enoch caught himself reaching out to the image.
Jacobi paused at the same time. He’d been reaching back. It was Jacobi who closed the distance between them at last. His incorporeal hand skimmed the raised peak of Enoch’s left nipple and over to the right. There was no touch, the long fingers weren’t really there, but Enoch’s flesh tingled and his breath caught. His chest tightened and the nubs under Jacobi’s attentions grew hard. Enoch found himself canting his hips that bit forward. He’d meant this to be a tease for the hacker who had so quickly grown adept at teasing him, but somewhere along the way he’d lost control.
The smaller hacker leaned in close, trailing phantom lips over Enoch’s collar bone. He tilted his head to the side to allow Jacobi in closer. Hands rested just shy of his hips and Enoch watched himself being thoroughly loved in the reflection in the solar mirror. His knees unsteady, he slid helplessly to the ground. Jacobi followed and ended up on all fours, kneeling between his legs.
“I wonder if I could bring you off without a single touch,” he licked his full lips and looked up at Enoch with those electric eyes and Enoch had no doubt the hacker could do just that.
The mirror showed an excellent view of Jacobi’s pert round ass rising. His motion spread the cheek apart just enough to give a glimpse of that delicate and wanting pucker. The hacker lowered his chest and parted his lips wide to take Enoch’s pulsing need into his mouth.
He jumped and cried out, helpless to capture the sound. His member twitched and Jacobi pulled back, licked along the image of Enoch in the Network. The perfect pink tongue stopped just where it should have if they’d truly been able to touch. Instead of just slipping through the image, it curled around Enoch’s cock in luxuriating circles. Oh that just wasn’t fair.
“You programed a bot from my likeness,” Enoch accused through a groan watching that ass wiggle happily while the mouth closed around him again.