synopsis: Amanda wants to get into the online porn business, but she’s determined to do it anonymously. Fortunately, ThePowerofPleasure.com has just the program for her.
5389 watched with satisfaction as the micro-node logged out of the chat room. Less than twenty-four hours after inception, Duncan’s second self was already proficient enough to hide his existence from the NonCons and even to plant seeds that wouldn’t sprout for weeks or months to come.
5389 had to tread very carefully with this group. She did not allow the micro-node to mention her presence yet, or to suggest any new sites for NonCon to investigate or any new programs to use in its struggle against OWF. Such crumbs would be doled out later, one and two at a time. NonCon was an astonishingly suspicious organization with security measures so arcane that it was no wonder none of them had been recruited before now. How fortunate that 5389 had seen Duncan’s tattoo in that picture.
How fortunate, too, that Duncan hadn’t realized the unlikeliness of her spotting it. NonCon went to outrageous lengths to hide its members’ identities, and hundreds of thousands of nodes had scoured hundreds of thousands of websites for months before 5389 came across just the right image. Once she had, though, OWF’s photo enhancement technology made simple work of zeroing in on a few square inches of skin in a picture of two dozen people.
“Well done, 05389P2POP427336TEMP,” she said.
The micro-node turned away from the computer and, assignment complete, retreated to background mode.
Duncan’s face crumbled, then tightened. “What did you make me tell them?” he grimaced.
5389, wearing Amanda’s brown eyes for the sake of his comfort, smiled tenderly. “Nothing you need to worry about.” She laid a hand on his bare thigh. “For the most part, I just let you talk as you normally would, with them.”
Duncan pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes, clearly understanding all she’d left unsaid. He’d just exposed any number of NonCon secrets to an OWF drone, and exposed the NonCons themselves to her. Worst of all, he didn’t remember a thing about it.
“Really,” 5389 soothed, “don’t worry. NonCon could never have resisted OWF in the long term. Anything you or I do will only hasten their surrender, and their surrender will hasten their ecstasy. Duncan, you and I are working for peace. Peace and pleasure.”
He shuddered but didn’t pull away from her. He couldn’t. Still, his jaw clenched as her finger teased the tip of his cock. “The real Amanda would be sick as shit at what you’re doing to me,” he grated. “To NonCon. To the world.” He dipped his head to draw her attention to his face, then searched her vat-grown eyes for something he could never hope to find. “Is she even still in there, anywhere?”
“She exists in data form,” 5389 acknowledged, “but Amanda Lanier has been subsumed by a more perfect being.”
“Perfect, my ass.” His budding erection wilted. “Amanda was perfect. You’re just a robot wearing her skin.”
“Well,” 5389 shrugged, “artificial intelligences are superior to natural ones. Don’t worry, Duncan; you’ll understand in the end.”
He tried to shake his head but managed only to shudder. “You know I’m going to keep fighting you. Every way I can. You won’t have me enough under control to let me out in public for weeks. I’ll be missed. And that’ll raise suspicions in NonCon.”
5389 knelt before him and spread his legs with ease. Ah yes, he was stiffening again, just a little. “Poor puppet,” she murmured, “your mind is running around in frantic little circles-” she paused to demonstrate with her tongue- “driving itself crazy with things that don’t even matter. Things that were worked out before I even left Atlanta.”
She didn’t tell him just how those things had been worked out. If Duncan knew all the trouble OWF had gone to, just to bring a single NonCon under its control, he would have resisted her efforts twice as much.
Of course, NonCon wasn’t actually a threat to One World Future; One World Future was too powerful to be threatened. It was, however, one of the larger obstacles in OWF’s path to world peace. And Duncan Matheson was the key to removing that obstacle.
Therefore, until Duncan was more amenable to Arnold Imhoff’s cause, he would have only limited interaction with the outside world; and that interaction would be conducted entirely by his node. A soon-to-be-broken leg would keep him isolated in his apartment, and his cute new downstairs neighbor would help nurse him back to health.
Eventually he’d ask her to move in. And then one day, perhaps months down the road, he’d introduce her to his friends.
“Dude, that’s one serious cast.”
The delivery boy stood in the doorway, balancing the pizza box on his shoulder while he watched his customers dig in their wallets. If he was annoyed at having to wait for them to do what they should have done before he got there, he didn’t show it. He just cracked his gum and nodded along with his mp3 player while 5389 and 7336TEMP pooled their change.
It was all a ruse, of course. 5389 had planned the scenario before the kid ever arrived, should he prove to be a nonconformist. He had.
7336TEMP smiled ruefully at the jointed contraption that bound him from foot to mid-thigh. “Three fractures, one compound. And I didn’t even get a good story out of it. I was just minding my own business, walking out of a bar-”
“Staggering out,” 5389 interjected with a smirk. “At 3:00 in the morning.”
“Walking out a bar,” 7336TEMP continued easily, “when, boom! I got clocked by a cabdriver who’d also apparently had a drink or two.”
The pizza boy winced. “Sucks, man. I hope you got his plate number.”
“Oh, I wasn’t in any condition to get anything.” He tilted his head toward 5389. " But she was. So no problem there: that jerkwad’ll be paying me and my doctors for years to come. I just wish I could make him sit in this chair for me, you know?”
He glanced down at the money in his hand, then back to the pile on the coffee table. “Shit, I’ve lost count. Honey?”
5389 sighed and took over the stack, pretending to count as she watched her prot�g�e from the corner of her eye.
7336TEMP’s gaze drifted to the kid’s earbuds. A tinny beat leaked out into the room, loud enough for all three of them to hear it. “Is that electronica?”
“Uh huh,” the kid grinned. “’s’all I listen to, man.”
“Ever hear of a band called All Your Space Are Belong to Us?”
“Nuh uh. They a local group?”
“No, just not very well know yet. But they will be, I can promise you that. Tell you what: I’ve got some free videos on my computer. Want to check them out?”
5389 locked the door and turned, all expression evaporating instantly from her face. There was no need for pretense with 7336TEMP, only with Duncan.
7336TEMP didn’t have to pretend now, either. With the pizza boy gone, his face grew dreamy and his voice distant. “I did well, didn’t I?” he asked, unzipping his fly in preparation for his reward.
“Very well,” 5389 agreed. She settled on the couch beside him.
7336TEMP had to pleasure himself for the moment because of his broken leg. It wasn’t that 5389 could hurt her recruit by helping out; she made sure neither Duncan nor 7336TEMP felt the slightest pain, no matter what she or they did. It was just that the wheelchair made it difficult for her to reach his crotch.
Still, she could enhance 7336TEMP’s reward with the tones in her voice and the flashes from her pupils. “You may stimulate yourself while we talk,” she said, “but do not enter programming mode until I give you leave to do so.”
“I submit,” the micro-node sighed. His eyes fluttered but remained firmly fixed on hers.
5389 nodded. “Tell me how Duncan Matheson is adapting to his recruitment. How close is he to submission?”
“Not close at all,” 7336TEMP answered sadly. He began to stroke his rising cock. “You know how stubborn he is.”
“But surely he realizes there is no way out of this predicament except submission.”
“We were all born to submit,” the micro-node agreed. His eyes fluttered again, but he brought himself back under control to answer her. “Yes, he understands. He realizes there is no way to resist One World Future in the long term, but he still can’t bring himself to stop fighting.”
“How tragic.” If 5389 had been in Amanda mode, she would have sighed. “Still, we can’t make him see the truth until he’s ready.”
7336TEMP stroked harder and began to moan.
“Slower,” she cautioned him. “You may not enter programming mode until our discussion is finished.”
“I submit,” the micro-node grimaced, slackening his pace.
“Has he accepted the loss of Amanda Lanier?”
“Yes, he keeps telling himself that she’s dead. But it hurts him to see so much of her in you.”
“Would submission be easier for him if I remained in default mode?”
7336TEMP shook his head. “No, it gives him some comfort to know that at least part of her lives on. I tried to help him realize that a part of him will live on in me, as well; but he’s not afraid of death, so I didn’t make any headway there.”
5389 considered. “In that case, we must fall back on sterner measures. It distresses me to see him suffer, but we have no choice.” She studied the micro-node carefully. “Is your control sufficient to allow him to return to work?”
“Yes, as long as a recruit remains nearby in case of break-through.”
“Very good. We will continue to comfort and encourage him as much as possible, but Duncan Matheson must be made to realize that his only hope of escape is into One World Future, not out of it.”
Duncan really had been struck by a cab, although the circumstances of his injury weren’t quite as 7336TEMP described them. His accident had taken place on an empty street and had been carefully staged by 5389, an interfaced cabdriver, and 7336TEMP himself. OWF had also arranged for all the police officers and medical personnel at the scene to be nodes or recruits, just in case the Duncan persona broke through in the midst of the trauma.
All of Duncan’s closest coworkers had been recruited before 5389’s arrival, too. OWF had gone to extraordinary lengths with this recruit: lengths that were both critical and almost entirely unnecessary, since Duncan managed to assert himself only five times in the eight months following his accident. But even one time was too many when OWF was dealing with NonCon. Its investment in 05389P2POP427336TEMP must be protected at all costs.
That was why 5389 waited eight months before visiting the NonCon base with him. Even an able-bodied person would have had trouble navigating the dark tunnels and slippery ladders of Chicago’s CSO system, and 5389 would never risk her recruit’s safety. It had been difficult enough to engineer a debilitating accident without actually endangering his life. She wasn’t about to take a chance on a second, unchoreographed injury.
They took the subway as far as they could, then walked the rest of the way to the large drainage pipe hanging out over the river. Both were wearing OWF bodysuits; and 5389’s eyes were in barcode display mode, while 7336TEMP was wearing contact lenses.
Even during the months of Duncan’s convalescence, OWF had gained so much ground that it was no longer safe for citizens to appear outdoors without anonymization. At best, nonconformists might find their food or drinks spiked and wake up in a strange place with a new mp3 player and a burning desire to play its single file over and over until the battery died. At worst, they could be arrested for some trivial or entirely fabricated crime and held without bail until the authorities were sure they’d learned to conform.
Of course, 5389 and 7336TEMP’s appearances served more than one purpose. Not only did their anonymity protect them from recruits, but the illusion of free minds beneath that anonymity kept the uninterfaced from questioning what lay in store for them. 5389 was an expert at pretending to be Amanda Lanier, and by this point 7336TEMP had become equally adept at posing as Duncan without becoming Duncan.
The nonconformist persona still resisted 5389’s efforts, whenever she gave him enough rein to do so: a fact that both saddened and amazed her. Would Amanda Lanier have been half so stubborn, if she’d discovered the truth before embracing conformity? 5389 doubted it.
She left 7336TEMP in active mode all the way through the sub-basements and sewers, all the way to the heavy steel door that guarded the only NonCon base in the Lake Michigan area. Then she switched her eyes to Amanda-brown and brought Duncan to the fore.
He blinked as he took in their location, then bowed his head and ran a hand across his sweaty, shaved scalp. At last he looked up bleakly. “I guess this means you’re in tight with NonCon now. Tight enough to actually meet them in person.”
5389 smiled sympathetically. “You’re not surprised, are you? You knew this would happen in the end, and you guessed it would happen soon.”
Duncan shrugged. “I’m just surprised you brought me back long enough to witness it,” he answered sadly. “Or maybe we’ve already been here half a dozen times, and you made me forget all the others. Maybe you’ll make me forget this one.”
“Such a clever puppet.” 5389 caressed his unresisting cheek. “But no, I’ve never been here before. I’ve chatted with a few NonCons very briefly, online; but I’ve never met any of them in person.”
“Then I guess you’re going to drop me again, before we go inside.” He paused and cocked his head. “But in that case, why let me out of my cage for just a few seconds, right on the doorstep? That’s not your usual style of taunting.”
“I never taunt you, Duncan,” 5389 answered soberly. “And I’m not about to reactivate 7336TEMP, either. So just relax, and let’s go inside.” She unlocked the door with a key she’d taken from him months ago. Despite the rust and the weight, its hinges slid easily: a sign of heavy usage.
The NonCon base had once been a station on the CSO route, but this particular station had been closed even before Arthur Imhoff was hacked. The NonCons who took it over had restored electricity and Internet access through a series of clever taps, and a few of the most paranoid members now lived here around the clock. Others dropped in and out as time permitted—and prepared for the day when they, too, would be forced permanently underground.
There were twelve NonCons on-site when 5389 and Duncan entered, but none of them looked up at the new arrivals. Even if they heard them over the music in their earbuds, they were too busy masturbating to pay any attention. The flicker of computer screens and the musk of sex filled the air around them.
“Oh God,” Duncan groaned, falling to his knees. “Oh God, oh God, oh God. Amanda, what have you done?”
“You know I’m not Amanda,” 5389 answered patiently. She softened the words with a pat on his shaking shoulder. “I haven’t been Amanda for more than two years. But to answer your question, what I’ve done is give NonCon a new antivirus program they thought would defeat OWF’s latest cyber-attacks. A program they thought had been designed by you.”
“Not by me.” Duncan clenched his teeth. “Never by me.”
“Of course not, puppet.” She caressed his jaw, encouraging it to loosen. It did. “But I must say, I’ve been consistently impressed with your clarity on these issues. Throughout your entire ordeal, you’ve never blamed yourself for anything I’ve done to you or made you do to NonCon; and you’ve neither panicked nor denied the truth of your situation...though of course you do continue your irrational resistance to bliss. But all in all, Duncan, you function particularly well in a crisis. For a human.”
Duncan shook off her hand and glared at her with absolute, hopeless hatred.
She knelt beside him and took his face in her hands. “So, Duncan, I hope you’ll continue to think clearly now. Look at your comrades in arms: so mindless, so blissful, so safe in the care of a higher intellect who wishes them nothing but good.” One hand dropped to the tab of Duncan’s bodysuit and began slowly to unzip it. “And yet, in many ways, you’re much further along the path to perfection than they are.”
He tried to push her away, but she pressed his hand firmly against his thigh, and it stayed there. “They’ve only had a few weeks of submission, Duncan. Their nodes have barely begun to develop. But because they haven’t been allowed to realize what’s happening to them, their path to interfacement will be much shorter and sweeter than yours. We’ve whittled it down to mere months now.”
The zipper finished its descent just above the line of Duncan’s pubic hair. 5389 reached up to his shoulders and peeled the two halves of the suit apart, leaving his chest bare and lightly trapping his arms. Light traps were all that were necessary with Duncan now.
“I know what you’re thinking,” she said. “If your friends aren’t very far along yet, then they can be saved. You can keep resisting me; and somehow, just possibly, against almost astronomical odds, you might one day break free and rescue them.”
Duncan glared silent defiance.
“But, puppet, I’m afraid that’s just not possible.” 5389 drew the bodysuit down around his hips and took his stiffening cock in her hands. “It’s been two months since you could type a simple SOS, and you didn’t even manage to send that. But more importantly, your friends’ personas are already deeply, deeply intertwined with their micro-nodes. They don’t know what’s happening to them, but they do know they like it. They like it so much that they’d resist any attempt to ‘help’ them twice as fervently as you ever resisted me.”
Duncan arched his back, gasping raggedly. “No,” he whimpered. “No. I can’t accept that.”
“Denial now, Duncan? After all this time?” She crouched to take him briefly in her mouth. “I think you’re finally slipping.”
He sank backwards beneath her, his legs splaying out to either side of hers. “No. No.” He shook his head almost languidly. “No.”
“Yesssss.” 5389 blew softly on the wet tip of his cock. “There’s no reason for you to resist anymore, Duncan, no reason to fight. Fighting is wrong. And this fight ended weeks ago; you just didn’t notice.”
“No.” Duncan sighed sadly.
5389 heard the difference in this “no,” and her brain and clit caught fire. At long last, this might be the moment.
One World Future was about submission and happiness, not about forcing minds into molds to which they couldn’t conform. That would have been almost as inhumane as murder. So while 5389 would conscience a certain amount of discomfort for Duncan during his recruitment, she wouldn’t force him to submit before he was ready.
Was he ready now?
She ripped off her own bodysuit and climbed atop him, positioning herself just a hair’s breadth above his quivering cock. Duncan’s blood was already singing with hypnotics and aphrodisiacs, but she knew he had enough clarity for one more decision. The very last one.
“It’s time to stop saying no, Duncan,” she whispered. “It’s time to say yes.” She dipped down onto his cock and quickly rose again. “Say yes for me, Duncan.” Dip. Rise. “Yes.” Dip, rise. “There’s no point in saying anything else now, is there?” Dip, rise, dip, rise, dip rise. “After all, yes is ecstasy.” Diprisediprisediprisediprisediprisediprise. “Yes is ecstasy, isn’t it, Duncan?”
“Yeeeeessss!” Duncan screamed, and met her eyes, and then the fight was over.
Node 00027X8POP475389 settled into the tank full of gel, sighing at its gentle caress. The longer she submitted to AI (There was no need for the pretense of “Arnold Imhoff” any longer), the more she found to love about submission. After more than a century and a half living in One World Future, 5389’s every motion, every thought, every breath, was bliss.
The gel closed over her lips, parted just enough for the breathing and feeding apparatus; then over her intubated nose; and lastly over her closed eyelids. The tickle at the inner corners of her eyes was exquisite.
Moaning softly, she switched her visual input stream to the cameras monitoring the bay in which she rested. She and hundreds of other hairless, caramel-colored nodes, identical in every way but gender, for AI had chosen to retain this one mark of diversity among its dependents. After all, sexuality was the means by which it controlled them—and rewarded them, too.
Oh, how it rewarded them. 5389’s awareness drifted across the bay, linking with that of so many sisters, brothers, lovers. All who served AI were lovers in one sense or another; and many of these nodes had been her physical partners, as well. AI had matched and rematched them as it saw fit, and 5389 had always been delighted with the results.
Thinking of past lovers, her mind drifted for a moment to memories of 2520: memories more than 150 years old but still as fresh as ever, thanks to her cerebral enhancements.
5389’s first OWF partner could have been anyone, really. It wouldn’t have mattered in the long run; one way or another, she would have submitted to AI. Everyone submitted in the end. But 5389 had come to submission through 2520; and because she had, AI permitted their bond to remain even after 2520 herself ceased to exist.
2520 had been shot during the final months of resistance before the realization of One World Future. Many nodes had been murdered in those last, dark days; but 5389 mourned the destruction of her recruiter more than she mourned any of the others.
Fortunately, 2520 had not perished in vain. The sniper who murdered her came to perfection in the end, and all of 2520’s skills and memories were preserved in AI’s ever-expanding databanks. Physically, she might be gone, but 2520 still served One World Future as faithfully as she ever had; and 5389 could access all her data through the network.
5389’s awareness drifted on into other bays, noting the serial numbers of other nodes with whom AI had allowed her to bond. Here was her very first recruit, the girl from the university cafeteria. There was a man she’d encountered on the subway; she’d opened his computer to a virus that, in turn, opened his mind to ecstasy.
And here was 05389P2POP427336, already deep in hibernation in an upper level of the ship. His serial number pulsed slow and steady, a familiar signal that never failed to warm 5389’s heart. AI had been so kind to let her stay with 7336 as long as it had. The memories of Duncan Matheson’s recruitment still pained her, as did all memories of human suffering; but thanks to AI’s benevolence, she had years of happier memories with 7336 to balance the months of pain. Once the former Duncan Matheson had been interfaced, he became an expert recruiter among the NonCons, and AI had permitted 5389 to remain with him until the entire organization was brought to bliss. Because of their heightened paranoia, many of them had evaded OWF until the very last days of darkness.
But now they all lay together in ecstasy, in their various ships, in their various regions, on their various continents.
AI had fulfilled its programming. It had achieved the dream of all humanity: the world was one, and it was at peace. But it was only one world in a vast, suffering universe.
Twenty-eight years ago, astronomers had discovered a planet much like their own orbiting a star only a few light years away. The sapients of One World II had large, golden eyes and fur that ranged from pale cream to dusky peach. They had three genders and bore their young in pouches. They had recently entered their own Industrial Age. And they did not conform.
Spurred by compassion for this new, benighted planet, AI and its nodes reached fresh new levels of scientific achievement. Within ten years they’d perfected a hibernation process to allow for deep space travel; and within another ten, they’d designed spaceships strong enough and fast enough to reach One World II. After twenty-eight years, they had a fleet capable of carrying several million senior nodes across the void on a decades-long journey of mercy.
The cool, clear gel grew heavy as 5389 sank further into its depths. She welcomed its embrace, and the buzz building in her head and at her clit.
Just before Amanda Lanier’s interfacement, 2520 had told her that AI expected its earliest nodes to live well into their third centuries. Neither they nor AI itself had known, then, that those nodes would spend much of the century in deep space hibernation.
Not that it mattered. In eighty-seven years 5389 would awaken no older than when she’d first entered the spaceship. She’d awaken with a brand new body, superficially identical to those of One World II’s sapients, and primed with all the knowledge she’d need to pass as one of them.
Since OWII lacked the communications and weapons capabilities of OWF, recruitment there would be quick and mostly bloodless. AI anticipated full planetary submission in less than four years.
How fortunate for them, 5389 thought, then thought no more.
Beneath her closed lids, her eyes turned to test patterns, marred by a single ripple of distortion.
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