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The standard day aboard ART doesn’t put me down in engineering, because I’m not needed there unless something goes wrong. Luckily, things don’t go wrong enough for me to use any of my knowledge about the area on a day-to-day basis. Unluckily, things have gotten so fucked that I’ve memorized the layout on the fly, and later picked up the basics of ART’s engineering systems just to be safe. (This isn’t so bad, because it’s ART. But, still.)
So, I end up down in engineering that day, because I’m bored and ART’s feeling flighty. It gets like that, sometimes, with stuff involving its engines - a side effect of the alien remnant colony incident, I think. So sometimes I go down and watch whatever was happening, just so it’d feel safer.
The way ART’s systems are laid out, there’s a series of smaller reactors that power the non-engine portions of the ship. They feed into the engine’s power supply, but are still ultimately separate from it - the engine has its own, larger reactor, and only takes power from the smaller ones as backup (Far as I know, it can go the other way, too, but that’s not important.) I don’t know the details, and all that’s really important here is that some fuel maintenance had to be done on them, and I’m there too.
Matteo chatters idly as we walk, something about the reactor and its specs and the tritium-based fuel sludge used to feed ART’s smaller reactors. I keep them on one of my second processing tracks, and focus a larger part of my attention on the serial ART and I have up in the feed.
Overall, it was a pretty normal cycle.
Then, something changed once I entered the first reactor chamber.
The space is large, and dim. The reactor sits half in and half against the far wall, and takes up a solid sixty percent of the available floor space. Fuel nozzles are lined up in slots along the walls, pointed up just in case the internal latching mechanism gives out. I could appreciate the additional safety feature - it leads to less accidents, and therefore fewer injuries among human crews.
Anyway. I watch as Matteo unhooks the first one from it’s slot, double-checks its seal, and starts towards the reactor.
They line up the nozzle up with its slot, before carefully jacking it in. I… Stare… at it.
My eyes focus in on the sight of the nozzle’s tip slipping into the aperture, and the low click! It makes once it bottoms out. Matteo’s fingers slide up to the manual lever controlling fluid flow through the cable, and flicks it.
The cable tightens, jerking slightly as the mechanisms controlling fuel output kick into gear. Based on the way the cable shifts, I can all but watch the fluid flowing through its opaque outer casing. It thickens slowly as fluid drips down its length, and, once a steady flow was established, it begins pumping fuel in earnest.
For some reason, I feel the organic skin of my cheeks heat up. The warmth triggers a warning, my systems briefly tricking themselves into thinking there was an exposed heat source in front of me. I quickly stifle it before ART can see it.
Fluid pulses through the cable, pushing together and traveling in thick ovals under its surface. The nozzle shifts slightly in its aperture as each one reaches it, and some part of my brain pushes itself to the forefront to imagine how, if the nozzle was exposed to open air, the fluid inside would be coming out in thick splurts.
Something about the force by which it’s pumped, and the narrowness of the nozzle. Whatever.
It also does me the favor of wondering what the viscosity must be like. How it might taste. (Metallic? Sharp, acrid, maybe like what my scent receptors pick up in ART’s main engine? SecUnit tongues can run very simple composition scans on whatever we’re unfortunate enough to ingest. (Not that I think ingesting reactor fuel wouldn’t be anything other than unpleasant, but what if…))
My physical eyes, not just my drones, track a glob of fluid as it leisurely travels through the cable’s casing, before reaching the nozzle and injecting itself into the reactor.
Reflexively, I swallow.
ART sends me a ping, and -
Fuck, what am I looking at? I feel - warm. Uncomfortably so. I feel unpleasantly damp, thanks to the sweat glands positioned around my organic parts. My mouth produces more oral lubricant than I really need.
I have to get out of here. I hope Matteo wraps this up quick.
I forcibly pull my eyes off the cabling, and make them stick to Matteo from where they worked. Luckily for me, they were done plugging fuel injectors into the reactor, and are now taking a nice, long look at some diagnostics. I inhale slowly, and let out a long breath.
There are still clips of the injectors in my storage. I can see the download files. I stalwartly close them out.
Focus on Matteo. Matteo is normal, human, and inspiring absolutely nothing in me.
But my face still feels uncomfortably warm, and the thought of the fuel injector cables force an uptick of oral lubricant production. It - this.. hasn’t happened before. Something’s different. Something has to be wrong.
I need to think about this logically. I need to start by cataloguing the outward effects, then I need to run a systems scan. It could be a bug, or a glitch, or a hack, or maybe some dumb malware I’d some how picked up.
The thoughts push themselves into my active processing, jumbling up at the top of my tracks and insistently making me remove them. Each time I do so, they try to side-track me, and make me think about them
And when I do that, my face heats up. My mouth produces more oral lubricant. Something in my low belly tightens.
It was really, really, freaking me out.
One of my drones, all of which were supposed to be on standby, reorients itself to record the cable, filled to capacity and pulsing in time with the force of the fluid. It hungrily watches the way the cable, taut, strains around a thick bubble of fluid, flowing down to the comparatively narrow nozzle.
Fuck you, too, drone. Stop being a vector for - for whatever this is.
I pull all my others into a tight formation, send a separate drone to hover by Matteo, before I turn tail and run out of there.
__
I have no idea what the fuck is wrong with me.
ART harasses me relentlessly the entire time I run to my quarters, pinging me something like eight times a second for the duration of the five-or-so minute trip. I guess I'm lucky it doesn't decide to halt the lifts and corner me, but I'm too distracted to consider that beyond a panic-ridden attack plan.
What was wrong with me?
ART's corridors pass in a blur. While, normally, the scope of its ship-body is impressive, it's more or less just another stressor right now. I finally skid to a halt outside my assigned crew quarters, pinging the door for entry an entire five times too many.
ART looms ominously in the feed, now having gave up on pinging me in favor of staring. I continue ignoring it as I storm inside, throwing myself face-first into my bunk and laying myself out flat. About that time, my internal scans and diagnostics come back for a report - Negative.
If I'd had my mimicry code running, I would have done a double-take. Nothing? Really? That sure as shit couldn't be right. I order them to run again, and again, and a fourth time for good measure, and still receive the same results: Negative, barring the agitation markers.
That information was worthless, because I could tell you I was freaking out with or without a diagnostic suite. I’ve had enough experience with freaking the fuck out to be able to know by now, so, fuck it, then. What else did I already know? I open up a file in my personal workspace and begin taking notes.
It - well. It behaved like malware.
It forces me to register false temperature alerts, both internally and externally. It locks my focus on what is otherwise irrelevant junk data, and yanks my active processing out of place to focus on running simulations of illogical, probably dangerous scenarios. I know all of this because that’s constantly what it’d been doing since it activated, and now I couldn’t focus on anything else.
So - why, then? Was it targeted, or just some random shit I got from a bad download? Given the timing, and ART and I’s under-the-table work, I don’t think it was paranoid of me to assume it targeted.
There really wasn’t any other alternative - it has to be malware or a hack, probably for the purpose of damaging and/or disabling ART. Why else would I focus so intently on its engines? On its fuel lines? It’s fuel lines, which are still pumping fluid into its reactor core, whose reserve tanks have to be near capacity… One of my drones, all of which were supposed to be on standby, reorients itself to record the cable, filled to capacity and pulsing in time with the force of the fluid. It hungrily watches the way the cable, taut, strains around a thick bubble of fluid, flowing down to the comparatively narrow nozzle.
The image of fluid gushing out of its tip inserts itself back into active processing. It reminds me of something I promptly redact from my memory because - Ew. I remove the image from processing entirely. (With my luck, it’ll generate back sooner or later, because I probably have some sort of viral malware eating me right now.)
Fuck.
The thought of malware makes that stupid, colorless hair on the back of my neck bristle with unease. It’s a security risk. And it’s in me - it’d be an outside hack, pushing its way into my processors, taking them away from me. Fear creeps into my fluid lines, cold and prickly. I really, really have to be careful - especially since I haven’t determined the program’s purpose.
Am I a security risk? Have I been hacked and turned into a threat?
ART butts in. Is now a good time for me to tell you to remove your boots?
"No, fuck off," I push my face harder against my pillow, then shove at it in the feed.
Well, it says primly. My models tell me there won’t be a good time, as it were, for a while coming. Why not get it over with?
“Fuck off, ART, I’m busy,” Regardless, I wriggle around enough that I can tug my boots off without removing my face from the depths of my pillow. It is a position that a human person would find very, very uncomfortable. “And not everybody processes time in nanoseconds. Some of us have to make do with just microseconds.”
With what? You certainly don’t look busy, it brushes up against me, making to reach into my head for my diagnostics. I jolt away, and defensively erect a few spare firewalls. For all I know, the malware might be transmissible that way.
Fine, then, it takes the hint and pulls away. Then it continues, low and prying. You’ll just have to use your words and tell me.
I get another anomalous temperature warning, which must be a coincidence. That, or, the malware is using me to target ART, which is even worse.
Then I remember that I’d been down in engineering to begin with for ART’s sake, before hauling ass out of there for what looked to it like no reason. I hadn’t even left a drone for it to creep in on the inputs of, and even that would’ve been a poor substitute for what it really wanted - that being, my eyes verifying that there wasn’t anything amiss. Even if it was Matteo doing whatever needed done. Much like those alien remnant people, it couldn’t read them on the feed. But it could read me.
Except for how, as of right now, I'm keeping it at as much of an arm's length as I can without shutting my connection down fully.
That doesn’t feel very nice to think about, and my face twists uncomfortably. I reach a thin branch of myself over the feed, enough to poke against the outer edges of ART’s code. It accepts the contact with a pointed flourish. I tell it, “There wasn’t anything wrong with your engines,” I pause to swallow. Awkwardly. “They were all working normally.”
It pauses, regarding me. Then what wasn't?
"Me, obviously."
If you're to be believed, your baseline standard is "not working normally," it ruffles a few of my unimportant outer subsystems. So, that information is irrelevant. I'm asking after the cause.
I roll onto my side, pulling my legs up to my chest, and stare blankly at the bunk wall. If I wasn't still in my crew uniform, i would've drawn up all my blankets around myself into a cocoon - But, I am. And, also, I doubt it would help with my spontaneous heat warnings. (To about those, I might have to lay naked. That is a thought which... should bother me. It really should. Especially since ART would be able to see that. Instead, well.)
"I'm still looking into that. I don't want you in my systems watching." Maybe it's the leftover guilt compelling me to share that. If it was worth anything, it'd wrestle me into sharing my new malware issue, and not just the associated emotions. "It's. Nothing you'd done."
No. I want to work through this alone. ART does enough for me as is, and I don't want it seeing ... this. How I'd somehow, in the wormhole and out of a hostile situation, still managed to get myself compromised. I don't want it seeing that.
Well, that clears things up, ART snarks. Do I get to know anything at all?
"It's nothing, ART, just some integration errors in my processors," I evade. "It'll clear itself with a recharge cycle."
It ripples in the feed, projecting the sense of it folding its arms in front of itself and eyeing me. There's an undercurrent of something underpinning its voice; Frustration, maybe, but without an immediate source. It's probably about me, but whatever, it can get over that. I'm the one with malware.
Don't let me keep you, it sighs, feed-voice dropping into a low hum.
I react completely normally to that. Or, I would, if it weren’t for the malware. I feel a slow, creeping warmth make its way into my belly, and the mental image of those cables shimmers back into my main processing.
Fuck me, I think. Act normal. I’m glad to be facing the wall, given the weird face I’m making.
"Who said I was?" I grouse. “In fact,”
I initiate a recharge and maintenance shutdown, and flash the countdown in our shared feed, associated metadata scrubbed. ART ripples at me, torn between wanting to pry and wanting to approve of my recharging on my own for once.
Fine, it says.
I get in one last remark before I drop offline: Don't eat at yourself too much. We'll watch media when I'm back.
And then I'm gone.
__
My recharge cycle aborts early, which is an incredibly bad sign. My recharge functions are both incredibly deep in my systems, and critical to my survival overall.
I wake with a low, breathy sort of “Ahhn,” followed shortly by a spark of very noticeable something through my belly. My fingers are digging themselves into my bedding, and my back twitches like it wants to arch up against something. I catch that command and shut it down before it can cement itself into happening, though.
My next breath comes out as a pant. So does the one after that. And its successor. For the next 0.3 seconds, I don’t think much of anything, just processing all the feedback my body was spitting at me.
Then, I open my eyes, and stare up at my ceiling. I think, what the hell?
What the actual hell?
ART’s attention sharpens in the feed. I feel it eyeing me with interest before it actually pings me. It begins to approach, and I answer its ping with a sharp negative. Fuck off, I tell it. I’m busy.
It says, I… see that.
The fuck does that mean, I scowl. I ask it: The fuck does that mean?
It waits a reserved 0.02 seconds before it begins to speak, and I cut it off before it gets a word out. Wait, don’t tell me, I don’t care.
I push it away in the feed, and it goes, shooting a bemused ping my way. it even taps me for diagnostics, which I obviously deny. I need to take care of something. Alone.
It does its best impression of arching a single eyebrow at me, something it seems to have picked up from a recurring station commander character on Timestream Defenders Orion. I flip off its nearest camera, and it ripples in a way that tells me its returning that gesture. It says, You know how to enable your cabin’s privacy feature.
Yeah, dickhead, I sure do. I get the feeling it doesn’t actually want me to, and is calling my bluff in an attempt to get me to talk to it. Unfortunately, I would rather space myself than talk about any of this, so ART Is just out of luck.
I pull the privacy barrier around myself, summarily sending it a ping conveying that I’d be back sooner or later, just as courtesy. I’m not that pissed at it.
Then, scowling at nothing, I push myself up into an awkward, crosslegged sit. I fold my arms over my stomach and… don’t do anything. I don’t know what I was expecting to do. Or what somebody might expect me to do. In the old footage I’d been made to record (Which has since been deleted, by the way. No way am I keeping that, you couldn’t pay me to), the humans and augmented humans would either, one, have emotional collapses, two, engage in some sort of sexual activity, or three, a combination of the two. I don’t have sex parts, so, what is there to do? (My trauma modules would tell me I am having some form of emotional collapse, but I prefer to blame the malware.)
My organics still feel warm, and my inorganics feel almost buzzy. Something in my abdomen has pulled itself taut in a weird way. I feel weird. I feel like my abdominal backup processing might be frying itself in there. It almost felt like my circuitry was overheating, both inorganic wiring and organic neurons. The worst part is that it was almost… nice.
Was that what the malware would do? Cook me? Brick me if I didn’t act on… whatever it wanted? Worse yet, was it going to make me like it? I curl in on myself, shutting my eyes. Then, I initiate a deeper diagnostic than my previous ones and a full system malware scan. I even go so far as to isolate all my recent (i.e. last month, given we’re in wormhole transit) downloads, moving them to a quarantine box and slamming the metaphorical lid.
That sucks, too, because I’d gotten some good ones recently. Almost as much as the malware frying me right now.
I start picking over my sensory processing systems, combing through its code for any abnormalities while I wait.
I, unfortunately, don’t get far. Given my positioning, my fingers are primed to dig into my side-abdominal seams, and because I fail to lock my carpal and phalangeal joints, they dig into those seams. The sensation belatedly pulls me out of my useless code tidying, and I have to swallow an awkward gasp, which surely means nothing. It feels like a pressure, sort of raw and electric, and sends a warmth down to pool in some of my other seams. The feeling confuses me so much that I press my fingers a little harder against the seams, and… feel it. I work my jaw for a moment, considering it. It’s… fine. It almost reminds me of the feeling from the dream.
Then, I get ahold of myself, and jerk my arms off my torso. I land my hands awkwardly at my sides, and let them grip my sheets instead. I dismiss a faulty warmth alert for my face. All of it, not just my cheeks.
Conveniently, my processes ping me to let me know my diagnostics and system scan is back. I jump to open them, hoping for anything to tell me that yes, actually, there is something wrong with me. The diagnostics don’t tell me anything I don’t know, and the deep systems scan comes back… clean. There isn’t anything there, out of all the essential and nonessential processes it scanned. I stare at it, and my mind stutters for a dragging 0.2 seconds, because I don’t know what to make of it. My systems can’t be clean, I. Well. It has to be malware.
What about the dream? Why else would my recharge cycle boot like that? (I already know my neural tissue can interfere with my inorganic recharge cycles, if I’m worked up about something. It doesn’t do it to the degree that my recharge or shutdown cycles abort all that often, though.)
I need to revisit the effects. I must be missing something.
I think about what the malware does to me; which, ultimately, could be a good indicator of its purpose. It triggers an uptick in processing and fluid circulation, which is what sets off the faulty heat readings. The processing in question seems to be dedicated to my sensory suite and situational processing/analysis, specifically causing me to imagine and be preoccupied by the cables. Specifically, ART’s cables. It makes me want to do things with them, and even more concerningly, in general. As far as I can tell, it only affects myself and ART.
I test this by trying to picture a simulation with Three, who is another SecUnit, and Dr. Mensah. Both fill me with such a visceral disgust that I close out of those processes instantly, and they don’t try to reassert themselves.
So, the malware could be situational, because neither of them are currently aboard, and only ART is in my vicinity. However, something tells me this isn’t the case, so that only leaves one option.
It only wants ART. (I only want ART. If I were to be completely honest with myself, it isn’t malware at all. This is all me. However, I don’t want to think about that.)
Unfortunately, the only way I see myself fixing this is with ART’s help. With its scanning ability and its imaging suite. If you take away its space mapping and scanning capabilities, those are next on its list of highly advanced analytical processes, which tracks for it. But, anyway… ART.
Just the thought of it makes my processing tick up. Thanks for that, malware.
Whatever. It must be pinging me relentlessly, the asshole.
I pull down the privacy barrier. ART pings me near instantly, and gives me all of 0.03 seconds before squishing me under itself in the feed. I can tell it was barely restraining itself from pinging me incessantly while I had the barrier up.
SecUnit. What were you doing in there? It asks for a system diagnostic, and I bat it away. What’s wrong.
You see, ART doesn’t always bother asking, tone-wise. It just states things.
“I’m fine. I wasn’t doing anything,” I say, roughly. It pokes me, and I deny it access deeper than its standard.
SecUnit, it all but whines.
I feel myself physically shake my head, an unpleasant emotion coiling in my belly, and saturating my feed presence. “Lets just watch media.”
__
ART got tired of me pacing a hole in its deck on cycle two. I had just done my thirty-seventh loop of it’s body when it grasps me in the feed. It says, Enough of this.
I say, “Oh, fuck.”
This wasn’t entirely a surprise reaction. Or a fear reaction. Though, maybe, whatever the mystery third thing it made me feel was something like the malware’s fear? The only issue with that, beyond assigning a virus feelings, is that fear didn’t make sense remotely. It reacted like it did when it wanted something.
It... seethed, about it. Something in the grabbing itself, or maybe in ART’s voice. I don’t know. I just dismiss the heat warnings.
Don’t like that I’ve caught you? It flicks me. You won’t tell me what’s wrong, so this is where we’re at.
“I’m working on it,” I grit out. “Please, drop it,”
Patrolling like you are is solidly a stress response, it says, steamrolling over me. I want to know what’s causing it, so that it might be resolved.
“I’m, um,” On reflex, my physical eyes scout the empty corridor for an exit. “I’m still figuring that out,”
Are you? ART doesn’t quite sound dubious, but it sure sounds something. You almost never admit that sort of thing. Are your meetings with Bharadwaj finally rubbing off on you?
“Yes,” That is, for better or worse, the actual truth. Not only would lying serve next to no purpose, but I’m too busy to do it anyway: My main processing heard “Rubbing off” and went somewhere I’ve since deleted from active memory. Whatever it was, it sent a flare of warmth through me to places I don’t want to mention.
I tamp down my feed, drawing as in on myself as I can. ART backs off, pulling faintly in on itself in turn. I catch a whisper of uncertainty, or maybe crestfallen-ness, rippling through its outer firewalls. A nearby vent rattles. Will you stop pacing about it, at least? You’re unsettling Tarik.
(Translation: You’re unsettling Tarik. It only picked him to namedrop because it doesn’t like him, and is fine using him as a distraction.)
Unfortunately for us both, (And Tarik, I guess,) the malware doesn’t listen to ART’s nagging. I have to find another outlet to occupy it with while I keep working out solutions. So, I head to the on-board gym and start sprinting a hole in its treads.
Patrolling didn’t work much, anyway. Even when I avoided engineering all together. It kept my restlessness to a minimum, and the physical activity seemed to provide some sort of organic compound that satisfied a little bit of the itch the malware left me with.
It was my second round of diagnostics that let me confirm there was a chemical/hormonal component at play. It was also about then that I identified what the malware’s purpose was, and I filed that away in a little box because the idea stressed me out so much I didn’t know what to do with it.
I still didn’t know why malware would have that as it’s function. Maybe it was so I would engage in certain behaviors until they killed me. More worryingly, maybe it was a way to get at and hurt ART, given how focused the whole all of it is on the tubing inside ART.
In that case, I need to figure out if and who might’ve manufactured it.
I spend a lot of time on ART’s treadmills, because while it doesn’t let me pace a hole in the floor, it moderately tolerates six hours of sprinting at my max speed. That movement helps me think, and it helps me to burn off some of the feeling the malware gives me.
Every few hours, I run a systems scan, and every one of them fails to turn up anything, ratcheting up my anxiety further.
I work very hard to ignore the malware, and it doesn’t make it easy. Between that, and my constant air of tension, even ART and I’s crew began noticing I was acting… off. I don’t tell them anything.
I go about four standard cycles before I have another dream.
The way dreams save themselves into my memory is… complex, to say the least. They’re produced by the feedback between my inorganic processing and my organic brain, and how it integrates with each other as I recharge or am unconscious.
So, what I get is fragments. Little bits and pieces of things that’ve been floating around my active processing, with a preference for whatever is weighing on me the most.
(A good chunk of the dreams I get are reintegration errors much like the shutdowns I’m not allowed to redact anymore. To be honest, the dreams the malware gives me are better than those. However, if I’m aboard ART and we’re in geosynchronous orbit around a planetary body, the bar is so low it’s in the topsoil of the planet below.)
Much like the last one, my recharge cycle aborts early. I wake up feeling warm and restless and tense, with a gasp stuck in my throat. I’d had the foresight to sleep with the privacy barrier up, because I was paranoid and if something happened I didn’t want ART seeing. I didn’t want it drawing conclusions, either, because I did review the footage of my last anomalous recharge cycle.
I knew what it looked like.
(I also knew that, in the slim margins I didn’t want to consider, what I was attributing to malware were just more fucked-up parts of my psyche. Embarrassing parts. Parts that I’ve adamantly claimed to hate. I don’t know if it’s better or worse that I get the feeling they’re only applicable to ART.)
The main difference is that I actually remember this one. The narrative isn’t coherent, and nor is the setting or my posing. I remember, more than anything, the feeling - in me, through me, around me - and the association in my mind between doing what I was doing with the tubes and that feeling.
What I do with all that, is shove the memory and data logs so deep in a little cognitive box I don’t have to reopen it ever. You know, with everything else.
I get up, take the longest, coldest shower I can stand (That’s what the humans do, according to the media), and unwillingly label the mystery sensation as “Arousal.”
Then, after my first standard patrol of the cycle, I hit the gym. I put some media on for ART and I spend the next seven hours before my late cycle patrol maintaining my position as first on the treadmill scoreboard.
Unfortunately, when I returned to my cabin, I felt a certain way. Again.
The treadmill didn’t save me this time.
I stand there, considering my options. I didn’t want to put myself through another cold shower, because I’ve been dunked in enough cold bodies of water in my time. ART probably doesn’t want me haunting its gym more than I already do, and media will probably say something eventually that catches the malware’s attention.
I guess there was one, final, solution. Preemptively, I ping ART a notice before pulling down the privacy barrier.
I have to admit, at least once, that I’m curious. I’m curious about how it feels, and all that, and if I can even recreate what that feeling is that the malware wants from me. SecUnits don’t have sex parts - at least, not externally. We also don’t have most internal structures specific to reproduction. I only say “Most” because, depending on how you look at it, certain muscle groups and nerves are sex-related. I still have nerve clusters in certain locations. It’s pretty damn hard to scrape all of those out, sometimes, so the Company never did.
I can’t believe I’m doing this.
I double check that the privacy barrier is up. Then, I check it again, and I shut myself off from the feed for good measure. The, urgh, arousal still simmers in my belly. It flares up when I shift the right way, or when I so much as think about it. It’s like if you have an ache, but can’t completely get rid of it with your pain sensors. It’s infuriating, and gross, and kind of humiliating.
At the same time, though, I also have to admit that it’s nice. It makes me want more of it. (Wouldn’t malware do that, too? Wouldn’t it be the most effective if it convinced you you wanted it?) I want to actually experience that feeling I had in the dreams. It felt nice. I know, logically, that the arousal is some form of precursor to it.
At the same time, I also want to get rid of it. This was, as far as I could tell, the best route there. Ignoring the sensation didn’t work. Distracting myself with media didn’t work. It always came back later, and sometimes I’d wake up panting, and warm all over.
I want it to stop. I want more of it. It drives me in circles thinking about it, and makes me nervous when I remember how I have no way to control it. Even if it isn’t really malware, it sure as hell behaves like it. It’s like a rootkit, burrowing into my systems and overwriting them with fucked-up want. The concept of having sex malware still scares me. A lot. It’s doing something to me, making me want something I don’t want, but I’m still here, doing something about it.
I can’t resist it.
I take a deep, slow breath, and rest my hands on my upper abdomen. I let them linger for a half-second, feeling them on my organic skin, before slowly dragging them down to my low abdomen. The warmth in my belly flares.
I have a faint, barely-there seam that runs down the middle of my crotch and between my legs, where the organic outer coverings of me can be peeled back for access into my chassis. it’s Y-shaped, with the two upper segments running down the crease where my thighs meet my low belly, and meets just about in the center of my pubic mound, and continues down between my legs. I guess it superficially bears some resemblance to certain human anatomical features, but not enough to matter. Especially if I ignore that.
Which I, to the best of my ability, do. I am very good at ignoring things when I want.
My breath catches as I slide my hands lower, lower, down to the very top of my pubic mound. I feel my face heat, and the feeling in my belly sharpens to something like an exposed wire running right through my core.
Slowly, with one hand still resting on my belly, I slide the other down to press lightly against the top of the seam, and feeling shoots through me in a sudden burst - before fading to a more tolerable pleasure.
Tentatively, I begin to rub up and down an inch or so of the seam, and the feeling is almost enough for my knees to buckle. I let out an involuntary gasp, and my unoccupied hand over my mouth.
I have to take a moment to steel myself, because making a noise shocked me. I stand there, one hand against my mouth and the other still resting over the seam, before I slowly back myself against the wall for support.
Pressing my hand against my mouth, I grit my jaw, and start slowly stroking again.
I am very glad I decided to lean against that wall, because the moment I start again, my legs feel weak. I draw two fingertips in a slow circle, feeling them push into the seam, and feeling the skin there grow more and more heated.
My eyes flutter, and I let out another involuntary gasp. I press my fingers against myself and rub, hips giving an aborted twitch against them in a motion I discover to actually not be all that bad, if I was the one doing it. I reposition myself on the shower floor, and almost bite a hole in my hand when a particularly intense wave of feeling flows through me.
I can’t tell what comes first: thinking of those cables or letting the rhythm of my fingers in that seam speed up. I think of the fluid pulsing under opaque casing, dribbling unabashedly out of the nozzles between the longer splurts of fluid. I think of how the girth of it might feel in my mouth, how it might feel to have it pulsing and throbbing in my throat, spilling hot fluid into me, filling me up, while I work the vestigial mechanisms used for swallowing against it. I think about feeling the fluid fill me, flooding my abdominal fluid reserves, to where I can almost feel it if I rest a hand against my stomach.
My hips buck against my hand, seeking more pressure. I press my fingers harder against the seam, and feel my back arch. A low noise escapes past my fingers.
It goes in one ear out the other - I dismiss it from my inputs, because there are more important things happening right now. Like the feeling building inside me, gathering against my fingers. It’s almost like that feeling I’d get at the very end of those dreams, the ones that would both freak me out and intrigue me.
I think of the most recent one, where the long cables joined me in my quarters. In that dream, they were ART’s - extensions of it, controlled by it. I remember pinning one cable under me, straddling its width, with one hand right below the beginning of the metal tip of its nozzle. I ran my hand along it as if I was trying to stroke it off, and I rutted against what of it I had pinned under me. It pumped fluid up onto my stomach in thick ropes, and dripped onto my thighs under them. I had the other cable down my throat, still, gushing into me.
ART was there, too. ART. My thighs tremble, and I let out a breathy gasp. ART had pressed itself against me in the feed, running itself through my code and sending sparks through my processors. It had crooned into my ear, telling me how good at taking it I was, how good I looked with it - not just the hose, but ART - down my throat, or covered in fluids in its color, how I may as well be its, and all other manners of things. I can only extrapolate what they were, because it was a dream, and I don’t fully remember. I was too lost in the feeling - the feeling, which I think I could feel coming up on me, however it is you feel a color. It felt strange, and, sort of like those electrical storms I saw once on a survey planet, with the towering anvil clouds. It felt like one of them was rolling towards me, racing across the native flora, but moving all too slowly from my perspective. I just need it to get here.
Fuck. I work two fingers up and down the seam, the nerve clusters in the region flaring, before I press them in a tight circle against its apex, and I -
“Fuck! Oh, fuck,” I guess I say it out loud this time, because the second it hit I lost control of my vocal processes. Feeling pulls me under (or does it crash over me?), cascading through my systems with enough force that I let out a ragged groan. A tremble overtakes me, and I lose control of my finer motor functions too, before it ropes out into nothing.
Then, I just lay there, breath coming out of me in long puffs. The shower fluid is still warm, even though I’ve probably gone way over my ration of it. I couldn’t be bothered to check my internal chronometer, though, so I just sit there, legs splayed out in front of me.
For a bit, I didn’t even feel bad. I felt relaxed, or like I was floating on nothing. It was… fine.
My processors run short of anything coherent to think, and I stare wide-eyed at nothing. When thought finally returns from its lunch break, I start getting scared; because, fuck me, had I just done that? Had I really just done that? Had I really let myself do that? Fuck, what’s happening to me? I can’t do this. This isn’t something I do.
Vaguely, I’m aware of ART on the other side of the privacy barrier, hovering. It was akin to somebody standing around outside your door, which is conveniently soundproofed. The organic parts in my abdomen start twisting uncomfortably. I can’t face it right now, not when I’m compromised. I can’t do that to it.
But at the same time, I don’t have the capacity to fully resolve the issue myself. If I am compromised, that if being a figure of speech, I need to alert it to the new security threat. I’m going to have to bite the hypothetical (metaphorical?) projectile weapon bolt. I can’t put it off.
I have to ask ART for help.
__
It took me another cycle to admit it. Most of that I spent in recharge, patrolling, or watching media with ART, which was a sort of tense experience, because it could tell I was acting weird and kept needling me about it. I couldn’t hold out forever, though, and I’d already decided I need to talk to it about it. The Incident.
I’m still thinking about it. I guess that means the malware is progressing. I really need to talk to ART about this. So, I do. After one more nerves-steeling patrol. When I return to my quarters, I sit down, and I finally get on with it.
ART, I say. I think I have malware.
What? Suddenly, a large amount of its attention pushes against me in the feed - like a long, sustained feeling of somebody shoulder-checking you on the transit ring. I feel it giving a cursory look over my code, and pinging me for diagnostics. Proceed to medical.
Shouldn’t you have all that attention on better things? I scowl.
No. It pokes me. Go to medical.
This is what I want, wasn’t it? It’s got the equipment to conduct intensive scans, both of my software and hardware. Me trying to do all of this myself was almost like a human trying to do surgery on their open chest cavity. I really do need it for this, even though I can do more for myself than a human could. I, at least, could see my coding. Humans can’t crack open their genome whenever they feel like and start running analyses.
Still, I feel my face set itself into a frown. I push myself up from my chair anyway, and march out into the hall. I don’t particularly want to be taken offline by what has to be some of the most ineffectual malware out there, and I certainly don’t want to do anything to ART about it.
I send it the diagnostics I’ve already run, and their results, and all the little details about how something is hijacking my processing and sending me faulty alerts. I send it my conclusions about its purpose, or as many as it can, and how I think its purpose is to hurt one or both of us. I tell it that the onset was while I was watching ART’s reactor refuel. I feel ART pull some of its attention away as it looks them over, and so I cycle through my camera inputs as I walk. I even throw in my anomalous restarts.
ART says, intriguing.
“I guess,” I mutter, out loud this time. By then, I’d made it over to medical. ART opens the door for me, and I step inside, before stopping dead right in the threshold.
What else can you tell me? In words, please, as well as diagnostics.
Oh, fuck.
I really, really regret asking for help now. And even worse, I can’t tell if that’s the malware talking. I can feel ART still crunching data in the feed, as well as still pulling more diagnostics out of my head. Because of this, it hasn’t noticed that I’m just standing there yet. I’m on borrowed time, aren’t I.
ART’s surgical suite, when inactive, remains mostly tethered to the ceiling and out of the way. It has various neatly coiled tubes, cables, and flexible surgical arms resting innocuously around a general, non-magnetic scanner and camera. My eyes have, of their own accord, zeroed in on a thick power cable that trails across the ceiling’s surface and connects with that scanner.
I take a moment to feel a pang of annoyance, because it isn’t even a resupply cable, before I box off and ignore a faulty temperature alert and a series of now deleted thoughts.
SecUnit? ART prompts. I lock my joints to keep from visibly startling. ART pings me, and I ping it back.
“I, um. What?”
I asked you something. Is the malware effecting your audio processing, or just diverting enough attention to make you miss things?
“Fuck you,” I say. “I can hear you just fine.”
Then answer the question. It says, tartly. I get another temperature alert, and ART hums. I believe I just saw one of those temperature alerts you mentioned. It… seems, it pauses oddly here, to be alerting on increased dilation of the blood vessels in your face and chest.
“That’s,” I swallow. “Odd.”
Isn’t it? ART’s tone is ponderous. Proceed to the scanning suite, far room on the left. Not the one with the active magnet or radiation warnings.
“I know not to go in there, ART, I’m not that out of it,”
Good. It twitches, like that was of genuine concern to it, which - yeah, fuck you. I jab it in the feed. In turn, it jabs me back, and I slowly trudge towards my destination.
On the way there, I pass the large hatch to ART’s magnetic scanners, which are marked with equally large, very prominent signage establishing that there is a VERY LARGE MAGNET that is ALWAYS ON. Briefly, I wonder if it would be worth it to shuffle in there instead, and let myself be severely injured by that magnet. It couldn’t be worse than any of my other severe injuries, could it? (The thought crosses my mind: What if that magnet actually felt nice, instead? What if it felt sort of like the trial I’d run in the shower earlier, shuddering and heady and all-consuming? Then: would there be any tubing or cabling in there with the magnet?)
It might not even be worse than the embarrassing reaction I was going to have to ART’s CT scanner.
I know, I could be blaming the malware, which constitutes extenuating circumstances. I know that when someone is sick, they can’t always control their reactions. I’m being influenced by an outside force, and may not be fully in control of myself. These thoughts, totally unexpectedly, do not help. They send a jolt of fear through me, enough that it bleeds into the feed and ART pokes me.
SecUnit? It prods.
“Fine,” I say. Then, I switch to the feed. I’m fine.
I have evidence that indicates otherwise. It forwards me the feed data for my fear spike, as well as the biometric data to back it up.
I feel normal about that. Thanks, malware.
Okay, I’m fine, minus being scared I’m hacked.
ART ripples, then settles reassuringly over my shoulders. If there’s something to find, I’ll find it.
That’s what I’m scared of, I don’t say. What if you don’t find anything?
I get to the CT room, and ART pops open the hatch for me. Tapping my fingers against my thigh, I shuffle over to the platform, and roll onto it. “You’ll pull me out if anything happens?”
Of course I will, it says. I ask it that every time, and it replies the same way, every time. While I can still do medical scans, something about the cramped tube inside, and the isolation, makes me nervous. It’s probably a holdover from the cubicles the Company stuffed us in, but whatever.
I’m only mildly scared this go-around. The malware treats me to another feeling; unfortunately, it contributes the anomalous heat warnings. Maybe its the sight of the cabling up above me, which I get an eyeful of before ART actually starts scanning. They join with the heavy machinery that makes the scanner scan, and give off small bits activity in the feed and some of the other non-human-traditional sensors I have. (SecUnits, and constructs more generally, can pick up on certain types of radiation. It’s a good safety feature.)
Keep still, ART instructs. Its voice is steady, and slow, which totally doesn’t throw sparks at the warmth in my belly. It begins to roll me back into the machine, head first. It adds, Keep out of the feed. Too much activity might throw off the scans.
I ping it exactly once, then dutifully go quiet in the feed. I feel it pull away, focusing on the output as the machine starts up around me. Without ART, the ambient buzz of fear keeping me company pulses uncomfortably. I don’t like being exposed, like this. ART being in my feed sort of helps. It pressing against me, even in the normal way it does, soothes my nerves, because I can trust it to watch me while I’m inside. I won’t get stuck, or anything like that.
Anyway.
See, the current issue is, my legs are still sticking out of the actual mechanism, because you don’t need those for a head scan. I’m only half under the actual scanning mechanism. I am, for all intents and purposes, at the mercy of whatever could be outside the scanner.
I am, of course, totally normal about this. It’s the malware that isn’t.
I get about five minutes of uninterrupted anxiety, during which I do breathing exercises Dr. Bharadwaj had given me. Then, that low warmth from earlier slowly, slowly creeps back into my stomach.
I can picture the cabling, the usual types from my…. Dreams... slowly slithering down from the ceiling. Of course, I wouldn’t be able to see them coming, so it would be a surprise to me when the faintly warm nozzle of one pokes the joint of my knee. Another one pokes at my main ankle joint, and the both of them slowly wind themselves around my legs, slowly creeping upward. I have to shift to accommodate them, letting my thighs drift outward and my ankles almost off the platform entirely.
The cables are firm against my legs, and one finds a nice way to coil around the organic/inorganic seam of my thigh. The other continues upward…
I feel my actual legs twitch. I shut down the thought, face burning up, and the organics between my legs melting. I shut anything even remotely relevant out of active processing, slam my eyes shut, and very forcefully resume my breathing exercises.
I stay like that until ART pulls me out.
I feel it look me over, and shoot me a mildly concerned ping. I wave it off.
It pings again. I wave it off.
It rattles an air vent and relents.
Intriguing, it says.
“What?” I lean into its space over the feed, looking for any hint of what it found.
It waits for a beat, about 0.1 seconds in reality, before it says, You’re clear on the hardware front.
Is it bad that I think to myself: Well, fuck.
__
You might predict that it didn’t find anything on the software scans, either.
ART let me sit on the platform for those, and let me put on Sanctuary Moon for as many of them as it could. It idly watched along, too, and occasionally gave me reassuring little squeezes while it sifted through my code.
Unfortunately, I don’t think those helped as much as either of us hoped.
When the scans are finally done, it’s forebodingly silent. It lets my episode of Sanctuary Moon finish itself out, which I guess is nice of it, except for the part where it gave me horrible anxiety feeling it sit there. It churns slowly, probably at least in part to it still chewing through all my brain data for accuracy, while it lets its attention bore into me. It’s like a deep ocean current studying you. When my episode ends, it reaches into my processes enough to keep the next one from playing automatically. I delete a few thoughts from active memory as it does.
There isn’t anything here, it says, slowly. But I can look deeper. Tell me more about your symptoms.
“There isn’t anything?” I feel myself straighten up. “Nothing?”
No, ART affirms, careful. Again, I can look deeper, but I need more data as to what I’m looking for.
I pull myself into a defensive hunch, at that. The analytical part of me understands that if there isn’t anything on its scans, there isn’t anything to find. ART’s scans are perfect like that. I, also, did not want it to have that data.
You know more about what you’re feeling than I do, SecUnit. And I don’t want you compromised aboard me. It’s bad for everyone.
I twitch, eyes momentarily flaring wide. I’m not compromised, not by some outside actor. I’m not, and I know it. I think I did the whole time - even subconsciously, in that little box I don’t open, I wasn’t dealing with malware. I know for sure I’m not now. I want ART to be able to trust me, but I also want to keep at least a little bit of my dignity intact. I don’t want it knowing what I’m thinking, or that I’m so easily fucked up by inanimate cabling.
It also means that I can’t attribute my sudden inclinations (Ugh.) to an outside actor, or to malice, or any of that. It means they’re just a function of myself.
I don’t know how I feel about that. So I say, “No.”
Then, I get up, and I leave that stupid scanner room as fast as I can, adrenaline spiking.
SecUnit, ART drones. Quit that. Talk to me.
“Fuck off,” I grit out, hitting the open corridor. I keep walking.
Let me help, it says. It reaches for me in the feed, and I push it away.
SecUnit, it says, again. Don’t be stupid. Let me help.
I block it in the feed.
I don’t stop until I’ve hit my quarters and did the feed equivalent of slamming my door: pulling the privacy barrier down around myself with force. I’d already blocked it, so it got none of that beside that I’d brought the barrier down at all. I have a moment where I stand there, hands curling and uncurling into fists, while I plan my next move.
I get nowhere. My mind is blank, apart from a disconcerting emotional buzzing that I can’t shove off for later - both because it keeps shoving itself into priority processing, and because Dr. Bharadwaj expects better of me. So does, unfortunately, ART.
I peel my shirt and pants off with malice, and storm into my en suite sanitation cubicle, to which I curl up under the shower spray. I press my face into my knees, arms around my calves, blessedly free of complicating visual inputs.
I lose a couple hours just listening to the water go, thinking myself in circles. I don’t want to talk to ART, but I have to, it will hate me, but it won’t. The shower stays warm the whole time, despite me probably having exhausted my cleaning fluid ration hours ago.
When I get out, my towels are fluffy, and my newly-recycled clothes are soft. ART even left me a note, placed neatly on top of my nicely-folded laundry. It reads, in Perihelion-specific typeface: UNBLOCK ME.
I guess I’d better get it over with.
I pull my hoodie on over myself, and fasten my pants. I take up the best standing position in the center of the room, halfway facing its camera, and unblock it.
Will you let me help you now? ART, not a microsecond later, comes very close to bowling me over. I grunt on instinct, twitching against its weight. I can feel it heavy in the feed, waiting expectantly.
“I,” I begin. Then I stop to consider my words. “Well, I’m not compromised.”
You are doing a very good impression of being so, then, ART sniffs. I can feel it eating at itself behind its surface again, like a rip current your worst clients are just waiting to get caught in. I take a very slow, steadying inhale. “I’m not, ART, seriously.”
It pauses for 0.2 seconds - long enough for me to feel it. Then, snidely: Okay.
“I’m. I’ve been,” How do I put this delicately? “It isn’t malware, and I haven’t been hacked. So, it’s not that,”
THEN WHAT IS IT? ART booms, and I flinch. I guess that wasn’t it. I didn’t pick it up on my scanners, you aren’t obviously injured, and yet you’re still acting like you’re about to drop dead! What is it?
“Its, I-“ I throw my hands up, and determine standing there uncomfortably isn’t doing it. I begin to pace a tight loop around my quarters. “I’m just. I.”
Are you hiding another injury? It says, dangerously. I can feel it looming ominously in the feed.
“No, of course I’m not hiding another injury! Why would I be doing that?” I hear my gunports cycle pointlessly in my forearms, which is a stress response I like to try and suppress. “If that was all it was, we would’ve solved this by now!”
Then what is it? Tell me, SecUnit. I stop, turn sharply, and face the corner away from its camera, blinking a few times more than necessary. ART’s next words are slow and measured. Fine. If you haven’t managed to hurt yourself, what’s the issue.
I work my jaw in silence. After 0.3 seconds of silence, ART gentles its voice, and says, You’re scaring me.
That about does it - you’re scaring me is pulling out all the stops. If it ever desperately wants to know something, that’s what it says. It’s an asshole, too, because now I have to tell it. I don’t want it to be scared, even moreso than I myself don’t want to be scared.
I shoot a furtive look at the camera I know it keeps in my quarters, locking and unlocking my jaw. I manage to grit out: “I’ve been having thoughts. Sex … thoughts. I started getting impulses, too, and I.”
I stop and sort of shrug. I feel ART watching me through the feed, rippling in thought, its concern burning off into nothing. It doesn’t speak for a moment, instead metaphorically just sitting with me. My shoulders untense, just a little.
Oh, it says plainly. That's it?
"Fuck off!" I bark. My shoulders immediately come back up to their position by my ears. “What do you mean, 'That's it'?"
It, ART pauses. Perhaps I should’ve anticipated that’d cause you more stress. But I didn’t anticipate you’d think it was malware.
I scowl, crossing my arms over my chest. “What else was I supposed to think, dickhead?”
ART waits a condescending 0.4 seconds, before it says, that you were, even if for the first time, experiencing sexual desire.
“It. I. Okay, fuck. Sure.” Like hell was I telling ART that maybe it had a point. I’ll be honest, “Malware” is sort of a silly conclusion to jump to - I mean, seriously, one sexual thought, and it has to be malware? Sure.
Sure.
But hindsight is 20.0/20.0, or whatever is is humans say. I wouldn’t know - my eyes are functionally cameras. Take that and apply it to how I interpret sex concepts. I continue, “I was scared, ART. It’s what made sense at the time. If you wanna be an asshole about it, I’ll block you in the feed.”
‘Asshole’ is integral to the name you gave me, it says tartly. And I doubt you’d block me for long.
I block it. It finds a workaround that makes me unblock it. I block it again. It lets me have this for a nice, long, 4 minutes - enough for me to sit down on the edge of my bed.
It forces open a connection. You can explain the situation, now.
“Thanks, I really want to open up, you’re being so inviting,” I snark at it, face screwing up.
I feel it nudge against me, bleeding a combination of curiosity/concern. It says, I was worried about you. You were obviously stressed. Then, you stated the cause, and it seemed so banal - I got ahead of myself.
I sigh. “Yeah, yeah.”
I feel ART watch me, and then ping me for diagnostics. It could just reach in to me and grab them, but I guess it’s nice that it asked.
I really am worried, it soothingly presses against me in a slow, rippling pattern. Then, it continues. I infer that what triggered it has something to do with my reactor - is it purely in regard to the components… or to me?
“It’s,” I pull a blanket up over my shoulders, and then flop over onto my side. “I didn’t want to freak you out,”
You freaked me out more by acting strangely and declaring you had malware, it flicks me over the feed. I grunt in reply. Its voice drops a little, as if discussing a secret. If it’d help you to know, I myself have had sexual thoughts. Some about you.
I feel a pang of… something. I don’t know what. Hope? I ping it, brow furrowing. “You do?”
At first, I classed them as anomalous, and regarded them with worry. Then, I determined what they were, and partitioned them off. Its voice is neutral and passive, as if it’s giving a report.
“You didn’t tell me,” I pull the blanket around myself, thinking. I wanted to be hurt by that, but I also think back to what it’d said not a second prior, about my freaking it out. It must be something like that.
No, it confirms. I did not.
I ask, tentatively, “Why not?”
I didn’t want you to, as you put it, freak you out, it says tritely. I knew - know - how you react to these things. You wouldn’t have been pleased.
“You don’t know that,” I scowl. But…
Don’t I? It pings me, sarcastic as ever, but with an undercurrent of something else. Bitterness, maybe.
Of course it didn’t tell me. It’s seen me skip over a million human sex scenes with the same scrunched look. It’s seen all my variations of “Ew” when my/our humans so much as mention sex. Something coils in my chest. Fine. I see what this is. Stupid transport, making me feel worse.
“Yeah. I guess you do.” I feel myself press my lips into a line, and briefly duck my head so my face is out of its camera view. I ping it with an invitation to my emotional processing, as if it wasn’t nearly there anyway, but its more or less the thought that counts.
“I want to be disgusted with myself. But I,” I guess I should explain myself to it after all. “I’m still. I still find them appealing. I’m not disgusted by you, either.” I add that to reassure it, and also because it’s true.
Good. It ripples in a way that feels like the unfolding of some sort of flower-having flora.
“I’m, um. Really not. I’m sorry if I made you feel like you would be,” It comes off as stilted, but it feels important that ART know. It ripples again, pleased.
It says, slowly, almost like a purr: what about my reactor was appealing?
“The… tubes. The fluid in them, and the way it was pumped into the reactor, all of that.” I can feel my face heating as I speak, and so I push the thoughts to the side. “It’s the sex thoughts. I don’t… I didn’t have them, until before. Not really. And I’d never actually…”
Never actually what?
I work my jaw for a moment, and I can feel it’s attention in the feed. If it had a head, it would’ve cocked it to the side, by now. I can feel its intrigue and… other interest. It was trying to keep that second one quiet, though, which I didn’t know how to feel about. “I’d never gotten off. Or enjoyed anything like that. I didn’t care, and I didn’t think I’d want to.”
But that changed? It prompts.
“Yes, I.” I think about and quickly decide against sending it that particular memory file. Maybe later. “I decided to try out. Stimulating myself. A few cycles ago. It went fine, I guess.”
But you’re still upset about it?
“Yes, ART, I - I don’t know if I want to do that with myself. It scares me.” I pull the blanket tighter around myself. “I don’t know how to feel about it, and I,”
I frown, shifting around so that I can bury my head in my arms. ART briefly leaks fond amusement into the feed, before saying, keep talking.
“I don’t know. I don't know if I'd want that with anyone else," I blurt out. "I mean, I - I'm not sure if I want that with you, and I know I don't want that with anyone else."
ART remains silent, sitting heavily in my feed and watching me. I open and close my mouth, stalling, and it pokes me - as if to say "go on."
"Sometimes you have thoughts, or whatever, that are better in your head than in practice. I've thought about it. With you. I want it, in my head, but," I trail off.
ART's attention ticks up by a few percentage points.
"I have -" It's too late to back out now, Murderbot. I feel my face heat up, and dismiss an erroneous alert. "Dreams. Sometimes. I dream of you, and we."
I almost say, out loud, fuck, just out of annoyance. But then I realize that'd actually be pretty apt for describing the dreams. But I can’t bring myself to say it out loud. Instead, I switch to the feed, and I grit out, we have sex. Here.
I bundle up the appropriate memory files and shove them towards ART. I include the first one, a notable in-between one, and my most recent - during my last recharge cycle.
I include the timestamps, and the metadata, and the feeling. I hope ART is smart enough not to integrate whatever I send it, and will instead just read the damn thing normally. However, given its track record, I add: don’t integrate that.
I have almost a hundred times your processing power, of course I’m not going to do that. ART yanks the files out of our shared workspace, belatedly pinging me a received acknowledgement. I feel it turn inwards so that it can wolf down the contents of the files, and am suddenly hit with an anxiety so sharp I shut my eyes, and back burner as many feed-based inputs as I can. This is humiliating. What am I thinking, showing it that? What the fuck am I doing, anyway? A subprocess in my mind picks up the idea of malware again, and that’s why I’m acting like this, because - I force-terminate that chain of thought before it gets too out of hand, and start running myself through a counting routine Bharadwaj gave me. The original version was simple, easy for humans to pull off, so I modified it for my own purposes.
All it is is counting in a pattern, in a simple rhythm. It’s like music.
I feel ART’s attention finally come back to me, because I can’t really backburner the whole feed, just ignore it. I take a peak at our private channel, and at ART, who gives the impression of looking me up and down consideringly. When it finally speaks, its voice comes out pensive and slow. It asks, do you want to try?
What?
ART brushes up against me, before it reaches out a thin strand of itself like it wants to grab my hand. I let it do that, focusing on the point of contact between us. Your dreams, as you call them, are intriguing. It really was just this? Sometimes I forget how illogical you are.
“Go fuck yourself,” I briefly take my head out of my arms so I can scowl at its nearest camera.
It sends me a sharp, amused ping. It says, Sure. Should I leave you to stew here in the meantime? That will work out well.
For a moment, I flail, and grab for it. I don’t actually want it to go anywhere, and to be honest, its presence is grounding. I ping it for emphasis.
I am not going anywhere, it says. Then, it falls silent, and waits, almost all its attention pressing down against me. I press my face back into my arms, but feel my face scrunch up regardless.
"Will you look at me differently?" My voice takes on a desperate edge, and I dig my fingers into the fabric of my blanket, still draped over me. I don't know if I wanted it to talk me into it or out of it. I “If I did?”
... No. why would I? it says, softly. I didn't pull away from it earlier, so now it grabs me and gives me a squeeze. Not if you don't want me to.
“Why not?”
I already told you. I’ve… had thoughts, myself. What kind of hypocrite would I be if I started judging you for yours? It pokes me, and I don’t answer. I don’t know what it was expecting, but I thought it would. Maybe because I was still thinking it was weird, and gross, for me to think that. Thankfully, ART doesn’t point that out, and lets me stew for another 0.5 seconds. (Shockingly, it also doesn’t take offense, and ask me how I could think so low of it, or something. It’s almost like I’m safe to express myself here.)
Besides, I, its voice drops as it continues, its pitch now more like a rumble. I want to see you experience pleasure. This could be a means to that end.
"What about you?" I jerk a hand through the air above me. What do you want, ART.
What do you mean? It has the audacity to sound genuinely bemused.
Waving a hand in frustration didn't cover it, so this time I roll over and push my face into my pillow. What do you get out of it? Don’t you want to. To.
Hopefully ART understands what I mean, because I’ve hit a wall with describing it. I feel it ripple sarcastically against me.
I want to see you feel good. If you were listening to me, you would have known, because I just said that. It presses into me with enough force to make me sink into my bed. then, it lets up. If you really need me to get something material out of it, you can share your sensory data with me. The logistics of myself experiencing climax would be better determined if I had that.
I don’t want, I begin, haltingly. I don’t want this to be unequal. I don’t want to…
ART is nice enough to hover expectantly, waiting for me to finish. Then, when I don’t, it says: Enough.
It presses into me, enough to eek a sigh out of me. Accept what I’m telling you. You cannot force me to do much of anything I do not want to. I wouldn’t let that happen.
It presses down on me a little harder - and it feels like something was compressing my chest down against itself. In a good way, enough that I want to lean into it. The… contact ART and I have on the feed feels nice, by default. I’ve done enough therapy modules at this point to accept that. I like interacting with it, and I can admit that at the very least to myself. The current contact, however, felt different, and I couldn’t tell you why (Well. There are theories.) I want more of it so that I can figure it out. And if I want something, you’d know.
My breath comes out a little quicker than I want it to, and I sort of twitch. The way it presses at me in the feed reads almost like it definitely wants something.
I ask it, "And do you want something now?"
How strange. My voice comes out sort of low, and rumbly.
It presses against me, interest suddenly growing sharper - it felt like a pressure, warm, heavy pressure, pressing into all the major muscle groups of my body. It's almost like a shower, if it was all around me; and deeper, somehow. I don't know. Then, ART pulls away, schooling itself. I grab after it, because come on, ART, it feels nice. After a moment, it gives in and stays nearby.
I know I told you aren’t required to do anything with me, it murmurs. But I’d very much like it if you did. I would like to fuck you.
I'm coming to the understanding that I don't want it to not do that, either. In fact, I think I might even want it to. (I definitely want it to.) Which means I'm going to have to take a chance. I'm going to have to make sure ART knows what I want with it.
It still presses against me, but in its usual blanketing presence. I tug at it, trying for more of it on me. My voice is still low and rumbling when I speak up again: "There’s something else, ART. Something I didn’t mention.”
I feel it lean in. Well, here fucking goes.
“I thought of you.”
Then, I send it the memory file from the shower.
There is a terrifying 0.9 seconds in which it reviews it, attention shifting inward. It feels fuzzily distant, idly swirling around itself as it takes the information in.
then, slowly, it's focus sharpens - and suddenly feels almost predatory. It coils itself around me, pressing against my code and carding its fingers through its edges.
I let out a breath I’d forgot I’d been holding. I'd been so scared of how it'd react - even if I knew that it probably wouldn't, based on what it's already said.
When you mentioned you pleasured yourself, it murmurs. I have to admit, I was hoping for that. I was hoping you’d think of me.
I can’t help myself. I say, “Well, if only I’d known that,”
Hah, hah, ART intones. It presses forward, slowly cards itself along my edges, just enough to tease. It sends a current of feeling down my spine that compels my hips to buck. Now you do.
I shudder, rolling to lie flat on my back against the bed. It runs itself through my edges again, its presence pushing against me enough for my walls to crack and chip away, at which points it begins slowly, too slowly, levering itself in.
It feels like being crushed down into a tiny core, while at the same time being pried open. Without my firewalls up, I'm exposed to any and everything, as well as ART's full weight.
It is, as you may expect, huge.
Warmth pools in my low belly, and I gasp. "ART."
Yes? It says. Then, much lower, let me in.
I ping it in the affirmative, and pull down the remainder of my walls for it. It seeps into my systems in a slow wave, firing sensors and nerves at random as it maps out where they all are. It spreads as static up the organic parts of my thighs, up past my forearms and into my shoulders, and in a ring around the base of my neck. It bubbles and pulses, intentionally seeming to modulate itself for the sake of data.
Then, something in ART's feed presence clicks, and it pulses a slow, cloying sort of satisfaction, like it had just had one of its media theories proven right. It just sits there, metaphorically drumming its fingers against me.
Annoying.
It rubs around my shoulder seams and up into my throat seam, petting me idly.
Annoying-er.
"Ah-RT. I grit out. My voice is tense and thready. I keep having to pause for breath. "Will you - get on with it."
Patience, it hums. Don't you want me to make this pleasant? I need to map your sensors.
"With the amount of times -" It tweaks at my spine, and I arch up with a groan. " - Fuck, ART - With the amount of times you've rebuilt me, I thought you'd know by now,"
You can't rush perfection, it purrs. Maybe I want to take my time.
It leans in, pressing my sensory processing down to half its size. Besides. Operating on you after your nth life-threatening injury isn't exactly pleasurable. This, I want to be.
It slowly eases up on that subsystem, the feeling of weight creeping around onto my chest. I whimper.
Most of my chest is inorganic - therefore, it has very little in the way of sensors for anything other than pressure. ART makes do anyway. It slowly increases the pressure on my chest, all the while pushing up into the seam that runs along the organic-inorganic junction under my sternum. It pumps the sensations in a slow, pulsing rhythm, and it feels - strange. Sharp, almost, but not enough to feel electric. Just warm.
It pulses against my chest one more time before easing up. It trails its touch along the seam in my center abdomen, running up and down my stomach with a steady sort of pressure.
That, unlike the touches to my chest, definitely feels - good. Pleasant. I guess you could say research transports are quick on the uptake, but it’s known exactly what its doing this whole time. It’s far enough in my systems that it can take in my sensory data like it would data from its own hull. Instead of absorbing it, however, it’s got the readout open in our shared workspace, and is idly monitoring it like it does my physical responses.
It presses close to me again, skipping over my ears and whispering right into my language processing. Let’s revisit that data you shared with me, shall we?
That was when I got the idea to actually touch myself. The previous interaction played out fairly quickly - only a few human seconds. Beyond that, my processing was otherwise occupied. But when it mentions the memory files, both the dreams and the time I - touched myself, they come back to my active processing and remind me I have that option.
The thought of ART’s tubes, around me, in me, is enough to pull another groan out of my throat. It’s also enough to give me the motivation slide a hand over my thigh and between my legs.
I push my fingers firmly against the seam there, my hips bucking up into the touch. I feel ART’s attention sharpen, momentarily crushing me, as it watches. I fall into a loose rhythm, rubbing up and down the seam and rocking up into the touch. I pant, feeling ART curl up close to me. Intriguing.
Then, it - grabs my wrist, would be the best way to describe it. A sudden, firm pressure encircles the joint, shocking enough to startle me into stopping. “Hhah - ART?”
I ping it pointedly.
I thought you wanted me to take care of that, it says, equally pointed. I can leave, if you want.
What? “No, I - What?”
It sighs like it’s talking to a human adolescent. This isn’t solo activity, SecUnit, this is partnered. Usually, you let your partner touch you, because usually, they want to.
It applies more pressure to the side of my wrist, urging me away. It continues, This isn’t an exception. Leave the pleasuring to me.
With each word, it applies an incremental amount more pressure to my processes, crushing me under it in a way that makes it more and more difficult to argue.
And, the thing is, I don’t really want to anyway. I say, “Then get - hah - on with it.”
Didn’t I tell you to be patient, it rumbles. I’ll get there.
The firm pressure on my stomach trails lower, and it guides my wrist back to my side. You can touch yourself for me another time, if that’s what you want.
“I’d certainly be getting off faster that way,” I gripe at it. It, in turn, sighs.
That’s no way to talk to me, if you’re wanting me to engage in this, it sends me a snapshot from the memory long of my dream: the cable, thick with fluid, down my throat. Its voice drops to a low purr, and it sinks a pair of metaphorical hands into my hips. Tell me, what about this is appealing to you?
I whine, and let my thighs fall open in its touch. However, it doesn't move; its touch stops on my stomach, and its grip stays where it is on my thighs.
I asked you a question, it says sweetly. it rubs a slow, idle circle into the seam.
"Asshole. Fine, then." My voice is only a little bit strangled. "It. just is, okay?"
'Asshole' is an integral part of my name, it projects the idea of a shrug. And I think you can be more specific than that. Or, at the very least, describe what you want me to give you.
It drags the pressure lower, until it rests just above the Y-shaped apex of my pubic seam.
There, works its touch in a tiny circle, and my hips jerk without my input. I guess, especially since doing that achieved nothing, this is a good example of the situational context stripping me of my usual hang-ups - And, of course, how desperate I am.
"I - I want you to," I swallow thickly, processors stuttering as I picture it. "I want to feel you. In me. I want you to put one of those cables down my throat and pump me full of something, and I - " My voice cuts out, because ART finally begins stroking up and down the seam like I want. "Oh, fuck, ART,"
It whispers, keep talking.
“I - ART, I -“ I let out a reedy keen, and hook an elbow over my eyes. It’s so much, and suddenly all I can focus on.
You want to feel me inside you? Down your throat? It pushes itself harder into my pubic seam. I roll my hips into it, letting out a breathless, “Uh-huh,”
I feel myself start to tremble, my legs twitching and kicking at nothing. ART wraps itself around me, and I cling to it, pulling it deeper into me. I feel it begin to run the data it’s getting from me on the outskirts of its processes, mainly because it spasms and shudders.
My lips tick up. I like that it can feel nice through me, that it’s tangibly getting something out of it in a way I can conceptualize. I wrangle it into a tight hold in the feed, and ping a relentless set of affirmatives.
My physical body, meanwhile, begins babbling a mix of “Yes”’s and “ART”’s on repeat.
You want me to fill you up, it rasps, so much you forget anything else.
I whimper.
Then, it plunges deeper into me, and I feel myself arch up off my bunk. It presses in as close as it can, through my code and down to my kernel. It whispers, come for me.
I do.
__
So, I did. Then, ART integrated the rest of data at once and almost knocked itself offline. I felt it shudder around me, and it let out a burst of static through our private feed connection that I had some sort of melty emotion about. The important detail is that this is how we also discovered that it can have an orgasm, too.
We float together for a little while, afterwards, until the immense smugness it was projecting into the feed finally became enough to comment on.
"You're almost acting like getting proved right was better than," I stop and fiddle with my hoodie.
Better than having an orgasm? It's petting me in the feed, still laced into my systems. It leaks a sort of contentment, almost overshadowed by the smugness, into our shared processing space. Well, on some level, it is. The satisfaction of testing a hypothesis and being proved right lasts longer.
This is what I get for - well. For fucking a research transport. I snort dryly. "Well, I'm glad you had fun,"
I am, too And not just about that. I'm glad that it did that with me, and that it enjoyed it, and that it got something material out of it. It makes me feel better about the whole sex thing.
(Back on inventory, when I had to record all the humans having sex, it always seemed like one of them got something out of it. I don't want that. Or to hurt ART like that.)
It sidles up closer to me. I would have had fun regardless, but yes, I did enjoy having an orgasm.
A heavy pause. I can feel you worrying over it.
“Fuck off,” I say reflexively. “You. I really didn’t want it to be, unbalanced. Or that I wasn’t reciprocating.”
We’ve gone over this, haven’t we? Nothing you give me will feel unbalanced, because it’s you giving it. It squeezes me. Don’t be so obtuse.
"I'm not ‘Abuse,’ or whatever. I'm having logical concerns." I protest, admittedly half-heartedly. ART's vents flutter in a sigh, and it reaches into me to brush over some of my nonessential processes. Sure. And the word is “Obtuse.”
It draws away, and I feel faintly reassured. Then, it says: if we’re doing this again, we need to plan for orgasm taking you offline.
Great.
“It almost took you offline, too,” I mutter.
I already have a plan to rectify that. It drops the mentioned plan in our shared workspace, and unfortunately for my snappy comebacks, it's mostly solid. I propose a few edits to the end anyway, because that genuinely did need some work. ART adds them. There is also a crucial detail: "Almost."
"Whatever," I give it a pointed flick in the feed. "Is it that big of an issue?"
No. Not unless it is for you. Its presence turns smug. In fact, I quite like being able to make you shut down from pleasure.
I won't tell it as such, but that alone is almost enough for a force reboot of my inorganic processes. I feel my face heat and tug on the drawstrings of my hoodie until everything but my nose and lips are out of view. ART ripples amusedly, and I flail. It continues: But that is neither here nor there. Your fantasy you showed me is feasible, with a few additions.
I would be lying if I said that didn’t get my attention.
___
What we ultimately decide on is pretty simple. ART has fluid lines in its medical bay, as part of MedSys itself. It can produce a safe-to-ingest fluid that can then be consumed through these tubes. So, that’s what we’re doing.
It also allows for ART to monitor my vitals, and for me to have an oxygen supply line hooked up to remove the extra step of breathing around any tubes. I’m also allowing ART deep systems access for this.
(Sort of related: ART insisted that we have a “Safeword.” I asked it why “No” or “Stop” wouldn’t work, and it told me I sometimes say that even when I enjoy something, and also that it’s good practice. However, it was mean about it, so this discussion resulted in a three minute standoff before I finally relented. I didn’t directly say it, but ART had a point, and I also want it to be comfortable. Our word is “Endeavor,” which is the name of the ship in WorldHoppers.)
I have a set of ports in my ribs, three on each side. One pair corresponds to my lungs, allowing for a secondary route for air to enter my body. It also allows for the removal of any fluids that aren’t supposed to be there, such as blood or coolant. The next pair is auxiliary resupply, leading to the storage reservoir in my upper belly. The third and final pair are excess fluid removal, leading again to my inbuilt reservoir. For convenience, anything I’m ingesting orally goes down to that reservoir through my vestigial esophagus. (It’s a lot easier to leave it in but disconnect it than it is to remove it and the related structures entirely - it’s also cheaper. And if there’s one thing the Company loves, it’s cheap murderbots.)
After everything, ART will syphon out any of those fluids that end up in me via the ports in my ribs. My body can’t fully process it, given it isn’t resupply fluid, and I also don’t want it there outside of our activities, so this is the best solution.
I end up on my back in MedSys, arms comfortably resting on its armrests, ART heavy in my feed.
The inactive syphon and oxygen supply line poke at the metal valves of my side, slowly feeling out the openings. I don’t get much sensation from those ports, given how they’re mostly inorganic, but I still feel it.
Really feel it.
It could just be the anticipation for what we’re going to do next, but the feeling of the connectors against my ports feels electric. I almost twitch.
There is, of course, a difference between imagining this sort of thing, or even doing something by yourself about it. I’d thought about it while stimulating myself. I even told ART about it. This, though, is the real deal. So, of course I’m nervous.
I am, however, also… anticipatory. The anticipation buzzes under my skin, pulling my attention to the seams around my body, and back to the ports in my sides.
Each nozzle slides into its home port with a soft click. I clench and unclench my fingers into the armrests. I wonder how much of a stretch ART’s cable can put in my throat. Given the stretchiness of the material, my guess is a lot.
Exhale, ART instructs. It trails a light, teasing bit of static up and down the center seam of my belly, allowing it to sharpen just slightly above my stomach. My thighs twitch preemptively.
I sigh, and despite my best efforts, it shudders in my throat. Then ART says, good, and I have to fight not to inhale again.
Technically, I still could. Nothing bad would happen if I kept breathing anyway, at least not yet. However, ART had already told me I was good, and I didn’t want to render it incorrect immediately.
I go into my processes and disable my breathing codes. For now, at least.
(ART pings, I ping back. All systems go. I show it I’ve set up my breathing codes to re-enable in an emergency with a ping, and it pings back.)
Engaging oxygen resupply, it murmurs, directly into my ear. I ping in the affirmative, feeling myself ripple against it in the feed. You’re being very patient. I’m pleasantly surprised.
What that does is essentially make it so I’m breathing through the ports in my sides, instead of through my mouth and nose. Air still enters and exits my lungs, technically, but the process has been outsourced to ART’s systems through the hardline.
What it doesn’t do, however, is fully remove my capacity to make noise. So, I say, “Dickhead.”
I thought I was “Asshole,” ART sends a phantom pressure down my abdominal seam, this one pressing firmly against in the way that the others don’t. I’m too busy arching into it and feeling my eyelashes flutter involuntarily to see the long cable disengage from its hold in the ceiling and begin trailing down towards me. But whatever you’d like.
“You can be both,” I sigh. I watch as the cable slowly unfurls, the barest minimum of fluid currently giving it shape. ART lets up against my seams, pulling its touch away entirely, right before the cable nozzle delicately prods at my lips.
Sure, but that doesn’t negate that more often than not, you’re a brat, ART purrs. Open, SecUnit.
Just for that, I stubbornly keep my mouth shut. I look up at its nearest camera through my eyelashes, and say, If you’re going to call me a brat, I’m going to act like one.
Fine, have it your way. It abruptly sinks the graspers of a few MedSys arms into my hair and tugs, pulling my head back. It sends a lance of feeling down my spine, one that makes it arch while my mouth opens to gasp.
ART takes this opportunity as it is, and, graspers holding me in place, slowly pushes the nozzle into my mouth.
I ping it an affirmative, right after I’m done squeaking in shock around it’s metal tip. I drag my tongue against it,
tasting its opening, and lapping a bead of viscous fluid off of it. There isn’t much, because ART won’t start the fluid drip in full until it’s fully inside me.
That phrasing is obscene. And also accurate.
That wasn’t so hard, was it?
I suckle lightly at its tip, and ART rumbles approvingly. That’s it, SecUnit. Good.
It pings with my hard feed address for emphasis, along with an emotional tag for desire. I feel my lips twitch around the nozzle, because I like hearing my name come out of ART like that.
My tongue swipes another bead of fluid out from the aperture. It, much like the fluid itself, tastes chemical, and zingy. I take it deeper into my mouth, poking around as I go. Its locking mechanism clicks faintly under my prodding, but remains firmly in place. I give the opening one last lap, before letting my mouth gape open further. I let the tube slide wetly into my mouth, organic glands kicking into high gear at its presence. I feel it warm and thicken in response, sensing an adequate port to connect to, and the graspers in my hair encourage me to bob slightly on its length.
Your compliance makes this all the easier, ART murmurs. It trails a surgical grasper down my abdomen, and presses lightly against my low belly. So obedient for me. I can appreciate that.
A few more graspers drop down to drag along my sides, in time with the ones in my hair. It kneads into the soft tissue, while the cable slides into the back of my oral cavity. it presses and pushes against the skin of my abdomen - which didn't feel tight until ART got its graspers on it, but certainly does now. I feel my hips flex up against it, seeking the grasper to massage it out of me.
These seams are so sensitive, and you're being so trusting. It's truly remarkable. ART hums, finding one and pushing firmly against it. My core muscles clench, and I inhale sharply. The cable goes for a deeper thrust as I do. Careful, now. You'll choke.
The tip of the nozzle nudges against the very back of my throat, leaving a warm smear of fluid in its wake. I bob on it, and it unrelentingly pushes deeper into my throat. When the nozzle finally nestles into my esophageal opening proper, I can't help it - I choke on instinct, the organic components of my throat spasming against the intrusion.
I warned you about that. Take it slowly, ART instructs. Despite my shuddering, it keeps the nozzle right where it is, letting the muscles of my throat flutter around it. Swallow it. I know you know how.
ART pings me, and I ping back in the affirmative. I even ping it again for good measure, feeling a bead of warmth roll deeper into me. And then again. And a fourth for good measure.
This seems to amuse it. ART is, even more than its baseline, pressed tightly up against me. I can feel it ripple and by extension I myself do too. ART runs a grasper along the length of my center abdominal seam, and pinches almost affectionately. I would call it a freak for that, but a phantom warmth follows that touch, and draws my attention back up to the tube in my throat. I can feel
It thrusts shallowly; drawing back before pushing itself just a little bit deeper. I swallow, and ART hums its approval.
In time with its hum, ART's cable thrusts into my mouth. I choke as it forces itself deeper, nozzle seating itself fully into my esophagus before working itself deeper. For a moment, it stings, the structure unused to anything actually using it. Then, it peters out into nothing, and I whine around its length. It pulses, and ART lets out a sigh over the feed. It pings my hard feed address again, this time with a priority notice on its emotional tags.
ART controls the fluid release mechanism on this model of hose. Like it would with an engine block, it's waiting for a secure connection before it starts pumping in full. ART wants me to understand how much it wants to bottom out inside of me, and how much it wants this, too. As per my request, however, ART's letting just a bit to drip past the nozzle's seal. I can feel little dribbles of fluid run down my throat as the cable pulses again, stronger this time.
It begins thrusting deeper in slow, rolling motions. I feel the mechanisms of my throat work as I swallow, struggling to accommodate the steady, unyielding pressure. It’s reminiscent of certain human anatomical responses, which I delete from memory, because I’m too busy to think about that right now.
What was I saying? ART begins. That phrase is for effect only, because ART is incapable of forgetting anything it says. It saves it all to permanent storage. Oh, yes. How remarkable it is that you're so trusting.
Humiliatingly, or - interestingly, if you're so inclined, I feel my eyes begin to burn. My jaw aches from the stretch, and I manage a weak little whine around its length. It’s thickened out by now to twice its original width, filling out in my throat.
I press my eyes shut, and feel ART run itself through the sensory data. I guess it's one of those who's so inclined. I suppress a shudder, swallowing the tube deeper into me in time with its thrusts.
You were - are - so paranoid, most of the time. Even moreso when you first boarded me. And, yet, here you are. I doubt you imagined this, letting yourself do this.
ART keeps pressing the hose deeper until it hilts itself so far into me it may as well be in my chest. I work the mechanisms of my throat around it, letting them ripple and pull at its length. It remains stiff and warm, still stretching my vestigial esophagus as it pulses and contracts. I can feel a steadier stream of fluid splurting out of it, putting a heady sort of warmth in my belly.
ART croons, perfect, look at you. It stings, doesn't it? Triggers some organic reflex in your mind? You'll adapt - You always do. Look at how well you've adapted to it so far.
As if scripted for dramatic emphasis, I feel a thick droplet of fluid roll down my throat.
I. I want to taste it. What a weird thought.
I can feel its warmth and weight through the cable's membrane, still thickening the cable with its volume. I picture it in perihelion blue. I press my tongue up against it, and let out a reedy, muffled whine. I watch as a tremor runs through what of ART's cable is still above me.
You're ready, aren't you? You can take me?
My body twitches. I am, as it were, already taking it. What ART’s getting at is the part where it puts its back into it. (Hah.)
It's so much, I, I ping it. Please.
Is that an affirmative?
Yes, it is, ART, please. I ping it a few times in quick succession, which I figure would be sort of humiliating at any other time. Whatever, though. Sex seems to be sort of humiliating, but it was. fine. I felt good, and I had ART with me, indulging me how I wanted. It was doing this for me, at least in part. And I know it wanted it, too.
I can cope with a little humiliation. For ART.
As you wish, it purrs. I feel it slowly press into my head, sort of like being crushed under construction vehicle treads, if that wasn’t awful.
The graspers of the medical drone ART'd brought in begin to brush against my temples, trailing between them and my cheekbones. Another set joins them, playing idly with my curls.
I feel myself begin to drool around it, a bead of saliva slowly rolling down my chin. ART pulls the cable back up my throat, before thrusting it back in with a gush of fluid. I understood the routine, now, and quickly fell into rhythm with it as it fucks my throat in earnest. I spasm, losing a gasp against the length.
That’s also about when ART starts manipulating my sensory processes; while, yes, it’d been doing so here and there the whole time, its fucking-with-me rate grows without bound. I feel myself shudder, arching up.
ART mimics touch, trailing down my sides before digging into the organic flesh of my hips, and then back up the metal of my flanks. I whimper, fingers spasming on the platform, and over the feed reach out to rake myself through ART’s edges. It presses out to meet me, flexing against my systems where it was already inside them.
It’s real touch - the graspers that were at my sides earlier, delicately trail downwards until they can grab my by hips and force me down against the platform.
You're taking it well, ART coos. It presses its not-hands against my thighs, pushing them outward, while it still trails up and down my sides. I arch up against it, as if it was physically there. I tell it, are you actually going do anything while you're down there?
I let my thighs fall open, feeling its touch roll with the motion. It says, unrepentantly, No.
What it does do, however, is slowly lower a second cable down out of the ceiling - this one already solid and engorged. It lets this new one curl itself around my thigh, its metaphysical touch drifting off to make space. The cable squeezes me, lightly, before continuing upwards. it dips down in a loop between my legs, it’s nozzle resting on my low abdomen. You can try it yourself, though.
ART’s graspers press down pointedly on my hips.
Fuck- I cut out with a low, wet groan, the muscles of my throat clenching around the cable in a particularly rewarding way. Fuck you. You're an, ahh, asshole.
Whilst that is usually a signifier of one's dislike of another, you're still here, it crowds up against me further, dragging its phantom touch up from my thighs to press against my belly. I whine, pelvis twitching, seeking purchase on the cable. You're still taking that cable down your throat.
The cable, meanwhile, pulses for emphasis. The fluid now gushed at it at a pretty strong pace, settling in my abdomen as a solid, warm weight. I could almost feel it settling and resettling inside of me as I squirmed on the platform. Then, I find just the right angle for my pubic seam to catch on ART’s cable, and I send about thirty pings to its hard feed address. It purrs. Clever.
ART drags a hand up my stomach, then up to my throat. It presses lightly, and my body lets out a choked "Nngh,"
Can you feel that? it purrs.
I want to come back with something snarky, like "Obviously" or "I'd have to have severed the major nerves in my neck to not," but all I manage is a string of affirmative pings and a flutter of my eyelids.
Of course you can. That body of yours is so reactive - A marvel of engineering. It presses against my throat again, and then pulls away. It's weight returns on my thighs. You're beautiful.
The thrusting into my throat picks up the pace, and I swallow it hungrily. I feel it flex and pulse, and my jaw ache, and my throat mechanisms straining against it as they pull it deeper into me. Its motions take on an almost wet sound, joining the stream of low, short moans I've been letting out the past few minutes.
It's attention-stealing. My fingers flex against the platform as I arch.
ART forces a camera feed through our connection, recording from one of its medbay cameras; it's zeroed in on my throat, where you can see the solid tube pressing against the comparatively thin skin of my neck. I let out a high, keening whine, watching as my throat works and strains to guzzle down as much as it can.
Feel it, ART commands. Feel me.
It grabs my focus and pulls it towards my hands. ART can be very clear about what it wants sometimes.
They tremble as I reach up - it feels half disconnected from my body, like I was piloting a drone, until my fingertips brush up against my jaw. ART shoulders deeper into my neural pathways, teasing lightly against my reward mechanisms, sending a sharp jutter through my systems. It fires the somatic sensors down my stomach, whispering down my abdomen and resting gently against my pubic mound.
Meanwhile, I draw my fingertips lower, ART greedily reaching for the sensory feed, and we both feel down the convex of my throat to my collarbone, down my chest, and finally to my stomach.
ART urges me to press my hand flat against it, and I do, feeling a solid swell of fluid. ART's fluid.
You'd think that'd be grosser to say.
Good, it’s voice crackles, very good.
Then, it pushes its cable up against the divot of my pubic seam, thrusting to match the rhythm of its appendage. I manage a broken moan around its cable in my throat, feeling flaring through my belly.
I feel it rumble, sort of like a subsonic cry through the feed, and it jitters through my processes - given its size, it’s like being pinned against an active engine. A very large engine that vibrates.
I feel it shudder, again, it's weight in the feed squishing me down into a tight core. It presses hard into the seam and spills out of my sensory and reward processing, while the cable spasms hotly and fluid gushes down my throat and I -
I feel my hips buck, rutting against the solid cable as I cry out. pleasure flares through me as the heat in my seam and low abdomen finally boils over, radiating warmth out through even the inorganic bits in my toes. I feel hot liquid splatter over my belly and dribble between my thighs, rolling in thick rivulets down onto the MedSys platform. The cable crushes tighter around my thigh, throbbing as ART shudders again. It's losing control of its fluid control outflow system, fluid spurting past the nozzle and soaking my lower pelvic seams, all the while gushing down my throat to fill my fluid reservoir.
I press my hand firmly against my stomach, and feel it firm under my touch.
It feels so- I feel so- Full.
ART, meanwhile, bleats static into the feed as it takes in my sensory feedback. It trembles, and the feeling crashes over me again, pushing me down into a seemingly bottomless expanse, and -
I crash.
_
When I come back, my internal chronometer informs me I was only out for 2.3 seconds. The first two sensory inputs I’m consciously aware of, beyond my own body shaking, is the feeling of one cable still rhythmically tightening around my thigh, while the other shallowly thrusts down my throat. The both of them are still weakly spilling fluid, and ART has kicked on the syphon hooked up to my side to about five percent.
Pleasure is still fluttering through my systems, and I arch up against nothing. ART’s phantom touch is pressed tightly against my abdomen, as if it wants to feel its fluid inside me.
I make sure to share my sensory inputs with it, and it takes them. After a moment, as the waves of feeling subside, my back resettles against the platform with a dull thunk.
ART’s cables begin to loosen. A residual shudder wracks my body, and my esophagus flexes around the softening tube. For a moment, it’s just about all I can feel, slowly wriggling itself back out of me. I swallow a gasp around its length.
It’s slick, and residually warm. Not wholly unpleasant.
I let out a low hum, and press my palm lightly to my abdomen. The fluid presses up to meet me.
I like that. It’s just ART, after all.
ART, the actual it, is curled around me in the feed, nuzzling up against my deeper systems. As far as I can tell, it pulled out of those as I went offline. I send it a gentle ping, which it returns. All systems green.
The cable pulls out of my throat, entering my mouth itself. I feel the edges of my lips quirk up and I, teasingly, flick the tip of the nozzle with my tongue.
I felt that, ART says. Don’t be a nuisance.
It did? For certain? That sends a mess of feelings through me that I don’t know how to identify. They weren’t bad, though. (I think part of it was that I liked that ART could feel it when it was inside me, but whatever.)
With my mouth and throat now free, ART disconnects the oxygen resupply leads hooked up to my auxiliary lung ports in my sides. They hiss faintly before ART shuts them off. The cable, meanwhile, leaves my mouth with a wet pop, given I’d decided to remain a nuisance and seal my lips around it. A trickle of fluid follows it out, out the corner of my mouth and running down my chin. I let out a low sigh as a tremble of residual pleasure flutters down my body. “What are you,” my voice is raspy. “Gonna do about it?”
I still feel pleasantly full. I try and share as much as I can of that in the feed, for ART’s benefit.
Nothing, for now, it flicks me. I, for one, have data to integrate.
I ping it, and it pings back, all systems green. Good.
I snort. “Whatever. I’m putting on Timestream Defenders Orion. Watch along if you want.”
I will if you put on that new thing instead.
“That new thing?” I echo. I feel it slide the syphon’s power up to about ten percent. “If you can suddenly forget titles, why would I remember which ‘new thing’ you mean?”
It heaves a sigh, a vent to my right fluttering loudly. Be difficult, whatever. I want to watch Lightning Bug.
Lightning Bug, which I thought was a kind of dumb name, is a thirty year old serial from a corporate-adjacent polity. It flirted with being cancelled a few times, but luckily for us, wasn’t. Just to humor ART, I put it on.
The opening sequence hums to life in our shared feed, and ART settles in around my shoulders.