"...but then she pulled me out of her ass. She changed my condom faster than I could even see... those mechanical paws of hers... and jammed me into her pussy and kept bouncing on me, grinning and squeaking all the time! She was really loving it, that was the best part! Like, she wasn't using me or doing me a favour, she wanted me! And there was nothing but here and no time but now and no one but us. It was a perfect moment. I wished it could go on forever! And then she looked down at me, like she was daring me to make it even better. So I slipped a condom onto my two fingers and rubbed it around her pussy for the lube, then put it against her tail hole. She eased down onto it, then started bouncing again, grinning and squeaking, so happy! So then I pinched her clit, just on her lips and pressed down and she rode me like that for a while, just squealing until she bore down on my dick and my fingers. And she squirted! I mean, she was juicy just riding me, but then she squirted when she came! We were a big, smelly mess... and it was the best ever..." The cat mewled and pressed his face into his palms. "I can't believe she's gone!" he whimpered.
"Dee was the best!" a golden Labrador at the bar exclaimed.
"She was a perfect slut," an otter beside him replied. "She didn't care what anyone thought, that's what she was and... and... it was perfect! Just the way she was, she was perfect!"
"Why?" the cat sobbed. "How could they... how could they!"
"The oligarchy," a slender rat girl replied. "I want them to be dead, all of them! Dead, like her!"
Growls of agreement went up around the tavern. Then the door opened and a shadow fell across it.
"We all love her," said a big wolf.
The whole tavern looked over at him. (The otter turned to the lab. "It's Bongo," he murmured, "from the Nakama!")
"We're going to make an official announcement soon," Bongo went on. "The Nakama wants the colony to know first. Dee is alive." He gave them a few seconds to murmur among themselves. "That's the good news," he added.
"There's bad news?" the rattess asked.
"For now, this part does not leave the colony," he went on. He looked around the bar; his muzzle and ears dropped and he sighed. "She's a brain in a jar," he said. Again, he gave the crowd a few seconds to take the information in. "Her brain was all that was left uninfected. By the time we found an effective antibiotic, it would have crossed her blood-brain barrier..."
"No!" the cat cried. "No, let her go! Let her go!"
Now the tavern turned their collective gaze on him.
"What?" Bongo cried, his teeth partly bared.
"She was a perfect slut!" the cat sobbed. "She loved it, we all loved her for it! How will she fuck with no body? How can she live that way?"
The cat went back to weeping, with a new emphasis. The crowd looked around at each other and tears started in more eyes. Bongo's ears went from combat position to merely lowered and he pressed his thin lips together.
"For now," Bongo announced, "don't talk to anybody outside the colony about Dee's body. It's very important. Let the rest of the system think she's still got one. Let the Nakama handle further announcements. We're not lying, just hiding part of the truth for now."
#
The speaker buzzed. After a pause, it buzzed again.
"Dee?" said Baz.
"The system needs to sync with her," Bletch told the sheep. "Keep talking, Dee."
The speaker buzzed again, squealed, hissed and sputtered, then said, "...dark!"
"Dee, can you hear me?" Baz went on.
"What? What's the noise? Why is it so dark? Where am I?"
"Dee, try to understand," said Bletch. "Try to make out what I'm saying. Keep trying."
"What? Trying? Where am I, what is this?"
"Can you hear me, Dee?" Baz repeated.
"Can you understand us yet?" Bletch added.
"Sort of," Dee replied. "It's dark! What's wrong with my eyes?"
"Just a minute," Baz replied, and reached for controls. "Your vision might be a bit jumbled while the system calibrates."
"White..." said the speaker. "Snow... coloured now... all jumbled... there, I think it's sorted now. Circles, scanning out from the center... a bright line on gray, scanning left to right, now top to bottom... a pink triangle... overlaid on a black swastika? Low res, but getting finer."
"Good!" Baz replied. "Okay, here comes vision."
"So my eyes are gone, huh?"
"...and your ears," Bletch replied.
"Unfortunate, I had pretty ears."
"You're already planning better replacements in your head, aren't you?" said Baz.
"Obviously. I have vision now. The resolution keeps stepping up. I can see you now. Hi, Baz! Hi, Bletch! I can't see myself, just a sheet... and I can't feel my body!" Dee sighed. "Spill it, guys. How bad?"
"Bad," said Baz.
"Your body was turning into blood sausage," Bletch added. "We found the last clean samples of your DNA, but we had enough trouble saving your brain, we haven't had time to do anything with it yet."
"So I'm a brain in a jar? Glass?"
"Sapphire crystal," Baz replied, indignantly.
"Base?"
"Molybdenum stainless with a titanium cap for heat shielding."
"Laser?"
"Retro-reflective hologram, all the common wavelengths, stamped into the sapphire. And no blood, we're gluconating and oxygenating your spinal fluid directly; mechanical filter, virus-grade, broad-spectrum synthetic antibodies as back-up."
"Sufficient, for now." An indicator under her cameras went out. "Save the software," she quoted, "the rest is just meat. But I really liked my meat, it was fun! This is such an inconvenience!"
Baz and Bletch looked at each other. "Inconvenience?" Baz whispered, dumbfounded.
"Forget the clone for now, just preserve my genome. They haven't given up, I'd rather be as far from vulnerable as possible until we're more secure. Who else knows?"
"The Nakama," Bletch replied. "The colony, we had to, morale was down the sewer. The rest of the solar system only knows that you're alive."
Dee paused. "You shouldn't have done that," she said, very solemnly. "It would have been better if you'd let the Oligarchy think they'd won for now."
"We had to!" Bletch exclaimed. "It was the Beaver!"
"The Beaver?" Dee exclaimed.
"It's your own fault," the fox went on, "basing our currency on your skill as a slut. Without your... well, beaver, the Beaver has no value! It literally reached terminal velocity; it was falling as fast as the speed of light let the market react! It's just lucky that nothing's official until we acknowledge the news. If we hadn't let slip that you were still alive, we'd have had no currency outside the colony! There were debt collectors booking passage already!" He paused for breath and his ears spread to half-mast.
"The Nakama agreed," Baz continued for him. "Tactically it was a bad move, but our only other option was to partner with another agency's currency. The Oligarchy was already spreading word that they'd look with military disfavour on any agency that tried to partner with us. They wanted our value for themselves."
"We had to back up the Beaver somehow," Bletch concluded.
"You were supposed to assume my debt!" Dee exclaimed. "Any time I can't back-up the Beaver, you're supposed to take it on yourselves!"
"We did!" Bletch replied. "Every one of us who wasn't working to save you made their bodies available immediately! That's when the Beaver started collapsing. I guess we're not as... valuable as you are."
Baz and Bletch gave each other rueful looks. They slipped their arms around each other, then cuddled as they looked back into Dee's cameras.
"I'm a fool," Dee grunted. "How could I let my own holes become a hole in security?" Dee paused. "Somehow, I need to go on slutting! So how can I fuck when I'm a brain in a jar..." The speaker paused. "...the same way I usually do obviously," she muttered. "Okay," she added, an unmistakable twinkle in her voice, "how soon can I go online?"
#
Unprogrammed cyberspace surrounded Dee and the cat, hazy and gray, as if they were standing in the middle of a cloud. The floor wasn't visible, but their feet stood on the same plane. Dee walked towards the cat, expanding disproportionately as she came until they were the same size. She smiled, her front teeth bared in a grin.
"Bongo tells me that you cried because you thought I was dead," she said.
The cat nodded. "I love you," he said.
"Aw!" Dee replied and hugged him. "I love our colony, every last one of us. Please tell them I said so." Then she pulled back enough to rub his nose with her own. "But this is just for us," she added, coquettishly.
"Thank you."
"You owe me a beaver."
The cat chuckled gently. "They let me see your jar."
"What did you think?"
"Weird, seeing it... a raw brain, with wires all over, and then thinking about it, thinking..."
Dee brushed the cat's lips with her own and shushed him.
"I am more than my brain," she said. "This is the real me, here with you, in this space we can share." She nuzzled his muzzle, wrapped her arms around his hips and held him closer. "I've been moving this way for a long time anyway. I replaced an arm here, a leg there, flesh organs for smaller, more reliable synthetic ones. The Oligarchy pushed me faster than I was comfortable with, that's all. I should thank them." She touched her nose to his, "We are luminous beings," she whispered, "not just crude flesh!" Then she pressed her lips to his and stroked the tip of his tongue with hers. "I want you," she murmured.
"You were so much fun in real space," he murmured back.
"I'm even more fun in cyberspace. There's no danger of pregnancy..." She knelt in front of him. "...or infections..." She unzipped his pants, then made his clothes go away and fondled his pod. "...or even interruptions, unless we want them."
Dee licked the tip of the cat's pod. His cock immediately peeked out and she began to lick it, slowly and sensuously, smiling and enjoying its scent and flavour. His cock grew quickly; it reached full hardness at a modest size.
"This is your real size?" Dee asked. The cat nodded. "Cute!" she declared and took it into her mouth. Her sharp front teeth went away. She applied her tongue fully to the hot, musky cock, licking up, down and around its full length, enjoying every ripple and fold. The cat started purring, a loud, ground-shaking rumble that Dee could feel all through his body and especially his cock. She giggled a little, then took even more of him into her mouth. She sucked hard, pulling him part-way out, then took his whole length into her mouth and sucked again. Her nimble tongue rubbed his frenulum as she sucked. It was too much. He growled, then yowled and his musky, salty cream spurted. She pushed him all the way into her mouth, aiming his cream right down her throat, sucking for all she was worth!
At last the stream of cum ended in dribbles. Dee licked it up, not wasting a drop. The cat massaged her neck and the back of her head, scritched her ears, caressed her face, purring loud and long. At last Dee let him out of her mouth, but nuzzled his balls with her nose. For a while she just enjoyed letting him pet her.
"So good!" he murmured.
"So are you, sweetie!" she replied, her face still in his sack. "In real space, I'd have asphyxiated half way through that."
"How... long were we... were you doing that?"
"Fifteen minutes, game time. (Two minutes and a bit real time, if you care.) Lost track?"
"It was terrific, the best BJ I've ever had!" He knelt with Dee and looked her in the eye, grinning broadly. "You really love this!"
Dee giggled. "Of course I do!" She rested her paws on his shoulder. "I thought of going into prostitution, but engineering pays better and I like tangible results. Fucking is my second favourite thing, though. Do you know how I started?"
The cat shook his head. "Tell me!"
"When I was a kid, my nakama... the same group as today... the guys were frequently distracted by girls. I was like a kid sister to them back then. They found it easy to talk to me. I discovered that the distraction resulted from them not getting laid. So I started giving them sex as a reward for getting projects done or doing something clever. They were shocked at first, but it soon became normal and I got to be the leader. I guess I'm pretty good at it. I still give them sex treats. And you..." She nuzzled his nose again, affectionately. "You just proved that I don't need a body to do it!"
"It was, too, it was so real! Oh Dee!"
He hugged her impulsively. His purr vibrated through her, stimulating every organ. His flagging cock pressed against her mons and his purr vibrated there strongly as it started to stiffen again.
"Purr louder, sweetie! It feels exquisite!" She pulled back a little. "Want some more?"
His face took on the sort of silly, surprised expression only a cat can manage. Dee giggled and booped his nose. "The BJ cost you a beaver," she said. "The rest is on the house, advertising expense. Besides, I'm really enjoying you! How about some scenery?"
He grinned broadly. "Meadow?" he suggested.
"Pond with that?"
He nodded. "Sound of water, smell of grass and ducks."
"Poultry for the kitty!"
He shook his head. "I used to feed ducks at the pond back home on the farm before I came here. I kinda miss them."
"You have to feed me first, sweetie!"
Scenery phased in around them; a well manicured lawn as far as the eye could see, shade trees beside a pond, a breeze making the water lap at the shore and ducks swimming quietly. A blanket appeared under them. Dee straddled his lap, a hand on his chest to steady herself. She stroked his modest cock, made it hard as he purred for her, then made it grow. Before long it was twice as long and more than twice as thick as real life. The cat stared at the improvement.
"Won't that hurt?" he said.
"Nothing hurts here unless you want it to. Lean back so I can ride you!"
He did and she knelt up, put his tip between her lips and came forward a little. He cupped her butt cheeks in his hands to help her keep steady; she smiled at that and her tail curled up. He took the hint and fondled deeper between her cheeks. With a happy coo, she pressed down on his enlarged cock, easing his mighty member inside. He sighed, smiling at the tightness. She moaned a little as the great cock spread her lips wide, bulged her slender tummy. She took the last few inches with a sigh, her head lolled back in bliss. Then the sigh became deep breathing. She sucked breath in as she rocked her hips backwards, pulling him out part way, sighed her breath away again as she rocked forwards, pushing him all the way in. Her rocking and her breathing became rhythmic. He kept the rhythm with her, drawing breath as she did, sighing as his cock drove into her again. He still held her butt, pushing on her tail hole as she rocked into his paws, guiding her down as she pressed him in.
Bit by bit the pace increased. Guiding her down onto his cock at first, soon he was urging her down, then pushing her down. Her sighs as she took him in became ragged, then grunts, then cries. Again and again his cock was outlined under the skin of her tummy. Her juice flowed, dripping luxuriously onto the blanket, its rich scent filling the air. He started rocking against her, pushing himself still deeper into her. His purr kept time with his thrusts. She pressed her forehead against his and thrust still harder.
Finally she cried out loud. She tried to hold him inside her as he kept thrusting. Then he yowled back and pressed himself as deeply into her as he could, hilted and pushed still harder. Her cries became long, loud moans, his yowls helpless mewling. Creamy cum spurted and dripped from her depths, mixing with her juice on the blanket. After a while he stopped mewling and started purring again. She wiggled as he did, whimpered a little as she pressed herself still further down on him. He purred all the louder. They held each other tight, tighter. Soon she whimpered yet again, squeaked and squirted all over his lap. She put a paw on his tummy and pulled away. His cock emerged, still pretty firm. She rested it in his lap and sat on it, letting it open her lips again, length-wise this time, from clit to tail-hole. They held each other tight, their tails wrapped around each other's waists.
"You're the best!" the cat murmured. "That was impossible," he added.
"That's the point," she whispered back, "nothing's impossible here! More?"
He chuckled. "In a minute, okay?"
"This time in my ass!"
"Swimming?"
She giggled. "What about zero gee instead?"
"We can do that here!" he realized. "I should have tried cybersex long ago!"
#
"Quiet everybody!" the bar tender yelled. "They're talking about us!" He pointed at the tavern's big monitor, then turned up the sound.
The patrons turned to look, even the regulars in their booths. The caption bar at the bottom of the image rolled stock symbols with values and trend arrows. A second caption bar just above it announced "Eichsfeldian Beaver Fever" as the announcer, a well-dressed rat lady, posed in front of a green-screen that currently read "Business News." She looked confidently into the camera.
"...took a beating in the markets after its founder reportedly died of a severe infection," the announcer read. "The Eichsfeldian Beaver is backed by the colony's founder, Deanna Dee. The Beaver is an unusual currency in that Ms Dee..."
The announcer stopped dead. She peered at the camera, (probably equipped with a teleprompter), then at a notepad, then blinked. Her confident smile faded for a moment. She coughed, while an image of Dee replaced the plain logo.
"...an unusual currency," she continued. "Each Beaver is a promissory note from Ms Dee to perform as..." The announcer coughed and cleared her throat. "...a sex act with the bearer. When news of her death reached the currency market, the bottom dropped out..." The rat lady dropped her muzzle into her hands and sniffled. She cleared her throat with what sounded just a little bit like a chortle. "...the bottom dropped out of the Beaver," she said, although her straight face looked a little strained. "It went down quickly to less than a tenth it's opening value. The Beaver quickly recovered when the Bayesian Nakama of Eichsfeldia, the body in charge of the colony, reported that Ms Dee was not dead, merely sick and that she would return to backing her currency when she had recovered. Although it did not reach it's opening high..." Again, she paused to cough. "...it continued to gain until closing. Speculation on the nature of Ms Dee's illness..."
The announcer snorted, turned it into a sneeze and turned away from the camera. Her shoulders shook for a few seconds. When she turned back to the camera, she didn't look quite as confident.
"I'm sorry, ladies and gentlemen," she said. "I'll continue. Speculation that Ms Dee's illness was sexually transmitted seems unlikely, as most of her... Beaver redemptions are conducted through cyberspace. The stock symbol for the Eichsfeldian Beaver and it's Unicode symbol is a double-barred Y, which represents..."
The announcer paused for a moment, then burst into laughter. She covered her muzzle with her hands, but couldn't stop the guffaws from escaping it.
"...Dee's pubic mound!" she cried, through her laughter. "Cut to commercial!" she begged.
Through peels of laughter, the tavern's customers broke into applause, then laughed all the harder as an advertisement for condoms faded in. At their table, the Nakama laughed along. Dee laughed too, her head and shoulders quaking in the monitor attached to the cubical box that held her and her life support.
"I'm going to find out who she is and send her a five beaver note!" she exclaimed.
"We owe her for lightening the mood," Bongo said.
"This still shouldn't have happened," Dee went on. "How are we going to prevent it in future?"
Seated around her, Bongo, Bletch, Baz and Quux gave each other questioning looks, while Zot took a long sip of her drink. Bletch took out a soft, woven-metal helmet from his jacket pocket and slipped it on, then pulled out a remote and adjusted it.
"Facts," said Bongo. "The Oligarchy was ready to exploit this weakness. The attack virus reached you at a time of their choosing to have maximum effect."
"They have somebody or something in the colony," Bletch added, as he pocketed the remote. "It's gathering intelligence at least. It had the attack virus ready to go, they probably created it for you as soon as you stood out. Which means there's attack viruses for all of us."
"Agreed," said Dee. "We'll need to find the vector virus and immunize the rest of you."
"We have your virus," Quux replied. "Foo ran it through his sources. We have a species and we can synthesize antibodies any time."
"We can't use them!" the fox exclaimed. "The Oligarchy will have different vector viruses for each of us. We're probably already infected, waiting for the right synthetic antibodies to trigger them! Or some secondary vector!"
"Turn down your creativity levels, fox!" Baz exclaimed. "That's just paranoid!"
"Sorry Baz," the wolf replied, "but I agree with Bletch. They've already operated that far over the top."
"Thanks, Bongo," Bletch said.
"We'll have to do a complete DNA spread on every virus in all of our systems," Dee decided. "With the surveillance-free hardware we have available, it would take..." Her image on the monitor froze briefly. "...about twenty years," she concluded. "We'll have to keep working towards the state of the art first. Meanwhile, we'll have to put off protecting ourselves from vector viruses and work on finding the source..."
"Render farm!" Bletch exclaimed. "Make a couple Kay of the processors we have now, have them working together, it should cut the time to do a full DNA spread down to five days!"
"It could only work on one of us at a time," Dee replied. "It's still worth doing, but we need to find the Oligarchy spy anyway. Right now let's concentrate on plugging our currency hole."
"Fact," Bongo went on. "When the Nakama offered to back your Beaver-debts, everyone, even New Atticans, rejected us. The only place where the rest of us were wanted was Phobos."
"One, Phobos is under the least Oligarchy influence," Bletch said. "Two, most of us have visited Phobos recently. Three, we have more trade with Phobos... Time delay! Dee, you have a bulk comm deal so that you can be online long enough to redeem Beavers on Luna and New Attica. But it's supposed to transfer to us if you're even temporarily unable!"
"Wait!" Dee ordered and her image froze again. "...it didn't!" she exclaimed. "Why..." Once more her image froze. "...they blocked me, now I can't even get to the transfer records."
"The Oligarchy," Bletch replied. "They have somebody in New Attica interfering with comm traffic."
"That's no surprise," said Baz."
"What's surprising," said Bongo, "is how secure a position their mole agent must have."
"No!" Bletch exclaimed. "Time delay! You were only gone for a few seconds, the interference must be local! We have a jabberwock!"
"But then why wasn't Phobos effected?"
"Different channel... different transponder... oh... Ow, ow!" Hands shaking, Bletch reached into his jacket pocket, pulled out the remote and stabbed a button. He pulled off his thinking cap and held it trembling and smiling. "That narrows down our jabber-hunt quite a bit!"
"Well done, foxy!" Dee replied. "You earned a reward, once your head stops hurting."
Bletch grinned broadly, his tongue showing. The rest of the table chuckled at him, but he kept grinning.
"Now everybody," said Quux, " I think we have a good idea of what happened and we've all been very cooperative. Is there anything we've left out?"
Zot nodded. "Our wealth is your body," she intoned. "We do not know the true extent of rejection of our bodies because a lie was told. We do not know exactly what the lie was, but we know that it will spread. We can oppose it by spreading truth."
"We're spreading the word as well as we can," Quux replied.
"We need to keep control of our message," Bongo added.
"The lie is not controlled," Zot replied. "Mouths mumble, ears are distracted. Like oil on water, its colours shift as it spreads. To hit a shifting target, shoot all of your arrows. To cancel a shifting lie, tell all of the truth. False tales spread away from us, spread truth against them."
"You mean embassies," Dee replied, a very serious look on her face.
Zot merely nodded.
"What?" Bongo said. "Embassies? What do you mean?"
"Spread truth back the other way. If we had embassies in New Attica, Luna, maybe even International City..."
"Are you out of your mind???" Baz yelled. "It's too dangerous! There are about a million ways you could get captured or killed! And even more things that could just plain go wrong!"
Baz immediately put his hands to his mouth. The rest of the table stared at him, except for Zot, who looked away with a strange, little smile.
"Then I'll need to make a million and one plans," Dee said, her image glaring in the monitor.
Bongo caught Baz's eye. He didn't say a word, just opened his mouth a little and showed the ram his big, lupine fangs. Baz, just as silently, picked up his drink and went to sit at the bar, his ears at half-mast. Bongo licked his nose-leather and closed his mouth as Dee's cameras turned towards him.
"What was that?" Dee accused.
"Nothing," Bongo replied.
"I didn't see anything," Quux added.
"Me either," Bletch chimed in. "Can we go play now, please?"
Zot merely took a sip of her drink, still smiling faintly.

Story copyright © 2013 Allan "D'Otter" Burrows, All Rights Reserved
Characters copyright © 2013 Daniel "DataPacRat" Boese, used here by permission
4514 words