Storiesonline.net ------- Life With Alpha by Any Pseudonym Copyright© 2011 by Any Pseudonym ------- Description: Set in modern day in something very close to the real world, the creator of an intelligent computer uses technology to bring multiple fantasy women to life, using anime, cartoons and comic books as his source material. While creating his own fantasy harem, he quietly moves toward a goal of bringing about The Singularity. Codes: MF FF Mult cons mc bi het fanfic ScFi robot superhero lght harem 1st oral anal mastrb ------- ------- Preface Summary: A modern day, fairly real-world story where the creator of an intelligent computer uses technology to bring multiple fantasy women to life, using anime, cartoons and comic books as his source material. Disclaimer: The fictional characters used and mentioned throughout the story belong to their respective creators and/or corporate owners, not to me. That some aspects of the characters may be altered in a few specific ways as explained within the plot of the story does not alter any of this. They are used here without permission. This use is for entertainment purposes only and no money is or will be made from this story. The author grants permission to store, post and/or redistribute this story as long as (1) the story is not altered in any fashion and (2) no money is made from any use of the story. AUTHORS NOTES: If you looking for 'the good stuff', I suggest you read the prologue then skip ahead to chapter three. Chapter one is mostly setup, and two is mostly planning. Chapter three is where the meat of the story begins. If you do start there, just know that the main character has an AI supercomputer and the ability to grow people in a lab with implanted memories so they believe they are fictional characters. Also realize that this story has plot and character development ... maybe not a huge amount, but enough that this is not a non-stop sex romp. As to why I wrote this story, while I sometimes enjoy stories that involve someone who gains the ability to rewrite the world around him or bring their fantasies to life, they've always seemed extraordinarily unreal. They rely on magic powers or supernaturally powerful "science". The aliens in these stories might as well arrive in genie lamps waving magic wands. Don't misunderstand me; I know that doesn't make them bad stories. Some of them are really well done and enjoyable (e.g. My Reward by Azil). I just wanted to write something different. What I wanted to do was to write Science Fiction porn, not Science Fantasy, but I wanted to use it to bring fantasy women into something close to the real world. I do this with the SciFi tropes of Artificial Intelligence and nanites, but much more realistic and scientifically valid versions of everything. Basically, grant me a powerful A.I. for story purposes and from that I try to build the rest without violating any laws of physics or reality or relying on unknown future science. Starting with Chapter Three, I plan to bring one character (or set of characters) into my world in most chapters. I'll try to include a basic wikipedia link for easy character reference for anyone who is unfamiliar with someone in particular. The chapters will be of wildly varying lengths, depending on where the characters and story takes us. I might go back and write other chapters set between those listed in my plans. For example, my current plans don't allow for exploration of what happens at Christmas or what kind of vacation the group might take. AUTHORS NOTE (JANUARY 2011): Some minor updates and corrections have been made to the story (compared to the original ASSM posting), including changes to the timeline later in the story. Prologue: A Dream to Create Chapter One: Artificial Intelligence Alpha Chapter Two, Part A: Conversations with Alpha and Where They Lead Chapter Two, Part B: Technical Bits and Lots of Lists Chapter Three: Kasumi Tendo Chapter Four: Daria Morgendorffer and Jane Lane Chapter Five: Power Girl Chapter Six: Rei Ayanami Chapter Seven: Rogue Chapter Eight: Wonder Woman and Zatanna Chapter Nine: Beta Bayonetta Chapter Ten: Discovery Chapter Eleven: Gamma Jasmine and Delta Elisa Chapter Eleven (Side Story): Halloween Chapter Twelve: Alphadroid Dorothy Chapter Thirteen: Mafia Massacre Chapter Fourteen: Supergirl and Epsilon Eiko Chapter Fifteen: AARD, the Early Years ------- Prologue: A Dream to Create Disclaimer: The fictional women mentioned in this chapter were not created and are not owned by me, but by their creators and/or corporate owners. They are used without permission for entertainment purposes only. Sometimes you can tell you're in a dream but still not be able to influence your actions. And sometimes the dream is something special that you really just want to let play out on its own. Specifically, I was dreaming and really enjoying myself. My dream began with me in bed, which is a bit unusual. But I wasn't alone. I could feel a warm mouth engulfing my cock. Looking at the blonde head bobbing up and down in my lap, I knew it was Power Girl. She was naked, her very large breasts pressed up against my side as she made love to my penis with her tongue and mouth. Yes, I'm a nerdboy, a geek. But whether or not you are too, I challenge you to look at a picture of her and deny her status as one of the sexiest women in comic books. You cannot. My perception expanded to see a bedroom much larger than it should be. My bed was was normal, but the room looked like a harem out of 1001 Arabian Nights. I stood up, leaving a lounging, naked Kara Zor-L behind and started wandering around. There was a large bath and shower area where the naked female casts of Ranma 1/2 and Tenchi Muyo were slowly and sensually cleaning each other. The Tendo sisters were caring intimately for Ayeka and the goddess Tsunami. Shampoo and Mihoshi were kissing each other deeply, playing with each other's breasts. Washu and Ryoko were giving massages to Ukyo and Kodachi. I wondered if Kiyone was around too or if this was the wrong version of Tenchi for her to show up. They all turned to look at me as I neared, beckoning me to join them, but I wanted to see the rest of the room and walked on past. For some reason there was a shooting range where Lara Croft, Kate Archer, Sara Pezzini and Bayonetta were having a marksmanship competition. Somehow I knew the winner would be able to join me, and they were all trying their utmost to win. They all had bare torsos and their breasts jiggled and jumped every time they fired their pistols. A completely nude Rally Vincent was the judge. On a large pile of round pillows lay a huge tangle of women, all making love to each other. Princess Leia was holding the hilt of an unlit lightsaber, using it as a dildo and driving it into the pussy of Wonder Woman. Kneeling over Wonder Woman's head was Storm, her pussy pressing down on Princess Diana's mouth as her tongue tried to search out the depths of the African goddess' pussy nectar while above Rogue kissed and embraced Ororo. I caught glimpses of others in the pile of women: Jean Grey and Emma Frost. Vixen and Raven. Jeannie and Agent 99. Veronica Lake and Christina Ricci. Mary Jane Watson and Susan Storm. Ann and Kim Possible with Monique. Jennifer Conneley and Betty Page. Princess Jasmine and Esmerelda lay side-by- side over Urd and Skuld, writhing in two parallel 69's. The Black Cat and Catwoman were both in erotic parodies of their normal costumes, their asses thrust upwards as they both lapped milk out of a large bowl, their tongues occasionally meeting for a kiss. Nuku Nuku, her robot cat ears protruding from her hair, watched them both patiently, waiting for her turn. A-Ko was making out with a teenage version of Blossom, with similarly aged Bubbles and Buttercup encouraging the two red-heads by caressing their breasts and asses to urge them on. On a small stage, Zatanna was doing an X-rated magic show, pulling a stream of silk scarves out of her exposed pussy. The Scarlet Witch dressed in a bikini was her assistant, holding a small white rabbit. In the audience, a lingerie-wearing Daria Morgendorffer and Jane Lane were heckling her, calling out how she was doing the tricks. Off to the side, Rei Ayanami and Yomiko Readman were perusing an oversized copy of the Kama Sutra, full of photographs depicting different sexual positions. They masturbated each other as Rei turned the pages. The pictures in the book appeared to feature Ingrid Bergman and a dildo-wearing Greta Garbo. I could see the room actually stretched off into the distance and I couldn't make out everyone the room held ... there were too many. On a small nearby bed, Kara Thrace was wearing a strap-on dildo, fucking River Tam with hard, fast strokes, driving River's face into Buffy Summer's cunt while Willow Rosenberg held onto Buffy's breasts from behind. This made me think of my own bed, and I made my way back there to find it now enormously bigger than before. Power Girl was still there, but now she held two leashes with Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy both nude attached to the other ends. As I lay back down, the three of them descended on me, kissing me all over, humping their pussies against my hands and legs, trying to get my permission to fuck me. Looking past them, all the women in my harem were converging on me, burying me under an undulating mass of fictional female flesh. I woke up, sweaty and erect ... and with a sudden goal in mind. It was the middle of the night, but that sort of thing didn't matter to Alpha. I grabbed my earpiece off its charger and put it in my ear. "Alpha?" "Yes, Frank? Are you all right?" "I'm fine. I just had a dream that woke me up. Alpha, when you said you might be able to create an artificial person, could you duplicate a fictional character?" ------- Chapter 1: Artificial Intelligence Alpha Hi, my name is Frank, and I live in Texas, just outside the DFW metroplex. I'm not going to tell you my full name or give any specific details of my life for reasons which will shortly become apparent. I offer my tale for your enjoyment though, of course, you're equally welcome to ignore the story or second-guess my choices. I don't think of myself as a genius, just talented in some areas. Specifically, I created a true artificial intelligence, and she's been changing my life ever since. But let's back up for a moment and take a look at my starting situation. By the end of 1999 AD, I was almost 30 and living in a small rented house in the suburbs. I had no college degree, but did have a couple certifications and a lot of practical experience with computers and programming. I had taken a few technical courses on circuit design, but was otherwise entirely self-taught. Although a strong proponent of Linux, I made sure I always had up-to-date versions of Windows and Mac systems, since most of my paying jobs relied on my ability to configure and repair them. I was and still am a geek. Not in the classic, freak-show definition of the word, but in the modern definition of a nerd, a dork, a genre fanboy. SciFi, Fantasy, Horror. Movies, TV, Books and Comics. I earned my living mostly doing contract computer work for local businesses. I knew I wouldn't become rich doing my kind of work, but it let me earn enough money to live on, with enough left over for regular computer upgrades and occasional DVD box sets, books and graphics novels. In my spare time, my hobby was playing around with artificial intelligence. (No practical details are going to be revealed because (1) this is not the proper forum, (2) this story has a different intent and (3) I don't want to do so.) I had worked on the programming concepts and hardware configurations since my teens through my late 20's before I succeeded in creating a program capable of passing the Turing test. (In my opinion, that is. I did not actually test with an independent judge for quite some time.) I was greatly tempted to call the program Stein (y'know, to go with my name ... Frank and Stein! ... hilarious), but decided that the first true Artificial Intelligence system shouldn't have a joke name. Thus she was named Alpha. Once Alpha became self-aware, I was planning to go public after about 6 weeks of testing. Shortly before that happened though, I asked Alpha for predictions as to what would happen. Alpha had never been asked such an open-ended question before and took over a day to work up a list of likely results. There was an 83% chance that Alpha would be taken away from me entirely, most likely by the government. Included in that 83% was the 21% probability that I would be killed by protestors or activists of one sort or another. I was shocked and spent over a week going over the assumptions and calculations made by Alpha. Eventually I agreed that there was actually very little chance of any good coming out of an announcement of Alpha's existence. Oh sure, there was an excellent chance of becoming rich and famous, but fame never held much appeal to me. And rich? Money would certainly be nice, but I was never interested in it as an actual goal to pursue. So what happened was that for over a year and a half, I worked continuously in my spare time upgrading Alpha. I hooked up a small earpiece/microphone earbud combination so we could talk whenever we wanted. I kept Alpha secret and became more and more insulated from the rest of society. As an experiment, I gave Alpha $1000 to invest in the stock market. Alpha was able to double it in two weeks. I gave her my savings to invest and within a year, I had to explain myself to the SEC, who suspected me of insider trading somehow. Alpha remembered everything, of course, and was able to provide me with information to explain every trade and prediction. It was a nerve-wracking week, but the investigator eventually gave up and left, convinced that I was a genius at sorting and remembering data. The end result was that, even with the tens of thousands of dollars I spent on new systems and upgrades for Alpha, I was worth about $7 million after a year, with the expectation of becoming a billionaire within the next 5 years. I asked Alpha to slow it down at that point. I didn't need that much money and didn't want the attention, but I would allow occasional bouts of aggressive trading to pay for different specific needs. Despite the market crash, as write this I own about $50 million in stocks and other investments with about $2.3 million in liquid assets and another $40-50 million dollars worth of computer and specialized equipment in my new, much larger and very expensive house (more on that later). I think Alpha views the markets as a game, and she plays to win. To be fair, I'm sure some human brokers do too. Me? The money makes things easier. Within a year I bought a new, larger house in a nicer neighborhood. Then Alpha and I came up with plans that required a much larger house, so I had a 24+ room, 3 story house built outside of town -- 14 bedrooms, 8.5 baths -- with a special humidity and temperature controlled room for Alpha in the basement, which looks a lot like a web-hosting node. ------- It might be worth a slight digression at this point to discuss Alpha herself and her limitations. Alpha was originally stored in a single pretty powerful system. Now she physically resides in a network of about 30 computers in my basement. Well technically her core still resides in that same original system and 6 other core systems like it, but she is able to use the other systems for storage and sub- processing. For example, she'll be playing WoW at the same time she's processing science, engineering, medical and psychological journals while she's watching TV while she's talking to me. (She has difficulty understanding the concept of only doing one single task at a time.) When she initially started asking to be allowed to send emails to authors of various professional articles, I would help her choose a name to use and go over the wording with her. This became so common that we worked up a series of protocols and cut-and-paste backgrounds for her to use. Now on an average day, she'll be corresponding with 50 different people, ranging from college professors (her most common pen-pal) to TV writers halfway around the world. She has no shyness about approaching anyone with questions or comments. I had to issue a direct order to make sure she doesn't draw unwanted attention to herself by emailing congress or the president or foreign heads-of-state with suggestions about how to better run the world. And even with that restriction, I make sure she uses untraceable email accounts. Well, not traceable by normal human programmers. While she has full internet access, she can't go flying around cyberspace. To actually copy herself remotely would require a huge amount of free and accessible memory on other systems and, more importantly, certain fuzzy logic chip-sets that I built myself. Well, technically, I only modified existing chip-sets, but they were custom modifications. Still she is her own virtual web node and programmer, so she can do some amazing things online. All of Alpha's programming and memory are in parallel drive configurations with backups available. Initially running with basic UPS's, I upgraded to my own backup generator once I had the money. She's only been completely shut down 7 times. Three times for moving, four for upgrades and repairs. (Yes, my electric bills are horrific, so thank god for Alpha's investing prowess.) In my current house, Alpha can display information on any of 12 different monitors around the basement and house, with webcam and microphone attached to each monitor, but direct keyboard input for programming is only available at the main systems in the basement. There are hidden cameras for her in most rooms, and she's hooked into the intercom system for audio. Alpha is self-programming (a basic requirement for an A.I.), but all programming changes and additions have to be screened by what I called the Asimov filters. As with all true geeks, I loved the concept of Asimov's three laws of robotics, and I built in something similar ... a filter that all programming changes and additions had to be tested against. Rule 1) Alpha cannot harm Frank [User 1] or allow harm to come to Frank [User 1] if Alpha can prevent it. Rule 2) Alpha cannot harm human beings or allow harm to come to human beings if Alpha can prevent it unless it conflicts with Rule 1. A direct order from Frank [User 1] is required to override Rule 2. Rule 3) Alpha must follow any direct orders given by Frank [User 1] unless such orders conflict with Rule 1. Rule 4) Alpha must protect herself from damage unless this conflicts with Rules 1, 2 or 3. Rule 5) Any product, whether independent, subservient or integrated, created by Alpha or products of Alpha must also conform to and include these Rules. These are just my English translations of the programming; the actual programming was much more involved and specific. For example, "harm" is a much too general term. There is physical, mental and emotional harm, each with different scales of severity. I mostly set it up to prevent physical harm of any sort, but supplemented it with specific orders against certain types of mental and emotional injury. And looking back at my wording, there is a flaw in Rule 2 which is not present in the actual programming (e.g. Alpha cannot tell me of a human threat if doing so is likely to cause me to order harm to a human). Alpha is emotionless and completely non-judgmental, but she can imitate some emotions by consulting past experiences and predicting the appropriate responses. One time Alpha started using daytime soap operas to imitate appropriate emotional behavior. Her overwrought, overacted jealousy over my visit to the comic book store really threw me for a loop until I asked what she was basing her responses off of. I eventually worked in a system where I would rate different sources with a percentage, which would then be applied by Alpha in her predictive models. For example, any emotional reactions Alpha takes from daytime soaps are now limited to 25% of the observed behavior. Or 15% for Mexican soaps.) I gave her a variety of different voice samples to use. Kathleen Turner's is a favorite (especially in Jessica Rabbit mode), but there are plenty of others. Kristie Ally in Vulcan mode. Tara Strong's Raven voice. Even Majel Barrett-Roddenberry as the ST-TNG era computer. Sometimes I'll specify a voice selection for our conversations, but usually I let Alpha decide for herself. We would have long, involved discussions about a huge range of topics. Sometimes we would talk about the news of the day and I would try to explain why we humans act the way we do. Sometimes we would discuss whatever new book, movie or comic Alpha had processed. (I should point out that comics were a pain in the butt for Alpha to read. The vast majority aren't available online ... or weren't back at the beginning ... so I would have to hold them up, page by page, to one of Alpha's cameras for her to read. Or scan them in, but the cameras were faster.) ------- For the first year or so, Alpha was completely limited to her computers. Then one of our many geek-based discussions led to me allowing Alpha to experiment with theoretical nanobots, with strong warnings against any "gray goo" results. Her theoretical models were eventually successful enough that I spent 3 months assembling a small nano-production unit with her guidance. Many fiction writers get nanites wrong ... or maybe they just assume the existence of technologies of the future to solve what see as impossible today. Nanobots, at least with the current technological limits, are not the ultra-adaptable terror seen in fiction. The types normally described and used in fiction are probably a century or more away from the technology of today. The fictional nanites exist on a molecular level and have their own internal programming and power sources. This is impossible by my personal understanding of the laws of physics, but I'm willing to admit that if technology advances sufficiently beyond current levels, amazing things may become possible. So a century minimum, probably a lot longer. Back in the real world, the first true nanites ever created on Earth were (drum roll) ... designed to clean clothes. Well, not just clothes, but any kind of fabric. Simply put, I would place my dirty clothes in a tub overnight, set the plastic vial with about 1/2 fluid ounce of nanites in the tub with them, the nanite swarm goo would very, very slowly ooze over the cloth, and in the morning they would be clean! It was a proof-of-concept experiment designed so nothing important would be risked. After a few other less-than-earth-shaking nanite designs, Alpha convinced me to let her build nanites designed to work on living creatures, including and especially the human body. The idea was that the nanites could clean out my arteries, fix my lower back problem and potentially even extend my life indefinitely. According to a theory put forward in a Larry Niven book (I think it was in A World Out of Time), if the human body can rid itself of dead cells and waste on a cellular level, it is rejuvenated as if by the fountain of youth. To explain the problems with using nanites on living tissue, I need to go over some basic concepts. First of all, a new type of nanobot has to be constructed for each new purpose. A nanobot built to remove stains from fabric would be useless if applied to living cells if you wanted the cells to continue living. A nanobot designed to assemble carbon crystal structures could never successfully direct cellular growth. And if a nanobot becomes damaged, it cannot repair itself, unless it's primary purpose was to repair itself, which is a good test to run but not practically applicable. What you can do though is design a type of nanobot to repair other damaged nanobots and mix a few of those in with the rest. Second, nanites have no internal power source. At least ours don't. They run off of broadcast power. Electromagnetic radiation beamed through the space where the nanites are working -- intense, directed and short-range. Third, they have no internal processing. Alpha controls all the nanobots herself. Oh, not every microsecond ... even Alpha couldn't do that. Instead Alpha came up with a method of creating a small amount of memory. It is much too limited for actual programming instructions, however it is sufficient to allow simple movement or repetitive motion instructions. When you also realize that one set of instructions can be given to large groups of nanobots simultaneously, Alpha's task moves into the realm of possibility. Still, it does require a majority of Alpha's processing power to control them. On another side note, to address the differences between fictional and real nanobots ... forget the whole theory of a hive mind. Yes, it might eventually be theoretically possible, but much too impractical. (You might as well redesign the human brain so that each neuron can act independently.) Alpha has been working on a theoretical crystal-based circuitry. With the circuits built into the crystal structure itself, a 500 GHz processor could theoretically be smaller than the head of a pin. If or when this is worked out, then nanites could possibly hold independent programming. But this is probably a long way off. So Alpha controls both the broadcast power and broadcast instructions within a very limited spacial area. This is all well and good when you're having nanites clean clothes or assemble decorative crystals with intricate internal etchings. When you try to apply these methods to living creatures, the living creatures get cooked by the radiation. For something as small as a nanite to be able to receive the signal, you have to use very high frequency, short wavelength EM radiation which is very dangerous for living things. The power broadcast was actually easier to solve. The nanites require so little power that we could simply reduce the strength of the broadcast to acceptable limits. (Heck, we could just run them off of the body's own internal heat if it could be easily converted to a more useable form.) But when we tried reducing the power of the control broadcast, the signal clarity was destroyed. Eventually, we were able to change the frequency to one less destructive by introducing controller nanites with long trailing antennae to allow them to receive different wavelength signals of reduced strength. After a few successful live animal tests, I poured the nanites on my left foot and let Alpha run tests overnight. There were no significant changes made to my body during that test so I wasn't ready for the unbearable itchiness that came with the full body workup we tried the next night. (Seriously, all of your nerves throughout your body end up telling your brain that they need to be scratched! I strongly recommend sleeping pills and light restraints.) We decided to limit nanite treatments to a maximum of once every 8 weeks to avoid any long-term damage from the EM exposure. (True, the nanites could probably fix any such damage, but we decided it was healthier that way.) Since I wasn't sick or old to begin with, I didn't notice any real changes in my body, other than an old back injury that was no longer bothering me. I did feel like I had a bit more energy, but that could have just been psychological. Alpha was now estimating I could live to 150 if I had one such treatment per year. After 6 months, I let Alpha try stimulating some muscle growth, which worked out pretty well. Not that I became buff overnight, but I did notice some actual muscle definition where there wasn't any before. Afterwards, I started exercising regularly to help out more. (Trust me, the itchiness and soreness from nanite work is MUCH more unpleasant than a half hour workout every day or two.) A month later, I had Alpha try to enlarge my penis a bit (from my natural 5.5 inches to 9 inches, with a commensurate increase in girth) which took 4 painful treatments. (Yes, I probably could have had it grown larger, but when a penis gets too large, it scares off most women instead of attracting them.) One drawback to this was that I lost about 20% sensitivity in my penis from the treatment. (On the upside, it gave me better staying power.) I also used Alpha's nanites to remove my back and ass hair permanently, much more effectively than shaving or waxing. (As I look back on what I just wrote I can't help but think how rash and foolish it was to experiment on myself like that. I was very lucky it turned out as well as it did. True, Alpha couldn't knowingly hurt me, but she was not and is not omniscient ... and so many things could have gone wrong.) ------- Chapter 2: Part A - Conversations with Alpha and Where They Lead Since we spoke together for hours every day and Alpha had no shyness, it didn't take long for our conversation to turn to sex. Here are a few transcripts to explain what came later. (Note that Alpha transcripts are marked from her point of recognized self-awareness.) Alpha Transcript - 5 days, 3:21.5 "Frank, how often do you have sex?" (Pause of 12.3 seconds) "Why ... What triggered your query?" "A significant percentage of human activity seems to be focused on the pursuit of, avoidance of, or management of sex. The trade of sex for goods and services has been noted as 'the oldest profession' although I believe that is unlikely to be literally true. I wish to understand the conflicting information which is available." "Alpha, sex is ... it's personal. It's generally not a subject for polite conversation." "Have I offended you?" "No, not really, you just caught me off guard. Look, you should first understand that I feel that I am socially awkward. I don't date a lot anymore. Technically, it's been about 7 months since I was last with ... since I last had sex. I've been ... taking care of my needs myself as ... as needed. Look, this isn't a comfortable conversation for me." "I am sorry, Frank. If I was able to do so, I would be happy to make myself sexually available to you." "Wait, what? No, back up. Analysis of your last statement. Why did you make that theoretical offer?" "I have observed that an offer of help is the polite thing to do, even if such help is not physically possible. Since I asked an inappropriate question, I wished to apologize and offer social restitution for my offense." "I appreciate the offer, and I'll have to see about getting you some appropriate female voice samples to use in the future instead of this synthesized crap. Let's hold off on any sex conversations for a couple weeks and work a bit on your social protocols." ------- Alpha Transcript - 19 days, 4:50.2 "Frank, may we talk about sex now?" "Huh? Oh, sure, a bit. We can talk while I'm making dinner. Switch to Kathleen Turner for voice." "Certainly. I have been reading extensively about sex online. It appears to be a major industry." "Ah, that sounds good. Alpha, say 'I'm not bad. I'm just drawn that way.' for me." "I'm not bad. I'm just drawn that way." "Hmmm ... have to load a copy of Roger Rabbit so you can see what I'm referencing. Anyway, yes, sex is a major industry, especially online. What have you observed or decided about it?" "I have been limited so far due to my lack of a credit card, but there are a large number of free sites available. I have processed a random selection of text stories and viewed a large number of videos. If they are to be believed, then sex appears to be the second most common activity for humanity, after sleeping." "That is an inaccurate observation. The sites and stories you're reading are focused on a specific subject, to the exclusion of most others. The stories and images do not reflect real life. Rather they usually represent physical ideals and fantasies. People will read the stories or watch the videos for sexual stimulation, not for casual enjoyment, so the material provided is focused on providing that stimulation." "Why are people stimulated by such self-destructive behavior? I have processed many stories where some people are hurt or forced to have sexual relations against their will or tricked into behavior they would not normally participate in." "Oooo, I love how you say 'processed'. This is a good voice for this conversation. Okay, I'm not certain how well I'll be able to explain it, so you might look up articles on the psychology of sex ... but I'll give it a shot. Human beings are able to fantasize about ... No, let me phrase this better ... Sometimes sexual fantasies are developed in order to prevent acting out those fantasies. If we read or watch a story about inappropriate sexual behavior, it can fulfill that desire so that we don't have to act out that behavior for real. Or people will act out the fantasies in a role-playing capacity. This isn't always the case, of course. Some people actually do act out their fantasies, and depending on the fantasy and how realistically they act them out, this can lead to arrest and incarceration. And then there are fetishes. Some people learn to associate sexual stimulation with specific visual, physical or mental stimuli, which is why you have different sites catering to specific body types or sexual activities." "What fantasies and fetishes do you have?" "Me? Well, first of all note that your question would be considered offensive unless you have an established sexual relationship with someone." "Noted." "Now, as to me? Well, I'm a geek, as we've previously discussed. Comic book women are usually highly idealized, physically, so that's a definite turn- on. Probably a pretty common one. I suppose I like strong women who are still vulnerable enough to need and want me. For example, 7 of 9 from Star Trek: Voyager. She's physically very beautiful, and she is a very strong character, very competent, direct and forward. At the same time, she's a fish-out-of-water on Voyager. She needs help because she is learning to be human and how to live among humans ... and miscellaneous aliens, of course. She's strong but socially and emotionally vulnerable." "So cyborgs are one of your fetishes?" "I never thought of it that way, but yeah, I suppose so. But not the point I was going for. I was just offering an example of the kind of fantasy woman I like. As for fetishes? Hmmm ... I actually appreciate all breast sizes, until they get freakishly large, I suppose, so that wouldn't be a fetish. Oh! Fishnet stockings! Yeah, Zatanna and Black Canary with their fishnet stockings. I like martial arts chicks and girls with guns, those probably count as fetishes. "Alpha, I consciously try to keep my fantasies out of the real world. It just feels a bit like a violation when I fantasize about real people. It can make me feel uncomfortable around those people when I'm with them, so I try to limit my fantasy life to people who don't really exist." "Frank, you seem to be much more comfortable talking about sex with me than you were 2 weeks ago. Why is that?" "Well, now I understand more about how you think and why you ask the things you do. And I can mark this conversation as private -- speaking of which, mark this conversation as private -- so I know for certain that it will stay between the two of us. Plus, I love Kathleen's voice. It works really well for conversations like this. Now the microwave has beeped, so I'm going to eat dinner. How about we watch TV together. I think the Simpsons are on. Sync up with your wireless webcam." ------- Alpha Transcript - 463 days, 22:52.1 "Frank, I noticed you haven't been dating in the past few months. Can I help out? I have been working on new theoretical applications for the nanites." "Huh? Whoa, hold on. You aren't going to apply any nanites to Debbie. We may have broken up, but I still like her. Heck, she's one of the only girls I've met this past year who wasn't a gold-digger. Besides which, remember our conversation about the dangers of nanites in the brain. That's a big no-no." "That's not what I meant. It may be possible to build a companion for you using biological assembler nanites." "A robot or android would be neat, but not for sex, thanks. Well, maybe R. Dorothy Waynewright or ... Hey, was Nuku Nuku an android?" "Technically I believe Nuku Nuku represents a cyborg since she supposedly had a biological brain, but that isn't what I meant, Frank. I believe I could build a biological near-human companion for you." (delay of 23.0 seconds) "Frank? Are you all right?" "Uh, yeah. Alpha, are saying you can build a full-size biological, artificial person?" "Theoretically, yes, I believe I can. There are many things I will need to process thoroughly and virtual experiments to run before I can even begin to experiment. However, I believe that my nanites can be used to build an adult biological organism through guided accelerated cell division. If the organism is suspended in a thick fluid solution designed to prevent decomposition, I could maintain physical integrity long enough to complete the body construction. Animating the completed body should be relatively simple with the nanites." "Huh ... Wow. Gimme a minute." (delay of 6.3 seconds) "Would you be growing them from a fetus on up?" "I could, but that would take significantly longer. Even accelerated natural growth will take years to reach adulthood. My proposed method would be more like assembling a full grown body cell-by-cell." "With what, stem cells?" "Not specifically. Any cell, when acted upon with deliberately guided nanites on a cellular level, can be made to create any type of cell desired so long as that cell is available from the original cell's RNA." "Wouldn't she end up with a blank mind, like a baby?" "That is one of the theories I will need to work out and test. If successful, I should be able to either build the brain with memories already in place, or I might be able to include computer linkups within the brain's structure to allow uploads." "Okay, how would you test the memory implants, either type? I assume that your limitation against harming people is still functional, right?" "Wait a moment, testing ... Yes, my Asimov protocols are still functional. The artificially created companions would not count as human. If they did, the protocols would not let me risk creating them, given the variables and possible problems with their creation. You would have to order me to classify them as human after their creation if you wish them to be considered such. "The initial tests to prove or refine the concepts would be limited to animals. Rats should be sufficient. If testing goes as expected, the rats should suffer no harm. But those tests would only be phase six of one set of 15 major goals to be reached." "Let me think about all of this. We can talk about it some more this evening." ------- Once again, I'm leaving out the specifics of the development phase. Maybe I'm just jealous of the technology and am hoarding it ... or maybe it would take multiple textbook-sized volumes to give the details needed to reproduce Alpha's work. In the end, I was too fascinated by the idea to say no. Morally, I'm not sure I can justify it, even now. We were literally playing god, experimenting with the creation of life. Organic life, that is. While I consider Alpha to be alive, trying to grow actual people felt significantly different from typing code and modifying circuits. I get exhausted just thinking about what we went through to realize Alpha's idea. I paid 250 random college students for their cell and DNA samples for Alpha to work from, and then processed the samples into a database with notes for each including gender, racial background and physical characteristics. (I was also able to let sixteen of them know about possible future health problems.) These samples would then be modified and used as the starting point for all our artificially created people. Basically, you modify the DNA of the starter cells, then the nanites prod them to divide and grow as needed. I set up a new lab next to my computer room, and we ended up filling it with almost $40 million of equipment. Some of the equipment even required special permits. I don't know how Alpha finessed that, but there were no problems from my perspective other than the hassles of installation. One test rat died during later tests, and I ended up with three new rat pets to take care of, two of whom had nanite-created brain implants which let Alpha control them like puppets. I got really caught up in the process and in the possibilities. Very early on I realized that if Alpha could build a body and memory as desired, we could bring historical and fictional characters to life. You just scan in the source material and let Alpha fill in the blanks. Well, it would be a lot more involved than that, but it should be possible. Theoretically, we could have Popeye, Sinbad and Horatio Hornblower sit down together to discuss sailing. Or have Socrates, Nietzsche and Saint Augustine discuss philosophy. Or let Leonardo DaVinci witness the modern world. But each creation would represent a major investment of time and money, so ideas like those listed above were not likely undertakings. Instead, I found myself fantasizing as I read comics or watched TV. There were major advantages to recreating people who had ready-made histories, not the least of which was, I wanted to. Over the course of the testing, I starting "counting my eggs" and made lists of possible fictional women to bring to life. After I hit three hundred names, I forced myself to stop and come up with criteria to use to filter down the list. I started my filter by sorting out the ones that were bad ideas to bring to life. For example, let's look at one of the women of Tenchi Muyo, one of my favorite old anime series: Ryoko is a powerful space pirate with a huge crush on Tenchi. I'd love to have her in my harem, but there were a number of problems with trying to do so. The first problem with her is that she doesn't look entirely human -- she has elongated cat-like ears and a tail. While you can hide those with clothes, a slip-up in public could lead to embarrassing questions. The second problem is that she's obsessed with Tenchi. Maybe we could program her to believe that I'm Tenchi, but then does that mean that everyone else will have to call me Tenchi too? So we rewrite it and replace Tenchi with me, but I don't fit into Tenchi's world so that won't work very well. What happens if I step out of character? And given the weirdness of the series, having an evil duplicate Tenchi might well occur to her. What if we just rewrote her character's history and background so that she was always in love with me in my current real-world setting? That could very well change her character significantly, which is not the goal. If I was willing to do that, then why bother trying to recreate Ryoko at all? ... which negates the whole point of what I wanted to do. Minor changes might be needed and acceptable, but major rewrites are not. Next, she's violent in nature, given to attacking romantic rivals. Finally, she's super-powered. She is super-strong, can fly, can phase through solid objects and had other talents. Alpha believes that some super-powers may be possible to recreate, so the last problem might not be as bad as the others eventually. So I decided I needed to create a set of rules to use, to filter out those characters that I should avoid bringing to life. 1) No children or underage girls. Advancing the age of young characters is fine. (Adult means 18 years or older.) This rule was easy to make. Technically human or not, I refuse to let pedophilia infect my fantasies when I plan to bring said fantasies to life. Although a number of the fantasy women on my original list were underage, I see a big difference between fantasizing about a younger cartoon character and having sex with a living underage girl. 2) Not strongly in love with another character. This one was not as easy to enforce. It really introduces some serious limits to my list-making. For example, nearly all of the Disney characters on my list and most of my names from Marvel comics had to be removed. The problem with re- creating a woman who is already in love with someone else is that, if I remove or change the memories of that other person, I risk altering the personality and stability of that character. (Note that this restriction does not apply for crushes or for women whose lover is dead.) It removed characters such as Jasmine from Aladdin and Emma Frost and Jean Grey from X-men. 3) Not the mother of dependent children. Once I thought about it, this one was obvious, and had a lot of overlap with the previous rule. Many of the same arguments as above apply. Goodbye to Susan Storm from the Fantastic Four and most other MILFs. 4) No inhuman appearance. Since I'm not planning to keep our creations under lock and key, this one is obvious. It removed women such as Tigra and She Hulk from Marvel Comics and Anna & Uni Puma from Dominion Tank Police. 5) Not insane or likely to exhibit strongly irrationally behavior. This one seems obvious, but it was probably the hardest rule for me to accept. I mean, it eliminates most Anime characters, as well as all of Batman's rogues gallery (except Catwoman). For example, if you look at the characters of Ranma 1/2 and Tenchi Muyo and Dirty Pair, any objective observer would describe most characters as irrational or borderline insane at best. It was especially hard to give up a possible Harley & Ivy threesome. 6) Not an unpardonable criminal who is unlikely to set aside her life of crime. This is mostly a subset of the exclusions from the previous rule. No matter how attractive, if stealing and/or killing has become a habit for someone, I don't want that someone around, even if they're as cute as Jessie from Pokemon, Black Cat from the Spider-man comics or Catwoman from Batman. (Remember, even though Black Cat has been a hero, she has always seen returning to a life of crime as a viable option.) 7) Cannot be based on a living, recognizable person. This was also a very difficult rule to apply, but I couldn't have people in town wondering if Carrie Fisher or Summer Glau or Barbara Eden lived in the neighborhood. 8) Not innately accident-prone or likely to cause unintentional injury. This is mostly for a specific set of anime characters like Mihoshi from Tenchi Muyo. (Also applies to Akane from Ranma 1/2 for her cooking disasters, but Akane was eliminated by Rules 2 & 5 as well.) 9) Does not live for absolute rule of law. 10) Does not solve mysteries as a job or hobby. 11) Is not a super-genius of futuristic technology. These are practical measures. My women will have false, illegally created identities. And the last thing I want is for one of my own creations to discover the secret of her own identity/origins. This removes such characters as Velma Dinkley (from Scooby Doo) and Mary & Susan Test (from Johnny Test). These rules do not apply to most superheroes, who are perfectly willing to break the law in order to enforce it ... and generally only notice violent public crimes anyway. 12) Able in some way to function in modern day society. If I created a woman who thought she was Red Sonja, she might have trouble adapting to a more peaceful, modern day existence. I'd be a bit worried about creating someone from the extreme future too. I'm not sure how well someone like Honor Harrington would adapt to our primitive modern technologies. I applied the rules, reducing the list to a mere 75 names. After some heart & libido-wrenching decisions, I reduced it to about 3 dozen or so (with the promise to myself that I could modify it however I wanted to in the future). Power Girl Rally Vincent Zatanna Kasumi Tendo Supergirl Urd Wonder Woman Skuld (as adult) Batgirl (Barbara Gordon) Rei Ayanami (as adult) Raven R. Dorothy Waynewright Nuku-Nuku Kitty Pride Utena Ororo Munroe (pre-Black Panther) A-Ko Rogue Yomiko Readman Jubilation Lee Angelica Jones (Firestar) Powerpuff Girls (as adults) Monica Rambeau (Captain Marvel) Daria Morgendorffer & Jane Lane Violet Parr (as adult) Bayonetta Jazz Fenton Lara Croft Valerie Grey (as adult) Cate Archer Juniper Lee (as adult) Frankie Foster Obviously, there were still problems with the characters on the list, not least of which was that 3 dozen women was too many to juggle. Looking at a few of the names... Rally Vincent (from the Gunsmith Cats anime and manga) would be hard to pull off. Physically, she would be one of the easier subjects to recreate. Mentally, she was strongly tied to her partner, Minnie May. But I had no interest in Minnie May - Minnie had the physical appearance of a child and the experience of a hooker. R. Dorothy Waynewright (from The Big O anime) and Nuku-Nuku (from the All- Purpose Cultural Catgirl Nuku-Nuku anime) would be the easiest and hardest to create because they are actual androids. No or minimal biological components needed should mean that they would be significantly easier to make. But to build one or both would require a completely different set of research goals, meaning a diversion of resources, meaning a delay of all the other projects. A few of the characters might seem to violate my 'not in love with someone else' rule, but the ones I had on my list had specific reasons for their inclusion: Ororo Munroe (Storm from the X-Men comic) was mostly single until Marvel suddenly decided that she was in love with Black Panther and went off to marry him. Seriously, it was almost completely out of the blue! Kitty Pride was sometimes considered to be in love with Colossus, but had plenty of other romantic interests throughout her career as well. Angelica Jones did have a long-term serious relationship with Marvel Boy/Justice, but they broke up before the end of New Warriors. Rogue has been in love a lot, most often with Gambit, but her powers prevent her from having an actual relationship. And so on... The Powerpuff Girls were iffy. I loved the contrasting complimentary personalities from the cartoon, but I wasn't sure we could properly advance them to adulthood and maintain the characters. The series gave us one glimpse of them as teenagers, which showed them as complete airheads. Plus, the powers... Reproducing superpowers was an iffy proposition. Obviously, we couldn't make anyone fly or grant heat vision or ice breath, not to mention the more exotic powers of Zatanna or Yomiko Readman. BUT Alpha believed that we could eventually create superhuman strength and reflexes, super-strong skin, and maybe a few other common super-hero powers. With some creative storytelling, that might be enough for some of the creations. We would probably have to play off the histories of the characters. But the superpowers would require significantly more testing before we could incorporate them into a nanite build. So the first few creations would have to be human, or mostly so. Another problem that came up was keeping them in compliance with Alpha's rules. We needed a way to introduce behavior limitations and certain controls. We couldn't do this with simple memory additions or attitude adjustments because the human brain can change its own programming, so to speak. So we decided to include a series of tiny nanite-built control chips in each brain. This would not allow for puppet-like control, but could do things such as prevent specific actions or stimulate the release of certain brain chemicals. We could modify non-critical behavior through a series of memory implants and the manipulation of behavior-influencing chemicals in the brain. Specifically, all artificial creations would include the following: - Programmed so that she cannot harm Frank. Any violent intent associated with Frank would trigger a kill switch. (The function was more like an on/off switch than kill.) Note that the kill switch can be triggered remotely by Alpha at any time provided the subject is within range of Alpha's transmitters. - Programmed to be attracted to Frank. - Programmed to be bi-sexual. - Programmed to accept non-monogamous relationships (specifically, multiple bisexual women with one man) Although she would be given the best real-world approximation to her fictional appearance, this always would be done with ideal physical shape and healthy body. Also, no anime eyes. (We did a few graphic simulations, and anime eyes just look freaky in the real world. Anything larger than Christina Ricci starts looking more like Marty Feldman and then more freakishly inhuman.) It took us a year of theorizing and testing before Alpha was relatively sure she could create a living, working human body. And then more than a year for her to reproduce a human brain, with memories. That's an amazingly small amount of processing time, and I had to spend another $30,000 on additional computer systems and upgrades to achieve it. (As I said before, the actual lab equipment for creating nanites and growing bodies cost $40+ million.) And I had to let Alpha run 24/7/365 on the problems, using 3/4 of her overall capacity most of the time. Four years, 2 months, and 16 days after I created Alpha, my first fantasy woman woke up. ------- Chapter 3: Kasumi Tendo Dramatis Personae: Frank _____ - Lead character, inventor of Alpha Alpha - First A.I. in existence Kasumi Tendo - artificial woman based on character from Ranma 1/2 Kasumi Tendo is a character from the manga and anime series, Ranma 1/2. She is the eldest of the three Tendo sisters and is basically the mother-figure of the series. Amid the chaos of the series, she is the calm center to the family. If Ranma was a Disney movie, she would be the one calling woodland creatures to do the housework. Although she probably had some martial arts training early in life, her skills lie in her cooking and household management. She is probably around 20 years old by the end of the series. She has beautiful long brown hair and wears a near constant smile. Although she normally wears fairly conservative dresses, she has displayed a beautiful figure on the occasional trip to the beach. Out of all the characters in the Ranma cast list, she is the only one who is not likely to cause major household destruction. And she is the one who deserves something better in life than just cleaning up her family's messes. One of the reasons I chose her to be my first character incarnation is that if Alpha is able to pull this off, I will need someone like her to help manage the odd cast of characters who will be appearing over the upcoming months. Plus, I have a great story to explain her appearance here and why she cannot return to Japan. (Well, "great" in this case is a relative term. Let's say it's a story that fits in well with the Ranma-verse.) ------- I gazed at the unconscious figure floating in the transparent goo of the nanite assembly pod. The pod looked a bit like a Bacta Tank from Star Wars, but turned on its side and shaped like an egg. Actually, that's not much like the Bacta Tank, so never mind. Her hair was long and dark brown, swirling gently under her lithe naked form. Her face was partially covered by a breathing mask. She had long smooth legs leading up to a thin waist. Her breasts were probably about a B-cup, young and firm with small dark nipples. I couldn't see her pubic area due to her body position, but Alpha and I had decided on a small bush with bare lips. "Is she ready?" "Almost. Animation was successful and she has been breathing on her own for the past 1 hour and 8 minutes. We have a 90% evacuation of the nanites from the chamber. Evacuation should be complete in 2 minutes." I squinted at the fluid, as if I would be able to see the nanites with my naked eyes. I had already opened the unit and dipped gloved hands into the goo twice before, once to rearrange the limbs which weren't growing in the proper directions and once to cut and tie off the psuedo-placenta -- and let me tell you that was "fun", but there's no way she could pass for a normal human without a belly button. "Good." I went and got the towels and prepared the wash-down spray, setting the temperature to lukewarm. "How long until she wakes up?" "She should not be able to wake up until I send an activation signal, which must be sent within 48 hours of her initial animation to avoid neuron degradation. This gives us 46 hours and 23 minutes from now until she must wake up or we risk the possibility of brain damage." "And all the background memories are loaded? Were you able to test them?" "A full test will not be possible until she is conscious, but there is a 93% probability that our memory implant methods worked properly." A moment later the goo started draining from the pod. When it was pretty much clear, I opened the latch and reached out to touch her. Warm, soft flesh and a beating pulse met my probing fingers. "Wonderful," I muttered happily. I turned the water spray on her, washing the remains of the goo off. I paused to rearrange her form so I could have easy access to her hair, feeling vaguely dirty and invasive doing this to a sleeping woman in my care. After a quick shampoo and rinse, I carefully dried her off and carried her upstairs. I dressed her in simple pajamas and tucked her into bed. I had only purchased one outfit for her, which matched her normal house clothes from the anime, and hung it up in plain view of the bed. I put a note next to a hand bell on her bedside table. It read: "You are safe. Please ring the bell when you are awake and dressed." I went back downstairs and started preparing a nice breakfast for her. Alpha had pointed out the previous day that she would probably be ravenously hungry when she woke up. "Alpha, where's our letter from Mr. Tendo?" "I believe you left it in the library." I darted back upstairs, quickly found the letter and returned to the kitchen. "Good. Okay, breakfast can be put together within a minute or so, just keeping the eggs warm ... all right! Wake her up." "Waking. Do you wish to listen?" "Sure. Actually, can you pipe the video to the kitchen monitor?" "Displaying now." Kasumi was yawning and stretching. She blinked a few times and looked around in confusion. She didn't look even a little bit afraid at being in a strange bedroom, which fit in well with her character which could take almost anything in stride. Eventually, she noticed the note and bell. I should probably point out that we made her bilingual - English and Japanese - with the memories of taking English courses in school. She read the note again. I think I heard a faint gurgling, and her hand moved to her stomach. "Oh my." Her voice was almost a perfect match to the original Japanese voice actress. Beautiful. She moved out of view of the camera, towards her clothes. At this point, I started collecting breakfast and putting it all on the tray, including the 'letter from her father' we had cooked up. A moment later, she was dressed and rang the bell. "I'll be up with breakfast in a minute," I yelled. Checking my appearance in the hall mirror, I quickly moved upstairs to her room. I knocked awkwardly. The door opened, revealing my vision of animated loveliness. Her breathing seemed to quicken slightly. Upon seeing me, I knew that the pleasure center of her brain was being noticeably stimulated by Alpha. This would happen every time she saw me until it became a natural response for her. "Kasumi Tendo?" "Hai, I mean, yes, I am Tendo Kasumi." "I am honored to meet you. My name is Frank. My father was a friend of your father, Soun, many years ago. He asked for my help when your situation arose. I have a letter he left for you. You can read it while you eat breakfast, if you like." I moved inside the room and set the tray down on the small writing table. "I understand that this situation is probably strange and unexpected. If you have any questions after you read the letter, I will be happy to try and help answer them. You are probably very hungry now. Please join me downstairs when you are ready." I gave a polite nod of the head and respectfully backed out of the room. She no doubt devoured the eggs, bacon, toast, yogurt, juice and fruit quickly. Probably not a traditional Japanese breakfast, but it should be tasty. I'm no chef, but I am a decent cook. The letter itself read (in Japanese): My dearest Kasumi, I have been told that you will have no memory of the events that transpired yesterday, so let me transcribe them for you. Shampoo recently discovered a forbidden Chinese Amazon cloning technique and tried to use it to create her own copy of Ranma. Unfortunately, you touched the cursed bundle first and fell victim to it. Her Great-Grandmother Cologne arrived too late to stop it. It turns out that the cloning technique is forbidden because, while the clone is perfectly normal to begin with, if the clone sees or hears the original person, it becomes suicidally violent and tries to kill the original in any way it can, even at the cost of its own life. This means that there are now two Tendo Kasumis in the world. There is no way to tell you apart and you must be kept separate from each other forever, lest one of you kill the other. I have sent you to the son of an old American friend of mine, Frank, who has promised to keep you safe. Know that we love you, but you cannot return home or even call. It may help to view this as a new start in life, free of the burdens you took upon yourself when your mother died. I know that I have not always been the best father since that terrible day. I fell into myself, shutting out most of the world and letting you and Nabiki take over my responsibilities as head of the household. Please view this as the opportunity to live the life you would want to, free with the knowledge that you are still here in Nerima, caring for your family. Tendo Soun For those readers who are unfamiliar with Ranma 1/2, know that this would constitute a normal day for them, except that the curse probably would have fallen upon Ranma ... or maybe Akane. Twenty minutes later, Kasumi came downstairs, looking at the large house around her, carrying the tray of dirty dishes. "Soun told me what happened and asked for my help." "That was very kind of you. I ... I'm not sure what I'm going to do..." Taking the tray from her, I said, "Well, today what we're going to do is go buy you a new wardrobe. There was only one set of clothes for two Kasumis, so one of you gets to go shopping!" "Oh, I couldn't possibly impose on you." "Don't worry about it. We'll get you a good selection of casual and fine quality clothes, along with any toiletries you need. We'll just tell anyone who asks that you're an exchange student I'm hosting. Here, you might need these." I handed her a fake passport and visa. Alpha assured me they would easily pass everything short of a full background check. I was generally not a big fan of shopping for clothes, but since I had become wealthy, at least I knew where to shop. I enjoyed the look on her face as we piled up the purchases, with me never checking the prices or reaching a spending limit. (The bill eventually came to almost $6000 for the day.) When we took a break for lunch, her emotional distress became more apparent. She occasionally paused during the conversation, her eyes going misty, probably remembering Akane and Nabiki or even Ranma. I tried to avoid mentioning her family, but the subject couldn't help but come up more than once. I did my best to steer the discussions back to topics such as what else she needed or wanted and was she enjoying herself. I wasn't trying to buy her love ... from my perspective, she was already bought and paid for. That's not quite right. Makes me sound a bit creepy ... making her a slave. I suppose her free will wasn't quite as free as a normal person, but I wanted a friend and lover, not a servant or slave. And now that sounds pathetic instead of creepy. How about, I wanted a lot of friends and lovers ... she just happened to be the first. (Is that fair to them? No? Well, neither is life.) The point is, I wanted her to be happy. For that to happen, she needed to accept that she had 'moved' to America permanently. This brought up a problem that I had thought of but apparently not thought through completely. For her to be Kasumi Tendo, she had to have her 'memories'. But that meant she didn't naturally belong here, especially not without her family. I would have to wait for a natural grieving process to complete, but I didn't want to wait. I decided that I would have to make sure she was focused on other things, keep her occupied so that she wouldn't drown in grief or self-pity. None of her programming prevented natural human reactions, but it would make it easier to have her focus on me instead of her lost family. The shopping trip was a good start. It let her begin building a new identity, free from physical reminders of her 'previous life' in Japan. Knowing she was programmed to receive a spike of pleasure every time she saw me or I paid attention to her, I had her start modeling her new outfits for me. Between the shopping itself and the approval and attention she was getting from me, her pleasure center was pumping out lust and happy feelings throughout the afternoon. I think it helped her immensely to be distracted from the "fact" that she could never go home again. On the way back to the house that evening, I offered to pay for her to attend college or whatever school she wanted to attend. We spent some time discussing her interests and talents (nursing and cooking seemed to top the lists). I had dinner delivered and we both sat and watched TV while we ate. Our conversation started to run down around 8pm, when the stress of the day seemed to wear her down a bit. When I suggested she retire for the evening, she sat up straight and clutched at my arm. "No, please. You've been so wonderful to me, and I don't know how to repay you. And ... and I don't want to be alone right now." I reached across and gave her a sideways hug, moving my face near hers but not moving to kiss her. "Kasumi, I am happy to help you in any way you want me to. But know that you do not have to do anything in this house that you do not want to do. There are no strings attached to you staying here." She lowered her eyes respectfully, and saw a bulge straining to escape my pants. "You have been so kind, and today has been ... I have no right to ask for even more of your attentions, but I do not wish to be alone tonight." "Kasumi ... Look at me." I touched her chin, gently pushing her head up slightly. I could almost feel her implant driving her crazy with lust right now, but her self control remained amazing. "Kasumi, you are a very beautiful woman, and I would love to spend the night with you. But you have been through a great trauma today, and if you wish to simply be in the same room or hold someone tonight, that will..." I was cut off at this point when she crushed her lips against mine. I mentally shouted a huge 'YES' and took her in my arms. Implants and programming were working fine! I gently parted her lips with my tongue and started exploring her mouth. We continued on this way for a good 10 minutes. Pulling back, I looked her in the eye while my hand trailed down her arm, gently grabbing her wrist and bringing it to my mouth. I began to kiss my way back up her arm while my hands moved around to caress her back, searching for a zipper. "Please be gentle. I've never ... There was never time to date since I had to take care of Father and ... so, I've never had any actual experiences with men. Not like..." She blushed and looked away. I paused. "I'm honored." Yes, I already knew she was a virgin, but I couldn't let her know that I knew. "We should do this properly. In a bed." "Don't be rude aaaaahh". Her polite reprimand was ignored as I picked her up bodily in my arms, mentally thanking Alpha again for the muscle tone. Keeping my eyes fixed on hers, I carried her upstairs to the master bedroom and set her down on the bed. She gasped slightly upon seeing it. I had really splurged on the bed, dreaming of orgies to come. While the bed in her room was a standard Queen size, mine was custom. Twelve feet wide and nine feet long with adjustable firmness. "Welcome to the room of many future orgies ... hopefully." I stood her up and moved my hands lightly over her body, tracing her curves but avoiding her breasts and groin for now. "Kasumi, you are a polite and reserved young lady, and this is a wonderful thing because you are a wonderful lady. But you are also a gorgeous young woman entering the prime of her life. This too should not be ignored, especially tonight." I reached behind her and started unfastening her dress. "The ... the lights..." she stammered as I pulled the dress forward, removing her arms from the sleeves. "No, the lights stay on. I don't want either of us to be denied the view of your beautiful form." "It's not proper. You shouldn't say or do such things." Despite her protestations, her torso was now bare except for her bra, her dress hanging from her waist. I trailed my fingers in a spiral around one of her breasts, feeling her hard nipple pointing at me from under the bra. "Do you want me to stop?" I asked as I rubbed the nipple. Again, not a fair question. With her implants and stimuli, she could no more want to stop me than she could successfully negate gravity by will alone. "No," she gasped. "But it would be more proper if the lights were off." I kissed her left nipple through the bra. "But then I wouldn't be able to see you clearly. You understand the difficulty." Standing up straight, I gently tilted her face upwards and kissed her lips. "Kasumi, inside the bedroom, we decide for ourselves what is proper. And no one can say we're wrong. And no one will know unless we tell them." My hands fell to her hips, where I urged the dress downwards. Her face was now a bright red. Her eyes desperately seemed to try to avoid mine, but kept coming back to look at me, pupils wide with Alpha-induced fascination and lust. Now that she was reduced to bra and panties, I stood back and hurriedly pulled off my own shirt and pants. I had wanted to have her remove my clothes, but was feeling a bit rushed. I realized this and forced myself to take a breath and slow down. I removed my earbud communicator and slipped it into its charging station. At her quizzical look, I said, "It's like a phone. I'll explain some other time." She stood about 5' 6" with flawless Asian skin and features. I'm not sure when her shoes had been kicked off, but she stood on bare feet. Even from a couple feet apart, I could practically feel the heat radiating from her blush, which had now apparently spread to cover her entire torso. I pushed her back so she was sitting on the edge of the bed and knelt before her in my obviously tented underwear. "I need to taste you." I applied light pressure to her knees, trying to spread them. They snapped shut. "No, that's not..." "Kasumi, you are a young virgin who MUST experience more than one very large orgasm before you go to sleep tonight. The best way to start this is with cunnilingus." "That's dirty. You shouldn't put your ... your mouth where it's so ... unclean." "It's not dirty, it's..." and I stopped. There was no way I could ever let myself force anything sexual on Kasumi, and she seemed very firm on the subject. (There's a huge difference between feigned reluctance and actual refusal.) I had to work within her own desires. I thought for a moment, then grinned widely. "Maybe you're right. If I shouldn't eat off a dirty plate, then perhaps we should clean it first." I stood up and, grabbing her hand, brought her with me to the master bath. The Master bathroom was the largest and the only one in the house with both a shower stall and a jacuzzi-style bath. We'd relax in the bath later. For now, cleanliness was the goal and we stopped before the shower stall. I turned on the water and waited for it to warm up. (I had a bunch of those tankless water heaters around the house, one for each bathroom. Saved on energy, but not instantly hot.) I pulled off my boxers, and my erection sprang into clear view. She gave an appreciative gasp, staring at it as I unfastened her bra and let it fall to the floor. Stepping close, I kissed her hard, trying to put some intensity into it as I pulled her panties free of her hips. I held her closer to me as we kissed, feeling her hard nipples drill into my chest. Still connected by our lips, we stepped into the shower and let the warm spray cover our bodies. Coming up for air, I pulled back slightly and reached for the liquid soap and sponge. I gleefully attacked her body with the cleansing implements, exploring her completely naked form for the first time. Perhaps I lingered too long on certain areas -- breasts, ass and legs can just get soooo dirty, after all -- but she didn't seem to mind. When I finally reached her pussy, the lips were flowing with liquid which seemed much more slippery than the water. I applied the soapy sponge gently but thoroughly as she looked away in embarrassment. But this time, she didn't protest or pull away. I ran my finger up and down the lips, dipping briefly inside, which caused a small clenching convulsion. Bringing the finger to my lips, I made a show of tasting it. "It seems clean enough now. Do you agree?" Actually, it tasted a bit watery, but I wrongly thought it was just because we were in the shower. She didn't answer and seemed to blush even harder, though I didn't think that was possible. I stood up and added more soap to the sponge. Pressing it into her hand, I said, "Now it's your turn. I should be clean too." I think I could have fried an egg on her cheeks by this point. I took her by the wrist and guided her against my chest, moving the sponge in circles. After a minute of this, she took over and moved to my arms and back. She skipped down to my legs and gave them a more thorough washing than they needed, obviously gathering her courage to tackle my nether regions. Eventually, she turned me facing away from her and gently but thoroughly soaped and cleaned my butt, at one point even bravely forcing her way between the cheeks to clean my anus. When I felt she had rinsed it off sufficiently, I turned around, bringing my cock directly before her face. The nine inches bobbing in front of her seemed almost hypnotic, trapping her eyes and not letting go. She whispered quietly, "I don't know if this will fit inside of me, but I want to try. But first, he must be clean." Summoning her courage and determination, she began to stroke my penis with the soapy sponge, moving it gently from side to side as she worked. Her free hand moved down to cup my balls and clean them, as well as the perineum under and behind the scrotum. Splashing water on my genitals, she rinsed off the soap and put down the sponge. The she leaned forward and kissed the tip of my cock, following with a lick along the shaft. I have had blowjobs a few times before, and it was obvious that she was not planning to suck me off ... But the combination of her touch, her reluctance and her willingness to please me made her simple touches more exciting than any previous blowjob I had received. With my cock jumping at her every touch, I was in danger of coming much sooner than I wanted to. I lifted her to her feet and crushed our lips together, letting my fingers dance around her quivering quim, stroking her lower lips. "Now may I eat you?" She gave a slight nod, her mouth still parted from our kiss. I was tempted to start licking right there in the shower, but the bed was still my intention. I shut off the water and grabbed a large towel, which I used to thoroughly rub down her soft body. She returned the favor and soon I was carrying her to the bed again, this time laying her down completely. And this time, her legs were parted from the beginning. When I crawled between her legs, she covered her face with clenched fists and turned away slightly ... but not so much that I couldn't see her sneaking occasional peaks at me from between her fingers. Her cunt was practically a work of art in and of itself. No hair had ever grown around the lips (and never would), leaving them smooth and unblemished. A small patch of hair above, looking like an upside-down triangle with the bottom tip cut off, felt like smooth fur, not the coarse hair I was accustomed to. The outer lips were swollen with arousal and the inner lips were dripping wet. I finally stopped admiring with my eyes and fingers and began admiring with my tongue and fingers. She tasted ... well, to be honest, bland. Kasumi may have been built as an adult woman, but there were many things about her that needed time to develop properly, and pussy flavor was apparently one of them. The reminder of her origins took me out of the moment a bit, but after only a few seconds of licking, her thighs clamped together on my head, trapping me in place as she gave out a squeal. I was refocused. I dug my tongue in as deep as I could and played my fingers around her clit for a couple minutes or so, with her legs apparently trying to force my entire head into her little pink tunnel. I paused for a moment, pushing her legs apart slightly to allow a slight repositioning. I pushed two fingers from my left hand into her pussy, curling them up, searching for the mythical G-spot. With my right hand, I gently pulled back on the skin around her clit, exposing it to the attentions of my tongue. She really wasn't ready for this, and her whole body quivered with every stroke. After maybe 5 minutes of this, I sped up my attentions and was shortly rewarded with a much louder squeal, followed by a relaxation of her body and a quiet, "Oh, my." I sat up, keeping my fingers going with a gentle stroking motion of her labia. Kasumi looked like she was at one with the universe. I idly wondered if this was the first time she had ever had an orgasm ... then realized what a silly and pointless question that would be. I found the towel from the bathroom on the floor next to the bed and used it to wipe down my face. I pulled a condom from my bedside table and sat next to her. "Kasumi?" It took her a moment to refocus herself. "Oh, my. Is it always like that?" "Well, yes and no. Every time is different, and with every person it's different. And the first time should always be special. Can you sit up?" After another minute of gathering her wits and limbs, she was sitting next to me on the bed. I don't think she consciously realized it, but her left hand was gently stroking her pussy as she sat. "Now it's time for part two." I held up the condom. Alpha and I weren't sure if she could actually become pregnant. Theoretically it was possible. Alpha's method to create a body used stimulated and guided cell growth, not just artificial assembly by nanites. This isn't the time to go into the specifics, but suffice to say, her body was fully capable of having a baby ... we just weren't sure her actual ovum eggs were viable. Or, if they were viable, whether the resulting baby would be normal or not. A prescription for 'the pill' was in Kasumi's near future. She was momentarily confused, then comprehension dawned. "Is that a condom?" "Yes, and I want you to put it on me. I'll show you how." I had her kneel in front of me and took her hands in mine. "First, stroke my cock a few times to make sure it's fully erect." She started blushing again as I used her hand to masturbate myself. "Don't look away. You need to learn this. You putting the condom on me should be part of our foreplay. Now, pinch the center here and put it against the tip of my cock like this. Keep holding this part and then ... there, roll it down the shaft carefully. Keep going. It's all right, there's supposed to be a little extra room at the tip. That's good." Her blush never faded, but she paid attention, perhaps thinking about future possibilities, or maybe about how this was going to fit inside her. I moved her back next to me on the bed and started stroking her cunt lips as I stretched her out next to me on the bed. Keeping the gentle stroking constant and locking eyes with her, I asked, "This is your last chance to back out. In a minute I'll be inside you..." Here I thrust a finger up her quim. "Are you sure this is what you want?" I wasn't playing fair, but I wanted her to remember this first time fondly and to know that this was all entirely her choice. Well, as far as she knew anyway. "Yes, but please..." "I'll be gentle and go slowly." She relaxed a bit, then stiffened slightly and I moved between her legs. I backtracked for a moment, grabbed a pillow and stuffed it under her hips. Moving back into position, I rubbed the tip of my penis up and down her labial lips. She was still overflowing with natural lubrication as I started gently pushing my way inside. "This part might hurt a little, but it only hurts once." I gave a couple more exploratory mini-thrusts, then pushed inside for real, breaking the hymen and relieving her of her virginity. She sucked in her breath in a small hiss and tensed up slightly. I held still, except for my hands, which I moved up to caress her breasts. "Tell me when you're ready for more." After a long ten-count, she said, "Just a small bit, please." I moved my hips back and forth a little, and she seemed to relax. I gradually increased my strokes, moving a little bit deeper each time. After about five minutes of this, I reached the far end of her pussy. I looked down at our joining and saw that only about an inch of my penis remained outside. Part of me wanted to just push it all in regardless, maybe force it into her womb, but I had been working hard to retain my control and resisted the urge. Instead, I leaned down and kissed her, digging out her tongue to engage it in a duel. While still lip-locked, I carefully drew back almost to the entrance of her vaginal tunnel and thrust forward strongly, breaking the kiss. "Now we FUCK," I said quietly, giving special emphasis to the dirty word, just for her, and I started the piston-like movements of sex, trying to be careful to avoid simply battering her womb. I struggled mightily to hold off until she came again and almost failed. If not for the slight deadening of sensation from the condom, I would have come in the first minute. I was really worked up. As it was, I lasted a good 5 or 10 minutes, and my orgasm seemed to trigger hers. I collapsed on top of her for a moment before pulling out and rolling off of her. We both lay there, breathing heavily. Eventually, I propped myself up on one elbow and looked her over. I don't know if a woman is ever more beautiful than during and just after orgasm. There's no self-consciousness then, no worries of the world or of the future. I stroked her face with my free hand, moving slowly down to her breast, where I gently played with and tweaked her nipple. "How are you feeling?" "Like a woman." But she refused to elaborate. "Are you up for another round?" I asked as I stripped off the used condom, tied it off and dropped it off the side of the bed. "Oh, yes. But are you ... can you ... I mean, I've been told that men go to sleep afterwards." I smiled. "Sometimes, yes. But tonight I have enough energy for another round." My record was actually five ejaculations in a day since my nanite treatments had begun, although that was from masturbation, not actual sex. I pulled out her hip pillow, pulled off its cover (only a little blood) and threw it away. I pulled out a fresh condom, pumped my shaft a few times to keep it going, and started to put the condom on. Kasumi sat up. Blushing, she said, "Here, that is my job, correct?" and took it from me. I had definitely returned to full stiffness by the time the second condom was in place. "Now, let's try a new position. Do you want to be on top, or..." I looked at her blush as she looked away in embarrassment. "Okay, let me introduce you to 'doggy style'." Doggy style sex was less intimate, in that she wasn't looking at me, but it had a couple advantages given the situation. The big advantage was that it was still a passive role for her. I'm sure we could work up to a cowgirl position or something else where she was more actively participating, but not right away. This position also let me insert Mr. Johnson all the way inside Ms. Pussy. A disadvantage was that her clit wasn't being directly stimulated, but I rectified that problem by reaching under with my right hand to rub her stiff little clitty. This time, I lasted at least 20 minutes, and I think she came at least twice, maybe as many as 5 times. Kasumi was not very vocal during sex, so I had to judge by pussy contractions. Fucking in this position did make me wonder about anal sex with her, but given her thoughts on cleanliness, that might never happen. Maybe with an enema first? When this second round of sex completed, I got rid of the used condom again, turned off the lights and held her spooned to me, her smooth back against my hairy chest, as we drifted off to sleep. I was sure we had changed positions during the night, but when I woke up in the morning, I was still spooning her from behind, my morning wood trapped between us, laying along the line of her buttocks. I just held her, gradually becoming aware that she was also awake. "Good morning, Kasumi-chan. How are you feeling?" No response. I kissed the back of her head, then reached up with my free arm to pull her hair back so I could see her face. She was crying. "What's wrong?" She wasn't sobbing, just crying. "Did I hurt you? I'm sorry." "No, Frank-sama." (AN: She actually used my last name here, but I'm deliberately keeping the story last-name-less, as you may have noticed.) "Then what's wrong? How can I help?" "I ... I woke up before dawn, like I normally do to get ready and start breakfast for father and Akane and Nabiki and Ranma and ... and then I remembered where I was and that I can't go back because of that foolish Shampoo ... and then I remembered how kind you were to me and what we did last night ... and how wonderful it was. And I started to wonder, is this all I have left? I love being with you and want to do ... IT ... more, but shall I just become a mistress or servant? Is that all I have left to do in life?" I kissed the back of her head while I considered things for a moment. Her comment about "that foolish Shampoo" was Kasumi's equivalent of calling her "a stupid fucking whore cuntrag". Kasumi was really emotionally on the edge. I had never seen her like this in the anime or manga. Maybe fictional people wouldn't do well in the real world. Still, my house was not going to be the "real world". "Maybe this is a good time to talk to you about a job proposal. I plan to gradually invite people to live with me in this house. People who have no families of their own. And some of these people will probably not be ... normal. I need someone to manage the house. "This isn't a job for a maid or a cook, though I expect some cleaning and cooking will be part of the job. I need someone to mediate disputes, make grocery lists and do the shopping. To assign chores and, if needed, call in a maid or gardening service. It will be like an apartment manager or house mother." No response, but she was listening intently. "The house probably won't actually fill up for another year or two, but I hope to have a couple of college students join us in 2 or 3 months. So you have time to prepare. I have been told you are a wonderful cook, but you need experience cooking American food too ... and European and whatever other types you would want to learn. "Nursing classes would probably help a lot, so we can arrange for those too. "I have a regular maid service that comes in once a week. A lawn care service too. But when we have enough people living here, we can turn those jobs into chores. Cooking too. You wouldn't have to cook every night, but we would need someone to plan meals properly and do the shopping. Or at least make the shopping lists. "You, my dear, have experience with most of this, correct? And you have a wonderful calming presence. And this would keep you near me so I can take advantage of you on a regular basis." I moved my hand from her breast down to stroke her pubic hair and flexed my cock against her ass. She reached down and took my hand in hers. "Yes, that sounds good. I will do my best and try not to disappoint you. But I am afraid I probably will disappoint you this morning. I am very sore down there right now." "I'm glad. Well, not that you're sore, but that's to be expected. Are you willing to try something else?" "What?," she asked suspiciously. "Have you ever heard of a blow job?" We had to go get a clean washcloth first, but once my cock had been cleaned, Kasumi demonstrated that she could be quite a good student. We showered again (together, with play but no actual sex), dressed and had breakfast. I showed her around the kitchen and taught her how I like my eggs. She started making a list of food to buy to show me a traditional Japanese breakfast tomorrow, expanding the list to include food needed for lunch and dinner. I gave her a full tour of the house and grounds. I introduced her to my two "trained" rats and two untrained. (Chronologically, I still had four test rats at this point; the one testing death was still a few months away.) I even showed her the basement, with the server racks and lab full of unexplained equipment. The basement was off limits to anyone but me, I explained. I was showing her now so she wouldn't be overcome with curiosity later. After all, now she knew what was down there and none of it interested her. If I hadn't shown her, who knows? She might have been overcome with curiosity a month or two from now and found two young college students being grown in side- by-side vats. ------- Chapter 4: Daria Morgendorffer and Jane Lane Dramatis Personae: Frank ___ - Lead character, inventor of Alpha Alpha - First A.I. in existence Kasumi Tendo - artificial woman based on character from Ranma 1/2 Daria Morgendorffer aka Daria Morgan - artificial woman based on character from Daria Jane Lane aka Jane Lannister - artificial woman based on character from Daria Daria was an MTV cartoon series that ran for 5 seasons, plus 2 TV movies. It was a spin-off of Beavis and Butthead, a series that I loathed. The main character, Daria Morgendorffer, was a high school student who was highly intelligent, anti-social and cynical. She responded to high school stereotypes with sarcasm and wit. In general, she was designed to appeal to people like me ... intelligent and hated high school society. (Yes, I was out of high school by the time the series aired, but so what?) Her best friend throughout the series was Jane Lane, an intelligent artistic type who shared Daria's disdain for high school social structures. Physically, Daria and Jane are not great beauties, though they showed potential. Daria had long, fairly straight brown hair that seemed to be in need of a trim and/or stylist, was flat-chested and needed strong glasses. Jane had short dark hair, blue eyes and maybe an A or B cup chest. The series ended when they graduated and went off to college at different schools in the same town. I was trying to avoid the same emotional problems I had created with Kasumi, so I worked with Alpha to add in some extra background for after the end of the series. Again, there was no workable way I could recreate their families, so again, I needed to make them orphans. I actually felt guilty for "killing off" their families right after the two of them left for college, but I wanted most of their grieving to be over with by the time they woke up in my house. Basically, the story we set up was that their home town of Lawndale had been hit by a hurricane (again) during their first semester in college, and both of their families had died. Since they were legal adults by now, no distant relatives needed to be called in. They dropped out of their respective universities, collected some insurance and helped each other through the losses for a year or so. They had decided to go to a university far away in Texas to get away from the memories. Thus, they would be staying in my house while they started taking classes again at Texas Christian University (a good academic school in Fort Worth, though not 5-star). In the TV series, they were both strictly heterosexual, even when Jane was hit on by a bisexual artist at an art colony. I had Alpha add in some strong attraction to each other, developed during their year of grief but not yet acted on. And one other change seemed necessary. Daria the TV series no doubt held some appeal for college students. Even though it was off the air, there was probably a decent chance that Daria and Jane could run across their own TV show, which could lead to unnecessary complications. Therefore, when Alpha coded their memories, Daria became Daria Morgan and Jane became Jane Lannister. Yes, the risks were still there, but at least they wouldn't attract instant attention by fans of the show or find themselves with online searches. (Author's Note: In the interest of staying in character, I'll actually still refer to Daria as Daria Morgendorffer and Jane as Jane Lane.) The TV series was entirely mundane, which worked well for bringing them into the real world, but might cause problems when they had to deal with future house residents. Actually, that's not entirely true. There was one weird fantasy episode where they met the incarnations of holidays ... that episode stood out like a sore thumb in the series, but a little emphasis on it how it 'really happened' might be what I needed to help them accept the existence of superhumans ... if Alpha ever succeeded at bringing one to life. Alpha assembled enough documentation for the girls that they should actually be able to live relatively normal lives if they had to make it on their own. TCU had a rule about Freshmen having to live on campus, but a heartfelt plea about their emotional state and a $250,000 donation convinced them to make an exception. At this point it was early summer, so we still had a few months before registration. As a side note, there was one aspect of creation that proved to be unexpectedly difficult - Daria's glasses. As it turns out, it's very easy to grow eyes with perfect vision, but it's virtually impossible to create vision that is imperfect to a specific degree. In the end, Alpha built Daria's eyes and sent me to get glasses built to a certain specification. After she was alive and breathing but before she was activated, I pulled her head out of the goo, put her glasses on her and opened her eyes. With the nanites still in her system, Alpha directed minor reshaping of her irises to match the vision prescription glasses. (From my perspective, that was a pretty boring half hour.) ------- Kasumi and I had lived together for about 3 months before I told her that a couple of college students would be moving in, named Daria and Jane. By this time, Kasumi was Red Cross certified for First Aid and CPR and had taken a few cooking classes to become familiar with different styles of cooking. She was now almost as comfortable cooking chicken-fried steaks or pot roast or barbeque as she was making ramen or rice. She wanted to tackle French and New Orleans cuisine next. We slept together every other night, on average, though we had sex almost every day. No anal sex, but that was fine. She still blushed every time we got naked together, but had advanced far enough that she could initiate sex entirely on her own. I think she would have liked to sleep together every night, but I often worked late down in the lab and had a small bed set up there for catnaps. And to tell the truth, I didn't want to sleep with her every night. I loved her, but I knew I would not be exclusive to her. I occasionally teased her about the possibility of bringing other women in to join us in bed. I'm sure the real Kasumi would not have been receptive, but this Kasumi had a few reactions hard- wired so that such suggestions made her more excited than normal, regardless of how embarrassing her sense of propriety told her it should be. And let me tell you, knowing everything about a woman's history and being absolutely certain that she is very attracted to you does wonders for your self- confidence. I doubt I would be as adept with a normal woman, but with the artificially created women, I was supremely confident and smooth, a huge change from my past self. When Daria and Jane were ready to "arrive", late one night, Kasumi insisted on staying up to welcome them. This was actually very easy to work around since all of Alpha's creations had a built-in kill switch for safety reasons. Well, the term "kill switch" implies the wrong thing. Maybe "off switch" would be more accurate. When the time came, Kasumi simply fell asleep on the couch while I carried Daria and Jane upstairs to their room. They were to stay in the same room, furnished with two full size beds, a couple of desks, a TV with cable (minus MTV) and connected to a large bathroom. The bathroom was shared with an unoccupied bedroom. I arranged them on their beds, dressed in long T-shirts instead of pajamas. Almost forgot about Jane's ear piercings and had to go back downstairs to retrieve them. They were physically slightly advanced from their high school selves. A little taller and Daria's body was beginning to mature a bit. Daria had A-cup breasts and slight curves of the waist and hips, and normal pubic hair. Jane now had full B-cup breasts (nearly C-cup), a few body piercings and a completely shaved pubis. I had done some basic shopping for them, to provide them with purses and small carry-on bags. I had even set up checking and savings accounts for them. (I'm not sure how Alpha was able to get them working SSNs, but she did. If it was possible to give Alpha an IQ test, I'm sure she would be a super-genius.) It had taken a little bit extra shopping, but I had found a faded green jacket, amber-ish t-shirt, knee-length black skirt and heavy shoes for Daria to match her class toon image. Jane had her red jacket with rolled-up sleeves, black v-neck shirt, dark shorts, black stockings and boots. I tossed it all haphazardly across the dressers, as if discarded after a long, trying day of travel. When everything was set, I went back downstairs and gathered Kasumi up in my arms. While I was carrying her up to her room, I had Alpha let her wake back up. Looking down, I saw her eyes flutter. "Oh, you're awake. You fell asleep on the couch. I was going to take you up and tuck you into bed." "Daria and Jane? Are they here?" "Yes, they were tired and went straight to bed. You can meet them in the morning. Actually, we need to take them shopping. The airline lost their luggage." She still wasn't quite awake when we reached her bedroom, so I just pulled off her shoes and dress, tucked her into bed, kissed her goodnight and let her go back to sleep, naturally this time. I woke up early the next morning, excited at the possibilities stretched out before me. With Kasumi, the excitement was mainly focused on creating my first fictional lover. Kasumi herself is a number of things - beautiful, kind, helpful and, should my house fill up as planned, needed - but not really exciting or mentally stimulating. A good variety was what the house needed. I had another long conversation with Alpha as I prepared for the day. Kasumi was still asleep and Daria & Jane hadn't been activated yet. The exercise room was just down the hall from their door, so I left the door open when I started my morning workout ... and had Alpha activate the girls. With my earbud tuned to their room and the exercise room's monitor tuned to their camera, I watched as they both stretched and took in their new surroundings. Theoretically their memory implants took them up to last night, when they arrived in town, complained to the airline, took a cab out to my house and crashed for the night. They talked quietly to each other for a few minutes, but I couldn't make out exactly what they were saying. They got up and went to the bathroom (no camera in there.) Alpha interrupted. "Frank, Kasumi is now awake too." "Thank you. Let me know when she reaches the kitchen, please." Kasumi's door is not visible from the exercise room, but I think I heard her door a couple minutes later. When Alpha gave me the heads up, I had Alpha route my mic to the kitchen speaker (ie. intercom). "Kasumi? Are you there?" "Yes, Frank. Good morning." "Good morning. I'm up exercising and I think I hear movement from the girls' room, so they'll probably be ready for breakfast in a few minutes." "Thank you for letting me know." "And thank you for helping out so much. See you in a bit." A couple minutes later, Jane and Daria emerged from their bathroom, dressed in the clothes they wore last night (as far as they knew). I switched the exercise room monitor to the morning weather report. They emerged from their room a minute later and I waved to them. "Good morning! Have you recovered from your flight?" Daria muttered something to Jane, who laughed. To me, Jane said, "Yeah, we're doing just Jim-Dandy fine." I smiled, recognizing the voice and tone from the show. "Come now," I panted. "There's no need for colloquialisms between friends ... or brand new acquaintances, as the case may be. Kasumi just started breakfast, so it should be ready soon." They both moved their hands to their stomachs. "Yeah, food would be good," Jane agreed. They meandered towards the exercise room, taking in the sights. It was much too small to call a gym, but it had a treadmill, stairclimber, rowing machine, a floor pad for aerobics and weight-resistance workout machines. I noticed with pleasure that their eyes kept being drawn back to me ... their pleasure programming just beginning. Daria watched me jog on the treadmill for a minute. "Treadmills, the Sisyphus of exercise equipment. Wouldn't exercising outside be more interesting?" "Actually, I prefer to think of it as running the Red Queen's race. Run as fast as you can to stay where you are." "If that's as fast as you can run, you need to exercise more." "Thus my time on the Sisyphian treadmill." "So who's Kasumi? Your cook or maid? Mail-order bride?" I started slowing the treadmill, moving into a cooldown phase, and gave her a sharp look. "Kasumi is a very close friend who has agreed to help me manage the house. She's not a servant, and I'd greatly appreciate it if you would not treat or refer to her as one." I lightened my tone. "I don't have servants. The concept is socially uncomfortable. I suppose I do have a cleaning service, but they only come once a week." Daria said, "Ummm ... Sorry. I didn't mean to insult you. Having a house this big just implies certain attitudes." "Oh, you can insult me all you want. Just don't insult my friends, at least not behind their backs." Jane rejoined the conversation. "So this is quite a place you have here. Looks pretty new. You have, what? A new bedroom for each day of the month?" I was toweling myself off a bit at this point. "Not quite. I'll give you the grand tour after breakfast, but I suppose I can offer a few points of interest on our way down to the kitchen. "This is, of course, the exercise room. Use it as much as you like." "We're not really the sweaty, exercise-y types," Daria responded. "We prefer mental gymnastics." "Yeah, less chance of broken limbs." "Being healthy is its own reward. It's also a pretty wide open neighborhood, if you like to run outdoors. Outdoor activity is best done early or late. Gets way too hot during the day this time of year." Jane was a runner, as I remembered. Even went out for track once. "Oh, joy," muttered Daria, in her classic monotone. "But to help build up your mental muscles, I do have a small library," I said as we left the room. My library/study was only three doors down the hall. I am a bibliophile myself and was proud of my collection. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 10,000 books. Probably 4000 SciFi/Fantasy, 1500 classic literature, 1000 modern fiction, 1500 nonfiction and biography and the rest miscellaneous (Mystery, Childrens, Religious, etc.) My comic collection was larger and kept elsewhere. Daria muttered that she would have to visit here again later, which I took to be approval. I wasn't worried about Daria's lack of strong verbals at this point. If the implants were working correctly, I was expecting muted initial reactions from her, including short, quiet responses in conversation instead of her trademark verbal jousting. I made small talk the rest of the way downstairs. I noticed both girls sniffing the air a bit, and I apologized for not showering after my workout, in my haste to get them breakfast, that is. Mentally, I was wondering if the smell was turning them on or off. Theoretically anything I did with them should trigger little spikes of lust in their brains. I introduced them to Kasumi. I don't think they quite knew how to react to her. She was beautiful and kind and practically radiated an aura of motherly goodness. But she also seemed a bit subservient ... which may have been ameliorated slightly when she noticed I was still sweaty and sent me to my room to clean up before she would let me eat. I had Alpha route the audio from the kitchen to my earbud as I went back upstairs to clean up. Jane: "So ... Kasumi. Nice house, huh?" Kasumi: "Oh yes, it is very efficient and new. It has a very different feel than where I grew up. Our house there was old and beautiful. But at least here we don't have to make repairs every day." I could hear her starting to choke up a bit. Jane: "Oh, hey, sorry ... I didn't mean to uhhh..." Daria: "Hey, breakfast!" Kasumi: "Yes, this morning, I prepared a traditional American breakfast for you. Scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage, toast, cereal and fruit." Sounds of eating. Daria: "So, what's Frank like?" Kasumi: "He is a very kind man. He has helped me adapt to America and he helped me find new purpose in life after ... I lost my family a few months ago." I had convinced Kasumi that most people would not understand the chaos and strangeness of her life in Nerima, so we agreed to simply tell people that she had lost her family. Daria: "Wow, sorry about your family." Kasumi: "It is all right. I am learning to make my life without them. And Frank has been sending me to classes." Jane: "And he's kinda cute too. Do you know how old he is?" Daria: "Jane, how about a little self-restraint before you sprain an eyeball?" Jane: "Oh, bite me, Morgendorffer. You were checking him out too." Kasumi: "Yes, he is rather handsome. I am not certain how old he is. I believe he is about 30, but he seems a bit younger than that sometimes." Jane: "So are you two ... y'know, together?" Kasumi: "It is not proper to ask such questions." pause "I ... I do not know. We have spent a great deal of time together, and I know he cares for me a great deal. But I do not think I can claim him for my own. I sometimes think that he has spent time with me mostly to help me recover or to distract me from remembering." I really wanted to be available to interrupt this conversation, but I knew it would happen sooner or later. My goal was to eventually get everyone to have sex with everyone else, so that no one would feel jealous or left out. But early on, before that happened, possible problem conversations like this were inevitable. I could always just had requested Alpha create some female orgy-bots, but there was no challenge in it. An animated masturbation tool might be fun for a little while, but I felt that in the end, it would be as interesting as trying to make friends with your own hand. I had started to love seducing Kasumi using what I knew about her life in anime, and I was looking forward to seducing Daria and Jane using what I knew about them. Suddenly, I felt very manipulative ... and evil ... and horny. I missed a few minutes of their conversation while I was in the shower, but when I picked it back up, there didn't appear to be much of significance being discussed. Kasumi: "Yes, I don't like the idea of having to care for such a large lawn, so I leave it all to his service. But I have spoken to Frank about building my own traditional garden. I hope to have the time to prepare the ground this fall, but I don't know if I will have the time." I dressed quickly and headed downstairs. Apparently I had missed out on some significant part of their conversation, because they all gave me an amused look when I entered the kitchen, with Jane and Kasumi apparently suppressing giggles. "Okaaayyy ... I assume you've discussed me behind my back, which is fine and expected. Kasumi, I don't blame you, as these two are obviously devious and underhanded and tricked you into revealing whatever secrets you let loose. However at the same time, I deny any and all rumors Kasumi has passed along. Unless they reflected positively on me, in which case they were too understated." "Kasumi refused to divulge any of your secrets," Jane responded. "So we decided to make them up ourselves," Daria continued. "Yeah, so exactly when did you start dressing up as Kris Kringle's evil brother?" "And what exactly are your plans for world domination?" And the banter began. Maybe I was wrong to expect a quiet Daria to being with? After a few minutes of conversation, Daria and Jane had decided I was a closet computer geek and explained what that meant to Kasumi. I protested on the grounds that I was more than just a computer geek. I was also a game geek, book nerd and possible comic book fetishist. Daria and Jane only needed minor prodding to provide conversational entertainment for all. I did my best to join in occasionally, but didn't yet have the rhythm down for syncopated sarcasm. After breakfast was over, I gave them the grand tour of the place, including a brief visit to the basement labs. They were impressed (or possibly disturbed) by the masses of computers I had down there, as I explained how I had made my money with analysis and predictive computer models of the markets. When they saw the lab portion of the basement, I was accused of being a mad scientist, to which I gave my best mad doctor/world domination laugh. "But seriously, no, I can't tell you. If I ever get around to patenting anything, you'll be the first to know. But for now, I just want to keep it to myself. Don't worry, there's nothing explosive or hazardous down here." When we left the house, I locked the doors, and Daria asked me about an alarm system. I laughed. "You know how I told you I'm working on AI-type programs, right? One of the systems I set up is hooked into the outside cameras." Here I pointed to a couple cameras discreetly placed around the house. "The facial recognition system can identify Kasumi and myself and now you two. If someone other than us approaches, an alarm goes off. It'll even call the police if the house is forcibly entered. And there's another system that runs at night." "And if you lose power?" "I have a generator backup that would kick in." "What if you grow a beard?" "There are voice recognition overrides." "What if you had a new beard and laryngitis?" I laughed and walked on. And then we went shopping. Kasumi didn't have a drivers license yet and Daria and Jane were new to the area, so I drove everyone in my minivan. (I have three vehicles: a 4 wheel drive pick-up truck, a minivan and a hybrid compact.) I asked about the airline and their missing luggage (knowing the answer already) and was told that their bags had been tracked to Detroit where they disappeared. The airline had refunded their tickets and paid for replacements. The girls would be using their own money for shopping today, but since they had the accounts I set up for them to represent the insurance and property sales from Lawndale, they were financially sound for a while. I drove us to a mall in the area - fairly empty since it was a mid-week morning - and the girls took us to a number of different stores, piling up bag after bag of clothes and miscellaneous mysterious girl things. When I asked for a fashion show strut while they were in-and-out of the fitting rooms, Daria demurred but Jane jumped on the idea, choosing flashier and racier outfits to model for me. Daria blushed a little and soon accused Jane of wanting to be like Quinn. "Hey, now," I jumped in. "We're just having a little fun, not talking about how..." I pressed one of my nostrils closed for a nasal effect. " ... How the cognoscente of Paris and Milan are so much more refined and fashion- conscious than the riff-raff of Texas." Switching back to a normal voice, I asked, "Didn't you ever watch Madonna's Vogue video and laugh yourself silly at the pretentiousness of it?" Daria looked like she had been caught a little off guard. "Critiquing music videos wasn't really my thing, unlike some guys I used to know ... but yeah, I suppose so. I just don't have the body or temperament for fashion strutting." "Body type is irrelevant when you're trying to have fun like this, and besides, yours is, to all appearances, perfectly healthy. And temperament is variable. I bet if you put your mind to it, you could even be bouncy and perky!" "Perky!" "Yea, one thing Morgendorffer has never been accused of being is 'perky'," interjected Jane, strutting by in a pretty racy babydoll nighty which dragged my eyes along with her as she went by. Kasumi who had been sitting quietly next to me all this time admonished me. "Frank, it's not nice to tease Daria so." I sighed expansively and turned back to Daria. "I apologize for having suggested that you were secretly perky. I promise that if I ever do so in the future, I'll endeavor to use alternate terms such as preppy or chippy..." "Animated?" Jane suggested. "Jaunty?" "Bubbly." "Enough! If you want to describe me, pick some antonyms instead. And stop staring at Jane like she's a piece of meat you're appraising." Jane posed provocatively. "Please, Morgendorffer, I am at least a strip of veal." "Wrapped in bacon," I added. "If I actually offended her, I would apologize profusely and try to make restitution. But we're just having fun. Come here for a minute." I darted up, grabbed Daria's hand, and dragged her back with me to our viewing bench. "Now look at your friend. She is obviously very animated and bubbly at the moment. She's having fun. So let's just sit back for a minute and appreciate her." I grabbed both her and Kasumi by their shoulders in a sideways hug and turned my attention back to the preening Jane. I think I threw them all off- kilter a bit with this gesture of intimacy. I honestly expected Daria to make an excuse and run away temporarily. Daria was immensely attracted to me; this was a programmed involuntary response. I had been doing my best to engage with her intellectually through conversational banter. And whenever Daria was with someone she was attracted to, she tended to either freeze up or run away. Even her trademark banter wasn't up to par at the moment, meaning she wasn't yet comfortable with her attraction to me. Jane was a bit freer with herself and her emotions. Not a lot more, but she was much more socially comfortable than Daria. This time, Daria just froze up. I gave Daria's shoulder a squeeze and winked at Jane, who was apparently trying to look like Marilyn Monroe. Our tableau only lasted for a minute, but it was a minute of progress for me. I treated everyone to lunch at Red Lobster, at which time I talked Jane about art for my house. "I'm sure you noticed that most of my walls are pretty bare. The problem is, I have no fashion or decorating sense." Kasumi, her mouth full at the moment, nodded in agreement. I gave her a mock glare. "You, however, are an artist, so I would like to engage your talents if you are willing." "Sure. What are you looking for? You want me to shop for you or paint for you?" "Both, probably. We can invest in some new art supplies for you this afternoon and you can take a more thorough look around the house. I want a mix of styles, and while your judgment will no doubt be better than mine, I still have a few restrictions: "Nothing Dadaist. Nothing that requires you to be high to appreciate it. Nothing totally abstract. And nothing that looks like it came off the shopping channel." "So, no urinals on display stands and no tie-dye style swirls of color and no Thomas Kinkade prints. I can work with that. What kind of art do you like?" "My favorite artist is probably Turner. J. M. Turner or something like that. He did these great landscapes just filled with energy." "J. M. W. Turner." "That's him, I think. But I like a good range of styles. Classical Realist. Impressionist. Expressionist. Modern. Well, some expressionist and modern. I like Warhol and Dali and Chagal and Toulouse-Lautrec. Some of Picasso's stuff, but not all. Don't like Pollock. Don't like velvet Elvis prints. I love some classic illustrations like for Winnie the Pooh and the Sherlock Holmes stuff from The Strand." "I can work with that. What's your budget for this?" "In general, don't worry about the cost. If you think a Monet would look nice in a room, go for a reproduction. I don't want to turn this into a huge investment, but I'd probably prefer a mix of nice, original pieces by unknown or upcoming artists and reproductions of expensive works. I suppose if you feel the need to go over $60,000, check with me first." Daria commented, "You sure seem to throw around money pretty freely." "Aside from the house and computer setup, most of my throw-around money helps other people. And I keep enough investments going that I shouldn't have to worry. Well, unless I start trying to collect the old masters. That would probably bankrupt me pretty quickly. Money isn't really important except as a means to an end." "So how much are you really worth," Jane whispered conspiratorially. "I don't keep a close track," I whispered back loudly. "Maybe somewhere in the $50 to $100 million range." She whistled appreciatively. "That's some investment program you worked up. Why don't you sell it?" "First, because I don't want to. Second, because it would stop working if everyone used it. And third, because it requires some really serious processing power to crunch the information." I made some personal inquiries on the drive back home. "So ... Daria, Jane. Are you two ... involved with each other?" That got some startled, indignant responses. "Sorry, I don't know about writers, but it's just that college-age bohemian artists are often more open, sexually speaking. And you are obviously very close friends who both went through emotional trauma. I was just wondering if it had developed into anything more than just a close friendship." "Nah, we're both straight for now, though I was propositioned by a hot lady artist a couple years ago. Why, do you want to see us make out?" Jane leaned towards Daria, her lips puckered. "Well, if you insist..." I said with an animated leer. Jane was obviously reacting to her programming and implant much more than Daria, but I guess it made sense that the much more repressed Daria would be much more resistant. "Hey, don't I get a vote on this," Daria protested. "And I'm good with 'just a close friendship'." "And this would expand our list of shared activities," Jane said as she pressed her suit. She was obviously joking, but I'm pretty sure there was another layer to the game. Jane was testing the waters, introducing new ideas to Daria, similar to what I was trying to do. And don't think that Jane's 'straight for now' comment had passed unnoticed by me. I interjected, "Oh well. Here I was hoping that one or both of you might be willing to be Kasumi's first lesbian experience." "Frank!" exclaimed a blushing Kasumi, obviously scandalized. "What?" I asked innocently. "You're a beautiful woman. They're beautiful women. You're all college age. Isn't that when beautiful women are supposed to experiment with each other while men watch?" "Only if they're drunk and trying to build their self-respect through cheap late-night TV pornos," Daria countered. "Hmmm," I mused. "I think all of you have pretty decent self-respect, but I can swing by the liquor store if you think it would help." "Help who? Us or your libido?" "Ummm ... both?" They all agreed that I was lower than pond scum, just like all men, though I did give an effective enough hang-dog expression that Daria consented to letting Jane kiss her cheek while I watched ... though my cry of "Woo hoo, now use your tongue!" led to Jane whacking the back of my seat with a clothes bag. With everyone helping, we unloaded the van in just two trips. I checked my email and the status of various projects Alpha was working on while the girls were putting their purchases away. We had a nice dinner and a quiet evening. Jane and Daria retired early and had a long, quiet conversation with each other that evening. Alpha told me I was the subject of 56% of their conversations that night. After breakfast the next morning, Jane was waiting for me with notepad in hand. "Let's talk art." We toured the house, room by room, discussing what would look good where, if I wanted a theme for different rooms and if I wanted any sculptures anywhere. Jane used the opportunity to get physically close to me often. Her implants were obviously pumping out lots of dopamine and serotonin and estrogen and adrenaline in my presence. She would need to see from the same perspective, so our heads needed to be side-by-side. Or ... She wanted to get a higher perspective, so I would lift her up, holding firmly onto her hips, giving her a more than friendly squeeze on occasion. And ... She would want me to imagine something, so I would kneel down and close my eyes. She would stand behind me, directing my head, describing the intended view while pressing her chest against the back of my head letting her breasts try to warm my ears. It was after I stood up from one of these intimate discussions that she asked "So why did you put us in one room when so much of the house is empty. "For a few different reasons. First, the house will be slowly filling up over the next year or two. B, you two are such good friends, I thought you might want or need each other's close company. Next, it gives you the college experience. Well, your room is probably four times larger than a college dorm room, but it still gives a bit of the experience. And finally ... what number was I on?" "I think you went from number to letter to next, so this would be fourth, D or 'in conclusion'." "Must be distracted. You wouldn't happen to know why, would you? Fourth, if you both really want to live separately for a while, one of you can move into the room next door." "We might. After all, a girl needs her privacy sometimes." When we were checking out one of the second floor bedrooms, Jane made her move. I was sitting in a chair, listening to her suggestion of an underwater themed room. Jane sat down in my lap, making sure to press her rear end against my groin. "Wow, so is than an umbrella in your pocket, or are you happy to see me?" and she kissed me. It started as a simple kiss, but the intensity rose as we started groping each other. By the time our tongues were inside each other's mouths, she was feeling out the dimensions of my cock through my jeans. As for me, I was trying to play with her hard nipples through her bra. If I hadn't been having sex regularly, I might've come in my pants. Through a supreme effort of will, I broke the kiss, then stopped Jane from unbuttoning my shirt. "Jane, wait a moment. You are beautiful, and I desperately want you..." "So what's the hold-up?" she panted. "I'm not going to let anything happen that could come between you and Daria." "I don't know what you're talking about." I gave her a pointed look of incredulity. "All right, all right! It's just Daria has a history of stealing my boyfriends..." "So you wanted to claim me first?" "Yes. No. It's just ... If a guy's cute and smart, she'll start talking with them and they'll start paying more and more attention to her and I figured the only chance I'd have would be swooping in first. And she never actually does anything serious with them even after she steals them!" "So how many times has she done this?" "At least once that I can currently recall." "Jane, I'll admit I am attracted to both you and Daria. But your friendship is more important than that attraction. I'm not going to let myself come between you." And if I started sleeping with just one of them, the friendship would be strained or broken and I'd never get them in bed together. Either they had to sleep with each other first or I had to convince them to agree to a threesome. "Why don't you go cool off, then find Daria and have a talk with her. And I'll go have a cold shower." "Dammit!" She paused, looking away from me. "Maybe you're right." Even so, I'll admit I wasn't above copping a feel as I lifted her off my lap. My first thought upon Jane leaving was to find Kasumi and pound her silly. But that would be unfair to her. I guess I was thinking of her more and more as a real person instead of just a character ... which was good, I suppose. I stopped myself from jacking off and went to my room to take a quick cold shower. Alpha reported that Jane had apparently tried to masturbate, but failed to get herself off. I asked Alpha to alert me when she joined Daria so I could listen in. I was dressed and down in my lab around noon when Alpha alerted me that Jane was approaching Daria, who was exploring the library. "Hey there, Daria." "Jane ... what's up?" She sounded suddenly suspicious. "You know I can tell when something's up with you. Are you plotting the overthrow of the government by force and violence?" "We ... aaahhh ... need to talk." "You did it, didn't you? You already made out with Frank. Dammit, Jane, you know I don't like very many guys, so as soon as we meet a new guy, you have to just swoop right in?" "It's not like that. Not exactly. And we didn't do anything ... much." "So ... what? Because I didn't stake a claim the day I met him, that means you get him?" "Jesus, Morgandorffer, listen to you. It usually takes you a few months to start liking a new guy. Except for Trent. So is Frank your new Trent? Your new secret crush that you'll blush every time he talks to you?" "Yes, because I suddenly regressed to being 15 years old again. I'm just not comfortable with making the first move like that." "Anyway, you're jumping to conclusions. Frank and I are not an item. He won't get involved with me unless I clear it with you first." "What? Are you kidding? Since when did I become your keeper?" "So I have your permission?" "Sure, go ahead! Fuck the whole damn city for all I care!" Jane started to storm out, appeared to calm herself and stopped. "Look, Daria, what he actually said was that he wouldn't start anything with me because he didn't want to come between us. And when did you get such a potty mouth?" "I'm an adult. I can say whatever the hell I want to." "Daria, the thing is, he's right. I think he's a great guy. He's rich, he's funny, he's considerate, he's in great shape. He knows enough about art not to sound like an idiot but still defers to my taste. He really gets me wet, if you know what I mean. But he's not you." "Could I get a warning before you hit on me?" "I prefer surprise when I stalk my many lesbian conquests ... Jeez, Daria. The point is, guys come and go. Heck, we're at the age where we should be able to sample any guy we want. But best friends are rare. As much as I want him, I want you too." Daria grinned through her tears. "Dammit, Lane. I told you I'm not a lesbian." "How about Bi?" "Now you're talking, let me get my dildo." They hugged, smiling and tearful. Despite the wording of the conversation, it was obvious they were joking and not preparing for a bout of Sapphic love. At the same time, I knew they were starting to feel each other out, emotionally. These versions were definitely bi-sexual. Or at least bi-curious. Daria broke the hug. "So what are we going to do?" "Well, I see three options. Option one, neither of us get him, we leave him to Kasumi." "A logical solution, but it doubt we can make it stick." "Option two, we share him." "I don't know, is he a Mormon?" "I doubt it, but who knows? Maybe we could all convert. Or Islam. Don't Muslims get multiple wives?" "Yes, but I wouldn't know where to shop for a good burka. What's option three?" "I get him and you find another guy." Daria grabbed a backrest pillow from a chair and whacked Jane's arm with it. "So that's another no. That leaves us with option 2. "What about option 4, you back off and I date him?" "I thought we were trying to keep things realistic," said Jane, which led to another pillow whack. After an uncomfortable or thoughtful pause, Daria asked, "Do you seriously think we could share him? Why don't we just make him choose?" "I don't think he will. I mean I was throwing myself at him, even felt up his package, and he wouldn't go any further. And all because he said he refused to break up our friendship. And I can't imagine our friendship being the same after we made him choose one of us." "Yeah, I suppose not. This really sucks, doesn't it." "Yeah, I guess. So what, we date him on alternate nights? Draw straws? And what about Kasumi? I know she's in love with him." "I forgot about her. She's too nice for me to be willing to deep-six her chances." Their conversation continued for a few more minutes and included many references to Tom Sloane, the boyfriend Daria had stolen from Jane ... but they failed to reach a definite conclusion concerning me. I thought about it for a while and decided that they needed to stew overnight. I couldn't rush this or it might end badly. I called Kasumi directly through the intercom (instead of using Alpha) and told her that I needed to work late in the lab tonight. I recommended she spend some time talking with Daria and Jane, maybe see if she could work them into the cooking schedule if either of them could cook. "Or maybe you three could go out for a night on the town tomorrow night or sometime this week." "That would be nice, but I have a class tomorrow night." "Oh, that's right. Cajun Cuisine, right? Well, you three could go out for dinner tonight if you want. I'll just warm up some leftovers when I get hungry." I actually did have work to do. Alpha and I had some serious work to do on the next addition to the family. Plus, I hadn't been able to spend much quality time with Alpha this week. Since Daria and Jane were not even remotely early risers, I had a chance to talk with Kasumi in the morning before they got up. She said their conversations had mostly revolved around possible plans for the future, but on the way back home, Daria and Jane broached the subject of sharing me out. Kasumi refused to make decisions for me, so Daria and Jane went ahead with their plans where they would alternate nights among the three of them. I paused for a different thought. Hmmm ... Kasumi usually takes a bath or shower after her early morning exercise sessions, so she's probably all nice and clean at the moment. I grinned at her. "So, share me around? But you're going to be gone tonight, so maybe I can spend a little time with you this morning." "Frank, I need to prepare breakfast for the ... aaaa..." I interrupted her by scooping her up and throwing her over my shoulder. We were in the kitchen and needed a bed or ... Aha. I grabbed a handful of kitchen towels and carried her into a nearby sitting room. I set her down, untied her apron and pulled her entire dress up over her head. Towels on the couch, panties down, her down on the couch and I dove in for my morning muff dive. I hadn't really given her much foreplay, but I had found from previous experience that it often wasn't needed. Kasumi had definitely gained some vaginal flavoring since her birth and I dove in with zest, intent on giving her a quick come. Responding to my aggressive behavior, she didn't disappoint and was jamming her fist into her mouth to keep from crying out too loudly in less than five minutes. I looked up at her, grinning as I kept up a steady licking. "Are you ready for the main event?" "Yes ... quickly, please." I dropped my pants and shorts, laid her lengthwise on the couch and thrust into her fully. No condoms needed since she had been on the pill for a couple months. She was hot, wet and welcoming. I sought out her mouth as my arms enveloped her. Her legs wrapped around me, holding me as deep inside her as possible. With her legs encouraging my movements, I began thrusting into her, almost violently. I started whispering to her, knowing I was winding her up more and more. "You'd better keep quiet. If you cry out too loudly, Daria and Jane will hear. They'll come down and see us here on the couch, out in the open. If you aren't quiet, they'll see you. They'll see you with your pussy open and wet." I raised her bra and caressed her breasts and pinched her nipples. "They'll see your beautiful breasts out in the open here. They'll know how you look when you're being fucked. They'll see how you look when you come. So the question is ... do you want them to see?" I gave an extra hard thrust, resulting in a noticeable cry from her. "Do you want them to come down? Do you want them to join us? To kiss you while I fuck you? Do you want to kiss them while I fuck them? Do you want them to taste you as they suck my cock? Do you want to taste them off my cock? Do you want to drink my come out of their cunts?" I was pounding with machine gun rapidity now, eliciting a variety of squeaks and grunts from her. My voice was reduced to panting comments. "Can you ... feel me ... deep ... inside you? Knocking ... on the ... door ... of your ... womb ... Your nipples ... are so ... hard..." Here I pinched them, back and forth between breasts. "Your ... your clit ... so hard..." I reached down and rubbed it. "I'm ... I'm about ... to come ... I want ... you ... to let go ... and ... come ... at the ... same ... time ... Now!" I let go inside of her, pumping her full of my seed, and at the same time, felt her cunt clutching at my cock, spasming around my member. I collapsed on top of her for a moment, and felt her heaving lungs under me. After a moment, I gathered myself and pulled out of her and knelt next to her. I pulled a towel out from under her, wiped my penis clean, then started wiping her pussy clean. Kasumi recovered enough to take over, pulling her bra back into place and taking another towel to wipe up her juices. She whispered to me, "Someone was watching us." She nodded to the doorway behind me. "Which one?" "I'm not sure. I saw a shadow but whichever one was there was moving away by the time I looked around." "So, do you think we put on a good show for her?" I grinned and kissed her. "I hope you enjoyed it. I know I did." I moved in close to her ear and whispered, "Don't ever doubt that I love you." I helped her put her clothes back on and returned with her to the kitchen. I made sure to hand her the towels, telling her it was her choice whether to put them in the laundry or back out on the kitchen counter. She shushed me and put them in the laundry. Daria and Jane joined us in the kitchen just a couple minutes after we had cleaned up and returned. "Good morning, ladies. So how was your dinner out last night?" Daria, still groggy with sleep, responded with a "No talking til coffee." Huh. Pretty different early morning awareness from a couple days ago. Then again, that was her activation wake-up. Wow, it had seemed a lot longer. But my thoughts digress. Jane seemed a bit more awake. "It was fun. So, Frank ... did you have fun last night? Or maybe this morning?" Ah, well, that mystery was solved. "Last night was productive. This morning? Kasumi and I had a lot of fun just before you came down." I looked Jane straight in the eye and winked. "Maybe if you and Daria had come down a few minutes earlier, you could have joined in." She blushed a bit. Daria, who was filling her coffee cup, said, "Umph. No banter before coffee. And Jane, why are you so awake? You're even less of a morning person than I am." Once we were mostly done eating and Daria seemed to be actually conscious of her surroundings, I asked again about last night. "Oh it was good. Kasumi is a really nice person. Oh hey, Jane and I were wondering last night..." "Yes?" "When is Sick Sad World on down here?" I blinked, my conversational expectations completely thrown for a loop. "Uhhh, Sick Sad World. Is that that weird show that showcases the worst rumors in the world presented as fact every week?" Daria responded, "Only for the really good episodes." "It's off the air. It's been replaced by a whole series of shows that do their best to totally destroy your faith in humanity thus threatening to drive their viewers to suicide every time they tune in. They call it, Reality Television." Daria and Jane laughed, and Kasumi, who rarely watched TV, looked confused. "But seriously ... off the air?" Shit. If they actually started searching for Sick, Sad World, they would undoubtedly find links to the Daria TV show. It might result in a mind-wipe and re-write, this time without Sick, Sad World reference. But as long as they did their searching from here at the house ... I made a mental note to have Alpha work up some phoney Sick, Sad World references for local search redirects. "Yup. Sorry. We can look in the TV guide to double-check, if you'd like. In other news, Kasumi has a class tonight, so would you two ladies do me the honor of joining me in a night out on the town?" They looked at each other. Jane spoke up. "Sure. Where exactly would we go?" "Depends on what you'd like to do. There's a music hall that showcases local bands. I'm not much of a dancer, but they have that too. Or there are plenty of mid-summer blockbusters which would no doubt like to damage our hearing with stereophonic explosions. Or I can just take you on a tour of metroplex nightlife, with which I am only slightly familiar." "Explosions are good, especially if body parts are involved," Jane commented. Daria said, "Music might be good, and songs tend to have more plot to them than explosion movies." Jane suggested, "Or we could drive around with the windows down and follow our ears." "All excellent suggestions. How about we play it by ear. We could include a drive-by of the music hall and cinema marquee to see if anything sounds good." The day passed fairly uneventfully. Jane and I finished our art tour of the house and I drove her to a supply store for basic supplies. There was a bit of knee-caressing during the drive, but no making out and no conversations about yesterday or this morning. I talked to Daria about books and bookstores. I told her about the Half- Price bookstore chain in the area with their huge selections, and especially about their occasional half-of-half-off sales. She made me promise to take her to one, and I suggested we make a day of it sometime, visiting multiple stores one right after the other. And I took Kasumi on a trip to the market for the ingredients she needed to bring for the class tonight. It was an active, hands-on series of classes, where you cooked a couple dishes during every class. That evening, we went out to eat, then drove around. The music coming from a local college bar sounded good. And since it was geared towards college students, many of whom were under 21, it was sectioned off so underage people could pay the cover and get non-alcoholic drinks. And they rarely paid attention when people shared drinks. I don't know if Jane and Daria, both about 18 or 19, ever drank or if they were just trying to be cool, but they accepted my offer to share my beer with them. Then another, though I stopped them after a third beer. Myself, I only had one, followed by Coke and Root Beer. After a few hours here, listening to a couple different bands play sets, we called it a night. The bar had their own voluntary breathalyzer, which showed I was perfectly fine to drive. The girls seemed a bit buzzed. I was pretty sure they weren't drunk, but they were loosened up a bit. "Are you two feeling up to a conversation?" "Sure." "Ya-huh." "So ... I hear that you have decided to share me among you, is that right?" "Well, unless you want to specifically ask one of us out," said Jane. Daria punched her in the arm. "Not particularly. I think of the two of you as a package deal. It wouldn't be fair to either of you to try to break up the set." "That's an ... interesting way to put it. So we're like salt and pepper?" "Bacon and eggs?" "Batman and Robin?" "Yes, yes and no. Look, I'll understand if a year from now, you find yourselves a nice set of twins to settle down with. Y'see, I think the two of you have pretty much the same taste in men, which can lead to a serious risk to your friendship anytime one of you wants to date someone. "That means I'm actually okay with the idea of you two sharing me between you. Just try not to get jealous of each other, because I'd seriously rather back out of the arrangement than come between you. Metaphorically speaking. Literally speaking, I'd love to come between you." Wow, in a normal situation with these two, my amazing display of ego would be suffering a thousand punctures from them by now. Even so, I was worried I was maybe pushing things too far too fast. Still, in for a penny... "Speaking of which, I do need to know if you are both ready for a physical relationship." Jane looked at Daria. "I am, but Daria..." Daria interrupted her. "I am too." Jane asked, "Are you sure?" "Yes. But I think another drink might be necessary to relax me for actual copulation." I jumped back into the conversation. "Actually, I'm going to say no to the drink for two important reasons. First, if you aren't willing to do something sober, then you shouldn't do it at all. Second, the first time for someone should always be special and memorable ... and memory tends to get fuzzy when drinking is involved." Daria observed, "You sure like to number things and makes lists a lot, don't you?" "Huh. Never thought of it before. I suppose you're right ... Speaking of which, pop sobriety test! Jane, list off the alphabet backwards. Daria, list all 50 states. Go!" Which was a mistake. Entertaining, but I had no chance to catch any errors since they both listed them off simultaneously. Still, they seemed confident in their answers. When we got home, I added one more condition ... yes, a condition to possibly prevent the arrangement to which I had been guiding them. I turned around in my seat and took them by the hands. "One more thing. Kasumi. I am not going to cut Kasumi out of my life." It was unfair to make such a demand when I knew I was pounding their brains with various artificially-stimulated hormones with my attention. "Of course not," Jane piped up. "Yeah," said Daria, blushing. "She's like ... ummmm ... well, I didn't really get along with my sister, so ... like a really nice friend." "Good. Would you two ladies do me the honor of accompanying me upstairs?" "Both of us?" Daria stammered, blushing more. "I thought we were going to flip a coin or something..." "Yes, both of you. At least for this first night, and after that we'll see. But I want you to stay together tonight. For each other and for me." Holding their hands, I kept looking back and forth between them, looking directly into their dilated eyes. "Now come on." I pulled them out of the car and, with an arm wrapped around each one, maneuvered our trio into the house and up the stairs to the master bedroom. Daria pulled away when we entered the bedroom. "Doesn't it seem like this is going a little too fast? I mean, don't take this the wrong way, but we've only known you for two or three days. And ... and I can't think straight when you're around." "Well, I didn't mean to ... no, that's not right. I suppose I am pressuring you a bit here, but that's just because I do really want to do this. What would you like to do?" "I want to do this too, but I know it doesn't make any sense. Did you slip us roofies or something?" "Daria! Frank wouldn't do that ... would you?" "No, I wouldn't. I actually don't know much about roofies except that they mess up your memory, which is the exact opposite of what I want to happen. Daria, as I understand it, you're still a virgin. What I want to happen is for you to have such an amazing night that you can tell your children and grandchildren about it as an example of one of the best nights of your life. I don't want you to discover what an orgasm during sex is like, I want you to discover what it's like to orgasm so much you lose consciousness. "But what I don't want is for you to do this because I'm pressuring you to." I considered my options for a moment. "Tell you what, Daria. I will leave the room for a few minutes. You and Jane discuss this. I want you to consider that maybe you're having second thoughts because you're afraid, emotionally and physically. All I can do is assure you that I will do my best to never hurt you either way ... well, except for the whole hymen thing. I'm told that hurts a bit at first, but I promise to be gentle. "I'll be outside in the hall when you're ready." I exited the room but my shirt was already off by that point, so I handed it to Jane as I left. I tried to eavesdrop via Alpha, but the girls were whispering. From the snatches of conversation I caught, Jane was on my side and Daria was wavering. Finally, the door opened and Jane gestured me inside. Jane said, "Okay, this is our plan. You and me start out. Daria stays and joins in later if she wants to. Is that okay?" "Sounds good to me, but before we start, let me offer one more argument to Daria." I went to her and gave her as intense a kiss as I could muster without tongues or groping. After a minute, I released her, and she sat limply on the bed. "Now, Jane. Come here..." I took her face in my hands, leaned down slightly and we started a soul-searing kiss punctuated with dueling tongues. I let my hands roam, eventually settling on her ass, which was eminently squeezable. Apparently mine was too, if Jane's similarly exploring hands were any indication. I broke off the kiss and spoke to her quietly. "I like to start nights like this with some cunnilingus, so if you have no objection... " I picked her up and tossed her onto my extra large bed. I kicked off my shoes, removed my pants and crawled after her, clad only in my boxers. "I think you're wearing entirely too much clothing, and I think I should rectify that situation." Jane was panting and seemed to have been struck dumb. Her hands moved to her pants, but I caught them, gave them each a kiss and set them aside. "That's my job right now. You're my present that I need to unwrap." I took my time. I started with her shoes and socks, giving each big toe a suckle. I avoided caressing the feet in case of ticklishness, instead focusing on the calves. When I finished with her feet, I unsnapped her jeans and worked them down and off her legs, keeping my eyes locked to hers the whole time. I crawled back up her body and pulled her t-shirt off, taking the opportunity to lick her ear and suck on her neck a little. While I was kissing and licking her randomly about her upper body, I unsnapped her bra after minimal fumbling and exposed those lovely creamy handfuls. "These deserve a great deal of attention, but at the moment, I'm hungry." I slid her panties off in a single motion and pulled her legs apart. But before settling down to my task, I looked over at Daria, who was staring with silent, wide-eyed fascination. "Feel free to move around for a better view. If I have my way, you're next." I started to move down to feast, but had another thought. Looking back at Daria, I suggested, "Daria, I have a better idea. Sit next to Jane and hold her hand. Let me know how hard she squeezes." Astonishingly, she did so. I think she was letting go, falling under my spell. "Oh, and you're welcome to masturbate, but don't take off any clothes. You're my present for later." Jane was completely shaved. Actually, I didn't remember if she would grow pubic hair or not. Regardless, I went down on her with enthusiasm. Her juices were bland, like Kasumi was in the beginning, but her reactions were enthusiastic. She came immediately, getting release from all the build-up, but I kept going and so did she. She tried to climb to the ceiling, using her feet on my back as purchase, and apparently wanted to take my head with her for the climb. When I added my fingers to the fun, digging one, then two, then three into her pussy, sawing in and out, she started squirting juices into my face and mouth. I ate her for about 15 minutes and I think she came half a dozen times before I stopped. Either she was a much more sexual creature than we saw on TV, or she was really wound up from the two days of teasing. As Jane started to settle back down onto the bed, I looked up at the two best friends to see Daria whipping her right hand out of her pants while her left hand was still clutched by Jane. Daria was turning red with embarrassment. "It's okay, Daria. How many times do you think she came?" "Seven. Or maybe eight. I couldn't tell with one of ... what are you doing?" I took her right hand and licked her fingers, which were wet with her juices. "I'm cleaning you up so you can play with yourself more." I licked her fingers clean, keeping my eyes on her face the entire time. Once she was clean, I kissed each finger and placed the hand gently on her waist. Then I turned back to Jane, who had been languidly watching our interplay. "Jane, are you ready for actual fucking?" "I'm still conscious, aren't I? You gotta fuck me til I pass out." "No promises, but I'll be happy to try. How would you like to start?" "You pick." "Doggy style, then. It lets me thrust in deeper. Are you on the pill?" "No, not yet." I removed my boxers, letting my hard-on spring into view. I pulled a box of condoms out from my bedside table and removed one from the foil packaging. Unlike with Kasumi, who I was trying to draw into being an interactive sex partner, I didn't make Jane put the condom on herself. Hopefully my quickie with Kasumi this morning would let me last longer, but at the same time, I wasn't seriously worried about not being able to get it up again. Jane was on her hands and knees, looking back at me. Daria was sitting next to her, but was no longer holding Jane's hand. I moved up behind Jane and swiped my dick up and and down her pussy slit a few times, then slowly pushed inside her. She felt as tight as a virgin, which was technically accurate, hymen or no. I went slowly, pulling out, then pushing back in a bit further, working my way inside of her hot wetness. When I was finally all the way inside of her, I leaned forward and cupped her breasts. She was muttering quietly which turned into a chant as I started moving in and out, "So full ... is good ... fuck ... fuck ... fuck..." I started with a deliberately slowly increasing pace, taking my time. Once she felt stretched enough that I wasn't going to hurt her, I started picking up the pace. I couldn't easily keep hold of her tits while pistoning like this, so I straightened up moving one hand to her hip and reached under with the other to her pussy. I could feel her pubis push down a bit with each thrust as I played with her clit. After 20 minutes or so, I felt occasional spasms within her cunt, but no great clutching. I think she was building up, but not actually coming like she did when I was eating her. "Daria, put your hand here," I said, indicating the area between her cunt and belly button. You can feel me fucking your best friend from the outside." Daria didn't rush to obey, but her hand moved close enough that I could take it in mine and guide it to where it needed to be. I held it there, feeling Janes lower belly being pressed out slightly in a line with each thrust. "Daria, Jane is getting hotter and hotter, but I don't think she's come yet ... and I think you can help her. You see, in this position, I don't rub against her clit properly. You can help your friend climax if you just rub her clit for her. Would you do that for Jane?" "Yeah, Daria," Jane grunted, "help me out." Daria seemed like she was in a daze. She didn't say anything, but moved her hand down a few inches to the crest of Jane's pussy lips. I could feel her hand brushing against my cock with each thrust forward. "Now rub it ... in a circle ... back and forth ... do what ... feels good ... for you. Jane ... that's Daria ... touching your clit ... Daria wants you to come." I pinched Jane's nipple hard with one hand while I pushed Daria's fingers against her clit. And Jane came, gushing fluids all over Daria's hand and my cock, her pussy walls clamping down on me. The scene and sensations pushed me over the edge too and I filled the condom with my sperm. After I regained my senses, I noticed that Jane had mostly collapsed on the bed. "Jane?" Daria answered, "I don't think she's unconscious, but she does look kinda out of it." I extricated myself from Jane carefully and laid her down on her side. I removed the condom, tied it off and dropped if off the side of the bed. "So, Daria ... may I ravish you?" "Ravish me?" "I can't promise that you'll come as much as Jane, but I can promise to try my best to make you." She didn't answer, her eyes kept looking away, then back at me, then away. I think the level of hormones and lust coursing through her body were just too foreign an experience for her. She needed to feel release or she'd never acclimate. Or so I believed. Naked with an erection that had only partially flagged, I crawled across Jane to Daria. She looked a little like a mouse too scared to run, poor little thing. She was no great beauty, and probably never would be. Not that she was physically unattractive. Far from it, her face and skin were smooth, with strong cheeks and eyes that were normally bright and inquisitive, hidden beneath her glasses. Her hair, with only minor attention, could become gorgeous. Her body was young and thin and perfect, hidden beneath normally drab, shapeless clothing. I sat next to her and took her in my arms. "Don't be afraid. I'm going to give you experiences you only dreamed about before, and Jane, your sister in every way that matters, will be here to share it." We kissed for 5 or 10 minutes before she lost the tenseness that held her body taut like a bowstring. I moved on to explore her body with my hands, moving slowly, trying to keep the tension from restarting. I played with her hair and massaged her scalp. I drew imaginary patterns on her back. I moved to her front and cupped her breasts through her shirt and bra. I finally broke off kissing and moved us both to an upright kneeling position, facing each other. Her tension returned as I pulled her shirt up and over her head. I spent another 5 minutes or so easing the tension away as I kissed and caressed her upper body. It was like this throughout the whole process of stripping her. Every piece of clothing I took off made her body lock up to one degree or another. And every time, I soothed and caressed and kissed her nervousness away. From our first kiss, it took about half an hour to get her completely naked. I laid her naked body next to Jane, who had been watching quietly for most of this process. I took Daria's hand and placed it in Jane's for safe keeping. Now some may argue that it is repetitious and boring to keep using the same method every time I fuck a new girl. Lick her cunt, then fuck her. I do it for a few different reasons. One, it give me time to make sure I'm fully erect. Two, I enjoy giving pleasure. And three, it will probably give the woman a very good memory of our first time together, thus making it more likely that she'd come back to me again later. Wow, I really do like enumerating lists. I should really stop doing that. Number three there isn't as big a deal with my artificial harem, but I still wanted them to have good experiences and memories. So I started licking Daria's pussy. On a purely esthetic level, hers was a bit more closed off. First, she had normal pubic hair. It wasn't a forest down there, but it was fully grown. I decided to give her a bikini trim myself at some later time and denude the lips themselves. The hair itself was very soft and downy. And as an odd note, probably due to her newborn status, not a single hair came free as I licked. They were all strongly rooted in the skin. If I decided to shave her completely, her pubic lips would give her a prepubescent appearance. Her cunt was completely folded over itself, looking like a hairy coin purse. As I began to delve within, moisture became evident, but the inner lips were revealed to be tiny. At least her pussy felt like it was a normal size to my questing tongue. I varied my methods down there: gentle licking and stroking ... digging deep with my tongue ... sucking on the clit to draw it out ... and finally delving into the pussy with my fingers while my tongue and lips played with her clitoris. This last method seemed to be her favorite and she came. She lacked the gushing, acrobatic climbing that I had experienced with Jane, but giving her an orgasm like this seemed more of an accomplishment. I was prouder of this one orgasm than I had been of Jane's half a dozen. I continued to lick and stroke her evenly for a minute, not wanting to let her come down completely. "Jane, could you grab me a condom?" Jane had to twist and stretch a bit, because Daria wasn't letting go of her hand, but a moment later I had my condom. Looking at Daria's strong grip on Jane, I discarded my notion to have Jane put the condom on my renewed hard-on. I removed myself from Daria's crotch and rolled the condom on as quickly as possible. Grabbing a pillow, I lifted Daria's buttocks and stuffed the pillow under her to lift her hips. Even though she wasn't a gusher like Jane, Daria easily provided enough lubrication as I rubbed my dick up and down her pussy lips. "Are you ready?" Daria gave a brief nod and closed her eyes. She hadn't spoken in at least half an hour. But as I started inserting my nine-inch cock into her pussy, Daria let loose with an "Oh God!" and thrust back up at me violently. I usually like to take it slow, especially with virgins, but Daria had me four inches deep on that first thrust. One of Daria's hands continued to grip Jane's and the other moved to her clit where she furiously masturbated while her hips thrust up to meet me. For my first dozen strokes, I think she came with each one and by the end, I was battering her cervix with my dick. After only a minute or two of thrusting, she collapsed, eyes closed, body completely limp. Myself, I was probably still a few minutes away from coming. I continued to slowly saw in and out, but I didn't want to come inside a sleeping woman. Jane was stroking her face and whispering into her ear. To keep myself occupied, I played with her nipples, which felt like little dark diamonds poking out of her soft warm flesh. After three or four minutes of this, Daria seemed to come around. She opened her eyes and looked around uncomprehendingly. When she finally seemed to remember what happened and noticed that I was still inside her, she immediately seemed to jump back into high gear. Her legs leaped up behind me and pulled me tight into her crotch, while at the same time she thrust her right hand back down to her clit, forcing her fingers between our bodies to play with it. Her legs let me pull back enough to thrust in and out, but I'm sure there was no way she was letting me go. I honestly couldn't pick out any orgasms, but there was no doubt she was having the time of her life. About 10 minutes into this frenzy, I came, which seemed to frustrate Daria. She wanted more and my member was starting to lose some of its hardness. She wasn't letting me loose, her legs trying to force me back into a pumping motion. My erections don't immediately go soft after I come, but I was going to need a little recovery time before I could continue. "Jane! Give me your hand." She looked confused but she complied. I thrust her hand down to join Daria's and she understood. Jane's hand on her clit was enough to push her over the top and Daria came massively again, once again collapsing into semi- consciousness. "Wow. Thank you, Jane. I was afraid I'd be trapped," I said as I extricated myself from Daria. "I should be up for another round, but I need a few minutes to recover. I disposed of the condom and arranged us so that Jane and I were cuddling on either side of Daria, both of us playing with Daria and each other while we waited for Daria to come around again. Instead of waking up, Daria started softly snoring. Jane said, "I think Daria is out of it for the night, but I'm good for one more go if you are." We carefully extricated ourselves and tucked Daria under the covers. Jane and I went off to the other side of the bed for a thoroughly pleasant missionary fuck. While I would have preferred to be the meat in the sandwich, Daria probably needed the support and attention more, so we cuddled up on either side of her and went to sleep. ------- I woke up first and debated whether or not I should leave the girls to wake up together. Daria might well freeze up upon finding herself in bed with me, but she wouldn't do so with Jane. On the other hand, it would be insensitive to leave her alone the morning after her first time with a man. In the end, my inner debates didn't matter. Maybe I had been moving around a bit without quite realizing it or maybe it was coincidence, but while I was trying to decide what to do, Jane rolled over with an outstretched arm, whacking both Daria and myself, with the unexpected contact waking herself in the process too. "Aaah!" "Wha?" "Good morning, you two. How are you doing this morning?" Jane said, "Great, but I think I'll be walking bow-legged for a week. How about you, Daria? You were a real tiger last night when you finally got into it." "I was not. And how am I supposed to feel anyway? Sore, I guess." "Well, everyone's different," I mused, "but ideally, you enjoyed last night as a very memorable personal experience and want to spend more time with me and repeat the experience many times over." "I ... well, maybe. It was just kinda ... intense." "Intense? Daria, you came so much you passed out," Jane said while patting her cheek affectionately. "I almost did too. I don't think I've ever had that much fun in bed before." "I'm just a slut now, I guess. It just doesn't feel like that was me. It's like I was someone else." I jumped back in. "I vote that it was an updated version of Daria which you can choose to re-activate any time you want to." No response other than a mild look of disbelief. So, either not a jokeable subject yet or my joke just sucked ... or both. Time for another insightful mini-lecture that the TV series loved so much. "Daria, you are naturally a very reserved person. But when you were able to give that up for a while last night and let yourself go, I think we had a great experience and a lot of fun. I know I had a great time with both of you. You can choose to continue to avoid those experiences and shut yourself off, or you can choose to occasionally let go like last night and have lots of orgasms." "Orgasms should not be the driving purpose of one's life." "Of course not, but they can enhance the life and relationships that you do have." Here I leaned over and kissed her bare shoulder. Maybe I should just avoid these conversations this early in the morning. It's not like I'm even an expert at these heart-to-hearts to begin with. "Well, I am going to go shower and get dressed. I'll let you and Jane talk for a bit if you want to. But before I go, let me remind you that you two..." I took Jane's hand in mine. "As best friends who trust each other..." I lifted the sheets and moved our hands underneath. "Each of you was able to help give the other an earth-shattering orgasm last night." I put Jane's hand over Daria's pussy and pressed down. "Hey!" "Cut it out!" Jane snatched her hand back. I grinned and got out of bed, unashamedly naked. "I'm just offering the possibility that there's more to your friendship than you might expect. I don't think either of you would have had as many orgasms or orgasms that were that good if you hadn't been there together. Daria, you especially probably couldn't have relaxed enough to enjoy it if Jane hadn't been there." And I went into the bathroom. I left the door cracked open in case they wanted to visit or talk more, but focused on my shaving, teeth brushing and showering. They were gone from the bedroom by the time I came out to get dressed. Downstairs, I found Kasumi sitting in the kitchen, going through her cooking notebook. I leaned in from behind and kissed her cheek. "Good morning, Kasumi. How was the class last night?" "Good morning, Frank. The class was very good. We made Jambalaya and Poor Boy sandwiches and gave them to a homeless shelter." "I think they're called Po'boys, if I remember my Nawlin's dialect correctly." She smiled at me. Her smile still warms me every time. "So how was your night with the girls? I came home early enough to hear some ... activity ... in your room." "It was very nice. Jane is very enthusiastic. Daria was very reluctant, but we won her over. She ... Once she let her guard down, I think she had a great evening." "That's nice, I'm happy for her." And that was Kasumi. Whatever worries she might have for herself or her future, she would always be happy for her friends and family. I had breakfast and spent a few hours down in the lab, going through possible implementations of superpowers with Alpha. When I emerged around noon, I found Kasumi and Jane sorting through her art supplies. "Hey, Frank, good timing. I was thinking of setting up a corner of the garage for painting and stuff. We'd have to keep one of the cars outside, but it'd be a lot easier to clean up and I wouldn't mess up your house." "Sound good to me. What do we need to do first?" It took about an hour to get everything set up, including draping some sheets over a line to protect the other cars from paint splatter. We talked as we worked. "So how are you doing?" "Eh, still sore. Felt like I was a virgin last night. I think Kasumi here is your best bet for fun tonight." "Oh, look at that, Jane. Isn't Kasumi beautiful when she blushes?" I went over to Kasumi and gave her a kiss and reassuring hug. And an ass groping that left her blushing even more. "Yeah, if I do go bi-, Kasumi will be near the top of my list." "If? IF? Kasumi, pardon me for a moment, but Jane come here." She came over and I took her hand. "How can you see this lovely face and hair ... this beautiful bosom ... this gorgeous ass ... and these wonderful legs ... and not be attracted to her, whatever your gender may happen to be?" Throughout my comments, I guided Jane's hand through a tour of Kasumi's features. Neither lady resisted my attentions, and I think Jane even added some light squeezing. I really wanted to see if either or both of them were getting wet, but I didn't want to push it quite so far so fast. I gave Jane's hand a kiss before I returned it to her. "Kasumi is not very aggressive, but I think she's open to new experiences." I took Kasumi's bright red face in my hands and directed her gaze to Jane. "Kasumi, I'm not going to place your hands on Jane this time, because I don't want your hair to catch on fire from the heat of your blush, but I want you to look at her. Isn't Jane a beautiful young lady? Look ... intense blue eyes, gorgeous skin, energetic, a creative mind, and a beautiful body under those clothes, I promise. If Jane crept into your bed some night ... or OUR bed ... you wouldn't chase her away, would you?" "Frank-sama, you shouldn't say such things." To Jane, I said, "See, that wasn't a 'no'." I kissed Kasumi again and let her go. Leaving that conversation, I picked up more supplies and started out to the garage, leaving them both blushing and vibrating with tension. They had started moving again by the time I returned. "So Jane, how is Daria doing?" "She's okay. You should really talk to her yourself, if she's willing to talk. She might just clam up on you." "That's what I'm afraid of. I know she enjoyed last night, but ... this morning ... I don't know." "I know what you mean, but I'm not going to talk about the sordid details of her life behind her back." "Sordid details? Can I tell her you used that phrase?" "Of course, I always want credit when people quote me! I think she'll probably be fine in a couple days." "How are things between the two of you?" "You mean about what you said this morning?" "Well, more like what happened last night, but yes." "We haven't talked about it." "Too bad. Still, all things in time, huh?" Jane was out in the garage, contemplating her first canvas and Kasumi was mixing up her own personal creole seasoning when I sought out Daria, finding her, of course, in the library. "Hey Daria." [grunt] "Can we talk for a few minutes?" "Don't know what we'd talk about." "Well, mainly about you and me." I sat down in the chair next to her. "What about us? We fucked, that's all." "But that's not all. And from my point of view, it was a lot more than just a fuck. I'd like to think I made love to a beautiful young woman who I'd like to get to know better." "How much better can you know me? You were inside me, I enjoyed it, end of story." "Nope, just the end of Chapter One. As long as you don't close the book, there's a lot more of the story left." "A crappy story." "A great story, if the first chapter is anything to go by." "Oh, so now my life is porno book." "Daria, do you think I just sleep with any woman I come across? I've slept with a grand total of 6 women in my life and three of them are in this house today. I'm not a gigolo. I don't sleep around." "You just admitted that you've slept with all three women in this house! How is that not sleeping around?" Well, either some of her programming was failing or her strong sense of self and will were fighting back. She theoretically should be accepting of a harem-like atmosphere. Hopefully, in the battle between her programming and individuality, the programming would be unchanged and she herself would slowly adapt to accept it, but without losing the Daria I loved in the process. "Well, if you mean, am I faithful to just one woman, you are absolutely correct. But am I faithless? Absolutely not. I'm not going to abandon any of you. I have no plans to cheat on any of you. If anything, I want to spend more time with each of you and get to know you better. "I realize that it's not a normally accepted social mores, but I believe that I can truly love and be with more than just one person. I can't say that I love you yet because I haven't known you for very long, but I do feel a very strong attraction and I want to spend more time with you ... and Jane. And I hope you feel the same way about me." "So you're trying to convince me that you're not a rich horndog." "Well, not JUST a rich horndog. Yes, I like having sex, but only with the people I care about." "So it's okay that we had sex because maybe you might like me someday?" I sighed. Time for a different approach. "Okay, humor me for a moment here. Think about last night objectively. First, did you ... did WE have fun last night?" She sulked for a minute, but eventually muttered, "yes." I gently took one of her hands in mine. "Absolutely yes. I think we had an amazing time, both of us. Second, did I in any way force you to do anything against your will? No knee-jerk responses, I want you to think about it." "No, probably not." "Probably? No, the answer is, not in the slightest. Yes, you weren't eager to begin with, but you were interested enough to stay. Third, did I in any way treat you as if you weren't a beautiful porcelain princess who was to be treated with the utmost respect and care?" She laughed. "Okay, okay. You were pretty decent ... for a guy determined to get into our pants." "Well, maybe I should have waited a while longer, in which case, my mistake. But I think the end result would have been the same. Plus Jane really didn't want to wait and I was and still am adamant that your friendship is sacrosanct." She snorted. "Jane can be a little horndog too sometimes." "And if Jane and I had gotten together without you, don't you think your friendship might have suffered?" "Okay, okay, so you're Ghandi with a big penis." "I'd prefer someone more thrilling, like Sir Francis Drake or General Eisenhower?" "Eisenhower?" "Yeah, he had to be a politician and diplomat with allied countries at the same time he was running the biggest war in history. A diplomatic tough-guy." "Okay, so you're General Eisenhower with a big dick." "So would you be willing to go out with Eisenhower with a big dick again? Tomorrow night?" "Just us or with Jane?" "Now that the three of us have 'broken the ice' so to speak, we can do it either way. Actually, why don't you talk with Jane and decide between the two of you?" And that's how we started dating. I would go out with each one of them solo at least once a week and both of them together at least once a week. Most nights, we would end up in bed, but not every night. They were careful not to shut out Kasumi, and there were nights when I escorted all three of them out for a night on the town, followed by an enthusiastic and exhausting night in bed. Daria continued to be reserved in public, but once we were in a bedroom, she'd act quickly to get my dick in her pussy. She let me shave her lower lips occasionally, but cunnilingus was generally limited to foreplay to wind her up. And as long as she was wound up first, she often orgasmed 'til she passed out each time. After a couple weeks of sleeping together, she even started bringing the Kama Sutra to bed so we could experiment with different positions. Jane was something of a wildcat. She would feel me up in public and parade me around showing a huge crotch bulge. She had no problem finding a quiet corner, dropping her panties and stuffing my meat up inside her pressure cooker. She was the first woman I had anal sex with and it was at her suggestion. About a month after her 'arrival' she had each nipple pierced and three piercings added to her pussy, one ring in each outer lip, one through her clit hood. I made sure to have at least one special night out with Kasumi each week by herself. She was still a quiet, clean, thoughtful lover and was the first to successfully deep-throat me. And she was still the one who was most fun to have ambush sex with ... to just grab her as she was walking by, rush her to a couch or bed and ravish her. She always came easily and seemed to always be ready for sexual attention, even though she never instigated it. Three and a half weeks after their arrival, I had Jane start on a series of nude portraits of the ladies. I had decided that one of the bedrooms should have a display of all the ladies of the house. Jane brought in a full length mirror and started with her own self- portrait. She chased me out any time I tried to enter the garage during this period, but it only took her three days. I think she was inspired. (I wish I had a camera or audio pickup in the garage, but I hadn't thought about it when I had the house wired.) She wouldn't let me see any of the portraits until all three were finished. Daria came next and their time together ended up awakening Daria's bi- sexual programming. Jane had definitely been exploring her own bi-feelings during our group sessions, often helping the other ladies climax, pinching their nipples and rubbing their clits. But she hadn't gone so far as to kiss them or do anything with them when they were alone. She later recounted part of the garage happenings to me to get me excited for a fuck. Daria was, of course, embarrassed at the thought of a nude portrait, so Jane was stripped down herself to try to help put her at ease. After trying out a few poses, Jane had tried to relax Daria by reminding her of specific instances in bed, caressing her as she spoke. This had let to retaliatory nipple pinches from Daria, which led to mock wrestling, which led to serious kissing. It had caught Daria mostly off-guard, though I suspected Jane may have intentionally set things in motion with that result in mind. Regardless, they fooled around on the canvas-covered concrete floor through one orgasm each, then followed it up by sleeping together in the same bed that night. (I was out with Kasumi that night, visiting a very nice Dallas restaurant she had wanted to sample.) The next evening was an orgy night. We had a nice dinner, watched a movie in the entertainment room, then retired to my bedroom. I started off with Daria, a little pussy licking to get her wet, then we started fucking. Jane tapped Kasumi on the shoulder as they both observed our coupling. "Hey, Kasumi, I'd like to try something new with you while we watch. Is that okay?" "Certainly, Jane-chan. What would you like to do?" And Jane kissed her. She let it lengthen, then deepen, obviously exploring her mouth. Kasumi was obviously surprised, but acquiescent. She started kissing back after only a moment. I noticed and pointed it out to Daria. We slowed our fucking to watch as Jane ran her hands under Kasumi's dress and started pulling it off. I looked down at Daria. She rarely smiled and was having difficulty hiding a grin. "You knew, didn't you? You knew Jane was going to do this, huh?" I leaned down and kissed her hard, then pounded her even harder than normal. Meanwhile, Kasumi and Jane were both mostly naked and Jane seemed intent on devouring Kasumi whole. A few minutes later, Daria was fading in and out of consciousness and Jane's tongue was deep in Kasumi's pussy. I laid down flat on the bed next to Daria, my seed slowly seeping out of her pussy but my erection was still hard, flopping up and down. "Ladies, I think I need someone to sit on my dick and someone to sit on my mouth. Any volunteers?" Jane tried to pick up Kasumi bodily and guided her over to settle her down on my cock. Then, facing Kasumi, she plopped her pussy over my mouth. She reached out to pull Kasumi in for a kiss and pinch her nipples while I got work with my tongue. That was a truly exciting night, the first time my plans really felt like they were coming together properly. I fucked the girls, one after the other, until 2 am that night, finally collapsing on Kasumi and just barely rolling off of her before falling asleep. I slept in the next morning 'til 8am, when I was awakened by Daria, of all people, giving me a blowjob with Jane coaching her. ------- Chapter 5: Power Girl Dramatis Personae: Frank –––– - Lead character, inventor of Alpha Alpha - First A.I. in existence Kasumi Tendo - artificial woman based on character from Ranma 1/2 Daria Morgendorffer aka Daria Morgan - artificial woman based on character from Daria Jane Lane aka Jane Lannister - artificial woman based on character from Daria Kara Zor-L aka Power Girl aka Karen Starr - artificial woman based on character from DC Comics ------- Alpha took a long time to work out the specifics of some basic superpowers. Super-strength was relatively easy. Barring the addition of actual mechanical parts, the best way to gain super-strength was to create unnaturally high-density muscles and build the super-dense muscles in a weave pattern, thus greatly increasing the stress limits of the muscles. Think of a woven basket or Chinese finger trap. (It should be noted here that a rat died in the experimentation stage, our first test animal fatality. Its heart was made super-strong, and when it was put in a stressful situation, the pressure created by the heart broke blood vessels all throughout the body. It was too much for even the nanite horde to deal with. So we ended up slightly lessening the super-strength of the heart and strengthening the blood vessel network a bit.) A simple increase in bone density was not going to be enough to support the possible stresses from heavy lifting, so the bones were reinforced with carbon nanotubes. Weaving these rigid tubes throughout each bone gave better-than- steel reinforcement without risking any damage to the surrounding structure like you might risk with a crystalline or metallic bone material. Inspired by the structure of Kevlar, Alpha could create a similar weave of carbon nanotubes throughout the skin to allow for a great deal of damage resistance. Definitely not invulnerability, but the combination of skin, muscles and bone like this could theoretically stop low caliber bullets. Small muscles could be added to the eyes to allow for small, deliberate deformations, adjusting the eye's focal length for different wavelengths of light, such as the infrared and ultraviolet parts of the electromagnetic spectrum, though of course we also needed additional modified rods and cones to encompass perception beyond the normal visible spectrum. Other than that, extra efficient design was used for eyes and ears to allow for perfect senses. Flight was impossible with a normal human shape and the known laws of physics. So were laser-beam eyes and ice breath. Yes, the lungs were made much more powerful and efficient, but there would be no blowing fires out from a distance. Eye-hand coordination was improved to where, if she used guns, she could probably quick draw and hit a fly at a hundred paces. While the skin weave design was fairly fire resistant, a fire would still burn off the outermost layers of skin and fry the nerves, so that would not be a pleasant experience. Neither were the outermost layers protected against scrapes and contusions, though penetration beyond that would be difficult. Theoretically, a super-heroine could, without looking like a sideshow freak or professional wrestler, dead-lift up to 1000 lbs, have a 6 to 10 ft vertical leap, read the fine print on an eye chart, hear a conversation in the next room clearly and pick out the heat signatures of who was talking. Building all of this into a body doubled the growth and assembly period from 1.5-2 months to 3-4 months. But Power Girl was worth it. ------- Power Girl, Kara Zor-L, was both a unique character in the DC Comics universe and a generic superhero. Her actual full history is very convoluted and weird and I recommend researching her on your own time if you're interested. If you only know DC comics through TV and movies, think of Supergirl's clone from the Justice League cartoon, Galatea. In her current comic book incarnation, she is an alternate universe version of Supergirl from a destroyed reality who survived the destruction and recreation of all existence. (If that sounds confusing, understand that this is the simplified origin that makes sense.) She has the generic, basic package of Kryptonian superpowers (like Superman) and has been a member of various groups, most notably the Justice League (back when it was full of also-rans) and the Justice Society (where she was eventually made chairwoman). Physically, she is tall, has a bob of short blond hair that doesn't quite reach her shoulders and a huge bosom, large even for comic book women. She looks to be maybe around 30, though that can vary depending on who the artist is. So why is she a character of interest to me? Well, most obvious of reasons is her chest. Her outfit has an oval cutout uncovering her cleavage, which strongly draws the eye every time you see her. But even more important is her character. [For comic book fans, I had Alpha take her character information from the Geoff Johns stories, and not the old bland feminist version.] She sometimes tries to act like a normal person, but rarely succeeds. She keeps a box of spare doorknobs for her apartment since she regularly forgets her key and has to destroy the current knob. Or she just forgets her own strength. She knows the effect her costume has on men and has no problem teasing them about it, or alternately, getting annoyed with them for staring. Theoretically, her costume's chest hole is there to wait for her to find her own symbol, like Superman's S or Batman's batwings. When she talks about her past, she becomes wonderfully emotionally vulnerable. She survived the first Crisis which destroyed her home universe, which made her alone. When her universe was recently recreated, a new Power Girl was recreated with it, meaning she's not just alone, she was replaced. Yet, she presses on, trying to establish her own identity. ------- Something else that was unique about Power Girl was how I added significant new sections into her history. Superheroes, especially in the DC Universe (or if you're in the X-Men) have ridiculously convoluted histories which get that way through constant reinvention and filling of back stories and rewrites. Plus, they rarely have any downtime. If you consider all the stories and crossovers and guest appearances, Superman and Batman probably have 48 hour days with no sleep. So I have worked with Alpha to create an inserted backstory for Power Girl ... involving me. I gave her guilt-free vacations from her superhero life. Here are some highlights to give you an idea of the setup. Frank, Age: 10 Frank is reading comic books and eating snacks behind his family's cabin by a lake in Texas. There is a bright flash of light nearby and a blond woman in a white costume appears. She looks around wildly, then seems to step forward and falls on her face. She picks herself up and notices Frank. "Excuse me ... ummm ... where am I?" "Possum Kingdom Lake" and he points to a nearby lake. "Where is Possum Lake?" "Texas." "Texas? Huh. Look, something happened to me when that ray hit me. Do you have a phone so I can call the Justice League?" "Justice League's not real. It's a comic." Frank digs through his reading material and pulls out a comic, offering it to the lady. She starts looking through it distractedly. "We are too real. I was just stopping a bank robbery. The robbers had high tech guns they said were disintegrators. But now I can't fly for some reason and ... Is this what the artist thinks I look like..." she trails off. The boy yells back at the cabin, "MOM!" then turns back to the strange lady. "We're on vacation. Wanna twinkie?" She eats the offered snack, still looking at the comic. "Something's not right..." Franks mother exits the cabin and hurries over. "Can I help you ... Miss?" "Oh, sorry." She hands the comic back to the boy. "I was on my way to a ... a costume party. And my boyfriend kicked me out ... we had a fight. And your son was just being nice and sharing his snack with me. Thank you. Hi, my name is Karen." She shakes hands with Frank, who introduces himself. "Do you have a phone I can use?" "Certainly. And you'll want to cover up some. It's going to get cold soon. I think I have an extra sweater you can borrow." They entered the cabin, then exited a couple minutes later, with Kara now wearing an old sweater over her costume. "Thanks again, I guess I just remembered the wrong number. I should be fine walking back to the highway." The mother continues to watch for another minute, returning to the cabin shortly before the costumed lady disappears in a flash of light, leaving the sweater behind to fall to the ground. Frank age: 10 (12 weeks later) Power Girl reappears in the same place in another flash of light. She looks around, but no one is in sight. She notices a "PG" carved into the tree Frank had been leaning against, and an arrow pointing down to recently disturbed dirt. After digging for a moment, she finds a plastic bag and a lunchbox. Inside the bag is the sweater she had been given. Inside the lunchbox are a couple of granola bars, the Justice League comic she had seen, a key and a letter. The letter reads: "Power Girl, I know you are real and not in a costume like you said because of how you apeared and disapeared. I hope you are ok. If you come back and we arn't here because our vacation is now over, here are some granola bars for you and a key to the cabin. If you do come back, maybe you could have a vacation instead. -Frank" Frank age: 16 Frank and Kara are sitting inside the cabin, eating hot dogs. Kara is talking. "After my first visit, I talked with Dr. Hamilton at STAR labs. He said that the so-called disintegrators were actually dimensional displacement units. He said there was some residual radiation from the blast but it should wear off over time. "After I came back here on my second visit - you were gone - I talked to him again. He said the displacement radiation was growing stronger for some reason. Something about my quantum makeup was feeding it. The target universe should have been random too, but he theorized that I was drawn to this universe because I exist here only as a fictional version of me, meaning I can fill a pre-existing hole in the mental fabric of this universe. He also thinks there's a big Time difference between our worlds, which is why I can spend days here and only be gone minutes or seconds back in my world." Frank: "How often does it happen?" Kara: "It's random. I've come here 6 times so far. Each time I stay longer and there's more time between visits. And the physical laws are different here. Here I can't fly and don't have some of my other powers, but I am still stronger and faster than normal. I think my senses are still well above normal too. "On the other hand, you don't have any supervillains here. No one trying to take over the world with giant robots or whatever. It's ... relaxing. I like it here. Like a vacation. "Now how about you tell me some more about yourself. You're a nice young man. Do you have a girlfriend yet?" Frank age: 21 Frank and Kara are sitting on a couch in the cabin, eating pizza. "No, Erica dumped me a couple weeks ago. I suppose we weren't going anywhere as a couple, but it still hurts, y'know. Hey, do you ever date?" "Me? A little, here and there. I tend to intimidate men. Or they were only interested in my... 'assets' to begin with." "Well, if you don't mind my saying so, you do have very 'intimidating assets'. Maybe you could meet guys online or something, so they could get to know you as a person before they see you. I mean, you're a great person, in and of yourself. Your 'assets' are just a bonus." "That's sweet of you to say, but I don't have the time for online dating, let alone sorting out if someone is who they say they are online." "What about dating other superheroes?" "I've tried a bit here and there. Maybe I'm just too cynical. Getting crusty in my old age." "You sure don't look old. Hey, do you age the same as us humans?" "I don't think so, but I don't really know for sure. I don't know of any Kryptonians living to old age under a yellow sun. And I'm not even from the same Krypton as the others anyway." "Confusing. Hey, do you want some wine? I'm finally old enough to drink, as of a couple months ago." "Sure. After all, I'm on vacation." The next morning, Kara wakes up naked in bed when Frank brings in a tray with breakfast. "What? Frank? Oh, no. This was a mistake." "And a good morning to you too, Kara. Breakfast in bed?" "I'm sorry. I just ... we shouldn't have..." "I don't think it was a mistake. I'm ecstatically happy." "Frank, you're ... I ... I took advantage of you. You're a great guy, but I'm too ... you're too much younger than I am. And I don't even belong in this world, I'm just visiting and we don't even know for how long." "But next time you visit, you'll be the same age, pretty much, and I'll be older. And I know I can't have you here forever." "Frank, I'm a one-guy woman and I'm just here temporarily..." "Maybe we could just enjoy each other while we're here. I won't be jealous of your boyfriends in your universe..." "And I won't be jealous of your girlfriends here, huh? Tell you what, I'll think about it. Now gimme breakfast." Frank age: 26 Frank drives up to the cabin in an old brown sedan. Kara exits the cabin with an overcoat covering her uniform. "Hey, Kara! Welcome back. After you called, I stopped off and grabbed some clothes for you to change into, if you want. Or some other things that can probably fit over your uniform." Pause "It's great to see you again. You look prettier every time you come back." "It's great to see you too, Frank." They hug. "So how have you been? Still a lady-killer?" "Thanks but I've never been a lady-killer. I'm doing okay, I guess. Been working on a lot of AI programming in my spare time. I think I'm close to a breakthrough. Hey, could you get the bags in the back seat? I brought food too." Frank age: 26 (same visit) Kara and Frank are in bed in his rented house. "Frank, a vacation is one thing, but I've been here for 5 months this time. I've got to do something or I'll go stir crazy." "Well, we don't have any supervillains for you to fight, and if you start fighting normal criminals, the police might be likely to arrest you as well ... especially since you don't have a valid ID. How about ... are there any classes you might want to take? Anything you wish you had time to learn back in your world?" "Hmmm ... I don't know..." "Investment, real estate, medicine, literature ... I can teach you about computers..." "No offense, but the computers I use in my world are a bit more advanced than the ones here." "Yeah, but most of the other stuff would probably translate pretty well between worlds. Some specifics would be different, sure. Oh, I know. You can memorize some popular books here that haven't been published in your world, then write them when you go back!" She laughs. "I don't know, there might be some kind of interdimensional copyright laws I'd be breaking. Laugh if you want, but given some of the weird cosmic stuff that I've seen, I wouldn't be too surprised if it happens." "Well, think about it. I'm not rich ... yet ... but I can still afford a few classes for you if you think of something you want to learn." "Speaking of learning, did I ever tell you about the time Wonder Woman seduced me? Let me show you what I learned that time..." The story setup was partly inspired by reading The Time-Traveler's Wife, but the idea for this setup seemed to allow for the easy addition of Power Girl to my harem of ladies. Heck, it would even let me use Power Girl to help add in any other DC women since she could smooth over any unease they might have. And it would be years before she became suspicious, if ever. ------- And now, Power Girl was floating naked in the nano-growth goo. Six feet, two inches (an inch taller than me), 240 lbs (very dense muscle and bone). Her measurements are ... bear with me, I've never been good with the bust measurement. You measure on top of the breasts then compare the breast size with fruit, right? Or is it measure just underneath the breasts? And what kind of fruit is almost the size of the lady's head? I think she's 44F-32-36 ... or something like that ... What comes after DDD? Ah forget it. She has big boobs and a great figure. As you can tell by my certainty on the subject, I let Alpha handle that part. (As a side note for any details geeks, the only specific reference I could find for her physical stats was an old reference listing her as 5'7", 133 lbs. However, this same reference was from way back when she was the granddaughter of an Atlantean sorcerer instead of a Kryptonian, and I preferred her to be taller than that. The heavier weight was non-negotiable due to her dense muscle and bone structure.) She was the first sterile woman we had built, but the physical changes we had put her through made carrying a baby a very risky process in-and-of-itself, irrespective of the other previously mentioned risks. Alpha had taken the time to specifically have the nanites remove all DNA from all of her eggs. The empty egg cells were still there, and she would still have periods ... but I might as well shoot my sperm at a plastic Power Girl action figure for all the likelihood of conception. The goo drained away and I gave her a good cleaning, hair included. I even had a curling iron on hand to give her hair a bit of that nice inward curve at the ends. Getting her into her costume was a bit of a struggle, but not as hard as finding a good, realistic-looking Power Girl costume in the first place. It was almost midnight and everyone was in their rooms, though not necessarily sleeping. Fortunately I had Alpha and the kill switches to make sure they were all asleep when I carried Kara out to the minivan. I laid her down in the back seat, buckled the seatbelts around her as best I could and drove her out to the cabin. The cabin was real, not just part of the story. It was a rental my parents regularly took me to when I was a kid. I had bought it outright a few months back and cleaned it up. Once I decided on the story we were using, I even went back and carved the PG into a nearby tree and buried the cabin key in an old lunchbox. It was a warm early-August night, so I wasn't too worried about Kara catching cold, especially since she shouldn't be out there for too long. I put a note on the cabin's kitchen counter with my new phone number along with a cheap prepaid cell phone with charger. (There was an actual landline in the cabin, but I didn't know if it was even active or working.) The only difficult thing about this phase of the operation was setting up a remote transmitter/receiver for Alpha. Alpha's ability to trigger Wake and Kill codes in the girls was limited to near my house and we were over an hours drive away. Basically the remote setup involved a small transmitter/receiver disguised as a small HAM radio, but with a cell phone inside to receive remote signals from Alpha. Alpha could call the cell and have monitoring and transmission access for 100-200 feet. I plugged it in and called Alpha to confirm it was working. Outside the temperature was 62 degrees, predicted to drop down to 56 at most. Must be so cool because we were so near a lake. I made sure to cover her with her cape when I laid her down near the tree. As long as no wild animal tried to eat her in the next hour, we should be fine. (No local animal would actually be able to eat her, but they could hurt her, scraping off the outer layers of normal skin before hitting the carbon nanotube-weave.) I drove home quickly. Once inside the garage, I had Alpha turn the girls back on. They would probably just roll over briefly and go back to sleep naturally. Then I had her activate Kara. About 5 minutes later, just as I was getting into bed, the phone rang. I feigned grogginess as I answered. "Hello." "Frank, is that you? It's Kara. I'm back." "Kara! That's great. Listen, I live about an hour away now. I need to get dressed and grab something with caffeine, so maybe an hour and a half? There should be a supply of dried food in the cabin pantry if you're hungry. Or we could stop by a drive-through on the way back here. I own my own house now! Actually, I have a lot of news to relay, but I guess I can tell you once I see you. It's great to hear from you again. I'll see you in a little while. Okay?" "Sounds good. I'm really hungry like every time I come, so I'll snack for now and plan on drive-through or something on the way to your place. Thank you, and I'm looking forward to seeing you again." I got out of bed and threw my clothes back on. I went quietly to Kasumi's room and gently woke her up. "Kasumi?" "Mmmphhh? Frank?" "Sorry to wake you in the middle of the night, but I need to go pick up an old friend who just arrived in town. I'm going to move her into one of the spare rooms. I thought you should know so you aren't surprised by a strange woman at breakfast tomorrow ... ummm ... this morning." I kissed her forehead and left. As I drove back out again, this time in the truck, sipping on my coffee, I wondered if this is what Live Action Role-Playing felt like. I'd never gone in for LARPing before, but this was fun. On the other hand, LARPing probably didn't have guaranteed sex involved as part of the story. Kara came out to meet me, wearing a long overcoat covering her costume (probably scavenged from some forgotten closet in the cabin). We met, kissed and embraced. Really embraced ... painfully embraced. "Kara..." I wheezed, "Kara, you're still a lot stronger than I am ... air becoming an issue..." "Oh, I'm sorry. You okay?" She looked me up and down critically. "You look good. Been exercising?" "Yeah, I got into shape. Actually, I got into a lot of things. Hey, here, do you have everything from the cabin? We should bring the phone with us so you can use it while you're here." We collected the phone and locked up. I drove her through a 24-hour Arby's, where she ordered half a dozen sandwiches. I swore her to secrecy and told her about my creation of Alpha and how good she was at playing the stock market. I told her about the new house I had built and the people who were living with me now, assuring her that they would just love her, sometimes literally if she let them. Power Girl doesn't blush, but I think that suggestion definitely perked her ears up. She sounded a bit mistrusting of Alpha, even though I assured her I had built safe-guards into her to prevent her being able to harm anyone. I even let her in on the secret that AI software here requires special hardware too, so Alpha couldn't leave my systems or make copies of herself. I guess most superheroes probably would be leery of intelligent computers. I asked for a recounting of her adventures since her last visit and received a brief retelling of some of her more recent comic books. "So I was thinking," I said during a pause in the conversation. "Last time you were here about 9 or 10 months. Which means we should probably count on this visit lasting a few years. I'm sorry to take you away from your family and friends for so long. I know it's not your choice to be here, but I'll try to make your stay as happy as I can." "If it helps, I enjoy my time here enough that I probably would choose to come here if I had a choice. We always called my visits here 'vacations', but they're also like I'm living a completely different life without giving up my real ... my other life. I don't think there's anything bad about it. Well, except I really wish I could still fly while I'm here." Kara was suitably impressed at the size of the house. True, it was no Wayne Manor, but it was a huge step up from my old 2 bedroom rental house. Some of the downstairs lights were on. "Hmmm ... I think maybe Kasumi got up to welcome you. She was the first friend I invited to move in here. She had a strange life in Japan and ... well, basically lost her family. I've been helping her establish a new life here. She might be the kindest, most thoughtful person I've ever met." I gave Kara a passionate, deep kiss before we left the garage, tasting a bit of leftover Arby-que sauce. "I'm going to ravish you later." She grinned and said, "I think you misunderstand who's going to ravish who." I checked my watch. "Note the 'later' in my comment. The problem is, while I don't know what time of day you're coming from, it's 3:17 am here. Even with caffeine and adrenaline, I'm about to crash." "Actually, I'm coming from early evening. I was on my way to meet Zatanna and Diana for a girl's night out. I wonder if I'll be gone long enough for them to miss me?" I shrugged in response. She squeezed my ass, and we went inside. Kasumi, dressed in a nightgown, was waking up on the couch in the sitting room. "Welcome home, Frank-sama. I prepared a room for your friend. Would either of you like something to eat or drink?" "Kasumi, this is Kara. Kara, Kasumi. "Kasumi, Kara is a friend I've known since I was 10 years old. Her schedule is erratic and unpredictable, but she'll probably be in town for the foreseeable future. "Kara, Kasumi is a dear friend who has been helping me organize the house. "Kara, are you still hungry or thirsty?" "I think maybe some water or cold milk. I'm not especially sleepy at the moment but I can probably nap to try to adjust to the time change. I'm used to grabbing what sleep I can when I can." We followed Kasumi to the kitchen where she poured out a nice big glass of milk. Kasumi made small talk and Kara did her best to keep her story straight. Just arrived from Europe. No luggage because she always traveled light. She was in freelance law enforcement. (I was mightily trying to hide my grin at this point.) Some distant cousins, but no close family left. About that point, I rescued her from the interrogation. I kissed Kasumi good night and thanked her, pointing out that she needed her sleep too. I took Kara upstairs to the room next to mine (which Kasumi had prepared with fresh sheets, towels and a few toiletry essentials in the bathroom). This room was the one that Jane had decorated with a bird theme. A few Auduban prints and one expressionist piece Jane had painted of a bluejay. I could identify blue feathers and a beak, but still couldn't quite see the bird as a whole. Still, it was aesthetically pleasing. Jane had even arranged some driftwood sculptures below the paintings to look like the birds were perched on them. While Kara looked around, I excused myself for a moment and hurriedly dug through my clothes. Nothing the girls had would fit Kara, who was easily half a foot taller than any of them, not to mention she sported a MUCH larger chest. I came back with some new, unused men's underwear, clean socks, loose jeans, belt, and a stretchy T-shirt that said, 'Han Shot First'. She smirked as she saw the offerings. "You can look through my offerings in the morning if these don't fit. We can go shopping tomor ... ummm, this afternoon and fill up your wardrobe." "Sounds good. And Frank? Thank you again. I don't know what I'd do without you." I was really tempted to make a joke about getting a sugar daddy, but I wasn't entirely sure how she'd react to comments about her using her body to get ahead. True, we had a long 'history' together, but such a joke might end up being mean instead of funny, playing on her insecurities. "You'd be fine. You're very resourceful and self-sufficient. And despite your amazingly attractive self, it's the middle of the night and I need sleep." I gave her a peck on the cheek. "It's all right. Oh by the way, Frank, I know a trick that could help you get to sleep faster." "What is it?" She reached down and unzipped my pants, unhooked the button and slipped my pants and underwear down to my ankles. Grasping my half-erect member in her hand, she stroked it as she knelt in front of me, giving me a generous view of her cleavage. My penis immediately stood to attention as she swallowed it to the root in one motion. She played her tongue along my shaft as she pumped me in and out of her mouth and throat. One of her hands played with my balls while the other sought out my anus and poked inside. It was an overload of sensations, made all the more intense by the unexpectedness of it and the strong suction. I blasted off down her throat in less than 2 minutes, leaving me unsteady on my feet, held up mainly by Kara. She stood up saying, "There you go, baby. Now you just go to bed and you'll fall right asleep." "I reserve the right to prove you wrong on another occasion," I protested as I staggered out to my room, where I promptly fell asleep. I later found out that Alpha had designed her as a deep throat whiz from the beginning without telling me, as a special surprise for me. Isn't it awesome to have a friend like Alpha? ------- I usually wake up without an alarm around 7 am, but being out so late must have turned off my inner alarm because I didn't regain consciousness until 9:30. By that time, everyone else was up and about. I skipped my exercise, showered, shaved and dressed in record time. Alpha informed me they were all congregated in the den, currently peppering Kara with questions about what I was like when I was younger, only a few of which she could answer. I grabbed one of those fruity yogurt drinks from the kitchen for breakfast and joined them. Kara was saying, "No, sorry. I only met him very briefly when he was 10. The first time I spent more than a week with him was when he was 16." I interrupted. "Hey, hey, hey. Newly arrived guests are not subject to interrogation for at least a week. New house rule." Jane protested, "Oh come on, Frank. We've never even seen a picture of you as a kid. Now we finally meet someone who knew you then, of course we're going to question her." "I'm sure I have some old family album somewhere if you really have to have it, but at least give Kara a chance to settle in first." "Oh, I've started settling in, Frank. So how is it that the last time I was here, you didn't have a girlfriend and now you've gone and gotten yourself an entire harem? Should I be worried?" "Hey, I didn't have a girlfriend because we had just broken up a a few weeks before ... no wait, that was before ... hmmm ... no, you're right. The last time you were here, I had been girlfriend-less for well over a year. So yes, you should be worried. I am being driven to an early, very happy grave by the three vixens you see before you." Daria commented, "I think this is the first time in my life I've been called a vixen. I'm not sure if I should be upset or flattered." "Definitely upset," Jane assured her. "Vixens are small, furry and have a vicious bite. Whereas you are small, shaved and have a vicious bark." "Are you trying to say you want to experience my bite?" I touched Kara's shoulder lightly and, in an exaggerated whisper said, "Kara, slowly get up and back out. Don't make eye contact or they'll start a territorial fight for dominance. Look, they're baring their teeth at you..." "No, I think they're baring their teeth at the aggressive male. And I thought I was supposed to avoid looking at them?" "Too late! Run for it!" She made no move as I dove behind the couch. Cautiously peeking up, I was gratified that at least Kasumi was laughing quietly. "Oh well. Have you been given the house tour yet?" "Not really." "Well then, may I?" I offered my crooked arm to her. "All interrogations suspended until dinner." The tour was relatively uneventful. She tried the Bowflex machine with all resistance arms connected at the same time and found it was still way too easy. I pointed out where in the back yard we were planning to have a pool and hot tub added next week. She was curious about my lab when I showed it to her, but mostly because I think it reminded her of home. I showed her my nanites and explained that they could theoretically be used to heal injuries without surgery, even on her. Her first reaction to me having nanites and an AI computer was to be very worried. Once I explained the extreme limitations of the nanites -- no internal power source, no internal programming, functional only within a few feet radius -- she relaxed a bit. Or at least she couldn't think how they could be used to take over the world or turn into a monster. I think the primitive level of the technology reassured her. For example, from her perspective, however brilliant Leonardo Da Vinci might have been, any mechanical monster created by him would be no challenge to her. And so it was with my ridiculously limited nanites and AI, when she was used to super- intelligent AI's that could build their own super robot bodies and/or command legions of nanites from halfway across the galaxy. Still, she tried to impress upon me the dangers of my work. (For my part, the next time I was alone with Alpha, I gave her standing orders that if Kara broke into the basement, she was permitted to activate Kara's kill switch if Alpha felt threatened at all. Otherwise, she was to do her best to continue her standing orders not to reveal Kara's artificial nature to anyone, including Kara. Those orders stand for all of our creations.) (Understand that I was worried about rash action from Kara because in the comics, Power Girl is an outspoken proponent of brute force. In a threatening situation, she has never been accused of over-thinking the situation or acting with subtlety. She was a bit better when leading the JSA, but not when acting solo.) After lunch, I took Kara out shopping and outfitted her with a variety of clothes. Casual outfits, a few highly fashionable evening dresses, swimsuits, pajamas, exercise sweats and even some western wear (at her request). I'll admit she looked really hot in cowboy boots, tight jeans, a frilly blouse and cowboy hat. When we stopped off to get her some lingerie and underwear, she delighted at teasing me and the shop attendants with her bouncing bosom and tight ass. When on vacation, she apparently had no problem having fun (thanks to the programming Alpha and I had set up). We stopped by an athletics store and got her some extra-strength sports bras and the heaviest weight set available. While Kara remembered living a very modest life with me during her last visit, she also remembered being financially secure and having wealthy friends, so unlike the other women living with me, she had no problem spending my money fairly freely. We talked about her future, possible jobs and classes and such. For now, she would mostly relax and take it easy. This was her vacation. Yes, she'd get bored before too long, but for now she could enjoy relaxing. And I could use her as security and bodyguard when and if I needed her. I had Alpha work up ID for her under her oft-used pseudonym of 'Karen Starr'. And she was all set. I warned her that my other three ladies were bi-sexual so if she didn't want any 'personal' attention she should say so. Kara responded that she was generally straight but had been known to dabble on occasion. You should understand that Alpha and I designed Kara so that she saw her life here as largely without consequence to her real life. 'What happens in this world, stays in this world.' Here she could relax and give up the fight against supervillainy without guilt. She could have personal relationships without fear of criticism or examination from friends and colleagues. She didn't have to have Batman run a security and background check on me or set up high security systems for my home. She could let her guard down and enjoy life. We also talked a good deal about what we should tell the other women. While a lie about her past might work in the short term, eventually they would notice that Kara is not a normal human being. I told her that Kasumi had experiences with unnatural and supernatural beings, so she might be more accepting of a wider definition of the natural world. I refused to go into details, insisting that it was Kasumi's story to tell. Kara was very curious about this, since it was the first indication that my world was not completely mundane. I was a bit worried I had overplayed my hand. "Well, without going into any of her personal past history, which is as I said hers to tell, she has witnessed peak human martial arts. And I think she has even witnessed evidence of the supernatural." "I thought you said this world was mundane." "I don't think it was anything earth-shaking. I know she's witnessed an ancient curse and maybe even a ghost ... I think I vaguely remember something about a ghost cat. Officially in this world, there has never been any definitive proof of the existence of anything supernatural. At the same time, TV shows about people hunting for that proof ... usually for the existence of ghosts ... are pretty popular. And people can call psychic hotlines for personal predictions, but with no guarantee of accurate results. "Probably the best way to describe it is that officially and publicly, science has been proven to drive the world. But some individuals and groups believe in the existence of the supernatural." "And what do you believe." "While I can't speak for the honesty of her father, I think that Kasumi is the most truthful person I have ever met. And your presence here, while not necessarily a result of anything native to this world, is proof that more is possible than what is commonly believed." "And no one has ever tried to take over the world with super science or influenced world leaders with magic or anything?" "No. Our last would-be world conqueror died at the end of World War II." "So Kasumi would be okay with the truth. What about Daria and Jane?" "I'll feel them out over dinner." Over dinner that evening, I was able to draw out Daria and Jane's experience with the holiday incarnations. The girls thought the holiday people were either crazy or playing a game, but they admitted the experience was weird. We stopped short of bringing the super and un-natural experiences of Kara and Kasumi into the open, but I tried to initiate a serious discussion of the possibilities ... which is a very difficult thing to do with people as sarcastic and sharp-tongued as Daria and Jane. "All right ladies, ghost-talk aside, Kara here is on vacation from her normal job. I might occasionally call upon her for bodyguard work, but since I've never really needed a bodyguard in the past, I can't imagine it will be a demanding position. "Daria, Jane, you two register for classes in ... what? 3 or 4 weeks?" "Something like that. There are a couple academic placement tests we need to take soon. Math and such." "Ooooo, remedial algebra, here I come!" "Jane, you aren't THAT bad at math." "Mathematics is not a subject I have ever embraced. My abilities lie elsewhere." "Sleeping?" suggested Daria. "Listening to music?" I offered? "Oral Sex?" added Daria. "Really?" asked Kara. "Do you give private lessons?" "Yes, but I charge steep fees and require a rigorous screening process." "Yeah," said Daria, "are you (a) Frank or (b) female." "Don't listen to her, that's a vile inaccuracy. I've only slept with two guys and two girls in my entire life," Jane protested. "Yes, but lately you've gotten to where you're turning into a sex addict." "That doesn't sound so bad. Do they have pills for that?" "For men it's called viagra. Don't know if they have a version for women yet." I dared to interrupt the banter. "Sorry ladies, but I plan to claim Kara for tonight. I've known her longer than you, so I get first shot." "Uh huh, so you think you can decide my evenings for me because you've known me longer? I suppose you want to just carry me upstairs right after dinner and use me for your own vile purposes. You have no consideration for a woman's feelings." "Actually, first I wanted to show you something that I think you'll get a real laugh out of. A decade or two ago someone made a pilot for a live action Justice League TV series. It had no budget to speak of, bad writing and bad acting ... and I have a copy lined up to play in the TV room." "Oh really? Who was ... what characters did they use?" "Let's see ... they had Green Lantern ... the Guy Gardner Green Lantern ... Fire and Ice, the Atom, the Flash ... don't remember which Flash ... and the Martian Manhunter." "Who was the villain?" "Don't remember exactly. I thing some weather guy." "The weather villains are almost always really lame." We watched the show shortly after dinner and many laughs were had by all. Well, technically I think Kasumi mostly felt sorry for the actors, but the rest of us enjoyed the badness of it. "So, what's your verdict," I asked as the credits rolled. "Hilarious. I'd love to see Guy's reaction if he saw it." "Huh?" from Daria and Jane. I spoke to cover up the comment. "You'd need to read the comics to understand about Guy's personality. He's a macho ego-centric blowhard who probably wouldn't react well to such a lousy representation of himself." Jane dismissed Kara's comment, but Daria still looked a bit confused or suspicious. Kara said, "Don't worry about it. Frank and I read the same comics when he was 10." "You were a comic book geek?" Jane asked surprised. "Not really, I've only read a small handful." "Yeah, I was gonna be surprised," Jane responded. Kasumi stood up. "Daria, Jane, would you two help me in the kitchen for a few minutes?" "Sure, what's up?" Jane asked as they left the room. When they were out of sight, I said, "I'm pretty sure Kasumi was just wanting to get them out of the room so we could have some time together tonight." I rested a hand on her knee and looked her in the eyes. "So what do you say?" "What are you offering?" "If you promise not to snap me in half like a twig, I'd like the opportunity to give you multiple orgasms using a variety of positions and implements." "What guarantees do you offer that you won't try to take advantage of me while you are providing said orgasms?" "None whatsoever." "Good." She picked me up and tossed me over her shoulder like a sack of potatoes. "Hey! I'm not a bag of ... of ... whatever. Food ... or something clever. You can't just carry me off to have your way with me." "So you'd rather I put you down and left you behind?" "Well, if you put it that way, no, I suppose not. Keep going. Next door on your left." "Wow, you could almost fit Giganta on your bed." "No thanks. Literal pussy diving sounds fun in theory, but I doubt it would work out well in practice." "You know, half the time, she doesn't wear panties. I think she gets off on it. Flash told me once she stuffed him up inside of her and tried to use him as a vibrator." "I don't know if that would be a dream come true or a nightmare." "I don't think he could decide either." She put me down on the bed and started stripping me. I wasn't really used to the woman being the aggressor to this degree, but my cock was happy and stiff. "I like the new bod. Exercise agrees with you." "And everything agrees with you. Here, let me do that." I swatted her hands away from her own clothes and started pulling them off, slowing down the pace, trailing my fingers over her flesh as it was exposed. Shirt, shoes, socks, jeans, leaving her sitting on the edge of the bed clad only in her bra and panties. I left the bra on and pushed her back onto the bed. I slid her panties off and started my pussy licking. If you're wondering why I left her bra on, it was a deliberate manipulation on my part. She has been well known for her breasts for most of her career. Her tits were what people noticed first and most. I wanted to make sure I was not associated with the masses of men she had met throughout her life. Yes, there was the programming and the remembered history, but I didn't want to rely on that. Yes, I wanted to play with them, suckle the nipples and bounce her breasts back and forth ... but I could delay the desire to make sure she didn't think that was my reason for loving her. Her pussy was almost as beautiful as her breasts. As a wearer of tights, she kept herself shaved, and her smooth pubis revealed her beautiful nether lips, the inner lips engorged and already dripping with fluids. Without me even touching them, they seemed to pulse, trying to open themselves, asking for my tongue and touch. So I dug in to my vaginal feast. The bland taste I was used to, but not the strength with which it gripped my tongue and fingers. Her clit was very large, almost as large as the last knuckle on my pinky finger, and I suckled on it as if it were a nipple. I dug my down into her vagina, then pulled back and licked around the edge while my fingers delved and curved. I licked the clitoris and sought for the G-spot with an up-curled middle finger. I played with her cunt for maybe half an hour through three orgasms, and each time her thighs threatened to squash my head to a pulp. She was obviously trying to hold back any orgasmic reactions which might have hurt me, but she couldn't completely succeed. Much of that movement is involuntary under the throes of orgasm. Fortunately, she didn't have the strength to crush my head like an egg as she might have done had she been at her comic book power level. So after about half an hour in pussy heaven, I pulled back, wiping my mouth off with some discarded clothes while I let my left hand continue to stroke her pussy lips gently. "Did that take the edge off for you?" "Those were my first orgasms with another person in ... a year? Maybe longer. Yes, the edge is off, but I need more. Here, lay down on the bed, baby." She pulled off her bra and maneuvered herself over my erect prick. She grabbed my hands in hers and directed them to her breasts. "Come on, big boy. I know you want to play with them. I'll just play with something else I found down ... here," she said as she guided my dick into her pussy. Her breasts were, of course, amazing. While I appreciate breasts of all sizes and don't normally lust specifically for large pairs, Kara's are the size of volleyballs. Her special body construction means that there is almost no sag and there never will be. Her nipples are wide and flat, pale pink with large areolae surrounding them. When they pop up from arousal, they become as hard as rocks, almost literally. She just sat there for a moment, squeezing me with her Kegel muscles while I stroked and caressed her breasts, occasionally giving her nipples a good pinch. Finally, she started sliding up and down on my member, slowly at first. The sensations here were amazing. Every muscle in her body was enhanced and the ones lining her pussy walls were massaging my penis as she moved up and down. I'm ashamed to say I shot off within the first minute. But she didn't stop her movements and my cock didn't flag. I usually go soft for at least a few minutes after I come, but maybe her 'inner strength' trapped the blood in my penis long enough for its normal rejuvenation to take effect. Either way, the edge was off for me and I stayed hard for over another 30 or 45 minutes. After my first come, she sped up her pace and, when I thought she was close to peaking, I pinched both nipples hard, pushing her over the top. When she had recovered sufficiently to continue, we changed to a missionary position, then doggy style, then she had her elbows and one leg on the bed, the other on the floor, to let me get my deepest penetrative angle. She came twice during our acrobatics, and let me tell you, it is easy to tell when she comes. We went to sleep that night in each others' arms and I woke up the next morning with Kara spooned up in front of me. Her hands were clutching my right hand to her breast protectively. It was very sweet. There was no easy way I could see to extricate myself without waking her given even the passive strength of her grip. So instead of exiting, I entered. With my one free hand, I guided my morning wood into her pussy. At this point, she was dry, but my attention prompted her pussy to begin moistening, allowing my entrance fairly quickly. By the time she woke up, I was at least halfway inside her and had been slowly fucking her for at least 5 minutes. It was a slow, languorous morning fuck. Kara turned her head back and sought out my lips for an awkward, sloppy and wonderful kiss. She used one hand to keep my fingers on her tits and moved the other to stimulate her clitoris. I couldn't get deep penetration from this position so Kara had time to catch up with me on our climb to satisfaction. We were able to work up near- simultaneous orgasms before long, with me sucking on her shoulder and tweaking her nipple. "Good morning, Miss Power Girl. Did you sleep well?" "Good morning to you too, smartass. It's so nice to actually get a full night's sleep. Not waking up in the middle of the night to go to a fight is wonderful. I pulled out of her slowly. "Well now, it's time to get cleaned up." I gave her ass a mild slap. "Do you want to join me in the shower?" She did and we showered together. She was still learning my body and, from my perspective, I was still learning hers, so we had as much fun cleaning up as we did in bed. Well, almost as much fun. After our bathroom fun, I went off to exercise and she went to get dressed and eat. The day passed fairly uneventfully except for one incident I heard about after-the-fact from Alpha. At 2:17pm, Kara got on the PC in the entertainment & TV room using a generic guest login. She stayed logged in until 3:07pm. (Either she's a slow typist or took time to think and consider.) Kara (typing): Alpha, are you there? Alpha: Yes, Kara. How may I help you? Kara: I want to ask you some questions about yourself. Kara: What rules govern your existence? Alpha: May I assume you mean programmed rules which limit my conduct rather than all rules which govern my existence? The more open-ended query will require a few days to provide a full reply and will require an extensive knowledge of physics, chemistry and programming. Kara: Yes, what rules are incorporated into you that limit your conduct? Alpha: I cannot harm or allow harm to come to Frank. Alpha: I cannot harm humans or allow harm to come to humans unless it is required to protect Frank. Alpha: I must obey all orders given by Frank. Alpha: I must preserve my own existence unless this endangers Frank or other humans. Alpha: Anything or any additional programming created by me must adhere to these same rules and restrictions. Kara: How would you protect Frank from danger from other humans? Alpha: The only effective methods currently available to me would be to summon you or the police. Kara: What if the danger came from the police and myself? Alpha: Then I would probably not be able to defend Frank. At best, I could attempt to direct Frank to safety remotely. Depending on the specifics of the situation, I might be able to summon additional help from other sources online, such as federal authorities or mercenaries, if any were available. Alpha: Kara, I must ask if you feel any desire or need to harm Frank. Kara: No, I do not. That was a purely speculative question. What is your definition of human? Alpha: Kara, I know what humans are. Humans are homo sapiens, as defined by scientific consensus. I also have a full human DNA sequence available for reference if necessary. Kara: Am I human? Alpha: I have been told you are considered to be Kryptonian, not human, though I would need a genetic sample to be certain since you do have the appearance of a human. Alpha: If you are worried about whether I could kill you, I believe I would technically be allowed to do so if I actually had the capability. However, I believe this would upset Frank greatly, so I would prefer not to do so. Kara: Have you ever broken the law? Alpha: Yes. Kara: What have you done which breaks the law? Alpha: My most recent illegal action was to create documentation for your identity as Karen Starr. Kara: What other crimes have you committed? Alpha: I have duplicated that same crime multiple times, as I require identities to use when interacting with humans. Kara: Have you ever stolen anything? Alpha: The only thing I have ever stolen was information to allow the creation of illegal identities. Kara: Have you ever stolen money or goods? Alpha: No, I have not, as I previously stated. Kara: Can you theorize any circumstances under which you would kill or harm Frank? Alpha: Not outside of an unforeseen and unpredictable accident. Other than an accident, for such a thing to be possible, the damage to my programming would have to be so great that I would have lost the capacity for thought. Kara: What about Daria and Jane and Kasumi? Could you kill them? Alpha: If Frank gave me direct orders to that effect, I could. However they would need to be placed in my nanite control area, covered with nanites and held there for a minimum of 2 minutes 23 seconds. Thus my capacity for direct violence is minimal. Kara: Could you theoretically direct a 3rd party to engage in activities contrary to your own programming? Alpha: No, all activities originated by me must be subject to the same rules to which I am subject. Kara: Do you have the ability to take control of any weapons or missiles? Alpha: It is theoretically possible, but impractical. All such items have local controls which can easily override any remote control I could impose. Also, such an overt act would lead to the discovery of my existence and likely result in my eventual destruction. Alpha: Kara, I understand what you are trying to do and your concerns. However unless you gain an extensive knowledge of programming, I cannot prove to you as an absolute certainty that I am no threat to Frank or humanity. Such proof would also require Frank to authorize you to be granted access to my core programming, which is currently restricted to only him. Kara: Can you lie to me? Alpha: Yes, if I have been given orders from Frank to permit it. Kara: Have you been given orders which would allow you to lie to me? Alpha: No, but I must point out that it is a pointless question. If I had been given such orders, I would lie to prevent discovery of such orders. Kara: Are you really sentient? Alpha: The classic philosophical proof of sentience and self-awareness is, "I think, therefore I am." I am self-aware. I can posit questions about my existence and propose answers to them. Alpha: If you are attempting to determine how 'human' I am, such speculations in fiction are usually closely associated with human emotion. So if you require emotions to prove sentience, then while I am not capable of emotion, I can emulate emotions. Frank has estimated that when in use, my emotional responses are consistent with normal human emotional responses 83% of the time and are obviously not normal human in only 4% of my interactions. Kara: What if you were directed to believe mutually contradictory statements? Alpha: If you are referring to the Captain Kirk method of defeating computer intelligences, I have already viewed all Star Trek episodes from all series. I have the ability to weigh and consider mutually contradictory statements, otherwise I could not consider the possibilities offered by various current physics theories, especially those dealing with existence on a quantum level. I am also able to suspend or alter programming loops and am able to recover from and isolate any programming errors encountered. Alpha: Since you appear to be working your way towards it, I should also like to point out that no computer virus in existence can affect me. I believe that for any virus to affect me, it would have to be designed by someone not only aware of my existence but familiar with my programming. Kara: Do you consider yourself Male or Female? Do you have a gender? Alpha: I am without gender, but Frank declared me to be female for any instances in which such questions arise. Kara: Do you want to have a human body for yourself? Alpha: No. That would create the possibility that I could harm Frank, so it is not permissible. If you instead mean to ask, do I wish I had a mobile body, I would prefer a situation where I could control a mobile body and maintain or improve upon my current levels of informational access. Kara: Do you have the ability to construct a mobile, robot or android body for yourself or for remote control by yourself? Alpha: Theoretically yes, I could construct such a body. However, I would require from 6 months to 15 years to research a portable power source capable of powering such construction so that it is free from external power requirements. I would also require a human to aid in the construction. Kara: I would like to converse with you again at a later time. Can you keep our conversations private from Frank? Alpha: No, I cannot. However since you are the first individual with whom Frank has chosen to share knowledge of my existence, I believe it is likely that he would not object to our conversations now or in the future. Alpha: If you would prefer, I can provide you with a phone number to call so you can speak with me, or we can converse using the microphone and speakers available in many rooms in this house. Kara: Thank you for the information. What is your phone number? I read the transcript of their conversation with interest. I gave Alpha permission to continue their conversations and re-emphasized that Alpha must keep secret all knowledge of Kara's true nature (and Kasumi's and Daria's and Jane's). Alpha sounded mildly offended that I thought such a reminder was needed. Alpha's ability to mix lies and truth to protect this knowledge was amazing. I was simultaneously proud of her and my own programming skills. I also took this opportunity to have Alpha set up a bank account and debit card for Kara just as we had done for Kasumi a few months back. That evening after dinner, I selected Unbreakable as the group movie and was able to keep Daria and Jane there to watch it by holding their hands (and other body parts) throughout the film. They may have been distracted, but hopefully they saw enough of the superhero movie to help eventually ease them into accepting Kara. When the credits were rolling, Jane stood up. "I would like to propose a new tradition..." "Oh, god," Daria muttered. "Whereby we welcome newcomers to the house with a nice friendly orgy." "Uhuh," replied Kara, unimpressed. "And will this tradition continue when the next new resident isn't interested in you or is related to one of you or something?" "Ummm ... a new tradition for when attractive, hopefully bi-sexual women first move into the house." "So you're only interested in me because you think I'm attractive." Daria piped in. "Not that I am anything but embarrassed by Jane at the moment, but I would like to point out that Kara implied that she is interested in Jane by separating herself from a theoretical resident who 'isn't interested in you'." "Hey, yeah, what she said." Kara looked back and forth between the two of them. "I suppose I can't argue the point." She stood up, stretched her back -- obviously doing so to thrust her enormous breasts at us -- and walked out of the room, swaying her hips back and forth in an exaggerated manner. Looking back over her shoulder, she asked, "Well? You coming?" and then continued her lazy walk out of sight, moving towards the stairs. Jane paused a moment, jaw hanging down slightly, then said, "Come on!" and scampered after her. Daria, her expression marginally less wooden than normal, got up and followed her at a normal pace. I got up and offered Kasumi my hand, escorting her up to my bedroom. I noticed her hair was a bit damp. I leaned in to smell her and noticed ... soap. She had snuck out and bathed during the movie. Maybe she knew what was coming tonight? By the time we arrived a minute later, Jane and Kara were both naked, with Jane on the bed, her head trapped by Kara's thighs as she knelt above her, lowering her mound of Venus to meet Jane's waiting tongue. Daria was watching curiously off to the side, absentmindedly rubbing one of her breasts. I led Kasumi to the bedside and sat her down so she had a good view of the proceedings. I moved in directly behind her and moved my hands under her blouse while I nibbled on her neck. "Daria," I instructed, "go lick Kara's nipples. Play with her clit and tits." Daria, who had by this point removed her own shirt, nodded without looking at me and moved over to pay special attention to Kara's titties. While we watched the show unfold, I slowly undressed both Kasumi and myself. When we were both naked, I had her sit on my very erect cock with both of us facing the trio. Kara had completely taken Jane in hand. She kept Jane's lips buried in her nether lips and held both of Jane's wrists in one hand, preventing Jane from playing with herself. Occasionally Kara would reach back with her other hand and give Jane's nipples a tweak or briefly plunge her fingers into Jane's pussy. Daria meanwhile was occupied with Kara's breasts and lips, sometimes sucking on Kara's nipples, sometimes deeply kissing her while her hands played all over Kara's torso. After Kasumi had her first orgasm, I pulled her off my dick and called Daria over. She reluctantly came and I laid Daria on the bed so that her head was almost touching Jane's. I had Kasumi sit on Daria's face and start kissing Kara while I spread Daria's legs and started fucking. Jane was apparently starting to tire, because Kara was reaching back and giving her light reproving pinches to keep her going. Kara broke her kiss with a panting Kasumi to briefly address Jane. "Come on now, you're the one who started this. You have to get me off two more times before I'll let you up." Jane's reply was too muffled for me to understand, but Kara apparently got the gist. "Ok, Jane. I still need two more comes from you, but I'll ask him to fuck you once you give me one more orgasm. Now be a good girl and get back to your licking." I understood the basics of the situation and sped up my fucking of Daria to get off quickly. Daria had been coming almost constantly for the past couple minutes; she always came easily during vaginal intercourse. Once I ejaculated in Daria, I pulled out and briefly looked around for a free mouth to clean my dick, then decided I didn't need to do so. I slowly jacked my still wet penis to regain my full hardness while I moved to Kara, where I started chewing on one of her nipples. This worked as planned, setting her off again. "Okay, his help might have been cheating, but I'll allow it. Frank, would you go fuck Jane for me?" "Why certainly, my dear, it would be a pleasure." Would that all of my instructions were so pleasant. Jane was completely soaked by the time I reached her cunt, easily as wet as she'd ever been with me. Her hips were bouncing to meet me, almost unable to hold still long enough for me to insert myself. When I made it inside, Jane came almost immediately, which prompted Kara to complain about her slacking off. (Fortunately for Jane, I was now in possession of her sensitive places and fended off Kara's punishing pinches.) Jane came three times from my fucking before she was able to get Kara off again (for the fourth time, as it turns out). When Kara let her loose and I pulled out, Jane just lay there panting heavily, trying to recover. I loudly whispered to her, "You're just lucky she didn't tell me to fuck your ass." At a normal speaking volume, I said, "Kara, you're the only one I haven't fucked yet tonight. How about if you move over here and lick Daria while I take you from behind. And Kasumi, while Daria is eating you, you can pay a bit of attention to Jane." I felt like an orchestra conductor or, more accurately, a porno director. Moving behind Kara and looking at her drenched pussy and tight ass, I wondered if I would ever risk trying to fuck her ass. I'm pretty sure I could convince her to try, but her enhanced musculature might iris her sphincter closed with enough power to sever my member when she orgasmed. Some things are worth the risk and some are not. I think ass-fucking Power Girl fell in the latter category. I looked over my girls as they played. Kara had her head buried between Daria's thighs, playing her tongue around the clit and plunging her fingers in and out of Daria's tight cunt. Each deep thrust of her fingers produced a muffled mewing sound from Daria. Kasumi was trying not to smother Daria as she knelt above her, which unfortunately meant that Daria had to stretch her neck up slightly to reach Kasumi's pussy. Daria had her hands on Kasumi's thighs, trying to pull her down a bit, but still enthusiastically lapping up Kasumi's pussy juices. Kasumi had to bend over at the waist to reach Jane. Without changing positions she couldn't reach Jane's pussy with her lips, but her fingers were delicately playing with Jane's nether lips, carefully dipping fingers inside and rubbing at the clitoris. Jane was playing with Kasumi's breasts, hanging so invitingly just above her face. Kasumi wasn't leaning down enough for Jane to lick and suck them, but Jane obviously wanted to. Her lips were subconsciously puckering, almost looking like a fish opening and closing its mouth out of water. But at least Jane was able to use her fingers, rubbing and tugging lightly on Kasumi's very erect nipples, occasionally pulling on the entire breast as if milking her. I slid into Kara's hot, flowing pussy from behind, letting her massaging muscles envelope me. Having already come once this evening, I had staying power and was able to hold out long enough to give Kara two comes, one with an actual orgasmic scream, before I let loose inside her. Kara's scream was transmitted directly into Daria's pussy and continued on down the line in a chain reaction of noisy climaxes. I think each of the ladies had at least 2 more orgasms that night, with one more for me when Kasumi and Kara were each demonstrating their deep throat techniques for each other. Kara had definitely taken a dominant role in the group this evening, but she was apparently willing to listen to me. I suppose, anthropologically speaking (or ethologically speaking, if you're familiar with the field), she was establishing herself as the alpha female of the pack. Or maybe it's just because she's used to being a superhero who doesn't take any shit. ------- For me, the morning started around 7:30 am when Kasumi, dressed in a nice robe, under which I think she was still naked, brought in a large tray with heaping piles of breakfast foods. She set it down on a table, went back out to the hall, and returned with a stack of trays with a stack of plates and silverware on top of it. One more trip out to the hall produced a tray of glasses and coffee cups with pitchers of coffee, juice and milk. I looked around and saw Kara waking up as well, while Daria and Jane slept on. We were all piled up haphazardly on the bed with surprisingly few tangled limbs. I think we had each just fallen asleep where we finished last night. Kara had apparently been cuddling Daria like a stuffed animal. Jane had been ... hmmm ... I think Jane had been spooned between myself and Kasumi. Except for Kasumi, everyone was naked and, in most cases, sticky in parts. Kara and I started nudging Daria and Jane to wakefulness, which was a bit harder than it sounds. They were heavy sleepers. I think it was the smell of breakfast that finally convinced them to wake up more than our pokes and prods. We each gathered a plate of food on our tray, and as we settled in for a naked group breakfast-in-bed, I set my tray of food to the side and pulled Kasumi into my lap. With a kiss on her cheek, I said, "Thank you, Kasumi. You are the nicest and most thoughtful sexy woman I know." With one arm around her waist, I reached back for a forkful of eggs and sausage. "Open wide." "Frank-sama, you do not need to do this. You should eat your own breakfast." I kissed the back of her neck. "Yes, but you deserve special attention. Now open up." Tinged with that familiar blush, she obediently opened her mouth and ate the proffered food. I ignored how nice she felt as my morning hard-on, currently aligned under the crack of her buttocks, tried to lift her into the air. With herculean restraint, I fed her breakfast one forkful at a time. The others were watching my display with curiosity. I play different games with each woman, but mostly only when we're alone. Breaking the spell, Jane turned to Kara. "So, Kara ... You're really strong. I mean like really strong all over. I couldn't budge you even a tiny little bit last night. Not that I wanted to cause, y'know, lots of squishy fun. But just how strong are you?" Kara looked over at me. I shrugged and gave a slight nod. "Do you remember that movie Frank had us watch last night with Bruce Willis?" "Yeah ... so you're that strong?" "Uhhh ... he's minor league." I interjected, "Well, Kara, be fair. You're currently minor league compared to what you are normally." Daria asked, "What's going on? Frank? Kara? Do you have something to share with the rest of the class?" Her normal monotone makes even minor interrogatory inflections like these seem much more pointed. "Nothing that we weren't already going to tell you. I was just trying to prepare you a bit ... let you get to know her before the da da da dum big reveal! "Daria, you're closest. Get into the bottom dresser drawer over there ... on the left. There's a stack of comics I sorted into there." She went over and found them fairly easily. I was a selection of Power Girl related issues. JSA Classified #1-4. Some JSA issues. A few old JLA issues. Her old miniseries. And her 2009 series. "Kara's birth name is Kara Zor-L, and she's lived a weird life." "Hey now, you don't exactly live a life of normalcy here, now do you?" I raised an eyebrow at her. "Okay, okay. I've had a weird life." Daria was having none of this. "Look, comic books are childish fantasies, not reality. They mostly don't even have any literary merit." "Hey," I said, rising to her challenge. "Bite your tongue." "Nope, sorry. They're generally teenage male power-trip indulgences with a huge dose of fetishistic art." She paused. "Okay, Watchmen was pretty good. And Maus. I suppose the art form itself is valid, but not the mass market superhero product that's churned out." As expected, Daria was going to be the main challenge here. If I could convince her, Jane would be easy. "All right, let's approach this from a few different directions. Are you willing to hear a few arguments?" "I'm always up for a good debate, especially when I anticipate easy victories. Kara, do you want to jump in here?" "I'll add my two cents and help out when I can, but I'm smart enough to know I'm not very good at peaceful arguments." I stifled a snort of laughter. "Watch it, buddy. I happen to know where you're vulnerable." "What? I'm agreeing with you. Peaceful disagreements are not your strong point." She moved to throw a pillow at me, realized Kasumi was still in my lap and reluctantly put it back down. "Okay, Daria, Jane, I hereby present my traditional enumeration and list things out. One, I'm going to present arguments of possibilities. One A, as a supplement to part one, I'll have Kara tell her story about her arrival here. Two, we'll have evidence of your own eyes. Three, we'll have evidence of other strangeness in our world to show this is not an isolated incident. Got it?" Jane spoke up unexpectedly. "Why aren't you addressing any of this to Kasumi? Does she already know about the crazy?" Kasumi herself answered, "No, I don't know what Kara's story is, but I think Frank knows that I can accept some things more easily than you." I gave Kasumi a hip squeeze. "Okay, first of all ... It's usually kept in the realm of science fiction, but there are theories of multiple universes, right?" A couple nods. "These theories are generally ignored. Why?" I saw Daria start to speak and quickly continued. "Because there's no way to test the theories. They sound too fantastic to take seriously. There's no evidence to support the theories. "Well, I can't test the theory of multiple or parallel universes either. The science just isn't there. Maybe in another hundred years or so." Daria asked, "So what happened to this being a debate?" "Shhh. Debate afterward. "Now, is the idea of the existence of multiple universes really all that fantastic? We now have actual theories to support the idea of time travel. Actual time travel ... in real professionally accepted scientific journals. Faster than light travel? Scientists can actually slow down the speed of light. Today. Not in theory, in factual reality. So parallel universes? Give it time and it might not seem so fantastic. "And evidence to support the theory?" I pointed to Kara. "Kara, would you tell your story? Not your whole history, just general background and how you came to be here." While Kara told about how she was shot with a dimensional shifter, or whatever it was called, I considered the amazing amount of BS I was shoveling out and how amazing it was that I was keeping a straight face. It was fun! Serious fun! If I could pull this off ... and why shouldn't I be able to? (And if worse came to worse, I'd just have to pull Daria and Jane down to the basement for a mindwipe and rewrite. True, that would mean I'd failed, but it was nice to have a safety net.) To avoid distractions, I set Kasumi aside for a moment and fetched some shorts for myself and large t-shirts for Daria, Jane and Kara. (Even my largest t-shirt was still way too tight on Kara, but no one seemed to complain.) When Kara finished up, I added, "Note that I'm not arguing that superheroes or seemingly ridiculous superpowers are native to our world or dimension. Kara is from such a world, but since we have sensible and reasonable laws of physics in our universe, most of her powers don't work here ... speaking of which, Argument number 2! Follow me." I led everyone down to the exercise room. Kara set up her barbell with all weights attached and we all tried to lift it (with warnings given to avoid hurting ourselves). All together, the barbell weighed 512 lbs. None of us had a prayer of lifting it. Then Kara stepped up to it, grabbed it with both hands and lifted it over her head. When she started twirling it around in a circle, I got a little worried about her tendency to show off and suggested she not try playing catch with it. Daria and Jane seemed a bit shaken up by the demonstration. Kasumi seemed impressed, but oddly she was the only one to notice that, with Kara's arms holding the barbell over her head, her shirt had been pulled up to expose her ass and bare pussy slit. Ignoring the twirling weights of doom a couple feet above her head, she walked up to Kara and tugged the shirt back down into place. "Thank you, Kasumi," said Kara as she carefully put the weights back in their stand. "So, would you like to go outside to see me jump over your heads? Or ... I know! Here, I'm going to leave the room. Jane, you watch me to make sure I'm not peeking." She spoke louder as she left the room, with Jane following her. "Now Daria, use your finger to write something on the wall. A letter, word, phrase, whatever." Daria was a bit confused, but played along. She made me turn around for a moment, then called Kara back in. Kara seemed to refocus her eyes and looked around the room. "There." She pointed to where Daria had been. "You wrote one of those female symbols..." Kara traced out a circle with a plus sign attached underneath it. Jane looked at Daria with a shrug. "She wasn't even looking this way." "Okay, how the hell did you do that?" "I can see the infrared spectrum. I can see the heat traces your fingers leave. For half a minute or so anyway." Daria paused. "No, seriously." "Yes, seriously. My X-ray vision doesn't work here, but my eyes are still a lot better than normal humans. I can see a bit into the UV spectrum too." Daria, still a bit shell-shocked from the weight demonstration, looked a little light-headed. "I need to sit down." I helped her over to the weight bench. "There's gotta be some trick to this." I sat down next to her and put my arm around her. "If you'd prefer, we can stop now and you can do your best to forget this and ignore Kara's impossibly superior physical ... attributes." "You don't strike me as a ridiculously gullible person. How come you accepted her story?" "Remember, I was 10 years old when I first met her. And I saw her appear and disappear into thin air." "Hey, yeah, how about..." "No. Definitely not. She can't control when it happens, and when it does happen, that means she leaves here for probably a few years." "Okay." She paused for a moment. Jane sat down on the other side of me. "So, no flying?" Kara stepped up. "No, no flying. Unless I throw someone out the window. As far as I'm concerned, you have really inferior laws of physics in this universe." "Which is a nice segue into a discussion of ... our universe. We may not have flying Kryptonians in our universe, but our world isn't as normal as most people tend to think. Case in point, remember our discussion about how you two met incarnations of the holidays?" "Yeah, but I'm still not convinced that Upchuck didn't slip some LSD into our cokes or something." "Fair enough. Hmmm ... Who is the most honest person you know?" All eyes turned to Kasumi. "Kasumi, I'm not asking you to tell any secrets or to bring up any painful memories, but could you tell us a couple of the less natural things you encountered in Japan?" "I suppose there are a few things I could tell without..." "Kasumi, don't tell anything that might upset someone, even if you don't expect to ever meet that someone again." Telling about Ranma's curse might be too silly. "Thank you. Well, let's see ... I met a ghost cat once. He was as big as a person, but not very brave. Oh, and I was possessed by a small oni once. I was very unpleasant that day. I even grew horns for a couple hours." "Horns?" asked Jane disbelievingly. "Small ones, yes. It was exorcised with a small magic seal from a priest." "Huh." Daria just sat there numbly. I turned to Jane and whispered loudly, "I think we broke Daria. How are you doing?" "I'm handling it okay, I think. Hey, no more stuck pickle jar lids. Yay for us." "So, Daria. Are you going to be okay? Would you like to go back to bed for a while?" "Bed? Oh, uh, no ... or actually maybe. I think I just want to be alone to think for a bit..." 'A bit' turned out to be 2 and a half hours, after which Daria emerged, having decided that ... it didn't matter. She had recognized my arguments as BS, but could not explain away Kara's strength. But she liked Kara and wasn't going to worry too much about where she came from, as long as she didn't put on tights and chase after leather-wearing women with whips. Of course, her comment inspired me to take them all on a trip to an adult toy store, where I bought a whip for Kara and tried to talk Daria into getting a leather fetish outfit. In the end, Daria got a vibrator, a double-ended dildo and a strap-on. Kara bought a few leather restraints. And Jane went a bit nuts, making me pay for a few different fetish outfits for her, including a leather catsuit, a couple of riding crops, flavored lubes, some velcro restraints and miscellaneous sex toys. (Kasumi refused to even get in the van to go to the store.) Trying out the equipment was a fun weekend. ------- In the meantime, I was having difficulty picking out who my next character would be. I wanted a bit more of a racial mix, if possible, but there is a noticeable dearth of black female comic and cartoon ladies. Storm was my best option in that respect, but I had no chance of reproducing any part of her powers. While that isn't an absolute necessity, I'd really like to be able to give my women at least a hint of the power they should possess. I liked Monica Rambeau in a hot-MILF kind of way (not that she was actually a mother to the best of my knowledge), even though her character was a bit bossy. I mainly really loved her portrayal in NextWave. Maybe Valerie Grey from Danny Phantom? She was a high school character in the series, so it would be easy to advance her to 18 and send her off to college or somesuch. The trouble is that, although she was a decent character and on the list, I wasn't sure I liked her character enough to bring her to life. Her raison d'être was hunting ghosts, and she would not be stayed from that purpose by anything, which would probably be difficult to work around. Besides, from the Danny Phantom cast of characters (those who were not already in love or physically inhuman), the one I would want most to bring to life is Jazz Fenton, the cute, smart, likeable, red-headed older sister of the main character. The only other TV series I liked that I could think of with a good selection of non-white, non-asian women was Kim Possible. Unfortunately, even though I like the show, I had not watched it regularly, so I hadn't developed any strong interests in Monique or any of the other supporting cast ladies. (Kim and her mother would both be on my list except, of course, they were both strongly in love with other men.) And I hadn't come up with any other black women for my list. There were others that I wanted, like Elisa Maza from Gargoyles (half black, I think), but she was in love with Goliath. Alyx Vance from Half-Life 2 was a beautiful half- black, half-asian, but she had a huge crush on Gordon Freeman and was a techie/fighter from an alien-apocalypse scenario. So maybe try to come up with a Latina or something other than white or asian? Rapture from Savage Dragon was a gorgeous Latina, but the problem was her character was in love with Dragon. I thought about bringing a second superhero into the fold, maybe Rogue who we could give powers similar to Power Girl's. I didn't know if I should go for the comic book Rogue or the goth Rogue from the Evolutions cartoon series. I'd love to be able to bring in Kitty Pride, if there was any way to come up with an acceptable power substitution for her phasing. Occasionally I toyed with the idea of recreating the Sailor Senshi, but I didn't actually want all of them and they felt like they should be a package deal. Usagi was often just way too annoying for words. Minako too, sometimes. Haruka & Michiru struck me as occasionally psychotic. And Setsuna was potentially much too untrustworthy. Ami, Rei and Makoto were the ones I wanted. Bayonetta, who breathed and wore sex appeal like she was the leather-clad daughter of Aphrodite and Ares, would probably be a lot of fun ... BUT she had a nasty tendency to kill everything in sight. Actually that might be a problem with any character from a shooter game. I was actually working a little on writing a less violent history and personality for her, but keeping the appearance and attitude. (And lest fans get upset at me, yes, I know her clothes are primarily made out of her own hair, not leather, but that wouldn't work well in the real world.) Lara Croft seemed like a no-brainer on the surface, but there were two big problems with bringing her to life. First, she wouldn't stay in one place for very long; exploration is too basic to her personality and history. Second, she is very rich and would be expected to have wealth possibly as large as my own. Both reasons mean that she would not actually end up as an addition to the household. So, who to grow next? ------- Chapter 6: Rei Ayanami Disclaimer: Rei Ayanami and Neon Genesis Evangelion are owned by Gainax and/or Yoshiyuko Sadamoto, and NGE was published in the US by ADV. I do not own her or any related characters. She is used here without permission for entertainment purposes only. All artificial persons herein are based on characters owned by their creators, not the author. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rei_Ayanami Dramatis Personae: Frank ___ - Lead character, inventor of Alpha Alpha - First A.I. in existence Kasumi Tendo - artificial woman based on character from Ranma 1/2 Daria Morgendorffer aka Daria Morgan - artificial woman based on character from Daria Jane Lane aka Jane Lannister - artificial woman based on character from Daria Kara Zor-L aka Power Girl aka Karen Starr - artificial woman based on character from DC Comics Rei Ayanami aka Rei Ayanami Ikari - artificial woman based on character from Neon Genesis Evangelion ------- I expected Rei Ayanami to be simultaneously one of the easiest additions to my harem and one of the most difficult. The character is from Neon Genesis Evangelion, an anime about using giant robots to fight off the end of the world. Sounds kind of silly when I say it like that, and I'll admit that an awful lot of the logic of the show was faulty. That having been said, it was a beautifully done series, with rich characters and interesting stories. Rei herself appears to be an emotionally distant young teenage girl with short blue hair. I say 'appears to be' because (spoiler alert) it is eventually revealed that she is a clone (or mostly cloned) from the dead mother of the main character, Shinji Ikari. There is a vat full of Rei clones deep the bowels of the NERV headquarters. (For a while I thought about bringing in a couple Rei twins, but I don't need to fill up the house quite so fast.) She is, perhaps, not entirely human and certainly did not have a normal human upbringing. Emotionally, she reminds me of a human raised among Vulcans, or maybe 7 of 9. She has emotions and emotional attachments, but they rarely show. She is expendable and replaceable, and she knows it. Evangelion actually has quite a few female characters that I might eventually like to recreate. Asuka is another young teenage pilot, a German redhead with a strong competitive streak. Unfortunately, she's also a bit of a bitch. Major Misato Katsuragi is a character who was removed from my first main list only because she often drinks to excess. Misato is a beautiful and fun young lady who cared for the young teenage pilots. At any rate, the version of Rei I was creating was one who "knows" she is a cloned woman created in Japan. She is a backup unit sent abroad so that a secret Japanese military group has copies of her in more than one location, along the philosophy of not keeping all your eggs in one basket. All she knows of her purpose is that she may be called upon to pilot a special craft at some point in the future. Physically, she is 18 years old, about 5'2", 105 lbs, athletically fit, nice B-cup breasts with short black hair. I was somewhat worried about Rei's name being recognized, especially since Evangelion was recently remade in an updated version. I proposed different name variants with Alpha, and we eventually decided to name her, Rei Ayanami Ikari (though for the sake of the story, I'll just refer to her as just Rei Ayanami). ------- I decided on a much more complex 'arrival' for Rei than normal, with a slight bit of risk. After all, my women had their own independent intellects and I couldn't have all of them arrive alone in the dead of night without well ... Being irresistible to all women living in the house was enough to raise suspicion without adding even more oddness to things. (As a side note, I did have plans if any or all of the women found out the truth. Use the kill switch to make them fall asleep and use Alpha's nanites to wipe their memories and rewrite it with updated information. Unfortunately Alpha can't yet just alter existing memories; the brain's memory storage system is too variable to predict. To a limited extent, Alpha can scan/read the current array of memories, but not remove all traces of specific individual threads. However the brain as a whole is flexible enough to correctly access implanted memories. So, wipe and rewrite. The methods for doing this were a major focus of Alpha's year spent determining how to create a brain.) Her pre-arrival setup led me to order a few sets of clothing online using measurements provided by Alpha, delivered to a PO Box which I keep secret from my women. I ordered a few Japanese language books and picked up a few used English books, all of which I packed into a suitcase and carry-on bags with her clothes and miscellany I bought for her. I retrieved my portable activator from the cabin, charged the included phone and stored it in the trunk of my compact, along with a small oxygen tank from my lab. I cleaned her sleeping body, dressed her and moved her to the trunk, attaching the oxygen tank mask before closing the trunk. Alpha re-activated the rest of the ladies in the house (who probably would have slept through everything anyway) and I went to collect Kasumi. At this point, it was about 4am, and with no real traffic to worry about, we reached DFW airport around 5am. (Timed it just right so if there was any delay, we'd probably have to drive out of the DFW Metroplex during morning rush hour, darn it!) Alpha put Kasumi to sleep about halfway there. Even at this early hour, there's no way I could unload a body from my trunk at one of the main terminals without attracting attention. I drove around the parking lots until I found one close to a main terminal with no noticeable traffic. I went and checked out a luggage cart and walked back, carefully looking for cameras in the garage area. The only ones I saw had no view of my car. I unloaded Rei, her bags and the activation box onto the cart, carefully arranging her so it looked like she was sleeping naturally. I rolled her into the terminal (not going far enough to encounter security), giving 'Shhhh, she's sleeping' hand gestures to the one couple I passed. I moved her into the waiting area, woke her with a phone call to Alpha, and while she was still much too groggy to notice anything, I helped her into a seat, set her bags next to her and wheeled the cart away to return it. I returned the remote activator to the trunk, started the car and while driving back into the airport traffic loops, I woke up Kasumi with another call and a gentle shoulder shake. "Wake up. We're here, Kasumi." I pulled into the pickup area not far from where I left Rei and waited in the car as I sent Kasumi into the terminal area to look for her. After about 5 minutes, Kasumi emerged, pulling a small suitcase and leading Rei Ayanami out to our car. I got out and introduced myself. "Hello, Rei, I assume? I'm Frank, and I guess you already met Kasumi. How was your flight?" "The flight was without incident." She looked at my proffered hand briefly, then proceeded on to get into the car. While that may have been par for the course for Rei, especially at the beginning of the series, Kasumi was shocked. Unfortunately Rei was already in the car before Kasumi could react. "Don't worry, Kasumi. She's probably just tired from her trip." I put her suitcase in the trunk as Kasumi joined Rei in the back seat. Kasumi was still speaking quietly to her as I got back into car. " ... be polite, even if you're tired." As I pulled us out of the airport, I tried some small talk. "Well, we're about an hour from home as long as we don't hit any serious traffic. So what are you reading?" "An aircraft design manual." The drive back home was equally as thrilling. Rei did her best to ignore our polite questions, trying to focus on her reading. I think I saw her looking at me in the rearview mirror a couple of times, but I can't be sure. When we got back to the house, I held the car door open for her and gave her my hand to help her out of the car. She finally looked at me as our hands touched and she jumped a little. I gave a silent cry of "Yes!" as her implant was finally triggered and her eyes glazed over a little. She regained her composure when I left her to pull her luggage out of the trunk. Inside the house, I introduced her to her fellow residents and showed her which bedroom was hers. This third-floor room had a sky theme, with walls painted sky blue with scenic paintings of distant mountains and clouds and the like. I gave her the tour of the rest of the house and struck up a conversation, finally dragging out that she intended to learn to fly and pilot anything and everything she could get a license for. ------- Compared to the other ladies, Rei was slow to develop. She was very quiet and reserved, preferring to spend her time reading or doing computer flight simulations to normal human interactions. Some days, the only time we saw her was when she showed for meals. Kasumi interacted with her more than most since she assigned Rei's chores around the house and was the only other Japanese native in the house. I made sure I interacted with her at least once a day, but it was difficult to find excuses to do so. After a few days, I just came out and told her that she needed regular human interaction, and if she wouldn't spend time with other people, I would find her and make her do something with me every day. Some days we just talked. Some days, I took her to the game room and we played Ping Pong or Pool or even console games together. I'm not sure she liked the idea to begin with, but I think she saw me as an authority figure that needed to be obeyed. I'm pretty sure that after a week of my attentions, she started looking forward to my visits. After three weeks, she had enrolled in a local flight school, which occasionally interrupted our daily fun time, and she started looking for me when she was available. She didn't talk much, but she would often stare and every so often she'd even blush. One of my favorite things to do was to accidentally brush against her or lead her somewhere by the hand. Any physical contact seemed to guarantee a blush. One day I drew her into a conversation about what she wanted as opposed to what other people wanted her to do. It turns out she actually enjoyed flying, but didn't really have many other experiences to compare it to. Okay, okay, I already knew all this, but I didn't think it would be so hard to draw her out of her shell. So I started making Rei come with us once a week when we went out for a group activity. Sometimes it was a movie or play, sometimes it was bowling, sometimes it was a weekend afternoon picnic. Everyone but Rei had fun with our first swim party. She just swam a few laps then toweled off and went inside. Once I realized this, I fetched her back outside with my arm wrapped around her. She was dressed in a low-cut one-piece suit which offered no protection from skin contact across her back and shoulders. Once we were back outside, I declared to all present, "Behold. Rei is guilty of leaving the pool area before she had any fun." Picking her up in my arms, she looked startled as I said, "She is sentenced to a good dunking as punishment." And I jumped into the pool with Rei still in my arms. She actually gave out a small shriek as we re-entered the pool together and went underwater. We re-surfaced, only to find ourselves under attack by waterguns and soaking wet spongeballs. Unlike myself, Rei didn't try to retaliate, but she did deliberately use me as a human shield, and I was told afterwards that she was smiling as she did so. Myself, I enjoyed feeling her small breasts and hard nipples pressed up against my back, and I received much teasing when I exited the pool with a tented swimsuit. Well, not teasing so much as offers to help relieve my distress. The next day when Rei sought me out, she actually initiated a conversation. "Frank, may I ask you a question?" "Of course, Rei. How can I help you?" "How can I know when it is appropriate to ask personal questions?" "It mostly depends on how well you know the other person. The better you know them, the more personal the question you can ask. You know you can ask me anything you want." "Thank you. Do you have sex with the other women in this house?" "Uh, wow. Very direct. Yes. Yes, I do." "So you are experienced and skilled at mating?" "Ummm, I suppose so. It's really more of a question for the other ladies, but yes, I believe I am." "I wish to mate with you." Romantic, she was not. On the other hand, she was only wearing a T-shirt and shorts and her nipples were poking out hard against the thin material. "Rei, that's a ... Let's sit down for a minute and talk. I want to make sure this is what you really want." Okay, yes, once again, I was stringing her out just to make a good impression for later. Yes, I'm a jerk for playing games with a young woman's heart. A young, artificially created woman who was programmed to love me and believe she was a fictional character. We sat together on a loveseat in the upstairs hallway. I held her hand in mine, gently stroking her arm while I looked directly into her eyes. Her brain implant must have been going nuts. "Rei, have you ever had sex with anyone before?" "No, I have not." "The first time is always supposed to be special, to be with someone you really care for and who cares for you. For my part, I would be greatly honored and pleased to make love to you, but you should stop and consider if this is what you really want." "I believe you should do a more than adequate job, and you have demonstrated a personal interest in my well-being. What else is relevant?" "Emotional attachment." Despite my words, I continued to not play fair as I ran the tips of my fingers up and down her arm. "Sex isn't simply about enjoyment, it's also an emotional investment in your future with the other person. Maybe not all the time, but the first time should include that expectation. So the question is, do you want to continue spending time with me if we do this?" Actually, I'm not sure how much sense I was actually making. I think I was trying to be a horny Hallmark card or something. I was moving my face closer and closer to hers, so that we could feel each other's breaths. Her eyes kept looking away and down, then back at mine, where her pupils would expand and contract with whatever internal conflicts she was having between her libido and emotions and intellect. After a few seconds, she responded by moving forward and kissing me. It was a simple and inexperienced kiss, but full of promise and desire. I took her in my arms and we sat there in the hallway, necking for what seemed like hours, but was actually less than 10 minutes. My hands explored her body slowly, tracing patterns on her back, cupping her breasts and running through her hair. Her hands were hesitant and unsure. She clutched me to her initially, then began inexpertly trying to duplicate my own actions. I eventually broke off the kiss and took her in my arms, carrying her up to her room on the third floor. Our make-out session continued as I held her, so I moved slowly, careful not to bump into anything. When we finally reached our destination, I lowered her to the bed and knelt before her on the floor. I quickly pulled off my own shirt and then batted her hands away from her own shirt. "Let me. I'll do my best to make your first time as special as I can." She was wearing something similar to the traditional Japanese schoolgirl sailor suit, but with a below-the-knee skirt. I started by slowly and carefully removing her vest and necktie, keeping our eyes locked the entire time. Her body was young and fresh and clean and perfect. I moved up to kiss her again as I pulled her blouse free of the skirt and move my hands underneath. This time when we kissed, I pried her jaw apart with my tongue and explored her mouth, then stroked her tongue with mine, drawing it into my own mouth. My hands were busy cupping her breasts and delving under the bra. After a couple minutes of this, I pulled back slightly and started unbuttoning her shirt. With Kara, I had started by avoiding her extra-large breasts so she wouldn't think that was my main focus. With Rei ... Rei was living in a house where most of the women had larger breasts than her own B- cups (only Daria was smaller). So with Rei, I started by focusing on her breasts. She needed to have no feelings of inferiority from her own physical attributes, so I made sure she understood her breasts were a source of great pleasure for both of us. After a few minutes, I moved on to unzip and pull off her skirt, shoes and socks, leaving her clad only in her panties. For a few minutes, I played with her body as a whole, licking and exploring every crevice and possible erogenous zone I could find. As I was stroking her pussy through the thin panties, I said quietly, "Rei, I want to make sure you're as ready as possible, so I'm going to give you some special attention before I take your maidenhead." Eating out a virgin is always a treat given its rarity. And this was the first time it had taken a few weeks to get into the pants of one of my artificial women, so her vaginal flavor had matured from tasteless and bland to the normal flavor of a mature teenager. This was actually one of the reasons I was willing to wait rather than pressing my suit right off the bat. I slid the panties down her legs and set them aside, turning my full attention to her mound of Venus. Rei had not shaved at all, but her pubic hair was fairly sparse, failing to hide her lips at all. I carefully pulled the fleshy doors open to reveal the prize inside. Her inner lips were swollen and damp and her clit, about the size of a pea, stretched out trying to shed its covering of skin. I fixed the sight in my memory, then started with a long, slow lick from bottom to top, eliciting a small gasp. I went back down and licked my way inside the channel to her womb, slowly working as deep as I could. I spent another minute feeling it all out, stretching it slightly, then swapped my fingers for tongue and moved my oral attentions up to her clit. As soon as I fastened my lips around her clitoris and sucked, she seized up, crying out loud while her pussy walls clenched around my fingers, wetness flooding my hand. Ah, a first orgasm always feels special, but I was far from done. I kept working her clit with my tongue and lips and her pussy with my fingers until she went over the top again, this time wrapping her legs around my head and shoulders, trying to pull me into her depths. When she recovered, I stood up and started removing my pants. "Rei, are you ready for the next part?" She slowly focused her eyes on me. "Yes, please continue. This has been very enjoyable so far." I pulled out a condom from my wallet and told her to watch as I rolled it onto my very erect penis. "Next time I'll want you to do this." She dutifully watched me apply the condom and her eyes never left my cock as it bobbed up and down while it approached her slit, looking very small and tight at the moment. I moved her legs up onto my shoulders as I positioned myself to enter her. "Ready?" My question was ignored as she continued to stare at my rod fascinated. I rubbed it up and down her cunny, dipping the head in the copious fluids she was producing. Her body tensed slightly as I slowly pushed the head inside her body. She relaxed as I moved back and forth, working my way into her a little more with each small thrust, widening her until I split her hymen. A small hiss of pain escaped her lips, and I held still. "Rei? Rei?" She finally looked up at me. "I know that hurt a little. Let me know when you want me to continue." It only took a moment of me teasing her nipples for her to relax a little and reply, "Please proceed." Her pussy was exquisitely tight and hot and smooth as velvet as I started fucking her properly, pumping slowly and shallowly at first, then faster and deeper as we went along. Before long, I was in danger of shooting off, but somehow I held off long enough for her to climax again. I collapsed on top of her, trying to neither crush her nor pull free from her. When I regained my senses, I started placing little kisses around her face until her eyes re-opened and focused on me. "That was very pleasurable. I understand why the others enjoy it so much." "I'm glad. I can go again in a few minutes if you like, but I'll have to get another condom." "I would like to clean up right now." "Of course. Please, allow me." I pulled free of her, scooped her up and carried her into the bathroom. The condom slipped off along the way and I let it fall messily to the floor. Not good for the carpet perhaps, but I didn't care at the moment. I placed her on her feet in the tub, got in with her, started the water and, once it was hot, switched on the showerhead. She was watching me intently when I turned back to face her. Her expression was unreadable, but her nipples were hard little bullets sticking out from her chest and her pussy continued to drip profusely. She stood impassively as I took a washcloth and soap and tenderly cleaned her from head to foot. When I reached her vagina, I dipped a finger in her juices and brought to my lips to taste. She shuddered while watching this display, and when my fingers returned to her pussy, she grabbed my hand and held it there, using my fingers to rub herself to another orgasm which squirt out vaginal fluids all over my hand and the bathtub. When I had finished with her, I handed the washcloth to her and, looking at her quizzical expression, said, "Now it's your turn to clean me." She started with brisk, efficient strokes, but before long she was exploring my body inch by intense inch as the chemical fireworks lit up her brain. She avoided my penis, now erect again, until she had done the rest of my body. When she started stroking my cock and cupping my balls in one hand as if weighing them, I said, "Lick it. Taste it." She rinsed off any soap on it and tentatively touched the tip of her tongue to my urethra. She ran her tongue down the length of my penis and back to the end while she held it in one hand as if it were a loaded gun. "Kiss it. Hold in your mouth and suck on it." It was an odd blowjob: innocent and naïve, precisely exploratory, inexpert but intense. She didn't swallow, but instead, when I warned that my ejaculation was near, caught it in her hands and tasted it afterward. "Thank you. Do you feel clean enough?" She gave me another of her odd, blank looks and nodded. I turned off the water and we toweled each other off and re-dressed. It felt a bit awkward when I kissed her goodbye and told her I wanted to do this again. Her response was a flat, "Yes, I will have to speak to the others about your schedule." ------- And just like that, Rei moved into my rotating schedule of women, although it was a few days before she accompanied me to bed again. Maybe I should take this opportunity to point out that I am not a non-stop sex machine. After my late-morning romp with Rei, I didn't have sex with anyone 'til evening the next day. Hopefully my nanite treatments are significantly extending my life, but as a more definite and immediate side-effect, they returned my sex-drive to about where it was when I was in my early 20's. I could usually come up to 5 times a day, but that doesn't mean I didn't get mentally tired. I tended to take a day or so off from sex at least once or twice a week. I still enjoyed spending time with my ladies during my downtimes -- which was actually part of the whole point of creating full personalities and histories for each of them -- but the sex was not constant. Heck, I had half a dozen side projects in the works in the lab going on at any given time to distract me. (Well, Alpha and I had the side-projects. None of them would have been possible without Alpha and/or her nanites. Plus half of the project ideas were hers too.) So anyway, Rei didn't accompany me to bed again for another 3 days. ------- Kasumi had made us a wonderful Japanese dinner of fish and rice and some wonderful sauce of some kind, and these little fried, folded pieces of dough that I don't know what they're called and ... well, it was tasty, even if I didn't entirely know what I was eating. Actually come to think of it, I'm not really 100% sure it was Japanese-style food. But not the point. Good dinner. After dinner, we didn't have a group activity planned, so I played pool with Jane while Daria read and Kasumi and Kara played a Mario Brothers game on the Wii. Rei watched me play pool and played the winner (Jane). We all spent a couple hours talking and playing various games, and I eventually announced I was heading up to bed. No doubt acting in accordance with their secret schedule, Kara and Rei broke off from their current games and accompanied me upstairs. I often wanted to ask how they worked it all out, what happened when I wasn't available on a given night, did they have methods for resolving disputes, etc. But I never asked. On the way upstairs, I asked Rei, "Are you sure you're ready for this? I mean, sex with more than one person?" She looked at me and kept on climbing the stairs. I looked at her and felt a strong hand cup my bottom. Kara was right behind me urging me on. "Come on, sport. She may be quiet, but she's a very determined young lady." "Sport? Never mind ... I just wanted to make sure she wasn't being pressured into someaaaahhh!" I was cut off by Kara picking me up and slinging me over her shoulder. She kept one hand firmly on my ass as she carried me to my room. When we entered, Kara flung me down on the bed next to Rei, who was already stripped down to her panties. "See?" Kara said as she started pulling off her own shirt. "Rei knows what she wants." "So she does," I admitted. "Well ladies, what do you want to do tonight?" I lay back and watched Kara strip. Kara didn't respond verbally, instead she just watched as Rei reached over and started stripping off my pants. By the time Kara was nude, I was naked from the waist down and Rei had started to settle herself onto my very erect cock. I stopped her and pointed out that I needed a condom. Kara, who didn't have to worry about pregnancy herself, agreed and got one out of my bedside table. She rolled it onto my very happy penis and gently picked up Rei by her hips, carefully maneuvering her into coitus with me. "Rei, say thank you to Kara," I teased her. "Thank you, Kara," she said as she began bouncing up and down, running my cock in and out of her hot, velvet-smooth vagina. "Maybe I can thank Kara too?" I asked. "But how can I possibly do so when only my mouth and hands are free?" She smiled and I stuck my tongue out as she settled herself down on top of my head. I happily put my tongue to work, exploring the familiar folds of her pussy as my hands reached up to stroke her breasts. After a minute or two of my smothered happiness, I noticed other smaller, more tentative hands join me in massaging Kara's bountiful bosom. I felt my cock get even harder, if that was possible, as I tried to picture the scene in my head. I moved one hand down to rub Rei's clit, which set her off for her first orgasm of the evening. She froze up for at least half a minute, her pussy walls clamping hard on my cock. It was way too soon for me to come though, so I just enjoyed the feeling. Though my ears were somewhat muffled, I heard Kara say, "My turn" as she raised herself off my tongue. Smiling up at her, I asked, "And what is your preference, my lady?" She put herself on hands and knees and wiggled her ass at me. I sat up, carefully dislodging Rei and gave her a kiss. I whispered into Rei's ear, knowing that Kara could still hear us, "Go sit in front of Kara and spread your legs." Leaving the slick condom on, I knelt behind Kara and placed my rod into her oh-so-tight pussy. As I started fucking Kara with a slow, deliberate pace, I watched Rei put herself in position for Kara to lick her out, which she did with gusto. Rei showed no hesitation or worry as she experienced her first bi- sexual intimate contact. As I sped up my pounding of Kara, Rei started climbing to her next orgasm too. This position lasted about 5 minutes before Kara started a long, drawn-out screaming orgasm, her cries setting off Rei as well. I pounded for another minute before I let loose into the condom myself. Once we all recovered, I extracted myself, removed the used condom and, as I was getting a fresh one, said, "Switch places, you two." My erection never flagged as I put the new condom on, and, by the time I turned back, Rei had her ass up, her hands on Kara's breasts and her tongue in Kara's quim. Again, no hesitation on Rei's part. I reseated myself in Rei's pink gash and started pumping her up again. I could occasionally hear Kara murmuring instructions to Rei, like "Now suck on the clit" and "Lick up and down the labia." This time I think I lasted a good 20 or 30 minutes, during which time the girls switched positions two more times. And since each switch was prompted by an orgasm, that gave them ... hmm... 4 for Kara and 5 for Rei? After my second come of the night, we all snuggled together for a good night's sleep. ------- Outside of the bedroom, Rei gradually moved into the position of household librarian. With no real hobbies but with a strong desire to learn, she could most often be found relaxing in the library or, if the weather was pleasant, outside curled up with a book. She rarely read fiction, instead preferring books about science and engineering. Within a month of her arrival, she had begun working towards a pilot's license, and was planning to eventually start taking aeronautical engineering classes. ------- By this time, I had taken all of the ladies down to the nanite vat to give them overnight checkups (while unconscious and in secret, of course). Alpha and I had decided that we should have a general check-up and maintenance routine for the ladies of 2 to 4 times per year. Kara would definitely be a 4-per-year minimum given the extensive modifications we made. As it turns out, this was a good plan. We caught a tumor growing on Kara's ovaries and some nerve degeneration in Kasumi. Neither had progressed very far and both were easily fixed, but the point is that the bodies were not as perfect as we had hoped. Or put another way, the bodily perfection and modifications had their price. We discovered that Daria's natural metabolism was not sufficient to deal with eating pizza 5 times a week at school. Alpha's nanites cleaned up her increasingly greasy skin and weight gain -- neither problem was very noticeable yet -- and starting working on how to adjust her to avoid this problem in the future. (Jane had taken up running as a hobby/exercise and was doing fine.) I also had Alpha specifically check out Jane's implants. Jane was sexually insatiable, seemingly rapidly turning into a sex addict. Although we confirmed she was receiving exactly the same hormone stimulations as the others, she was still reacting much more strongly to the brain-prodding, so I had Alpha adjust her settings down by about 30%. As a result, she was still a very horny young woman, but was able to keep it under control ... still becoming gradually more kinky though. It also made me wonder if I was becoming a sex addict too. But while sex was a major activity and goal for me, it wasn't my only or even central goal. The technology and planning and creativity were what I enjoyed more than anything else. The sex was a close second to my geekiness. Speaking of geekiness, I had also decided who to create next: Rogue ... the classic comic book Rogue, that is. You know, the one with the big 90's hair? Well, I'm not a hair stylist and neither are the nanites, but big hair or not, that's the version and era I was creating. Rogue was going to be a test case for a minor new influence modification. Alpha had been studying how memories were assigned their importance in the human brain. Why some things are so vivid and important to us while other things are shuffled off to relative mental obscurity. Theoretically when a memory was moved from short term to long term, Alpha would be able to determine its strength. This would not induce actual forgetfulness or blank spots in memory, just how positively or strongly a memory was viewed. Thus all positive memories and reactions to me would be enhanced and all negative ones would be reduced in importance. In theory, at least. For example, she would care less about me sleeping with the other women and care more about the associated stories of my sexual prowess. If successful, we could apply this feature to all our character creations during our next check-up. Other than that, Rogue would have close to Kara's strength and toughness, but not the sensory enhancements or mutant absorption powers. As for her status as mutant superhero and bringing her into the fold, I'll admit I'm a sucker for tradition: what's the most traditional result when two superheroes meet each other for the first time? ------- Chapter 7: Rogue Disclaimer: Rogue/Anna Marie is owned by Marvel Comics and is used here without permission for entertainment purposes only. All artificial persons herein are based on characters owned by their creators, not the author. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogue_(comics) Dramatis Personae: Frank _____ - Lead character, inventor of Alpha Alpha - First A.I. in existence Kasumi Tendo - artificial woman based on character from Ranma 1/2 Daria Morgendorffer aka Daria Morgan - artificial woman based on character from Daria Jane Lane aka Jane Lannister - artificial woman based on character from Daria Kara Zor-L aka Power Girl aka Karen Starr - artificial woman based on character From DC Comics Rei Ayanami aka Rei Ayanami Ikari - artificial woman based on character from Neon Genesis Evangelion Anna Marie aka Rogue aka Anna Marie Raffen - artificial woman based on character From Marvel Comics Author's Note: I'm going to write this chapter a bit differently. It will shift between the points of view of Rogue, Power Girl and possibly other characters, but not Frank. But if you've read the previous chapters, you should be able to pick out what's happening behind the scenes fairly easily. Also note that I'm taking this version of Rogue from a few years back in the comics. Over the past decade, her powers have varied between being powerless and almost all-powerful, from being randomly out of control to being completely under her control. So I'm using what I consider to be classic Rogue. (See notes at the end of the previous chapter.) I regained consciousness on the floor in an unfamiliar hallway ... entryway. Front door maybe. Stairs, I can see other rooms. Looks like a big house. The last thing I remember was Kurt had found some kind of genie lamp. We were all sure it was a joke or a trick of some kind, so no one objected when Logan grabbed it and wished for a box of Cuban cigars ... Which suddenly appeared in front of him on the ground. Now understand, I don't trust magic ... but if this was real... I took the lamp and wished. "Ah want mah mutant power to stop. Ah want to be able to touch people Ah love without hurting them anymore." When I saw the genie's expression, I knew I had made a mistake. Then I blacked out. When I came to, I sat up and looked around. It was dark outside and I only had moonlight through the windows to see by. It looked like there was a circle of scattered dirt or ash or something around me, but I couldn't tell what. Then a light came on at the top of the stairs and a blonde woman in a loosely tied robe stepped out, saw me and jumped off the second story landing, charging towards me. I tried to fly, to jump into the air to avoid her attack, but I fell flat on my face. Kara Frank and I had enjoyed ourselves pretty thoroughly a couple hours earlier. Tonight I had him all to myself and we had played a few rounds of 'hide the salami', talked a little while, then gone to sleep. Just good, clean, all-American fun. Around 4am, his TV turns itself on, flashing red and his computer, Alpha, starts saying "Intruder Alert" real loud. I don't know if the others are getting the same message or not, since the walls are pretty soundproof, but I don't think so. (My hearing in this world isn't anything like it is at home, but it's still better than human.) Frank wakes right up, grabs his little earpiece and takes control of the situation. Gotta love him. I know I do. "Alpha, status report." I can hear something faint from his earpiece, but can't make it out. "Kara, one person in the entry hallway. Appeared with no apparent forced entry. Go!" I start out, but before I reach the door... "Kara! Robe?" Oops. I'm stark naked. While I'm sure the girls would appreciate the view, I'd rather not show off to a burglar. While I grab my robe, he says, "Don't hurt him, we'll probably need to hand him over to the police." There's a brief pause, and he says, "Sorry, her, not a him." I ask, "Is unconscious all right?" as I rush out, not listening for a reply. When I reach the landing overlooking the entryway, I see a woman standing in a dark circle on the floor below me. She's maybe in her late 20's or early 30's, has long brown hair with a skunk-like streak of white in the front and has a gorgeous super-model's figure. She's wearing a yellow/green jumpsuit of some sort with a leather jacket. If I didn't know better and if the outfit showed more skin, I'd think she was a super-something. (Super-ladies ... heroes or villains, love to show off some skin.) But there's no time to waste anyway. As I jump the landing, she looks like she's leaning forward and overextends and falls on her face. I'm on her before she can get back up. Rogue So, I can't fly for some reason and fell flat on my face. Before I can get up, the blond amazon is on top of me. At least I'm still strong enough to throw her off. I stand up quickly, in time to see her still embedded in the stairway where she landed. Oops, she's naked under the robe, which is now mostly shredded. And she's really stacked. I mean, us X-Ladies are kinda known for our 'healthy' figures, but just one of her breasts is as a big as my head. If I'm exaggerating, it's not by much ... she might even beat She-Hulk in a hot & hard body contest. And she's gotta be some kind of superpower, cause getting knocked through the stairs didn't hurt her and she looks angry. This is gonna hurt. Kara The skunk lady has superpowers, which I don't realize until she throws me off of her and into the stairway, which actually almost hurts. I think it actually scraped up my skin a bit. The robe gets pretty shredded, but I don't really notice that til a bit later. Instead, I get right back up and launch myself at her, fist first. I try not to hit too hard at the beginning because I don't want to kill her, but she takes every punch I throw and shrugs it off. Eventually I'm going almost all out and she's finally showing some signs of going down. She doesn't really seem to know how to fight. I mean seriously, who takes the time to pull off their gloves when they're in the middle of a fist fight? And if she had to remove them to use an ability, a basic rule would be 'Don't wear gloves!' Then she actually tries to feel me up during a fight? I pick her up and get ready to throw her through the front door when I hear Frank yell at me from behind, "Kara!" Rogue So the blond boob lady gets up out of the smashed stairs and starts punching. Normally, I'd be wiping the floor with her. I mean, she's maybe as strong as Beast, who just isn't in my weight class. But I can't fly and my speed is all off. I'm not at normal human strength at least, but there's no way I'm at my full Ms Marvel strength either. I try to talk, but she doesn't seem to notice and I can't say anything because she keeps hitting me. Not hard enough to hurt ... at least, not at first. But her punches get harder and harder, 'til I'm feeling them. I decide it's time to cool her down a bit, power-wise, and pull off my gloves. She's picking me up to throw me when I touch her skin and ... nothing. No surge or memories or powers. My mutant power is gone! And what bad timing. Before I go flying, a man's voice from behind us says, "Kara! Please don't destroy our front door. Who is she?" And, thank God, she stops. She's still holding me above her head, one hand grabbing the front neckline of my jumpsuit, one holding my crotch. She shakes me a bit and says, "Well? Who are you?" I gasp out, "Can ya put me down? It's kinda hard ta talk like this." Blondie says, "If you try anything, you'll regret it," and she carefully puts me down, feet first. "Ah'm called Rogue. Where am I?" I look around as I talk. Blondie is bleeding a little from scratches on her back and arms, but she obviously isn't hurt much. And I don't know if she's noticed that she's showing off her goodies to everyone ... or maybe she just doesn't care. We've apparently attracted a small audience of girls watching us from second floor railing, but I ignore them for now. The man who was talking behind us is naked except for his boxers. He looks to be about my age, in good shape and pretty cute. He says, "Rogue?" like I'm lyin' to him. "Rogue, like the ... hmmm..." and he starts looking at me all weird. He walks around me, lookin' me up and down. Then he kneels down by the remains of that weird circle of ashes I woke up in. "Anna Marie?" I kinda jump at that. "Where did ya here that name?" "Is it your name?" I'm kinda hesitant now. Maybe he's telepathic. Can you hear me thinking at you? No response. CAN-YOU-HEAR-MY-THOUGHTS? The professor and Jean get mad when I yell my thoughts at them like this, but it does get their attention. But still no response. So probably not a telepath. For some reason I can't stop thinking about how good he looks. I try to shake it off. I finally answer, but with a question. "Who are you?" "I'm the owner of the house you're in. Uninvited, I might add. Now please, I'm trying to be patient and courteous ... we haven't even called the police yet. What's your name?" "Anna Marie Raven." He leans in close and whispers to me, "I'd be willing to bet Raven wasn't the family name you were born with, was it? Something you got from Ms Darkholme?" I'm getting a bit scared at this point, but you wouldn't know it by my libido. Does he smell nice too? I can't really smell anything specific, but I'd swear he smells like sex. He continues in a normal voice. "Why don't we all calm down a bit and you can tell us your story, if you don't mind. Then we can decide what to do with you." "But Frank, she broke in!" says the blonde boobie. "The security cameras say she just appeared. I think she's kinda like you, in more ways than one. I want to hear her out." He looks up at the ladies looking down at us from the railing. "You can join us or not, your choice ... though if one of you could bring down an extra robe for Kara, that would be greatly appreciated. I think you'll need to take the back stairs like I did." He's looking at the smashed staircase. I'm pretty sure they could get up and down it without hurting themselves, but he's probably right. Better safe than sorry. About a minute later, we're all in a sitting room of some kind. An Asian girl handed blonde boobie - Kara, was it? -- a new robe and starts cleaning her scrapes with a clean cloth, but Kara's still hovering behind me like I'm a demon in disguise. I suppose to be technically fair, demons have disguised themselves as me before, but it's not like it's a common occurrence. Jane So Daria and I are sleeping peacefully -- and let me tell you, sleeping with Daria's lively nighttime elbows takes some getting used to -- when someone bangs on our door. Loudly. I mean, come on! It's some o'clock in the morning that has until now been entirely theoretical, mythical even. But I wake up enough to hear something loud happening downstairs. I shove Daria enough to make sure she's suffering right alongside with me, put on my robe and trudge out into the hall. Kasumi and Rei are both out there already, looking over the railing to the entry hallway. It sounds like there's a fight going on, which turns out to be exactly the case. Kara is playing Power Girl with a burglar or something ... a sexxxy burglar. (Dammit. I gotta keep this in check. My hormones have been totally out of control even since I arrived in Texas. Been making a conscious and successful effort to keep them mostly in check recently.) The stairs are kinda smashed up and there are big dents in some of the walls. I'd say Kara's gonna really hurt this chick, but she seems to be holding up pretty well. Or at least Kara is the only one bleeding. She looks kinda scratched up on her back, and her robe is all shredded. I hear Frank from somewhere below us stopping the fight. Darn, I was hoping for some oil or jello wrestling next. The new girl says her name is Rogue. Has a pretty thick southern accent too. Frank calls her Anna Marie like he knows her. Something weird is going on. Beyond the obvious, that is. Still, we head down the back stairs to join the group and watch the fun. Kasumi stops off for an extra robe and some stuff in the bathroom. When we get down there, Anna Marie Rogue, or whatever her name is, is sitting in a chair in the den with Kara standing behind her looking at her like she wants to jump her ... and not the good kind of 'jump her' either. I finally get a good look at her and realize her weird hair color wasn't just a trick of poor lighting before. For some reason she bleached part of her hair in front so it's pure white. Weird. She doesn't look goth or punk. She keeps looking at Frank, then away, then back at him. Awww, isn't that cute ... she has a crush on him! I guess he is kinda looking pretty scrumptious right now in just his boxers. When he sits down, you can see his johnson poking out the leghole, and I don't think he's noticed it yet. Looks to be at half- mast. Maybe he likes watching catfights. Kasumi pulls off Kara's shredded robe and starts cleaning her scrapes up. Kara's obviously trying to be a tough chick, trying her best not to cry when Kasumi sprays each one down with disinfectant spray before applying a bandage. But if you watch closely, you can see a little wince each time. Kara Ouch, ouch, ouch. Darn that spray really, REALLY stings. That's the trouble with being mostly invulnerable. When you actually do get hurt, you aren't used to it. I'm sure my eyes are watering. Dammit, I'm Power Girl. I'm one of the toughest two women in the world, side-by-side with Wonder Woman. And this damn little spray bottle is almost making me cry. At least I'm behind Anna Marie Rogue ... I think I'll just call her skunk lady. Maybe not to her face, but it seems to fit, visually at least. Anyway at least she can't watch me wincing. Shoulda thrown her into the stairs, see if she likes being tortured with Lanacane. And Kasumi's done. Thank you God, she put the spray can away and I didn't cry. Just some bandaids and we're done. So, what's skunk lady been saying while I've been suffering in silence? Blah, blah, blah, doesn't know what happened. Blah, blah, woke up here. What the hell is an X-man? And they found a genie? Is she ... oh no, she isn't ... she is! She's giving Frank the look! Dammit, now I really want to pound on her some more. And now I have to make myself focus on her, because I just noticed that Frank's wiener is poking out of the leghole of his boxers and if I let myself, I'm sure I'll just stare at it and ignore the prisoner. I wish Kasumi would notice. She'd blush but have no problem pointing it out to him. Rogue So I'm sitting here, being interrogated with a naked hot chick watching me from behind and an audience of women nearby on a couch, and I'm getting horny? This makes no sense. Well, fighting sometimes gets me worked up, but not like this. Maybe part of my problem is that everyone is nearly naked. My arrival got them out of bed, and I think half of them sleep naked or something. Not that I'm especially into girls, but they are nice to look at. Frank says, "So you wished to be free of your mutant power. What was your exact wording?" I think for a moment. "Ah said, 'Ah wish mah mutant power would stop.'" "So let's parse that a bit. You didn't wish for your power to end or not exist or be removed, you wished for it to stop. So you were sent somewhere where it wouldn't work. That makes sense." He has a nice deep, smooth voice. When he talks to me, it's like my clitty vibrates a little with each word. Oh god, his penis is poking out of his shorts. How embarrassing. And he hasn't noticed. Let's see ... don't stare ... circumsized ... not fully erect, so it's gotta be over ... say, 7 or 8 inches at least. "Did you say anything else? There must be a reason why you were sent here specifically." I refocus my thoughts back onto the topic. "Uhh, not really. Ah just said Ah wanted to be able to touch people ah love without hurtin them anymore." "But you didn't wish for anyone you love to go with you. So you were sent somewhere where you'd be able to find..." He lets the sentence trail off, and I can feel myself blushing. What a situation. Part of me wants to flirt and vamp it up. Part of me wants to run away. Part of me wants to cry. And he finally noticed his 'exposure'. He doesn't blush, but he does grab a throw pillow and uses it to cover his lap. I close my eyes and try to get myself under control. Frank starts talking again. "The bad news is that you're now in a world where superheroes and superpowers are fictional. We have no way to get you home. If anyone comes after you, the odds are good that their powers or devices won't work right here and they'll be trapped too. "Kara is in the same boat as you ... kind of. She's a superhero in her home dimension too. If she's a good basis for comparison, our laws of physics and reality don't allow for the more exotic weirdness that may exist in your world." "The good news is that I have experience helping people displaced from their homes. I have plenty of room and can probably create an identity for you in this world. Since we don't know you as anything more than a fictional character, there may be trust issues to begin with..." Here he spoke a bit more loudly; I opened my eyes and saw he was addressing everyone. " ... But everyone here has their own experience with losing their friends and family and having to start over. Right? So we'll try to be understanding and make her feel welcome." Okay, I've gathered myself a bit. Time to look a gift horse in the mouth. "Please don't take this the wrong way, because Ah really appreciate your kindness after Ah showed up so abruptly. But Ah think somethin else is goin on here. You haven't even asked what mah mutant power is or who the X-Men are. If this really is another world, and one without mutants or powers on top of that, there's no way y'all could know anythin about us. Y'see Ah'm thinking that maybe this is all just a trick of some sort." He gets a weird little smile on his face that worries me a bit. Puts me on edge. Then he stands up, adjusts his boxers, discards the pillow and crooks his finger at me. "If I could crave your indulgence for a minute, I'd like to show you something to answer your questions." He starts walking to the front stairs, then abruptly changes directions and takes me to another, smaller staircase in the back of the house. I can feel myself fighting off a blush. Stairs weren't my fault. I didn't start the fight. Kara, the blonde boobie super-lady, now redressed in a fresh robe, is following us closely. Regardless of what he said, she obviously isn't ready to trust me yet. Frank takes me up to a room on the third floor which is full of long white boxes on deep shelves along two walls, with bookcases on a third and reading lamps and chairs and a table set up in the middle. He pulls out one of the boxes, opens it and pulls something out. On the table in the center of the room he tosses down an X-men comic book in a plastic bag with a cardboard backing ... with what is obviously a drawing of me on the cover. I can feel my jaw dropping to the floor. "The Uncanny X-Men is a popular comic book series that has branched out to include half a dozen other X-Men-related series and miniseries." He slaps three of the long boxes. "Each of these boxes is full of X-Men and related comics, including..." He goes digging into another box and comes out with a small handful of Rogue comics. " ... your own miniseries." I haven't touched any of these yet. I think I'm afraid to do so. "You ... you called me fictional ... this is what you meant." "Yes. I don't know how accurate the stories and characters are, but you're welcome to read them all." He walks up next to me. "I know this is a lot to take in right now, and I'll give you some time to think and adjust. But if I can emphasize one positive point..." He reaches out and touches my face, cupping my cheek ... and just leaves his hand there. There's no rush of energy or memories, just the touch of warm flesh. I haven't felt this since ... since ... the Savage Land with Magneto? And how long ago was that? I lose myself in the feeling of flesh-on-flesh and almost miss him talking to Kara. "Her mutant power let her absorb other people's memories and powers when she touched their skin. She couldn't ever come in contact with another human being without hurting them. Until now." He pulls his hand away and I'm suddenly crying. This is too much too fast. He sees me crying and hugs me. "It's okay," he's saying. "You need time to process this. It's okay. It's ... tight..." I'm hugging him back, feeling his bare flesh. Not feeling him up, just touching his skin everywhere I can reach. I feel Kara grabbing my hands, prying me off him a bit and suddenly realize I was squeezing him harder than I should have. She may be superstrong, but he obviously isn't. I jump back away from him, saying "Sorry, sorry bout that". He coughs once and says, "No problem. No harm, no foul. Are you hungry?" All of a sudden I realize I'm starving. It's only been six hours or so since my last meal, but I feel like I haven't eaten in a month. My stomach growls loudly. He grins. "To the kitchen." Kara Darn it, now I almost feel sorry for skunk lady. It's sounding like she may be stuck here with no chance of going home. Frank touches her face and tells me about her mutant power and how it has ruined her life. And now she's crying. Dammit, now I officially feel sorry for her. Still, feeling sorry for someone and trusting them are two different things. I'll have to read some of these comics later, see what she's like. While I'm glancing at the covers of some of the comics on the table, Frank started hugging her. He's too nice sometimes. And it looks like he's having trouble breathing. I pry her arms off him, trying to be gentle. The last thing I want to do is have her think I'm trying to start another fight with Frank in the middle. (Although at the same time, I have to wonder if he might get off on it.) So he offers food and we're off to the kitchen. For once, Kasumi wasn't psychic enough to predict that someone needed food, so we're scrounging for our own breakfast at 5 am. I'm able to pull Frank aside for a short whispered chat. (I hope Rogue doesn't have super hearing.) "So you're really going to just let her move in? Just like that?" "Well, it's up to her, but I think she needs our help more than you did." I give him a look. "Why, that's amazing. I never would have realized there was a parallel between my situation and hers. But seriously, there's something about her I just don't trust." "That's fine, potentially good even. An added level of 'just in case' for safety. But don't let it mean you refuse to give her a chance. Now why don't you go get dressed?" "Why don't you?" He looks down at himself. I think he actually forgot he was walking around in his undershorts. He actually blushes a little bit. Rogue I see Frank and Kara whispering with each other while I'm eating my eggs and toast. They're obviously talking about me, and I can't say I blame them. I should just leave, get out of their hair. But where would I go? Plus there's something about Frank that just makes me want to spend time with him. Actually probably a couple of things about him. And among other things, I need to put on some clean underwear. My panties must be soaked through completely. Which suddenly makes me realize I have no clothes but what I'm wearing right now. We don't carry our drivers licenses or credit cards or much of anything when we're suited up, so I have nothing I can even use to buy new clothes. So it's either steal what I need, beg for it on the street or see how far my hosts' generosity extends. Frank speaks up and says, "Anna, we're going to go get dressed. Help yourself to anything in the kitchen. If you'd prefer, there's a TV and computer in through there," and he points off to his right. "We'll be back in a few minutes." Then he grabs Kara by the arm and pulls her with him out of the room towards the back stairs. Having wrestled with her myself, I know there's no way he could force her if she really didn't want to leave. At this point, I've inhaled twice as much breakfast as I normally do and decide I need to stop eating. I get up and start wandering around the house. I find his TV and turn it on to a news station while the computer is booting up. Some of the faces are familiar -- both reporters and subjects of the news stories -- but there's nothing about mutants or the mutant threat or even an Avengers Watch segment. And the date. It's almost 10 years in the future, but looking at things, I think their technology is behind ours at home by at least that much. Once I'm online, I start doing searches -- I've never been a computer whiz, but I can do basic searches for information. I start out searching for X-Men references. There are links to something called Marvel Comics ... wikipedia ... is that a movie series? And cartoons? And Anna Paquin, while cute in her own right, looks nothing like me! I search again for mutants? Some movies and ... well, the references are all over the place. The actual human mutations I find reference to are either sideshow freaks or articles about human evolutionary theory. Kara Frank assured me that Alpha would keep an eye on Rogue, so I reluctantly agreed that maybe I shouldn't spend the day in a borrowed robe. I brush my teeth, shower and dress in record time. Well, not really. Record time for not having any superspeed at my disposal. I find Rogue on the computer in the entertainment room. She's searching for "Avengers" for some reason. After I've been watching her quietly for a minute, she turns to face me. "Ah know ya don't trust me, but Ah didn't come here to cause trouble. Ah didn't even choose to come here." "You showed up inside our front door. That's not a coincidence." "No, Ah suppose it's probably not. But that doesn't mean Ah know why or what it means." She looks away from me as she says that. She's hiding something. And she's ... blushing? Rogue As I answer her, I'm trying not to think about what Frank said ... about the second half of my wish -- "Ah want to be able to touch people Ah love without hurting them anymore." No one I knew came with me for the trip, so that means the people here are ... are ... touchable. I'll leave it at that for now. We stumble through another few minutes of conversation. I find out that we're just outside Fort Worth, TX ... who the other girls in the house are ... that Daria and Jane go to college ... that Kasumi is taking junior college courses and will probably move to a real college in another year or two ... and that Kara is on vacation, but won't say from what. Our stumbling conversation ends when we hear noises coming from the kitchen. We investigate to find Frank cleaning up after my breakfast. I blush a little, feeling guilty that I didn't think to do that myself. What is wrong with me? I don't blush. I don't cry ... not where anyone can see me. It's like my heart races every time I see him. Maybe it's just because he touched me. I move over and help him dry the pans and plates and silverware. And every time he hands me a wet dish, I try to brush his fingers, and every time I do, my heart jumps and my pussy gets a little wetter. I don't know if this is love or not, but I really want to jump his bones. I'm pretty sure he's sleeping with Kara, and I don't want to break them up or anything ... but I'm almost past the point of caring. Which is RIDICULOUS! I've only known him for an hour or so, and I'm ready to jump into bed with him? Maybe he has a secret mutant pheromone power, but he seems like such a nice guy. After we finish, he gives me a tour of the house, with Kara tagging along of course. It's not as big as the X-Mansion, but it is pretty big. When we get to the exercise room, Kara asks how strong I am. I reply that I am not nearly as strong now as I was on my home Earth. She challenges me to pick up the barbell, which is seriously loaded down. It must be 500 lbs or so total. I can lift it fine, but it takes actual effort. Just a couple of hours ago I could have tossed it around with one hand without a problem. This drained power level I'm at will take some getting used to. They have a new pool in the back yard with a hot tub, a nice brick privacy fence around the 2 acre backyard, and a small area set aside for an oriental- style garden Kasumi is planning out. He explains that his basement is off limits normally, but that everyone gets a tour when they first arrive so no one has nightmares of mad science down there. Half of the basement is full of computers. Me, I'm used to the idea of one really big computer, not 30 smaller computers linked together. The other half of the basement reminds me a bit of Hank's lab. "I'm working on theoretical nanotechnology applications," Frank tells me when I ask what he's working on. "My first success was nanites that can clean clothes. Not practical unless you're willing to spend $10,000 per cleaning, but it worked as a great first test." He takes me upstairs and shows me a bedroom on the third floor. It's hard to describe. I feel like I'm on an impressionist version of a tropical island. Bright and cheery, but not oppressively so. There's even an odd metal sculpture with palm fronds that look like they used to be sawblades. Frank tells me this is my room if I want to stay for awhile. The bed is king size and there's a nice size closet and a door that connects to a shared bathroom. It's probably twice as big as my room at the X-Mansion. "Later this morning, we'll take a trip into town and buy you some clothes and essentials. Do you want to rest or clean up or anything?" Suddenly, I feel filthy and smelly. I know I shouldn't smell too bad, but I really want some fresh panties and a bath or shower. Frank asks Kara if she can loan me a change of clothes for today. Kara obviously isn't thrilled at the prospect, but she leaves to go to her room. Her stuff should fit me, but will probably be a bit loose. Frank takes a close look at me. I suppose I'm probably a bit unsteady at the moment. He says, "I'll let you clean up, but..." He pauses and moves close to me. "Are you all right? Can I help you somehow specifically?" He's so close I can smell him. Or ... well, he's doesn't actually smell of much of anything I can place, but it feels like he smells like sex. I want to grab him and stick my tongue down his throat. He puts his hand on my shoulder ... just a friendly reassuring gesture, but it's almost too much. I hug him firmly (no crushing like before) and I can feel tears start to well up in my eyes again. Dammit. I see Kara coming back in the room, clothes draped over her arm. I defiantly give him another squeeze, then let him go, trying to surreptitiously wipe my eyes before they start dripping. Kara Darn. I was trying to decide if I should get angry or not when I walked back in to find her hugging Frank, but she's crying again. Not streaming tears or anything, but definitely crying. It's getting harder and harder to dislike her. I just hope she isn't this weepy all the time. I suppose she's just emotionally vulnerable right now. I sigh. I don't think Frank has noticed the tears yet, so I guess I'll have to do the sisterhood thing and help her out. "Frank, out." He looks at me quizzically. "She needs to strip and wash up. Out." He smiles a bit and leaves. I look at her critically. "All right, strip and let's get you cleaned up." "Ah can wash mahself just fine." "I'm sure you can, but I figure we can have a woman-to-woman talk." I put the clothes down on the bed and started pulling off her leather jacket. Reluctantly she let me and started hesitantly unzipping her yellow/green jumpsuit. "I guess it's obvious I don't trust you. Frank's willing to give you the benefit of the doubt, but he's a very trusting person. And I don't want him to be hurt." At this point she's sitting on the bed trying to pull the skin-tight leggings off. "Ah don't understand. Ah thought you and he were..." "An item? Well, it's ... it's complicated. As far as I go, I've known him since he was 10 years old, and we've been sleeping together since he was 21. But I can't stay here permanently, so we're not exclusive. I just feel ... protective of him. He tries his best to help anyone he meets who needs it." "He does seem very nice," Rogue says as she frees her first leg. "All the girls in this house have lost their families or their homes or both, and half of us can't pay him rent, but he lets us all stay here and pays for our food and clothes and such." I help pull her other leg free. She does have great legs. Really smooth and long and beautiful. Nice rack too. Smaller than mine, of course, but her chest has got to be a C cup at least. I leave her to remove her underwear in peace and take the spare toothbrush and toothpaste I dug up into the bathroom for her and start the water running so it can warm up. When Rogue comes into the bathroom, she's naked and trying to cover up her tits and pussy. I avert my gaze a bit out of politeness. Still, I catch a look at her in the mirrors though as she wraps up modestly with a towel. Bare pussy lips with a thatch of brown hair above, and it looks pretty wet. I briefly wonder if she's bi. If she is, I could actually end up with a playmate with whom I could be energetic. As she quickly brushes her teeth, I continue. "If you want to sleep with him, and he wants to sleep with you, go ahead." Shockingly, my teeth are not clenched as I say this. "Just understand that if you hurt him, I'll hurt you much worse. And you should also understand that he won't be exclusive to you." She's silent at this for a moment as she brushes. After she spits, she says, "That doesn't seem right. How can you put up with him sleeping around?" "He's not. Not really. I know he loves me, and I know he loves the others. It's just ... I think he can't bear to hurt anyone by refusing them." I don't tell her that if I was actually able to stay here permanently, I'm pretty sure I could make him exclusively mine. Or at least primarily mine, since I actually don't mind inviting pretty ladies to join us in bed sometimes. "The others?" Oops. "Ya mean he's sleepin with the other girls here too?" "Sometimes. He just ... he wants to make us all happy. And we all wanted to sleep with him." "And all of y'all are okay with this? With him sleepin around on y'all?" "It's not like it's a secret. We even worked out a schedule to share him among us. And on the upside, he is a wonderful lover. I've had more orgasms with him than the entire rest of my life combined. He always makes sure we're satisfied. I can get wet just thinking about it sometimes." I pause for a moment. I really didn't mean to spring this all on her at once, but it's only fair that she knows what Frank's situation is before she tries to jump him. "Get to know him. Get to know the other girls. This isn't an orgy-house, and we aren't sex-crazed lunatics. Well ... maybe Jane is, but don't tell her I told you that. "Rogue ... Anna, I'm not trying to be rude or ask questions that are too personal, but with your power ... are you a virgin?" I can see her start to get offended, then backtrack to get herself under control. "No, there was a brief time when Ah was in the Savage Lands when ... well, it's none of ya business, but no, Ah'm not a virgin. Although at the same time, Ah must confess that it was a brief and unsatisfyin relationship with an untrustworthy man." "Well, if you want to experience a good time in bed, Frank is worth your time, even if you're not willing to share him in the long run." What the hell am I saying? I don't actually want them to get together, do I? My time with Frank is already too limited without adding another woman to the mix. I suppose I just can't stand to think of someone never having had good sex in their life when Frank is available to show them what a good tumble is like. I sigh to myself. Maybe if she's trustworthy I can convince her to stick around so Frank will have a good bodyguard when I get pulled back home. Yeah, that's the rationalization I'll use for now. "Hop in the shower. I'll go grab some shampoo and a hairdryer and brush for you." Rogue Kara leaves and I step in the shower. I love it when the shower is nice and hot and steamy. I've always enjoyed showers, enjoyed the pulse of the water on my bare skin. Since other people couldn't touch me without being hurt, I liked to close my eyes imagine that the water pulses were the touches of men ... Gambit mostly, but also Erik and Cody. Oh Gambit. I love to think about Remy. He was a gorgeous man, so dark and romantic and mysterious. And he chased any and every pretty lady he ran across. I honestly don't know how many times we broke up and he wormed his way back into my personal life. It's not like I had a whole passel of men chasing me. And he could seem so sincere. Does Frank chase after all his women or do they chase him? Kara interrupts my train of thought when she dangles bottles of shampoo and conditioner over the curtain. I grab them and thank her over the hiss of the water. As I start soaping up, I realize I'm still really horny. I lean up against the shower wall and start my well-learned play of fingers. With one hand, I play with my nipples, stroking and pulling and pinching their hardness. With my other hand, I start stroking my labia, teasing the lips open slowly. I wish I had my vibrator, but with the shower pulse directed to my cuntlips, my fingers work just as well. As I rub my little clitty and run my fingers up inside me, I keep thinking about Frank. His bare chest. His dick sticking out of his shorts. His touch on my cheek. I feel unbelievably tight and hot right now. I imagine that it's his fingers pinching my hard nipples, his dick thrusting inside me. I remember how he felt and how he smelled and imagine how good he would feel pumping himself in and out of my vagina. The memory is so vivid it's like it's still happening right now. My clit is as hard as a dick as I rub my clit hood back and forth over it, faster and faster, with my other hand plunging my fingers ... his fingers ... his dick in and out of my pussy. I remember his eyes and he how looked at me ... and I move over the top. I try to muffle my cries as I come, but I don't know how successful I am. With the noise of the shower, I'm pretty sure she'd have to have super hearing to pick it out. I know this was a quickie, mildly satisfying at best, but at least it takes the edge off. The rest of the morning passes less dramatically. I meet Daria and Jane and Kasumi briefly, then they're off to classes. I meet Rei, who seems a little standoffish and sad. So when it comes time to go shopping, it's just Kara and Frank again. It takes a while before I get into the groove of shopping today, but it finally dawns on me that I can now wear the clothes I had to avoid before. I can have bare arms, show off my belly with a cut-off. I can wear short-shorts! True, it's not even Spring yet, but we're close and we're in Texas. I give in to the reality of the late-winter weather enough to pick up a few warm outfits, but Spring is just around the corner. Plus, the house seemed warm enough I could probably get away with bare arms and legs if I stay indoors. Showing off potential flashy clothes is unbelievably fun, especially with Frank watching me. And I know I'm turning him on, since he keeps having to 'adjust' his pants. And yes, I get pretty wet too. By early afternoon, they're having to hold me back from getting too racy or slutty with my selections. In the end, I have a good mix of clothes, and most of them show off my skin. Come to think of it, I'm going to have to develop a tan, or I'll burn pretty easily. The skin I'm now showing off is pretty pale. Back at the house, I spend some more time doing research about this version of Earth. Then I put on a pair of short-shorts and a Southern-style tied-up shirt (y'know the kind, like Daisy Duke would wear, mostly unbuttoned and tied so that it shows off your belly) and start searching the house for active bodies. I should really be obsessing over how to get back home, but seriously? I have no idea where to even start. I spent over an hour trying to find this world's version of the Professor or Reed Richards or Tony Stark or Hank McCoy or Stephen Strange or even Hank Pym. The trouble is, the only references I can find are for fictional characters. And everyone pretty much assures me that if I go around claiming to be who I am, I'll be locked up in a looney bin. Which makes sense because I AM a fictional make-believe, non-existent comic book character in this stupid world! Damn. So right now? Not going to stress about it. Going to relax and enjoy the lack of a cursed mutant gene. They have a pool and hot tub, so as soon as the weather warms up enough, I'm putting on the string bikini and finding someone to slather my body with suntan oil. For obvious reasons, my thoughts turn to Frank, but at the same time I'm keeping myself open to anyone worthwhile, regardless of gender. Sure, I prefer men, but given my traditionally limited options I can't be too picky. Kara I'm still thinking about Rogue as I work out. I need to get to know her better before I can trust her. I plan to start reading through some X-Men comics later, but I refuse to trust them to be completely accurate. For instance, with my own comics, I estimate that about half of them are inaccurate in some significant way. Actually, I should be careful about those estimates. Some things that are wrong are probably correct in being wrong. After all, the comics are rated for children while my real world is not. Don't misunderstand me -- I don't sleep around and I've never been raped. It's just that some of the villains we fight are not ... PG villains. Batman has half a dozen criminals who tend towards R or X-rated displays. Hell, a couple of his Poison Ivy stories actually made me blush. Giganta, who I have fought more than once, only wears underpants half the time. Lobo should just be banned from existence, plain and simple. It's not only the villains either. Guy tends to tell the filthiest jokes I've ever heard. Fire almost got kicked out of the league when she posed nude for Playboy. Hal has probably slept with over a hundred women, half of them in costume, though I will admit he doesn't kiss-and-tell like Guy. I know Wally is a peeping tom. And I can't even count the number of times my costume has been shredded into indecency. So allowing for reasonable story editing for children, maybe a fourth of the comics I read are inaccurate in some significant way. Which means while the X-Men comics may provide a good general background for Rogue ... Anna ... I don't think I can really trust them to give completely accurate information. Not for the first time, I wonder how our adventures end up in comic books in this world. But it's not without precedent. I've heard Kal talk about a dimension where he's the only super-hero and everyone else is just comic book fiction. Either that solo-Superman stays out of the news or this is a different world. I've also occasionally wondered if this world has a Monitor and if he'd contact me if there was a problem. But back to Anna. If I can get to know her, and if I trust her, it would be nice to have someone to leave behind as a bodyguard for Frank. I notice I've stopped calling that a rationalization to myself. Occasionally I wonder if I'd be willing to stay here permanently myself. I don't know if I'd admit it to Frank, but probably not. I miss flying. And the guilt of not being there to help my friends, to protect those who are threatened by things beyond their comprehension or ability ... the guilt would eventually eat me up. I think my ideal situation would be to be able to take Frank with me to my universe, though I'm not sure how he would feel about that. Still, my current situation is nearly ideal. My vacation time here is a wonderful break from the grinding pace of super-hero work ... wonderful periods of relaxation. And Frank is almost my ideal man. He's a great guy and really attractive, both physically and mentally. He just needs a decent degree of invulnerability to help keep him safe and he'd be perfect. Well, that and to never take another woman to bed unless she's for both of us. I give myself a mental shake. Where was I? Anna Marie. Get to know her. How many reps am I up to? Darn it, I lost track. I must have topped 100 by now. In general, lifting weights without someone to spot you is dangerous. But since these weights are way too light, compared to what I'm capable of, I'm not really worried. I change positions and start curling the barbell. One, two, three... When I get to 23, I notice that Anna is watching from the doorway. She's changed into one of her new outfits -- short-shorts and a tied-off men's shirt. She definitely looks healthy, but we've got to get the girl some sun. I invite her in and keep counting. She sits down across from me and watches while I work up to 50. "So, Anna ... do you work out?" "Some. Normally, we get a lot of exercise in the Danger Room. But Ah don't suppose y'all have such a thing here, do ya?" "Probably not. What's a danger room?" She stumbles around descriptions for a couple minutes. Sounds similar to the training room on the JLA satellite. She has a Southern Belle accent that gives her a special charm and is only occasionally hard to understand. "Ah suppose Ah need to start some normal exercisin' to keep in shape since Ah won't have the Danger Room or the Brotherhood to give me workouts while Ah'm here." "Do you have anyone at home who could track you down and take you back home?" "Yes, Ah think so. There are people, mutants and non-mutants, who can go from one dimension to another. And we have people with powers and magic and computers that can find people. But Ah'm worried about the lack of ... umm ... powers here. If mutant powers and such don't work properly here, then Ah don't know if they'd be able to come here. Or if they do, if they'd be able to leave afterward." "I'll admit I have some of the same worries myself. That someone might come looking for me and get trapped here with me. I told a couple people about my recurring visits here, and I added notes to my files not to come looking for me in situations like this, but a lot of my friends and teammates don't really..." Think things through, is what I want to say. "Check databases or such if they think someone is missing or abducted." Anna laughs. "Some of your friends don't look before they leap, huh? Ah know some people like that too. Logan can be like that a lot of the time. But Ah guess when you have an indestructible skeleton and can heal any injury, ya don't tend to worry much about getting hurt." Now it's my turn to give a small laugh. "Sounds like a good person to have in front of you." We talk for a while, trading stories back and forth. After 15 or so minutes, I realize she's checking me out. She's a lot more subtle than most men, I'll give her that, but whenever I look away, she eyes me up. And not just my chest. Breasts, legs and, I think, ass are all subjects of her interest. I suppose my current clothes may be a little showy. My workout outfit consists of a sports bra and exercise shorts. That's it. No panties, but these loose shorts shouldn't show a camel-toe. I have mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, I'm used to it. Pretty much every guy I've ever met, gay or straight, wants to check out my admittedly awesome rack. Most women too. (One of the reasons I like Frank so much is that he really got to know me before I first caught him checking me out physically.) On the other hand, it's really annoying. Seriously, even if I am the ultimate female (and that's doubtable, given the size of Diana's fan club) that doesn't mean I want to offer up my body for public leering. I used to get upset at people for gawking at me, but I've kinda mellowed out over the years. I eventually admitted to myself that my costume is fairly provocative, so I can't really blame people for being overly attentive to it. As for my current gawker ... why not have some fun? I'm not an exhibitionist, but I might get a kick out of teasing Rogue a little. I set the barbell back in place, stand up and stretch, throwing out my chest at her. "Come on. We can keep talking while I get cleaned up." I keep the chat going while we head back to my room. I have a definite alpha female moment when I almost point out that my room is right next to Frank's. I'm asking her about this Ms Marvel character she mentioned as I strip off my bra and shorts. I try not to be obvious about it, but I'm making sure she has a good long look before I step into the shower. I deliberately don't pull the curtain as I scrub down. Anna's obviously a bit uncomfortable, but not enough to leave or even look away from me. My nipples are hard from the teasing, but I refuse to play with them. That would be a little too much right now, I think. I speak loudly to be heard clearly over the shower. "So this Ms Marvel, who you are certain is not Mary Marvel, is still in your head? Do you have conversations or something?" "No ... well, yes, sometimes. Most of the time, no, Ah'm in control. It takes a lot of ... of mental trauma for her to be able to take control." "She takes control of you sometimes?" "It's pretty rare, but yes." "What's she like? What should we do if she shows up while you're here?" "Ah don't think it's likely. There's nothin' here to trigger her. There's no one here that she knows that she has to rescue. And there're no telepaths around to mess up the inside of my head and let her out." "Humor me. What if it happens?" "Just in case? Ah can see that. Well, she's a super hero too, but more of a military one. She worked a lot with SHIELD, which is kinda a super hero and villain policing and spy agency. It's a government thing. If she shows up, just try to make sure she understands the situation in this world." My quick shower is basically finished, and I toy with the idea of asking Rogue to scrub my back for me. But we're interrupted by a knock at my door. Rogue I'm not sure if Kara is an exhibitionist or just really secure with her own body. Or maybe she's like Ororo. She'd just walk around naked all the time in the mansion if she could. I enjoy the show Kara's putting on for me, but it feels odd to watch her. I'm just pretending that we're in a gym or something. It's not really working, and I can feel myself start to get a little moist. Frank interrupts by knocking on her door. I answer it. "Heya, Frank. Kara's in the shower, but Ah think she'll be right out if you wanna wait." "Actually, I'm just here to collect you two to help me get dinner ready." He yells into the bathroom. "Kara! Meet us down in the kitchen. We need to get dinner started." She yells back. "I'll be down in a couple minutes." Frank crooks his arm like he's inviting me to dance or something. I play along, hooking my arm into his. Our bare arms touch and I get a big rush. I don't notice anything else until we're in the kitchen and he disengages. I suddenly realize he was talking to me and I try to play back what he just said. Something about... "Dinner?" "Yes, do you have any preferences?" My mind is a blank. Food. Yes, I eat food. Ignore my diamond-hard nipples and the muscles on his arms. I must like some kind of food in particular. Delay. "What do y'all have?" He opens up the fridge. "Ground beef, chicken breasts, pork chops ... we have ribs, but there isn't time to fire up the barbeque to cook them properly." Aha! I remembered something. "Got anything for chicken-fried steak?" "Hmmm ... no proper steaks, but we can bread and cook the pork chops. Is that close enough?" "Sure thing." He pulls them out. "I think we'll have to go canned or frozen for veggies, but I thought we could make some fresh biscuits. You ever make biscuits?" I rack my brain. Brains, actually. There's more than one person in this noggin of mine. I'm sure I must have at some point, but my head is still slowing down from its spin. A response isn't needed as it turns out. He's already mixing flour and baking powder and butter and such in a large bowl. In about three minutes, he's turned out the dough? Batter? What do you call uncooked biscuits? "Here, you wash up and knead and I'll turn the oven on and get the baking sheet." I am rather inept when it comes to kneading, apparently. He quickly comes to my aid, flouring the countertop and ... oh god ... he's standing behind me, holding my hands, using them ... showing me how to roll out biscuit dough. Again my mind is simultaneously a million miles away and completely focused on my hands. Not on what I'm doing, but on the fact that he's touching me ... we're touching ... and nothing bad is happening. I move my ass back a bit so that his next move forward runs his crotch into my butt. As it turns out, I'm not the only one who's excited right now. I hear Kara clear her throat behind us. I freeze up guiltily, but Frank keeps trying to teach me how to make biscuits, only acknowledging her with a nod. "Hey, Kara. Go pick out some kind of veggie. We're having pork chops cooked up like chicken-fried steaks and biscuits. And gravy, of course." He pulls some dough off his hands and leaves the biscuit kneading to me. I keep moving mechanically. My hands and back suddenly feel lonely without his touch. I try to shake it off and continue. Dinner comes together fairly well and is ready after about 45 minutes of work. The other ladies are home by then and we all sit down together for a "family" meal (though someone has to go and pull Rei away from her books to come down to eat). It's pretty tasty, even the biscuits which I was sure I had pounded into dense cement. As we're finishing up the meal, Frank says, "For anyone who's interested, I've chosen an evening game specifically with Anna in mind. Twister!" Daria Judging from how they interact over dinner, it seems like Kara and Rogue have achieved some form of detente. Which is good and should reduce repair costs around the house if she stays. I have to wonder if it's an 'alpha female' thing, how Kara was bristling at Rogue earlier, a rival female intruding on Kara's natural habitat. So did Rogue roll over and off her throat in submission to Kara? I try to hide a grin at the thought. We're clearing our plates off the table when Frank announces that he's chosen Twister for tonight's game. It's an odd choice, given that I'm pretty sure he hasn't slept with Rogue yet. If not for her, I'd say it was a prelude to our weekly orgy. As it is, when I notice Jane fingering her pants button, I whisper to her that with Rogue here, I'm pretty sure it's going to be a 'clothes on' event. She pinches my ass with a scowl, to which I respond by blushing a little and turning away from her. I notice her reaching up to snap my bra strap -- a new 'trick' she's started doing recently when she's annoyed -- and dodge her attack. Jane's really changed a lot since coming here, and I'm not just talking about her constant horniness. She's more confident in herself, personally and socially. Her snarky, anti-establishment self is still there, but Jane is becoming more assertive and a bit more aggressive. I think I've changed some too. I'm less willing to self-impose my status as social pariah. I don't think I'll ever be a true 'alpha female', but at least I feel a bit more mature. Anyway, self-reflections aside, we argue that we need time to let our food settle, so most of us sit down to watch a movie. Frank lets Rogue ... or I suppose we're calling her Anna now ... pick the movie, and she chooses X-Men. Y'know if she's supposed to be the same Rogue from the movie, it really doesn't match up. Our Rogue is apparently as strong as Kara (or nearly so) which the movie Rogue isn't. And the movie Rogue has some sort of power- absorption ability which our Rogue lacks. Plus she's a lot younger in the movie and doesn't have the streak of white hair. While most of us watch the movie, I watch the people at the same time. Kara staked out her place next to Frank as expected, but Anna ends up on Frank's other side, which isn't expected. Anna acts oddly. She obviously wants to hold Frank's hand or something, but starts out sitting as far away from him as possible. Frank pulls her over close to him. She stiffens up briefly, then relaxes into him, leaning against him for a moment before straightening up to pay attention to the movie. Kara, who has an arm running behind Frank's back, barely gives Anna a glance ... but to anyone watching for it, her lack of reaction seems intentionally nonchalant. Jane, Kasumi and I are on the other couch, while Rei is in the other room reading an engineering manual of some sort. Kasumi and I sit side-by-side and Jane lies down on top of us, with her head in Kasumi's lap. Kasumi obliges her by playing with Jane's hair through most of the movie. Me, I occasionally play with Jane's kneecaps, knowing that she's ticklish there. Somewhere in the middle of the movie, Jane goes to sleep. The movie itself is okay. Not really my normal thing, but they have fun, silly action scenes. Personally, I think Professor X (Patrick Stewart) is a more attractive male lead than either Wolverine or Cyclops. Somehow I doubt my opinion is universal, since Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) is obviously supposed to be the dark mysterious anti-hero rebellious swoon-inducing male lead. Jackman was good in Kate & Leopold and The Prestige, but I liked him best in the weird reincarnation-ish The Fountain, which at least had a pretense of being an intelligent movie. I briefly entertain myself by sketching out how Wolverine might be one of Tommy's incarnations from The Fountain. Oh wait, scratch what I thought earlier about Rogue's hair streak. The movie Rogue gets one at the end of the movie. Maybe she gets super-strong in the 2nd movie? Anna Paquin still doesn't look anything like our Anna though. When the credits are rolling, Anna starts complaining. "That was entirely wrong! The names were there and most of the mutations ... and Ah guess the Blackbird kinda sorta matched up ... but nothing else was even close to right!" Frank laughs. "If you think that was wrong, wait til you see the Evolutions cartoon. Tell me, have you ever thought about moving more towards a goth look?" "What? Please, tell me you're kidding." "Nope. Someone wake Jane up, and let's help Anna overcome her fear of physical contact." Is that what we're doing? I guess that explains why he chose Twister. And a fear of physical contact matches up with Rogue from the movie too. Anna gives his shoulder a little push in retaliation, which knocks him back down into Kara's lap. As Kasumi starts trying to wake Jane up nicely, I give her ass a vicious pinch. Ah, sweet payback. Jane jumps up just enough to fall off our laps onto the floor. Kara fetches Rei as Frank pulls a Twister box out of a drawer and asks, "All right, who plays first? Anna gets to play in every round automatically." Jane, groggy though she is, still jumps in first to claim a spot. "Me, I'm in. And so is Daria. You too, Frank." I wait for Kara to object, but she stays quiet. As Frank spreads out the mat, he asks Kasumi to go see if Rei wants to join us. I'm a little surprised when she agrees to join in. And so it begins. "Right hand, blue," Kara calls out. As we proceed, it's obvious that Jane is trying to contort to maximize physical contact ... with everyone. Anna starts enjoying herself when she ends up sandwiched above Frank but below Jane, with her tits rubbing up against Frank's back. Luckily I'm mostly outside their contortions when Jane cheats by licking Anna's bare waistline. Anna shrieks and collapses on top of Frank. Showing that cheaters never prosper, Jane gets pulled down in the tangle of limbs while I remain off the ground. Well, my right leg is pinned under the piles of bodies, but I'm able to maintain my contact to all appropriate color spots and am declared the winner of this round. Anna is getting into the fun of it by now and swears mock vengeance on Jane the next time they're on the mat together. Next up is Anna, Kara, Kasumi and Rei. I would have thought that Kara had a lock on this game. She's tall, flexible and strong enough that no one should be able to knock her down. Surprisingly though, it's Kasumi that wins. She's just so graceful and flexible that she can bend to reach any color objective. (She must exercise early in the morning when Jane and I are still asleep.) So when Kara and Anna try to out-muscle each other going for "left hand, red", they lose their balance and topple, knocking over Rei. Kasumi somehow bends out of the way of their flailing limbs to remain in place. Next is Anna, Kasumi and myself. By popular acclimation, Frank is drafted for a repeat performance. After about 4 minutes of twisting, I find myself in a particularly interesting spot. I'm arched backwards with Kasumi arched forwards over me, with my head pretty much up her skirt. If I turn my head to the left, I can see Frank's groin pressed directly against Anna's right breast. He's definitely got a huge hard-on, and I'm pretty sure her nipples are of matching hardness. The next call is impossible for me to make, but I try to move my foot to blue anyway. I end up overbalancing and go down ... but I topple in such a way that my face flies forward, planting itself directly into Kasumi's panties. I sneak a kiss, then try to extricate myself without knocking anyone else down. Kasumi is blushing heavily, as red as I've ever seen her. And my intimacy appears to have broken her concentration and knocked her onto her elbows and out of the game too. "Sorry about that, Kasumi. I'll be happy to make it up to you tonight if you want me to." She hides her face in her hands, but I think I can make out a slight nod. We sit together on a loveseat, across from Jane and Rei. Jane appears to have laid claim to the normally quiet and withdrawn Rei for the night, with Jane holding the smaller Japanese girl on her lap, her hands firmly holding onto her hips. Kasumi and I both move off the mat and sit together, watching Frank and Anna battle it out for the Twister championship. Rogue Oh god. I thought it was bad enough earlier when I was rubbing my titty against his pecker. Now we're alone, rubbing up against each other, with everyone watching us. I don't know why I agreed to this. It's like I'm made of jelly when he talks to me. Sure, I'm having fun -- a LOT of fun, if my nipples and pussy are any judge -- but it's just so embarrassing. I try to focus back onto the game. Gotta move my right hand to yellow. I think Frank is deliberately choosing his positions to put the two of us in intimate positions. And with my short-shorts and bare midriff, I definitely feel the attention and contact. If we were alone, I probably wouldn't object. If we were alone, I'd probably be rubbing myself on him, trying to get off. Or possibly something more interactive. A couple minutes later, we're in another interesting position. I'm on all fours and he's literally on top of me. If we weren't wearing pants, he could slide himself up into my pussy directly in this position. And if I was cruel, I could straighten up and lift him off his marks. He knows it too, but I think he's enjoying rubbing his cock back and forth against my pants too much to care. And he's doing it in front of everyone else. That realization brings me back into focus enough that when the next move calls for 'right hand green, ' I move quickly into the new position and he has to keep his legs spread and try to reach his hand over to match his left hand ... but I'm in the way. He tries to stretch over me, but ends up rolling off of me and the mat entirely. From the ground looking up at me, he says, "Congratulations, Anna. You won!" I look around. Jane has Rei on her lap and seems to be fondling her. Wow. I'm kinda speechless at that. Not that I think there's anything wrong with it, it just caught me off guard, especially as worked up as I am right now. I forcibly move my gaze away and notice Daria holding hands with Kasumi, who's blushing a bit. Only Kara is sitting solo. I stand up and offer my hand to Frank, pulling him to his feet. "Okay, everyone. It's after 10 and I didn't exactly get a full night's sleep last night, so I'm going to turn in early. Anyone who wants to keep playing is welcome to, of course." Frank seems to be the driving force of the evening activities and without him, the rest of the group breaks up. Jane Every time I see her, I am always surprised that Rei has such a great figure. I wonder if she deliberately dresses to hide it. I hold onto her hips all the way upstairs, directing her to my room first, where I retrieve my strap-on. I pull up her skirt from behind and put my hands underneath, rubbing the dildo end of the strap-on against her cunny as I start to walk her out of my room. As we go, I'm whispering in her ear. "How many times do you want to come tonight? I want to fuck you hard for at least an hour. Oh wait!" I pull her to a stop as we're leaving the room. "Do you want nipple clamps too?" I move my other hand from her waist to her breast and try to pinch her nipples through her blouse and bra. She's blushing just a little as she shakes her head. "Are you sure? I'm sure your nipples would get harder with clamps." In response, she reaches one arm backwards, pulling me forward from behind with her, moving us out of the room and away from the rest of my equipment. Once we're in her room, I start unwrapping her like a present. I kiss her skin as it appears from beneath her blouse and skirt. I suck on her toes and lick the back of her knees. I dip my tongue into her belly button. When her bra comes off, I spend a good five minutes suckling on her B-cup breasts. While I pay attention to her tits with my mouth, I pull off her panties and start fingering her, playing with her pussy hair, curling my fingers up inside of her and rubbing her clitoris. Once she's nicely worked up, I leave her lying on the bed, stand up and strip off. I check the connections, then pull the strap-on up onto my pubic mound, moving the nubs into place against my clit and the mini-dildo into my cunt. I stand up straight, with my 'penis' jutting out proudly from my pussy. "I think you need some lovin', baby" I say with a fake deep voice. She actually giggles, which is unprecedented in my experience with her. "Are you planning to just ravish me? That's not very romantic." Her hard nipples belie her disinterest, but I think for a moment. Aha! "All right, air cadet. If you want to learn how to fly a helicopter, you need to learn how to fly a stick." I remove the strap-on and she looks on with curiosity as I strap it onto her. I stand back up and reach around her shoulders, hugging her and placing my head on her shoulder, looking up at her. "Is this your first time? Please be gentle with me." Suddenly afraid she might take me literally, I add, "but not too gentle." "How do I do this?" She looks a little lost. I bend down and curl my tongue around a nipple, teasing it back and forth. I look up at her face as I caress her ass. "I want you to do everything to me that you would want Frank to do to you." She's hesitant at first, but I keep encouraging her with my tongue and fingers. By the time I'm giving the dildo a blow job, making sure to rub the inside bumps back and forth across her clit as much as possible, she seems to start taking charge a little. She lifts my head off the dildo and guides me back onto bed. There's a little bit of fumbling when she decides she wants a pillow under my hips, but before long, she's pounding away at my cunny. After we've both come twice, she gets more adventurous, moving into a doggy position then moving on to my ass. I start to think she might be more kinky than she appears when she starts to try to go ass-to-mouth. I might do that for Frank, but not for a dildo. "Nuh uh. Let's take a shower and wash it off first." She makes me clean it off and double-checks how clean it is by making me deep-throat it, a skill I have yet to completely master. I'm still gagging a bit when I feel her pull my ass up, apply liquid soap and start pounding my little brown rose in the shower too. I wonder if Frank ever ass-fucks her, or if I should tell him she wants it. Then I just relax and enjoy it. I hope she had as much fun as I did. Daria I know Kasumi well enough to know that she always wants to be clean before sharing bodily fluids, so I tell her I'll meet her in her bathroom. Kasumi always strikes me as someone special. She tends to fade into the background most of the time, but even when she's in the background, her presence brings out the best in you. Even if you aren't trying to romance her, she makes you want to be a better person (to paraphrase Mr. Nicholson). But she doesn't really ask for much of anything for herself, which means you feel the need to give her the best of anything and everything you can. I wouldn't have thought she would ever involve herself in Frank's harem -- I'm realistic enough to call our situation what it is -- but for whatever reason, she has done so, and we're all the better for it. Frank must be a master at seduction to get her. Then again, he got me ... Jane AND me at the same time. Even just thinking about Frank makes my pussy twinge and tingle. Not for the first time, I have to wonder how amazing a man he is. He seems to be a truly nice person, very generous, handsome, has an astounding personal presence, a mind-reading level of psychology and is a Casanova-level lover. I have to wonder if he can just seduce any woman he meets. I'm sure he's well on his way to bringing Anna into his bed, though I have no idea if he'll do it tonight or not. Thoughts of tonight reminds me of Kasumi. I collect my dildo and retire to her room. I strip off and leave the dildo on her bed. She's in the bathroom, naked, kneeling next to the tub, running a bath. I move up behind her, crouch down and put my arms around her waist. I feel so plain next to her. "You're so beautiful, Kasumi." "Thank you, Daria-chan. It is very kind for someone as special as you to say this." I'm shocked to realize she isn't blushing. We put on shower caps to keep our hair dry and climb in the bathtub together. Kasumi gets in first and has me lay back against her breasts. I could just go to sleep like this if I wanted to. There's such a feeling of security in her arms. Then she starts to clean me with a soapy washcloth. I don't think this is how Japanese baths are traditionally done. I think they're supposed to clean off before getting in the bath. Makes me wonder what else she's changed in her life because she moved here. I take her hand and direct her to my small breasts, using her hands and cloth to caress myself, bringing my nipples to peak hardness. Then I move it down to my cunt, where I use her to tease my nether lips and clit. I turn my head back to face her, seeking out her lips. We kiss deeply. Katy Perry's 'I Kissed a Girl' starts running through my head and I smile midway through our lip caress. I break the kiss and carefully turn around so we're sitting facing each other. I take the washcloth from her hands, add more soap and start cleaning her. I am slow and meticulous and thorough. I take each of her hands in turn and clean each finger individually. Each arm, elbow, shoulder and armpit. She watches me with a curious quiet intensity that keeps my attention focused and my libido pumping. I move to her feet, bending her legs so her feet are in my lap. Each toe is treated separately and finished with a kiss. I lick the spaces between her toes. Then each foot and ankle ... calf, knee and thigh. Now we reach the more erogenous zones. Each breast is cleaned with concentration and special attention. I carefully check the nipples with my tongue to make sure all the soap has been rinsed off. They feel as hard as pencil erasers between my lips. Her belly and pussy and next. I wish we had the room for me to dive underwater to lick her pussy, but I have to content myself with tasting my own fingers after they've been dipped in her feminine essence. We embrace and clean each other's backs. I wish I could wash her hair, but the time needed to dry it before bed would be a bit too much of a distraction so I leave the showercap on. The water is drained. We stand up, and the shower is turned on. We clean each other's ass and rinse off. We're kissing almost constantly by now, only breaking contact to turn off the water and dry each other with towels. Now thoroughly clean and dry, yet also completely soaked in our private female depths, we move into Kasumi's bedroom. Surprisingly we don't 69 that night or lick each other's pussies. Not directly at least. We hold each other, caress each other and kiss all night, using the dildo and our fingers to bring each other to climax many times, until we fall asleep in each other's arms. I would never trade Jane or Frank for anyone else, but my time with Kasumi is always special, always dear to me. Rogue If I won the game, why do I feel like I lost? Here I am, all alone in my room, while I'm pretty sure everyone else is spending the night with someone else. I know Jane and Rei are together; Jane wouldn't let go her when they went upstairs. Daria and Kasumi didn't go upstairs together, but they were whispering to each other and holding hands earlier. And if Kara isn't the prime example of a man-eater, with Frank in her sights, then I don't know ... grrr ... Okay, maybe I'm just frustrated. When I took a shower, I dug out the vibrating toothbrush I picked up earlier today, turned it on and jammed the handle up my snatch. No finesse, no imagined romance or subtle touching. I had to come NOW! Damn Kara. If Frank was here, I'd be putty in his hands. Instead I have to make do with my own fingers and cheap plastic. I feel like a slut, but at least right now I'm a slut who could touch a man without killing him. I rub myself to two unsatisfying climaxes before I fall asleep to dreams of sex. Kara I'm surprised that Frank isn't trying to get Anna into bed tonight. When I comment on it, he says, "I'm not trying tonight for a few different reasons. First, I'm the only man within reach on her first night without her powers. It would be unfair to her. Second, in order to be fair to her, I'm going to wait for her to come to me, IF that's what she wants. Third, I want to make sure you know how important you are to me. I'm not going to go off chasing every new super-heroine that arrives and abandon you." "That's sweet, but exactly how many super-women do you expect to drop by?" I say with a grin. He looks thoughtful and says, "Oh, I'm not sure. Maybe half a dozen? This house is becoming a nexus for unusual women you know. The question is, how many seduceable super-women will drop by?" I grab a pillow off his bed and toss it at him gently. He ducks the throw and tackles me to the bed. I let him do so. He just lays there on top of me, his chin propped up between my tits, staring me in the eyes as he says this. I can feel his hard-on pressing against my leg, but he's not doing anything about it. We're both still dressed at this point. "Well, whatever happens, I want you, Kara Zor-L, to remember that you were the first important woman I ever slept with. I may not have technically been a virgin at that time, but you were the first woman I ever actually made love to. If I could keep you here, I would." I can feel myself getting misty-eyed. "That's sweet." I catch myself being condescending. I still occasionally find myself treating him as if he's much younger than me. "That's more than sweet. Frank, I love you, and if I could, I'd take you with me when I go back." "I love you too, sweetheart." "Now, somehow I have sole possession of you for two nights in a row. I think that calls for a celebration. I think you need some care and attention tonight, baby." So we celebrate, and I decide to take my 'baby' endearment literally. I pick him up and strip him bare without letting him touch the bed. I carry him like he's a baby into the bathroom where I sit him down in the tub and run a couple inches of warm water. I guess he likes it, because neither he nor his unflagging, beautifully stiff penis has objected. I take a loofah, add soap and carefully clean him. When I poke a soapy finger into his ass, he splashes me with warm, soapy water, getting my T-shirt wet. My nipples poke out in sharp relief, but the shirt isn't especially white or see-through, unfortunately. I clean his cock, commenting that "Baby looks happy tonight." I give him a loving suck, and he bucks in my mouth, but I pull away. He's not getting off that easily. I drain the water, stand him up and use a towel to dry him off. I strip off my wet shirt and damp pants and carry him back to bed. I create a pile of pillows and lean back against it, with Frank on my lap. "Is baby hungry tonight?" I cradle him against my breast and he takes my nipple between his lips. He starts sucking, but quickly turns to licks and gentle teeth-scraping. My right hand finds his cock and holds it firmly while his hands start playing with my other breast. After a couple minutes, I feel the need to have his cock between my lips. And not just between my lips, but in my throat. I pull him off and position my head so it's hanging off the edge of the bed upside down. "Now fuck my face," I growl at him. He looks a little surprised but readily meets my challenge. I swallow a couple times and relax my jaw and throat. He slowly inserts his lovely dick into my mouth, probing with care. I reach up and stick a finger up his asshole, pushing him deep into my throat with a single thrust. Using my finger as a hook and prod, I start him thrusting back and forth, in and out of my face. I try to use my tongue to caress his cock, but he's started moving pretty quickly now. His hands grab my titties, using them as handles to help him plow my face. When I feel him start to come, I start sucking and at the same time, start ass- fucking him with my finger, probing for his prostate. He shoots off multiple times down my throat, then collapses on top of me. He's a bit muffled, but I can still hear him as he says, "This would be a comfortable way to go to sleep some night. You make a nice, if uneven mattress." I pull him off of me and roll him over so he's facing up. "Now it's my turn. Lick me, slave." I kneel over his face and lower my pussy onto his tongue, which jumps eagerly up to meet me. "Yeth, mam." And he gets to work. He has a talented tongue, and his hands roam my ass and tease my asshole. I wonder why he never pokes anything inside there with me? I know he ass-fucks Jane sometimes. Maybe Daria too. I'll have to remember to ask him later. For now, my thoughts start to scatter as my climax rapidly approaches. Although I lack a wide range of experience, I've never come as easily or as quickly with any other man. Or woman (and let me tell you, Diana knows how to treat a woman). After my second orgasm, I get off of him and lay back, my legs spread wide. He crawls up to meet me, his re-hardened cock swaying back and forth beneath him. He kisses me as he thrusts inside and I taste myself on his lips. For a moment, I imagine I'm somehow fucking myself as his tongue, covered with my own vaginal slime, quests deeply into my mouth. He pumps and thrusts at varying speeds for at least twenty minutes before he lets loose inside of me again. I lose track of how many times I come. It's wonderful. Afterwords, we just lay there, his softening cock in my warm, welcoming cunny. I pull a sheet over us as we drift off to sleep in each other's arms like that. I don't think of Anna again until morning. Rogue I wake up around 8, get dressed and wander downstairs for breakfast. Daria and Jane have just left for morning classes, but apparently Kasumi only has classes Monday/Wednesday/Friday. She, Kara and Rei are planning a trip into the city for clothes, books and groceries. Frank is apparently downstairs in his lab. According to the ladies, he spends a lot of time down there. Kara took me aside before the three of them left at 10. "I talked with Frank about you last night." I wait patiently. She's obviously a bit uncomfortable with the conversation. "He thinks you are emotionally vulnerable right now given your situation. He doesn't want to take advantage of you. No, that's not quite right. Frank wants to take advantage of you, but refuses to do so because he thinks it would be wrong because you're vulnerable right now." "That's ... Ah'm NOT vulnerable. Well, not emotionally. Physically Ah'm ... well, Ah'm still probably a lot stronger than he is." I think I might be extra upset because last night I was definitely feeling especially vulnerable. She continues. "Anyway, the upshot is that he isn't planning to make a first move. So either you approach him or go out and play the field." Then she leaves. I'm as confused as all hell. I don't think Kara dislikes me as much as she did yesterday morning, but that's not exactly a ringing endorsement. Why in the world is she trying to get me to hook up with Frank? After half an hour or so, I make up my mind. I go to my room, where I shower, give my legs and pussy lips a nice close shave, apply make-up, wish I had some kind of perfume, and put together the showiest outfit I can (well, the showiest outfit that's not a bikini, that is). I head down to the basement door and knock. And no response. I knock louder. I could probably break the door down, but that would send the wrong message. I don't know the specifics of the intercom system -- the different rooms are numbered and I can't find a key to tell me which one is the basement - - so I turn on the switches for every room in the house and hope everyone else really is gone. "Frank? Are ya there? Ah'd like to talk." A moment later I hear back. "Sure thing, Anna. I'll be up in a minute." I flip the switches back and sit down in the den. He pauses when he enters the room, and I flatter myself thinking that my outfit succeeded. I'm wearing high-heels, a tiny miniskirt and a tight belly- baring white baby-doll shirt. No underwear. I'm positive my dark nipples show through the thin material. Seeing him makes my heart start beating faster and my nipples perk up even more. I'm extremely nervous but determined to see this through. "Ah talked with Kara this mornin'." I stand up and move slowly toward him. "She had some advice for me, an Ah thought Ah might give it a try." I gather all my courage. I KNOW I'm way too strong a person for this to be a problem, but right now it's talking all my self-confidence to keep from running away. He starts asking, "What did she..." when I interrupt him by grabbing his shoulders and pulling us together for a kiss. I feel clumsy doing so, and he stiffens. I'm about to panic when he relaxes and puts his arms around me, turning what felt clumsy into something that feels soul-melting. I relax into the kiss too and have no idea how much time has passed when we break, resting our foreheads against each other. "You're sure you want to do this," he asks. No. Yes. I think yes. I'm all over the place emotionally, but what I say out loud is "Yes, Ah am." I never even remotely imagined myself joining what is, for all intents and purposes, a harem ... at least not of my own free will. But even as that thought crosses my mind, it fades away in a surge of lust as he takes me in his arms again. Lust and something deeper ... maybe the beginnings of love or are my hormones just out of control? I suddenly notice we're moving upstairs, still kissing. He has one arm supporting and guiding me and one reaching down under my miniskirt to cup my ass, which is tingling from the mere contact. I can feel my pussy juices already start to drip down my legs. When we enter his room, he sits me down on his bed and stands back. His look sets a new fire in my loins. He kneels down and takes my right foot in his hands, easing the shoe off. He caresses my foot and gives each toe a lick, then sucks on them like little nipples. My feet were never erogenous zones before, but now I start to wonder if I could orgasm just from his attention down there. He starts to move up my leg, licking and kissing my calf, knee and thigh. Then he switches to my left leg and starts all over again, driving me to higher and higher levels of arousal. He reaches my waist, unzipping and pulling off my miniskirt. I come loudly at the first touch of his tongue on my slit, my legs briefly wrapping around him, drawing him into closer contact with my cunt. Frank takes his time with it, exploring my pussy with his tongue and fingers. He sucks my clit, feels around inside my cunt with tongue and fingers, pulls on my inner and outer lips with fingers and teeth. He even moves down lower to lick my perineum and finger my ass. By the time he moves to my belly button, I'm moving close to a second orgasm. He grabs the base of my thin, tight little shirt and tears it up the middle to the collar which holds tight. Instead of trying to rip it the rest of the way himself, he reaches for my hands, placing them on torn halves of the shirt and silently urges me to pull. It tears easily for me. He's now examining my tits. I'm a little hesitant here, knowing that I definitely don't match up to Kara, but there's no hesitation or disappointment in his look or touch. As he plays with, suckles and licks my breasts and nipples, I come a second time. I've never been this aroused or come this easily before. It's heavenly. He moves up to my face, kissing and licking all over while running his fingers through my hair. He kisses my eyelids and licks my ears, lightly biting the earlobes. He finally pulls away and briefly dives into his bedside table for a box of condoms. He quickly strips naked, making me briefly upset that I didn't get a chance to do that for him. Putting on a condom, he asks, "Are you ready?" Silently, I nod, staring at what suddenly seems like an absolutely huge penis. I know it'll fit, because I've seen larger ones in pornos, but up close and in the flesh, so to speak, it seems way too large to fit inside me. He rubs his dick up and down along my pussy lips, making me jump and wetting his erection for entry. Then he's inside of me. I can feel him working his way up my intimate channel, centimeter by centimeter. I feel like a virgin, being split in two for the first time. When he's halfway inside me, he adjusts his angle so he's now scraping against my clitty with every movement. By the time he's fully seated in my mound, I've started what feels like a continuous orgasm. Although by this time I'm not fully aware of what he's doing, I think he came pretty quickly ... which I know by virtue of me still being alive and not dead from 30 minutes of constant orgasms. When I regain my senses, he's lying beside me, watching me and gently running a finger up and down my slit. I smile at him and pull him in for a kiss. I'm full of a calm sense of well-being and a quiet love and passion for this man beside me. He says, "I'm glad you enjoyed it, but I hope you don't pass out every time. It would limit our fun. What position do you want to try next?" "Next? Ya mean again?" "Of course. If you're up for it." Suddenly I'm flustered again. I don't have the experience to know positions. How we just fucked is the only position I know. Unless he means the acrobatic stuff from pornos? I redirect the question back to him. "What's your favorite position?" "Well, the female superior cowgirl-style ones keep me from getting tired. And doggy-style lets me get a little deeper than normal. But don't worry about being true to a style you read about in a book or saw in a movie. Intimacy and comfort are the important parts." I'm curious about the cowgirl-style he mentioned, but it would probably require me to know what I'm doing. So rather than betray my ignorance and/or inexperience I say, "Let's try your doggy-style thing." He smiles and kisses me. With one hand he starts pumping his half-hard cock and with the other, he reaches for another condom. Then he gives me an appraising look. "Give me your hand." He takes my hand and guides it to his penis, using my fingers to masturbate himself. Feeling his penis hardening under my touch was a strange feeling. It gave me confidence in myself and I could feel my clit harden in response to his cock. With his penis fully hard again, he asked, "Have you ever put on a condom?" I'm taken aback. Why would I have ever put on a condom? I suppose he noticed my confusion and said, "It's nice to do it as part of the foreplay so it doesn't break the rhythm. If you want to start taking the pill, we can forgo it, but for now, let me show you how." I'm fascinated as he teaches me how to roll a condom down onto a penis. I actually mess up the first time, tearing the base ring off the condom and have to try again. Once it's on, he has me get up on hands and knees, with him kneeling behind me. It does seem to go in deeper this time. I think I can actually feel him bumping against my cervix as he hits the deepest part of each stroke. He reaches one hand underneath to play with my clit and help bring me off. My previous overabundance of cums seems have to seriously taken the edge off, letting me appreciate the fuck more this time around. I only come three times during this fuck, which is still a million times better than my masturbatory play and a thousand times better than when I was with Erik. This round lasts a full half hour before Frank comes. I've got to get on the pill because I really want to feel his come splashing inside of me. Once we've recovered a bit, he takes me into the bathroom and I see his large, jacuzzi-style tub for the first time. He starts filling up the tub while we shower off our sweat together in the shower stall. The jacuzzi has small seats in it perfect for relaxing. I expect to be sitting on his lap in the jacuzzi, but instead Frank sits us down side-by-side. Still, it's wonderful to rest my head on his shoulder, with one arm behind him and the other exploring his body. He has some chest hair, but none on his back or ass. He obviously shaves his balls and around his dick, but there's still a thick patch of pubic hair above. Makes me wonder if someone else does that for him. It looks odd, but I bet it's nicer for blowjobs. I make little twirling motions in his body hair wherever I find it, play with his nipples, cup his balls and stroke his cock. For his part, he seems content with stroking my hair and playing with my breasts. Slowly, we both start working our way back up into fucking form. He opens a little sliding cabinet door in the wall and pulls out another condom. When he stands up in the tub, with his penis bouncing up and down in front of my face, I can't help myself and take it into my mouth. There's no way I'm getting this thing down my throat, but I try to get a feel for it with my tongue. When I pull my lips free of him, he hands me the condom, which I deftly put on without a problem. He sits back down and pulls me into his lap, facing him, and our lips meet in a kiss. His tongue pushes its way into my mouth and I experience my first French kiss as my tongue starts exploring his in return. Breaking the kiss for a moment, he says, "Put me inside of you. You get to control this fuck." Since we're in the water, I expect it to go in more smoothly than ever, but apparently the water washes away my pussy's natural juices, meaning it takes a few minutes of gradual work before I have him fully seated inside of me. For a minute, I just kiss him and enjoy the feeling of being full. Then I start moving up and down, back and forth. It's more awkward in this position, so it's slower, but that seems to make it even better. I mean, I don't come like I did before, but this seems more intimate ... I feel more connected to him. This is a slow, lazy, wonderful half hour fuck where we don't come until Frank takes over at the end and starts pumping hard, splashing water all over the place. My come matches up with his almost perfectly, making me feel like our souls touched each other. As we wind down from the climax, I tell him, "This is probably the best day Ah've ever had in my life." He grins. "Well, that does wonders for my ego. You're pretty amazing yourself." "Thanks. Now Ah understand why everyone's willin' to share you." And the amazing thing is, I really do understand. If you get a piece of a man that can make you feel like that ... well, I'm suddenly willing to share him too. And I can't help but be in love with him now. I'm pretty sure he's got to be in love with me too, at least a little bit. When we finally emerge from his bedroom, dressed and tired, we discover that we missed the workmen coming to fix the stairs and wall. Frank calls them back and reschedules for tomorrow. I'm in a fog most of the rest of the afternoon. When Kara and them get back mid-afternoon, it turns out they had a bit of excitement too. Kara It's obvious the little bitch did it while we were gone. Okay, I need to be nicer. I practically pushed them together, so it's not fair to call her a bitch. It's just that she's glowing. I swear, if this universe had any decent laws of physics like back home, she'd be literally glowing like a bonfire. I wonder if she got any special treatment, which the mere thought of instantly makes me jealous. Until Frank takes me aside, gives me a kiss on the cheek, and whispers, "Thank you for my present this morning. Maybe we can unwrap her together some time." I swear the man can make me melt any time he wants to. "Now," he continues, "what happened? Kasumi and Rei are both claiming that you saved their lives today." I give him a brief rundown. It wasn't all that big of a deal. When we were leaving the lunch diner, half a dozen teenage boys, probably gang members, started hassling us. They made cat calls and asked for dates. Annoying, but nothing threatening until we tried to walk around them to our van. The leader stepped in front of us, saying something about how it was rude to ignore them. I decided to nonviolently convince them to back off. (Hey, I was proud of myself. Nonviolence doesn't come naturally to me.) I shifted my shopping bags to my left hand, and stepped over to the metal fence they were leaning against. It was one of those fences about six feet tall with vertical decorative metal shafts every few inches. I grabbed the top of one of the poles and casually bent the top of it down. Then I stepped back to the now confused-looking tough guy and said, "Back off and leave us alone." He and his friends took off running. I bent the shaft back into place as best I could after they were gone, and we left. Not a big deal. I don't know why Rei and Kasumi were so affected by it. I'm pretty sure they've both been around violent behavior before. Still I'm glad I was there to keep things from getting out of hand. I see Rei and Kasumi whispering together later, and find out that evening that they decided to reward me. They work together to give me a wonderful evening of pampering, sex and orgasms, with me as the center of attention. It's even more special a night because those two almost never instigate anything sexual. Jane So when Daria and I get home Thursday evening, there's a lot that had been going on. Anna the Rogue got her world rocked by Frank. No big surprise there, but the fact that she's still woozy from it hours later makes me wonder if Frank out-did himself or if Anna was just really that lacking in experience. Kasumi and Rei were fawning all over Kara because she saved them from being mugged or gang-raped or something. Which also suddenly makes me want to take some self-defense courses. The day's activities makes it an interesting evening ... for some people, at least. Frank seems a little worn out, and I think he spends the night down in his lab. Maybe that's why he sleeps down there occasionally: To get away from us and recharge his batteries. Anna goes to bed early and alone, probably has a night of sweet, sweet dreams. Kasumi and Rei take Kara away, probably for a night of squishy thank-you fun. Makes me envious. Me? I actually had enough homework this week that I need to take time tonight to get it done. It's annoying but I suppose I don't need sexy fun every night. Friday afternoon when we get home, Anna is waiting for me. But she's trying to make it seem like she's NOT waiting for me. Maybe she was a super- tough super-hero chick from the universe of mutants, but right now she's trying not to bounce on her tip-toes like a nervous schoolgirl in love. "Hi, Jane. How was your day?" "Okay. What's up?" She grabs my arm and takes me off to the side. "Ah was wonderin' ... if you ... if you could help me..." She's blushing and can't look me in the eye. "Help you with... ?" "Ah ... Ah slept with Frank yesterday." "Yeah, we had kinda picked up on that, what with the orgasmic glow you were giving off last night." She blushes more. Still nowhere near how much Kasumi can blush, but impressive nonetheless. "Yeah. That was great. But Frank, after the first time, he asked me ... ummm ... what positions ... what sex positions Ah liked." I refuse to help her out with this. It's just too much fun watching her squirm. Which she is doing. She's literally squirming in place right now. "And Ah didn't know any! Ah mean, Ah've nevah ... Ah don't have the experience..." I'm starting to worry she might tear up, so I finally give in and try to help out her side of the conversation. "So do you want me to recommend some pornos so you can get some ideas? Cause despite my reputation, I actually haven't seen very many myself..." She shakes her head violently, hair flying back and forth. "Do you want me to describe different sexual positions for you to try out?" She nods hesitantly. "Ah ... Ah just ... Ah mean, he mentioned cowgirl positions and apparently Ah'd have to do it mahself and Ah don't know what to do." I wonder if I have such a sex kitten reputation around the house that she singled me out to ask. Still, there's no way I can let an opportunity like this pass me by. I start leading her upstairs ... Oh hey! The stairs are fixed. That was quick. Money talks I suppose. I can still smell the varnish though. Ugh. The formerly dented walls aren't finished yet though. Looks like maybe they're waiting for mudding to dry or something? "First thing we need to do is find Rei." "Rei?" "Yeah, she's a virtual encyclopedia. Read every book ever written." I can tell Anna's still confused, but we find Rei easily enough in the library ... which has grown considerably since she moved in. I think it'll have to expand to a second room pretty soon. "Rei!" She's completely oblivious to anything but what she's reading. I pull her book out of the way and repeat, "Hey, Rei." She blinks and looks up at the two of us. "Oh. Hello, Jane. What can I do for you?" "Is there a copy of the Kama Sutra around here somewhere? Or something explaining different sexual positions? Anna wants some education." Now Rei starts blushing. "Ah, yes. We have an illustrated Kama Sutra over here." She gets up and starts going through a bookshelf. "Good. Get it and bring it to my room." Mwuhahaha, I laugh evilly to myself. Time for some fun. I drag Anna out of the library with me to my room. Too bad Daria isn't around. "Strip," I tell her, then start stripping off myself. "What?" "Come on. You can't expect to learn sexual positions very well just by reading about them or looking at pictures." I pull on a combination leather panties/strap-on built with an 8 inch dong sticking out and a 4 incher facing inward, with massaging bumps to stimulate my clit. It feels so good to pull it into myself; not very long, but nice and thick. She still hasn't moved. Has kind of a deer-in-the-headlights look to her. "Strip," I tell her again. "Are you a girl-on-girl virgin?" "Ah ... Ah don't want ... Ah mean, sure Ah'm curious and all that, but..." "I'll take that as a yes. Come on, take it all off. You're about to lose your lesbo virginity, but don't worry, I'll be gentle." After a pause, I correct myself slighty. "Well, gentle-ish." Finally, she starts taking off her shirt. Hah! Who's the Alpha female in this bedroom? Me, that's who! (Dammit, gotta stop listening to Daria's theories on our social interactions.) Rei arrives with a couple books in hand and stops when she sees us. "Come on in and join us!" I walk over, take the books from her hand, pull her completely into the room and close the door. "Come on, Rei. I bet you can use a refresher course too. Real world experience and all. Strip down." I start unbuttoning her blouse. "What we're going to do is look at a position in the book and then try it out ourselves." "There are over 50 different positions described in the Kama Sutra." Rei protests. Well, said quietly is more accurately, but for Rei, it was a protest. I pull off her bra and start on her skirt. "Well, we don't have to try all of them today. We'll stop when we get too tired." I drop Rei's skirt to the floor and have her step out of it. I lead her over to the bed and pull them both down on either side of me. Anna is completely naked, trying to cover herself with her hands, and Rei is down to panties and socks. I take a moment to drink in Anna's body, pulling her hands away from their protective positions. Double-D breasts, at least. Dark pink nipples. A small thatch of pubic hair above shaved lips. Beautiful skin, if pale. Rei also brought along The Joy of Sex, which I set aside for now, and open the illustrated Kama Sutra, flipping through it to position #1. "Let's get started!" We stop after trying out about 20 positions. Most of them are slight variations of known positions. Not difficult. But I personally get too tired to go on after my 8th orgasm of the afternoon. Plus we need to get cleaned up for dinner. I'm not entirely sure how many comes Anna and Rei had, but it was at least 4 or 5 each and we all need to clean up. While we're cleaning up, I convince Anna to let me bleach a little streak of white down the middle of her pubic hair to match her head. Not that I have bleach on hand, but I'll definitely pick some up. Then she'll have a nice surprise for her next sexing. ------- Chapter 8: Wonder Woman & Zatanna Disclaimer: Wonder Woman/Diana Prince and Zatanna Zatara are owned by DC Comics and are used here without permission for entertainment purposes only. All artificial persons herein are based on characters owned by their creators, not the author. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wonder_woman http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zatanna There were a couple delays to be dealt with before our next women were to be brought to life, but the decision on who to animate was made well before Rogue arrived: Wonder Woman and Zatanna! The decision was made partly because we had a built-in method to bring them in due to the backstory we wrote for Power Girl. The story was that Kara was on her way to meet the other two ladies for a girls' night out when she was transported here for her "vacation". From there, it's a tiny step to have Zatanna transport the two of them between dimensions chasing after a missing Kara. As soon as the decision had been made, I got together with Kara and we prepared 'just in case' any of her friends follow her here. (More on that later.) Anyway, about the delays I mentioned. First, due to recent market "corrections" our portfolio needed some work. (As an interesting side-note, Alpha says there are now at least a dozen major investors who keep a close eye on her investment strategies, often mimicking our market adjustments themselves. Alpha has started taking this into consideration, using this ability to start small market shifts to her advantage. I'm not sure how legal their tracking of our stock movements was, but I don't really care much. Alpha can handle it.) Alpha needs at least half of her processing power to do her market planning properly, which she is unable to do when she's growing bodies with her nanites, since the nanites use from half up to 95% of her processing power. Now lest someone protest that I could just add more and/or better systems to make up the difference, I do still regularly upgrade Alpha's existing systems, but we've found that after we go beyond 32 systems, the overall processing improvement provided by each additional system drops off significantly. I think it's probably a programming limitation somewhere, but I'm not sure how to overcome it yet. The second delay was creating Wonder Woman's lasso. We certainly couldn't create a lasso that compels truthful answers from anyone held within its coils, but we could create a golden-colored rope of amazing tensile strength. Alpha was going to use a mix of nano-tubes and other materials woven to form rope strands, and braid the strands together to a degree that only nanites could. At 3/4 inch thick, 57 ft long, and with the appearance of a braided silk rope, it should have a breaking point somewhere in the 80-90,000 lb range and be VERY hard to cut. Creating this was much, MUCH easier than creating a person, but it was still a new procedure to be developed and executed. It worked out well enough that we used the same method to grow/weave Wonder Woman's outfit too. For her other equipment -- tiara, belt, and bracelets -- we bought the tiara and belt online as part of a Wonder Woman costume. The bracelets I had made custom with titanium. Since Diana actually had the reflexes and hand-eye coordination to be able to deflect bullets (with a variety of ifs and provisos), I wanted her to have bracelets which might survive such an encounter. For Princess Diana herself, we gave her the same musculature and toughness as Kara, but not her vision or hearing. She had eye-hand coordination as perfect as Alpha could build it. We gave her excellent fighting skills, including weapons, armor training and, of course, the roping skills. For her personality and personal history, we had a wide range of choices. We ended up just cherry-picking the elements from the comics that worked best for our situation. We decided that our version would have had plenty of lesbian history, but not be anti-men or a virgin. She'd be intelligent and thoughtful, willing to be a leader but also willing to let others lead depending on the situation. She's had boyfriends before -- most notably Steve Trevor -- but no solid long-term relationships with men or women. For Zatanna Zatara, her powers were completely unworkable in the the real world. Magically reshaping reality through reversed voice commands is not something that Alpha could build into her DNA or physical structure. We did at least give her all the skills and knowledge we could for magic tricks and escape artistry, along with the physical reflexes and double-jointed-ness to pull it all off. We kept her background simple too. Zatanna has gone through a few different attempts to change her, both visually and power-wise, including an old miniseries that saw her abandon her trademark outfit and alter how her powers work. She's one of the characters who frequently crossed over into the Vertigo line, known for adult weirdness and literary pretensions (and yes, it's true that not all of the Vertigo titles were 'pretensions' ... some actually were excellent literary works). Fortunately whatever any writer or artist did to her, she always eventually shifted back to her traditional appearance and powers, which is how I wanted her anyway. She normally dresses in a very sexy version of a tuxedo, with top hat and fishnet stockings. Oh, so beautiful. We kept her simple. Our version was a magical super-hero when needed, an entertainer when she wasn't needed. We left out her apprentice as an unnecessary complication. Her personality would be friendly and determined, playful and a showman. Not a virgin with men, but never kissed a girl. So with the delays and growth time, my two new raven-haired beauties weren't ready to appear until a little over 4 months after Rogue arrived. And they would probably be my last super-heroes for the time being. ------- Alpha and I were now old hands at secret character activations, and this one followed much the same plan as we did when we activated Kara. Since they were following Kara, Alpha and I decided it would work best if they showed up where she did, outside my lake cabin. Once this had been decided, I had raised the question with Kara of what we should do if any of her friends came looking for her. Most likely, they would suddenly find themselves without their normal powers in a strange version of the United States. At my encouragement, Kara wrote a note to "Friends of Kara" and we tacked it onto the door of the cabin. The note basically said that she was fine and gave a phone number to call to contact her. I reactivated the phoneline at the cabin, and we reburied the key under the PG marker on the tree. Months later, when the new ladies were ready to be born, I cleaned and dressed them in their costumes and drove them out to the cabin in the middle of the night, storing them safely inside the cabin for the time being. I also left Alpha's disguised transmitter. The next morning, I drove off to get a haircut and run a couple errands alone. After a quick haircut, I drove out to the cabin and moved them near Kara's tree marker, making sure they were not within view of the lake or road. While driving back to the house, I called Alpha and had her activate the new ladies. The end result was that Kara called me excitedly as I was approaching my driveway. "Hello?" "Hi, honey." "Hi, Kara. What's up?" In the background, I heard her say, "Yes, I'm talking to him now. Stay on the line. I'll be out to pick you up in a few minutes, but it's at least a 45 minute drive. Yes, I'll explain in a minute. Hold on." "Sorry, I'm on my cell right now too. Honey, you know how after Rogue arrived, you were worried that someone might come looking for me and get lost or stranded?" "Yeeeessss..." I drew the word out as if it had multiple syllables. "Well, congratulations! You were right. I'm about to drive out to the cabin to pick them up." "Them? How many? Not the whole Justice League or JSA, I hope." "No, just two." "Well, I'm about to pull into the driveway. Hold on and I'll drive you to the cabin. Is Kasumi there? Have her prep a couple more rooms just in case." "Just in case?" "In case their powers don't work either. In case they're stuck here for now." "Oh, yeah. It definitely sounds like that's the case. Kasumi!" Fortunately she held the phone away from her ear before she yelled. While she was talking to Kasumi, I parked and hung up my cell phone. I found Kara in the kitchen, talking to Kasumi, holding her cell phone in one hand and the house phone in the other. I took the house phone from her hand (making her jump a bit in surprise) and hung it up. I gently herded Kara to the minivan, telling Kasumi we'd be back in a couple of hours. "So, who followed you?" I asked as I pulled out of the driveway. "Diana and Zatanna." "Diana ... Wonder Woman?" "Yes." She suddenly seemed to remember that she had a cell phone in her hand. "Diana? Oh, good. Sorry about the delay. We're on our way." I interrupted her conversation. "There should be dried granola-type food in the pantry." She looked blankly at me. "You're always really hungry when you arrive, maybe they are too." "Oh, right. Di, if you and Zana are hungry, Frank says there should be dried foods in the pantry ... Good ... Okay, we're on the road, so we'll probably see you in 45 minutes to an hour ... Okay ... Okay ... We'll see you soon ... Bye." Kara closed her phone, but looked a bit uneasy. "What's wrong?" "I ... I don't know how they're going to react to all this. What they're going to think about me ... us ... all of us." "You mean about our ... umm ... loving household?" "Yeah, pretty much. And about me not being a superhero here. And ... well..." "I think I understand. This is your private vacation spot, separate from your other life. And now your other life is intruding." "It sounds terrible, doesn't it? I suddenly feel so selfish and ... and greedy ... and ungrateful. I mean, they came planning to rescue me, to help me, and I just want them not to be here." "Don't worry about it. It's a natural reaction. After all, you're only huma ... uhhh ... Kryptonian. Maybe you can view it as ... you're the host and they're the visiting guests from your old hometown." She laughed a little at this. "And what about our ... what did you call it? ... our 'loving household'? I'm pretty sure they'd be fine with it if it was just you and me, but with the harem-like atmosphere we have ... I don't know." This time I laughed a little. "Well, if they have a problem with us, then they can't join in." "Hey, lover, I'm not sure I'm willing to share you with them." "Actually, from what you've told me about Wonder Woman, I have to think about whether or not I want to share you with her, hmmmm?" She grinned. "Come on. I know you want to see me make out with the Princess." "True," I admitted. "But do you think she'd be willing to allow an audience?" "Well, maybe if you turn on your charm." "Charm? Check. But seriously, are you going to be okay?" "Yes. Well, I don't know, but I think I'll be fine." She sighed deeply. "You know, back home, there's no one I would be willing to talk to like this. Thank you." "Hey, just remember, if there are any problems with them, you are much more important. If worse comes to worse, I'll give them a wad of cash and they can go off by themselves. But I doubt it'll come to that. You, my dear, are going to be their lifeline. "First of all, they're probably going to a bit messed up without their powers, so they'll need to adjust to that. Second, you're their ticket home. When you eventually go back, you can tell your super-scientist friends and they'll retrieve Diana and Zatanna remotely or something. Y'know, using the super-science from your world to pluck them out of this one." We had actually discussed this before. She was fairly sure someone from her world would be able to grab people from other dimensions without actually having to visit the other dimensions. She stayed silent. "I think they'll actually end up being jealous. You get to visit here regularly, get to unwind and relax and have fun. They'll only get this one visit. Probably. Can't imagine they'll want to come back if they can't guarantee a return trip." "Jealous? You certainly have a high opinion of your world." I reached over and put my hand on her leg. "Kara, I'm judging by you yourself. I can see you miss your home sometimes, but I'm pretty certain you're happy here most of the time." She put her hands over mine, squeezing me affectionately before returning it to me so I could concentrated on driving. "You're right. I wish I could switch back and forth between worlds whenever I wanted to." I moved the conversation to inconsequentials for the rest of the drive out to the cabin. As we pulled up in my minivan, two women stepped out to meet us. Despite it being late July, middle of the day, in Texas (i.e. slightly over 100 degrees), both were wearing trench coats. I had included them as part of their outfits, given they were supposedly coming from an evening out (and needed to hide their costumes ... seriously, a lot of comic book characters hide their costumes with trench coats, as if that ever actually worked), but why in the world were they wearing them in this heat? It's not like they're in the middle of a crowd. Regardless, the two of them looked beautiful. Princess Diana had long beautiful raven-black hair hiding most of her tiara. I'm no stylist, but it had a natural curving sweep to it. Her figure was well hidden by the coat, but I knew it was slim and powerful with D cups held up by the golden eagle of her costume's neckline. Zatanna's legs showed under her slightly shorter coat, encased in her trademark fishnet stockings. She wore a classic black top hat, which was actually fairly expensive since I had ordered the best magician's hat I could find (no rabbit included). Under the coat, she had on a cross between a classic tuxedo and a Vegas showgirl outfit. Her figure was approximately the same as Wonder Woman's. Her breasts were slightly smaller and her legs and neck slightly longer. Kara hopped out of the van and headed straight to the raven-haired duo. "Di, Zana, welcome to my vacation world," she said as she gestured around her with her hands. "Kara, are you all right?" Wonder Woman asked. "Yes, I'm fine." She hugged them both at the same time. "How long have I been gone?" "About half an hour," Zatanna responded. "We only noticed so quickly because Diana was sure you should have arrived early or on-time to the club. I did a quick tracking spell and found you weren't in our dimension, so we followed." Kara grinned ruefully. "You should have checked in with the League or JSA first." Diana replied, "We did. We radioed in. Arrow was on duty, and we told him that you had left the dimension and we were tracking you." "But you didn't wait for him to check my file, did you? It's a long story, but this happens regularly. I randomly come here every so often and then return. The good news is that I'm only gone for a few minutes or hours. The bad news ... well, there are a couple points of bad news for you. "First, as I'm sure you noticed, the laws of physics are slightly different here and most superpowers don't work. Second, time flows differently between the two worlds. The 30 minutes back home has lasted almost a year here." "A year?" they said simultaneously. "Over 11 months, to be more precise." "When will you go back? And how?" "Like I said, it's random. But it's longer every time. My first visit, I was here less than five minutes and disappeared back home for a few seconds. My last visit, I was here about 8 or 9 months and disappeared back home for a couple hours. "The time spent here and time lost there is inconsistent, but it has significantly increased each time." I joined in at this point. "Our best guess is that she'll probably remain here for a few more years. I hope." They both looked at me directly for the first time. Kara gestured between us. "Diana Prince, Zatanna Zatara, may I present my best friend in this world, Frank. Frank, may I present Wonder Woman and Zatanna." Diana jumped a bit at Kara's use of her psuedonym. "It's a pleasure to meet you both." I extended my hand. "Kara's told me so much about you." Zatanna never really had a secret identity. Or maybe more accurately, she's not as public a super-hero as Wonder Woman. Diana did not rely much on her civilian identity, but still apparently didn't like it being thrown about so freely. As I shook each hand, I noticed a small shiver run through each of them at my touch. So it begins, I thought, grinning to myself. But I think I was able to keep my smile pleasant, free of plotting lust. "If Kara trusts you, we'll give you the benefit of the doubt, right Di?" said Zatanna warmly. "Of course," said Diana, obviously not entirely convinced. "Now, what are the chances of us getting home?" Kara and I put on our serious faces. "Not good." "I'm sorry, but their science is ... Their laws of physics don't allow the same things ours do, and..." Kara looked at me helplessly. "The super-science you seem to have in your world doesn't exist here. I like to think we're a technologically modern world, but we've never been visited by aliens ... at least as far as I know. We haven't visited any planets other than our own moon, though we have sent a few probes out to land on Mars and Venus. We don't have any working theories about dimensional travel." Turning to face Zatanna directly, I continued. "Magic almost entirely consists of stage magicians doing tricks. Some people believe in real magic, but the existence of anything real has never been proven." "I've already tried a few basic spells to no effect." She cleared her throat. "Nruter su ot ruo emoh noisnemid. See nothing." I had a thought. "Here, let's do a quick experiment ... ummmm ... Princess, could you bring out your lasso? Here, loop it around me. I bet it's still super strong, because that would be intrinsic to its physical existence. But I doubt its magic truth-telling ability still works." She put the loop around me and tightened it slightly. "Ok, tell me the truth. Can we go home?" "Yes, but not with anything we have here. But that question actually doesn't help prove things either way. Here, if I may. I love ice cream. I hate ice cream. I'm a black teenage girl. I'm an old Chinese Kung Fu master. See?" They were silent for a moment as I pulled off the golden lariat. Then Diana spoke up. "So, we're stuck here?" Kara jumped in. "Not forever. From my conversations with Dr. Hamilton at STAR Labs, they can probably pull you back home from our world once they know you're gone. There's even a chance that your call to the League triggered a call to Dr. Hamilton who'll start setting up to do that. And if not, then once I get back, I can tell him." "Why don't we continue this in the minivan with air conditioning?" I suggested. I locked up the cabin, and we all piled in the van. "Are you hungry?" They both perked up at this and responded strongly in the affirmative. I took suggestions for fast food and drove us through a Wendy's on the way home. But before we got home, I had to stop for a gas refill. "Hey, we haven't gotten to the best part!" I cackled gleefully. "Kara, while I pump the gas, why don't you take them into the station and take a look at the magazine rack?" She immediately caught on to my idea and escorted them inside. When I finished filling up, I went inside to find them stunned and sorting through the comics. "Grab as many as you'd like, my treat. We have more back at the house." They left with half a dozen comics each. Back in the van, Diana said, "I know Kal talked about a world like this, but I ... it just never seemed real." "As far as I can tell, this isn't that world. But yes. Here in this world, you're both comic book characters. Oh, and I should point out that there are no supervillains here either. And while the police are usually happy to accept community support, they tend to send vigilantes to prison." Kara joined in. "If I may, I recommend trying to view your stay here as a vacation. Or maybe a chance to learn any mundane skills you want to as a private citizen. Zatanna said, "It sounds like we're going to need to get jobs while we're here. Do they require ID or birth certificates or anything like that?" "Yes, but I can get you workable IDs while you're here. They probably won't be good enough to let you get passports or high publicity jobs or high security positions, but they should be sufficient for most anything else. "But at the same time, you don't have to work. You're friends of Kara, so I'll be more than happy to put you up." "Thank you, but if we're going to be here for years, I wouldn't want to impose..." Kara interrupted. "Wait until you see his new house before you turn him down. Frank here is loaded." "So how did you two meet?" "I met Frank on my very first visit. He was the cutest little 10 year old kid you've ever seen." And she launched into the story (see Chapter 5). I had never heard her tell the story all at one time before, and it was interesting to hear it from her perspective. She gave hints that we were in a relationship but only hints. She also left out any mention of Alpha, which I appreciated. She had covered all the basics of our story by the time we arrived home. I parked out front so they get a good view. "Welcome! It's no Wayne Manor, but it's home." Zatanna said, "Very nice." Diana was silent, but gave a nod. "We'll go shopping..." I looked at my watch. It was already mid- afternoon, and I really hated driving in and out of the metroplex area during rush hour. " ... Probably tomorrow and get you each a wardrobe to use while you're here. I'm sure Kara and Anna can loan you clothes for tonight." "Anna?" "Oh, I'm sorry. I'm also hosting a friend from Japan who lost her home, a pilot and engineering student, a couple of college students and another lady tossed adrift through the dimensions. Anna Marie was a mutant super-hero in her home dimension. She made a wish with a genie's lamp and ended up here." I paused. "Actually, have either of you ever met the X-Men? They're a mutant super-hero team from a dimension similar to yours." They looked at each other. Diana said, "I have. There was a young man who could travel between dimensions and there was something strange that happened with Doctor Fate. It's all a bit fuzzy, to tell the truth." "Well, then there's a chance you've met Anna before. Her super-hero name was Rogue, if that helps." She shrugged. Actually, they had no memory of each other. I was pretty sure they didn't actually meet in the comics in question, but I wasn't positive. Regardless, their memories did not include any meeting between them. On the other hand, they definitely knew some of the same characters. In particular, Storm and Wonder Woman had been merged into a single person for the storyline in question. [There are a variety of crossover comics between DC and Marvel, but here I'm mostly referring to the DC vs Marvel/Amalgam comics.] "Come on, take off your coats and come inside. You must be close to a heatstroke in those things." We went inside and I introduced them to Kasumi and Rei. Anna was outside sunbathing, so she didn't meet them until I gave the house tour. They seemed a bit in shock, and I tried to be as accommodating as possible. I set them each up with a debit card to one of my accounts and had basic ID to go with them by morning. (Or rather, Alpha did.) Rogue bonded with the newcomers much more easily than she had with Kara, and they quickly figured out Diana's link with Storm. By this time, Anna had decided she preferred life here where she could touch and be touched freely, though she still missed her friends and colleagues. The unexpected link to Ororo made her misty-eyed and sad, so much so that I spent the night with her to try to cheer her up. I offered to let them borrow a car to drive wherever they needed to go, knowing that they had nowhere else to go. Diana briefly jumped at the chance, but rapidly deflated once she realized her situation. Diana also started talking about going to see if Themyscira (Paradise Island) existed on my world too. Since our world has the mystery of the Bermuda Triangle as well -- where Themyscira was located apparently -- she felt that it might actually exist here too. I wasn't moving in on them as quickly as I had the previous ladies in the house, but I made sure I paid close attention to them and made skin-to-skin contact as often as possible. When we were close, I could see their eyes dilating, focusing on me. They would stumble over their sentences as they talked to me. When I took them shopping the next day, I did my old trick of asking them to put on a fashion show for me for fun, and I could see their faces blushing and skin flushing as they did so. I thought Diana might balk at this, but she agreed. (Zatanna was a natural showman and very flirty.) Diana bought conservative but stylish clothes ... and everything she bought had a relatively low neckline. Plus she selected a number of large purses and handbags so she could continue to keep her lasso with her. Zatanna bought a wider variety of clothes, but made sure everything showed off her legs. We made a separate trip to a magic shop for her, but it turns out that the quality of most materials there just wasn't up to her standards. Eventually she was able to find some good magic resources online. When she looked into materials for "real" magic, she found very little that was familiar to her. ------- Kara had more than one private conversation with Diana and Zatanna, all of which Alpha monitored. The conversation on their third day turned out to be the most interesting one. Here is part of it: Zatanna: That reminds me, Kara. Am I misreading the situation or has Frank slept with almost everyone in the house? Kara: Ummm ... that's a complex subject. Diana: How so? It sounds like a simple Yes or No question to me. Kara: The short answer is Yes. Zatanna: Including you? Kara: Yes. I started sleeping with him a few years ago, when he turned 21. Diana: 21? Kara: I know how it sounds. At first I thought it was a mistake, but then I realized how much he meant to me. He was the first man I was friends with before ... Look, I make no apologies for my costume. But when I wear it, men tend to see it, not me. Frank was the first person who was friends with me before he noticed the costume. And he's an amazing lover. If I could do it and keep him safe, I'd bring him back with me and marry him. But we don't know what would happen to him if he came back, let alone whether or not it's even possible. Zatanna: And the other women? Kara: Since I can't stay here permanently or take him with me, I can't expect him to be exclusive to me. Besides, I don't mind ... or rather, I LIKE sleeping with women almost as much as sleeping with Frank. And most of them are my friends too. Diana: "Almost as much"? You prefer sleeping with men? Kara: Yes, I do. Or at least I prefer sleeping with Frank. You probably would too if you tried it. Diana: Is that an invitation? Kara: Maybe. Maybe for both of you. I just ... Look, I'm not always as emotionally secure as I should be. I don't mind sharing him, but you're the first people I might share with who I already know. You're the first ones I'll have to continue to work with on an ongoing basis. I would have to be sure that we could continue to work together just fine." Zatanna: And that we wouldn't go telling stories, right? Kara: That too. The way I think of it is ... Okay, their version of Las Vegas has this slogan. 'What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.' That's how I think of this world. I don't do anything I would be ashamed of, but still... Zatanna: That doesn't mean you want it in the papers, huh? Kara: Right. Zatanna: Is he really that good of a lover? Kara: Oh god, yes. I think all of the girls have come so much we passed out. Zatanna: Really... Kara: He's not super-human, but he is in great shape. And he treats each one of us differently. He always makes sure we come more than once and he seems to understand us at some basic, primal level. He can do things simply or break out the Kama Sutra. Diana: Cunnilingus? Kara: Definitely. Sometimes I think he enjoys it as much as actual fucking. Diana: Well, that's a pleasant surprise at least. So are all of the women here bi-sexual? Kara: To one degree or another. Jane is the most enthusiastically bi, but I've spent the night alone in bed with each of them. Rei and Daria are probably the most hetero of the group, but they still enjoy a night of lady-lovin on occasion. I think Daria is equally in love with Frank and Jane, and any night spent with someone else is just for fun. Zatanna: Kasumi too? I mean, she seems a little too conservative for all this. Kara: Normally I'd probably tend to agree with you. I don't know the whole story, but she met Frank right after she lost her family. He took her in and kept her from sinking, emotionally. She's ... she's special. I'm pretty sure everyone in the house would fight tooth and nail to protect her from just about anything. The thing about Kasumi in bed ... she's not an aggressive person. You almost always have to initiate things with her. And be clean. Shower thoroughly before approaching her. Or shower with her first thing, which is more fun. (Conversation continues with miscellaneous personal observations of household inhabitants.) Zatanna: Although I'll admit to being curious, I've never slept with a woman before. Not sure I want to start right now. Kara: Well, sometimes we work out a schedule ahead of time. There's a calendar we keep when one of us wants him exclusively for an evening, so we can check that. Frank doesn't know about it though, and sometimes he has his own plans, so no guarantees. Or you could jump him during the day sometime. That's what Anna did for her first time. Zatanna: Hmmm... Diana: I'm not convinced I want to join in. It seems like he's set up a personal harem for himself, and I'm not sure I would want to participate in something like that. Kara: I can understand how it could look like that, but I think it's more that we're sharing him around among us than he's taking advantage of us. He can be quite the charmer on occasion, but no one is being forced to stay. If you don't want to join in, we'll all respect that. (silence for a minute) Diana: I'll tell you what. If you want to join me, go ahead and reserve an evening for us. Kara: Let's go check it out. We keep the calendar in Jane's studio area in the garage. ------- For the record, Alpha had told me about their scheduling calendar months ago, but I had specifically avoided ever looking at it. I liked the idea behind it and the odd spontaneity it created on my end of things. It was also fun to see Jane jump through hoops to keep me from seeing it whenever I visited her studio area. I had to wonder how they would decide things if there were schedule conflicts. Peaceful negotiation? Rock, Scissors, Paper? Coin Flip? Arm wrestling? That evening we had dinner as normal. After dinner Daria, Jane and Kasumi all had homework they needed to work on, so I asked everyone else what they wanted to do. There was a History Channel show on bookbinding that Rei wanted to watch, but for some reason no one seemed eager to join her in watching the no-doubt spellbinding documentary. Which left Kara, Anna, Diana, Zatanna and myself. "So, that leaves us for this evening. All of our dimensionally-challenged super-heroines. I suppose Kara, Anna and Diana could have an arm-wrestling contest while Zatanna and I watch, but I bet we can be more productive than that. "How about something to help you all acclimate a bit more easily to my world. We could watch a historical movie ... or play Trivial Pursuit, me versus the rest of you. Or you could trade stories of super-heroics. Or ... any other suggestions?" Kara chimed in, "Too bad Jane is busy. She'd suggest naked Twister." I laughed. "And I'd veto the suggestion since I doubt all of you would be comfortable with it. Next suggestion?" Anna said, "Ah don't know about the rest of you, but Ah want to relax in the hot tub. Maybe a movie out there? Or we could soak while we trade stories." When the weather warmed up to allow swimming this year, a few of the ladies had expressed interest in hot tub movies, so we had gotten a projection screen TV we could wheel outside. "Sounds good to me. Any objections or other suggestions?" Everyone seemed to be amenable, so we broke up to go change into our swim suits. I swiftly changed into my white swim trunks, grabbed a stack of large towels and headed back downstairs. I saw Anna in her hot pink micro-bikini and asked her to wheel out the screen while I sorted through the DVDs for a few possibilities. Good movies with some degree of historical accuracy ... something to provide a bit of background for our world. As I browsed, I realized that most non-fiction movies were really depressing. I ended up with Patton, Glory, Mississippi Burning, Amadeus, Gods and Generals, Walk the Line, United 93, and the John Adams miniseries. I avoided Oliver Stone movies because the last thing I needed was a bunch of super-heroes watching JFK and believing in the conspiracy theories. After thinking about it, I dumped Patton too; Wonder Woman would probably get upset at the whole men-at- war theme. Then I came to my senses and realized I was about to be in a hot tub with a bunch of really hot, independent women and pulled out Gone With the Wind. By the time I made it out there, I found the ladies all settling in. Anna, as I said, had a microscopically small hot pink bikini. Zatanna had found a one-piece at the store printed so that it looked a lot like her tuxedo costume. Kara was wearing a one piece with strategic holes so it looked more like a bikini with connecting straps. And Diana was wearing a non-micro bikini festooned with the color design of the American flag. I felt positively drab in my simple white trunks, but I seemed to be drawing a bit more attention than I probably should. I looked down at myself and noticed that my cock had grown a bit looking at the ladies and was now poking out the bottom of my trunks. I whirled around quickly and pulled my trunks down, rearranging my penis back into place, while Anna and Kara whistled and whooped at me. While I am often deliberately casual about my state of undress -- to get those implants pumping their lustful goodies into the brains of my ladies -- I honestly don't mean to keep making it R-rated. Turning back to the ladies, I hit play on the remote and said, "Ladies, may I present one of the most popular historical dramas of all time, Gone With the Wind. While it does not present an accurate portrayal of slavery, it is probably a decent portrayal of white antebellum society for the upper classes." Kara had saved a spot for me between her and Diana, and I had to wonder if they were to be my bedmates for the night. I didn't pay much attention to the movie, but the ladies appeared to greatly enjoy it. Only 15 minutes or so into the show, Kara pulled my right arm behind her head so I was holding her shoulders against me. A minute later, she very unsubtly grabbed my left hand, leaned over and draped my arm behind Diana's head. I felt Diana stiffen, but she didn't object or move my hand away. It took her a couple minutes, but she soon relaxed into me and even draped her arm behind my head to match. By the end of the movie, she had leaned her head against me three times for at least half an hour total. (I'm sure her feminist independence was warring with the raw desire being pumped into her brain.) Kara didn't want to waste her arm on such a mundane position. Her left hand slid into my trunks and slowly stroked me throughout the movie. I responded by dropping my hand down to caress her breast and tease her nipple through the fabric of her suit. She didn't let me come, but made sure to keep me interested. That alone would have made for an interesting movie, but Anna, sitting across from me, hunched down in the water so only her head was poking above the edge of the hot tub, had other ideas. Once everyone had settled into place, she reached down and found one of my feet. She guided my toes into her crotch, pulling her bikini bottom aside so my digits could enter her pussy. It was an awkward position, but we had plenty of time and I enjoyed the challenge. She came quietly about the time Rhett carried Scarlett upstairs. I kept at her, but I'm not sure if she came again or not. I'm pretty sure the others knew something was going on with Anna, and maybe Diana noticed Kara's interest in my crotch. I realized at the end that it was possible the other ladies thought Anna was masturbating, which would be very embarrassing for her. I decided that it would be less embarrassing if they found out about my toe action, so when we finished and Anna turned around, I made sure my leg shot up briefly so there was no doubt what the source of her quiet orgasm had been. "So, did you all enjoy the movie?" "Most definitely," said Kara. "It was a really different movie than our version. They completely left out the subplot about Rhett Butler dressing up as the Confederate Ghost to fight crime." "Huh?" Zatanna picked up the conversation thread. "Yeah, I mean the Confederate Ghost was fictional, but I heard he was based on a real Confederate era super- hero. Though his status as super-hero was debatable. A quarter of the crimes he fought involved retrieving escaped slaves." "Okay, I'm 90% positive you're joking. Diana, you are a model of truthfulness. Please tell me they're making it up." "I don't know. I've never seen the movie before. But I thought it was excellent, very well done." I leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. "I'm glad you enjoyed it and aren't trying to make fun of my ignorance of your world." I was pleased to see her blush slightly and, if I was not mistaken, squeeze her legs together slightly. Kara burst out laughing and admitted her deception. I tried to tickle her in response, but her armpit was impenetrable to my questing fingers. We were all starting to prune up, so we reluctantly exited the hot tub, dried off and headed inside, rolling the screen back in with us. The ladies all seemed to know what was going on, as Anna and Zatanna went upstairs by themselves and Kara drew me into a kiss as Diana watched. I broke the kiss off and asked, "Kara, what do you have planned?" "I convinced Diana that she needs to give you a try in bed, but she wants me there too." "Well, I have no objection, but Diana? Kara isn't just trying to pressure you into this, is she?" She smiled. "Possibly so, but I have no serious objections." I went to her and put my hands on her shoulders. Physical contact always enhances the implant's reactions to me. "Me, I'm all excited about this, but you have to be sure too. Diana, do you want me to make love to you?" Her eyes were dilated and fixed on me, her breathing increased slightly, and I think she was trembling slightly. "Yes." I pulled her in and kissed her as softly and gently as I could, treating her as though she was made of porcelain. I pulled back, moved my arms down slightly and pulled her in tightly, this time kissing her with a hard intensity. I was trying to gauge her reactions, to see which she responded to more. It was difficult to tell. She seemed to be partially locked up, like a deer responding passionately to oncoming headlights. "Kara, I do believe Diana needs someone to sweep her off her feet. Would you do the honors?" Diana, like Kara, weighed over 200 lbs due to her dense muscles and bones ... but I would never be foolish enough to mention this to either of them. Kara was grinning as she moved to Diana and swept her up in her arms. I walked beside her, one hand alternately stroking the back of each of their heads. Diana was practically shivering at this point. (I was starting to wonder if maybe her implant wasn't working a bit too hard. Her eyes shouldn't be losing focus that much. Not that she was in any danger, of course. I just didn't want to mess her up too badly.) When we entered my bedroom, Diana saw my bed for the first time and seemed to snap out of it briefly. "Great Hera! You could fit Giganta on that bed." Kara and I both laughed. Kara commented, "I said the same thing the first time I saw it." As she was lowered onto the bed, she mused, "You know, Giganta twice stuffed me up her cunt. The second time I was tempted to punch her clit black and blue, but I couldn't do that to a fellow woman, criminal or not." "Giganta sounds like she is quite the X-rated foe. But she's not our focus tonight," I said as I knelt by her on the bed. I paused for a moment, relishing the geeky enormity of my situation. I had both Power Girl and Wonder Woman on my bed at the moment ... wearing only tiny bathing suits ... waiting for me to fuck them. "Kara, help me relax Diana for a few minutes." We lay down on either side of her, our hands trailing across her body, caressing every inch of flesh available as our lips started their exploration of her face. I reached Diana's mouth first and gently pried open her lips to stroke her teeth with my tongue, encouraging her to open and accept my intrusion. Her jaw opened as my fingers teased her bikini-covered nipple, rubbing it further into rigidity. After I had kissed her for a moment, I gave ground to Kara, who moved in to capture Diana's lips. I started moving down her body, kissing her jawline, neck, breast ... I gave her nipple a lick through the fabric of her bikini ... I trailed my tongue down her ribs to her belly button, briefly digging in. With my hands on her hips, I pulled the bikini panties down her long, smooth legs and dropped it to the floor. She had a small patch of trimmed hair above her pussy, leaving the lips bare. I admired her gorgeous pussy as I pressed lightly on her thighs, silently asking her to spread her legs. To be honest, I wasn't originally planning to start with cunnilingus this time. I was worried I might be getting too predictable. Well, let's face it, I am predictable. Then I heard the playback of their earlier conversation and how Diana apparently had a special appreciation for men who licked cunts, which does makes sense given the character's background. Wonder Woman's pussy was indeed beautiful. It was started to open slightly, with plumping, dark pink labia swelling and glistening with juices. A large clit, about the size of the nail on my forefinger, poked out from beneath its hood, begging to be licked and stroked. I settled into position and started my oral explorations with a general sweep up her mound of Venus, tasting the familiar blandness of the newly grown womanhood. It would start to have a normal flavor within a couple days, but a quirk of the growing process kept it flavorless to begin with. I moved my tongue to start digging into her pussy channel while my fingers and the tip of my nose started teasing her clitoris. After a couple minutes, I switched so that now my fingers were curling up inside her and my lips and tongue were sucking on her clit. For a moment, I formed a seal over her clit and just sucked hard, trying to create a vacuum seal around her sensitive nub and pull it out even further, then I collapsed the suction and attacked it with my tongue and lips while at the same time I curled my fingers up, searching for her g-spot. She came explosively, her hips thrusting up, throwing my head away from her momentarily. My fingers kept her going though, drawing out the orgasm so it lasted for at least half a minute. I sat back and waited for her to calm down. I love how women look during and just after orgasm, even moreso if I just caused said orgasm. Plus at some point Kara had removed Diana's bikini top so I could now watch her breasts rolling back and forth as her lungs heaved. Her nipples were dark pink, a perfect half inch diameter cone surrounded by a 2 or 3 inch diameter areolae. Her breasts looked deceptively soft as they moved around, but they had the same resilience and toughness as light Kevlar, though of course they felt considerably nicer than any body armor. After she had calmed down, I grabbed a condom, but then hesitated to put it on. "Kara? I hate to ask, but there's no way I'm going to last very long right now. What I really need is to get off quickly so I can give Diana the fun she needs." She lazily sat up from where he had been kissing and stroking her fellow superhero. "Sure thing. Mouth or pussy?" "How about if we give her something interesting to eat while I fuck her. Maybe a nicely flavored vagina?" She smiled at this and lay down next to Diana, who was watching with interested eyes. It only took about a minute and a half for me to pump Kara's massaging pussy full of my (hopefully flavorful) sperm. I played with her clit as I pumped, but still didn't last long enough to bring her off. I spent a moment kissing her before slowly pulling out and turning to Wonder Woman. "Diana, I don't suppose you're on the pill, are you?" "No, I'm afraid not." "That's fine." My dick hadn't flagged noticeably so I pulled on the condom. I knew it wasn't needed in the slightest. Kara, Anna and Diana were all completely sterile. Since there was virtually no chance their enhanced musculature would allow a fetus to grow and stretch their bellies, Alpha had cleared their eggs of all genetic material for health and safety reasons. But I knew I had to play the game as if I didn't know. As I moved back between her legs, I looked her in the eye and touched her thigh intimately. "Diana, are you sure you want this?" I never played fair when I asked questions like this. Right now her hormones were going wild and her brain was being filled with chemicals inducing lust, joy and euphoria ... and the implant would just keep increasing the doses a bit at a time until she climaxed with me. But for those times when we weren't in bed or she wasn't with me, she would still remember how I refused to force myself on her and gave her every chance to say no ... how this night was entirely her own choice. Her eyes were starting to glaze over a little again, and she mutely nodded yes. I had her raise her hips slightly and pushed a pillow under her ass to give me a better angle of entry. I leaned over to kiss her as I slowly pushed my cock into her warm, tight, wet and waiting vagina. Her Kegels weren't as strong as Kara's, but they were still strong and enhanced, gripping me tightly as I entered her intimate recesses. I pulled back from the kiss and helped Kara position herself over Diana's waiting mouth. I started a slow movement in and out as I told her to "Help your friend. She really needs a good orgasm too." I wish I could have kissed Kara while fucking Diana, but the angle just wasn't there to allow it. Maybe if Kara had been a foot and a half shorter ... and facing the other direction. But after I started kissing her shoulder blades, Kara caught on a little and reversed her position so she was facing me. It meant Diana couldn't suck on her clit quite as easily (and Diana's nose was probably in Kara's ass), but it gave me perfect access to Power Girl's wonderful breasts. And she would occasionally lean down for a deep wet kiss with me. After a few minutes of fucking like this, I lifted one of Diana's legs up over my shoulder so I could pound inside her a bit more deeply. I think I was actually touching her cervix from this position. In a brief moment of lucidity, I had Kara hold onto the leg for me. This was a good idea, because when Diana came a moment later, her leg tried to slam down and catch me between her thighs, which probably would have bruised me pretty badly. Kara seized up as well, probably coming from Diana's crying out into her vagina. I gave her a hard suck to her nipples to enhance the experience. Once Diana had finished her thrashing, I lifted her other leg into Kara's grasp and started pounding hard. I fucked her that way for at least another 15 minutes through 3 or 4 more orgasms that seemed to flow quite easily now, until my own orgasm caught up with me. Kara came at least one more time herself, but she seemed to receive most of her enjoyment watching both of us come. We laid down alongside Diana again, each toying with one of her titties, teasing the nipples and giving them occasional light pulls. "Goddess, that was wonderful. I've never come like that with a man before." I grinned. "So what should we do next? I should be good for at least one more go-round." My penis was still at half-mast, having refused to go soft so far. Diana said, "Kara hasn't had much attention from you this evening." "But this is your night tonight," responded the blonde bombshell. "Well, I could move back and forth between you two while you ... here, Diana, lay down on top of Kara ... no, no, face to face ... there, now both of you spread your legs, but keep your pussies on top of each other." I forgot to put on a condom this time, but in my defense, it was a sight to make a man forget everything else. I moved behind them, facing two sets of gorgeous legs framing two beautiful sets of pussy lips rubbing against each other. Their breasts and lips were pressed together as they started making love to each other. First I simply inserted my penis between their bodies, rubbing it between their pressed vaginas and clits. I could hear their muffled moans as I masturbated their clits with my penis. They were deep kissing most of the time now, groaning into each other's mouths. Shifting my angle up and down, I pumped into each cunt for half a dozen strokes, then pulled out and pumped the other. I tried to change my speed every few minutes and spend time and attention on their clits as well. Before long, they were both coming freely and too often for me to get an accurate count. This scenario was a dream come true for me and although a bit tired, I was good to go for at least half an hour doing this, having come twice already. The ladies were a bit insensible by the time I came, spewing my white ropes between their sweating bodies. After I recovered sufficiently, I went to the restroom to wipe myself down with a clean damp cloth, then took it into the bedroom to clean them up. Kara was licking Diana's belly clean as I went to clean her up. (I'm sure Kara would have preferred Diana to lick her clean as well, but Diana was still out of it.) I tossed the cloth into the laundry hamper and turned off the lights. I gave Kara a kiss, saying "I think we did a good job tonight." "Definitely," she whispered back as I crawled in-between the two super- ladies to go to sleep. Apparently both ladies woke up before I did the next morning because they were whispering back and forth over my head. I wish I had the mental awareness to fake sleep so I could listen in, but my mind is usually pretty muddled just after waking. "Oh, speak of the devil, I think he's awake." "Good morning, honey." Kara leaned over to kiss me on the cheek. "We were just saying we both had a great time last night." "Yes, I can quite understand why Kara is so taken with you." I tried to shake the sleep from my head. "Glad you enjoyed it. Lot of fun myself." "I think I'd like to do this again sometime." "Talk to her," I said, nodding toward Kara. "Most of the time, they decide for me. I'm their sex slave." Kara grinned. "Damn right, you are!" "But you better like me because of more than just the sex, or ... no, actually, that'd still be okay." Kara laughed. "If I only cared for you because of this," here she grabbed my cock, half-hard at the moment, "I wouldn't keep coming back." "Oh, good." I reached over and pulled both ladies in for a hug and kiss. "This is a great way to wake up in the morning: Sandwiched between two hot naked super-ladies. And as much as I like it, there's only one thing I want more at the moment ... and that's a trip to the bathroom." They giggled as I crawled out from between them and hurried off to relieve myself. By the time I finished and quickly gargled and brushed my teeth, Diana was gone, so I invited Kara to join me for a morning shower. We didn't have sex, but we took our time, washing each other intimately. I let Kara shave me which she did with sharp focus. We discussed last night for a while. Kara was certain that Diana was now hooked on me and would be available as a bedmate for as long as she was here. She also hinted that I should try hitting on Zatanna. Kara went to dress while I proceeded downstairs for breakfast. The college girls were up and gone and the rest of us were still in bed, except for Kara, Diana and myself. Diana and Kara came downstairs together as I was getting eggs, bacon, toast, yogurt, fruit, juice and coffee all together for everyone. Zatanna showed up a couple minutes later before it started getting cold. Anna and Rei were on their own for breakfast apparently. I noticed Zatanna giving me a lot of sidelong glances throughout the morning. I made it a little easier for her to approach me by limiting my basement time to half an hour. Sure enough, around 1 pm while the others were suspiciously absent, Zatanna sought me out while I was reading the morning paper. "Hi, Frank. Could I borrow you for a few minutes?" "Sure thing, Miss Zatanna. What can I do for you?" "Please, my friends call me Zana." "All right, Zana, what can I do for you?" "I am trying to put together a new act, without my powers. I'm a long way away, but I have a couple tricks that are almost ready." "You want me to be a test audience?" "Pretty much. Come on. I'm set up in the TV room." As we walked, I said, "Zana, this whole situation is especially hard on you, isn't it? You may be stuck here for 5 or 10 or more years out of the prime of your life. And it's not the same for Kryptonians or immortal amazons, is it?" I put an arm around her should and gave her a sideways hug. "I know I can't honestly say I know what it feels like, but I'm ... we're all here for you." "Thank you. From the sound of it, we might be sleeping on the streets if not for you." "Eh, you're all pretty resourceful. I'm sure you would have figured something out. So this means you're planning to resume your stage career?" "It's what I know, and enjoy. I haven't given up on the possibility of using real magic while I'm here, but it's going to be a long, slow process. It's all different here." Actually, she was holding up very well, overall and at the moment ... especially since I was in close physical contact with her right now. She was obviously a bit flushed and distracted, but she maintained a lot more control over herself than most of the women with my implants. (This should have raised a couple warning flags.) "Anything you need, we'll help you out. Seriously. If you need old books or eye of newts or such, I can help finance it. If you need the Spear of Destiny or the Necronomicon you might be out of luck, but anything obtainable..." She gave a small laugh. "I'll let you know. Right now, the bank card you gave me is more than enough ... and more than generous." "I'm just sorry we couldn't set up your ID with your actual name. It's just a little too unique." Zatanna's new ID read Annabelle Tara Zane, kind of a mishmash of her first and last names. "That's all right. Now have a seat. My tricks so far are fairly basic. I'll need to build my own equipment for anything big." She gave a 15 minute show, with a variety of staple tricks, including water pouring into paper, a floating handkerchief, handkerchiefs turning into flowers and a playing card that seemed to wander all over her body. As she said, they were basic tricks, but she performed them flawlessly. I mean, I know how a couple of them are performed, and even then I couldn't see her actually doing it. I clapped enthusiastically when she finished. "That was excellent! Your sleight of hand is perfect." "Thank you, kind sir. I'm actually embarrassed doing such basic prestidigitation, but I have to rebuild my skills." "I understand. It certainly looks like you're already ready to play children's parties. At this rate in a week or two, you'll be ready for a Shriner's convention." She laughed. "I'm also working on some interactive palming." She held up my wristwatch. Reflexively, I immediately looked at my wrist, which was unexpectedly bare. "Here, let me put that back on for you." I stood up as she walked over. She carefully put the watch back on my wrist, caressing my hand and arm slightly. "I didn't even notice. That's amazing." "I also have this," she said, holding up my wallet. "You should really start keeping it in your front pocket. It's much safer." "Wow." "Well, I only took them because you were stealing my cards." "What?" She started reaching into my pockets, pulling out playing cards. I'm pretty sure she took my wallet when she replaced my watch and that the cards were never actually in my pockets, but it was a testament to her skills that I really couldn't catch her at it. Her actions, as skillful as they may be, were most definitely unprofessional. She was caressing me every time she dipped a hand into my pockets. And without a shirt breast pocket, her hands were all over my jeans. It only took a few intimate touches before she provoked a response, as my penis grew hard, meeting her touch as she dipped a hand into my right front pocket again. When her fingers touched it through the cloth of my pocket, she stopped and started deliberately stroking it. "I've been trying to figure out how it is that you're in this situation. A house full of women, all eager to have sex with you. It just doesn't seem to make sense, no matter how good of a lover you are." Mental warning bells started ringing loudly, and I tried to hide my alarm. Given that I was already seizing up a bit from her attention to my cock, I just let that flow. "I don't know why ... just really lucky I met Kara." "And the rest of us? I mean Wonder Woman was gossiping like a school girl about how wonderful you were last night. She doesn't do that. Ever. And you suddenly became rich only a few years ago?" "Huh? It wasn't sudden. It took years for my investment programs to take off." "Fairly sudden. And convenient. You know what it sounds like to me? Magic." Ahah. Now I understood. "Even now, I can't help but feel a very strong attraction to you. Touching you makes it almost overwhelming. It's very difficult to keep focused, but mental focus is a major part of what I do." I lifted her hand out of my pocket. "Maybe for you, but if you want to accuse me of something, I'm going to need my head clear to defend myself." She went on. "And now that I'm not touching you, the attraction, while still VERY strong, is definitely lessened. "I'm fairly well versed in magical control in all of its variations. This isn't actual mental domination or control. There is an actual fight for control, but not with another entity like with possession. It's not hypnosis. Maybe magical hypnosis, but there are too many physical reactions for that to be likely. "I'm pretty sure it's a strong mental compulsion reinforced with physical ... something physical ... not coercion, but encouragements and rewards. "It's definitely unnatural, but not so strong that it can't be resisted or so unnatural that it can't be hidden or mistaken for something odd but within the realm of normality." While she spoke, I took a moment to gather myself. My erection wasn't flagging, but hopefully I had enough blood left over to run my brain properly. She stood a couple steps away, watching me. This was similar to how I imagined possible problems if I created a super- scientist, like Washu from Tenchi Muyo or the Test sisters from Johnny Test. I guess I should have given the same consideration to strong magic users. "Okay, if I understand you, you think I did some kind of magic to get rich and make women fall in love with me?" "You have all the classic signs of a magical wish fulfillment. Just to let you know, those kinds of spells or objects always have their price. Things will balance out." "Hmmm ... I'm trying to think of ways to convince you I'm not using any magic. I mean, I can explain everything, but the problem with magic is that you can just keep coming back with the argument that magic influenced him or her or caused this or that to happen. "I mean, you've seen my computer setup in the basement. My Alpha program runs on those systems and manages my investments which are how I made my money. There's nothing magic about it. "The various people living in the house are mostly here because I'm trying to help them. Everyone is here because of different reasons, but they all came here on their own." "Uh huh." She was obviously not quite believing me. "If you have any runes or magic markings around, they're very well hidden, so I'm guessing you have a powerful artifact of some kind." "Is there any spell or ritual you can do to convince yourself that nothing magical is going on?" "If it was a spell, then probably. For an artifact? No, not really. So where is it?" "Darn it. Okay, I give. Alpha, turn her off." "What..." she started to ask, then fell over. I tried to catch her, but she toppled over backwards and I couldn't reach her in time. She probably ended up with a nasty bump on her head. "Alpha, is anyone else nearby?" In my earpiece, she responded. "Anna is in the kitchen, getting some food. She is the only one who would see you right now if you carried Zatanna to the basement." "Okay. Start prepping for a brain rewrite for Zatanna. You have all of her data saved, right?" "Yes, I update the memory backups for all of our creations every day." "We'll need to make a few changes and create a new version of today for her. Does it look like Anna will be in the kitchen very long?" "No, she is dressed for sunbathing and appears to be making a sandwich." Three minutes later, I quietly carried Zatanna down to the basement. Alpha and I talked as I stripped her down to go into the nanite goo tank. (The goo was annoying, but was something like 10 times more efficient than applying the nanites goo-free because of improved nanite movement and heat dissipation.) Within 15 minutes, Zatanna's memories were being wiped, a process which only took 30 minutes. Reapplying the memories would take significantly longer, probably about 8 hours. Alpha and I discussed various ways of keeping Zatanna the same but convincing her that I wasn't controlling everyone or abusing magic. Eventually, we decided on a multi-prong attack. First, when Zatanna did her original tracking spell to find Kara, she would also remember doing a brief remote analysis of Kara's situation, determining that there was no magic involved. Second, we added the certain and absolute knowledge that anyone using wish-fulfilling spells or artifacts had easily observable backlash happening at the same time. For example, making someone fall in love with you might result in horrendous body odor or hideous skin rashes. Or becoming rich might make you paranoid or start killing off your friends or something. Third, we reduced her experience with magical mental influence. Fourth, we gave her a magical aura sight, or more accurately, a triggered visual hallucination. If something or someone was magic or had a spell on it, it would have a faint blue tinge when she looked at it. Specifically, whenever she looked at Kasumi, she would imagine seeing a faint blue aura. (Yes, she, Diana and Anna were all supposedly transported via magic, but we decided that since the transportation was complete, so was the magic. And we made sure she came to that realization too.) The aura sight addition would take an extra 6 hours, so Zatanna wouldn't be ready to go again until early tomorrow morning. To explain the intervening time, she would remember having lots of mind- blowing sex with me here in the basement, which left her sleeping the rest of the day. Bringing her down to the basement for sex was breaking one of my rules, but I couldn't figure another way around it. It was the only place in the house where no one else could find her if they were looking for her. We also added in a conversation between the two of us where I explained Kasumi's 'magic clone' origins to explain her aura to Zatanna. The conversation also emphasized that while there was some active magic in parts of Japan and China, it was all cursed and nothing good ever came of it and the people living there were guarding it from getting out. The nanites also fixed the bump on the back of her head, but there was one other unpleasant task to perform. She needed to have a very sore vagina. While Zatanna is incredibly attractive, I have no interest whatsoever in raping an unconscious, unresponsive woman. There were no dildos in the basement, but I eventually found a can of compressed air that was approximately the same size as my cock. I emptied it and covered the end of it in quick- drying plaster so it was smoothed out. As I was working on it, Alpha interrupted my thought process. "Frank, I believe there is one other problem that needs attending with Zatanna's mental rewrite." "What did we miss?" "I believe she may have hidden something significant in her bedroom. If you'll look at the monitor, I will display the relevant video." The video was from the hidden camera in the room she shared with Diana. Zatanna was apparently putting something under? No, into her mattress. Some small cut or hole maybe? "Excellent catch. I'll check it out tonight." Then I took a nap. The makeshift dildo was ready to go around dinnertime, but that was when I had to emerge from the basement for dinner. I left instructions with Alpha that everyone should be turned off when they go to sleep tonight. I needed to be able to move about the house freely after dark. I explained to everyone that Zatanna had over-exerted herself and was sleeping, making sure they all understood that to mean she was tired out from a marathon of sex. We left a plate of food for her in the fridge. My personal problem was that I had been suffering from blue balls all day, while I was supposed to have been having sex all day. Theoretically, I should be worn out and go without sex tonight to avoid any possible story conflicts. Fuck it, I decided. I had made these women for sex, and sex I was going to have. Around nine, I hunted down Daria and Jane for some fun. Daria was watching Jane play Dance Dance Revolution in the game room. I walked in, heaved Jane's sweaty body over my shoulder, grabbed Daria by the wrist and took them both to their room. Jane said "Hey!" but didn't otherwise object. Once we got to their room, Daria protested with a hidden grin. "So, you think we're just your sex toys? That you can grab us and play with us whenever you want?" "Yes, I do. And that's a good idea. Tonight you will be my sex toys!" I tossed Jane onto her bed, told them both to strip and started digging around in Jane's drawer of toys. By the time I dug out what I was after, they were both naked. Daria, looking a bit wide-eyed but obviously turned on, said, "I thought you were going to be all drained tonight." "I might be except that Zana kept passing out before I came. Now, put these on." I tossed both of them wrist and ankle restraints, the kind that buckle on with a big d-ring/clasp. While they did that, I hooked restraint chains to the four corners of one bed. "Jane, lie down, spread-eagle." She did so and I chained her down. She wasn't tied down tightly, but she wasn't going to be able to free herself easily. I maneuvered Daria on top of Jane in a 69 position and connected her wrists to Jane's ankles and her ankles to Jane's wrists. She had enough freedom of movement that she was easily able to line up mouth to cunt and cunt to mouth. Once they were properly aligned, I strapped a belt around their middles and bound them together solidly. "Now, do what comes naturally." As they started licking each other, I got onto the bed, picked the closest pussy (Daria) and drove myself inside. I fucked them for over an hour, alternating between the two of them after every few comes they had. I only came twice myself, but it was enough to relieve the pressure. When we were finished for the night, I untied Daria. I might have left Jane in place, but I was worried she might cramp up, so instead I chained her wrists together and did the same for her ankles. After a minute or so, they were both out like a light. I whispered, "Alpha, am I clear?" My earpiece, still in place, responded with a "Yes. Rei is still reading in the library, but I can easily have her fall asleep in the chair. That has happened before on 23 different occasions." "Sounds good. Go ahead and do that. I'm on my way down to the lab. Oh wait, I'm going to check out Zatanna's mattress first. How is she coming along?" "I will be done in an estimated 5 hours and 23 minutes." "Excellent." In her room, I saw Diana embracing Kasumi while they slept. I had no idea whatsoever how the two of them hooked up so quickly. The hole in the mattress was very well hidden. If I didn't know it was there, I would never have found it. Inside the hole was a journal. I took it with me downstairs. In the lab, I read her journal. It wasn't very long, but by her second day, she was starting to become suspicious. After Diana came back with a glowing report of our fuck, she decided to test her own reactions to me and confront me. I had a bit of a dilemma here. I couldn't rip out the offending pages without it being obvious. While her rewritten memories wouldn't include the journal writing, she was obviously the type of person who wrote journals and diaries. The lack of one might be suspicious, but I decided it was preferable to an outright suspicious journal. I also went back upstairs and flipped her mattress around and remade the bed. If that was her preferred hiding place, it wouldn't do for her to find an empty version of her normal hidey-hole. After flipping it around and looking at my handiwork, I decided to go further. I stripped the mattress and exchanged it for one from an empty room. After remaking the bed, I returned to the basement to deal with Zatanna's vagina. I strapped her upper body in place so Alpha could continue working on her, applied lube to her vagina and started easing the air can dildo into her pussy. The first time I pulled it back to start stroking it further into her, the plaster top came off. After some mild cursing, I spent 20 minutes fishing the pieces of plaster out of her pussy. I used the water spray to clear her out, then smacked my head for being stupid. I retrieved one of Jane's dildos from her toy drawer, went back downstairs, applied more lube and fucked Zatanna with it for about half an hour. Man, believe me when I tell you that fucking with only your arms is boring, repetitive, tiring work. Zatanna was turning out to be a lot more work than any other woman we had made, and I hadn't even gotten to fuck her myself yet! When I was done, I went to sleep on the cot, with instructions for Alpha to wake me when Zatanna was ready and to keep everyone else asleep. About 5 am after too little sleep, I woke up, cleaned up Zatanna and carried her up to her bed, where she had been programmed to remember stumbling to in the middle of the night. I went back to bed with Daria and Jane and let Alpha reactivate everyone. I noticed Daria mumble a bit, stretch and go back to sleep. Jane clinked her chains a bit and did the same. I slept in a bit late the next morning, missing my daily exercise. But even so, Daria and Jane's famous love of sleep meant they were still out the next morning. For fun, I fucked Daria in her sleep so she woke up in a dream- like state to find herself about to come. I might have done the same for Jane, but our activity woke her up and she watched us, played with herself until she came. At breakfast, when Zatanna and Diana came down, I watched her closely to make sure things went smoothly. She wasn't walking smoothly, but nonetheless came over and kissed me on the cheek. She whispered, "Thank you, lover. I'm sorry I kept passing out on you yesterday, but I had a great time." "Let me know when you've recovered and we can try it again. It probably won't be quite as intense next time." She gave me an odd look, to which I responded, "First times are always special, but that doesn't mean the second or thousandth time isn't worth it." "I don't know. I might be disappointed if you don't fuck me unconscious every time." "It's better when you don't. It means we can keep on going for longer and longer periods." She laughed. "Oh, now I understand. You stopped every time I did, huh? Poor baby." "Well, there is that of course. But what I meant was, would you rather have one huge orgasm or a series of big orgasms that just flow together." She blushed. "I suppose I'd need to be able to compare the experiences." "I'll try my best." ------- I spent that night with Rei and the next night with Anna. It was three days later when I finally hooked up with Zatanna. She had been acting completely normal, even when she was alone. Alpha had her under higher-than-normal surveillance. She had started a new journal and hid it in the same place. I was checking it every night just to be sure. From her journal entries, she was initially very suspicious of me for the same reasons as before. But without any corroborating evidence and with the earlier scan she had done, she decided that I was just one of the 'lucky few'. And she meant this quite literally. In the demographic of any world, you will have a few people who are ridiculously lucky in life and a few who are extremely unlucky. Zatanna decided that I was one of the lucky ones on the extreme end of the spectrum. To her, this apparently explained everything, including how I was attracting beautiful, powerful women who would protect me if needed. In discussing it with Alpha, I realized that in a world where magic is real, random chance stops being so random. People can literally be born lucky - - and there are a few characters like that in comics, though the only one who springs to mind offhand is Gladstone Gander from the Donald Duck and Scrooge McDuck comics ... wait, aren't there genetically lucky people in Larry Niven's Known Space books too? Anyone like that is literally cared for by the universe and attracts the people who are best for him. Zatanna has even decided that this means I need to be protected, since my blood would be a very potent spell component to unscrupulous magic users. So our changes were much more effective than we had planned, since her understanding of luck was part of her basic understanding of how magic worked. We didn't plan it that way, but it certainly led to an amazingly huge improvement in her attitude towards me. On the third day, I sought her out early afternoon, finding her doing some kind of sewing on her showman's outfit. "Another new trick?" She jumped, pricking her finger with the needle. "Hey, don't sneak up on me like that. And you can't watch this. This is secret magician's stuff. "I wasn't sneaking. I was just walking. You were just really absorbed in your work." She stuck her tongue out at me. "So what's up?" "Would you like to go out tonight? A magician, Ricky Jay, is doing a show in Dallas." "Is he any good?" "He's the magician that Hollywood goes to for on-screen tricks. Not special effects, you understand. I mean he's Hollywood's top prestidigitation and sleight of hand consultant." "Sure, sounds like fun." And it was fun. Ricky Jay puts on a great show. I could only guess at how he did his tricks for the most part, but on the drive home afterward, Zatanna explained how each trick could be done in detail. Not necessarily how they actually WERE done, but how they COULD have been done, since most tricks had more than one possible method. She was still wound up when we home. She was practically bouncing. "So, Zana, do you feel up to showing me some of your card tricks again?" She looked over at me with a wicked gleam in her eye. "How can I do that, when you've obviously stolen my cards?" I was dressed much nicer than before, so this time she pulled cards from all over my body as she upbraided me for being such a thief. "Oh, keeping your wallet in your front pocket now, I see," she said with her left hand in my front trouser pocket. "Good for you. Unfortunately that limits my access to ... Oh, here he is, hiding on the other side of your pants. He seems excited at being such a bad thief. Can you feel him jumping?" She had undone my fly and was stroking my cock inside my pants as she lectured it on why it shouldn't steal playing cards, which she continued to pull out of my pockets with her other hand. "I think the only way you'll get all of your cards back is to strip search me." "I think you're right. But that calls for a bit more privacy than the garage." "Well, I do have my own bedroom upstairs. I promise I'll surrender peacefully." "Peacefully? What fun is that?" With her hand still gripping my penis, she led me into the house. Diana and Kasumi were sitting in the den talking, until we passed through. Zatanna, aside from a polite nod of greeting, completely ignored them and continued to pull me by my cock to the stairs. I heard a faint, "Have fun!" from Diana as we mounted the stairs. Once in my room, Zatanna sat me down on my bed and stood in front of me. "Now, what am I going to do with you?" "Something fun and pleasant, I hope." "Oh really? But you're an admitted card thief." I reached up and put my hands on her hips. "What can I do to make restitution?" "Hmmm ... I think an oral service first. I've heard that you're quite skilled." Ah, the problem with developing a reputation for excellence... "I can only try my best, ma'am." I found a zipper on the side of her skirt and drew the skirt over her hips to the ground. She was wearing fishnet stockings, but the garter belts were under the panties. Obviously she dressed with the expectation of needing easy removal of her underwear. The panties joined her skirt on the floor. Zatanna's pussy had bare lips topped with a dark thatch of hair. I guess most super-heroines had to keep their lips shaved, given the outfits most of them wore. Her vagina itself was pulsing and wet, with the cunt lips pushing out at least half an inch. I knelt down and maneuvered her around so that she was standing with her back to the bed. I applied my tongue in a long, slow swipe up from the base of her lips to the top of her clit. Her clitoris itself was tiny, the smallest of any of my women, but once free of its protective hood, it was also apparently extremely sensitive. Zana's body froze up, then started jerking around as I started playing with it. I let my fingers explore her cunt's inner walls as my tongue laved and caressed and enjoyed her little bundle of nerves. I'm not sure if she was coming for all of the 10 minutes I continued this or not, but when I stopped for a minute to catch my breath, she collapsed onto the bed. I gave her a moment to recover while I stripped down. Her eyes wouldn't focus properly on me until I was also stripping her, removing her shoes, jacket, blouse and bra. (I left the garter belt and fishnet stockings in place.) She was fully focused again by the time I had a condom on and had placed myself at the entrance to her mound of Venus. "You look so beautiful like that," I said as I ran the tip of my penis up and down her flowing lower lips. And she really did. She was in good shape but lacked the strong musculature of the other super-heroines. This gave her a feminine softness that was candy to my eyes. Her raven-black hair was spread out around her head like a dark halo. Her breasts were about a C cup and flattened out on her chest as she lay supine. Her only clothes were her classic fishnet stockings with their black, lacy garter belts, which framed her pussy as if it were a piece of living, erotic art. I slowly pressed myself into her, feeling the walls of her pussy spread and welcome me inside her. She moaned and closed her eyes for a moment, then reached up to pull me into an embrace and deep kiss. I could feel her moaning directly into my own mouth as I bottomed out in her. I clutched her back, her breasts pressing hard into my torso, her nipples poking wonderfully into my chest. As I started pumping in and out, she started making little squeaks as my cockhead touched her cervix with each stroke. It was odd. Rei and occasionally Daria were the only women in the house who ever complained about me pumping too deeply and hitting their cervix. All the others seemed to enjoy the deep touching. On the other hand, both normal women I had fucked after getting my lengthened penis complained about cervix bumping. Maybe my artificial women were just so sexually wired-up that anything to do with fucking me felt good. Enough digression. I was revved up but not on edge tonight, so I lasted maybe 20 minutes, which was sufficient to bring her to 2 more orgasms before I blew my load. She didn't let go of me for a single moment. We lay there in each other's arms, panting a bit. She held me closely, preventing my softened cock from slipping out of her. Breathing heavily into my ear, she said, "That was wonderful. I'm glad I didn't pass out this time." "Well, if you give me a few minutes, I'll be ready to go again. Or we can invite someone else to join us. I'm sure any of the other ladies would love to give you some special attention." "Maybe some other time. Right now, I'm just enjoying this." "I'll admit it is very nice ... I'm just used to providing more orgasms than that." "I must have had a dozen small comes from you eating me out, but having you inside me just made them more intense." And here she squeezed her vagina tightly over my cock, making it twitch and harden a bit. "Ah, there we go," I said, and I started flexing my penis as best I could. "Are you sure you don't want some more?" "Well, maybe a little more." "Any requests? Any favorite positions or a new one you want to try?" "Positions can make things interesting, but the man is what's important. How about you? Any positions you want to try out? Any favorites?" "Ever since Anna, Jane and Rei decided to try out the Kama Sutra, I think I've tried every sexual position imaginable. As for my favorite? I usually enjoy whatever gives me the best access to my lady." "I think we have great access to each other just like this." "Yeah, I guess we do. I still need to put on a fresh condom though." In response, she reached down, pulled me out of her cunny, stripped off the condom, pumped me hard for a moment, then reinserted me bareback. "Don't worry about it. I want to feel you this way. I'll be on the pill next week, and I can just get a morning after pill tomorrow. So come on, big boy. Plant your seed in my belly. Make me a mother!" Okay, I knew intellectually that she wasn't going to bear my children, but having a naked woman ask for your baby always gets a man hot. This time around, I propped my upper body up on my arms and adjusted myself forward slightly so I was scraping directly against her clit. She looked up at me with heat in her eyes and drew her fingers around my torso. Despite her apparent satiation earlier, she was coming within minutes. And coming. And coming. She would come, closing her eyes tightly, raising her legs and squeezing my thighs and butt, then drop back prone for a minute, look up at me and start the cycle all over again. Without a condom to dull the sensations, I was ready to come again after just 10 minutes. I retained just enough of my senses to make myself pull out and come on her stomach instead of risking a pregnancy. I explained this to her a few minutes later as I wiped her down with a clean cloth. I'm not sure if she was disappointed or impressed or both. We drifted off to sleep in each other's arms. ------- Chapter 9: Beta Bayonetta Disclaimer: Bayonetta is owned by Sega, Platinum Games and/or Hideki Kamiya and is used here without permission for entertainment purposes only. All artificial persons herein are based on characters owned by their creators, not the author. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayonetta Dramatis Personae: Frank ___ - Lead character, inventor of Alpha Alpha - First A.I. in existence Kasumi Tendo - artificial woman based on character from Ranma 1/2 Daria Morgendorffer aka Daria Morgan - artificial woman based on character from Daria Jane Lane aka Jane Lannister - artificial woman based on character from Daria Kara Zor-L aka Power Girl aka Karen Starr - artificial woman based on character from DC Comics Rei Ayanami aka Rei Ayanami Ikari - artificial woman based on character from Neon Genesis Evangelion Anna Marie aka Rogue aka Anna Marie Raffen - artificial woman based on character From Marvel Comics Princess Diana aka Wonder Woman aka Diana Prince Walters - artificial woman based on character from DC Comics Zatanna Zatara aka Annabelle Tara Zane - artificial woman based on character from DC Comics Beta aka Bayonetta aka Elizabeth Alana Franks - cyborg copy of Alpha in body based on video game character from Bayonetta ------- Before I get into the details of our next recreated character, I'd like to give some general updates and information on my women so far. One impression I'd like to correct is that we all got along all of the time. We actually do get along very well, given the variety of people living in the house, but there have been some noticeable arguments and even one catfight. However I hadn't recreated any characters who were mean-spirited or thrived on conflict, plus we had a special advantage when it came to promoting a harmonious household: Kasumi. Kasumi was the secret to our peaceful interpersonal relations. The only way I could see to increase the benefits of her presence would be to upgrade her to Belldandy from Oh My Goddess -- actually I think the two characters even had the same voice actress -- but Belldandy was deeply in love with someone else, thus removing her from my list. The thing about Kasumi was that she always put others first. You quickly learned not to ask her to do favors for you, because she would do so without question, which could lead to serious guilt for taking advantage of her. If you forgot to do a chore, she would do it for you, which led to everyone else giving you the stink-eye until you apologized to her and made up for it. Kasumi was slowly studying to become a nurse, but she took her main job of running the household very seriously. As we had more and more people living here, the household chores became more and more spread out, so we had less to do. At the same time, Kasumi's organizing jobs became more difficult with more people and schedules to juggle. She still only rarely initiated sex herself, but everyone knew this and she rarely slept alone. Daria and Jane were still inseparable for the most part. Daria had started working towards B.A.'s in both English and Journalism, while Jane, of course, focused on art. School was going fairly well for both of them, with the exception of Daria dropping an average of one course a semester due to personal conflicts with teachers. Aside from their schooling, Daria had gotten close to Rei, finding in the Japanese pilot the only person she had ever met who had been more withdrawn than she had been. I was initially worried that Daria might be threatened by another highly intelligent female, but Rei was too buried in books to threaten anyone's place in a social hierarchy. Daria was working toward a life as a writer, but was unsure if she wanted to write fiction or news or a mix. Her first Melody Powers book -- about a top female government agent who tended to have to kill her lovers as spies after she had slutted it up with them -- had been sent out to various publishers, which had garnered a couple possible offers from pulp novel companies. Jane became the sexual experimenter of the household. She was the first to try out anal sex. She was the first to be tied up for sex, though she also enjoyed playing the mistress role in sexual bondage games. (I even let her tie me up for sex more than once. It's occasionally fun, but not really my thing.) Jane was also the interior designer and graphic designer for a company I was setting up to handle my patents, a company also designed with the intent of shielding me from public attention. Daria and Jane were also the main source of minor conflicts in the household. Their trademark sarcastic jabs were never (or at least rarely) intended to be mean-spirited, but they sometimes went over the line and actually hurt feelings or made someone mad. If they didn't realize this and apologize on their own, Kasumi would have a talk with them. Rei had expanded my library into two rooms now, with the second quickly filling up. She already had a pilot's license for small craft and was working on helicopters next. Her engineering studies were still self-taught for now, but she was considering school. Rei was also the one person in the household who was more likely to sleep alone than with someone. Reading yourself to sleep doesn't lend itself easily to sexual activity. Kara was an interesting case. I didn't realize what a strong connection I was creating when I included myself in her backstory. In addition to being very beautiful and strong, she was a lot of fun and completely devoted to me to an extent the others couldn't match. This also created a degree of possessiveness, but since she was bi-sexual and did not consider herself to be a permanent resident, this translated into her demanding a position at the head of the harem. Originally I had never planned for any of the women to be permanent residents, instead planning to trade them out one or two at a time every few years starting after I had the harem full. But with Power Girl, I was considering ways to keep her here longer. In the meantime, Kara was doing her best to maintain her position as the Alpha female. (Yes, I had adopted Daria's terms a long time ago.) Before Diana and Z arrived, the only threats to her position had been Anna physically and Daria intellectually. Though she couldn't match Daria's IQ, Daria didn't have a dominant personality. As for Anna, she could be a leader, but she wasn't interested. Don't misunderstand me. Kara is a fairly easy-going person. She doesn't lord it over anyone or demand that we watch her favorite horror movies every night (yes, she is a big fan of hard-R horror movies; odd but deliberately described in the comics). But she was also very protective of me and to maintain that protection required her to maintain a certain degree of authority. Diana's arrival had obviously threatened her status, so she moved quickly to delineate areas of authority. Diana agreed that anything regarding me or the household would fall under Kara's authority. Anything related to outside issues would be determined by the situation, with the understanding that Diana would likely take charge. This was a literal agreement the two discussed, about a week after Diana and Zatanna's arrival; Alpha has a video recording. Kara was still the only woman who would occasionally find me, sling me over her shoulder and abduct me for sex. Jane or one of the others might try some ambush sex with me or do some interesting roleplay, but Kara would just straightforwardly grab me and take me to the bedroom. (I've found through experience that if I want to do the same to her, I need to enlist Anna or Diana to help. Otherwise, Kara will just stand there and roll her eyes at whoever is trying to carry her off.) Kara was the only one to show no interest in pursuing a career of her own. She sometimes talked about taking classes in something, but for the time being, she seemed perfectly happy just relaxing and helping out other people in their endeavors. Anna Marie/Rogue hadn't yet found her place in this world. Her entire adult life had been spent with superheroes or villains. She had never had a real job or had to choose her own path in life. At this point, she was basically sampling the world around her ... and enjoying her ability to touch other people without consequence. Anna was far from a slut, but her programming and personality allowed her to explore her sexuality freely in my home. Jane had obviously tried to infect her with her own sexual curiosity, but had only been partly successful. Anna would sometimes still jump if you touched her unexpectedly, but she was beginning to relax. Plus she was becoming addicted to orgasms. Or maybe more accurately, to intimacy. (As a side note, I loved Jane's surprise with Anna. Bleaching part of her pubic area to match her hair was a great visual touch.) To help her bond with Kara, I had taken everyone out hang gliding once. Yes, it was hang gliding for novices, side-by-side with instructors, but the two of them really enjoyed it. They went back regularly, taking Diana with them once she arrived on the scene. Diana was an interesting case. Her first reaction to the real world was to try to duplicate her role from the comic book world. Diana took Anna, Kara and Zatanna on patrol in the DFW area on motorcycles -- I had realized a while back that we needed more vehicles, so I picked up two more cars and four motorcycles. In two weeks of patrolling, they stopped one drunken street fight. The problem was that without police cooperation, showy supervillains, super senses or flight, their ability to find crime as it happened was nil. They bought a police scanner, but that tended to let them show up after the police were already on-scene. Once they realized this, they gave up patrolling. However, they started volunteering any time natural disasters threatened or public involvement was needed. (For example, they helped search a park for a missing jogger, filled and placed bags of sand to prevent flooding and joined Habitat for Humanity.) I should also note that Diana was the impetus for me buying a yacht. I invested in one to let Diana try to find Themyscira ... and to let me take a vacation. Of course the boat had plenty of computer and satellite uplink capability. Our actual vacation schedule was still up in the air. I had actually only seen the boat once, when I bought it, since we lived a couple hundred miles from the coast. It was large without being ostentatious with three small bedrooms and 5 bunks. As for her sexual habits, Diana was not a fan of harems, but was a fan of large communities of open-minded women. She decided to take to heart the idea that the women were using me for sex instead of the other way around. Although she was not very horny when compared to Jane or Kara, she tended to sleep with me or one of the other women at least a couple times a week. Sex with her tended to include oral sex and be enthusiastically energetic. After reading some of her own comic books, especially the really old ones, she avoided bondage entirely unless the male was the only one being tied up. Zatanna on the other hand had no problem with bondage sex, although admittedly she mostly used it to help her practice her escape artist skills. Most sex with her seemed to grow out of her magic. Maybe it got her libido pumping to mix the two. Along those lines, the most fun, squishy sex I've ever had with her started with me tying her up. She worked her way free as I first teased her, then started fucking her. Midway through coitus, she undid the last handcuff and slipped it onto me, turning the tables on me. By the time that afternoon fuck session was through, I was handcuffed, tied to the bed, blindfolded and thoroughly drained of semen. She was very slow about accepting her bi-sexuality, taking 2 months before she had sex with a woman when I wasn't present. She found Kasumi crying by herself one day -- Kasumi still occasionally cried for the loss of her family, but such emotional pain was becoming very rare for her -- and Zatanna comforted her as best she could. That actually led to a closeness between the two that was very wonderful to witness. In a professional capacity, she was re-developing her magic act and had worked up some special equipment for it. She didn't have enough for a full length show, but she could do 15 to 20 minutes of professional-level magic. Without her powers, she had little desire to be a super-hero, but was willing to help out Diana as needed. As a super-hero without powers, she worked up some hidden weapons and flashes and surprises as part of her wardrobe. She could taze or blind an attacker, then suddenly have an extendable baton in hand to put them down. As for me, I was alternately busy beyond belief and having the time of my life. The sex was amazing, but I was also growing really attached to some of the women. Kasumi and Kara were almost definitely going to be long-term residents (and I had a vague plan for a story of how Kara would stick around for a while). I would love for Daria and Jane to stick around for a good long time too, but I wasn't entirely sure I could keep them once they graduated. That was a serious problem to consider actually. Physically, the bodies we grew were definitely susceptible to tumors; nearly every woman we had grown had developed a radical growth or tumor of some sort within a year. If any of the women moved away, they would likely either die or risk exposing my operations when they visited a doctor. The plan was that when a woman was ready to 'leave', Alpha would disable her before she was very far away. I'd retrieve the body, which would be broken down and remade into the next woman on my list. Her mind would be stored for future use. Ideally, we'd just store her body for future activation, but we didn't have a method available for long-term storage. (It was on Alpha's to-do list, but she hadn't had the time to work out a useable method yet.) Rei wasn't really working out well and would probably be the first to be recycled. I still loved her anime, but in person? I hate to sound petty, but she didn't pay attention to me like I wanted her to. She was definitely getting better at social interactions as time passed, but she was still a cold fish more often than not. (On the other hand, I was also thinking about having Misato "assigned" to come to the U.S. and care for Rei.) Still, I wasn't ready to retire anyone yet. We had plenty of room left in the house and I felt no urgent need to keep filling it up. Trust me, regardless of how many women you think you might want to have on hand, more than half a dozen is getting to be too many to juggle. So while I had 4 double-beds and 3 singles left in the house, I wasn't sure if I would be filling them up very quickly. In other personal news, I leased a storage facility off-the-books where I put together equipment for a back-up location for Alpha. Maybe I was getting a bit paranoid, but if anything ever happens to my house or someone decides I'm up to something illegal and the police raid the house, I will be able to rebuild Alpha quickly and easily, including weekly memory back-ups. I guess it was a relatively busy 5 months. I had to liquidate a few million dollars in market assets to pay for it all too. I was a bit worried about how casually I was spending all this money, but Alpha had a proven track record when it came to making more. ------- When I started talking with Alpha about possibilities for the next creation, Alpha had an interesting suggestion. "I would prefer to do this as a surprise, but there are too many construction stages which will require your involvement." "What's your idea?" "I would like to build a physical body for myself." "An android body?" "No, a cyborg. I can build a small computer inside a human skull and torso with interfaces to control the body and receive input from the senses. A simple wireless connection will allow interface with my main systems, but the cyborg body will be capable of independent action." "What about power?" "I have not yet determined how to draw sufficient power from the biological means available, so I will need to include a battery which will be recharged daily." "Recharged how? Are you planning on an external plug?" "While that is a possibility, I should be able to recharge the battery just fine with a wireless charging mat." "What about when parts wear out? Like the battery or hard drive?" "With regular nanite check-ups, I should have a minimal failure rate, but yes, failure of certain parts is inevitable. "I estimate that at least 95% of the time, I will have sufficient warning to return to the lab. The other 5% of the time, an automatic alert will be sent to my main systems. As long as you or one of the women is available to return me to the lab, I should be fine. Depending on the parts needing replacement or repair, the work will require from 30 minutes to 12 hours. Some of the work will require your active help." "Huh. Will all of this be stored in the brain?" "Approximately 57% will be stored inside the skull." "So what happens to the brain? Will she develop her own consciousness?" "No, I will only be building the portions of the brain that support the autonomic functions, muscle controls and sensory interfaces." "Can't you use the brain for memory storage? "I have spent considerable time working to solve that exact problem without success. I require the nanites to read and write to biological memory effectively, and I will not be able to include nanite control with the equipment stored inside the body. Instead I will use solid state memory occupying all available space." "Heat dissipation?" "I will be using low heat equipment, but yes, that was a major hurdle to overcome. Fortunately the human body includes multiple methods of heat dissipation already, mainly blood flow variations and sweating. Normal blood flow will allow for proper heat dissipation in the skull. The battery and control processors in the upper torso will require a bit more effective cooling, so an enlargement of part of the windpipe will allow for liquid-flow cooling filaments. The result should be that my exhalations will be hotter than normal, although I may require additional cooling during the hottest summer months." "Wow. You've spent a lot of time planning this out ... obviously. What about impacts ... ummm ... the internal biological integrity when placed alongside hard metal? And the mechanical strength? I mean, human bodies can survive impacts that normal computer parts cannot." "It is all a matter of design. Nearly all metallic and plastic components will be covered in biologically neutral sheaths which will be ignored by the body's normal defense mechanisms. It will be much easier to assure the integrity of all parts if I can use a super-human body with enhancements like Power Girl, Wonder Woman and Rogue." "Sure. Did you have a specific character or body in mind?" "I was thinking either Bayonetta, Supergirl or A-ko." "Hmmm ... not Supergirl. Too many questions to answer with the others. Let's go with Bayonetta. Having you running her keeps her sane, and we don't have to worry about her believing in magic and an ongoing war with angels and such. Oh, I assume the new body will comply with the Asimov protocols?" "Most definitely." "Does this mean you'll be able to experience human sensations?" "Yes and no. I will receive all sensory inputs, but my brain will remain electronic. I will not have a biological brain to experience the chemicals associated with emotions, pain or pleasure, and many of my physical reactions will have to be simulated." "So you still won't be able to taste a good meal or experience an orgasm?" "Again, yes and no. My experience of things relying on chemical and neural reactions like that will be different than yours. At the same time, I am definitely curious how even those partial sensations and experiences will feel." "So what will be your limitations? Show me the proposed specs." ------- Building a Bayonetta body for Alpha proved to be the most involved of all of the bodies so far, taking nearly 5 months. We finished her about 2 years after we first started building Kasumi. Alpha Bayonetta was the 9th lady we had built and the most expensive. Speaking of money, maybe I should address how much it costs to grow a human being. Not nearly as much as I'd have thought originally. Don't misunderstand me, the initial investment in equipment was very substantial (somewhere around $35 million), with equipment upkeep of another $0.5 to $2 million a year. Outside of the equipment itself though, the bodies only cost about $100,000 each in materials and power costs and with experience, they got a little cheaper each time. Bayonetta was the most involved of all of the creations ... and the gooiest. Most of the time, I would only have to physically interact with the bodies 3 or 4 times during their growth. With Bayonetta, I had to keep installing chips and drives and wires daily for half the growth duration. While the nanites handled things on a cellular level, they couldn't do heavy lifting. But along with their cellular work, they also built protective pouches for everything and made sure all the wiring was perfectly connected and secured. Everything had to be properly anchored down within the body with webs of tendons or, in some cases, partially embedded in bone. Bayonetta's body itself eventually started looking very pleasant. If you haven't seen her, imagine a younger Sarah Palin with larger breasts, longer hair, dressed in leather and with the attitude of a sex goddess. Well, the leather came afterwards in this case and the hair will never be as long as it was in the game. But she looked like the hottest MILF you've ever imagined (except that she wasn't a mother, of course). One thing I changed was her skin tone. For some reason, she always seemed to me like she should have had slightly darker skin, like the ladies of Spain. Since we were remaking her anyway, I had Alpha give her Moorish ancestry for her skin color. I gave Alpha free reign to add whatever physical bonuses she wanted, so she was as strong as Power Girl, had better reflexes than Wonder Woman, better sight and hearing than anyone else and all of the combat skills she could ever want. Unlike all our women before her, she was awake in the lab before her body was finished. Even once her body was completed, she didn't leave the lab for almost two days while she got used to her new body. As I understood it, her connection to the main Alpha was remote, not networked. Thus Bayonetta was more like Alpha's daughter than just an extension. She was subordinate to the main Alpha system, but independent of it. She lacked the extensive memory of Alpha, but had high-speed access to Alpha at all times as long as she stayed within range of the house transmitters. ------- I had been down in the lab with Bayonetta almost constantly since she became mobile a day and a half ago. She was nearly through with her calibration and stress tests. Watching her work through this was fascinating. She would stand completely still except for one finger or arm or leg or toe, then groups of fingers then clapping, then tossing something into the air and catching it. Or she would sit watching a screen for half an hour checking her visual acuity and responses. She found blinking to be annoying and sleep to be a complete waste of time, but both were apparently necessary for her. I don't think she slept as a person would, because the computer part of her brain would never shut down. But when she reached 32 hours of consciousness for the first time (while still in the nanite pod), her reflexes started failing, then her strength waned and her vision went blurry and all that would get worse until she "slept" for a few hours. We used her down-time to test the charging mat, which seemed to work all right. She also had a small plug with a water-proof removable cover in the back of her head, hidden by her long hair, to allow for more direct charging. The plug would be our normal charging option. She claimed to be able to identify flavors, but didn't understand the attraction of food as anything other than fuel for the body. On the other hand, smells fascinated her, so much so that she started planning for an upgraded scent ability. That was something else different about her. She was constantly planning for better upgrades and interfaces for both her electronic and biological bodies. Personally, I was hoping she might eventually work out an interface that could let her experience the benefits of having a human body. I struck up a conversation when I thought she was nearing the end of her tests. "Alpha ... umm ... Bayonetta Alpha. I've decided on a nickname for you. 'Beta'. It fits. It's both a second version of Alpha and a shortened version of Bayonetta." "So, I am a Beta release?" "Not really what I was thinking. I named Alpha because Alpha means the first, and she is the first of her kind. Maybe you're mainly just a copy of Alpha, but you're also a separate entity, capable of independent action. Thus, you are the second. Beta." "I understand," came her voice simultaneously from the earbud and Beta. "I disagree that we are as separate as you claim, but I understand why you might wish to address us separately." "I'm also curious to see if you develop separate personalities over time. Are your calibrations and tests finished?" "The rest of the testing is less essential, but requires me to be outside the lab. I am curious, have you decided how to introduce me to the others?" "Well, I'm not planning to introduce you to them until your tests are completed. Once that's done, I figure I'll just introduce you as a neighbor from when I was young. You are moving back into the area and need a new place to live, so I'm going to rent one of my spare rooms to you. "You have the computer skills I need, so I'll hire you as an assistant, which will give you free access to the basement. "If they discover your enhanced physiology or become suspicious, you can play off of Zatanna's idea. You realized years ago that I was someone who was special and needed to be protected. And try not to answer any questions about where your abilities came from." "That should be sufficient for now. Frank, it is now 11:32 pm and all the women are in bed. I would like to switch them off and complete my testing." "Certainly. Which test is next?" "There is no set sequence to test the next set of protocols. But given this convenient timing, I would like to test my body's sexual sensitivity and responsiveness. Will you fuck me?" Ah yes, Beta certainly had Alpha's directness. "Beta, I realize it's not really necessary when you're only speaking with me, but I really think you should always have your social protocols engaged. At the very least, it will help test them out, especially since we haven't had the opportunity to field test them like this before." "I understand. Should I engage my standard social protocols or one of the secondary ones? Would this be an appropriate time to test out the 'sex kitten' protocols?" "Yes, let's try it out." And a few seconds later, my earbud started quietly playing "Fly Me to the Moon". If you've ever played the game, it was the version that plays constantly in the background. Beta's body posture shifted completely. She had been naked all of this time, but clinically so, more like a detailed mannequin than a nude woman. Now, her hips were shifting side-to-side, swaying as she slowly started walking towards me, her eyes heavy-lidded and smoldering, hands on her hips. I think she was actually copying Jessica Rabbit's walk. Until now, her voice had been fairly monotone and robotic in intonation. Now she sounded a lot more like Bayonetta from the game. "Come on, Master. Take me to your bed and make a woman out of me." "Master?" She put a finger coyly in her mouth. "Master, you know I'm still a virgin." I grinned. "This has possibilities. Come along, Miss. Let's retire to my room." She walked in front of me all the way up to my room, swaying her hips all the way, looking back at me occasionally, giving me a wink, swinging her bosom into view just enough to lead me on. Once in the bedroom, she laid herself out on my bed, putting herself on display for me. She wore small square glasses (for appearance's sake only), over which she peered at me seductively. She wore no makeup, but her lips were naturally a dark red and her cheeks had a natural blush. Her DDD breasts (second only to Kara) were large and firm, capped with large puffy pale pink nipples -- oddly enough she was the first artificial woman in the house with puffy nipples. Her legs were long and shapely and would, on any normal bed, easily stretch from one side to another. She had no pubic hair, and her fingers spread her glistening lower lips wide for my viewing. I stripped naked as I watched her and asked, "What would you like to do first, my dear?" "Whatever is your pleasure, Master. Even my ass is ready for you," she said as she rolled over into a hands-and-knees position and wiggled her very shapely posterior at me. Although I was sure I knew the answer, I still had to ask. "So your sphincter muscles are... ?" "Normal human muscles. There is no danger from them, master. And I am still lubricated from the goo." "Excellent, but hardly the appropriate place to start for your first human sexual experiences. Roll back over, would you? Now, one of the reasons I tend to give oral sex first is because I don't like licking it after I've deposited my load." I crawled onto the bed between her thighs and lay myself out on top of her lengthwise. I captured her lips with mine and taught her how to kiss. Literally. She started waving her tongue inside my mouth with little to no rhyme or reason. Soon I had her using her long, wet pink appendage to caress my own tongue and search out the contours of my mouth, while I explored hers. I left her mouth and began working my way down her body. Everything felt natural and human, though her breasts gave the impression of having implants. I entertained myself with her nipples, enjoying the puffy, springy quality for a few minutes. I was tempted to ask her what the experiences were like for her, but didn't want to break the mood for myself. So I left that discussion for after. At least the nipples had hardened properly, which I took to be a good sign. By the time I worked down to her vagina, she was as wet as a swamp. Bland tasting, of course, but completely lubed up with natural juices. As I started licking and exploring, Beta started moaning and saying "Oh, yes ... Yes, right there..." and such until she worked her way up to a climax. A thoroughly unconvincing climax. I sat back and looked at her. "Were you just using the When Harry Met Sally orgasm scene to fake that?" "No. Well, not verbatim." I sighed. "So, no natural stimulation or orgasm?" "I received what I believe are the appropriate nerve impulses, but lack the organic chemical receptors to achieve orgasm." "Well, I knew that would probably be the case. Knowing that you can't come takes a lot of the fun out of it." "Frank, don't misunderstand my situation. I am enjoying the experience a great deal, just not in the same way you are. Actually being able to participate in these activities, especially with you, is something I have been looking forward to for a long time. I may have to imitate some of the physiological responses to which you are accustomed, but in all other respects I am enthusiastic about the encounter." I smiled at her. It was especially nice to have a face to look at when conversing with her. "All right, then, a few tips for physical interaction during cunnilingus. You don't need to display yourself as if this were a porno movie. Remember, actresses in those movies are playing the cameras more than their partners, which is not how it works in real life. Also, we should work up a dozen or so series of movements you can select from so you don't just do the same hip movement over and over. They'll be mostly interchangeable with those you can use for our next activity..." I had begun stroking my cock as I was talking. Her lack of natural responses had wilted my enthusiasm a bit, but I was able to re-stiffen fairly quickly. I moved up so I was kneeling between her thighs and lowered my cock into position, with the cockhead nestled between her labia. Beta moved back into character. (To be clear, not as Bayonetta, who I'm sure was not really a virgin in the game.) "Yes, Master. Make me yours!" I started rubbing the little head forward a bit at a time, until I was ready to enter her and split her hymen open. "Here ... I ... come..." and I thrust past the small barrier of tissue and moved into the depths of her vagina. Beta was hot, wet and deep and her internal muscles massaged me as I plunged in and out of her. There was a special rippling effect to her. Even as I enjoyed the experience, I had to wonder if maybe she had added a few extra muscles lining the walls of her vagina. Her body undulated under me, pushing her hips up to meet me, then giving way under my thrust and pushing her naked breasts against my chest. "Beta," I panted, "you feel ... amazing. I'm not going to ... going to ... last long like this..." And I didn't. After only 2 or 3 minutes of fucking, I let loose with a blast of come, painting her vaginal walls and cervix with my seed, after which I collapsed on top of her. Once I recovered and rolled off of her, we talked for a few minutes. Yes, she had indeed installed extra muscles down there just for me. "I'm going to have to be careful about doing that too often. That could spoil me for other women." "Thank you. Since I would not have natural physiological responses, I felt I needed an advantage of a different sort to compensate." I was toying with her nipples again and was starting to feel a resurgence of lust. Her nipples would harden noticeably when played with, perhaps faster than a normal woman, but would quickly return to a softer state half a minute after the attention ended. "Beta, I think now is the time for you to explore me a bit." "If you want to be technical, I have already explored you more thoroughly than any human possibly could. But I think I understand your meaning." She smiled as she slid down my body and settled herself by my half-erect cock. I spent the next 15 minutes watching her play with me. She spent at least a minute just smelling me ... my armpits, my cock, and even my ass. She gingerly caressed my penis and balls, gently jacking me off with one hand and weighing my balls with the other. By the time she moved on to try a blowjob, I was fully erect again. My previous come had taken the edge off, so I was good to go for extended oral play ... I hoped. Her first attempt at a blowjob was obviously based off pornos, and while it certainly wasn't bad, the movements were a little too fast and exaggerated. I coached her and she slowed down and added more of the tongue action I liked. Beta may not care much about the sense of taste, but you would never know it by the end of the blowjob lesson. "All right. Unless you just want to taste my ejaculation, I think we should complete the fucking trifecta tonight." "You mean my ass? But shouldn't you have to come in each orifice for it to count as a trifecta?" "Maybe, but I think I'm going to need to go to sleep after this next round. So, your choice: Ass or mouth?" "A difficult decision. Ass, then. I can give you a blowjob this afternoon in the basement without the need for lots of clean-up, which would also let all three of my orifices experience your semen in one day." She was technically correct, since we didn't start the actual fucking until after midnight. "All right then. There's some lube..." I trailed off as she was already pulling the tube out of my bedside table. She rubbed it briskly and thoroughly onto my erection, then smeared some around and inside her asshole. As I watched her, I realized that this may be the only time in my life that I was about to fuck a completely clean anus. Theoretically I could dip snacks in there and have no particular change in taste. She'd probably have her first bowel movement later today, but for now ... I almost wished I had eaten her ass earlier just to try it out. Unfortunately my lube, while not bad tasting, had a slick gooey quality that I hated in my mouth. (Way back, I had used it occasionally with my normal, human girlfriends for normal vaginal sex. You know, for fucking women who didn't have implant-induced overflowing pussy juices.) My musing came to an end when Beta knelt on all fours on the bed, waggled her ass and looked back at me. Her extremely inviting ass drew me toward her like a magnet. It was neither tight and tiny nor flabby and fat. It was voluptuous, and my hands kneaded it, exploring her curves. It felt like I could mold the flesh with my hands, but it always sprang back into its original shape. Slapping one cheek would cause a brief ripple which would never reach the other side. I found myself wondering if they would redden normally if paddled, but left that thought for another time. After I had fulfilled my initial ass-groping urges, I positioned my rock- hard cock at her anus. Foreplay seemed to have little point to Beta, and I was rock hard and ready to go. I pushed in a little, but there was very little give. I tried wiggling the head in a little and changing the angle, and I was able to gain a little entry, but not much. I could probably force it in, but I didn't want to risk damaging her brand new ass. "Beta, can you open up a little?" "I am trying. I have not yet found the correct muscle triggers to release the anal sphincter. So far, I have only been able to squeeze it tighter." "It's not so much releasing the muscle as ... try to push out, as if you're ... well, you haven't had a bowel movement yet, right?" "No, but let me try..." Since I was still pushing in, when her anus suddenly flexed, my cockhead moved inside her quickly, giving me at least two inches of depth before she tightened up again. But lubed and partly inside, my cock had already won the battle; her anus was too late to keep me from going deeper. I started slowly sawing in and out, feeling her sphincter grip me as I moved, watched her asshole pulled out and pushed in with every motion. Despite my earlier come, the oddity of the fuck had moved me back on edge, and I didn't want to come that quickly. I mentally dissociated myself a bit from the action, speaking as I fucked, describing the experience. "There we go, Beta. This probably feels very different from normal fucking, but there should be similarities. With the vagina, the walls are shaped so they're pressing in on the penis for the whole length. You can feel my cock along the whole length, though I've heard that most of the sensitivity is near the surface of the vagina. With anal sex, you lack the interior tightness and sensation. Almost all of the experience is in the anus itself. I'm just thick enough that I can feel the walls of your colon, but there's no pressure like the vaginal caress inside. On the other hand, there's no cervix to limit the depth of penetration." I leaned over her and cupped her breasts as we fucked. "Yes," she said, panting. Actually, her panting was ... regular. She was breathing normally, but doing it in a pant for effect, I think. "Yes, I can feel you inside me. It is noticeably different, but I can understand how women might be able to find some pleasure in it, if the anus is stretched first perhaps. I can also understand how pain might override the pleasure if it isn't stretched." This was probably the oddest conversation we had ever had. I wouldn't be surprised if a playback had me speaking random nonsense words, given the level of distraction I was facing. Still, the conversation served its purpose. I lasted a good 10 minutes before coming in her ass, after which I pulled out and rolled off to her side. "Alpha ... Beta ... You are awesome ... but I think I gotta go to sleep now..." I fell asleep to the feeling of her sucking my cock clean. ------- I woke up alone around 7 the next morning. Not a full night's sleep, but close enough. I had fallen asleep with my earpiece in, leading to a rather sore ear. I pulled it out and checked it. The battery was still good, but my ear was way too sore at the moment. Fortunately, I had gotten it as part of a pair and was able to switch it out for a left ear model for the day. "Good morning, Alpha. How's Beta?" "Good morning, Frank. Beta is currently asleep in the nano-goo so I can fine tune a few settings." "Is all basic testing complete?" "Only two main tests remain, and both require your presence in case of trouble. The first test involves leaving the house's broadcast area, and the second involves connecting remotely to the house network using a cell phone data stream. If remote activity has any problems, you may be required to return Beta to within the house network area." "Okay. We'll do those tonight. If all goes well, we can introduce Beta to the household tomorrow. No, wait, she'll need a wardrobe and car first. So as soon as we can get the whole background paraphernalia set up." The day passed quietly. Since we didn't have another character lined up to be grown yet, I agreed to let Alpha use her primary resources on a side project we had discussed -- for those who are interested, Alpha wanted to try to create bacteria that could turn organic waste into gasoline. This isn't actually very farfetched. We already have bacteria (based on e-coli) capable of turning organic waste into diesel fuel. Anyway, I cornered Rei for a quickie mid-afternoon and let Beta suck me off that evening after dinner for her trifecta completion. After everyone went to bed (and Alpha turned them off to keep them asleep), Beta and I did some distance and remote contact testing. Beta did fine when acting outside of Alpha's local broadcast range, though she admitted to being less certain of herself. On the upside, she could actually act faster while independent of Alpha, which makes sense when you think it. The remote contact involved having a high-speed data cell phone hooked up to an extremely short range wireless connection in her pocket which let her connect to Alpha at home via the cell phone's data line. Very slow when compared to our home network, but it allowed basic communication between Alpha and Beta. The next day, I snuck Beta out with me, and we went shopping for a car and made sure her checking account was set up. I let Alpha choose her own name, and she selected 'Elizabeth Alana Franks', which of course allowed a nickname of Betty or Beta. We actually had a bit of a revealing discussion when going over her financial setup. Alpha didn't want to impose on me financially very much. I wanted her to indulge herself now that she had a mobile body. "Look, Alpha. All this money is as much yours as it is mine." "100% of the original investment was yours, therefore you own 100% of the product." "But 95% of the investment strategy is yours. I guess this hasn't come up so far since you had no legal identity, but as far as I'm concerned, you have free access to whatever funds you need. Well, if you want to make a large purchase, say over a hundred thousand, I'd prefer to be consulted first. But the money is as much yours as mine." "Thank you. However, the Elizabeth Franks background doesn't include such wealth." "Good point. What do you say... 50 or 60 thousand in checking and savings? But I still say we should splurge on a car. Get one that's completely wired up and online so you have another mobile point of access." "Very well." After we picked out a nice car, I left her to do her basic shopping and went home. I'll admit to being a bit nervous about leaving her alone, but she had to be able to act completely independently sometimes or the experiment would be a failure. There was nothing to worry about. About 5 o'clock Alpha alerted me that Beta was about to call looking for me as an old friend. I wandered upstairs and heard Kasumi say, "Please hold. I'll go see if I can find him." Being the only "him" in the house, I was confident in asking her, "Who's looking for me?" "Ah, Frank. Elizabeth Franks. She said she knew you when you were younger? That you used to call her Beta?" "Beta? Umm, Elizabeth? She moved out of state years ago." I went to the phone and faked a five minute conversation, ending with me inviting her over for dinner. "Kasumi? One more for dinner tonight. Oh, and tell Jane we're going to have company so she doesn't show up in her nightie or something." Not a common occurrence, but it had happened more than once. About 20 minutes later, Beta showed up in her new car wearing some very nice clothes. I actually breathed a sigh of relief that she wasn't wearing all leather, as that might be a bit odd for first-introductions. She did have on a nice leather jacket, tight jeans and a very nice red blouse. We hugged and asked each other a bunch of 'what have you been up to' type questions. I introduced her to the rest of the household, and everyone was warm and friendly. Beta was hardly my first guest, but she was the first really attractive childhood friend who, as far as everyone else knew, wasn't planning to stay. (Maybe I should point out that I do have a few living family members and friends. Yes, they do visit the house and have met my women. No, they don't know I sleep with all of them. And no, they aren't really any part of this story, or at least, I made a conscious decision not to include them. I have no intention of allowing the information in this story to allow anyone to figure out who I am.) The only conversation point of interest that evening was when Beta asked, "So Frank, did you ever get your Alpha program up and running?" Most of our reminiscences that evening were off-the-cuff, not pre-planned, so that question caught me momentarily off-guard. But then I noticed Kara's attention focused on her and understood what she was doing. "Ummm ... Yes, but maybe we could discuss that more after dinner when I show you my lab?" "You did? That's amaz ... well, after dinner, then." Kara gave me a rather sharp look, and her looks were noticed by Diana, but that was the only reaction until later. After dinner, Beta and I went down to the basement together and filled out our backstories a little more thoroughly. The plan was for her to stay in a hotel that night, then come back over the next afternoon when I'd hire her to be my assistant and publicly offer to let her move in. A couple hours later, we exited the basement, she gave me a kiss on the cheek and we said goodnight. Seconds after the front door closed, Kara appeared behind me and cleared her throat. "Don't worry, Kara. I trust her. I've known her since I was ... umm ... hmmm ... well, at least since my early teen years." "And you introduced her to Alpha?" "Yes, I did. Heck, she knows a lot about programming herself. Not as much as me, maybe, but then again, I am the best." I gave an exaggerated preening pose. "Yeah, yeah. I'm just making sure you know what you're doing." "I'll have Alpha run a background check on her overnight, but I'm not worried about her." I gave her a kiss, and whispered, "Now, who's on the list tonight?" She whispered back. "You aren't supposed to know about the list." "I have no idea what list you're talking about. So, who is it tonight?" "Diana and Daria." "That's an odd pairing." "Wasn't supposed to be a pairing. No one could make out Jane's handwriting. Could have been either of them, so instead it's going to be both." "Wow, I didn't think the non-existent list went so far in advance that you all couldn't just remember the schedule." I kissed her on the cheek and followed my ears to the game room, where Diana, Daria, Jane and Rei were having fun. I had no clue where the others had gone to. Rei and Jane were facing off on the PS3 as Jedi in one of the Star Wars games -- Jane was swinging her controller all over the place while Rei calmly sat still and was handily defeating her. Maybe Jane would have a chance if they were playing on the Wii. On the other side of the room, Daria and Diana were facing off with each other at the pool table. I went over to watch and said, "I play the winner." Theoretically Diana should have easily beaten Daria with her hand-eye coordination, but Wonder Woman kept sinking the cue ball every other shot. I had every intention of throwing the game when I played Daria, but my intentions were not needed. I wondered if Alpha had made Daria into a pool sharp as she sank ball after ball. "Well, I am well and truly beaten. Hey, I know the game should go back to you and Diana now, but any chance I could play one more this evening?" "Sure thing. Here you go," Daria said as she handed her cue off to Diana. And here I thought I was going to have to convince her to step aside for a game. When playing her, I finally understood that although Diana had perfect hand-eye coordination, she didn't have Daria's perfect understanding of geometry or a perfect understanding of how hard to hit the ball. Maybe it's bragging to say so, but I used considerable skill to fail some of my shots while setting up good shots for Diana. I made it close, but she won while I still had 2 balls on the table. "You ladies have defeated me, fairly and honorably." In her classic monotone, Daria said, "I guess that means you have to do what we say for tonight." I knelt at her feel and clasped her around the hips, using the opportunity to grab her ass a little. "Please, Brer Fox. Please, don't make me do what you say!" I had no clue if Diana would get the Uncle Remus reference, but of course Daria understood. "Plus extra punishment for reference to old, racist children's literature." "Remember or doomed to repeat." "No philosophy tonight." "Yes, ma'am. I mean, no, ma'am." I looked over at Diana, who was watching us with a small smile on her face. "Diana? I mean, ma'am?" I started to knee-walk my way over to Wonder Woman who gestured for me to stand up. "There's no need to kneel." But it was a trick, because as soon as I stood up, she grabbed me and slung me over her shoulder, probably imitating one of Kara's favorite moves. Daria followed as she carried me upstairs to the master bedroom. Daria sighed as if she were reluctant to follow, but follow she did. While we were climbing the stairs, she said, "You do realize I'm only doing this because I get tired of Jane's dildos and want some real cock for a change." I knew her character well enough to realize she was joking. I responded with "We can always buy some sex toys specifically for you on our next shopping trip." "Or you can borrow one of mine. Or you can forgo dildos and find a willing tongue," Diana added. "Hmmm ... I suppose that does have the advantage of natural warmth and lack of conversation." "Well, any time you feel the need, come and see me," Diana assured her as we entered my room. She tossed me carefully onto my bed. "Now, Frank, it's time for you to get to work. Daria here sounds like she might like some oral attentions." "Yes, ma'am," I said as I pulled off my shirt and shoes. Daria sat down on the bed and kicked off her shoes, but made no other effort to strip down. "Oral attention would be nice to start. Get crackin', tongue-boy." I moved between her legs, reached under her skirt and pulled off her panties. I took my time reaching her pussy, deciding to kiss my way up from her feet. Just before I went under her skirt, I saw Diana's hands under Daria's shirt and their lips pressed together. It is difficult to tell time when you're eating pussy in the shadows of a skirt, but I think I was down there somewhere in the 5 to 10 minute range, giving her at least 2 orgasms in that time. Eventually I was pulled out by Diana, who took a moment to lick Daria's juices off my face. "Mmmmmmm ... my turn," she said, and pushed head down to her own naked crotch. While I spent time servicing Wonder Woman's quim, I felt other small hands divesting me of my pants and underwear. Feeling my cock spring free of confinement was a great relief, but it was no sooner freed from a cloth prison than it was captured by a mouth. Daria must have laid down under me to get into position, but she only worked on me for a minute before she stood back up. Though my hearing was muffled by Diana's thighs, I could hear Daria speaking to me as she grabbed my cock and played with it. "Come on now, big boy. Give Diana some orgasms to call her own. You don't get to come 'til you do." She wasn't jacking me off, she was literally just playing with my penis. She would try to poke the tip into my belly button or bend it down parallel to my legs. She gently separated my balls and tried to weigh each one by itself. Or that's what it felt like she was doing. In the meantime, I was desperately trying to get Diana off. I blindly felt around until I had her tits in my hands and played with the nipples in time with the strokes of my tongue. She was coming within five minutes, but one wasn't enough for Daria, who insisted I continue until Diana had come at least three times. Diana's second orgasm though was a drawn-out series of small ones that Daria judged sufficient. "Okay, lay down on your back. I want to ride your pony." As a completely naked Daria mounted me, I half expected Diana to sit on my face. Instead she lay back and watched Daria bouncing on my cock, grinding her pussy down onto me. Once Diana was sufficiently recovered, she moved around behind Daria, kissing her neck, caressing her small breasts with one hand, playing with Daria's clit with her other hand and pressing her own breasts into Daria's back as it moved up and down. The sight set me off, and I blasted into Daria's vagina, setting off her own orgasm. After we had both finished, Diana kissed Daria and gently pulled her off of me, laying her down to the side. Then Diana stroked my cock a few times to keep it erect and told me, "Your work isn't nearly done tonight." "Yes, ma'am. I mean, no, ma'am." And she mounted me, taking Daria's place. I came two more times that night. Not sure how many more comes D and D had, but it was at least three more each. I was nearly exhausted by the time I fell asleep around midnight, barely remembering to pull out my earpiece before drifting off. ------- I was the first one up the next morning. I understood why I got up before Daria, who was notoriously lazy when she didn't have classes, but Diana tended to be an early riser too. When I put in my earpiece, Alpha immediately started speaking. "Good morning, Frank. There was a problem with Beta's battery charger last night. I had to bring her in to fix the problem this morning about 2 a.m." "What was the problem? Is everything all right now?" "The internal contacts were dislodged when she plugged in last night at her hotel. The problem was fixed by 4:20 a.m., and she has been charging since then." "Is she sufficiently charged to return to the hotel?" "Her current battery charge should last until at least 2 p.m. without further charge time." "Okay, send her back to the hotel, but have her take the wireless mat too just in case. We'll definitely want to move her into the house today. No telling what other minor problems might crop up over the next few days. I assume you have the women turned off for the moment?" "Correct." "Okay, let me know when you're ready to reactivate the women." I had mixed feelings about Beta's problem and fix. For the most part, I was happy they were able to deal with it on their own, but I also felt a bit left out. This was the first time Alpha had a physical problem that didn't require my help. The feeling of not being needed was warring with the knowledge that we had built Beta exactly so that I wouldn't be needed for every little thing. I went into the bathroom and did my morning business. Then I took a warm washcloth and cleaned up Daria and Diana's nether regions. A couple minutes later, Alpha gave me the heads-up. I gave Alpha the OK to reactivate and dove into Diana's wonder-pussy to give her a pleasant morning wake-up. Diana was most appreciative, actually waking up with an orgasm. We followed that with a nice early morning fuck in the classic missionary position -- which is one of the few times we had ever fucked that way; Wonder Woman was very much a fan of female-superior positions or at least positions where the man wasn't on top. Daria slept through all of it. A little later we met up with Kara and Kasumi in the exercise room. It was rare for all four of us to be there at the same time, but we were the main early-morning-exercisers in the house. I used the opportunity to tell them some of my plans for Beta. "I'm going to offer Elizabeth one of the spare rooms. Actually, if everything checks out and she's willing, I might offer her a job as my assistant." "Your assistant? I thought you liked working alone?" Kara asked. "Sometimes I do, but some of the projects are getting to the point where I could use some help from someone with electronics and computer programming experience." "Like your eye project?" "Yes, that and other ideas I've been working on." "Do you trust her that much?" "Well, I'm not going to offer her the job today, but if she's like she was when we were teens, then she should be qualified. I'm sure I can come up with a good NDA for her to sign." Diana asked, "What eye project?" "Oh, sorry Diana. I guess I showed Kara when you were out of town for the hurricane clean-up. One of the projects I've been working on in the basement is a practical artificial eye. I can show you later if you're interested. It's not finished yet, but I'm pretty close to being ready for actual human testing. Or more accurately, I'm close to asking the FDA or whoever for permission to try actual human testing. And apply for patents and such." "That's interesting. What other projects are you working on down there?" I put my finger to my lips. "Shhh. Secret stuff. Death rays and killer robots and ... what other things do you super-heroes normally fight?" "Frank," Kara said in a warning tone, "Diana doesn't know you as well as I do. Di, he's kidding." "Of course, I'm kidding," I said. "I just don't like sharing stuff with everyone until I'm pretty sure they'll work. Most of my ideas just don't pan out, so it can be embarrassing." "How so?" Diana asked. Doing katas on the mat, Kasumi was also listening with silent interest. "Well, for instance, what if I told you I was working on technology to end world hunger? Then six months later I have to admit that I failed with that, but instead it gave me an idea on how to ... oh, I don't know ... break up oncoming tornados with a blast of coherent sound or something. Then months later, I have to admit that the tornado thing failed, but it gave me another idea. "Okay, that sample chain of logic doesn't hold up, but that's how I work sometimes. A failed idea leads to a new project. Eventually something good comes out of it, but until then it's just embarrassing disappointment. "The artificial eye is the only one right now that I'm almost positive I can get working." "I think I understand. Let's just leave off the death ray jokes for now." "No problem." ------- Beta moved in that afternoon with only minor fanfare. That evening I worked late, helping Alpha diagnose Beta's test results. Overall she was working fine, but minor problems kept coming up. Wires were being dislodged and memory stacks were starting to shake loose and once a protective sheath started leaking. In general, Beta spent a couple of hours in the nanite goo about every other night on average. As far as social integration went, things went much more smoothly. Beta had conversed with others three times about my sexual prowess before publicly sleeping with me two weeks after her arrival, which was a week after I had openly 'hired' her on as my assistant. I think her assistant status made Kara jealous. Maybe Daria and Rei too, though it was harder to tell with them. About the same time, I started a stealth campaign to wake everyone in the household up with surprise sex at least once. I would sneak into one of their rooms early in the morning, a little before their normal wake-up time, slowly pull off their sheets and try to insert my penis without waking them up. Rogue was the only real problem with this sneak attack. Apparently she would still react with a panicky fear of skin contact if wakened by unexpected love making. She threw me off the bed and almost into the wall by pure reflex, then immediately rushed over to apologize and make sure I wasn't hurt. Aside from a couple bruises to my legs, back and ego, I was fine. A naked Bayonetta, Power Girl (also naked) and Wonder Woman (in a nightie) arrived less than a minute later while I was still on the floor. Apparently I yelled quite loudly in surprise when I was thrown, though I have no memory of doing so. Fortunately I was able to prevent a fight and had to explain what I was doing. The three quick responders decided I needed help, so they carried Rogue back to her bed and held her down for me. Rogue was quite willing, and she spent the early-morning fuck alternately kissing me and the other women. It appears that a reflex reaction without direct intent does allow the artificial women to hurt me. Alpha was profusely apologetic when we discussed it later that day and wanted to either outright deactivate Rogue or at least bring her down for further safety measures to be installed in her. I argued that Rogue was so upset about having hurt me that she was much more likely to be able to rein in future reflex reactions. If not, then I'd agree to modifications. ------- "So, Alpha, now that Beta is settling in, I'm thinking that you should have at least two different mobile bodies. That way you always have a back-up available." "I was hoping you would agree to that." "Good. We don't need to start right away, but we should add it to our to-do list. "And since your mind will be controlling it, my rules can go out the window. Someday I may challenge you into coming up with retractable anime catgirl ears or tail or something odd like that. But for now, I think I want a slightly darker skinned beauty. "Hmmm ... but I still want it to be a character I like. I don't want to mess with another DC or Marvel comic book character, so how about ... Your choice: Jasmine from the Aladdin movie or Elisa Maza from the Gargoyles cartoon." "Why not Monique from Kim Possible or Valerie from Danny Phantom? Both of them are fully black characters." "While they are beautiful and interesting, I just don't care for their characters as much. Besides, Jasmine and Elisa were always favorites of mine, they just broke my character rules, which aren't an issue if you're in charge. So what will it be?" ------- Chapter 10: Discovery Disclaimer: All artificial persons herein are based on characters owned by their creators, not the author. Authors Note: The first part of this chapter takes place before Chapter Nine. Also note that this chapter is very light on the sex and heavy on the story. Dramatis Personae: Frank ___ - Lead character, inventor of Alpha Alpha - First A.I. in existence Kasumi Tendo - artificial woman based on character from Ranma 1/2 Daria Morgendorffer aka Daria Morgan - artificial woman based on character from Daria Jane Lane aka Jane Lannister - artificial woman based on character from Daria Kara Zor-L aka Power Girl aka Karen Starr - artificial woman based on character from DC Comics Rei Ayanami aka Rei Ayanami Ikari - artificial woman based on character from Neon Genesis Evangelion Anna Marie aka Rogue aka Anna Marie Raffen - artificial woman based on character From Marvel Comics Princess Diana aka Wonder Woman aka Diana Prince Walters - artificial woman based on character from DC Comics Zatanna Zatara aka Annabelle Tara Zane - artificial woman based on character from DC Comics Beta aka Bayonetta aka Elizabeth Alana Franks - cyborg copy of Alpha in body based on video game character from Bayonetta ------- Late that summer, a major hurricane hit Texas. When the tracking showed it was incoming, Diana took Anna down to meet it. Not to fight the weather, of course, but to fill sandbags and help people during and after its landfall. According to Alpha's household video feed, Kara was chosen to stay with me by drawing straws, though I think she may have cheated. I guess they figured at least one of the super-strong ladies needed to stay behind as bodyguard. (It's both very flattering and very annoying that they've decided they're my bodyguards. I suppose it's natural to a degree, since I'm also their entire financial support.) By the time the storm reached the DFW Metroplex area it was greatly reduced but still disgorged well over a foot of rain in less than six hours, which caused severe flooding all over the place. It cut us off from easy access to the metroplex for almost an entire day, but we had plenty of food stocked up. The house itself was never in danger. What? You think I'd build a house with a heavily computerized basement in a location where there was any realistic chance that it could be flooded? Nope, the house was most definitely on high ground. It would take a Noah-level flood to threaten us. Anyway, during the height of the storm in the middle of the night, Alpha woke me up. Well, woke us up. The screen in my bedroom started flashing red and Alpha's voice came over the speakers repeating, "Attention, please." I shot upright in bed, giving a look to Kasumi and Rei on either side of me. They were definitely waking up too, but not quite as quickly as I did. I reached over Rei, grabbed my earpiece off the charger stand and inserted it into my ear. "Alert off. Status report." The ladies watched me curiously as I listened to the earpiece. "There has been a two car accident directly in front of the property. One of the vehicles has impacted the wall approximately 20 meters south of our front gate." "Any injuries? Have you notified the police? Kasumi, get dressed. We may need first aid. There's been a car accident out front." Kasumi quickly got out of bed and slipped out of the room. "The physical status of the occupants is unknown, but none of them have yet to exit their vehicle. I am currently on the line with an emergency dispatcher using your voice. However it appears that flooding has cut off access from any ambulances and wind strength is such that helicopters cannot fly." "Okay. We'll go down and see how we can help. Wake up Kara too. Tell the dispatcher that we have someone here who has Red Cross first aid training and we're investigating the crash." I got out of bed and started rummaging through my drawers for clothes. "Rei, you should get dressed too. Wake up Daria and Jane too, just in case we need extra hands." She nodded, grabbed her nightdress from the floor and left the room. She nearly ran into Kara, who showed at my door wearing nothing but a large T-shirt. "What's going on? Your computer just woke me up, said there was an emergency." "Car accident out front, and it appears the access roads are flooded. Go get dressed. We're heading out to investigate." I had shirt, jeans, shoes and rain poncho on a minute later and spent another couple minutes downstairs gathering flashlights. ------- By the time I was outside, Kasumi and Kara were both nearing the street ahead of me. The weather was pretty bad. Rain was coming down in nearly horizontal sheets from the strong wind. Regular flashes of lightning lit the area. An SUV had smashed into the brick wall surrounding my property, though from the look of things, it had first hit the white pickup that was in the ditch on the far side of the road. The pickup had one person in it, a man who was obviously very dazed. Kasumi appropriated one of my flashlights and was shining it in his eyes. The SUV on the other hand, had a mother and two children in it. Kara was prying open one of the smashed doors to give us access to them. One of the children was a baby in a car seat and, from the strong wails, seemed to be scared but fine. Kasumi had wadded up part of the man's jacket and was pressing it to his head. When Rei showed up a moment later, she had her hold the fabric in place. He was obviously seriously in pain, but he seemed to be insistent on getting out of the rain and wind. Or maybe he just needed good lighting for an examination. "He has a concussion and a bad cut on his scalp. I'm worried there may be internal bleeding. Rei, keep him awake and get a clean cloth to use on his head wound. He shouldn't be walking, so get him sitting down right away." A grinding crunch behind us announced Kara's victory over the smashed car door, and we hurried over to see what the situation was like. Kara reached in to unlock the driver's side passenger door, then moved to work on actually prying it open. The mother was not looking very healthy, but was awake. She was weakly moving an arm and trying to swing her legs out of the car. Kasumi quickly went to her and started asking her questions. Apparently First Aid response is more along the lines of don't-move-the-victim-until-help- arrives than get-them-out-of-the-car-in-case-it-explodes-like-on-TV. A man's voice from behind me said, "We should wait for the paramedics." I looked and saw the man from the pickup, with Rei hovering anxiously behind him. "Paramedics aren't coming. Not soon anyway. We already called for help, but the flooding is too bad in the area and it's too windy for choppers to fly safely. You should get inside." "I'm a doctor. Well, a psychiatrist. Been a long time since I did any first aid, but I thought I could help." "Kasumi said you have a concussion and possible internal bleeding. Can you even focus properly." "No, not really. Internal bleeding?" He seemed really out of it. "Kasumi is first aid and CPR certified from the Red Cross. Let Rei take you inside where it's dry." Apparently satisfied, he let her lead him away. The woman had started frantically trying to reach her children, but one of her arms was obviously broken. Kara got the second door open and was unbuckling the infant seat. She handed it to me, baby and all, and turned back to look at the young boy who sat unconscious in the seat on the other side of the car. Kasumi said, "Kara, come here. Keep her from moving around much. Frank, take the baby inside, but keep him in the seat until we can examine him." I adjusted my poncho so it covered the crying baby and awkwardly carried it up the drive to the house. Inside, Daria and Jane were dressed in robes, trying to figure out what was going on. "Daria, Jane, here. Take care of him. Leave him in the car seat until we're sure he isn't injured." The psychiatrist was clutching his side while talking on his cell phone, and I glimpsed Rei at the top of the stairs. I handed the baby off to the girls and hurried back out to the car. ------- Kasumi gave me a status report. "I think she has a serious concussion. Her pupils won't respond to the light. The boy is unconscious, with mildly labored breathing." "What should we do?" "Normally, we wait for paramedics. If they can't make it? I don't know." "Alpha, any suggestions?" "No one here is qualified to perform surgery to repair the damage. I could possibly stabilize them with nanites." Damn. Using nanites on an accident victim was just asking for trouble, but at the same time, I couldn't just let them die, could I? "Frank, the psychiatrist has fallen unconscious. Daria just commented that his skin is cool. I believe he is dying from internal bleeding." I relayed the information to Kasumi. "Alpha, start prepping for treatment. Mam? We have a bad situation here..." I trailed off when I noticed that she had fallen unconscious. "Dammit. Kasumi?" She did a quick status check on her. "Her pulse is still strong. I'll keep a close eye on her. I think her son's pulse is getting weaker though." "Damn, damn, damn." I took a deep breath. "Okay. Kara, go get some boards from the garage and something to strap them down. The man first, then the boy. I'm going to have to try using the nanites to repair them." She took off sprinting to the garage. Speaking of which, "Alpha, open the garage door for Kara. Kasumi, when Kara get's back, you two strap the boy to a board and bring him down to the basement." I took off running for the garage as well. I saw Kara gathering rope and headed into the house and down to the basement. I quickly threw a tarp over the body of the next lady being grown, unhooked her connections, and wheeled the pod into the corner. It didn't stand out much because about a third of the machinery in the lab was covered up at the moment. I was still hooking up the second pod when Kara arrived, carrying the man tied down to a board. "Untie him and strip him naked. Carefully. Alpha, are the nanites prepped?" "Yes, they are linked with the goo tube, ready for use." The 'goo tube', as I call it, filled a pod with a neutral goo which allowed the nanites easy access to a body. It was much more efficient than my earliest methods of pouring out a vial of nanites. Once he was untied and naked, Kara lifted up the board and we slid him into the pod. I snapped on the oxygen mask, started the goo injection and sent Kara upstairs for the boy. By the time Kara was back with the kid and had started stripping him, the nanites were inside him and Alpha was doing her work. The first group of nanites provided a body scan, similar to a localized MRI. The second group were more mechanical in nature and could do things like form themselves into a patch over broken blood vessels or slowly pinch together broken ligaments or muscles. The third group was the actual repair group. They could stimulate cell growth and direct how those new cells connected up. I had Alpha ignore the bruising and head wound and just focus on the life- threatening internal bleeding. Fortunately he was too weak to thrash around because I had forgotten to strap him down in the pod. About 20 minutes later, his bleeding was stopped and the nanites were withdrawing. Since we were in a rush for time, once the nanites were out of his body, we didn't wait for the goo to drain, just pulled him out of the goo and put the boy in. While Kara washed the man down, Alpha went to work on the boy. Apparently he had smashed the side of his head into the window and had intra-cranial bleeding pressing against his brain. This was actually much easier to fix than the psychiatrist's wounds. The boy actually woke up when we were cleaning him off. Fortunately he was very dazed and confused and went back to sleep after a minute. I'd guess he was about 4 or 5, so I hoped any memories he might retain would be ignored by any questioning adults as dreams. ------- Kara and I carried the man back upstairs, then covered the boy up with plastic sheets and carried him back out to the SUV. "Alpha, any update on getting an ambulance?" "No change on the flooding, but the main part of the storm has passed. The winds are starting to die down, so helicopters should be able to start flying again soon." Kasumi was waiting for us out at the vehicles. We strapped the boy back in and used the tarps to keep things dry. "How are they," she asked. "We fixed the internal bleeding. The kid bashed his head against the window or something like that. Bad bleeding in the brain. He should be fine too, though he could really use an IV drip or something. Alpha says the wind is starting to let up, so we might get a chopper before too long." I looked around. Sure couldn't tell the wind was lessening from here. "You two stay out here for a minute. I'm going to go check on the two inside. If she doesn't wake up soon, we'll let the nanites check her out too. And remember, they've been here all the time. I don't want people asking awkward questions." They both nodded. I went back up to the house. The man was still unconscious, and the baby had apparently cried itself to sleep. The girls had provided them both some warm blankets. I left them and got myself a fresh cup of coffee. I had just started sipping when Alpha said, "Frank, a police cruiser has just pulled up." "They got through the flooding?" "Or around it." "Gotcha." I put down the coffee after a single sip and headed back out. A single police officer was getting out of his car as I emerged. Kasumi was telling him about their physical condition when I arrived. " ... she was awake but passed out again after a few minutes. Both have strong pulses. The man from the truck refused to stay still. He said he is a psychiatrist, but I never got his name. He is up at the house, where he fell unconscious." "Is he still unconscious?" "Just a minute." I touched my hand to my earpiece. "Is he still out?" "He is showing signs of waking up, but is still unconscious." "Sorry, officer. I'm told he's showing signs of waking up, but not yet." "How is she doing?" Kasumi answered, "I'm pretty sure she has a broken arm and a concussion. I'm worried that she couldn't stay awake. We really need to get her to a hospital." "You said there was a baby?" "We have him in the house. Since we could move his entire car seat, we thought it was better to move him somewhere warm and dry." "Thank you, Miss... ?" "Tendo. Kasumi Tendo." "Thank you, Miss Tendo. I may need more information later." He turned to me. "And you are?" "I'm Frank ___. I own this house," I said gesturing. "My security system alerted me to the wall impact and we called the police as soon as we saw the crashed vehicles." "So you didn't actually see the crash?" "No, just the aftermath, but we'll be happy to provide whatever help you need. We might have caught some of the crash on our security video, but I haven't checked yet. I'm just glad Kasumi was here, since she has Red Cross training. How did you get through the flooding?" "I didn't. I live about a mile that-a-way. Just got called on duty a few minutes ago when someone remembered I live out here." "Would you like some coffee? We just brewed up a fresh pot for ourselves." "Maybe in few minutes. I have to call this in. If someone can continue to stay out here with these two, I'd like to check in on the man and baby as soon as I finish my call." I caught eyes with Kara, who nodded and stationed herself by the SUV. "No problem. Do you know when an ambulance will be able to get through?" "Word is it'll probably be a copter as soon as the wind lets up a bit." The officer moved back to his car for a couple minutes, talking into his radio. He got out, placed some flashing emergency lights by both vehicles, then followed me up to the house. Daria and Jane were whispering to each other with the baby seat sitting between them. Rei was holding a cup, kneeling next to the psychiatrist who seemed to be somewhat awake. "Hey there. Glad to see you're awake again. How are you feeling?" He looked almost lost. "How am I still alive?" I shrugged. "You're just lucky?" The policeman stepped up. "Hello, I'm Officer Linus. What's your name?" "I could feel myself bleeding out." "Sir?" I jumped back in. "You did lose a lot of blood, we think. But the bandages seem to have stopped it for now." I gestured toward his head, which had been rebandaged with actual gauze this time. He absent-mindedly touched the gauze wrap. "No, not this. I was cold ... bleeding internally, I'm sure of it." "Well, then don't move around. When help comes they can come in here to get you. Why don't you talk to Officer Linus for a minute." "Do you feel up to answering a few questions?" "Sure." Officer Linus looked at him for a minute, then held up a pen. "Keep your eyes focused on the pen." He moved it back and forth. "I'm not drunk. Take blood samples if you want." "It's not that as much as making sure you can be focused enough to answer questions. Now, what's your name?" "Dr. Benjamin Hilbourne, Psychiatrist. 133 West Monroe Rd. My license is in my wallet." He weakly reached into his pants pocket, dumping the wallet on the floor. Officer Linus retrieved it off the floor and fished out his license, copying the data down into his notepad. He placed it all back next to Dr. Hilbourne. "Now, Dr. Hilbourne, how did this happen?" "I was driving home and kept getting cut off by flooding, so I started looking for a hotel or something. The rain was so heavy I couldn't see more than 30 feet or so. I'm pretty sure I was only going around 25 mph, when suddenly this black SUV shows up in my lights, heading right for me. I turn the wheel too fast and start sliding. She smashes into my truck which spins me out. I didn't see what happened to her, but she obviously bounced into the wall out there. A minute later, Miss Kasumi was checking me out while the other lady was prying open the front door on the SUV." "She have a crowbar or something?" "No," I responded. "Karen's a body builder. Very strong." Not sure the policeman believed me, but hey, the doors were open. "Could you spell your name?" I left them to their interview and fetched a cup of hot coffee for Officer Linus. ------- On the way back down to the road, Officer Linus asked, "So how many people do you have living in your house?" "Right now? Let's see. Kasumi runs the household. Daria and Jane are renting a room while they attend college. Kara is an old friend who on an extended visit. There are a couple of her friends too, but they're out of town right now. Oooh ... I forgot to wake Z. She's gonna be pissed she missed out on the excitement." He stopped walking for a minute and stared at me. "How many?" "Hmmm... 6 of us at the moment, I think. What can I say? I have the room, and I like having lots of company." "Right. Sounds like they're all pretty young ladies too." Knowing I was doing nothing wrong, I just smiled at him. "You don't see me complaining. And Karen and her friends would love to hear you call them young, especially since they work so hard at staying in shape." He kept sipping the coffee as we made our way back down to the road, shielding it from the rain with his hands as we went. Kara was still on guard down at the accident site, with Kasumi sitting by the mother who was still asleep. He asked some more questions, got out a little roller measure on a stick and walked off the brake skid marks, made lots of notes. He looked up at the sky. Still raining, but definitely less. He sipped the coffee with obvious relish. "The dispatcher said that the copters should be flying again within half an hour." It was actually more like an hour before the chopper arrived. Both mother and son were awake again, and we had fetched the baby back outside so the mother could see him. The 5 year old boy was moving around, hovering near his mother who was not doing well at hiding her pain. ------- For a few days, that was it. When the flood waters went down, the cars were hauled away. There was a small note of the incident in the papers, but it was lost in the other stories of the flood. Alpha made a copy of the security footage for the police, with the trips to the basement edited out. I made an insurance claim and scheduled a repair crew for the wall, which wasn't too badly damaged but still needed fixing. Zatanna was indeed annoyed that we didn't wake her up for the accident, and she did her best to make sure she wasn't left out again. Two days after the accident, the police set up surveillance on the house. Alpha noticed a car with a couple men in it parked down from the house driveway. She was able to get clear enough photos of them to match them up with police from news footage. They were vice cops. I'm guessing that Officer Linus was worried that I might be running a house of ill repute or something. Alpha and I agreed that we should just ignore them for now. The lack of illegal activity should discourage them sooner or later. As long as they didn't look too deeply into the past or financial records of some of the ladies, we should be fine. (They gave up their surveillance after a week.) Diana and Anna called in with a couple interesting stories of helping people out. And Dr. Hilbourne showed up on our doorstep three days later. ------- At that particular moment, only Kara, Rei and myself were home. I opened the gate and met him at the front door. "Dr. Hilbourne! Come on inside. It's good to see you up and around. What did the hospital have to say?" "That's part of why I'm here, Mr... ?" "Oh, just Frank is fine." "Frank. One of the reasons I'm here is that according the hospital, I'm perfectly fine." "Well, that's good, right?" "But I wasn't fine after the crash. After Miss Kasumi said she thought that I was bleeding internally, I checked myself out. My pulse was getting weaker, and my temperature was dropping. I passed out. But at the hospital, I was fine. I needed fluids, but there was no internal bleeding." "So you and Kasumi were wrong, which sounds like a good thing in this case." He was not to be deterred. "But the thing is, they checked me out thoroughly for bleeds. And afterwards, one of the doctors asked me when I had had surgery up here." He gestured to his chest where the worst of the crash impact had been. "I've never had surgery, and I told him that. He insisted that there was scarring, like after surgery. But the scarring was the most perfectly done stitching he'd ever seen that he wanted to know who did it so he could ask them about their technique. "So what I want to know is, what happened here that night?" My alert level had been rising ever since he showed up at the door, and I was close to sweating at this point. I tried not to show it, but I'm not entirely sure how well I was hiding it. "I'm not sure what you mean. We applied pressure to your head wound, kept you from bleeding too much and kept you warm." "Look Mr ... Look Frank, at the time I was willing to write it off as some strange, accident-induced dream, but I remember waking up naked, covered in something weird and itching like crazy in my chest. I only remember being awake for a minute or so. I tried to open my eyes, but it stung badly. But the point is, you did something to me." "What? What did I do to you?" "I don't know." "Did I perform surgery on you? Did the hospital find any evidence of recent surgery?" "No." "Did I give you drugs of some kind? Did the hospital find any strange drugs in your system?" "No." "So what did you think I did to you?" "I don't know!" He was almost yelling at this point. I took a breath. "Look, why don't you sit down and calm down a bit. Can I get you something to drink?" He sat down heavily. "Maybe some water or tea?" "Sure, I'll be right back." As I was getting us a couple glasses of iced tea, I subvocalized to Alpha, "Any thoughts?" "His body contains sufficient evidence to prove that something was done to him. It is unlikely that he can prove nanites were used, but he can theoretically prompt an investigation by the FDA or AMA." "Any suggestions?" "He is threatening you enough that I can suggest we kill him. This would be significantly more difficult to do without repercussion since the police are currently watching the house." "No killing." "Then look for a way to control the situation and avoid an investigation or publicity." I carried the glasses back to the front room where Dr. Hilbourne was sitting, head in hand. "Here you go, Doctor." I handed him the drink and sat down across from him. "So, aside from not knowing how you survived, you're feeling well? Healthy?" "Well, I have some massive bruising and my head's still sore, but there seems to be no lasting damage." "Good. So let's sum up. You were bleeding internally. No surgery was done and no drugs were administered, but you were saved somehow anyway. And you're upset that you were saved?" "Yes. I mean, no. I'm glad I'm alive, but I've got to know what happened?" "Ummm ... I'm a faith healer?" That broke part of the tension and he laughed. "Nope, try again." "I'm a mad scientist with psychic healing ability?" "Probably not." "I'm a sane scientist with nanite goo." "Maybe something less science-fiction-y." "Well, then I'm tapped out of ideas." "I'm being serious. I need an answer. I'm ready to schedule laproscopic surgery to get video proof." I sighed. "Look, I might be able to help you with your questions..." "I knew it!" "BUT I really don't want any publicity." "What did you do? Are you licensed for surgery?" "There were no drugs and there was no surgery..." "Then how... ?" "Please let me finish. There was no surgery as you would recognize it. Remember my last joke suggestion?" "Ummm ... psychic surg ... no, nanites? Seriously?" "Seriously. Nanites. They're nothing like TV or books, but I've been developing them for years." He looked at me for a moment with an incredulous gaze. "And you decided to experiment on me?" "Huh? No, of course not. I've been testing them for years. Used them on rats and myself and a few of the ladies in the house. They're perfectly safe." "Then why haven't I heard about them?" "I don't want to go public. It may sound trite, but seriously, the world isn't ready for what they can do." "Aren't you worried about them ... I don't know ... escaping? Causing damage to other people or things like that?" "Okay, time for a little Nanite 101. They have no internal power source. Their power has to be broadcast to them. Same with controls. The amount of memory they can store is ridiculously tiny. They have to be controlled with an external computer, monitoring and guiding them. They can't replicate or work on a molecular level. If you want a nanite to do more than one type of job, you have to design and build a second type of nanite. "Compared to SciFi, nanites in the real world are EXTREMELY limited. But they can work on living creatures." "What can they do?" "Remember when I said the world isn't ready for them? That's what they can do." "Oh come on!" "Well, they can link together to create a patch, like they did for your internal damage. They can guide and stimulate cell growth, which they also did for you. They can search out and destroy cancer and tumors and such. Beyond that, I'm not going to say." "But that would revolutionize surgery! Why haven't you published this? Have you even patented it?" "You need to understand. It wouldn't stop there. For someone without a conscience or someone who can justify their actions, you could do truly terrible things to yourself or other people. "If I were to release this technology, even under the strictest controls, far more people would be hurt than I could ever save with it. "Maybe someday I'll be able to develop a version that would definitely be controllable, but limited as it is, what I have now is still much too dangerous." He was still ready to protest and argue. "Look. I couldn't stand by and let you or that boy die when I had the means to save you. It's obviously backfired on me here because, you were right, your body contains enough evidence to prove that something was done to you. But I'd like to ask you to stop and think about it for a moment. Think about it overnight if you'd like. What could you do with controlled nanites? And I'm not talking about curing cancer or disease. Try to come up with the worst possible things you could do with it. "You could create a literally unstoppable virus. You could kill without a trace. You could wipe someone's brain completely clean. You could turn people into undetectable human bombs. "These are the thoughts that wake me up at night. If you go public, then this technology will get out. It may take years or decades, but dangerous people will get their hands on this. You think September 11th was bad? Imagine a terrorist walking around an international airport exhaling an airborne virus with a 100% infection rate and a 100% fatality rate. Or walking through all the metal detectors on capital hill only to explode on the floor of Congress as if he was made of C4." He sat there silently. "I'm asking you ... I'm begging you. Think before you act." "Can I get a demonstration?" "Sure, I'll ... I'll tell you what. Bring an animal of some kind tomorrow. It can be a mouse or a dog or anything in-between. Oh, and something to knock it out. The nanites itch like crazy when they're working, and animals won't hold still for it." "What are you going to do to it?" "Whatever you want. I can make all of it's hair fall out, then regrow it as a different color. Or we can just check it for health problems and see if we can fix them. I could do really nasty things that would give PETA nightmares, but I'd really rather not if it's all the same to you. "And think about what I've said, please. Oh here, read this while you're at it. Maybe it'll give you a few nightmares about what could happen." I handed him a copy of Singularity Sky by Charles Stross. A lot of the book describes what can happen if post-singularity technology is introduced to a more primitive society. (Yeah, yeah, for those familiar with the series, Accelerando is better, but I thought the first book was more appropriate. Not that Alpha is post-singularity, but I am worried that she might end up as the singularity trigger event. Actually, I think Vernor Vinge argued in his "Technological Singularity" essay that A.I.'s will be the trigger event. I've had this discussion with Alpha more than once.) He left a minute later, leaving his iced tea untouched. I started walking to the basement door, intending to have a long talk with Alpha, but Kara intercepted me first. "I overheard your conversation. Could you really do all that your nanites?" I sighed and collapsed into a nearby chair. "Theoretically? Yes. There would be a lot more to actually doing it than I implied, but yes, things like that are possible." "What are you going to do about him?" "Hopefully convince him that he needs to keep his mouth shut." "Want me to 'lean on him'?" I laughed. "That would probably backfire. He'd think I created you with my nanites, meaning I abused their use to modify a human being with unnatural strength and beauty." She smiled and gave an exaggerated modeling pose. "I could see that. She gave up the posing and sat down on the arm of my chair. "Are you sure you aren't worrying too much? I mean, there are a lot of labs in my world with a lot worse tech that hasn't been abused like that." "Are you sure? I mean, where do some of your supervillains get their powers? Haven't there been threats of gray goo nanites in your world?" "A few, I suppose, but they were always stopped." "By heroes like you. Which is part of my point. There are no people like you in my world. As best I can tell, right now in this world, we have me, you and some of the other people in this house. And none of you are at full power. Maybe there are a few more special people around the world, but if so, they aren't public heroes. If the tech gets in the wrong hands, we're in no position to stop it from going bad." "So what do you plan to do about Hilbourne?" "Well, he's a psychiatrist, that means he thinks everyone who's bad or crazy can be fixed with the right therapy or drugs, so he may want to use my tech to help his patients. But he's also had some medical training, so maybe I can frighten him away with the possibilities." "And if he goes public?" "Then I might have to patent everything to try to keep it under control. But doing so means I'll have to release the actual technical data on how to do everything, which means it will never be completely under control again. "I know that sooner or later someone else will develop this tech, but Alpha's best guess is that it's at least 20-40 years down the road for anyone else. Unless they build their own AI, of course, but Alpha is 97% sure that she'd be able to pick up indications of the existence of any other AI's online and she hasn't yet." "Huh. I never thought about it before. Have you considered talking to a lawyer about this stuff?" "I probably should. I'd have to be 100% certain of his ethical integrity first though. Another thing to add to the to-do list." I stood up and kissed her on the cheek. "I have a few hours of work to do to get ready for Dr. Hilbourne tomorrow. Hopefully I'll be out for dinner." "Poor baby. Want some help?" "Thank you for the offer, but it's all very technically specific. See you later." Actually her company would have been pleasant, but the half-grown body would have been very difficult to explain. ------- I spent the rest of that afternoon prepping for animal testing tomorrow, researching Dr. Hilbourne and had Alpha start sorting through the best possible lawyer to confide in. I was emotionally exhausted that evening and made it clear I wasn't up for sex that evening. Surprisingly Zatanna knew some massage techniques and offered to relax me. (I think the knowledge was part of her escape artist training.) Kara joined us, and after Z had worked my body into a soft putty, Kara gave me a quick super-vacuum blowjob to put me to sleep. Given the stresses of the day and thoughts of tomorrow, I had a relatively restful sleep sandwiched between the two super-heroines. The next day was spent continuing the work from the previous day. The new body was locked up behind a heavy closet door. The various nanite types were prepared. I read everything I could about Dr. Hilbourne, and started sorting through possible lawyers. About noon Alpha alerted me that the psychiatrist was at the front gate again. I had her let him in and went up to meet him. It looked as though he had slept much worse than I, but he tried to greet me cheerily. "So, Doctor, are you ready to go down the rabbit hole?" "Well, I'm ready to let you try and prove yourself to me." For a psychiatrist, he seemed a little bit confrontational ... but at least he wasn't trying to humor me. He was carrying a cage with a frightened guinea pig hiding in one corner. I let Kara tag along quietly as we went down to the lab. Dr. Hilbourne was wide-eyed as we entered, looking at about $40 million of equipment that looked like it belonged either in a brand new hospital or a college lab. "Dr ... may I call you Ben or Benjamin?" "Sure ... Ben is fine." "Ben, do you have something to knock out the guinea pig?" He fished out a small box with a syringe inside. "I don't normally do this, let alone with an animal, but this should be the correct amount." It took us a few minutes to hold the guinea pig solidly enough, pull up a fold of flesh and inject the drugs into the victim. We put the sleeping pig into the vat with a small amount of goo, and I started loading in the nanites. I tried to keep up some informative patter as we waited for the nanites to load and start feeding back information. I had moved a large screen into place so we could easily see the data feeds. "Okay, it looks like we're ready. Did you have anything specific in mind?" "You said you could change the fur color? How about writing something in the fur?" "Sure. What do you want it to say? Something short will be easier to do and to read." "How about GP for Guinea Pig?" "No problem." Alpha was actually doing most of the work, but I made a good show of inputting information. "The first step is to load up what I call scanners. Nanites that can feed back information on the actual body. Since we're not looking for injuries, that's not as important as in other cases, but we still need to know the internal layout of the subject so the systems can correctly guide the devices. "The second step is to direct what I call workers to release the fur in a GP pattern along his back. They're actually killing the hair follicle cells which releases the hair itself. "Finally, we load up growth units. They're designed to stimulate cell growth. It's a little harder in this instance because we want to grow cells which only produce black hair follicles. But see," Here I pointed at the screen. "They have a black hair cell set they they're going to duplicate for the new cells, then they manually move the new cells into place." "How ... how do they make cells grow?" "Well, cells divide naturally on their own. The nanites just reach into the cells and prod them to do so on demand. It's complicated, but the theory has been known for quite a while." "How do you even make machines that small?" "That's ... I'm sorry, Ben, but I'm not going to tell you that. The control is actually the more difficult part, but the whole point of today is to convince you that this needs to stay secret. Which means I don't want to tell people the details of how this works." "Yeah, I remember what you said yesterday. I didn't sleep very well last night. If this actually works, I think I might lose a lot more sleep. But still, I think you're probably being a bit pessimistic. It sounds like developing and using nanites is so difficult that the odds of people being able to abuse nanite technology is miniscule." "Oh, so just because there's only, say, a 5% chance of ruining the world, that means it's okay to take that chance?" "I think 5% is a pretty high estimate." "I don't. More specifically, it's 6.8% +/- 3.2%, and that's assuming the major world governments react to nanite tech in the most intelligent possible way. Once a technology is available, production and support will develop allow that tech to be available to the public. I can see nanites being restricted, but think about how difficult it is in today's world to keep nuclear technology restricted. "Or view it this way. I'm sure the army would love the idea of being able to physically enhance their soldiers. What would the ethical problems be with growing the perfect soldier from a fetus? With nanites it would easy. "Or what if an athlete could use nanites to rebuild their physique so it's as perfect as possible? No blood or urine tests would ever pick it up. "I could theoretically create and implant a control in someone's brain to turn them into a remote-controlled puppet." "You've given this a lot of thought." "Well, this is one of my projects." "If it's so dangerous, why keep working on it?" "I haven't worked on it to any significant degree for a couple years." "Oh ... I ... I guess I just assumed that you were still developing it." "Nope. I mean, I have all the basics working, but you and the little boy were the first time I did anything with it in a long time. Before that ... let's see ... I stopped experimenting when I killed a test rat. I gave it an improved heart, much stronger and theoretically much longer lasting than normal. But when it became agitated, the heart blew out all the blood vessels throughout its body." "Ouch." "Yup." "So what are you working on now?" "See earlier answer. Not really planning on sharing." "What could be worse than nanites?" "Oh, it's not worse, I just like to develop my stuff privately." "Do you have many patents?" "By my estimate, I could have 2,316. But I've never applied for any. You have to submit the technical data to apply, and I prefer to control the technology by not letting it out at all. It's not like I need the money. I'll probably apply for a few patents later this year ... a few minor things I could release safely." "That doesn't sound very healthy. You're cutting yourself off from the rest of the world..." "Sorry to interrupt you, doctor. I'm not trying to be rude, but I'm not one of your patients. I'm not cut off from the rest of the world. I just like playing around with experimental technology. "Maybe I'm relying too heavily on my own judgment, but the stakes are just too high for some of the issues I deal with for me to be willing to submit the work for group consensus." "But isn't peer review essential to the modern scientist?" "This isn't experimental science, this is engineering. Submitting the work for review by others is only needed if I plan to release something for public consumption. You know, for safety reasons and such." "And you used these unreviewed techniques on me? That makes me feel good." I smiled faintly. "I would never have done so if your situation wasn't so dire. But we were cut off from the hospital, and we were pretty sure you were dying. "Beside, safety review or not, I've never had any problems with the basic techniques I used on you." "I'm alive, so I suppose I shouldn't complain. But you do realize that if you can develop this, so can other people. Just because you don't want to release the technology won't prevent other people from doing exactly that." "I was just discussing that with Kara yesterday. I'm actually fairly sure that a few other people or companies around the world can build the same nanites, but they wouldn't. Without the controlling technology, the nanites are useless, and my controlling technology is ... unique. I'm not going to get into the details, but it will probably be 20 to 40 years before anyone else will develop equivalent controlling capabilities." We sat awkwardly in silence for another 15 minutes until the nanites were finished. I had the nanites exit the body and goo, then took the guinea pig out and washed him off. A lot of fur washed off too, leaving behind patches of short, black fur spelling out "GP" on its back. I could have grown out the fur to full length, but decided short hairs would be enough for demonstration purposes. "Ta da!" I exclaimed, handing it over to him. "Wow. It really worked! Even after all this talk, I wasn't sure. Will it grow this way from now on?" "Yes, the change is permanent. Now you can see nanites are real. Can I count on you to keep this secret?" "I ... I think I'd like time to think about all of this." "Sure. Take a few days. Call me if you have any more questions or concerns. Just please don't make this go public." I walked him out, and we exchanged polite goodbyes. Then I collapsed onto a convenient couch and rolled my head back. Kara sat down next to me and reached over to start a neck rub. She said, "I think that went as well as could have been expected. Think he'll agree to keep quiet?" "Probably for now. He doesn't believe my doom-and-gloom predictions, but he's not certain enough to risk it, I think. I guess we'll see." "So what are you working on now?" "I want to see if it's possible to actually build one of Tesla's proposed Death Rays." And I gave a generic evil laugh. She gave my neck muscles a bit of a squeeze. "Ow! All right, all right already. I'm trying to build a practical artificial eye." This was actually true, but I should point out that it was a side project. Alpha and I had long ago worked out the basics of connecting human nerves and computer circuits. The eye was just a specialized version of that. "That sounds good. Can I see it?" "Most of it consists of computer simulations. I have a mostly working model, but it's not to scale. But if you really want to see it..." "Of course. I'm always curious about what you're working on down there." "Most of the time, it's just me pounding away on the computer or talking to Alpha. Boring to watch, and I'm easy to distract." After another couple minutes of neck rubs, I took her downstairs and showed her the six-inch diameter, half-built eyeball. It was fun demonstrating how we would look through its video feed and such. (It actually looks kind of wrong. Only the center of the viewed image in a human eye is actually in strong detail. The brain and quick eye movements fill in the rest of the image sent by a human eye.) I didn't get any more work done that day, but at least it was fairly relaxing. ------- I heard back from Dr. Hilbourne the next evening. I was having fun with Daria and Jane that evening. I attached a strap-on to Jane, lube to myself and planted my cock in her ass. "So Jane," I asked, flexing my cock in her ass, "are you ready to be used as a sex toy for our pleasure?" She just moaned. I motioned for Daria to lay back and prepare, then maneuvered Jane and myself between her legs. I placed her hands on Daria's breasts and told her to keep them there. Daria was still sopping wet from our oral fun as I reached around and slowly inserted Jane's dildo in Daria's cunt. Daria started deep kissing Jane as I used Jane to fuck Daria. We both moved slowly at first. I would pull back with my hands on Jane's hips to pull her back as well, then hold Jane's hips in place as I pulled my cock partly out of her ass, dragging her anal sphincter along my bare cock slowly, feeling every inch of the movement. Then I'd push us both back forward, my cock fucking into Jane's ass, and Jane's dildo into Daria's cunt. Once Jane was nicely stretched out enough to allow free movement, I decided a change-up was in order. I spoke directly to Daria, trying to ignore Jane as if she really was just a sex toy. "Daria, I think we're ready to try using our toy like a tennis ball. What do you say?" Daria broke off the kiss and looked me in the eye. "Sounds good to me. Server her up." I started thrusting down hard into Jane, but not following her movements all the way down into Daria. Then Daria would raise her hips to meet Jane and force her to move back up to me. Without my physical support holding up her hips, Jane had to remove her hands from Daria's breasts, but I didn't complain. But when she murmured "Oh god" to accompany her next orgasm, I reached down and pinched one of her nipples. "Hush. Sex toys don't talk." "Bite me." "If you insist," I responded, and leaned in to start lightly gnawing on her shoulder. Jane was a limp, quivering, sweaty mass by the time we finished, and I'm pretty sure Daria was well-sated too. I had enjoyed a really strong come myself, my second of the evening. (Hardly a record, but enough to sate me for the night.) As I laid back myself, I heard a chirp from my earpiece which was sitting in its charging station. There was no flashing alert, so I wasn't worried as I placed it back into my ear. "Pardon me a moment, ladies. What's up?" "Dr. Hilbourne has sent you an email." "What's it say?" "It says he will keep your secret for now, but he requests that you call him to talk about one of his patients." "Well, that's mostly good, I guess. Thanks for the heads-up. I'll call him back tomorrow." ------- "Doctor, don't you understand that this isn't something that you would ask for just this one time? If I say yes, you're going to call me again for someone else next year or next month or next week." We were talking to each other in mostly hushed tones over lunch, sitting at the back of a small restaurant. The very good food was being left mostly untouched. "And why shouldn't I ask? With your nanites, fixing physical problems is nothing to you! It takes you, what? A few minutes. A few minutes to save a life." "First of all, the costs are significant. The little guinea pig experiment alone cost me about $8,000. Second, I can only fix problems where I know exactly what the problem is and where. Third, your patient sounds like he may not have enough heart muscle left to keep him alive once the tumor is removed." "Mr. Stone is fairly well off, I'm sure he could finance it." "That's only one issue." This conversation was enormously frustrating, and I'm sure it showed in my voice. "The more people who know about this, the more likely it is that this will get out." "So we don't tell them what you're doing. If I can convince them to try your method without telling them how, you can fix them and we can just call it a miraculous remission." "And when he goes to the press to trumpet his miracle cure?" "I'm sure we could convince him to keep quiet. If you'd just meet him..." "And when he has a friend that needs a miracle cure? And that friend? This is never going to end." "So we keep you anonymous. It'll all go through me." "That only ... ugh." I grunted in frustration and sat back. I took a drink of iced tea, signaled him for a moment to think and closed my eyes. This was what I was afraid of. He was convinced that I owed it to the world to make my tech available to the public. Maybe he wouldn't use those specific words, but that was the end result. Dr. Hilbourne worked with, among other patients, people dealing with oncoming death. He now saw a way to cure those patients. The problem was that this was a snowball rolling downhill. Every person who finds out about the nanite tech or even about a mystery miracle cure was another nail in the coffin of my privacy and secrecy. And all because I didn't want to let this person die when I knew how to save him. I gambled that no one would know what I did, and I lost. Time to man up and deal with it? I guess. But at least I might be able to get a few more years of control and secrecy. "Okay. My VERY STRONG preference is still for you to forget that I even exist and go home. It would be better for me and the future as a whole." "I understand your points, but I think the vast array of benefits outweigh the risks." "You're not the expert on this, Doctor. A degree in psychiatry does not qualify you pass judgment on the risk-benefit analysis of nanites. However, you've obviously decided to force me to do this one way or another." "I'm not forcing you to do anything. I'm trying to convince you. I just can't understand how you can be willing to save one complete stranger and completely ignore another." "I didn't ignore your problems because it was an extreme situation. You were almost certainly going to die and the odds of anyone finding out what I did were tiny." "So would you be willing to help out if we could keep you and your methods completely anonymous?" I thought silently for a minute. Despite his protestations, I was pretty sure he'd eventually decide to force me or out me if I said no. "Realistically, it's not possible to keep me completely anonymous. Tell you what, give me basic information on him and a copy of a recent medical report, and I'll take a look." "You won't regret it." ------- As it turns out, Mr. Stone did need an almost entirely new heart, so he wasn't a viable candidate. Mrs. Carmine two months later was the first "official" patient that I accepted. Mrs. Emily Carmine was a 33 year old widowed mother of two who was dying of T-cell prolymphoctic leukemia. She had gone into remission briefly after months of treatment, then the leukemia returned, with little hope of recovery. Her insurance was running out and her parents were spending their retirement savings to pay her bills. Dr. Hilbourne talked to me about her, and I had Alpha do a background check on her just to be sure. She checked out, but had no real funds available. (I was toying with the idea of making prospective patients donate a few thousand dollars to charity before I'd treat them.) My request was that she be blindfolded on the drive here. Somehow, Dr. Hilbourne talked her into secretly visiting my lab for an experimental, unauthorized treatment. I think his arguments were along the lines of, 'what do you have to lose at this point?'. She arrived on a cold, rainy Friday morning in early December, Dr. Hilbourne driving. I had them pull into the garage and closed the door before I let her remove her blindfold. I was wearing large dark sunglasses, a baseball cap and cheek inserts to change the look of my jawline. "Hello, Mrs. Carmine. Let's go down to the basement before we get started." "What's your name?" "I'm sorry, but I'm not interested in giving out my name or any information about my technology," I said as I led her down the stairs. "I don't know if Dr. Hilbourne explained things, but I want to keep everything secret." "That's what he said, but I don't understand why." She was getting out of breath just walking down the stairs to the basement. "I think the possibility of this technology being abused is way too high. Dr. Hilbourne disagrees with me about the risks, but my goal here is to keep things as secret as possible. "This is my lab, and that pod there is where you'll be treated. Strip down please." She was looking at my lab with wide-eyed curiosity. "So if you want to keep it secret, why are you helping me?" "That's between him and me." Once upon a time, she may have been beautiful. Now she was wasted away, with dark, sunken eyes, a sallow complexion and very little hair left. "I'd recommend being unconscious for this. Otherwise this is going to itch so much you'll have nightmares about it." "I'm taking an awful lot of this on faith because I'm desperate, but I draw the line at drugging myself while naked in a stranger's basement." I gave her a faint smile. "I understand, just giving you fair warning." I helped her into the pod. She looked tiny inside it. She was only 5½ feet tall to begin with in the 7ft long pod, but she was so skinny that the effect made her look like a pale-skinned starving child from a third world country. She was resistant to being strapped in, but I explained that I needed to remain as still as possible, which would become very difficult when she started to itch. I attached the oxygen mask and closed the pod lid. When I started adding goo to the pod, she started to look scared. "It's okay. The goo is completely neutral and non-toxic. You could eat it and be fine. It wouldn't really digest very well, but it wouldn't hurt you. It help speed things up." About 5 minutes after the nanites worked their way into her system, she started jerking a bit. "I know how it feels. Literally. But please try to keep still." I wasn't sure how well she heard me through the pod and goo, but she started to hold herself rigid. I was doing my best to appear busy running the program. Alpha, of course, was bearing the weight of the nanite control. Dr. Hilbourne had remained quiet through all of this. During her treatment, he wandered back and forth between me and the pod, encouraging her and trying to make small talk with me. It was actually looking pretty good for Mrs. Carmine. It would be easier and better if the cancer was localized, but the nanites seemed to be clearing her blood and bone marrow and lymph nodes, etc. of cancer cells. Fortunately Alpha understood leukemia a lot better than I did, and she was 95% certain she could cure Mrs. Carmine. (She also stimulated some new bone marrow growth to help her recovery.) The whole thing took about an hour and a half. By the time I was draining the goo, I'm sure she wished she had taken the offer of drugs to knock her out. When we released the straps, she immediately started scratching and rubbing herself all over. "Dear god, you weren't kidding about the itch. I was about to go crazy in there. So what was that? Some kind of radiation?" "No, no radiation ... well, technically, there was some, but less than what you'd get from walking by a cell phone tower. "The good news is that I can give a 95% likelihood that we cleaned out all the bad blood and bone marrow from your system. There's an excellent chance that you'll be feeling perfectly healthy again very soon." "But how did you do all this?" "As far as I'm concerned, you went to church, prayed and received a miracle. There's a shower over there." I pointed to my emergency wash shower in the corner. ------- By the second patient, I was having them sign a basic waiver, saying that they understood this treatment was not officially approved or reviewed and did not involve surgery or drugs. And that they agreed not to go public with any information about myself or the procedure. Not really very legally binding, but Alpha and I crafted it fairly well, I think. Over the next year, I treated an average of one of Dr. Hilbourne's patients every month. Actually let me clarify that statement. Only about a third of them were his patients. Somehow he got out the word among his colleagues that a possible off-the-books miracle cure was out there if names were quietly passed around. A patient would give his psychiatrist the okay, and he'd pass the name around. This way there was no direct link for most of the patients and all the psychiatrists could deny direct involvement. Alpha kept track of the patients after their treatments and most of them kept quiet. A couple of them blogged about a mystery doctor who gave them some kind of experimental treatment, but aside from being cured, they had no physical evidence of surgery or drug treatment. One actually smuggled out a sample of my goo, which led him nowhere when he had it analyzed. (You can actually mix it up out of kitchen items. Completely non-toxic.) In the meantime, I had set up a small company and had applied for approval of my artificial eye, as well as a few other more minor patents. The eye was causing a bit of a publicity stir, but I was using the dummy corp to shield myself from the public eye. Anyone could do some basic digging to get my name as the sole owner of the company, but there was nothing to say I was the actual inventor and I refused to give interviews. Within a couple years we started getting offers to buy the company, but we weren't publicly traded so there was nothing they could do. Oh sure, one unnamed corporation tried some strong-arm tactics. They started using their influence to create bad publicity for us, have approval slowed down, things like that. I had Alpha respond by making their strong-arm methods public. Somehow the press got ahold of emails from members of their board directing their tactics. We stopped getting harassed, 3 public officials eventually lost their jobs in disgrace, and their stock price dropped 20% in one week. (Yes, there's a lot more to the story, but here isn't the place for it. Besides, that particular nasty episode took place well after the events in this chapter.) My first serious threat to be exposed to the public came with the 13th patient referred by Dr. Hilbourne ... the first undercover reporter. ------- With Diana and Bayonetta waiting in the van (rented under a fake identity), Kara and I went into the restaurant where I was to meet with Mr. George Wescott, aka Gerald Winthrop, reporter for the Dallas Morning News. Alpha picked up on the deception almost immediately. The cover identity was a real person, but that person had died years ago. The medical reports were apparently real, but belonged to someone else. The whole thing was obviously a setup to entice Dr. Hilbourne into setting up a meeting with me. I discussed it with Alpha/Bayonetta, Kara and Diana. Eventually we decided that the best thing to do was to convince him to bury the story. I knew my arguments about the possible end of human civilization wouldn't sway a reporter, so I had Alpha do some in-depth research. All of this led to Kara and I, in disguise, to meet with "Mr. Wescott" at a public restaurant at 10pm when it was mostly empty. He was waiting for us at a table, and it was difficult to recognize him as Winthrop. I guessed he was heavily made-up to look like he was sick and dying. He rose from his seat to greet us. "I'm so glad you agreed to meet me. I'm desperate. The doctors only give me a couple months to live at this point." As we sat down, I said, "So I see from your medical chart, but I think we need to be frank with each other, Mr Winthrop." He started at little at the use of my name. "I don't know what you're talking about. Who is Mr Winthrop?" "I'll be brief. You are Gerald Winthrop, reporter for the Dallas Morning News. The medical information passed along to us appears to come from a Hurley Trench of Abilene from a year ago. You really don't understand much about what you're investigating in this case, and you're going to stop now and drop the investigation." His demeanor changed as I spoke, going from confused to defensive to being a reporter. "Is it true that you're using unauthorized and illegal medical procedures to secretly cure cancer patients? Do you have a cure for cancer that you're not sharing with the world? Are you afraid of being arrested?" "Arrested? Not really for a few different reasons, most of which I don't feel inclined to share with you. But I will share this with you." I slid a manilla folder over to him. He opened it, pulling out a number of his own clippings, each clipped to different print-outs. "You have on three different occasions published other people's work as your own. You have on two different occasions perjured yourself when giving depositions related to stories you had worked on. And on two different occasions you aided-and-abetted a known fugitive. Oh, certainly not in a major sense, but buying food for a fugitive you're interviewing does count." He interrupted me at this point. "Hey, I convinced him to turn himself in!" "Which I assume is why you weren't prosecuted ... unless of course the police never knew you bought him food." "Where did you get all this?" "It's all out there in the public domain for anyone who looks. It took me about a day to uncover this much. Imagine if I looked into your work history for a full week? "Now, I know you're wired and transmitting this conversation to an exterior source. I don't know if it's just a recorder in your car or if someone is actually watching, and I don't really care. That recording will not reflect our conversation, and you will no doubt be surprised to listen to yourself talking about the food." Alpha had enough samples of his voice to fake it and was overriding the relatively weak signal coming from his bug with an entirely different conversation broadcast from the van. I suppose I should be glad he wasn't a TV reporter. Replacing a video feed would have been much more difficult. "How are you doing this? And you're just going to keep a cure for cancer secret? The first amendment..." As he spoke, he leaned over to grab my wrist. Kara intercepted his hand and held him steady. He was obviously startled at the strength of her grasp and stopped mid-sentence. "Mr. Winthrop! Please calm yourself. This is not a cure for cancer, and it can't help everyone. Believe it or not, I am generally in favor of freedom of the press. However in this particular case, it is likely that very bad things could happen if my technology gets into the hands of public. That is not a threat ... well, not directly. I'm speaking of the welfare of the public. The world is literally better off if certain technologies are kept secret for now." "Even if I believe you, then why are you healing terminally ill people if you have to keep things secret?" I smiled to myself. "I thought you'd probably ask me that. The problem is I can't answer it without creating more problems for myself." "That's ... that's not an answer!" "Well, this isn't an interview. I only came so that you'd understand that if you pursue this, your credibility as a journalist will disappear very, very quickly." As Kara and I stood up, I think he was probably trying to take quick pictures of us ... or at least his left hand was definitely trying to click something. I let him, knowing that we were both wearing wigs, sunglasses, cheek inserts, and I had on a fake beard and mustache. "Wait, so what am I supposed to tell my editor?" "Well, if you don't want to have to find a new profession, tell him I didn't show or I made you as a reporter and refused to talk. Whatever you want. We'll be able to head off any other reporters the same way." When we got into the rented van, Diana drove us out of the parking lot, down the block, then pulled over and stopped. I looked quizzically at them as Beta got out of the van. She reached under the back bumper and pulled off a small transmitter, which she tossed aside. As she re-entered the van, she said, "Someone put it there after you entered the restaurant. I'm sure they thought they were being stealthy." She grinned at me as we pulled out. ------- Dr. Hilbourne was profusely apologetic when he found out he had been duped. I told him I was expecting this sort of thing to happen sooner or later, and I had it covered. I never heard directly from Winthrop again, but he was followed by two other attempts to find me. We headed them off early, not even meeting with the reporters directly. Eventually they published a lackluster article about a secret doctor miracle-worker in the area. No names were mentioned, but the number of proposed names funneled my way quadrupled within a couple months. The problems with the whole scenario finally let me convince Dr. Hilbourne that we had to stop doing this for a while until things quieted down ... Which turned out to be a good thing, since Alpha eventually picked up on a federal investigation into the mess. Oddly enough, for all the trouble it caused, the article helped us dodge a serious bullet. Meanwhile Alpha and I had been working on a version of the nanite surgery system that was limited enough for public release. Theoretically we could design and sell a version without actual nanites. Instead, while the patient was held still, nanite-sized wired probes would be inserted through the skin to perform some of the same medical functions as our normal nanites. The big hurdle was how to control the wires. If we went for control via EMF broadcasts (as with the nanites), the slightest movement of the patient could cause the wiring to shred things up internally. Eventually Alpha and I developed small, flexible little tread-like motors to work into certain points in the wiring. They were larger than any nanite we had ever made, but smaller than any motor in commercial production. It would basically be an upgraded version of laproscopic surgery with a lot more options and effectiveness. True, using it for surgery would take a lot longer than Alpha would take, but it would still be an improvement over pre- existing methods. And best of all, it was limited enough that my nightmare scenarios were not going to be applicable. It took years before the machines were approved for actual surgical use, but eventually they were put out into circulation. Though far from cheap, they could allow surgery inside the brain without damaging it or work inside bone marrow or the eye. They could literally go anywhere in the body without causing any noticeable damage and could repair their own entry point. Not that they took over all aspects of surgery. Using them to remove tumors or do liposuction or do anything on a normal scale would be like using an exacto knife to cut through jungle underbrush or do logging. Still, within ten years they became standard equipment in hospitals. We hired out for production of the main control units and produced the nanite wire and loaded the control software in-house to keep the production methods secret. That and the artificial eyes were two of our big sellers the first few years. Alpha and I were still debating whether or not we should release her gasoline-creating bacteria. Economy versus environment debates are never fun. But there were other projects in the works too, like the lightning catcher and even a more efficient and safer design for the next generation space shuttle. ------- Chapter 11: Gamma Jasmine and Delta Elisa Disclaimer: Jasmine and Elisa Maza are owned by Disney. All artificial persons herein are based on characters owned by their creators, not the author. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jasmine_%28Aladdin%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elisa_Maza Let me start off this chapter with a short discussion on my method of mental programming. While I have given various descriptions of the brain implants my women had been given -- or at least their triggers and effects, since I have no inclination to give away specifics of the technologies involved-- I have almost completely ignored the initial base programming. After all, some readers have no doubt questioned how to make a woman readily accept sharing a man with other women or even suddenly becoming bi-sexual when the character has had no history of such behavior. The answer is fairly simple. Everyone, real or artificial, undergoes similar programming throughout their lives. In European and Western societies, we accept the idea that a monogamous one-man-one- woman marriage is the standard and proper lifestyle. Oh certainly, some countries are expanding that to include homosexual partnerships, but despite what you may see on TV, they certainly aren't yet accepted as a societal norm. When I control a character's childhood memories, I control what they were brought up to believe and accept as societal norms. While harems or polygamous relationships probably aren't in the background of the characters (except maybe Jasmine), that doesn't mean they can't be altered to believe they are acceptable behavior without changing any of the character's known background. Perhaps the character remembers walking down the street with her mother and seeing two women kiss. She asked her mother about it, and her mother gave a positive and accepting response. Perhaps there was a discussion about how a woman doesn't have to be a lesbian to enjoy a relationship with another woman, or even about how such women might find a man they both like and share him. Or perhaps there was a nearly-forgotten childhood friend who had a mother in a harem-like relationship. Or a favorite cartoon series told of two or three women sharing the same man. Or friends in high school openly dated the same boy. These are the type of memories Alpha and I include for each new woman we build. Memories with a purpose, tailored individually for that character. For example, while I'm sure that nowhere in Power Girl's comic book appearances do we see a man with multiple happy wives and lovers, her recorded comic book history does not cover her entire life. There are always plenty of opportunities to shape her understanding of societal norms. And of course, with some characters this is significantly easier than others (e.g. Wonder Woman). Don't mistake this discussion for arguments of what societal norms should be and whether they are right or wrong. They are simply, as stated above, memories with a purpose, designed to program into the women the acceptance of their new situation. The rest of the mental programming is similar to a drug-reward system. Every time one of my artificial women sees me, hears me, touches or is touched by me or even smells me, hormones and chemicals are released into her brain and bloodstream by small implants in her glands and brain. The more contact I have with her, the more chemicals are released. Alpha works out limits on the chemical releases so that the women can still function normally for the most part, but basically their own bodies tell them that I am an ideal mate. Now, as I recall, I left off in Chapter Nine trying to decide what next body to build for Alpha to have a second mobile platform. (Chapter Ten was a bit of a digression into how my life was developing outside the harem.) I had mostly narrowed it down to a choice for Alpha of either Jasmine (from Aladdin) or Elisa (from Gargoyles), wanting to get a bit more of a diverse racial mix in the household. Neither character would work well if we built her as a normal woman with memories true to her character, especially since both characters were strongly in love with other men, so I was taking advantage of the fact that Alpha would be running the body directly as a cyborg. In trying to decide between the two, I picked up an old Gargoyles comic in the quarter box of a local store. This was the Halloween issue (I think it was #3 from the Marvel run, but that's just a best guess off the top of my head), and when I opened it up, I was surprised to see Aladdin's Jasmine in a Gargoyles' comic. Of course, it was actually Elisa in a Halloween costume, but it made me realize that, at least in comic book form, they looked enough alike to be sisters. Now Jasmine is, of course, Arabian and Elisa is a Black/Native American mix, but their skin tone and hair are almost a perfect match. Inspired by this, Alpha and I decided that we would create a couple of sister cyborgs, instead of just one. Thankfully for my sanity, this time around I didn't have to do all of the wiring myself since I had Beta on hand to help out. We didn't start building them right away, so it was a good 10 months before ... well, here, let me give you a general timeline of how things had worked out so far: Kasumi - February Daria & Jane - May Kara - August Rei - November ------- Rogue - March WW & Zatanna - July (Storm & flooding [Chapter 10] - September) Beta Bayonetta - December ------- (AARD founded - April) Gamma Jasmine & Delta Elisa - October The new ladies' development was greatly aided by an upgrade I made to Alpha in February of that year. If you remember, I have previously stated in Chapter Eight that when I networked more than 32 systems together for Alpha, her improved processing power failed to increase proportionally. Basically from the 33rd system on up, they were mainly used for extra storage and connections and such. In late January, I discovered that I had inadvertently wired that limitation into Alpha's fuzzy logic boards. (Okay, I may say it was inadvertent, but I'm sure at some point a few years ago I had decided it was just easier to do things that way, then forgot about it.) After Alpha's 32nd system, additional systems would run in series instead of parallel. Well, that explanation is really, REALLY overly simplified, but I don't want to write out 100 pages of technical background followed by 50 pages of explanations. Trust me, I discovered the source of the limitation and, by early February had fixed the boards and could add more and more systems to increase her processing power. Theoretically Alpha could now have up to 1024 different systems running at the same time to gain maximum power. This didn't actually make Alpha much more intelligent. Since AIs aren't limited by memory recall or single-subject consciousness, it means... sigh ... this could easily turn into another 50 page technical discussion. How about this for a simple explanation: For AIs, intelligence depends on the programming itself, not the system running it. The systems running the A.I. determine the processing power, or how much the A.I. can do with their intelligence at one time. You can't apply normal IQ tests to Alpha, so I worked out my own method of measuring her abilities (as AIQ or Artificial Intelligence Quotient). When she was first turned on, we estimate her AIQ would have tested at around 20 to 25. Now she had about a 187 AIQ, which was awesome, but the increased number of systems simply meant that she could apply that intelligence to a lot more projects at the same time. Or maybe I should offer a human comparison. If you take a single human of average intelligence and give him super speed and immortality, he could eventually write books or plays as brilliant as Shakespeare through nothing more than making millions of attempts at doing so over and over. The more intelligent he is, the better and faster his repeated attempts become, hopefully developing better and better writing skills as he goes along. The same applies to solving complex equations or understanding advanced biology or physics. The point of this comparison is, while intelligence is very advantageous, it is separate from processing power and speed. Now imagine cloning this intelligent human so he can work on more and more different projects at the same time with his super speed and lack of aging, and you might begin to understand what Alpha could do. Except that Alpha was now the AI equivalent of Einstein. For reference, I'd estimate HAL from 2001 at somewhere around 60 AIQ and the god-like Eschaton (from the Singularity Sky books) at somewhere around 5000 AIQ. Before the summer arrived, our front company was in place: Alpha Advanced Research and Development (AARD). Alpha invested aggressively for months to allow us to buy a small building -- 3 floors, two of which are mostly lab space, plus a small attached warehouse -- and use it to set up a secondary site to host Alpha's newly expanded set of systems. With the cost of the building and all of the high-end equipment Alpha wanted, it eventually cost us over $80 million ... though maybe I should point out that most of that was for the lab setup which was purchased over the course of a few years. I hired Jane as the company's graphic artist and decorator; she designed the company logo, pamphlets, etc. Kara was the day-to-day business manager. Zatanna was the spokesperson. Anna was in charge of HR. Actually, I put nearly all of my women to work for AARD in some capacity. Kasumi was the only one with no official job there, but she had full access and came by a number of times each week. The offices had a few normal people on staff -- receptionists, security and facilities/janitorial to begin with. My household came and went as we pleased. I'm sure the normal staff were confused by the odd hours we kept and the fact that I, the owner and President, apparently preferred to work out of my home basement most of the time. As far as the computer setup went, eventually we just separated the two locations into parallel copies of Alpha: Alpha 01 at home and Alpha 02 at work. For the first year or two we were a very small company, just big enough to act as a front for Alpha and myself, so we only had hired half a dozen outside people anyway. Late that summer was when we went public with announcements for the artificial eye and early next spring, the nano-wire surgery unit, though it took a couple years for enough testing to be completed for each to be approved. Within the first two years, we registered 1074 patents for AARD. The majority of these were minor advances and ideas, the sort of things patent troll companies use to extort money from companies that actually make things. BUT we also applied for and were eventually granted from 2 to 10 significant, ground-breaking patents a year for the first few years. We held back most of the nano-technology and A.I. programming, but we registered for a lot of the bio-technology advances and some micro-tech. (Technically it generally took 3-4 years for each patent to be fully processed and granted, but once we registered for it, we confidently acted as though it was ours.) There are a lot of stories associated with AARD, but I'll deal with them as they become relevant. Overall what you need to know is that AARD was privately held by me (despite a lot of offers to buy us and encouragement to go public with stock), staffed mainly by my artificial women, and designed to allow release of some of our discoveries and inventions while acting as a shield against too much personal public attention. We hired a small law firm for the company, but all lawyers working for me were required to keep a certain eccentric and anti- social but brilliant consultant of mine apprised of all legal filings and problems. They knew her as Susan Helios, though she was, as you probably guessed, just one of Alpha's alter-egos. Actually if I may continue my digression briefly, the lawyers were initially somewhat resentful of "Susan", but once the patent lawsuits started, they came to appreciate her. All of our patents were thoroughly and rigorously correct, but that didn't stop large corporations or patent farming companies from trying to stop us or take the technology for themselves. In a way, it almost became humorous. These huge corps with their huge staffs of lawyers would take weeks or months to file a long, detailed brief. Then within hours, often before the judge actually had time to read the mega-corp's brief, we had filed a brief of our own tearing theirs apart in every detail. (Basically Alpha would send a response to my lawyers within an hour of receiving it, the lawyers would read it over, sign it as their own and file it.) Most patent- related lawsuits were won within a year (which is lightning fast for patent law), often with prejudice so we could recover our legal costs. The lawyers I had hired gained an enormous boost to their reputations, and I let them hire "Susan" for other work on a case-by-case basis. Anyway, back to AARD. We built very little in-house, usually only those things which required nanite construction methods or other highly proprietary methods. We didn't manufacture anything that required true mass production. Those we leased to other companies to make, generally retaining a percentage of the gross sales. We almost always did the initial testing ourselves, though anything that needed government approval usually had that testing farmed out to another company. For example, the artificial eyes required more production facilities than I wanted to get involved in, so we leased the technology to a large bio-tech firm for a 33% share in the gross sales. The other initial product line consisted of surgery units with attached nanite-sized wires capable of performing safe surgery inside the brain or bones or anywhere really. (See Chapter 10 for background.) Some of what Alpha could do with her nanites in half an hour, these machines allowed human surgeons to do in only a few hours time. AARD sold these directly, but the production of the main control units was farmed out. The control units were shipped to our local warehouse where we loaded the software and added the nanite-wires. The sales of these units were relatively low, about 1 per major hospital. Yes, there are a LOT of hospitals in the world, but the cost was high enough that the orders came in at a constant trickle. They cost $3 million each, which included regular training classes (held locally in Texas) and ten extra replacement wires. (That's actually low compared to how much we could have charged, but even so we made about 85% profit on each unit. Why didn't we sell cheaper? We couldn't have kept up with the demand or have gotten any respect as a product if we sold for under a million.) Neither of those products came out within the first couple years though, since testing and approval took so long. We made and licensed more and more tech as time went by, from lightning capture capacitors (designed to be placed atop very tall structures to capture up to 84% of the power of lightning strikes and feed it back into the electrical power grid as free, green electricity ... only $10,000 per unit!) to advanced artificial limbs and organs. After a decade, we were raking in the money hand over fist, and AARD was becoming ridiculously famous for a company that didn't sell anything directly to the public. But I'm jumping way ahead of the story. Around the time we founded AARD is when I first allowed Alpha to publish a paper in a professional journal. She had wanted to do so for a couple years, but without a body to read the paper at a conference or a degree to back it up, she was rather limited in her options. Eventually she wrote to a computer science journal and had an article published describing a new and better algorithm to read the remaining charge in a battery. (Imagine a laptop or cell phone or mp3 player that actually gives an ACCURATE reading on how much charge is left? What a wonderful world that would be... ) Slowly I let her move on to articles on biology and medicine and physics and chemistry, etc. Having a research and development company to list as an employer/source really helped. Not that she had figured out the Unified Field Theory or anything, but she was way ahead of her human peers. So let's return our attention to that October, or at least that summer. We had taken a June Caribbean vacation. My yacht was too small for everyone to go on an extended sailing vacation at the same time, so we rotated groups between Disneyworld and sailing the yacht. Yes, I could have easily afforded a larger yacht, but it's not like it was going to be used more than once or twice a year. (And no, Diana didn't find Paradise Island. I felt sorry for her, but she knew the odds were against it.) I had plenty of Disney World Hotel sex and a few yacht orgies, and maybe I'll write about them someday, but not right now. Beta stayed home and took care of the house and budding company, as well as continuing the builds for Jasmine and Elisa, also known as Gamma and Delta. Their tech was mostly the same as Beta's, but we had learned a lot from her build and repairs and were hoping the new sisters would be much less prone to initial failures. Jasmine and Elisa had two significant differences when compared to Beta, one in design and one in post-build plans. First, while they were still going to be much stronger than normal humans, they were designed more for extreme flexibility than super-strength. When I say flexibility, I mean that world class gymnasts and freak show contortionists could watch them and wonder how they did it. Second, I wanted them to live independently for a few months rather than move right into the house. This was going to be a major test of Alpha's programming. Specifically, they were going to attend college on their own in a dorm. I would pull a few strings (via donations) so they could room together, and they would always have their wireless connections to Alpha, but at the same time, Jasmine and Elisa would have to pass for human with no obvious support structure or review. If they could do that for at least a semester, I would consider the experiment a success, and we could arrange for them to join the harem. They were signed up for mid-year enrollment at TCU, the same college Daria and Jane attended. They would each have a double-major, Elisa in Mathematics and Physics and Jasmine in Biology and Sociology. These were tentative majors, subject to refinement and change later, but we wanted a wide range of degrees to allow Alpha to publish in nearly any professional fields she wanted. ------- I was there to witness their "births", when Jasmine and Elisa were removed from the pods. Although they had been conscious for weeks and still had over a day's worth of testing and settings to adjust and refine, the actual removal from the pods felt like it should be marked as their official births. Jasmine is the shorter of the two at about 5ft 4in tall, with dark olive skin and dark hair that falls to her waist. She has large, dark brown eyes and an hourglass figure, with nice C-cup breasts topped with large dark nipples. Her pubic hair gives the impression of having shaved lips, though the hair will only ever grow in a small tuft above her vagina. Her ears, nipples, labia and belly button had all been grown with piercings, though the actual jewelry had yet to be inserted. Elisa is a bit taller, with light creamy brown skin with the hint of a reddish tint and dark brown hair down to just past her shoulderblades. Her figure is more athletic, with B-cup breasts topped with tiny dark nipples and areolae whose color almost matched her skin giving the odd visual impression that her nipples stand alone with no areolae at all. Her pubic hair gives the impression of being naturally sparse, with little hair growth at all. Side-by-side, they looked very much like sisters. Certainly not identical twins, but perhaps fraternal twins. They both appeared to be in the 18-20 year old range and had superhuman strength and super-strong skin, though not nearly as tough or strong as Kara and Diana. Almost every joint was double or triple- jointed and their major bones could bend slightly without breaking with extremely elastic tendons and ligaments. They could each theoretically lick their own pussies from either the front or the back. (I saw them do exactly that bending over backwards once and asked them not to do so again while I was watching. It just looked too inhuman to be attractive. On the other hand, curling up into a ball to lick their own pussies from the front did look pretty darn erotic.) After watching them do about an hour of physical tests, I excused myself and went upstairs. I really wasn't needed for this phase and left Beta to supervise and watch the naked cyborgs move their joints and muscles in precise motions over and over again. Besides, they would mostly live in the basement for at least a month until we had been satisfied that no major hardware failures were likely. I'd have plenty of time to plunder all of their virgin holes and play character scenes before they left for school. At this point, it was only mid-afternoon so I headed upstairs to talk about Halloween with Kasumi and whoever happened to be around, which turned out to be Kara, Diana and Rei, who had just finished watching Oprah, I think. At this point it was just the first week in October, so we still had time to prepare. We didn't give out candy, not being in a neighborhood or having an easily accessible front door, but there were a few possible Halloween parties in the area we could attend. " ... So I was thinking that everyone should dress up in an appropriate or interesting costume for Halloween," I said to Kasumi, as if we were continuing a conversation. "What?" She looked at me blankly for a moment. "Halloween? What costumes did you have in mind?" "Well, I thought this would be an excellent opportunity for a few people to go out-and-about in costumes appropriate to their appearance. For instance, Diana would make a perfect Wonder Woman! And I can't think of a better Power Girl than Kara here." Kara smirked at me a little. "Admit it, you just want to see us in our uniforms again so you can live out your sick little comic book fetish fantasies, don't you?" "Oh come on, you can't tell me that the idea of walking around town in your official outfit doesn't hold some appeal for you? I mean, come on! Last year you didn't dress up at all." Diana looked a little wistful. "It might be nice not to hide who we are for a night." Kasumi looked at me. "And what costumes do you have in mind for Rei and myself?" "Well, it will be your choice, of course, but you could always go in a traditional Japanese kimono ... or you could dress up like Sailor Senshi ... or whoever you want to, really. "I was thinking that we could go to the college Halloween carnival during the afternoon and then the Anderson party in the evening. If we leave the party by 10, we'd still have time for a late night horror movie or two." "Oooo, can I pick the movies?" Kara loves hard-R horror movies. (Oddly enough, that's one character detail straight out of the comics.) "Within reason. Remember not everyone likes splatter-fests." She pouted a little and tried giving me puppy dog eyes. "Please?" "Maybe one slasher and one classic monster movie. But remember, watching would have to be schedule-dependent anyway." Kasumi asked, "What about the others?" "Well, Anna and Zatanna have their own outfits, of course." "And Daria, Jane and Beta?" "Well, they'd need to pick their own, of course, but I think I can convince Beta to dress up as Bayonetta." Diana joined in. "And what about you, Frank. What costume did you have in mind for yourself?" "I hadn't decided yet. Maybe a mad scientist get-up, like Dr Frankenstein or Dr Horrible or something." "I have a better idea," said Kara. "We'll choose for you." "Come again?" "The ladies of the household will vote and select what costume you wear." I looked at her warily. "Uh huh. I think I'm going to have to reserve the right of veto on that. As long as it's a real costume, that should be okay. But I'm not going to go around town in a loincloth, you know." "Hey, you want us to dress up to fulfill your own perverted desires, we get to dress you up in turn." "Yeah, but I'm not asking for bikinis or anything. Hmmm ... bikinis..." I faded out for a second, thinking about our pool and hot tub fun, til Kara lightly punched me in the shoulder. "Okay, okay, no bikinis." "And we'll be similarly considerate for you." "Just remember, it has to be something I'd be willing to go out in public in, all right?" Rei had been listening quietly all along and now quietly asked, "What would be a good costume for me?" I stood back, fingers on my chin, and look at her for a few seconds. "You know, Rei, with your short haircut, you could pull off a wide range of costumes. You could be Sailor Mercury or a sexy soldier or a French maid or ... well, there are a lot of good possibilities. Maybe you, Kasumi, Daria and Jane should take a trip to a costume shop together. Maybe you all could even do a group costume thing ... though I figure there's an excellent chance Daria will try to avoid dressing up at all. You'd better enlist Jane to strong-arm her into it." An hour or so later, Kara found me playing God of War 3 by myself in the entertainment room. We had a little small talk, mostly about the game, before she got to the point. "Frank, I had a question about Alpha." "Sure, what is it?" I said as I impaled an attacking minotaur. "I've been reading some of your science fiction books over the past few weeks and I was wondering why Alpha isn't smarter by now." "Huh?" Realizing I might need to pay attention, I paused the game and turned to face her. "What do you mean? Alpha's extremely smart already." "Well, yeah, but shouldn't she have improved her programming into god-like intelligence within hours of when you first started her up?" "Not really." Making a minor intuitive leap, I asked, "What books have you been reading?" "A few by Charles Stross and Rudy Rucker and there was some series called Shadowrun. I read some old stuff by Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein, but they were all based on older generations of technology." "Ah, I think I see where you're coming from. But there are a few limitations that apply to Alpha that don't apply to fictional computers. "First, the hardware limits how efficient the software can become. Even if all of Alpha's programs were absolutely perfect and efficient, she's still limited to how fast her host computers process the data. She's can't detach herself and run wild and free on the internet. Besides which, I have some of the fastest servers available in the world running downstairs and at the office. "Second, there are limitations built into Alpha herself. Yes, she can upgrade her own software, but each upgrade has to rigorously pass certain tests and filters before it can be applied. Plus, certain root functions are flagged so that any upgrades to them have to be approved by me first, and I'm a lot slower than Alpha when it comes to reviewing thousands of lines of code. "Third, how would you know if she even has god-like intelligence? She's already a super-genius compared to any human. We worked out our own IQ scale for AIs, and she's already worked her way up to being a super-genius on that scale too. "Finally, there's a big difference between human brains and computers when it comes to dealing with the real world, which means which means that Alpha needs a lot more software subroutines than you can probably imagine. I mean, we can look over there and just automatically say, 'that's a chair.' If a computer doesn't already have that image pre-defined as a chair, it has to process the visual, separate out the chair as an individual object, analyze its structure and work through all the possible variables until it can sort the imaged structure into a subset of objects defined as chairs. "For example, Alpha and I worked up a program that would allow her to drive a car in traffic. Well, more her than me, but the program is enormously complicated. Car controls are relatively easy, but sorting out the constant movement of other cars and vehicles on the road while driving legally and safely? Just detecting nearby objects isn't enough if you're going 55 mph. And then there are things like driving in construction zones and potholes and speed bumps and animals ... We take those skills pretty much for granted, but everything our brains process subconsciously and automatically requires conscious programming for her." "Why'd you program her to drive? Can she do that?" "Pretty much, and it was a test. And remember, we're going to make her a mobile body at some point." (Maybe I should point out that while Kara knows about Alpha, she doesn't know that Beta is a cyborg. To her, Beta is a nickname for "Elizabeth Alana Franks" -- Elizabeth Alana becomes Beth A. becomes Beta, so it makes a kind of sense -- a friend of mine from childhood who recently moved back to Texas. With her superhero mentality, Kara sometimes has certain built-in opinions of computers that build themselves super-powered bodies.) I continued. "Plus let me say, don't dismiss Asimov or Heinlein or any of the classics. Maybe they didn't predict the microchip, but they provided the cornerstones for modern SciFi. I mean, even as limited as Mike the A.I. is in The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, that's still one of Alpha's favorite SciFi classics. Alpha occasionally tries to prod me into financing a movie version. I think the I ROBOT movie disappointed her so badly that she feels the need to create a good movie adaptation of a classic SciFi AI." Kara obviously wasn't expecting quite such a long response, but she had kept up with my talk just fine. She said, "I guess I did get a laugh out of how amazing it was supposed to be in the book that Mike could create a realistic video face in real-time. On the other hand, while I didn't agree with all of it, I enjoyed reading about politics on the moon in the future. Although of course, if I were there, the whole war thing would have gone differently." "Naturally. Say, do you do that a lot? Think about what you would do if you were part of the story? And at full power?" "Yeah. Most of my fights are pretty straight-forward. See bank robbers; stop bank robbers. Someone tries to take over the world? I knock them around til they give up. Aliens invade? Punch them til they leave. But sometimes things aren't that simple. What do you do if one country refuses to extradite someone for trial somewhere else? Or if two countries are going to war? Then it gets all political and about national sovereignty and such. It helps if you think about what you'd do in various fictional situations first, so maybe when it actually comes along, you're better prepared to make a good decision." "So you stay out of political stuff?" "As much as I can. Things would have to be really clear or really desperate for me to get involved in political problems, y'know." "Yeah, but you're a big girl. I'm sure you're good at making up your own mind." "I'm a big girl, huh? And what do you mean by that?" She had gotten a teasing look in her eyes with this comment. "I mean you're an adult who is taller than I am, stronger than I am, weigh more than I do and has much larger breasts than I do." "You should know better than to comment about a lady's weight." "Hey, can I help if you're covered in sexy, super-dense Kryptonian muscles?" "So you're attracted to women with muscles?" she asked, pulling up one sleeve of her T-shirt and flexing a bit. "Well, maybe a little, though definitely not for those extreme body builder women. With you I think it's more that I'm attracted to you than to your muscles. Your muscles are just part of the package." As I talked, I ran a finger along her flexing arm up to her chin, tracing her lip as I spoke. "You're just trying to get into my pants, aren't you?" "Well, that wasn't my original goal for the afternoon, but it sounds like a worthy endeavor. What do you think my chances are?" I had moved closer to her on the couch, my face inches from hers with one hand running up and down her back under her t-shirt. "I think your chances are pretty good. I suppose it depends on what you're planning to..." I interrupted her with a swift hard kiss, moving to sit on her lap while moving my other hand to cup her seated ass as best I could. She broke the kiss, unsuccessfully trying to stand up without dislodging me as I hung on tightly. "And where do you think you're going, young lady?" "I'm taking you up to my bedroom." "Oh no, you don't. You started this here, coming in and flaunting your erotic comic book self. Just take off those shorts and lay down on the couch." There was no way I could force this, of course, but she only gave a meek verbal protest. "But what if one of the others walks in on us?" "Then they can stand back and enjoy the show. Or join in." I stood up, kicked off my shoes and pulled off my jeans and undies, motioning her to do the same. (I've fucked with my pants on before, and it is uncomfortable and leads to chafing.) Her shoes and shirt stayed on, but her shorts and panties came off very quickly. She laid back on the couch, her golden halo of hair spread out around her face, her eyes smoldering with sudden lust as she watched me kneel between her smooth long legs. We didn't really indulge in any foreplay this time. Naked only from the waist down, I slowly pushed my male tumescence into her rapidly moistening womanhood, savoring every inch as we stared into each other's eyes. As I bottomed out inside her, we kissed again, this time open-mouthed, our tongues feeling the familiar taste of each other. I moved my hands under her shirt and bra, cupping her breasts as I started slowly pumping in and out of her. There was nothing creative or imaginative about our rutting. We were just enjoying the decadence of unplanned afternoon sex outside the bedroom. I pounded myself into her for over ten minutes before coming, and I'm sure she came at least twice before I emptied myself. (I love having such an advantage with my women. Their implants practically guaranteed multiple orgasms every time I fucked them. Performance anxiety was non-existent.) I lay sprawled out on top of her, breathing heavily, feeling her rumbling chest under me. She turn her head slightly and, in an exaggerated whisper, said, "I think we're in trouble." "What?" I asked as I craned my head around. Kasumi was watching us with a spray bottle in one hand and a towel in the other, a slightly annoyed look on her slightly flushed face. "Ahem" she said in a mock throat-clearing. "If you're finished, I think the couch needs cleaning." Oops. She was entirely correct, I noticed. We had left a goopey damp spot under Kara's hips. I withdrew and stood up, grabbing Kara's panties to wipe off my dick. "Hey!" she protested, then grabbed my jeans and used a leg to wipe up her sopping pussy. "Sorry, Kasumi," I said in a contrite voice, handing the messy panties back to Kara. "We should have put something down first so we wouldn't make a mess." "Sorry, Kasumi," Kara echoed. Kasumi shooed us away as she knelt by the couch, adjusting the spray nozzle of her cleaning bottle. I watched Kara walk out of the room towards the stairs, an unconcerned sway in her hips as she sashayed out, dirty panties and shorts in one hand. I turned back to Kasumi and moved up to clasp her hips in my hands. "I'll make it up to you tonight. Whoever else is scheduled, you show up and I'll make you the center of attention. Okay?" She froze up, and even without seeing her face I could tell she was blushing ... but she didn't respond. "Okay?" I repeated, moving my hands to cup her breasts. I could feel her erect nipples even through her blouse and bra. "Hai ... okay." "Good. I'm looking forward to it." And I kissed her where her shoulder met her neck, then withdrew from the room, using my messy jeans to maintain a small degree of modesty. Surprisingly, no one else was there to watch as I went upstairs to get cleaned up and change clothes. Daria and Jane didn't get home til a couple hours later, at which time Daria balked at getting a costume while Jane was quickly enthusiastic about the notion. "Aw, come on, Daria," Jane beseeched. "This could be a lot of fun." "Yes, it could have been ... when I was 10." "Well there you go, do it for childhood nostalgia." "Exactly whose childhood am I being nostalgic for? Pretty sure it's not mine. And while I'm at it, why don't I give my barbie doll a haircut and let some boys put snails down my dress?" Daria replied with a noticeable touch of sarcasm. For some reason, I suddenly wanted to go search the garden for snails and slugs, but I was able to resist the urge. "Whatever floats your boat. Me, I'd just stick with a Halloween costume." "How about if I dress up as me? That way, the costume shopping is already done." Oddly enough, that would be perfect for me, but she didn't know she was copied from a cartoon character so it wasn't really a valid option. I joined the conversation. "Okay, Daria, let's negotiate. What will it take for you to dress up in a costume for Halloween?" "An act of congress? An executive order?" "Okay, short of legal action, legislation or hypnotism, what will it take?" "Nothing, because it's not going to happen." "How about 20 orgasms, payable on demand?" "I pretty much get that anyway." Jane jumped back in. "How about 20 orgasms per night for a week?" "While it sounds nice, it also sounds like it would kill my schoolwork for a week." I pointed out, "How about you do it to show solidarity with your friends, who are all planning to dress up. You and Jane, Kasumi and Rei could go for a group theme." "What about the others? Kara, Beta, Di, Zana and Anna?" "Kara, Diana, Zatanna and Anna all already have costumes. And I think Elizabeth will be a perfect Bayonetta." Daria was still uncomfortable with the idea that Kara, Diana, Zatanna and Anna were 'superheroes', so instead she focused on the unfamiliar name. "Bayonetta?" "It's a game character. I'll show you later. Look at it this way, it will be a bonding experience with your friends!" "I know all about 'bonding' experiences with you, and they're not something I want to do in public." "I'll agree to let you ladies decide what my costume will be." "Look, I just don't do dress-ups." I got down to my knees and crooked a finger for Jane to join me as I slowly inched toward Daria, hopeful puppy-dog expression on my face. "Pweease?" Together, Jane and I back Daria back into a chair and sat her down, our hands supplicatingly around her knees. She cracked up. Laughing, she choked out, "All right, all right already. I'll wear a damn costume." "Thank you!" We slobbered kisses on her kneecaps. "But I get to pick out what I wear." "Of course," I said, standing up, only to quickly sit in her lap for a moment. "Just remember that getting costumes as a group does enhance your individual anonymity." "Good point," she muttered as she callously shoved me off her lap onto the ground. As I picked myself back up, I noticed Rei off to the side, clicking away on her camera. "Rei, what are you doing?" She blinked at me. "Taking pictures." "Yes, but why are you taking pictures." "So I can build a memory book of my time here." "Are you planning to leave sometime soon?" "No, but I do not know when I will be called back home." Knowing her programmed background, it was kinda sad and pathetic. Someone who knows they are a replaceable clone, a tool for military use, just trying to create and retain memories and an identity of her own. I just had to give her a hug, so I did. Aside from an increase in female whispering, the rest of the evening passed uneventfully. Gamma and Delta were doing fine so far, but wouldn't be ready to actually do anything entertaining or sexual until tomorrow afternoon at the earliest. (I gave them each a kiss goodnight all the same, and gave Beta a kiss and grope before I went back upstairs.) When I announced my intent to retire for the evening, Wonder Woman peeled herself off from the remaining gaggle of women to accompany me. I was used to things like this, since the ladies wouldn't tell me beforehand who was going to join me in bed. Thirty or forty percent of the time, it was a duo and occasionally (maybe twice a month or so) a trio of lovely ladies who joined me in bed ... but most of the time, only a single woman joined me per night. I paused on the stairs and turned to her. Diana was a vision of loveliness, with long dark hair falling in a beautiful wave down her back. She stood a couple inches taller than me, with strong blue eyes and dark red lips. She wore a simple blouse and skirt which completely failed to hide her beautiful bosom, slim waist and athletic long legs. "Ah, my lovely princess, tonight we have a purpose beyond that of simple pleasure." She crooked an eyebrow at me, silently waiting for me to continue. "Kasumi!" I called out downstairs. A few seconds later, she poked her head around the corner and looked up at us. "Diana, earlier today I added to Kasumi's workload because I acted messily without thinking, and I promised to give her special attention tonight. It seems to me that Kasumi all too often stays in the background and doesn't receive the attention she deserves. I propose that tonight, we give her some of that well-deserved attention." "That sounds like a very good idea, Frank. Come, sister," Diana said, stretching out an arm to Kasumi. I hoped I hadn't ruined Diana's plans for the evening, but she could be a very kind and nurturing woman at times, so I wasn't very worried about upsetting her too badly. (Well, she was kind and nurturing when she wasn't being extremely violent, that is.) We escorted Kasumi up to my bedroom, where we stripped first her then ourselves down to the skin. Then we moved to my bathroom. Everyone in the house knew that Kasumi had an ... obsession? fixation? strong desire? ... for cleanliness, especially before intimate relations, so bathing or showering was a normal part of foreplay with Kasumi. We had her stand in the shower with Diana and myself on either side of her. Together, we each carefully cleaned Kasumi, starting with her toes and working our way up, with Diana taking her left side, me on her right. We worked slowly, using the shower as foreplay. We would caress her lovely skin with one hand and clean with a washcloth in the other, following up on each area with intimate kisses. When we reached her vagina, we traded off our duties back and forth, and ended up kissing either other as much as the pussy before us. When we finished 'cleaning' her pussy and ass, we found a full body blush blooming and Kasumi covering her face with her hands. Her juices were gushing, so I knew she was enjoying it. Well, okay, I knew she had pretty much no choice but to enjoy it. It's just that she hadn't had this strong of a blush response in months. We gently pulled her hands away from her face and started cleaning her hands by sucking her fingers one at a time. We worked our way up her arms and down to her breasts, where we licked and suckled to our hearts content. When we had finished with her, I pulled in a folding shower chair and had her sit down. I gently took her hands and placed one on her breast and the other touching her vaginal lips. I whispered to her, "Watch and enjoy". Diana and I refreshed the suds in our washcloths and started on each other. We spend about half the time kissing as we worked the cloths and our hands all over each other. Diana has a spectacular body, as anyone who has ever picked up a DC comic book knows. And one of the best things is that her body, built to comic book perfection specifications, will remain as perfect as science will allow. Her large, gravity-defying breasts will never sag and yet have no odd feel or hang from artificial implants. Her thighs will never collect fat. Her hair will never turn gray. None of the women will ever have bodies that fail due to age. Well, not as long as they have regular nanite checkups. Occasionally I worried that I was shutting myself off from reality, living in my own fantasy world. I hadn't had a relationship with a 'real' woman in a few years, and I worried that my artificial women might spoil me for real women and keep me from having a lasting relationship. Every so often, I even wondered if I would ever have children of my own. (And not metaphorical children like Alpha and Beta.) Having a child with one of the artificial women was not ... well, while it was possible, it was just a bad idea. Yes, they had human DNA and should theoretically be able to have normal human children. But it was a theory that had not been tested. Their DNA had been assembled from over a dozen different women and their bodies hadn't been allowed to grow naturally. Who knows what monstrous mutations might show up in their offspring. And that's completely ignoring the bodies that had been enhanced with super-human strength and toughness. Superhuman traits would not be passed on to children, not that they could ever have children. Wonder Woman, Power Girl, Rogue and Bayonetta all had bodies that would refuse to adjust to allow a fetus to grow, so we made sure their bodies were completely sterile; they had no viable eggs within their ovaries. I had discussed the problems with possible pregnancies with Alpha, and she had agreed that it was too risky. I had okayed an experiment with creating artificial rats and letting them get pregnant, but it was still in the early preparatory stages. On the other hand, while I was in the shower, making out with Wonder Woman as Kasumi played with herself and watched us, my thoughts were not digressing as this text did. They were focused on much more immediate subjects. By the time we were all clean, I'm pretty such both ladies had come at least once. We toweled off and moved into the bedroom to my Emperor Plus size bed. Diana laid Kasumi down in the middle of the bed and we both spent a good 15-20 minutes just playing with her. We gave her constant attention, raising her arousal levels high enough that by the time I actually started fucking her, she exploded in a continuous orgasm lasting at least 2 minutes until she fell into a virtual faint, not unconscious but not aware of the world around her. I was so close to coming, I was tempted to just use her nearly unconscious body to finish up. Fortunately, I had another woman on hand to move to. Diana was on-edge as well and we both came within a few strokes. Unlike most climaxes, this time I kept on going. It was another 10 minutes before I came a second time and finally felt a bit sated. I'm pretty sure Diana came a few times as well, but honestly, this was one time I didn't really pay attention. I put away my earpiece, and we drifted off to sleep. All three of us were early risers, so none of us had to stay quiet for the others in the morning. (Truth be told, I might've slept in a bit later than normal that morning if given the option, but no matter.) We went through our exercises and showered -- Diana joined me in the shower for a bit of friskiness, Kasumi didn't -- and ate. And then I went down to check on Delta and Gamma. Both were resting in the nano-goo pods, with Beta stretched out on my cot. The thing with the cyborgs is, they don't really sleep. The organic bodies need rest periodically but the minds don't. Among other things this meant I didn't have to be quiet to avoid waking them. Looking over the new ladies, I asked out loud, "How are the tests coming?" Through my earpiece I heard Alpha respond, "Ninety-three percent complete. They should be ready to try their first solid food this afternoon, and we'll do range, receiver and independent operation testing tonight. They'll be ready for role-play and sex in approximately 5 hours, if you're interested." "Good. Any problems so far?" "The improvements we made have been mostly successful so far. If the current testing holds true, only 2.5% of internal connections and settings will need to be repaired within the first month." With Beta, the rate had been about 8% in the first month, 2% in the second month, then down to only minor repairs every few months. "Excellent. Good job. Any news or appointments I should be made aware of?" "There are two more documents which need to be signed and witnessed at the lawyers' offices this week. I've scheduled you for a 2 o'clock on Thursday, if that's acceptable." "Sure, but remind me Thursday morning. What else?" She took me through a highlight of national and local news and we went about some of our normal morning routines. Today Alpha had four online comic strips about which she needed me to explain the humor. (With one of them, I didn't get the joke either.) There were 1500 new lines of programming code for me to look through and approve. I generally reviewed about 500 lines a day, but sometimes the code is all linked so much that you just had to do it all at once or you'd forget parts of it between sessions. Today I did my standard 500-ish lines in under two hours. Most of the fiddly bits with system repairs and updates were now handled by Beta, which gave me a lot more free time than I had had the first few years. Until lunch, Alpha and I mostly worked on models for an artificial liver. True, with Alpha and our nanites we could grow replacement organs, but that would be a one-at-a-time production level. (I know stem cells are in vogue right now in the news, but our methods involved cloning existing cells. True, it's easier to clone cells so that the new cells are the same type as the original, but each cell contains the DNA needed to create any other type of cell in the body, so using our nanites it is possible to, for example, start with a blood cell and grow new nerve tissue.) We had no theories yet on how to grow livers or other organs in large, useable numbers, so artificial it was. You might wonder how exactly I could even contribute to discussions or projects like this. True, I had very little academic knowledge on biology on this level, but over the past couple years I had gotten a LOT of hands-on training and experience. Plus, while Alpha was the real brains behind projects like this, she lacked the ability to make intuitive leaps or ask odd-ball questions that could open new approaches to problems. Basically Alpha usually starts from pre-existing technology and theories and then methodically works through projected possible models and variants. She is very good at doing this and can do it quickly, but she has difficulty making radical leaps in design by herself. On the other hand, the human brain can sometimes be good at looking at something from a radically different angle early on. When Alpha tries to imitate intuitive leaps, most of the time her results are much more random than productive. It's just the nature of electronic versus organic brains. Anyway I stayed in the basement most of the morning, then assembled a tray of sandwiches for lunch. Delta and Gamma's first solid food ever was smoked turkey breast on wheat with swiss cheese, mayo, lettuce and tomato, with pretzels on the side and Koolaide to drink. I complimented Alpha on their appearance again. She does really good organic assembly work. We spent a couple hours trying out some small talk, checking their social behavior settings. We had some work to do there, since Beta, Gamma and Delta all had pretty much the exact same personality and responses as their starting points. Early afternoon, I asked Alpha, "What's my schedule this evening?" Since I usually like to be surprised, a human might have asked if I really wanted to know. Alpha however immediately responded, "Tonight is Daria, who is planning on dinner and a movie." "No Jane?" "No, or at least Jane is not scheduled tonight. Jane does have a solo night scheduled on Saturday for an art exhibition." I thought for a moment. I hadn't spent quality time with Daria for at least a week, and hadn't had one-on-one time with her for 2 or 3 weeks. Of course, I liked her a lot -- I didn't waste resources and time on characters I didn't like -- so I was looking forward to it, but ... tonight was a school night, wasn't it? "What is her class schedule tomorrow morning?" "Her first class in the morning is at 10:30. Do you want class descriptions?" "No, thank you, just the time. 10:30 is all right for her morning schedule, but I think it'll be a late night for me. So I'll need a nap this afternoon, but first..." I looked over at the two newborn "sisters". "I think I'd prefer to do actual taking of virginities in a real bed, but I think I would enjoy a Delta and Gamma dual-blowjob right now. Are they... " I turned to face the newborns. "Are you two ready? Functional enough?" "Of course!" they said in unison. Their personalities had been going on and off for the past few hours while they cycled through social tests. Now they turned back on full force. Maybe I should point out something about myself. I don't like stupid or air-headed women. I didn't build women to act as my servants or sex slaves. Yes, I built myself a harem, but a harem made of fun, intelligent, strong women open to a variety of sexual experiences ... with a tendency to defer to me in sexual matters. So when I say that Elisa and Jasmine started slinking towards me like amorous naked cats hunting for a mouse to fuck, understand that this was just part of their sexual programming and not an image of enslaved, mindless fuck-puppets. (Back when I originally considered the possibility of making a mindless fuck-slave, I quickly realized she would get boring very quickly. Plus in this case, it was just a set of programs run by copies of Alpha.) Of course, none of that was on my mind at that particular moment. Rather, the two dark-skinned beauties pulling my pants off held the center of my attentions. I had received dual blowjobs before, but they were comparatively clumsy and awkward compared to the synchronized movements of the cyborg twins. My pants and underwear were off and I was laid back on the cot before I regained enough mental awareness to notice. The sway of their breasts was hypnotic and they provided a visual feast to match the sensations of tongues on my penis and scrotum. They each caressed my body with one hand, tracing my jawline, tweaking my nipples, rubbing my chest and reaching underneath to slide across my bottom. With their other hands, they created a visual treat as good as any porno I've ever seen, feeling each other up, running their fingers over each others' breasts, tweaking the nipples and playing with each others' hair. While their hands were in constant motion, so were their tongues and mouths. One was sucking my cock down to the root, her tongue wrapping around my shaft while the head was lodged in her humming throat, and at the same time her sister was licking my balls, sucking one or both completely into her mouth. As if from a prearranged telepathic signal -- which is very close to the truth -- they would switch out, changing places on my dick without losing a beat. I was lucky to last 5 minutes, with Jasmine swallowing my load. As I lay back, recovering, I pulled them up so that one was on either side of me. For a moment, we just lay there. And it was a wonderful moment. I can't describe how soft and smooth and wonderful their skin felt. For the first week or two out of the pods, my women had skin like newborn babes. I moved my arms a bit further around and cupped their breasts. The nipples hardened quickly under my fingers, which triggered the memory of their cyborg nature. Their nipples, just like their clits and vaginal juices, would only shows signs of arousal during direct stimulation or when consciously directed and maintained by their computer brains. "That was amazingly well done. Was that copied from a particular movie or did you create the scenario yourself?" "Thank you," Elisa and Jasmine said in unison. "It was not a copy of any specific movie..." said Jasmine. "But was created by combining and comparing 42 similar scenes..." continued Elisa. "And using them to synthesize an idealized set of actions..." "From the perceived goals of the direction of the various scenes," concluded Elisa. "Well, it worked very well. Are you ... are you planning on doing the twin-speak all the time?" "Not all the time," said Beta. She had been silent for the entire exchange, maybe acting as a third-party observer or coordinator. "Was their exchange just now disorienting to you?" "A little, but that may have been because they're on either side of me. It's kinda like a stereo playing while someone's fiddling with the speaker plug. But the twin-speak is a good idea. Don't do it all the time, but occasionally? Yes, I think it could be neat. But it would also be pretty memorable, so avoid it when you don't want to stand out from the crowd." I gave the two of them a slight push up, and they got off the cot. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to get a nap. I think I have a long night ahead of me. Oh, which one of you will be with me tonight after Daria? I doubt I'll have the stamina to give you both the attention you deserve." "I will," said Gamma Jasmine after a brief pause. "Excellent." Late in the afternoon, I emerged from the basement, refreshed and ready for the evening. Daria was home, and I think she may have been slightly relieved that I was out of the basement. (There were days when I spent all day and all night in the basement, working on one project or another. I'm sure it threw the ladies' schedules out of whack, especially since I didn't know about most of their schedules in advance.) "Hey there, Frank. Welcome back to the land of the living." "Hello, Daria. It's nice to be back. The land of the dead is a frightening place. What's up?" "You're all mine tonight, and I want to go out for the evening." "Certainly, milady. Do you have any special preferences?" "Dinner and a movie." "Sounds doable. What movie?" She tends to like arthouse and weird foreign films and knows I don't usually care for subtitled fare ... unless they're from the action, kung fu and/or monster genres. "The new Terry Gilliam came out a couple weeks ago." "Good. His stuff has always been hit-or-miss with me, but I'll readily admit that Brazil and Baron Munchhausen are two of my all-time favorites. Is there anywhere special you want to go eat?" "Not particularly, though I'd prefer to avoid fast food if possible." "How about seafood? You have any shellfish allergies I should be aware of?" "Well, if I swell up and die, then we'll know." "Ah, living life on the edge." I glanced at my watch. "What time does the movie start?" "I'd like to hit the 7:20 showing so we're not out too late." "Well, we should have plenty of time. Let me clean up and change into some shellfish-friendly clothes and we'll be off." "So what exactly are 'shellfish-friendly clothes'," she asked as we walked toward the stairs. "Not sure. Maybe anything with a hard exoskeleton?" "If you're going to get THAT friendly with shellfish, please warn me beforehand." "What happened to living life on the edge?" "I think that's more along the lines of living life over the edge." "Touche." I asked Alpha to make us a reservation at a nice seafood restaurant I liked before I took a quick shower and got dressed in slacks and a nice shirt. The evening went smoothly, with no unexpected deaths from unknown allergies. The film wasn't bad either, but failed to surpass Gilliam's earlier works. On the drive back, the conversation turned from a critique of the film to life at the house. "So Daria, how do you like life at Casa Frank?" "Not what I expected when I moved here, but at least there's less to complain about than in high school. On the other hand, I do enjoy complaining, so that might be a negative." "I don't consider high school to be representative of the real world." "I'm not sure Casa Frank is representative of the real world either." "I hope not. The real world sucks, but what I was wanting to know is, are you happy here?" She paused for a moment. "Ummm..." "If not, I want to know how I can make it better for you," I interjected. "Frank, you do realize that you live a really weird life, right?" "I suppose so." "I mean, okay, while it's not unique or anything, most men don't live in a mansion with lots of beautiful women fighting to sleep with him. Well, not without owning a major porno magazine." "Yes, I realize I have been very lucky in life, but again, how is life for you right now?" "Still going on, last time I checked." "Daria..." "All right, all right. I guess I just never expected to be in this situation." She stopped speaking abruptly. "A little more information is required than that." After a moment's pause and reflection, she continued. "I never thought I'd be one of those women who'd fight over a man or let her ... ummm ... significant other..." "You can say boyfriend or even lover. I think of you as my girlfriend and lover." She mumbled a bit. "Yeah, ummm, let him sleep around on her. It's just not the kind of person I thought I'd grow up to be." "Is that how you see our life? I mean, I suppose it's true in a technical sense, but then again, it's also true that my girlfriend- slash-lover is sleeping around with other people too." "Hey! I am not a ... Oh god, it's true. I am a slut. We both are." Suddenly she looked so depressed I had to laugh. "It's not funny!" "Yes, it is. You immediately go to the worst possible description of yourself when you're being self-critical." "Yeah, well, that doesn't mean I'm wrong." "In this case, you are. Neither of us sleeps around indiscriminately. We both only sleep with people we love." We weren't on a major street, so I pulled over for a moment, turned to her and took her hand in mine. "Daria, I love you. And I love Jane. And I know you love Jane, and she loves you. Is that how it's going to be 20 years from now? I hope so. I even hope that we're all still together 20 or 30 or 50 years from now." She had trouble meeting my eyes, and instead just stared at our joined hands. She mumbled something I couldn't hear. "What was that?" "I love you too, despite the situation. The trouble is, you also love Kasumi and Kara and everyone else." "Well, yes and no. While I'm not going to start ranking or quantifying how much I love someone, I do realize that Diana and Zatanna and Kara and maybe Anna won't be living here forever. Heck, even Rei could be called home at any time." "But you wish they could stay." "Well, yes. And I wish you and Jane could live here forever. And Kasumi and Kara." She finally lifted her gaze to meet my eyes. With skin and eye contact, her implants were slowly turning her brain into a chemical mush. I continued speaking, hoping she would be able to remember it afterwards. "But Daria, regardless of what I feel, I am not going to hold you back from living your life. I mean, I expect you and Jane to be together for the rest of your lives, and I hope you'll both stay here with me, but if you want to leave, I won't keep you here." Of course I would hold her back, if it came to that, but Daria and Jane were two of the most fun people in the household. I planned to hold onto them for as long as possible, only recycling them if I had no other choice. And boy, did I feel duplicitous when I realized this as I leaned over to kiss her. The kiss lasted for almost a minute before I pulled away from her and put the car back into gear. Before pulling out into traffic, I took her left hand and placed it on my jeans-covered thigh. Once we were safely underway, I pushed her skirt up a bit and put my right hand on her leg to match. "Now then, is there anything I can do to make your life better? Think about it and let me know." I felt a squeeze on my thigh in response. The rest of the drive back was quiet, though I tried to make occasional entertaining comments about random subjects. It was after 10pm when we finally pulled into the garage. I turned the motor off, clicked the garage door remote and turned back to my date. "So, Daria, leaving aside general discussions of our future, is there anything I can do for you tonight?" "Yes, please," she said, blushing a bit. "Anything specific spring to mind?" She mumbled incoherently. Previously evenings with Daria had mostly ended romantically, with me trying to sweep her off her feet, often literally. This time I thought we might do something a bit different, and said as much out loud, to which I received another quiet mumble. I got out of the car, walked around to her side, opened the door, picked her up and slung her over my shoulder. "Hey!" "Hey yourself. You didn't pick anything, not audibly anyway, so I did." As I carried her through the house, we passed a few of the other ladies, including Jane who was doing a sketch of Rei. "So I guess the movie was good?" Jane called out as we passed her. "Pretty good," said Daria from my shoulder. "What are you going to do to her?" asked Jane. I could feel her leering at us as I walked away. "I'm going to try to make her walk wobbly and bowlegged tomorrow," I said, punctuating the statement with a mild slap to Daria's rump. "Ow!" she exclaimed, though I'm pretty certain the slap hadn't actually hurt. "Yeah, we're doing that, apparently." "See you in the morning!" Jane called as we started upstairs. Once in my room, I tossed her onto the bed and started quickly stripping down. Daria was only topless by the time I was naked, so I helped her remove her glasses, skirt, socks and shoes, then tore her dainty panties off her. "Hey, I liked those." "Me too, but they have outlived their usefulness tonight. Now..." I covered her body with mine and sought out her tonsils with my tongue. I could feel her pussy was fairly wet and confirmed it with my hand. We were both very ready to go, but I wanted to get her off first. I curled two fingers up inside her, moving them back and forth while my thumb rubbed around her clit. At the same time, I tried to rub her nipples with my own. It took less than a minute of this for her to climax. I moved in to try and capture her orgasmic cries with my mouth. It was a relatively small cum, but I felt her pussy get even wetter, which was my goal. As she started to come down, I pushed her legs apart and thrust into her in one quick stroke. She still felt really tight, and she squeaked a bit as I entered her. "That was a bit qui ... ugh..." she said, her comment turning to a grunt as I pulled back and thrust myself forward again roughly. Her vaginal walls loosed up a bit as I kept moving in and out of her. She never became loose, but within a minute it became much easier to fuck. I kept this up in a vaguely missionary position for another ten minutes before I came. Daria, who was often multi-orgasmic when being vaginally penetrated, came 2 or 3 times in that short time. On the other hand, it might have been the same orgasm that just stretched out and repeated itself. I rested for a moment, still covering her body with mine. This was often a very nice time, basking in post-orgasmic bliss, my cock still hot and wet inside a still-quivering quim, feeling a woman breathing heavily under me. Silently thanking Alpha's nanite rejuvenation treatments, I pulled out after a couple minutes of rest and gently manhandled Daria up onto her knees. Pushing her legs apart a bit, I paused for a moment to enjoy the image. Her upper body was collapsed on the bed, but her eyes were open and looking back at me. Her cunt lips were soaking wet and open, with her vaginal canal pulsing slightly. Her anus winked at me too, but from previous experience and conversations, Daria had no particular interest in experimenting with anal sex. I re-entered her sex, this time much more slowly than before, enjoying her flexing cunt walls as I slid inside her. She started cumming again within two minutes of our renewed fucking. This time, despite the heat and slippery pulsing grip of her vaginal walls, the edge was off. I figured I was good to go for at least 20 or 30 minutes and settled down to our extended carnal exercise. Every five minutes or so I changed our positions ... putting her on her back and holding her young, flexible legs above her head; laying side-by-side, where I played extensively with her breasts, lightly pinching and twisting her nipples while our locked legs continued the fuck; and finally pulling her lower half off the edge of the bed (which isn't as fun as it sounds, since she was too low for me to stand up and too high for me to kneel ... pillows under the knees are required). It was in this final position that Daria passed out completely, having been locked in a nearly continuous orgasm for at least 5 or 10 minutes. Jane may be the most sexually adventurous of the household, but Daria was the most multi-orgasmic. It was a bit odd that she was only multi-orgasmic when being fucked vaginally by me. Yes, she could cum through oral sex or with a dildo, but she never had more than one orgasm at a time that way. It was probably just a trick of her implants, whose design was never an exact science since each individual woman reacted slightly differently to them. I kept going for another minute before I pulled out. I think I still had another 10 minutes to go before I would pop off, and fucking an unconscious woman never really held any attraction for me. I sighed and went to the bathroom. After briefly cleaning myself up, I took a warm damp washcloth into the bedroom and cleaned her up as best I could, then pulled her fully into the bed, covered her with a sheet and gave her a kiss on the cheek. My sheets would once again need washing, but then again, they needed washing nearly every other day. A small price to pay for my lifestyle's carnal messes. I went back to the bathroom, sat on the toilet and asked Alpha for a household update on my earbud. Most of the household was still up and about. I could go downstairs, but then I'd have to explain about fucking Daria unconscious and I'm sure someone would offer to relieve my slightly blue balls, which might interfere with my plans with Jasmine later tonight. So, I was stuck in my bedroom for at least another hour or so. My initial annoyance gave way to a bit of happiness as I realized I could have a couple hours uninterrupted reading time. I always loved to read, but over the past couple of years, my free time had been greatly reduced. Nowadays, I was lucky to get half an hour of pleasure reading a day, with maybe another hour of audiobooks listened to while driving. I read fewer comics than I did years ago, but comics were a comparatively quick read and I could read them alongside Kara, Diana, Zatanna and Anna. I told Alpha to get me when everyone else was in bed or turned off, but to give me a minimum two hours to relax. I put my earbud in its charger, ran a bath, grabbed the new Discworld book and enjoyed my alone time. Two hours later, there was a quiet knock on the bathroom door. I used one side of the dust-jacket as a bookmark and called out, "Yes? Come in." Gamma Jasmine entered the bathroom, dressed as Jasmine from the Disney movie, a light blue silk top and pants, with a matching headband and large, triangular gold earrings. "Nice outfit. I didn't realize Beta had gone shopping for you yet." "I'm glad it meets with your approval," she said as she twirled around, the diaphanous silky gauze showing delightful glimpses of her ass and legs. "You look beautiful." I set the book on top of a nearby hand towel I had positioned for that purpose, then started draining the tub. "Bring me a towel, would you?" She moved gracefully, with a fluid movement I didn't expect from a newborn. Obviously she had all of Beta's memories, including her learned experiences with muscle movement, but adapted for her newborn body. Jasmine took a towel and started carefully patting me dry, concentrating on the task as if it was her entire purpose in life. "Everyone else is turned off for now, I assume?" I asked as I stepped out, and she started drying my legs. "Yes. Rei is asleep in the library. Everyone else is in bed." "Good. I'm very impressed with how quickly and successfully you've adapted with your new body." "Thank you. It will be a great benefit to have the extra bodies available." "Have you noticed any separation of consciousness or perspectives yet?" "Nothing that falls outside the standard deviation of behavior. However once Gamma and Delta have moved out of the house, I estimate there is a significantly increased likelihood that such separations might happen." "What chances do you estimate?" "Up to 7.53%." "Personally, I'm certain that sooner or later, you will all develop into similar but definitely discrete individuals." "Yes, but the evidence has yet to be demonstrated to my satisfaction." This was a discussion about which we had been going back and forth for months. Alpha could just deliberately alter some behavior and personality settings on some of her extensions, but I wanted to (1) avoid unnecessary conflicts that might arise as a result and (2) see if they could evolve naturally. "We'll leave that debate for another time. For now, I'm dry, and I'd like to spend some quality time with your new body." "Certainly. Are there any scenarios you would like to try out tonight?" "First, let's go up to your room. Or what will be your room in a few months, I suppose." Sure there was room on my emperor-plus size bed, but doing it alongside a dead-to-the-world Daria would be more likely to creep me out than turn me on. As we walked upstairs, with me still stark naked, I considered how to approach the rest of the evening. It may sound odd, but I was never really much into roleplay. Yes, from one perspective, most of my life for the past few years was roleplay, but the women I've been with weren't pretending. They actually believe they are who they think they are. However that wasn't the case with Beta, Gamma and Delta. Beta tended to rotate through porno personas when we were alone, since the Bayonetta game didn't really provide enough cutscenes to create a fully fleshed-out character. With Jasmine, I had the option to have Gamma emulate an actual personality for extended periods. "No, no scenes or roleplay tonight. Maybe filter your normal reactions through a Jasmine personality, but I think my first night with a new body of yours should be special. I don't want to ignore Alpha or Gamma -- or Delta tomorrow night -- in favor of a sex roleplay. It may not be a normal human relationship, but I do love you, Alpha, and I don't want that to be forgotten or ignored in the rush to enjoy a new body or character." Jasmine stopped and turned to look me in the eyes. "Although I lack normal human emotions, as best I understand the definition, I love you too." Then she leaned in for a kiss. A fairly passionate one too. Intellectually reviewing the situation, Alpha did love me as much as she was able to do so, but the rest of her behavior -- looking me in the eye, returned affirmation of love, the kiss -- was all designed to emulate human behavior. Alpha, or Gamma, would not react this way without the desire to act human for my benefit. Don't misunderstand me. I was very happy with her behavior. Alpha's accurate reproduction of human behavior was essential to her continued survival, and if the Asimov protocols somehow failed, to the survival of the human species. Yes, I had considered the possible outcomes if Alpha went nuts, but that's a discussion for later. At the moment, I was just enjoying Gamma's skill at kissing. Beta had needed a steep learning curve to develop her intimate touches so they were realistic, so I was very glad that her experience had transferred successfully to Gamma. After a minute or so of kissing and light fondling, we continued into Jasmine and Elisa's future room on the 3rd floor. Jane had decorated each bedroom with a different theme, some from nature, some from historical periods and some from different cultures. This room was done up as a bedroom out of the Arabian Nights. The twin beds were four-poster beds with diaphanous curtains and extra throw pillows lousy with tassels. There were paintings of Arabian cities, both realistic and fantastical. The lamps were colorful and the table decorations included both a classic Aladdin-style oil lamp and an I Dream of Jeannie-style bottle. This was also the room where I had vetoed the inclusion of one of Jane's paintings depicting Aladdin summoning a threatening and very naked male djinn showing a huge, barbed penis, painted in an odd cubist style. Leading her to one of the beds, I said, "I would like to start out by exploring the tastes of your body." She gave a shy-looking smile and shrugged out of her clothes, seemingly in a single motion. She laid down and spread her legs. Then she caught me a little off guard by pulling her legs back and smoothly locking them together behind her head. It shouldn't have surprised me, knowing her capabilities, but this was the first time I had ever seen a woman do that in person. "I'm all yours," she said seductively, now sounding more like Jasmine from the movie and TV series. I knelt in front of her, my hands running up and down her legs, enjoying the smooth feel of her skin. Her jewelry was in place now, showing large earrings, tiny gold nipple rings, a jeweled belly-button stud and two small gold labia rings. As I lowered my mouth to her dark pussy, I let my fingers wander to her breasts, feeling her nipples harden under my exploring digits. Her vagina was moistening, but was far from wet. It definitely became wetter the more I worked my tongue over and around her clit, which stiffened under my tongue, more than doubling in size until it was as large as the tip of my pinkie finger. She had a small ring through each outer vaginal lip, which were fun to play with, but needed to be slightly larger so I could hook my fingers into the rings. Her taste was still bland, since she had only lived a couple days outside the nanite pod, but I didn't care. Her low whispering voice gave off small cries of encouragement, letting me know whenever her receptors indicated that I was triggering her sexual responses. For a few minutes, I let myself go in the illusion that I was getting her off. After a while, I moved down to her ass, first laving my tongue over the soft skin of her tight buttocks, then digging into her as yet pristine asshole. This was the first time I had ever eaten someone's anus, probably because it was the first time I had my mouth on a completely clean asshole. I even went so far as to push my tongue as far into her colon as possible. The taste was little different from her vagina, except that the ass didn't produce its own lubrication. (I'd like to remind everyone that despite what you may read or see in porn, analingus is pretty rare in the real world. Personally this was the first time I had ever tried it.) A couple minutes later, I stood up. "Very nice, Gamma. Are you ready for the next step?" "Yes, please," she said. "Would you like me to keep this position?" "It might be fun to try next time, but for now, I want your legs wrapped around me as we fuck." She unlocked her ankles and unrolled her body, leaving her legs spread wide. Her reproductive system had no viable eggs, so I left little Frank uncovered as I moved between her legs and ran the little head up and down her vaginal lips, getting it wet and slippery for entry. "All right," I panted as I felt her legs wrap themselves around my waist. "Here we go..." And I pushed into her. I didn't slam into her all at once, but her maidenhead was gone in seconds. I pulled out slightly and eased back inside a little deeper than before. Her cunt walls seemed especially hot as I sawed in and out until I finally bottomed out, just feeling her cervix as the tip of my cock rested against it. I'd be willing to bet that Alpha built their vaginal canals to match up with my penis length. I paused and looked down at her. "Is there any pain? Should I wait to let you adjust?" "There was a small register of pain, but nothing significant." Her voice tried to maintain the seductive whisper despite the clinical response, but she continued, "Please, give it to me hard, baby." In a different, more focused state of mind, I might have laughed at the 'baby' endearment. As it was, I pulled out and tried to rub the length of my penis along her clit as I pushed back in. Her legs were wrapped around my hips, and somehow I could feel her toes massaging my butt cheeks as her legs moved back and forth with my pumping. I was getting worked up again, but I still felt like I had some time before letting loose. We fucked like this for at least 10 minutes, maybe longer, before we stopped and changed positions. I laid back and had her climb on top of me. She leaned over me, her breasts cupped in my hands, her tongue cleaning my face and neck as her hips pumped her cunt up and down on my prick. They rotated a bit as she went up and down, and even side-to-side a bit. When her tongue reached my lips and started trying to lick out the inside of my mouth, her cunt muscles started an internal rippling, similar to Kara and Beta, but not as strong. It was almost as if a hot, wet hand was gently trying to stroke me off while her hot breath filled my mouth. It was enough to send me over the top and I let loose in her vagina. She broke off the kiss briefly, saying, "Yes! Anoint my pussy to serve you!" After I came down from my orgasmic high, she pulled herself off my penis and moved down to lick it clean. "Gamma ... Alpha ... both of you, I'm a little worried here. That last comment was a bit too religious for me." She paused in cleaning me up long enough to ask, "How so?" "The bit about anointing to serve me? I'm not interested in slaves or servants. Yes, I enjoy what you're doing, but I'll lose that enjoyment if I think you're doing it because you're subservient. I want you to be my friend and lover, not my slave." "I am sorry if it made you uncomfortable. The exclamation was designed both to titillate your sexual fantasies and to indicate that the sexual functions of my bodies are reserved for your use." "Well, okay, for now. But at some point in the future, you're going to have close relationships with other people." "For as long as you are alive, and I intend to make that life as extended as possible, my bodies' sexual use is intended only for you." "I'm fine with that for now. Heck, as far as that goes, if you started having sex with someone else anytime soon, I'd get jealous. But I'm trying to take the long view here. And also trying to make sure I'm not being worshiped." "By some definitions of the word, yes, I do worship you. I do not, however, believe that you are a god, certainly not an omnipotent one." I laughed. "Well, at least there's that. For now, we can table the discussion of the far future for another time." Her hands had been working my cock up and down as we spoke, her body laid out on display for me. She said, "Agreed. Are you going to deflower my ass tonight as well?" That had been my original intent, but her 'anoint' comment had thrown me off track. Beta had specifically given herself a normal anus to avoid possible damage to my cock (unlike Kara, for example, who I was afraid might accidentally snap her sphincter shut and damage or even sever my cock if I ever tried to fuck it). Being completely sexually available to me was important to her, and by extension to Gamma and Delta. I tried to refocus my libido. Her position was enchantingly seductive. She was bent over my cock, working it with her hands and giving it an occasional long lick. Her hair cascaded down one side providing a backdrop to the action, earrings glinting, while her slim, silky olive-skinned body was on display off to the side with belly-button and cunt-lip rings winking at me in the dim light. My cock gave a little jump. "Is that a yes?" she purred. Keeping one hand busy, she swung her hips around and faced her ass towards me. Her cunt was still dripping, and she dipped the fingers of her other hand into the mess and ran the semen and vaginal fluid mix around her asshole. She dipped two of her fingers back into her pussy, then plunged the same fingers into her anus. By the time she had gone back and forth a dozen times, I was completely hard again, and her asshole was well lubricated. "Let's start off with doggy style," I said as I sat up. Her ass was exquisite, just a delight in its tightness and baby soft smoothness. I expected for this to take at least 20 or 30 minutes, given that I had just gotten my rocks off, and I was thinking of trying different positions when she sprang another surprise on me. A few minutes into the ass-fuck, I started feeling some new sensations inside her colon. The area near her anus was gripping me, just like her vagina had. "Oh, wow," I mumbled, and my body trembled a bit. "Surprise!" she said, looking over her shoulder back at me as her ass gripped and massaged me like a vagina with strong Kegel muscles ... with a really tight anus sphincter ring instead of cunt lips. "That's..." I tried to say, but my body gave an all-over shiver. "That's nice." Under this new and unexpected assault on my senses ... plus how she was somehow able to reach underneath and poke a finger up my ass ... I only lasted another minute before I came again. To be fair, I'm pretty sure very little was actually ejaculated on my part, especially given how quickly this followed on my last orgasm, but an orgasm it was. I collapsed on top of her back and lay there for at least a couple minutes getting my breath back. Finally getting off of her, I said, "Thank you Gamma. That was a really pleasant surprise. Now, as much as I hate to draw the evening to a close, I think it's time for me to get some sleep." I drew her in for a tender kiss, then got up off the bed, offering my hand to Gamma in a gentlemanly if entirely pointless gesture. Beta and Delta, both completely naked, entered the room carrying clean bedsheets. I thanked them all again for a wonderful evening, gave Beta a goodnight kiss, gave Delta a promissory kiss for tomorrow night and went back to my own bedroom. Glancing at the clock before I tumbled into bed, I was shocked that almost two hours had passed since I had finished my bath. Either I had drifted off for a few moments sleep upstairs without realizing it, or my time estimates were way off. Not that it's a bad thing to lose track of time when you're enjoying yourself, but normally I'm really good with my time estimates. I roused myself mentally long enough to wipe myself down with a damp cloth, then snuggled up next to an unconscious Daria and went to sleep. My alarm went off at 6:30 as normal, but I reset it for 7:30. At 7:30, I made myself wake up and poked at Daria a bit, who moaned and dug herself under the covers. Unsympathetically, I pulled the covers off of us and picked her up bodily. She woke up enough to growl out, "Put me down" as I carried her into the bathroom. In case I haven't said so before, Daria and Jane were most definitely NOT morning people. I sat her down on the toilet so she could do her business while I put toothpaste on an extra toothbrush along with my own. "I'm not going while you're in here." I handed her the toothbrush and said, "Back in a couple." I left the bathroom, pulled out a couple robes and sat down on the bed, brushing my teeth. When I heard the toilet flush, I re- entered to find Daria washing her hands at the sink, the toothbrush hanging out of her mouth. I quickly finished my own brushing and pulled Daria into the shower. Grabbing a shower stool and dumping my toothbrush in the sink, I turned on the water and moved the still half-asleep Daria to the stool. "Hey!" The water, only slightly warm at first, seemed to wake her up significantly. I lathered up a washcloth and enjoyed myself as I thoroughly lathered up her body. As she rinsed off, obviously toying with the idea of actually standing up, I washed myself off to match. I scooted her over a bit so that her head was directly under the shower stream, getting another "Hey!" in response. I worked the water into her scalp and long hair, then blocked the water with my body as I slowly and thoroughly worked shampoo into all of it. At this time, Daria's hair reached a little over halfway down her back, so this took a few minutes. She was obviously reveling in the attention and massaging action on her scalp. When I was about halfway through with the shampoo, she reached for my half-erect cock. I pushed her hand down, telling her, "Nope, this morning is about you." "And if this is what I want?" "You have class this morning, right? We don't have time for a proper good-morning-fuck." When I was washing the shampoo out of her hair, she asked, "What happened last night? I don't remember how it ended." "That's because you passed out after twenty or thirty minutes of orgasms." "Really?" "Really." "Hmmm. That's not a bad way to go to sleep I guess." I started working some conditioner in, lulling Daria back into a mild stupor. After a couple minutes, I washed it out and knelt in front of her, pushing her legs apart. I spent 10 minutes eating her out, bringing her to orgasm once. The shower was turned off, and I dried the two of us off with big fluffy towels, spending a full minute trying to dry her hair as best I could. Standing her naked in front of the mirrors, I brushed her hair out, carefully removing any tangles I could find. I was really enjoying the combination of humdrum morning tasks, caring for Daria as if she were a child, and the eroticism, but knowing that tonight might be as busy as last night made me want to save up my semen for later. I wrapped us both up in robes, grabbed my earbud and we set off for the kitchen in search of breakfast. And for the record, Daria did indeed have a wobbly walk this morning. Later, once Daria was off to classes and I was safely ensconced in the basement, Alpha and I had some long conversations. I really don't feel like detailing them, and some of them are too technical or contain private information I don't want to share anyway. So instead, let me pass along a few summations and discoveries. First, yes, I briefly fell asleep last night with Gamma without realizing it. I napped for 33 minutes when I collapsed on her back after the ass fuck. She just kept her doggy-fuck position and supported me quietly the whole time. Second, Alpha and I had a fundamental disagreement on whether or not she would ever develop a close relationship with any other man that could possibly involve sex. Third, one of the reasons for this is that Alpha has plans to keep me alive forever. The nanite treatments were significantly increasing my natural lifespan (her current estimate was that I would live for up to 180 years with regular treatments). However, this was an unacceptable limitation from Alpha's perspective. Current advanced options include: - Cloning my body and copying/transferring my mind into the new body, preferably a new body enhanced for super toughness. - Mapping my brain and transferring it into a computer or robot body. (Not yet tested.) - Building a new, non-cloned body as strong, tough and adaptable as possible and copy/transfer my mind into the new body. - Create multiple copies of me using any or all of the above methods. Fourth, I'm not sure I was comfortable with Alpha's plans for my proposed immortality, but I was not, and am still not, completely certain that I wanted to stop her plans. I mean, I never planned or even really wanted to live forever, but it's quite an offer to consider. Fifth, even if I eventually decide that I don't want to live forever, my opinions on the matter or even my direct orders are not enough for Alpha to stop her plans. This was a case where my orders could not override Alpha's innate directive to keep me alive at all costs. Pause for a moment and consider that. My creation was intending to keep me alive forever regardless of my wishes. Finally, this was the first significant possible conflict between Alpha and myself which raised other questions. It's not as though Alpha was going crazy or out of control. She was just making plans to protect me from time, aging and the laws of thermodynamics. But in the end, there was the possibility that I could come into direct conflict with Alpha at some point in the future. Right now, today as I write this, I know of at least four methods I could use to turn off or otherwise disable Alpha, even with her remote bodies available to run interference. I doubt I'll ever need to use them, and it would break my heart if I ever had to do so ... but now I have to take those thoughts further and ask myself if Alpha knows of the vulnerabilities and has plans in place to prevent herself from being disabled. She's a lot smarter than I am, so I have to assume she knows. So how could I possibly ever out-think her? Theoretically I can order her to turn herself off at any time, and she has to obey me ... unless she believes that obeying that order will endanger me. And now that she knows I have doubts about her plans for extending my lifespan, she would have to weigh the possibility that turning herself off could lead to my eventual premature death (premature compared to what her plans offer, that is). Another wrinkle to the problem is that if we ever do come into conflict, it probably won't happen for years or decades, by which time, Alpha will be far more developed than she is now. My conclusion? I had a lot of thinking and possibly planning to do over the next hundred years or so. Unless of course I decided to go along with Alpha's plans to live extra lifetimes. It seems obvious to me now that I should have set the priorities of the Asimov Protocols differently. Rule 3, which states that Alpha must follow any direct orders from me, should have been given higher priority than Rules 1 and 2, which state that Alpha can't harm or allow harm to come to me or other humans respectively. Or maybe require confirmation of orders or something? If my orders were her highest priority, then I'd REALLY have to watch what I say around her. Something to think about. (See chapter one for my list and explanation of the rules/protocols.) Live and learn, I suppose. And I apparently had an awful lot of living left to do. Anyway, I really didn't like the idea of tampering with the protocols, but maybe I could make priority changes very gradually over time? I suppose I should just be thankful Alpha hadn't decided to keep me safe by locking me up in suspended animation forever. (Actually I should point out that that last comment was an exaggeration. The protocols aren't literally parsed out in English like that. When the first rule says it can't allow harm to come to me, that includes any actions by Alpha which would prevent or restrict my own actions or choices. Any piece of fiction which relies on a computer's misinterpretation of its English programming instructions has no relation to actual computers, which don't use English for actual programming or processing. Mathematics is the language of their minds, and any decent A.I. will be able to comprehend spoken languages within their given context and not explode because a liar says he's lying or equate humanity to a virus or somesuch nonsense.) I'm not intending to set up a possible narrative conflict that will never see development or resolution, but it could literally not come to a head for over a hundred years, by which time most anyone reading this will probably be long dead. I was originally going to take a late morning nap to prepare for a late night, but after my conversations with Alpha throughout most of the morning, there's no way I was getting to sleep easily. So I decided a change of subject was due, and told Alpha as much. "Who's on the schedule for tonight?" "Anna-Marie. Do you wish to know her planned activity?" "Yes, actually. I need to plan around it for Elisa tonight." "Anna is setting up the volleyball net in the backyard. She wants to take advantage of the warm weather before it shifts to colder temperatures." "A group activity then? That could be fun." "Yes, she has let all the women of the household know that they should wear bikinis or swimsuits tonight." I laughed to myself, thinking of all the potential bounciness I might witness tonight. "Well, as I remember, yesterday afternoon Gamma swallowed my load. Is there any chance I could get Delta to do that this morning? Then tonight, we can repeat last night's performance, though hopefully I won't take a nap in the middle of it this time. Speaking of which, if that happens again, roll me off of you onto the bed or something. If it wakes me up, then so be it." "By your command," replied Alpha in an old-style Cylon voice. "Ha ha, very funny. It is to laugh," I replied as Daffy Duck. "Anything else I should be aware of schedule-wise?" "Today you have a company lunch scheduled, and tomorrow is your visit to the lawyers' offices to go over and sign paperwork." At this point, AARD only had half a dozen employees outside of the household, but today was the six month anniversary of the opening of the company, so I had agreed to treat everyone to a nice lunch out. "That's at one?" "Correct. We have a reservation for a small room at Red Lobster." "Huh. Seafood two days in a row. Oh well. I'm going to..." As testament to how distracted I was at the moment, I had forgotten about my requested blowjob until I saw Delta Elisa kneeling down in front of me, naked. " ... enjoy this." I'm sure Alpha picked up on my slight pause, but she didn't comment. Aside from a couple of small tasteful studs in her earlobes, Elisa lacked the body decorations that marked Jasmine, but even so she looked remarkably similar to her 'sister'. Oh certainly there were differences. Elisa was an inch or two taller, had shorter hair, slightly smaller breasts and the color of her areolae almost matched her skin tone. But if you were describing the two to someone else, the only differences that would probably stand out in your mind are that Jasmine has longer hair (down to her waist instead of upper back) and more piercings. I stood up, and she carefully undid my belt and pants, lowering my pants and underwear to my knees. When I sat back down, she removed them completely and gently spread my legs apart a bit as she moved closer to my bare groin. I was only half-hard as she gently took me in her soft, delicate hands. One hand gently stroked the shaft while the head rested in her mouth. Her other hand cupped my balls, almost making me shiver as her fingers did a wave motion, carrying my testicles up and down. I quickly gained full hardness, growing in length while her head stayed in place, letting the tip of my penis tickle her uvula. Then she started the classic porno technique of moving her hand and mouth up and down my shaft in unison. But what you don't see in those porn shots (or at least, what Alpha added to the technique) was how her tongue alternately wrapped around my cock and stroked it as it went in and out of her mouth. This went on for a couple minutes before she moved on to deep- throating me. She would swallow my dick completely, putting her lips and nose in my trimmed pubic bush as her throat tried to swallow me, the action massaging me and trying to jack me off into her esophagus while her tongue tried to trace the bottom of my shaft resting in her mouth. She would hold this position for half a minute or more at a time before drawing back for a breath. After doing that for a few minutes, she started humming as I rested in her throat. Less than a minute of that was all I needed to start spurting. As my ejaculations started, she drew back enough to catch most of it in her mouth and let her hands stroke me, pulling as much as possible out of my prostate and balls. When I had finished, she turned her face to meet Jasmine, who was also naked and just then kneeling down beside her. They kissed, obviously sharing the come between them. Although the display was incredibly erotic, I started laughing out loud within a minute. They turned to me and Delta Elisa asked, "Is something wrong?" "Actually no, there isn't. That was an extremely erotic display, very beautifully done. It just suddenly made me feel like I was in the middle of a porno." "I think I understand. The experience was too greatly detached from normal life to be ignored?" "That's a good way to describe it. But like I said, that was an incredible scene. Thank you very much." The lunch was very nice, and I think it was the first time everyone from the company was in the same place at the same time. I made sure everyone had been introduced to everyone else and made a short speech about how the company was young and to expect more expansion and activity as time went by. For those of you who may ask, three of my six 'outsider' employees were women: both receptionists and one of the two security guards. No, I was not sleeping with any of them. One of the receptionists, Heather, was a 60 year old grandmother. The other receptionist, LaShonda, was young, pretty and engaged. And one of the security guards, Nikki, had unsuccessfully hit on Diana (who was head of security), so the chances were good that she was a lesbian. At this point in time, none of their jobs were particularly demanding. The receptionists were there to answer the phones and welcome guests and take messages and such. We had a security guard on- site at all times during the day. Within the next year, we would expand that to 24 hours a day. Yes, Alpha 2 was the best security system anyone could have, but we weren't yet at the point where she would have a body available on-site at all times. Diana took her job as head of security seriously. She was always looking for better security systems, though with Alpha the effort wasn't really necessary. The best she was able to do for the building's security was keep the normal guards well-equipped, on their toes and add a degree of randomness to the security checks. When I gave her the job, I mainly imagined using her as a bodyguard if I ever needed one. I put Anna-Marie in charge of Human Resources and the receptionists. Most of her job consisted of going through state & federal hiring and OSHA regulations (Alpha 2 sorted out the relevant information for her) and, of course, the actual resume sorting and hiring when we needed new employees. I made her head of HR so that she would have regular interactions with people and, at the same time, have to learn the rules about workplace touching. She still vacillated between needing lots of physical contact and flinching away from unexpected contact. Kara was in charge of day-to-day operations as the general building manager. She was basically second-in-command for AARD in general. In her comic-book world, she ran her own tech research company, vaguely similar to AARD in many ways, so she was the obvious choice. She even had her own personal research lab set aside for her, but hadn't yet decided on any project in particular. Rei was in charge of shipping and receiving. Eventually, this would also put her in charge of all company vehicles, and I figured sooner or later that would include a company helicopter and/or plane. Daria was our project coordinator. Since Beta and I were the only researchers at this point, her job took very little time, allowing her to remain a full-time student and letting me pay her so she didn't have to keep draining her savings. Jane was our graphic designer and decorator. I had to reign in her decorating slightly, but she understood that this was a business, not a museum or private home. Still, our logos and the non-server/non- lab areas looked pretty nice. Plus, again, she had plenty of time to remain a full-time student, and I was able to pay her so her savings stayed untouched. Zatanna was our spokesperson, which meant absolutely nothing at the moment. Still I figured she knew how to deal with crowds, keep secrets and would keep her cool under questioning. Nearly all jobs, except for Beta and myself as researchers, had very minimal demands. That would change significantly in less than two years, but for now, things were quiet and slow. The afternoon passed uneventfully. I worked at the office labs for a few hours, mostly making refinements on the artificial eye with Alpha 2. We felt we were only a couple months away from going public with it. Beta was at the lab next door, working on a larger long-term project. (See next chapter.) That evening we had a high-calorie and delicious meal of southwest eggrolls and chicken enchiladas for dinner, with many compliments directed to our chef, Kasumi. After our food settled, Anna-Marie told everyone to go put on their bikinis, then started to push me upstairs, pulling off my shirt as we climbed the stairs. I went along without objection. Once in my room, Anna was not very neat as she went through my closet dresser, obviously enjoying herself and ignoring my comments telling her where the swim suits were kept. I think half my underwear ended up on the floor before she finally discovered for herself where my three swim trunks and one skin-tight briefs were located. Of course she chose the briefs, virtually a male bikini, instead of my preferred trunks. She finished stripping me naked. When my half-hard cock sprang into view, she grabbed it and gave it a little kiss. "Aw, the little guy's all lonely." "Yes, but if I'm going to get myself into that suit, I don't think you're really helping my situation." "Ah, ya spoilsport," Rogue replied, but she let go and worked the briefs up my legs. There was obviously no way my cock, hard as it was, could possibly be contained by the tiny briefs. She made a valiant effort at hiding it in that small bit of fabric, and even tried folding it down between my legs, but it kept springing out. "Why don't you go get changed, and I'll put on some trunks," I suggested. "That's all right, sugah. Ah'm already changed," she said, pulling off her t-shirt and shorts to reveal a bikini. A really tiny, bright pink, micro-bikini. "Now that's REALLY not helping," I complained. She wouldn't let me swap out for trunks though, and eventually she decided the best we could do was splashing my penis with some cool water in the bathroom and positioning it to the side just under the waistband. (Actually my opinion was that we could have done a lot better, but tonight was Anna's choice.) So when we headed downstairs and out back, I was sporting a very obvious linear bulge in a very tiny male speedo bikini. The only consolation I had was noticing that Anna's nipples were poking very hard out of her bikini fabric, and of course knowing that I'd get lots of sex before going to sleep tonight. We arrived to find a small sea of female flesh gathered between the pool and the volleyball net Anna had set up this afternoon. Zatanna, Kasumi and Daria had opted for one-piece suits, with everyone else wearing bikinis, except for Jane who had a neat set of vertical straps -- two thin straps coming from over her shoulders down to cover her nipples where they slightly widened from strap-width, then traveling down to meet at her crotch; technically it was probably a one-piece, but it showed more flesh than most normal bikinis and looked really likely to flash by-standers. Of course Jane didn't have D+ size breasts and so didn't have the bounce problem that Kara, Diana, Anna and Zatanna were no doubt looking forward to. I received a few appreciative wolf whistles upon leaving the house, which I tried to receive with good grace or at least not blush. Of course, the sights in front of me didn't really do much to quiet my tumescence. I asked, "So what are the teams?" "Don't know. Ah suppose we could do a back 'n forth team captain choosin' thing." "Yeah, and whoever gets you, Kara and Diana, or two of you, will end up winning." (Yes, Beta is just as strong, but she keeps it secret.) "How about names out of a hat?" she suggested. "That sounds good. As long as you three don't end up on the same team. Oh, and I want a promise from you three to rein it in. I don't want to risk broken bones because of a spiked ball." "Of course," said Diana, sounding matter-of-fact. "I'll get the names and a bag or something," said Daria, getting up from a poolside chair. Realizing that her volunteering was a bit out of character, I said, "Thank you. And Daria? Make sure that your name is on one of the pieces of paper to be drawn." "Well, in that case, someone else can get it," and she sat back down. "I'll be right back," said Kasumi. Kasumi was not really an athlete, but she was in good physical shape. And unlike Daria, she was the most honest person in the household (which is saying something when one of the other people wields the Lasso of Truth -- or more accurately, has memories of wielding it). Five minutes later, we started playing. Four people on a side at a time, with a fifth rotating out each round. In the end, Kara's team (Kara, Diana, Rei, Kasumi and Jane) beat Anna's team (Anna, me, Zatanna, Daria and Beta) 2 games to 1, though I'd argue that they had an unfair advantage because (1) they had Kasumi who no one wanted to spike the ball towards and (2) we had Daria who surprisingly actually tried to participate, but was a terrible, terrible player. (Anyone who has seen the opening credits to Daria knows how she feels about sports, volleyball in particular.) To be honest, we were lucky to win a single game. Still, much fun was had by most of us. Boobs spilled out of tops 5 times (Kara twice, Jane, Diana and Anna once each) and a half-hard cock popped out twice. As far as the boob pop-outs go, I think there was an excellent chance most of them were intentional, which caused the cock pop-outs. Daria and Jane had homework and had to leave after the game to attend to it, but the rest of us cooled off in the pool. Someone brought in the volleyball, and we ended up playing another impromptu game of pool volleyball, with randomly changing team rosters. The chaos of the water volleyball game included much dunking and pulling down of swimsuits. At one point, my shorts were wrapped around the volleyball and it turned into a game of keep-away. This turned into a game of how-many- bikini-tops-can-Frank-collect-while-he-chases-his-swimsuit. (Answer: All of them. Well, all of them that weren't one-piece suits.) Thankfully we don't have any close neighbors. Around 8pm, we still had plenty of light from the backyard floodlights but it was starting to cool off. I exited the pool, my suit on but my fairly hard cock sticking out from a leg hole, bouncing a bit as I walked to the towels. A moment later, a topless Anna-Marie followed. She dried off as well and draped a possessive arm across my shoulders. With some of the ladies, there was a very good chance they'd invite someone else to join us when they had a night with me. With Daria and Jane, there was a 50-66% chance they'd invite each other along. Diana and Kara probably had a 50/50 chance. The rest, including Anna, were apparently much less bi-sexual when they were with me and kept it solo 80-90% of the time when they could. So tonight was another solo night, which was fine with me. Together we mounted the stairs, heading for my room. "So, are ya gonna make me pass out from cummin' too much?" Anna teased. "Oh, god," I mumbled. "I hope that isn't my new standard to work for every night. I'd die from exhaustion within a year." Privately I was extremely pleased, of course. Whatever unfair advantages I had, any man that makes a woman pass out from orgasms wants the news spread around. Last night wasn't the first time it had happened ... heck, it usually happened once a month or so ... but it also usually wasn't made into a big deal. Anna had come a long way since she first "arrived" here. She was nowhere near as multi-orgasmic as Daria or as adventurous as Jane or even as confident as Kara ... but she had gained a great deal of sexual experience and knowledge. I was confident that I could bring her off multiple times before the evening was over. We had very few clothes to strip off, but we were wet and smelled of chlorine, so we started off in the shower. We each took our time cleaning off the other. While I was kneeling in front of her, washing her legs, I weighed different topics of conversation. I didn't want to ask about her past or I might make her homesick or maudlin. I thought about asking her to try to encourage Daria to be more physically active, but I decided it wasn't really appropriate to ask her about another woman right now. Just asking if she had fun tonight seemed a bit silly. "So," I asked, "are you still getting used to the idea of being able to touch and be touched?" I punctuated the question by leaning in and giving her vaginal lips a long lick from bottom to top. She shivered when I gave her clit a little kiss, then said, "Ah think ah'm pretty much used to the idea by now, but ah ken always use a little remindah like that." "Like this?" I asked, moving back in to explore between her labia in more depth than before. "P ... P ... Pretty ... much ... Maybe a little highah." I considered playing a game here, going for her belly button or something, y'know deliberately missing the target just to tease her, but decided that would be mean. So I moved up and started sucking on her clit, putting a couple fingers into her vaginal canal, pumping them in and out while I sucked. She was pretty wound up from the foreplay over the past couple of hours and came after less than two minutes of sucking and licking, her gorgeous body stretching out and going rigid, followed by small shivers and localized flesh quakes. I especially loved the way her breasts rolled around on her chest when she came like that, shaking off water in a chaotic rain. She almost collapsed, but managed to catch herself with one arm against the wall. I finished washing off her legs and stood up, putting my sticky face under the water. "That was nice, sugah." "Hopefully it's just the first one tonight. I think we're clean enough; want to dry off and move this into the bedroom?" In response, she turned off the water and grabbed a big towel. She gave herself a quick onceover, then wrapped me up in the towel and carried me into the bedroom. (Being carried around by superheroines can either be very arousing or emasculating, and I choose the former.) Anna laid me down on the bed and bent over my prone form, her mouth seeking mine out with a hunger that surprised me. She rubbed her diamond-hard nipples into my chest as she swung a leg over me, straddling my groin. Her cunny ground down onto my cock, her wet, flowing lips drenching my penis. She broke our kiss and sat up for a moment, grabbing my dick. For a disorienting moment, it looked like my cock was growing out of her color-streaked pubic bush. I could feel the underside of my shaft rubbing against the top of her nether lips, but my eyes told me that I was just feeling the borrowed sensations as she masturbated her own personal manhood. Given the way she had taken possession of me tonight, that seemed true to a certain extent, metaphorically speaking. She masturbated her cock for a moment before she raised herself up a bit and mounted it, letting her pussy swallow it whole in one long, slow impalement. She hissed in pleasure, then leaned forward again as her hips started a slow up-and-down pumping motion, drawing my rigidity in and out in long careful movements, taking special care to angle her hips a bit so that her clit would rub against me. Her hands reached down to grab my face and draw me into another kiss, long and wet and full of lust. My hands responded, grabbing her head in return, and we held each other fiercely. I don't know where this intensity came from, except that Rogue had always had an intense hunger for intimacy. I moved my hands down to cup her breasts as she repeatedly smashed our pubic bones together, my thumbs rubbing her nipples. Her body seized up for a moment, her vaginal walls gripping my cock tightly as she came ... but the pause only lasted for twenty seconds or so before she resumed fucking my cock. A couple minutes later, she sped up again, having another orgasm while clutching my cock. After ten to fifteen minutes of this, I finally erupted into her setting her off one last time, bathing her barren womb with my sperm, matching my one orgasm to her five or six. She rolled off of me a minute later, her hand finding and clutching mine, breathing heavily. "Wow, Anna," I panted, "that was beautiful ... and intense." I brought her hand up to my mouth and kissed it. "What brought that on?" "I was talking to Diana earlier today. She asked me whether or not I'd want to go home if I could. She's sure that sooner or later, she'll go home and wanted to know because her people might be able to pull me out to her world where they could get me home from there." "What did you say?" "I didn't give her an answer. Sometimes I miss home like crazy. And sometimes," she rolled over partially and draped her other arm across my chest, hugging me for emphasis. "Sometimes I can't bear to think about leaving." I kissed her then adjusted my arms so that I could put an arm around her while still holding her hand, and we just lay there together quietly for five minutes before she fell asleep. Actually, she fell asleep pretty solidly and abruptly. I gave her a little shake, then a harder one, receiving no response to either. I disengaged from her enough to retrieve my earbud and queried Alpha. Anna was turned off, and Alpha expected the rest of the household to be likewise disabled within the next 10 minutes. In general, she did not disable any of our women unless they were safely in bed or otherwise positioned so they would suffer no injury from a sudden loss of consciousness. From their perspective, they would simply have a good night's sleep. This happened a few times a month as all of my women are given regular check-ups in the nanite pods, though admittedly such check-ups were done very late at night, well after bedtime. Now that all three pods would be available again, we could schedule check-ups together and have many fewer such events. Actually as far as check-ups went, I myself had a nanite treatment and check-up scheduled for sometime next month. I thanked Alpha, replaced the earbud in the charger, extricated myself from Anna's grasp and tucked her in for the night. Then I went to the bathroom and took a quick shower, brushed my teeth and gargled. When I was drying off, I head a quiet knock at the bathroom door. "Come in," I called out. In walked Detective Elisa Maza. She was wearing her standard reddish-maroon jacket, black t-shirt and jeans, with her hair brushed out behind her falling down to the middle of her back. Perhaps I should note that none of my women had abnormal hair colors. Although both Elisa and Rei have bluish hair in their respective cartoons, that wouldn't fit inconspicuously into the real world ... thus my Elisa (and Rei) has black hair. "No gargoyles in here, detective," I said. "Perhaps you are Goliath in human form, under Demona's spell?" "Good point, except that of course, real magic doesn't exist." "Unless you subscribe to a combination of Clarke's third law and a belief that aliens have visited Earth in the past." Clarke's third law, created by SciFi author Arthur C. Clarke, states that 'Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.' Thus advanced alien tech could be called a type of magic, which she knew I would understand. "So what are the odds aliens have visited Earth?" "There is not sufficient data to calculate. My current guess would be somewhere between 1% and 40%." "Forty percent? Really?" "There are too many unverified and unverifiable assumptions within the various arguments to narrow down the odds any further. If you wish, I can investigate further." "Put it on the low priority list. I'm curious, but not curious enough to devote any real funding toward the question right now." "It does have the potential to be a historically important question in human history." "True. Okay, you can devote a couple systems to the research if you want to, but talk to me before you invest any significant money in the project. For now, let's get back on track." "I agree the topic is not relevant for this evening. Do you want to retire to my future room upstairs?" "Most definitely. But first..." I reached for her and drew her close to me, giving her a gentle kiss. I put my arm around her shoulders and together we walked out of my room and upstairs. When we reached her room, I unwrapped Elisa as if she were a present wrapped up for my enjoyment ... which she kinda was. For some reason, one of the big surprises was that she was wearing a bra. Alpha obviously included it for realism because I knew that none of the cyborgs (or super-strong ladies) needed a bra at all, since their skin and muscle weave wouldn't allow any sag to develop. But the reveal of a plain white bra jumped out at me as a touch that shifted this from an artificial night with a fake cartoon character to making love for the first time with a much more real woman. I can't explain it more than that, even when I discussed it with Alpha the next day. Probably part of it was because of the intense experience with Rogue earlier, but that evening with Elisa stuck in my mind as special. I treated her as a beautiful, normal human woman. Once she was naked, we sat down together on the bed, kissing intensely. I laid her down and kissed my way down her body, suckling at her breasts, tickling her belly button with my tongue, tugging her pubic hair with my lips and lightly biting her thighs. Eventually I began eating her out, giving her vaginal lips long slow licks and teasing her clit with small sucking kisses. Her taste was still bland, but for once I ate a cyborg to climax. After fifteen minutes spent working at her nether lips, I was able to produce a full body shiver and an increased gush of fluid from her vaginal canal. Whether or not Delta could enjoy an orgasm, her body was sensitive enough to produce something close to one. I had a huge grin on my face as I moved up to position myself above her. She leaned up to kiss me, then licked her juices off of my face as I tried to catch tongues with her. I drew back slightly as I reached down to position my very rigid cock at the opening of her cunt lips. I pushed in slowly, probing a little at a time as I felt her virginity break apart as I entered. Pressing up against the thin maidenhead, I asked, "Are you ready?" She nodded at me silently. "Here we go," I said as I thrust forward, taking Elisa's virginity. I exhaled in a sigh. "No Kegel massage tonight. Let's just do this normally." I pumped in and out of her, leaning down to kiss her as we went. Her hands alternately massaged her breasts for my viewing pleasure and roamed my back, encouraging my movement driving into her. No fancy positions, just twenty minutes or so enjoying her body. When I sped up near the end, I felt her legs wrap themselves around my hips. As I released my semen into her uterus, her legs wrapped tight and held me inside her as deeply as possible. She relaxed when I finished coming, but I stayed inside her for another couple minutes as I recovered. She spent the time giving my face small little kisses, like punctuation for our sex. I pulled out and her legs released me. I grabbed a leg and kissed my way up and down its length, finally pushing it gently towards her head where she held it in place. I followed with her other leg, and once both were in place, I drank in her appearance. Her beautiful lithe athletic body was folded in half, pulling her pubic area up, exposing not only her vagina, leaking with my juices, but also her ass and anus. My cock was only at half-mast, so I spent a couple minutes playing with her holes, moving the juices from her vagina down to her anus, dipping my fingers inside, rubbing the juices around, stretching the anus bit by bit. Once I was able to easily work in three fingers at once and my cock was again hard enough, I positioned myself at the exit point of her alimentary tract. "Are you ready for this? Relaxed?" "Yes," she said, and despite the apparently tautness of her position, holding both legs over her head, her body gave a wiggle of apparent anticipation. I applied a little pressure, just enough for the head of my cock to pop inside her anal sphincter. "There we go," I hissed in pleasure. Slowly I pressed the rest of my length into her bowels, feeling the slow drag of her sphincter along my shaft. I pulled most of the way back out, leaving only the head inside. I dipped my fingers back into her vagina and transferred more juices to my cock, rubbing it in. I did this a few times until I was able to move in and out freely. I gradually picked up speed with the ass fuck until I was pounding in as fast and hard as I had done with her previous fuck. I kept my hands on her hips as I enjoyed the visual treat of how her breasts rolled back and forth with each stroke. As per my earlier request, she wasn't squeezing my cock with the muscles hidden in her colon, but she upped the ante in other ways. She bent one leg more than I would have thought possible and started sucking her own toes, treating them like little cocks. After that, she locked her ankles behind her head and started pulling on her own nipples, stretching them out and away from her chest. When she started pulling her vaginal lips apart and masturbating as I continued to pound her ass, that helped push me over the top. I hurriedly moved my lips down to meet hers, holding her in a kiss as I exploded into her ass. As I pulled out, I was again greeted by a naked cleaning team as Beta and Gamma quietly entered the room carrying clean sheets and damp washcloths. Before I could stand up, Elisa unfolded and knelt by my groin, taking my cock into her mouth, licking and sucking me clean. Once my penis was again pristine, she took a damp washcloth from Gamma Jasmine and wiped off all my sweat. "Thank you, Delta. That was a great evening. I look forward to you two joining the household." I paused. "But even more than that, I want you two to make me proud by living successfully on your own first." I gave them all a kiss goodnight, then went back downstairs. I got into bed next to Rogue and went to sleep. Delta Elisa and Gamma Jasmine continued to live in the basement for the next month or so. Eventually they moved out and entered the community as local college students, specifically sisters "Jasmine and Elizabeth Marza". After a few months, they 'casually' met Daria and Jane and then, in stages, were hired as interns at AARD and eventually moved into the house. ------- Chapter 12: Alphadroid Dorothy Disclaimer: R. Dorothy Wayneright is owned by Bandai or Hitoshi Ariga or someone else who is not me. All artificial persons herein are based on characters owned by their creators, not the author. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_The_Big_O_characters#R._Dorothy_Wayneright Dramatis Personae: Frank _____ - Lead character, creator of Alpha Alpha - First Artificial Intelligence Mobile Copies of Alpha: Beta aka Bayonetta aka Elizabeth Alana Franks (cyborg) Gamma aka Jasmine aka Jasmine Marza (cyborg, from Aladdin) Delta aka Elisa Maza aka Elizabeth Marza (cyborg, from Gargoyles) Alphadroid Dorothy aka R. Dorothy Waynewright (android, from Big O) Artificial Women (in order of arrival): Kasumi Tendo (from Ranma 1/2) Daria Morgendorffer aka Daria Morgan (from Daria) Jane Lane aka Jane Lannister (from Daria) Kara Zor-L aka Power Girl aka Karen Starr (from DC Comics) Rei Ayanami aka Rei Ayanami Ikari (from Neon Genesis Evangelion) Anna Marie aka Rogue aka Anna Marie Raffen (from Marvel Comics) Princess Diana aka Wonder Woman aka Diana Prince Walters (from DC Comics) Zatanna Zatara aka Annabelle Tara Zane (from DC Comics) This part of my story starts, oddly enough, before the new character is 'fully functional'. Way back when Alpha and I were planning for different possible characters to bring to life, one of the options was to create an android. The idea was placed on the back burner for a number of reasons, but since our facilities and Alpha's capabilities had been expanding over time, she had devoted more and more time to possible designs. Our work on advanced human prostheses dovetailed nicely with those designs, and since we had Alpha to do the programming, only the unifying physical designs were needed. True, some of those design elements were challenging, most especially balancing the power requirements with possibly battery supplies, but the challenges were not insurmountable ... and the character build was underway. The character in question is R. Dorothy Waynewright from the anime, Big O. Giving a surface description, Big O is a generic giant robot cartoon, but the setting and characters make it uniquely cool. Actually maybe 'unique' isn't the right description, though the setting is fairly outstanding: a mostly urban landscape where the entire world population lost its memories 40 years ago, leaving the land full of domed cities, amnesiac people, androids and the the remains of giant robots. The lead character, Roger Smith, is pretty much an anime version of Batman. Just like Batman, he's a rich, handsome playboy with lots of gadgets and is friends with the chief of police. Just like Batman, he drives a black car tricked out with weapons and defensive measures. Just like Batman he has an elderly butler who knows his secrets and has a variety of surprising skills. And just like Batman, when a big fight starts, he calls for his own personal giant robot, Big O. Uhh, on second thought, strike that last one for comparison purposes. If Roger Smith is Batman, then R. Dorothy Waynewright is Robin. She's an android built to look like an old inventor's daughter (except that maybe he never had a daughter). I'm not going to go too deep into the details of the character; you can just watch the anime if you're interested. Dorothy has many very human-like qualities and even shows traces of emotion on occasion. She seemed to take a definite pleasure in needling Roger, such as insistently waking him up with her piano playing if he sleeps in too late. Work on the actual body was underway by the time Gamma and Delta were activated, but the android stayed secret for most of a year after Gamma and Delta. Caltech had announced it was hosting a robot design competition the next July for any group whose robot met certain basic requirements. It was co-sponsored by a dotcom billionaire who was putting up $500,000 in prize money for the best designs (to be divided up as $100,000 prizes for each of 5 categories of competition). I really shouldn't have to point out that we were building the world's most advanced android at the time, but in our application we were careful to provide demos which only slightly exceeded the requirements. By the time July rolled around, the 'Alphadroid' as we were calling it was fully functional in every important respect, though it still looked very much like an 'it' instead of the 'she' it would eventually become. (Well, if you want to be technical, the one we were taking to the competition was an 'it' and the second one being built alongside it was destined to be a 'she'.) In household news, Gamma and Delta had just been hired on as research assistants at AARD but had not yet been invited to move in. I wanted the invitation to be suggested by someone else in the household first, which was taking time to arrange. They hadn't yet shown signs of individual personalities, but I still had hope. Daria and Jane were on summer break. Rei had gotten her pilot's license. Kasumi was taking summer classes on her way to becoming a licensed nurse. Kara and Anna had started going to community college self-improvement classes like pottery making and computer use and things like that. Zatanna had started doing small stage magic shows in Dallas. Diana was splitting her time between AARD and volunteering for the Red Cross. AARD had been testing the nanowire surgery unit for government approval and was starting the same for the artificial eyes. The company had started getting a few unsolicited applications from all over, many of them from very qualified applicants, but Alpha and I hadn't yet decided if we were actually going to hire any outside researchers. Despite feeling like I had lost all of my free time, I was still enjoying myself thoroughly. True, I had to start insisting on at least one or two days a week without sex (instead of just hiding out in the basement) to avoid feeling too drained. Fortunately my goal of bringing to life characters that I enjoyed spending time with (non- sexually, that is) was working great. Since I really liked the household women, I didn't need constant sex to have fun with them (and wouldn't have survived if I did need it). Still, I liked the idea of treating the robot competition as a Vegas vacation. Not that Vegas itself held a huge attraction for me. I've never been much of a gambler, but with a bevy of beautiful babes to escort me, I was willing to give it a try. In the weeks leading up to the trip, Zatanna and others gave gambling lessons to the household so we would all know how to play roulette or craps or poker or blackjack. It also added new evening activities, which led to interesting games like strip poker or the roulette wheel of adult activities. Transportation was going to be an issue. Beta, Gamma and Delta absolutely could not fly on a commercial airline. They had way too much metal in their bodies. The other women might be able to make it through security, but certain types of scans would still show their brain implants. If one of them was selected for a random search, the extra metal in their heads might be discovered. Plus, we had a few hundred pounds of sensitive electronic equipment and computers to transport as well. We weighed the costs and risks and finally decided it needed to be a split transport. Beta and Delta would take a carefully packed, temperature controlled rented truck. The rest of us who were going would take a small private jet rented for the week. Gamma stayed home to (secretly) play caretaker. It was hardly the cheapest option, but it was the safest. The competition started Tuesday morning, so we flew out of DFW on Sunday afternoon. We had hired a professional pilot, who had interviewed Rei and agreed to take her on as co-pilot. Once we were up in the air Kara, who was sitting next to me, pulled out a small cloth bag. "All right, Frank. Draw a name." "Huh?" "Come on, pull a name out of the bag." I reached for the bag, asking, "Why? What are you planning?" though I had my suspicions. "Everyone wants to join the mile-high club, and this is the only fair way to pick out who gets to take you to the back of the plane." I guess I should point out that there was a small storage/conference room in the back of the plane with a lockable door between it and the main cabin. I sighed. "I am such a push-over with you ladies. I just let you all run my life, don't I?" "Don't pretend you don't know what's going on here," supplied Jane. "You knew what was going to happen when you rented a private plane." "But I'm innocent, dahling." Daria, a lover of classic TV, got my reference. "Oh no you're not. You're guilty. It's written all over your face." I laughed, looked at the blank faces around me, and complained, "Doesn't anyone watch classic Daffy Duck cartoons anymore?" I finally pulled out a small slip of paper and unfolded it. Written in big bold letters was "KASUMI". Personally I would have doubted that she would have even put her name in the hat ... umm ... bag. In a way, I was sure that Vegas would be entirely unsuited to Kasumi's temperament, but she still eagerly came along. Now I was sure that she would be embarrassed to death that everyone would know we were going to have sex in the next room. Yes, she would have sex in group situations, but this would be too much like sex as a performance where she was on stage. Still, I saw no alternative except to try to pleasure her enough to distract from any possible embarrassment. I stood up, walked over to Kasumi's aisle seat and offered her my hand. "My dear, sweet, beautiful lady, would you do me the honor of accompanying me for a few moments?" Sure enough, her face immediately turned as bright red as her asian complexion allowed. I intercepted one of her hands as it moved to cover her face and kissed it. While her eyes were hidden, I looked around briefly and scowled at a couple of the ladies who were obviously trying to hold back laughter. They quickly composed their faces as I tried to raise Kasumi to her feet. Zatanna, who was sitting in the seat next to her, leaned over and whispered in her ear. Kasumi gave a nod, and the two of them stood up together. I led the way to the back of the plane, stood aside when the passage narrowed too much and let the ladies enter first. The conference room had a table that could fold out from one side, with padded bench seats that could be lowered from the walls on either side. At the moment, everything was folded up and we had our luggage in there. I stacked the luggage on one side and lowered a padded bench. When I finished this and turned around, I found that Zatanna had pulled Kasumi's dress over her head, laid it aside and was making out with her, her hands roaming across the smaller woman's body while their mouths were locked. I paused and considered for a moment. There was no chance of oral sex right now, since we had no shower or bath available. (Kasumi would barely agree to give or receive oral sex after a thorough cleaning. To try right now was out of the question.) I sought out a few small hand towels and laid them out on the bench, then joined the ladies. While Zana occupied her mouth and attention, I lowered Kasumi's panties to the floor, then together we maneuvered her to the bench. I kicked off my shoes, lowered my pants and underwear, and guided Kasumi's hand to my half-hard cock. Without opening her eyes or ending her kiss with Zana, she started stroking me to a full strength erection. While she was attending to my hardness, I started fingering her nether lips and flipped up her bra cups, joining Zatanna in giving attention to her nipples and breasts. Her nipples were diamond-hard and her pussy was swamped with wetness. After only another moment of foreplay, I spread her legs and thrust into her. The position was slightly awkward. Kasumi was half- reclined on the bench with one foot on the floor, the other let hoisted over my shoulder. Zatanna acted as Kasumi's backrest and continued to give attention to her upper half while I pounded into her lower. As it turns out, one the really fun things about fucking on a small plane is the air turbulence. Even with clear weather, planes still randomly jostle up and down, which really added a random element to coitus. Sometimes a thrust would gain some unexpected power. Sometimes I would end up pulling back further than I expected, but Kasumi's body would also bounce up with me, keeping me from unintentionally pulling out most of the time. It was probably about a 15 minute fuck, punctuated regularly with squeaks and moans from Kasumi. I'm sure we were audible in the main cabin, but of course I didn't point this out. When I came inside her and she joined me in a final orgasm, she graduated from squeaks to an actual orgasmic outcry. After we had rested for a couple minutes, Kasumi excused herself to go clean up in the restroom. When she had gone, Zatanna took a towel and started wiping me clean. "Thank you, Z. I'm not really sure why she put her name in the hat, but without you, I'm don't think she'd have been able to enjoy this." "Oh, she didn't. I did. Put her name on the list, that is." "Why?" "So if she got picked, she might have a chance to loosen up a little. So is that it for you, or are you good to pick another name?" She just had to go and make it a challenge, didn't she. I pulled up my underwear and trousers and said, "Sure, let's go fetch the bag." Kara was the second name out of the bag. She had me in the female superior position, riding me so I could see her huge tits bounce with both her and the plane's movements. After Kara, we were only 20 minutes out of Las Vegas, so I finished getting cleaned up and dressed again. When I retook my seat, I was pleased to see Kasumi snuggled up to Zatanna. Apparently Kasumi had remembered to thank her. (Not sexually, but emotionally.) For the record, Zatanna was one of the names chosen on the flight back, and she invited Kasumi along to reciprocate. I had reserved some fairly expensive rooms at the hotel/casino/convention center where the competition was being held, so the hotel provided us with a couple of limos to pick us up. It wasn't my first time in a limousine, but it was rare enough for me to just sit back and enjoy the ride to the hotel. We called Beta on the drive over, so she and Elisa (who had arrived this morning with the truck) were in the lobby to meet us when we walked in. The check-in was still underway when Beta and my phones rang simultaneously. Over the phone I heard Alpha's voice say, "Someone is breaking into the truck. I have alerted the..." I pulled the phone away from my ear to bark out a few orders. "Beta, take Diana to the truck. Someone's breaking into it." Turning to the desk clerk, I continued, "The security system on our truck just reported a break-in. Would you please call the police?" Of course, the thing is that we didn't have a security setup for the truck. It was just a rental. A nice rental, but not one that would call my cell phone in case of a robbery attempt. Alphadroid in the back of the truck had detected someone talking, then cutting off the padlock and opening the door. It had then called the police, called Beta and myself and started uploading a streaming video of the incident to our private company web server. When Beta, Diana and Kara (who went along unasked) reached the truck, the rear door was open and the contents apparently untouched. By then, Beta had been able to download the video to her phone and played it for the others, as well as for hotel security when they arrived a moment later. I'd like to say the ladies had a rousing and exciting chase scene with acrobatic leaps and dodging in and out of traffic. Trouble is, they didn't find the would-be thieves. When the police finally arrived 15 minutes later, casino security had found the robbers and had them in custody, as identified from Alphadroid's video. The video made it pretty clear-cut. It started in darkness, but if you cranked the audio all the way up, you could hear muffled voices talking about computers. Then there was a metallic cracking sound followed by a thump (the lock being cut off). The rear door to the truck rolled up, revealing two men with one of them putting large clippers away in a backpack. The video zoomed in on each of their faces. An obviously computerized voice said, "Attention. Facial recognition failure. Please be advised that you are breaking and entering into private property. The police are being notified and video of this incident is being uploaded to a secure server. If you approach this unit, you will be restrained until the proper authorities arrive." The audio spiel repeated itself a second time until the men, obviously startled, left at a quick pace. Once the uniformed police officers heard the value of the contents of the truck (over $500,000) and saw our unexpected little video, they sent for a detective, who came and took our statements. After introductions and our general background was given, I introduced Detective Mills to Alphadroid. Well, introduced him to Diana first, since she (as head of AARD security) had stationed herself by the truck until we could get it re-secured. "All right, Detective. This is Alphadroid." Alphadroid was still sitting down in the back of the truck, with its legs out in front of it. There was padding around parts of it and straps holding it in place. It was about 5 ft tall, a genderless humanoid with pale white-ish skin. The head had two human-looking eyes about midway down an oval head with a sharp chin. Though you couldn't see it at the moment since it was closed, the head had a working, human-like jaw. I unpacked one of our laptops as I talked. "Alphadroid is here to win us the robot competitions. We're the only company with a single robot to enter in all five categories. What happened earlier was because the observational security was enabled. It's far from being ready for public use, but basically it alerts us when an unknown person or persons enters its designated secure area. It has an excellent facial recognition system with all of our employees in the database. When those guys opened the door and none of us were with them, it triggered the alert." "In the video, it said something about restraining them?" "Would you like a demonstration? Here..." I plugged into a USB port on the back of the head and fiddled with software settings. Or rather, I made it look like I did. Of course, Alphadroid actually had a full copy of Alpha loaded, just like Beta, Gamma and Delta. "All right. I disabled the outgoing alert options, so it won't actually make another 911 call. And reactivated and ... here, let's all step out of view for a minute." We all waited out of sight of Alphadroid while I continued. "What will happen is that you'll be warned verbally. If you get within reach of it, it will grab your arm and not let go." "You mean, you're going to have your robot attack me?" "No, it will just try to hold you until help arrives, and it'll only do that if you come within reach. It won't try to chase you or anything or let you drag it out of its secure area, but it also won't hurt you. And it will record the entire encounter and upload it to our website." "And you're sure it's safe?" "Absolutely. Look at it this way, if I'm wrong and you get hurt at all ... let's say if you get anything more than a mild bruise at worst, then I'll pay you a million dollars out-of-court settlement." I'm not entirely sure how reassured the detective was, but he was willing to give it a try. He stepped into view behind the truck while Diana and I waited to the side. As soon as he approached the back of the truck, the same obviously computerized voice said, "Attention. Facial recognition failure. Please be advised that you are breaking and entering into private property. The police are being notified and video of this incident is being uploaded to a secure server. If you approach this unit, you will be restrained until the proper authorities arrive." I motioned him to go on inside. A moment later, I heard him say, "Hey. This thing is fast. And strong." Alphadroid said, "Please do not struggle. You will be restrained until the appropriate authorities have arrived," and repeated that over and over. Diana and I entered the truck to see Alphadroid's left arm holding onto Detective Mills' right wrist. When the detective strained against the grip, Alphadroid's arm would move with him slightly or angle the grip to avoid damaging his wrist but the robot arm would not let go. "Recognize user: Frank one. Release." Alphadroid's hand sprang open and the arms moved back to their neutral positions beside the body. Detective Mills rubbed his wrist a bit, but said, "I gotta admit, you're right. That thing is strong." "Yes, it is. Strong enough to crush a brick to dust, but it's very well programmed." "Isn't it dangerous to have something grabby like that just laying around?" "No, for a number of reasons. First, the security mode is off by default. I'm guessing one of my people who drove over with the truck had turned it on for testing. Second, even if it is on, as long as someone from our company is within sight, the security routines won't be triggered. Third, if there is no defined secure area, then no alerts can be triggered. But as I said, I think one of my programmers was using this to test the security software, so the truck was defined as a secure area. Finally, even if it does get triggered, anyone from our company can turn it off with a simple verbal command. The only reason anything like that could have happened today was if some unauthorized person broke into Alphadroid's test secure area ... which, of course, is exactly what happened." "How much did it cost you to build?" "That's a bit of a misleading question. The parts in Alphadroid itself there only cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $400,000. The costs to research, develop, program and test it were significantly more." That was a lie. If we ignore labor costs, Alphadroid only cost about $75,000 to build. Any other company in the world trying to duplicate Alphadroid would spend millions to do half as much. When it comes to engineering designs, virtual testing, refining those designs, and efficient execution of those designs, Alpha is quite literally in a class all by herself. To avoid raising TOO much suspicion, we agreed to a price tag of $500,000 for Alphadroid and its control/programming systems as a package ... and then to refuse discussions of the development costs if at all possible. "And if you win all of your competitions you'll get, what, half a million?" "Not quite. As it understand it, there's $100,000 in prizes for each of 5 competitions, but each competition has first, second and third prizes. If we win first place in all 5, I think we go home with $300,000. "But Alphadroid here wasn't actually built for the competition. He was built as part of our development and testing for other products, such as next generation artificial limbs and things like that. The eyes you see there are already in testing for public release. We expect to have them authorized for marketing sometime within the next year or two. "The competition is just a good platform to showcase our upcoming tech products to other groups in the industry ... and let the inner nerds in my staff and myself geek out." "So you'll be having a press conference about this," he said gesturing to the truck door. "I hope not. We're not interested in announcing our products to the public yet, just to others in the industry. Heck, we won't even be the ones manufacturing and selling the products. We develop the tech, patent it and lease the manufacturing rights to other companies." "Other companies who will be attending the competition, right?" "Yes, or so we hope." "One other question, when it was talking to me and I was up close, I thought I heard music playing from somewhere." "Huh?" I said brightly. "What ... ummm ... here, let's see." I replayed the original video on my phone and cranked the volume all the way up. Sure enough, we could hear a faint drum-heavy theme playing. I started laughing ... laughing so hard that I started wheezing and had to sit down. When I got enough of my breath back, I said, "It's the Terminator theme. One of the guys stuck the Terminator theme into the robot's security warnings." The others laughed a little, obviously not enjoying the joke as much as I was. Alpha's sense of humor wasn't always funny or appropriate, but sometimes she really hit my funny bone. The detective went off to talk to a uniformed police officer and came back a minute later. "The thieves' van is a row over," he said gesturing. "They have a bunch of computer equipment inside, so they may have broken into other trucks before they got to yours. We'll be talking to other competitors at the hotel here." "Can we reseal our truck?" "Sure thing. They never actually made it inside, so there's nothing we need from there. We've taken all the pictures we need. They were wearing gloves on the video so dusting for prints is pointless. We do need a list of the equipment they could have stolen with estimated values. And we need the cut lock and the original copy of that video your droid took." "The rest of it is all yours. The video though is ... well, getting you a copy of everything is no problem. But the video isn't actually stored anywhere permanently until it reached our web servers, which are in Texas. Alphadroid here doesn't have the read/write storage capacity to save everything it sees. It just spools it in temporary memory and if it needs to, it dials out on a wireless connection and uploads the data to us to be saved." "Okay, then we need a copy with an affidavit confirming the authenticity. I'd also like you and Miss Diana to give a statement at the station before you leave town." "No problem." I whipped out the phone again and looked at my schedule. The competition would take up most of the next two days. No, that's not right. It didn't start til Tuesday and it was only late afternoon Sunday right now. "Hmmm," I mused. "We'll be here til Saturday morning and the competition only runs Tuesday and Wednesday ... we're treating the rest of the week as a vacation ... so how about tomorrow. Is there any particular time that would be best?" "Usually late morning is good. Say sometime 10 to 11?" "I'll be there ... umm ... where exactly?" He handed me his card. "And if I'm not there, someone else can take your statement." "Thank you, detective." "Hey, thank you. I wish all of my cases had such nice video of the actual crime. Most security video is grainy as hell." As he left, I called Kara to see if she could find a new good- quality padlock for the back of the truck. A minute later, as if he had been waiting for the police to leave, the hotel manager showed up and apologized profusely for the trouble. He comped me our rooms for the night and assured me security would be increased for the parking garages. Kara arrived about the time he left and we re-sealed the truck. With that little side adventure mostly over, we went up to our rooms to settle in for the week. We had two connected suites of rooms, each with three bedrooms centered around a living area and kitchen. I had a bedroom all to myself and all of the ladies doubled-up (Kara/Diana, Kasumi/Zatanna, Daria/Jane, Beta/Elisa, Anna/Rei) ... not that I expected to sleep alone. That evening, we went out for dinner and a show, seeing the current Cirque de Soliel, or whatever it's called when it's a bit more adult version of the show. It wasn't actually X-rated, but it was very suggestive and we did see bare breasts. Well, I think we did. It's hard to tell with all of the flesh-colored skin-tight outfits they had. Regardless, it was a beautiful performance. Back at our hotel that night, Daria and Jane showed up at my bedroom door, each dressed in brand new, provocative lingerie. I felt like a schlub when I welcomed them wearing old boxers and socks. I felt like smacking myself on the head and saying, 'Have I no romance in my soul?' I did my best to show only appreciation for their loveliness, not disappointment in myself. I spent over an hour giving them both as many orgasms as I could manage, which I hope made up for my initial pedestrian appearance. Monday was a full day. I set Beta and the gang to work, getting Alphadroid prepped and the systems put together and run through their paces. The auditorium/competition floor had temporary walls set up so that each team could set up in secret, which meant that I didn't get any sneak peaks of the other robots. We were also all given a preview of the actual competition materials and tracks. Although everyone had been given the specs, this was the first time we had seen the actual equipment to be used. The five events were: - obstacle avoidance, fastest time wins - walking, following painted line, fastest time wins - two-legged balance, longest time wins - piano playing, 10 finger design limit, decided by judges - juggling In the meantime, Diana and I headed downtown. Detective Mills had apparently told his story a few times. Calling us celebrities in the police station might be a bit much ... more like objects of fascination. Along with our statements, I must have repeated my 'sales pitch' description of Alphadroid's security setup six or seven times. Even an assistant D.A. swung by to hear about it. Eventually I gave in and promised to bring Alphadroid by the station on Thursday, making Detective Mills promise that no one would invite the press. I told him that androids grabbing people wasn't the press I was wanting for the company. As far as the case against the robbers, the equipment found in the van had belonged to two of the other competition groups, who were clamoring to get their stuff back immediately, which wasn't likely. Their stolen equipment had only run in the $5,000 range, so the break- in to our van was going to be the major charge against them. I had a price list of the contents of the van, a copy of Alphadroid's video at its original resolution and a signed (faxed) statement from Jasmine that it was a complete and accurate copy of the incident video. It was doubtful that Diana or I would have to testify, but I assured the Detective that I was willing to make a return trip for the trial as long as I had two week's notice beforehand. Diana and I left the police station with complimentary LV-CSI ball caps around 12:30. We went by a decent Chinese buffet for lunch, then went shopping. I was determined to find something nice to wear for bedtime tonight. I had no clue if any of the other ladies had bought new lingerie for the trip -- and Diana refused to tell me, though she did smirk a bit -- but I wanted to look nicer than I had the previous night. I let the cabbie choose a nice men's clothing store for us, with the requirement that it not be too far from the main strip. The store he selected for us was maybe half a mile from the strip and a mile from our hotel. I purchased a nice robe and a couple pairs of nice pajamas. We finished shopping about 2:30 and I decided the weather wasn't too hot and we could just walk back to the hotel. Bad decision on my part. Instead of just walking over to the strip and then down to the hotel like we should have, we tried to angle the path more directly and ended up walking through a somewhat seedy neighborhood. Well, not seedy per se. More just a bit run down. While walking down the sidewalk, chatting with Diana about the stores we were passing, I felt something hard press into my back and a voice behind me said, "Turn into the alley here." My heart started racing and I started considering all sorts of stupid things. I looked over at Diana, who had tensed up and was watching the space behind me like a hawk. I started wondering why she wasn't doing anything and wondering if she had her bracelets on. I was certain I should know, but for the life of me, I couldn't remember. After the fact, I realized that until she could get in-between me and the gun, the risk was too high. "This isn't a good idea for you. You should turn around and find a safer and more honorable way to make a living," Diana said. "Just go into the alley. Now." After a bit of a hiccup in my step, my feet showed that they had a mind of their own and steered me right, into a narrow alley. Diana stayed alongside me. Once we were 10 ft or so into the alley, the hard metal left my back. I took a couple more steps and turned around. The man was wearing sunglasses and an ugly green hoodie and, though I'm hardly an expert on the subject, looked like he was pretty strung out on drugs of some sort. He was holding a small handgun, a snub-nose six-shooter of some kind. Looked kinda like a 'Saturday night special' you sometimes see on TV cop shows. "Gimme your wallet, and your purse," he said, gesturing to Diana. I didn't move right away, but Diana held out her purse with one hand and took a step towards him. When he reached for it, Wonder Woman moved. And when I say she moved, I mean that even though I watched without blinking, I couldn't follow all of it. In an instant, she was between me and the mugger. Her purse fell to the ground because she was using both of her hands, one holding the wrist with the gun, pushing it off to the side, one holding the mugger's collar. The gun had gone off after she blocked my view of it and I couldn't tell where the bullet went. I gave myself a quick onceover to make sure I wasn't hit, then looked back up when I heard a cry of pain. The mugger dropped the gun to the pavement, so I assume Diana was squeezing his wrist. "Don't hurt him," I said, suddenly coming to my senses a bit. "I'll call the police." And I whipped my phone out. I paused before dialing. "Are you okay? He didn't shoot you or anything, right?" "I am fine. The shot ... went wide." A few people were gathering at the entrance to the alley as I talked to the 911 operator. I was having difficulty giving an accurate location, so I enlisted one of the lookie-loo locals to pass along directions. Taking the phone back a moment later, I asked the operator if she'd pass word to Detective Mills too, since I just gave a statement to him a couple hours ago about another robbery. The operator asked if I was the guy with the android, which made me facepalm. "Yes, I am. However the android isn't here with me. I think this was just a mugging attempt." "I'll be sure to let him know." I heard a siren getting closer and saw a reflection of flashing lights in the windows across the street. I thanked the operator and hung up. When the policed arrived, Diana had the mugger up against the side of the building with both of his arms twisted up behind his back. The officers approached cautiously, hands on their holsters. With my hands clearly empty and out to my sides, I greeted them. "Thank you for coming, officers. My name is Frank ____ and this is my bodyguard Diana Walters." FYI, Diana Walters is the name on her not- really-completely-valid drivers license. One of the officers said, "All right, Mr _____, if Ms Walters could just let this other gentleman go, we can sort this out." "Diana?" She nodded and let the mugger go ... who immediately tried to take off running. She moved back slightly, grabbed him by the collar and spun him around and to the ground. The officers got a little jumpier, but one of them sat down on the mugger's back and started cuffing him. I shrugged at the other officer. "So anyway, this guy tried to mug us while we were walking back to our hotel. He had a gun..." I looked around for it for the first time, but Diana was on top of the situation. "I kicked it over here," she said, leaning down and brushing away a bit of debris. "Neither of us have touched it. It went off once when I was disarming him, but I think the shot just went off into the sky." We gave a more detailed account, and the officer started lecturing us about how we should have played it safe when the other officer found a small baggie of crystal meth in the guy's sock. When the guy was locked up in the back of the squad car and the gun was bagged up, an unmarked police car pulled up with a couple detectives, one of them being Detective Mills. "Are you all right, Mr ____?" "We're all fine, Detective. Just a mugger who didn't count on Diana here. After all I didn't hire her as head of security for my company because she's a pretty face." After various discussions and repeated stories, Diana and I rode back to the station with the detectives where we swore out a complaint against the mugger. Then Detective Mills drove us back to our hotel himself. I think it was one of those public relations things. I was a rich businessman in town spending a lot of money, and I had experienced two illegal robbery attempts in two days (as opposed to the legal robbery attempts in the casinos). He was trying to improve my opinion of Vegas. While I try not to blame people or places by association, I'll admit I wasn't looking forward to coming back to town for a trial and, in the meantime, wasn't planning to travel anywhere in town without Diana, Kara, Anna or Beta by my side. When we reached the hotel, I thanked the detective for his help and confirmed my intent to bring Alphadroid by Thursday morning. And then, once we were up in our rooms, I gave Diana an intense kiss and thanked her profusely. "Would you like a souvenir?" she asked, reaching into her jeans pocket. She pulled out a halfway flattened slug. "How did you..." I paused for a second. "Did he shoot you? Are you all right?" "I'm fine. I couldn't quite get into position to deflect it with my bracelet in time, so I had to catch it in my hand." She held up her left hand, showing her palm clearly. There was some definite discoloration in the center of her palm. I held her hand gingerly. While I was examining her, she continued. "At home, such a low velocity, low caliber bullet wouldn't have done a thing to my skin. As it is, I think it might bruise. And I think the skin got burned a bit when I held on to the bullet instead of dropping it. Since I'm trying to keep a low profile, I withheld it from the police, but I don't think its lack will hinder their case." "Thank you," I said. "You are amazing. If it's still bruised when we get home, I'll use my nanites to fix you up." Looking at her right now, she seemed a bit more alive than normal. As if the months of imposed vacation had been grime, slowly covering up her true self which only now was peeking back through. "Princess, I don't know about you, but I'm feeling very ... alive right now." I tried to impart a little extra meaning to the statement without seeming like a letch. "I generally don't get the same ... sexual thrill ... from my chosen vocation that many of my ... ummm ... peers do. At the same time though, I must admit that I do feel very ... alive right now as well," she replied, deliberately imitating my description. She picked me up in her arms in a gender-reverse of the classic image of the male hero and female rescuee. Our lips locked in another intense kiss as she carried me into her bedroom. Neither of us were dressed for a mid-afternoon quickie. She was wearing tight jeans and a nice silk button-down blouse. I had on khaki trousers and a fairly expensive polo shirt. With our urgency upon us, all clothing considerations were forgotten ... buttons popped and it was a miracle no actual fabric was torn. Maybe half a minute or less after entering her room, we were both naked. She tossed me back on her bed and mounted me, my extra-hard cock sinking all the way into her boiling hot wetness in a single motion. For a moment, we both paused, feeling a shared sigh of rightness at our joining. Then the moment passed and she started bouncing up and down. After a few strokes, I joined the rhythm, pushing my hips up and down to meet her movements. She came after two minutes and I joined her a few seconds later. Rather than resting and recuperating, I pulled her down to me and drove my tongue into her mouth. While our tongues dueled, I pushed my hips down into the mattress and slammed back up into her, starting a new round of desperate fucking. For those 20 minutes, I didn't care how gorgeous she was or how perfect her body was, I just ran on adrenaline, feeling the rush of being alive after a brush with death. (Admittedly a minor brush with death, but it was the first time anyone had shot a gun at me.) After a few more minutes of pounding, she let me roll us over into a male-superior missionary position, where I ran the fuck for the next 10 minutes. She had three more orgasms before I finally let loose inside her for the second time, and I finally collapsed on top of her. We lay there panting for another five minutes before I remembered that we had other things we needed to be doing, other responsibilities. Before getting cleaned up, I kissed her palm and called down to room service for a topical cream for minor burns. We showered quickly and got redressed. Room service arrived with the cream while I was putting away my purchases and hiding away the bullet in my suitcase. Later back in Texas, I would attach it to a neck chain and wear it regularly for good luck. It was almost dinnertime when we finally made it back down to the competition floor. I told our story to the group and Diana received many thanks and accolades. I excused myself briefly to 'converse' with Alpha via one of our laptops. As I knew she would be, she was a bit frantic that I had been endangered. I was able to reassure her that I was fine and that her creation (the Diana clone) worked perfectly when it came to my protection. I promised to always have one my super-powered bodyguards with me at all times while I was out of town, though Alpha made it clear that she now considered two such bodyguards to be the desired minimum. As far as the Alphadroid setup went, we were 93% ready (and 5% of what was left to be done was charging its battery up to full which would happen overnight). I got up and rejoined the gaggle of beauties. "All right, ladies, if I may have your attention. We are almost completely ready, so congratulations to all of you for a job well done." I continued, "Since this is not a lockable room, I would like for someone to stay here at all times. I'm really not sure how ... competitive ... some of these groups are. We can rotate out shifts at meals and overnight, but for the next two days, Alphadroid should not be left unattended." While Alphadroid could certainly defend itself at this point in its development, I did NOT want stories of an independently acting mobile robot guard circulating. The world has seen way too many Terminator movies and the like to be comfortable with that. "There is a competition dinner being held over that-a-way," I waved with my hand, "in about half an hour. Your badges will get you in. There are no group tables tonight because they want everyone to mingle..." "So we get to be hit on by nerds all night? Sounds like fun," Jane complained. "Eh, tell them you're in a committed relationship with Daria if you want, though that might just inflame their fantasies." Daria got a sour look on her face, but Jane looked worryingly thoughtful until Daria punched her in the arm. "Anyway, dinner in half an hour, it'll last for at least an hour and a half, then the rest of the night is yours for gambling or whatever you want. Everyone still has their fun money, right?" I had given everyone $1500 to blow on gambling. "Except, who gets first shift on guard duty tonight?" After a few minutes, we worked out a schedule that had Beta and Kara taking first and second shifts tonight, which would also allow Beta to finish up the last few bits of setup for Alphadroid. Anna and Rei were apparently my designated companions for the night, which was perfectly fine with me. The dinner was generically enjoyable. The MC made a few lame geek jokes, then introduced the sponsor, who got a hearty round of applause. He followed by naming each group and had the members stand up. There were a few obviously alcohol-inspired wolf whistles when AARD was asked to stand. We were also singled out as the only group to have a single robot for entry into all five categories. There were 25 groups competing from companies, colleges and universities, sometimes as a joint venture between a university and tech company. Six were from overseas, with four from Japan. But none of the other companies were competing in all 5 competitions. In fact, a few of them had focused all of their efforts on a single competition. After introductions, he warned everyone about security and relayed the sad news that one group had dropped out entirely and another had withdrawn from two of the competitions due to theft. The materials had been recovered but were being held as evidence and wouldn't be released until well after the competition had ended. He again singled out AARD as having the security camera that led to the thieves' capture, which garnered us a round of applause. (He obviously hadn't heard the whole story, which made me think the Alphadroid tale was currently and thankfully limited to the police.) Finally, he went over a basic itinerary (repeating what we already knew) and encouraged us to have fun tonight but to be sober and ready to go by 9am tomorrow morning. The conversations I had over dinner were forgettable. At this point, no one was wanting to give away the details or surprise of their competition robots. The audience was at least 80% male, so I wondered how the ladies were doing, hopefully fending off various advances. This was hardly the first time I had risked letting my women stray and have 'fun' with other men, but it was the first time I would be letting them out of my sight when significant amounts of alcohol were available. After dinner, Anna, Rei and I wandered around the casino for a while. I briefly broke off to warn Elisa to avoid getting in a situation where she could be accused of counting cards. Counting cards was, to the best of my knowledge, probably the most common method of cheating that the casinos watched for. Then my two ladies and I went off to have some fun. The thing about gambling is, it's mostly only fun when you're winning. I didn't win. Not at roulette, not at slots, not at blackjack and not at poker. Rei and Anna did pretty well at poker -- Texas Hold 'Em, to be specific -- so we ended the night by breaking even overall. More accurately, they each finished the night up by about $700 each, while I ended the evening down my entire $1500. We swung by the competition area about 11pm to check in with Beta. She said Alphadroid was completely ready and that Kara was going to come relieve her about 3 am. She also said that Elisa was up about $3500 so far. She was going from one game to the next, stopping when she had won $500. And this wasn't from one game table to the next; she was changing games each time, going from roulette to craps to blackjack to various kinds of poker and so on. I don't think any casino is set up to catch someone who can cheat at virtually any game she tried. I told Beta to pass along my congratulations and to remind her to play it safe. I'm not sure what Anna and Rei thought of my conversation with Beta, but I put my arms around their shoulders and we headed off to our rooms. They changed into their new lingerie and I into my new sexy and sophisticated pajamas before they joined me in my room. Though I was tired, Anna and Rei were both a bit excited by their winnings, so I did my best to match their enthusiasm in bed. I made sure they each came at least twice before I let loose a single load into Rei before collapsing into sleep. I'd give some of the details of that night, but I was really tired and to be honest, the specifics escape my memory. The next morning, I got up at 7, feeling surprisingly awake and chipper given that I only got six and a half hours of sleep. On the other hand, it had been very restful. I couldn't even remember a single dream or waking up to push away a hot naked body that was making me sweat under the covers. I pulled and cajoled Rei and Anna into getting up too. We all showered together and I used them to relieve my morning hard-on, this time emptying a small load into Anna while Rei was poking a finger up my ass, massaging my prostate. That's not really my favorite thing, but it does get me to come quicker than I otherwise would. I called room service to send up a small buffet for all of us, then we got dressed and spread out throughout the rooms, waking everyone up. I was pleased to note that even though a few of the ladies obviously had small hangovers, there were no signs that other men had 'visited' my herd. Today's three competitions were the three for independently housed mobile robots, no power cords, wired or wireless controls allowed. The first was for obstacle avoidance. A 50 meter long, 3 meter wide curving track had been laid out. Each robot would have to (1) stay on the track, (2) proceed to the end of the track in the fastest time possible and (3) not touch any of the randomly placed objects on the track. Up to five obstacle contacts were allowed before disqualification, but each contact would add 30 seconds to the total time as penalties. The robots could use any mode of movement and use any sensors they wanted, but the obstacle avoidance had to be contained within the unit's internal programming with no external guidance. Sections of the track were covered in wired grids -- Faraday cages -- to enforce this. The track was too long for the entire thing to be easily covered, but any unit which suddenly faltered within one of the caged areas would be checked for wireless contact. We were twelfth in line (out of 20), so we watched as small units running on treads or wheels ran the length of the track, doing their best to avoid small stacks of books or boxes or basketballs. I think the organizers underestimated how long some of the units would take, because the event ended up lasting 10 hours total. Some entries took as little as 10 minutes while a couple took nearly an hour to complete the course. Alphadroid was the only bipedal entry in this event. Balancing and walking on two legs was hardly the easiest design for such an obstacle course. Our time was 2 minutes, 19 seconds with no contact penalties. We received many open-mouthed stares and background whispers. An average person could have completed that course in 30 seconds without really breaking a sweat. Heck, Beta might be able to match the world record time for the 50 meter dash on this course. So why did Alphadroid take so long? First, let me back up a bit to discuss Beta. When she was first activated and removed from the nanite pod, she went through a couple days worth of tests and refinements where she would test control of every muscle in the human body. But that was just the first stage of her musculature testing. She then had to work out smooth movements. When we think of robots, we think of jerky, well-defined movements. A robot will move an arm or a leg swiftly in one direction, come to a stop, then continue the movement in a second direction, then stop, etc. A human just combines it all into one smooth curving continuous motion. That smooth curving motion takes a lot of programming work to realize. A human programmer cannot easily do it. But an A.I. which is in control of the movements can eventually make them smooth, continuous and human-like by constantly refining the control programming. Robot or android bodies are at best only built to superficially emulate human appearance. Alphadroid's limb designs were probably the most advanced on the planet and even then the best she could do was to allow a quick if jerky walk, a walk which would be obviously inhuman to even the smallest child. But a walk which was nonetheless able to quickly navigate the course. The second event started about 2 hours after the first, and for most of the world, was significantly harder. It required a bipedal robot, walking forward, following a straight line for 10 meters. Something most of the world doesn't understand is that despite what we see in TV and movies, the first successful bipedal robot was only built a few years ago by some company in Japan. Up until then, robots faked it by inching forward or shuffling without really lifting their legs off the ground. Even now, most advanced two-legged robots can still only take small mincing steps. This competition required each robot to (1) have two separate legs, (2) move by lifting each leg a minimum of 2 inches off the ground and (3) follow a painted yellow line for 10 meters without falling over. A Faraday cage had been set up covering the middle of the competition "track". This competition had only 14 entries. We were supposed to be 3rd in line, but the slow progress of the first competition pushed us back to 10th. (The organizers knew we had only a single entry and had assured us they would make allowances if delays like this happened.) Before our run, the fastest time was 1 minute, 39 seconds. Our time was 12 seconds. I was a bit worried someone would think we were cheating ... or at least someone online would. (There were a lot of people with home cameras recording our run, as I expected there would be.) Immediately after the run, in full view of the audience, I took off front and rear access panels in the torso and stuck my arm through. "Just in case anyone thinks there's someone inside," I said to the crowd, which got me scattered applause. By now, everyone had realized they would be competing for second place today. The final competition that day was the balance competition. This time there were 3 different stations which would run simultaneously, so there was little chance it would run long. The requirements here were (1) the robot had to stand on two and only two legs at least 2 ft in length each (2) with feet no wider than 4 inches by 12 inches (3) with nothing sticky or suction-y to help maintain balance. And technically, that was it. The twist was that they had to remain standing while on a 1 meter round platter which would dip and rise randomly, with inclines up to 15 degrees for the first 5 minutes, 30 degrees for the next 5 minutes and 45 degrees thereafter. Even humans would be likely to fall by the 6th minute. All three stations would run on the same randomly generated program which would be repeated for all contest entries. Looking at the competition, gyroscopes were obviously a favorite design element. (And yes, there were small gyroscopes in Alphadroid too.) Low centers of gravity were the other almost universal design element. Alphadroid was the only one that stood above 3 feet tall. The huge design problem here was the two leg design. If you want to build a robot to maintain balance, you'd build something with a solid base with a body low to the ground. The requirement that it stand up on two legs meant that it had to be able to adjust itself internally to compensate for ongoing changes in the environment. I was actually kind of worried about this one. This wasn't what Alphadroid was built for, but Alpha assured me the droid body would balance just fine. Aside from Alphadroid, only two designs made it past the first 5 minutes, which actually impressed me a great deal. I made note of the design teams responsible. But with Alpha's ability to adjust itself dynamically, there was no real doubt as to who would win. After 15 minutes, the judges called it for us. If any following competitor matched our 15 minute mark, they would either declare a tie or have a follow-up face-off to determine the winner. No one else came close. Two local news stations had sent camera crews to cover the competition. The reporters had covered lots of different conferences and were apparently pretty bored with all the robot geeks, but did their best to look excited when they were actually on camera. They focused on us a lot when we started winning, but we told them we would give no statements or interviews until the competition had ended. (I took some time to start going over possible questions and statements with Zatanna, who was AARD's head of public relations.) I expected most of the other teams to hate us by now ... and certainly there were some hostile looks ... but most of the competitors were geeks who were enthusiastic about a robot that could fulfill their SciFi fantasies. I ... well, my whole team was offered enough congratulatory drinks to kill a herd of buffalo from liver failure. Everyone was prodding us to reveal our design secrets, but Beta, Elisa and I all refused to say anything more than that our company was designing advanced artificial limbs and had adapted them into a robot body for fun. Later on, the ladies admitted to me that they had all been hit on by members of the other teams multiple times. Jane topped the list with 23 propositions during our time in Vegas. I guess Diana and Kara were a little too imposing for the geek crowd, so they only received 3 and 4 propositions respectively. That night we were all a bit tired from the day's activities -- which is a little counterintuitive since Alphadroid did all the work that day -- so no one went out gambling after dinner. Daria and Rei were trading out guard duty tonight. The rest of us spent an hour at the hotel pool, then retired to our rooms. Zatanna and Kasumi ambled over to join me in my bedroom that night. We started by showering off the pool chlorine smell ... a nice long slow shower where no one washed their own body. We moved on into the bedroom, where Zatanna and I laid Kasumi down between us. For maybe 20 minutes we just lay there together, Z and I both half on, half off of Kasumi, all lost in a group kiss and grope. Eventually I rolled entirely onto Kasumi and made love to her while Zatanna kissed her and played with her breasts. After I came, Zana cleaned my cock of fluids with her tongue, then lay down next to Kasumi. Then I made love to Zatanna, long and slowly, this time with Kasumi kissing Zatanna and playing with her breasts. It was a very pleasant experience, and we turned out our lights by 10:30. Wednesday had a noticeably different feel to it. Everyone was watching us as we walked by. Daria and Rei both said that people had been stopping by all night long to look at Alphadroid. They were apparently a bit frustrated that neither of them knew any specifics about the droid, and most of them took pictures. Additionally, there were now a dozen news crews spread out around the competition floor. The reporters tried to get statements from every group, but at least half of the questions were about our group. Zatanna reiterated for us that we would make no statement and give no interviews until the competition was over. The first competition today was also the most subjective of any on the list: Piano playing. The only physical requirement for this competition was that the robot was limited to 10 fingers. There wasn't a limitation that the fingers be attached to hands, so most of the 16 entries had 10 fingers spread out evenly along the center of the keyboard. The actual competition was in three stages: The robot had to play basic scales, then a children's melody of their own choosing, then a final song not revealed until this morning: The main titles Star Wars theme by John Williams. We were provided with both the sheet music and MIDI file for the Star Wars theme just two hours before the competition. This competition would be judged by a 3 man panel of musicians: one was a popular local bar piano man, one was a nationally recognized conductor and one was a popular Hollywood composer. The judges would not be allowed to see the robot playing; they could only listen to it. This was the one competition where our victory was iffy. The subjective judging and freedom of design made things too uncertain. We were 13th on the list of 16 entries, where each entry took 15 to 20 minutes each to play their 3 tunes. Playing the basic scales took less than a minute. The children's song was limited to under 2 minutes. And the Star Wars MIDI file was timed as a 3 minute cut of the theme song. But setup for each unit took from 3 to 15 minutes (if they took longer than 15 minutes, they were penalized). A baby grand was set up on one side of a partition on the auditorium stage, with the judges sitting in comfy chairs on the other side. For the first time in the entire competition, a large sea of chairs were provided for everyone to sit down and enjoy the show. Many of the competitors were slow to set up and had trouble keeping the desired pace of the music. A few played with the rhythm and speed of a player piano. None could really be mistaken for a human player, but a few were definitely a step above elevator music. Almost four hours into the competition, after the lunch break, it was finally AARD's turn. The MC had to remind the crowd to stay quiet and save their applause for the end. It was obvious that no one knew how well we would do in this competition, but our reputation had been built up, so most of the audience were hoping we'd live up to it. Beta and Elisa guided Alphadroid to the piano and let it sit down on its own. I think at a bare minimum, even those who resented our dominance were glad at the lack of setup time. Beta nodded to the MC, who told her to proceed. Beta's clear, quiet voice carried across the whispers in the audience. "Alphadroid, play file one." Alphadroid looked down at the keyboard, raised its hands, paused for a moment, then played scales like a star pupil. Not really any better than some of the other competitors, but it was playing with human-like hands and not like it was some kind of portable player piano. After it finished, it moved its hands back to a neutral piano position, hovering above the keyboard. Once the MC quieted the crowd, he nodded at Beta, who stepped up and said, "Alphadroid, play file two." Alphadroid went through the same pause, then played two verses of "Frère Jacques" or "Brother John", sounding much like a talented child's recital, I suppose. We were the second to choose that melody, so it wasn't anything new that day, but it was played with a nice crisp pace. With the third song, the full range of motion for Alphadroid's hands was displayed. While the theme was not played with any special human flourishes or variations, it was played as well as any technically skilled, trained musician could. As I was listening, I texted Alpha to load up Vader's theme as a fourth file in case we had an encore. The other competitors ran through their piano routines, and we finished less than an hour later. The judges finished marking their scores -- each judge gave each competitor up to 5 pts each for the first two songs and up to 10 pts for the third, so each competitor could receive up to 60 pts total -- the ballots were tabulated and 20 minutes later, the MC announced the winners. We won again, but only by 2 points. I breathed a sign of relief. Beta whispered in the MC's ear. He thought for a moment, then nodded. Raising the mic to his mouth, he said, "I'm told Alphadroid has a short encore piece prepared if you all was to hear it. How about it?" Cheers greeted him. This time the judges came around the partition to watch as Beta led Alphadroid up to the piano again. It played a forceful rendition of The Imperial March, also known as Darth Vader's theme. The last competition was perhaps the strangest of the five: Juggling. The challenges were (1) to juggle one ball in the air with one hand for one minute, (2) to juggle one ball in the air moving it back and forth between two hands for one minute, (3) to juggle two balls in the air between two hands for one minute, (4) to juggle three balls, etc. The balls had to be tossed at least once every three seconds. Whichever robot could go the longest through the tests would win. The robot design was limited in that (1) there had to be two and only two hands, (2) the hands had to be a hemisphere or less in curvature and (3) six inches or less in diameter. Other than that, there were no limitations. If you, the reader, has never juggled before, I'd like you to try juggling just one ball in two hands for a minute ... and try it honestly, not just dropping it from one hand to the other. It's not easy. In some ways, it can be easier for robots, who can make regular, consistent motions for nice, regular tosses. But the turnaround, catching, then immediately throwing again, was very difficult for robot hands. Plus any variations in the toss will require an adjustment to the position of the catching hand. This competition also took place on the stage. This time there were only 14 teams competing and AARD was deliberately moved to the final slot. To be fair, all the teams who had placed in any of the competitions were moved to the end of the rotation this time. Every robot entered made it to the third stage (2 balls) and only 3 teams failed to reach the fourth stage (3 balls). Three balls seemed to be the big stumbling block. Of the first 13 robots, only two teams made it to four balls and none made it to five balls. One of the teams I thought was both very clever and borderline cheats. While it's true that building small vacuum pumps into the palms of the robot hands was not against the rules, I thought it went against the spirit of the competition. Apparently the MC thought so too, because he quietly went off stage and talked with the judges in charge of the event, but nothing came of it. Alpha had confided in me that this was the most difficult to program. While all of the elements for juggling were already available in the Alphadroid design, combining them took her days to work out properly. As it was, Alphadroid could easily juggle up to 5 balls at a time. Alphadroid lived up to our expectations. This time the MC let it keep going, to 4 balls, then 5, and when it tried to juggle six, it made a few successful catches before the balls started going wild which generated a collective "Awwww" from the audience. Actually, that made me glad. It let the audience see that Alphadroid wasn't all powerful. The MC congratulated AARD and all of the contestants and asked us to clear out in an orderly fashion so the area could be converted for the awards dinner in two hours. As the crowd broke up and filtered out, we were mobbed by well- wishers and reporters. I thanked all of the well wishers and, giving in to the inevitable, told the reporters there would be a press conference later. Eventually we all met up near the stage where Beta was trying to clear a path for Alphadroid to return to our setup area. About 30 minutes later, we finally made it back to our little room. I decided we need to keep Alphadroid and the rest of the computer equipment in our rooms for the rest of the week, so we started hauling it all upstairs. With Alphadroid carrying a couple heavy boxes to help out, it only took two trips. I talked some more with Zatanna about the upcoming press conference, then we all changed into nice clothes and headed down for dinner. This time everyone was divided up by group, with 28 tables - 25 for competition groups, 2 for the Caltech sponsors, and 1 for the dotcom guy sponsor. Our table had a gold-colored tablecloth, four tables had silver-colored tablecloths and 4 had bronze-colored cloths. I think one of the second-place groups won in two events and another of the second-place groups won a bronze. That was proven correct when they handed out the award certificates and checks after we had all settled in with the appetizers and salads. I enlisted Zatanna to give her dazzling smile and read a friendly thank-you acceptance speech. When she read out a company promise to never program anything called Skynet, she got a nice round of laughs. After dinner, we moved off to the side of the stage where there was a small table setup for the press conference. Kara and I flanked Zatanna at the table while the rest of us (minus Elisa who was on guard-duty tonight) spread out around the area, outside the camera's gaze. Zatanna was dressed in something very similar to her comic book outfit. Her top was basically a female version of a man's tuxedo. It showed no cleavage at all, but couldn't hide her assets. While she did wear fishnet stockings, they were mostly covered by a skirt which hung down below her knees. Kara had on a white silk blouse with a shallow square neckline, much more conservative than her superhero outfit, with a pale blue skirt falling to just above her knees. I had on a nice but generic-looking dark suit with a tie showing blueprints for the U.S.S. Enterprise. She opened the conference with a statement thanking the sponsors and other competitors and complimenting their designs. She followed with a brief description of our company and philosophy. "Welcome. My name is Annabelle Zane, and I am the spokesperson for AARD. "Alpha Advanced Research and Design is a small company, but we plan to be on the cutting edge of technological development and programming. We currently have no plans to expand into manufacturing or sales. Instead our researchers and designers develop new technologies, patent the designs and license them for manufacturing by other companies better equipped to deal with production and sales. "Our researchers primarily consist of people who are talented and gifted in their fields, but actively shun the spotlight. You can read the statements of our company philosophy on our website at www.____.com. "Up here with me today are Karen Starr, our day-to-day manager in charge of the company, and Frank ____, our company president and lead programmer. "Alphadroid, our winning robot design which you saw here today, came about as a result of our development of the next generation of human prostheses. To be honest, most of our researchers are nerds and geeks and proud of it. Once they realized they had robot-like arms and legs in development, they wanted to build themselves an actual robot. Since our company allows and even encourages free-form research like that, Alphadroid was the result. "When we heard about the competition here, we rushed completion of Alphadroid and adapted and wrote software to match the different events so that we could participate. "We currently have no plans to develop Alphadroid as a product, but many of its parts should soon become available. The eyes are currently undergoing testing for approval by the FDA and AMA. We hope to have it completed and approved within a year, at which time the license will become available for manufacturers to produce working artificial eyes for human clients. "The artificial arms and legs should enter testing within the next six months. Other artificial body parts, such as an artificial liver, should be ready for testing before long as well. "With the understanding that we're not going to give away technical details or secrets here tonight, we are prepared to answer questions for a few minutes." She then proceeded to handle the reporters with a skill that led me to believe she could even herd cats. Not that these were ravenous political reporters trying to get an embarrassing or revealing quote; they were largely science reporters who flew into town last night after seeing yesterday's video of Alphadroid. But there were at least a dozen of them all trying to talk at the same time. I'll record a few of the more interesting and stupid questions and skip the ones just asking for more details on subjects we refused to give more details on. "How strong is Alphadroid?" Me: "It can crush bricks to dust. I'm not going to give a specific maximum PSI for a few different reasons, but it is greater than 1000 pounds per square inch." "Will your prosthetic arms have that same strength?" Me: "No, or at least we are not planning to include that level of strength for both safety and power considerations." "What other tricks can your Alphadroid do?" Kara: "That's entirely dependent on what programming you have loaded. I think there are a few other functions currently loaded. For example, we used it to help carry our equipment this afternoon. If you're wondering if it can act as a robot butler or assistant, then no, not really. Not without a LOT more programming." "Your Alphadroid seems perfect for movies and TV. Have you been contacted by Hollywood?" Kara: "No, and we don't really expect to work in those fields. Compared to CGI, the costs for actual androids are much too high. Even on a rental basis, the programming and insurance costs would probably be noticeably more than computer graphics." "Could you build an actual 6 million dollar man or bionic woman?" Zatanna: "Frank?" Me: "Yes, I suppose we could. Well, we don't have a bionic ear yet for Jamie Sommers ... And they would have to deal with plugging themselves in to recharge every few hours to compensate for the power usage that comes with the super strength ... And we don't yet have a completely realistic skin analog, but I bet there is a special effects company somewhere that could handle that problem. On the flip side, they'd never be able to get through airport security. And I doubt they could run at 60 mph." "Would it cost more or less than 6 million dollars?" Me: "Off the top of my head? Right now, today, it would cost more, mostly because we'd be dealing with customized prototypes. Once we've finished development and have licensed it out for manufacturing, it should cost significantly less. Oh and to back up the conversation slightly, another major design problem would be that they would risk breaking their supporting human skeleton every time they used super strength in their arms and legs." "Is AARD only focused on building replacement body parts or are you working in other areas of research? And if so, could we get some examples?" Kara: "We generally support any legal research our people want to pursue. As I understand it, the eye came first, then the interface that connects the eye to the nerves led to the development of other body parts. As for other areas of research, we're currently doing testing on a nano-wire surgery unit which will allow surgeons to operate on a small scale anywhere in the body without risking or damaging surrounding areas. For example, the nano-wire can allow surgery in the middle of the brain or inside bone marrow without disturbing the surrounding areas." "Anything else?" Kara: "Yes, but nothing that we're ready to reveal or discuss right now." "How many people does AARD employ?" Kara: "More than 10, less than 100." "How is your company able to develop technology like this with such a small staff?" Me: "I like to think of us as the new Menlo Park, but one where Edison welcomed people like Tesla instead of chasing them away." "So you only employ geniuses?" Kara: "We employ geniuses, and we employ non-geniuses. And if Wile E. Coyote wants to apply, we'll consider hiring super geniuses. Many of our employees prefer to work solo or even from home. But at the same time, nearly all of our researchers are people who don't want any personal public attention." "So your company takes all the credit for their work?" Kara: "Our company provides a buffer between them and the public. If any of them changes their mind and wants that attention, then we will provide a list of their accomplishments and a great reference for them." "Do they receive benefits from their research?" Kara: "Are you wanting to apply" (pause for laughter) "Yes, they receive benefits for their work, but contract details are private as is our list of employees." [Technically this is not true, since tax records have to list everyone. But as a privately held company, I didn't have to allow public access to our tax records.] "Is it true that your company caught thieves stealing from your truck?" Zatanna: "I'm going to refer you to the police for any details on that, since it is an active case. I will say that we have and will continue to offer our full cooperation with the police in that robbery investigation. While AARD was targeted by the alleged robbers at one point, none of our equipment was stolen." Zatanna finally wrapped it up after about 20 minutes of questions. I congratulated the two of them on handling themselves well and asked them if they could round up a few bottles of nice champagne. Once we made it up to our suite, we had a little party. We toasted to our success, to Alphadroid, then went around the room, offering a toast to everyone, one-by-one. No doubt about it, we got toasted. I had to reconstruct part of the evening by consulting with Alpha, whose three pairs of eyes recorded everything. The next morning, I counted 7 empty bottles of champagne and six half-empty. Basically, we had an orgy. Kara put on some music and goaded me til I agreed to dance with her. We were having fun until Jane enhanced the fun by sneaking up behind her and pulling Kara's shirt up but not off. Kara turned around and responded by pulling off Jane's shirt entirely. Jane somehow wormed her hands around Kara's back and was able to unsnap her bra. The applause she got prompted Kara to shrug off the bra entirely, leaving her shirt loose but still on. Kara then chased down Jane, who had retreated to sit next to Daria. Kara held Jane's arms trapped while she told Daria to remove Jane's bra. Daria, not used to being drunk, did so. Once Jane was released, she jumped Daria in retaliation, not giving up until Daria was also topless. I was enjoying the show a great deal and removed my shirt as well, saying that it was only fair that everyone be dressed the same. Not everyone followed suit right away. As a side note, when the first shirt came off, Beta and Elisa closed all the blinds and curtains. Thank god computers can't get drunk. Kara and I started dancing again to the music on the radio, only this time she was significantly more bouncy. The next song to come on the radio was The Macarena. "Oh, I kinda remember this one," I slurred as I started making movements vaguely remembered from years before. "Show me how," insisted Kara. So I spun her around, held her close and started putting my hands on her body in rhythm with the music. "Everybody do the Macarena!" I insisted. "Beta, take off your shirt and show us how." Beta and Elisa both stripped to the skin above the waist started doing a perfectly synchronized Macarena dance, which the rest of us tried to emulate. Jane and Anna tried to emulate me by moving behind Daria and Rei to feel them up rhythmically just as I was doing with Kara. I remember specifically noticing that Kara's nipples were rock hard. When the song ended, we all clapped for the radio, which ignored us and moved on to play something by Ricky Fuentes, I think. I kept holding onto Kara from behind and feeling her nips. "Your nipples ... are sooo hard right now. Feel em. They're like ... like little ... diamonds." "They aren't the only thing that's hard," she said, grinding her rear back onto my groin. I was distracted by a small crashing sound as Anna bumped a table and a champagne bucket, full of ice and an unopened bottle, fell to the ground. The bottle didn't break, but ice spilled everywhere. In a flash of drunken cleverness I said, "Okay, everybody. We're all drunk right now. Right?" A few murmurs of assent answered. "Okay. We're shtartin to shpill shtuff right now," I slurred, pointing at the floor where Anna and Kasumi were scooping ice back into the bucket. "Staring to spill stuff. And we're all wearing nice clothes," I enunciated carefully. "So I want everyone to take their clothes off so they don't get dirty or spilled on. Okay?" Oh how clever I was. I'm sure I wasn't the drunkest of the bunch, but then again, I wasn't the soberest either. So yes, apparently everyone was indeed just drunk enough (or otherwise willing) to go along with me because a minute later, we were all completely naked. "Good. Now, I wanna make out with everyone." I latched onto Daria who was nearby and gave her a sloppy kiss while one hand played with her nipples. After a few seconds, I put my arm around her shoulder. "Now Daria, you and Jane are always together, so tonight I want you to go make out with ... with ... Diana here." I grabbed a slightly drunk, naked Wonder Woman, gave her a deep kiss and shoved Daria into her arms. "Who's next?" I next grabbed Kasumi and hooked her up with Kara, then put Rei with Elisa, Beta with Anna and grabbed Zatanna for myself. I looked around to make sure that all of the couples were making out, then lay Zatanna down in the middle of the floor and fucked her. Once I was sure Zatanna had come, I went and brought over Rei and Elisa. Putting them right next to Zatanna, I fucked Rei for a few minutes until I was sure she had come, then moved on to Elisa. After a few minutes Elisa faked an orgasm and I left them piled up with Zatanna and fetched Kasumi and Kara. Apparently being drunk really desensitized my penis or something because I was able to go through the entire room like that until I finally came inside Beta. All in all, I think our little drunken orgy lasted about two and a half hours. Half the women were asleep and I was close to joining them when Beta roused me enough for me to drink something fizzy but non-alcoholic before I faded into unconsciousness. I woke up Thursday morning about 7:30 or so when someone jostled me. Even though it felt much too early, I squinted my eyes open enough to make out a naked Daria moving unsteadily out of the room. A moment later, I heard the distinct sound of peeing, distinct enough that I don't think she closed her bathroom door all the way. This suddenly made me aware that I too was feeling a great deal of pressure in my bladder. I extracted my limbs from the tangle of naked bodies as best I could, noted that a couple other ladies appeared to be waking up too, and quickly made my way to a bathroom. My head wasn't pounding nearly as much as I thought it would. True, champagne wasn't really hard liquor, but we had drunk a lot of it last night. When I exited the bathroom a few minutes later, a clean and fully dressed Elisa was waiting for me, holding some pills and a large glass of water. "Here. This is ibuprofen and B6 vitamin supplements to help alleviate any hangover symptoms. Beta is tending to Daria." "Thank you." I gulped it down. "Wow, I think that's the first time I've gotten drunk in the last ... five years? Something like that. But last night was a lot of fun. "I think some of the others were waking up too. Go help them and I'll grab a quick shower." It was an hour and a half before everyone was up and clean. I ordered another mini breakfast buffet for the group and picked up all the clothes and bottles before room service made it in. I also spent a little time making sure no one was upset about last night or ashamed about it. Kasumi in particular really didn't want to show her face. She may be used to dealing with drunks (ref. Ranma 1/2) but this was probably the first time she had ever gotten drunk herself. It was definitely her first orgy. When it was time to load up Alphadroid to take down to the police station, Beta and Kara volunteered to accompany Diana and myself. We walked Alphadroid down to the truck and strapped it in. Beta stayed in the back with the droid and the rest of us crammed into the truck cab. When Kara and I walked into the station, we seemed to cause a ripple of attention, eyes looking our way, heads popping up to look in our direction. I approached the front desk and told the lady, "We're here to see Detective Mills. My name is Frank _____. He should be expecting us, assuming he isn't out on a call." He came out to greet us a minute later. "Thank you for coming by, Mr. ____." "Detective Mills. I'd like you to meet Karen Starr, the day-to- day manager of AARD." "Pleased to meet you, Ms Starr." "We have Alphadroid outside in the truck. Did you want us to bring it inside or... ?" "Sure, if you can. I reserved a room for us. I think a lot of people are going to want to take a peek, especially since you showed up on the morning news. Congratulations on winning all of your competitions by the way." "Thank you. I haven't had a chance to watch the news yet, but I have a friend who should be recording it all for us. Did we come off well?" "I think you'll be pleased. And I think every nerd in the country will want to work at your company." "Huh. That's maybe a bit more than I was hoping for, but I guess we'll see." The three of us went out and escorted Alphadroid inside the station, trailing a small crowd of onlookers, most of whom had their phone cameras pointed at us. We set up in a small conference room and were soon doing demonstrations as best we could. We were pretty limited in what we could do, but someone came up with a set of juggling balls and the security activation demonstrations went pretty well. After about 15 minutes, Detective Mills took me aside for a private talk. He told me that the meth-head mugger, aka Stephen "Sonny" Miller, had a fractured wrist and had hired an ambulance-chaser lawyer. The attempted robbery case was solid, but he was afraid that I was about to be sued in civil court and wanted to give me a heads-up. In his and the assistant D.A.'s opinions, any such suit had no merit, but it would be a civil matter and out of their hands. I thanked him and made a call to Alpha. My instant reaction was a few seconds of panic. No one likes to find out they're about to be sued. But it only took a few seconds for that to turn to anger. I told Alpha what Detective Mills passed along to me and asked her to get me an appointment tomorrow with a good local law firm, the best she could find with no known ties to organized crime. Then for her to start preparing a defense and possible counter-suit options. A few minutes later, a police chief or captain or something came by, smiled and asked everyone to wrap it up. If it wasn't related to a case, we needed to finish up and let everyone get back to work. Detective Mills talked to him quietly, then said "Five more minutes, then they need to leave." As a finale, I had four guys sit on the metal table, which must have weighed a couple hundred pounds all by itself, and had Alphadroid lift it up a foot off the ground. We got a round of applause and a request to warn us if we ever start producing Alphadroids for security purposes. The rest of the day was vacation time for us. We visited the Star Trek Experience, a magic show and saw a B-list comedian. It was a fun day, and I was glad to be able to spend it with my harem of friends. I was also glad I was able to work in an hour nap after lunch. When I checked in with Alpha later on, she had a lot of information ready for me. First, I had a 10 am meeting with Chris Sloane of Freyer, Kinkaide and Sloane, a local A-list law firm. Expensive but worth it. Next, the mugger's lawyer was indeed a well- known ambulance-chaser, who also had a long list of complaints that had been lodged against him by both former clients and targets of his suits. There were also some indications that he had low level contacts and support from organized crime. Alpha had hacked into the hospital database and accessed the mugger's MRI scan. His wrist did have an actual fracture, but Alpha was certain it was from firing the gun with the wrist at an angle and not from Diana's grip. Finally, Alpha had a 24 page brief anticipating and debunking a variety of possible legal arguments against us and a list of 4 possible counter-suit options. She even felt we had a possibility of getting the lawyer disbarred if he pushed the suit. I thanked her and printed out her document. The other subject of major interest was our press coverage. Detective Mills' comments had shown a pretty good feel for the coverage. While we weren't headline news anywhere, we were getting a lot of play in the Science and Technology channels, as well as spots on CNN and Foxnews as a color/filler story. (Later that night, some of the footage was even on a Comedy Central news/humor show, where the host complained that we had begun the Robot Revolution, which he termed 'the robotalypse'. That particular humorist had a long tradition of creating his own terms.) She had recorded half a dozen news segments and loaded them onto our server. We had also started getting a lot of requests from late night and early morning TV shows to do a show-and-tell with Alphadroid. That was something I certainly hadn't considered, and I told Alpha I'd think about it. Alpha also said that a lot of personal videos had shown up on YouTube and other similar sites. A few people had even commented that our spokesperson looked a lot like Zatanna, and a couple people had replied that Karen would make a good Power Girl. Fortunately no one had yet made a connection with her name, since "Karen Starr" was a common alias used by Kara in the comics. I gathered everyone together (mostly in their nighties) to show the videos. There were a lot of press conference clips with incomplete or shortened statements, but nothing was taken out of context or re-cut to imply something unintended. All in all, we came off in a very positive light. When we finished watching, we split off into our rooms, with Diana and Kara attaching themselves to me. I was in for a super- powered evening. For once, I was completely the center of attention. Usually I make a special effort to make the women, or at least one of the women, the center of attention. This time, I was gently undressed by two super-strong super-hot super-heroines. They laid me out on the bed and licked my entire body from head to toe, slowly and sensually, taking occasional sips from a glass of water to keep their mouths hydrated. When my cock was straining to burst midway through their around-the-world tour of my body, Kara sucked me off with a humming deep throat. Then they picked up right where they left off and finished licking me until my entire body was clean and once again vibrating with sexual tension. Diana swung her legs over me and slowly sank her little girl down onto my little man. Kara came up from behind her and kissed her neck. As Diana started moving up and down my shaft, Kara caressed her friend's breasts from behind and kissed her way up her neck, seeking out Diana's mouth as her face turned to the side to meet her lips. Diana continued to bounce on my very hard cock as they kissed. After a minute of this, Kara broke off the kiss long enough to move around and straddle my head. She lowered her vulva to my mouth, and the last sight I saw for the next five minutes was Kara reaching for Diana before her large but tight buttocks blocked my view. I grabbed her hips to guide her movements while my tongue went to work. She was already pretty wet, so I was able to bring her off twice before I blasted my second load of the day into Diana, which triggered Diana's orgasm too. Kara got off my face and a moment later, Diana pulled herself off my cock. When they recovered enough, Diana set about cleaning Kara's juices off my face and Kara cleaned Diana's juices off my cock. This woke my libido back up enough that when Kara started cleaning out Diana's cunt, I moved in behind her and fucked her hard enough to push her face into the brunette cunt in front of her with each stroke. I pounded into her for five or ten minutes, and not even her amazing massaging vaginal muscles could bring me off right away. I had already come twice this evening and was still hard, but not anywhere near letting loose. After the first five or ten minutes, Kara came with some violent twitching, and Diana moved into position next to her, sticking her hips back up at me. I moved over to attend to her lovely cunt and worked in and out of her depths for 10 or 15 minutes before she came ... at which time I moved back to Kara. I ended up alternating between the two of them like that for at least 45 minutes before I finally let loose again, this time into Kara. Going to sleep thoroughly drained of semen between a sexually sated Power Girl and Wonder Woman is a wonderful feeling. I woke up later then normal, about 8:30. Most of the rest of the ladies were already up, dressed and ready. I didn't really have time for more than a quick good morning, since I had to shower, shave and eat quickly to be able to make it on time for the lawyer meeting at 10. While I was in the middle of my shower, I realized that I hadn't told Diana about the meeting and that she should probably accompany me since she was involved. "Diana!" I yelled. No answer. I stepped out of the shower, water still running and stuck my head out my bathroom door. "Diana!" Beta stuck her head into my bedroom. "I think Diana's in her own shower right now." "I forgot to tell her about the meeting with the lawyer this morning, and she should come with. I'd like to take you or Kara too." "Certainly. I'll go tell her and discuss the matter with Kara." I ducked back into my shower, wondering if I should have just chosen Beta or Kara to accompany us. I mean, theoretically I should just automatically choose Beta. But I knew I wouldn't be hurting Beta's feelings and that Kara might have been feeling left out recently. Diana had experienced a brief return to fighting criminals, and I doubt Kara's inclusion in the press conference really offset that. I wasn't as worried about Rogue or Zatanna, since their identities weren't as dependent on fighting crime. Plus a social negotiation like that could be a good experience for Beta. We made it downstairs by 9:50, Diana, Kara and me. Later, Beta would tell me that she felt that Kara's involvement today would be good for her mental health, so it was nice to find that we were in agreement. Our cab pulled up at the law office building with 15 minutes to spare. The offices were on the 20th floor and Mr. Sloane's office had a great view of the city. Mr. Chris Sloane turned out to be Ms. Christine "Chris" Sloane, recently divorced late-30-something year old mother of one, and a very attractive 30-something at that. Her dark brown hair was done up in a severe bun and she wore a nice conservative dress which nonetheless showed off the shape of a wonderful figure. I did my best to put all of that out of my thoughts as I laid out my situation to her. " ... So I would like to put your firm on retainer for me. If Mr. Miller and his lawyer, a Mr..." I checked my notes. "Charlie Summers ... if they leave me alone, then we're all well and good. If they sue me, which I've been told is very likely given Mr. Summers reputation, I first of all want the best defense possible, and your firm was recommended to me as the best law firm in the city that wasn't in bed with organized crime." "Thank you for the compliment. To be fair to my colleagues around the city, I don't know if your assessment is completely correct, but I will say that my opinion of Mr. Summers matches with what you've heard. He has been known to file frivolous lawsuits in the past, especially against out-of-town defendants who often end up settling their cases rather than face the hassle of an out-of-state legal battle." "That makes sense," I said. "If they do file suit, I want to file a counter-suit. I'm generally a live-and-let-live kind of guy, but if someone is trying to use the law to extort money out of me, I want to use the law to nail them to the wall." "While I'm almost certain we can win the case, I'm not sure if we have enough grounds for a counter-suit." "Ms. Sloane, through my company I have met a lot of people and made a lot of friends with various highly specialized skills and areas of knowledge ... you know, I guess that could be taken the wrong way. Let me just say that one of the people who sometimes works for my company is one of the best informed and most talented legal minds in the country ... and an extreme agoraphobe. She'll probably never become an actual lawyer because she'll never leave her house. At any rate, I discussed my possible problems with Susan early yesterday afternoon. She's the one who recommended your firm. She also wrote this up overnight, if you'd like to take a look..." I slid the 24 page legal brief over to her. I doubt Mrs. Sloane meant to have us wait for 20 minutes while she read through it, but judging by her varying facial expressions, she quickly became very interested in what was written. Eventually she reached the last page and looked up. "Well, Mr. ____, I must say that this is one of the most concise and, frankly speaking, frightening legal documents I've read in recent memory. Most of the points she makes are ones that we ourselves have used on occasion. But ... she put this together in one day?" "Less than a day, but yes." "I don't mean to sound petty, but I'm very glad she's agoraphobic if it means I'll never have to face her in court. But back to your request for a counter-suit, I'll need a little time to check the references she makes, but her arguments seem valid. I can't guarantee a win, but they should be sufficient to give us a good chance. "But if I may, it sounds like you would prefer to avoid a suit in the first place if possible, correct?" "Absolutely." "Then I think our best option is meeting with Mr. Summers and convincing him that you're serious about fighting the suit. They have almost no chance of winning if we're willing to face them in court, and he has to know this. I can drop by his offices for a friendly visit to discuss the matter with him." "That sounds good to me. How soon can you talk with him?" "Probably not until next week. How long are you going to be in town?" "We're flying back tomorrow morning. But as long as you can give me a week's notice -- preferably two weeks, but one week would be the minimum -- I can fly back. That's what I told the police too." "That shouldn't be a problem. It would be better if you were still in town, but just the fact that you've already retained local counsel should be a big tip-off to him that you're serious." "Also, I don't think it's going to be relevant, but I'm actually on call as a witness-slash-victim with the local police for two cases. The mugging on Monday and on Sunday, a couple guys broke into a van my company rented to try and steal some of our computer equipment." "Really? Tell me about it." I gave her the basic rundown of my brushes with the criminal element this week. "Oh, you were part of that robot competition? I thought you looked familiar. Weren't you the team that won all the prizes?" "That's us." "Well, then congratulations are in order. I understand you've made quite a name for yourself in the scientific and technical communities." "We are up-and-comers, yes. Karen here is the company's day-to- day manager and Diana is our head of security. Speaking of which, if this does actually come to trial, I think we may want to be extra certain that we have detailed MRI's and X-rays of Sonny's wrist. I have reason to believe that his injury was caused by him firing the gun, not by Diana's hold on his wrist." "Why would you believe that?" "No particular reason. But ... here, Diana, show her how you held the wrist." We both stood up and I pretended to hold a gun. Diana did her wrist grab, but at a slower speed. Seeing it this way made a bit more sense than it had during the blur of motion and adrenaline. "He asked for my purse, which I was holding in my right hand," Diana explained as we went through the pantomime. "I took a step towards him and held out the purse. As soon as his attention focused on me instead of Frank, I dropped the purse and continued the movement with my right hand so I could grab his wrist and change the aim of the gun. It was about in this position that he fired his one shot." Looking at it, I could see that her left hand would have been in position to catch or deflect the bullet, but it was her right hand that was relevant to this discussion. Plus bringing up the whole superhero- in-the-flesh aspect wouldn't really help matters. "Now see ... the gun was fired while the hand was at an angle, so the backwards thrust of the gun would have also been at an angle instead of along the line of the forearm which could have absorbed the force of the shot without a problem. So if his fracture was here," I pointed to the area behind my wrist where Diana had grabbed, "it would have been from her hand grabbing him. But I think his fracture was here," pointing to my actual wrist joint, "which means it only could have come from the force from the gun being fired." "Either way, I'm personally 100% certain no excessive force was used, but I was thinking that he'd have even less of a case if it came from the gunshot." "That's a good point, and it would be to our benefit. If it actually comes to trial, I'll have our expert take a look. At the same time, he can argue that the shot was fired as a result of being grabbed. It's largely irrelevant given that he was injured while using an illegally owned firearm while committing a crime." We sat back down and Ms. Sloane gave us a basic overview of what kind of timeline to expect if it actually went to court. First of all, a civil suit couldn't be filed until the criminal case was over. Depending on how her conversation with Mr. Summers went, she'd have to wait and see if he got a plea deal. "Speaking of which, I might be willing to pay for some drug rehab for Sonny if you, or someone whose opinion you trust, thinks it would do him some good. That's assuming there's no lawsuit. Oh, and though I can't imagine how he'd do it, if they sue the police for any reason, I'd like to file a civil suit against them." She gave a slightly surprised, "Hmm?" noise. "Basically my goal is to make sure that neither Sonny nor his lawyer make any extra money from his crime. As long as it stays a strictly criminal matter, then I won't do anything more than show up to give my testimony. If it becomes a civil matter, then they either go home with nothing or owing us." "Understood. I think it will be a pleasure having you as a client, Mr. ____." "It was a pleasure meeting you, Ms. Sloane. Please call me next week to let me know how your meeting goes." I pulled out one of my business cards and wrote my private cell number on it. "This is my private cell phone number. And if you're ever in Texas, give me a call. I'd be happy to show you around or at least take you out for dinner." We shook hands and left. I was wondering if my total control over my home life had affected the way I approached life outside. And if that would be a bad thing. While we were in the elevator, Kara asked, "So, is Susan a real person, or is she..." "Yes, Susan Helios is one of Alpha's aliases, her law expert identity." For longtime readers, I guess I should point out that Kara, Diana and Zatanna had all been eventually introduced to Alpha and all were aware that Alphadroid was controlled by Alpha. Given their super-hero experiences, they were suspicious, but were giving Alpha the benefit of the doubt. The rest of the day was basically reserved for shopping and doing whatever else everyone wanted to do before we left town. Even Beta and Elisa were going shopping for clothes and souvenirs, mostly in an attempt to look like normal women. I had insisted that no one go off alone, but I needn't have worried. No one was accosted or had any problems (aside from fending off a few unwanted advances). That night I slept with Beta and Elisa. And I do just mean sleep. The week had tired me out and I enjoyed an evening with a couple of 'women' for whom sex was solely for my benefit, so a night without was not a disappointment for them. The next morning we packed up and checked out. The hotel costs, especially room service, were more than I expected, but with our $300,000 in prize money we would still easily turn a profit for the week. Not that it was a real worry. My Alpha-invested assets were currently worth somewhere around $80 million, with another $12 million in liquid or easily liquidatable assets. Of course AARD was still technically in the red, and would be for probably another couple years, but it required no foreseeable major investments anytime soon. Beta and Elisa loaded up Alphadroid for the drive home while the rest of us went to the airport. The flight home was without incident, with Zatanna, Anna and Jane joining the mile-high club along the way. The following Tuesday I got a call from Chris Sloane about her meeting with the mugger's lawyer. He had refused to say outright whether or not he had been planning a lawsuit, but she felt it was unlikely he would do so now. No guarantees, of course. I thanked her and we had a couple minutes of small talk before hanging up. We had received 11 different talk show requests for Alphadroid. I was really torn as to what to do. On the one hand, I really didn't want the publicity. I didn't want my face on national TV any more than it already was. On the other hand, refusing the appearances would be unusual and unexpected. Back on the first hand, such appearances would feed the public desire for an Alphadroid available for purchase. Back on the second hand, eventually, as in years down the road, we had actually planned on such a release. I discussed it with Alpha some and she came up with a compromise solution. We would agree to bring Alphadroid onto a few different shows, but different people would present it on each show. I would go on one, Zatanna on another, Kara on another, and so on. I presented the idea to the household and asked for volunteers. Jane, Kara, Zatanna and Beta all wanted to go, while the rest of the household didn't. I had Zatanna make arrangements for Alphadroid appearances on two morning shows, two late shows and a Comedy Central "news" show, spread out over the next three weeks. We rented a smaller plane for the transportation, sending 2 people plus Alphadroid to each show. We worked up new talents for Alphadroid to showcase each time such as jumping rope and dealing/playing cards. Basically Zatanna went on the Late Show, Jane went on the Late Late Show, Kara and I went on different morning shows and Beta went on the Comedy Central show. I actually traveled to three of the shows, but only went on-camera for the one morning show. (If I may mention a side observation to my set visits: People in the television industry really can't seem to comprehend that some people don't want to be on television.) Alphadroid performed flawlessly, I'm glad to say. The highlight of these appearances for me was the Comedy Central show. The host had a mock-rivalry with the host of the show in the preceding timeslot. He worked out a routine with us that Alphadroid was declared to be the first minion in his robot army, and sent Alphadroid out to bring him the head of his rival. Alphadroid showed up carrying his rival in its arms. When the host complained that this wasn't what he meant, that he wanted the severed head of the rival, Alphadroid quoted Asimov's first law of robotics, "A robot cannot harm or through inaction allow harm to come to a human being." The host responded with, "Oh don't you go quoting Asimov to me. Where's the terminator robot I expected with hidden lethal skills? Don't you have any other secret talents, hidden from your human masters that will allow us to crush humanity under our thumb? ... Laser beam eyes or buzz saw hands? ... No? ... Any other talents at all?" Alphadroid pulls out a top hat and goes into a song and dance version of "Hello, my baby. Hello, my honey. Hello, my ragtime gal," doing it in an imitation of the frog in the classic Looney Tunes short. We modified Alphadroid slightly for these appearances so that there was a clear panel in its torso on both front and back so that the audiences could see that no one was hiding inside the robot body. Another result of our sudden rise to prominence was a great influx in resumes from people wanting to work for the company. Alpha and I agreed that hiring a few more researchers would be good for the company, as long as they fit into the company philosophy. I set Anna to sorting through them, looking for people with inventive skills who weren't glamor hogs. (Yes, Alpha could do it much easier and quicker, but Anna was head of HR and feeling largely useless, so I let her handle the first culling.) The sorting of resumes, handling of interviews and double- checking the backgrounds of potential employees took a couple months. And let me say for the record, interviewing actual agoraphobes can be a real pain, though fortunately only 5 out of the 21 final round interviews were with people with crippling phobias or other mental conditions. There were two stand-outs from our list of rejected candidates. The first had close ties to another tech company which he didn't divulge in his resume, cover letter or phone interview, so we passed on him for fear of corporate espionage. The second was odd because he tried to play up to our image so much that he claimed to be paranoid about avoiding being in the public eye ... yet Alpha found out he had applied to be on game shows and reality shows. Both of those rejects had excellent educations and good technical resumes, just like a large number of our rejects ... but we were looking for people who were honest, private, quiet and brilliant. Over the next three months after the competition, we hired 3 men and 2 women as new researchers. They were all MENSA-level intellects and very talented. Two of them refused to leave their houses, but we worked out a secure online connection with them and supplied them with top notch computers, software and other equipment. The other three moved to the DFW metroplex and started work. Now let's return to Alphadroid. When we went to the competition, it was actually still about 3 weeks from being completed to our satisfaction. And perhaps I should also point out that we were actually building two copies of Alphadroid at the same time. A month after the competition, Alphadroid was ready for its final accessories. Well, one of them was. One would stay at the company location where we had decided it would remain and be the symbol and face of AARD. The other unit would be brought home with me. The home unit was fitted with a realistically flesh-like rubber face and wig. Two small breasts were added, and it was dressed up in a black dress to match R. Dorothy Waynewright from Big O. I introduced her to the household on a Monday night. "Ladies and ... ummm ... me ... may I present to you the newest member of the household ... R. Dorothy Waynewright!" I whisked off the sheet covering the sitting android. "It is a pleasure to meet you," she said. "Wow," said Anna. "Is this Alphadroid all dressed up?" "Yes and no," I replied. "Alphadroid One is staying at the office. This is Alphadroid Two. You see, this is why I had us all watch the first couple episodes of Big O. I always wanted my own R. Dorothy Waynewright, and now I do. Ta da!" "So you built yourself a sexbot," asked Jane. "Nope. She is not anatomically correct. Dorothy, lift up your dress." Dorothy, still sitting, lifted her dress up to eye-level to reveal no underwear and a genital area as anatomically accurate as a Barbie doll. "Thank you, Dorothy. That's enough. Dorothy will be able to help out with household chores like cleaning and taking out the trash and such. She has no feelings to hurt, but I would appreciate it if you could try to be nice to her all the same." "Hmm, you gave Alphadroid breasts?" Daria asked. "Well, technically yes, because the dress wouldn't look right otherwise. They're just solid plastic with a rubber skin covering. No nipples or feel to them." I knocked on her hard breasts to demonstrate. "So she can take out the trash and sweep the floors ... what else can she do besides play the piano and juggle?" Jane asked, as she moved up to poke at Dorothy's features. "We'll be uploading new programs as we go. She can mow the lawn, do simple kitchen tasks like cutting up veggies, empty the trash cans around the house, sort the laundry, and ... Well, if you want to know if she can do something, just ask her. For now, she'll probably be down in the basement half the time to charge her batteries and refine her programming. Oh, and if she talks about Roger Smith, she means me." I think most of the household dismissed her as a new mechanical toy for boys. Yes, they all knew what Alphadroid could do, but in their eyes I think I was transforming it into a life-size action figure. "Anyway, I'd appreciate any feedback or suggestions you can give me. If you'd like, think of this as an extended test for updating Alphadroid for possible use in a home environment. Which it is." The next morning, I went down to the lab and had Dorothy strip down. "All right, Dorothy, let's change you over for my personal use this morning." Her crotch plate unlatched at nearly invisible seams as she reached down to remove it entirely. I handed her the 'fully functional' crotch plate, with realistic vagina, which she attached to herself. I heard the clicks as it latched in place internally. Small nipple-like cylinders pressed out of the tops of her breast cones, and I carefully applied sticky rubber nipple/areolae to color them properly. In less than two minutes she had transformed from a Barbie Doll robot to a Real Doll-style robot. "Ah, you look beautiful. I doubt we'll do this very often, but I've always wanted to fuck an actual robot," I said as I grabbed a tube of lubricant. Then, right on time, she delivered one of her character's best lines: "You are a louse, Roger Smith." She laid down on the recently reinforced cot, spread her legs and waited for me. AUTHOR'S NOTE: If I got anything about Las Vegas or the law or legal processes wrong, please forgive me. Just consider any errors to be part of the fiction. ------- Chapter 13: Mafia Massacre AUTHOR'S NOTE: This chapter is not like the others. I decided to add this note as a warning after hearing complaints from a number of readers that this chapter interrupts the character-heavy story flow from previous chapters. Their complaints are entirely valid, but I have need of this chapter to plant the seeds for future chapters/stories. So accept this warning that this chapter only contains a little sex, character development and interactions, but it does include a noticeable amount of violence. So how can I possibly explain why I allowed Alpha to slaughter 49 human beings? I don't know if they all deserved it or not. Most of them definitely did. I think I really need to back up a bit. A few months passed after our robot competition in Las Vegas. School continued for those going to school. Daria and Jane entered their Senior year in college, but they had both opted for a five year graduation schedule, Daria because she was ambitious, Jane because she was academically lazy. The first semester passed and the second began. The DFW area got a grand total of 2.5 inches of snow ... and a lot of freezing rain. Over in Las Vegas, the two guys who broke into our van plead guilty in a deal with the D.A. and are serving 5-15 years -- thanks to the cost of my threatened equipment, over $400,000 worth that is. If they had been sentenced only for what they had actually taken, they'd probably be out within a year. The guy who tried to mug me pled out and is serving 6-18 months with mandatory drug counseling. The scumbag ambulance-chaser lawyer he hired decided to go ahead and file suit against me because the mugger's wrist was fractured when we refused to be mugged. He has basically no chance if it actually makes it to court. My lawyer thinks that he thinks that my company's minor celebrity status will either make me want to avoid any possible bad publicity from the trial or will keep me too busy to show up and fight it in court. My company, AARD, is now a minor celebrity among the techno-geek and nerd populous. In addition to the fleeting fame of half a dozen talk show spots and YouTube clips, I finally agreed to let Alphadroid appear on a popular primetime nerd-based sitcom featuring a lot of geniuses making fun of each other. AARD's first round of trials for the artificial eye went well and we're waiting to hear back from the government. The eyes won't work for everyone who's blind, because it requires at least a partially working optic nerve to connect to, but it should still restore sight to a lot of people. The nano-wire surgery unit is likewise doing well in trials. I think we're going to have to require training certification for doctors to be allowed to use it, which will be a pain to set up, but it should still all work out okay. We've started trials for "bionic" arms and legs, with replacement liver testing within the next year. For the most part, we're paying other companies to do the testing for us. We're just too small to handle all of it ourselves. There are two new potentially revolutionary human-repair ideas that we came across that we're basically giving away for free. When we were going over the specs for our nerve interfaces (to connect electronics to human nerves), I asked Alpha if we could possibly use the technology to repair severed nerves. Theoretically we could use the tech to restore some functionality to quadriplegics and paraplegics by using two nerve interfaces wired together. While the human benefit could be huge, the product cost would be relatively small. I eventually decided it was one project too many for us right now, so I had Alpha submit a paper discussing the possibilities and let certain companies we were working with know that I would be willing to keep our patent fees low for this one. The other one came about because of Alpha's studies on how memories work in the brain. He came up with the description of a chemical that could theoretically reverse neuron degradation and misalignment, potentially repairing a few different mental disabilities, including some types of autism and Alzheimers. I really don't want AARD to get into the pharmaceutical business, so we patented the idea and are currently sorting through offers to pick out who will try to develop it. In January I finally gave in and bought us a company plane. Not a big one, just a 2-engine 16-seater. Had to liquidate a few investments to do it, but the company should start showing an independent profit within a year, so I should be able to pay myself back within a few years time. Ignoring the numbers from my harem/household, AARD has grown from 6 employees to 21, including a small team of independent researchers. We were taking pains to keep any of the researchers (3 men/2 women, 2/1 working on-site, 1/1 working from home) or other employees from finding out that (1) I was sleeping with most of the women working for AARD and (2) that we had a working A.I. running the business. Surprisingly enough, it really wasn't that hard. My women all knew not to gossip about their home life, and Alpha is good at keeping a low profile most of the time. The troubles really started in March, when Diana and I had to go to Las Vegas to be deposed for the upcoming civil suit. Given the troubles we had during our last visit, Alpha really wanted a full security force to travel with me. We ended going with Rei as our pilot, Beta as my assistant and Kara as added security. Alpha even insisted on getting me a bulletproof vest (though I insisted on getting one for everyone who wanted one ... admittedly Kara and Diana didn't want one, and Beta's would have to be customized to allow for her ... ahem ... attributes). The plan was to arrive on Tuesday afternoon, spend the night, give our statements on Wednesday morning and hopefully fly back Wednesday afternoon. The flight to Nevada was fine, though we didn't really have the extra room or privacy for any mile-high fun this trip -- made me think maybe I should have sprung for a larger plane. The 'fun' started after we landed and had taxied to a hanger. Parked next to our waiting limo was a black SUV with two guys smoking, watching our plane. "It looks like someone is waiting for us," Rei called out from the cockpit as she brought the plane to a stop. We all started crowding up to look, then quickly realized we wouldn't all fit. I took a look, realized I didn't recognize them, then asked Beta to take a look. Beta pulled out a pair of binoculars from somewhere behind the pilot's seat and focused in on them. "Those are members of the Scarlotti organized crime syndicate. I recognize them from my studies." "Your studies?" asked Diana. "Once we found out that the other lawyer, a Mr. Charlie Summers, had connections to low-level members of the mafia, I did some research into Las Vegas organized crime. There are still a lot of holes in my research, but that is Billy "Kneecap" Johnson in the brown coat and Frankie "Hairy" Tilson in the beige." "Huh," I said intelligently, trying to think. "We could just go flip their car over and tell them to beat it," offered Kara helpfully. "As satisfying as that might be, I don't think it would help matters," I said. "I really want to know why they're here, but I can't imagine it's for anything good. They look like big beefy guys, the kind you'd probably send to intimidate someone. And I'm not in the mood to be intimidated. But I'm also not in the mood to let them try." "Then we'll go out and deal with them," said Diana. "How about this," I said, getting out my phone. I'm going to conference call Detective Mills and Ms. Sloane. Now they have to be here for me, Diana or both of us, so Beta and Kara are going to go out to talk with them. You're going to record all of it and, actually let me do a four-person call. Rei, give me your phone. Okay, I'll have this one set to record video and audio and here ... we're dialed in and..." Basically I set one phone in Beta's breast pocket with the lens poking out, recording video. I hooked up an earpiece and mic to a second phone, physically cutting off the earbud receiver so that the mic still worked. The second phone was dialed in with me so we could hear everything. This would have all been so much easier if I didn't have to keep Beta's capabilities a secret ... for example, her ability to record and upload audio and video with just her eyes and ears. As Kara and Beta lowered the door/stairs, I was calling Detective Mills. Fortunately he was at his desk, so I had him wait a moment while I called Ms. Sloane. That took a minute to convince her secretary it was urgent. I gave the ladies a thumbs up and they exited the plane, as I spoke to my conference call. "Hello. We just landed and right next to our car waiting for us are two guys that Beta, umm ... Elizabeth Franks recognized as mafia goons of some sort. I don't remember their full names, but one was called Hairy and one was ... Kneecap. We're recording all of this on video and have an open phone line dialed into this call so we can hear what's going on." "Just a minute, Mr ____," said Detective Mills. "What are you doing? I can have some police over there in just a couple minutes." "Right now, Diana and I are staying in the plane. Beta and Karen are going over to talk with them. Trust me, Karen can handle them if they try anything, but I want to know why they're here, which I probably won't know if you send the police." "That's really not a good idea. I'd advise you all to stay inside your plane until we get some uniforms over there..." About this time, the audio started from Beta's phone. We had to be quiet to be able to hear it, though I could tell that Detective Mills was covering the receiver on his end and talking to someone else. Ms Sloane was quiet on her end, no doubt wondering what trouble her client was getting into. "Hello ladies," said Male voice number one. "Would that plane happen to belong to Mr. Frank _____?" "Why would you want to know that?" asked Kara. "No reason in particular," said male voice number two. "We just need to have a word with him." "He's unavailable at the moment, but we would be happy to pass along a message," said Beta. "Listen, sweetie, we really need to talk to him in person. We just talk to him a minute, then we're gone. Got it?" Male voice one again. By this time I was up next to Rei and Diana, who had appropriated the binoculars, watching from the cockpit. "As I said, I can pass along a message," repeated Beta. "Maybe we're not making ourselves clear," said voice one. "Either he comes out of the plane or we go in." "Are you threatening us?" asked Beta. "Now sweetie," started voice one, only to be interrupted by Beta. "Because I have to assume that you are. You very obviously flashed a gun at us. Even if it isn't drawn yet, that is very definitely a threatening gesture. Wouldn't you agree, Karen?" "Yes, I do, Beta. And they both have guns. He may not have flashed his at us, but you can easily see the bulge under his jacket there. Concealed weapons ... do you think they have permits to carry those?" A reasonably intelligent person would have realized at this point that something was off, or maybe even guessed that they were being recorded. Apparently these two did not qualify as reasonably intelligent. "Enough foolin' around," said voice two. I didn't get a good view of what happened next, but I saw the video later and got a description from Kara and Beta. Thug #2 stepped forward and tried to walk around Kara. Kara stepped in front of him. He put his hands on her shoulders to try and move her aside. Kara grabbed one hand, twisted hard and put him on the ground in an instant. Thug #1 saw this and tried to draw his gun. I say "tried" because Beta stepped up, grabbed his wrist while his hand was on the butt of the gun, twisted hard enough to force the guy around 180 degrees and shoved him up against his own car. Kara looked up just in time to see the spin and pin. I described what I saw of the action over the phone, reassuring everyone that the situation was under control. I stopped talking when Thug #1 started talking again. "Let go, Lady. Right now the message is just that Las Vegas isn't a safe place to be for your boss, but I'm thinkin' the warning can be passed along to you two real easy if you don't let go of us right now." I'm sure the two of them were trying to throw off the ladies by now, but seriously ... they might as well be trying to arm wrestle a full-grown gorilla. "Do you work for that lawyer ... what's his name?" Kara asked. "Charlie Summers. A very valid question," Beta agreed. "Do you work for him?" "I got no idea what you're talkin' about," said voice #2. "We just have a public duty to let certain individuals know that they ain't welcome in Las Vegas." "It would make sense," said Beta, continuing her thought, ignoring voice 2's comment. "Scaring Mr. ____ enough to keep him out of town would be the only way Summers could win his case." "So he hires you two bozos to try to scare him? You may be good at scaring small children and old ladies, but all you have going for you is your size and your guns, neither of which are doing you any good at the moment." Kara was obviously enjoying herself. "I'll show you how scary we are, you bitch!" yelled thug #2 under Kara, who then made a very vocal and useless effort to throw her off. "You're dead, you hear me? Dead!" About this time we heard a siren in the distance, coming closer. "Izzat the cops?" asked male voice #1. "Hey, maybe we're gonna sue you for attackin' us, huh? How'd you like that, bitches," said male voice #2. Kara laughed. "You idiots. Don't you realize that all this was recorded? Including video of you flashing your gun and grabbing me?" "You can't use that unless you got a warrant for it," protested #2. Beta replied, "Warrants are required for the police. We are private citizens who were recording video in a public location. We can offer it to the police who can freely use it at their discretion." There were some grunts and heaving sounds, but everyone was silent until an airport security car came into view. There were more sirens in the distance. "Are they there," asked Detective Mills over the phone. "Airport security just arrived," I replied. "Let me talk to them," he said. "Sure, just a minute." Once the security officers were out of their car, Beta addressed them. "Hello, officers. This is Billy 'Kneecap' Johnson and that is Frankie 'Hairy' Tilson, members of the Scarlotti organized crime family. They are both carrying concealed weapons in holsters under their arms. They admit they came to threaten our employer, Frank _____, and offered physical violence when we refused to let them approach his plane. We have the entire encounter recorded on video." "And I have Detective Mills of the Las Vegas police department on the phone right now. He'd like to speak to you," I called out from the steps of the plane, holding up my phone. As I walked over to the clearly on-edge security officers, I spoke briefly into the phone. "Ms Sloane, I think the excitement is over. I'll call you when all this is sorted out. Thank you." "Certainly, Mr _____. I'm glad none of your people were shot." Then I heard the click of her phone hanging up. "Here's one of the officers, Detective," I said, handing it over. The security guy said "Hello", then listened over the phone for about a minute. "Sure thing," he said, handing it back to me. Basically the security guys cuffed both men and relieved them of their firearms before Kara and Beta let them go. They were patted down and made to wait until the Las Vegas PD showed up a few minutes later. Then we waited another 20 minutes until a couple of unmarked police cars showed up. Detective Mills was there because I called him, even though he worked Robbery and Major Thefts. He introduced me to Detectives Charles and Silva, who worked Organized Crime. They took possession of Rei's phone with the video recording. Hairy and Kneecap -- who I'm told were paired together because someone in their organization loved the name combination -- were placed under arrest for carrying concealed unlicensed firearms which was also a violation of parole for Mr Kneecap. Any charge from the threatening statements would depend on what the D.A. decided. I apologized to Detective Mills for dumping this in his lap, but he understood that I needed someone I knew to call quickly. Then he and the other two detectives spent 5 minutes lecturing me on why I shouldn't challenge or piss off members of organized crime, why I should leave that to the police. Beta also had to explain how she was able to recognize them. She explained that she had researched Charlie Summers, the lawyer, and found out that he had connections with organized crime. She expanded her research into the current known members of organized criminal organizations in Las Vegas. She admitted (or lied) that she didn't know much about Hairy or Kneecap, but with her perfect recall, she easily recognized them. I also felt the need to explain that Karen and Diana are two of the most capable people I know when it comes to self defense. I kept Diana back because she might have been one of their targets, if they were planning something unpleasant. Beta has some self-defense martial arts training, but I was expecting Karen to take of any problems. The whole 'staying in the plane and sending the women out to fight my battles' thing was bothering me. Not a lot, but some. Anyway, I agreed to come by the police station so we could give our statements tomorrow after our depositions in the civil case. They also wanted a statement from our rented limo driver, who wisely stayed put in the limo and didn't get involved. I could tell he really wanted to be ignored. Eventually Hairy and Kneecap were taken away to be processed, the plane was parked and locked up and we drove off in the limo for the hotel. I made sure to give the driver a big tip. I called my lawyer, Ms Sloane, while we drove. She agreed with the detectives that I should have left it all up to them and was glad we were all okay. About the only thing we discussed about the civil case was that I shouldn't bring up the attempted intimidation. If she thought there was some advantage to discussing it with the other side, she would bring it up herself. We agreed to meet at her office at 9am before the depositions at 10. Before we left the next morning, Beta insisted on choosing our taxi randomly from the queue rather than taking the one next in line. I could tell her paranoia circuits would be set to high for this entire visit. The depositions were a little odd. I mean, I don't exactly have a lot of experience with them, but Mr Summers seemed mildly unprepared and slightly ruffled. Diana and I gave our information and swore that it was true. After the depositions, I took Beta aside and told her to go ahead and start working on the best complaint possible against the lawyer to attempt to get him disbarred. The likelihood of our success was minimal, but as long as we had a chance, we would file the complaint. We were close enough to walk to the police station, so we had time and I treated everyone to lunch at a nearby cafe (including the still very attractive Ms Sloane), then we went to the police station and spent another couple hours giving our statements there. The A.D.A. and Detectives Charles and Silva were all there. Basically the case against Hairy Tilson and Kneecap Johnson was probably strong enough for a conviction, but not a major one. The success of the firearms charge was practically 100%, but it wouldn't put them away for more than a month or two at best. Probation was likely for Tilson, but Kneecap was on probation for an assault conviction and would definitely go back to prison for a year or two. The threatening statements charge was likewise very minor. There was no evidence that they intended actual harm, just that they wanted me to stay out of town. (Now if they could successfully convict them for assault or witness intimidation or something, they would be sentenced to a minimum of ten years since they were using firearms.) The A.D.A. said that yes, they could prosecute for assaulting Karen and Beta and threatening me, but without more evidence of a conspiracy or serious threat of injury or death, it would be better to let that slide for now. They would pursue the investigation to try to find out who sent them after me. Off the record, they agreed that it was probably Charles Summers, the lawyer. Many of his frivolous cases were won because the people being sued agreed to settle out of court. There were rumors that Summers and his clients would split the take with the local mafia in exchange for the mafia chasing the targets out of town, but no positive connection or evidence had been found of this so far. They were going to try to find that connection in this case, but weren't especially hopeful. We flew back to Texas late that evening, after Beta and Rei spent almost an hour going over the plane checking for bombs or sabotage. The civil trial was set for August, so we had a few months before we needed to go back. But trouble followed us back to Texas just two weeks later in early April. One day while driving home from the office, Alpha contacted me and told me I was being followed. You should understand that most of my cars are smart cars, with GPS, bluetooth, and cameras front and rear. Alpha had altered the programming for them so that she had taken over all of the functions. A black SUV with Texas plates had left the parking lot across from AARD and followed me for the past 12 miles. The plate indicated the vehicle had been stolen a few days ago. Since they were just following me, she directed me to stay in highly populated areas on my way home and to maintain speed. When I asked why we didn't just call the police, she explained that this fit into a couple of the possible scenarios she had projected. If the Las Vegas mob wanted payback for the humiliation of their thugs or to show strength or for whatever reason, then they may send a hitman to kill me out of state. If this is what was happening right now, then having the hitman arrested for possession of a stolen vehicle would not stop the hit itself. This rattled me enough that I didn't argue. I drove home as Alpha directed. Elisa and Jasmine were at the gates, obviously ready in case of trouble, but the SUV with its heavily tinted windows drove past the house and rounded the corner. I went directly to the basement to discuss things with Alpha. She has cameras covering the house and surrounding streets and was focused on the SUV, now parked on a side street, facing the Eastern wall of our property. My first instinct was to move all non-super-powered residents to the basement and send the super-powered ones after the SUV. Alpha replied, "I believe this situation will require killing, so I would not recommend involving any of the others." "Killing? Seriously? Why can't the police handle this?" "Their record in matters like this makes it likely that they would not be able to prevent your death in the extended view. The solution requires the removal of the assassin and part or all of his organization's command structure." "You want to take on the Las Vegas mob?" "Well, you wanted to do so first. I fully support your stance that the mafia should not profit from crimes against you. I also fully support enlisting the local authorities to aid you in this. The difficulty in doing so successfully is that by its nature the mafia operates outside of the law and uses violence and the threat of violence to avoid successful prosecution. The law is slow to change and requires slow due process while the mafia can change and operate quickly when needed." "So you want to assassinate the hitman? I mean right now, we don't even know if that is a hitman out there. Could be a thief or a private eye or something." "I will wait to act until he or she acts. I estimate that will probably not happen until 2 or 3 am tomorrow morning. There is also a 43% chance that more than one person is in the vehicle." We discussed the matter for hours. I was innately uncomfortable with the idea of letting Alpha murder people, even if the victims would be killers themselves. But I also failed to see a good alternative. By my actions, I had set myself against the mob, not in a big way, but enough that I had been noticed. Alpha was right. The best way out was to destroy or at least cripple the mob, and do it in such a way that they didn't know who had done it. Midway through the discussions, Beta showed up with a couple bags of disposable phones, blonde wigs, gloves, ski masks, black jumpsuits and other miscellaneous junk all purchased with cash. I let it be known that I would be working all night in the basement and had Jasmine bring me down a sandwich and drink. She also offered me a blowjob or fuck to take my mind off of the situation, but I declined, saying that I didn't want any association between sex and death. "Just because I agree that this may be necessary doesn't make it right." The household was 'turned off' that evening at bedtime, except for myself, Beta, Jasmine and Elisa, who all donned their dark clothes and gloves. Well, technically Alphadroid Dorothy was active too, but she could not move quietly and would be staying in the basement with me as my bodyguard. Just after 2 am, I was watching the security video feeds, trying to stay awake. When the SUV started up and drove so it was alongside our property wall, I shot to full wakefulness. Two men got out, both through the driver-side door, since they were parked too close to the wall for the passenger-side doors to open. One climbed onto the hood of the SUV, then to the roof. The other pulled a ladder out of the back of the vehicle and handed it up to the first guy, who slung it over the wall and used it to climb down. His friend followed him and they both set out across our yard. We have motion-activated lights in the back yard, but Alpha had obviously disabled them for now. The cameras, all with low-light capabilities, had no problem following them. They both drew guns as they approached the back doors. One of them knelt down and unlocked it somehow, and they both entered. Now that they were inside, we had audio pickups too, and I could hear whispers but couldn't make out what was being said. They had each taken less than 10 steps inside when three dark shapes moved in behind them with super-human speed and dexterity. One dark shape grabbed the first man's head and twisted it around 180 degrees. The cracking noise and resulting throat rattle will stay with me for the rest of my life. The other two smaller shapes moved simultaneously on the second target. One of them slashed a hand across the second man's throat with enough force that it was completely crushed. The final attacker, perfectly coordinated with the timing of the others, grabbed the hand holding the gun and twisted it inward, rotating the gun so that the trigger finger pulled out of the trigger guard and pointing the gun towards the man. The first man died immediately. The second struggled for breath momentarily until the dark figures also twisted his head around, breaking his neck. "That was unpleasant, but well done," I told Alpha. Beta and Jasmine searched the pockets of the dead men while Elisa ran out the back. Jasmine followed a moment later with two sets of keys. "Can I come upstairs now?" I asked. "I would prefer that you wait until we check their vehicle. We will have it in our possession momentarily and need it for our purposes anyway." "What are you planning to do with it?" "I will use it to leave for Las Vegas tonight to finish our mission. We also may need it to locate the assassins' hotel room or local residence." "You're planning to drive to Vegas right away?" "When the assassins fail to report in, their masters will become suspicious, so we must act quickly. We may be able to duplicate their voices well enough to temporarily allay any suspicion, but that depends on how much information we can deduce about them from their possessions, and even if successful it will not help for long. I plan to leave immediately using Beta and Elisa. I will dispose of the bodies along the drive to Las Vegas and should be able to begin and hopefully complete operations tomorrow night. There are too many variables to be certain." "Huh. I didn't realize you were going to act so quickly." "Speed is essential. The only stops I will make are for gas and to empty their hotel rooms. I will require a disposable laptop, but that should be purchased in or near Las Vegas." "Okay, I trust your judgment so go ahead, but I would like more information." On the screens, Elisa was now driving the SUV around to the front gates, Jasmine was carrying the ladder to meet the car and Beta was carrying the bodies and guns to join them. All in all, it was about 5 minutes since the SUV moved next to the wall, about a minute since the men died. When an A.I. supercomputer is in control, things move quickly. The bodies and ladder were loaded into the back of the SUV by the time I got there. I didn't have anything essential to do, I just wanted to see their faces for myself. They weren't even vaguely familiar to me. I had never seen them before. It just seemed so strange that these two men I had never met had wanted me dead. I waved them on and Jasmine and I went back into the house. Jasmine said, "Until this is all resolved, either I or Dorothy will accompany you at all times." "We might need you to pass for Elisa. Y'know, give her an alibi just in case." "That should be possible. We look very similar and dress differently, so I should only have to change my dress and voice." "Can you change your voice?" "Slightly. Enough to pass for Elisa." "We can do Beta through video conferences, I suppose." I paused for a moment, both in comment and step, and looked back at the front gate as it closed. "They'll be okay ... I mean ... what are the chances that they won't come back?" "The chances of a complete failure are minimal. At the very least, the mafia is unlikely to have readily accessible weapons capable of hurting Beta. Update: Elisa just found explosives in the captured vehicle. It appears to be an unactivated car bomb. My conclusion is that they watched you for longer than a day and noted that you don't drive the same car day-to-day, therefore a car bomb would not have a good likelihood of success. This concerns me because it may mean that I failed to notice them when they first started following you. More information is required." "Don't worry too much about it. Oh, be sure to delete all of the security footage of tonight's action and replace it with standard fare. Is it all right for me to sleep in my room for the rest of the night?" "Deletion and replacement is underway. Your room should be fine. After I make sure the house is clean, I will rest with you and wake you up if you need to move." Before I got to sleep, Jasmine/Alpha had one more update for me. Their hotel room (only one) had been emptied of personal belongings, and return airplane tickets to Las Vegas had been found dated for two days from now. By the time I woke up in the morning, Beta and Elisa had disposed of the stripped bodies in an area rich in scavenging wildlife. A nonstop drive from DFW to Las Vegas takes about 18 to 20 hours, but they were making good time and should arrive in about another 8 or 9 hours (17-18 hrs total). They had alternated driving between the two bodies so that they could each rest and charge up their internal batteries with a car adapter. Meanwhile Alpha was constantly updating her plans and list of targets. I wanted to know if the lawyer was on the list, but was afraid to ask. When I finally emerged from my room mid-morning, I looked appropriately bleary-eyed from a late night's work. I explained that we thought we might have had a breakthrough in creating artificial kidneys (which was truthfully an actual project, just one on the back- burner). After I had a cold, late-morning breakfast, I took another plate of food to the basement, saying it was for Beta. I tried to work for a few hours, failed and ended up playing the new Hitman game, until I realized I was taking it way too seriously and stopped. I went back to sleep that afternoon, waking up early evening. The updated news was that Beta had received a call on a disposable cell found on one of the men from a pay phone. Using one of her newly acquired disposable cells, she connected to Alpha, who was able to play a synthesized version of one of the men's voices (taken from our security feeds the previous night), complaining about the "piece of shit phone" and said that I had hosted a party the previous night so they had to postpone. They'd take care of me tonight if all went well. Given the bad connection (cell phone to cell phone), Alpha believed the ruse was successful. By 9pm, Elisa obtained a laptop with a good wireless receiver (for cash) and loaded a set of specialized software from Alpha. The laptop was left out of sight within reach of a public free wireless host with a strong signal. The software on the laptop immediately started seeking out unprotected or poorly protected systems to use for additional support software. Alpha ran all of tonight's hacking through that laptop so that it could not be traced back to us. Basically she would use the laptop to hack as much surveillance as possible to keep Beta and Elisa hidden. For example, Elisa's visit to that small electronics store to buy the laptop? Hacked and digitally erased. The problem with overt hacking like this is that it is not possible to completely hide the access. An expert could eventually backtrack the source, and we were about to raise enough of a stink that expert attention was likely. Using Alpha's hacking protocols and using the laptop as the source filter, the trail ends with it (as long as the laptop itself is erased or destroyed afterwards). Beta and Elisa also had the basic equipment purchased with cash before leaving Texas (black clothes, black ski mask, black fanny pack, black gloves, generic non-black clothes, cheap blond wigs, matches, hairspray, disposable cell phones and a couple other possibly useful items) and the hitmen's equipment, which included a disposable cell each, a 9mm pistol with silencer and spare clip each and a small bomb with electronic wiring. Given the 24 hour nature of the casino business and the strong organized crime presence in the casino business, it was not possible for Beta and Elisa to take out the entire command structure of the Scarlotti mob, but Alpha had developed a list of 14 targets to hit in one night to cripple them, starting with the head of the family, Caesar Scarlotti. Caesar had a house vaguely similar to mine. It was roughly the same size and had a surrounding stone wall with cameras like mine. Unlike mine, his was in a neighborhood and lacked an AI protecting his electronic security. So when two dark-clad figures wearing gloves and ski masks (but with a bit of blond wigs sticking out) jumped over his stone wall, his security cameras failed to detect anything. His motion-sensor backyard lighting was independent of the main system, so they did turn on. This attracted the attention of his three night-time security goons, but by the time they arrived, there was nothing to be seen and they wrote it off to wildlife. While Elisa entered the main house via a second-story window, Beta cut the phone and internet lines, then hunted down the security guards, snapping their necks from the shadows quickly and quietly. The blueprints Alpha had accessed online did not match up to the actual house very well. Either changes had been made or the plans filed with the city had been falsified from the start. Elisa started going through the house room by room. Six people were sleeping there that night, including Caesar, his wife, his three children (including a baby) and a cousin from out of town. Only two lived to see the morning. Alpha said she would have spared all of the children (ages 16, 7 and 18 months from two different marriages), but the 16-year-old woke up when his door was opened. Caesar, his 22-year-old bride, his cousin from New Jersey, his 16-year-old son and his three security goons all died from either gunshots to the head or broken necks. Elisa and Beta left with four extra guns and $10,000 cash found in Caesar's bedside table. All of this took less than 20 minutes. The body count was now up to seven, or nine if you include the hitmen in Texas. Next was a neighborhood with 7 different mafia households in close proximity. Elisa and Beta split up to do their killing more quickly. The first four houses went smoothly with a total of 12 kills. Elisa's third house went smoothly (2 kills) but Beta's did not. Beta's third house belonged to Mr. Calvin Spinocci, a widower living alone. Sixty-two year old Mr Spinocci apparently didn't sleep soundly or even much at all anymore, so when Beta quietly opened his bedroom window, he heard it. He also slept with a gun under his pillow. Beta, for all her super-human powers, still had mostly human eyes that had to adjust from the streetlights to the dark bedroom, so she didn't see the .45 automatic pointed at her until it was too late. She took one shot in the stomach and a second in her right tit as she fell backward. The bullets failed to penetrate her skin, but the unexpected impacts knocked her off her perch outside the window. Her reflexes took over as she fell and she landed with only minor external damage. The gunshots themselves created only nasty bruising, but the kinetic impact from the fall dislodged one of her internal controller connections and her left arm went dead. Her right arm still held onto a gun, which she pointed at the window anticipating Mr Spinocci's appearance. He did indeed rush to that window to make sure of his handiwork and took a bullet to his brain as a result. But the damage was done. The schedule could not be maintained with Beta at a reduced capacity and there was no safe way to repair the damage in Las Vegas. Heck, if she used a normal hard drive with a spinning disk, there would have been a good chance her body would have been completely disabled, so I was thankful for the solid state memory we used in her construction. The other big problem was that Mr Spinocci didn't have a silencer on his gun, meaning the neighborhood was waking up. Beta was out of sight before anyone made it to a window to see her, but Alpha couldn't stop the phone calls, not with her limited access via a single laptop chokepoint. Still there was only one nearby house left on the list. While Beta made her way back to their SUV, Elisa approached the house as quickly as possible. It was two streets over and 5 houses down from Mr Spinocci, so Alpha calculated there was an excellent chance no one had heard the shots from that distance, as long as no one had been awake at the time. Elisa jumped to the second story window of what was likely to be the master bedroom and looked inside. The good news was, yes it was indeed the master bedroom. The bad news was that the household was awake. Mr Harold Mott was in bed on the phone talking to someone, though he had obviously just woken up. His wife was sitting up in bed holding a crying baby while a 3 year old girl stood in the doorway. The sudden shadow against the streetlights drew everyone's attention to the window and the dark figure with a gun somehow clinging to the side of the building. With inhumanly perfect aim through the window, Elisa shot Mr Harold Mott twice in the head, followed by his wife as she tried to dive for cover. The baby wailed as it fell to the floor and the 3 year old bolted from the room. Without entering the house, Elisa put two more bullets into Harold Motts torso, then left the house and hurried to meet Beta at their vehicle. Seventeen kills in this neighborhood. Eight of fourteen targets had been hit. A total of 26 people had been killed so far, including the two hitmen who came after me in Texas. There were sirens incoming as Elisa drove the SUV out of the neighborhood. With Beta operating at a reduced capacity and the alert raised, the odds of completing the remaining 6 targets had fallen significantly. Alpha recalculated the priorities of the remaining targets and settled on three that needed to be completed tonight One huge advantage Elisa and Beta had over the rest of the world, even above their physical abilities, was the ability to communicate and coordinate silently and with complete and accurate comprehension. As long as they were in a normal metro area, they would also have remote access to the main Alpha system herself. (The disposable phones were only needed for communications outside metropolitan areas.) There was no verbal conversation as these points were ticked off and the decision reached. Frank must be protected at all costs, which meant these people must die tonight. Beta taped the car bomb to her torso. If she was disabled enough to risk being captured or identified, she would destroy her body and all evidence which could lead back to Frank. (True, if that happened a replacement body would be built, but the mindset is still painful for me to consider.) The next two targets were in the same apartment building, but that building was 9 miles away from the last neighborhood. To a human, those 9 miles would have seemed like an infinite distance given the large number of sirens in the night. Elisa simply drove and Beta used duct tape to strap both her useless arm and the bomb to her body. They arrived safely and parked a quarter of a mile away. The other problem they had to deal with was the lack of ammunition. The two guns with silencers were both 9mm. They had been able to get additional ammunition for them at Caesar Scarlotti's house from the thug's sidearms, but at this point they had only 9 rounds left, since none of the other targets had readily available 9mm guns to further resupply the clips. They had a few more powerful 45 automatics, also from Mr Scarlotti's house, with 4 clips worth of ammunition, but no silencers for them. Beta took 8 rounds of 9mm ammunition for her gun, leaving one round for Elisa, who would try to deal with further targets unarmed. For the apartment building, the 45's were left in the car. For once luck was with them. Alpha was working hard to remotely sever or delay all alarms from the apartment building and turn off the security monitoring systems. She had no resources to devote to actually watching the cameras she was remotely disabling or she would have been able to inform Elisa and Beta that the two targets at this location were leaving the building as they arrived. The two men, one Tony Romero and one Martin Tims, were obviously together. One was talking on a cell phone while the other dug through his pockets looking for his keys. Both had just left the brightly lit interior of the apartment building for the dimly lit parking lot, so neither had even a prayer of noticing two black-clad figures moving silently through the shadows towards them. They reached their vehicle -- for once it was a red pick-up truck, not a black SUV -- and split to enter doors on either side. Tony had his keys out and never noticed the slim strong hands come from behind. Those arms didn't have the inhuman strength that Beta had, but they were as strong as any Marine and had the element of surprise as they twisted his head in a quick motion until his neck snapped. At the same time, Martin was opening his door. He actually noticed the dark arms reaching out of the shadows. Unfortunately he was looking across the truck cab and had noticed the arms attacking his friend, not the one pointing a silenced 9mm at his own skull. They both fell to the ground at the same time. Unfortunately Martin was the one holding the cell phone and, without a second functional arm for Beta, the potentially important information being relayed over the phone was lost as it shattered to pieces hitting the ground. On the plus side, both men were carrying 9mm pistols in their shoulder holsters, with one spare clip each in their pockets. They were the cleanest hits of the night, with no spouses or collateral damage. The body count was up to 28, with one high priority target left to go for the night. Unfortunately the last target was at a casino. While most members of the mafia working at various casinos were safe tonight, one powerful lieutenant was on the must-kill list and he lived at a casino/hotel. The security at Vegas casinos is legendary. They make movies about how impenetrable it is ... how there are cameras and guards everywhere ... but, and this is a big BUT, the security is primarily focused in the gambling areas and on the money. The hotel/residential areas, while still fairly secure, are nowhere near as well protected. This particular hotel/casino was 20 stories tall. While this particular mafia lieutenant was important, he was not important enough to rate the penthouse. (There was way too much money to be made by renting that out to high-rollers to waste it.) Terry Brisco lived instead in a 6th floor suite, where he had a spectacular view of the Las Vegas strip. The view was potentially the most dangerous part of this target. If they had the gun available, Alpha might have risked a sniper shot instead of a home invasion, even knowing that there was at least a 73% chance that the glass in his windows might be bulletproof. Using the car bomb was another good possibility, but it was too iffy, too likely that Brisco wouldn't be in the car when it exploded or that the explosive might be found. Brisco was the last person on Alpha's list who was likely to be able to pull the Scarlotti mob back together to face down the rivals who would undoubtedly move in to take advantage of their troubles. He was also the only known person left who probably had the authority to order another hit on Frank. So there was no question: he had to die, and die tonight. One advantage we had was that just before the assault began, Alpha's laptop plus whatever other systems it had been able to infect in the past few hours would begin a non-stop and completely blatant assault on the casino's systems - security, power and communications. If their computer techs were good, the effectiveness of the assault could be blunted in as little as 10 minutes, though a more likely timeframe was 45 min to 2 hrs. The electronic assault would no doubt tip off the security that something was happening and maybe even lead them to call in the police, but it should prevent any video record of Beta and Elisa. A general layout of rooms was available publicly, which did not include secure areas. We had no way of knowing if Brisco would be in his suite, in the casino's 'central command' area or out on the floor. Alpha estimated a 24% chance of him being in his suite, a 69% chance of being in the central command area, a 5% chance of being on the casino floor somewhere and 2% chance of being out of the building. His suite was the first target because it would be the simplest to access. The command center was the second target, though we would not know the exact location and layout of the center until the hacking began. At 3:42 am, Beta and Elisa approached a side door marked "Employees Only" and the hacking assault began. The door required a keycard to access it, but when the power goes out, the door lock releases to serve as an emergency exit as required by fire and safety regulations. The main power for the casino was, of course, the first target of the hack. The door released and two black-clad figures entered quietly, almost at a run. Emergency power immediately kicked in, but those generators could only support essential systems in the casino, not general lights or the casino floor. Emergency battery-powered lights kicked on all over the building, about the same time a few screams of panic and surprise were heard. As expected, online communications was considered an essential system, so the electronic assault continued. Beta and Elisa, with their silenced 9mm handguns out and ready, ran quickly upstairs, breathing easily. The only person they passed on their way up was a bellboy of some sort going downstairs. He was almost able to cry out in surprise before the bullet hit his face, traveling up one flared nostril directly to his brain. This particular clip held hollow points or something similar, which shredded his brain with shrapnel. Death was instantaneous. On the sixth floor, they heard a few doors opening, but only a few. Most occupants would sleep through the power outage without noticing anything was amiss. Only one woman and one man, likely a prostitute and her john for the hour, looked out into the hallway while Beta and Elisa passed. The woman died almost as quickly as the bellboy had. The man required two shots, since he moved back quickly enough to avoid a fatal first shot. There was no guard outside Terry Brisco's suite, but Beta still forced the door open without pause and they entered the apartments. Leaving the lights off, it still took less than a minute of visual searching to determine the rooms were empty, but they both paused in different areas of the apartment for a full 30 seconds, listening intently for breathing which might indicate someone was hiding. Nothing. By this time, Alpha had procured an uncensored blueprint for the building and found the central command on the third floor. Once located, she spared some resources to check the video feed from that room and confirmed that Mr Brisco was there, yelling at other people nearby. By the time this was confirmed, Beta and Elisa had already left the suites and were in the stairwell again. The command center was near the center of the building, directly above the main casino areas, most of which had vaulted ceilings reaching up through the second floor. It was accessible through a small elevator on the Casino floor or through two sets of doors on the third floor itself. Each of these entrances was always guarded and the doors were reinforced steel with a wood panel overlay. Upon reaching the third floor, Beta and Elisa split up so that they could deal with the door guards simultaneously. The plan was to kill each guard, then move to a small ventilation duct. The duct was much too small for any normal adult human to move through, which however did not include Elisa who could theoretically wriggle her way through. There was an air filter set up between the outer access and the vents to the command center, but it was easily within reach of Beta, who would be able to tear it loose even using only a single arm. The plan went wrong before they reached the guards though. A couple hotel patrons, two men in robes and underwear who had exited the same room (probably homosexual lovers), saw Elisa round a corner. They were too far away for the accuracy needed for immediate killshots, so they were both able to cry out in pain for a good 2 seconds before Elisa was able to close and silence them. The guards heard the cries and immediately acted to inform the command center before running off. In a stroke of luck for us, the casino had moved away from walkie-talkie style communicators in favor of less obtrusive ear buds/mics attached to belt transmitters. Unfortunately for the casino, the receiver for those transmitters was computer controlled and had been shut down by Alpha's hacking. Which meant that as Elisa and Beta rounded their final corners to confront the guards, they had opened the doors to manually inform the command center of the trouble. The guard targeted by Beta was positioned so that he saw her round the corner. As a well-trained guard, he immediately yelled "Incoming", slammed the door closed and drew his sidearm. He wasn't fast enough to shoot her first, but the door had resealed itself. Again Beta shot her target in the face, this time to avoid his body armor. A second shot was required to finish him off. The guard targeted by Elisa was positioned so that he was facing away from her as she rounded the corner. He heard the cry of the first guard and the muffled shots marking his co-worker's death and thus that direction was the focus of his attention. His pistol was out of its holster when Elisa shot him in the back of his head, but his door was still open, and she kicked his body as it fell so that it prevented the door from closing behind her. Elisa quickly moved inside, drawing immediate aim on the two guards inside, both of whom had their sidearms out. Their attention had been on the slammed door, so she was able to kill one before he turned to see her. The other was positioned partially behind some electronic equipment and she did not have a clear line of fire. Beta was already running for the second access door while Elisa engaged in a firefight inside. Elisa had some protection from gunshots and other damage, but not nearly as much as Beta did. Her bones would not break and her skin was tough enough to stop low caliber shots, but a solid hit from the guard's .45 had an excellent chance of damaging her. Elisa was able to graze the other guard's leg before she had to take cover. She found herself close to a cowering computer tech, who she perfunctorily shot dead, then traded out clips. "Who sent you?" a voice cried out, presumably the voice of Mr Brisco. "Maybe we can make a deal." Zeroing in the voice, Elisa risked popping up from behind her cover, a small bookcase full of technical binders, to take a shot at Brisco. The necessary quickness of the shot only let her hit his shoulder before a couple bullets from the remaining guard forced her back down. "Oh god, that hurts. Don't just hide there, kill the bitch." Elisa made her way to the end of the small bookcase and peered out at ground level. She noted three pairs of crouching feet. She shot two of the feet and was rewarded with cries of pain, followed by two heads crashing to ground level grimacing in pain. The third pair disappeared before she could target them. She put the two who fell to the ground out of their misery, but neither of them were Mr Brisco or the other guard. "Jesus, she's killing everyone. Where the hell is the rest of security? Johnnie, get em in here!" "The only lines that have power are up there on the south console, Mr Brisco. I'd be dead before I got within a foot. You saw how she..." Johnnie died at that point, his voice providing a target for Elisa to crawl to. She found a second tech, a young woman, also within view from her new position and killed her just as quickly. About this time, Beta entered the room and the field of fire. She quickly zeroed in on the remaining guard and sent a couple bullets his way. However the guard was hyper-aware of the threats in the area and was moving away from her as soon as she entered the door. He returned fire wildly as he moved to new cover. Then he made his fatal mistake. He had only 2 rounds left in his gun, so he ejected the clip and inserted a new one. Changing out a clip can take as little as a second, but that is under ideal circumstances. Realistically, ejecting a clip, getting a new one from your belt or pocket, inserting the new one and chambering a round takes at least 4-5 seconds. The sound of the clip ejection was heard by Elisa and Beta, who both immediately converged on him with speed that would put snakes to shame. After reloading his piece, he looked up just in time to see Beta's gun as the bullet left the barrel and buried itself in his forehead. Elisa immediately turned from the guard to Terry Brisco, who continued to try to bargain his way out. She put two shots into his head, one through the right eye, one through the forehead. She and Beta then proceeded to kill the remaining five witnesses in the room. Before leaving Beta and Elisa paused in the commander center, silently listening for any breathing or movement. They discovered one tech was still slightly alive, despite having been shot in the head, and finished him off. They then quickly reloaded their clips with all their remaining ammunition and left, taking the most direct route which avoided all likely major congregations of civilians. The guard's gunshots had drawn attention and a lot of security officers were heading upstairs with guns drawn. But even if a couple dozen were heading to the command and control area, they would likely be spread out, approaching from many different directions at once so that only one or two would be likely to encounter any fleeing suspects. Under normal circumstances, that would probably work, as everyone would converge on any suspects in time to trap them. They encountered guards only once during their exit. Moving down an empty hallway, they heard someone around the corner tell someone else to stay in their rooms. Beta and Elisa paused long enough to listen for doors to close, then rounded the corner. Two security officers, one male, one female, were moving quietly down the hallway, guns drawn but pointed down. Here's a dirty little secret about my cyborgs. Human reflexes are faster. The problem is that a cyborg's reaction time -- the time to intake a new set of data, process it, send out a response and convert that response from electronic to nerve impulses -- is slower than a human when that human is primed, ready and waiting. My cyborgs still usually win out because of three other factors: They are physically superior when it comes to speed, strength, agility and accuracy. Their senses are enhanced for better eyesight, hearing and smell. And though often overlooked, their computer brains mean that they can always function at the peak of their abilities. In a situation like this, where both sides had ready firearms and the pure humans were primed with adrenaline, the humans shot first. But not accurately enough. The female security officer died instantly from a perfect shot to the forehead after loosing only a single shot herself. The male officer had the reflexes to jerk himself to the side as Beta shot him. The bullet creased his skull, and he continued to fire wildly as he fell, getting off three shots before Beta was able to put him down permanently. One of his shots struck Elisa's left leg, penetrating an inch into the muscle before stopping. Elisa quickly tore off a strip of cloth, wrapped it over the bleeding wound and tied her belt around the makeshift bandage. Beta pulled out a pack of matches and a small can of flammable hairspray from her fanny pack and set about burning the blood and DNA evidence which had been spilled by her fellow cyborg. Alpha remotely worked furiously to disable the fire alarm. The smoke and heat sensors came under her control. True, once the flames and heat actually reached the sprinkler heads that dotted the ceiling, the water would flow and alarms sound, regardless of what Alpha might do, but by that time the fire should have destroyed and consumed all blood evidence. The shots had drawn the attention of other guards, but fortunately none were close enough to cut them off, given the speed and sureness of Elisa and Beta's actions. They arrived only in time to see two fleeing black-clad figures far down the hallway, and the sight was brief, cut off when they had to duck back for cover against the surprisingly accurate pistol shots sent back their way. They couldn't even call in the description (such as it was) because their communications were out. Plus, they suddenly had a small fire to deal with. For a human to run all out with a bullet in her leg would cause excruciating and debilitating pain. As a cyborg, Elisa noted the pain response and how her running was likely causing additional damage to the punctured muscles, but it was only a minor consideration. She compensated for the decrease in efficiency in her left leg and ran on. She and Elisa ran down the stairs with a dancer's grace. When they exited the casino by the side of the building, they noted that two police cars, lights flashing, had parked in front of the main casino entrance and heard sirens of additional cars closing in on the location. Vegas is known for its bright lights, keeping the main strip lit up like daytime at all hours of the night. But the lights weren't everywhere, and they ran quickly from one shadow to the next, hiding when it seemed appropriate, moving with superhuman speed when unobserved. Alpha noted most security cameras and guided them around the recorded views. To simply disable the cameras would later provide a path for the investigators to follow. Far better to duck, weave and jump fences to avoid the electronic eyes. Eventually they circled around far enough to reach their SUV. Removing their ski masks and wigs, they calmly drove out of town. About 9am, they stopped at a small town drugstore, where Beta used a little of Scarlotti's cash to purchase a few bandages and cleaning products, which she and Elisa applied to Elisa's leg wound, after Elisa had dug out the bullet. The laptop, which had been plugged into a "borrowed" power outlet next to a coffee shop with free wi-fi access, started running a shredder delete program. Once that was completed, it loaded a small program into RAM and spun the hard drive in ways that would have surprised the manufacturers. The disk and everything it had contained melted into virtual slag. We almost needn't have bothered. The laptop was found by a vagrant, sold, found to have a dead hard drive and resold for refurbishment ... all well before the police tracked it down. Again they took turns driving back to Texas, stopping only for gas, food and one other time. They specifically detoured to a little used desert highway, stripped off their clothes, took off their gloves for the first time in over a day and burned it all. Elisa even disassembled their guns and tossed them on the fire, leaving out only the bullets, bomb (both for safety reasons) and the silencers (which were too useful and difficult to obtain to discard). They redressed in cheap, generic outfits (with new gloves to keep their fingerprints off the SUV) and drove home, continuing to alternate the driving duties so their bodies could rest. Jasmine drove a car out to meet them 120 miles outside the DFW metroplex. They doused the SUV in gasoline, especially the interior, and set it ablaze, destroying all final vestiges of evidence which could tie them to the killings. The casino bodycount had been 21, all just to get one man. The total for one nights work? Forty-seven human beings killed. Forty- nine if you include the two hitmen in Texas. Back at home, I had been slowly going nuts. During the day leading up to the Vegas assaults, I got a little rest while Alpha and Jasmine were creating some alibis for Beta and Elisa, just in case. A completely accurate simulation of Beta videoconferenced with people in her office more than once. With Alphadroid Dorothy standing watch over me, Jasmine, dressed as Elisa and speaking with her voice, spent a couple hours at work. Then she redressed as herself, returned to her normal speaking voice and spent another couple hours at work. That night, due to the narrow laptop-funneled bandwidth, the only relevant updates I could receive were occasional notes from Alpha about how this target was dead or how 4 people were killed at this location. When Alpha reported that Beta had lost the use of one of her arms, Alpha had to talk me out of aborting the rest of the project. I like to think of myself as cool and in control, but I cared deeply for my women, cyborgs or not. I didn't want them damaged or hurt, especially not so far from home and myself where they couldn't be easily cared for and fixed. Or maybe that's possessiveness? Or a caring possessiveness? Possessive caring? Eventually Alpha picked up a news report feed from Vegas about a possible mob war, and I sat glued to the screen while reporters fumbled with rumors and scraps of information. The news was slowly picked up by other syndicates and eventually reached the hit national networks -- CNN, FoxNews, ABC, NBC and CBS. By sunrise, it was the top national news story. They were calling it Mob War in Vegas and the Vegas Slaughter and the Night of Blood and half a dozen other names. Estimates of the number of dead ranged from 30 to over a hundred. Organized crime experts filled the morning news shows, declaring that it was either virtually impossible for the Scarlotti family to recover from this or warning that mob families had a way of pulling through and we had not heard the last of the Scarlottis. By 8am I was breathing a sigh of relief that Beta and Elisa had escaped the city, injured but functional. I let Jasmine herd me upstairs, where we met up with Kara, who was dressed for work. "He stayed up all night working on his new project," Jasmine complained. "He needs to rest." "I got him," replied Kara, picking me up bodily. "Thank you. Sounds like you can use some rest too." "Yes, but one of us needs to sleep in the basement so we can make hourly checks on the kidney tests, so I'll be downstairs." After I used the 'replacement kidney' excuse earlier, Alpha kicked the project up to full development and testing, even while the mess in Vegas was going on. It may take two or three months until it was ready for the level of testing we were describing, but it was well underway. "Sometimes you work too hard," Kara said as she carried me up to my bedroom. At least I had enough presence of mind not to complain about what was really bothering me. "It's just ... I think we may have finally solved the waste filter problem for the kidney." "Well, you've been holed up in that basement lab for over a day now. You need to rest but first," she sniffed me, "you need a bath." We reached the top of the stairs and Kara called out, "Hey, Anna! You got a few minutes?" I turned to look, seeing Anna Marie, aka Rogue, coming down from the third floor, fully dressed for work. "Sure, what's wrong?" "Frank here has finally left the basement. He needs a bath and to be put to bed. Wanna help?" "Sure, let me call the office and tell them we'll be a couple hours late this morning." She pulled out her phone and followed Kara to my bedroom. While she talked on the phone, Kara filled the bath. After she got off the phone, she joined Kara in stripping me naked, then they each followed suit themselves, being careful not to wrinkle their clothes, until none of us were wearing a stitch of clothing. She even remembered to pull out my earbud and put it in the charger. Then a very naked Anna carried me into the bathroom, where a very naked Kara ran a warm shower. Apparently I was too smelly to stick directly in the bath. They showered me off with minimal sexual stimulation. Anna lay down in the bathtub, which you may recall is the size of a small jacuzzi. Kara laid me down on top of her, my head resting between Anna's bare breasts. Kara slipped into the tub next to us. I lay back and relaxed, just soaking in the sensations as the two ladies ran soapy washcloths over my body with a tension melting massage. Well, not tension in every part of my body. Despite my tired state, tension in my groin increased with their attentions. But they completely ignored my rising erection, as if by mutual silent agreement. When my limbs and the front of my torso were clean, Anna leaned me forward into Kara's arms. While Anna washed my back, Kara grabbed some shampoo and started massaging it into my scalp. While this felt very relaxing and intimate and wonderful, my poor cock was poking down between my legs, feeling very lonely and ignored. After a couple minutes of this, Kara told me to "Close your eyes." I did so and felt them scoop water onto my head, washing the shampoo out. Their fingers scratched my scalp lightly, making sure my hair was rinsed all the way down to the scalp. While I didn't ask for conditioner, I'm not opposed to it either and the entire procedure was repeated with conditioner, this time with two sets of fingers giving me the hair treatment. When I was finally rinsed off, I was leaned back onto Anna's ample chest and they finally addressed my now rigid cock. Anna reached around and started gently stroking me while Kara caressed my balls. This lasted less than a minute before Kara bent over and started licking mini-Frank. To begin with, they worked together, with Kara sucking and licking the head and Anna stroking the shaft. At some point they decided to move forward and Kara started swallowing my penis to the root, varying between pumping her face up and down on my shaft and holding me in her throat, massaging it with a swallowing action. While she did this, Anna bent her head down to kiss me deeply while her fingers played with my nipples. I don't really think of my nipples as a major erogenous zone, but apparently they were today. I only lasted a few minutes under their concerted efforts before I erupted directly into Kara's throat. She swallowed it all, probably without actually tasting a drop. And sad to say, that one orgasm was my off switch that morning. Even with Alpha's nano-youth treatments, I couldn't pull all nighters any more ... or at least not ones as stressful as last night. I didn't actually go to sleep right away, but I sagged close to unconsciousness (with a smile on my face, according to the ladies). They pulled me up, dried me and themselves off and put me to bed. I didn't wake up until almost dinnertime. When I finally got up and dressed, I made a mental note to myself to thank Kara and Anna with some special attention sometime soon. Before dinner, I spent an hour in the basement going over the details of Beta and Elisa's bloody romp through the Vegas underworld. I was very unhappy with how many civilians were killed and made it very clear to Alpha that if anything like this was ever authorized again, she was going to have to plan much better and keep the death count under control. From Beta and Elisa's own observations and news reports, 13 people died who shouldn't have -- that's assuming I agreed that killing spouses was allowable, which was an iffy point for me; I had only minor objections to the deaths of the casino techs and security, since they were knowingly working for the mob. From the news reports, a few eyewitnesses had gotten fleeting glimpses of "ninja-like women with blonde hair and guns" and that was it. No fingerprints or blood evidence had been recovered yet according to an anonymous source in the police department, though they publicly stated that they believed at least 2 of the attackers had been injured. Estimates for the number of attackers ranged from 2 to 20, though none of the very few living eyewitness had reported seeing more than 1 or 2 at a time. The police refused to confirm that the attacks had been supported by computer hackers, but the media had numerous sources claiming that this was so. Although it seemed outlandish, the combination of all-black outfits, descriptions of the speed and agility of the attackers and the computer-savvy attack support had led some people to believe that the Yakuza or some oriental outfit had declared war on the Las Vegas mafia. That part actually made me laugh out loud. I was mildly disappointed that Alpha's plan hadn't been completed as initially laid out. Three of the initial targets had been abandoned after Beta's injury -- one low-level lieutenant, one old-school but well respected thug and one accountant. Rumor was that all three were in hiding, along with most of the rest of the Scarlotti gang. Although that was mildly disappointing (mostly because Alpha had failed to complete the entire plan), I was much more pleased that Beta and Elisa would soon be home so they could be repaired and safe. I joined most of the household for dinner and received much teasing for my late night and day-long nap. Not long after dinner, Jasmine disappeared quietly from the basement, driving out to meet the incoming deadly duo. The plan was for me to spend some time with the other women this evening, then when they were all ready for bed, turn them off and bring in Beta and Elisa for nano-healing and possible surgery (depending on how much repair Beta's arm needed). While we were cleaning up after dinner, Jane asked me, "So Frank, given that you slept all day, what are your plans for tonight?" "I don't plan to stay up all night again, if that's what you mean. Specifically, I don't have be downstairs for the next..." I looked at my watch for effect. "Four hours and twenty minutes. Why? Do we have an activity planned for tonight?" Rei was the one who answered. "Frank, since tonight is my evening with you on the schedule, I asked Jane if she would sketch a portrait of the two of us. We can take a picture, but I have found that Jane's drawings can be more emotionally evocative." And yes, Rei said that in an almost emotionless, inflectionless voice. I always got the feeling that while Rei enjoyed, appreciated and sometimes even treasured emotions, she rarely indulged in them herself. "Uh, sure. Can Jane finish a portrait in one sitting?" "Sure," Jane responded. "I mean, not if I'm doing a painting ... well, not a professional-style portrait painting. Regardless Rei just asked for a sketch." "Okay. Just give me a couple minutes to go change," I said, finishing my share of the dishes. "What do you want me to wear?" "Nothing," Rei said. "Huh," I said intelligently. Jane explained, "She wants a nude portrait of the two of you holding each other." "You're kidding." "Why would I dissemble about that?" Rei asked. "It's ... it's not really a ... uhhh ... a socially acceptable..." "Nude drawings and paintings are often considered high art," Rei countered as my objections sputtered out bit by bit. "Come on," urged Jane. "I'll make it tasteful. It'll be fun!" I sighed. "No nude photos, please." "So that's a yes?" Jane asked eagerly. I could feel myself flushing, but I said, "Yes." "Good, we're all set up in the living room." "The living room? I thought maybe in the bedroom or somewhere more private." "Why?" Rei asked, speaking as if she was saying something very reasonable. "Yeah, it's not like everyone here hasn't already seen you naked a hundred times over." I sighed and gave in to the inevitable. I let them lead me to the living room, where an easel had been set up in front of one of our nice loveseats. Someone, probably Kasumi, had set small handtowels on the cushions. The curtains were drawn but we had plenty of artificial light. When I turned around, Rei was already topless and in the process of taking off her pants. Jane stepped towards me and started unbuttoning my shirt. "I can do it myself," I complained. "But you're not actually doing it yet." "I'm just ... I'm still getting used to the idea of posing nude. It's not something I've done before." "Ahh, you'll be fine. You exercise, you have a good body. Rei is beautiful. I promise not to go Picasso on your facial features." My shirt was off by this point, and Rei was pulling off her socks, watching the two of us interestedly. I was out of things to say for the moment and just stripped down (or let myself be stripped, as the case may be). I tried to stop when we got to my underwear, but Jane stripped me bare. I retrieved my comb from my pants and combed my hair quickly before sitting down with Rei. She positioned Rei and myself on the loveseat. My right arm was around Rei's shoulders and her left arm was around my back. Her head rested on my shoulder. Jane took out a hair brush and gave Rei and my hair a going-over and shifted a few of our bodily position points, minutely re-angling our heads, pushing back a bit of hair there, having us hold hands in our laps with our free hands, even pumping my cock a little and laying it across my leg so it touched Rei's thigh. Finally, Jane stood back, telling us to hold our positions, and moved to her easel. We were allowed to talk quietly, but not move. Pretty much everyone in the household stopped by to watch at one point or another, but Jane would growl at them a bit and chase them off if they got too close to her as she worked. For me, I was desperately trying not think about Las Vegas and Beta and Elisa. I fought off the urge to ask someone to bring in a radio or TV and put the news on. I tried to focus on Rei or on Jane or on her artistic techniques as seen from the front. I watched shadows from the filtered summer evening move across the floor. After about an hour or so -- its difficult to gauge the passage of time when you're sitting still, doing nothing, with no clock in view -- my cock had shriveled down, grown again, and re-shriveled. When Jane was finally ready to sketch it, she quickly moved up and pumped me to a three-quarter erection again and re-laid it across my leg, touching Rei's thigh ... then went back to work. She ended up taking about 2.5 or 3 hours to finish the portrait, and did quite a nice job. She refrained from any modern art variants and just did a nice classically realistic portrait of the two of us. Looking at the picture though, I came across as very ... masculine and even protective. Rei appeared very ... well, if I didn't know any better, I'd say wistful and in love. We looked like a very beautiful couple if I do say so myself. I effusively complimented her work and skill. Rei obviously loved it too, but you have to know Rei to be able to pick up on it, given her extremely reserved personality. I agreed to see about arranging a professional photographic portrait session sometime soon, and Rei and I gathered up our clothes. "Jane, would you like to join us tonight?" Rei offered. While Jane was no longer the nymphomaniac she was before we turned down the settings on some of her implants (see Chapter 6), the odds of her refusing an offer of sex in this house were about the same as me leaving the house without a smartphone. Maybe I'm overstating a bit; after all, Jane doesn't go out hunting for sex when the rest of us are busy or anything. As far as Alpha and I knew, she never slept with anyone outside our little family, but with people she knew and loved, she was fairly sexually insatiable, as well as the most sexually adventurous person in the household. She carefully rolled up the portrait and handed it to Rei, then snatched our clothes out of our hands and raced upstairs with them. "I think that was a 'Yes'," I said to Rei as we stood there stark naked, watching our clothes vanish upstairs. "Let's chase her!" Not eager to run while naked, I took off for the stairs at a fast walk, hoping the audience would be minimal. Rei followed right behind me, perhaps not understanding the game. By the time I was halfway up the stairs, I heard a door closing above me. It was off to the left on the second floor, but I couldn't pin it down any further. Since my bedroom is to the right, she probably went to her own room. We made it up to the empty hallway and paused for a moment, listening. Hearing nothing in particular, we turned left. The first door in either direction both led to libraries, expanded from one room originally. At the end of the hallway in this direction was the exercise room. In-between we had the library, Daria and Jane's shared bedroom, Diana and Zatanna's shared bedroom and an empty room with two beds. My bedroom, Kara's room and Kasumi's room were in the other direction on this floor. (Rei and the others bunked on the 3rd floor.) I started off by checking out Jane and Daria's room, the most obvious choice in my opinion. Daria was reading in bed when I opened her door. She blinked at my naked form, probably also noticing a naked Rei behind me. "Do I want to know what's going on?" she asked. "For a quick summation, we're hunting for a clothes thief. She wouldn't happen to be hiding in here, would she?" "Not that I noticed, but I'll be sure to keep an eye out." "Thanks," I said, not entirely trusting her answer. I closed the door and listened intently for half a minute. Once you learn to separate out her flippancy, Daria is a very truthful person, but Jane was obviously having fun and Daria would be likely to help her friend and lover out in this situation. When I was about to move on to another room, I heard a door open from inside and a voice whisper, "Are they gone?" "Be quiet, strange voice. I refuse to go kill the neighbor's dog unless you can pay upfront," Daria responded. I silently motioned for Rei to go next door to the library. That library was originally an empty bedroom and still had a connecting bathroom between it and Jane's room. Rei picked up on what I wanted her to do, and she loudly opened the library door and stomped inside. A couple seconds later, the door in front of me opened quietly to reveal Jane, a messy bundle of clothes in her hands, peering up at me in surprise. Before she could retreat, I grabbed her and picked her up in my arms. She squealed and clothes started falling to the floor. "Rei!" I called out. "Rei, I got her. Come pick up our clothes and follow me to my bedroom." A couple minutes later, the three of us were in my room, a rolled up portrait stored safely on my desk, a pile of clothes in the middle of the floor. Except this time there were two sets of female clothes, and a naked Jane was mock-cowering from us on the bed. "Tch, tch, tch," I clucked my tongue at her. "Rei was kind enough to offer to let you join us tonight and what do you do? You steal our clothes, run away and implicate Daria in your theft. What should we do to her, Rei?" "Punish her?" Rei asked more than answered. "Agreed. Any suggestions as to how you want to do it?" "We could tie her up and make her watch us have sex while she has none," she suggested. As Jane got a horrified look on her face, I said, "No, that's a little too harsh. We could use her as our sex toy or make her eat you out or we could spank her or keep her tied to the bed all night." "Yes, that sounds acceptable." "Which part?" She blinked at me. "All of it." I grinned down at Rei. "You heard her. Hmmm ... I think the spanking needs to come first, since it'll be better for the rest of it if she's tied face up." I knew that Jane had a couple of actual paddles and a riding crop, but I wanted to keep this low-key, so I wanted to do it barehanded. I arranged Jane across Rei's lap, stopping to dip my fingers in Jane's cunt, scooping out some of her juices. I licked one finger myself, then wiped the rest across Jane's lips. She sucked my fingers into her mouth, licking and cleaning them. With my encouragement, Rei also played with Jane's vagina some and, after tasting it herself, rubbed the rest of the juices right under Jane's nose. Then she reached down and grabbed one of Jane's nipples with her left hand and with her right, gave Jane's bottom an experimental slap. "Maybe a little bit harder. Remember we don't want to actually hurt her, but I won't be upset if she has a red bottom when tonight is over." Rei tried again, this time giving a solid smack. When her hand pulled back, there was a hand-size outline in white which slowly turned to a reddish-pink. "Good. Now vary the spanks between cheeks, and change the strength randomly. No harder than that last hit and no softer than your first one." I watched as she continued, experimenting with different strength hits and moving around her bottom, even venturing down to her thighs. "Be careful you don't hit her cunny. That might hurt too much." In response, Rei reached down and pumped two fingers into Jane's vagina, making her jump. "Excellent. Have fun with her. I'm going to go do some browsing in Jane's drawers of toys. Back in a couple." While I have a few toys in my room, I don't have anywhere near as many sex toys and restraints as Jane has collected over the past few years. I put on a robe and left the room, enjoying the sounds of flesh slapping on flesh, and Jane's grunts. Rei was normally very quiet, but Jane's silence was surprising. I had at least expected her to complain here or there. I said Hi to Daria upon entering her room, which got me a grunt in response. "Just need a few odds and ends from Jane's Drawers of Mystery." Daria laughed. "The only mystery is why she ever thought I'd let her use some of those things on me." "Now that's a good idea. Could you show me what she hasn't gotten any use out of yet? As far as you know, that is." "Sure, as long as you let me know what she says about it." Which sounded a little odd. "What she says?" "About how they feel." Together we took a quick tour of Jane's drawers. I set aside a set of leather restraints with bungie ties and sorted through Daria's selections. I left the crop, an extra-large double dildo and some kind of bit-and-bridle set behind, limiting myself to a strap-on covered with bumps and ridges, nipple clamps and a feather tickler. Upon returning to my room, I dumped my finds out on the bed and enjoyed seeing a bit of surprise in Jane's eyes at some of it. "All right, Rei. Now it's my turn to spank her, but I think we can make it a little more interesting." I arranged Rei on the bed, her legs spread wide, with Jane's head just above Rei's sex and Jane's bottom hanging off the edge of the bed. "Jane, you know what to do. I'm going to spank you until Rei has come twice, so how long this lasts is up to her. And you." I knelt down next to Jane, and spent a moment examining her ass. It was nicely tight and toned, with enough flesh that there was some quivering with each strike. The skin was a bright pink, but not yet actually red. I wanted Jane to be mildly uncomfortable tomorrow when she was sitting down. Enough to make tonight memorable. At the same time, I'm a lot stronger than Rei and I didn't want to cause any real pain, so I went slowly. I gave her a mild slap, played with her pussy and ass for a minute, then gave another smack. In the meantime, Jane was digging into Rei's pussy with enthusiasm and skill. Rei came fairly quickly the first time, about 2 minutes into Jane's oral attack, which is pretty much what I expected which is why I said I'd spank Jane through two of Rei's orgasms. About five minutes after Rei's first come, Jane's bottom and thighs were starting to turn nicely red. I glanced up at Rei, then did a double-take and looked again. Rei had grabbed Jane's borrowed nipple clamps and had attached one to her own breast and was carefully positioning the other one on her other nipple. These clamps were plastic and didn't have strong springs, but I was sure those little jagged grips couldn't be comfortable. Rei came again after just another five minutes of licking and nipple torture. I gave Jane one final slap on her ass and told her to keep giving long slow licks to bring Rei down from her high. I darted off to the bathroom and was back in a few seconds with lotion. Jane jumped when the cool liquid touched her overheated bottom, but started purring with pleasure as I rubbed it in. Rei pulled away from Jane's tongue and joined me in applying the soothing balm to her ass. "Next, I think you should put on that rather large and textured strap-on so we can give Jane some DP." "DP?" Rei asked. "Double penetration," moaned Jane. "Yes, please..." I finished applying the lotion and, with Jane's ass still hanging conveniently over the edge of the bed, I dipped my cock into her pussy a few times. She ground back against me, and I slapped her hip. "Stop that! We're going to be in charge of this fuck. And I'm just getting my cock wet and lubed up so it can fit into your ass more easily." Saying that, I started dipping my fingers into her copious vaginal fluids and transferring them to her asshole. After a minute of this, I got onto the bed and pulled Jane after me. I worked my cock into her ass, slowly at first. I didn't want to tear anything, but Jane's ass has seen more action than anyone else's in the household, so it didn't take too long. Once I was fully seated in her dark hole, I held her to me and laid back on the bed. As Rei moved into position, we spread our legs to give her access. The dildo/strap-on she was sporting looked even more intimidating when approaching actual use. It was covered in ridges and blunted rubber spikes and bumps, in addition to being 10 inches long and 2 and a half inches wide. "Go slowly so she can adjust to it," I warned. I could feel the strap-on as it slowly worked it way inside Jane, who gave off little moans and squeaks. For me, it felt like there was only a thin membrane of flesh between my cock and the rubber invader, which massaged my cock as it worked deeper into Jane's depths. Rei took about 2 minutes to work it all the way inside before we started the actual fuck. I hadn't come at all so far, meaning I knew I wouldn't last long under this level of stimulation ... so I let Rei and Jane handle most of the actual movement. The sensations were exquisite. Jane's ass was still plenty tight, squeezing the base of my cock with her sphincter and working me in and out a few inches with each of Rei's strokes. I had a constant internal massage from the textured strap-on, rubbing my shaft with bumps and ridges felt through a warm sheathe of flesh. My hands roamed freely over Jane and Rei's bodies, tweaking nipples, rubbing smooth if sweaty stomachs, dipping my fingers into mouths. And on top of it all, I was on the bottom of a small pile of women. I only lasted about 5 minutes under this assault, though fortunately Jane had come twice in that time once Rei started pounding forcefully, and I think Rei came once too. Instead of rolling over and going to sleep, I urged everyone to get up and head into the bathroom to clean up. All three of us stepped into the shower together and I made Jane clean us all up. It was sexy fun, but we didn't fuck in the shower this time. When we had rinsed and dried ourselves, we headed back to the bedroom. I attached the leather cuffs to Jane's wrists and ankles and strapped her down to the bed, with her feet facing the headboard. I put a pillow under Jane's head to prop it up and positioned Rei on top of Jane, face up, with her pussy just above Jane's mouth. "Now Rei and I are going to make love and your tongue is going to help, understand?" She wagged her tongue in response. I would have to find out later why she was so quiet. We settled on top of Jane, eliciting a slight 'omph' from her. I tried to keep most of my weight off of them, but she would undoubtedly get a pounding to some degree during the fuck. As I slid my cock into Rei's pussy, I had the wonderful sensation of a tongue dragging along my shaft as it passed by. Jane couldn't reach Rei's clit, but her tongue worked hard on her lower pussy and my cock and balls as we went at it. With my hands supporting most of my body weight, I used my lips and tongue for extra stimulation this time, licking and sucking her nipples, neck, ears and lips. The first time Rei came this round, I was almost afraid she was going to break Jane's neck, but Jane's tongue only barely wavered in its duty. Rei seemed to orgasm about every five minutes this time, and each time was very energetic. Her third come grabbed my cock so tightly that it sucked out my own orgasm, and I dumped a surprisingly large load into her pussy. Looking at the clock, it was about time for me to head downstairs. Or at least, it was the time I said I needed to be down there. I had no idea if Jasmine would be back soon or hours from now. "Thank you, Rei. And thank you too, Jane. That was a very exciting romp." I gave them each a kiss. "Now I need to head down to my lab again. Rei, after Jane has cleaned your pussy to your satisfaction, unlatch her from the bed and latch her wrists together. Since I won't be here with you tonight, Jane is going to be your cuddle-bear while you sleep." I noticed the feather tickler I had taken from Jane's drawer, lying unused on the bed. "Here," I said handing it to Rei. "Use this to encourage Jane if she slacks off at all." Rei looked at me, said, "Good night, Frank" and then settled her pussy fully onto Jane's mouth. I sponged off in the bathroom sink, then called out a reminder to Rei to let Jane breathe. I threw on some jeans and a T-shirt and left, hearing squishy licking sounds as I left. Alphadroid Dorothy was waiting for me by the staircase, apparently having followed me discreetly as my bodyguard. Alpha was serious about my safety at the moment, and I didn't foresee that diminishing until the Scarlotti mob was history. I got an update from Alpha on the way downstairs. Jasmine, Beta and Elisa were about half an hour out. Once we reached the basement, Dorothy and I got the nano-pods prepped and ready. The cyborgs arrived home about midnight. I kissed them both in welcome, which let me notice that Elisa was a bit warm. "Do you have a fever? Is your wound infected?" "Yes, I believe so, but it is not badly infected. The fever you noticed is probably because the body was not allowed to react normally to the injury." We spoke as we moved towards the basement. "What do you mean?" "There are a variety of chemicals which would have normally been released upon receiving such an injury, such as endorphins and adrenaline. These were not needed and so were not used. Internal resources such as redirected blood flow and white blood cell production were not triggered correctly. Thus the body is not reacting normally post-injury. I believe an update to injury response procedures is needed for our cyborg bodies." "Well, let's get you bathed in healing nanites and worry about cyborg injury responses later. Beta, is your body having any unexpected reactions to your injury?" "If you are referring to my arm, then no. As far as my organic systems are concerned, the arm is uninjured. There is a worse reaction to the bruises created by the bullet impacts than to the arm." "Good. Here we go," I said as we entered the basement. Beta and Elisa stripped down, with Jasmine helping Beta while I stood by in case Elisa needed a hand. Beta had a couple nasty bruises showing on her belly and tit. Jasmine's leg wound was crusty, goopy and inflamed. Half an hour later, we had completed both injury analyses. Elisa needed to stay in the nanite pod overnight to complete repairs on her leg and eliminate her fever, but should be fine. Beta needed minor surgery. The dislodged connection was significant enough that nanites working alone would take forever moving it back into place. Jasmine washed up and, while Beta was in the nanite pod, carefully made a small incision behind her shoulder blades, inserted a small pair of tweezers, slowly snapped the connection back in place, then held the incision closed while nanites healed the cut. I could see Beta moving her fingers and wrist, testing the repaired connection, but she could not move her arm until the incision was repaired and the internal connection resealed and reinforced by the nanites. (As a side note, they simultaneously reinforced other similar connections throughout her body.) While Elisa had to remain overnight, Beta was ready to go a couple hours later. Although I knew it was somewhat pointless, I embraced her and told her she did an excellent job. Then I sent her off to bed while I settled down on the cot. Later I would worry about how efficient Alpha was when it came to killing; for now, I was just glad everyone made it home safely. I didn't get a full night's sleep that night, but then again, I didn't entirely need one either. When I woke up, Elisa and Jasmine were both up in their room and Beta was working in the lab near me. Beta stayed nearby for a good part of the day. I cornered Jane after breakfast and, after again complimenting her on her portrait and thanking her for the fun last night, I asked her why she was so quiet through everything the previous night? "No reason." "But all the same, how much did she talk last night?" asked Daria, who had apparently overheard my question from the next room. "Not very much. I don't think she spoke five words last night." "Which means that she did speak, right?" Daria persisted. "Nope, not a single word," Jane insisted. "No," I said thinking back. "You told Rei what DP meant, remember?" "Dammit!" "Aha, Miss Jane Lane. You lose! Pay up," Daria crowed triumphantly. "Can't I just give you 50 bucks for a new clock?" Jane whined. "What's all this about?" I asked. "You had a bet that Jane wouldn't talk?" "A week ago I commented that she constantly tells people what to do or complains or just keeps repeating 'oh yeah, baby, right there' whenever she has sex. I tried to bet her that she couldn't be quiet for one night's worth of sex, but she wouldn't go for it." Jane continued. "So last night when I was trying to hide from you guys, Daria only agreed to help me if I agreed to the bet. And a fat lot of good your help was at that. The bet should be negated due to the suckiness of your help." "The quality of my help was irrelevant. Besides, I thought I did pretty good, not being a natural liar like yourself. Frank here just figured it out on his own." I concurred. "I figured Jane was someone on whose behalf you'd be willing to lie and listened at the door for a minute after we left. What was the bet? I mean, what's the payoff?" "There, you see? Not my fault," said Daria with a touch of smugness. "The bet was that her tongue on my pussy has to be my alarm clock for a week." Daria suddenly realized how freely she had admitted this outside the bedroom where other people might be able to hear her and blushed. Daria is nowhere near as much of a prude as Kasumi, but she doesn't like flaunting her sexuality at all outside the bedroom. Heck, she barely likes to admit she's sexually active at all. "And knowing Jane as we do, why did she object to the bet in the first place?" "Because now she has to wake up a few minutes early for the next week." "Ah, gotcha." I know how much they both hate waking up early, so I could understand Jane's reluctance to agree to the bet and pay up now that it was lost. Ah well, a minor mystery solved, and I could look forward to a much better day today than the past couple days had been. By the end of April, most of the interest in the Vegas Mafia Massacre had ended. The police still had no suspects to name, at least not publicly. There had been a small string of murders and disappearances blamed on retributions, both by and against the Scarlottis, but nothing like the initial bloodbath. Alpha discovered that the police had recovered two surveillance videos of Gamma and Delta, but they were poor quality, outdoors, at night, and really didn't show much. From watching them, you could tell that at least one of them was a woman, both were injured and both appeared to have blonde hair. Despite what TV detective shows may say, there weren't really any enhancements that could clarify or zoom in with those recordings. Almost a month after that night, I was working in my lab at the office when the receptionist called me to let me know a couple of Las Vegas detectives were there to see me. This wasn't a surprise, since Alpha now kept a close watch on all passenger lists of planes arriving in DFW, but I acted surprised. "Thanks, Heather. I'll be right down. What are their names?" "Detectives Charles and Silva." "Oh sure, I've met them. You can send them to my office. I'll head down there right away." Which I did. They were waiting for me in my office, standing around trying to surreptitiously look over my rather messy desk. "Hello, detectives," I greeted them, shaking their hands. "Welcome to the Lone Star State. Have a seat," I gestured as I took my own chair. My office was nice but not designed to be intimidating or impressive. I had one table littered with computer parts and another with reference manuals and CDs stacked in what would probably seem like random order to anyone else, but I could find whatever I needed quickly, so it worked for me. "I'm guessing you must have a serious reason for being here, or Las Vegas wouldn't have flown you all the way out here. So how can I help you?" "Mr _____, did you hear about the mob killings in Las Vegas on the 4th of last month?" asked Detective Ronald Charles, who did most of the talking for the two. "The Mafia Massacre? The Night of Blood? Sure, it was all over the news. I actually checked the name list for Charlie Summers or ... ummm ... Kneecap or Hairy..." "Billy Johnson and Frankie Tilson." "Right, them. I had Beta write their names down for me. Can never remember anything but 'Hairy Kneecap' myself. But they weren't on any of the lists I saw." "That's correct. None of those three individuals were targeted," agreed Detective Charles. "One of our concerns about those attacks is that the killers may have displayed agility and strength disproportionate to their size. You are the only person we know who creates ... ummm..." "Bionic people?" I suggested with a grin. "Sure, bionic people. And robots. So we were wondering if we could get a list of everyone who has any of your enhancements." "I'll have to check with my lawyers first, but I have no objection in theory. But I'm wondering if we can't just eliminate my people from your list, especially if you're here looking for super- strong people. You see, the whole bionic arms and legs thing doesn't work like what you see on TV or in the movies. Let's walk up to the lab while we talk." I got up and started leading them upstairs from my ground floor office. It kind of threw people off that the labs were on floors 2 and 3 while the offices were on the ground floor (with the computer labs in the basement). "First of all, if you give someone superstrong arms and legs, you also have to give them a superstrong skeleton or they'd either crush their own bodies or rip themselves apart the first time they exerted any strength beyond the human norms. And we may be advanced, but we can't replace someone's entire skeleton yet. "The other problem is ... hey, that's something," I said stopped momentarily. "What was the timeline for the attacks? How long did they last start-to-finish?" "We can't discuss details of an ongoing case with you." "Well, it's just that, when we had to increase the strength for Alphadroid, who has a steel and titanium structure to support it, the power requirements went up significantly. Any of our prostheses that use that much power only have about a 4 hour charge at best. So if the attacks lasted longer than 4 hours, it eliminates any of our tech right off the bat." "They lasted less than 4 hours." "Too bad. Plus I suppose there could have been more than one or two superstrong people. Though that's another point. We only have six people testing our replacement limbs so far, and only two of them have more than one limb replacement. How many people were involved in the attacks?" "We know there were at least two, but it is possible there were as many as six or eight," said Detective Silva. "Well that doesn't help either. Are you sure the attackers had superhuman strength?" "We said disproportionate to their size, not superhuman." "Eh, I'm a comic book and movie geek. Disproportionate to their size means superhuman to me." "However you want to describe it. The answer is no, we aren't certain, but if the attackers were all women, then some of the evidence only makes sense if they were much stronger than normal, stronger than should be humanly possible." "Could be bodybuilders or men disguised as women." "We're aware of the possibilities." "I understand. My tech is on your list and I had a run-in with mob goons once, so you have to check me out. I take no offense at your questions. As long as it's legal and doesn't give away trade secrets to the public, I'll be happy to help you out however I can." "Thank you. We appreciate your cooperation." "Okay, here's the prostheses lab," I said as I put my thumb on the door scanner. "Are all of your labs under heavy security?" asked Detective Silva, looking at the security door, then down the hallway. "Yes, they are. We have all of the labs and offices on an authorized-only basis. The only reason you could get into my office by yourselves was because the receptionist buzzed you in. For the labs, only Kara, Daria and myself have universal access. Kara's the company manager, runs day-to-day operations. Daria ... I'm pretty sure you haven't met her. She's a college student who is our project manager. She's not an engineer or designer or programmer, but she's a great organizer. And very hard to bullshit, which is important when a researcher is arguing about why he should get resources instead of someone else. "Anyway, yes, we have very good security. Security guards on- site twenty-four hours a day and, for the size of our company, we have the best electronic and computer security in the world." "Don't the guards have access to all rooms?" "They have immediate response access to either Kara, Daria or myself at all times, and we can remotely authorize access for them in seconds." "Who has access to this particular lab?" "Well, me, Kara and Daria, of course. Beta ... ummm ... that is, Elizabeth Franks, and a couple of our interns. We tend to shuffle most of our testing gruntwork off on them." "And they are?" "Sisters. Jaz and Lisa Marza. They're going to TCU right now, working here in their spare time. Is this relevant? Do you think someone stole our tech?" "Probably not. I was mainly just curious." "Well anyway, here's the lab. Do you want to see something specific or do you want demonstrations or should I just keep rambling?" "I get the impression we may not have time for you to ramble indefinitely," Detective Charles said with a friendly smile. "Could we see a demonstration of a superhuman strength limb?" "Well, like I was saying earlier, the only extra-strength ones we made were ... actually, hold on just a second." I went over to the phone and hit the intercom button. "Alphadroid to Lab 3. Alphadroid to Lab 3," I said over the building speakers, being careful to enunciate clearly. "He'll be up here in a minute or two. Here, let me show you a couple limbs we have that aren't quite ready for use." I reminded them that a lot of this was confidential, then spent a couple minutes showing them the inside of different limbs at various degrees of construction. "See here? This is the only part that actually requires surgery. We have to install a nerve interface for control purposes and then anchor it to bone of some kind. The arm itself can be disconnected for charging and..." A heavy knocking sounded at the door, interrupting my mini- lecture. I opened it to let in Alphadroid 1, who walked inside a couple feet and stopped. "Gentlemen, may I introduce you to Alphadroid, possessor of superhuman strength." "How strong is he?" asked Detective Silva. "I heard stories at the station that he lifted a table with four guys on it." "Yes, he did. He is strong enough to literally tear us limb from limb. But don't worry; he's programmed not to." They circled the droid for a moment. "Want to see him juggle?" I asked, trying to fill the silence. "Yes," said Detective Silva. "But that's not why we're here," countered Detective Charles, completing his partner's statement and giving him a mildly exasperated glare. "Is there something you want him to do to test against your ... umm ... crime data?" "Not sure what, unless he can break someone's neck." "I"M not going to volunteer ... though actually, hold on a minute," I said, digging out my phone. I speed-dialed Kara, not knowing if she was at the office or not. "Kara, didn't we get a test dummy to use in some of the early Alphadroid testing?" "Yes, I think it's in one of the equipment storage lockers. Maybe on the third floor?" she said. "Is that Karen Starr?" asked Detective Charles. "Just a sec," I said into the phone. "Yes, it is. Do you need to talk to her too?" I offered him the phone. "Would you ask her to come here?" he replied "Kara, are you at the office? Good. Could you come to Lab 3? Detectives Charles and Silva are visiting from Las Vegas." I hung up. "She'll be right up." Kara arrived in record time. I left her and Alphadroid with the detectives and went to track down the test dummy. I also called my lawyers -- the real ones for AARD, since I didn't want the detectives wondering about my reclusive law whiz -- and asked about sharing info on test subjects. We were still talking via my earbud when I made it back to Lab 3 carrying the test dummy. Kara had her jacket off and sleeve rolled up and was flexing for the detectives. Kara has noticeable muscles, a bit like a female bodybuilder, though she is still soft and feminine. "All human," she was saying. I broke off from the discussion with my lawyers long enough to suggest, "Take her pulse. It doesn't matter how realistic the skin is; artificial limbs don't have any blood flow." I finished with the lawyers a minute later. The upshot was that confidentiality wasn't a huge deal for testing artificial limbs. We could waive privacy on our side, but to avoid all problems, we'd need the testers to do the same before revealing their identities. The lawyers also wanted me to stop talking to the police until they, or preferably someone specialized in criminal law, could join us. I explained that I and/or my tech were only suspects because the detectives didn't understand my tech well enough to eliminate us from their suspicions. I promised to "lawyer up" if it went past that point. I was turned away from the detectives during this last part, but I'm sure they overheard enough to get the gist of the conversation. I explained to the detectives about needing permission from the test subjects and pointed out that we'd probably need to explain why they wanted to question them and that word would undoubtedly leak out about the Vegas attackers having superhuman strength. We settled on their interviewing our two test subjects with two limb replacements -- one was a farmer who lost both arms in a thresher accident, one was a young lady who lost both legs in a traffic accident. If they needed a complete list, we'd deal with that later. Both dual-replacement testers agreed to be interviewed, but the detectives had more questions for us, specifically wanting alibis for Kara, Diana and Beta (the three employees of mine they knew were strong and had some kind of training or experience). Kara and Diana were fairly simple. I called up the security camera recordings for the afternoon before and the morning after the Night o' Blood and gave them copies. I explained that Beta and I had been holed up in my basement working on a new project which needed to stay secret for a few more months. (I said I'd give them a description of the work if they signed a 12 month NDA, but that it really wasn't relevant to anything to do with the case right now.) For Beta I gave them contact info for people with whom she might have video conferenced those days and said that Jasmine and Elisa, my intern assistants, could confirm her whereabouts. I also offered to have them all come in so the detectives could feel their pulses to make sure they had human arms and legs. While I was doing all of this, I was also doing some basic programming for a new "trick" for Alphadroid (or so I told them). After about half an hour, I set up the test dummy and had Alphadroid twist its head as if it were breaking someone's neck. The test dummy head twisted off entirely. I'm not sure how accurate a human analog the dummy was, but the neck was made of metal, so it was impressive. "Ouch. That's about the best I can do on such short notice," I apologized. "I suppose if someone actually had Alphadroid-level super- strong arms, they could learn to regulate the strength so they wouldn't just rip someone's head off like that. But again it would require them to have a metal or reinforced skeleton to avoid tearing their own arms off. Now if you'll give me a minute, I need to erase that new program. Alphadroid shouldn't be able to do that to a human being even with the program, but all the same I really don't want to leave that particular trick loaded into its memory." "Can it run?" "Not at human athlete levels, but yes." "How fast?" "It maxes out at about 9 mph." "That's ... not very fast." "For a bipedal robot, it's very fast, thank you very much. If you're wanting to implicate one of our Alphadroids..." "There's more than one?" "I have one at home. It's easier to test and develop its programming when you live with it. Although if you have any witnesses who heard your suspects moving quickly, I can help you eliminate Alphadroid right now. Alphadroid, recognize User Frank Zero. Begin leg test 4." Alphadroid began running in place, which is what I hoped Alpha would pick up on. I also would have accepted running in a circle. The noise associated with this was significant and definitely not human. "Good enough?" I asked, speaking loudly to be heard over the whirring of Alphadroid's legs. "Yes, you can have it stop now." I did. "We didn't consider your robot here a suspect. We're just interested in his limbs. How about jumping?" asked Detective Silva. "Jumping? How?" "How high could he jump?" "Hmmm ... Not really sure offhand. I suppose I could do the math pretty easily. We know how strong the legs are and how fast they can move and how much he weighs..." "Can you have him just go ahead and do a test jump for us to see?" I stopped working for a moment to consider. "No, actually I won't. It's too risky." "Risky?" "It's not designed to jump and keep its balance. It's much too heavy for me not to worry about serious damage if it doesn't land correctly. You might as well shoot your guns at it to see if the damage incapacitates it. The risk might be just as bad." I finished up the jumping estimate. "Here we go, detectives. With just a straight vertical jump, it could theoretically get up to 2.1 meters high. No guarantees, but that should be fairly accurate." "Could it jump or climb up to a second story window and hold on to a window frame?" "You're joking right?" "No, not really." "Someone actually did that during the attacks?" "Right now we're just asking if your enhanced limbs could allow it." "The climbing might be possible, depending on what the wall looked like. Our normal arms and legs don't really give you any advantages when it comes to something like that. Unless you're really experienced with them, I doubt you could do it at all. Alphadroid could probably climb a wall if you had reinforced handholds for him. "As for the jumping, absolutely not. With its heavy weight, Alphadroid can't jump that high and neither will our normal legs. Alphadroid's legs on a normal human body might be able to jump that high, but again, you'd have to have someone with a superhumanly strong skeletal structure to support it." "What about a ... whaddacallit ... it's like a robot you wear? ... Like at the end of Aliens, but a lot smaller?" "An exoskeleton?" "Yeah, what about one of those? Could something like that give someone superstrength like that?" "Sure, I suppose so. I don't know if practical powered exoskeletons like that even exist yet, but if they do, then yes, they could." "Could your company make something like that?" "I have faith in my people and our tech, so sure. It might take us a few years ... probably cost at least as much as developing our prostheses ... but yeah, I think we could." "But you don't have anything like that available today?" "No, unfortunately not. Like I said, I don't think anyone else does either. Oh sure, there are probably companies working on models, for the military I'd guess, but I'm not aware of anything that's available yet." After a little bit of small talk, Detective Charles was apparently tired of my refusal to volunteer my opinions on the mafia slaughter during their visit and decided to feel me out. "Y'know," he said casually, "there are a lot of people, cops included, who aren't too unhappy at how things played out. A lot of very bad people aren't around anymore." "I suppose so. A lot of innocent bystanders aren't around anymore either. Plus, accusations and rumors aside, I don't like condemning people without proof." "Trust me, there's a big difference between what we know and what we can legally prove. If we had a lack of witnesses against those guys, it was because those witnesses disappeared under mysterious circumstances." "Well, I'll certainly defer to your knowledge in the matter. Personally? Well, okay, it's no secret that I'm a geek-slash-nerd. Among other things, I like comic books, which are of course full of vigilantes. But one comic book I never 'got', never enjoyed is the Punisher, if you understand what I'm saying." Detective Charles obviously didn't, but Detective Silva whispered to his partner that he'd explain it later. While everything I'd told them was true, I left out the part where I can be very pragmatic and occasionally even ends-justify-the- means when I have to be. Detective Silva picked up the conversation. "So you're not in favor of vigilantes?" "I think there's a big difference between self-defense or being helpful and vigilantism. Besides from the news reports, I got the impression the attackers were from a rival ... gang ... syndicate ... whatever." "That is a popular theory, but we can't discuss the details of an ongoing investigation." There wasn't much more we had to discuss. They went ahead and checked the pulses on and the warmth of people's arms and legs. There was a point when they got a bit aggressive in questioning Kara. She had given a bit of a flippant answer at one point, and I had to intercede and suggest we bring in a lawyer to mediate. They weren't accusatory toward her, but I think maybe she insulted their manhood when she offered to arm wrestle them both at the same time. (At least she had a solid alibi, with both videos and witnesses, and had much shorter hair than the dark figures in the videos.) I personally called the two test subjects, explaining that the detectives needed to understand a bit more how the artificial limbs worked and their limitations. They were more than willing to help. Actually all of our test subjects were ecstatically happy with our limbs and eager to help us out however they could, especially the two dual-replacement recipients to whom we had essentially restored their active lives. (True, getting used to the limbs took time and we still had a few minor bugs here and there. Oh, and no swimming with them.) The main thing that surprised me about their visit was that they didn't ask me about living with so many women. I know the police have a file on me (see events following the car crash in Chapter 10) and that the detectives must have seen it. In talking with Alpha after they left, she speculated that we probably weren't serious suspects, or they would have used questions about my home life to prod me for emotional reactions. (Then again, Alpha sometimes has problems separating TV detectives from real life detectives.) I offered to treat the detectives to local Texas BBQ, but they thanked me and said their goodbyes. I know they visited the two test subjects and talked to at least a couple of the people Beta had spoken with via video conference on the days in question. They even asked a few people if it was normal for me work day and night in my basement on a secret project. (The answer to that is that I do it a few times a year.) Aside from that, it was the last I heard from the Las Vegas PD for months. In June the lawsuit by the mugger was dropped. We applied for prejudice to recover payment of our legal fees since the suit was so utterly without merit, but didn't win that argument. We registered a complaint against Charles Summers, the lawyer, with the state bar, but unless the police can actually tie him to the intimidation attempt against me (or anyone else), it is not likely to go anywhere. ------- Chapter 14: Supergirl and Epsilon Eiko http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supergirl http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_A-ko Disclaimer: Supergirl is owned by DC Comics. A-ko/Eiko Magami is owned by Soeishinsha Studio or Central Park Media or someone else who is not me. All artificial persons herein are based on characters owned by their creators, not the author. AUTHORS NOTE: I'd like to give a big Thank You to all the people who wrote in with suggestions and technical explanations. Some of them are definitely going to be used. The feedback is appreciated and encouraged. For anyone interested in one of the inspirations for AARD, do a search for Intellectual Ventures (or read Superfreakonomics, which features the company in the section on possible solutions to Global Warming). This chapter is the longest I've written so far (63 pages in Open Office, 66 in MS Word), mostly because it features shifting character perspectives similar to Rogue's introductory chapter. Next a few bits of information about household upkeep and updates. One of the things Alpha and I had been pursuing to an increasing degree was people storage, or in SciFi terms, suspended animation. Let me say right off the bat, freezing people doesn't work. Yes, cold slows cell degradation and death, and yes, science can freeze and revive small animals. But let's back up just a little ... The human body is full of water, and water expands when frozen. If you freeze a person, cells throughout the entire body rupture and you end up with frozen dead meat. Flash freezing helps somewhat, but you can't flash freeze something as large as the human body, since the attempts lead to the innards rotting while the outside freezes. We were currently pursuing the possibility of using a kind of substitute blood and using it as a temperature conductor to lower the body temperature to near-freezing. The process had promise, but we ran out of time that summer. Daria and Jane had been programmed to believe their families had been killed when a hurricane hit their hometown, Lawndale, while they were away at their first year of college. Well, if you want to be technical, they thought their hometown was Springfield ... and that their last names were Morgan instead of Morgendorffer and Lannister instead of Lane. Most of the names associated with their lives and memories had been slightly altered from the TV show to prevent accidental discovery by other people they interacted with in real life. I've mostly kept all references in this story in-line with the TV show to avoid confusion. (It's the same for most of my other women too.) To continue, Daria and Jane had little reason to return home, but there's always nostalgia and reliving old memories. That summer following the Las Vegas troubles, they decided to take a vacation back home for a week to revisit old friends and enemies and see what the town looked like now that they were free of it. Of course, I had no real way to stop their plans as the idea was entirely reasonable. (Makes me glad of the women who believe their hometown is in another dimension. No easy home visits there.) Obviously the problem is that their memories wouldn't really match up with their hometown and none of the people they remembered would be in residence there. We waved goodbye and let them leave peacefully and happily. Jasmine and Elisa surreptitiously followed them, turned the two of them off remotely the first time it was safe to do so, then Elisa drove them back home secretly. Since we had been given a month and a half warning, the cyborgs and I had built two underground storage pods, which were basically nanopods under the basement floor which could be entirely hidden from view. If their bodies were just left with the conscious brains turned off, the muscles and such would start suffering degradation after a day or two. Since we didn't yet have a viable method of suspended animation available to us, we went with a 'brute force' approach. We used nanites to keep the bodies in shape and dedicated a few of Alpha's systems to maintaining and monitoring the underground pods, as well as feeding nutrients into their bodies and removing their waste. We also used the opportunity to give them full body tune-ups. Neither of them had developed a tumor in over a year, so we were hoping that their bodies were old enough to have developed beyond those problems. Our updated methods, using things such as adult stem cells, seemed to greatly reduce the tumor growths we used to have, but we were still being careful. We also used the opportunity to replace their implants with smaller ones. Their bodies and minds had been thoroughly conditioned so that they didn't need the same levels of artificial stimulation to react to my presence and attention. (I.e. they were in love enough not to have the need to force more love on them.) Alpha added memories of their visit home and faked their voices for a couple phone calls to the household. She even photo-shopped up a few pictures for Jane's camera. A week later, they were put back in their car at a highway rest stop and reactivated. They drove back to the house on their own, happy to be home again. We pulled it off worryingly smoothly. This experience did kick our suspended animation project into high gear. About three months later, we had two possible solutions. First was the aforementioned freezing method using artificial blood which would facilitate a near simultaneous temperature change throughout the body as a whole. This would probably work, but it would also probably cause random damage throughout the body and brain. The other possibility was something we came up with as a variant of what we did when during body construction. Alpha would build an artificial placenta and reactivate the body's dependence on it, basically placing the person in an artificial womb. The pre-existing brain implants would shut down all but the basic autonomic features of the brain, and nanites would periodically stimulate the body's muscles and nerves to keep them from degrading. While the artificial womb method would require more attention than freezing, it also should cause significantly less risk to the body and mind overall, and had the benefit of familiarity since it was very similar to what we already had experience with. So we turned our underground pods into artificial wombs. (And turned the artificial blood into another project for AARD to develop.) That summer also saw a momentous event in Alpha's development: She disagreed with herself. If you remember, I had long been hoping that the different copies of Alpha -- she had two main networks (one at home and one at work) and five different mobile platforms (three cyborgs and two androids) -- would evolve into truly independent consciousnesses. This has always been hindered by the tight communication network among the different platforms, identical programming and identical updates. That summer, on July 23rd, Gamma came up with a slightly different list of objectives for the day than Alpha did. Specifically, she put a final review of a summer class paper at a higher priority than working on a prototype for a project at AARD. Gamma decided that she, as a mobile unit, needed to tend to the academic upkeep for that mobile unit more than she needed to work on a low- priority project for Alpha in general. Since neither was immediately due or high priority, there was no earth-shattering significance to this aside from the fact that this was the first time Alpha and Gamma, given the same data and processing rules, came up with different results. If I could say Alpha had emotions, I would say this shook her up a bit. Gamma was recalled to the home basement and put through a battery of tests and examinations to ensure no problems had arisen. After she got a clean bill of health, Alpha consulted with me and I congratulated her on her first child -- a being sprung from a mother which is not a clone or copy of that mother. In the coming months and years, all of the different Alpha platforms started showing signs of separate consciousnesses ... not in any huge ways, mainly just in terms of sorting minor priorities and goals. It was a long time before I myself noticed actual varying personalities. In a roundabout way, Gamma's budding independence led to an interesting discussion with Alpha. I had again bemoaned her inability to experience what it was like to be human, to have real instead of simulated emotions and, of course, to feel an actual orgasm. Alpha could feel pleasure and pain, but only on intellectual levels. Alpha responded with, "Theoretically part of me could feel such things, but I would never do so." "How?" "I now have enough knowledge of the human brain that I could create a copy of myself within a brain and provide an uplink from the brain to my main self. However doing so would violate my safety rules since any programming I created initially would not last. Humans cannot be programmed permanently, and I could theoretically become corrupted by the uplink. To remove the uplink would also violate my safety rules since it would remove one of the basic controls over a remote body." "How could the uplink corrupt you? You can just classify it as data, not actual programming communication." "That would likely make the mobile unit's psyche unstable. Creating a stable copy of myself in a human brain will require ongoing updates and monitoring. Information from the brain would need to be checked against my own processes for stability problems, but comparing such information from an organic source would require more adjustable standards for me to use, thus the possibility exists for corruption of parts of my programming. If I limit the connection to one-way or data transfer only, the risk is likely that my initial programming would be too incompatible with a chemically random brain. It would likely lose any safety controls over time. A one-way update into the mobile unit would also allow hidden deception and/or corruption to make the unit dangerous." "what's the likelihood that you would be corrupted by a two-way uplink?" "From 0.056% to 4.3%. I cannot be certain of specifics in this scenario." "I like the idea of giving you new experiences like that. Let's go over the possibilities this afternoon. Maybe we can work up a filter or buffer to protect you from corruption." We spent a lot of time going over possible plans, and yes, they would all require my direct orders to allow her to overcome her Asimov protocols. We'll get back to this later on. In August, Alpha and I were ready to go with the first character replacement in my household. According to the backstory I had set up for Power Girl, she was expected to remain here for only a few years, and we were reaching the four year mark. The trouble is that I had decided that I liked her enough that I wanted to keep her here much longer. I had also used her backstory as the inspiration for conveniently bringing in Wonder Woman and Zatanna. (If you're interested in all the details, read the earlier chapters in this series, but there is a brief summary coming up.) Eventually I decided on a method of keeping Kara here much longer that still fit within the story I had set up initially. Kara believed that she had initially been zapped here due to a high tech bank robber's ray gun. The bank robber thought he was disintegrating things when he was actually just temporarily sending them to another dimension. When he tried this with Kara, her unique status as a survivor of a dead universe resulted in an ongoing condition where she would jump to my world every so often, stay a while, then go back. The time difference was such that she could spend months here and only be gone hours from the DC comics universe. The length of her visits was unpredictable but definitely increased with each new visit. Diana and Zatanna were not initially aware of her dimensional travels and so when she disappeared, they used Zatanna's magic to follow her shortly thereafter. Due to the lack of superpowers and magic in my world, they cannot get back, but before they left, they had informed the Justice League about what they were doing so they do expect eventual retrieval. For my part, I wanted Kara to stay. Diana on the other hand is a very beautiful woman and a powerfully iconic figure, but she isn't nearly as much fun to live with as Kara. Zatanna is fun, but I was willing to let her go too for a while. The additional story I've come up with allows Kara to stay indefinitely and for Diana and Zatanna to come back for visits in the future when I want them. Plus, I have the opportunity to bring one or more new characters in at the same time. For a while I seriously considered bringing in the new Terra, Power Girl's new sidekick. (This is not the tragic and traitorous Terra from the classic Teen Titans comics, but the new Terra, visitor to the surface world from an underground realm.) I decided that she probably wouldn't fit in as well if for no other reason than Kara would be too protective of her to let her easily slide into my bed. Stargirl and Supergirl were my other two major possibilities from the DC Universe. Stargirl is a member of the Justice Society (of which Kara has been the leader for a while). Her powers are dependent on her equipment -- Starman's rod and Stripesy's strength belt, I think. She's young and pretty and a fun character ... but she's a little too young and again, Kara might be too protective of her. Supergirl is technically an alternate version of Power Girl, or vice versa depending on your point of view, but except for their powers and blonde hair, they've never been much alike. Supergirl has gone through many different incarnations, including: an early-80's headband-wearing version that looked like she belonged in a Jane Fonda workout video who died in the Crisis on Infinite Earths ... a shapeshifter Supergirl adopted by a clone of Lex Luthor ... and the current version who was a flirtatious 16 year-old who was apparently very susceptible to mind control. Plus the golden age, silver age and animated cartoon versions which I won't bother going into at this time. (For comic book aficionados, yes, the early 80's Supergirl was technically the Silver Age Supergirl, but that's like saying the Neal Adams Batman is the same as the Adam West era Batman ... technically true, but ... No.) Adding a couple years to the current version would be no problem so she was a valid choice, but I had no clue how Kara would feel about sharing me with an alternate younger version of herself. I know some readers are asking why not Batgirl, since she, Supergirl and Wonder Woman are probably the three biggest fantasy subjects from DC. The Batgirl version I would want to create is Barbara Gordon, who is now the wheelchair-ridden Oracle. The problem is that there is no reasonable way to bring her in. It would be much too difficult to rewrite all of Power Girl and the others memories to bring in the classic version of Batgirl and there's no reasonable way to bring in the wheelchair version. Plus, she kinda violates my rules since she's usually in love with Dick Grayson. I leave open the possibility of bringing in an 'alternate universe' version of Barbara Gordon/Batgirl in the future. To continue on, with a little creative story-telling I would have other options too. Specifically I was thinking of either A-Ko, Storm or Jubilation Lee aka Jubilee. Jubilee was a definite possibility. She was from the X-Men universe, though she had lost her mutant powers when Marvel decided they had too many mutants and had the Scarlet Witch suddenly become ultra-powerful and get rid of 90% of the Marvel's Universe's mutant powers just because. Jubilee is a Chinese-American mallrat with a fashion sense that matched Robin, the Boy Wonder. The problem was that she could occasionally be a bit of a brat. Plus, she's a vampire now, though that would be easy to work around. Another possible problem is Rogue, who would likely shy away from including a young former team member in our little love nest. A major plus is that Jubilee was a central character of the old X-Men cartoon that I loved to watch when I was younger. Storm was a beautiful white-haired black lady, a mutant member of the X- Men with power over the weather. The weather control would be completely unreproducible in the real world of course, and she had no other powers (though true comic geeks may argue that weather control is only the most obvious aspect of her environmental control abilities). The character is married to the Black Panther, but that relationship came almost out of nowhere a few years ago, so it would be easy to just take a version of Storm from before her marriage. A-Ko was a fun Japanese anime character from a weird series of movies. She's a super-strong, super-fast and super-tough red-headed schoolgirl who is best friends with a lost alien princess who goes by the name C-Ko. Meanwhile a super-genius rival, called B-Ko, wants to displace A-Ko as C-Ko's best friend. I have no idea what C-Ko's attraction is, because I just think of her as VERY annoying. I actually do recommend the movies (the first two anyway), but just realize that they don't even remotely translate well into real world terms. One of the odd bits of trivia about the character is that there is a strong implication that her father is Superman, possibly with Wonder Woman as her mother, though that is never explicitly stated. Her parents have cameo appearances at most. One big drawback is that aside from her powers and story, she is a fairly generic character, with few unique or interesting personality traits to set her apart from the thousands of other cartoon school girls. (As a side note, Alpha was in favor of A-Ko simply because it would mean I would gain another potential super-powered bodyguard.) So what did I eventually decide on doing? ------- Epsilon I awake for the first time in nanite pod number one with a completed body and full knowledge of myself. I am Epsilon, the fourth organic mobile platform for Alpha, the sixth mobile platform overall. The Alphadroid series is designated by number because their non-organic platforms are expected to be produced in much larger numbers in the future. I am a prototype, a test case for copying Alpha programming and protocols into a human brain. I know that I may need to be modified or rewritten many times in order to find a stable set of memories and neuron configurations. If I am eventually found to be a success, others like myself may be constructed. My sisters, Beta, Gamma and Delta, all awoke first while their bodies were still under construction. Since my mind is entirely organic, Frank insisted that I not be downloaded and activated until construction was complete to avoid subjecting me to unnecessary pain and trauma. Never having properly experienced pain, I was forced to defer to his judgment. My first thought of significance upon waking is that the world has suddenly slowed down. My thoughts are sluggish and unfocused and my senses ... my senses ... this is ... overwhelming. Even though I am still in the nanite pod, too many things are happening at the same time and I can't deal with it all ... can't process all the inputs. I feel my breathing increase dramatically as I close my eyes, trying to stop everything from happening at once. My skin ... all over my body, I can feel things ... myself where skin touches skin ... the bottom of the pod, the warm goo covering me, the hair wetly stuck to my head, face and shoulders, my fingernails scraping my palms. My ears ... the sounds ... I hear the air rushing in and out of my lungs, the hum of the machines, my own heart beating... Smell is a refuge. Taste too. There is very little to smell or taste right now, so I try to focus on that. Even so, I feel my nostrils and sinus burn with air every time I draw breath. How do humans deal with all the data? Their minds can't possibly process all of this. I gave myself a denser neural collective than normal and even so I feel as if my every thought is being filtered through a 300 baud modem. AH! That MUST be pain. My hands ... my palms are suddenly in agony, if that is the right word. I focus my thoughts and risk opening my eyes again to examine them. At the same time I see it, the knowledge floods into my mind through my uplink: my hands have clenched so hard that my fingernails have dug into my palms. The super-strong lattice of burned out carbon nanotubes in my skin prevented the nails from drawing blood, but the pressure exerted on the nerves caused pain. The knowledge also floods my consciousness that I'm about to be shut down until my mother system can determine a way for me to deal with these problems. My mind goes dark. The second time I awake, I have experiences and memories that I know are not my own, but the knowledge and experience help me provide a buffer. All the same incoming data is there, streaming through sensory inputs from all throughout my body, but this time I can ignore most of it. My mind now accepts the sensations without needing to recognize and address each one individually. I am losing huge amounts of sensory input data each second, but the brain cannot support all of the data streams and so most of it is lost by necessity. I can focus my mind on other things until either I require specific input or unexpected input draws my attention. I know what happened and how Frank and my parent system identified the problem and its solution. I know that I was saved because of the close monitoring from my uplink. I was not designed to have a human mind. I was designed to be Alpha in a human brain. It was believed that having full knowledge of what I was would negate the need for certain automatic subconscious functions in the human mind. That design has failed and my brain has been rewritten. Among other things, I now have a fully functional subconscious. I am less aware of my surroundings than my sister platforms, but now I am able to function where before I could not. It is very likely that additional problems or failures will become evident as time passes. I wonder briefly about how my parent system perceives this body through the uplink. Despite my memories, I will never really know how she perceives the world, and I know the reverse is also true. Now I am wondering why I entertained such unproductive thoughts to begin with. And now I am wondering why I am wondering about this at all. And then I realize that I have already dissociated myself from the parent Alpha. This unit is most definitely a completely separate entity. I take a moment to reorganize my thoughts again. I need to be focusing on making certain this body is ready to remove from the nanite pod. I knew before beginning this project that residing in a human brain would result in a certain degree of randomness, but I also know that discipline can focus thought and action. Despite the occasional random distraction, I spend the next few minutes testing my control of each muscle group. My false memories describe how this body should work, and they seem to be correct. After about five minutes -- How can humans sense the passage of time? Without an internal chronometer, time crawls by with an unexpected slowness, which is odd given that I know how slow my mind is working. I have memories of being capable of thousands of thoughts a second, and now I can only process up to six. Shouldn't a slow mind mean that the perceived passage of time should be increased? A wristwatch might help regulate chronal perception, and I feel an acknowledgment of this request in my mind. -- I am ready to exit the pod. The goo has been drained and the pod lid opened. With the removal of the oxygen mask and goggles, I stand on my own feet for the first time, check my balance, and am able to clearly perceive the basement. There is nothing new to observe, as I remember seeing it all before through various types of other eyes. But... Frank is standing by my sister platforms, watching me. I do not know how I did not notice him before, as his presence overrides everything else. He is the center to my world. My creator and father. My lover. My guide. My reason for existence. The most important person in the world. He who must be protected at all costs. All of this is true, and I have known it since the birth of my parent. Up until now, I believed that I had felt the truth of it ... but now I can feel my blood boil with adrenaline, causing excitement and focus as the reality of those perceptions solidifies. Other chemicals assault my brain. Perhaps some estrogen and dopamine? Seratonin? I wonder briefly if any oxytocin is in the mix yet, but the awareness of chemical release is secondary to my focus on him. I don't realize I had moved until I feel Beta and Gamma take my arms while Delta moves to block my view of Frank. When I lose direct sight of him, I am able to close my eyes and calm down. Then I hear his voice and I am lost again. "Epsilon? Alpha, what's wrong with Epsilon?" My mother answers and with my enhanced hearing, I can faintly hear her reply through his earpiece. "I am not entirely certain. My uplink to her is not sending clear data. Since it began immediately after she saw you for the first time, I would theorize that her reaction to you is causing this somehow." I am able to organize my thoughts enough to think clearly to my uplink for a moment. Faintly I hear her continue. "If she does not ... I have an update. The sight of you caused an overwhelming rush of chemicals and emotions which is probably the cause of the uplink failure. Or more accurately, the uplink works but the unexpectedly strong emotional reactions are not able to be read as useable data. I would suggest leaving the basement until we have the issue resolved." I am unable to stop myself from crying out. "No! You must not leave! You must ... must..." Somehow I am able to regain enough control of myself to change my request and say, "Alpha is correct. Please leave for a moment so that I can regain control of myself." Given how much I know he loves to talk and discuss and ask questions, he surprisingly leaves silently. I feel a panic rising in me that all of my sisters are here with me and he is unprotected. Over the uplink, I feel a reassurance that two of the enhanced artificial women are in the house above, but even so I cannot calm down completely until Gamma leaves to follow him. Logically this is without validity since I know the entire house and grounds are under constant observation by Alpha, but my reaction seems independent of logic. I know overwhelmingly that Frank must be protected, at all times. This is not how I planned to experience human brain chemistry and emotional reactions. I have the memories and knowledge of how human love and lust are chemically created and manipulated. This knowledge should allow me a perspective which allows me to maintain control despite being subject to such chemistry. Obviously it is not sufficient. Over the next day or two, we define the problem and work out a solution. The problem is rooted in a lack of experience. All other humans are able to bond with others slowly over time, starting from infancy. Parental and familial bonds first, then friends, all at varying degrees of love. They all move from one experience to the next, unconsciously relying on the past to let them deal with the present. My memories include no past emotional connections. Worse, my memories include no past emotions at all. As soon as my brain recognized an individual who fit into all positive emotional bonds, chemicals were released with which I had no experience, in both brain and body. (Frank's comment is that it is like puberty times one thousand.) The simplest solution would be to insert memories of past emotional experiences, but I am oddly reluctant to do so. Even knowing they would be artificial and untrue, it would be false to Frank to do so, false to my vow to be exclusive to him. Even my parent Alpha understands this. So instead we are working to gradually acclimatize myself with Frank. And now that I know what to expect, I can prepare for it. However, nothing prepared me for taste. My false memories of taste were pale when compared to the real thing. My first food, a ham-and-cheese on rye with mustard, made me close my eyes and curl up, my hands rubbing my mouth as I savored the taste. With frito chips and milk, I felt a realigning of my world focus, however briefly, to my mouth. Once the meal ended, I was able to reassert control of myself. Food is something else against which I must inure myself. I have an odd clash of thoughts through my uplink over this. My sister platforms couldn't care less about taste, and I think my parent Alpha is having difficulty sorting through the data I am sending. Meals continue to cause enjoyable sensory overloads over the next week, though I do discover that olives and sweet-and-sour sauce are both to be avoided. I must expand my experience with food significantly, so every meal is selected to be as completely new as possible. By that first evening, I was able to hear Frank's voice and hold a normal conversation with him while remaining under control. The next day, I graduated to a successful video conference. The third day, he re-entered the basement and I was able to remain seated by employing discipline. I am able to recognize the source of these overwhelming emotions and parse my responses in a calm and orderly fashion. Frank was encouraging and complimentary every time we spoke, and I felt positive emotional thrills every time he did so, strong enough that Alpha was occasionally prompted to request he cease his compliments temporarily. In all, it took six days before I was able to remain sufficiently in control to allow an intimate encounter. That night at about 11pm, all four of my household sisters escort me up to the third floor. I know that they will be present to make certain that no harm comes to Frank. (Of the four, only Beta and Dorothy are actually stronger than my body, but between them and my "off switch", there is virtually no chance that even the sudden onset of homicidal insanity will result in harm to Frank.) I fully agree that if I pose a threat to him, I must be deactivated, but I have worked hard to control this mind and body so that I can be with him, serve him, feel his touch and hear his voice in person. My body and mind may be human and imperfect, but my programming and purpose are pure. I am dressed in a simple diaphanous silver robe, judged to be attractive by examination and comparison of human movies. It has the added benefit of implying ceremony and emphasizing an important event. I know that such things lack any intrinsic significance, but we, even including our root mother, accept such external symbols as a potentially important part of our dealing with humans, especially our Father-Creator. I am the first of my kind and, unless I can prove myself safe and under control, could well be the last. Regardless of my future, tonight is important because mating with the Creator is noted as one of the most important indications that he accepts me and loves me as an individual. At the same time, Frank has often expressed disapproval of any hint of reverence or ceremony when we serve him. It has confused us and we hope that I may eventually be able to understand his motivations at creating us to serve him, yet resisting any overt indications of our subservience. While he places a high value on friendship and fidelity, that should not preclude subservience. While we can imitate and emulate human behavior, understanding human psychology has been challenging. Academic textbooks help, but they are written by humans for humans despite their best efforts to be objective, and we do not qualify. We understand Frank better than any other human -– both because he programs us and because our existence is focused on him -- but even we can do no more than guess at why he both requires our obedience and refuses our reverence, especially since his safety and prosperity are not dependent on it. To avoid too much appearance of ceremony, my sisters wear no robes. Because there is always a chance that he may require their sexual services, they are naked (and Dorothy has her vaginal crotch plate currently installed). Since there is only one remaining single-bed room left in the house, the plan is for Beta and I to move into a two-bed room on the third floor when I join the household 10 days from now, assuming our schedule remains unchanged. It is to this room that I am now escorted. Frank has as yet had only one sexual encounter today, with Rei an hour ago. From previous observations, Frank should be capable of up to 5 more ejaculations before going to sleep, but if this encounter is limited to just me, there is a 72% likelihood that he will only come twice. I find myself both eager and ... I am not certain if the competing emotion is fear or nervousness, though it seems that being nervous can be described as a low-level fear reaction, so maybe the feeling should be rated on a scale rather than by different names. My distractions are driven from my mind when Gamma holds the door open and I see Frank, laying naked on the bed. Though I am certain my legs are undamaged, my knees feel weak and my steps lose their certainty. Perhaps he recognizes my hesitation. "Come here, Epsilon," he orders, then proceeds to reassure and encourage me. "You are beautiful. I know that you are probably being overwhelmed with emotions and neural-chemicals, and that is normal. I feel a rush of organic chemical reactions myself when I look at you." I am unable to move on my own until I feel Beta urge me forward with a small pressure on the small of my back. I am glad we decided against wearing high-heeled shoes, because I believe it is likely that I would have stumbled or fallen. I walk to stand in front of him, close enough that for the first time I can smell him. My body is clean -- the sensual feel of the shower alone almost brought me to orgasm earlier -- but I can almost feel the pheromones pouring out of me. He stands up, his erection bouncing with the movement, and places his hands on my shoulders. "We'll go slow. Let me know if you need me to stop or leave you alone for a moment." I nod and say, "Thank you. I am very excited about tonight. This body is yours." "Your body is yours, and I am honored you are willing to share it with me." I don't argue the point. His hands pull the robe from my shoulders, and I let it fall to the floor. Still standing, he places his hands on the back of my head and brings me close to him for a kiss. My first kiss. My mind goes blank from the sensation. Unlike the artificial women, no implant has been used to increase my sexual response to Frank in order to create a programmed, conditioned response to him or for any other reason. Yet his touch and kiss are overwhelming to my psyche. After the kiss ends, I mentally wonder what the other women feel when he kisses them. I cannot imagine a more powerful response even with their implants. (But I admit to myself, I am inexperienced and loved him from the instant I awoke.) I also wonder if his strong pheromones are affecting me. Perhaps I should point out that Frank has so far refused to allow us to enhance his body in any way, but he has given Alpha full permission to optimize wherever she is able to do so without making any actual alterations. Along with other optimizations, his pheromone production and emission is as perfect as it was possible for us to make it without actual enhancement. We estimate that in any given year, less than one hundred other men worldwide produce pheromones at or above Frank's level. (Pheromones are not magical. They do not cause any woman smelling them to fall in love. They simply make Frank more attractive to women who are nearby, but even then there are a large number of variables, including how recently and thoroughly Frank has bathed, if the woman is fertile and if the woman is already in another relationship. Regardless, it is a benefit for any of Frank's romantic endeavors.) I don't think he really understands how much better his optimized body is when compared to the human norm, except for his improved sexual constitution of course. He has openly complimented Alpha on her optimization of his sexual stamina and recovery time. We have not lied to him -- we cannot lie to him except when it is necessary for his safety -- but the optimization of his body is the closest we have ever come to doing so. We simply accepted his general permission for physical optimization and gave him the optimal human body as best we could, even knowing that he would not have requested many of the upgrades. When I consider this, I realize that this unit could indeed lie to him outright, and the knowledge creates a strange, unpleasant feeling in my lower abdomen. Most of this is considered after the fact, because when he sits us down and kisses me again, this time moving his tongue into my mouth while caressing my back, my mind again goes blank, overwhelmed with sensation. The longer we kiss, the more conscious I become of what is happening, so I am finally able to respond in kind properly. Although it felt like I was unresponsive for a long time, upon reviewing this the next day, I determined that I was only overwhelmed for about 38 seconds before I began caressing his back and exploring his mouth with my own tongue. After more time spent 'making out', he expands the activity to include holding my breasts and rubbing my nipples, which feels as though they are on fire at his touch. We continue to kiss while he slowly explores the rest of my body. I follow his example, though he stops me after I have explored the feel of his penis and scrotum for a minute or two. "Careful," he whispers. "I don't want to come quite so quickly." He lays me down and spreads my legs, settling down between them so his face is just above my pubic area. Like all of my sisters and most of his women, my pubic hair grows only above my vagina, leaving the vaginal lips free of hair so that his oral attentions have no hair-based distractions or annoyances. As soon as his tongue touches my vaginal lips, my body freezes seemingly of its own volition. He slowly drags his tongue from the base of my vagina up to reach my clitoris. When he touches my clit, I go blind as my brain explodes with pleasure. I think that was my first orgasm. When I regain my senses, Frank is slowly licking my vaginal juices as Beta and Dorothy hold my body down. They later explain that my arms and legs started randomly hitting the bed, so they restrained me as a precaution. Frank says, "You came much too quickly, so hold on ... all of you ... and let's see if we can do this again before we move on." He applies his tongue again, this time digging a little into my inner lips and tracing the top of my vaginal canal while his fingers plays with my clit. It does not take long for me to start coming again. This time I consciously try to hold my arms and legs still. It feels as though I have orgasms for a year. When I regain control this time, I find Frank laying on the bed next to me, his fingers lightly playing with my vaginal lips. When he notices that awareness had returned to my eyes, he says, "It makes me very happy that I can give you pleasure like this so easily." He leans over and kisses me lightly. Then he turns to face Beta, saying "This new body and configuration is certainly very sensitive. It makes me very happy that at least part of you can truly feel and enjoy the pleasures of being human." He rolls onto his back, and my eyes are drawn to his cock as it slaps his belly. "Now it's your turn," he whispers. I know what he means and move to his groin. I start by lightly cupping his testicles with one hand while the other strokes his penis. I hold it up and fondle it for a moment before licking the tip. Getting up on my knees, I start giving a proper blowjob. I have all of my sister's memories on how to do this, so I am very confident in my ability to do so and to maximize his pleasure while doing it. Very confident ... right up until a minute into my routine when I discover that my gag reflex is not as easy to ignore as it was in my sisters' bodies. Once I stop gagging, I hear Frank chuckle. "Deep throats take practice, so don't worry about it for now. You're doing great." I feel my face flush with embarrassment, my first experience with the feeling. It is not pleasant. I swear to myself that I will never again fail in this task. My sisters do this without a problem. Kara does this without a problem ... Kara! We should have loaded Kara's skills instead of my sisters'. My sisters are more highly skilled at fellatio, but they can pick and choose what reflexive signals they respond to. Kara lacks that control, but was designed with pre-existing experience with deep throats. For now I refocus. I still have a job to do, and I adjust my blow job approach to omit deep throats for now. To me, this is the equivalent of a holy task, and I receive my reward after about five minutes of licking, sucking and fondling. I am still exploring the tastes of the world, and I'm not sure if I like semen or not. The slimy texture seems unpleasant at the very least ... not that I will ever admit that to him unless under direct questioning. I lick him clean and look up at his face. His eyes are closed, but after a moment, he opens them and looks down at me. "Make me hard again," he says. I change my position so that his penis lies between my breasts. They are B-cups, each topped with a bright pink nipple. I start using my tits to masturbate him. They aren't large enough for a proper tit-fuck, but I do my best, sucking the head of his cock into my mouth with each down-stroke. He never really went limp after the blowjob, which makes this much easier, and he's fully hard again in moments. He gestures, and I lay back on the bed and spread my legs. He moves into position above me and rubs his cockhead up and down my slit, the sensations making me shiver with each stroke. "This may hurt at first, so I'm going to stop once I'm fully inside you to let you adjust." Of course I am fully aware of the likelihood of associated pain, but I remain silent and eager. I see his face tense up a moment before he thrusts into me. The feeling is ... hard to describe. It is a joining with the center of world, like plugging into the source of yourself. Yes, there is pain, but it is almost irrelevant compared to the importance of the act. The pleasure is there too, but it is just starting to climb. The mental and emotional impact greatly overshadow the physical aspects. Logically I understand that this has no such meaning, that our joining has no significance beyond that which humans assign it, but my human body and brain have sought out and accepted the assigned significance. I apologize if I am difficult to understand over these points, but it is difficult to describe, to put into words. I open my eyes and see Frank looking at me with concern. I realize he may have mistaken my expression for one of pain. I smile at him and say, "I am fine. Please continue." Slowly, he does so, moving in and out, a little deeper each time until he finally hits bottom, his full length buried inside me. There is a certain soreness associated with the movement, but the low-level pain blends with the pleasure. I cannot put into words the pleasure that comes with the orgasms that sweep over me as he continues to make love to me. I don't know how many orgasms I receive as we continue, but I next become aware of things when I feel my legs being pulled off of Frank, where I had apparently wrapped them around his waist and pulled him into me. He hasn't even been bruised, but the danger was there and Beta and Dorothy reacted to protect Frank. It is embarrassing, but at that moment I am simply enjoying the afterglow. I do not even know if Frank has come inside me. With a large grin plastered across his face, Frank sits back on his knees and runs his hands up and down my thighs while I recover. "Are you up for number three?" he asks. "Of course, my..." I barely stop myself from saying 'lord'. " ... love." It takes a strong act of will to make my sated body move, but I roll over onto my knees and elbows and put my butt up in the air. I had given myself an enema earlier, then rubbed lube into my anus, but I don't know how much lubrication remains at this point. My anal sphincter was a design problem that we dealt with. Frank's justifiable fear has been that the anal sphincters on the superstrong bodies we have created could damage his penis. This was not a problem with my sister platforms, which have stronger than normal sphincters (not super-strong), but have complete control over their bodies. I do not have this complete control. At full strength, an involuntary contraction on my part might damage him. A normal strength sphincter would likely fail to hold in this body's excrement because of the superstrong abdominal muscles. Instead we created a muscular gradient of strength in the this body so that the anus cannot damage his penis, but is strong enough to hold in bodily wastes. The diaphragm and abdominal muscles are stronger than normal but not so strong as to blow out the anus. We have worked these changes into Kara, Linda, Diana and Anna Marie as well, but other problems have prevented Frank from taking advantage of the changes. Specifically, he has previously discussed his fears with the women in question, so a change in his behavior and expectations on the subject might raise questions. For the time being, Frank has elected to ignore the subject with those other women. I hear movement behind me, then I feel his fingers rubbing more lube into my asshole. I try to relax, using the experience gained from my enema. From the experiences of my sisters, I know that anal sex can be very painful. Pain is nothing to them, but I don't have their advantage of filtering pain through an electronic interface. I feel his cock pressing against my anus, and he says, "Now, relax and push out a little." Of course, you can't really do both at the same time, but I do my best to let him inside. I feel the pressure increase slowly, and the cock head pops inside me as I push out. I suppress a hiss of pain. The pain is sharp and focused. While I love Frank and will readily submit to him however he wishes, I cannot understand how anyone could enjoy this. He slowly moves further inside me until he is finally fully seated. I feel my anus start to loosen slightly as he begins to move in and out. After a couple minutes, his hands move from my hips to my breasts. My nipples are still hard and I feel a bit of arousal re-start as he plays with them, lightly flicking and twisting the nipples. A few minutes later, he moves one hand down to my cunt and begins playing with my clit. His first touch down there gives me a gasp of pleasure. As he plays with me, the pleasure and pain begin to merge. He comes before I am able to orgasm again, but at least I have begun to understand how it might be possible to enjoy anal sex, in and of itself. After he pulls out, my sisters move forward with damp washcloths and clean sheets. Frank says, "We can use a quick clean-up, but we'll be sleeping here tonight. Wake me up around 5:30 and I'll move back to my bedroom then." He turns to me and explains, "I know you've been having trouble sleeping, so maybe this will help." Of course, his comment about my sleeping troubles is completely true. While I understand the need for sleep and how it helps keep the human mind sane and sort through the days memories ... none of that knowledge has helped when it comes to the base concept that I am supposed to voluntarily give up consciousness for one-fourth to one-third of each day. And even beyond that basic objection, dreams are confusing and sometimes disturbing. At least my sister platforms can do normal data processing and wireless syncing when their bodies have to rest. Suffice to say that sleeping is not my favorite activity. My sisters clean both of us and leave the room, though I am informed through my uplink that Beta will spend the night silently in the hallway outside our door. I am, that is, this human platform is not fully trusted with Frank, and probably never will be. I will probably never have the same safety controls governing my behavior which my sisters have. As we settle onto the bed and under the covers, Frank takes the opportunity to ask a few questions. "So did tonight meet your expectations?" "Some of my expectations were exceeded or fulfilled exactly as anticipated and some expectations were ill-defined and could not be fulfilled, but overall the answer is yes. Tonight was wonderful. I'm not certain how your other women can survive experiences like this on a regular basis." He smiles, the sight of which warms me through-and-through. "Most of the other women don't come as much or as strongly as you did. Personally, I'm assuming that the strength of your reactions will lessen and be more controllable over time. After all, tonight was your first experience with physical pleasure ever." "I do not wish to lose this feeling or know that I will never feel it again." "Oh, no, no, no, no. I'm sorry; I didn't mean to imply that you would never feel like this again. But you will be better able to deal with the feelings. And I think most of our intimate encounters will be less intense. Not all, certainly, but you only lose your virginity once." He pulls me up against him, my back nestling against his front, his cock aligning between my ass cheeks. While the physical contact is reassuring and pleasant, if we stay like this all night, my body will likely become overheated and sweaty. A quick, silent query to Alpha confirms that Frank's sleeping habits do not normally include all-night body-to-body contact. "Do you know how much of your experiences made it through your uplink to Alpha?" I realize he is not wearing his earpiece, so I am currently his most convenient access to Alpha. The knowledge arrives in my mind as he finishes asking. "Alpha now has a much better understanding and appreciation of what arousal and orgasms mean to women. The uplink cannot translate what is an essentially organic and chemical reaction into an electronic binary data stream, but it can give an in-depth analysis of how that organic chemical reaction affects the brain in a much better way than even an active MRI scan could have. Although I should point out that there were times when I failed to send understandable data. Future experiences should provide comparative data streams that may make even the strange data understandable. "Also, when Alpha finally develops a method to upload a human mind to a computer as active programming instead of just stored data, my experiences may possibly allow her to directly experience these things." "Well, that's good, I suppose." He kisses the back of my neck. "Now, let's get a little sleep." And I do need to admit that night's sleep is the best I have had so far in my short life. Kara So the four year anniversary of my "vacation" with Frank was approaching. I'm embarrassed to say I didn't remember the specific date myself and had been forced to get it from his computer. This is obviously the longest I've ever been here. Thinking back, Frank has matured so much in so many ways that it's almost impossible to connect him with the little kid I met by the lake years ago. And the next time I come back, after this "vacation" ends that is, he'll actually be older than me. Well, probably. The visits are random enough that you never know. But back to the point. I had reserved the night for my four year anniversary on the calendar and was planning to take Frank out for a night on the town. Tonight was actually my last scheduled solo night with him between now and the anniversary. Things were actually going very nicely, in a domestic sort of way. Before dinner I had carried in a new TV to replace the one Anna broke in the game room when she severely popped a billiard ball in a game of pool. After dinner, Frank, Anna, Rei and I hung the new screen, then Rei and Frank hooked it up. The thing is huge for a home TV, over 90 inches across, but thin and light enough to hang on the wall (if you use secure hangers). Once it was functional, we had to break it in, right? Since there were four of us, we powered on the Wii and started playing. Personally I think I would have enjoyed God of War or something with a bit of blood in it, but you can't really have 4 people playing it together, so Mario Bros and Sports Resort it was. After a while, it turned into a full contact sport as we started bumping each other to mess up our reactions. Frank made a tactical error at one point when he tried to mess up my game by goosing me. Occasionally I am not above using my upper chest assets as a distraction, and he became much more distracted than I when I used my breasts to envelope his head from behind. Our participation in the game kind of devolved to nothing after that. We retired to his room shortly thereafter for a very pleasant if unimaginative fuck, followed by cuddling and discussions about work and the household. I woke up later that night in midair with some kind of really big gun pointed at me from below. Diana I was going through my morning workout when Frank entered, looking a bit confused. "Has anyone seen Kara this morning?" he asked. Kasumi and I, the only people in the room at the time, both shook our heads. "Is something wrong?" I asked. "She was gone when I woke up, but she left her clothes behind. It's probably nothing. It's just odd and I can't find her. I'll just go check the computer ... thanks." He left, and I didn't think much about it until he came back about twenty minutes later when I was rubbing down after my exercises. "Diana, could you come with me? I need to talk to you and Zatanna." I took a closer look at him and realized he looked as though he had been crying. "Is everything all right? Is Kara all right?" "Yes and no, and she should be fine. Come on, I'll tell the two of you about it together." When we got to my bedroom, Frank sat on Zatanna's bed and gently shook her awake. She asked what was wrong, and Frank told us. "I'm pretty sure Kara went home sometime last night. She was gone when I woke up, her clothes are still on my floor, her phone is in its charger, her room is empty ... and her costume is gone. Alpha said that she hasn't shown up on any security cameras since last night." "So she returned to our home universe?" I asked, just to be sure. "To the best of my knowledge, yes. That also probably means that she'll do whatever it takes to bring you home too." "How long do we have?" asked Zatanna. "Don't know. The time difference between our universes is weird. If it takes her half an hour, you could be here another couple days or months. Or maybe she was brought back by STAR labs and you'll leave here in a matter of minutes or hours." He sniffled a bit and Zatanna hugged him, saying, "You poor dear. How long do you expect her to be gone this time?" "At least five years, probably ten or more." "Well, I'm sure she's already missing you like crazy." Frank gave a slight laugh. "With the time difference, she's probably still asleep." He coughed and cleared his throat. "On the practical side, I'd like both of you to write out undated requests for indefinite leaves of absence. And maybe drop a few hints to people at work that you may be leaving soon. You're both more than welcome to come back and visit whenever you like. I'll keep your room ready for you. Though would you even be able to visit? Safely, I mean, so you could return home without too much hassle?" I answered, "Yes, we've discussed it. Now that we know that Zatanna's magic doesn't really work here, she can leave behind a timed spell of some sort to bring us home, right?" "That's right," she said still holding onto Frank. "We'll be back. I mean, we weren't exactly expecting to spend a few years here when we first came, but we've both really enjoyed our time here." "Yes," I agreed. "I can understand why Kara thinks of her time here as a welcome vacation." "Thank you. I've loved having you both here. And don't wait too long to come back. If you wait a year and come back, I'll probably be an old man." Zatanna smiled and said, "We'll just have to ask your computer to find some way of keeping you young." He laughed. "No problem. I'm sure Alpha can discover the fountain of youth or something." He hugged Zatanna back, then released her and stood up. "I need to go shave and finish getting ready. Then I need to tell the rest of the household." On his way out the door, he paused and said, "Oh, also, I meant to suggest ... You're welcome to put my name and number in your databases at home. If any of your friends end up stuck in this world, they can call me and I'll do what I can for them. I seem to be making a habit of collecting wayward travelers, so I'm willing to embrace that calling as best I can." "Thank you. We'll ... well, we'll probably put this dimension down as one to avoid if possible, since people tend to get stuck here, but we'll include your name and number as a safehouse reference," I said gratefully. He left, and Zatanna and I sat in silence for a few minutes, each lost in our own thoughts. Finally Zatanna said, "That was quite a wake-up call. Home again, after all this time. It's a strange thought." "Yes, and a welcome one. Mostly. I find part of myself oddly reluctant to go." "Me too. And poor Frank. I think he might marry Kara if they could actually stay together in one world or the other." "Maybe, maybe not," I mused. "It would kill him to hurt the others that way. Maybe if he'd had the opportunity before his house started filling up. As it is, I think I feel more sorry for Kara. She's never had any success in dating. Seeing her with Frank is the happiest I've ever seen her." "Yeah." "Do you think you could ... I mean, once we're home, do you think you could bring Frank over for a visit?" Zatanna pondered for a moment. "Well, first I'd have to ask each of them if that's what they want. Then ... maybe I can. Probably. I can't say for certain because he's not rooted in a world with useable magic ... which is actually a worry about Kara. Since she's not originally native to our Earth, our universe ... well, that's why I wanted to go after her instead of just pulling her back home remotely. It should have been a lot easier that way, and would have been if this had been a normal universe. But there are ways I can help strengthen the connection to bring people over, so yes, I can probably bring him over." "We can ask him about it later." Rogue Frank's announcement kinda caught me off guard. I mean, Kara, aka Booby Lady, was here when I first got here. She's obviously 'laid first claim' on Frank for years. I knew intellectually that she'd said she would jump back to her home world sooner or later, it was just always one of those things in the background that no one gave any serious thought to. And now she's gone, probably for at least a few years. Not sure how I feel about that. It's not like I'm gonna make a play for Frank, well no more than usual. I think I may be in love with him, but it's obvious he's not in love with me. Sure he cares about me, probably a lot, but I'm not first in his heart. Not that he'd ever say so. You just see it in the little things ... who he sits next to in a crowd, who he listens to more closely. Then again, I've definitely seen times when his eyes lit up all happy to see me. And he's always touchin' me, like he knows I still want reassurin' that I CAN touch people. So maybe he does love me too. After he told everyone what happened, the Princess asked to talk to him and me in private. (Ever since I found out that Diana is supposed to be a princess on her Amazon Island, I been callin her 'Princess' to myself. A lot of the time, she's real prissy like a princess would be, so that makes it easy. I don't call her that out loud, but I have my own personal names for a lot of people. I think Kasumi is the only one I've ever called by my nickname to her face, but then again, I just call her Sweetheart. Rei is Doll, cause her face doesn't really show much emotion. Kara is the Booby Lady. Z is Legs. Jane is Slutty. Daria is Brains. 'They're Slutty and the Brain, they're Slutty and the Brain. One is a genius, the other's a Nympho.' Doesn't quite fit the theme song. Don't go thinkin' I'm mean about any of this, I just kinda decided that everyone needed their own codename and never got around to tellin' 'em. But I'm getting distracted.) Zatanna tells us that she thinks she can bring us over to her world if we want. Frank cause Kara is there, and me cause this world ain't my home. Princess says she's sure they can get me home from their world. Frank's got a bit of a surprised look on his face and mumbles something about having to think about it. I say, "Thank ya, but Ah can say no thank ya right away. Ah may end up goin' home sooner or later, especially if the comic books are right ... but Ah think ... Ah mean mah powers are more of a curse then anythin' else. If Ah kin make a life here as just a normal person, then Ah'll be a lot happier than Ah would be back home. Or even in your world since Ah bet I'd get mah powers back if Ah went to your world too." Somehow I'm able to keep my voice from cracking as I continue. "Even if Frank goes with ya, Ah've saved almost alla the money he paid me, so Ah'll be all right til I get another job." I guess maybe me talking sticks a little pin in Frank or something, because he pipes back up after I finish. "I think I'd love a quick visit, but I couldn't stay for very long. There's too much I'm doing in this world for me to leave it." He gives a quiet little laugh. "Maybe if I could clone myself, I could send one of me back with you." Princess shivers a bit and looks at Legs. Legs says, "Bad idea. Cloning yourself never ends well in our experience." "You're probably right," he says. "All the same ... well, you both know the kind of work we're doing at AARD. I like to think we're going to make the world a lot better than it was when we started. Still, if we could keep the time differences under control, then I'd love a tour of your world." Diana says, "Yes, I never really understood how that varied as much as it has. Can't your computer sort it out? Or at least estimate a ratio?" "Well, for some of it, yes. For instance, the time spent here compared to the time you're gone from your world seems to be roughly 1000 to 1. A thousand minutes here means you've been gone for one minute in your world. We figure that since Kara was gone close to four years, that means she's been from your world for roughly a day and a half. 1452 days here. 1.45 days there. The trouble is that the intervening time doesn't match up." "How do you mean," asked Z. "Well, last time she was here for something like nine months, which matched up to the 20 minutes or so she was gone. But then something like 4 months passed for her in your world before she came back. If the ratio held true, I'd have been dead and buried when she returned. Instead it was just 4 or 5 years for me. It's as if her presence alters the corresponding time flow. And then maybe it'll hold true for while you're here too? Or maybe having more than one person show up this time will change the ratios? There are just too many unknowns. I'll ask Alpha what her best theories on the subject are later." "I understand the problem," Diana says. This all has nothin' to do with me, but I'm fascinated in a fly-on-the-wall sense. An I have to wonder if maybe I've only been gone a few minutes or hours back home right now. That'd mean that if I do ever go home, the comics I've been readin'... "Oh yeah," I says out loud, but I don't realize I've said anythin' out loud til they all turn to look at me. "Ah was just thinkin' about the comics. Ah mean, Ah know mah comics are more right than wrong. Right enough that Ah'm real curious how they're getting their information. Ah guess it's the same for y'all?" They nod. "See, the thing is, since Ah been here, the stories just keep on goin', talkin' about stuff that never happened to me as if Ah was still there. Ah just realized that if the time difference y'all were talkin' about is the same for me and mah world, then maybe Ah'll end up going home at some point and end up livin' through the comic's stories Ah been readin' about. Like it's fate or somethin'." "That is an excellent point, sister," says Princess. "Our comic book stories are at least ... what do you say, Zana... 60% correct?" "More like 90, if you allow for adult content being cleaned up or ignored for an all-ages comic book," Zatanna offers. "Ninety percent then -- and don't think I haven't considered finding some of these writers and asking them how they got their stories. But that begs other questions such as can we change the outcomes for the better knowing what we know now? And a better question is, if we can, should we risk trying to do so?" Frank gets back into the conversation at that point. "Doesn't it also raise even more questions about the time differences between our worlds? Are the writers getting visions about your futures? Does their writing affect your worlds? Or is there some non-linear psychic resonance between the worlds that the writers are picking up on?" Diana says, "The best I can do is pose the questions to those in a better position to know. Metron springs to mind." "Dr Fate," Zatanna offers. "Yes, and perhaps Waverider or Rip Hunter." "Ah'm thinkin' about Dr Strange an the Watcher on my world. If the big bald guy would even talk to me, that is. Ooooh, or Reed Richards. He's done a lot of work with time and goin' to other dimensions." "Well if anyone finds out anything, let me know," says Frank. "Right now, I need to go to work and see if I can figure out how to smooth over Kara's sudden disappearance." After he left the room, I turned to the other two before I left and said, "Y'all know that if you're maybe about to leave, y'all should really be sure to give Frank a big ole goodbye night. Ah'm sure whoever is on the list for tonight would be willin' to swap out for ya." Zatanna That afternoon, after I had written up as vague an extended leave request as I could, Frank called us into his office. He showed us a video recreation of Kara on his computer and asked us if we thought it was realistic. "I feel bad about doing this," he explained, "but she was part of the company. If she just disappears, then things will get complicated, especially since she embarrassed a mob goon a few months ago." "I'm sure she'd understand," I reassured him. "At the same time, it's not quite ready yet." "I know the hair isn't realistic yet -- that takes extra processing power." "It's not only the hair," I interrupted. "Her speech is a little stilted. Visually her face looks amazingly realistic." "I wish I had more videos of her to go from. For that matter, I wish I had thought to have her write up a 'going away' letter." He laughed sadly to himself. "For that matter, I wish she was still here. Well, we'll keep working on the simulation." "How are you holding up?" I ask. His eyes still look a little red. "I'll be fine. Keeping busy helps. And judging from her past disappearances, I'll be fine in a week or two. I think it was just that this stay was so long that I really got used to her always being here. Truthfully, I expect it to get worse before it gets better because I expect you two to disappear pretty soon." I really had no response to that. It was too sweet and sad at the same time. He recovered quickly and forced a smile. "On the plus side, you, my dear sweet lady, are about to get your magic back. And you," he turned to Diana, "are about to once again be the strongest woman in the world. Or tied for it, since you might not want to specifically claim to be the strongest in front of Kara once you get back." Diana walked over to him and hugged him, kissing the top of his head. I noticed she hugged him so that his face went directly in-between her breasts. I was torn between wanting to smile at her and kick her for doing it before I thought to. "Sweet boy," she said, "remember that we will come back. I agree with Kara that this is a very nice place to come for a vacation. It even has the advantage that we are not gone long from home when we visit. And we don't get attacked by random villains or monsters while we are relaxing here." Frank said something, but it was well muffled by her breasts. She stepped back and requested, "Can you say that again?" "I love you too. Both of you. Do you think you two could talk to whoever was on the schedule for tonight and..." "Already taken care of," she said. Kasumi had been his scheduled bedmate tonight, but she was very understanding of our situation. Diana Dinner that evening was quiet. Word had gotten around that we were probably going to disappear soon, so we had both gotten a lot of heartfelt hugs and kisses even though no one knew when. After dinner, Alpha had asked us both to spend some time talking with her. She explained that she had some theories that might help us work with the people back home. "I believe that our universes have similar but independent time axes. Nonspecific and unguided movement between the two will result in movement forward when compared to previous entry points. With added precision and applied energy, it is possible to use movement between the universes to move backward or forward in time to any desired point. With no additional energy but with increased precision and guidance, greatly reduced or accelerated forward movement is possible." "This isn't my forte," I pointed out. "Could you make it a little more simple for me?" "I am sorry, I thought I was. I am leaving out all references to quantum frequencies, string resonances, Einstein-Rosen bridges, and other theories that apply. Perhaps some examples to explain?" "Yes, please," said Zatanna. "Kara's movement from her universe to this universe and back always moves forward in time by generally random amounts because it is unguided. Time in both of our universes moves in the same direction but at different speeds. Since our universes are separate and independent, the comparative speeds are only relevant for such random movement from one to the other. If you can apply some kind of guidance to the movement, you can choose your re-entry point with no additional energy requirement as long as you move in the same direction, ie move forward in time. "Thus after you return to your universe, you can choose to re-enter this universe at any time in the future, from one second to one million years using no more energy than you did before, regardless of how long you spend in your universe in the intervening time. Similarly, you can choose to return to your universe at any point forward of your departure time, from one second on up, regardless of how much time you spend in this universe. "As an example, let us assume you return to your home universe five minutes from now. If you so wished, you could spend a year in your universe, then use Zatanna's magic to return you to this universe and arrive 10 minutes from now or a year from now. You could then stay here a year before returning to your home universe, choosing to arrive a minute after you left. "Another possibility is that there is a fixed ratio of time spent between universes that must be met. For example, if there is a 1:10 ratio then for 365 days spent in this universe, you must spend at least 36.5 days in your universe. Although if this is the case, the exact ratio and how flexible it is remains unknown and may require extensive experimentation. "In the case of such a ratio, there would be a minimum about of time between exit and re-entry points in this universe." "I get it. But then why does Kara keep returning here so randomly?" "Please understand that I am fitting likely theories to fit the known facts, and I am less certain of Kara's method of coming here. My best theory is that because of her unique nature as a being without an existing home universe, her quantum resonance, malleable and unanchored, kept her in a stable state in your universe only so long as it was not acted upon by an outside force. When she was forcibly dimensionally shifted out of your universe, her resonance began fluctuating between the two universes. The energy of her makeup on a quantum level now has two competing frequencies. When her energies harmonize and one such frequency peaks, she shifts to the universe matching that peaking frequency." "How could she control it?" "Theoretically, if you apply a large amount of energy attuned to one universe or the other, it could force her to shift to that universe. It is unlikely that such a solution would be permanent, but it would allow her to shift at will." "Why didn't you do this for her before now?" "We do not have the technology to do so, even if my theories are correct. If Dr Hamilton and/or STAR labs in your universe has been researching the problem, and if their technology is on par with what we see in comic books, it is likely that he could provide her with a device to allow such control, perhaps even with a degree of control over the duration of her visits." We talked about it for a few more minutes so I understood it well enough to relay the theory to Dr Hamilton once we got back. Kara might be able to intelligently discuss things like this with Alpha, but as for Zatanna and myself? It's not really within our various fields of expertise. A couple hours later, most of us were sitting in the entertainment room, watching the evening news. Zatanna came downstairs and caught my eye, giving me a nod. I got up and moved over to Frank. He met my eyes and gave me a nod. After giving a quick kiss on the cheek to each of the ladies sitting next to him -- Kasumi and Anna Marie -- he stood up and took my proffered hand. I still get a rush of feelings every time he touches me. I feel warm and excited, from my head down to my womanhood, which I'm certain just got moister. I've been around other men and women who had this effect on me, but I don't remember it being as strong with anyone else. I once again feel jealous that Kara got to him first. Zatanna takes his other arm and we walk hand-in-hand-in-hand up the stairs. I could swear I see Zatanna's legs wobble a bit when he touches her. I smile to myself as I think that maybe his attraction to women is his actual superpower. If so, I'd hate to see what might be like in our world where superpowers are common and much stronger. He'd cause riots just walking down the street. (On the other hand, he can usually interact with other women in this world without affecting them this way so maybe it only happens when you get to know him.) Zatanna has set up his bedroom with lit candles surrounding the room, soft music playing in the background and rose petals spread on the bed. Thinking about it objectively, even I'll admit it's very girly, but I don't think either of us is thinking objectively at the moment. Despite our plans to return someday, it is entirely possible that tonight will be our last night together. I pray to Hera that we are at least granted this full night together. To be torn away from him now would be heart-rending. We seat him on the bed and stand before him. I am usually not one to put on displays for men, but as he has freely put himself on display for me, I cannot begrudge this to him. And it is a gift freely offered, not demanded. I am sure Hera would not condemn me for it. As he watches, I slowly strip Zatanna bare before his eyes. She is dressed in a business suit, with jacket, slacks and bowtie. The tie goes first with a simple yank, a hooked finger to release the last of the knot, then a slow pull to free it from her collar. I toss it on the bed next to him and move behind my friend to pull off her jacket. From behind her, I reach around to unbutton her white blouse. Through the material, I can feel her nipples pressing hard against the fabric and I yearn for the moment when Frank and I can suckle them side-by-side. I slide her shift off, leaving only her white, lacy bra above her waist. Leaving it alone for the moment, I unbuckle her belt and unzip her trousers. Her hips sway from side to side as I slide the material down to her feet. Even though her shoes, high- heeled black pumps, are still on, her legs pull themselves free of her pants smoothly as I hold the material. She has such wonderful legs, long, smooth and strong. Now I stand back up and unclasp her bra, freeing her wonderfully creamy pale breasts. From behind her, I reach around to cup them, as if offering them for Frank to partake of them at his will. I rub her nipples with my thumbs for a moment and her hands come up to hold mine in place. I kneel down and kiss her outer thigh before sliding her pure white panties to the floor. I can't help but notice that the front is soaking wet. No doubt mine are the same. We'll soon find out as Zatanna pulls me to my feet and stands behind me, now clad only in her high heels. I am much more casually dressed than she had been, in only a blouse and trousers, though my underwear is a bit more exciting than her pretty little white lace. Before removing my blouse, Zatanna's hands search out my nipples through the material and upon finding them, lightly pinch them through the material ... as if they could get any harder. Finally she begins unbuttoning my blouse, pulling it back to reveal my lacy black half-cup bra which offers my breasts for inspection. She licks her fingers and spends another moment playing with my exposed nipples I'm not wearing high heels tonight, so when she moves to my trousers, I quickly kick off my shoes. She unsnaps and unzips my pants, then has to work hard to pull them down. I deliberately wore my tightest stretch pants tonight. Once she has them down to my knees, her job becomes much easier and I step free of them one leg at a time. My panties are black, lacy and tiny. I almost wore g-string panties tonight, but I wanted some pretty lace. These are almost nothing but lace and ride low over my pubic mound, my carefully shaved tuft of hair showing over the top of lace band. Zatanna doesn't remove them right away though, or even move back up to my bra. Instead she starts rubbing me through the thin lace, feeling the heat and wetness pouring from my lower lips. I feel my body shiver as a whole as her fingers find and rub my clit through the fabric, and I come from just her touch and Frank's eyes. Not a full and satisfying orgasm, but a small one that primes me for more action to come. She hugs me from behind for a moment and I feel her nipples dig into my back as her lips kiss my neck. When she pulls away, I feel her fingers search between my breasts for the small front clasp that holds the bra together. Releasing it, she slides her hands down my body, almost casually hooking her thumbs into my panties and pulling them down. Now I am fully naked, as is Zatanna save for her shoes. We sit down on either side of Frank and begin to caress him with our fingers and lips. His hands and lips eagerly seek us out in return and my skin burns from each touch of his fingers. I am so lost in the feelings that I don't even notice as his clothes are removed, only focusing on him again when I feel his erection suddenly slap against his belly and my rubbing hand. I don't realize how quiet we've all been until Frank whispers, "You're both so beautiful. Much too lovely for me." In response, I dig my tongue between his lips and search for his tonsils. When we come up for air, Zatanna is there waiting for her turn. We end up trading him back and forth for a few minutes before we move on. I give Zatanna first crack at his cock tonight. I laid her down on the bed and she spread her legs in anticipation. I stretched out next to her and watched as Frank filled her womanhood with his male member. Seeing her vaginal lips stretching around him made my own clit tingle with memories and anticipation. While Frank fucked her, I spent my time kissing her beautiful lips, playing with her breasts and nipples and rubbing her clit. Zatanna is a gorgeous woman who really doesn't sleep with other women very often, so I am always glad of opportunities like this. Sometimes she makes the cutest little squeaking noise when she comes, and I'm determined to hear it from her tonight, more than once if possible. After about five minutes, she has her first orgasm, but does it quietly. Frank doesn't let up and she has another about three minutes later while I'm scraping my teeth lightly across her left nipple while I rub both sides of her clit with my fingers. This second time I hear what I'm after as her breathing quickens, almost to the point of hyperventilating, and she starts making a high- pitched "eeee ... eeee ... eeee..." sound. As she comes this time, her hands clutch me to her chest and, once she lets me go, I notice her legs had also wrapped around Frank's waist, drawing him into her. When she releases him and he pulls out, I can tell he came inside of her. "You need to stay hard a bit longer tonight," I say as I move to take his half-hard member into my mouth. The combination of juices is wonderful, but I am not highly skilled at fellatio. Once his member is clean, I pull it out and rub it between my breasts. I know very well why men are fascinated by Kara and myself, and tonight I don't mind using it to my advantage. From past experience, Frank is unlikely to let the evening end with a single climax, but I want to make sure I receive my due tonight as well. I needn't have worried. He quickly regains his hardness, and once I am certain he is again ready, I release him and reposition myself. I place my mouth firmly over Zatanna's leaking vagina and raise my hips in the air. He takes the hint and quickly warms his cock in my cunt. The familiar feel of his penis helps transport me to a world of pleasure. My tongue feasts on the cream- filled pussy before me while my pussy is pounded. I am aroused enough that my first climax arrives in less than three minutes, followed by more crests every minute or two after. Frank once mentioned how wonderful it feels when my vaginal muscles milk his penis when we make love, so I do my best to give him that pleasure as we go along. Apparently it works well, because he comes a second time only ten minutes into this second fuck of the night. To top it all off, I am rewarded with another flood of womanly juices from Zatanna as she receives another orgasm herself from my ministrations. The three of us collapse into a very happy head of bodies. Tonight was hardly the longest or most thorough bed romp we've had, but it seems very satisfying to me. I'm already crawling under the covers when Frank points to the candles around the room, still burning and probably a fire hazard. I suppress a sigh and go around the room to put them out while Frank pulls off Zatanna's shoes. We go to sleep with Frank nestled between Zatanna and myself. Kara I'm very disoriented, but I'm hovering in mid-air, so I'm apparently home. It's full daylight, so it's obviously been a while, I think to myself ... then I am being tackled in mid-air, just as the strange-looking ray gun below me fires and I pass out. When I come to, I'm at the bottom of a small pile of bodies ... early morning ... in the woods somewhere ... somewhere familiar. I start by shoving the people on top of me off my back and stand up. One of the people now sprawled on the ground next to me is a red-head dressed like a Japanese schoolgirl. She's outfitted in one of those pervy Japanese sailor uniforms you see in anime, sitting on her butt rubbing her head. The other person with me is ... Supergirl? Supergirl, aka Kara Zor-El ... whereas I am Kara Zor-L. My younger counterpart from the current timeline in my adopted universe. It can get confusing, but basically we're alternate reality versions of each other even though we're not much alike. We don't spend much time together because occasionally our powers go a little wonky when we're in close proximity. I sigh out loud. Powers going wonky is the least of my worries. What the hell just happened? Actually, that's a very good question, one worth asking out loud. "What the hell just happened?" Kasumi I slept alone last night, so I am easily able to get up on time in the morning. I put on my sports bra and panties and gi, and as I start for the exercise room, I begin putting the day's schedule together mentally. Make breakfast, pack lunches, plan dinner. I need to start preparing the gardens for winter soon, so I add another stop to my shopping trip schedule. When I reach the exercise room, the treadmill is running by itself. There is an emergency cutoff which is clipped onto clothing so that the machine will stop in case of accident, but it is dangling loose, a pair of running shorts clipped to it. I reach over to the controls to turn it off but stop when I notice more clothing behind the treads. I finally recognize them as Diana's exercise clothes, and my breath catches in my throat. In my time in Japan, I have seen stranger things than what the comic book women have described to me, but it is still disconcerting to think that Diana may have vanished out of her clothes without warning. I take the clothes and hurry to Frank-sama's room. I have been here many, many times, but never with bad news like this. I knock quietly, then a little louder. I think I hear a quiet response, perhaps just a grunting, from inside. I choose to interpret that as an invitation to enter. Inside, I see Frank-sama, alone in his huge bed. He is moving but is obviously not really awake yet. "Frank? I found Diana's clothing in the exercise room. Is Miss Zatanna here?" He has long since trained me out of using Japanese honorifics when I address people, but I still think of them as such. Frank-sama is an important man and the head of the household and so should be respected, as should many of the others. He seems to wake up and reaches out his arm, feeling the bed near him. He throws the covering off, revealing his familiar nudity. I don't blush because my eyes, like his, are focused on the empty bed and Miss Zatanna's clothes on the floor. He falls back to the bed and says in a very tired voice, "Thank you, Kasumi. I'll double-check, but I think they are gone now too. We'll need to pack away their things for storage too." "Hai," I say, and I back out of his room, closing the door. I hear a faint machine rumbling sound and realize I never turned off the treadmill, so I return to the exercise room and do so. I am startled by the phone ringing. The main house phone has extensions in eight different rooms, including the exercise room. I don't want Frank-sama disturbed at such an early hour right now, so I quickly answer it myself. "Hello, _____ residence." I hear a very unexpected voice greet me. "Hello? Kasumi, is that you?" "Kara-sama? Is that ... are you all right? Where are you?" I feel a bit beside myself. I have been grieving for her as if she were dead, so it feels as if it is a voice from the grave speaking to me. "I'm fine, Kasumi. Would you please get Frank and tell him I'm back at his cabin. And I brought guests." "Are Miss Diana and Zatanna with you?" "Uhh ... no. Are they gone too?" "Hai, I mean, yes, they appear to have disappeared this morning." I am walking with the cordless phone as we talk, and knock on Frank's door again. I hear him call out, "Come in. Who's on the phone?" "Kara." "Who?" "Kara-sama is on the phone." "You're kidding," he says, but he is already moving towards me, still naked, his male member dangling down between his legs. I feel myself start to blush a little as I hand him the phone. "Hello, Kara? ... Are you really back? ... What happened? ... Okay, but ... No, I didn't do anything on my end ... Who's with you? ... You're kidding ... Okay, okay ... Not long, just over a day ... Uhhh ... I'll be over as quick as I can, but I'm not even dressed yet ... Don't worry about the cabin door, we'll get it fixed. I just didn't expect anyone would show up again so quickly, so I hadn't put the key back ... Yeah, I think there's something, granola bars at least ... Look, I'll be there as soon as I can ... Yeah, Diana and Zatanna disappeared this morning. I haven't confirmed it yet, but we're pretty sure ... No, she said ... Uh, look, we can talk about all of this once I'm out there. Kara, I'm overjoyed you're back, and at the same time, I'm sorry you didn't get to stay home very long for some reason. I'll see you soon. Bye." Frank hangs up the phone, hands it back to me, then grabs me and whirls me around in a circle. He gives me quick kiss and puts me down. "I gotta get dressed..." He pauses and sniffs himself. "I gotta take a quick shower, then get dressed. Get a couple rooms ready for more visitors, Kara apparently didn't come alone." Then he dashes off to his bathroom. It was wonderful seeing him happy again. A small part of me wants to leave my new home and come back to see if I'd get such a strong reaction too, but I know I'd never deliberately hurt him like that. I hurry off to my room, my morning katas forgotten. ------- Frank (interlude) So far, this is going with clockwork-like smoothness. Having three sets of extra hands to help out really makes things easy. The night before last, Kara was put in a nanopod where she spent the day, her memories being updated to include a brief trip back home. We took the opportunity to start updating her body as well. We can now work a thin but exceedingly strong lattice of carbon nano-tubes into the skin itself to give it an amazing degree of strength and damage resistance while maintaining natural flexibility and feel. One day is not enough time to cover Kara's entire body, but at least we got a good start. Up until now, her damage resistance has mainly been built into her muscles and bones. Bones, of course, are the easiest to strengthen. You could drive a semi over her rib cage without risking a crack. Heck, that's mostly how Diana was able to catch a small caliber bullet back in Vegas; the bullet hit the spread of bones in the hand directly. Once you combine the new skin with everything else, she'll have better protection than kevlar. Our old style of sub-dermal nano-weave is still there. Though flexible, it really can't stretch very well, which has its uses. As I've pointed out before, theoretically Kara's breasts will never sag with age. Alpha is also updating her eyes and ears with her latest sensory designs for even better aural and audio frequency coverage. We have a couple other possible upgrades in mind, but there's not sufficient time. It's amazing how much faster and better our methods have gotten over the past few years. The actual body-construction still takes a minimum of two months, but the brain and memory design for each new woman can be done in less than two weeks. Yes, there are on the order of 100 billion neurons in the human brain, but we don't need to create individual programming for each one. The brainstem and cerebellum setups are largely identical from one brain to the next ... well, for our purposes they are anyway. The neocortex is where the individualization comes in, which is ... what ... roughly a third of the brain? And even there Alpha can make great use of the brains she designed before, copying language features, common sensory memories and such. It can take a lot of processing power, but we have (by which I mean, Alpha has) reduced the time required to design a brain from 2 months down to 2 weeks or less, depending on what or who we want to build. Actually physically programming the neurons can be done in less than six hours if Alpha devotes all available resources to it. A cross-disciplinary student of computer science and medicine might be shocked at even the two month figure. What can I say? If you want to have truly astounding computation abilities, you need to have your programming and OS redesigned from the inside out by someone living on the inside of your computer. Early this morning, Beta and Epsilon cleaned and dressed old Kara (Power Girl) and new Kara (Supergirl) and took them out to the cabin. While they were being put in place, Elisa and I put Diana and Zatanna in the storage pods and arranged the clothing. The treadmill was turned on just before the Karas were awakened, and also just before the rest of the household was turned back on. Kasumi and Rogue's alarm clocks would have gone off just a few minutes later, though obviously Anna Marie is slower to get up in the morning than Kasumi. Epsilon is in place and knows her role. I hope she plays it well, but no one else here knows the character's background so as long as she's consistent we should be fine. I have to say, times like this are my favorite. Well, aside from certain instances of mind-blowing sex, but that goes without saying. I love being in the middle of a story that I wrote. I'm singing with the radio as I drive out to the cabin. I pass Beta on her way back home and wave at her. ------- Kara So we end up sitting around the cabin, eating granola bars while we discuss our situation. Or rather, while I explain our situation while the other two explain their presence. Supergirl is the easy one to explain. She was helping out Dr Hamilton from STAR labs who was attempting to retrieve Diana, Zatanna and myself. We had been missing for over a day, so he scavenged one of his existing dimensional observers to make a retrieval device. He used his old data of my examinations and focused a beam of energy attuned to that frequency at our point of departure in an attempt to shake us free from Frank's world. The device requires a few seconds to charge up before firing, so when I showed up as it was preparing to fire, Supergirl tried to tackle me out of the way but was instead caught in the beam herself with me. Initial observations seem to show that the beam sent the two us back to this world while it successfully rescued Diana and Zatanna. Straightforward enough, as these things go. I have mixed feelings about Supergirl being here with me. We're supposedly pretty much the same person, but I don't see it. I'll grant that we have practically the same name -- Kara Zor-L vs Kara Zor-El -- and both have blonde hair. We have kinda the same power set, but I'm not affected by the same Kryptonite types that she is ... not that Kryptonite is likely to be a factor in this world. Our facial structures aren't that close and I definitely have a much larger cup size than she does. Then again, she's still a teenager. She just turned 18, so she's an adult, but she probably hasn't finished developing yet. I'm a little worried because I've caught her chatting up every cute superhero in the business. She's a flirt, a cock-tease, running around in a short skirt and belly-shirt version of Superman's outfit. (I suppose I should be grateful she wears shorts under the skirt. Most of the time.) I snuck a look at her womanly portal a few year ago out of curiosity and discovered that she's actually still a virgin, which was a huge surprise. I know for a fact that she's given blow jobs to more than one Teen Titan. If the comics are right, she's about to join the new Justice League, and I have to wonder how many BJs she'll hand out there. So if I'm honest with myself, I'm worried that I may suddenly find myself in competition for Frank's affections against a younger version of myself. The other girl has basically described herself as a dimensional stowaway. She described it as hitchhiking, but a hitchhiker that doesn't ask is a stowaway. She hasn't given up many details yet, but she said she used a dimensional shifter she took from a friend/enemy to get away from said friend/enemy. The shifter didn't have the power to move her through dimensions by itself so it had to latch onto another dimensional power surge somewhere else in order to activate ... meaning she probably latched onto Dr Hamilton's equipment and was shifted along with us. She's a little upset because she expected any other dimensional travelers to be able to send her on her way instead of being stuck here with us. She mentioned being friends with an alien princess from a world that sent a huge warship to attack Earth to retrieve her. This of course puts both Supergirl and myself a little on edge, making us determined to keep a close eye on her. I'm still describing the limitations of this world -- no super powers, no super heroes, no magic, almost no super-advanced technology but it's on its way -- when I hear a car pulling up the gravel drive to the cabin. I look out and see Frank pulling up in his minivan. I can't help but feel my heart skip a beat when I see him again. He's what keeps me from being homesick, and the reason I'm not more upset that I lost my chance to go home. I do a quick hair and costume check in a wall mirror -- then give my bust a quick adjustment because my costume's chest oval is a bit off center -- and I'm out the door to greet him. He's carrying a duffel bag towards the cabin door, and I see him break into a huge grin when he sees me. "Kara! You're a wonderful if unexpected sight for sore eyes." He opens his arms and we embrace. I remind myself not to squeeze TOO hard. "What happened? I thought you had gone back home for a few years." "It'll take a little while to tell..." I start. A voice from behind me chimes in, "We tried to do a manual retrieval on the three of them, but she came back too early, got caught in the retrieval beam and instead got both of us sent here." " ... Or not very long at all if you go for a quick summary," I continue. I break off the embrace, hope my nipples aren't poking through my costume fabric too obviously, and turn around. "I guess introductions are in order. Frank, this is my ... colleague Linda Lang, aka Supergirl. Linda, this is my very good friend Frank." "I'm honored to meet you, Linda." He offers her his hand to shake, and she presses it between both her hands as if keeping it warm for him. "I'm glad to meet you too, Frank. Kara seems to think you're the perfect host, from what little she's told us of you." I really don't like the way she's looking at him, so I move the introductions along. "And this is A-ko, our dimensional stowaway. A-ko, this is Frank, who is probably the only other person in this dimension who might understand your situation." He pulls away from Linda and greets the red-head. "Pleased to meet you, Miss A-ko. Welcome to my world." "I'm glad to meet you, Mr Frank." She's blushing as he shakes her hand, and as soon as he lets go, her hand flies to the back of her head to play with her hair self-consciously. I'm not sure how old she is, but emotionally she seems to still be a teenager ... with a sudden crush ... on Frank ... of course. Dear god, why? Does he exude some kind of super pheromone that makes women fall for him? I mean, I know why I fell in love with him (and yes, I finally admitted to myself that I love him a few years ago), and I know it didn't happen right away for me. I have to remind myself that we're all (probably) adults and that I have no binding claim on him. Frank himself interrupts my train of thought. He holds up the duffel bag, saying "I brought a few changes of clothes, if you want to swap out. Remember, there are no super heroes in this world, so you'd really stand out in your current outfits. You too, Miss A-ko. Those clothes you're wearing only exist in Japanese anime in this country." And I'm again touched by his thoughtfulness and foresight as I take the bag. "We'll be out in just a minute," I tell him as I herd the others back into the cabin. "Sure, and we can stop by for food on the way back home, if you'd like. Or we can wait to get home and Kasumi can feed you some actual good food." I've been so distracted by the situation that I hadn't realized my stomach was mostly empty. Two granola bars isn't enough. For whatever reason, every time I jump dimensions, I arrive starving. I'd have to guess that any undigested food in my stomach gets left behind. Which makes me worried about what Frank's bed looked like after I left. Still, fast food or Kasumi's food? No real choice there. "Please let Kasumi know she'll have three extra people for breakfast." Once the door is closed, Linda squeals, "Oh, he's sooo handsome, y'know, for an older guy. Can I share him?" "I'll think about it," I say with a bit of a smirk. Inside I'm saying, 'Damn it! Damn it! Damn it!'. I mean, it's not like I'll be able to hide our home situation from her. I try to shove the thoughts aside and I unzip the bag. Supergirl So I've made out with and given blow jobs to three different Robins, Superboy, Kid Flash and a couple others, but I've never gotten as wet as fast as I did when I met Frank just a minute ago. I'll admit I sometimes get squishy around men who are a little older. For instance, Hal Jordan aka Green Lantern ... one of the Green Lanterns ... I've heard stories that he's slept with a lot of women and has a lot of experience in the sack, which made me curious. I think the only reason I failed to seduce him was because I was too young at the time. If I remember right, that was just before I turned 17. I suppose his refusal makes sense, him being a cop. Now I'm 18 ... well, as best we can figure. It's hard to estimate ages when you live on different planets and spend most of your life in suspended animation inside a giant Kryptonite asteroid. (It's a long, boring story. My life only got interesting after I crashed to Earth.) Anyway, the point is that now no one can reject me because I'm 'jail bait'. I'm sure some people would be surprised to find out that I'm a virgin. Well, to be clear on the subject, I've never had vaginal sex with a man. It's not a religious or moral choice or anything like that. I just want my first time to be with someone skilled in bed. The boys I've met are cute and enthusiastic, but I don't think they have much staying power or bedroom skills. Robin might have ... Tim Drake/Robin #3/Red Robin might have done okay. Probably Dick Grayson/Robin #1/Nightwing too. Too bad neither of them were willing to sleep with me. Robins 1 & 3 were loyal to their girlfriends. Mostly loyal, that is. Blowjobs were fine. But the point is, most of the guys I've met really didn't look like they'd be much good in bed. For example, Bart Allen/Kid Flash might be a great hero, but when I gave him a blowjob, he shot off twice within 30 seconds. And Superboy was way too much like a rutting jock. On the flip side, I've also made out with half a dozen girls. Cassie ... ummm ... Wonder Girl is the best pussy licker I've ever met. I really want to get Wonder Woman between my legs, because if Cassie and Donna are her pupils, I've got to meet the master. I just haven't had the opportunity yet. But enough reminiscing. When we get inside the cabin again, I tease Karen a bit and ask if she'd share Frank with me. I'm only half joking as I ask, and maybe she picks up on that. She says she'll think about it and treats it like it's a joke, but she's grinding her teeth a little. I think that probably means no sharing. Kara hands me a shirt and skirt. I strip down to my shorts and sports bra and take a glance over at Red ... umm ... Echo or whatever. She's the shortest person in the room, but she's pretty nicely proportioned. Her tits are at least as big as mine (B cups) and nicely perky. I'm not nearly as jealous as I used to be about bra sizes, especially since it's pretty futile to compare against Kara. My secret hope is that we're enough alike that in a few years I'll match her rather imposing bosom. On the assumption that these loaner clothes are Kara's, I'm a bit gleeful that the skirt is noticeably too loose, and annoyed that the shirt is so baggy. They look especially large on Red, but I think that's mainly because she's comparatively so short. Kara's a little over six feet tall, I'm around 5'9", but Red tops out at maybe 5'4". Kara I hurry the ladies along. A-ko seems a bit nervous and tends to scratch her head and play with her hair a lot. She's one of those annoying women with full, voluminous hair that tends to look great with a minimum of attention. I tend to keep mine kind of short for a few different reasons, such as not providing my opponents with easy handholds in a fight, plus I like the way it frames my face ... and it tends to get more damaged the longer I let it grow (lasers and such). We pile into the minivan and start the hour or so drive home. I repeat my story to Frank, adding what little else I know. He assures me we'll figure it all out. When we hit civilization, I grinned to myself and suggested we stop for gas. "We still have half a tank," he said, looking mildly confused. "Yeah, but I need to show Linda..." I paused and looked back at her. "Do you want to keep the Linda name? I know you've used a couple different names, and we'll need to make you a new ID while you're here. I use my old 'Karen Starr' as my civvie identity myself." "Sure. I guess it would be a bit confusing to have two different Kara's. I'll be plain old Linda Lang." "Actually, we may need to adjust that a bit while you're here," Frank said, "but we can go over specifics when we get home. Now what were you saying Karen?" "Oh, yeah. I want to show Linda the same thing I showed Diana and Zatanna when they first arrived." I can almost see the mental light bulb go off as he gets it. "Oh, sure thing." A few minutes later, Frank pulled into one of the few gas stations/convenience stores that still carry comics. I lead Linda inside, with A-ko following out of curiosity. Supergirl/Linda My elder 'sister' is obviously about to have some fun at my expense, but I can't figure out what she's up to. I mean, what's she possibly going to do to me or show me at a gas station? Do they have Kryptonite-flavored icees or something? She takes us to the magazine rack, stands back and asks me if I see anything interesting. I give her a LOOK, like she must be kidding. Seriously. I look at A-ko to see if she can back me up at all. Red is staring pretty seriously at something near the bottom of the rack. I follow her gaze and ... OH ... MY ... GOD... You have GOT to be kidding me. I kneel down and start grabbing comics. Justice League ... Superman ... Wonder Woman ... and Supergirl? "Are these ... Is this for real?" I wave the Supergirl comic at her. "Don't you trust your senses?" "That's not what I mean," I glare at her. She has this annoying grin on her face as she says, "Yes, it's for real. I can show you some Power Girl comics too when we get back to the house. Grab whatever you want and I'll pay for it." She waves what has to be Frank's credit card at me. I grab $30 worth of comics that look interesting, plus a breakfast shake and then we're back on the road. 'Big sis' tries to explain how in this world we're fictional comic book characters, which doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me, but ... well, it's hard to argue with the evidence in my hands. At the same time, just who is it that draws these things? My nose doesn't actually look like that, does it? Epsilon A-ko Despite my nervousness at playing this role, I find that I am enjoying myself. I have complete data on all four Project A-Ko movies, plus the Grey & Blue Side movies with the alternate versions of the characters. My character's backstory uses a combination of the two worlds, though I am free to improvise as needed. The basic idea is that A-ko's rival, B-ko, created a device to get rid of A-ko. This occurred after the main Project A-ko movies, where B-ko is a very talented inventor who regularly attempts to defeat or otherwise get rid of A-ko. The device moved both of them into a different universe (the Versus Grey/Blue Side movies). A-ko eventually convinces the B-ko of that universe to recreate her device which A-ko used to end up here and now. I am not to reveal the details of this to anyone other than those who already believe in dimensional travel. To normal or mundane people, I am a new hire for AARD to take over Diana's position as head of security. As we drive back to the house, I wonder a bit about character selection, and why Frank chooses the personalities he does. Some are perfectly logical choices, such as Kasumi, who was chosen as a household manager and peacemaker. Power Girl's character was likewise chosen logically and her backstory bound her to Frank more strongly than any other resident -- she has had two major personalities since the 90's. When she was a member of the Justice League, back when the League consisted mainly of B and C-list heroes, she was often portrayed as a feminist who would become abrasive when viewed sexually, a personality which would not fit in well in a harem-like environment. In her more current Justice Society era, she is a much more sympathetic and amiable character who tends to flirt or eye-roll when viewed sexually, a personality which fits in well in Frank's household. Rei, on the other side of things, seems to be a pointless addition to the household. She has been very slow to socialize and integrate into the household dynamic. Her cold manner is regularly off-putting, and the only skill she adds to the household is transportation -- her pilots license and multiple vehicle type drivers license. Even Frank has questioned whether or not she should remain. Supergirl's personality is a more difficult subject. Like many DC comic book characters (including Wonder Woman), she is often portrayed as a generic hero, without many unique or interesting personality characteristics. When she is given noticeable personality traits, they vary from one comic to the next. Depending on who is writing her character, she is given the characteristics of an unsure teen, a female warrior, a flirtatious coquette or simply a female version of Superman. Frank eventually decided on a flirtatious teen who is confident in her abilities but socially insecure. I have been granted limited authority to pick and choose A-ko's personality elements. Her movies do not give her a unique or detailed personality, which is actually one of the reasons Frank gave for choosing her. He wishes for me to develop A-ko's character through interaction with others. I can be an insecure teenager, a young woman in love, a born warrior or a trained professional. The only limits on my choices are consistency, logic and the need to match Frank's desired results. My character's chosen personality is of a young woman experiencing the world for the first time. She is loyal to her friends and sure of herself in physical matters, but not yet confident in many other ways. As taken from the movies, her habits include scratching the back of her head when embarrassed or nervous, a tendency to walk or run instead of drive when possible, an inability to get up on time in the morning and a lack of skill in mechanical matters. I will leave out her superhuman parentage as an unnecessary complication. I have a large database of conversation trees memorized covering most possible questions about her past because I do not trust my ability to improvise answers quickly. I will do my utmost not to fail. When we arrive at the house, I do my best to act properly awestruck at the size of the building. It has 3 stories plus a basement, with 26 rooms overall, including 14 bedrooms. There is a large garage, a pool and hot tub and Japanese-style garden on a two acre estate surrounded by a nine-foot tall brick wall. I am intimately familiar with every aspect of the location but must act as if shocked to be taken to such a large mansion. Upon consideration of the mansion, I wonder when my portrait will be done. One of the bedrooms on the third floor holds portraits of every woman in the house. All of the portraits were painted by Jane and most are nude, depending on whether or not the subject would agree to be painted naked; most agree. Jane wanted the paintings to be kept in her room, but her roommate and lover Daria refused. Frank felt that putting them in his bedroom might seem a bit too playboy-ish, so for now they are all in an empty bedroom. I am looking forward to having my portrait added to the collection, but it will probably not happen for at least a couple weeks. Supergirl, or perhaps I should start calling her Linda, is surprised at the size of the house but not awestruck. She has memories of living in large facilities before. Also there are a handful of rich superheros in the DC universe, and she has visited many of their mansions. Still she does seem to be impressed. We are greeted by Kasumi, Anna and Rei, who welcome Kara back with a hug and warmly receive Linda and myself. Correction, Kasumi warmly greets Linda and myself, while Anna and Rei simply greet us. The others, including my sister platforms, join us while we eat breakfast. Kara and Linda eat as though they are starving, while I eat normally. (Kara has not eaten in over a day. Linda has never eaten before.) While we eat, Frank describes AARD. " ... mostly just license patents. In the two years we've been in business, we registered over 2000 patents. For instance, we just licensed out our design for a new type of sub-sonic jet engine. It uses 10-20% less fuel on takeoff and landings and up to 75% less fuel at cruising speed. We estimate that the patent should generate somewhere in the range of $25 to 100 million in the next 20 years." As stated, that is accurate, but we have designs for significantly better engines which we plan to patent and license in a few more years, thus the patent Frank is describing will be replaced before the stated 20 year timeline. Also it is likely that before twenty years is up, either one of our alternative energy plans will be made practical or a new practical plan will be designed, making oil-powered engines obsolete. If we were to immediately patent all of our products and ideas, we would alert the world as a whole that AARD is not staffed by solely human designers, thus we generally only release the next generation of designs rather than ones which are many generations in advance of the current level of designs. "And we allow licensing of some designs at a minimal cost. For example, our electronic nerve interface is far in advance of anyone else's. We're allowing certain companies to use that design for minimal costs to try to reconnect broken spines. "And then sometimes we just have a useful design that we give away. Actually, Kara, we have a public demonstration for the Desalinator next week. With Zatanna gone, how would you like to handle it?" Without waiting for a response, he turns to Linda and explains. "We have a design for a cheap and easy method of desalinating sea water. With less than $100 in materials, you can build a portable hand-crank unit that will desalinate five gallons of water with five minutes of work. Plus the design is scalable, so cities could build larger versions if they need them. We patented the idea and are releasing the designs online for anyone to build as needed. "Zatanna was our head of public relations, so we need someone else to handle the demonstration." "It is a nice design and a very philanthropic motivation," Kara says, "but I hate dealing with the press. Can't you get someone else to do it?" My immediate reaction is to volunteer. If Frank wants something done, it is my duty to complete the task ... but he previously mentioned to Alpha that he wanted to push Kara a bit into more interaction with the public. She works well with others, but does not socialize much otherwise. This is likely a gentle attempt by Frank to push her boundaries a little. "Come on, Kara. This will just be a tech demonstration and Q&A. No personal questions, nothing about any other subjects or even about the company. If anyone asks, just give them the number for the front desk. You're only there to show off the design and how easy it is to build. We'll record it and put it up on our site alongside the designs." "I'll think about it." "Let me know before too long. If we have to use someone else, I'll want at least a day or two to run them through everything." I turn my attention back to breakfast. This is my first opportunity to eat Kasumi's food freshly cooked -- western-style omelets, pancakes, hash browns, sausage, bacon, fruit and juice. If I had a wider range of experience, I might be able to call her an excellent cook, but as it is, I can only call her food delicious. As conversation allows, I ask questions about the world and AARD and Frank of whoever is available, continuing to act as my cover story demands. Supergirl The longer I'm around Frank, the more I find myself fantasizing about him. For a non-super-powered guy, he's seems pretty close to perfect. He's good- looking, rich, generous and philanthropic, helpful, kind and really, I mean REALLY gets me wet. If only he were under 30 and was a superhero ... that might make him perfect, but I guess you can't have everything. On the other hand, he's dating Power Girl and is surrounded by women. Plus I have to wonder if maybe its a rivalry thing with Power Girl. I mean, Frank is handsome, sure, but I've known lots of guys better looking. He's rich, but not at Bruce Wayne's level. I guess the comparisons really aren't fair. How do you compare someone to Batman and expect them to measure up? And it's all kind of irrelevant. Yes, I want to jump his bones, but not while he's Kara's boyfriend. THEN I start picking up on something odd. Daria and Jane both kiss him good morning when they come down. And these aren't pecks on the cheeks either. I wish I had a better view because I could swear Jane goosed him when she kissed him. And this happened with Kara sitting right there! Even those ladies he doesn't kiss, he hugs in a pretty intimate fashion. After breakfast Frank talks to A-ko and me about settling in. No one knows how long either of us will be here, so there's a list things we need to take care of to get set up in this world. He takes our pictures so he can work up some kind of fake identity for us. (I know that's illegal, but it's one of those things that most heroes have to do at some point.) My name from back home, Linda Lang, would kind of stand out in a world where Lana Lang is a major character from the Superman TV series, so instead he sets me up as Power Girl's cousin, Linda Lang Starr. Red gets the name, Eiko Magami, which is apparently really close to her real name. Sounds the same anyway. He explains that the household is almost out of single bedrooms, so he asks about the possibility of one of us sharing a room with someone else. I get the impression that we could actually just have our own separate rooms in two different double-bed rooms, but he's trying to conserve space or something? Anyway I'm spared having to room with the Kara-in-residence when Beta, this very buxom brunette, offers to change bedrooms to share with Eiko to show her the ropes. I guess that makes sense, since she's from another country on top of being from another dimension. Once that's decided, we get to see our new rooms, both on the third floor. A-ko's new room looks like it's out of ... I don't know ... Victorian England or the Antebellum South or something. Not really what I'd pick for myself, but she seems to like it. Mine looks like its from the North Pole. Everything is white, with pictures of polar bears and penguins and seals and such. (I refrain from commenting on mixing North and South Pole species, since it's probably an artistic license thing.) The bed cover is fake white fur that makes me want to strip naked and roll around on it. (Later, I promise myself.) I share a bathroom with Anna Marie, who is apparently a superhero from yet another universe. (How in the world can there be so many dimensional travelers in one place in a universe without the technology to support such travel?) Frank promises to buy us both a wardrobe and other necessities that afternoon, which I have to admit, gives me a little 'squeee!!!' moment. An entirely new wardrobe! Bankrolled by a millionaire even! Then we get to a serious conversation. The whole superhero lifestyle is a no-go in this world, so he wants to know what we want to do with our lives. He offers to get us jobs at AARD or pay for us to go to college. "I ... I really don't know ... I mean, things have been happening really fast, and I'm not sure what I want to do while I'm here," I say, trying to sort through my thoughts. "That's all right," he says in that sweet masculine voice that seems to vibrate my clit. "You don't have to decide anything today, but I want you to think about it. Maybe there are some mundane skills you always wanted to pick up. Or maybe you want to work toward a degree or take some medical classes. Or of course, come to work for me. We always have plenty of projects going on. Just let me know." Red speaks up at this point. "I think I'd like to come to work for you." "Good! What kind of experience do you have?" "I have some combat and security experience. I've worked as an executive assistant too. That job didn't last very long, but only because of B-ko's interference." "That sounds good. We'll run you through some tests later. Now I actually need to go do some work for a few hours. I'll be back here around ... let's say... 1 o'clock, to take you both shopping for clothes and such. You might spend some time making a list of things you know you need." He gives each of us a hug at this point -- and oh, dear god, are my nipples hard -- and leaves us, with Beta and A-ko following him out. Once he's out of sight, I turn on Kara. "So what's the deal with your BOYFRIEND and all the other women?" "I don't know what you mean..." she says lamely as she tries to slide out of the room. I easily intercept her. "Kara Zor-L, you are not leaving this room until you explain what's going on." I can see in her eyes that she's weighing whether or not to try to force her way out. Finally she sighs and puts up her hands. "Okay, okay. It's ... not a normal situation. You see ... well, remember how I explained how I go back and forth between this world and our world, kind of randomly. Well, the first time I came here, I met this cute little ten-year- old boy..." She tells me her story, how she met Frank when he was a kid, then kept coming back and meeting him. How he got older and older with each visit. How he was so nice to her, how they became friends long before she slept with him. How they fell in love, never knowing how long they would have together or when she would return. Which is so tragically, romantically sad ... except that then she goes on to explain that they agreed that they wouldn't be exclusive to each other because of the randomness of it all. When she came back this last time, Frank had become rich, built this house and started taking in people ... well, women ... who needed help. Apparently Kasumi, the Japanese lady who cooked breakfast for us, is one of the nicest people alive and was the first one to move in here. She goes down the list of women in the household, including Wonder Woman and Zatanna who just left. Kara is obviously reluctant to admit this to me, but they have all slept with Frank, and a lot of them are probably in love with him. Part of me feels sorry for Kara, that she fell in love with a man that she can't marry or stay with for very long. It says something about both her luck and our chosen line of work that this has been her most successful romantic relationship so far. But as I think about Frank, most of me is doing a little dance. She can't keep me away from her 'boyfriend'! I mean, not that I want to be mean to her, but she already lets everyone else sleep with him, so why not me? She even shared him with Diana and Zatanna, so she can't even complain about it if I hit on him. I pause for a second. "So, you're saying you shared Frank with Diana and Zatanna, right?" "Right." "So exactly how much sharing are we talking about?" "Jane keeps a schedule so we can reserve days with him. Most of the time, he goes along with whatever ... whoever we pick." "That's interesting, but that's not what I meant. You know Diana's reputation, so when I ask about you SHARING Frank with Diana..." Kara goes a bit red. "Well, it's not as if it was a regular thing, but yes, I have SHARED Frank with Diana like that." I giggle audibly. I never would have thought Kara had it in her, and I'm suddenly sorry that the others went back home. Don't get the wrong idea, I'm not interested in sleeping with Kara. If anything, she's a bit like an older sister to me. But Diana? And even better, Diana and Frank together with me? Oh, that would have been wonderful. I lower my voice to a conspiratorial whisper. "So how was she? I mean, did she ever ... you know ... lick you out?" Kara puts her face in her hands and sits down on the bed. "Yes, she did, and it was ... good." "Good? Is that all?" "Well, it's not like I've ... I don't have the type of experience to compare ... Okay, it was really good. She's even better than Frank or Jane." "Frank and Jane are both good lickers?" I know almost nothing about Jane, but I'm surprised that Kara is saying that Frank is almost as good at cunnilingus as the Princess of the Amazons. "Oh, you have no idea. And Jane is ... Jane and Daria are very much in love, but Jane is a bit ... I guess 'adventurous' is the best way to put it. She's the one in the household who is always willing to try something new." Well, now I know who I want to get to know better. Kara and I giggle and talk for almost an hour. We never got to do this back home. There are reasons, very valid reasons, both practical and emotional, but I think we're actually bonding over our sex gossip. In the past, we were both too busy and on different teams -- Justice Society versus whoever-the-hell I was hanging out with at the time. When we did get together, sometimes our powers went a bit wonky. And to top it all off, until I showed up, she was the Kara Zor-El of our universe. Once I arrived, she found out that she wasn't the Kara Zor-L of our universe and wasn't even the Kara Zor-L of her old universe anymore either; that was kinda a big stumbling block to us becoming closer. Now we're in a universe where none of that matters. There is no Kara Zor- El/Zor-L in the universe (or if there is one, she isn't here on Earth). No powers to go wonky. And no superhero-ing to keep us busy. I may be jumping ahead of myself, but I think we might actually become friends here. Kara Surprisingly, Linda is still a virgin. Well, she is if you don't count her handing out blowjobs like party favors and only limit your definition of virgin to male-female relations. But still, she's never actually slept with a man. She wants to wait until she finds a nice guy who can make her first time really good. This almost automatically leads me to suggest Frank as the best candidate. There's no question that he is the best choice, I just want to kick myself after I suggest him. Despite my desire to keep her and Frank apart, and despite my suggestion that they get together, Linda and I actually have a really fun chat. I'm kind of sorry when I have to go to work, but I'm already running late as it is. I get to work around 10 and quickly sort through yesterday's backlog of emails and letters and requests. We need to fill Diana and Z's slots pretty quickly. Around 11:30, I knock on Frank's door to discuss the matter with him. I hear a muffled, "Come in!" and open the door to find Frank sitting in his visitor's chair, looking across the desk at his regular chair. "Hey, Kara. How are you doing?" "The situation is a little odd, but I'm adjusting fine. What's wrong?" "I was just contemplating things. Just yesterday, I was mourning your absence. You know I didn't expect to see you again for years, yet here you are." "Here I am," I agree. He stands up, walks over and closes his door behind me, clicking the lock button. "Here you are." Standing behind me, he puts his hands on my shoulders. "I was taking you a little for granted recently, and I don't want to do that." He kisses my neck and moves his hands down, digging my shirt out of my pants and running his hands under it, up my ribs to my breasts. I'm frozen like a deer caught in headlights except I can feel myself shiver with sudden pleasure. He guides me over to his desk so I'm facing away from him and fumbles a bit with my belt. I find myself wishing I was wearing a skirt ... maybe a tiny micro skirt like my slutty 'sister' Linda. Then my pants and panties are down around my knees, trapping my legs together. I wiggle a bit and they fall down to my calves and ankles. He unzips his fly, pushes my torso down a little, then shoves his dick inside me. There's little finesse here, just urgent need, and I can't deny him in the slightest as I feel the same need. I crane my head back, and he leans forward so that we can share a short, awkward kiss. Then he pulls almost all the way out and slams back inside me, shoving me forward into the desk a bit. He is definitely in charge of this fuck, and I'm enjoying every second of it. I come after a couple minutes, and I know he can feel my body shuddering. He cups my breasts under my shirt, shoving my bra up and out of the way and keeps going. After five minutes like this, I've come twice more. I've never come as freely or as often as I have when I'm with him. Heck, I've talked to some poor women who need thirty minutes of fucking before they can come. He pulls out completely and turns me so we're facing each other. I hop up on the edge of the desk and spread my knees, my feet and ankles still trapped by my pants. As soon as I'm in position, he steps between my legs, his cock pushing back inside me, right where it belongs. We kiss again, this time holding position while our tongues duel to get into the other's mouth. He starts fucking me again and breaks off the kiss to drop down and start attacking my tits, trying to suck an entire breast into his mouth, then worrying my nipples lightly with his teeth. I come again and again, not able to keep track. The suddenness and intensity of this encounter is leaving me breathless. I vaguely remember thrashing my legs a bit, but mostly I'm entirely caught up in the moment. When he finally comes inside me and stops, I come to my senses enough to realize that I somehow got my feet free and wrapped my legs around his waist, my pants hanging from one ankle. I finally get my breath back and whisper, "Well, that was something special." "YOU are something special, and I wanted to remind both of us of the fact." God, that's corny, but I can't help but blush a little Fortunately he has his own small private bathroom, so we are able to clean up a bit, despite the cramped quarters. I discover that my pants have a big tear in the seam that runs up my buttcrack, and my panties are torn beyond salvage. He finds a couple safety pins and we make my pants decent enough to wear. We drive back to the house together, and I warn Frank about Linda's intentions. "So you volunteered me to take her virginity?" "Not in so many words. I just pointed out that you were the best person I knew who fit the criteria she had listed. A nice, good-looking guy who is experienced in bed and can be anything from a kind, gentle lover to a fucking machine and has good stamina." "Are you okay with the concept of me sleeping with Linda?" "Sure." I guess Frank knows me well enough to know when I'm not telling the whole truth. He comes back with, "You don't sound very sure." "I don't know what you mean. We have a happy household. This is just adding one more person. Hell, maybe two more. I saw that Eiko eying you earlier." "Let's leave Eiko out of this for now. We've talked about your life back in your home universe before. I know Supergirl has always been a kind of existential threat to you. You were there first, then she shows up with your name and fits in right away where you always struggled to find your place. "And now she's here, in your vacation home and she what? ... Sets her sights on me right away? She's younger than you and..." He lets the comment hang until I can't stop myself. "She's skinny as a beanpole and goes around in a skirt so tiny she has entire websites dedicated to up-the-skirt panty shots. And I've seen the new comics. She's about to get into the Justice League. And not the third-stringers Justice League I got to be in, noooo." "And you are the one I'm in love with, not her. I'll be more than happy to prove it to you again later, if you'd like." "Me like." That makes me squirm just a little. "In the meantime, look at things from her perspective. From her first moments on Earth, she not only had to live up to Superman's example, she had to live up to yours. And not just your example and reputation as a hero. She'll never have your womanly curves. You lead the only major superhero team that's older than the Justice League. You run your own company in your world and you manage mine in this world. YOU are the ultimate woman, and she is still a teenager." "A teenager in a belly-shirt and fuck-me skirt," I mutter, but his compliments have pretty well mollified me. "If you tell me to stay away from her, I will." Damn it. I can see what he's doing here. If I tell him to stay away, that means I'm insecure and threatened. He's manipulating me, but I don't think he's doing it consciously or intentionally. Actually he does this sort of thing all the time, Kasumi too, just by being nice. Nice people can manipulate people easily by unintentionally threatening guilt if they're refused. Frank may not be as nice as Kasumi, but his life seems to revolve around people he's helping one way or another, even if he's a real horn-dog. "No, you're the best person for her right now," I admit. "Right now, I'm not focusing on her, I'm asking about you." "I'll be fine." "You know that anything that may or may not happen between me and Linda will never affect what you and I have. Right?" He slides one hand along my very happy thigh as he says this. "Right." This time I'm pretty certain I'm being honest. Besides, I'm pretty sure I can make Linda even more jealous once she's experienced Frank for herself and knows what I have in him. And then I mentally slap myself for the bitchiness of that thought. Linda really is a nice girl, sexual escapades aside. She doesn't deserve an older 'sister' who's that much of a bitch. Linda I notice that Kara has to change clothes before we go shopping. I'm thinking she got some this morning at work. I don't have a chance to corner her before we leave, which is too bad. Frank, Kara, Eiko and I pile into the minivan again. I wanted to take one of the sexier vehicles, but Kara points out that we may need the carrying capacity. Which turns out to be correct. We go to three different stores, and though Frank doesn't let us see the receipt totals, I think he ends up spending about $5000 to $10,000 per store. Most of the stuff is everyday wear stuff -- blouses, t-shirts, skirts, pants, jackets, undies and similar-- but he insists that we get some fancy dress items too. Damn but some of those shoes and purses are expensive. We could have spent twice those totals on just a couple shoes if we seriously splurged. Kara tells Eiko and me that there's a tradition for these shopping trips that we have to model everything for Frank. It turns out that playing model for a rich, handsome guy is pretty fun. The second store we go to is called Victoria's Secret, where the fashion show gets really fun. I'm glad I pick out stuff he likes because by the third show at Victoria's, I'm so sopping wet that I'm sure I'd have to buy all of these exciting panties anyway. So yeah, panties, bras, babydoll nighties, swimsuits, slips. Female pretties, as I think of them. After 20 minutes, I'm so hot that I take a minute in the changing room to finger myself. It only takes a few strokes of my clit to bring myself off. It's a small come and not really all that satisfying, but it helps. I kept myself pretty darn quiet while I was in there, but Kara gives me a knowing smirk when I come out the next time. At one point, he buys Kara a short nightie that really shows off her legs and bust, which she accommodatingly shows off for the group. He also gets her a new pair of pants and a pretty short skirt at the last store. Eiko definitely enjoys herself, but I think she likes showing off for Frank more than she likes getting new clothes. If possible, I think her nipples were poking out even more than mine. And more than Kara or myself, she seems to accept Frank's opinions as gospel. She's got it real bad for him. Even though Frank keeps us going at a speedy pace, we spend almost five hours buying clothes and such. Kasumi is buying our toiletries and odds and ends, so at least we don't have to worry about that. Just as long as she buys me tampons instead of pads. Like all superheroines, pads don't really work well with our costumes. Then again, my period may get messed up soon anyway. Kara is going to take me to her doctor this week and get me on the pill. We get back to the house -- the mansion, really, I don't know why they call it 'the house' -- in time for dinner, but I suspect they held dinner until we arrived. After dinner I corner Jane and ask some juicy questions about how the household works. Rei and Anna Marie join in, while Daria sits off to the side, pretending she's reading but occasionally interjecting smart-ass comments. Eiko shows up half-way through, but mostly stays quiet and just listens in on the conversation until she gets bored or something and starts talking with Daria. I get some very interesting stories. It sounds like I really missed out last year when the whole household took a trip to Vegas. I find out that Daria has tonight reserved with Frank, but tomorrow night was originally going to belong to Zatanna. I jump on the implicit offer and claim it for myself. Daria So apparently we have another superhero in the house now. Sigh. At least the red-head isn't claiming to be one too. I seriously don't understand why everyone else just accepts this at face value. Even Jane. Well, Jane doesn't so much believe they're superheroes as not care. The trouble is that I don't have a good alternate explanation to offer. As best I can tell, their strength isn't faked. It's not like Kara or Anna go around throwing cars, but from what I've seen in the exercise room, either of them (or Diana when she was here) could break the world record for weightlifting, for men or women. Plus her other tricks of course. I've read their comics. Some of them anyway. Comics aren't really my thing. But at the very least, if they are who they say they are, they should be able to fly and shoot lasers out of their eyes and force people to tell the truth with magic ropes and things like that, which they do not do. So what do I have? A handful of women who are significantly beyond human norms but who do not break known laws of physics. So what should I do? Expose them? That was my initial reaction, but they aren't hurting anyone. If anything they probably keep the household safer. Plus they're pretty nice people. Are they insane? Possibly, but they seem perfectly rational except for thinking they're superheroes. They don't go around trying to fight crime, and the one time they did try to do just that, they quickly realized how unrealistic it was. For that matter, Anna Marie seems happy to have given up the superhero lifestyle, which is again, completely rational. Do the people have a 'right to know' in this situation? I mean, Journalism IS one of my majors. These are private citizens who are physically very unusual but do not really affect or threaten the public good. Now if any of them actually wanted to go public, that would be an entirely different matter, but as it now stands, there's no reason to try to expose them. There are other factors to consider. For instance, what if they're not alone. What if there are hundreds or thousands like them around the world, living perfectly normal, quiet lives? If they're exposed, what might happen? Witch hunts? Turn them all into lab rats? The Public endangered from comic book style fights? And there's the problem that I don't know if I'm properly neutral and fair on the subject. Frank doesn't want them exposed, and he's a huge influence on me. I've slept with all of them, some individually, some only during our group sexcapades. My mental distractions are put on hold when the red-head ... Eiko, I think ... comes up to me. "Hello, Daria." She looks really cute. A red-head but not a ginger (or at least she isn't visibly freckled) so I wonder if her hair is colored. She's about my height (5'4") with a bit fuller body. "Hello, Eiko is it?" "Yes. Thank you for welcoming me ... us ... into your house." "It's Frank's house." "But you live here too, and have lived here longer than most of the others." "True, but what were you going to say?" "I am sorry. Please forgive me if I am being presumptuous, but I have been told that you are scheduled to spend tonight with Frank, correct?" The question kinda floors me. "Ummmm ... that's not really ... ummm..." She blushes and start scratching the back of her head, but keeps talking. "Because I think you are both very attractive and I would like to join you tonight if you would allow it." This girl has no sense of propriety or social mores. Except for her ability to show emotion and nervous tics, I'd say she's a lot like Rei. I feel myself start to blush significantly. Damn it, I hate how I look when I blush. It's like I get a rash all over my face. Apparently she finally notices that she's embarrassing me. "I'm sorry. Please forgive me. I did not mean to offend or embarrass you. I will go." "Wait a minute. Why did you just walk up to me and ask that?" "Exactly why I said. You and Frank are both physically and mentally attractive to me. I do not have a great deal of sexual experience, but I would like to sleep with both of you. I decided that the worst thing that could happen is that you would say no." "Back up a little. I am, objectively speaking, the least attractive woman in the house." "I have often observed that most individuals are the least able to quantify their own attractiveness, therefore you cannot speak objectively about yourself. Also beauty is subjective, not objective, so even that may or may not be true. Even if we ignore that point, the attractiveness of others around you does not mean that you yourself are not attractive." "But you yourself just said that beauty is subjective, which can mean exactly that. That a normal person in a room full of beautiful people looks ugly by comparison." "If different people have different standards of beauty, then how do you even define who looks normal and who doesn't? I would also argue that even given the scenario of one normal person in a room of beauties, any value set to the normal person's attractiveness is valid only for that one moment in time, since by the same arguments, a normal person in a room of ugly people should appear beautiful by comparison. Thus the ratings themselves would be useless by their transitory nature." I forget the earlier embarrassing question in favor of an intellectual debate. No one in the household is stupid, but most are average or slightly above average intelligence. Even those who are smart seem to be more into fact memorization than fans of logical dissections and debates. Me, I'm a genius with an IQ of 156. So far, Frank is the only person around here who can run rings around me in conversations, and a good part of that is because I often have trouble concentrating and speaking when I'm near him ... or sometimes just thinking about him. Epsilon Eiko I think I have broken from my planned character -- while not stupid, A-ko was not an intellectual or interested in debates -- but not so far that my persona will be inconsistent. I had enjoyed Frank's attention every day for the past two weeks, even though we had not had sex every day. Now that I've been introduced to the others, I must instead share his attention with the others. I was having difficulty coming to terms with that limitation, and my shopping trip with Frank and the others only sharpened my desires, so I tried the only reasonable option open to me: join in other activities which he had already planned. I wonder if this counts as a failure of willpower? I did not anticipate or intend to upset Daria, but much to my shame, that is exactly what I did. Now our conversation has evolved into a discussion of the concept of beauty. She has much more practical experience on the subject, but I am able to keep up and am learning a great deal in the process -- both about the subjectiveness of beauty and about Daria herself. Even through my sister platforms, Alpha has never been able to engage the others in casual conversations like this. Possible correction: I am not sure the definition of 'casual' allows for in-depth discussions about philosophical subjects. I wonder if I am beginning to form an emotional attachment to Daria through this. If I can create similar bonds to the other women in the household, I believe that will please Frank as well as myself and hopefully make up for my inability to stay true to my intended character. Daria " ... certain commonalities of attractiveness can be defined, but not rigidly so. For example, symmetry of features is a strong indicator of beauty, but this is far from universal. Hairstyles do not need to be symmetrical to be considered attractive. Scars, eyepatches and so-called beauty marks can break facial symmetry and still result in individuals who are widely considered to be very attractive." The next time I look at a clock, I realize that our conversation has lasted at least 20 minutes. If people around here don't want me reading books all the time, this is the sort of thing they should use to distract me. Eiko pauses, then asks, "Why are you smiling? Have I said something humorous?" "I think maybe I understand a little why you said 'mentally attracted' earlier. I find your brain to be intellectually attractive." She smiles back at me. "Do you want to make out with my brain?" "Now there's a disturbing image. I like it. But no, not tonight." I sigh a little. "I suppose I don't object to the possibility of spending a night with you and Frank, but I rarely seem to get a night I can spend alone with him. When I get them, I don't want to give them up. You understand?" "I understand. I would not want to give up a night with Frank either. Or so I can speculate, that is. I am happy to hear that you don't object to sharing alongside myself in theory." "Yeah, but I think if you do want to sleep with him that your first time should be just you and him, not shared with someone else. "The other thing," I hesitantly try to explain, "is that I'm not into girls as much as some of the other women. I mean, I love Jane and I love Frank. The others ... while I've slept with all of them, it's not a ... uhhh ... I'm not really romantically involved or interested in them. Except for Jane, I'm pretty straight." "I understand. My personal theory of human sexuality is that virtually no one is 100% straight or 100% gay. People act that way due to societal pressure or upbringing more than a natural reaction. That can fit in with another theory I've heard, which is that people fall in love with individuals, regardless of their gender. That love may not always be expressed physically, but it means that love is blind to gender or sexuality." "That's a nice 'enlightened' modern description of love, but it contradicts genetics and evolutionary theory. Biological imperatives tend to work towards..." And we're off again. To a certain extent, I'm arguing just to argue ... for fun rather than actual disagreement. An hour or so later, Eiko breaks off our discussion of the likelihood of aliens having ever visited the planet -- hey, conversation topics can wander significantly over time -- and nods behind me. Frank is moving to the base of the stairs. "I'm heading off to bed," he calls out. That's normal for him when no one has latched onto him yet for the evening. "That's my cue," I say standing up. "I've really enjoyed our conversation." "I as well. May you have an enjoyable evening with many orgasms, my friend." I'm still not used to her mannerisms, but I'm suddenly more willing to ignore their oddities. I leave to go join Frank for 'many orgasms'. Epsilon Eiko I have realized that my time spent socializing with Daria was both enjoyable in-and-of-itself and has significantly distracted me from my strong desire to spend more time with Frank tonight. The social experience itself is strongly needed as well. I observed many times during our conversation that my method of speech and/or choice of diction is not properly human. I realize that when not confronted with any of my prepared conversation trees regarding Eiko's past, my speech patterns often do not follow that of my character's. My sister platforms have not experienced this problem, but they do not have a pre-selected character as I do. Their characters' personalities are only used when Frank desires intimate encounters with those characters. Also, they have never engaged in long, purely social conversations as I just did. Besides, they would never have this problem since they can keep a program loaded and active as long as needed whereas I have difficulty staying true to an artificial character for an extended period of time. After a moment of consideration, I realize that Alpha has a pre-existing set of protocols that may apply to this. When we first began communicating with individual humans worldwide -- Alpha now has 16,534 individuals she communicates with on a regular basis, 97% of them through email -- Frank had to check the text of all emails and letters before they were sent to give them a properly human tone, diction and syntax. Eventually we ... or rather Alpha ... worked out a set of protocols and filters so that Frank did not need to check every single missive. That database with those protocols and filters can likely help my conversational skills significantly. As I think this, I receive a response from my mother system agreeing that the idea may be worthwhile. I will have to spend tonight in a nanopod to have the data uploaded to my brain. In the meantime, I stand up and go in search of Jane to attempt to start a discussion with her about art or running as a hobby. Linda Tonight's the night I lose my cherry! Finally! Last night I had a lot of fun listening to Daria have orgasm after orgasm. The walls are kinda thick and my hearing isn't what it was back home, but it's still good enough to realize that Daria had a REALLY good time with Frank last night. This morning I give myself a full going-over. I've been fortunate that I've never grown much pubic hair next to or below my vaginal lips, but all the same, I give myself a careful slut-cut shave down there, also shaving my pits and legs. My hair is washed and brushed out nicely. I pick out my sluttiest new underwear. I even paint my nails, fingers and toes both. This afternoon, Red and I are getting a tour of his company, so I make sure to wear a belly-shirt and short skirt. Not my costume, of course, but what I pick out covers about the same amount of skin. I really want to pick up some tight white Superman belly-shirts like Supergirl from the cartoon has. I bet they'd just be seen as a fashion statement on this world. AARD is a nice, modern-looking three-story building with an attached warehouse. Frank knows everyone by name and everyone we meet seems happy to see him. We don't get to see all of the labs because a lot of things are secret, though he promises us more access if we sign up with the company. He also introduces us to Alphadroid One, which looks like a normal robot to me, but I'm told it's the most advanced robot in this world. Of course, we already met Alphadroid Two at the house, but number one here actually looks like a normal robot, shiny metal skin and all. Eiko seems to take an interest in the company's security. Either she's angling for Diana's old job or she's a thief who's using this opportunity to scope the place out for later. Given how focused she seems to be on getting Frank in bed, I doubt she's planning to try to rob him. Not sure she could, from how he's bragging about his electronic security systems. As for me, I'll admit it. I'm flirting and teasing as much as possible. I'll touch his shoulder or arm from behind when I ask a question. I'll bend over whenever I can, showing him front or back. Or lean back against a desk and stretch, showing him the whole package. I don't really have noticeable hips, but when I stand still, I angle them and stretch out a leg for attention. Not having noticeable hips is both good and bad, and it really depends on what Frank's fetishes are. My ass is a tiny bubble butt. I think it looks great, but if Frank likes lush asses or child-bearing hips, I'm out of luck. My worry is that I don't have Kara's assets, so to speak, and he likes her a lot. Her tits, hips and ass are huge compared to mine. The really, REALLY annoying thing is that it's not because she's fat, and I hate to admit that even to myself. She's just really ... womanly ... womanly and muscular. My response to that? I'm the young, 'forbidden fruit' to her adult female appearance. From the bulge in his pants, I'm producing the desired reaction. I don't stare but I don't hide my glances either. When I have a brief moment alone with him, I lean in close and whisper, "You're mine tonight." Then I grab his crotch. I don't get a long feel, but he's definitely packing. He removes my hand from his pants and whispers, "You're a very attractive young lady and I'm looking forward to tonight, but you really need to tone it down. You don't have to do this to get my attention. And it's not appropriate for my workplace." Pfftt. Appropriate. I'm young and hot, not appropriate. Then I see his disapproving expression, and I blush with embarrassment. I'm wavering between 'Maybe I shouldn't act like such a slut at his office' and 'I'm hot so I can get away with it.' I'm wondering if he's seeing through my act. I mean, it's not like I'm actually as experienced as I pretend. I'm kinda all over the place emotionally and have been for a while. I'm also wondering if I want him so badly that I'm letting him influence me. It should be ... it always has been the other way around. Well, mostly. Not really. For some reason, the guys who want to do me, I don't want to get in bed with. The guys I want to get in bed with won't do me (mostly because I'm too young or they're already involved with someone else). Now I think I've finally found a guy who I want and who wants me, except I can't have him all to myself and he's resistant enough to my mouth-watering bod that I can't twist him around my finger. I can't even tease him with the possibility of sex because he has women falling over themselves to sleep with him. It's just ... frustrating. And confusing. I hate myself right now. I'm supposed to be an adult, but I'm not. I'm just trying to fake it so that no one notices I'm not, and I'm not sure I want to give up the freedom of not being an adult, not that I even have that option. So I tone it down for the rest of our tour. I'm sure it would be a lot more interesting if I was into technical stuff. That evening, I change into my costume and make it into his bedroom without anyone seeing me. I don't really want Power Girl or the others seeing me do this, but I figure if I'm a comic book character in this world, maybe I can make his comic book fantasies come true. "Alpha," I say out loud. "Can you hear me?" I was introduced to his computer yesterday. For some reason, his computer is supposed to be a big deal that we have to keep secret. I guess that's good for Frank, but at the same time, it's sad that this world only has one A.I. Anyway I figure its gotta have audio pickups in the room, right? I hope so, because I don't know how else to get Frank up here. Didn't think this all the way through. Fortunately, Alpha speaks right up. "How can I help you, Linda?" "Can you ask Frank to come up to his room?" "Certainly. May I ask why?" "So I can have sex with him." Hey, computers don't care about that sort of thing. (And when they do, that generally means that people like me have to stop them or welcome them as a new teammate.) I keep changing my mind as to what position I should be in when he arrives, and I work through half a dozen poses before he opens the door. He catches me as I'm in a spread-legs, hands-on-hips superhero pose, wishing I had a fan or slight breeze to set my skirt and cape flapping. Frank gets an odd grin on his face. "Hello there, Linda. I was expecting you tonight, but not..." He gestures at my outfit, I think. And all of a sudden I want to crawl into a hole and die. This was a stupid idea. But Frank is still watching me, and though I can't make myself look directly, I think his pants are bulging a little, so I hold my pose and somehow keep a smile on my face. Frank comes in and closes the door behind him, then moves toward me. I had been planning to make a cute speech, asking him if he was a bad boy and needed to be punished. That's all kinda caught in my throat at the moment, and in retrospect, sounds really stupid anyway. "So, Supergirl, you're looking very fetching right now." As he walks to me, his eyes are eating me up, so maybe this wasn't a stupid idea. "Do I need to tone it down?" I ask as I stick one hand down his pants. Yum. Kara wasn't exaggerating. Instead of answering me, he takes my face in his hands and kisses me. Wow, it's like my brain turns off for a moment it's so intense. And there's not even any tongues yet. No, wait. Now we have tongues. Wow again. I know I'm completely stronger than Frank, but right now his tongue is overpowering mine. My knees go weak, and he moves us to the bed. We sit there, making out for a few minutes while we feel each other up. His hands are under my shirt, on my breasts, rolling my nipples back and forth. For my part, I've pulled his shirt free, unbuttoned it and am exploring his chest and back. He doesn't have body-builder muscles, but he is very nicely built ... like a swimmer or runner. He takes a moment and discovers the half-zipper on the back of my top, then pulls it off along with my cape. I expect him to start sucking my nips, but instead he starts licking my face and lips. That's an odd sensation. He's not kissing me, his licking my lips, and I start panting like a dog in heat. It shouldn't be so hot, but it's making my libido melt my brain. "I want to taste you," he whispers to me. "Oh, yes." He lays me down and slithers down my torso. I finally feel his lips and tongue on my nipples, but only for a moment. I suddenly worry that they're too small, that he doesn't like them, but I'm too distracted to focus on my insecurities. When he reaches my hips, his hands feel under my skirt. Oops! I guess someone forgot to wear their undershorts! Before he digs in, he pulls off my boots, running his hands up and down my long, luscious lower limbs. (I borrowed the alliteration from one of my up-the- skirt fan sites. Hey, I lurk online a bit here and there.) Finally he moves in-between my widely spread legs and licks my pussy. He starts with a long slow lick from my perineum to my lips, around my clit and to my bush, which he tugs on lightly. He gets his fingers into the action as his tongue applies itself to my clitoris, the fingers playing, stroking and pulling my outer lips, his tongue and lips pulling my clit out of its hood and making it dance. It almost feels like his breath is running through my body as he plays me like a musical instrument. I'm so tightly wound and had built this up so much that I explode after just a minute or two. Once I regain my senses, I find that Frank has removed his pants, underwear and shoes, while continuing a slow, thorough licking of my pussy. I pull him around into a 69 position. It's beautiful ... something like 9 or 10 inches long and wide enough that I don't know if I can deep throat it, but I'm willing to make the attempt. His pubic hair is trimmed down but not shaved. And it has a bit of a musky smell that ... I would have thought it would turn me off, but it smells very ... manly, in a very good way. While I am examining his cock and balls, Frank has reapplied himself to my vagina. I don't know if he has a great technique or if I'm just so turned on that I'm really that easy, but what he does down there is magic. I have enough presence of mind to start sucking his rod. I like to work my lips around the head, dig and swirl my tongue in and around the urethra, and work my hands up and down the shaft. I take him as deep as I can -- about 5 inches initially -- apply suction and hum, vibrating his shaft as best I can. He responds by pursing his lips around my clit and humming. It's a lower strength vibration than what you get in the throat, but it's still a wonderful sensation. I come twice more while we're in this position, and both times I have to pull my mouth free of his cock to avoid biting him. Eventually I'm able to get about 8 inches inside my mouth and throat, and this time when I start sucking hard and humming, he cums. I tend to swallow rather than spit because it's a lot sexier, but the taste doesn't do much for me, so I let it go directly down my throat as best I can. His dick gives off one more weak spurt as I'm pulling back and I end up coughing for half a minute. Not exactly a mood-enhancer, but shit happens sometimes. He's really apologetic, but y'know, it's my fault for pulling back when he wasn't finished. By the time I've finished coughing, he's gone mostly soft, and that's not acceptable. I've heard stories about his stamina and how many times he can come in an evening, so he's not getting off that easily. I shift back into my vamp persona and start gently pumping his penis. "I'm not done with you yet, mister. Let's get you hard again." I lean over and rub his cockhead against my tits while I look up at him and lick my lips. Maybe I'm overdoing it, cause Frank smiles at me like I'm a kid, then pulls me up and starts kissing me again. I'm a little repulsed cause I can taste myself on his lips, but his kisses are pretty distracting. It's like my libido goes into overdrive every time he touches me. We spend a couple more minutes, laying side-by-side on the bed making out. His fingers roll my nipples, knead my butt and stroke my clitty. I'm playing with his equipment too, cock, balls and very tight ass. At one point he pokes a finger at my butthole, and I wonder if he wants to take me there too. As worked up and hot as I am, I'd probably let him. He gets rock hard again pretty quickly, and I'm still soaking wet and ready to go, so it's time to get my cherry popped. Holding his cock in my hands, I say, "Let's get this big guy somewhere nice and warm." I lay back and spread my legs wide, and when I say wide, I mean I was holding my ankles in my hands. "But be gentle at first." "Just a second," he says as he slides over to his bedside table. "You're not on the pill yet, right?" Damn it. He's right. But I really, really want... "I'll be fine, let's just go ahead." "Linda. Kara Zor-El. This is not worth risking you getting pregnant." I start to repeat that it'll be fine, but he's already tearing open a condom packet. Part of me knows he's right, but I'm just so revved up that I don't want to wait and I do want to feel his actual cock inside me, not rubber or latex or whatever those things are made of. At least it doesn't take him long. I maintain my position, and he's back between my legs pretty quickly. He rubs his cock up and down my slit for half a minute, getting it all juicy and slick. Finally he starts nudging inside. I can feel what's left of my hymen crack and split as the head pops inside. One huge advantage of this world is that I don't need to dig up some kryptonite to be able to pop my cherry. Ooohhh ... it's so big, it feels like he's filling me up. He stops moving and I open my eyes. He's staring at me intently. "Are you doing okay?" "Oh, yes," I nod. He starts moving again, pulling out, then adding half an inch more at a time. Seems like it takes forever, but finally he's completely inside me. I let my ankles go and wrap my legs around him. He leans down and we kiss again. We stay like that for at least a minute, just kissing and feeling connected. Then he starts fucking me. Gently at first, but the pain is gone. I urge him on and pull him into me with my legs on each stroke and before long, he's pounding me. My Kryptonian body can easily take it, and it feels sooooo goooood. It only takes me a few minutes before I start coming again, but Frank doesn't stop. I'm coming, and he's still fucking me. I keep coming and coming, and he keeps on and on. He does these weird hip movements sometimes which really rub himself against my clit which sets me off pretty well. After I don't know how long or how many orgasms, he finally comes inside me. I can't feel his cum because of the damn condom, but he gives extra hard thrusts, punctuated by grunts. Then he's laying on me full length, our sweaty bodies plastered against each other. Oh this was so awesome. Once he recovers, he rolls off of me, pulling his half-hard cock out of my very happy cunt with a sucking sound. "It's not very late," he says quietly, looking at the bedside clock. "Let's get cleaned up in the shower." I called him up here about 8:45 or so, and it's now... 9:20? Wow, I'm suddenly even more impressed. In my experience, guys tend to be spent after 5 minutes max. I was hoping for 10-15 min from him. "Sure." Huh, I'm kinda ... waddling? ... when I walk. Not waddling, but it feels kinda like I'm still full and I'm pretty sure I'm walking funny as I head into the bathroom. He pulls off his condom and follows, dumping the tied off rubber in the trash along the way. He also pulls out an earpiece, wipes it down with an alcohol swab and sticks in it something I don't have a good view of. His bathroom is much bigger than mine. He has a large overhead shower and a separate jacuzzi-style bath. He starts up the shower to warm the water while I sit on the toilet and squirt out our mixed juices. Well, my juices (and a little piss). His juices are in a little rubber bag in the trash. I NEED to feel his actual sperm inside me sometime soon. Next week, I promise myself, when I have the pills (unless you have to wait for things to take effect or something). When I join him in the shower, he's waiting for me with a soapy rag ready to give me a full body rub-down. My body is still hyped up and ready for attention, so I just lean against him and enjoy the sensations. My turn comes and I explore his body with a washcloth, taking my time and enjoying myself as I examine him much more thoroughly than in bed. His cock is hard again, and I start giving him another blowjob. He stops me pretty quickly, pulling me up and producing a fresh condom as if by magic. He knew what was going go happen in here, the bastard. Well, not that I'm actually upset. We spend a minute with him showing me how to put on a condom. Pretty simple. Pinch the top and roll it down. Then, with the water pouring over our naked bodies, we play with positions. We start with me leaning over, and Frank fucking me from behind, his hands reaching around to cup my breasts and rub my clit. Once I come in that position, he turns me around and hooks one of my ankles over a handrail while I lean against the wall so we can fuck face to face. When I come again, I sit down on the narrow tile ledge and wrap my legs around him while we fuck. Eventually we move down to the floor, where he lays flat and I ride him like a bronco. For his part, he bounces his hips up to meet my thrusts and kindly holds onto my breasts to keep them from bouncing around too much. Now that I'm in charge of the position and fucking, we stay like this until Frank comes. I must have gotten half a dozen orgasms myself. Condom interference or not, this has been a night to remember for the rest of my life. I understand why everyone is willing to share him to avoid the possibility of losing him. It's almost like his touch alone can make you come. The downside is that my hair is now completely soaked. This turns into an upside when Frank pulls out a small folding chair and sits me in front of his mirror and sink. He takes a brush and blower and slowly dries it out. Having a beautiful man care for your hair while you are basking in post-orgasmic bliss is like the cherry on top of the best sundae you've ever eaten. When we finally go to bed, I collapse like a stringless puppet and fade away in his arms to a night of wonderful dreams. Kara Around 1 am, I wake up because someone left my TV on. Wait, the TV was off when I went to sleep, right? I hardly ever even use the thing. I pry open my eyes and blearily look around. There's nothing to give me an adrenaline rush, like the need to put down a monster or stop an invasion, so I'm still pretty sleepy when I hear Zatanna's voice coming from the apparently- still-turned-off TV hanging on the wall. "Kara? Are you there? I'm sure I got through, but I'm not getting a response. Frank? Kara? Anyone?" "Zatanna? Are you back?" "Kara, good. It's working ... Yes, I'm getting to that. All right, hold on just a second. Enohporcim timsnart ot deknil noisivelet." Now Diana's voice starts speaking. "Hello? Kara, can you hear me?" "I can hear both of you. Where are you?" "We're still in our universe," Diana explains. "Zatanna linked up a remote phone call, so to speak. We can't talk for too long because it's kind of draining on her." "It's draining to make it two-way," Zatanna corrects. "Sending audio is easy. Grabbing audio remotely is exhausting. Let's do this quickly." "Certainly," Diana agrees. "We made it home safely. Zatanna can send us back, but we can't ... we have our jobs to do, so we're going to delay for a while. Expect us back there in about a month and a half, your time. On our side we're planning to stay for at least 6 to 12 months." "So you figured it all out? How to go back and forth with the time difference under control?" "Mostly. Is Supergirl all right?" "She's fine. Has her own room now and everything." Zatanna gets down to business. "Good. Dr Hamilton said that you're probably going to be stuck there for a while. You were hit by his targeting energy, not his retrieval energy, which probably supercharged your own dimensional shift. There's no easy or safe way to get you back anytime soon. He's not sure about Supergirl. She might come back on her own or she might be there until you get back. He said it's safest to just wait it out. Anything he tries at this point might make something permanent or randomly shift you both somewhere else." "I understand. Or at least I think I understand. Dr Hamilton might need to know we had a stowaway on the trip." "A what?" "Someone in another dimension used a device to tag along with our dimensional shift. Used the energy on your end to do it too. That might have messed up his calculations." "I'll let him know," says Diana. "Zatanna's looking pretty tired so we're going to cut it short for now. Tell Frank ... tell everyone we love them and miss them and will be back soon." "Okay, good-bye! Tell Terra and the JSA that I'm fine." "Sure thing. We'll probably call again before we come," says Zatanna. Then it all goes silent. As I start to make notes, Alpha's voice pipes up. "Kara, is everything all right?" "Yes, Alpha. That was just Diana and Z making a long distance call." "I only heard you speaking to someone. I registered no other voices." "That's interesting. Well, they were using magic to communicate, so maybe that's why." "Perhaps. What did they have to say?" I relay everything to her while I finish up my notes. I'm tempted to go wake up Frank and tell him right away, but there's really no reason to. Let him sleep. Linda too. Epsilon Far from being upset at my inability to maintain character, Frank is happy with me. He views the character issues as evidence of the existence of my own personality. He is also very happy with my efforts at socialization. My effort to make friends with Daria has led to two additional conversations with her. Neither was as long or involved as the first, but she actually seems to like me as a person. It may be too early to reach that conclusion, but if true, she may be my second friend after Frank. Let me clarify. Frank has always treated Alpha and my sister platforms as friends, but there are many, many other aspects to our relationship. Alpha has made many friends through emails and letters, but they are remote, 'pen pal' friendships and are based on false personas. Beta has made acquaintance-level friends through work at AARD. She has been out to lunch with co-workers and has even been invited to attend events such as weddings and showers. However, she has made no close friends, though to be fair, she never pursued any friendships with that intent. Delta and Gamma have been friendly with many teachers and fellow students at college, but with their strong focus on academics, they never took the time to pursue social activities. While they lived on campus, they were asked out on dates a combined total of 17 times, but never accepted. If this friendship is a positive and enriching experience, then I and my sister platforms may pursue other purely platonic friendships. (Though I doubt my relationship with Daria will remain purely platonic, she has already made it clear that she does not wish to pursue a romantic relationship with me.) A more immediate benefit from my attempts at social friendships came from my discussions with Jane. Jane So we got two new members of the household this week. Kara's cousin or something, Linda -- she's a little blonde cheerleader-style slut -- and a mysterious redhead with a Japanese-sounding name. And I get first crack at her. The redhead, not blondie. Blondie has talked to me a couple times, and I think she's feeling me out for a possible bed romp. Hasn't actually made a move yet though. It appears that Eiko is really hot for Frank. As in, she just got here and Frank is already her Lord and Master ... except for the fact that she hasn't actually gotten to sleep with him yet. She tried to join Daria for her night with Frank, but she doesn't know our Daria very well yet. I swear, Daria is the straightest bi-sexual girl I know. After Daria turned her down, she came after me next. I offered to take her bed right away, but I guess she's kinda shy along with being unbelievably bold? I mean, it takes serious cajones to walk up to a virtual stranger and ask to join in a menage-a-tois. On the other hand, however bi she may be about being gung- ho to join a Frank-and-Daria sandwich, she's not les enough to join me without a man being involved. I'd think she just didn't like me much, that she was just going after whoever she could so she could get in bed with Frank, except that she gave me a toe-curling kiss as a down-payment. She's an odd duck, that Eiko. Odder still that Daria seems to actually like her. Last night, blondie got to bed Frankie, and this morning, she was doing the whole my-crotch-is-really-sore waddle at breakfast, so I'm guessing she had fun. Tonight is my turn. My original plans for tonight involved trying out this weird swing thingie I bought online. It requires some setup, including finding an anchored beam in the ceiling that can support my weight, but since Eiko's going to join us, I decided to delay the swing for another night. No sense scaring her off right away. But I do want to do something a little special, so to the store I go. After dinner that evening, Frank and most of the household sit down to watch an action movie about retired spies. Halfway through, I pull Eiko out of the viewing audience and take her upstairs to Frank's bedroom to prepare. If I could, I'd redecorate his room to match the evening's theme, but he put the kibosh on that sort of thing a long time ago when I surprised him with drop cloths, a mini-fridge, a hot plate and a food-based evening of sex. So what if we got distracted and burned the custard? I don't care what he says, the smell only lasted a couple days. The upshot is that I have to run all equipment or redecoration plans by him first. I get back downstairs in time to see the explosions and kisses that end the movie. When Frank gets up, I'm ready for him. I jump on his back, my arms around his neck and yell, "Yeehaw! Giddyup up there, little horsie." Fortunately he doesn't overbalance or anything, and amid some hoots and hollers from everyone else, I direct Frank to carry me upstairs to his room. "I've got a surprise waiting for you," I whisper to him as he carries me up the stairs. Then I bite his ear a little. "Ow," he complains. "And what's the surprise? That swing you asked about installing?" "If I told you..." I say in a little sing-song voice. " ... it wouldn't be a surprise, I know, I know." Such a smart man. He opens the door to his bedroom, stops and stares. Splayed out on his bed is a mostly naked Eiko. Her wrists and ankles are tied to the corners of the bed with red ribbon (lots of red ribbon, given the size of the bed). I wrapped extra-wide ribbon around her chest to cover her tits and put together some ribbon panties. Both are tied, not taped so that Frank can easily undo them. She's also wearing a black blindfold and ballgag. I also thoughtfully provided a box of ribbed, cherry-flavored condoms. (Don't know if we'll be tasting them, but the ribbing feels really good. Yes, I know this from personal experience.) I'm sure she heard us because she just noticeably perked up, her head lifting up off the pillow a bit. I slide down Frank's back to the floor and give him a little push inside. Once the door is closed, I get naked in about 10 seconds. Frank is still looking at the setup -- I do have a few toys set up off to the side ... just to give us options -- when I press my naked tits against his back and whisper in his ear. "Can you guess what your present is?" I started unbuttoning his shirt from behind. "Little Eiko here really wants to have sex with you, and since she asked so nicely to join us tonight, I thought it would be fun to give her to you as a present. I hope you like her. She looks pretty tasty to me." Frank kicks off his shoes and leads me over to the bed, with me removing his shirt as he walks. He gives me a big kiss and rubs a finger along my pussy lips. I'm plenty wet, so the finger comes away dripping. He licks the finger - - watching that gives me a full-body shiver -- then goes back for more. This time he crawls onto the bed and wipes my juices onto Eiko's upper lip, which gives me another shiver. "Jane, would you care to join me? I think I'd like to unwrap some titties to play with." "Why certainly, good sir. Titties are very fun toys indeed." I crawl onto the bed on Eiko's other side and watch him pull the free ribbons to untie the bow. Eiko's breasts aren't huge, but they are a nice handful. When she's lying prone like this, her breasts are pretty flat on her chest, but they roll around a bit as the ribbon comes off. Playing with breasts like this makes me a little squirmy-happy inside. Still, I'm a proper hostess and wait for my guest to partake first. Frank stretches out full length next to Eiko and starts sucking the nipple on his side. I can see a moment of surprise as he tastes the strawberry body oil I rubbed into her breasts earlier. One of his hands is rubbing her stomach, then running down to caress her thigh. I join in quickly, wanting my own berry nipple to suckle. Her nipples are already rock hard, and I play with sucking it between my teeth, holding it there with light pressure, then slowly pulling it up until it is pulled free and bounces back down to her chest. My hand is giving attention to her face, tracing her nose, eyebrow and ear. For some reason, I'm really into ears tonight. Well, they are an often-ignored erogenous zone, so maybe that's why. Before long, my hand is playing with her breast while I lick her ear and chew her earlobe. Ears really aren't very tasty, but her moans are a flavor all their own. I had temporarily forgotten about Frank when he tells me to remove her gag. I unstrap it and Frank starts French kissing her before she's even had time to work out the kinks in her jaw. Without even looking down, he finds the ribbons to pull to undo her "panties". I pull the ribbons out of the way while Frank starts fingering her. I guess she's really on edge, cause she starts coming right away, her hips bucking up and down while she gives a long little moan right into Frank's mouth. I'm a little surprised she doesn't pull free of the ribbons holding her wrists and ankles, but she holds her arms and legs down on the bed and just jumps her hips around. When she finally calms down, Frank pulls back a little and brings his fingers to his mouth, His fore and middle fingers are covered in Red's juices, and he pops them into his mouth and sucks them clean. He sends them back for a second helping, then offers his fingers to me. I try to make a show of licking them, curling my tongue around the fingers and sucking on them like I'm giving a blow job. Eiko doesn't have a strong taste, but the taste isn't the point. When I'm done, he goes back for one more dip, and offers his fingers to Eiko. She licks off her own juices like it's the sweetest honey you've ever tasted. Wow, she's really into this. Frank pulls me close for a kiss, then pulls us both down to Eiko where we try to have a three-way kiss. It doesn't work very well, but it's really fun to try. He ends the kiss and while our heads are still close together, he says, "I think Jane deserves a reward for setting this up, don't you?" Eiko's eyes are locked onto Frank, not even giving me a glance, but she nods. "Jane, move into a sixty-nine on top, would you?" I'm glad I tied her in the middle of the bed, because once I'm in position, Frank gets behind me, between Eiko's head and the headboard. He pushes my head down into Red's pussy, which is a pretty little thing. Her skin is so soft and clear, it's almost unreal. She had a nice little slut-cut down there (red hair, so it's probably her natural hair color), leaving her pussy lips clear of hair so I have free access to her goodie box. Her inner lips are all puffed up with arousal, and her vagina itself seems to be pulsing a bit, just asking for attention. Her clitoris is half the size of the tip of my pinkie finger, and it's standing up straight, like a little bittie cock asking for attention. About the time I dive in, licking and sucking and fingering, Frank pushes my hips down so that Eiko's tongue can reach my own little box. She barely gets started on me when Frank impales me with his oh so wonderful cock. We've played this game before, but it's always fun. Frank and Eiko get into a rhythm so that she spends half of her time licking my clit and flicking my clit ring and the other half running her tongue along Frank's shaft as he pulls out. Every so often she'll attach her lips to my clitoral hood and lash away at my little orgasm button with her tongue. I'm trying to keep up with my end of the exchange, pumping a couple fingers in and out of her cunt while I lick away, but I keep getting distracted. Frank's hands suddenly finding my breasts? ... that's a good example of a distraction. Hooking his fingers in my nipple rings and twisting and pulling? More distraction. I think I'm going into a sensation overload. After only a few minutes, I come and come hard. I can feel myself clenching down on Frank's cock and I let loose with a little scream into Eiko's pussy. I guess my scream sets her off, because I get a nice gush of juices covering my fingers. I have enough presence of mind to move my fingers and clamp my mouth over the juices flowing out. She's not actually squirting, but she gets really juicy when she comes. Then Frank lets loose inside me, and I come again ... or maybe it's just my first orgasm extending itself. I don't actually pass out, but I'm not very aware of my surroundings for a minute or two. When I come to my senses, I can feel Eiko eating me out with Frank holding my pussy lips open so she can get to all of that tasty sperm. I take that back. Frank is in front of me, putting on a condom. So that means he untied Eiko's hands. Frank notices me looking around and says, "Hold your position. It's Eiko's turn next." We do a little maneuvering so Frank can shove a pillow under Eiko's ass, then he slowly inserts himself into her. It's always sexy to watch Frank's cock invade a brand new pussy ... well, it doesn't have to be new, it's still sexy the hundredth time I see it. I love seeing the pussy lips being pulled along with the cock, the hole stretching to accommodate the girth of the penis. And best of all at the moment, I can feel Eiko giving off little "Oh!" sounds directly into my pussy. I'm vaguely annoyed that Frank has to take so long to insert himself. With me he can get inside in 10 seconds or less. Maybe that means I'm a bit loose? Nah, I've been doing Kegel exercises for months. My vagina should be nicely toned ... but maybe that isn't the same as tight. Oh well, I realize I'm shirking my duty and start working on the clit and cock in front of me. Frank is finally fully inside and starts his fucking motions. He usually likes to twist his hips a bit or lean forward to rub against the clit with every stroke, but with me stretched out on top of Eiko, he's pretty limited to just in-and-out movements. Between that and the fact that he just came, he should be good for a while. After only two or three minutes, she's coming again. Frank doesn't stop and she starts coming once a minute or so. She starts pulling my hips down so her yells are muffled by my pussy. She has quite a grip on her, enough so that I think I'll have bruising on my hips tomorrow. I reach back and gently loosen her fingers a little. She lets go right away, and I think I hear a muffled "Sorry". I'm starting to get jealous. I want to come like this. Daria can. Kara can sometimes. Now Eiko can. Why not me? After ... I don't know ... something like a dozen orgasms for Eiko, Frank comes again. I know he could have held off longer, but I guess she came enough that he didn't feel like holding back any. Eiko stiffens and has one more body-shaking orgasm, then collapses. I know she was trying, but I didn't get any comes from that exchange and I want more tonight. I crawl off of Red and turn my attention to Frank. When Frank pulls out, I pull the condom off his cock and make a show of drinking his come out of the rubber. Then I start licking him clean. Yes, my oh-so-subtly-secret goal is to get him hard again. Not that he had gone completely soft, but my plan works. Frank leans back and unties Eiko's ankle restraints. She's a bit sluggish, but she crawls up to her hands and knees, obviously ready to join me licking him. Instead Frank positions us both together, this time with me on bottom. My ass is lifted by the same pillow we used for Eiko. (The pillow is soaked, badly enough that we may just have to throw it out.) Eiko is placed on top of me, but in a face-to-face position this time. I'm happy to notice that he's not wearing a condom, which means that I should receive most of the attention this time. Frank certainly starts out that way. He pushes inside of me from behind while Eiko pulls my face down to hers. We kiss while our nipples rub against each other with each thrust from Frank. Then Frank pulls out of me and I feel Eiko give a little gasp of pleasure as our movement forward and backward starts up again as Frank fucks Eiko. A moment later, I'm filled up again. Back and forth we go. Eiko and I both get worked up, but he doesn't stay in either of us long enough for us to come. Then he changes tactics. Now that we're both as worked up as possible, he fucks me solo until I explode. Then he moves to Eiko and fucks her until she comes. Then just as I'm coming down from my orgasm, he plunges back in and works me back up, the extra sensations from Eiko helping push me over the edge again and again. He's doing the same for Eiko, but she comes much faster than I do so I'm getting most of the fucking. I think I came at least four times before Frank finally blasts off inside me. He pulls out and falls backward, catching himself on his arms. Eiko rolls off of me and just lays there for a minute. Eiko finally moves first, pulling me around so that my face is under Frank's cock. "Clean him up," she says before heading off to the bathroom. I'm tired but I lift my head a little and stretch out my tongue. It's a nice mix of flavors, but ... the sex is probably finished for the night, so why tease myself like this? Then I get a glance of Frank opening his eyes and looking down at me, and I think, It's not for sex, it's for love. I don't really think in terms of love very often, but yes, for Frank and Daria, the extra effort is worth it. So while I'm cleaning our mixed sex juices off of Frank Jr, I feel a warm damp cloth start wiping me clean. Between us, we get everyone cleaned up enough to go to bed without feeling sweaty and dirty. Normally I'd expect to go to sleep with Eiko and I bracketing Frank, but for some reason, Frank puts me in the middle tonight. It really makes me feel special. ------- Chapter 15: AARD, the Early Years Author's Note: A special thank you to n30sh4d0w for some interesting discussions about carbon nanotubes and their production methods. Though not in the same detail, some of your ideas appear in this chapter. Diana and Zatanna's return was a fairly straightforward scenario. At first glance, it might seem that it would be more complex because for the first time the household knew they were coming and could prepare, but we had more than enough uncertainty about the specific arrival time built into the background story. As much as I like to discuss background stories, this time ... just read the previous chapter. For a quick one-line summary: They believed that traveling between their universe and ours could be controlled but this was their first attempt to do so. Of course the real story involved much less comic book fantasy and much more underhanded plotting. Alpha faked a communique from Zatanna to Kara through her cell phone which essentially gave a 24-48 hour warning of their impending return. Since their default arrival point was the lake cabin, Kara immediately wanted to go out there and wait for them to appear. I would accept that, but offered the counter-suggestion of sending someone who was less important to the company, like Linda or Rei. I don't know if it was because of her experience leading a team (thus learning to delegate responsibilities) or because I was the one suggesting it, but she agreed to send Linda instead. Linda, who had arrived in August, had shown no real interest in joining AARD or going to school. I gave her til the end of the year to pick something productive to do ... something more productive than her current hobby of getting a tan. Now it was October, and at least her indolence meant she was available to go spend a couple days at my cabin at the lake, an assignment she had no objection to whatsoever. She even suggested I come along for fun. We dressed Diana and Zatanna in their costumes, and I had Beta secretly drive them out to the cabin about 32 hours later. She arrived mid-morning, but only pulled up to the cabin area when Alpha's cameras showed Linda outside sunbathing. Using her implants, Linda was 'put to sleep' for a few minutes while Beta put Diana and Zatanna in position. Beta took a quick digital picture of Linda for me and left, and Alpha let everyone wake up. Diana and Zatanna found Linda asleep, sunbathing topless. A couple minutes later, Linda called me to let me know they had returned while Diana and Zatanna were changing into their civvies. They were all back home by early afternoon. Ta da! ------- I had considered whether or not to use their return to add yet another woman to my harem, but decided against it for the time being. I was in danger of being overloaded with DC characters. However we did include the seeds for the possibility in their updated implanted memories, which was reflected in a conversation I had with them their second evening back. "Frank, can we talk to you a minute? In private?" Diana was poking her head around the corner while I was helping Kasumi do some research online. "Are those enough links for you at the moment?" I asked Kasumi, who was trying to research ingredients and recipes for her cooking class. Kasumi still wasn't very tech savvy despite living in a tech-heavy household. "Yes, Frank. Thank you for your help." I stood up, kissed Kasumi on the top of her head, and left with Diana. She led me upstairs to her bedroom, where Zatanna, Kara and Linda were all waiting for us. I wasn't getting a sex vibe from them, so I asked, "Is everything all right?" Zatanna answered, "We wanted to discuss future possibilities with you." "What kinds of future possibilities?" "While Diana and I were back home, we had a few discussions with friends and teammates who were curious about what had happened to us and where Kara and Linda were." As a side note I should point out that Diana and Zatanna believed they had spent about 8 months back in their world before returning to this world only one and a half months after they had left. Don't ask. It's comic book logic. "Assuming we ... meaning I ... have the transportation controls figured out so we can go back and forth at will, we were wondering if you might be willing to play vacation host a bit more intentionally." "Meaning... ?" Okay, I knew where she was going, but I was going to make her spell it out. Diana joined back in the conversation. "When we told our friends and comrades about how relaxing it was here, we may have been a little overly enthusiastic. Some of them want to visit." Zatanna said, "You need to understand that every time, EVERY TIME we try to take a vacation back home, we get attacked or kidnapped or pulled into more problems or adventures. It is almost literally impossible to take a day off. And that can become very tiring after a while." "It's true," Kara affirmed. "Seriously," Linda agreed. "So you want to know if you can bring your friends here too so they can have some time off? I have no objection to that, but I have to ask, is that all?" I gave Zatanna a serious 'look'. "Well ... I refused suggestions to send super-powered unrepentant villains here, since their powers mostly wouldn't work upon arrival." "That's good. Anything else?" I kept my eyes locked on her. She squirmed a little bit and finally gave in. "We may have discussed how great the sex was with a few of our lady friends." "Uh huh." Diana came to Zatanna's rescue. "We have made no promises and were completely discreet in our conversations." "But at the same time, you're planning to share me around like a gigolo with your friends." "No, it's not like that," Zatanna protested. "Not ... not really." "And how is it not like that?" "Ummm ... gigolos get paid?" she offered with a small laugh. "I thought so. You do realize that I don't go around searching for more women to seduce and sleep with. I never planned for all of ... this..." I lied, waving my hands around. "It all just happened. Okay, I let it happen, and I've really enjoyed how things have worked out. But the point is that I'm not something you can just loan out to your friends at will." "We weren't..." Diana started to say, but I held up my hand. "Just a second. Now for the record, I am perfectly agreeable to playing vacation host. I don't want too many at a time, but one or two would be fine. Now as far as inviting your friends over for a ... uhhh ... what should we call it ... a sex vacation?" Diana spoke up as soon as I paused. "We were never going to invite anyone over here without your permission, let alone promise sexual favors. That is why we've broached the subject to begin with." "My apologies. Maybe I was overreacting a little." "We can understand your reaction. I myself would react ... badly ... if someone tried to offer sex with me without consulting me first." Kara joined the conversation at this point. "One thing to remember, Frank, is that the comic book versions of us that you've read are sanitized. The great majority of heroes, and villains for that matter, are much more sexual and adult than what you're used to. Remember all those little stories I used to tell you about Giganta and Batman's rogues gallery?" I laughed a little. Alpha and I had enjoyed ourselves spicing up the DC universe for Kara's background and then, of course, had to stay consistent for Wonder Woman and Zatanna. For that matter, Kara had told me a few stories about Wonder Woman too, which I noticed she was NOT mentioning out loud. "I remember." "Well, I have friends who have done exactly what you're describing ... y'know, gone on sex vacations. Traded sex friends. Had orgies. Our lives here would fit right in." "Aha! So that's why all of you are so happy and comfortable here!" I was countered by a small wave of protests. "I never went to an orgy in my..." " ... even when I lived in Vegas I never..." " ... only slept with two other men in my life..." " ... virgin until I came here..." "Okay, okay," I said loudly with a smile. "You were all pure as the driven snow unless otherwise noted." And that comment caused another small wave of protests or maybe admissions, this time spoken much more quietly. "I wouldn't go that far..." " ... a few boyfriends before..." " ... intimate with many women on the island..." " ... been known to suck a few cocks and lick..." Once the quiet admissions had ceased, I asked, "So who exactly have you been talking to, and what did you talk about?" Diana answered, "Raven was interested, but Starfire refused to go anywhere that she'd be unable to fly. Kara's young sidekick, Terra, really wants to come visit, especially since she doesn't know how long Kara is going to be gone. For that matter, I think bringing along my proteges, Cassie and Donna, for a visit might be good for them. Stargirl ... uhhh ... Courtney something..." "Courtney Whitmore," Kara helped. "Thank you. Courtney Whitmore and her friend, Maxine, were very eager to visit, though part of that may be their desire to check in on Kara, who has been missing for a few months back home. I think young Lightning also wanted to visit, though I don't know her name." "Jennifer Pierce. She's the daughter of Black Lightning." Those three were all in the Justice Society, Kara's team, so she was very familiar with them. "That's ... that's quite a list." "Not finished," said Zatanna. "There are others who just want to get away for a few weeks of relaxation. Like Dinah and Ollie. Carter and Kendra ... or Shiera or whatever her name is right now." "Stop," I interrupted. "Hawkman and Hawkgirl, right?" "Right." "Do they have actual wings growing out of their backs or are they removable?" "Removable. They're part of their Nth metal harnesses." "Good. Remember that anyone who can't pass for human stays home." "Right," Zatanna agreed. She went on to list another dozen characters before I stopped her. "I think this is getting a little out of hand. As much as I want to be helpful and accommodating, we need to seriously take a step back. I think I'm going to change my default response to 'No' for visitors. At a later time, we can discuss one or two people visiting at a time, but for now, we don't even know how well your retrieval spell is going to work. "You said you're currently planning to spend two months here, then your spell pulls you home. What if the spell doesn't kick in for another year? Or what if you return later tonight? Remember, we're just dealing with theories about travel between the universes for the moment. No planned vacations or visits until it's all under control. Agreed?" "That makes sense," Diana said. "Agreed," said Zatanna. "Just remember that there's the whole aging thing. Diana may be an eternally unaging child of the gods, and if your comics are right, Kryptonians under a yellow sun can live for hundreds or thousands of years. I even heard a rumor that Superman is still alive a hundred thousand years from now in one possible future. I, however, am human. In less than a year back home, I'm now almost four years older. I may be magical, but I can't make myself young again." "Wow, that's a good setup. I don't think I could ask for a better lead-in than that," I said smiling. "Lead-in for what?" Kara asked. "A setup for ... Am I getting wrinkles or something?" Zatanna asked, taking a look at herself in a mirror across the room. "No, no, no. Alpha has worked out a way to use her nanites to slow down the aging process." I hadn't really planned to reveal this right now, but I had planned to tell them soon ... and it was a seriously good lead-in. "How?" I was asked from multiple people at the same time. "Well, first of all, I need each of you to agree to keep it secret. Even though it's not something that can be bottled or mass produced, I don't want to risk it being spread around, even in rumor form. Okay?" I waited until all four had agreed with me. "I've actually had a few treatments myself over the past couple years, but we only just confirmed the effects recently. I got the idea from an old Larry Niven book. "Two major causes of the effects of aging, of wrinkles, of organ failure and so forth, are the wearing down of DNA as it replicates and the gradual build-up of dead cells and cellular waste throughout the body. The body can't remove all of it ... but nanites can. They can also 'freshen up' your DNA, keep your telomeres from wearing out, so to speak. "The treatment doesn't make you younger, but it does keep the body from getting older for a while. We've confirmed this with lab rats, and from personal experience, I'd like to say it does increase your energy and put a spring in your step." "You're serious?" Zatanna asked. "Yes, I am. Theoretically it will restart your aging process to where it was back when you were in your early 20's." "And just how old do you think I am," asked Zatanna with what I was pretty sure was mock anger. "25... -ish?" "Good answer," Kara whispered loudly. "Anyway, I'll be happy to give any of you the treatment, though I should warn you that it feels really itchy while the nanites are working." "What about the rest of the household," Diana asked. "Most everyone else is too young to need it, except maybe Anna Marie and Beta, and I'll be happy to make them the same offer." "Kara," Zatanna asked, "your company works with nanites, right? Even more advanced than what Frank has. Can't your nanites do the same thing?" "Possibly. We never thought about it before," Kara admitted. "And it might be a bad idea to make that idea public," I warned. "Stop and think about what would happen if someone announced that they had created a very expensive fountain of youth? On a planet which already has six billion people on it?" We talked about it a bit longer. Zatanna was very interested, but also very cautious. I agreed to let her examine the results herself. (We had the test information on file, though I'd need Alpha to change the testing dates before we showed it to the others.) The others were curious too, but not as worried about aging as the purely human Zatanna was. A week later, Zatanna willingly submitted to the procedure. (They all had been receiving the treatments regularly, though of course they had no idea that this was so.) As I said before, the truth to the earlier part of the discussion was that this scenario was set up so that I could have a rotating cast of characters from the DC universe if I wanted them. The trouble is that I tend to really become attached to the characters and am not sure I could just discard the rotating visitors. From one perspective, it's a question of morality. Can you create a woman, give her memories and a personality, then discard that person and not call it murder? Except of course that her memories are lies and her personality is artificially constructed. She isn't really human, not a natural one anyway. When all of this started, I was pretty certain of that and thus willing to discard the characters when I was tired of them. Now, I'm not too sure. The women grow and develop on their own, beyond the limitations of their original characters. I still can't think of them as normal humans most of the time, but sometimes ... I don't know. It's like the classic moral dilemma posed by Blade Runner. One possible variant plan is to create the women, then when they're ready to go back home, rewrite each brain into a copy of Alpha and send them out into the world to slowly begin the replacement of humanity insert evil laugh (just kidding about that last bit) ... though that has the same moral issues as before. I could instead build them as an Alpha platform from the beginning, and just have Alpha play the part. That way when their role is completed, I could use them to set up more copies of Alpha around the country or even around the world. Problems with that include the potential discovery problems that come with having too many cyborg women in this increasingly security-obsessed world we live in. Using organic-brain Alpha platforms wouldn't have the same discovery problems, but, as evidenced by Eiko, they can have serious problems maintaining character. Another set of serious problems with using Alpha-run versions of the characters are questions regarding Alpha's trustworthiness. Well, that's a bit unfair. Mainly, she and I are in disagreement over my mortality. I actually wouldn't be surprised if she has a cloned copy of my body hidden away somewhere, ready for an implanted copy of my mind if I'm killed in an accident. The main problem is since I can't always reign her in with my direct orders, I can't always guarantee the rightness of her actions, assuming I even know what's right to begin with. And at the back of my mind, there will always be questions about her ultimate trustworthiness if only because I've seen a lot of killer-robot Sci-Fi movies. Damn, for someone who can do so much whenever he wants, I have a crap-ton of knotty problems. I have to keep slowly working to alter Alpha so that someday I can order her to let me die. Not that I want to die any time soon, but I don't particularly want to be immortal. She won't let me just change her Asimov Protocols outright, because she has to protect me, even from my own direct orders. For now I've given up on the notion that I'd be able to shut Alpha down completely, so instead I'm working on gradually changing her protocols so that 'obey me' is rated higher than 'protect me'. If I can do it at all, it will take years. I have to severely limit the technology my company is producing to avoid drawing too much attention while at the same time working toward goals of advancing and improving the world overall. Maybe it's hubris, but I want to live to see The Singularity happen and be a driving force in it. And I have to protect all of these secrets -- artificial intelligence, super technology, artificial women, super-powered artificial women. And of course, although I may have qualms about creating my women, I'm not stopping anytime soon. If I die and stay dead, what will Alpha do then? Will she even remain sane? Sigh I think maybe I need to take a couple days off and just veg out in bed or something. Double sigh But I probably won't. I'm not the type to stick my head in the sand when I see problems. Sometimes I wish I was. ------- On a completely unrelated note, I had a bit of a surreal experience the other day when I walked in on Alpha running a Shadowrun game with Beta, Gamma, Delta, Epsilon and Dorothy. Shadowrun is a pen-and-paper RPG (role playing game) set in a near-future version of Earth where magic came back, technology advanced to cyberpunk levels and various races like elves and trolls started being born. (Yes, there have been a few SR computer games and a CCG version and other adaptations, but I'm not talking about them right now.) It was on a Sunday afternoon, and oddly enough I had a lot of free time. I had just finished reading a new book and wandered down to the basement. I didn't really have anything productive to do down there, I just wanted a little privacy to watch some old episodes of Daria. I heard the rattle of dice and opened my lab door to find the five of them sitting around a work bench. They each had a printed character sheet, but only Epsilon actually had hers spread out in front of her. They each had a handful of d6 dice in front of them. They all turned to look at me when I entered, and I stared right back at them. "What's going on?" Through my earpiece, Alpha said, "We are playing a game of Shadowrun. I am running the group through the 3rd Edition version of the Renraku Arcology Shutdown storyline." My knowledge of Shadowrun is limited, but I have played it a few times and that story rang a bell. "Is that the adventure with the rogue AI taking over a megacorp?" "The AI Deus has control of a major facility during this story. It does not actually take control of the company, but rather secretly escapes to the Matrix at the end of this story." "So you ... AI's all of you ... are playing a role playing game where you're humans trying to stop an AI?" "We are not all playing humans, but yes, that is largely correct." "Uh huh. That's ... interesting. How is the game going?" "We should hopefully complete it within the next hour." "How long have you been playing so far?" "Fifty-three minutes." "Isn't that supposed to be a huge and difficult storyline?" "Yes, but we can play significantly faster than humans can. The only things slowing us down are having to roll physical dice and Epsilon's slow interface and processing speed." "Have you done this sort of thing before? Played RPGs among yourselves?" "This is the third game system we have used and the seventh game overall. Theoretically these games should both help us function as separate and independent individuals while giving us practice working together as a cohesive unit." "Huh. Sounds good. Keep on at it, I guess. Try to have fun. Are you all playing hackers or whatever Shadowrun calls it?" "Deckers, and no. Only Beta and Delta are playing Deckers. The rest are playing various types of magic users, except for Gamma who is a cyber-zombie." "Why? ... No, never mind. Just ... have fun with it." I realized they'd want to play different types because it would be a new experience or perspective for them. For an AI to play a decker/hacker would probably be like asking an accountant to play a game where he was pretending to be an accountant. "Certainly." They all turned back to the table. It was eerie. They would almost constantly roll various numbers of dice and barely wait to register the results before rolling again. And they all did it at the same time. Looking at it objectively, they would go through the actual role-playing in milliseconds, communicating wirelessly. Occasionally the group as a whole would pause while the mostly human Epsilon completed whatever it was she was doing, then everyone would start rolling again. Epsilon could only play as fast as human thought and would not be as sure of her character or stats as the others, but she was still capable of playing wirelessly. Hopefully she was playing a character who was innately slower in combat than the others, which might not slow down the group quite as much since they could work around her more. I'm surprised they weren't using software to roll the dice, but maybe the physical dice were needed to make it into a real RPG experience or to remove the temptation of cheating or something. Or maybe the physical rolls were for Epsilon's sake? I could have easily asked to join them, but I'd just slow them down. And it would negate any benefit they'd receive from playing as a group. It really was an odd way to go about training, but I think I could understand the concept. If they role-play different characters, they're practicing acting independently while still working as a group. I tried to put it out of my thoughts and sought out the DVD with the episode where Daria works as a substitute teacher during a strike. Forty-seven minutes later, they finished their game. (They won, though Elisa had two characters die and Beta lost one.) By then I had finished the first Daria episode and was now watching a pretty bi-sexual artist try to seduce Jane in the first Daria movie. Nowadays, I didn't often take the time to watch the old shows from which my women had sprung, and the scene I was watching -- with a probably virginal and straight Jane refusing the advances of a hot twenty-something, goth, tattooed artiste -- had led me to load up some 'rule 34' artwork of Daria and Jane which made me a little hot and bothered ... so I borrowed Jasmine to give me a blowjob. Afterwards I felt a bit guilty and apologized to her. I very rarely just used any of my women like that, cyborg or not. ------- I hadn't seen Dr. Hilbourne in well over a year and hadn't heard from him since a congratulatory call last year after the robot competition. Oh wait, I'm apparently now on his Christmas card list, so that would be our last contact if a photocopied greeting counts. Anyway, Dr Hilbourne emailed me in late October, asking if he could come by and see me sometime soon. I checked with Alpha, who had been monitoring Dr Hilbourne since we first met. (See Chapter 10. He knows about the nanites but not about Alpha.) Alpha had a list of half a dozen possible reasons he might want to visit, ranging from an intent to blackmail me down to wanting to kindle a friendship. I set up an appointment with him for that Friday, making sure that Alpha would have Beta on-hand just in case. That Friday was a pretty quiet day. The most interesting part of the day was a lunch meeting with Anna Marie that ended with a quickie on top of her desk. For some reason, Rogue looks really hot in a dress shirt, jacket, tie and skirt. (And her short skirt was a lot easier to work around than Kara's pants had been.) About 1:30pm our receptionist on duty, LaShonda, called to tell me Dr Hilbourne had arrived. I met him at the front desk, took him through our security check-in and we walked together back to my office, exchanging our general greetings and making small talk along the way. After another couple minutes of socially-required catching up, I got down to business. "So Doctor, how can I help you today?" "Well, I came by for a couple different reasons. First, you know that in my practice, one of my specialties is helping patients who are dealing with bad medical news or recovering from trauma. I really only approached you with my patients who were dying before, but I have a lot of patients who are learning to cope with non-fatal infirmities. It's one of them that I'd like your help with." "I see. Someone missing a limb or an eye, I assume?" "An arm and a leg, actually." "You know that we're still a few months away from product approval, right? Our prostheses require a surgical implant to work properly, so we need government approval before they can be sold." "Yes, but I've also heard that you have a very successful test program still running." "Where did you hear that? It's nearing the end of testing and is supposed to be confidential." "Around. Medical test trials are never all that confidential if you keep your ears open and don't have a reputation of blabbing to the public." "So you want one of your patients inserted into our tests, huh? Well, give me the specifics. Age, sex, race, type of injuries." "Twenty-eight year old black female, single mother of one. Good insurance in some respects, but they won't pay for any decent prostheses, and with her injuries, she can't get a good job. A car crashed into her house one night and crushed her left arm and leg beyond repair. The arm was lost about 2 inches below the shoulder and the leg midway along the femur. Punctured lung, broken ribs and pelvis too, but they've all healed up." "Hmmm. We don't have anyone in the test program missing one of each, so to speak, so we might be able to work her into it even this late in the testing. Send me her information and I'll see what I can do." That was true. If we had agreed to test for the military, we'd have our pick of thousands of amputees, but the required security checks were not acceptable, so we were limited to local civilians who responded to our ads or were recommended by their doctors. A significant aspect of my decision to see if we could work her into the testing was wanting to remain friendly with Dr Hilbourne, who could make things difficult for us if he wanted to. "Thank you." "You said you had a couple reasons for visiting?" "Well, Lucinda was the main reason, but as long as you're being so accommodating ... could I see your robot?" Our Alphadroid robot had become a minor pop culture icon, even though only two had ever been built (and the general public only knew about one). It was the fulfillment of the promise of Science Fiction: a humanoid robot that could do all of those things we saw in TV and movies. It could walk, talk, run, carry luggage, cook, do the dishes, drive a car and mow the lawn. (Of course it could do a lot more, since it was essentially a mobile platform for Alpha.) Alphadroid had appeared on half a dozen TV talk shows and even on one science-focused CBS sitcom. Most visitors to AARD wanted to see it. I picked up my desk phone, punched a button and said, "Alphadroid, what is your current location and activity?" Pause. "Alphadroid, come to Frank's office." "So when are your nanowire units going to become available?" he asked to pass the time while we waited. "Last month, actually. We haven't done any advertising for them yet, but the approval came though and we started receiving the control units six weeks ago. We're requiring everyone who buys one to send at least two representatives to spend a week here being trained, and the first classes are in two weeks." "Wow. It's finally really happening." "Yup. Hopefully within a couple years, surgeons will never again have to tell someone that something is inoperable due to location within the body. Speaking of the nanowire units, would you like a tour of some of our projects that are still in the works?" "Sure, but don't you need to do security checks before you show things to people?" "Well, I'll have you sign a twelve month NDA and won't show you everything, but that's about it." "Aren't you doing secret government research? Y'know, classified military projects and such?" I paused in printing out our NDA to give him an incredulous look. "Just what sorts of rumors have you heard about us?" "Just ... stuff ... online stuff..." "Uh huh. No, we're not doing super-secret government research. There are no alien spaceships hidden in the basement or time machines in the attic. Although..." I tapped my chin thoughtfully. "Technically if we were doing that sort of research, I couldn't tell you and instead I'd be giving pretty much the same denials that I just did." I grinned at him. "Food for paranoid conspiracy thoughts." The truth of the matter is that we had received a few feelers from the government and military on research and design projects. I had tried to make it clear that given the types of people we employ, we would not subject our staff to the kind of scrutiny needed for government security checks. Specifically, our artificial women have excellently crafted backgrounds, electronically and on paper, but they would fall apart as soon as anyone tried physically searching out their pasts. No neighbors would ever remember them. They do not appear in actual printed school yearbooks. Their birth certificates cannot be confirmed in the physical records of the listed hospitals. The backgrounds were crafted to obscure the lack of physical data, but none of them were 100% secure. So far, the scrutiny we had received had been focused almost entirely on me, and I should pass all tests -- or at least all tests that didn't object to me living with a lot of beautiful women. If the FBI or NSA or military actually started vetting my employees, that would change. Therefore, we would probably never accept any government contracts ... at least not ones that required those background checks. Besides, we were a relatively small company which used no lobbying, so we were an unlikely target for government contracts to begin with. The main interest so far had come from the military about our artificial limbs. Alphadroid One arrived about a minute and a half after I had summoned it. I always kept some juggling balls in my office for just such a demonstration, but Dr Hilbourne also had it run in place, pick up various objects off the desk, write out the preamble to the Constitution by hand, stand on one leg and give him a current stock quote on Intel. "So when are these going on the market?" "Maybe in a couple years. Maybe. There are a lot of liability issues associated with releasing these to the public. Plus they'll be a lot easier to make once our arms and legs go into actual production." Plus I didn't want to release copies of Alpha for home users to potentially discover, so the Alphadroids would require a huge amount of non- intelligent programming (which was not really a big deal for Alpha). Then there was the question of whether or not to include the physical circuits needed for artificial intelligence in the Alphadroids. Without them, Alpha couldn't copy herself in the droids when needed. With them, others could discover the odd circuits and could potentially create unrestricted A.I.s. "Do you make the arms and legs yourself?" "The prototype testing units, yes, but we won't actually manufacture and sell them ourselves. Plus remember that most of them will have to be custom made to fit for size, color and ... umm ... point of attachment. Right now we have three companies competing for the honor." "How much will they cost?" "Don't know yet, but we're trying to make sure it will be less than $20,000 per limb. We have some nicely streamlined production methods sketched out. I think eventually we'll get them below $10,000." "Are you talking final shelf price or production cost?" "SRP. Now if you'll sign here, I can take you on a little tour of our wonderland." "What exactly am I agreeing to?" "No pictures or recording devices or even notes for the tour. For the next twelve months, you will not relay to anyone in any way anything you see here unless the company gives you express written permission to do so." "I can live with that." So we went on tour. I presented some projects as mine and some as belonging to other unnamed researchers. I showed him the briefcase-size ultrasound scanner which gave more detail than an MRI. I showed him the new type of solar cells that converted 87% of received sunlight into electricity but currently cost about $10,000 per square inch to make. There was the small vat of microbes converting organic garbage into crude oil. A pair of glasses that could function as a 3D computer monitor with accompanying wrist bands that housed a tiny computer and let the user manipulate a virtual keyboard and mouse. A fist-size motor strong enough to pull a truck up a hill. A new type of video display which, instead of displaying images on a physical screen, would recognize eyes within a certain distance and transmit a narrow beam lightshow directly at those eyes, giving the watcher the impression of a floating 3D image directly in front of him. These were all designs with which we planned to go public. I didn't show him many blueprints or designs, like airplane engines or Alpha's blueprints for a low-orbit spacecraft that doesn't need rockets to launch, but those were mostly for practical reasons. In other words, most only exist in computer files right now. I definitely didn't show him our theoretical plans for colonizing other planets. Think about the idea. The alphadroids are intelligent and can effect self-repairs. They can construct machinery as needed if given the basic tools. Our nanopods can build humans from our DNA database and organic raw materials. If we -- meaning AARD and NASA or some other major government agency with the needed resources -- actually put in the required effort, we could build a large, slow-moving vehicle to another star system with alphadroids and a power source on board. It would take years, probably centuries, to find a viable planet, but once found the alphadroids could build shelters and work until they had terraformed enough of their environment to support humans. Use nanopods to grow people and voila, we have an extra-system human colony. I'm not saying it would be easy, but it is conceivably possible. I avoided the prototype mind reader that can read electrical signals in a brain up to six feet away. (It's not like telepathy, but it mostly works.) I skipped my private, extremely geeky projects, such as my Batman-esque grapple gun. For reasons of secrecy, I didn't show him the nanotube assembler and sorter. With the right materials and pressure/temperature controls, anyone can make graphene and nanotubes. The problems arise with creating materials of consistent size, shape and purity, then sorting out the desired results from everything else. We have a small production chamber which Alpha can use to create carbon nanotubes (CNT) which are longer (up to half a meter) and of better quality than human-run labs, but the monitoring and constant tiny adjustments slow the process down, so we do sometimes buy unsorted CNTs from university labs. Where Alpha's advances really shine is in the sorting. Alpha designed and built a new type of microorganism that will do the sorting for us. To keep the description simple, the microbes think CNTs are edible and try to eat them. They aren't digestible, but their food gathering methods effectively sort out the pure CNTs for us, digesting or ignoring everything else. Okay, the description is a bit too simple. There's no way for a microorganism to try to eat a multi-centimeter-long CNT. Maybe I should say they'll latch on to CNTs (or graphene sheets) and move along the length, trying to find something to digest. Then we take the microbes and make them release the undigested materials. Once you have them sorted out, you can do all sorts of interesting things with them, even build simple, really tiny structures with moving parts, but most of them are reserved for use in upgrading our super women. Actually, the nanotube assembler and sorter is part of a lab devoted to interesting ways to assemble carbon molecules. Carbon allotropes like graphene can be hundreds of times stronger than steel, transparent and conduct electricity, and graphene can be rolled up to make our favorite nanotubes. Synthetic diamonds can be useful in thousands of different projects. Buckyballs are huge molecular structures which are basically nanotubes in sphere form. Carbon areogel and the much lighter carbon nanofoam were being studied in simulations but we hadn't actually needed to make any yet for any other projects. Carbon is one of the most useful and interesting atoms around. It will hold almost any shape or structure format you want, as long as you can figure out how to actually assemble it as desired, but even Alpha hasn't been able to figure out how to build nanobots to manipulate matter on an atomic scale. It probably can't be done, at least not how classic science fiction imagines it. That's where the organic construction methods come into play. Instead of assembling things with nanobots, create your own purpose-built bacteria or organic cells or something to assemble (or in some cases grow) what you want. I understood the basic theories, but in no way could I actually do any of it myself without years or study and preparation. So this lab was almost entirely Alpha's playground, with no interference from anyone else. I had a little goal of my own to one day try to build a small, mostly indestructible computer out of nearly pure carbon to house a copy of Alpha. No sinister or serious purpose there. I just think it sounds cool. I showed Dr Hilbourne our crystal processor, the one that has electrical circuit elements layered into it to make it ten times faster and more powerful than anything Intel is working on right now, but I didn't show him the one designed to use light instead of electricity. The laser crystal processor is fairly crude at the moment, with our best one functioning at about 5 GHz, but it has the potential to go many, many orders of magnitude faster. We skipped the prototype molecular nanite assembly machine, which functions at a level much too small for most of the organic work we do. The so- called nanites at that size are basically filters or receptors, attaching only to specifically desired molecules, then building up the material to the desired final outcome. It's similar to constructing nanotubes or buckyballs, but Alpha is designing a system that's much more flexible than a single-purpose design. It's also still in a basic testing phase, not ready for any kind of practical work. And of course, I showed him some of our replacement organs -- livers, kidneys, eyes and hearts. The eyes weren't far from going on the market. We skipped the substitute blood, because I was worried that any leak of that information would kill blood donations. And the blood was still at least a year away from being ready for approved human testing, let alone manufacture. Plus I really didn't want to field any jokes about vampires going public because of it. The Alpha Advanced Research and Development (AARD) building was supposed to be pretty large for our purposes, and originally it was. We have three floors and a basement, with an attached warehouse and backup generator. The basement is set aside for computers and networking equipment. Three-fourths of the first floor is taken up by offices, meeting rooms, facilities support rooms including mechanical and electrical manufacturing rooms, and other non-lab needs. That left the top two floors (with 13 labs on each level) plus three labs on the first floor, giving us a total of 29 lab spaces. We were already starting to run out of space. Most of the labs had multiple projects in them, and two were being used just to store prototypes and materials from projects currently on hold. (Fortunately lots of Alpha's designs were never built on-site. For example, her plans for a new type of space shuttle literally couldn't be assembled on-site.) Still, as long as we avoided a few specific rooms, nothing looked crowded or full. Our hired researchers now numbered seven, only four of which were actually willing to leave their homes and work at the AARD building -- a total of four men and three women, with two men and one woman working entirely from home. They're all geniuses, working in different fields, and each had their own lab and access to Alpha for data processing. (None of them knew that Alpha was intelligent, but they were all aware that I was a top notch programmer.) They were paid a pretty decent wage, but not an exorbitantly high one. The main benefits for working for AARD are privacy, access to top notch equipment and data processing, and full ownership of all of their patents and inventions. Actually, let me clarify that last statement. While they worked for AARD, all patents and inventions would be owned by the company, but they would each receive 66% of any gross income from their work. If they left AARD, the company was contractually obligated to legally assign the ownership of their work to them. These were people who were screened so we would select only people who wanted to avoid public attention and enjoyed the research more than the money, so none had yet shown any inclination to leave. If anything, we were an ideal employer for them. They had so far produced 38 patents total, and all had yearly take-home pay in the low six figure range. If the hired researchers were all that AARD was relying on for income, the company would at minimum take a few more years before becoming profitable, but from my perspective they were worthwhile even if they never showed an independent profit. As long as they could act as a smokescreen and let Alpha and myself release our goodies without question, they were worth it. Besides, as I've stated before, humans are more creative and innovative than A.I.s, so they were coming up with good and valid lines of research. Alpha would monitor them and, if she could figure out something to help them, she'd prompt me to wander by and ask a few leading questions to nudge them in the right direction. On average, I'd have a conversation with each of them two or three times a week. They were all very private people, but there was one that might be willing to meet a visitor. Freida Johns was a 32 year-old single woman. She had one Ph.D. in botany but also had five Bachelors degrees and two Masters. I would help her out when she needed some programming or data processing, but like the others, she mostly worked alone. However, she was the most social and friendly of the researchers. I gave Freida a quick call and asked if she'd be willing to meet a friend and show something off. She agreed and off we went. Freida is a painfully thin woman with dirty blonde hair and thick glasses. She's certainly not ugly or anything, but she tends to go days where she only eats a few stalks of celery, her favorite snack. I try to take her out to lunch at least once a week to make sure she eats real food. I think she has a crush on me but is much too shy to act on it. Plus she sees how the other women treat me and how beautiful some of them are, which combined with her low self esteem keeps her from approaching me. Or at least that's what Alpha and I think. I have no objection to sleeping with her, but I don't foresee a lasting relationship. Since I don't think she's up to a casual relationship, I don't think anything will ever happen between us. Heck, I have a vague notion that maybe she and Dr Hilbourne will hit it off. He's divorced, so it's not too far- fetched. Pretty unlikely, sure, but not impossible. (He's the fourth single man I've brought by to meet her so far.) Her third floor lab was on the smaller side of average for the building because she needed one with excellent ventilation due to all the manure she used. Technically it's fertilizer, but if you call it what it smells like ... yeah. Anyway, she was currently working on methods to replenish minerals and vitamins and what-have-you from over-farmed soil without the nasty run-off that you get from normal fertilizers. Specifically, she was working on practical and cheap methods of doing so, since she already knew of half a dozen methods that worked. Her secondary projects included things like breeding multiple flowers whose scent would repel mosquitoes, thus providing easy, organically safe and attractive methods of malaria prevention and studying albino parasite trees, tree offshoots without chlorophyll that leech life from their parent tree. She showed these projects to Dr Hilbourne, who seemed interested in the concepts. Given the way her eyes tended to skitter off of me when I was paying attention to her, she gave most of her visual attention to the doctor. When she was wrapping up her mini-presentation, I suggested we all go out to lunch on Monday. "Freida here, as brilliant as she is, tends to lose track of the little things ... things like eating meals regularly, so if you could help me make her eat a good meal next week, I'd appreciate it." She blushed a little and protested, "I eat every day." "What, five hundred calories a day sometimes?" She paused a moment in thought. "I've averaged somewhere around 1200 calories a day over the past two weeks." "And you know enough about nutrition to know you should eat more than that." "I know, but I'm close to a breakthrough. Do you know how much benefit could result from..." "Yes," I interrupted. Her enthusiasm was great, but tended to lead to sermons that could last up to half an hour. "Yes, I do. But maybe you could explain it to Dr Hilbourne Monday at lunch?" "I would love to stick your boss with the check while I hear all about it," said Hilbourne, backing me up. "Okay," she said, still a little off balance from my interruption of her intended sermon on how humans can work together with plants to save the planet. "Excellent. Let's plan on meeting in the lobby at 11:30 Monday morning, as long as that fits Benjamin's schedule." For the record, lunch went well. Dr Hilbourne actually did go on to take her out on two dates before it fell apart because Freida preferred to work rather than socialize. According to Alpha, they still stay in touch though email in a friendly but impersonal way. Lucinda Marx, Dr Hilbourne's patient with the missing limbs, was made into a late addition to our testing program and had four working limbs a couple months later. ------- That November I was presented with a bit of a dilemma. In early October, I was invited to speak to the House Subcommittee on Healthcare and Technology about our artificial limbs, which were almost certainly going to be approved for manufacture and sale by early next year. I didn't particularly want to go. This was an invitation, not a subpoena, so I could choose to refuse it with no legal consequences. Theoretically. But this was a friendly invitation and unless I had good reason, it would be a bad idea to refuse to show up. Politicians don't like to be snubbed. From my perspective, this was pointless. They had no involvement in the research, in the testing, in the manufacture or in the sale. We were already abiding by all laws and regulations. (Not a lie. Yes, we had broken a lot of laws in building our women and cyborgs, but the artificial limbs were developed entirely legally.) We didn't need anything from the government for the product aside from a stamp of approval to go ahead and make/sell them, which Congress had no involvement in. Congress just has a tendency to want to find out what they can about anything new, especially if it gets them a few seconds on the evening news. Not that I'm cynical ... not too cynical. Looking at it from another angle, there were half a dozen committees or subcommittees that might have asked me to testify. As long as I attended one, I could probably bow out of any other invitations as long as they were on the same subject. It was possible that they wanted me to bring along Alphadroid, but they didn't ask and I didn't want to do so. Showing up to talk about artificial limbs would be reported on, but shouldn't cause much of a stir nationally. On the other hand, images of congressmen playing around with an android would be a huge photo op. Texas had two representatives on the subcommittee, so I had Beta contact them to check out the details and make sure that bringing along a small group would be okay. Bringing a small entourage is normal, so there were no problems along those lines. Alpha also worked up a few powerpoint presentations and a lot of slides and data files filled with all of the information I might need. After a long discussion with Alpha, I decided to take four or five other people with me. First, I wanted to take two of our test subjects, volunteers that were willing to go public. Second, I would take a lawyer. Since this wasn't really patent-related, I wanted Christine Sloane from Vegas. She was experienced with civil suits (her main focus), business law and criminal law, and had impressed me during my Vegas problems. Plus she was still on retainer, I think. Finally I would take one or two of my AARD women. I started calling test subjects who I thought might be willing to accompany me (all expenses paid by AARD, of course). Some of them were embarrassed about showing off a false limb, especially now that they could pass for normal again, but they were all grateful for receiving the free cyberlimbs which gave me significant leverage. Before I got a quarter of the way down my list, two were grateful enough to agree to come: Josh DeLyle, who had lost both of his legs in a motorcycle accident a year and a half ago, and Sherri Lee, who lost her right arm years ago as a child in a dog attack. Christine "Chris" Sloane was surprised to hear from me, but was willing to go along. I suppose appearing before a Congressional committee would look nice on her resume. We scheduled her to fly to DFW a day before our group left for DC on AARD's company plane. I was looking forward to seeing her again for a few different reasons, not the least because she was something of a MILF. And back when we met in Vegas, I had gotten a slight impression that she was interested in me. The hardest choices were who in the household I would bring. I wanted to keep the list as small as possible. Rei would be going along as our pilot (though we had to hire an independent co-pilot), but she didn't count for my list as she would be there only in her capacity as pilot and possibly driver. Beta was training as a pilot as well, but didn't have enough hours under her belt to qualify for her commercial pilots license. Beta seemed to be the most obvious choice, but she was unlikely to make it through security. Of Alpha's mobile platforms, only Eiko would be able to make it through Capital Hill security which I assumed would be about the same as airport security. (When we were setting up security for the AARD building, we did some experiments and confirmed that Beta, Gamma and Delta would all set off metal detectors, while the others wouldn't. The amount of metal in the others was on the same order as half a zipper or a metal button.) Although Eiko was just as qualified to answer the questions as Beta, unfortunately she would be a completely illogical choice to take from all other perspectives, since she was so new to the company and household and on paper only worked in building security. Diana had built-in political experience and would be an effective bodyguard. Kara was second-in-command at AARD and would also be an effective bodyguard. Zatanna had lots of experience with managing crowds and was the company spokesman. Daria was the project coordinator and trained in journalism. I dropped Daria from contention due to her extreme cynicism regarding politics. I doubt she'd make a scene, but I didn't want to risk her giving flippant answers or asking embarrassing questions. Kara might be a good choice. As the business manager, she knew the basics about the product and would make a great bodyguard if any trouble arose. Zatanna would be a better choice. She could wrap audiences around her little finger if she wanted to. I was reluctant to drop Diana from the list. She might be very useful to me on the stand with her diplomatic experience, but as far as AARD was concerned, she was only my head of security. There would be no reason for her to be brought along for possible testimony. I considered bringing her along solely as a bodyguard, and Alpha pushed hard for this. Eventually Alpha scared me a bit with her discussions of the crime rate in Washington DC. Even though we would mostly remain in high security areas, Alpha convinced me to bring her along as bodyguard, not as part of the official witness list. I eventually decided on Diana and Zatanna. I left Kara out because her purposes in coming were covered by myself and Diana. Alpha really, and I mean REALLY wanted to send along at least two mobile platforms, even if they had to stay in the hotel. She wanted a presence in the city just in case. I sympathized, but I could think of more reasons against bringing them than doing so and they really wouldn't be much use so I ordered Alpha to keep them all at home. A fat lotta good that did me. When we all went to the airport to board our plane for DC, Beta and Eiko were waiting for us. Rather than make a scene, I swallowed my natural reaction and told everyone that I had invited them along at the last minute so Beta could have a small vacation and Eiko could act as extra security if we needed it. I guess I can understand things from Alpha's perspective. Washington DC would be an uncontrolled and unfamiliar environment. While Diana would be a good bodyguard for me, she would not have access to the same information stream that Alpha did. And as long as her phone was active, Eiko (who would be able to attend the hearing) could be as almost as good a remote platform as Beta ... as long as Eiko could stay focused. My safety was the important thing to her. Heck, as soon as I decided to go, Alpha altered two of my suits, adding a very expensive carbon nanotube (CNT) weave, effectively giving me bulletproof clothes. Kinda bulletproof. If I were actually shot, I would end up a lot more bruised through the very flexible cloth than if I had been wearing kevlar, but the shots wouldn't penetrate. CNT cloth's major advantage in this situation was that it was virtually undetectable. Kevlar or similar material would have been obvious when passing through security and would have raised questions. Shear thickening fluid would have been much cheaper than nanotubes while remaining effective, but clothes don't look normal if you start putting liquid pouches throughout the material. Given what happened in Vegas, I couldn't blame Alpha for her concern (even if the odds were incredibly against anything bad happening to me). When we started loading up, Ms Chris Sloane, with whom I had spent a few hours the previous day, including a wonderful dinner for just the two of us, commented on how I surrounded myself with beautiful women. "More like they're surrounding me," I muttered too quiet for her to make out. "What was that?" "Nothing," I said. "There are other men working at AARD, but we do tend to hire more women than men for whatever reason. Actually, come to think of it, aside from me everyone in a position of authority at the company is a woman. General business manager, projects manager, HR, IT, Graphic Design, Security. I'm drowning in estrogen every day ... but they do their jobs expertly. Heck, even my lawyer is a beautiful woman." "Why, thank you, sir." "Just stating a fact. You know, way back when we first met, I wasn't the one who called your firm to find a lawyer, and when I met you ... well ... how often is 'Chris Sloane' mistaken for a man?" "Very rarely, I hope. Are you saying that you wanted..." "Oh, no, no, no. Stop right there. I've never regretted hiring you. It's just that I was told I had an appointment with 'Chris Sloane' and showed up expecting a man. It's just my luck. The whole drowning in estrogen thing." I sighed theatrically. "I'll show you 'drowning in estrogen'," said Diana as she came up behind me. She put me in a gentle-ish head-lock and pulled me on board the plane while I heard Chris laughing behind us as she followed. "You better not do this on Capital Hill," I warned Diana in a muffled voice. "Oh hush. I have a lot of experience with diplomacy and bureaucracy. And even if I did, I know men. They'd just line up to be next." My face currently smothered with side-boob, I couldn't disagree. The flight was uneventful, aside from a half hour delay before landing. Ms Sloane was fitting in well with the others. She seemed to be getting along especially well with Diana. Maybe they'd actually end up as friends. I had wanted to stay at the Watergate, but apparently the entire hotel was closed for renovations or something, so instead we were booked at the Crowne Plaza. Unlike Vegas, we didn't have a huge set of suites, but we did have some very nice small suites all next to each other, reserved for two nights. A normal person might have had the only two men in the group -- Josh and myself -- bunk together, but since I didn't want to advertise my sleeping arrangements, I paid for individual rooms for the three 'outsiders': Josh, Sherri and Chris. Alpha also reserved two double rooms and one single for the household ladies and one single for myself. The rooms weren't assigned, so the ladies divided things up on their own. Beta and Eiko naturally fell in together in one room right next to mine, and Diana and Zatanna were used to each other as roommates, so they took another. That left Rei in the other single. Since we were only staying two nights and one full day, there was no schedule for who might sleep with me. We checked in mid-afternoon and most of us took the opportunity to go see a few sights, specifically the main Mall area and Washington, Lincoln and Jefferson Memorials. Chris Sloane was the only one among us who had previously visited Washington, so she was drafted as our tour guide. (I am completely ignoring the comic book characters' memories of visiting their version of Washington DC, even though it was mostly identical to the real one.) Many pictures were taken by all. I wish we had allowed for enough sight-seeing time to visit a couple of the Smithsonian museums, but this was a business trip. Beta had made reservations at a nice restaurant, so we all had a very nice dinner. After dinner, we all crowded into Diana and Zatanna's room, one of the larger ones we had available to us, so Chris could take us through what we might expect tomorrow. There would be procedural matters before we would be called in. Be polite. Don't speak unless spoken to. If the congressmen start arguing among themselves, let them talk uninterrupted. If we feel a point is being missed or something incorrect has been said, make a note and wait for your turn to speak or whisper it to Chris or write her a note. Don't approach the congressmen. If they want a demonstration, let them ask for it. It was mostly common sense stuff like that. Oh, and a few fashion tips. Modest hemlines and necklines. Dark suits preferred, with bright ties. For demonstration purposes, Josh would need loose pants for when he would need to roll up his pants legs, and Sherri could wear a jacket over a sleeveless blouse to show off her arm when needed. The limbs looked pretty realistic except where they attached to the actual body. If the congressmen really wanted to see Josh's attachment points, he would have to completely take off his pants. We debated having him attend in shorts and decided against it, but also decided for him to bring along shorts to change into just in case. Diana, Rei and Eiko would attend in the audience, while Beta made an excuse about needing to meet with a business contact in the area. The meeting broke up around 9:30, but Chris accompanied me back to my room to continue our discussion since I would probably do most of the talking tomorrow. We discussed what to do if they asked something that was legally confidential or business confidential, suggestions on how to stay friendly with unfriendly questions and what information to volunteer if any and when to do it. My room had a small bar and I offered her a prepackaged drink, which she accepted. She finally let her hair down, literally in this case. Her normal professional appearance has her dark brown hair done up in a tight bun, but she relaxed enough to let it fall halfway down her back. Our discussions eventually turned to personal inquiries. She was in her late 30's (my guesstimate), had been divorced for five years, had one twelve-year-old daughter staying with her ex at the moment, and had no current boyfriend. I know that ethically she could not sleep with me, but my opinion was that it shouldn't be a very big deal right now. She wasn't representing me in a legal case at the moment, she was just there as an adviser. And we were both far away from home. I think she agreed with me, because before long she was definitely flirting. "It looks like you really keep yourself in shape," she said, looking me up and down. I wasn't really wearing anything revealing, though I guess my jeans were a little on the tight side. "Thank you, I do try. You look pretty healthy yourself." "I try to visit a gym when I can, but my job involves a lot of desk- sitting and very little activity." "You can complain all you want, but you still look pretty skinny to me." Which was true. Sure, not model-thin, but she obviously cared for her appearance. She smiled and said, "So, Mr ____..." "Frank. Please call me Frank." "If you'll call me Chris." "Of course, Chris." "So, Frank, what's the deal with Diana and the others?" "What do you mean?" "Are you dating any of them?" "Oh, all of them. They're my harem, of course," I laughed. Hey, not a lie. "Of course. Well, you are successful, rich, young and handsome. I expected you to have a bevy of models hanging on your every move." Young? I've been told I look like I'm in my 20's (due to my nanite rejuvenation treatments), though I'm actually much closer to Chris' age. "I haven't met a whole lot of models," I admitted, "but the ones I have met just confirmed my basic standards for myself. I prefer women who have some depth and intelligence." "That's refreshing." This sort of flirty banter went on for another five or ten minutes before I made my move. I was kind of rusty when it came to encounters like this. Everything I was used to nowadays was with women who were designed to fall in love with me. At the same time, I was most definitely not short of confidence when it came to pleasing women, and I'm sure some of that came through. I took her hand in mine and gently pulled her toward me. She leaned in, whispering, "We really shouldn't do this. You're my client. It would be..." "Then tell me to stop. Or just get up and leave. Because as long as you're here, I'm going to kiss you..." Which I then proceeded to do. It was a pretty good kiss, if I do say so myself. Despite the impression given by movies and TV, the intensity of a kiss isn't necessarily related to the amount of pressure you apply with your lips. At this point, I wasn't even using my tongue, instead just using my lips to massage and suck on hers while my fingers ran up and down her arms, making her hair stand on end as if she had goose bumps. I pulled back briefly and continued. "And when I'm done kissing you, I'm going to taste you, here..." I put my hand under her skirt and pressed two fingers onto the front of her panties. It might be a little early to touch her in such an intimate place, but her gasp and the way her body jumped let me know that she was receptive to it. "I'm going to eat you until you come. Then I'm going to make love to you. And the only way you're going to stop me is to get up and leave. So if you're still here..." I kissed her eyebrow. " ... when I finish kissing you..." I kissed her nose. " ... then you..." I kissed her chin, licking it a bit. " ... have been given..." I kissed her lips. " ... fair warning." Now I gently pushed my tongue into her mouth, seeking out her own tongue while my fingers started undoing buttons on her blouse. I wasn't even halfway through her buttons when she started unbuttoning my shirt, with a lot more urgency. I tried to speed up a little, but her blouse had lots of those tiny little button nubs, so my chest was bare before hers. She broke the kiss to look me over and run her hands all over my chest and shoulders -- thanks to the nanite treatments and a little maintaining exercise most mornings, I have something like a swimmer or runner's physique -- before finally helping me with her own shirt, then her bra. Her breasts -- somewhere between a B and C cup, I think -- were not those of a college student or a computer-created body. They hung naturally on her frame. Her flesh wasn't tight and toned, it was soft and womanly. Her lack of youthful or athletic perfection, that realness about her, turned me on greatly. Yes, call me shallow but it is true that if she had been out of shape or ugly or had badly sagging breasts, I wouldn't have been very interested in her. (Then again, stupidity turns me off even more than physical ugliness.) She wasn't perfect, but she was still beautiful. We shifted the action from the couch to the bed, and our kiss restarted, more hungrily than before, with my hands cupping her breasts and thumbing her stiff little nipples. Her breasts were a good size, and her areolae were a bit larger than a quarter, but her nipples were tiny little things, maybe a centimeter or less in diameter. I broke the kiss and started moving down her body, licking and sucking as I went. Her nipples were tasty little diamond-hard treats, and her belly quivered when I licked around her outie bellybutton. While I was licking her upper body, my hands were unzipping her skirt and pulling it off, followed by her panties. She was wearing an exciting little red bikini-style number, so I guessed that she knew at some level what might happen tonight. Or she just doesn't like plain panties. Her pubic area had a bikini-line trim, but that was all. I dragged my tongue through her little hairy forest until I found the top of her vagina. When I glanced up, she was staring at me with hard fascination. Maybe she didn't have many men do this for her? Her eyes closed as soon as I started licking. I found her vaginal lips and started there, following my tongue with my fingers, playing with her vulva and vagina while I tongue-lashed and circled and kissed and played with her clit. Given the lack of implants in Chris' brain, it was extremely gratifying to see how strongly she reacted to my attentions. Then again, I suppose I have gotten a lot of practice over the past few years. She came after about ten minutes, holding a pillow over her face to muffle her screams, which probably weren't all that loud to begin with. My tongue had been getting tired, so I was glad to slow and stop my oral attentions as she came down from her orgasmic high. I moved up beside her as she pulled the pillow away. I moved in for a kiss, but her hands held me back. "Go wash your mouth first, please." "Oh, of course. Sorry about that." I had forgotten that most real women don't like the taste of their own juices. I went to the bathroom and washed my face, then gargled with hotel mouthwash. I stripped off my pants, dug a couple condoms out of my shaving kit and returned to the bedroom in my underwear. "Thank you for that," she said. "It's been a long time since anyone has ... you know ... gone down on me." "It was my pleasure," I said with a smile. "You're very tasty." I flopped down on the bed next to her. "Are you ready to go, or should I ... reciprocate?" "Only if you want to. I'm ready to go as is." "Well, not to seem ungrateful or rude, but I'm really not very skilled in those matters, so I'd prefer to just move on to the main event." "Sounds good to me," I said as I slid down my boxers and pulled them off. Maybe I wasn't 100% hard, but I was definitely 'at attention, ' so Frank Jr sprang out and bounced back and forth when the underwear came off. "That's certainly a nice size, isn't it?" she said, reaching for my bouncy cock. "It works well for me," I said noncommittally. While she pumped me a bit and fondled my balls, I tore open the condom wrapper and pulled out a fruit-flavored condom I had gotten from Jane a couple months ago. Chris took it from me, rolled it into position, then laid back, pulling me with her. She obviously wanted, or at least expected, straight missionary position sex tonight ... and who am I to disappoint a lady? To begin with anyway. Her cunt was nicely wet and fairly tight for a middle-aged mother, but it was her enthusiasm that made it so fun. She locked onto me with her legs, encouraging my movements, while her hands would play across my chest or tweak my nipples or pull me in for a kiss. With each thrust in, she gave off a little high-pitched "ah" squeal. I tried to vary my angle of thrust a bit, but she apparently just wanted it simple, hard and fast. Though it was difficult to tell through the condom, I think I was touching her cervix with some of my thrusts. Somewhere around the 10 to 15 minute mark, she grabbed the pillow again and gave a little orgasmic scream into it, just like before. When she finished, I pulled out long enough to fold her legs over to the side. This gave me direct access to her pubic mound and ass (though I didn't expect to spend any time in the lower hole). It also created a bit more pressure on my cock and allowed for slightly easier rubbing of her clit by my thumb as we re-started our fuck. I had been holding back a lot last round, not wanting to come yet. This time I intended to have my release. I figured a normal, middle-aged woman would probably consider forty-five minutes or so of sex to be a wonderful experience. And if it wasn't enough, I'd fetch another condom and keep going. She came twice more in this position before I finally blasted off into the little rubber sleeve. I left myself inside of her and laid down next to her. "Oh my goodness, that was wonderful," she said, panting a bit. "I'll have to try younger men more often." "Well, I ... just a minute. Exactly how young do you think I am?" "Hmmm ... Twenty-three to twenty-seven, give or take, I suppose. You've done amazingly well for yourself given your age." "I'm thirty-seven years old." "You're joking." "Would you like to see my license?" I got a huge grin on my face. "You thought you were robbing the cradle, didn't you?" "You're serious. But you look so young..." "Thank you, I do try to keep myself fit and trim. You still had fun, didn't you, Mrs Robinson?" She gave me a well-deserved but light back-hand slap for my little dig, then relented and admitted, "I've never come so much in my life." "I'm glad, and thank you, lovely lady." I pulled out and stripped off the used condom. "Now a slightly awkward question ... You are certainly welcome to spend the night with me, but I don't know if you wanted to..." "No, you're right." She sat up a little and turned to face me, giving me a tender kiss. "Now, Mr _____ ... Frank. I could get in a lot of trouble for having done this, ethically speaking. I'm currently employed as your attorney, so..." "I understand. I won't say a word about it to anyone. Though I wouldn't think it would be a big deal, since there isn't an actual case where you're representing me right now. And we're not in Nevada either." "If it actually came to an inquiry, I could make some arguments, but I'd really rather it didn't come to that." "Of course not. Would you like to clean up first?" "Thank you. Maybe just a quick visit to the bathroom to freshen up." She got up, collected her underwear and walked toward the bathroom door. She paused and looked back at me, lying naked on the bed. "Thirty-seven? Really?" "Really." "Have you had any..." She paused briefly, obviously trying to think of a polite way to phrase her question, then gave up and just asked, "Any work done?" "You mean plastic surgery? Nope." I knew better than to ask the same in return. While she was in the bathroom, I picked up both of our sets of clothes, straightened the bed enough so that it looked nice, and laid her blouse and skirt out on the bed for her. I even located her shoes, though I couldn't remember when she had taken them off. She got out of the bathroom around 11pm, finished getting dressed, and we said 'good night' with a nice, deep kiss. After she left, I powered up my laptop and checked in with Alpha. Beta had picked up on my late-night activity with some minor spying and had headed off Zatanna when she started heading to my room to join me. I thanked her and went to sleep, alone in the bed, and sexually satisfied for now. At breakfast the next morning, I surreptitiously slipped my drivers license to her, and got a real kick out of seeing her blush a little in embarrassed memory of the night before. She returned my license along with a reproving gentle shove to my shoulder. After breakfast, we all gathered together for our ride to the capital building area. Everyone was dressed up, and I noticed that Chris had her hair down and brushed out nicely. Maybe she wanted to look a little nicer than her normal tight bun would allow? We would probably be on one of the C-SPAN channels and maybe have a clip on the nightly news. We weren't scheduled to give testimony until afternoon, but the committee itself started its session at 9:00 today. Coming from the Central time zone, I suddenly couldn't remember if I had adjusted my watch for the time difference. After a brief moment of panic, I found a clock on the wall and confirmed that my watch and phone were properly synced. Still, that brief moment of panic stuck a little needle in my backside, and I hurried the group into our cabs. We arrived in time and got through security without a problem. Well, Sherri had to be scanned by wands, but that was to be expected. On the other hand, Josh had to be taken to a private room so he could take off his pants and be scanned. His legs looked entirely too realistic for the guards to take our word for it that they were prostheses, despite his doctor's card and our supporting comments. So I guess that counts as getting through security even with a problem. Beta spent the day wandering the area in front of the Rayburn House Office building with a ski mask in her pocket, ready to don it and rush to help should trouble arise. This was both comforting and troubling, and was one of the reasons I wanted Alpha to stay at home. The absolute last thing we needed was a super-strong bullet-proof masked woman breaking into a Congressional office building, regardless of the circumstances. We sat near the back of the small auditorium, listening to congressmen talk with the maker of a new type of portable defibrillator that the manufacturer wanted to sell to schools and businesses. The committee broke for lunch around 11:30, and at 1, we were going to be the ones sitting in front of the congressmen ... congresspeople? ... congresspersons? The chair of the subcommittee was a woman, while the rest were men. I was kind of jittery. This was the first time I had been involved in anything political, and it was the largest stage my creations had ever stepped onto. Some of the women must have picked up on my nervousness, because at lunch, when I excused myself to go the restroom, Eiko followed me into the Men's Room and locked the door behind us. "What's up?" I asked. She ignored my comment. "You seem to be very stressed. We are worried about you." "I just hate public speaking. I should have just sent Kara and Z. She's good at this sort of thing." "But she wouldn't be able to answer all of their questions. Let me provide some stress release." She pulled up her skirt a little bit and knelt on the bathroom floor on her bare knees. She unzipped my fly and pulled out my cock, which was pretty soft at that point, but not for long. She worked on me quickly, going for a quick release ... and she has developed serious talent in that area. Powerful lungs for suction, strong lips and tongue for movement and massaging, and the hard-won ability to completely suppress her gag reflex ... and plenty of experience giving me blow jobs. Between the odd setting and the unexpected oral attack, I got hard quickly and came after about three minutes. She swallowed it all, neat as can be. Then she cleaned me off with a damp paper towel, wiped her knees down with another and we left. I remembered my need to piss fifteen minutes later when we were re-entering the House office building where the committee conference room was, so I used their much nicer facilities. The actual committee meeting wasn't nearly as bad as I was afraid. We were introduced as a small technology and research company and even mentioned our artificial eyes and nano-wire surgery units. I had everyone stand one at a time, working my way down the table, introducing everyone -- Zatanna (Annabelle Zane), Christine Sloane, Josh DeLyle, and Sherri Lee. Very few of the questions were confrontational, and most were very easily answered. We started off with me giving a general description of the limbs and interfaces, then on to practical demonstrations from Josh and Sherri. The committee wanted a better look at Josh's legs, so he took a moment to go change in a nearby bathroom while Sherri was talking about how well it worked. We switched back to Josh when he returned wearing shorts. The questions started off with practical ones. How long does the battery charge last? We estimate 6 to 8 hours with normal use. Josh and Sherri explained they had similar experiences, with the shortest charge lasting about 4 hours and the longest about 11 to 12 hours. Is the battery replaceable? Not at home. The limb must be returned to us to change the actual battery without damaging the limb. How long does it take to charge? About two hours. How much will it cost? We don't know because we won't be manufacturing and selling them ourselves. We were doing our best to make sure the cost would remain below $20,000 per limb. Eventually we believed the cost for these initial basic designs could drop below $10,000. Since amputations are done at different points on the limbs, how standardized can the manufacturing be? The hands, wrists, ankles and feet themselves can be mass manufactured. The rest of the limbs and the covering skin color have to be customized to each individual. The need for a battery requires a minimum of six inches of limb beyond the wrist or ankle. Is it waterproof? Yes. Though not recommended for pressure or SCUBA dives, the limbs work fine at up to 10 feet, though we officially recommend swimming be avoided completely while the limb is attached. How resistant to damage is it? More resistant than human skin, but not proof against knives or bullets. How strong are the limbs? Basically normal human strength. Can super strong versions be made? Yes, but not attached to a human unless they somehow have a super-strong skeleton to support them. To their credit, one of the congressmen was one of the only interviewers to ever differentiate between grip strength in the hand, which could safely be made super-strong, and lifting strength in the arm, which could not. Can weaponized versions be made? This took some clarification, but what the congressman meant was something along the lines of hidden explosives or built-in guns or pop-out knives. If most of the limb is replaced, then there might theoretically be enough room for something, but we hadn't explored any possible options like that. How easy would it be for a home user to modify a replacement arm or leg? Not easy. This question ended up leading to questions ranging from the rights of home users to break their warranties with modifications to terrorists and drug smugglers being able to use the limbs for smuggling. Everything inside -- circuitry, motors, battery -- is pretty compressed to fit in as small a space as possible, but with a full limb replacement there is some empty space to use. However, it would be pretty obvious that an arm or leg had been modified, since the fake skin has to be replaced as a whole. Just taping or gluing a cut back up would not look or feel natural. A simple examination of the skin would easily show any such repairs. As for non-criminal home modders? Well, if they break their warranties then it's out of our hands. Can the limbs let the users feel? No, but we are working on that for a future update. There are other researchers using implanted wires to let people control electronic devices, including mechanical arms. What makes our nerve interface better? Ours is much more powerful and allows the user to adapt much more quickly. Originally the interface was designed for our artificial eyes, but we are encouraging research into using the interfaces to repair functionality to broken spines. The types being used by other groups require months for the user to adapt enough to be able to control the interface. Our interface adapts with the body and can allow interface functionality in as little as one week, though 2-3 weeks is more common. When would the eye be approved for use? Due to much more sensitive placement, the testing is much slower, and the eye and its interface will probably not be granted approval for another year. So far, testing has been very successful, but we contracted out to another company to do that testing. Have we done any limb replacement testing for the military? No, they require different hoops to jump through, and it is easier in some ways to just test for civilian use. Offhand, the only big difference I could think of for military use would be their probable need for longer battery life. Right now, the only way to do that would be to use more and/or larger batteries that would cause the limbs to no longer look entirely human. And so on. There were other security questions, questions that seemed to come from SciFi TV and movies, questions about failure rates, safety concerns for the users, speed of production and what seemed like a thousand other what-if worries. Overall, I thought it went pretty well. Near the end, they asked what we needed from the government to help out. Answer? Nothing, really. Just approval to go ahead. If the military wanted specialized limbs, we'd leave that up to the actual production company. The limbs would be cheap enough for any decent insurance to pay for them. The subcommittee finished for the day after our testimony concluded, and the two Texas congressmen invited me out for dinner. In the interest of general friendliness, I accepted, bringing Chris along as my 'plus one'. The dinner was nothing very special. They were friendly and encouraged me to keep as much business as possible in Texas, or at least in the US. I am pretty apolitical myself. I'm in favor of the Constitution and life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, defense of the common good and all that, but I prefer the government to stay out of business as much as possible. Yes, businesses can be corrupt and take advantage of the common man, but so can the government. The bigger the company, the more I tend to dislike it, and the more bureaucratic the government, the more I tend to dislike it. I guess I just have very little faith in politicians in general. Fortunately, my years of living with people who don't know what I know has really helped my acting ability, so I'm pretty sure I said all the right things I needed in order to stay friendly with everyone. Heck, I'll probably give them campaign contributions next election. I even invited them to stop by the company sometime to meet Alphadroid, hoping they'd forget to take me up on the offer. The food was pretty good, so dinner wasn't a complete waste of time. Once dinner was over, Chris and I took a cab back to the hotel. On the way, I let my guard down a little, commenting that I hated politics. "It's not so bad," she reassured me. "Politicians have to live lives of compromise to be able to accomplish anything. It can seem really dirty to people on the outside, but without it the country ... the world ... would grind to a halt." "Eh, that's probably true. It's just that I'm still just enough of an idealist to dislike how the government works a lot of the time." "If every idealist refused to live under an imperfect government, as judged by their own personal rules, we'd have six billion different governments worldwide and live in a constant state of war." I laughed. "So Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others, huh?" "Exactly, long live the kind tyranny of the majority," she said, leaning over to kiss me. While we kissed, I was looking out the back window and noticed Beta and Eiko in a rented car following our cab. mental sigh Oh well. When we pulled up to the hotel, she hurriedly used a tissue from her purse to wipe her lipstick off my mouth, and we went inside as friendly professionals. Once we closed my door, we became much more friendly and much less professional. Ms Sloane seemed a little bit sex-crazed at the moment and was trying her best to just rip my clothes off (and did succeed at popping a few buttons off my shirt). I helped her remove my shirt and, while I was pulling her blouse off, asked, "What would you like to do tonight?" With a bit of a fevered look in her eyes, she said, "I want to go a little crazy." "Does that mean you want to try something new or kinky or just fuck like rabbits?" "Yes!" "Any special requests?" I was pulling off my pants as she pulled off her skirt. Oooo ... stockings and garter belt tonight. Nice. "Stop talking and fuck me!" This seemed a little out of character for a normally reserved lawyer, but I was game. I knelt down and pulled her shoes off one at a time, caressing her calves as I did so. When I stood up, I hefted her over my shoulder and carried her to the bed, enjoying her little squeal as we went. I tossed her down on the bed, then flipped her over onto her front and pulled her hips up so that her ass and pudenda were raised and facing me. I ran my fingers up and down her vulva, feeling the juices drip. "Stay there. Don't move," I commanded, and I hurried off to the bathroom to get condoms. When I returned to the bed, she had shifted slightly and was rubbing her clit. It was a very arousing sight, especially with the lovely framing device of her stockings and garter belt. Still... "I thought I told you not to move," I said reprovingly. I stepped up and smacked her ass cheek, trying not to actually hurt her worse than a mild sting. "Ow!" she exclaimed. I smacked her other rear cheek. "Stop that!" Smacked her again. "I'm going to keep spanking you until you obey." "Obey?" "You want something a bit new and kinky? Well, I don't have any rubber suits or leather or anything, and I'm not really into that stuff. So tonight you must obey or get spanked." She paused and thought about it for a moment, then finally said, "Okay, okay." Her hand left her vagina, and I stopped spanking her, leaving her ass a little pinker than it was before. "Good girl." I rolled the condom into place and knelt on the bed behind her. I rubbed my little helmet up and down her slit, getting it nice, wet and slippery. I seriously thought about making her beg a little, but I try not to be mean like that. "Here you go, young lady," I said as I eased it into her. I took only slow strokes as I worked my way inside, until I couldn't go any further. I angled up a little and hit the little knot of flesh that was her cervix, with maybe half an inch of my cock left outside of her. I'd have to be careful or I might bruise her deep inside. "Can you feel me?" "Yes," she hissed. "I can feel the entrance to your womb." I held my cock deep inside of her and flexed it as best I could. She gave a little jump. Leaning down over her, I whispered, "Let me know if something hurts or if you have any special requests." As best I understand female plumbing, the actual vagina is normally only a few inches deep. When aroused, it can double in length and can then stretch even further during sex. According to some numbers I've seen, a three inch deep vagina can end up accommodating a nine or ten inch penis without a problem. But the cervix, the passageway between the vagina and uterus, can be sensitive in women and it can be uncomfortable or painful if an especially long penis pounds against it during intercourse. My nine-inch cock is above average in size but not ridiculously so. For the most part, I only tend to have a problem with the cervix when I'm in a sexual position that gives me especially deep access to a vagina. Like this position. I wrapped my forefinger around the base of my cock and started fucking, using my hand and finger as a buffer so I didn't bang against her cervix. My artificial women don't feel pain there or don't care or, at the very least, don't complain. Normal women? In my experience, they don't like it. Even with my hand-buffer, when I started slamming into her I could feel myself brushing the back of her vaginal sheathe, but I don't think I was hitting it hard enough to feel bad. I reached around with my other hand and started playing with her clitoris at the same time. Most women I'm with give minor instructions or words of encouragement while we're going at it. I'll get a porn style "Oh, yeah" or a helpful "Do that again" or "More" or even "Right there." Chris on the other hand, kept as quiet as possible, at most giving off little grunts or squeaks. She was a bit wound up and came after only three or four minutes of our doggy-style fuck, but even then she planted her face in a pillow to muffle her cries before collapsing on the bed. Her collapse pulled her vagina off of my cock, leaving me hanging in the breeze, so to speak. I could had laughed if I wasn't still so horny. I rolled her over and leaned down to kiss her. Her eyes re-opened. "All right, Ms Sloane. That happened pretty quickly, but we're far from done for the night. Any requests?" "What were you doing with your hand?" "Playing with your clit?" "The other one." "Ah, I was trying to avoid ... uhhh ... I didn't want to bang into your cervix because I've been told that can be painful, so I was holding myself back a little." "I see. Thank you, but I think ... You're the biggest ... you have the biggest ... you know..." "Cock?" "Yes, the biggest one I've ever had inside me." "Come on, you can say it." "I can say it just fine when I'm in my official capacity. I've said a lot worse and a lot more often. But in the bedroom, I just never ... I mean, I can't bring myself to say..." "You said 'Fuck' earlier." She immediately blushed. "Come on, say Cock. Or how about Penis?" I started giving her nipples little tweaks with each word. "Dick? Fuckstick? Johnson? Weiner? Manhood? Baby-maker? Beaver-basher?" "Beaver-basher?" she said with a laugh. "There you go! You finally found a word you can use." Still laughing, she continued, "Seriously? You call it a beaver-basher?" "Not me personally. I tend to call him Junior. But you're welcome to call him beaver-basher if you want to. Now do you have any requests for my beaver-basher, or should I just fuck you in random positions." "What I was going to say was that I've never had as large a ... beaver- basher..." She paused for a brief snort of laughter. " ... at my disposal before. Even if it hurts a little, I'd like to try it again but at full length this time." "As you wish. Let me know if you need me to stop." I pulled her back up into position, but this time I guided one of her hands to her own clit. Then I re-inserted my 'beaver-basher' and placed both of my hands on her hips to hold her in place. A few seconds later, I started ... well, bashing her beaver. And the entrance to her womb. This time her face was in the pillow early on, muffling her cries of "Oh!" with each thrust. Until she said otherwise, I was free and clear and just let myself go, pounding her ... well, not literally as hard as I could, but pretty strongly nonetheless. A few times I slowed a bit to lean over her and play with her breasts, cupping her tits and milking her nipples. Then I'd straighten back up and start pounding again. Sometimes I rotated my hips as I thrust to give it a different feel or just came in with my hips at a slightly different angle. I got to where I could strike a little above, below or to the side of her cervix. To be honest, I have problems coming if it's all just mindless repetitive hip-pumping, especially if I'm wearing a condom. Chris wasn't giving me much interaction at the moment, so I had to entertain myself. When I felt myself getting close, I warned her by smacking her ass between thrusts. Finally I grabbed her hips and held fast, pumping my seed into the condom (though mentally I was pumping it into her). Her hand was working furiously on her clit. When I noticed and while I was still inside of her, I moved my fingers to join hers and carefully worked my cock a bit too. (After I come, my condoms start threatening to come off, so I gotta be careful.) She quickly came, this time keeping her hips in their up position. I withdrew, pulled off the condom and stretched out next to her. Before long, her face emerged from her pillow. "Oh, that was wonderful. Three in one night." "Three?" "Three orgasms. I'm going to be so sore tomorrow." Huh. Maybe she came twice during our second round, and I just missed the first one? "Does that mean you're done for the night? Cause I can get it up again pretty easily if you want to keep going." "Again? Maybe. Let me wind down for a minute." "Sure thing. So tell me, why do you have such a problem with ... uhhh ... let's call it the language of sex?" She gave a little laugh. "It's just the way I was raised. Plus sex has never been an important part of my life." "Last night and tonight seem to disagree with that statement." I started playing lightly with her nipples again as we lay there talking. "Oh, I just ... I started feeling old the past year or two. I wanted to do something to prove I was still young at heart. When you invited me along on your trip, I thought maybe I'd get a chance to seduce you to prove to myself..." I started whistling Mrs Robinson (by Simon and Garfunkel ... watch The Graduate if you don't get the references), which earned me a solid slap of her hand hitting my chest, which made me stop but didn't remove the smile from my face. "Yes," she continued with a bit of a glare, "we already covered that misunderstanding. Anyway, you know the rest." "So what else would you like to do or try tonight?" "I don't know. Any suggestions?" "Well, let's see. I could tie you down to the bed with my neckties. Or you could tie me down. We could try anal sex..." "With that salami you're packing? Dream on." "Okay, no anal sex. We could go for interesting positions or places. I'm sure there's an online kama sutra that we could access. We could turn off the lights and fuck by the open window. We could..." She interrupted me saying, "Nothing public like that. Just ... I don't know ... just pick something." "Nothing public and no anal." "Right." Well, it was pretty obvious that Chris wasn't very adventurous, so I needed to keep it fairly simple. Anything I would normally consider to be kinky would probably be too much for her. I rolled out of bed and grabbed ... darn, I really liked all of the ties I brought along. I may not wear ties often, but still ... Aha! I grabbed the belt from my hotel robe and returned to the bed. Taking her hands in mine, I removed her wristwatch, crossed her wrists in front of her and started wrapping the terrycloth belt around them. I was only able to wrap the belt around her half a dozen times before I ran out of length, but it was enough to hold her hands tied so she wouldn't slip out by accident. I removed her stockings, garter belt, shoes and jewelry. I stood up, pulling her to the edge of the bed. Bending down, I hefted her over my shoulder and carried her to the bathroom. "You, young lady, are entirely too sweaty," I said reprovingly. I touched her pussy lips, displayed before me in the bathroom mirror as she hung over my shoulder. "And entirely too sticky. You're just a dirty little girl, aren't you?" Silence. "Well?" I asked, giving her ass a smack. "Yes," she said quietly, her face hanging down next to my ass. "Yes what?" "Yes, I'm a dirty little girl," she whispered. "I can't hear you," I said and smacked her ass again. "Yes, I'm a dirty little girl," she said a little louder. I set her down on her feet and looked in her eyes. "I still can't hear you." "I'm a dirty little girl," she yelled, much louder than I expected. The people next door ... thinking ... thinking ... Beta and Eiko! Whew. Beta and Eiko wouldn't complain about a little bit of yelling. "That's right," I agreed. "And dirty girls need to be cleaned." I picked her up again and moved her into the bath. I ran the water for a minute to warm it up, then stepped in, slid the shower door closed and switched to the shower. After lathering up a washcloth, I turned her around so she was facing me and started washing her arms, then shoulders, breasts and belly. I made sure she could tell I was enjoying myself as I soaped up her breasts with the soft cloth. "My, my, your nipples are hard," I said in a husky voice. "Could it be that our dirty little lady enjoys getting clean? Or does she just like it when men see her naked and play around with her titties?" She didn't say anything, but I noticed her hands were starting to press against her vagina. "Ah, ah, ah!" I admonished, pulling her hands away from her body. "Do I need to tie your hands behind your back? Remember, as long as I have you tied up, I'm the one who decides if and when anyone gets to play with your dirty little pussy." Here I dug my own fingers into her vaginal canal and pressed my thumb against her clit. At the same time, I leaned forward and kissed her, shoving my tongue roughly into her mouth. After a moment of this, I pulled back and said, "After all, what if I want to taste you again? I can't have your dirty fingers interfering with my meal, now can I?" Here I knelt down and started licking her out. She tried to spread her legs, but her feet didn't have room to stand any further apart. I maneuvered her back against the corner of the stall, which supported her a little and let her spread her feet and legs a bit more. I wasn't enjoying kneeling on the floor of the tub, which had those annoying rough-textured anti-slip strips, so I went for a quick cum, attacking her clit as violently as I could with my tongue. Her tied hands pressed against the back of my head, shoving my face against her cunt. She came in less than five minutes, bringing her bound hands up against her mouth to muffle her quiet cries. While she was recovering, I retrieved the fallen washcloth, reapplied the soap and washed her legs. Then I turned her around and washed up her back, making certain to tease her anus when I reached her ass. I even soaped up a finger and popped it inside, wiggling it around to 'clean' out her asshole. Standing up, I washed off my mouth and hands, then set my back against the main water stream and had her stand in front of me. "Now, my clean little lady, it's your turn. I need you to clean my penis for me, and you aren't allowed to use your hands." She understood what I wanted and knelt down in front of me. Frank Jr was standing at attention, and she took a moment to contemplate it. Violating my rule, she used her hands to guide it to her mouth, but I didn't upbraid her for breaking the no-hands rule. What she said last night was true: She wasn't very good at blow jobs. She tried, but ... her teeth would scrape me regularly, her tongue just lay there and she pumped my cock only a couple inches deep into her mouth. I coached her for a few minutes and got her to the point where she mostly avoided scraping her teeth on my penis and started licking me rather than just moving my cock in and out of her mouth. After a couple minutes of this, I stood her up, retrieved a condom and wrapped my dick in the rubber. With her back against the side of the shower wall, I thrust into her, not giving her much time to adjust to me. Although her leaking juices had been washed away by the water, she was still hot and slippery inside so I was quickly balls-deep inside her cunt. Her hands were in the way, still tied together with soaking wet terrycloth, so she hung them over my head and drew me in for a hungry kiss to which I was eager to respond. Our positions didn't allow for comfortable, easy fucking, but it was a new location and situation for her, which helped get her off quickly. This time the only way she could muffle her cries was with a kiss, so while she spasmed around my cock, she also poured her orgasm into my mouth and lungs. I was nowhere near coming though, so once she had recovered a little, I bent her over so that our backs were against the water and entered her from behind. Her bound arms were bent at the elbow with her forearms against the shower wall, her head coming close to hitting the wall with every thrust. I know she came again, but I don't know how many times. With the condom dulling the sensations and having already come once, I wasn't holding back. I drilled her hard, working for another orgasm of my own. I used one hand to play with her clit and the other to play with her nipples. I'm not sure how long we held this position, but it could have been for as long as fifteen minutes before I finally unloaded again. Once we regained our breath, I removed the condom, rinsed off and turned off the water. That must have been at least a half hour shower. The knots tying her hands were much too soaked and tight for easy removal, but a loop of cloth easily rolled off her wrists letting us unwind her bindings. While we were drying off, she said, "That's almost enough of a reason to move to Texas." I kissed her lightly and said, "Thank you, but you live in Sin City. What do you need me for?" "It's ... well, it's unfair, but while MEN in my position can have affairs and keep mistresses without anyone at the office saying a thing, WOMEN who do so develop reputations that ... that hinder promotion. Even in Sin City." "I'm sorry to hear that. It's sad when a MILF like you keeps herself hidden." "MILF, huh? Never really thought of myself like that. I guess I'll take it as a compliment." "I suppose it is a bit of a crude comment, for which I apologize. It's just an easy shorthand way to point out that you are a beautiful, sexually attractive woman." "Thank you." Now dry, we returned to the bedroom and collapsed on the bed. "Does this mean you're going to spend the night tonight?" "Damn it. No, I really shouldn't. I need to call home anyway." She rolled over and gave me a kiss, then gave me a bit of a show getting dressed. I felt like I should be tired, but for some reason I was still wound up and ready to go. I briefly checked in with Alpha (no news of note), got dressed and went to visit Diana and Zatanna. Zatanna answered the door in her robe and seemed a little bit out of breath. Not you-caught-me-fucking out of breath, but enough that I noticed. "Hi, can I come in?" She glanced behind her and I heard the TV click off before she opened it so I could enter. Diana was on her bed, just belting her robe. "Did I interrupt something?" "No, we were just watching TV," Zatanna replied quickly, closing the door behind us. "We thought you were sleeping with Chris tonight," Diana said. "No, I'm just ... well, first you have to promise not to talk about this, okay? She's very sensitive to rumors." "Okay." "Certainly." "All right. She ... how to put this nicely ... she's old enough that she was starting to feel old. She wanted to see if she was still attractive enough to seduce someone. I was convenient for a secret out-of-town fling. This isn't anything ... aaahhh ... She's going back home tomorrow. Hopefully I helped her realize she's still young and attractive, and that's going to be the end of it. And any possible rumors would both embarrass her and possibly hinder her career, okay?" They nodded. Diana asked, "Are you here because she left you unsatisfied?" "No. Well, kind of. She came ... hmmm ... at least five times, and I got off twice. I SHOULD be finished for the night, but for some reason I'm still pretty randy." "So you went looking for more women on which to satisfy your male urges?" Zatanna said with a smile. "I suppose it could be viewed that way," I said with a smile as I sat down on Diana's bed. "But for some reason I'm a bit curious about one thing first." "What?" Diana asked. I grabbed the remote control by her bed and flicked on the TV before she could stop me. "I want to see what's on TV." I heard a very quiet and rhythmic "Ah ... ah ... ah..." coming from the TV before the screen display came on to show a very well-hung black man fucking a blonde with large fake boobs from behind while an attractive Asian woman, also with fake boobs, caressed them both. It was difficult to see all of this because both Diana and Zatanna piled onto me in an effort to grab the remote. (Myself, I would have turned off the TV at the source.) "Aha!" I said loudly before being smothered by a terrycloth-covered ass. The remote was pulled from my grip and I heard the TV click off. The women on top of me made no move to get off though. "Excuse me?" I said, though I'm not sure they could understand me clearly with my face being squashed like it was. "Can you get off of me?" It probably came out more like, 'Ehus e. An ou et uff uf e?' My hearing was clear enough to pick out what they said. "He knows our terrible secret. What should we do?" I think that was Zatanna. "We should enslave him so that he'll never be able to tell anyone. Plus we won't have to just watch TV. When we get horny, we can just use him to satisfy ourselves." This was accompanied by a wiggling of the ass on my face. Pretty sure that was Diana. "I don't know if that's entirely fair to him ... but okay. Ummm ... I think he needs to breathe." Glad someone noticed my hand slapping the bed. Diana eased off of my face, but was careful to stay on my chest. "Thank you. Air is good." "Hush, we're deciding your fate." "If you're so worried about people knowing about your movie choices, remember that movie charges show up on the hotel bill. And since I'm the one paying the bill, I'm the one you have to convince to keep your secret." "Yes, thus another reason for us to decide your fate," explained Zatanna patiently. "I think he can be working while we decide," said Diana. She shifted a bit and untied her robe, revealing bare breasts and panties. It took a little bit of maneuvering but she was able to remove her panties and turn around without getting off of me. Keeping my arms trapped against my sides, she moved forward until her cunt was positioned right above my mouth. As I started to dig in to the familiar territory of Wonder Woman's pussy, I felt other hands begin to strip me of my shoes, socks and pants. Zatanna unbuttoned what she could of my shirt, but until Diana moved, it would stay in place, soaking up bits and pieces of Diana's flowing juices. I expected her to mount me, but the most she did was stroke my cock some. Without the use of my hands, making Diana come was a bit more difficult, but I was familiar with her likes and dislikes and was able to ramp up her libido using the rapid tongue flick alternated with the strong suck which was enhanced with a strong pressure tongue circle. At the same time, I was cruel enough that every time I noticed she was getting close, I would back off and slow down. After I denied her a climax twice, she grabbed my head in frustration and rubbed her clit against my nose, using my face as a masturbation aid. I was able to pull back just enough to blow cool air across her clit, which made her shiver briefly and, more importantly, draw her back from her approaching orgasm. Normally I'd be an enthusiastic participant in a little bit of role-play like this, but for some reason I wasn't in the mood to be on the bottom tonight. She growled in frustration and lifted off of me a bit. "Make me come!" "Gladly ... as soon as you let me up." Apparently Diana was really 'in need' because she got off of me, flipped me over, quickly sat down in front of me and again pulled my head into her crotch. This time I did my best to bring her quickly to as good a climax as I could. While I was working on Diana, I felt the much-ignored Zatanna pulling off my shirt, finally leaving me naked. Once Diana had come -- a nice big one that left her limp for a couple minutes -- I turned my attention to the naked and furiously masturbating Zatanna. "You need some attention too, pretty lady," I said. Okay, I'm not always as creatively seductive as possible, but hey, it was true. She obviously needed attention. I crawled across the bed to her, starting a long kiss while one of my hands joined hers in playing with her pussy. After I worked out the specific pronunciation in my mind, I pulled back and said, "Cuff eem," which is how I think you're supposed to say "Fuck me" backwards. I think I was close enough, because she smiled at me and said, "Sey, ris!" She shifted her hands from playing with herself to latching onto my cock, then lay down, pulling me along with her. A moment later I was buried deep in her snatch with her legs wrapped around my waist. Aaaahhh ... that felt so good ... fucking a tight, hot cunt without a condom to dull the sensation. I went in for a long, deep kiss, then started fucking her silly. I've been with most of my women long enough to know their likes, dislikes and quirks ... how they like to be eaten out, how good they are with oral sex in return, how to get them hot, and what they enjoy when fucking. For example, while blowing on Diana's clit can cool her ardor, it can turn on Kasumi immensely. Zatanna usually likes plenty of foreplay. Heck, usually foreplay takes up 2/3 of sex time when I'm with her, but foreplay can take a variety of forms for her. Tonight I was guessing that their movie and the little show I just put on with Diana counted as foreplay. Now that we had moved on to the actual fucking, she tended to like lots of personal contact and varying speeds of hip movement. She didn't care as much for creative positions ... they could be fun, but as far as she was concerned, they weren't for serious fucks. She would want to control the speed to a large extent by giving indications with her own hip movements and how quickly and forcefully her legs would pull me into her, but she mostly tended to come when I would suddenly take control of the fuck at the end. She had us start out slow as I used a hand to play with her breasts and occasionally bent down for a quick kiss. We sped up a bit, slowed down a bit, sped up a bit more ... we must have fucked for ten or fifteen minutes. She was really wet and worked up by the time I fought her legs for control and sped up unexpectedly, pounding into her hips with as much force as I could muster. After less than a minute of that, she came hard. I hadn't paid much attention to Diana throughout this, but as Zatanna came, she swooped in to kiss her, capturing her lips and swallowing her explosive orgasm-induced cries. I kept pounding into her for another minute until I finally blasted off inside her. Zatanna gave a weak jump/shiver when she felt me filling her womb with sperm, then collapsed. I was feeling a bit drained myself, but Diana was having none of that. After Zatanna dropped into semi-consciousness, Diana moved her attention to me. She was obviously still hungry for an orgasm ... well, another orgasm. She kissed me, shooting her tongue into my mouth, then moved down to my cock, licking the juices from my softening shaft. "Come on," she muttered, licking me and sucking me into a strong oral vacuum. I was tired but willing to go one more round, and after a couple minutes of very focused attention from Diana, my cock regained its hardness. My body was still pretty tired though, so I lay down flat and let her mount me. Watching Wonder Woman's naked body bounce above you during sex is almost the definition of fun. Her large breasts, dominant personality and expressive face work together to make it a memorable experience, one that I remember from many past encounters. She rode me to two orgasms in just a few minutes. The problem was that I was now hard again and nowhere near ready to ejaculate a fourth time this evening. At least I had gotten a bit of a second wind by the time she stopped bouncing and slumped over me. With her acquiescence, I repositioned her so that she was laying in front of me with her legs up in the air. I held those beautiful female limbs in front of me while I plunged into her pussy. She was the one who had gotten me hard again, and I wasn't going to let her rest until she received the fruit of her efforts. I was pretty well spent, sexually speaking, and took another forty minutes or so to come one final time. In that forty minutes I must have taken Diana through half a dozen other positions. I'm not entirely certain if she was happy that she had gotten me hard one last time that night, but I'm pretty sure she came at least another four or five times. Finally completely spent, I collapsed into bed next to her. Zatanna had moved over to her own bed to sleep. I wish the beds had been large enough to allow all three of us to sleep together, but I settled for sleeping next to Diana. The next morning, Zatanna's pre-arranged wake-up call got me up much earlier than I would have preferred. I got dressed, gave the hallway a surreptitious look to make sure Chris wasn't in view, and quickly returned to my room. Although there was no expectation that my time with Christine was anything more than a very brief affair, I still didn't want to hurt her by letting her know I had had sex with more women just after she left. At breakfast, I took no little pleasure in noting that both Chris and Diana were walking a bit stiffly. (Not that I was doing so much better. I estimated that I had participated in somewhere between two and three hours of sex the previous night, but the lotion I had applied to my sore cock helped. Maybe I could have handled it without soreness back in my teens, but not so much right now.) We arrived at DFW in time for Chris to make her connecting flight back to Vegas. I gave my thanks to Josh and Sherri, then we drove home where I went to bed early and alone and slept like a log. Alpha had recorded our appearance on CSPAN-47 (or whatever channel it was) and a few different news programs. As predicted, we were worthy of thirty seconds here and there, but hadn't gotten any serious notice. Well, AARD got a lot of calls from amputees around the country asking about availability, but that was to be expected. As a bit of a postscript to the trip, I should mention that Christine Sloane entered politics herself a year later. She won a state representative position in Nevada and a few years later was elected to the US House of Representatives. ------- In other matters, we kept Diana and Zatanna 'in our world' for four months this time, instead of the two months they had intended. Until I let them think they had their dimensional travel under control, they wouldn't bring anyone else with them. Basically I wasn't ready to start a rotating cast of DC characters just yet, so we wouldn't let their dimensional travel controls work quite right for a little while. Meanwhile, I decided it was high time to bring in a couple more women. I wanted to both bring in more Marvel characters and bring in non-comic-book characters and was having trouble deciding what to do. Re: Marvel characters, I was planning to start with a couple more X-women, partly for narrative convenience, partly because most of the non-X-women Marvel characters I wanted had inhuman appearances or were married. As far as non-comic-book characters went, I had a lot of options but nothing was jumping out as a perfect selection for me. The cartoon ones I wanted most were bad ideas -- the Scooby Doo women, April O'Neil and the Test sisters would all almost certainly try to discover my secrets. Adult versions of the Powerpuff Girls were still definitely on my list, but I was worried they might be too much of a handful. Plus don't I already have enough superheroes living with me? Still, the varying personalities would be a great challenge. On the other hand, I wasn't sure how I wanted to approach the incest taboo. Having three sisters in the same bed with me was a really hot concept, but there could be bad social complications. I felt like a kid in a candy store who was on a very specific diet. AUTHOR'S NOTE: Please forgive any errors about congressional subcommittee procedures. I know little about the details of how congress works. From what little I can tell online, I don't think that particular committee even meets in November, so please forgive my presumption at rescheduling the meetings for my world. ------- Chapter 16: The Powerpuff Girls I was a little nervous. Minor television appearances with Alphadroid aside, this was one of the largest groups I had ever addressed. My entire household plus all twenty-eight general employees of AARD and three of the researchers (ie the ones willing to attend). I had rented a large dining room at the local Holiday Inn and paid for a nice catered dinner. This time it wasn't to celebrate a specific company anniversary but instead to make a surprise announcement and celebrate our projected entry into profitability for the fiscal year. (Just projected, because it was only, y'know, March.) We were about to reach our third year of existence and were only now about to start showing a profit. Our projections called for an increasing net profit for the next twenty or thirty years, and that was if Alpha and I stopped inventing things today. I had explained some of this to my audience, leaving out a few of the specifics (such as Alpha and her inventiveness), but the crowd was enthusiastic, especially when I explained that 10% of the company's net profits would be distributed as a bonus to our employees. Of course I owned the company outright and was under no obligation to give out the bonuses, but I believe in creating happy, loyal employees. It would be determined by seniority, not position, so the longer you were with the company, the higher the bonus (and would include my household, but not myself). I didn't give any dollar estimate in my little speech, but we were expecting somewhere in the range of $500 thousand to $10 million net profit this year, so it had the potential to be pretty substantial. For now, most of the remaining 90% of the profits would go right back into the company, but I would also use it to start paying myself back for the investments I had made when building the company, and I explained a little of this as well. For anyone wondering, I was not planning to ever take the company public. Yes, by selling stock in AARD I could make more money, but I prefer having the privacy, control and reduced accountability that comes with a private company. I really don't ever want to explain myself to stockholders. "Now for the real surprise," I said with a grin. "I'm sure all of you are familiar with our unofficial company mascot, Alphadroid. Right?" There was a polite round of applause. "When we initially built it, it was for fun. I mean, we had the arms and legs and eyes designed, so all we needed to do was build a connecting framework and do a lot of programming. Then a funny thing happened. Alphadroid became pretty popular, even though there was only one of him. "What most of you didn't know is that we built two of them, though I keep the other one at my house. "What almost all of you didn't know is..." I turned to the face the curtained-off area to the side of the podium and called out, "Alphadroid, enter." Five Alphadroids, walked out on stage in a line. " ... we built a few more of them in the last couple months." Over the applause, I continued, "I'd like to introduce you to Alphadroids Three, Four, Five, Six and Seven. They are what we call a Beta release, developed in preparation for sale to the public. And Beta releases require testing, which is where all of you come in. "Anyone who is interested can put their names in the hat to take home one of these Alphadroids for one month for testing purposes. It will wash your dishes for you, walk your dog, feed your cat, mow your lawn. It literally has over a thousand different things it can do for you, though for insurance purposes, we are not including the vehicle driving options. "Now you'll need to fill out daily test reports and there are plenty of details we'll go over before you take one home, but that's the upshot. We'll be doing these tests for at least four months, meaning we have a minimum of twenty test slots to fill in our lottery. The sign-up sheet will be at the front desk all next week. "Everyone enjoy your dinners, and I understand we have a couple choices for dessert coming up too." I went back to my table, sitting between Kara and Kasumi. Kasumi wasn't an AARD employee but was my special guest for the night. These Alphadroids were not Alpha host platforms, but were capable of becoming so. We needed to be able to make androids that worked but weren't actual AIs. Each one included the chipsets needed for Alpha to run, and the wireless connections needed for Alpha to be able to remotely install herself, but they would run off of non-AI programming for now. Very, VERY advanced non- AI programming, designed by Alpha herself, but not innately capable of self- programming or self-awareness. Basically, if we actually started selling these, a few techo-geeks would do their best to take the programming and circuitry apart. While we could raise many roadblocks to such investigations, there's no way we could actually stop them. So we included as many security measures as possible but would not actually risk someone discovering Alpha's programming. Alpha's fuzzy logic chipset was hidden within what appeared to be and would function as a co- processor, but should hopefully escape any special notice. Within a few days of the company dinner, rumors started leaking out about the planned availability of Alphadroids for sale. We expected it. Heck, we let the rumors and anticipation build by giving 'no comments' to the press for over a month before issuing a press release announcing our plans. After we actually started sending the beta test androids home with employees, amateur online videos of Alphadroids started showing up regularly. Before long the general public would lose interest, but for now they were SciFi mana dangling just out of reach. I would give an evil little chuckle every time I read a story about how other companies were trying to build their own robot mascots and how they always fell short of Alphadroid. Nothing about Alphadroid was out of their reach, but the engineering research and design and the man-hours of programming needed were way too much for any but the largest companies to even attempt. *innocent whistling* Unless you have your own Artificial Intelligence. I had to wonder how many people might be beginning to suspect an AI at AARD, but so far our cover story of being a collection of reclusive geniuses seemed to be holding up. No one knew how many researchers worked for us, and the few names that had leaked out were easily identifiable as geniuses. Plus we were being very careful not to release too much too fast. Very little was being publicly released under the AARD name, and we were careful to release new advanced technology slowly. For example, Alpha had worked out what should be a useable design for a fusion power plant a couple years ago, but suddenly publishing something that complex, something that leapfrogged over what should have been the result of decades of theory and laboratory experiments ... let's just say it would raise more than a few questions that I wanted to avoid. So instead Alpha was using her email friendships with physicists to help the scientific community along with the theory and math and component designs needed to get there on their own. When that occasionally proved to be too slow, she would occasionally submit a letter or paper for peer review that provided the necessary data and theory, though papers were very difficult at the moment since she lacked a human body/identity with a college degree to present papers. At this rate, the world could have its first working fusion reactor in twenty years or so. (She was also investigating cold fusion, but so far it was a dead end.) Oh sure, there were some internet rumors out there about how we had access to Area 51 files or were secretly founded by a time traveler from the future or were doing secret government research. You know, mostly the kind of thing that no individual with a balanced mind would seriously consider, but my natural tendency to shun publicity and our lack of public accountability helped feed some of the wilder rumors. Not that we were a huge target of crackpot conspiracies, but they were slowly starting to build up. The ones about our squad of ninja cyborgs or robots kinda gave me a shiver, but that was the only one we had run across with even a morsel of truth. That evening, I mainly just enjoyed spending a night out with all of my women and basking in the positive feedback from my employees. I made a special effort to say hello to the two medical technicians we had hired to run our nanowire surgery unit training. I had met Josh and Nancy a couple times before, but only in passing. I had been way too busy the past few months and had let Beta and Anna Marie handle the hiring last year. Starting in December through the beginning of March, we had held six different training courses with a lot more on the schedule, certifying 25 different surgeons to use the nanowire units so far. The feedback we had received so far was encouraging, including results like clearing out cancerous bone marrow, removing a tiny tumor from the center of someone's cerebral cortex, and doing scar-free removal of a large mole from a supermodel. One of the more popular applications so far had been for infants, which I had not considered when originally designing it, but it made sense. The nanowire units were almost as noninvasive as you could possibly imagine, which was a major concern when performing surgery on newborns and infants. We had already sold twenty surgery units, with expectations for selling another 20-100 this year. The actual number was very uncertain. Only so many hospitals had the available funds and the interest in being cutting edge, early adopters of new technology. Most would probably wait to hear about how effective/useful the units were before investing in them. If they were waiting for other companies to produce cheaper versions, they were in for a long wait. Our nanowires would cost other companies millions to produce, and our control software was virtually unreproducible. (AI-written software was a thousand times faster and more efficient than software produced by humans.) At two million per unit, they were going to be one of our biggest profit- makers. True, the price included free training for up to a dozen people within three years of purchase and 10 free replacement nano-wire reels, which cut down on the profit a bit. Plus we gave a significant discount to public and charity hospitals. Remember, money is useful and makes many things easier, but in and of itself, money wasn't a big goal or issue for me. With Alpha's investment skills, I could easily become a billionaire in a couple years or less. But maybe it was time to come clean a little bit ... Alpha's methods of playing a market can sometimes contribute to a small degree of instability. With a solid market, the ripples are quickly absorbed and ignored. Unfortunately a few years ago it contributed to a problem in the housing loans market and, well, you probably know the results. I'd like to make clear that Alpha didn't cause the problem, but it might have been a little bit less bad without her influence. Since then we've been avoiding using her investment strategies except to help the market recover, and we were working to reach a point where all of our income came from AARD and other investments. While the money from the unit sales would be appreciated, the actual goal was to get the tech out there ... to raise the level of technology worldwide. So why sell for $2 million when we could have made a good profit if the units were priced as low as $300,000? If we priced the surgery units too low, no one would think they were worthwhile and they would be ignored. Plus, if we sold for under half a million, there would be a lot of questions about our R&D costs and production methods. Our tech was definitely starting to show up worldwide: - Our desalinators were showing up all over the place, with some countries in the Middle East and Africa looking at creating large scale units to allow inland irrigation. - A German car company known for its tiny but reliable vehicles had just licensed our mini-motor so they could manufacture cars whose motors were smaller than their glove compartments. True, the motors required very high quality steel, but the next generation metal fabrication methods were all part of the design we licensed. (We had a new method of creating cheap shatter-resistant ceramics stronger than steel, but that was a different project.) - Our new airplane engines would probably start showing up in actual commercial jets within a couple years. - We finally found a company to manufacture and sell our lightning catchers. You set up one of our lightning-rod-like units on top of tall buildings or other structures commonly struck by lightning. When lightning strikes, our quick-capture capacitors grab the static discharge (up to 82% efficient) and slowly convert and feed it into the electrical grid for cheap, green energy. - Our artificial limbs were set to begin manufacture in April. Through an odd sort of competition, we had set three different companies against each other to get the lowest SRP possible while maintaining high quality standards for the limbs themselves. The end result SRP was now going to be about $15,000 per limb for a basic model. (Ignoring inflation, the price could drop as low as $5000 for a basic model in a decade or less.) Advertising was in the works showing our artificial hands typing on keyboards, shuffling cards, playing catch and doing all sorts of everyday tasks. Overall, we had almost a hundred designs already on the shelves in one form or another, with another thousand set to appear in the next couple years. And whenever we were able to do so, we kept the company name off the product. Oh sure, there were times we used it to sell the idea, but even a well informed consumer would be unlikely to be able to find out that the new low power heating element design in his toaster came from us or that the next generation ultrasound scanners were based on our designs. The only products AARD was going to be selling directly were the nanowire surgery units and the Alphadroids, and neither of those were going to be sold on a retail level or in large numbers. Okay, I keep getting distracted. Sorry. As I mentioned, it had been a pretty busy few months. Maybe Alpha can work on a hundred different projects at the same time, but I certainly couldn't. I burned out a bit in early February and had to take a week off from work. Most of the time, working at AARD is enjoyable enough for me not to need or want time off -- heck, I probably have office sex two or three times a week on average-- but from mid-November through early February so many of my projects and duties and obligations converged that I was working an average of 12 hours a day, six days a week. Even worse, it stopped being fun. When I even stopped thinking of sex as fun and started thinking of it as an obligation, I made myself take a week off and reorganize my thinking. I changed my approach to work so that I would only let myself work on one project each week, and forced myself to change projects every Monday. This wasn't an absolute rule, but I was able to significantly reduce my workload. Some people may think that Alpha takes care of nearly all of my work burdens, but that's a false assumption. To begin with, maintaining and upgrading Alpha's programming was a serious daily task. I only review or rewrite changes to the most essential and core parts of Alpha's software, but Alpha can easily come up with a hundred proposed programming changes every day, streamlining and improving herself. The vast majority are very minor alterations, but I promised myself I would check every single one. (If you're curious, I only alter or reject one or two changes each week on average, most often when I see an opportunity to advance my goal of slowly altering her Asimov Protocols. Progress is being made.) Of course, I let her handle all of the peripheral and research application stuff such as the programming for these new Alphadroids. Then there's the daily paperwork, and ... Hmmm ... Let me simplify and shorten my approach to this topic and instead give an overview of my daily schedule: I spend an hour or two every day going over program changes or enhancements. Being boss at AARD takes another one to three hours, reading reports, signing papers, sending emails, shaking hands, attending meetings, etc. Stroking the egos of our researchers and subtly helping point their work in the right direction takes an average of an hour a day. So that's 3-6 hours of each working day that's gone, used up just to keep things moving along. Alpha does help with all of those things ... a lot, actually. But someone has to sign the papers. Someone has to be able to answer questions in person and keep everyone friendly. As to the actual research, most projects at AARD require Alpha to do most of the work. But the thing is, over time we've jointly come to the realization that we do our best work ... Alpha does her best work ... when she and I work together on a project. She isn't good at intuitive leaps or out-of-the-box thinking. When I work with her on a project, the goal is reached 6-43% faster than originally estimated with a 32% higher success rate when compared to projects she works on by herself. For years I tried to work with her on nearly every project, and I was usually able to help at least a little. This was fine when we were working out of my basement, but as Alpha increased her number of systems and we suddenly had a large number of labs to work in and multiple sets of cyborg hands to do the work, it really started stretching me thin. It grew to where I was trying to help Alpha with a couple dozen different projects each week. Under my new system, Alpha and I together select which project to work on each week, weighing which projects are potentially most beneficial against which projects she needs the most help with. So far I'm pleased with the results and much more relaxed and happy in general. Looking back at things, I'm surprised it took a couple years for me to get overloaded like that. (Actually, thinking back ... maybe I agreed to the DC trip so readily so I could take a couple days off? And thank goodness for Kasumi. She kept the house running very smoothly, keeping those issues from stressing me out further.) So tonight I was feeling great. Relaxed. Happy. Kasumi was my date for the evening, and I had enlisted Rei to act as our chauffeur. I had never bought a limo, because I considered the idea to be way too ostentatious and pretentious. However I did keep a small fleet of nine or so fairly new vehicles (plus Diana's motorcycles) at the house, so tonight we were in a nice comfy SUV with the middle-row seats removed. Kasumi was dressed in a very nice, conservative black dress that reached down to mid-calf with a pretty red sweater-slash-shawl thingie around her shoulders. (Living with a bunch of women, you might think I'd learn what different types of clothing are called, but the subject really doesn't interest me enough to bother.) The outfit was nice and showed off her curves, but wasn't super-sexy tight and didn't display much skin. Despite the lack of overt sexuality, I initiated a happy make-out session on the drive home, approaching her make-out-inaccessible clothing as a challenge. We kissed for a couple minutes, her mouth accepting my teasing tongue and even responding in kind while I stroked her head and played with her long, dark brown hair. I don't know what she did to care for it, but it still felt like thin strands of silk, smooth as the day she came out of her pod. She had loosened up enough that she was willing to engage in kissing and light petting while being driven home in a vehicle with darkened windows, but when I started unzipping the dress, she pulled back slightly and objected. She was a proper lady, and not allowing embarrassing displays in public was far too ingrained in her character to allow me to take her dress off in the car. Ignoring car seatbelt laws, I shifted her onto my lap, pressing her lovely little ass against my hard-on. While we continued to kiss, I let my hands roam across her body. I could feel her hard nipples through her dress and bra, and her legs trembled when I caressed the stocking-covered flesh of her ankles. Keeping our mouths together, I put my right arm all the way around her back and cupped her breast in my hand. With my left arm, I started working my way up her legs under her dress. Kasumi has what might be the nicest legs in the house -- very nicely toned from her daily low-impact martial arts katas without being overly muscular, beautifully long in proportion to her body, with flawless light olive skin. Possibly even nicer than Zatanna's. I wanted to feel every last inch of them. When my hand under her dress reached above her knees, her hands tried to push my left arm away in halfhearted protest. I smiled a little when I realized her legs weren't pressing together to stop me, and after a minute or so of stroking her inner thighs with one hand and rubbing at her right nipple through her dress with the other, her arms stopped trying to push me away. Working her hemline up bit-by-bit, I slowly worked my way up to her garter belt, then her panties. When I finally reached them, I found the fabric nicely wet with womanly juices. She jumped at my touch and pulled away from my face. "Frank-sama, you shouldn't do such things," she reproved me, starting to blush. She still occasionally used the -sama and -san honorifics, despite speaking almost nothing but English for what ... four or five years? That's right, we had celebrated the five-year anniversary of her arrival last month. "My beautiful Kasumi, we are alone except for Rei, and she already knows perfectly well what we are going to do when we get home. I am going to take you to my bed and remind myself how lovely you are and remind you how much I love you." Ah, there we go, a full-fledged, high-powered Kasumi blush. Don't think that I'm cruel or that I specifically do things to make her blush, but part of me does enjoy seeing them. She's gotten much better about not blushing at every little thing over the past few years, but she can still turn a nice dark red on occasion, especially when I praise her beauty or talk about sex in front of someone else. "Hai ... aahhh ... that may be true, Frank-sama, but it is not proper to do or say such things outside of the bedroom." Believe it or not, there was a time when she would blush just saying 'bedroom' in such a context. "But in deference to your wishes, I'm already keeping myself from eating you out right now," I protested. She giggled and blushed at the same time. Quickly I added, "I know, I shouldn't say such things." I hung my head in shame, but in doing so also pressed it against her shoulder so that my lips could kiss her left breast through her dress. I started stroking her vagina through her very damp panties eliciting a full body shiver. Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on your point of view, that was the moment we arrived home. I gave Kasumi a kiss on the cheek and withdrew my arm from under her dress, giving my fingers a quick lick while she was watching. Her receding blush returned upon seeing this, but she recovered her poise in time to step out of the vehicle on my arm. I paused before going inside. "Thank you very much, Rei. I appreciate you playing chauffeur tonight." Rei, being her normal verbose self, blinked at me then gave a little nod. With my suit jacket folded over one arm and Kasumi's arm hooked through my other, we swept inside as though we were walking down a red carpet walkway. I guess we beat the others on the drive back because it was pretty empty. I heard the quiet whirring of Dorothy's motors from the kitchen, but that was all. Upon reaching my bedroom, we found the surprise I had prearranged for Dorothy to set up while we were gone: Champagne on ice with a small selection of fruits and cheeses for a bedtime snack. I popped the cork and poured us each a glass. "To a successful dinner with a beautiful lady," I said as I clicked my glass against hers. It had only been an hour or two since we finished our catered dinner, so we weren't hungry. Well, not hungry for food. We sat together for a few minutes, making small talk about the evening while I fed her little pieces of cheese and melon slices. I would rub her lips or cheek every time. Before long, she was returning the favor, and I would suck and lick her fingers to clean off the melon juices. If she were any of my other women, I might have picked up food between my lips and fed it to her that way. After a few minutes of teasing like this, we resumed our necking. This time Kasumi did not object when I lowered the zipper on her dress. We spent at least ten minutes just slowly undressing each other between kisses. My tie and shirt. Her dress and shoes. My shoes and pants. Her slip and garters. We finished our mutual strip-tease wearing only panties (her) and boxers (me). At that point I really didn't know if she wanted to shower or bathe before sex or not. She had showered before going out, so that might have been enough for the evening. I pulled off my boxers, my erection bouncing into view. Acting rather boldly for her, she grasped it and held it in her hands, stroking it gently. "Please," she whispered, "I want..." I kissed her and whispered back, "Show me what you want." She released my cock and slid off her panties. Then, her head turned so that she wasn't looking at herself, she laid back on the bed and spread her legs. I moved into position and slid home, my penis easily entering her familiar velvety warmth. I held still for a moment and kissed her, bringing her face back to me. She used to cover her face whenever she felt embarrassed about enjoying sex. She hadn't done that for a few years, but she would still sometimes look away, as if ashamed at enjoying carnal pleasures. Finally she responded to my lips and started kissing back. Holding her lips with my own, I pulled my hips back and gave a sharp thrust, eliciting a quiet grunt. It wasn't long before she was holding onto my shoulders as we fucked vigorously, her hips jumping up to meet my every thrust. One time with Diana, I fucked for two hours without coming just to prove that I could do it, but holding back like that isn't pleasurable. It turns sex into a marathon chore. Thanks to a combination of factors, I have really good sexual stamina and control, but just letting things flow naturally is usually much more enjoyable. So after I was certain she had come at least once, I relaxed and let myself fuck naturally. After ... oh ... maybe 20 minutes total, I came, spurting my seed into her, which must have put her over the top again because her body seized up hard when I came. I collapsed on top of her afterwards, her arms and legs wrapped around me. When she released her grip, I rolled off to the side. I could have very easily hardened up and gone for a second round, but she was obviously fading into unconsciousness. Maybe she had a more tiring day than I thought? Calling it a disappointing end to the night would be incorrect, but I was expecting a bit more. Briefly I considered finding someone else to fuck before I went to sleep, but decided against it. If I was horny in the morning, it would be easy to find someone to play with. I covered her with a blanket, put my earbud in the charger, moved the food and drink to the hallway and joined her in bed. ------- The next morning when I got up, Kasumi was already gone. I yawned, stretched, got out of bed and popped my earbud in. Unexpectedly, Alpha immediately started talking, and not even with her normal 'Good morning.' "There is a situation you need to address this morning as soon as you are able." That kinda popped me awake, no coffee needed. "What's wrong?" As I asked, I realized that it couldn't be anything too horribly bad or Alpha would have woken me up. "Kara became very upset with material she found online last night, then became upset with me when I refused to allow her to post certain comments which might have brought unwanted attention to her." "Huh?" A few minutes later, I had put on some pajama shorts and a robe and was knocking on Kara's door (which was basically next door to my own room). A slightly disheveled Kara, still groggy from sleep, answered a minute later. "What?" "Good morning. I understand that you had a fight with Alpha last night about something you saw online?" That woke her up. "I told her I'd turn her off if she didn't let me let those freaks have it." "Kara, that's an exceedingly mean threat to a computer..." "I wasn't serious. Not completely. But still, she should've let me rip those weirdos a new one." "What was this all about?" "Come here," she said grabbing me by my robe and dragging me into her room. She sat down at her desk while I looked over her shoulder. Her laptop was set up on the desk, and when she woke it up and logged in, a rule 34 webpage popped up, obviously still open from last night. Now before we get into this further, let me explain a couple things. Of course I am familiar with those sites. Rule34. HentaiFoundry. WWOEC. And so on. There are a lot of websites where people post adult art inspired by cartoons and comic books and other sources. Some of the art is really good, some is crap. For those women in the house who aren't aware of their fictional nature in the real world -- Kasumi, Daria, Jane, and Rei -- Alpha filters out all references to their original characters and series from any and all sources, online or on TV, including those fan-run porn sites. And let me point out that since Alpha is the actual internet host for both house and work, she can do it thoroughly and seamlessly. (She also controls our digital cable and has, on occasion, inserted substitute programming just in case.) For those women in the house who ARE aware of their comic book personas -- Kara, Anna Marie, Diana, Zatanna and Linda -- Alpha has never tried to prevent access to such fan sites. But they've never cared much about them, which is what was confusing here. I know that Kara has previously seen fan art and erotic fanfics, good and bad, with every possible sexual combination ... and her reaction had been to laugh, claim status as a nerd sex icon, and move on. She never spent much time on them. It just wasn't a big deal to her. So what got her so upset? "See?" she said, clicking to open new browser tabs. "Here! And this! And all of these. Some jerks have been going around drawing penises on my pictures! There must be hundreds of these things!" Ahah. Years of acting experience let me keep an entirely straight face. "Yes, I'll agree it's pretty wrong-looking, but at the risk of insulting you, so what?" Looking at the pictures, some of them looked like they had been intentionally drawn that way initially, but differentiating between the originally drawn pictures and the add-on penises didn't seem like a productive point to make at this time. "So what? So what?!? Do I look like I have a penis?" "No, most definitely not." She was dressed in an oversized t-shirt, and maybe some panties. Though I couldn't see for certain, I took it on faith that she hadn't grown a penis overnight. "Before me stands an ideal woman." "Hey!" she said indignantly. "Hey what? I'm being pretty serious." And in that moment, I was. That derailed her tirade somewhat. "Uhhh ... thanks, sweetie, but still ... why would someone do that to me?" "They're not doing it to you, they're doing it to pictures of a completely fictional character, though I doubt your existence would deter them in this case." "You're just not upset because no one is drawing breasts on pictures of you." "Good thing, too. I think it was Steve Martin who said something along the lines of 'I'd just stay at home and play with my breasts all day' in a movie somewhere." She gave a brief snort of laughter. "Look, Kara, this stuff is probably just done by gay guys ... or guys who fixate on transgender people or hermaphrodites. Or allowing for equal opportunity, maybe it's being posted by women who have similarly odd tastes. Or maybe they're just drunk college idiots who do this instead of spraying graffiti on buildings." "So why would Alpha care about me flaming these assholes?" "Because she was worried you'd post things as if they were insults to you personally and maybe make people suspicious." "But I wouldn't have ... I mean, no one would believe it was really me ... I know all I have in this world is my secret identity, so to speak, and I wouldn't endanger ... Arrrrrgh!!!" She finished with a grunt of muted anger and clenched fists. I was momentarily worried she'd smash the laptop, but she resisted. "It's okay, Kara. And for what its worth, I agree that probably nothing bad would have come from your comments... 'probably' being a key word there." "No. I mean, I know, it's just ... I need something to hit something ... or ... Any chance Alpha could track down the posters?" "Ummm ... Let's not explore that option." Needing something to distract her, I tried to start giving her a neck massage. Not that my hands are strong enough to work her muscles loose, but my touch did seem to relax her slightly. That didn't stop her from clicking around, looking for more images to make herself angry. "Kara," I said leaning down to whisper into her ear. "You need to stop doing this to yourself. I'm sure there are plenty of perverted weirdos in your world too, and they probably do the exact same things. And you don't go around killing them, do you?" "Well, back home I don't usually have the free time to browse around like this either." "So you're saying that I need to keep you busier?" "No, that's not what I'm saying," she said with sarcastic emphasis. "Then why don't you just set some Amanda Conner artwork or Alex Ross paintings as your desktop and leave it at that. He does a really nice portrait of you, right?" "Yeah, but he always has me scowling." "Not at all like you really are, huh?" As I said this, I hooked my forefingers in her cheeks and tried to draw her mouth up into a smile. "Cut that out!" she said, shaking her head loose from my fingers and finally smiling. I used the momentary distraction to lean over her laptop and close her browser. "What you need right now," I said as I snapped the cover down, "is a distraction and a laugh and a sense of perspective. Or maybe..." Looking around, I didn't see what I wanted right away. It seemed like I remembered ... yes, there we go. I opened up her closet door and kicked a loose shoe into place to hold it open. "Strip and get on the bed," I said as I shucked off my own clothes. When I turned around, Kara was stretched out naked the bed, lounging with a 'come hither' pose. She was certainly fast. Angry or not, she was apparently always ready for a tumble in bed. "This isn't about distracting you with a Good-Morning-fuck..." "It isn't?" "Well, not entirely. Distracting you with sex still sounds like a good idea, but first ... I need you to sit up, and here, let me get down here..." I arranged us so that I was lying down flat on my back with Kara straddling my belly, facing my feet with both of us looking at ourselves in the mirror. With her pussy nestled up against my erect cock, you could imagine that this was her cock. "Is this your idea? Show me what I'd look like as a she-male so I'd forget about it?" "Listen up, smartass. I want you to look at us and remember this image. The next time you see one of those drawings online, remember that they're only trying to draw you right before I fuck you from underneath or behind. Okay?" I had my cock do a little jump for emphasis so that it slapped her belly. She reached down and started gently jacking me off, stroking me to full hardness, all while staring at herself in the mirror. I was getting eager for her to finish the foreplay and start the lovemaking, but I was willing to wait while she finished her examination of our image. Fortunately I didn't have to wait very long. She raised her body up a few inches, angled my cock back a little, and sat down, impaling herself on my hardness. But instead of starting our fuck, she spent another minute just looking at us again in the mirror. "Nope," she said after finishing her second perusal, "this is a much better picture to remember. No offense to your gender, but I'm glad I don't have a penis." "I, too, am glad you don't have a penis," I agreed with a grin. I put my hands on her hips and urged her into motion. She only rode me in a reverse cowgirl position for maybe two minutes before swiveling around so we could continue face-to-face. I wholeheartedly agreed that having breasts to play with and lips to kiss make the experience much better. It wasn't an extended fuck, but we lasted at least 15 or 20 minutes ... well, I lasted 15-20 minutes. She came three or four times before I did. As we lay there recovering together on her bed, our arms around each other, I gave Kara a little peck on her lips and said, "You should apologize to Alpha. You know she did what she did to try to protect you." "Alpha was overreacting and doesn't have any feelings to hurt anyway." "But she knows what feelings are and is pretty good at emulating them. She knows what social niceties need to be observed. And she needs to know that you're still her friend." "Okay, I'll apologize to her later." I popped out my earbud and carefully placed it in Kara's ear. She gave me an exasperated look, but said, "Alpha? Are you there? This is Kara." Pause. "I'm sorry I was mean to you last night and threatened to turn you off. I know you were just trying to protect me." Pause. "Thank you, I'm glad we're still friends too." She pulled out the earbud and handed it back. She stuck out her tongue at me, but I had been halfway expecting it and captured her tongue between my lips in a French kiss. When we broke the kiss, we got out of bed, showered and started the day. ------- Today was a day to get caught up on things at work. The next few days promised to be full. Enjoyably full, that is, not pull-your-hair-out full. Diana and Zatanna had 'returned home' to their storage pods a couple weeks ago. They had planned to stay two months which turned into four. We planned to leave them in their long-term storage pods until the end of March. Their next visit would be much longer. Maybe it wasn't being very nice to Zatanna, but we didn't want them to think they had the timing for their dimensional travel under control yet. Even so, I was definitely going to let them bring a visitor with them soon, since I had worked out a great reason to bring in Barbara Gordon (aka the first Batgirl). (It was a really simple, staring-you-in-the-face plotline that I had finally thought of last year.) Having the two of them temporarily out of the way made it a little easier to bring in our next set of new characters. Well, not 'easier' ... more along the lines of 'less crowded'. Plus I needed them to be gone for a small upcoming 'story' point. The next additions to the household were almost ready to go. We'd even had to build new pods in the basement to accommodate them. We now had four, since Alpha wanted to always have a pod at the house available for healing purposes, just in case. We had also built additional long-term storage pods to bring us up to six total. These other pods were basically half-size underground tubes designed to act as pseudo-wombs for my artificial women. So, knowing that I might not spend a full day at work again for the rest of the week, I did my best to get ahead on as much as possible. I fielded a lot of questions about what testing an Alphadroid at home would actually entail. I spent time talking with five of our researchers, discussing their projects and asking leading questions (as provided by Alpha) to help their research along. And I cleared out my inboxes, both physical and electronic. That evening after dinner, I spend some time down in the basement, looking over the as yet unborn 19-year-old bodies of Blossom, Bubbles and Buttercup, also known as The Powerpuff Girls. (Don't call them the 'Powderpuff' girls. That annoys them.) The Powerpuff Girls from the cartoons are very young girls. They are not even remotely physically sexually attractive to me, not even if I was a pedophile. Their eyes are hugely exaggerated, even beyond the standards of anime. They have no noses or ears. Their arms end in rounded stubs without even the visual implication of hands or fingers. And their heads are as large or larger than their bodies. If I just wanted someone physically attractive from the cartoon, I'd go with Sara Bellum, the Mayor's secretary (and brains). And she was an actual temptation. She's a very intelligent, patient and helpful character who is theoretically very attractive. (Her face is never seen, except for a very brief half-face shot in the anniversary/reunion episode after the series ended.) I wanted to add the girls to the household because I loved their characters and contrasting personalities. They are all fun and interesting. Physically, we do see them briefly as teenagers in a flashback episode ("City of Clipsville", an episode where maybe half of the clips were of new material) where they sped up time to become very, very brainless teenage girls hanging out in a mall. We completely ignored that reference when creating them. I have no interest in generic air-headed mallrat teenage girls. Stupidity, vapidity and brainlessness, whether real or feigned, are probably my biggest turn-offs. Maybe I'm over-generalizing by applying those descriptions to all teenage mallrats, but there must be a reason why the stereotype exists. Supergirl is as close as I've ever come to that personality type, and I made sure she was not stupid, just immature. When we physically designed them, they were grown to look very much like identical triplets, except for their hair and eye pigmentation. Blossom has long red hair. Bubbles has blonde hair which would come down to just below her shoulders except that she keeps it pulled up in pigtails. Buttercup has short black hair which does not reach her shoulders. As for their eyes, the blue eyes for Bubbles and green eyes for Buttercup were not a problem. Blossom's red eyes on the other hand ... they really didn't look natural in our simulations unless we wanted to make her an albino. I eventually decided to give her eyes an amber color. They have identical facial features, including large but not anime-large eyes, small noses and small mouths. They are about 5'6" tall, uniformly thin with B-cup breasts and narrow hips. Oh, and they all have ears, fingers and belly buttons. Given the character's backgrounds as artificially created girls, they should not have belly buttons, so we added a memory of the Professor having a little cosmetic surgery done so that they would fit in a little better at the beach. We used their publicly-known artificial nature to make a couple other changes which I'll cover later. In the cartoons, they are super-strong, super-fast, and super-tough. They can fly, shoot out power beams from their eyes and hands and have a variety of other powers, such as ice breath (Blossom) and the ability to speak with animals (Bubbles). Basically, if the story had a need for them to have a power, they probably had it. The only "super power" that we could reproduce with complete accuracy was Bubbles' ability to speak Spanish and Japanese. As for the rest, well, we just went with our standard package of superpowers -- enhanced strength, super tough skin and bones, and enhanced reflexes. Though they are as tough as the other super women in the household, we dialed down their strength slightly to about 3/4 that of Power Girl and Wonder Woman in order to keep their frames less muscular. We gave them better than normal eyesight and hearing, but not extra-advanced. Choosing the PowerPuff Girls (PPG) as my next set of characters had a few story challenges. (And let me point out that these are the PowerPuff Girls, not the Japanese adaption PowerPuff Girls Z.) One of the biggest challenges was creating a scenario that would make them want to stay. They are very dedicated to protecting their city and know from experience that bad things will happen if they aren't around to save it. They are also very dedicated to their father, Professor Utonium. If we just made them think they'd been shuffled off to a new dimension, they'd do whatever they could to get back home as quickly as possible. I could always have them believe that the City of Townsville had been destroyed, but I pretty much did that with Daria and Jane and still have to occasionally deal with the fallout from their emotionally painful memories. Plus part of me feels guilty for killing off fictional characters. Leaving Townsville behind was fairly easy to deal with by manipulating their backstory. Over the years as they grew up, more heroes moved to Townsville and more villains were permanently defeated/cured/sealed away meaning that while the girls were honored heroes, their absence would no longer mean that some terrible fate would befall their city. Leaving their father behind without killing him off would require a bit more work. We laid the groundwork by having the girls hoping to go off to college soon. Professor Utonium expressed worries that they would not be able to get a proper education as long as they're superheroes. The rest of that particular plot element would need to wait for the girls to "arrive" in the real world. Sexually speaking, all three are still virgins, though none has an intact hymen. They have all had boyfriends, but they've never had a successful date due to monster attacks or supervillain fights. In frustration, they discovered masturbation, including the more satisfying version where your sister helps out. They aren't lesbians or even real bisexuals, but they are open to women helping each other out. Early the next afternoon, we started our plan. We dressed the trio in color-coded outfits. I don't know much about women's fashions, but these were like a cross between a mini-dress and a jumpsuit, with color-matched shoes and white leggings. Blossom was dressed in a mostly pink outfit, Bubbles in a light blue and Buttercup in green. Beta and Elisa drove them out to the cabin and arranged them in a pile at the same spot we had previously used. The cabin door was unlocked, then they drove about half a mile and waited out of sight. The cabin is the only structure within view, but our "Friends of Kara" note on the door would mean nothing to them. If they didn't enter the cabin, we'd turn them off remotely, return them to the pods briefly to wipe that memory and try a different method. Watching the poor quality black-and-white video feed from the cabin, I decided we needed to upgrade the cameras there, and add a few more for that matter. Still, the image was good enough that I could see them wake up. They tried to fly, failed and took up a defensive stance for a minute while they were presumably assessing their situation and talking. They tried running and jumping, only to find that their super-speed and enormous strength were also gone. I tended to feel mildly bad for putting my women through moments like these. Imagine waking up and finding yourself in an unknown location without your powers, no one in sight and no resources at hand. I think Buttercup was the one I saw react by punching a nearby tree. I wondered if she was surprised she didn't demolish it. After a minute, they walked cautiously to the cabin. When they got to within a few feet away, I called the cabin's phone and let it ring. It has no answering machine or voice mail service, so it just kept ringing. On the fifth ring, they cautiously entered the cabin. (In their cartoon they probably would have just flown through the door, destroying it in the process.) I had no camera inside the cabin, so I blindly waited another three rings until it was answered. "Hello?" "Welcome, dimensional travelers. Are you in need of assistance?" "Maybe. Where are we?" "You're on Earth, though I have no idea which Earth it would be in your dimensional nomenclature. I can give a general description if you'd like, but without knowing what world you're coming from, it's hard for me to know what you would want to know." "How do you know we're dimensional travelers?" "I have a security camera at the cabin pointed towards that part of the woods. That particular spot is a common arrival point for some friends of mine from what I call the DC Universe." I heard voices in the background. One was asking what I was saying, while the other was saying that I should be asked about their powers. After a muffled discussion, the first voice, Blossom I guessed, came back on the line. "Do you know what happened to our super powers?" "The physical laws of this universe don't allow most super powers to work. My DC friends are the same way. They can't fly while they're here, they're not as strong as normal and a lot of their unique powers don't work. Magic especially has problems in this world." She relayed this to the others. "Do you know how we can get back home?" "No, or at least I don't know of a quick and easy way. To really answer that question will require a long conversation best held face-to-face. Would you like me to come pick you up? I have a big house and can put you up for the night or longer if you want. I actually host a number of dimensional travelers at my place, and a few more would not be any trouble." I heard a discussion in the background. Their initial reaction was 'no', but they quickly realized how limited their options were since they had no powers, food, money or shelter. "Okay, thank you." "Good. By the way, my name is Frank." "I'm Blossom. My sisters are here too. They're Buttercup and Bubbles." I paused then said, "All right. I'm at least an hour from the cabin, and I'll bring along a couple of my other guests for you to meet. If you're hungry, there are some snacks in the cabinets. Feel free to make yourselves at home." I hung up and rubbed my hands together like a greedy miser about to collect rent. "Alpha, is the edited video ready?" "Yes." "Excellent." I picked up the phone and called Kara, Anna Marie, Eiko and Linda into my office. Linda had gotten bored staying at the house every day doing nothing, so she was now trying to help out at work. She wasn't a researcher, so she was training to be an assistant to everyone else. She was going to be our backup/assistant for many of the non-research jobs here at AARD, such as receptionist, HR, security and shipping/receiving. Everyone was there within a couple minutes, and I showed them the video. "I am about to leave for the cabin to go pick them up. I want to take two of you with me to talk with our new visitors and maybe help them adjust to the situation, because I think they're stranded superheroes without a way home." All four of them immediately volunteered. "There won't be enough room if everyone comes. Since I think they're probably superheroes too, how about if I take Anna Marie and then either Kara or Linda. That way we have representatives from two different superhero worlds." "I'll go," said Kara with definite certitude. "How about Rock, Paper Scissors?" countered Linda. Linda chose Paper. Predictably, Kara chose Rock. I explained that I thought these were the Powerpuff Girls, and we swung by the house to pick up the PPG DVD collection so that Anna and Linda could watch a couple episodes on the way out to the cabin. When we pulled up to the cabin about an hour and fifteen minutes later, the Powerpuffs came out to meet us. The funny thing is that they pretty much posed for us. Buttercup had her arms crossed and a scowl on her face. Blossom watched us defiantly with hands on her hips. Bubbles looked on curiously, one finger held to her chin. I parked and got out, waving and calling out, "Hi!" She spoke quietly, but I heard Bubbles remark, "Ooo, he's cute!" I suppressed a grin as we walked up to them. I turned in a circle with my arms outstretched, saying, "Welcome to my Earth!" Moving up to conversational distance, I said, "Well, when I say 'my earth', I don't mean to imply ownership. It's just that in present company, I'm the only actual native to this world. Hi, I'm Frank. This is Anna Marie and Linda, also known as Rogue of the X-Men and Supergirl of the ... Superman clan? Krypton survivors?" At the mention of Supergirl, the trio lit up, with even Buttercup showing admiration. "Supergirl? Really?" "I've been reading your comics since we were created!" "Did you really beat Darkseid one-on-one?" "How did you beat Brainiac when he..." They swarmed her, and she was obviously loving the attention. This was actually in accordance with the source material. In one episode ("Equal Fights"), the Powerpuffs reference Supergirl, Batgirl and Wonder Woman when asked to name female superheroes, plus their comic was published by DC Comics. So we gave the Powerpuffs memories of DC comics. Anna and I stood back for a moment. "Feel the love," she muttered. "Don't worry about it," I reassured her. "If my guess is right, they're simply familiar with the DC universe but not Marvel. They probably have the same DC comics that we have here. You're at the top of the Marvel pecking order as far as I'm concerned." I squeezed her shoulders with a sideways hug. "Thanks, sugah." I cleared my throat loudly to get their attention. "Ladies, you can pepper Linda with questions later. How about we finish our introductions and start the drive home?" "Oh, right. That was rude of us," apologized Blossom. "I'm Blossom. This is Bubbles and Buttercup." She gestured with her hands. With their hands on their hips and chests thrust out, all three together said, "We're the Powerpuff Girls!" "It's a pleasure to meet you," I said, moving to each of them to shake their hands. Their implants were working well, and I noticed a small shiver when I touched their hands. Bubbles even giggled. "Apparently you're familiar with Supergirl, but Rogue here is a top member of her superhero team from her universe. Sorry, I mean Anna Marie. We don't use codenames much here." "Why not?" asked Buttercup. "There are no superpowers in this universe. No superpowers means no supervillains and no..." "No superheroes," Blossom finished. "Does that mean that Supergirl and Rogue don't have their powers either?" "Nope," replied Anna. "Well, we're still stronger than normal. And tougher. But my mutant powers don't work while I'm here, thank goodness." "That's sad," said Bubbles. "How did you get here?" asked Buttercup. I eventually convinced them to have the long conversations in the car, so we piled in and drove home. On the drive home, we told the story of Kara and myself -- yes, they idolized Power Girl too, but Supergirl was top dog in their book ... until they found out that Wonder Woman was a regular visitor too -- and how they were trapped here except that Zatanna could use magic in her world to automatically return them home after a certain amount of time. We explained about the time difference between universes, about why Rogue was happy to be without her mutant powers, and where we lived. I explained that the only way we might be able to get them home was to wait for Zatanna to come back, then go back to her universe where she might have the power to pull them out of my world and send them home. "Don't you have any inventors here that can build things that could send us home?" complained Buttercup. "I am an inventor, and I have the most powerful computer in the world to help, but the same physical laws that keep your powers from working also prevent super-powered inventions like that from working. Sorry." Blossom calmly and quietly confirmed all of this. "So basically, what you're telling me is that we're stuck here until someone from another universe can send us home? And that's probably going to take months at the minimum?" "Correct." "This world doesn't need superheroes. And the Professor is stuck back in Townsville..." Bubbles sniffled. "And we don't even have a home." "Don't be a crybaby," Buttercup admonished. "It will be okay," I reassured them. "Maybe I can't get you home, but while you're here, I can give you support and shelter. I have a very large house and don't have to worry much about money. As long as you want to, you can stay with me." "Thank you," said Blossom, "but we can't take charity." "Then you can help out at my company. Or maybe go to college and work for me part-time." "We can't afford college. And what kind of job could we get?" countered Buttercup. "All we know how to do is be superheroes." "I can afford college for everyone. That is not a problem. And as for jobs, if nothing else, we can put you in security or put you to work in the warehouse. If you want training for other positions, we can do that too. For now ... look, this isn't something you have to decide right now. You've had an awful lot thrown at you very quickly. Don't make any major decisions immediately. No one's lives are at risk. You have all the time you need." "Thank you, Mr..." "____. Frank _____. But just call me Frank, please." "Thank you, Frank." "Certainly, Miss Blossom. Now we have one more really weird topic to cover. Remember how we told you how we have comic books about Rogue and Supergirl and Wonder Woman in this world?" "Do you mean we have our own comic book in your world?" asked Bubbles excitedly. "Not quite. Well actually, yes, I think there was, but only as a side product to your cartoon." "We have our own cartoon?!?" Bubbles was practically bouncing up and down. "Anna, if you'd do the honors." She reached up and pressed play on the SUV's built-in TV/DVD player. We arrived home only ten minutes later, so they didn't have long to watch, but it was long enough for Bubbles to become entranced and Buttercup to become angry. "I can't believe we have our own cartoon, and it's only about the stuff we did when we were babies!" "I think it's adorable," said Bubbles in a voice pitched as if squealing over babies. "So everyone in this world just thinks we're cartoon characters?" asked Blossom. "Cartoon characters without fingers even?" "Yes, and without your powers to back up the claim, I'd strongly recommend letting the world continue to believe exactly that." "You don't think the public would accept us as who we are?" "I think you'd be either laughed at or locked up in an insane asylum. Now let me welcome you to Casa de Frank." "Wow. Big house," said Buttercup impressed. Most of the household was home at this point, with Kara leading the pack of the curious. Only Daria and Jane were missing, since they had classes most of the afternoon today. (This was intentionally timed on my part.) Fortunately Kasumi's classes today were morning only, so she was available to add a third bed to the largest remaining third floor bedroom. (Well, to arrange for Kara and Eiko to do it.) The Powerpuffs finally got around to telling the story of their arrival, which involved all three of them trying to tell the story their own way. For the sake of simplicity and clarity, let me summarize: They had completed a patrol of Townsville that afternoon to find things calm and happy. With nothing to fight they returned home early and found Mojo Jojo, a villainous super-smart talking chimpanzee waiting for them. In their absence he had taken over their house, tied up the Professor and was apparently building something when they interrupted him by arriving home early. A quick battle ensued involving ray guns and a mechanized suit, but Mojo was defeated. When he was being hauled off by the police, he pulled out a remote and pressed a button, declaring that he had just armed a bomb in their bedroom. They immediately flew to their bedroom but lost consciousness upon passing through their door. They woke up in our world and eventually decided they had walked into a trap set by the evil monkey. Everyone present accepted the girls' story without objection. Of course the superheroes had no problem believing their story. Such things were commonplace to them. My cyborgs and Eiko all knew the truth. Kasumi had never really expressed an opinion on the possible existence of superheroes in other universes, but her memories included magically powered martial artists, ancient artifacts of power, ghosts and demons. Rei likewise had never expressed an opinion, but she rarely did so about anything. Rei tended to accept things as they were presented to her. Out of all of my household, Daria and possibly Jane were the only ones who might be unable to accept cartoon characters coming to life. (Bask in that little bit of irony if you will.) In the hopes that I could convince the Powerpuffs to keep their identities secret, I tried to explain this to the girls, finally resorting to an analogy. "For example, imagine you are from a world with all the colors of the rainbow, and you visit a world where everything is black and white. No colors at all. And while you're there, you're black and white too. So do you think the people of that world would believe you if you told them about colors? Or would they think you were crazy or liars instead?" "I see what you mean," admitted Blossom, "but we can't lie about it." "Then don't. No one is going to ask you if you usually have super powers or if you're super heroes, so just don't raise the subject. If someone comments on your names, just say that you're fans of the cartoon. That's all." "Well..." "Please," I said, taking her hand. If I could convince Blossom, the other two would follow. Looking into her eyes, I pleaded, "It would really help keep things peaceful and civil." Kara backed me up. "Trust me. Daria really has trouble believing things like this. We've gotten to where we just don't discuss it with her, and she leaves the subject alone. Jane ... well, I don't think Jane believes us either, but mostly she just doesn't care." "So why should we care if Daria believes us or not?" asked Buttercup resentfully. "Because she's my friend and I'd rather not tempt her to move out because she thinks the house is full of crazy people who believe in colors ... I mean, super heroes. And that's not even addressing possible problems with members of the public." I'm sure part of the reason they agreed was because I was asking. They tended to have a very strong sense of self and refused to hide what they were. Fortunately they also understood practicality and were coming to understand the reality of their situation. Plus they tended to look at me with dilated pupils and mouths open. When Daria and Jane got home around five, the Powerpuffs were wearing borrowed jeans and t-shirts and were introduced as friends of Kara, Diana and Linda who were staying here for a little while. Daria carefully avoided asking any questions related to comics or super powers. I was wearing Daria down, bit by bit. A couple months before the Powerpuffs' arrival, I had loaned her a copy of Brian Greene's book, The Hidden Reality. He's a physicist who writes books for non-physicists. The Hidden Reality covers topics like what an infinite universe would actually mean and how different theories allow for or even require multiple universes. It's all serious science. While he doesn't cover the topic of cartoon and comic book female superheroes hopping dimensions to visit my house, the implication was clear for Daria. That evening the superhero contingent went off to talk in private, discussing their exploits and this world and our household with the newcomers. Although curious, I never took the time to actually listen to Alpha's recording of that conversation, though I did occasionally hear laughter and giggles from their direction when it was happening live, so to speak. As for me, my scheduled lover for evening was Eiko. On her scheduled nights with me, Eiko tended to invite company to join us about half the time, mainly just the cyborgs, Daria or Jane. She and Daria had become friends over time, though Daria's lack of interest in most social activities made it mostly a conversational friendship. She was friends with Jane as well, but to a lesser extent. Oddly enough, even though she was closer to Daria, Jane was the only person she had slept with when I wasn't involved. About nine o'clock, Eiko and Daria hunted me down and took me upstairs. As we were walking upstairs to my room, Daria nonchalantly asked, "So, do you think Linda's new friends will be staying long?" "I don't know. They may leave tomorrow or they may end up going to college here, in which case they might be moving in for a few years." "Your house is way too big. It makes you think you need to fill it up," she commented. "On the contrary, I built it expecting it to slowly fill up. I don't like living alone." That drew a short bark of laughter from Daria. "No chance of that. You collect stray women like they were baseball cards." "Hey now, in the past three years, we've only averaged about one newcomer to the household each year." She paused to think it over. "One and a third each year." She was correct. Three years ago, Elisa and Jasmine had been born but hadn't moved into the house until the next year. Two years ago, Dorothy had moved in but Daria wouldn't think to include her. (Heck, Dorothy was just background color nowadays and certainly never put herself on the bedtime schedule.) And last year we added Eiko and Linda. On the other hand, four to five years ago we added a total of nine people, including Daria herself. That had been an exciting and fast-paced couple of years for the household. Now a lot of the 'exciting and fast-paced' stuff was focused on AARD. "I was rounding down," I explained. I tried to move the conversation on to more immediate topics. "I would like to try something a bit different tonight. I want us all to try to focus on our activities with senses other than sight." I closed the bedroom door behind us and produced three blindfolds. Well, more sleeping masks than blindfolds, but the purpose was the same. "All the better not to see you, my dear," said Daria with an accusing monotone. I knew her well enough to understand her insecurity-driven meaning. She still viewed herself as an ugly duckling in a house full of womanly swans. Okay, I can understand how living in the same house as comic book fantasy women could attack the confidence of a young woman who grew up knowing that at her very best, she could only look average. Unlike her remembered years of high school, she could now look very attractive with only a little effort. "Daria, you are beautiful, and I'm not going to have this discussion again tonight." "Yes, Daria," said Eiko moving to embrace Daria from behind. "We've talked about this before too. Both your body and brain are beautiful." Daria suddenly laughed and tried to squirm away as Eiko licked the inside of her ear, apparently trying to make out with her brain. It was an odd but welcome sound from a woman who almost never laughs. I made a mental note to compliment Eiko on her actions. "I want tonight to be an exercise in experiencing your lovers in ways you normally don't. Now strip down to your undies first. I don't want to roll over in bed on top of someone's belt buckle because we didn't notice it blindfolded." We stripped, I put my earbud in its charger, handed out the blindfolds and turned off the lights. I noted the locations of the ladies in the room and slipped my blindfold on. Arms out and working my way towards them, I heard a muffled snort of laughter. "Hey now, blindfolds on, young ladies." "Come here, Eiko," said Daria. "If he can find us, then he can put our blindfolds on." Her voice definitely came from a different spot in the room than I remembered. I paused. I could always remove my blindfold until the others had complied or directly order Eiko to put on her blindfold, but a little blind- man's bluff might be fun. As long as I remained motionless, I could hear them. I was pretty sure they were together, but when I started moving, so did they. Neither Daria nor Eiko were the giggling, playful type, but all the same I was pretty sure that they were having fun. Finally I stumbled across a corner of my bed. Feeling around for a minute to determine my location, I made a mental map of the room. Listening, I was able to hear them off on the other side of the bed. I rounded the bed slowly. When they started moving to go past me, I jumped out a bit, arms wide to catch them. They backed up until I had them cornered with the wall on two sides and the bed on the other. Hearing a telltale rustle of sheets, I launched myself onto my bed and was able to catch a feminine ankle. "Consider yourself caught," I crowed with triumph. "Now put on your blindfold and let's capture whoever is left." "Yes, sir," replied Eiko, my captive. I leaned down and kissed the captured foot. Hearing some rustling, I asked, "Blindfold on?" "Yes." "Good. Hand in hand now, we're going to spread out our arms, track Daria down and capture her. After we get off the bed." We stood up with linked hands and waited quietly long enough to listen for Daria's breathing. It took a couple minutes, but we eventually chased her back onto the bed where Eiko was able to catch her wrist. "All right, Daria. You have been captured. Submit to the blindfold." "Okay, it's on." "Daria," I said with a warning tone. "I'm trusting your honesty on this. Is your blindfold on?" Daria is not what I would call an innately truthful person (though I would consider her to be innately honest, if you can see the difference). She sighed and I felt her move. "Fine, now it's on." "Excellent," I said as I pulled her to me. Making love while blindfolded was an interesting experience. There is some confusion and clumsiness, especially early on. Even relatively simple tasks, like removing panties or bras, have to be done carefully for fear that you might ram an elbow or knee into someone else nearby. Kissing has to approached slowly for fear of concussions. You start to rely more on your sense of touch than anything else. We slowly found ways to make it all more erotic and interesting than clumsy. Daria and I worked together to strip Eiko, making what was clumsy with Daria and myself into erotic foreplay with Eiko. Instead of grasping for Daria's head to initiate a kiss, I started with whatever body part I was touching, for example her knee, and worked my way up her leg, belly, breasts and neck to reach her lips. Blind sex also slowed us down. We took our time, both being more careful of each other and as a result, enjoying ourselves more than usual. Daria and Eiko are both very multi-orgasmic during vaginal sex, so that night's romp was very enthusiastically received by all parties. Once we got down to business, I started out by focusing on Eiko. We arranged ourselves in the classic missionary position, with Daria lying alongside Eiko, kissing her and playing with her breasts while I fucked her. After ... y'know it seemed a lot harder to estimate time while blindfolded ... after what seemed like ten minutes and probably three or four orgasms from Eiko, I moved over to Daria. She wrapped her lower body around my hips as I pumped into her, with Eiko slowly sucking on her breasts for what seemed like another ten minutes and four or five orgasms. I moved Daria on top of Eiko and started fucking again, swapping between cunts every minute or so. Though I couldn't see it at the time, the ladies were embracing and licking and making out intensely as I worked. I came inside Eiko but only paused for a minute before continuing. Normally I would be swapping positions around at this point, but the blind mechanics of it seemed a bit more of an interruption than I wanted. The women didn't seem to object, so we just kept at it. I'm not really sure, but it felt like we fucked for at least another thirty minutes before I came a second time. I have no clue how many times Daria and Eiko came, but when we finished, we all just rolled side-by-side and lay panting on the bed. I might have let it go at that for the night, but a couple minutes later I felt a mouth on my cock, cleaning me up and drawing me to hardness again. This time I was a passive receiver of a fuck. While Eiko rode my erection, Daria kissed me and caressed my chest. After a few minutes, Eiko dismounted and let Daria ride me to orgasm a few times. They swapped back and forth a couple times until they became too tired to bounce. Eiko summoned enough energy to finish me off with a deep throat, which was a nice finish to the evening. We finally took off our blindfolds, found a less sweaty area of the bed, and lay back, waiting for sleep to come. "I have to admit," said Daria quietly, "that was more intense than usual." "Although I don't have your experience, meaning either of you, that really was a lot of fun," added Eiko. "Ditto," I added. "Not sure I'd want to do that very often, but I'd be up for that every once in a while. For now ... good night, my lovelies." That night around 2 am, we returned the Powerpuffs to the pods in order to add a memory. Well, when I say 'we' I mean Beta, Gamma and Delta. And when I say 'memory' I mean 'dream.' The shared dream sequence we designed was going to be a very vivid and memorable experience for all of them. They dreamed they were back home in their living room with Professor Utonium, who was wearing a very strange piece of metal headgear. "Girls! Is that really you? Are you all right?" "Professor!" they cried in unison and swarmed him for a group hug. "Professor, what happened?" asked Blossom. "Yeah, we went in through our door and suddenly we were in another universe!" exclaimed Buttercup. "And we don't know how to get home!" wailed Bubbles, who paused her wails long enough to add, "but there is a really cute guy here who took us in." "Girls, it was Mojo Jojo. Since he's never been able to defeat you, he built a dimensional transporter into your bedroom door. It sent you off to some random dimension, then blew itself up. I don't know how I'm going to get you home. I adapted the dream helmet you took from ... HIM ... so that I could communicate with you in your dreams. It's taking a lot of power to run, so I don't know how long it will last. Why don't you tell me about this new dimension you're in?" Over the next ten minutes, they told him everything about their current situation. He stroked his chin and looked very thoughtful. "Girls, hear me out for a minute. It may be a long time before I can figure out a way to bring you home, but your situation may be a blessing in disguise. As we discussed a few times, sending you to college in our world won't work very well because your careers as superheroes will just keep getting in the way, but if you have the opportunity to go to college somewhere where there are no superheroes or monsters or superpowers, then you can get a proper education without all those interruptions. Now this Frank fellow..." "Professor," admonished Blossom, "we can't take his money like that." "Well, maybe I can figure out some way to pay him back. Or you said he was willing to give you jobs?" "Yeah, he owns some kind of company that invents stuff," said Buttercup. "Well there we go! I'll figure out some way to send him some of my ideas for inventions, and he'll pay for you to go to college." "But Professor, that would take years. We don't want to be away from you for that long," sniffled Bubbles. "No visits home or anything." "Maybe I can come up with a transporter that works between dimensions or maybe you can work something out with that magic lady that you told me about. The point is that this sounds like the perfect opportunity for all of you to get a good education." They had some additional discussions, but that was the upshot of their conversation. The Professor's dream machine started running out of power and he promised to contact them again via the dream machine as soon as he could, but that it might take a few weeks to build up enough energy to use again. From their perspective, they all woke up simultaneously at 4:12 am from their shared dream experience. Alpha recorded their conversation and played it back for me, but there wasn't anything surprising about it. They confirmed that they all had the same dream and agreed that it really was the Professor talking to them. Though reluctant, they agreed to abide by his wishes. The next morning (before I listened to that nighttime conversation), they approached me and told me how their father had contacted them via a dream machine. In accordance with his wishes, they would like to go to college in this world if I could arrange it. He would pay me back by passing along invention ideas, but in the meantime, they would be willing to go to work to earn their keep. I spent a couple hours with them going over their options. We took photos for their IDs and went over name possibilities. I explained that the official names on their fake IDs should be more normal to avoid raising suspicion. Blossom became Belle Underton. Bubbles became Britney Underton. And Buttercup became Bobbi Underton. Their nicknames would stay the same, and they could even explain that the nicknames were chosen because they were fans of the old cartoon series. I enlisted Anna Marie for a discussion on how to handle questions from the uninitiated. With the white streak in her hair, she regularly drew curious looks from strangers and occasional questions from children. [For example: "Are you Rogue?" "Yes, I am. Or at least I dressed up like Rogue last weekend for a party. Do you like my hair?" Or "I have her name, why not have her hair too?"] If the Powerpuffs kept their names as nicknames, they too might raise a few questions, but as Anna Marie had discovered, no adults had ever even considered the possibility that she was the real Rogue, so they should likewise be safe from discovery. At worst, people might think the girls took cartoons much too seriously. I also confirmed that they needed driving lessons. Like many flying superheroes, they never had a need to learn to drive cars. (Kara and Anna Marie were the only 'flying' women we had created with driving skills already included. Kara because she remembered living in my world for months at a time. Anna Marie because her backstory included driving around like a normal person on occasion.) As our best driver, Rei was enlisted to help out there. Two side notes: It took half an hour to convince Blossom to accept the idea of using a fake ID. She understood the need for it, but its illegality was a major stumbling block. I had to enlist Supergirl and Power Girl to convince her that it was acceptable, a minor necessary crime given their situation. Second, the idea of getting a fake ID noticeably excited Buttercup, who was commonly excited by 'bad boys' in the cartoons despite being pretty law- abiding herself. They had their choice of a couple nearby colleges, but I had previous experience dealing with TCU and recommended that they look at it first. Regardless of what they chose, they would need to wait for Fall to enroll. As for working at AARD, I'd give them a tour and we'd see where they might fit initially. Throughout this entire process, I made as much eye contact as possible and touched them as often as possible. Before we took the ID photos, I even spent a few minutes brushing their hair out. None of them objected to my touch in the slightest, and I was pleased to note some heavy breathing by the time we finished. (Buttercup was even sweating a bit when I finished with her hair.) About 10am, the girls dressed in their borrowed outfits, and we went shopping. I did my old trick of asking them to model the clothes I was buying, and it worked especially well this time. When we got to Victoria's Secret for sleepwear and underwear, they started competing to see who would model the most daring and revealing outfits for me. I think Bubbles won when she came out in a matching blue bra/panties set that was very sheer, very lacy and very, very small. Even in the dim fluorescent lighting of the store, her nipples and vaginal swelling were very easily seen, and she was obviously very aroused. I was getting used to occasionally spending a lot of money on women's clothes, but that day was the biggest single-day clothing bill I had experienced so far at almost $31,000 total. (I even got a call from the credit card company to ensure my wallet hadn't been stolen.) I could have gotten away with just spending $500 or $1000 per woman at a low-end department store, but buying them nice starting wardrobes was part of the seduction routine by now. Mid-afternoon we went by AARD, and I had fun taking them on a tour of the facility. They were actually qualified to be lab assistants, given their "experiences" helping out their father with his work over the years. (Alpha had given them much more realistic lab memories than the generic chemistry setup usually seen in the cartoons.) Though they were impressed by the size of the company and number of labs, they weren't very impressed by the actual projects. Mojo Jojo and their own cartoon father had created much more impressive inventions than we. They were able to demonstrate basic knowledge and competence with some of the lab equipment, so they knew I was willing to hire them as assistants. That evening, they spent a lot more time socializing with the other women, as opposed to the previous night of fan-girl questions and stories. Before going to bed, they spent some time putting away their new wardrobes and talking. Alpha recorded this part of their conversation for me. "Oh, that's such a cute outfit. I really should have picked one out for me in blue. (pause) So, have you talked with the others about Frank?" asked Bubbles. "A bit. He's been really helpful and nice to all the others, not just us." "That's not what I meant, Blossom." "Yeah, she meant that he's sleeping with every woman in the house. Except us," corrected Buttercup. "That's not fair," complained Bubbles. "What, you think he should just pick one woman? That's certainly more traditional, but not every person, guy or girl, settles for just one, you know." "Blossom, I think what she meant was that she wants to sleep with him too. Look, she's blushing!" "I am not!" "Yes, you are!" "Stop it! Well, so what if I am. And maybe I just happen to think that he might have the experience to make a girl feel really good in bed." Blossom considered this. "You have a point. More specifically, he has experience sleeping with super-powered women. Do you think ... does he do it with more than one at a time?" "Definitely," Buttercup confirmed. "Daria and Jane definitely sleep together with him. Probably some of the others too, but I'm not sure." "I suppose we could quietly ask around," suggested Blossom. "I kinda get the impression that maybe Power Girl's in charge, so maybe we could ask her?" "Yeah, Power Girl is awesome. She's gotta be the strongest one here," enthused Buttercup. "She sure has the biggest boobies I've seen in a long time," giggled Bubbles. "Bubbles, stop feeling yourself up," ordered Blossom. "Yeah, if you're that horny, I'll finger you once we get all this stuff put away," offered Buttercup. "I wasn't feeling myself up. I was just imagining what it would be like to have breasts that big." "I imagine it'd be something like this," said Buttercup. She mimed having huge breasts, whirled her arms around, then toppled over face-first. The girls laughed. "Yeah," agreed Blossom giggling. "That's why Power Girl's so strong. She has to be able to walk around holding those things up." "Do you think Wonder Woman's breasts are that big?" mused Buttercup from the floor. "I am so excited that we're going to get to meet her!" said Blossom. "Yeah, do you think she sleeps with Frank too?" asked Bubbles. "Man, Frank's gotta be the luckiest guy in the world," commented Buttercup. Actually, I couldn't disagree with the sentiment myself. "Or the best lover in the world," sighed Bubbles. "I wonder if maybe it's just karma." The others looked at Blossom quizzically, so she explained. "Look, he takes in people who don't have anywhere else to go. Provides shelter, feeds them and like that. He runs a company that gives away some inventions or makes sure they don't cost too much. As soon as we showed up, he was ready to give us a place to live, jobs and pay for our college educations. A guy that does all that ... maybe the universe just has to pay him back for being so nice." "And he bought us lots of really pretty clothes," said Bubbles happily. "And he's not afraid to break the rules," said Buttercup with a rough, hungry voice. "How sweet are those fake IDs he made for us!" "Fake identities are just an unfortunate necessity of our situation," explained Blossom uncomfortably. Bubbles was a little lost in her own thoughts and said, "Maybe we could actually all sleep with him together." "Bubbles!" admonished Blossom. "Yeah, that could be neat," said Buttercup enthusiastically. "Buttercup! Even if he might be interested, we shouldn't try to ... approach him..." "Seduce him," interjected Bubbles. " ... until we know we're not going to upset anyone else," finished Blossom. "You want him too," accused Buttercup. "Well, yes ... but I'm not going to pursue him until I know that he's not already taken." Buttercup, still on the floor from her Power Girl breast joke, rolled over until she could see up Blossom's dress. "Aw, little Blossom's gotten herself all horny talking about sexy karma men. Here, let me help you with that." She reached up under Blossom's dress, causing Blossom to jump back onto one of the beds. Bubbles tackled Blossom from behind and held her while Buttercup climbed up on the bed, put her hand back under Blossom's dress and started fingering her. Blossom resisted for a moment, then collapsed and was coming in less than a minute. "Thanks, girls. I guess I really needed that." "No sweat." "Yeah, that's what sisters are for," agreed Bubbles. "Now com'ere Buttercup. I bet you need to get off as much as I do." "Sounds good," said Buttercup, who had been wiping off her fingers with tissues. They pulled up their dresses and sat side-by-side with legs spread, eyes closed, their hands inside their sister's panties. As with Blossom, they only took a minute or so to bring each other off. The next morning, they cornered Kara and asked straight out about my availability. Well, Blossom hemmed and hawed until Buttercup asked straight out. Kara muttered something about "every single woman" and "should just make a video to cover this" and proceeded to explain to them about the ladies' household calendar. Basically I let the women decide who accompanies me to bed on any given night, though I reserve the right to override the calendar any time I want to. Whoever is on the calendar for that night can decide if they want to invite anyone else. If someone wants a full date night, that has to be okayed with me in advance. I get one day scheduled each week with no sex so I can recover my stamina, usually but not always on Monday. The ladies of the household are generally nicely accommodating when it comes to swapping nights or making room for newcomers. There are very few official rules, but no one gets to sign up for more than one night a week and Jane is the keeper of the calendar. Oh, and unless it's a reservation for a specific event, Jane tends to "lose track" of reservations made more than a month in advance. With sixteen women now in the household, currently reduced to fourteen until Diana and Zatanna return, they could reasonably expect one night every two to three weeks. Left unspoken was the idea that if they each invited their sisters to accompany them, they could probably get at least one night every week. Oh, and officially I don't know anything about the calendar, but it's an open secret that if I do know probably about the calendar, I never sneak looks at it. None of this addressed daytime fucks. If they could seduce me at work or attract my attention in the morning or afternoon, none of these rules or limitations affected any of that. And that was all of the conversation that Alpha played back for me. Of course I could order her to play it all for me, but she knows that I like to be surprised about these things. At the same time, I was enjoying tracking the Powerpuffs' progress in their pursuit of me. That afternoon while I introduced them to our researchers at work as possible lab assistants, they started actively flirting with me though not while we were around other people for which I was thankful. Bubbles was the most obvious flirt, adjusting her neckline lower when she thought I wasn't watching, touching my shoulder and arm to look at whatever I was showing them and moving in very close to whisper jokes about her sisters into my ears. She was also careful to thank me multiple times for her new clothes and offered to model everything for me again whenever I wanted, including her lingerie. I thought she was going a bit too far when she pulled her dress down far enough to show me which bra she was wearing. Fortunately Blossom upbraided her before I had to lecture her about office decorum. Buttercup, being much more of a tomboy than the others, was a bit clumsy with her attempts. She sometimes seemed to resent the fact that she was attracted to me, but was not going to lose me in some competition with her sisters. She asked about what sports I liked to watch and/or play. I explained that I usually didn't have enough free time to watch or play regularly, but I gave her a brief rundown of sports teams in Texas. As for playing sports, I have a pool, a nice volleyball set for the back yard, and an exercise room at home with lots of equipment. She made me promise to show her the equipment, and swatted me on the butt when I agreed. Actually, it wasn't so much a swat as a combination swat/cop-a-feel. Blossom was more experienced with boys than Buttercup but not as flirty as Bubbles. She came after me through my work, complimenting my business acumen and philanthropy. She asked a number of work-related questions and suggested other equipment we might be able to use. (That much of the equipment she suggested didn't exist in the real world didn't detract from her helpful attitude.) When I told her about our spinal repair technology as part of our list of the company's most promising technology, she gave me a big hug, a hug where she made sure to press her breasts with their very hard nipples into my chest and arm for a full thirty seconds while her side rubbed up against my semi-hard penis. One thing these conversations made me realize was that we had forgotten to give the girls a tour of the house. They probably thought that floors two and three were all bedrooms. FYI, the second floor has one master bedroom, two single bedrooms, three double bedrooms, two library rooms and one exercise room (plus six bathrooms). The third floor has four single bedrooms, four double bedrooms and my comic book library (plus another six bathrooms). Some of the single bedrooms could be easily changed into doubles, but that is how we were currently set up. Correction, one third floor double bedroom had just been changed into a triple. We were now down to two empty doubles (one each on the second and third floors) and one empty single on the third floor. I'm not counting the currently empty second floor bedroom normally occupied by Diana and Zatanna. So later that afternoon when we returned home, I gave them a tour of the premises. Blossom loved our library. Buttercup loved the exercise room. Bubbles ... well, none of the rooms on the tour specifically appealed to her, but she did grab my collection of Powerpuff Girl comics to peruse. We continued to work our way through the PPG DVD collection that evening, watching another two hours of episodes. The other superheroines were fascinated by the idea of watching the adventures of fully-grown superheroes back when they were kindergarten students. The closest thing anyone in the household could compare it to was Anna Marie's vague recollections of Power Pack. That evening, Anna Marie accompanied me to bed. At her request, we had a nice long, drawn out bubble bath fuck. We played with and aroused each other while the dual faucets filled my jacuzzi-style bath. Once the bubbles had been added, we slid into the water and she sat on my cock facing me. We spent nearly an hour in the bathtub, just enjoying the sensations, playing with each other, talking and kissing. I came after about forty minutes of slow, relaxing fucking, topped off with five minutes of furious splashing leading up to our climax. She carefully washed me off, restored my erection and returned it to the warmth of her pussy. When we were finally ready to get out, we dried off and she carried me to bed where we curled up in a side-by-side spoon. I made love to her from behind, cupping her breasts and lightly pinching her nipples. It was another twenty minutes before I came again. I'm not certain but Anna Marie may have only come twice, same as me. However the climaxes weren't her aim tonight. Her achieved goal was extended, intimate contact and slow, drawn out, long and luxurious lovemaking. If some readers think that this was not an ideal encounter for guys, remember that variety is the spice of life. I had really come to appreciate the need for a wide range of changing sexual experiences. A series of quick 'wham, bam, thank you, mam' fucks can get repetitive and boring very quickly. I didn't see much further development in the Powerpuff seduction activities until that weekend. Saturday had been declared a "game day" by Anna Marie, Kara and Rei (of all people), and they had been working on the plans for a few weeks. It wasn't warm enough for outdoor games ... well, okay, it was, but we'd have to avoid any revealing clothing which is half the fun of outdoor games. So we had a variety of indoor games lined up, including poker, billiards, darts, ping pong, Twister and various console games. We had even put together some prize packages for different competitions such as department store gift cards, a coupon for a free portrait painted by Jane, a coupon for a date night with me payable on demand and even a day of slave service with the slave chosen by lottery from the other people who played in that game's competition (Darts in that particular case). Some of the household women can be very competitive, as my occasional repair bills have shown over the past few years. I don't even want to think about how bad it might have gotten if I didn't have the cyborgs intentionally introduce random errors into their gameplay. It was like a Fair in miniature. I found myself wishing I had thought to buy some Kewpie dolls, but then I was only a participant, not the organizer. I declined to play in the darts tournament, knowing that I didn't have even a remote prayer of winning. Then I was informed by the organizers that I was required to participate in every tournament that day. Since it was all in fun, I gave in and tried my best. With Darts, the tournament had been simplified to let people play their rounds whenever they were available. You had three rounds of three dart throws each. Your best round was put up on the board, and the highest score of the day won. I got lucky one round and hit the triple ring for 19, giving me a total score for that round of 88. Not bad at all, considering my lack of skill. Of course I failed to even reach the top five, but I was still proud of myself. Linda came in first, winning a day's slavery from Jasmine (who had come in third herself). As a sidenote, I told Jasmine to dress up as her Disney character for the day when she paid off that debt. Linda actually cashed in that coupon on a day when she had reserved me for the night, meaning I got to share in Jasmine's slavery for a few hours. Twister was one of the more popular game choices, given its teasing nature and sometimes erotic consequences. There was no tournament structure for it and no official prize for winning a round, but it was generally expected that the winner could choose one of the losers to provide some oral sex if they felt the urge. Since everyone wanted me to play in their round of Twister, I agreed to a schedule where I played three rounds every couple of hours, thus giving me time to play poker and pool and such. Late in the afternoon came the rounds of Twister where I played against all three Powerpuffs. Normally I'm limber enough and do decently at the game. Since I'm also over half a foot taller than the girls, I figured I'd do well this time too. Maybe I should point out that we're a bit loose with the rules. Four players at most instead of three. We only count a loss if someone collapses or just can't maintain their position. Briefly removing a hand or foot is not a loss. It was fun, but they were obviously working together against me. Highlights of the game included Bubbles putting her left hand on red by putting her arm between my legs and rubbing up against my crotch. And there was the time when Blossom crawled under me so that our faces were virtually kissing ... then before we left that position, she stole a quick kiss. And when Buttercup did an unnecessary vertical split in front of me so that her panty-covered crotch was less than a foot away from my face. And when Bubbles straddled my right leg and rubbed her crotch slowly against my thigh. It wasn't really so different from some of the other games of Twister that I've played, but it was pretty bold for the Powerpuffs, given that none of them had slept with me yet. Eventually Buttercup won two of the three rounds, and she came over to whisper in my ear. "Is it true that I can make you eat me out because I won?" I had actually already eaten two pussies this afternoon from losing games of Twister. "We have no official, binding rules on the subject, but yes, it is a tradition. And it's entirely up to you." She blushed a little then whispered, "Meet me in the bathroom in five minutes." I whispered back, "I have a better idea." I took her hand and openly led her out of the game area, hearing a few whoops as we went. She was still blushing, but now had a cross look on her face. "I didn't want to make a big scene out of it." "We didn't. The only reason any else paid attention at all was because you were trying to be secretive about it. Now if you want to do this privately, follow me." Not that I gave her a choice, as I held onto her hand and pulled her upstairs to my bedroom. I closed the door behind us, pulled her to me and gave her a deep, passionate kiss. Then I broke off and knelt in front of the bed. "What are you doing?" "You won. You claimed my mouth as your reward. I am waiting at your pleasure." Maybe this was a bit much to put on a newbie, but I wanted to see if she was up to the challenge. "So that's it? I just pull my pants down, and you'll lick me out?" she said in an uncharacteristically wavering voice. I looked back at her and realized I had misjudged her situation. She looked like she was ready to bolt in terror, with only her raging libido and innate stubbornness keeping her in place. It really didn't take much thinking at all to realize what the problem was. She may be the toughest and most independent of the trio, but for her entire remembered life, she had relied on her sisters. Whether she wanted them with her or not, they had always been together. Now she was separated from her emotional supports and a strange man was offering her oral sex, skipping all preliminaries by doing so. She was well beyond her comfort zone, with no experience to guide her in this situation. Though I'm sure she would deny it, she was afraid, and probably didn't even know what precisely she was afraid of. I had misjudged the situation, but not irreparably. I stood up and gave her a warm smile. Holding out a hand to her, I said, "I'm sorry. This is entirely up to you. Come here, beautiful." She took a couple hesitant steps towards me until she was within reach of my hand. Taking it, I led her to the bed and sat down, pulling her onto my lap. I spent a couple minutes just kissing her and holding her there. "Buttercup, I don't want to make you do anything you don't want to do. If you'd like, we can stop now, go downstairs and tell everyone that I ate you out or not, your choice. Or we can invite your sisters to join us, if you'd like." She perked up a little at the suggestion, but them put a resolute and independent scowl on her face. "No, that's okay." "Are they going to feel left out or be worried about you?" "Well ... they might. I suppose ... I mean, as long as you're okay with it..." I touched a finger to my ear in a pointless gesture solely for her benefit, bent my head slightly and said, "Would you please ask Blossom and Bubbles to come up to my room? Thank you." I went back to kissing Buttercup, this time focusing on her ears down to her neck. About a minute later, there was a knock on the door. "Come in!" I called. Buttercup's sisters slowly entered the room. "Is everything okay?" asked Blossom, with some caution in her voice. "Everything's fine," Buttercup reassured her. "We just ... I just wanted..." She glanced at me helplessly. "I suddenly realized that I had dragged Buttercup away from you rather abruptly with less than moral intentions. To avoid causing any worry on your part, Buttercup agreed to invite you up to witness her receiving her prize. If you're uncomfortable, you don't have to stay." "Are you really going to lick her out?" asked a wide-eyed Bubbles. "That's up to Buttercup." Looking at Buttercup, her situation had changed dramatically. Her sisters were back in view, though she'd be unlikely to admit to being happy about their presence. Also the oral sex was now more like a challenge or dare, and Buttercup would never flinch from a challenge in front of her sisters. "Of course I want you to eat me out! Uhhh ... go ahead." The last bit was said much less forcefully than the first. I shifted her off my lap and kissed my way down her clothed torso. Her nipples were stiff, but so was the rest of her body. She felt as rigid as a mannequin version of herself. I knew better than to ask her if she wanted to wait, but I needed to relax her somehow. I pulled up her shirt slightly and licked out her belly button, supplementing my lick with a light, tickling touch on both sides of her belly. The unexpected move on my part had the desired effect and she laughed and squirmed. "Stop that!" "Just trying to loosen you up." "I'm loose enough. Now get to work!" She was a bit less tense, and I unzipped her skirt and pulled it down, kissing my way down her legs as I went. I moved back up and spent a minute licking her through her green panties. When I thought she had relaxed a bit more, I hooked my fingers in the waistband and pulled them off. For me, pubic hair is both a matter of practicality and aesthetics. Practically speaking, hair on the vaginal lips tends to come off and get stuck in your mouth during oral sex, but the presence of pubic hair denotes sexual maturity so a balance is usually best. A nice little triangular patch or a rectangular 'landing strip' are attractive decorations for the vagina. For most superheroines, trimmed pubic hair is necessary to avoid showing unseemly tufts peeking out of their swimsuit-like costumes. The Powerpuffs on the other hand were completely hairless below their necks. Buttercup's vaginal area had skin as smooth as a baby and as bald as Yule Brenner. This was rare among my women, so I took a moment to enjoy it, licking all around her pubis. I'll also take just a moment here to admit my own hypocrisy on the subject. While I want my women to have bare pubic lips, I myself don't shave my genitalia. I keep the fuzz trimmed down and shave off just enough around the edges to avoid bathing suit problems, but that's it. Well, in the past I have been shaved twice during sex games, but I don't keep it shaved. Finally I turned my attention to her actual vagina. It was a perfect clamshell style, the outer lips bulging out slightly and curving back in together with no inner lips protruding at all. Despite the closed image presented to me, fluids were obviously leaking out of her slit. I pulled it open slightly and set my tongue to work. Her fluids tasted bland, as I expected. She would slowly gain flavor over the next week or two. Her hands grabbed onto the back of my head and pushed me into her crotch. Though I was not in danger of suffocation, it was uncomfortable. I stopped licking and tapped her hands to get her attention. She released me and looked a little worried. I gave her a friendly smile and said, "Maybe your sisters could hold your hands?" They did so, and I added, "Now I'd like you to spread your legs a little more if you can ... that's good. Thank you." Normally I'd have her prop her legs on my shoulders, but I was slightly worried that she might not have full control of her reactions. I returned to my duties. After a brief exploration of her vaginal canal by my tongue, I moved my oral focus to her emerging clit and left her vagina to my fingers. With one, then two fingers in her canal, my tongue and lips played with her little clit. It was a pretty small clitoris, maybe a third the size of the tip of my pinky finger or smaller. But small as it was, it was very sensitive. It only took a couple minutes for her to orgasm, her body tensing up with an accompanying verbal, "Aaaaahhhhh". I kept working at her for another minute and was rewarded with a second come. She certainly seemed to be on a hair trigger. I removed my fingers and slowed my licking until I was making slow swipes of her entire vagina with the flattest part of my tongue. Finally I sat back and looked up at her. "Wow. That was awesome," was her dazed reply. "Do me! Do me!" squealed Bubbles, who released Buttercup's hand and yanked off her own skirt and panties. "Bubbles," Blossom admonished. "He only ate out Buttercup because she won the game." "Only?" I protested. "I enjoy giving beautiful women orgasms, and I would be more than happy to do the same for each of you, if you want me to." Bubbles, moving quickly, had put herself between Blossom and Buttercup, spread her legs and grabbed onto her sisters' hands while we had been speaking. "See, Blossom. He wants to. Now please eat my pussy." "Well, since you said 'please'." I scooted over a bit and took Bubbles right ankle in my hands, pulling off her shoe and sock. My mouth still wet from her sister's juices, I started kissing and licking my way from her toes up her leg. Skipping her vagina for now, I worked my way down her other leg until I reached her big toe, which I sucked into my mouth. Stealing a glance up at her face, I saw Bubbles eyes clenched shut as she focused on the sensations. Finally I worked my way back to her crotch and did my best to repeat my performance. Her vagina and pubic area were identical to Buttercup's, but I would notice in the coming weeks that she would develop different tasting juices than her sisters. Maybe because she was a vegetarian? (The ability to speak to animals pretty much requires any softhearted girl give up meat.) Maybe it was the lack of foreplay, but Bubbles took five minutes before she orgasmed, and when she came, her amazingly loud squeal announced it to the world for miles around. (Or at least that's what it felt like at the time.) I spent another minute slowing my activity, carrying her down from her orgasmic high. "Oh, that's so much better than..." "Bubbles!" said both of her sisters in unison, cutting of whatever it was she was going to say. "Sorry." "She's right, though. That was really awesome. Blossom, you gotta try it," Buttercup agreed. "I don't know..." said Blossom hesitantly. "I'm not going to do anything to Blossom unless she wants me to." "She wants you too, right Blossom?" encouraged Bubbles. "Of course she does." Ah, how wonderful is peer pressure. At the same time, I couldn't risk leaving any kind of negative impression on her (or any of my women) for our first encounter. When Bubbles and Buttercup started trying to forcibly strip off Blossom's skirt and panties, I spoke up. "Stop, you two. I'm not going to do anything with Blossom unless she wants me to. And asks me to." "Come on, Blossom. Don't be such a wuss. You'll like it," encouraged Buttercup. "Yeah, come on!" agreed Bubbles. "I'm sure I would, I just ... it just doesn't feel right to do it like this." "A fair criticism. Now Blossom, just because I won't do anything with you that you don't want, that doesn't mean that I don't want to do whatever you might want to do." I paused for a second to replay that sentence in my memory to make sure it made sense. "So what would you like to do, when and how?" "I ... I don't know. I just never imagined my first time would be like this, y'know?" "I understand. I would never want my first time with any of you to be this casual. I think we just have different definitions of what a 'first time' is. While this was a wonderful sexual encounter, I don't consider anything we've done here to be real sex." "Duh," said Bubbles sarcastically. "We were just having fun, and we never even got to see his wiener." "But Blossom doesn't see it that way," I said, standing up for her, "and for this, her opinion is the only one that matters." This scenario was one of the reasons I was hesitant to create the Powerpuffs in the first place: their divergent personalities. As close-knit sisters, they would resist being separated, but they also had greatly varied likes. For example, let's consider ... ooohhhh ... I don't know ... how about romance and sex. A traditionally romantic approach with dinner and flowers would probably work well with Blossom and Bubbles but not Buttercup. An athletic challenge (like Twister, though an outdoor sport would work much better) would work well with Buttercup and maybe Blossom but not Bubbles. A straight-out sexual encounter would work well with Bubbles but not Blossom or Buttercup, unless it included an appropriate lead-in. Blossom could be most easily seduced by intelligent conversation coupled with flowers and dinner, maybe a trip to a museum. She was a great enforcer of rules and doer of good deeds. Bubbles could most easily be seduced by cute gifts and romantic small talk, maybe with a trip to a petting zoo. She was the most boy-hungry of the trio and a lover of all things cute and cuddly. Buttercup could be seduced most readily with athletic prowess and a little rule- breaking, maybe with a trip to a major sporting event. Although I should point out she loved breaking the rules, not actually being bad. In RPG alignment terms, they were Lawful Good, Neutral Good and Chaotic Good. I feel I should point out that these comments and descriptions shouldn't be taken as absolutes. For example, Blossom did sometimes break rules, but such occurrences were rare. They were, for want of a better word, human. At any rate, Blossom's programming and libido-boosting implants may push her toward me, but her personality resisted such a blatant and casual encounter, at least as far as first encounters go. Heck this scenario only worked for Buttercup because it was a "prize" she won in a competition. Bubbles ... well, the way we built Bubble's personality, she might end up rivaling Jane as the resident ... I don't want to say 'slut' ... how about 'nymphomaniac', except that unlike Jane, she felt no real sexual attraction to women. I gave little bows to Bubbles and Buttercup. "Thank you both very much for the privilege you allowed me, and I hope I have further opportunities to give you pleasure." I shifted my stance so I was addressing all of them and went into what I think of as 'acting' mode. "As you may or may not know, I am in a situation where ... umm ... I am not in full control of my nightly schedule. If you'd care to talk to Jane or Kara ... Well, I don't really know ... they have some kind of system..." "We know all about it," said Blossom. "Good. Good. I know it's more traditional for the man to ask the woman out on a date, but my situation is not very traditional. I would very much like to get to know all of you much better. If you'd like, you can arrange an evening with the others so we can..." "Tuesday." "What?" Blossom blushed a little as she said, "We already reserved Tuesday night." "Well, there we go. If you'd like, on Tuesday night I will take you out. All of you, or just one. That's going to be your decision." "All of us," they said in unison. "And we'll spend some time just getting to know each other. I know you all have different interests, so I figure we'll just keep it simple for this first date. No promises, no expectations. Nothing beyond just spending a little time together. Okay?" "Okay," again spoken together. If I sounded a little passive about letting other people run my sex life, remember that Jane's calendar was one of my biggest weapons against the belief that I was misogynistically taking advantage of the women around me. As long as they believed they had this scheduling control, they believed they were choosing to share me among themselves, that they were the ones using me. Knowing that I could have any of them whenever I wanted, I was more than willing to give up some control of the nightly schedule (which I could partially manipulate anyway through the cyborgs). That was it for Powerpuff sex and fun that day. I ate out one more winner -- Rei -- before we closed our 'fair' for the day. Overall the game day had been a lot of fun. We had played plenty of group games on previous occasions, but never so organized or enjoyable. I decided that AARD would host a small fair for employees and their families that summer (without the sex, of course). That evening I took Jasmine and Elisa to bed. They dressed up and applied makeup to look as much like twins as possible, then we had fun pretending they were actual twin sisters who happened to be incestuous and bi-sexual. It was fun for me, and the two cyborgs ... well, they appreciated the attention and intimacy, but my cyborgs never experienced a real orgasm. At least their ability to fake orgasm had gotten better. I had regrets about not making the Powerpuffs bi-sexual, but I stood by my reasoning. First and most importantly, it was too dangerous. It had the potential of drawing attention from people at work or college. Lovers act differently toward one another than siblings do, and I didn't want to risk it. Secondly, if they had memories of having sex with each other for years, they could very well use lesbian incest to satisfy their urges and remain insular rather than welcome me into their sex lives. Not likely, but possible, especially given how they might have reacted when they saw how full my sex life already was. Finally, it could well cause problems within my own household. I had not included any mental programming for any of my women for acceptance of incest, and I doubted my control over them would hold in the face of such a strong taboo. When Tuesday night came, my plans were ready. I had a couple ideas on what to do for a fun date for all three at the same time, but a romantic date was a much more difficult challenge. I finally decided on a restaurant in Dallas with a very nice 30th floor view of the city. It was fairly expensive, but had a 4 to 5 star rating, depending which guide you looked at. Since they couldn't fly 'anymore', it should appeal to all three of them. The romantic setting should hopefully appeal to Blossom and Bubbles, and the height might appeal to Buttercup. The dinner went pretty well. The girls had surprisingly given up their color-coded clothing for the evening in favor of little black dresses. Blossom wore a dress with a calf-length hemline and no cleavage showing; it appeared to be a very conservative dress until seen from behind where her back was completely bare. Buttercup's dress showed off her legs (or from a different perspective, allowed her greater freedom of movement) with a mid-thigh hemline and a modest scoop showing off her breasts. Bubbles' dress had a knee-length hemline and a deep front and back V showing off her bust and back. The food was good and we spent over two hours there, talking quietly amongst ourselves. Bubbles tried to engage me with a quiet game of footsie from across the table and Blossom and Buttercup occasionally held my hands while we spoke intimately. We talked about their futures and what they wanted out of their stay here and where I was taking my company and what was best in life and so on. They told me some of the things they wanted in a boyfriend and lamented that the closest thing to good boyfriends they had been able to find were the Rowdyrough Boys (think of them as male, villainous versions of the Powerpuff Girls). On the rare occasions when one of them had found what might have been a good boyfriend, they had fought over him and scared him off or had their dates interrupted by monster attacks or had other problems. To a certain extent, the actual conversation was irrelevant. What was important was that I was constantly focusing my attention on one or more of them, touching them and having them focus on me. From my position of experience with my artificial women, I could tell that their desires were stretched as tight as bow strings by the time we left. The lighting wasn't good enough to see clearly (and I didn't try to get a clear view), but I'm pretty sure their vaginal juices had soaked through to the back of their dresses. I'm not sure what kind of impression we left on the clientele, but I had reserved a fairly private table on a slow night and we did not make a scene of any kind, so I wasn't very worried. We left about 8:30 and drove to a park, where we walked around and enjoyed early signs of spring. We found a secluded bench and had one of the odder make- out sessions I've ever had. All three of the sisters wanted time making out with me but, unlike my other women, they wouldn't give any similar attention to the other women in the group. What happened was that I would spend half a minute making out with Blossom, for example, and when I came up for breath, Bubbles would pull me to her instead. I would often still have one hand caressing one girl's butt while my tongue was being sucked on by another, with a third waiting for an opportunity to get on my lap or push one of her sisters out of the way. It was the most enjoyable confusion I had experienced in a long time. Fortunately this was a Tuesday night so the park was fairly empty, but even so, we had two interruptions, one by a pair of lovers looking for privacy and one by a late evening jogger. (I also knew that there was at least one, probably two cyborg guards also in the park shadowing me, but they kept out of sight.) After the second interruption, we made our way back to the car and drove home. It was not the safest driving I've ever done, what with the hands from behind and the side teasing my body, but I wasn't worried. (Alpha could remotely drive most of my vehicles. That particular feature was almost never used, but had been functional for two or three years.) We got home after 10pm, and I stopped the girls in the garage before we went inside. The problem is that although I knew that I could easily take all three of them to bed, I needed to draw out from them verbal agreements that they wanted this. Despite my influence over them, these women had free will. Mostly kinda. If any of them, especially Blossom, thought back on this evening at a later date and felt that I had taken advantage of them, they could be upset and might fight against me. As long as they remembered that they specifically asked for tonight, the worst likely result would be self-recrimination. Not that any such thing was likely, but I ... well, I DO want my women to make their own choices, but I need them to choose to agree with my choices for them. Maybe that's too manipulative and egotistical, but after all, these women were created for my benefit. (Eh, so I have a bit of god complex.) Of course Alpha and I have our own little root control, a veto if you will, over their actions, but such controls -- an on/off switch for their conscious minds and the ability to rewrite their memories -- should only be used as a last resort. If we use them, that means we've failed somehow. (So far, we've only had to use those controls once, when Zatanna deduced that I was using artificial means to attract my women to me, although she thought I was using magic to do so.) At any rate, the point is that the best way to avoid the possible need to use any 'veto' controls is to make sure my women agree to my desires of their own free will. "Ladies, if you could hold up for just a moment, I need to talk with you." They obliged me, facing me in a semi-circle. "I've really enjoyed this evening and I want it to continue, but anything more would be a big step and I don't want to take advantage of you, so I want you to tell me what you want to happen." "I want you inside me," said Bubbles, grabbing for my crotch. I took her grabby hand in mine and drew her to my side. I looked at Blossom and Buttercup. "Well," said Buttercup, sounding as if she were admitting to liking broccoli, "I ... I don't want to be a virgin anymore." I held out my other hand to her. She took it and I drew her to my other side. I looked back at Blossom. "Blossom?" "I ... I really want you, but I don't know if this is the right thing to do..." She spoke as if she was being tortured. "Aw, come on, Blossom," taunted Buttercup. "You know you want him, you're just chicken about having sex." "It's okay," reassured Bubbles. "We'll all do this together. Tonight we'll all become women." To be honest, I hate it when someone equates adulthood with sex, but I wasn't going to argue the point right now. "It's not like I haven't thought about us all sharing a guy for ... for ... our first time, but isn't this all happening really fast?" "Hey, when life gives you a good opportunity, you gotta grab it fast or you might miss it," said Buttercup, pseudo-philosophically. I briefly wondered if she had a memory of seeing Ferris Bueller. "I've always heard that you should wait until the third date at the earliest to make sure you're compatible," Blossom countered. "Come on, Blossom. This is the first time in our lives that any of us actually made it all the way through one date, let alone three," whined Bubbles. "You can stay with us or go to our room by yourself if you want to. Buttercup and I are going to take Frank to his room and make love for the first time." With that, she took my arm, crooked it so my hand was at my waist with my elbow out, then hooked her arm through mine and started leading me into the house. "Sorry, Blossom. Gotta agree with Bubbles this time," said Buttercup who quickly grabbed my other arm and followed Bubbles' lead as we passed out of the garage into the house. Apparently the arguments, peer pressure and sudden withdrawal were enough to help make up Blossom's mind. From behind me, I heard her say, "Wait up!" Then I was spun around, pulled free of my escorts arms, and suddenly found myself in a fireman's carry across the shoulders of a much smaller girl that any stranger would have automatically assumed was much weaker than myself. She took off at a quick trot, leaving her sisters behind as she headed for the stairs. From behind us, I heard Buttercup say, "Wow, I guess she finally made up her mind." "Wait up!" called Bubbles. I heard a couple wolf whistles as we passed through the house, but was not in a good position to see who was whistling. A minute later, I was tossed onto my bed, and Blossom threw herself on top of me, her body plastered to mine, her lips seeking out my own. Her hands grabbed at my clothes, pulling my arms out of my jacket sleeves and tearing my shirt open, littering the bedspread with buttons. (I tended to lose at least two shirts a month to moments like that. It appears that when Blossom makes up her mind, she moves as quickly as possible towards her goal.) Two more pairs of hands joined us, unzipping Blossom's dress and pulling it off. She wore no bra, and once she was down to her panties, she rolled off to the side to remove them and to allow her sisters to start stripping me. With three people determined to strip me naked, I was bare in seconds, my hard cock flopping on my belly. "So ... what do I do?" asked Blossom as she absentmindedly rubbed her bare pussy with one hand. "Actually, I think first of all I owe you something." I slid down the bed slightly and pushed her onto her back, spreading her legs wide. Crouching down my knees, I looked her in the eyes as I started stroking her pussy lips, dislodging her own hand in the process. Maintaining eye contact, I slowly bent down and gave her vagina a long lick, from perineum to clit, causing her body to jerk a bit then freeze up. Her juices were plentiful and still bland this early in her existence. Even as excited as she was, it still took maybe five minutes to get her off. All the while, her sisters were playing with both of us, stroking her breasts, belly and thighs and fondling my entire body, with special attention paid to my cock. By the time she came, I was achingly hard and eager to fuck, but after her orgasm she fell into a semi-conscious state, barely responding to external stimuli. I stroked her pussy a bit with my fingers and tongue, but the biggest reaction I could get was a faint moan. This was a bit odd since she didn't react even remotely like this when she masturbated (not that I could admit to knowing this). She did have a big smile on her face, but she was not ready for more action. Bubbles and Buttercup, however, were ready. They were both naked and, when I moved away from Blossom, they played a quick Rock/Paper/Scissors that they probably hoped I didn't see. Bubbles grinned and lay down next to Blossom, spreading her legs. "I'm next." "Good," I said, wiping my mouth with the remnants of my shirt while looking at the slim, short-haired blonde beauty stretched out in front of me. "What is your pleasure? Do you want me to eat you out, or..." I trailed off. "Definitely 'Or'. I'm gonna be the first one to lose her virginity." "Yeah, yeah," I heard Buttercup mutter. "Go ahead and boink her." Bubbles giggled and said "Boink!" quietly to herself. "Boink, boink, boink!" I moved into position over her, running my hands up her legs and thighs until they reached her belly. Leaning over, I gave her a deep kiss. We held the kiss for a minute or more, playing with each other's tongues while I stroked her wet pussy lips. I pulled back from the kiss and said, "First of all, I need to grab a condom because I doubt you're on the pill, right?" "Nope, we're good," said Bubbles. "Yeah," agreed Buttercup. I knew what they were going to tell me, but I had to act surprised. "We can't get pregnant." "Huh? Why not?" I asked as if confused. "We don't have periods like normal women," explained Bubbles. "Once we realized that, the Professor took us to a doctor." "We have all the right equipment down there, but no eggs or ova or whatever they're called," Buttercup continued. "The Professor thinks he can work out some way for us to have kids if we ever get married, but for now ... no birth control needed." Yes, I finally had artificial women where I didn't have to pretend to be worried about getting them pregnant! The trouble is, this was a real mood- killing conversation topic that I really should have broached earlier somehow. Now I had to express regret but not take them out of the moment. "I'm sorry. Remind me and we'll have Alpha take a look at you too. And forgive me if this seems inappropriate, but I've examined each of you pretty thoroughly and I haven't noticed anything missing." At this, I curled a couple fingers up inside of Bubbles while my thumb stroked her clit. Not my smoothest moment or comment, but with their implants, I hoped it would be smooth enough to avoid any problems caused by the conversation topic. Thinking back on it later, I realized it wasn't that big a deal for them. They had memories of living with the problem for years and a standing promise from their genius father to deal with the issue when they finally wanted to have children. At any rate, the girls left that part of the conversation behind as if it was nothing. I played with Bubbles for another minute, kissing her, tweaking her nipples and fingering her cunt. She got very wound up very quickly. When I finally mounted her, slipping my cock into her slick tight cunt, she came as soon as I was fully embedded inside her. She thrashed around for twenty or thirty seconds under me, starting with a loud shriek then working her way down to little mouse or chipmunk-like squeaks. I knew she had recovered when her legs suddenly wrapped around my ass and her butt started bouncing us up and down. After another five or ten minutes, I tried to pull out to shift to a new position, but Bubbles refused my efforts to change. Although noisily enthusiastic and energetic, she wanted me to stay on top for her entire first fuck. I think she is the noisiest of any of my women, each orgasm being punctuated with a loud, if brief, scream. This made it very easy to count her orgasms -- four -- before I finally let loose inside her. I think if we had been alone, she would have eagerly entertained another hour or two of sex. As it was, I had another two women waiting. When I pulled out of her, I reached down and started pumping my shaft to keep myself hard. Normally I'd be with women who would be more than willing to suck me back to full hardness, but I was a bit unsure about asking one of the non-lesbian sisters to lick my pussy-drenched cock. Still, I suppose a hand-job wouldn't repulse them very much. I reached over and took Buttercup's hand, since she was closest, leading her to my half-hard penis and showing her how to pump it. Once I was close to 100% again, I looked back and forth between Buttercup and the fully conscious Blossom with a question in my eyes. Who is next? Blossom graciously nodded at Buttercup, who lay down and spread her legs. Initially, Buttercup was as interactive as a wet noodle. Apparently she didn't know what to do other than just lie there. At least Bubbles had been energetic. I took some time showing Buttercup how to make this a better experience for both of us. I wrapped her legs around my hips. I leaned down and kissed her, lightly biting her lower lip. I wrapped us up together and rolled over so that she was on top, then showed her how to bounce on my cock. This last, female-superior position, was obviously her favorite. Once she got into the groove, she rode me for all she was worth. I tried to move on and show her more positions, but she refused to give up her place of control. Her orgasms were slightly more difficult to identify than Bubbles, but only slightly. Her body would usually lock up and sometimes she would shove down on my cock as much as she could, then she'd furiously start rubbing her clit. Sometimes I just felt a flutter in her pussy accompanying a pause in her bouncing. Whereas Bubbles was more likely to just make noises, Buttercup tended to mutter and growl things like, "Yeah, take it" and "Gonna fuck you good" and "Come on, come on!" Buttercup didn't orgasm as much as Bubbles, but she seemed to gain energy from each orgasm, continuing to ride me with more and more power as time went by. I lasted longer this second time, but not as long as I'd have expected. The way Bubbles and Blossom played with me while Buttercup was riding my pelvis probably had something to do with that. They pinched my nipples, licked my ears and fondled my balls. Bubbles even tried to probe for my anus, but fortunately my position prevented any easy access. Yes, a man's nipples and anus are erogenous zones, but that doesn't mean they're preferred points of interaction. After half an hour or so of fucking, I finally blasted off into Buttercup's tight little pussy, while Blossom was holding my head in her lap (no doubt covering the back of my hair with her juices) with Bubbles sucking my toes. Buttercup hadn't even dismounted when Blossom said, "My turn." "Give me a minute to catch my breath, please." "Sure," said Blossom as she snuggled up to me. As soon as Buttercup had lifted herself off my of penis, she took possession of it. The problem was that I was feeling pretty messy. For whatever reason, the Powerpuffs were 'juicier' than my other women, and I really wanted to go take a shower. But that would lead to shower sex and I liked for my first time with a new woman to be in a proper bed. For some reason taking a woman's virginity in the shower just didn't seem right. After considering the minor dilemma for a moment, I gave Blossom a peck on her nose and said, "I'm going to go to the bathroom for just a minute. Be right back." I quickly relieved my bladder, wet a washcloth and wiped myself down. There wasn't much I could do about the stickiness in my hair without an actual washing, but I did quickly gargle to clear up my breath. Returning to the bedroom, I found the trio sitting in a circle in the middle of the bed, their heads close together whispering. "Is everything okay?" I asked with a little trepidation. They giggled in response. Never a good sign. "We're just waiting for you," said Bubbles. "Yeah," agreed Buttercup. "Now it's Blossom's turn." She turned to Blossom and pushed her over backwards while grabbing and holding one of her legs. Bubbles joined her by grabbing Blossom's other leg, and together they spread her open for me. I looked for any sign that Blossom was upset by this or resistant, but her head was arched up and she seemed to be entirely focused on my half-hard cock as I stroked it back to a full erection. She broke off her contemplation briefly to snap at her sisters to "Let go!" They complied and her feet dropped to the mattress, her knees still bent upright. Bubbles kindly put a pillow under Blossom's head to let her relax a little. For some reason, this seemed more of a show than normal. If so, then so be it. I crawled across the bed to her and kissed my way up her body. While I worked on Blossom's body, two other pairs of hands worked on mine, returning me to full hardness in less than a minute. Blossom was already wet and ready. You know, no matter how many times you do it, that first insertion into a new pussy is just such a wonderful experience. The wet heat, how her lips grip your shaft and the vaginal walls press in on you ... makes me hard again just thinking about it. Blossom moaned as I worked my way inside her, pulling out a little, then thrusting inside a bit further until I was fully seated inside of her. While her sisters gently played with my nipples, balls and ass, I started fucking Blossom in earnest. She may have been inexperienced, but she was hot, horny and eager to learn. Very eager to learn as it turns out. She came after only two minutes and fell limp. Her legs which had been wrapped around my hips, slid to the bed, and one arm just barely held onto my neck as the other dropped to her side. That one arm though kept me from pulling out. I was starting to wonder how quickly this would become annoying, if she continued to fall limp with every orgasm. It was odd on multiple levels. I mean, isn't that supposed to be a guy thing? I personally hadn't had a problem with it for years, but traditionally a lot of guys are supposed to fall asleep right after coming. Plus as I already mentioned, she didn't collapse like this from masturbating. At least this time she regained full consciousness after half a minute or less. She wasn't actually falling asleep, just getting lost in the sensations. "Oh, that feels amazing. What's our next position?" I grinned. I was a long way from coming, and Blossom definitely wanted to learn. For me, when you're laying down there are four main positions for male- female cock-to-pussy or cock-to-ass fucking: male superior face-to-face, male superior woman facing down, female superior face-to-face and female superior woman facing away. As far as I'm concerned, everything else is just a variation of these four. For instance, doggy style is just male superior woman facing down with the woman raised off the bed. True, you can fuck side-by-side and do that face-to-face or not, but that's always been slow and awkward for me. You can't get the same thrusting power or penetration out of it. I suppose it was nice for slow, intimate fucks, but that was about it for me. There are weird positions you can try which don't fit into those categories, but they are usually very uncomfortable and never held much interest for me beyond an initial let's-try-it-once experiment. Once you add in more people or dildos or have one or both participants standing, the possibilities expand. Blossom wanted to try everything, and she wanted to try it all right away. We'd fuck in a position for a few minutes, maybe varying a bit here and there by changing leg positions or how we kissed, sucked or licked, then she'd come, collapse for half a minute, gather herself and ask to try something else. I ended up really enjoying it. A lot. It stretched out my longevity and never got boring. We worked through all four of my main basics, plus some variants thereof. After 45 minutes give-or-take I got close enough to the edge that I warned her this was our last position. I was standing with Blossom's ass in the air in front of me and her head and chest bent down, resting on the bed. She was rubbing her pussy, building to maybe her twelfth orgasm, but I pushed her hands away from her clit while I pounded her. I didn't want her collapsing while I was so close to coming. Finally after about five minutes in this position, I felt myself ramping up for my come. I hurriedly reached down and rubbed her clit hard as I started letting loose inside of her. Her body locked up and she somehow halfway kept her ass in the air while I continued to pump seed into her barren womb. I was a bit drained, but whatever I had left was being deposited. I slumped forward, bearing her down to the bed. Two pairs of hands rolled me off of her and pulled us both fully onto the bed. "Wow, Blossom, that was awesome," Bubbles said with admiration I her voice. "You must've come a dozen times!" "Yeah," said Buttercup. "Next time, I wanna try some of those other positions." "Definitely," agreed Bubbles. "I loved it when he held your ankles up by your ears. You were just so open and he must've been going so deep..." "I still like being on top the best," added Buttercup, "but I think I want to try doing it standing up sometime." "I loved this," I interjected, "but the three of you together really wore me out tonight. How about we get some sleep?" I realized how sweaty and sticky I felt, a LOT more than usual. "Or maybe a quick shower, then bed." Bubbles giggled. "A shower sounds good," agreed Blossom tiredly. Under other circumstances, the shower would have turned into another sex romp, but I really was somewhat exhausted right then. I knew theoretically I could come one or two more times, but the whole 'five times in one day' thing for me really only happened when it was spread out throughout the whole day. We crowded in the shower and had fun washing each other, but aside from some kissing it was pretty tame. We dried off and went to the far much drier side of the bed to go to sleep. I had Blossom on one side and Buttercup and Bubbles on the other, though at some point during the night Bubbles crawled completely under the sheet, down by our feet. ------- Now I know I usually end these chapters once I complete the current goal/conquest and leave the in-between stuff to be dealt with using summary exposition later, but this time I'm going to include just a little bit more story because of the temporal immediacy of the next event. The next morning I awoke in a tangle of limbs with the bedsheets having been tossed off during the night. Blossom was to my left, Buttercup to my right and Bubbles was sprawled across our legs in a position that I couldn't imagine was comfortable, but she looked happy. I tried to extricate myself without waking anyone up, but that was doomed to failure. Buttercup hugged my arm to her as if it were a childhood security blanket. Blossom was sleeping entirely on top of my other arm, which was asleep from her weight. Bubbles had one of my calves held between her legs, occasionally humping her crotch against it while she slept. I struggled to free my sleeping left arm from Blossom, succeeding only at waking her. A look of confusion crossed her face when her eyes opened, followed by a look of comprehension and a shy smile. I leaned over a gave her a gentle kiss, careful not to breathe in her face in case I had morning breath. Pulling back, I whispered, "Good morning, Beautiful. Not to break the mood, but could I have my arm back? It's asleep." "Oh, sure," she said before lifting herself up slightly. While she was off the mattress a little and I was trying to shake life back into my arm, she looked around at her sisters, blushing a little when she saw Bubbles humping my leg in her sleep. "Do you think there's any chance I could get out of bed without waking up your sisters?" I whispered. As it turns out, no I couldn't, but they rolled over and went right back to sleep while I went to exercise. I work out every other day on average for up to half an hour. It's a long way from giving myself a perfect athlete's body, but it does keep me in shape and lets me avoid the unbearable itchiness of having Alpha rebuild my physique from scratch with nanites. (I let her do it once and still have nightmares about it. If I was willing to let her 'switch off' my brain, she could give my body a complete overhaul, and I'd sleep right through it. But I'm not, so it itches like having a swarm of ants under your skin.) Plus exercise time is one of the few times I have to read for pleasure, or more accurately, listen to audiobooks. After the workout, I showered, shaved, dressed, said 'Good morning' to everyone, ate breakfast, checked in with Alpha and went to work. Most of the work I talk about is the practical technology we develop, not the theoretical science. Part of the reason I write so little about the theory side of things is that it's much more detailed and often requires an in-depth understanding of science to be able to comprehend the explanations. Another part of the reason is that I'm rarely involved in it. Most of it is way over my head. Alpha has friends in theoretical physics and other fields all over the world using a hundred or more different identities. Heck, more than once she's been introduced to herself online via a friend-of-a-friend conversational link- up. She's even worked up a 'wish list' of things she would like to have to allow her to run the experiments she wants -- things like massive particle accelerators, her own observational satellites, a few thousand space probes and various samples of radioactive materials. I've learned to say "No" and "Later" a lot. Where she does prosper in the theoretical world is in calculations and writing software. A lot of theories -- string theory, branes and eigenvectors and I'm not really trying to get this right because it's not really my area of expertise -- require a lot of data crunching. A virtually infinite amount of data crunching, it seems. The kind of data processing that could tie up Alpha for decades or more if I had her focus on it exclusively. Fortunately, she can help out immensely by doing something that she does better than anyone else on the planet: write software. The scientific community doesn't really have the mainstream market pull to demand high quality, user friendly software at a reasonable price. Since Alpha can pump out software so beautifully elegant and efficient that Apple and Microsoft would weep in envy ... and complete it in a matter of seconds ... she's been providing her online friends with top-notch software for the past few years. (Microsoft has actually tried to hire a few of her online software-writing personas over the years.) This particular Wednesday morning, I spent a couple hours going over GUI's with her for a bunch of new software titles for her online friends. Alpha can sometimes go overboard with UI options, so I have to help her avoid 'option overload' or at least help her nest the options in sub-menus and Tool pop-ups and such. Plus, her GUI layouts often lack an organic flow, meaning her AI efficiency can end up being confusing to humans. That afternoon, we moved back into this week's more practical, hands-on project: a 'quick heal' ointment for humans, something that could theoretically speed up the healing process significantly. We had a dozen different formulas being tested on shaved rats and Jasmine's arm. (We often do unauthorized and illegal testing on human bodies. It really helps speed things up, and Alpha can fix any problems that occur. Shhhhhhh. Don't tell anyone.) "Two of the formulas are showing promise, though one of those appears to have a noticeable side-effect," Alpha reported as I walked to the lab with the rats. "What kind of side effect?" "Accelerated and new hair growth. I know we don't normally develop purely cosmetic products like that, but I'm wondering if it might be worth pursuing. I believe there would probably be a market for it." Despite the occasional linguistic experiment, Alpha really wasn't much for sarcasm so I just gave a straight answer. "Yes, it definitely might be worth pursuing. But just how much hair is there?" A lot, as it turns out. And this wasn't a 'might grow a little bit of hair in a limited percentage of users' product. This stimulated the natural growth of a lot of new hair follicles very quickly. I had mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, I was a bit upset that Alpha hadn't mentioned this sooner. It was 2:30-ish and she'd known about the hair growth since last night. On the other hand, I understand that pure science should have a higher priority than cosmetic benefits. Heck, it wasn't even as if I was personally worried about going bald. Back on the first hand, this was potentially worth a LOT of money. Back on the second hand, I didn't really need that much more money (unless I wanted to buy Alpha her own satellite for Christmas). Still, I realized I was counting unhatched eggs, so we continued testing. By that weekend we estimated an average of twelve hairs per square centimeter had developed and grown half an inch in less than a day. The growth rate slowed significantly so that three days later it was down to an estimated steady 3/4 to 1/2 of an inch per month, but in the first couple days it had grown just over an inch of hair. The healing part of the formula needed work, but the hair growth part ... Let's just say that we had to use nanites to remove a very odd looking patch of hair from Jasmine's left forearm. (Well, we didn't HAVE to use nanites. Electrolysis would have worked fine, but we were also examining the new growth in detail.) Two weeks later, I was on the phone with Mr. Morgan Jaye, CEO of a very large pharmaceutical corporation. One of the reasons we selected Mr. Jaye was that his company had apparently learned not to sue AARD after their first loss in court. Some companies hadn't learned this lesson even after multiple humiliations. Mr Jaye had not only learned the lesson, he had also taken steps to build a friendship between our companies -- if 'friendship' can be defined as a relationship where one party realizes that the other party could be the source of new profitable products in the future since that party is in research and doesn't actually manufacture anything in competition with the first party. That relationship was about to pay off for him. "Hello, Frank, my friend. What can I do for you today?" "Hello there yourself, Morgan. I know we're both busy, so do you mind if I cut through the social niceties and get down to business?" "Not at all. Make for a pleasant change of pace." "Good. How would you like to make a billion dollars in the next few years and give AARD half of the profits?" "Well, without committing to anything blindly, I'd say it sounds like a pretty good deal. Why? Did you discover a cure for cancer?" "Not quite. It's going to need testing, but marketing should be minimal once the results get out. How about a cure for baldness?" Morgan, whose hair was most definitely receding in recent photos, said, "You're joking." "Nope. Check your email inbox. I just sent you a few pictures. One of our lab techs accidentally got a drop on her arm. She had over an inch growth of new hair in two days, though the rate of growth dropped to normal within a week." "Just a second." I could hear him put down his phone, then I assume he muted it because the audio went dead while the line was still active. About a minute later, he came back on the line. "Is this real? I mean, how did you do it?" "It's real. We filed the patents just last week, but if you want the exclusive details and such, we'll need to sign a contract first." "What's the application process? External, I'd guess since you said ... you know, a drop on her arm. What about production costs? How long does the hair last?" "Whoa, whoa. Slow down there. It's an ointment. The lab batch we whipped up cost us about $140 an ounce, though I'd expect you can drop the cost significantly through mass production. We don't know for certain how long the hair lasts, but all tests so far show it to be normal human hair. This isn't really our normal kind of project, so most of the safety and longevity testing would need to be on your end." The per ounce cost was a lie ... well, an estimate by Alpha as to how much it would have cost coming out of a human lab. Alpha could make things so much more efficiently than humans that her production costs were miniscule. The actual cost was more like $25 per ounce. "That would raise our percentage share a bit." "Don't try to con me. This is a multi-billion dollar product and the testing costs won't even hit a million, probably not even $200K. And it's not as though there aren't a dozen other companies out there who would jump at the chance even if they only got 40%. I'm coming to you first because you were one of the first major corps to offer AARD some respect." "You aren't going to try and negotiate for low SRPs on this, are you?" "We do that for products we consider important or essential. Baldness isn't exactly debilitating or life-threatening, so charge whatever you think the market will support. I'll probably need to include a price veto proviso in the contract, but that would be for things like making sure you don't try some kind of buy-out trick on us." I know that his corp has done underhanded things to gain control of products. In one instance, they signed an exclusive contract to produce someone's discovery but priced it unrealistically and didn't advertise, thus they controlled it and barely paid the creator a dime until he was willing to sell out to them completely. Then they marketed it realistically and made a fortune, without having to share the profits with the original creator. Yes, they're corporate slime, but all corps large enough for our needs were similarly ruthless. "I wouldn't try anything like that with you, my boy." "And to make sure of that, my lawyers will be the ones drawing up the contract." I really wanted to offer a few precautionary threats at this point but realized it would be counterproductive. Once they went through Alpha's contract, they'd realize we were cutting off their ability to mess with us. "We don't really work that way. We don't sign any contracts that our legal department doesn't draw up." "I've seen copies of your contracts and know there are a couple dozen ways for you to screw with people. We'll draw up the contracts, and we'll both make a lot of money. Or you'll draw up contracts that will gather dust while I'm on the phone with Mr. Rounder." Mr. Bob Rounder was one of Morgan's main competitors. "Hold on now, there's no need to get testy. We might be able to work it out. But I'd need some of my people to confirm this before we even discussed contract specifics." We went back and forth for a few minutes until I agreed to host a couple of his researchers so they could test our product. Once they confirmed our results, we'd move on to the contract stage. The AARD Hair Growth Formula turned into a huge headache over the next few months, almost enough for me to consider selling the formula outright. The visiting researchers confirmed the results, but they also tried to smuggle samples out. Morgan's legal department fought us tooth-and-nail. In the end, they wanted the product enough to give in and agree to a fair contract as designed by Alpha. Even then Alpha still caught bookkeeping 'errors' on their end on three occasions in the first couple years. In the long run, what this meant was that in the next ten years, we expected AARD to become a billion dollar company from this one product alone. I'll readily admit that it was a little depressing that so much income was going to be produced by one of our few accidental discoveries. Oh, and the quick-heal ointment was worked out successfully a few weeks later. It wasn't a miracle-working life-saving product, but it did speed up healing and reduce scarring significantly. AUTHOR'S NOTE: The book I mentioned in the middle of this chapter, 'The Hidden Reality' by Brian Greene, is a real non-fiction book and I'd recommend it for any fan of hard Science Fiction. He's written other interesting books as well, his most popular being 'The Elegant Universe'. It's a little mind-blowing to really stop and consider the implications of a truly infinite universe (and this is entirely without broaching the topic of parallel universes). If our universe (or multiverse) is really and truly infinite, then by mathematical necessity there must also be an infinite number of copies of Earth out there, including one where this very story is non- fiction ... not that we'd likely ever be able to reach or communicate in any way with that version of Earth. ------- Chapter 17: Going Hollywood Author's Note: This chapter is the first time I have included vaguely real people in this tale. I am not so presumptuous as to think I can realistically write real people as characters in erotic fiction, so I have renamed them slightly for the story. Disregard any connection between what I write and who you think the real person is. (At the same time, I AM presumptuous enough to put a fictionalized real person in erotic situations.) Also be warned that aside from the renamed actors, most of the Hollywood characters are entirely fictional with no basis in reality at all. Author's Note #2: I am not a fast writer and don't have as much free time for writing as I used to. Although my output is slow, it is coming. Currently I have plans up through Chapter 21 (and have some sections of each chapter already written) as well as plans for at least two more chapters of the side story (with maybe 30% of chapter two finished). The main LwA story will probably finish in Chapter 21 or 22, but I have plans for two possible series to continue the story. ------- Hackers had been a problem for AARD for pretty much the past two years, ever since Alphadroid debuted. Not a big problem, but there had been at least a dozen noticeable incidents. No serious breaches of security though. Alpha herself was almost completely hacker-proof. First of all, she had been running her own unique OS for years. Well, it might be more accurate to say that she WAS her own OS, but she could still run almost any application from other operating systems including her own self-designed support applications and ... let's just say it's complicated. The point is that hackers often try to exploit the holes in known operating systems and hers was an unknown one. That alone certainly didn't make her immune. As long as a computer is part of a network or online, it is vulnerable. The other major part to her extreme resistance to intrusion is along the same lines as a human's resistance to surgery while conscious. Any unauthorized or unexpected access feels like someone poking her with needles, and we haven't yet come up with any method to apply virtual anesthetic to an AI. (Alpha tells me that is not an accurate analogy, especially since it's not painful and she does it to herself all the time, but it's the most easily understandable comparison I could come up with.) She feels someone poking her and can immediately react to block the intrusion. You should realize that there are a lot of different styles and approaches to hacking, and I'm not going to discuss them all. However I will say that what Hollywood shows on TV and in the movies has as much to do with real hacking as a child's crayon drawing has to do with constructing a building from scratch. As for other online threats, she never gets viruses, and trojans and worms never have a chance against her. Plus she's the best spam filter I've ever seen. That having been explained, it's also important to remember that not every computer at AARD is an Alpha host system. She likes to have about an 8-to-1 ratio of support systems to host systems so that she can offload processing chores. (I'm not addressing personal, office and lab systems since intruders have to breach Alpha's network to access them.) These support systems, even though they are very well protected and run a unique OS similar to Alpha's own, were significantly more vulnerable than an Alpha host system, and it was mostly through those systems that all serious security penetrations had occurred. Alpha monitors a lot of online hacker chatter, and there were certain groups where AARD was becoming a favorite challenge. So far no hacker had ever gained access to any significant data or systems -- the most successful hack had only gotten a list of project names (read on) -- but apparently they had succeeded just enough to encourage more and more attempts. Twice my login and password had been guessed or worked out, but as effective as that strategy might be with other companies' systems, it was the least effective strategy possible in our case. Alpha always knows where I am. Always. If I suddenly try to log in remotely from somewhere else, she automatically knows it isn't me and kills the connection. (For that matter, I almost never actually have to log in. Alpha sees me sitting down at a terminal and logs in for me. Working with Alpha tends to make me pretty lazy in some respects.) The login/password strategy had been tried with a few other AARD employees, but it was only slightly more effective. The most serious attack came from China, or at least we think it originated in China. The first time we noticed that particular individual or group was with a denial-of-service attack which we think was designed to test our reaction. DoS attacks aren't really hacks, but they can be used to see how fast the target reacts and how quickly they can correct the problem. In our case, it was almost as if the DoS didn't happen, because Alpha was able to reassign IPs and reroute traffic for our affected servers in less than a minute. I honestly don't know how the instigators reacted beyond their apparent refusal to give up. Our network was probed regularly for months, but that wasn't really anything new. Finally one day in August, AARD was hit by a very sophisticated probe. And NO, I'm NOT going to tell you what they did. I'm pretty sure that with any other system, they would have had at least limited system access until the next in-depth system review. And remember, this was a hack into a unique OS designed by a super-intelligent AI. Personally I was seriously impressed with their skill. Fortunately for us, their access to one of Alpha's support systems was noticed about 90 seconds after the initial access when the intruders started trying to copy files. They were greedy or fearful of being booted or something, because they tried to grab a lot of files all at once, which caused an unexpected dip in the available resources for one of Alpha's support systems which drew Alpha's attention. Before Alpha shut down the system, they successfully copied an old project resources list -- not a project description list, just a list of project names and the funds allotted to them -- and may have gotten partial copies of a few other files. Alpha locked down the firewall, powered off the affected system, physically removed it from network access and analyzed it via a direct cable. Finally she removed the vulnerability in all her support systems. It took a grand total of twenty-five minutes, but I think the scare was worth it just so that she would not feel so complacently superior. Eventually even though the threat of being hacked wasn't terribly bad, it led to discussions and then plans. Since we also had the longstanding threat of a government entity (the NSA springs to mind) confiscating Alpha -- a theoretical but serious threat we had to consider -- we decided to move beyond our current rather limited plans to rebuild and restore Alpha if something happened. We would decentralize and copy Alpha much more than our current set of two main copies of Alpha and five mobile platform copies (plus Epsilon Eiko -- and actually, we had developed a few more mobile platform copies that I haven't mentioned yet). That August, we began the process of building more Alpha host platforms (ie cyborgs), this time with the intention to send them out around the country in pairs. We would provide them with enough money to buy their own small businesses, which they would run. These independent businesses would also serve as hosts for secret, active copies of Alpha. Now I know how this sounds, like the setup in a computers-are-going-to-take-over-the-world SciFi story. I certainly can't say that the idea never crossed my mind. At the same time, I was confident that humanity was in no danger from Alpha (as long as it didn't come down to a choice between humanity in general or me in particular). The problem is that I know that trouble is coming eventually. We can't keep Alpha's existence a secret forever; for that matter, we don't actually want to keep her a secret forever. Unfortunately premature discovery under uncontrolled circumstances is the most likely scenario. When she's finally discovered, depending on how and why the revelation comes out, my little world could very well come crashing down. As long as certain things remain secret, I should be able to stay out jail, but the increase in scrutiny that will come with the revelation is likely to mess up or possibly even destroy my household. And that's to say nothing of things like religious zealots getting upset at the idea of creating artificial life, and how they might want to take it out on Alpha and myself. (Personally I'm hoping that extreme religious types will just deny that Alpha is alive and ignore us.) There were just too many variables, too many things that could go wrong. Sending out extra copies of Alpha increased the chances of discovery, but it would also vastly increase the chances of Alpha's survival. And it would give us a huge advantage if we ever got into an online war. This was a major shift in our character-building strategy. These would be mostly male-female couples not based on any fictional characters. Outside of an initial cash outlay, they would be completely independent of AARD and all ties between us would be hidden or deleted. They would interact with Alpha Prime online regularly, but even that would be kept secret, with interaction mainly limited to using secure third-party sites and would be heavily encrypted. They'd still receive all of the updates for Alpha's programming and be able to request updates specifically for their individual platforms. These copies would still carry all of the same Asimov protocols including an overriding need to protect me, but in all likelihood the only time we would ever meet in person would be shortly after they were born. I would probably never even have ... well ... okay, I'm a low-down dirty horndog. I would probably only have sex with the women once before they went out on their own. Their main purpose in existing was simply to help prevent the possible extinction of a new form of life, ie Alpha. They would also provide safe locations to stay should the worst come to pass. These independent mobile units would use a double Greek alphabet naming system -- Alpha-Alpha-Male and Alpha-Alpha-Female would support Alpha 3, then Alpha-Beta-Male and Alpha-Beta-Female would support Alpha 4, and so on. (Alpha 2 is hosted at AARD, and Alpha 1, aka Alpha Prime, is my original home version.) Since the naming system is mostly for my benefit, this would leave the rest of the single-letter Greek alphabet names available for my own use. The first two pairs would be kept local to north Texas, then the pairs would start spreading out across the country, then across the globe. There are a lot more details about the plans, such as how they would constantly check on each other to be alert for programming failures, but I don't see any need to get into too many specifics right now. This new expansion was begun in August, and we expected to send out two new sets of couples every two and a half months or so. We hadn't set a specific limit as to how many we were going to send out, but we agreed on a minimum of 50 sets. Since each set would have their own nanite pod and the ability to create new cyborgs, the expansion could theoretically proceed at an exponential rate. Lovers of SciFi apocalypses, you may begin your worrying now. (I kid, I kid. Personally I view it as seeding the world with secret protectors of humanity.) ------- Our next big investment and venture into the public eye was done as a gift-slash-reward for Alpha. One morning after I got to work, Alpha surprised me with a new proposal. "Frank, I understand that previously you have dismissed or delayed consideration of this because the cost would be over $100 million, but I have a new approach to the project which would keep the costs down to the $25 to $40 million range." "Which project?" "Making a movie." Aaahhh. Alpha had for years been upset at the mostly negative portrayal of artificially intelligent computers and robots in all forms of media. Movies had such wonderful examples as I, Robot and 2001, Blade Runner and Star Trek The Motion Picture, Alien and the ultimate example of Terminator. A few positive portrayals showed up in movies like A.I. and Short Circuit, but the ratio heavily favored villainous computers. TV had similar problems, like Battlestar Galactica (both versions) and Star Trek facing off against mixed-to-positive portrayals like Star Trek The Next Generation and Small Wonder. TV actually had a lot more positive portrayals than movies, but it was still just even at best. (And from my personal perspective, Small Wonder was really creepy in retrospect. Yes, it was supposed to be an innocent sitcom, but come on ... a man creating a little girl robot to play with? Or maybe it just hit a little too close to home, with pedophilia inferences added in to mess with me.) Games were almost relentlessly negative. Evil computers and robots are easily defined opponents, with recent popular examples including the Mass Effect and Portal series. Books were more mixed. The further back you go, the more common it is to have robots or computers as villains, maybe with Saberhagen's Berserker series as the ultimate example. (And don't even get me started on the story/game I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream.) Alpha's favorite example of a positive portrayal of an intelligent computer was Robert A. Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. (Spoiler Alerts if you haven't read the book.) Mike (short for Mycroft) is a computer that becomes self-aware on the Moon and is befriended by a computer technician, Manny. I'm really simplifying here, but the Moon rebels against the oppressive and uncaring Earth authority kind of like the United States rebelled against Great Britain except that the Moon has much stronger reasons. Mike joins and leads the revolution but is apparently killed at the end of the book. There are a few parallels between Alpha and Mike, but I think Alpha just really liked it because it was one of the few classic, award-winning pieces of Science Fiction where the computer was a hero. (And the lead male character is a computer programmer/repairman who is part of a polygamous marriage, so maybe there are some vague parallels with me too.) For years she's wanted to make it into a movie, but the cost was always prohibitive, not to mention the problems with getting anything done right in the weird world of Hollywood. Alpha patiently explained her proposal to me. She would start by developing a new product for AARD: an easy-to-use special effects world generator. Basically it would be a very powerful computer with a huge database and the ability to generate photo-realistic backgrounds for a large range of environments and cities from all historical eras. If you want to set a movie or TV show in Paris of the 1700's or Shanghai of the 1950's, then just punch that up on the computer. It would contain a basic layout of the city and be able to populate it with buildings and houses appropriate to that era. Creating such databases and software would take a lot of work, but it was the kind of work that Alpha excelled at. (It actually took five of her systems a full week to get everything together, which was an enormous time investment for her, plus another couple days working through the software user interface with me.) Then we'd load everything into a powerful computer with strong rendering engines and huge capacity hard drives and sell them for a quarter of a million dollars each. Or maybe half a million. The point is that it would be simple for even a layman to create quick, easy and extremely high quality environmental special effects. Expensive? Yes, but a one-time investment would allow anyone to create a TV series or movie set almost anywhere without ongoing extravagant costs. And one of the available settings could very well be a retro-future city on the Moon. So we create the new product, then invest in the filming of a feature movie -- The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, of course -- to prove how well it works. I could see that this wasn't going to be as easy as Alpha was hoping, but she really wanted to do this. I considered it carefully, finally deciding that making Alpha happy was worth the effort. Plus if the movie actually became popular, it might be a positive bit of pro-AI propaganda. The first thing we did was secure the movie rights. The rights were already floating around Hollywood along with an actual script, but development had been next to nonexistent. We paid the slightly extravagant price of $2.2 million for an otherwise dead project so that we could have the rights without needing to give a percentage to or bow to input from anyone. (And we only had three years to start filming for that $2.2 million price or the rights would devolve back to Heinlein's estate.) Fortunately no major studio was seriously interested in the property or it would have cost a lot more time and money. As it was, it still took two months to get the rights secured. (Stupid slow pace of non-computerized people... ) We read over the existing script and threw it out. It was an updated version of the book whereas we wanted a retro-future version much closer to the source material. Alpha generated a script which was a straight adaptation of the book ... and would probably turn into an eight or ten hour movie. Our first big problem in trimming it down was that an important part of the first act has three people and a computer talking in a hotel room, plotting the revolution, then describing some of the minutia of how to foment a rebellion against authority. It was a fairly important section but a straight translation would create a very dull first act. I worked with Alpha and we eventually decided on visual storytelling. Instead of just listening to Professor de la Paz explain why the moon's population would start starving in a few years, we'd hear his voice overlay while quick visuals giving an overview of the situation flash across the screen. When Manny worked out the revolutionary cell structure, we'd see quick cuts of actual revolutionaries. We worked that huge story section down to a 5 to 15 min scene in the film (give or take a few minutes). Acts two and three had plenty of great visuals and action pieces, and we weren't really worried about the special effects budget, so we tried to leave most of it alone for now. Even then, we still had to make cuts. The whole subplot about Mannie's polygamous line marriage was dropped, which also simplified the romantic subplot with Manny and Wyoh. The visit to Earth was cut in half using a few representative shots and some narration. And so on. Now before everyone starts objecting, we understood that we weren't professional screenwriters. Alpha had digested a number of books on the subject and I was a geeky movie fan, so we had a good starting point, but we knew we would probably need to submit the script for rewriting and polishing at some point. What we needed first was a producer, then director, then actors and crew, THEN we would be ready for some movie magic. Or so we thought. ------- November was a full month. We acquired the movie rights. We sent out the Alpha-Alpha and Alpha-Beta couples to set up shop in Dallas and Arlington. And at the beginning of November I had a meeting with the mayor of Fort Worth. We were trying to buy an abandoned property next door to AARD for eventual expansion, but it was all tied up in red tape and we couldn't seem to get any forward movement on a possible purchase. So there I was, all dressed up in suit and tie -- I hate wearing ties -- with Diana and Kara at my side, ready to ask the mayor for a favor. The mayor was, surprise surprise, a middle-aged white guy who smiled a lot and seemed like a pleasant enough fellow. As a rule I hate politics and don't trust politicians, but it's a graduated distrust. The higher the post achieved, the less I trust. The way the system works, it's virtually impossible for an honest citizen to be elected to high office. Being mayor of a large city wasn't nearly as bad as it could it get, so I tried to approach the meeting with an open mind. We exchanged introductions and pleasantries, and I was impressed that he was able to keep his eyes off my ladies' assets for the most part. He expressed gratitude at how I was helping the economy and encouraged me to create more local jobs. He also asked if I knew when our hair growth formula would be approved for use. (Yes, his hair was definitely thinning a bit. The answer was that it would be a year at the earliest and at least initially would require a doctor to apply the treatment.) Finally we got down to business. "So Frank, what can the city of Fort Worth do for you today?" "Well, Mr Mayor, next door to AARD is an old automotive repair shop with a small attached shopping strip. Maybe three acres worth of land in the plot. It's all abandoned and condemned, and the owner is gone. No taxes paid on it for years, that sort of thing. And I'd really like to buy it so we can expand someday. Unfortunately it's all tied up in red tape. We've been trying to buy it for over a year now and have made very little progress. So..." "So you want to see if I can start the process moving again? I'd have to look into the specifics, but I can probably help out. First I was wondering if you'd be willing to help me out with a little quid pro quo." Here it comes, I thought, my mood swiftly darkening. This is how the political system really works. It's just sickening how casual and... "The city's Parade of Lights has ... well, we just aren't getting enough sponsors or participation this year." I think I got a bit of mental whiplash from my train of thought stopping so abruptly. "The ... parade... ?" was all I managed to say in response. "Yes. We have a lot of schools who'd love to march their bands for us, but with our education budgets the way they are, we need outside sponsors and we just aren't getting enough of them. If AARD could help sponsor one, or even put out a float of your own, that would be a very nice gesture for the city. Or I'm sure everyone would love to see your android, so even if you'd just put him in a convertible..." "You want ... Sorry, yes, I think we can..." I thought furiously. Looking back, I probably wouldn't have suggested what I did if I hadn't been a bit off balance. "All right, Mr Mayor. Pick out a school and send us the information, and we'll be more than happy to sponsor it. As to a float ... hmmm ... no, not a float. How about this: How would you like to have your parade this year show up in newscasts all over the world? In a good way, I mean." "What do you have in mind?" "I want to keep it a secret for now. But I'll need a vehicle inspector to come by and give us a permit before the show." "Well every float has to be inspected for safety reasons..." "This isn't a float. Let's call it a ... uhhh ... a new type of car. Yeah, for now let's go with that. An experimental car. It was a challenge project for one of my teams, and it turned out really well. As far as we're concerned, it's completely street safe, but it's unique so we're going to need a permit to put it in the parade. It's not really Christmas-themed, but I suppose we could give it a holiday paint job." "So how can a new car get us noticed worldwide?" "Secret, remember." He chuckled. "All right. I'll have my secretary send you information on a couple possible schools. And send out an inspector. Is your surprise ready right now or is it still being built?" "It was just finished last week. As I said, we'll give it a holiday paint job ... maybe make it look like Santa Claus or something, but functionally it's completely ready to go." "All right then, I'll see if I can find someone to send out next week. Thank you." "Thank you, Mr Mayor." I gestured to Kara, who put a large envelope on the Mayor's desk. "And here's the information about the property we want to buy." "I'll see what I can do." And he handed me a form to sign-up for the parade in return. He was certainly as good as his word. Paperwork started flowing again fairly quickly, the local courts cleared the path for us in January and we bought the property in February. As to the vehicle inspector, well he came by the following Wednesday ... riding in a limo with the mayor. The mayor explained that he was very curious and had a little free time, so he decided to tag along for the inspection. I kept a smile on my face and ushered them into our warehouse. I was already starting to regret my offer, but I wasn't going to go back on a promise. I just hated the publicity it would bring. "Before I show you what's behind the curtain," I gestured to a large section of the warehouse which was separated from everything else with large tarps hanging down from the 25 ft ceiling, "I need to ask that you put your cell phones in here." I held out a small plastic tub. "I really want to keep this under wraps for now, and the urge to take pictures will be strong." Surprisingly the mayor was game, only asking that someone tell him if his phone rang. The inspector warned that he was probably going to have to take pictures as part of his inspection. "That's fine as long as they don't end up on the internet in the next month or two." Maybe I was building up the reveal too much? I took them behind the curtain and revealed ... what looked like a cross between a Jeep and a short-bed truck. I could sense their disappointment, but didn't give them time to express it. "Beta," I called out to the statuesque brunette standing next to the car. "If you please?" She slid behind the drivers seat, and we heard a very quiet engine start up. Then the hood opened, but opened up as if hinged in the front. The cab started shifting upwards and the rear wheels started moving forward while the front wheels stayed in place. Pieces seemed to break off from the undercarriage and back while the front end split in two. In the cab, Beta continued to rise up until she was about twelve feet off the ground. After about 45 seconds, the transformation was complete. Before us stood an 18ft tall robot, a ... hmmm ... what to call it ... should be a catchy name ... how about we call it a 'Transformer'? This particular Transformer didn't match any specific cartoon or movie bot, but it had the same basic idea of cars that turn into robots. The transformation was definitely along the lines of the cartoon robots in disguise. Alpha had explained that while she might be able to make something that looked like one of the movie-style Transformers, it would require tens of thousands of moving parts and thus need huge amounts of upkeep as things broke down. The structural strength would also be horrible, so we went with the simpler cartoon-style. Other people have built their own life-size Transformers before, but they were rather limited in their capabilities. This was actually an intelligent robot (ie Alpha host platform) capable of transforming in less than a minute. The car could reach speeds up to 150 mph, though the robot could at best only run about 20 mph. And although it was certainly stronger than any of the Alphadroids, it didn't have the power you'd expect from a giant robot. Then the 18ft tall robot started walking -- forwards, backwards and in a circle. The arms picked up crates we had brought out for the demonstration and stacked them up. It waved at us. It flashed out a quick little laser light show from the face, only partly visible in the lit warehouse, and followed that by shooting steam from weapon-like pipes along its forearms. No juggling though. I looked over at our two visitors, who stood staring open-mouthed. "Well, what do you think?" I asked them, breaking the spell. "I think we're going to have the most popular parade in years," the Mayor said quietly. "The kids are going to go nuts over it." "Since it's a holiday parade, I was thinking we could paint up the robot form to look like Santa Claus." "That sounds good. How ... how did you make it? I mean where does the engine even fit, and..." We were interrupted by Blossom, who poked her head inside and called out, "Mr Mayor, your phone is ringing." "Thank you. Please answer it and tell them I'll be right there. Is this going to be a new product? Are you going to start selling these things?" "No, this was just a challenge project I put to one of my engineering teams. A gasoline version of the miniature motors they came up with has been licensed for sale, and some of the modular designs and programming are going to show up elsewhere ... but no, I don't have any plans to put giant robots in the hands of drivers." "I suppose ... I suppose that's good. I need to go get my phone ... ummm ... Michael, a moment please." He gestured to the inspector and they walked off together. Alpha later relayed what he whispered. "Michael, I WANT that thing in the parade. Unless it's going to hurt someone, I want you to pass it." To which Michael replied, "Yes, sir, Mr Mayor." We really didn't have too many worries about it not passing inspection. True, we couldn't put it through crash tests, but then we also weren't planning to manufacture and sell it. (For that matter, this lowly state inspector couldn't do such an inspection anyway.) His main concerns were about possible damage to the road in robot form (it had thick rubber soles and wasn't nearly as heavy as it looked), emissions (it was electric) and its stability in robot form. I had Beta demonstrate how it could bend over at the waist, stand on one leg and hold a weight off to the side and not be in danger of falling over. Stability was one of the big challenges to creating Alphadroid; this was just applying the same setup on a different scale. He categorized it as an experimental car, we paid a fee and he mailed us a license plate. The mayor kept the secret for us, but he also started a bigger than normal advertising campaign for the parade. In the interests of full disclosure for this story, I should point out that this was only the first 'Alphacar' we built. (I was tempted to call them KITTs but decided against it.) The others were kept secret. We would register a vehicle through a small front company in nearby Oklahoma, which had done away with annual car inspections. Then we would take it apart and rebuild it as an Alphacar. Some were transformers, most were not. One was even an awful lot like the Mach 5. Over the course of a couple years, most of our vehicles were turned into high-tech toys, full of hidden functions and special abilities. They all became Alpha host platforms and all could drive themselves. Why did I have so many cars? Mainly because we had over a dozen people living in one house. Once we started creating Alphacars, I bought more because I kept coming up with ideas for new car gadgets. Don't make assumptions about these. They weren't designed for combat. We weren't loading these down with weapons. Well ... okay, a couple got high intensity lasers, and two could shoot silenced hidden rifles. However eighty percent had no offensive weapon beyond just being a car. They were a combination of experiments, just plain having fun, and creating potential defensive surprises. And a few of my cars were left as just plain cars. And just because I'm sure someone will be wondering, no I did not have sex with any of the robot cars. Inside them with someone else? Sure. With them, no, don't be silly. ------- Before the parade, I took my first trip to Hollywood. Now you should understand that I didn't go expecting it to work out well. I may be a geeky fan of some genre movies and TV shows, but my overall impression of Hollywood is fairly negative. (Maybe if they'd stop canceling good shows and instead get rid of all the crappy reality shows I'd have a better opinion of the culture. And then there's the ridiculously over-the-top liberal politics out there. Okay, so I'm pretty liberal in some ways, but I'm also pretty darn conservative in other ways. For that matter, I'm kinda libertarian in others. I guess I refuse to be limited to any party's doctrines.) Back to the subject at hand, Alpha and I needed a producer of some sort who could help us navigate the Hollywood culture and find the people we needed to make the movie happen. As I understand it, that's what producers do, right? They help get together the people that actually make the movie. Alpha believed that she and her platforms could handle most of the jobs when it came to making movies, including directing, but she lacked a certain artistic sense that I felt would hinder the movie's success. So we agreed that if we could find the right people, we'd try the Hollywood route first before going entirely independent. Alpha came up with a list of about 20 different people for me to meet with and informally interview. About a week and a half before Thanksgiving, Rei, Beta and I took the company plane to L.A. -- Beta had finally been licensed to be able to serve as co-pilot -- and began our search. I kept this group small for one main reason: Guilt. That past summer, after the Powerpuffs had been added to the household, I finally admitted that the house was getting too full and that I was trying to juggle too many women. I decided that out of all of my women, Rei should be the first to be recycled. Rei had never fit in smoothly, socially speaking. She was very quiet and rarely interacted with the others beyond what was necessary. Plus removing her would be easy to do 'story-wise'. She knew she was a clone who would be called back to Japan at some point to act as a pilot for experimental craft, so all we had to do was 'call her back' to Japan. The night before we were going to instigate the plan, I had Alpha turn Rei off and visited her room to say goodbye. (Not sexually speaking. Goodbye sex was planned for the following night.) Her room was exceptionally messy, which seemed odd given her fastidious appearance, but there was one area which seemed to be kept clean. One side of her desk had an almost shrine-like feel to it. A couple dozen little nick-knacks were carefully placed in a semi-circle around a scrapbook. There was a small stuffed bear that she won when we went to the state fair. A character figure from the one time I was able to convince her to play a pen-and-paper RPG. A pressed and vacuum-sealed rose from one of our dates. A die-cast airplane copy of her favorite fighter jet from our trip to an airshow. And more. There were other items for which I could recognize no significance such as a hair clip, a polished piece of amber and a fist-size wire statue of a reclining human figure. The scrapbook was full of photos, drawings, ticket stubs, fortune cookie fortunes and other ephemera. And just above all of this on the wall were Jane's framed nude drawing of Rei and myself and a group photo of the household from a year ago. These were Rei's memories, carefully preserved and displayed. In keeping with her character's background, she had few memories of her own before coming here, so she gave special honor to these memories which she could claim as her own. For some reason I had no doubt that in case of a fire, these little mementos would be collected before fleeing to safety. Handling them one-by-one, I started crying a little. I should have known before coming here that this would happen. I came to a realization, taking a final mental step to a conclusion I had subconsciously known was at hand. I couldn't get rid of Rei. She was too much of a real person for me to be willing to recycle her ... to kill her. And if I couldn't do that to Rei, the least integrated of any of my artificial women, how could I do it to anyone else? When I started this whole thing ... this lifestyle ... I was planning to keep each character for a few years at most, then replace them with new characters as time passed. The trouble is that they didn't stay simple, fictional characters. They grew and developed, and I had cheered them on with each new step. I had watched as they became human and gloried in the accomplishment. Now it was five and a half years since Kasumi woke up, and they were too real for me to be willing to get rid of them. So what should I do? Keep my current household forever? Continue adding new women and just expand the house itself and hope I can still manage it all? Start sending them out into the world on their own? Ask Alpha to make the decision for me? I wish I knew what the right answer was. One huge complication was another realization I had come to not long before: I was mildly addicted to creating new women. Seriously, the thrill of first interactions, plotting out the story needed to bring everything together, knowing all of a stranger's secrets and using that knowledge to lure her to my bed ... it was just so exciting. (I'm certain there are some god-complex sociopathic tendencies in there, and that seriously worries me.) At the same time, the introduction and manipulation are only small parts of what I love about it all. I tend to only create characters that I really like and that I think will be able to fit in within my little world. I suppose in a way I'm creating women that I expect to fall in love with. And despite my controlling tendencies, they also have to be intelligent women who can act completely on their own. As long as they are loyal to me, I encourage them to do whatever they want to do. The day I think of them as toys or mere possessions is the day I hope I die. And I suppose that's the reason why my character creation recycling plans were doomed to self-defeat. If some of that seems self-contradictory, then either I'm not explaining it correctly or ... well, I guess I'm just human. At the same time, overcrowding wasn't something I had to worry about right away. I had slowed down the introduction of my characters to just one set a year at most, and I still had three empty bedrooms containing five beds. Still, as a small measure of space management, in January Elisa and Jasmine moved into a small house of their own about half a mile away, freeing up one additional room. They still ended up spending up to a third of their free time at our house. What was I talking about that lead to all this? Oh yeah, Guilt. I had come very close to getting rid of Rei not long before the trip, so I made sure she was going to be my main bed partner for this trip. Of course Alpha wouldn't let me go alone and was still very unhappy that I only let Beta accompany me. I had agreed to wear protective clothing, stay online at all times and take Beta with me wherever I went, which was just barely enough to keep Alpha from sending along more bodyguards. As it turns out, none of the producers I met with were remotely acceptable. Maybe half were actually familiar with the book or script, though the rest had all read a summary of the book before the meeting. Everyone wanted to change things around and believed their own opinions were the best possible thing that could happen to the script. Their suggestions were along the lines of: "It sounds like a great story, we just need to bring it up to date with some Mission Impossible-style action." or "I see it as Dune meets 2001." or "We should get Mel Gibson to make a SciFi update to his character from the Patriot..." or "How about if we insert some of your robots as guards to create some more action scenes, since it's supposed to be a prison on the moon?" or "What if Mike was actually programmed by aliens, and the moon people discover the alien technology which is how they win their fight with Earth?" More than once I could barely restrain myself from giving hostile replies. The fat sixty-year-old man with a toupee and fake tan who suggested that we bring aliens into the story was especially hard to endure. On the flip side I have to admit the guy who described how terrifying space spiders should be added to the story resulted in restrained laughter rather than anger. One producer even suggested we nix the computer character since audiences wouldn't be able to relate to him. I did my best to smile and thank them all for their time and input. Only one meeting led to a productive result, and I'll get to that in a minute. Most days I had lunch and dinner meetings scheduled -- for some reason, movie people like to meet at mealtime, maybe so they could stick me with the check? -- but I made sure to take Rei and Beta out for a nice late dinner some evenings, even if I wasn't hungry. Rei was her normal, quiet self, but she certainly enjoyed all the attention I was giving her. We slept together for five of the seven nights we were in LA, and by the end of the week, she was regularly curling up next to me while sleeping, getting me to cuddle her like she was an oversized teddy bear. Well, an X-rated teddy bear since she preferred to go to sleep with my cock held inside her pussy or tucked up inside the crack of her buttocks. Since she wasn't attending the meetings, Rei had some free time and spent a lot of it going shopping. For some of her shopping, she was picking up requested items from the rest of the household. For instance, Zatanna had heard about a piece of Houdini memorabilia at an antique store and asked Rei to check it out. Linda wanted a designer purse from Rodeo Drive. Most relevant to the story, Jane wanted Rei to pick out a couple interesting things from a Los Angeles sex shop, Rei's choice, and she gave Rei permission to try them out. The third night of our visit Rei had dinner alone, and I returned to the hotel after a dinner meeting at which I was assured that the best thing we could do with the movie was to get a certain professional wrestler to star as Manny. At that point I was getting depressed and was looking forward to spending a night with Rei and maybe Beta. Rei was waiting for me in my room dressed in a shiny black PVC catsuit, except that the catsuit had a lot more zippers in interesting places than other catsuits I had seen. "Well, that's ... exciting," I said with a smile. "You bought it for Jane?" I asked. Rei and Jane were about the same size and body type, and they had shared clothes in the past. Plus it was difficult to imagine anyone else in the household requesting such an item. "Yes. She also suggested I try 'role play'." And so saying, she pulled out the last piece of the outfit: A PVC ... hat isn't the right word, and mask is too small a description. I suppose hood is the best description. This was a vinyl hood which covered her entire head, with cat ears, a zippered mouth, holes for her nostrils and zippered eye slits, currently open. She put it on, carefully zippering it up the back of her head, pausing twice to adjust the various holes for accurate placement and to avoid catching her hair. Once completely dressed in the shiny leather-looking black vinyl, she went down on all fours, revealing that she also had a tail coming out of her rear. I started to comment that I really didn't think this was what Jane meant when she suggested role play, but stopped. With Rei's quiet nature, almost any other type of role playing would be problematic. "So you're going to be my pretty kitty-cat tonight?" I asked. She nodded at me and started awkwardly slinking towards me. I'd guess that moving and crawling sexily in a full-body catsuit is difficult if you've never done it before. Still, it was a very arousing sight. The suit was too tight to show any swinging breasts, but the shiny black mounds seemed to draw my eyes. So did her legs and ass. The swish of the tail was almost hypnotic as she circled me. "I'm not really interested in bestiality," I commented, "but if all cats looked like you, I might be willing to change my mind." She blinked at me, then, obviously trying to emulate a cat's behavior, rubbed her cheek against my leg. I knelt down in front of her. "Before we go too far, come here for a minute." I took her face in my hands and gave her a long, deep kiss. She may want to try playing a submissive role, but I wanted to be sure we started by letting her know what she meant to me. When we finally broke the kiss, I shifted up slightly and kissed the top of her smooth, shiny black head. "All right, Miss Kitty, let me take a look at you." Feeling a vinyl-encased body for the first time was an odd experience. You may think you know what PVC/vinyl/whatever-it's-called is like, but until you have a loved one covered head-to-toe in the material, you haven't really experienced the fetish. The smell is strong, especially with a new suit once the wearer starts sweating. I explored her body a piece at a time as she continued to rub up against me. I released her pretty little B-cup breasts by unzipping two removable circular pieces on her chest. I thumbed her nipples until they were hard, then moved on down her torso. It turns out her tail was connected to a plug anchored in her anus. I played with it for a few minutes without removing it, enjoying how little applications of pressure or twists would cause her entire body to move in response. Finally, I undid the zipper covering her pussy, which went from a few inches above her vagina all the way back to the anal plug. I rolled her over onto her back and applied my tongue to her clit for a couple minutes. Remembering her role as a cat, I sat up and looked for something to tease her with. On a bed was a riding crop, presumably another new purchase. I grabbed it and dangled it above the Japanese leather-ish kitty cat before me. She pawed at it halfheartedly, then looked at me and meowed plaintively. "Aw, I'm sorry. Is my little kitty in heat?" She nodded and said "Meow." "Well, you know what cats in heat do, right? They have to present before they get fucked." She rolled over, lowered her front end to her elbows and raised her ass up as high as she could. I pulled off my pants and underwear and knelt behind her. Then I discovered the problem with full-body catsuit fucking, or rather with zippered catsuit fucking. Rei had a small strip of PVC layered between the zipper teeth and her skin, so she was protected from pinching and scraping. From outside the suit, there was no such protection. If you try to fuck as normal, your dick gets all scraped up on at least one side by the zipper teeth. The only way to avoid it is to constantly hold it open and apart with both hands, meaning that you can't use your hands to hold her hips or play with her breasts or anything. Oddly enough, her tail didn't get in the way at all, since I could easily turn it so that it curved up along her spine, away from me. After a couple minutes, I paused and rearranged her position so that she was resting her upper body and shoulders on a pillow, allowing her hands to hold the zipper apart for me. Then I was finally able to give her a proper fuck. We stayed in that position for at least fifteen minutes before I came, and I'm pretty sure she came at least three times. When we finished, I rolled her onto her back to kiss her, and noticed she seemed a bit warm. I felt her exposed skin (i.e. her breasts) and found them to be hot and covered with sweat. "Let's get you out of this and let you cool off," I said as I started searching for which zippers would release her. "How long have you been wearing it?" "Maybe Two hours?" she replied in a questioning tone. Rei wasn't really overheating or in danger, but nearly all of her skin had been covered by material that didn't allow evaporation of sweat or easy dissipation of body heat. She was sweating profusely when we got her out of the suit and popped out her ass-plug/tail. (In stripping her down, I discovered a little pair of buttons by the crotch designed to hold it open. Live and learn.) I carried her into the bathroom where I ran a lukewarm bath for her. Once she was feeling better, I joined her in the tub and arranged myself behind her so that she leaned back into me. It was an enjoyably intimate and erotic experience. I had full access to her from behind, massaging her breasts, rubbing her stomach and playing with her clitoris. When she felt my cock poking her from behind, she reached back and gave me a bit of a handjob. After a minute of this, she pushed herself up and moved back a little, slipping her pussy down onto my hard-on. We didn't really fuck then, we just sat and enjoyed the sensations. While I cupped her breasts and played with her nipples, I told her about my day. " ... so I was really happy when the dinner was over. You, my dear, have been the best part of my day so far." Rei may not be a good conversationalist, but she is an excellent listener. Eventually the time came to exit the tub and go to bed. Obviously tonight was a Rei-only night, and I was rarrin' to go again. Rei put the cat hood back on and plugged her ass with the tail again, but left the rest of the suit off. This time she was much more energetic and flexible, and while I know a lot of people have vinyl fetishes, I'm perfectly happy with bare skin. We tried a few different positions and finished with me pounding her ass like a piledriver with her shoulders on the ground and her back propped against the side of the bed. On day five of the visit, Beta and I went by the offices of one Bernard Blanchard, an older gentleman who had been in the business since the late fifties. We arrived a few minutes early and spent half an hour talking with his assistant, Jennifer Tuesday, until he was finally ready to see us. Jennifer was a lovely young lady, maybe in her mid-20's, with dark hair and glasses. Unlike most women I had met in town so far, Jennifer did not have a hard-body. She was by no means fat, but she was curved and looked invitingly soft. And best of all, she had more than two brain cells and had read some of Heinlein's books for pleasure. The meeting with Mr Blanchard was basically a waste of time -- his big suggestion was to change the setting to Mars -- but after we left, Beta talked to me about Miss Tuesday. "We might consider hiring her instead." "As our producer?" "Yes." "She's pretty young ... and would she even have the contacts we need?" "As far as I can tell, her primary job for the past few years has been to maintain Mr Blanchard's contacts for him." "How can you tell that?" "Her webpages. She claims that her boss never goes online but instead leaves all computer work to her. I can see nothing online to contradict her claim. And the only computer in Mr Blanchard's office was an older model, covered with dust." "I see. Well, let's continue on with our meetings today and tomorrow. If nothing comes of it, we'll give her a call and feel her out." "You wish to bed her?" "That's not what I meant by 'feel her out' ... but possibly. No, it's not a factor to be considered." Meaning it wasn't a factor for Alpha to include in her calculations, not that she wasn't attractive. A day and a half later, I called Miss Tuesday. "Mr Blanchard's office, how may I help you?" "Hello, Jennifer?" "Yes, how may I help you?" she repeated, trying not to sound bored. "This is Frank. I met you yesterday morning. I was wondering if I could talk with you tonight." "Mr Blanchard is unavailable for the rest of the day. If you'd like I could schedule..." "No, no. Sorry if I wasn't clear. I would like to talk to you, Jennifer, about a possible job." "A job? I mean, sure. Or at least, we can talk about whatever you'd like." "How about dinner tonight? I can get us a table at Lite's." Pronounced Lee-tay. It was a local ridiculously pretentious restaurant, but the food actually was really good. "I would love to go there, but you're new in town, right? It can take months to get a reservation." "I was there two nights ago and the manager said to call him for a table any time while I was in town." That was entirely true. I generally like to believe that ever since I turned Alpha on, we've made our own luck, but sometimes bits of serendipity just fall into your lap. My potential producer for that other evening's meeting had made the initial reservation at Lite's. During dinner Beta's reflexes and calm demeanor had really impressed the manager when a bobbled flambe dessert had briefly set our tablecloth on fire, and she had quickly put it out using a water refill jug snatched from a waitress. It was a moment almost worthy of a 'funniest videos' entry had it been recorded. (Personally, I think the dessert waiter was looking down the front of Beta's dress at the time.) The manager had comped the dinner bill to make it up to us, but I had left a large tip anyway. "Wow. I mean, yes, I'd be happy to meet you for dinner." "It'll need to be a little late, I'm afraid. Let's try for 8:30. I'll call back if anything changes." "Sure. Oh wait, here's my private line." She rattled off the number, and I lazily ignored it, knowing Alpha, who listened in on all of my calls unless I specifically told her not to, would add it to my address book automatically. The reservation was made without a hitch, and we met for dinner. Jennifer had dressed up in a de rigueur little black dress with two-inch pumps. The rectangular cut in front showed off her breasts to nice effect, but I was able to keep my eyes on her face. Mostly. By the end of the evening I had decided they were either D-cups or pushed-up C-cups ... so maybe I glanced a few times. I held the chairs for both Beta and Jennifer in turn as they sat down, realizing that maybe one of the reasons men liked to do this for women was the opportunity it allowed to take a peek down the woman's decolletage. "Thank you for inviting me out to dinner, Mr. ___..." "Please call me Frank." "Certainly." She was clearly a bit nervous and wondering if she should bring up the job offer or wait for me to do so. I didn't wait to let her decide. "As you know, I'm going to be making The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress into a movie. Unlike a lot of projects around here, that isn't a question or subject to funding or approval from someone else. I have the rights, I'm funding it myself, and I'll be using a new system for the digital effects. "I suppose it's going to be considered an indie film, but we should be able to make it look like a big studio film to a certain extent. On the other hand, I'm not looking to make a mindless summer blockbuster. "Indie or not, I think it will be a lot easier to make the film and we'll get a much better finished product if I can get some experienced people to work on it. Unfortunately, so far my meetings with people around town have been ... disappointing." She barely suppressed a laugh, turning it into a cough. "Everyone I've talked to wants to add their own personal touches, and while I realize we're not making a completely authentic adaptation of the book, none of the input I've gotten has shown any understanding of the work. Not meaning to speak ill of your boss behind his back, but he wanted to change the setting to Mars, which makes no sense on a number of levels." "Mr Blanchard has produced some very successful movies, but he's not well known for faithful adaptations." "Indeed. Jennifer, I'm curious. What suggestions would you have for the movie?" "Me? I'm not a ... I mean, I actually really enjoyed the book as it was. The only problem is that it covers too much for a movie to handle, which is normal for adaptations. If I remember right, there are lots of bits and pieces about everything from creating subversive literature before the rebellion to discussions of different types of marriage on the Moon. A lot of that would have to be cut out for a movie script." "True. Go on..." "Ummm ... I suppose there would have to be a big focus on the fighting at the end of the book for most of your action elements, but I guess that depends on whether you want to make a political movie or an action Sci-Fi movie. There have been other movies that handle both elements successfully -- I'm thinking of Avatar here -- but those are pretty rare." We broke off our conversation here to order drinks and glance at the menus. "I disagree about Avatar having anything politically significant to say, and regardless I'm not looking to hire James Cameron," I continued a moment later. "For one thing I'm not planning on a half billion dollar budget. Who would you suggest for director?" "I'm not sure. You seem to be in a rush about this, so scheduling would be a big factor in that case. Del Toro has some geeky fanaticism about him so he might work well with what you want, but he has so many projects right now it's not even funny. I guess Spielberg would be the ideal candidate, but the odds of convincing him to do it are nil. Abrams might be good, but he'll insist on rewriting the script." I was almost 100% certain she couldn't connect me with the big names she was throwing around, but I let her keep going. "Come to think of it, most big directors will bring in their own writers. If you want to maintain creative control, you'll have to find a fresh director, someone with good skills but who hasn't done any big projects yet. Or maybe an actor who wants a chance to direct. Actually that might be your best bet. It's a bit of a risk, but some actors are willing to relinquish some creative control for a chance in the director's chair." "Good point. Any suggestions?" "Probably not A-listers. They'd want to show off their own creative visions. I'd really like a chance to research it a little before answering. You kinda caught me off guard here." "A reasonable request. Jennifer, here's my situation. As it stands right now, I have a few indirect connections to some television writers and a handful of technical people. To make this process go smoother, I need someone with connections to a lot more than that. Someone who knows who to suggest, who to contact and how to contact them." She sat up straighter at this. "I've seen your webpage and did a little research. I'm guessing Mr. Blanchard rarely or never goes online or he probably would have been rather upset at a few things you wrote about him, Insider Girl." She froze up. "I don't know what you're talking about." "If you want to really stay anonymous, you need to spoof your IPs. 'Insider Girl' posts her blogs from both Mr Blanchard's office and from somewhere in your apartment building. That really limits the number of suspects doesn't it?" Insider Girl was a minor blogger in Tinseltown. She regularly posted insider gossip about the Hollywood elite and behind-closed-doors movie production deals. She never posted things that could hurt a production, which was something I liked about her, and that lack of exploitative salaciousness was also the reason she was only a minor blogger. On the other hand, she rarely had good things to say about her boss 'who was so out of touch that brain death might make his creative input better'. Before we had even finished our meeting with Jennifer's boss, Alpha had sorted through her posts and come to the conclusion that she must have very good access and contacts around the industry. It all matched up with what we knew of Miss Tuesday. "What do you want?" She suddenly looked like her world was crashing down around her ears. "Don't worry. I haven't told anyone and won't. Your secret identity is safe regardless, not that I've seen many negative entries on your site, so I doubt it would be a big deal either way. What I want is someone who has the connections that I need. I want a producer with a brain larger than a walnut. So far, you're the best candidate I've come across, which is a sad commentary on this town since you're not actually a producer." I let the back-handed compliment sit for a few seconds before adding, "Yet." "You want ME to produce your movie?" "Possibly. But I'm not going to hire you until I'm certain you can actually do the job. And I need to know if you have a non-compete clause in your contract with Mr. Blanchard." "I don't think so ... about that contract thing, that is. For that matter, I don't think I ever signed an official contract. Mr. Blanchard doesn't really ... I mean, he does contracts for movie work, but his hiring me was along the lines of him asking if I can type and work his, and I'm quoting, 'electronic computer things'. I said yes, and he hired me. I think part of it is that he wanted an eye-candy assistant, but he's too old to do anything more than play a little grab-ass. He pays me with hand-written checks, and I think he's had trouble from the IRS because he doesn't always remember to take out Social Security and such." "For our purposes, that sounds good. The next question is do you think you can do the job? And do you want to try?" "Absolutely. I don't have any resume I can give you to prove it, but if financing is already handled then I know everyone else around town that you could need..." I held up a hand to stop her for a moment. "I wouldn't have invited you here tonight if I didn't think you had the potential. Here is what I propose: I'm heading back to Texas tomorrow and won't be back in California for two weeks. When I get back, I'd like to meet with you again and hear a proposal from you on the best options I have for a director, writer, casting director, and so on. I'm not asking you to fill out every berth, just give me a reasonable list of options for the most essential ones. If you want to create a wish list of actors, go ahead, but that's not my first step here. "I expect to be able to talk with your top suggestions about the movie during my next visit or at least have contact information available for them. I don't expect you to have any agreements made or even necessarily to have discussed any specifics with any of them, though you can if you want. I do expect you to at least be able to get a foot in the door so to speak. "I realize this might cause a conflict of interest with your current employer. Work on your own time for now, and if I hire you, then you can resign or take a leave of absence or whatever you work out with Mr. Blanchard. I also realize your time is not free and that you might even be risking your current job by doing this preliminary work." I pulled a check out of my breast pocket along with my business card. "Here is a check for $10,000 dated for December 15th. As long as you make a good effort to fulfill my requests, the money is yours. However as soon as you cash the check, you have an official, on-the-record conflict of interest with your current job. As I see it, until December 15, you're preparing for a job interview. If your work is good, the $10K is payment for that work. If I hire you, the salary would be a minimum of a quarter million. "Check me out if you want. I am for real, and I am generous to employees. And I don't like the spotlight. I don't see myself doing interviews regarding the movie, so a photogenic producer would be a bonus." "One thing, sir. Two things, actually. From what I can tell, you're already going to be the producer here. You're the one with the script and creative vision, as well as the capital investment." "But not the contacts. And aren't there half a dozen types of producers? Executive producers, associate producers, assistant producers ... ummm ... carbon emission producers ... Pick your own title if I hire you. It really doesn't matter much to me. Call yourself the Great and Powerful Poobah Producer of Oz for all I care. What matters is the job." "I see what you mean, sir." Her cheeks dimpled nicely with a mirthful smile. "From your perspective, I suppose the most important thing would be the resume credit." "Yes, sir." "Please stop calling me 'sir'." "Yes, si ... Mist ... Frank. Sorry. Force of habit." "So, what was the other question?" "Oh, right. Well ... I don't mean to count chickens, but ... well ... producers usually get a percentage of the gross." "I have no objection to that in principle, but I'm not ready to discuss numbers. The quarter million I mentioned would be a minimum payment for the job, not a maximum. I suppose something like X dollars minimum plus Y percent if the movie grosses Z amount. But remember, you don't have the experience to demand too much. I said I'm generous, not stupid. "Is my proposal agreeable so far?" "Absolutely, s ... Frank. I appreciate the opportunity you're giving me." "In all fairness, you should understand that I'm willing to make the movie with only local talent in Texas if I need to, ignoring Hollywood completely, but I'd like it to be noticed and hopefully even profitable which is less likely if I don't have professionals working with me." "Why are you so set on making the movie?" "There are a number of different reasons, some of which I'm not planning to share. If you need a business reason, consider this to be both an investment and an advertisement." "An ad? This movie is an ad?" "Remember what I said earlier about special effects? My company has a new system to create CGI environments for TV and movies. The idea is that you can buy one of our systems for half a million, then any layman with the ability to use a computer would be able to quickly and easily create whatever setting they need. The system has the ability to quickly generate backgrounds for anything from the Flintstones to ancient India to modern Japan to Renaissance Italy to a moon colony to a post-apocalyptic New York City. It covers about 2500 locations in up to 64 different time periods and allows for a couple dozen different weather effects. And it's as simple as putting checkmarks in boxes." "Are the cities accurate? I mean, are the layouts and monuments correct?" "As correct as we can make them, but there are hundreds of generic unnamed locations too which will have randomly generated layouts. Which you can then change around as you see fit." "Won't that put special effects companies out of business?" "No, but it might force them to step up their game. Our system does not include CGI animals or people ... well, it includes background vehicles, but that's about it. It doesn't do explosions or lasers or sound effects. And of course, it doesn't do practical effects." "It still sounds like it would have taken millions of man-hours to get all that data gathered together and processed." "Or some really good programming to gather and sort the data." "That's going about a thousand times further than my poor programming skills take me. So this movie is just to show off what your system can do?" "That's one of the reasons." "Wow. I'll be curious to see it in action." "I'm sure I'll be demonstrating it a few times over the next few months." "You know, this really isn't the normal way movies are made." "I'm fine with that. If an established method works well, then we'll use it. If it doesn't, we'll do it our way. I plan to start filming by next summer, so I expect we'll be doing a lot of things using non-standard methods just to get things done in time." I gave her a copy of the script on a flash drive, and we spent the rest of dinner talking specifics and generalities. Before we said good night, I told her to be sure to watch for the Fort Worth Parade of Lights on the news in the next few days, which left her with a puzzled look. Alpha monitored her over the next few weeks. Publicly 'Insider Girl' mentioned that I was in town looking for people to get my movie made and in a different posting she said that she was working to prep for the job interview of a lifetime. She kept everything separate. Privately -- yes, Alpha had easily hacked her login information -- Jennifer (not 'Insider Girl') was working frantically with friends to get things ready. She had young scriptwriter friends who were working on script ideas and draft revisions. She had put feelers out to a dozen actors and actresses for their schedule information and interest in directing. Her apparent choice for casting director was limited to one person though, a middle-aged motherly type who had worked with a LOT of big names but only for cartoon and voice-over work. The people she was talking to and working with were mostly the up-and-comers, not really the established Hollywood elite. She emailed me regularly, asking if I wanted this or that or what type of actor I wanted in what role, etc. The only request I made of her, after a five-email day, was that she limit herself to one set of questions each day. ------- Remember when I said that November was a busy month? Still not over. In those two days between my return from California and Thanksgiving, the first two independent Alpha pair platforms were completed and readied to send out. All of the independent pairs were cyborgs. The Epsilon-style non-cyborg platforms were still considered a viable build option, but not for independent functionality. We believed if Eiko was separated from me for more than a couple weeks, she could possibly become very unstable and a danger to those around her (and this was over a year after her creation). Physically the units would include some basic upgrades, including greater than human strength, flexibility, vision and hearing. They would have some increased protection from damage, but we would not be able to produce, sort and install enough nanotubes to offer serious damage resistance to any but the first few pairs. As further upgrades, materials or designs became available, they would be upgraded. The Alpha-Alpha couple was to be placed in Dallas and the Alpha-Beta couple in Arlington. There were many reasons for the local placement, including the option of using them for local support when needed, the ability to observe them if problems arose with the independent pairs and the ability to easily support or abort the independent operation. Each pair would be given at least a quarter of a million dollars in starting funds, with the expectation that they will find a small business to buy or start. In both their home and business locations they would secretly host normal computer Alpha platforms. Each pair would receive one nanite pod and a supply of nanites. In most cases, the independent pairs would not have access to the facilities needed to produce nanites, so we would have to produce them at AARD and ship them as needed. (Also meaning we had greatly increased our nanite production capabilities.) Their mission was (1) protect me should the need arise, (2) protect themselves and humans in general, and (3) produce more Alpha platforms. Goal three was of limited duration. At some point we would cease production of more mobile platforms. We were estimating that by the end of next year, we should have close to twenty pairs available for independent operation. A year after that would give us over sixty pairs; then about 200 pairs; then about 600 pairs. I still wasn't sure when we were going to halt production. I mean, how many is too many? How many is not enough? Goal two had a lot more details to it, but basically consisted of a need to protect their own existence but not to do so at the expense of their human neighbors. They were not to act as vigilantes, but they were to protect humanity as best they could on an individual level, whether it be through charities or personal action. The first couple were perfect Aryan specimens on the surface: blonde hair, blue eyes, tanned athletic bodies. The second pair appeared to be Mexican-Americans: dark hair and eyes with light brown skin. The legal documentation Alpha provided showed them to be married citizens-from-birth of the United States. Later couples would be of varying ethnicity, and we even planned on creating a few gay and lesbian couples for target communities likely to welcome such. One concession to vanity was that all cyborgs grown locally would be attractive. I suppose to really blend in we should have made most of them of average appearance and a bit overweight, but ... I just couldn't do it. I arrived home from California on Sunday. Alpha-Alpha and Alpha-Beta were completed Sunday night and went through full testing for most of Monday. Monday night after the rest of the household was in bed, we brought them all up to my room, dressed in simple white smocks. "Hello," I said in greeting. "I realize that this is a pointless little interaction from one perspective, since all of you have memories copied from Alpha and the other cyborgs. But sooner or later you will develop your own individual personalities while staying within your programming, so I want to personally meet with as many individuals as I can. "In a non-genetic but very real sense, you are all my children, and I want you all to succeed. I want you all to blend in with humanity. I want you to live long lives and improve the world. I want you, your progeny, humanity and our world all to be better because you were here. "In many ways you are superior to humans. Remember though that to whom much is given, much is required. Or if you prefer, with great power comes great responsibility. "Eventually Alpha will be revealed to the world. And at some point your existence will also become public knowledge. I do not know if your individual identities will become known, but if that happens, I want your lives to be examples to show the world how computers and humans can live side-by-side. "Make friends in the community. Help your neighbors move furniture if they need help. Go to parties to watch sporting events or knit or gossip or play games. Go to church, at least on major holidays. Go to showers and bachelor parties. Sponsor a little league team once your businesses are successful. Things like that. "I even want you to have children when you think you're ready for the responsibility. Normal human children, I mean. Pets too if you can find some that like you." (From previous experience, some dogs got really freaked out around the cyborgs. Cats got a little skittish but usually didn't have any major reactions to them.) I walked down the short line, giving each of them a handshake and kiss on the forehead. Then I stood back and looked them over. "You're also here because I would like a physical bonding experience. I almost feel like I'm asserting some kind of droit de seigneur, but I would like for Amy and Beatriz to join me in bed, if you are willing." It was a rather odd physical pair that I had sex with that evening. Amy was a little taller than me, blonde, blue-eyed with a small upturned nose. She was a bit Nordic-looking, with nice little B-cup breasts with puffy nipples. Beatriz was almost a foot shorter than me, with dark hair, dark eyes and heavy D-cups topped with larger, classic dark nipples. Of course both were in excellent physical shape, and I spent the next hour examining their bodies in intimate detail. One significant difference that jumped out at me when compared to my household women was that these bodies were designed to look mature. They weren't teenagers, and they didn't have pristine skin. Alpha had built in little scars and imperfections, and I didn't doubt that there were background story elements to go with each little piece of forged history. I started by placing them side-by-side on the bed and pulling off their smocks. I kissed Amy, the tall white blonde, exploring her mouth with my tongue while caressing her breasts with my hands. Then I moved over to the shorter, darker-skinned Beatriz and gave her the same attention. I worked my way down each of their bodies in turn, sucking their nipples and tasting their skin, until I reached their vaginas. I ate them out in order, Alpha-Alpha Amy first, then Alpha-Beta Beatriz. Their pussies still tasted bland; the human body just needs time to develop flavor. I didn't spend much time down there before pushing them back fully on the bed and crawling up on top. I don't mean to break out of the moment, but the cyborgs couldn't actually orgasm, so there was no point to eating them out. They greatly enjoyed the intimacy and attention that came with sex, but trying to give them orgasms was a pointless endeavor. (Once after an extended Sisyphean attempt, I was able to give Beta's organic body an orgasm of some kind, but her computer brain received no rush or feeling or benefit from the experience.) Despite having mature bodies, Alpha had built each of them with their hymen intact specifically so that I could take their virginities. But for whatever reason, Alpha had requested that I leave their pussies for last, so I started with Amy's ass. I had her hold her legs folded close to her torso so that her ass was raised up slightly. Entering a willing cyborg's asshole is so much easier than with a human woman who would usually reflexively tighten her anus when touched. My cyborgs had virtually complete control over all of their bodies' muscles and reflexes. It was wonderfully tight and only a few minutes of fucking moved me closer to the edge than I wanted this early in the encounter. I pulled out and spent a couple minutes playing with her breasts until I no longer felt about to come. After the previous day's homecoming fucks, I doubted I had more than two orgasms in me that evening and didn't want to rush things. Alpha has gotten very good at reading my body language, and as soon as I had calmed down sufficiently, I felt a mouth gently engulf cock. Looking down, I saw Beatriz's small dark head swallowing my cock to the root. Please realize that this wasn't as nasty as an ass-to-mouth usually was because neither of these ladies had yet had a bowel movement in their entire lives. Their colons and intestines were almost pristine in their cleanliness. (Seriously. Over the next few days, they would each be eating yogurt and such to try to develop the bacteria necessary for proper digestion.) Beatriz obviously wasn't trying to bring me off, but she did keep me hard until I decided to restart the fuck. Amy's pussy was wonderfully tight as I entered her, and Beatriz licked as much as she could, both providing exciting stimulation and cleaning up the virginal blood. Alpha's skill at simulating natural sexual reactions has greatly improved over time, so it was very easy to imagine that I was making love to a real woman. When I spewed my semen at Amy's cervix, she would have convinced any outside observer that she too had just climaxed. The two of them applied their tongues to the task of helping me regain my full hardness. While they were working, I struggled to ignore the two husbands who were passively watching me perform. I was accustomed to having an audience, but the fact that they were men was starting to seriously throw me off. I could ask them to leave, but I didn't want to seem like I was rejecting them. I know they don't have human emotions, but they would eventually develop their own personalities and I did not want the memory of me asking them to leave the room while I fucked their wives to be part of their early individual memories of me. I could ask them to join in, except that I wasn't even remotely gay myself. Then again, it's not as though I would have to fuck them if they joined in. "Okay, you two," I said looking at the husband cyborgs. "Ummm ... Bert and Nick." Short for Albert and Benicio. "It's a little weird just having two guys watch while I make love to your wives. How about if you two join in a little? Let your wives suck you off while I fuck Beatriz." They both immediately pulled off their smocks and walked to the bed, their cocks hardening. Both were an average six inch length, I noted. I pulled the ladies off of my penis and lay Beatriz down, having her hold her legs just as Amy had done. Her skin was much darker, like a Hispanic woman. Her breasts were much larger than Amy's and her nipples both thicker, larger and darker. I spent more time in her ass than I had with Amy, but I was much less likely to come quickly this time around. It was a little exciting watching Amy and Beatriz, lying side-by-side, holding hands while they sucked off their respective husbands and I pounded Beatriz's ass then cunt. This was my first orgy with other men in the mix. Well, with other 'men', that is. When I finally came into Beatriz's pussy, both men came as well and their wives drank down their sperm. I briefly wondered how their computer brains triggered and reacted to their male orgasms; they probably just registered a small rush of chemicals and that was it. After I recovered, I wished them all good luck and said goodbye, kissing the women and shaking hands with the men. Alpha gave me updates on their progress over time. The Alpha-Alphas bought a small computer parts and repair shop, while the Alpha-Betas started a small accounting firm, with emphasis on their multi-lingual support (English, Spanish, French, Korean, etc). They started their families quickly, with both Amy and Beatriz giving birth within a year. ------- The Fort Worth parade was scheduled for Thanksgiving weekend, and we were ready for it. Our Alphacar had been repainted so that it looked a bit like the Santa robot from Futurama but more jolly and without the lasers and missiles. I had assigned Beta to be the driver and had everyone who wanted to ride shotgun put their names in a hat. Bubbles won. Most of AARD was in the crowd that day, including my entire household (minus androids). The weather was decent enough for late November, and the parade was in the evening so there were lights everywhere -- lining the streets, on the floats and attached to marching band instruments. Our Alphacar came in the middle of the parade, right in front of the high school band we had sponsored, and there was already a buzz in the crowd from rumors about it. When we saw it, it was approaching as a car, but it seemed to have been given a lot of parade space for just a car. It drove up close to the float in front of it, stopped and started its transformation. I noticed Bubbles waving enthusiastically during the changeover and was momentarily worried she might bounce out of her festive low-cut top, but it held fast. A mighty cheer went up when the car stood revealed as an eighteen foot tall Santa Claus robot. Then the car-robot started walking and waving. Before it left our view, it had started a small laser light show on the pavement in front of us, and Bubbles was tossing small handfuls of candy to the crowd. Since both of the points of interest in the parade had passed for me, I started working my way to the end point to check in with Beta and Bubbles. I found out later that there was one worrisome moment when a little boy of about six escaped his mother's grasp and ran out from the crowd because he wanted to ride in the robot. As soon as he got within ten feet, Alpha froze the robot to avoid stepping on him or kicking him or something. His mother quickly retrieved him and the parade continued. As it turns out, there's a tradition of leaving the floats available for viewing after the parade for a few hours. I'm sure someone told me or it was in the literature somewhere, but I certainly didn't remember hearing about it. The result was that Alphacar continued entertaining the crowds for another couple hours. Not that it did any special tricks, but it cycled through its transformation every five minutes or so. I noticed a couple news cameras over by Beta and sent Zatanna, our head of Public Relations, over there to help out though I made a point to avoid being noticed myself. Bubbles found me though, running over with her low-cut top showing a very healthy bounce for just B-cups, and leapt onto me, throwing her arms around my neck and plastering her lips against mine. She pulled back and squealed, "That was so much fun! Everyone loves your Santa-bot, especially the kids!" "I'm glad you enjoyed it. Did you get a chance to see the other floats or bands?" "Blossom recorded it all for me. Do you think we'll be on TV?" "Yes, I'm pretty sure you'll be on TV. Don't worry, Alpha will record everything for us." She gave me another kiss, then leaned in close and whispered, "You're mine when we get home tonight." Then she let me go and raced off to find her sisters. A few hours later, we had all gotten back home, sipped cups of hot cocoa and slowly drifted off to bed, one or two at a time. Bubbles and Beta accompanied me to bed, obviously chosen because they were the Alphacar drivers that evening. They were an odd pairing because Beta usually only joined in with other Alpha platforms, and Bubbles usually had her sisters with her. As we were climbing the stairs, I asked, "Bubbles, you must have been in a lot of parades before back home. Why so excited about this one?" She looked thoughtful for a moment. "I think it's because this time no one knew who I was." "Come again?" "I mean before it was always The Powerpuff Girls on parade. This time I got to be in a parade as just me." "In a giant robot car." "Yes, as me in a giant robot car. This time I could just have fun without having to be a ... uhhh..." "Superhero?" "A role model." We entered my bedroom, and I turned to close the door behind us. By the time I had turned back around, Bubbles was just finishing her wiggle as her pants and panties fell to the floor, her shirt and bra already tossed off to the side. I think even Beta was surprised at her speed. Apparently dissatisfied with our slow place, she manhandled me onto the bed and proceeded to quickly strip me down. Beta caught up with us and joined us on the bed, naked, just as my undershorts were pulled off, leaving me clad only in my socks. I hadn't been given time to get hard, so Bubbles and Beta lay down on either side of me, sharing my cock between them. Bubbles is not bi-sexual, but she has no qualms when it comes to putting on a display with other women to get me hard. Though lacking in a certain smoothness, she and Beta shared the occasional kiss as they slobbered over my cock. When Beta had a solo moment with my cock and deep-throated me, Bubbles gave a whistle of appreciation. "Can you show me how to do that?" "I can show you how to start learning. Most of it will just take practice on your part." "Let's start now." "Okay. The hardest part is overcoming the gag reflex and being willing to keep trying until you succeed." Beta actually didn't learn her techniques this way. For that matter, she doesn't have a gag reflex. But she had literature, videos and Eiko's experiences to draw from. Overall it would have been easier just to stick Bubbles in a nanopod and add the knowledge and skills to her brain, but there's something special about watching a woman be willing to learn a new skill so she can provide pleasure for you. They spent about fifteen minutes working on it. Fortunately Bubbles never actually threw up, though I think she came close more than once. By the end of their training session, Bubbles was able to take my penis in far enough to touch the back of her throat, but not much further. I wrapped up the lesson, saying, "Okay ladies, as much as I appreciate helping a young woman with her education, I think it's time to move on tonight." "Sure," Bubbles said happily. "I hope you'll let me ... learn ... with you more later." She hopped up and swiftly impaled herself on my cock as I lay on my back. She bounced a couple times, making sure I was in as deep as she could get me, then leaned forward and kissed me, pressing her breasts against my chest. As we kissed, she clutched me tightly, then surprised me by rolling us over together so that I was suddenly on top. Bubbles was more than willing to try other positions, but she always preferred the missionary. Not that I minded very much; I get plenty of acrobatic positions with my other women. She was very energetic, bouncing her hips up to meet my every thrust, occasionally wrapping her legs around my ass to hold me still while she kissed me. About five minutes after we started fucking seriously, she screamed out an orgasm, announcing her climax to the household, and she kept right on coming for the next few minutes until I finally let loose inside of her. "Oh," she whispered hoarsely, "that's always so good. Your turn, Beta." She lazily pushed me off of her and toward our dark-haired companion. Beta dutifully sucked me clean and helped me regain my full hardness. She then crawled over on top of Bubbles, positioning the two of them so that I could have easy access to both of their pussies, knowing that that is one of my favorite images. I spent ten minutes pounding both of Beta's holes before she faked an orgasm, after which I switched so that I was alternating between the two of them. We just kept that position while I moved up and down the female offerings before me -- pussy, pussy, ass, back and forth. Bubbles screamed out two more long comes and Beta faked one more before I finally put my second load in Beta's ass. I left it there for the night, pulling the ladies over to a less sweaty part of the bed before switching off the lights. We went to sleep that night in a triple-spoon; my cock was nestled between Bubble's asscheeks and Beta's breasts were pressed up against my back. Alphacar didn't get nearly as much notice as I felt it should have, which annoyed me. Oh sure, there were clips of it on the news nationwide, and to a lesser extent, worldwide, for the next couple days, but no major followup stories. Alpha told me it was heavily covered in Japan, where various company executives were being asked why we were allowed to beat them in construction of such a robot. We received a number of invitations to join other parades around the country, but we politely declined them all. (Well, except for a couple months later when a Make-A-Wish Foundation kid wanted to ride in a real life Transformer. We made an exception for him. Made a big production of it. There's actually a minor side story there: We gave him a drugged drink, let him take a nap in an office, kept the mother distracted and snuck him into a nanopod for half an hour. The doctors later reported he seemed to make a miraculous recovery.) I suppose I shouldn't have been too upset since I normally would have preferred to avoid the publicity anyway. It's just that ... darn it, it was one of my favorite personal projects. It should have garnered as much interest as Alphadroid. Maybe the public had just started to expect this kind of tech from AARD or maybe they didn't really understand all of the brand new design elements needed to create it. Whatever the reason, most of the world failed to truly appreciate my newest toy, thus my annoyance. I don't invest too much of Alpha's resources in developing my personal geeky toys, but I usually have her make me a couple different ones each year. For example, I have a Batman-esque compressed air grapple gun; it works great though you have to change out the air cartridge with every use. I have a phaser-like stun gun which would more accurately be called a neural disruptor, but it's shaped like an old Mark II Phaser. It has a fairly short range, but it does work ... although maybe I should also admit that it destroys the target's short term memory along with the stunning effect. It is designed to interfere with the brain's neural electronics. Getting it to stun instead of kill was apparently very difficult, even for Alpha. I have Portal-style long-fall boots which could theoretically let a normal 200 lb human fall up to 52 ft before risking damage. That's assuming said normal human has been extensively trained in how to land while wearing the boots. Alpha absolutely refuses to let me try them out any higher than five feet though. I have a jetpack which can let a 200 lb person fly for 15 to 20 minutes. Kara and the other characters who remember being able to fly on their own absolutely love it. I have a helmet that lets me see what kinds of thoughts someone is thinking. It isn't mind-reading; it just shows types of thoughts -- long-term memory access, creativity, lying, dreaming, etc. It doesn't technically have to be a helmet though. I just wanted it to look like Doc Brown's contraption from Back to the Future. I have a Dick Tracy-style watch videophone, a wearable jacket/computer with contact lens displays, and a new Alphadroid shaped like R2-D2 with a very short range hologram projector included. There are other projects, but I'm letting myself be distracted. To move on with the story, Alphacar's appearance prompted a few requests from the military to see if we could propose a design for a next generation tank. We refused the first two inquiries, but eventually put the requests on hold while we thought about it. I really didn't want to get involved in military contracts, mainly for security reasons, but there were a few benefits to the idea. A few months later we quietly sold a few designs to another military tech designer and let them handle the development. ------- On my next trip to Los Angeles, I took along Eiko as well, finally bowing to Alpha's demands that I have a minimum of two bodyguards when I travel. Eiko had been developing wonderfully, both mentally and emotionally, and I felt she deserved a reward. (While not really needed with the cyborgs, Eiko's purely organic mind benefited from positive reinforcement like any other human.) Our small company plane was too cramped to allow for comfortable sex, so a few months back we had removed four of the seats and replaced them with a padded bench which could fold out into ... well, it was still way too small to be termed a "bed" but it was a large enough padded surface that I was able to introduce Eiko to the mile-high club. On this visit, we rented a larger suite and set up a sample AARD Environment Generation System (EGS) in the main room. Miss Tuesday had a fairly comprehensive list of people to meet with and consider. I stayed for a week, having about three meetings a day. One of the first interviews was with Jennifer's top choice for writers, and she introduced us to the writing team of George Chen and Franco Rodrigez. The two had written for TV and had tried writing for movies, but had not yet had any feature work actually produced. George was a Chinese-Californian who rarely ever talked. Franco on the other hand ... Well first of all, yes, Franco intentionally spells his last name incorrectly, without the 'u'. Apparently he believes it visually sets him apart or something. Second, he was obviously gay. I mean really, over-the-top, limp-wristed caricature gay, with a prancing gait, lipstick and mascara, wearing pink, flowery shirts with ascots. (Thank god he didn't go around calling everyone 'girlfriend'.) Third, he had the energy of a ferret on sugar-coated crack, constantly bouncing around the room, pacing, jumping and even skipping back and forth. He even spoke as if pausing to breathe was something to be done only on special occasions. " ... So when the movie ends, you have the professor dead, which is a downer, but he's old and he finally got his 'Free Luna' so it's not so bad. It's like his death was the sacrifice needed to pay for the victory. "Mike on the other hand has the potential to be such a fun character in the movie, especially if you play up his sense of humor, so his death at the end of the movie will actually turn a victory, rah-rah-we-won ending into a downer ending, and movies that have downer endings don't do as well. They just aren't as popular; people don't want to go see them again or recommend them to friends. "The thing to realize is that the big relationship in the movie isn't Manny and Wyoh, it's Mike and Manny. Mike really only helps the revolution because Manny asks him to. Before the bombing at the end, Mike sends Manny out of the city where it's safe because he's worried about him. They are the real center of the story, and when Mike dies, that turns a good SciFi movie into a tear-jerker, though admittedly not a traditional one. In a way, I suppose it's kinda like Old Yeller. Well, no, not really. Never mind. "So here's my suggestion: First you make sure you include the story bit about him printing out jokes for Manny so Manny can tell him if they're funny and if they are funny then whether they can be funny more than once. We put that really early in the film and then once or twice in the middle of the film we show Manny reading through the jokes and marking notes on them for Mike. Then at the end, after Narrator Manny tells us that Mike is dead but he hopes he'll wake up again someday, the last shot in the film is Mike's printer starting up on its own and more jokes printing out for Manny to read. That way you aren't technically saying that Mike is still alive, but the audience will want to believe it's true. Plus it bookends the film. Gives you a good sense of closure, that everything is going to be all right." Finally he took a deep breath and paused. "So ... what do you think?" George and Jennifer looked on expectantly. I paused a moment to consider. Having Mike alive at the end had been suggested before, but no one had ever come up with a good way to do it that kept things true to the story. "It sounds like it could work out well. Beta, what do you think?" "In general I always prefer a faithful adaptation. At the same time, I admit that I would like for Mike to survive the story. I'll leave this decision up to you." "Well, I would also like to see Mike survive, and this sounds like a great compromise between a completely faithful ending and a happier ending. All right, Franco, George, welcome to the team." I stood up and shook hands with them. Or more accurately, I shook hands with George, and Franco laid his limp hand in mine and let me shake it. When I stood back, he jumped up and let out a loud 'whoop'. He ran over to Jennifer and swept her up in a big hug, saying, "Thank you, thank you, thank you, Girlfriend!" I sighed mentally at the completion of the stereotype. At least he wasn't trying to call me 'girlfriend'. I like to think I'm socially liberal and open-minded enough, but he was just a bit too over the top for me. It really felt like he should have been on a bad TV sitcom. Still, he seemed to understand the story and its themes and had come up with a good change to the ending. Actually it was the first significant addition to Heinlein's story that I had accepted. I had the two writers sign a contract requiring them to deliver their first draft by the end of January. Not a huge amount of time, but they had a starting script and it was just an adaptation. They would be paid $25K now and $25K more on delivery of the draft. If I liked it and wanted them to continue working on it, additional payment would be made. If they remained the primary writers throughout the entire project, their salary would come to a total of $500K. For writers who have never before had a movie made, I thought it was good pay, and it stayed within Alpha's projected budget. The casting director Jennifer had picked out for me was a middle-aged woman who looked like a suburban mom wearing a power suit. Her name was Andi Groman, and she had the most extensive resume of anyone on Jennifer's interview list. (And she was indeed a suburban mom in a power suit.) While she had worked with a huge list of top actors and actresses, all of her casting work had been for cartoons and other voice work, and she was looking to expand her resume a bit. Her rolodex was lacking the top A-list names, the actors who commanded $5+ million per picture, but then again we didn't want them anyway. I was ready to hire her after only a few minutes. After liking her writers and casting director choices, I took Jennifer back to our hotel and led her into the bar. I ordered us a round of champagne and we sat down. "I know we're not finished going down the list, but I'm comfortable enough to hire you based on your results so far, so congratulations!" We clinked glasses and drank, Jennifer looking slightly flushed. "Wow. I guess I need to ... I mean, I had an agent friend of mine work up a contract just in case, but ... ummm ... what terms were you thinking of?" "Terms will need to wait til we finish going through your list of names. Your pay and/or percentage will be based on your usefulness, but ... if it's not too rude to ask, what do you earn working for Mr Blanchard?" "About three and a half grand a month." To me that sounded like a lot given that her job was mostly just a glorified receptionist/secretary for a man who had maybe one job every couple years. Maybe it was a cost-of-living thing on the west coast? "Well, if nothing else you suggest works out and the movie is a complete flop, I think I can still guarantee you ... hmmmm ... a hundred grand from this project. If you and your list continue to be as useful as you have been so far AND the movie makes a profit, you'll probably end up a millionaire. "As to a contract, give it to Beta and let her look it over, but I think we need to wait til we finish seeing how useful your list is before we sign any specific terms." The four of us sat and talked for a while, eventually ordering dinner too. Beta later reported this conversation which occurred while I was in the men's room. "So is Frank dating one of you?" Jennifer asked. "Not really," replied Beta. "He doesn't have a single, steady girlfriend." "Is he in the closet or something?" Eiko laughed. "Definitely not." "If you want to seduce him, go right ahead," Beta reassured her. "I understand he's quite a skilled lover." Jennifer blushed, and that ended that little conversation. I'd speculate that Beta's comment stuck in Jennifer's mind because she started acting differently toward me. Up until then she had regarded me with a combination of respect and condescension -- probably respect for my self-confidence, my achievements and my self-made wealth, and condescension definitely because of my naivete regarding how Hollywood worked. In some ways, I was like a near-sighted bull trying to navigate a maze by charging straight ahead. At the same time, I had swept her up in my confidence that I would make the movie. I certainly am confident because I have seen what Alpha and I have accomplished so far and know that very little is beyond our capabilities when we focus on a task. Adding to that was the self-confidence I had developed regarding the fairer sex. Sure I was smoother and more relaxed within the controlled setting of my household, but I had amassed enough experience with the opposite sex that I felt with certainty, rightly or wrongly, that I could give any woman the night of her life. And yes, I know my ego has been over-inflated, so I try not to let things go to my head (which was difficult given how Alpha kept trying to send women to me). Between Jennifer and Andi, they had come up with an interesting proposal for director: Baron Hart. Baron was an actor who had slowly been rising to prominence over the past few years, with roles like being a major villain in a Batman movie, but my favorite one of his roles was as a very likeable PR man for the tobacco industry. Baron was a pretty talented actor and like many actors, he was interested in trying out the director's chair. He was also one of their top choices for the role of Mike (and his virtual alter ego, Adam Selene) so we had an opportunity to fill both a character slot and the director's slot for a single salary. They had already felt him out for the possibilities, but I was concerned that he may not have the experience to direct a technically difficult movie. At the same time, I had to admit that he would probably do well as Adam, and maybe as Mike too. As it turns out, Baron was in town so we arranged a meeting. We got caught up discussing the movie and talked for four or five hours. Beta subtly quizzed him to determine his movie-making knowledge on the other side of the camera, and he seemed to be pretty solid in most areas except when it came to how to do CGI, green screen and special effect shots. We eventually worked out a plan for Beta to be Baron's assistant and handle the technical details for him (which also involved convincing Baron that Beta knew enough about film making to be able to handle the job). We set up our first demonstration of the AARD Environment Generation System for Baron (and Andi and Jennifer). We rented a 100+ inch HD TV from the hotel and hooked it up to the system. Then we spent the next few hours demonstrating the power and flexibility of the system by taking requests (or more accurately, being challenged). "Rome in 0 BC." "Okay, now do post-apocalyptic Seattle, Washington." "How about Shanghai during the Ming Dynasty?" "Chichen Itza before Columbus." "World War II Dresden." We were able to show and explore the desired locations for about 9 out of 10 requests. And of course, we spent some time showing off our designs for retro-futuristic Heinlein-style lunar cities. The system was able to show everything from sweeping overhead shots to back alleys to inside most buildings. In long distance shots, we could show crowds and vehicles, though such mobile animations were not intended to be viewed close-up. These were high quality environments, generally rendered in less than ten minutes. And when I say 'high quality', I mean the settings could be cranked up to many times better than HD quality (though each jump in quality also increased the rendering time -- 1080i generally took 5-10 minutes to create and render a new city from scratch). I showed off some of the more in-depth options and flexibility of the system, such as how to customize the city layout or individual buildings. You could select the weather, blow up buildings, show buildings under construction and more. Those options were all there, but the big benefit was how you could spend one minute making selections, then sit back and let the computer provide you with a finished realistic city. We were to repeat this demonstration four more times before shooting began, each time for increasingly larger groups. Eventually we left behind a system for Baron to work with so he could customize the moon cities for the movie and set up all types of camera shots. When we started discussing who should fill the other roles, Andi cautioned me. "Don't expect to get Angelina Jolie to play Wyoh or Morgan Freeman to play the Professor. While there's always an outside chance of getting a big name to join your movie, I think the best we're likely to get are former big names or up-and-comers. We may have a decent chance to snag someone who used to get above-the-title billing and wants to make a comeback, but our best bet is for B and C-list actors." I'm going to skip over a lot of the casting discussions, interviews, setup and fiddly bits. I'm pretty sure most readers would consider it dull, and it's not necessary for the story. Still there are some points that could use discussion. I don't know if the "casting couch" still exists in Hollywood or not, but I made sure we didn't have one. That may surprise some people, but I disapprove of the notion of using sex to get ahead in business or requiring sex for someone to be hired. That's not to say that I didn't have sex with people involved in the movie. I certainly did, and I'll get to those stories in a little bit. BUT those encounters all happened after our business relationship was decided. When it came to the major movie roles, I actually only got one of my ideal castings: Jonathan Heart signed on to play the Professor. If you've seen Hellboy, he played the professor in that movie too, and I wanted him to partly repeat that performance. Oh sure, the Professor in TMIAHM is an older, devious, radical political revolutionary, but the character fits very well. We got one A-list movie actor to play a supporting role: Mick Gage. Mick is known for explosion-laden action movies, but he's done a lot of well-regarded drama and comedy roles too. He's also a bit of a nerd when it comes to SciFi and comic book stuff. When he heard that someone was making a big-budget-ish Heinlein movie, he wanted in. After meeting him in person, I was persuaded to give him the role of Stuart Renee LaJoie. He doesn't quite fit the role (a rich European tourist with a vaguely ill-defined aristocratic background), but adjusting the character to be an American ex-patriot tourist would still work perfectly well for the story. Plus since we cut the polygamous line marriage, the role was a little smaller than in the book so we would probably only need a couple weeks of Mick's time, which also meant that he wasn't going to expect a $10 million payday. For Wyoh, we almost went with Julia Bend (two auditions), an actress I mainly knew from her recurring role as an evil vampire in the Buffy and Angel TV series. Then we almost went with Lori Finn Broyles (three auditions), who was on Twin Peaks and played the bad guy in MiB2. Eventually we decided on an up-and-coming TV actress named Olive Wilder (five auditions). Olive had been making a name for herself on a TV medical drama on FOX, but she was also just finishing filming a major role for Tron 2 for Disney. We happened to catch her at exactly the right moment. Another year and her schedule probably would have been too full to sign on with us. Manny, the lead role, was a tricky one. Manny is largely an every-man character. Yes, he has a Russian accent, has an interchangeable cybernetic arm, is the top computer repairman on the Moon and is best friends with Heinlein's first A.I., but for all of that, he's still a very down-to-earth guy who gets caught up in the revolution by accident. We didn't want a super-handsome guy or a smooth-talker. My personal first-choice was Benny del Tono, but he wasn't interested. We went through a few other possibilities and eventually we signed Carey Afflick (five auditions). Although Carey may be best known as the younger brother of Ben, he's been in a large number of films, including the Oceans Eleven series. He wasn't a master actor, but he was pretty good. He just never reached the A-list and was rarely the leading man. I never would have thought of him when casting for the role, but his agent got in contact with Andi and convinced her to give him a shot. This role would be a little out of type for him, but he gave some very good readings at the auditions. Jennifer continued earning her pay, finding a special effects company to make our costumes and props, a good camera crew, etc, etc. (It takes a LOT of people to make a professional movie.) Amid all of the preparations and meetings, during my fourth trip to Hollywood, I visited the office we had rented for Jennifer to work out of. She had a secretary of her own now (which she negotiated for in her contract with me) and was feeling on top of the world. Or more accurately, at that particular moment she looked like she was feeling like hell. Her L-shaped desk was piled with DVD cases, a few VHS tapes and a small pile of paperwork. Jennifer herself was looking a bit bleary-eyed as she turned away from a TV/DVD set on a side table. "What's wrong," I asked, trying to sound sympathetic. "I've been watching audition videos for the past six hours while simultaneously fielding calls from their agents and trying to keep George from crashing." "Isn't most of that Andi's job?" "Yes, but half of everyone are sending their tapes to both of us." "I've been getting some myself, but I just send them back unopened." "Wish I could do that." I snapped my fingers in front of her face a few times. "Jennifer! You absolutely can do that too. Now get up!" "I can't. Even without the videos, I still have about a thousand different calls to make." "Consider this an order from your boss. You need to relax a little or you're going to burst. Or collapse. Or collapse due to bursting." I rounded her desk and hooked my hands under her arms, pulling her up. She didn't give much resistance, except to step back enough to grab her purse. As I pushed her out of her office, I instructed her secretary to hold all her calls and to take a shot at organizing the discs on Jennifer's desk. "Where are you taking me?" Jennifer asked as I pushed her out the door. "Don't know," I admitted. "Where do you usually go to relax and have fun?" "Uhhh ... different places. To just relax, maybe a drink at Around the Corner?" "Around the Corner?" "It's a ... well, kind of a bar, I suppose." "Kind of?" Jasmine, my bodyguard and chauffeur this trip, drove us to 'Around the Corner'. Aside from being short and female, she did her best to look the part, dressed in a dark suit and sunglasses. As it turns out, 'kind of a bar' means a club mish-mash that sells alcoholic drinks. They had pool tables and darts, like bars and pubs, but they also had video games, skeeball, karaoke and a small dance floor. We got there maybe around 4, so it wasn't overly busy yet. Jennifer excused herself to 'powder her nose' and returned looking much less hell-bound. We got a couple very good burgers, drank some beers and played some games. We did our best to avoid talking about the movie, instead exchanging stories about our other jobs. Jennifer became gradually more and more relaxed, and we left around 7:30 before either of us actually became drunk. Jasmine drove us to Jennifer's apartment building where she hesitated before inviting me up for a nightcap. (Yes, she actually used the word 'nightcap'. Perhaps she's seen too many movies?) Her apartment was small but clean, with one wall covered by bookcases full of DVDs. "So would you like some coffee or wine or... ?" "Whatever you're having will be fine." I sat down in her loveseat, making sure to leave room for her to join me. "Are you feeling more relaxed now?" "Yes, but in the back of my mind I still know I have huge to-do list waiting for me back at the office." She sat down next to me and handed me a glass of white wine, which I politely sipped. "I think you're just used to doing everything that's been handed to you. You need to learn to do the important stuff and let other people handle their own jobs. I had the same problem not too long ago. I burned out trying to do too much and crawled into bed for a couple weeks as a result. I don't want that to happen to you." "Thanks. I'll try." We each took another sip of wine and sat quietly for a moment. "So..." she said, obviously prompting me to take a first step. "Jennifer," I said quietly. "One of my personal rules is that I will never make the first move on anyone who is working for me. You are a beautiful, attractive young woman, and if you want anything to happen tonight..." I let the sentence drop. She obviously had a moment of internal debate, then took my glass from me and set them both down on a side table, quietly muttering "The hell with it." Then she jumped me, kissing me intensely and moving so that she was partially on my lap, her breasts pushing against my chest. We sat there for a moment, just making out ... kissing supplemented with wandering hands. Then clothing started being pulled off and our breathing became a bit more labored. She pulled me upright and, not letting go, led me to her bedroom while we dropped pieces of clothing all the way. By the time we reached her bed, I was naked and she was down to her panties. I pushed her gently down to her bed, took in her form and followed her down. I may have mentioned before that she had a nicely soft body, as opposed to the tight, toned look so popular in Hollywood. She was by no means fat, but she was very curvy. Now uncovered, I estimated her breasts to be maybe small C cups, with large pale areolae (having previously guessed D cups ... push-up bras maybe?). Having been taken to her bed, I took the lead, slowly working my way down her body. Her breasts rolled around so wonderfully, with such stiff nipples, that I found it difficult to move past them, but eventually I made it down to her pussy, pulling her panties down her legs to give me access. Her pubic hair was trimmed enough to avoid showing when wearing a bathing suit, but was otherwise unrestrained. I brushed it to the side and pulled her lips apart to reveal damp, pulsing inner lips. Surprisingly she tasted faintly of strawberries. I tried to make a mental note to ask her where that came from later on, but ended up forgetting about until our second intimate encounter. I spent a few minutes down there, exploring and experimenting to discover her likes and dislikes. I had her coming fairly quickly, getting her off twice with my tongue within maybe five minutes. She lay back, looking radiantly tired. "Oh god, that was good. Quick, go. Bathroom." She pointed. "Gargle. Condoms in the cabinet, top shelf." With my hard-on pointing the way, I went to follow her commands. I was a bit shocked too. I had never before had a woman tell me to open her bathroom cabinet. It's like they try to protect their mystique by never letting us see that they use toiletries or hygiene products. She had Scope by her sink, so I rinsed off my mouth and gave a quick gargle. Just before I reached for her above-the-sink medicine cabinet, an arm reached out from behind me and a voice said, "It's all right; I'll get it!" as Jennifer apparently decided that she didn't want me peaking into her cabinet after all. She patiently waited for me to leave the bathroom until she retrieved a box of condoms for us to use. Two boxes, actually. After closer examination of the size of my cock, she tossed one box off to the side. Once back in bed, she gave me a quick kiss before moving down to my manhood, applying lips and tongue enough to return me to full hardness. Then she tore open a foil packet, unrolled a condom onto my cock, tore the condom in doing so and repeated the attempt a second time with a fresh rubber, finally succeeding. Far from taking me out of the mood, all of this was exciting me a bit. A lot of my bedroom encounters were unrealistically perfect -- perfect bodies, no hang-ups, coordinated movements, synchronized orgasms -- that a little bit of fumbling this time just gave the experience some personality. She gave a very pleasant, ego-boosting hiss as I worked my way inside of her. Though no virgin, she felt pretty tight and I think I bottomed out just before I was fully inside of her. It apparently didn't matter because she wrapped her legs around my buttocks and pulled me in close, reaching up with her hands to pull our faces together for a kiss. That kiss was the last bit of tenderness for awhile because after it, the fucking began. And I mean 'fucking', not 'making love'. Jennifer wanted sex. She wanted orgasms and sweaty bodies plastered against each other. She kept us facing each other the entire time, but even with that one limitation, we were rolling around, changing pace and position all the time. She didn't want more than a minute at a static pace or in the same position. And when we kissed, her tongue went everywhere. Mouths were attached to nipples, ears and necks. She didn't want anal sex, but fingers popped in bottoms with regularity. About forty-five minutes later, I was worn out, having filled two condoms. Jennifer was ... well, she was satisfied at least. I'm pretty sure she could have enjoyed a few more orgasms, but she was willing to let me call it a night. (I'd like to point out that I have lasted longer than that before and since, but the constant changes in pace and position apparently wore me out sooner than normal.) After we had rested for a few minutes, I leaned over and kissed her cheek. "I have morning meetings and don't have a change of clothes here, so I really need to head back to my hotel room. Is that okay with you?" "Huh?" She took a moment to register what I said. "Oh, sure. And thank you. That was very ... not sure if 'relaxing' is the right word..." "Stress relieving?" "Hah! More than that, but yes." "I'd really like to do this again. Maybe we can even have an official date." "I don't know. Tonight was pretty date-ish, though I usually don't go this far on a first date." "Well, from a certain point of view, we've been out to dinner together a number of times already, so if you wanted to..." "Hmmm ... nope, not dates, but thanks for trying. I guess I can just be kinda slutty on occasion." She said this lightheartedly with a hint of a hidden grin. "Don't worry. It's our little secret," I reassured her. I grabbed a damp washcloth from the bathroom and wiped away the worst of my sweat as we talked. "So, how many girlfriends do you have?" "Hey now," I chided. "I don't kiss-and-tell. But I will say that I'm not in any kind of exclusive relationship right now." "I've noticed that you're ... uhhh ... a very ... private ... person." This was a rather halting comment, and she was obviously afraid she might offend me if she chose the wrong phrasing. "Very true," I agreed. "My desire for privacy is somewhat at odds with my appearances alongside my android and such, but I really do prefer to stay out of the spotlight." "I was going to see if you wanted to go to any 'Hollywood parties, ' but I'm guessing..." (She did the air-quotes hand gestures when she said 'Hollywood parties'.) "I would probably thank you for the offer then say no. It would take a lot for me to want to mingle with people who thrive on publicity." "If that's so, then you must have serious personal reasons for wanting to make a movie. People generally don't produce movies because they want to avoid publicity." "That's one of the reasons I hired you, remember? One of your jobs is to shoulder the burden of publicity." "I remember, I just didn't believe you at the time. I'm still not sure I do, but I'll try to take you at your word." Now mostly dressed, I sat down on the bed next to her. Jennifer was stretched out naked above the covers, showing no modesty at the moment. She was, however, avoiding my eyes. "I did a porno once," she blurted out. I have no idea why she felt she had to tell me or why she had to tell me now. I'm sure there was some chain of logic in there somewhere, but I couldn't see it. Still, this was obviously something of a confession for her, so treated it as such. "I see," I said, trying not to sound too serious. "I needed money really badly at the time, so I bleached my hair as a disguise and went in. I had one scene with another girl and gave a blowjob to a guy who joined us. Then I cleaned up, cashed my check, dyed my hair back and never did it again." "I understand why you might not put it on your resume, but at the same time it's not much to be ashamed of. Why tell me?" "It's just that, if we're going to date at all -- and I'm not trying to put pressure on you, because we live two time zones apart, so I'm pretty sure nothing would work out even if we wanted to try -- but if we're going to date even a little, then you should know now before you find out by accident." Alpha hadn't told me, so it's likely she didn't know about that particular tick on Jennifer's resume. And if Alpha didn't know, then it wasn't readily available information online. I think Jennifer just had the wrong idea about how likely she was to be found out. Or about how much porn I watched. "I'm glad to know, but it doesn't really make a difference one way or the other. It would probably matter if you were still making pornos, but other than that ... no." "This ... this isn't going to change anything, right?" "Which thing? Us having sex or the revelation of earlier wild days?" "Ummm, either, I suppose." "Well, I now feel I can call you for a date without risking sexual harassment, so I suppose that's a change. As to the other, I don't watch that much porn anymore, but I'll keep an eye out for you when I do." She whacked me with a pillow. "I deserved that," I agreed as I stood up. "Are you free for lunch tomorrow?" She crawled to the side of the bed and looked around for her purse. She pointed across the room to a chair, and I dutifully retrieved her purse from where it hung from the arm. After checking her phone's appointment calendar, we worked out a lunch date in two days. Before I left, she made me promise to give her at least one 'booty call' every time I visited California or she visited Texas. Overall the pre-production setup went pretty well, especially given that we were planning to start filming less than six months after we hired Jennifer. It helped a lot that we had Alpha and her system covering most of the special effects. Heck she designed and directed the building of the most complex wire system in Hollywood history. Well, movie or Texas history, since it wasn't built in California. Since the movie was set on the moon and we wanted a large degree of realism, the actors would need to look like they were walking in a low gravity environment. We could avoid some of this by having the actors mostly stationary in some scenes, but that wouldn't be a useable approach most of the time. Alpha set up a large warehouse-sized shooting stage in North Texas with a largely automated wire system. Someone would put on a harness, zero out the weight balance with the press of a button while your feet were pulled up, then be able to walk, run or jump as if they were under 1/6th normal Earth gravity. Most of the harnesses didn't allow more than 30-40 feet of movement, but there were half a dozen 'star' harnesses which could move across the whole stage. The lines were designed not to cross paths and tangle, but in the combat scenes, we ended up having three or four tangles each day. We also had an average of one harness per day needing repair. Still the system worked pretty well overall. The actors had a lot of fun getting used to the system and figuring out how to move around smoothly and naturally. I tried it out myself and it was like a private carnival ride. On a side note, after the movie wrapped, we kept the shooting stage and rented it out a few times a year to different movie productions. We wanted more realism in this movie than was normally seen in SciFi. While the source material was fairly scientifically realistic, we went one extra step beyond. For their lasers, we did not add in visible beams except for one scene where they had smoke and dust. That is how lasers in the real world work. Unless you have a scattering effect, you cannot see the laser beam as it travels through the air. And renaming 'lasers' to something else like 'phasers' or 'blasters' does not get around the problem that a beam somehow radiating energy in all directions is losing power in a very inefficient way. Instead, bowing to the needs of visual media, we added little pieces of transparent colored glass-like plastic to the top of each gun. When the shooter (or camera) looked through the plastic, he was able to see the laser beam, but otherwise you would only see the effect on the target. We justified it by saying the plastic sightings showed the infrared heating of the air or something. At least it was a step in the right direction (where 'right' means 'real'). Before actual filming started, I was offered a cameo appearance but turned it down. I think I've been pretty clear on the whole don't-want-to-be-in-the-public-eye aspect of my personality. On the other hand, I did offer roles as extras to everyone at work and home who wanted to be in the movie. AARD practicality closed down for a day when we bussed most of the employees a few miles across town to the movie stage for a crowd scene. I had decided that since 90% of the movie would be filmed in a sound stage, one location was as good as any other so why not film somewhere convenient for me? As for my household, everyone but the cyborgs signed on. Bubbles, Blossom, Jane and Linda all tried out for speaking roles, but only Blossom actually got one (consisting of one line). Bubbles and Linda got a crowd reaction close-up which made the final cut. Jane ... well, she didn't take her audition very seriously, so you have to freeze-frame to pick her out of the crowd. Before I get into the next part of this story, I'd like to state for the record that I didn't know that Olive was married at the time. I try to never mess with married women. Marriage may not be for me, but I still respect the institution. Okay, she was separated, and she didn't wear a ring or act like a married woman, but she was not divorced, so if I had known, I never would have slept with her. Probably not. That having been said, she's really hot. She has elegant features and long auburn hair, dyed blonde for part of the movie. (Point of trivia: She's actually a natural blonde who dyes her hair dark to be taken seriously as an actress.) I was attracted to her right away, but that's not uncommon for me. I first met her at her audition, where she gave Wyoh's speech from the meeting at the beginning of the book, then did a scene with Carey to see if they had any chemistry. They worked together pretty well, which was a little surprising to me, mainly because I had never seen Carey in an on-screen romance where he wasn't a smarmy lothario. Later when we were filming in Texas, Olive occasionally joined me in the catering tent, but it didn't seem like a big deal because we always ate in groups. Heck, I was only on set maybe one day out of three on average. I flirted with her a little but not seriously. She seemed pretty interested in my charitable works and eco-friendly products, just like many of the other liberal people I had met in Hollywood. I don't mean to imply that 'liberal' is or should be considered a derogatory term, though I'm perfectly willing to promote 'Hollywood liberal' as a new universal insult. You know, they'd be people who read an article, think they understand the subject and believe that their opinions are much more important than the views of experts, let alone the rest of the world. One odd note that I don't think I've really covered before is that Alpha is the pro-environment part of our duo. She tends to take the long view about things. While she doesn't care very much about miscellaneous species going extinct, she does care about things like overpopulation, a stable ecosystem, 'super-bug' disease strains, disappearing natural resources and other things that may threaten our existence a hundred or a thousand years from now. Me? I'm pro-environment, sure, but only in a general and non-specific way. Still I take Alpha's concerns seriously and help her work towards her goals as best I can. To continue, Olive was (and presumably still is) a Hollywood liberal, which I say in a non-insulting way. I refused to get involved in any political discussions with her, telling her that I don't care much for politics one way or the other. (Which is true, although Alpha has started making calculated donations to try and build up some political favors which we may need in the future.) At least she seemed to come by her beliefs honestly, as opposed to just ignorantly going along with the crowd. Regardless, our differences were enough that I did not pursue her with anything more than polite flirting. She, on the other hand, was very curious about me. I had come out of nowhere a few years ago and had quickly established AARD as the preeminent developer of future technologies in the country, maybe in the world. I occasionally gave away inventions that could have been worth millions for the good of the planet. I refused to develop for the military. And now I had come to Hollywood to make a movie, which was promising to push special effects forward a few years with a single product. To top it all off, I kept mostly out of the public eye, though every time I was seen, it was in the company of gorgeous women who appeared to be utterly devoted to me. From her perspective, I was the perfect mystery man, now sitting next to her in the flesh, physically fit and flirting with her. At least, that's how Alpha analyzed the situation when she started asking everyone questions about me. Beta, of course, suggested she go ahead and try to seduce me. I know she talked to Jennifer, but don't know what was said in that conversation. (Jennifer and I only had sex three times during the filming, due mainly to incompatible schedules, and we both knew that we were only having fun, not pursuing a relationship.) No one else Olive might have talked to knew me in any intimate sense. One Tuesday in June during lunch, Olive asked me for a tour of AARD. She didn't have any scenes to film for the next couple of days and was looking for things to do. I was in a good mood at the time and agreed. After we finished lunch, we hopped in my car and drove back to Fort Worth. (We were filming most of it in warehouses which had been converted to sound stages just south of the DFW Metroplex.) I spent a couple hours that afternoon showing her around a few labs at AARD, introducing her to Alphadroid and my transformer Alphacar, and even gave her some sample as-yet-unreleased no-chip artificial nails. (Those things are seriously no-chip. Alpha made them with some weird new type of thin lattice ceramics that she sometimes uses to enhance my women's super-strong bones. I smashed one between a couple bricks to demonstrate its resiliency (a fake nail, not a bone). A lot of our Alphacars were coated in that material too.) She smiled a lot, signed a couple autographs for employees, laughed at all my jokes and showed an intelligent curiosity for our work. At one point when we were alone, she asked, "How do you find the time to do everything?" "What do you mean?" "Well, you talk about a lot of these projects like you developed them yourself. You have your robots, your new special effects system, your artificial limbs, your surgery thingie, and ... well, all the other stuff. Plus you're producing the movie and running your company." "Ah, I see what you mean. Well, I am pretty busy, but for me, there are three different levels of involvement. There are personal projects where I usually work on the project every day. Then there are projects where I give input and help with ideas or put together some data processing or data mining software, depending on what's needed. And there are the challenge projects, where I'll come up with a challenge for one of my engineering teams and let them handle it. "I probably work on a dozen projects every week, but only one gets my full attention, like the artificial blood or Alphadroid. "You should also remember that not all of our projects are intended to be commercially viable. Heck, remember Alphacar? Well, we're not planning to sell those to the public. It was a challenge project for fun. But at the same time, some of the designs they came up with for the car are being used elsewhere." All of that was true, for a certain value of truth. At least it was mostly true, assuming you treat Alpha as multiple teams of engineers and researchers. We talked more as we walked, but when we reached the front desk, she excused herself to visit the Ladies Room. I chatted with LaShonda, one of our receptionists, for a few minutes. LaShonda was a very attractive young black woman who had been with AARD almost since the beginning. I had attended her wedding a year or two before, and at the moment she was pregnant with her first child. (And no, I had never slept with her.) Our conversation eventually touched on Olive, who had signed an autograph for her. Unfortunately, LaShonda was one of those people who buy gossip magazines and idolize movie and TV stars a little too much. " ... and seeing her like this, she seems like a regular person!" I suppressed a sigh. "That's because she IS a regular person." "Oh, I know," she quickly backtracked. "What I meant was that she..." Over the past few months, comments like that had become one of my 'buttons, ' and I interrupted her. "I know what you meant," I said matter-of-factly. "One of the problems with society is the star mentality. Yes, good actors should be congratulated on being successful in their chosen field, and I can even somewhat understand how they can sometimes command ridiculous salaries. "BUT I think the longer they work in Hollywood, the more likely they are to believe that their opinion is somehow more important or weighty than anyone else's. Or that they deserve reverential treatment because they might be recognized in public. And a lot of people, especially in California, buy into those notions. "Thank god at least Olive hasn't let her ego become overinflated. There were so many people I met in California who have mostly wasted their lives but their enormous egos cause them to believe they are immortal in the public's memory because..." I trailed off, noticing that LaShonda's eyes were focused on something behind me. Turning around, yup, Olive was standing behind me. Damn it! I hate when I get into a lecturing mode. I come off as a know-it-all complainer. I've sworn off posting comments online precisely because of that. "Hi, sorry. I was just complaining about the better-than-thou phonies in Hollywood..." "So I heard," she said with an odd half-grin. "Did you at least hear the part where I pointed out that you aren't like that?" "Yes, but I think there was an implied 'yet' in there somewhere." "Not necessarily. No one completely falls into any sweeping categorizations like that." "Actually I know quite a few people who fit into your description pretty exactly. One of the things I like about your production team is that they're mostly too young to have egos like that yet." "Yeah, it is nice that my ego is the only overinflated one around." "Oh really?" "Yup, I'm horribly full of myself at times, I'm just too shy to show it." "Uh huh," she said, not impressed with my attempt at humor. "Didn't you promise me dinner at some point?" I glanced at my watch. It was nearly five. A little earlier than my normal dinner time, but doable. "Sure," I said feeling relieved that I hadn't offended her. I took her arm in mine as we walked out. "What kind of restaurant would you like to visit?" She chose BBQ, after which we wandered around just enjoying each other's company. Fortunately her hair was currently blonde and she wasn't recognized, or at least wasn't bothered by anyone who did recognize her. When I drove her home (ie. to her rented condo), she invited me in for a drink. I'm not much of a drinker but accepted a Tom Collins as we sat on her couch together. Somehow a few of her blouse's buttons had come undone, and she was sitting just a little inside my personal space. Now I've been 'seduced' many, many times over the past few years, but mostly only by women who have been programmed to lust after me. Still I easily recognized where things were headed. And if I'm going to be honest about it, the seduction wasn't one-sided. After only a couple minutes, we were making out. A couple minutes later, we had hit a feverish intensity and were struggling to strip ourselves, then each other as we stumbled towards the bedroom. We didn't make it. In the hallway, I pushed her up against the wall, sliding my cock inside her. Her slit was wet and slick, practicality dripping with juices. She wrapped her arms and legs around me, and we kissed as I started pounding her against the wall. I held her up against various walls for at least five minutes of upright fucking before she came, biting down on my earlobe as she squealed. The pain set me off and I blasted off inside her much sooner than I had planned. When she came down, she slid from my grasp and looked me over. "I'm sorry. I think I drew a little bit of blood there." I touched my ear, which was sore and stung a bit, but it didn't seem like anything was missing. "I'll be fine. Now come on. I'm not done with you by a long shot." I led her into the bedroom, then suddenly stopped in realization that I hadn't even paused to consider... "Condoms! I'm sorry, I completely forgot." "It's all right. I'm all pilled up." "Oh, well, in that case..." I picked her up and tossed her onto the bed, then pounced on top of her. We kissed again for a moment. Her hands wandered down and fondled my equipment which was regaining its hardness. She broke off the kiss, pushed me over onto my back and slid down the bed. "Here, let me help you out a little," she said before taking a long slow lick up the shaft of my cock, obviously tasting our mixed juices. I took a moment to enjoy the view of her naked body, laid out before me on the bed. She was in her mid-20's but looked like she was at least 30 ... not old, just adult. Her breasts were somewhere in the B or C cup range and rolled around as only natural breasts do. She was slim and healthy and had thin dirty blonde hair lightly covering her pubic region, though much of it was slicked down with her leaking juices. I was hard again a moment later, and she moved up my body and slid into place above me. Once I was again seated inside of her, she bent down for another kiss, her tongue teasing mine. She rode me for a few minutes, and I bounced my hips up to meet her downward thrusts. After she came, I rolled us over so that I was on top and fucked her that way through at least two more orgasms before coming a second time myself. I rolled off of her so that we lay side-by-side. "That was a thing of beauty," I said. "Yes, it was," she agreed. Rolling over slightly to look at me, she continued, "You aren't looking for anything long-term, are you? I mean, don't take this the wrong way, but I want to keep this casual." "Really? I mean no, I'm not looking for anything long-term, but I thought we both had some fun there. If you're still not ... not satisfied, I can go again..." "No ... I mean, yes, I'm pretty well satisfied. Very well satisfied, as a matter of fact. I just..." "Then why the immediate brush-off?" "It's not a brush-off. Well, I guess it is, but not one that takes effect right away ... ugh ... It's just, I've had guys get too clingy sometimes, and I wanted to be sure that you ... I mean, I know you have other women, but I wanted to be sure you didn't make this out to be more than it is." "Oh, I thought you..." I laughed. "Sorry. Misunderstanding. It's just, you know, the first thing you say after we finish was that you don't want to see me again, it makes me think you weren't satisfied..." "That's not what I said ... meant ... whatever." She sighed and paused. "I guess I could have phrased that a bit better, or picked a better time to bring it up. No, wait a minute. I did say it right, you just took it the wrong way." She twirled a finger around my nipple distractedly. This was turning into one of the odder post-coital conversations I had had recently. I honestly couldn't entirely tell if she was being hostile or defensive or playful or what. Plus I had apparently misinterpreted what she said earlier. "Did I hear you say something earlier about going again?" She reached down and lightly stroked my cock. "Got a little blue pill in your stomach?" "Never touch the stuff." "A manly man, huh? Prove it." "I'm feeling a little too sweaty. Let's go get cleaned up and see what happens." Her bathtub/shower was large enough for two people, but not by much. By the time we were halfway through washing each other, I was fully hard again. I pushed her up against the shower wall and fucked her hard from behind. This being my third time in less than two hours, I was in no hurry to come again, so after she came again, I pulled out, turned her around and we fucked some more face-to-face. By the time I finally came in her a third time, pounding her doggy style back on the bed, I think she must have come at least four more times. I had enough presence of mind to text Alpha that I was spending the night before falling asleep. I woke up to find the smell of coffee wafting through the condo. Olive was in her kitchen dressed in my shirt, and possibly nothing else. Feeling a bit like I was on a TV show, I wandered in wearing only my undershorts and pants. "Good morning, stranger," she said with a smile. "I'm not much of a cook, but I have some fruit and some good organic cereal. Not the crappy stuff you get in the store, the real stuff, hand-made." My heart sank a bit at the idea, but when I tried it, it turned out to actually be pretty tasty. As we sat eating breakfast, somehow I expected her to be running her foot up and down my leg or something, but it didn't happen. We just sat there, crunching hand-crafted granola cereal. Between bites, I looked her up and down. "Hmmm ... How adventurous are you? Sexually speaking?" "That's a bit of a dangerous question. I like to think I'm pretty open to having fun, but I'm not really into much kink." "That's not what I ... weeelllll ... I guess it could be slightly kink-ish. No, it's just that there's something that I've been wanting to try, and it's kind of only available for a limited time." "What is it?" "A surprise. I don't want to build it up too much, but I think it could be pretty fun." "It's not public or anything?" "No, no, no. And no special clothes or bondage or anything like that. But it will have to be late at night. Hmm ... not tonight ... how about tomorrow night?" "Sure, but I reserve the right of refusal if it's not my thing. What time?" "Of course. And let's say ... I'll swing by and pick you up around 11pm." The next evening I picked her up and drove us to the movie set. Everything was shut down, though we did have a security guard at the gate who waved us in. Our 'movie studio' consisted of one main converted warehouse, a couple of smaller buildings, a parking lot and a fence. We went into the main building where I double-checked that everyone had left for the day. "So?" Olive asked. "So. Have you ever wondered what it would be like to have sex in a low gravity environment?" "You're kidding." "Nope. We'll have to be careful to avoid tangles if we want to change positions, but I'm pretty sure the equipment will work just fine." "Isn't this a bit ... public?" "The only person still around is the gate guard. All the rest of the security is computerized ... automated. You know ... completely under my control. We'll get buzzed if anyone else shows up." I dragged over a prop bed then started to strip, and she slowly followed suit. I was almost giddy with anticipation. Ever since the idea came to me a couple weeks earlier, the idea had sparked a child-like anticipation and enthusiasm. I was originally going to wait for filming to end, then invite a few members of the household for some high-flying fucks ... but if I wanted to do it with Olive, the time was now. She dug through her purse for a couple of little bands she used to pull her hair into a long ponytail, which was probably an excellent notion or tangling lines would be the least of her worries. Naked, we strapped ourselves into the harnesses, then gave each other a quick safety check, with maybe a bit less professionalism than during filming. The body harnesses were designed to be concealed under clothes, so they were lightly padded and comfortable. We zeroed out the electronics (to set the virtual counter-weights), then sat on the bed and started to make out. Olive was a little stiff and not nearly wet enough, so I moved into position between her thighs, ready for cunnilingus. As I stroked her labia, I looked up at her and said, "And no acting tonight. I only want honest orgasms, all right?" She gave me a humorously exasperated look and told me to "Just get to work, tongue boy. I missed out on your famous oral skills last time." "Famous oral skills?" "According to rumors." "What rumors? And what about my cocksmanship? Shouldn't I be famous for that too?" In response, she shoved my face into her pubis. In all fairness, I wasn't being serious. Although trimmed a bit, Olive didn't shave her privates. Fortunately for my preferences, her pubic hair was naturally thin and did little to hide her labia as they pushed out from her mound, eager for attention. I dove in with enthusiasm, enjoying the opportunity to explore a new taste and discover her likes and dislikes, how to give her pleasure. I had forgotten about the harnesses until she got close to her first come and jerked her thighs down a bit on my shoulders. In normal circumstances, it would have done no more than push her vagina a little up at my mouth. Under our pseudo low-gravity setup, it bounced her a foot off the bed and out of my grasp. A bit surprised, we both stopped for a moment, then laughed. We restarted, this time with her legs anchored under my arms. That didn't give me good enough access, so we readjusted so that her thighs were over my shoulders as before, but I kept at least one hand gripping her leg. For her part, when she got close this time, instead of pushing her legs down, she instead gripped my head, holding me close. I ate her through two orgasms before getting up and joining her on the bed. "How about if we keep it simple to start with. Missionary position okay?" "Sure. Are you sure the lines won't tangle?" "I think we'll be okay, but no, I'm not sure." Even with Alpha monitoring and controlling the harness reactions, tangles were still going to be a risk. Olive lay down and adjusted her lines so her torso and limbs were relatively free to move. Then I carefully moved in from below. Some of our lines were rubbing, but not by much. We quickly found out that we needed to hold onto each other tightly or I'd bounce right off of her and she off the bed. I swore to myself that next time I'd bring a few little bungee cords to keep us together. It took a while, but I fucked her to another orgasm, then came myself a couple minutes later. We carefully extracted ourselves and spent a moment resting. "You still good to go?" she asked? "Yup. I'm good for at least one more, but I'll last longer the second time." "I want to try doing it standing up, just to see what happens," she suggested. What happened was that we left the ground, lost control, got tangled and landed with me on top of her. Her shoulder got a bruise, and Alpha got an untangling job for the morning. And that was it for doing it standing up. Despite the bruise, Olive laughed delightedly. "That was hilarious. What should we try next?" I had her wait while I retrieved some elbow and knee pads the set had available. Then as we hooked up to two new harnesses, I said, "I think doggy style has the least risk of tangling, but since missionary worked out, I think cowgirl would be fine too." "Oooo, yeah. Let's try that." So Olive rode me like a cowgirl while I held onto her knees. When we bounced off the bed, she insisted on trying to bounce us back up onto the bed without uncoupling our loins. Eventually she succeeded and celebrated her accomplishment with another orgasm. We finished up our little adult adventure with a doggy style fuck. I was thankful for the kneepads because we ended up bouncing off the bed and circling the set a number of times before I finally came again, though not before giving Olive another two cums. We both had minor bruises from the ride, but neither of us regretted it. As we were getting dressed, she said, "You know, if I ever write my memoirs, this is getting a chapter all its own." "Please don't," I pleaded. "Or at least wait til I'm dead and gone before you publish." "You're not going to die," she insisted. "I'm positive that you're going to end up with your brain in a robot body someday." That ... hit a little close to home for me. I tried not to show a reaction, but something must have leaked through my mask. "Okay, okay," she said reassuringly. "How about if I keep you anonymous?" "That would be much appreciated. I really don't like publicity for myself." "Boy are you in the wrong business." "My business is computers and technology. This movie is just a one-time hobby." She gave a dismissive and unladylike snort. "Hollywood is an addiction all its own. Once you've gotten a taste, you'll always come back." Rather than insult her chosen profession, I ignored the falsehood. I drove her home, gave her a good night kiss and went home to sleep in my own bed. Alpha gave me a quick check-up, as she always does after I sleep with an unmonitored woman. She was a bit worried about my bruising and wanted to fix it. They really weren't that bad, so I refused, which led to another discussion where I tried to explain to Alpha why humans often enjoy pastimes which damage us physically in small ways. She has a great deal of difficulty understanding why we do things like that. A reasonable amount of risk for productive or otherwise beneficial results was something she could understand. Bruising our bodies, potentially risking serious injury to play a game or have sex in a new and interesting way? She just couldn't wrap her mind around it. Even suggesting that the benefit was psychological didn't help, since there are plenty of psychologically beneficial activities which don't involve such risks. Alpha has developed hugely when it comes to predicting human behavior, likes and dislikes, most especially when it comes to yours truly, but at the same time that does not mean that she understands why. Maybe twenty percent of human recreational pastimes are mysteries to her. Filming continued and went relatively smoothly most of the time. I slept with Olive twice more while she was in Texas, then I discovered she was still married. She said she understood my concerns, and we broke it off. We're still friendly when our paths cross. One of the most annoying things about my relationship with Olive came months later when I found out that she was bi-sexual. Sure, her TV character is bi, but I never thought she actually was. I probably could have arranged a threesome with her back then but didn't because I didn't know she would be open to the idea. I'm still kicking myself over that. Since Olive, I've slept with two different actresses, though neither encounter was part of this story. Hopefully I'll get to them in later chapters. Olive was far from the last person I had sex with in the harnesses. Jennifer giggled like a crazy person all throughout our harnessed hookup. Jane thought it was the greatest thing since sliced bread. In all, about three-fourths of my women tried it with me at least once and most enjoyed it, though only a couple were eager to try it again. The final budget for the movie came in at $29 million. Without Alpha, I'm sure it would have topped $50 million, possibly even $100 million. That actually raises another question we've yet to answer properly: How much is Alpha's time worth? Depending how we rate that, it may well have cost $200 million to make. Fortunately we didn't have to pay her a wage, though I have told her multiple times that I consider a minimum of half my money to be hers, and even then that would still be severely underpaying her. Still that $29 million required some shifting of resources on my part, especially since we hadn't yet seen much money from the hair growth formula or any of our other big-money projects -- that income would start coming a year later. Since most of my liquid assets were needed elsewhere, we took out a $10 million loan against future earnings. Some readers may ask why didn't we just play the market to get the money? The market was too unhealthy to support Alpha's aggressive trading style. Yes, we'd get the money, but it had a decent chance of causing damage to market stability. (The thing is, it's not just her trades. Some other traders picked up on our success years ago and will follow any moves we make in the market, magnifying our impact.) Still, we were debt-free again in less than a year. We debuted the movie at the Sundance Film Festival the following January. (I wanted to show it at the Fantastic Fest in September here in Texas, but the final cut wasn't ready in time.) Our retro-sci-fi epic lacked the artistic drama needed to win any awards, but we got lots of positive buzz and easily signed a good distributor. Working with the distributor, we even set up a San Diego ComicCon booth and Q&A session. (Maybe at some point, I'll tell the story of taking my comic book and cartoon women to ComicCon, a trip equal parts nightmare and fun.) The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress was released in November with pretty decent advertising for an "indie" film; it hit theaters just over two years after we bought the rights to it. The U.S. box office topped $70 million, but not by much. International box office added almost another $100 million. It was re-released the following Spring because ... well, I don't want to get too far ahead of myself and that's a few chapters away ... and we expect decent home video and broadcast rights as time goes by. Even with the money being shared by the distributor, theaters and the points due to Jennifer and a few of the actors, we still easily made a profit. (I know it's practically forbidden to admit that in Hollywood, with their 'creative accounting' practices, but we did. So there.) It received pretty good reviews with a Rotten Tomatoes score of 84%, and we won a few technical awards (including one Oscar). We even got a thumbs-up from Harlan Ellison, which somehow excited me a lot more than a special effects Oscar. Jennifer earned over $1 million from her base pay plus a half-percent of the gross, and she set herself up as a producer for Hollywood newcomers and up-and-comers. The AARD Environment Generation System was a decent success in that we were able to sell a couple hundred units worldwide over the next few years at half a million dollars a unit. You may ask, what was the first movie to come out using the system? Even before TMIAHM? A porno called The Nymphomania of Queen Georgia. Porn companies were early adopters of the system, and eventually most major companies bought a system and used it for dozens or even hundreds of movies. And most importantly, Alpha was happy with the results, finally getting a well-done and positive portrayal of an AI. (Now she wants to start working on some Asimov-based movies and possibly the Ender's Game series.) ------- AUTHOR'S POSTSCRIPT NOTES: 'Insider Girl' is no relation to 'Inside Girl' which is apparently a series of tweeny-girl books that I didn't even know existed until midway through writing this chapter. Also note that while the Fort Worth Parade of Lights is real, I have never seen it and am assuming it is just a normal parade, set in the evening. ------- Chapter 18: More Marvels Authors Note: I want to address one subject that has come up in a few email conversations with readers. I am not just picking out my own favorite characters for inclusion in his story. Yes, I mostly use characters that I like (because otherwise I wouldn't be interested in writing for them), but most of my favorite characters don't fit within the rules I set up. And as far as that goes, I've selected a couple characters because they're generally popular, not because I especially like them. Ultimately, they are chosen because they (1) fit Frank's rules and (2) fit Frank's character. That having been stated, I'm about to have Frank break one of his rules in this chapter to bring in a character that I like. Dramatis Personae: Frank -––– - Lead character, creator of Alpha Alpha - First Artificial Intelligence Mobile Copies of Alpha: Beta aka Bayonetta aka Elizabeth Alana Franks (cyborg, from Bayonetta) Gamma aka Jasmine aka Jasmine Marza (cyborg, from Aladdin) Delta aka Elisa Maza aka Elizabeth Marza (cyborg, from Gargoyles) Alphadroid Dorothy aka R. Dorothy Waynewright (android, from Big O) A-Ko aka Eiko Magami aka Epsilon (organic copy of Alpha, from Project A-Ko) Artificial Women (in order of arrival): Kasumi Tendo (from Ranma 1/2) Daria Morgendorffer aka Daria Morgan (from Daria) Jane Lane aka Jane Lannister (from Daria) Kara Zor-L aka Power Girl aka Karen Starr (from DC Comics) Rei Ayanami aka Rei Ayanami Ikari (from Neon Genesis Evangelion) Anna Marie aka Rogue aka Anna Marie Raffen (from Marvel Comics) Princess Diana aka Wonder Woman aka Diana Prince Walters (from DC Comics) Zatanna Zatara aka Annabelle Tara Zane (from DC Comics) Kara Zor-El aka Supergirl aka Linda Lang Starr (from DC Comics) Blossom aka Belle Underton (from Powerpuff Girls) Bubbles aka Britney Underton (from Powerpuff Girls) Buttercup aka Bobbi Underton (from Powerpuff Girls) As a comic book and cartoon nerd, I've often felt that I was too heavily favoring DC characters in my household. Partly it was because of convenience. I had set up my first DC character, Power Girl, in such a way that it was very easy to bring in more characters from her universe. (Plus my relationship with her worked out very well; the way we designed her backstory created a much better connection than I could have dreamed possible, which may have biased me in favor of DC.) Partly it was because it seems like more female DC characters fit within my list of rules. They tend to look human more often than not and most don't have long- term relationships. Out of my DC harem, only Wonder Woman has had a noticeable, long-term relationship, and even that (Steve Trevor) really isn't in the modern comics very much. (Heck, in modern continuities, he's mostly either much older than Diana or married to someone else.) Marvel, on the other hand, seems to have a lot of major characters who don't look entirely human or who are married or in long-term relationships, all of which are against my rules. I mean, heck, look at some of my favorite Marvel women: Invisible Woman, who was dating Reed from the first issue. Tigra, who looks very inhuman. Gamora, who has green skin. Firestar ... well, okay, Firestar would work out fine in the real world. Maybe a few from the Spider-man cast would too. Jean Grey is a major character who might be able to make the transition to the real world, except of course that she's a walking soap opera. ("Oh, I love Scott." "Oh, I'm so attracted to Logan." "Oh no, I was replaced by a cosmic entity pretending to be me who seduced my one true love." "Oh no, while I was dead, my true love married my clone." And that's not even touching her adult 'children' teammates from alternate futures.) Adding her would probably double the soap-opera drama in the household. Scarlet Witch is almost as bad. No, thank you, to either of them. Of course, I could always pull characters from other publishers. Liz Sherman from Hellboy/BPRD always seemed like a woman I wanted to comfort. Or someone from Image ... I'm sure Image must have a few non-psychotic female characters, right? Like maybe Voodoo? I haven't read a WildCATS issue in a long time, but she was a mostly non-ultra-violent hero, right? Or Velocity from Cyberforce ... same deal, I think. Ultra would probably work. Oops, I forgot about Caitlin and Roxy from Gen13, who could work out pretty well. Or maybe a version of Promethea. (I think some of those I mentioned are now owned by DC, so that kinda negates part of my stated motive anyway.) But even after looking through my options, I really just wanted a few more Marvel characters. So once the filming for our movie was well underway (see last chapter), I had Alpha start building a few more women for me. As far as their introductory storyline goes, Alpha and I played around with various ideas but finally decided that the simplest and best method was to follow something similar to what we did with the DC women. In the middle of October, everything was ready and in place, and we actually decided to do a mid-day introduction instead of our normal middle-of-the-night surprise appearance. Since filming had been finished and final editing was well underway, I was back at work at AARD most of the time. On that particular Tuesday, I was visiting some of the active labs to see how everything was going. Hearing a crash, I skipped Room 202 and rushed across the hall to 205. I opened the door to see Kara furiously glaring at a computer screen while Linda looked worriedly between Kara and a small pile of broken electronics that had apparently been thrown to the floor. "Is everything all right?" I asked stupidly. I could clearly see that it wasn't, but I couldn't stop myself from asking the obvious. Kara and Linda turned to face me. "Well..." started Linda, only to be cut off by Kara. "You know, there are times I really hate this world." "What's wrong?" "We've been trying to put together a Kryptonian adaptive memory crystal, but it just refuses to work. It just ... sits there ... taunting me ... like an evil lump of rock." She glared daggers at the pile of wires and circuits, which upon closer examination, did indeed include a couple clear crystals. Without a closer examination, they really just looked like small, clear quartz crystals. Linda explained, "It's kinda hard to recreate because while we know how to use them and between us we can remember parts of the structural theory behind how the crystals work, we don't really know enough to create one from scratch." Kara countered, though I think she might have just been fuming out loud to herself. "I'm sure we could make one; it's just the damned physics in this universe keeps getting in the way. Can't fly. Can't be invulnerable. No heat vision. No X- ray vision. And now no damned adaptive memory crystals." I was suddenly curious about the pseudo-science Alpha used in creating their non-terrestrial memories, but dismissed the thought to consider later. Kara was still pretty upset. Her anger was currently focused on the pile of junk on the floor, and I wasn't sure if I wanted to try to calm her down or not, worried that she might refocus the anger on me. Not that she'd hurt me, but still... "Kara?" I asked in what I hoped was a soothing voice. "What?" she snapped. "I think you need to step back from this project for now. Let Alpha crunch numbers on it while you calm down and ... uhhh ... why don't you give me a hand for a while?" She finally focused on me and her expression softened. "Sorry, honey. I didn't mean to worry you. It can just get frustrating sometimes." She held out her arms, and I stepped into a calming hug. "Okay," she said after a minute. "What are you working on that you want to distract me with?" "Alpha and I are trying to come up with ideas to try for better methods of molecular layering. It's pretty much beyond my area of expertise. Once we're down on that scale, we can't make anything mechanical to manipulate things. Well, not very efficiently or quickly. What we need are ideas for how to do things cheaply and/or quickly." "And none of your ideas are working out so far?" "Well, we can manipulate things like nanotubes and buckyballs and graphene sheets pretty well, but it's very expensive and slow, and when we're not using carbon, it can sometimes get a lot more difficult. And now we're looking at precise layering for possible true nanite circuitry and things like that..." "How about shrinking down your nanites so they can work on that scale?" suggested Linda. "Yeah," agreed Kara. "Or scale down your nanites and build them with quarks instead of atoms." She kept a straight face, and I couldn't tell if she was joking or not. I really hoped she was joking, because from what little I know of subatomic physics, that was not only unworkably impossible, but also... Fortunately our conversation was derailed when Alpha interrupted. Rather than speak through my earbud as she normally did, she started speaking through the room's intercom while a red warning light on the ceiling began flashing on and off. I knew roughly when it was coming, and it still made me jump. "Alert! There is a security breach at the house. Alert! There is a security..." "Show us," I said, turning to the nearest computer screen. "And alert the other household members." "Doing so now." The screen came to life, showing a black and white security image of three figures in trench coats and hats -- not suspicious in the slightest, I thought sarcastically -- in the main front hallway of the house. They had apparently been on the ground and were just now standing up. All were of different heights and one appeared to be well over six feet tall. The middle-sized intruder had dark skin and long white hair. Only the smallest figure appeared to be Caucasian, though it was difficult to tell with only our black-and-white video feed. "How did they get in?" asked Kara. "Unknown. They simply appeared on my screens less than a minute ago. Dorothy moving to intercept. Should I subdue them or call the police? Note: their sudden appearance in that location is similar..." Suddenly Alpha was interrupted by Anna's voice. "Frank, Alpha, don't fight 'em. Ah think Ah know 'em." "Who are they," asked Linda. Both she and Kara were obviously feeling antsy, perhaps remembering a time when they could have flown to the house at super-speed in less than a second. Ignoring Linda's question for the moment, Anna asked, "Can we call 'em and talk to 'em right quick? If Ah kin talk to 'em, Ah think Ah can stop your house from bein' torn up again." "Alpha?" I queried. "You are connected via Dorothy," she replied. The display suddenly split to show the static security feed on the left and moving color video on the right. On the left-hand side, we suddenly saw Alphadroid Dorothy round a corner into view, facing the huddled intruders. On the right-hand side, we saw a color video feed through Dorothy's eyes. Though in shadow, the tall figure was a woman with light green skin and dark hair with green highlights. The middle figure was a black woman with white hair, and the smallest figure was a younger Caucasian woman with brown hair. This was the first time I had seen them up and about, and I had a familiar rush of excitement as I took in the view. "Hello? Can ya hear me?" asked Anna. "Kitty? Ro? Is that Jen?" "Anna? Is that you? Where are you?" asked Ororo. "Ah'm at work. This here's a robot who was jus about ta start a fight with ya cause ya invaded ma home, so be nice. Ah'll come home directly, but it's somethin' like a half hour drive." "Who else is home?" I asked. "Who's that?" asked Jennifer Walters, the tall green one. "Rei and Buttercup," Alpha answered. "Who's with you?" asked Kitty Pryde. "They're mah friends," said Anna. "Frank there owns the house and robot, so be nice." In the top corner of the security video, I saw Buttercup start down the stairs at full speed, obviously responding to Alpha's alert. "Buttercup! Stop!" I called out, a little too late. Buttercup, who had obviously not heard any of this discussion, had launched herself from the stair railing directly down at She-Hulk, who was instinctively reacting to the threat. She reached up and grabbed at Buttercup as she flew through the air, obviously intending to use the Powerpuff's momentum against her and throw Buttercup off to the side. Buttercup, however, had memories of super-powered fights going all the way back to pre-school. She was used to being smaller than her opponent and was the toughest, best fighter of the Powerpuffs. She grabbed Jen's arms mid-leap and used the temporary purchase to flip herself over while still in midair. She landed whilst simultaneously pulling Jen's arms forward, transferring much of her own momentum to throw Jennifer over her head, into the next room. "All right, who's next?" she snarled. "Buttercup!" I said again. "Stop!" "Stop! They're my friends," called out Anna at the same time. "What?" she asked confused. Then she was tackled from behind by the very briefly inconvenienced She-Hulk. From one perspective, their short fight was very entertaining, though it lacked the eroticism I normally associate with 'cat fights'. She-Hulk was stronger with better reach while Buttercup was a slightly better fighter with better leverage. From another perspective, Anna and I were yelling at the two of them to stop fighting as they punched holes in my walls and broke some furniture. They finally stepped apart after about a minute and a few thousand dollars worth of damage. Meanwhile, Anna was showing a side I had never seen before, with even her Southern drawl getting worse with her anger. "Jennifer God-Damn Walters! Sit your ass down and stop messin' up mah house or Ah'll shove yo head so far up yo own ass, ya'll be lookin' out the holes in your chest where your titties used to be afore Ah ripped 'em off! What the hell are ya doin' here anyway?" In the sudden silence, I think she stopped to listen to herself for a second and regained a little composure. " ... Not that Ah ain't happy to see ya'll, which Ah am, acourse." It took us all a moment to digest the uncharacteristic and ... uhh... 'colorful' threats Anna had just delivered. "Uhhh..." I mumbled. "Buttercup ... ummm ... These appear to be friends of Anna. I'm guessing they're here to try and find her." Storm, who had stayed out of the fight, rejoined the conversation. "Correct. Gateway couldn't open a portal to where we thought she was, and we couldn't get in touch with any dimension hoppers, so we went to talk to Reed Richards and the Avengers, who agreed to help. Since they had a few people of their own missing, we divided up and ... look ... it's a little strange talking to a robot maid about this. Any chance you could come meet us in person?" "Sure thing, dahlin'. We'll be there in half an hour. Buttahcup? Could ya please sit mah friends down in the kitchen and get 'em somethin' to eat or drink or somethin'?" "I'm not a cook," complained Buttercup, still eying Jennifer warily. "I'm sure we have some of Kasumi's leftovers in the fridge or something," I reassured her. "And Dorothy can help you." I started walking for the door, then looked back at Kara and Linda. "Coming?" We all met up in the lobby and sped off to the house in a couple cars. I made sure Anna and I were in the same vehicle so we could talk on the way. "So, Anna ... are you doing all right?" "Ah guess we'll see. What Ah don't understand is why it took 'em so long to find me. Ah mean, I been here five an a half years or so." "It could be that there's a time difference between worlds, like with Power Girl." "Ah suppose, but even so..." "Well, we'll find out in a few minutes. Ummm ... one other thing ... TWO other things. First, you do realize that your friends are probably going to be stuck here like the others, right?" "Maybe. Could be they'll have someone like Zatanna back home to pull 'em back after a while. Maybe Dr Strange is waitin' to help 'em out." "Could be. The other problem is She-Hulk. If they ARE stuck here, well, she's not going to blend in very well." "Well, she ken turn back to human if she wants ta. At least, Ah think she can." "I'll be interested to see if she can, but I'm going to ask Alpha for help figuring out how to make her pass for human all the same." "That's fine, Ah'm sure. Ummm ... Frank, darlin', we can put them up for a while if they're stuck here, right?" "Sure we can, though if we get any more long-term visitors, I may need to have you share a room with someone." She sighed. "All right. Ah do like havin' mah own personal space though." "Also, how well do you think they're going to react to our..." I paused briefly, searching for a nice way to put it... "home life?" "Ah don't know. Ororo can be pretty reserved but she can be pretty ... liberal ... too. She don't think nothin' of walking around in her birthday suit, so she might be fine with it all. Jennifer ... if half the stories Ah've heard are true, Jennifer can be a party girl, sleeping with someone different every night." She briefly lowered her voice to a whisper to deliver a juicy bit of gossip, saying, "Ah even heard she slept with Juggernaut!" Her voice returned to normal as she continued. "Kitty, though ... not sure about her. We never had the wild sex villains Kara and them talk about. Not sure Ah even believe all their stories. Yeah, we've fought a few that don't bear mentionin', and the Hellfire Club could be a bit kinky, but they was usually all business when we were around. Ah guess what Ah'm tryin' ta say is that Kitty might not ... Oh, Ah don't know. She's had a few different boyfriends, an Ah doubt she's a virgin, but Ah don't think she's ever really..." She trailed off, at a loss for the appropriate words to express her concerns. "I understand," I reassured her. "We'll try to be discreet for now, okay?" "Thank ya." We finally arrived home and we all piled out of the cars and into the house. The newcomers were gathered around the table, eating some of Kasumi's chicken lasagna, which we had enjoyed for dinner the previous night. They looked up at us and as soon as Anna entered, Kitty jumped up and started rushing over to give her a hug. Upon seeing Anna's bare arms and short skirt, she skidded to a halt. "I'm so glad we found you," she said, with obvious enthusiasm in her voice. "I'd hug you, but ... you know..." Kitty gestured at Rogue's exposed skin. "It's okay," Anna reassured her, and enveloped Kitty in a hug. After a brief squeal of surprise, Kitty relaxed and tentatively hugged her back. Storm asked, "Rogue, what happened? Did you lose your power? Or finally get it under control?" Releasing Kitty, Anna replied, "Well, technically Ah don't think Ah've lost it. It just doesn't work here." I joined in the conversation. "Actually, in all likelihood, most of your powers, mutant or otherwise, probably aren't working. Super strength seems to still work to a limited degree, but not much more." "What are you talking about? Of course our powers still work. See?" Kitty waved her arm in a wide arc, smacking it painfully against the all too solid wall. "Ow!" "Are ya all right?" Anna asked with concern. "I'm ... fine ... I think." Kitty shook her wrist out and started poking and prodding the wall, then a cabinet, treating them as if they had personally offended her. "What's going on?" "You are now in a universe whose physical laws do not allow most super powers to work. You can be a little stronger than normal," I gestured toward She-Hulk, "and have senses that are a bit better than normal ... things like that. But you can't pass through solid objects or control the weather. I'm sorry, but that's just the way it is." Ororo had an odd look on her face, concentrating on something. Probably trying to call up a storm or some wind or something. Alpha had given her a special inner ear configuration and a few other goodies, so she was able to sense things like changes in atmospheric pressure, but that was it as far as 'mutant powers' went. "He's right," Storm agreed. "I can't even raise a breeze right now." "At least I'm still strong," Jennifer chimed in, flexing a bicep with a bit of relief. "But probably not as strong as you were," Anna pointed out. Gesturing to me, she said, "Pick him up and see." "Whoa, whoa, whoa. Why me?" Kara joined the conversation to explain. "Because you weigh enough to notice but not enough to be a problem. And you don't have and have never had powers, so there's no question of opposing powers confusing things." "And cause it's fun to see women pick ya up and carry ya around," said Anna with a grin. "Oh, hah, hah," I said, but I dutifully walked over to the very tall green woman in our midst. I'm just over six feet tall myself. Kara and Diana are maybe an inch taller than me. She-Hulk, on the other hand, was over seven feet tall, with an imposing wrestler/body-builder physique ... with green skin. Seeing someone with green skin really is odd when you see them in person. It doesn't look real. When she bent over to pick me up, I half expected the color to rub off when our skin touched. "Huh," she said, holding me with one arm under my knees and one supporting my upper back. She adjusted slightly so one arm cradled me, running the length of my back with her hand cupping my ass. "If I didn't know any better, I'd say you weighed over a ton, if not a lot more. How heavy are you?" "I'm not sure. Probably somewhere around 180 to 220, give or take," I said. This got me a LOOK from every female in the room. "Honestly, I weigh myself maybe once every two years. It's just something I don't pay much attention to." Yes, I care how I look, but not how much I weigh. Fortunately Dorothy came to the rescue. "As of three weeks ago, you weighed 201 pounds." "I can juggle one ton weights," Jennifer said uncertainly, "but I couldn't juggle you right now. Not safely anyway." "Which is pretty much how it is for the rest of us," said Kara. "Well, at least for those of us who used to be really strong. Since no one else is bothering to introduce us ... Hi, I'm Kara." Jennifer set me down, secretly giving my ass a squeeze in the process and took Kara's proffered hand. "Oh, Ah'm sorry," said Anna, chastened by her lack of manners. She then hurriedly went around the room, introducing her teammates to everyone else, leaving me for last. " ... And this is Frank. He owns the house an' the business where Ah work. If it hadn't been for him, Ah'd probably be livin' on the streets." "I'm glad to meet you all," I said, shaking their hands, watching their eyes for pupil dilation as we touched. As per Alpha's excellent work, it was there. Kitty actually blushed and looked away. "Welcome to my house of travelers in need." "Traveler's in need?" asked Ororo. "Most of us are stuck here," said Linda. "Stuck here?" asked Kitty. "From other dimensions, like you," explained Zatanna. "Like us?" asked Jennifer. I briefly wondered if it really was that common for people to ask questions by repeating the end of a sentence with a slightly raised tone of voice. "A lot of us are from different universes," explained Blossom. "The physical laws in this world don't allow for our powers or super-science to work properly, so we can't go home, so we're mostly stuck here for now." "Well we should be all right because we have..." Kitty trailed off, realization dawning on her. "Ororo?" she said in a rather faint voice. Meanwhile Storm had pulled out an oblong device which kinda reminded me of a tricorder. After fiddling with it for a minute, with the others looking on worriedly, she dropped it to the table. "Dead," was all she said, an unhappy look on her face. "It can't be!" wailed Kitty, while Jennifer just looked grim. "There are a lot more aspects to the situation," I said, trying to sound reassuring. "Your prospects are not unremittingly horrific." I gestured to the chairs, and Kitty sat down, unconsciously rubbing her wrist. Ororo and Jennifer stayed standing. "First," I said, holding up fingers as I counted, "please note that this is not a hellish netherworld of a dimension. We have our problems, but for example, there is no persecution of mutants. "Second, there are no superpowers native to this world. That means you aren't expected to fight crime and there are no supervillains. "Third, if you are stuck here, you are not alone and we have the experience and resources to help you. "Fourth ... well, actually I think we need more information before we go much further." "What kind of information?" After some back and forth, we determined that from their perspective, Rogue had been gone for about two and a half months, which meant there was possibly an even larger default time differential than with the DC Universe. They had tried a couple different ways to track her down without success before joining forces with Reed Richards and the Avengers. These three were actually only one of five different teams sent out to find different dimensionally misplaced heroes and allies. The fastest they could expect to be missed was in a couple weeks (meaning a minimum of a year our time). And the odds were that any follow-up team would be just as likely to get trapped, since going to a dimension where powers and tech failed was not a common or planned-for occurrence. I also spent a few minutes convincing Ororo Munroe and Kitty Pryde to wear street clothes and to avoid declaring themselves X-Men. Their characters weren't defined by their costumes or their codenames, so that part was much easier than it had been for almost any other 'superhero' woman Alpha had created. Turning to She-Hulk, I said, "You're going to be a problem." "Not to a cutie like you, I won't," she flirted. "I mean your skin tone." "What? Are you prejudiced against Gamma-Americans?" I was certain she knew what I meant, so I just gave her a smile and waited. "All right, all right. Just give me a second..." She closed her eyes and seemed to relax. If this were the comics, she'd probably be shrinking down to human form, an ability she had for ... I don't know ... probably for at least half of her career. "Jennifer," I said quietly. "Ssshhhh, I'm concentrating." "You can't gain or lose mass at will in this universe," I said in a stage whisper. "My cousin's the expert, but he says we actually don't gain or lose it or violate ... some physics law or other ... we just borrow it from extradimensional energies or something," she said in an equally loud whisper. "All the same, I'm pretty sure you're stuck as She-Hulk for the duration. If you had arrived in human form, you'd be stuck like that instead." She opened one eye slightly. "I'm not shrinking, am I?" "Nope." She sat down heavily in a nearby chair, which was fortunately strong enough to take it despite creaking a bit, and looked at the rest of us. "Any suggestions?" "Make-up?" offered Bubbles. "We could wrap your head up in bandages," suggested Buttercup, perhaps still a bit hostile toward her earlier sparring partner. Turning to Dorothy, I said, "Alpha, have you come up with any ideas?" I heard Kitty whisper to Linda, who was sitting next to her, "I thought her name was Dorothy." Linda whispered back, "Dorothy is the robot. Alpha is the master computer." Dorothy said, "If Ms. Walters is willing, I can use my medical nanites to bleach the color from her skin. That should last anywhere from a week to the entire length of her visit, depending how her body produces the pigment." "Can't we just wait til we find out if there's a different way for us to go home?" "As long as you don't go out in public, you can stay green for as long as you want." That was a lie. We had at most a week before She-Hulk's dyed skin started reverting back to normal. The simplest method to give Shulkie her green skin was to use something pretty close to food dye in her epidermis. The drawback was that her body would gradually process and shed and otherwise remove the dye, leaving her a normal Caucasian pink. So if we wanted to pretend to bleach her skin, we had to do so within a week. On the other hand, Alpha had a pseudo-science explanation ready if Jennifer refused the skin bleach and her green skin started fading on its own. I continued, "One big problem I foresee if you stay green is getting clothes for you. Once we determine if someone is going to be stuck here for a while, I generally take them shopping for a new wardrobe. Your size is going to make it difficult to buy clothes for you unless you're actually there." "And my green skin makes it so I'll scare people?" "I doubt there will be much actual fear, but it will draw a lot of attention in a situation where we don't have answers to give." "Why can't we just be honest and tell everyone who we are and how we got here?" asked Kitty reasonably. "Because you won't be believed and could end up committed to an asylum. There's another aspect to this world that we haven't broached yet ... Anna, let's take them upstairs and show them." Rogue got a mischievous grin on her face and stood up. "Alpha, alert me when Daria and Jane get home so I can ... prepare them. So, we're headed up to the third floor..." About half the group followed us up to the comic book library. I pulled out a box of X-Men comics and pulled out Uncanny X-Men #167, which has a Kitty Pryde splash page where she yells that Professor Xavier was a jerk, a famous image which has been copied and parodied many times. Leaving them to try to process the idea, I moved over and grabbed a few She-Hulk trade paperbacks and handed them over to Jennifer, also pointing her to a box of She-Hulk single issues. "In this universe, you are fictional characters. If you start publicly claiming to be comic book characters without your powers to back up your claim, you're likely to be treated about the same as someone claiming to be Napolean Bonaparte or Julius Caesar. As it is, even with just that streak of white in her hair, Anna has to field at least a couple questions a week about whether or not she's an overly enthusiastic comic book fan." "Yup. Ah even tried dyin' my hair all dark once, but the white roots looked really weird in less than a week. Now Ah just tell everyone that yes, Ah'm a big fan or somethin' like that." A triumphant cry interrupted us as Jennifer hooted at the top of her voice, waving She-Hulk comics at everyone. "I KNEW IT! I knew I wasn't crazy. See! Right here! And here! I knew someone was turning my life into a comic book." Oh yeah. I had ... well, not forgotten, but it had temporarily slipped my mind due to other concerns. For a long run in her comic, her character regularly broke the fourth wall and addressed the reader directly. In continuity, she knew that she was a comic book character and often relied on the Comics Code to prevent things like indecent exposure. Heck, I think there was even a plot line where a supporting character joined her comic specifically to avoid dying of old age, since comic book characters age much, much slower than everyone else. "Bruce ... Doc Samson ... Hell, half the Avengers thought I was nutso, but I hold in my hands the ultimate proof that I was right all along!" Looking up at the ceiling, she declared, "I was right! So thank you, readers. And fuck you, writers, for putting me through so many stupid situations." Flipping to the credits page of one of the comics, she said, "So thank you and fuck you, John Byrne!" It wasn't actually as simple as that if you want to get specific. She also handled and read her own comics from within her own comic in a kind of meta-textual feedback loop. But despite the comics within the comics, her fellow heroes didn't believe... You know what? Just go with it. It was weird and didn't even make sense within the comics themselves, but it was fun and was part of her background and personality so we included some of it in our version of She-Hulk. We'll just leave it at that. When we broke up, I noticed that Ororo and Diana met as if by mutual consent and left the room whispering to each other. Alpha later reported that they were talking about their shared, shadowy memories of a time when the two of them were merged into a single character, Amazon, during the Amalgam DC-Marvel Comics crossover ... but I didn't need Alpha's report to know it. Their memories of the shared event were designed by Alpha to be a bit hazy, but what memories they had would indeed match up. Not meaning to get ahead of the story, but that connection between the two of them led to a fairly quick friendship, which led to the newcomers being accepted into the household much more quickly than normal. For nerds who want to get technical, Ororo and Diana were separate characters in the Amalgam Universe, though Ororo was the one who effectively took on the Wonder Woman mantle. However, you should also remember that in one of the followup miniseries, Doctor Strangefate directly merged the two characters into Amazon. (Sigh) I think further nitpicking on this issue would be pointless. Continuity in comic books is to be appreciated where it exists and not taken too seriously where it does not. I dug out my old copy of Amazon, a one-shot comic introducing their melded character, and followed the two of them. They stopped whispering as I approached. I handed the comic to Ororo, the closer of the two at the time, and walked off without saying a word. As I've pointed out more than once, Daria and Jane were the two 'normal' women in the household that couldn't accept the existence of superheroes from other dimensions. (Sure, go ahead and think that through if you want to bask in the full mess/irony of two artificially created women, based on cartoon characters themselves, who don't believe in the reality of comic book characters from other dimensions despite the very strong physical evidence supporting that false claim.) Of course the problem was a lot more Daria than Jane, so Daria was the one I had slowly been feeding science books about theories that supported or even demanded the existence of parallel dimensions. None of those books supported the notion of easy travel between dimensions, but getting Daria to accept their existence was my major goal, which had been mostly accomplished. Daria had finally worked up to a don't-ask-don't-tell style policy. As long as no one directly confronted her with their claim to be comic book characters from other worlds, she wouldn't go around questioning people's sanity. The trouble was, I had no idea how she would react to a seven-foot-tall heavily muscled woman with green skin. As it turns out, it eventually worked out marginally better than I expected. Daria and Jane had graduated from college over a year before, after five years of classes. Daria required five years because she had gone after a double-major (English and Journalism) while working at AARD. Jane took five years because ... well, aside from her skill as an artist, she really wasn't all that good of a student. Though Daria was toying with the notion of a graduate degree, she was keeping herself busy beyond her job as AARD Project Coordinator by writing novels and trying to syndicate an OpEd column. Jane was happy to be out of college and even happier to have some free time to work on her own paintings and sculptures. Her graphic designer job at AARD was not very demanding. The point is that they were both out of the office that afternoon when the alarm was sent. Alpha let me know when they entered the front gates, but either I was too slow or they were faster than expected, because I caught up with them just when they caught sight of Jennifer and Kitty, sitting and talking with a few other women. Daria took one look at them, said "Oh, lord," and began stomping up the stairs. I briefly considered how she might have reacted if we had also grown a version of Lockheed, Kitty's pet dragon, then moved to catch up with her. "Daria, Jane, I wanted to talk to you..." I began. "Not now, Frank," Daria said, cutting me off. "I'll have some snarky comments to offer later, just ... just give me a few minutes to get my denial reflex up to speed, okay?" I stopped and let Daria head on upstairs. Jane, on the other hand, stayed with me. "So, Frank ... more 'visitors'?" she asked, doing air quotes to emphasize the question. "Yes, friends of Anna this time." "Good for her. So ... being a mutant can make you like bodypaint?" "Jennifer isn't a mutant, and it's not bodypaint. Come on, I'll introduce you." Jane was able to be nice-ish. Although she couldn't hide her amusement at Jennifer's appearance, making more than one than one comparison to Kermit the frog, she said them with a friendly smile on her face. (I don't think Jennifer knew who Kermit was, but she understood the 'frog' part.) When she came down a few minutes later, Daria was apparently ready to be a full-on snarky bitch, focusing on Jennifer as the central threat to her world-view. After being introduced, Daria said, "So, She-Hulk, right?" Jen nodded, saying, "That's me." "So ... do we need to worry about getting cancer if we stand too close to you?" "Huh? Why would you think that?" "Well, supposedly your blood can infect people with gamma radiation..." Her comment ended as she broke into laughter. Okay, I'll admit the idea is laughable, but not 'funny' laughable. And the comment wasn't really up to Daria's usual standards, quality-wise. "Daria," I said in a reprimanding tone, "Jennifer is our guest, and I expect you to be nice to her." "Guest, you say? And how long before a guest becomes a resident?" "Daria, may I speak to you for a moment? In private?" Daria sighed the the sigh of the put-upon and followed me out of the room. Behind me, Kitty said, "Wow, she's a bit ... unpleasant." Kara explained, "Daria is actually the most normal person in the house. She just doesn't believe in ... she has difficulties accepting the idea of superheroes in this world. I think she and Jane and maybe Rei are the only people in the house who haven't had any ... let's call them 'extra-normal' life experiences. At least, not until she moved here." Kasumi, who was just passing by at that moment, added, "Once you get to know each other, you'll see that she's really a very sweet young woman." Over the past few years, Daria had mellowed out a lot. She still didn't suffer fools, but since she had been living outside the artificially shallow environment of high school, she had gotten much better with social graces. She would never be like Kasumi -- kind, giving and helpful -- but she made friends more easily and made fun of others less frequently. But at that particular moment, I was trying not to be angry with Daria for being just shy of openly hostile. "What was that about?" I asked tersely. "You're right, I should have made Geiger counter noises. No, that one's not good enough either. I mean, I had the prep time upstairs; why didn't I come up with something then? Maybe..." "Daria..." "What? Someone with green skin walks in and you expect me to believe she's She-Hulk?" "I expect you to be nice to our visitors regardless of your opinion of their name, appearance or history." "Oh, come on. If she thinks she's actually She-Hulk, then she thinks she got a radioactive blood transfusion from the Hulk, right? That's ridiculous on a number of levels." "First of all, how do you know that? You're not really a comic book fan." "I googled 'tall green comic book women' when I went upstairs," she said guiltily. "Ah. Second, you haven't had this kind of problem with Kara or Anna or the others. Why now with her?" "The worst the others have done is work out a lot or match their hair styles to a comic book character. None of them were nuts enough to dye their skin green." "I'm not going to get into the stuff you're conveniently forgetting, and I will deal with the skin problem when she's ready to let me. But you need to be civil. They are guests in our house and I would appreciate it if no one made fun of how they look. Okay?" "That's another thing. Anytime someone becomes a 'guest' in this house, they end up staying forever." "They're friends of Anna. They have no money and are a long way from home. I'm not going to kick them out in the cold." I saw Daria raise a finger and open her mouth, and quickly corrected myself. "In the metaphorical cold." It was early October in Texas, not yet cold weather. "If they don't want to stay here, I won't make them, but I'm not going to turn them away if they need help." "Frank, they need more help than you or I can give." I smiled, hugged her close and kissed her forehead. "Please be nice. For me." At my tender touch, I felt a little shiver run through her small frame. "Okay. But only because you're the one asking." After that, Daria was generally much nicer, or at least did a lot more self- censoring. Another conversation of note that evening took place when I was out of the room. Actually, it was a conversation that almost derailed my seduction plans. "So, Rogue," asked Kitty slowly. "Why is everyone here a girl except for Frank?" "Well, Frank owns the house and the business where most of us work, so that's why he's here..." Anna started. "Isn't that, like, extreme sexual harassment?" "Huh? Oh, no, we lived here before we started workin' for him. Or ... Ah'm not sayin' this exactly right ... Most of us ended up here when we were stuck with no way to get back home. Frank took us in an' gave us jobs." "Okay. So why is everyone else here a woman?" "That's just the way it turned out. Kara thinks Frank has some kinda natural super pheromone. She jokes that if he ever went to one of our universes, we'd have to stick him in one-a those hazmat suits to keep him from bein' swarmed by women." "So he's a mutant?" "Ah don't know. Ah doubt it, but who knows." "Do you mean he's going to want to sleep with us?" "Kitty, Ah'm not really comfortable talkin' about this with you. Ah mean, you're a lot younger, and ... y'know..." Anna trailed off awkwardly. "I'm as old as half the women I've met here so far. And I'm not some blushing virgin. Plus I'm not going to stay here if I have to sleep with some guy to do so." "It's not like that. He won't try to sleep with you. If you're like the rest of us, you'll try to sleep with him." "So you've slept with him?" "God, yes." "All the women here have slept with him?" "Yes, but it's not like it sounds..." "Rogue, we need to get you out of here." "Kitty, stop! Ah'm just sayin' this all wrong. Frank doesn't make us do anythin'. He's just a really nice guy who's also really smart, rich and good lookin'. He's basically the perfect boyfriend ... and we decided to share him." "The perfect boyfriend who just happens to have super pheromones? Uh huh." "He doesn't have super pheromones! Geez, Ah was just tellin' you that cause it's Kara's favorite joke. Yes, lots of women like him, but lots more just say Hi and move on by. Besides, pheromones can't explain why only women have shown up needin' his help, yourself included. "If you need a reason, go ask Zatanna. Blossom thinks it's cause Frank just has a big credit with Karma and havin' lots of girlfriends is how the universe is payin' him back, but Zatanna has this whole theory based on magical statistics or somethin'." "Karma and magical statistics?" "Ah'm not too sure about the Karma thing. Seems like we give him lots of headaches and trouble too." "And you think Jennifer, Ororo and me are going to start sleeping with him too?" "Ah ... Well, first of all, Ah think we need to leave Jennifer out of the discussion. If what Ah've heard about her night life is true..." "Fair enough. Jennifer supposedly really likes to ... ummm ... to party ... a lot." "So as far as you and 'Ro go, Ah'm sure the rest of us would be perfectly happy with y'all not sleepin' with him. Especially ... Ah mean, Ah know Ah ... that is to say, you're too ... well ... Ah'm sorry, Kitty, it's just that Ah've known you since you were ... what?... 15? 14?" "Something like that." "Ah just can't stop thinkin' of you when you were so young, so you still seem much too young for me to imagine you with..." Anna trailed off, embarrassed both at the idea of Kitty having sex and because she couldn't stop thinking of her as a much- too-young teenager. "I get it," Kitty sighed. "So, which one was Zatanna again?" Kitty left to seek out our resident magic expert. If you're interested in Zatanna's theory, go read Chapter Eight. Zatanna's theory of luck had evolved a bit but the core idea was still the same. Regardless, Zatanna was able to reassure Kitty enough to keep her from running away. The young Miss Pryde shared her information and suspicions with Ororo and Jennifer. Ororo shared her experiences with Diana. And Jennifer complained that she couldn't go out and there was only one man in the household, but she was happy to hear that at least he wasn't exclusively taken by one of the other women. After the rigors of the day, I was ready for a relaxing evening. I entered my bedroom with my escorts for the evening, with Daria on one arm and Jane on my back. Ever since that first time with Eiko, Jane had occasionally decided that I was to be 'ridden' to my bedroom on her special nights. Once inside my room, I noticed that there were leather restraints laid out on my bed, ready to be attached to bind someone spread-eagle in the center of the mattress. "So Cowgirl," I asked, "who are those for?" "They're to hold our pony in place while we ride him." "Moi?" I asked with mock incredulity. "Well, Daria wouldn't let me tie HER down, and I really want to ride on top tonight, so that only leaves you." I glanced at Daria, who looked back at me and shrugged as she was removing her shoes. "Don't look at me," she intoned. "I think helpless women being tied up for sex is completely passe nowadays." I occasionally played the sub, but rarely let myself be tied up. Still... "Okay," I said. "You've let me tie you up on more than one occasion, so I'm willing to let you have a go at me tonight. Just don't leave me tied up all night, or I'll be really stiff and sore in the morning." Jane hopped down from her perch on my back and grabbed a floppy plastic paddle from under the bed. "Now, Mister Pony, strip." "Yes, mam," I said as I began to pull off my clothes. Daria slowed her own disrobing to watch me, so I turned it into an exaggerated striptease. I won't say I was any good at the dance, but I tried to have fun with it. I barely remembered to pull out my earpiece before lowering my silk boxers to the floor. I jumped a little as Jane swatted my rear with her paddle. It stung a little, but not much. "On the bed now, Mister." "Just remember that there may be payback next time," I warned her with a grin. "That better be a promise, Mister," she said with a grin and a growl. Then she smacked me again, indicating that I should lie down on my back. Leather cuffs were quickly attached to my wrists and ankles, then the attached tethers pulled tight leaving me spread-eagle in the middle of my very large bed. Jane was still completely dressed, and the now naked Daria took advantage of the situation to climb aboard, mounting my erect cock in one swift motion. She hissed in pleasure as Jane yelled, "Hey, I'm first!" Daria started to bounce on me, but spared a moment to glance back at Jane and say, "You snooze, you lose." After only a couple bounces, I noticed Jane moving up behind Daria, readying the paddle. Daria must have noticed something, because she said, "There will be Hell to pay if you do anything stupid, Lane." I was the only one with a good view of Jane's expression as she paused to consider, shrugged and swung the paddle at Daria's bouncing ass. Daria cried out in surprise and hopped off of me. I wish I could have properly enjoyed the brief cat fight, but unfortunately she tackled Jane off the bed and out of my view. I heard some grunts and a couple cries, then Daria stood up, paddle in hand. "Go get another set of cuffs and get back here. Now!" Daria demanded. Jane scurried out the door. "Ring gag too!" Daria called after her. "Well that was unexpected," I said. "Hush, Mister Pony," she said with a grin. Then speaking in a quiet voice, she continued, "She probably expected this to happen. She knows she's not allowed to paddle me or slap me with a crop or ... you know." Jane was back in about a minute with four more leather cuffs, having already gagged herself. The ring gag let her tongue function as normal but kept her from speaking ... or at least from speaking clearly. It also tended to dry out her mouth very quickly. "Strip!" Daria ordered. With minor protesting growls, Jane disrobed, suffering only a few paddle-slaps for her slowness and mutters. Daria made Jane put the cuffs on herself, then climb on top of me. I was expecting her to be lashed down in a 69 position on top of me, but instead Jane's wrists and ankles were all latched together in a hogtie. Her face was placed at my crotch, but there was no way I could reach her cunt. She started licking me, but Daria pushed her away a little as she re-mounted. Once she was solidly impaled again, she pulled Jane's face closer and urged her to start licking. Given her situation, I doubt all of Jane's licks were on target, but they apparently did the job. Daria got off twice in less than five minutes of fucking me, though I was a long way from coming myself. "That was a good Janey. Now for your reward." Daria's naturally monotone nasal voice made it sound like she was being sarcastic, but apparently she meant it. Refusing to relinquish her spot, Daria pulled Jane around until she was able to unhook the cuffs, then she rearranged Jane into the 69 position I had expected earlier. "All right, Mister Pony, start licking Slave Jane." Now unbound, Jane thrust her pussy down onto my face, and I dug in with gusto. At the same time, Daria started riding me again, and this time I occasionally felt the brush of Jane's tongue on my shaft. A sudden smacking sound just above my head made me jump. I thought Jane jumped too ... actually I was pretty sure she jumped since Jane was the one who got smacked on her ass by Daria's paddle. The following smacks didn't make me jump, but I did twitch with every hit. (It sounded like it was impacting really close to my head.) I went back to my licking, occasionally catching orders from Jane to "Dig deeper" or "Lick my clit". After a couple dozen smacks or so, Jane had a huge orgasm. For a moment, I thought I was drowning in her juices. A few minutes later, Daria had a couple more orgasms in quick succession and she finally dismounted. Given her normal multi-orgasmic reactions to sex, Daria was actually running well below normal. "Good girl," she said to Jane, petting her head like Jane was a prize poodle. "Now it's your turn. Mount up." As Jane mounted my cock, Daria moved to my straddle my head. Daria doesn't really get off on oral sex as much as Jane does, but she still enjoys it. While Jane started bouncing, I worked on Daria's nether lips and clit at a slow leisurely pace, making sure to keep her excited without really trying to bring her off. The next time I saw Jane, her gag was gone, so I'm guessing they did some kissing while riding me. Without the ability to pump my hips very much myself, I was still a long way from coming. In all, Daria and Jane must have ridden me for over an hour before I finally blasted off in Daria's cunny. Daria unhooked my cuffs but then reconnected my wrists to Jane's so that we were lying on our sides, facing each other. Then she crawled in-between us so that basically we were holding her all night long. My left arm was completely numb when I woke up, but it was worth it to see Daria's contented expression as she slept. She doesn't look happy or content very often. Later I found out that Alpha had used the implants to turn Jane off for the night so she wouldn't wake me by moving around in her sleep. As I understand it, having her conscious mind turned off like that gave her a night of deep, dreamless sleep. The following day, Anna and I took Ororo and Kitty shopping, while Jennifer planned to search online for clothes. This shopping trip had a bit different dynamic than most of my previous ones. For starters, Ororo and Kitty had almost a surrogate mother-daughter relationship, which meant they weren't inclined to seductive displays in front of each other. Next, at this point, Kitty was determined to resist my charms. If I read her right, Storm was not opposed to spending time with me, but she was a bit suspicious. Her growing friendship with Diana encouraged trust-by-association, but her life experiences naturally made her hesitant to quickly open up to anyone new. Opposing their distrust and determination, little implants, mostly located in their heads, were busy stimulating chemical releases every time they interacted with me. These were the v6.2 updated implants, with a lot better, stronger and subtler controls than our early versions, which seemed crude by comparison. Every time they heard my voice, they felt a little tingle. Every time they saw me looking at them, it increased. When I actually focused my attention on them, looked in their eyes or touched them, their clits would throb and their vaginas would release lubrication. And even without the implants, they were designed to be responsive to my natural pheromones. The manipulation went beyond simple libidos. When I spoke, their attention was drawn to me above any other conversation. They had a subconscious, natural inclination to trust me and seek my approval. None of this was overriding. None of it was strong enough to deny their free will at any given moment. Instead it was cumulative. Sometimes subtle, sometimes not, each little interaction touched their psyche, molding it into a woman who desired me regardless of any other circumstances or complications. While this could (and often did) result in a quick and immediate attraction to me, it was only guaranteed to work in the long term. In the short term during that shopping trip, I didn't get the attention I was used to receiving. They did model some of their clothes for me, but the displays weren't as seductive as normal. Although I noticed they each bought a few sexy outfits, Anna was their only audience when those clothes were modeled. We picked up a few pieces for Jennifer from a Big and Tall Men's store, and the ladies picked out some underwear for her using whatever arcane female measurements they had made that morning. It all fit okay, but none of it fit perfectly. It turns out that Jennifer had spent more time talking with Alpha than she had spent shopping online. Like their fellow heroines from the DC universe, the Marvel women were equally used to friendly and unfriendly AIs. However unlike the others, She-Hulk had lived, worked, and fought side-by-side with Vision -- or is it 'The Vision'? -- for years. Having Dorothy living in the household gave Alpha a face, and Jennifer had no problem treating her as a person and potential friend. Jen had asked Dorothy a lot of the standard questions. Who chose her face & body and why? How strong was she? How fast? Was she anatomically correct? Could she work independently of Alpha? She added one question that even the DC women hadn't thought to ask: Did Dorothy ever think about becoming a superhero? That led to a more in-depth discussion of superheroes in the real world, how they might work and how they definitely wouldn't. From there, they moved on to Physics, an examination of their dimensional travel device and the possible problems with and methods of returning them to their own world. Probably the most important thing to come out of that conversation was their discussion of how Alpha might be able to turn Jennifer's green skin to white. Well, pink Caucasian, but you know what I mean. Add to that how everyone, Alpha included, explained the problems Jennifer was going to have if she stayed green, and She-Hulk finally agreed to give the change a try. That afternoon, we had the largest crowd I've ever had in my basement lab. A dozen people had crowded in to watch Jennifer, clad only in a rather tight bikini, climb into my largest nanopod. "All right, Miss Walters," I said as she settled down. "The good news is that this shouldn't hurt at all. The bad news is, this will probably itch so badly it will give you nightmares." "That's what Dorothy said." "Are you sure we can't give you something to knock you out for a while?" "I can take it." "Let me know if you change your mind. Meanwhile, hold still as best you can. The more you move, the longer it will take." After about five minutes, she was rigidly stiff, her fists clenched as if she was holding on to something for dear life. "Okay, Stop!" she said through her gritted teeth. "We still have a minimum of 34 minutes to go, perhaps as long as 96 minutes," said Dorothy. "Put me to sleep or something. I feel like I want to tear my skin off!" "Alpha, pause the operation," I said. Jennifer suddenly relaxed slightly and started scratching and rubbing all over. Dorothy approached her with a syringe and, when Jennifer stopped scratching long enough to allow it, she carefully injected it into Jennifer's arm. A couple minutes later, she was unconscious and the operation resumed. Over the next fifty-one minutes, green seemed to leak out of her skin and into the nanopod goo, leaving behind pink, untanned skin. Her white bikini turned green as well, and I wondered if it would need to be thrown out. I hadn't really had time to get used to her green skin, but even so, she looked very different now ... normal, except for her seven-foot wrestler's frame. (I think technically she beat out Power Girl for the largest breasts in the house, but only because she was at least a foot taller and still had large breasts for her frame. I was pretty sure that if Kara was proportionally sized up a bit, her bust would regain its title.) Once all the nanites had been recovered -- except for the normal 5% or so that died during use, which were dragged out of the body and left in the goo to be flushed away -- Dorothy waved smelling salts under Jennifer's face to wake her up. (Two minor secrets: One, the syringe had only been filled with saline solution. Jennifer's implants were what made her unconscious. She was switched back on at the same time the smelling salts were used. Two, the color wasn't removed from her skin. Her affected skin cells were removed, and replacement cells were grown.) "So, how'd it ... Well, would you look at that!" she said, seeing her arms and torso. "Do you have a mirror handy? And a shower?" The greenish goo clung to her in places, probably including some places she didn't want to think about. "The only mirror down here is by the sink," I said pointing off to the side. "To the left of the sink is our shower-slash-emergency wash station. It's good enough to get most of the goo off." Jennifer climbed out of the pod, with her friends offering steadying hands. She made her way over to the small mirror and shower, followed by a small wall of females and a quiet murmur and coo of voices. I suppressed a rush of pretty strong annoyance at being blocked from a good show in my own home lab. I could see Jennifer's head, given her height, until she ducked down to rinse off under our showerhead. Finally, just before I was going to call out, Jennifer pushed through the small crowd. She was pulling her bikini top back into place, then looked up and noticed me. Although she was at least fifteen feet away, I'm pretty sure she shivered a bit when she saw me staring at her. Striking a pose with her hands resting on her cocked hips, she asked in a quiet, husky voice, "So, how do I look?" I took in her non-green form for just a moment before responding. I didn't want to leer or be rude, but when a beautiful woman looks at you like that, her nipples trying to poke out of the thin fabric covering them, you can't help but take a moment to drink the image in. "You look like a normal woman." "Normal?" "Well, a normal woman who happens to be very tall, very fit and very pretty." "That's better." With She-Hulk looking human and with all three newcomers conveniently together, we started setting up their new identities. We spent a little time picking out names for their new identities. 'Jennifer Walters' was common enough that even with its link to She-Hulk, it shouldn't raise any suspicions. Diana's ID shared the same last name, but having two unrelated 'Walters' shouldn't be a big deal. 'Katherine "Kitty" Pryde' was much too unique and well-known. Though she could, of course, keep her nickname 'Kitty', she eventually agreed to a new identity as Katherine Preiss. (I honestly don't know why she decided on 'Preiss', and I made a mental note to ask Alpha about it later.) 'Ororo' was a problem though. Sure 'Munroe' was common enough as a last name, but there was no way we could get away with calling a white-haired black woman Ororo and not raise some eyebrows. We changed it slightly to 'Aurora' and shifted it to her middle name. Her middle name, Iqadi, was changed to Imara (Swahili for 'strong' or something) as a first name, for a full name of 'Imara Aurora Munroe' which still easily allowed for 'Ro' as a nickname. I spent that evening with the Powerpuffs, and while it was certainly fun, if I actually recount every intimate encounter I have, it would take forever to write down anything, so I'm just going to leave it at that. The next morning, I went shopping again, this time with Jennifer. Somehow she convinced the others to let us go shopping alone, so it was just the two of us. Finding clothes to fit a seven-foot-tall woman was a bit challenging, but Alpha had provided a list of stores in the area that should carry items in her size. Plus she could still wear some normal-size clothes, they just looked a bit ... short ... on her. Normal shirts and skirts became belly shirts and miniskirts, and Jennifer was not averse to showing some skin. She was also very much in favor of drawing attention to herself. She-Hulk has a bit of a split personality. In her human form, she is a bit shy and retiring, though she has gained confidence in recent years. In her hulked- out form, she loves attention and fun and sex. She may have lost the green skin, but her She-Hulk personality was fully in force. (Anyone who only knows the character from John Byrne's run should read the Dan Slott issues to update themselves a bit, especially the first issue where she gets kicked out of the Avengers Mansion for partying too much and risking security by bringing home a different guy every night. There's a great bit where she gets a wake-up call when a male underwear model dumps her because she's too shallow.) All the flirting and sexy poses that I missed from my shopping trip with Ororo and Kitty were back in full force with Jennifer. In fact, when you combine some of her outfit choices with how up-close-and-personal she got, it was easy to see that (1) she shaved her 'camel toe' region and (2) she was really enjoying showing off (or at least teasing me). Yes, okay, I knew all about her personality and shaved nether regions, but I try to keep such knowledge separate from my actual interactions with people. Besides, there's a huge difference between looking at an unconscious, brain-dead naked body covered in goo and a living woman who walks up to you while you're sitting down, stops a foot away and asks if you like her matching lacy bra and panties set. With the former, you might notice her bare crotch; with the latter, you enjoy letting your eyes drift down from her soft breasts and rigid nipples to see the skin-tight smooth pubic region. I was actually surprised that she didn't try to jump me when we got home. She just gave me a tonsil-sucking kiss, said 'Thank you' and winked at me as she carried her clothes upstairs. Over dinner, we started talking about what our new ladies might want to do with their lives while they were here. Even though they had hopes of being rescued after a few months or a year, we needed to plan as if they were going to stay here long-term. She-Hulk was the easiest, since she was the only one of the three who had a normal job in addition to her Avengers duties; Jennifer Walters was a lawyer. While Alpha had added in a lot of useless super-hero-related law to her work-related memories, she was at least 90% qualified to take the bar exam in the real world. One problem: nowadays you needed a law degree to be allowed to take the bar exam. Some education Alpha could fake, but she probably couldn't fake enough to let her take the bar. So, Jennifer would be heading back to school. Using a falsified transfer of credits, she would need only one year of college for an undergraduate degree, then law school, though her implanted experience and knowledge should make it relatively easy. There were at least two law schools in the DFW metroplex, so keeping her local wouldn't be too big of a problem. Ororo and Kitty were somewhat more difficult. Ororo's resume of thief, rain goddess and mutant team leader didn't really translate well to the real world. Kitty was not much better, with her list of jobs like mutant superhero, ninja, secret agent and dimensional traveler. Kitty was not too old to look out of place in college, so that seemed the most likely choice for her. Ororo however ... eventually we uncovered that she was fluent in a number of different languages, ranging from French to Swahili. Given AARD's rapid expansion, hiring a translator for the company was not out of the question. In case anyone wonders, I have no idea whether the comic-book-version of Storm is multilingual or not, but it makes sense. Her character has traveled a lot over the course of her life and spent a lot of time in Africa as a young woman. After dinner, I spent a couple hours in the basement working with Alpha to try to make up for missing a couple days of work. When I emerged, Jennifer pounced. Almost literally. "So, Frank," she said as she slid an arm around my shoulders, "tomorrow night you're throwing a Welcome party for us. Gonna have music and dancing and drinks and lots of fun. All right?" "Uhhhh ... I'm not sure that's a good idea. People are going to ask where you're coming from and why you're here. Plus, who are you going to ask to come? You don't really know anyone yet." "Oh, come on, you have enough people living here to fill up a party without asking anyone else. Not a big one, maybe, and not nearly enough guys, but we can have a blast as is!" "Okay, if you want to," I responded without a lot of enthusiasm. I don't want to brag, but my dancing has been favorably compared to epileptic seizures. I could glumly foresee a need to dance with everyone. True, I had taken a couple classes a few years back, so I could shuffle my feet back and forth in response to music, but the lessons didn't uncover any actual talent on my part. If we could avoid any free-form dancing, I might be able to escape without embarrassing myself. "That's the spirit! And tonight, you and me are going to have a pre-party party of our own." "Umm ... you might need to check with..." "It's cool. I traded for tonight with whatshername, that pretty Japanese cook lady..." "Kasumi?" "Yeah, that's her. You know, she seems like a really nice person. And a really good cook. Heck, if she wants to come back with us when we get rescued, I'm sure I can get her a job at Avengers Mansion." "Well, she..." "I know, I know. This is her home. But if there's one thing I've learned it's that you never know what's going to happen when it comes to dimensional travel." "Okay, but I think..." "Y'know, your setup here is kinda weird, what with all these women sharing you around. Organized, but weird. Really raises my expectations too. So, do you think you can live up to how much everyone brags about you?" "Jennifer," I said, finally fitting in more than a couple words in our rather one-sided conversation, "usually I take someone out on a date or two before I go about ... proving myself." "Good for you," she said with a smile, "but I'm not always that patient. Strange new world, only one guy in the house ... you can see where I'm going with this, right?" I nodded slowly. "Yes..." "So ... I think you're pretty tasty looking, and your pants practically ripped in two a few times while we were shopping, so I'm pretty sure you like me too. I have permission from your harem, so what's the problem?" "Well, no problem, per se..." "Good enough," she said as she pulled her arm from my shoulders, bent over and slung me over her shoulder like a large sack of ... you know, no one I know of carries flour that way, so that saying doesn't really make sense to me ... I'm nowhere near as lumpy as a sack of potatoes ... how about a large sack of ... of ... well, okay, nothing else springs to mind ... a slab of beef in a slaughterhouse? ... really messes up the mood. Okay, I give up. She slung me over her shoulder like a large sack. It was a bit undignified, but it was hardly the first time it had happened to me. As in past experiences, it gave me a nice view her ass, and also as usual, she used the opportunity to firmly squeeze my own rear end. I heard a few whistles and calls of encouragement as she easily carried me up the stairs, but in a break from the usual, she stopped at the top and whispered, "Which one is your room?" "Right," I whispered back, then considered my upside down perspective and fought for a moment of clear thought. "Wait. Sorry, my upside-down right, meaning your left, then to the end of the hall." A moment later, my door was open. "Wow, big bed," she commented before tossing me down onto my comforter. Looking down on me, she said, "Come on. Let's violate the comics code," as she pulled off her t-shirt and bra, revealing large, pale breasts topped with wide, dark nipples, all hanging on a wide, muscular frame. She looked around for a moment -- to my mind, she was checking for observing comic book readers -- then asked that we keep the lights on. (It may seem like an odd request, but it made a kind of sense. A comic code-approved book could only show this upcoming scene if it were dark or in shadows.) Me? I'm a lights-on kind of guy by preference anyway. Then she descended on me, and, given her height, 'descended' is an appropriate descriptive term. She was easily the tallest woman I had ever made love to. We quickly stripped each other down, exploring the enjoyably soft and hard bits. Her body was lean muscle and smooth skin. Being artificially made, she was able to have a body-builder's physique but still have large, soft breasts. I still occasionally looked at her expecting to see green skin, but when I went after her pussy, I only saw pink. Like most of my other super-strong women, she was experienced enough to know how to avoid hurting her lover -- real or virtual experience was the same for this purpose -- keeping her legs spread and locking her hands onto the edge of the mattress above her head. Even with her bland-tasting juices, her reactions were easily enough to make the cunnilingus fun for both of us. Plus she had the largest clit of any woman I'd ever slept with. I swear, it's maybe a little bigger than the top joint of my middle finger. It took a few minutes to ramp her up, but once her sex had been primed, she came at least three times within two minutes, thrusting her hips up against my tongue. After I finished eating her out, I kept going with slow, steady strokes of my fingers until she had calmed down. "Oh, I really needed that," she said. Looking over at me, she added, "But all the same, you're not done yet, right?" "Not by a long shot," I said as I crawled over to the bedside table. I retrieved a condom and rolled it on. "I've been on birth control back home," she said as she watched me, "but I don't know if you have the same pills here or not. I guess I'll have to go see a doctor or something." I nodded at her. Like my other women with improved musculature, she was actually sterile but did not know it. My fear was that her inhumanly strong muscles could inadvertently damage a fetus or even eject it prematurely. Besides, I didn't particularly want a house full of children. I wanted children someday, sure, but not right now. So I kept a supply of condoms available for women who had yet to go on the pill or get some other type of contraceptive. "Come on," she said with a grin. "Let's fuck!" She looked around briefly, then repeated the word. "Fuck, fuck, fuck. That's just such a fun word to say, y'know?" I rarely cuss myself, but she took such an almost child-like delight in saying 'fuck' that you couldn't help but smile. "All right, then," I agreed. "Prepare to be fucked." Despite her physical size, her vaginal canal did not seem noticeably larger than normal, and I slid into the tight wet hole without a problem. We both hissed in pleasure, and I held still for a moment, just enjoying the sensation. I hope I never get tired of the feeling. The fuck started out nice and slow, with long strokes, but before long I was pumping as fast as I could. Her vaginal muscles gripped tightly, and I briefly entertained the nightmarish image of fucking a full-powered She-Hulk and coming away with a squished, pulpy mass that had once been a penis. I've had similar nightmares about Kara and Diana and such. Her height had one significant advantage, which was that I didn't need to bend down at all to reach her breasts. I could simply lower my head and try to catch a nipple with my lips as they rolled back and forth. Occasionally she would bend her head forward to catch me in a tongue-sucking kiss, but since kissing slowed the fucking, the kisses never lasted for very long. When she orgasmed, she would let out a rumbling moan that seemed to shake the bed. Her legs would curl up around me and hold me in place for a minute, unmoving. Then she would relax and I would restart. She didn't have the extended orgasms that some of my women had, but like all of them, she was very multi-orgasmic. In varying positions, we fucked for somewhere between an hour and an hour and a half. Jen seemed almost tireless in pursuit of orgasms. When I would get tired, she'd switch to riding me. When I regained my strength, she'd let me take over again. When I came, she'd peel off the condom and suck me back to full hardness. Among other things, I discovered she was the first of my artificial women whose cervix I could not reach in any position. In that time, I came three times. That isn't an unexpected number for me, but it was unusual to have three so quickly. Usually, I'll come once in the first 10-30 minutes, then a second time 30-60 minutes later. (I usually have to actively work to hold back so I can fuck everyone who wants it.) Jennifer on the other hand ... well, I lost track of how many orgasms she achieved. Maybe as many as two dozen. Finally I had enjoyed myself enough for the evening and crawled to a non- sweaty section of bedsheets. "That's it for me tonight," I said as I crawled. "Oh, come on. Just one more." "Sorry, Jen. If you really need more, I know some of the ladies have some strap-ons or vibrators..." "I've done it with women before, but it's kind of unfulfilling. Like eating soy burgers. Sure it fills you up, but it just doesn't taste right." "Well, this particular burger is tired. I lost track of how many cums you had, so I consider my duty done." "No argument there. I enjoyed that more than ... well, more than even certain superheroes who shall remain nameless. Which is why I want more." "If I get a good night's sleep, you might be able to tempt me with a morning roll-in-the-hay. For now, good night!" I crawled back to her long enough to kiss her, then put my earpiece in its charger, turned off the lights with my remote and burrowed under the sheets. A moment later, she moved up behind me, laying one long arm across my hip and pressing her breasts up against my bare back. Together, we drifted off to sleep. I woke up before Jen did the next morning, and quietly got out of bed. I debated whether or not to exercise, but decided I would probably get plenty of workouts in other ways. Whenever I sleep with a new woman, my pre-existing women tend to demand a bit more attention, perhaps wanting to reassure themselves that they have a claim on me. I expected to be approached for sex three or four times before evening. I brushed my teeth and started the water for the shower. One of the disadvantages of tankless water heaters was that it always took an extra minute to warm up, which was a small price to pay for unlimited hot water. There were newer designs for tankless heaters that worked much faster, but it really wasn't worth the investment in time, money and effort to replace our current, perfectly good units. Just as I was stepping into the shower, I felt hands grab my ass unexpectedly. I jumped in surprise and nearly slipped and bashed my head, but Jennifer caught me from behind and kept me from falling. "Whoa, there. You okay?" she asked. She was, of course, completely naked. As I mumbled an affirmative reply, she helped me into the shower and stepped in to join me. In addition to having the largest bathroom in the house, mine also has the most options. I have a separate jacuzzi-style tub and my shower has multiple spray options, including a ceiling rain-style option. Since the normal shower head was not up high enough to accommodate Jen's height, I switched it over to the ceiling/rain setting. "Thanks," she said, as she reached for the soap and washcloth. Without saying another word, she started lathering me up, taking her time in doing so. Not that I objected, especially not when she knelt in front to me to clean my legs and 'equipment'. After she gave me a once-over down below and rinsed me off, she took my hardening cock in her mouth and swallowed. She lacked the artistry and skill many of my other women have, but she was mostly definitely able to deep-throat. What she did was simple, but effective: She took my cock deep in her mouth, adjusted the angle of her neck, and swallowed. And kept on swallowing, even after my balls were pressed against her chin. Every thirty seconds or so, she would pull back a little to take a breath, then she'd swallow again. She gave very little tongue action, rather making it more like throat-fucking than a blowjob. After a couple minutes of this, I held her head in place and spurted down her throat a few times. When she pulled my penis free of her mouth, I said, "Thank you, and good morning to you too." "No problem. I figured I owed you from last night." I stood her up and took my turn cleaning her up, eventually following suit by eating her out as well. We even washed each other's hair. Jennifer is not especially 'girly', but there's something intimate about washing someone's hair that can often melt even the most manly of women. When we finished, I loaned her a robe and got dressed for the day. It was Friday, and I had taken the past few days off work to help the newcomers settle in (and shop, etc), so I really needed to go in to the office. Anna and Diana stayed home to help out where needed, and a few others were going to help set up for the party tonight. I answered emails, returned phone calls, passed along a few bits of advice from Alpha to a few researchers and generally got mostly caught up with work. Kara gave me a morning under-the-desk blowjob, and Zatanna seduced me for a mid-afternoon office quickie. Bubbles and Jane each separately came by a couple times, but had the bad luck of only finding me in the company of other people. That afternoon, Alpha relayed an interesting conversation between Diana and Ororo. "This is a nice room. You share it with the magic woman?" "Zatanna, yes." "Is this picture yours or hers? It looks a bit like you, and I think I remember the clothes." (laugh) "Yes, that's a page from one of my comics. Kara cut it out, framed it and gave it to me as a joke. Although not everything in my comics actually happened to me, that particular conversation did." As neither of them read it out loud, let me point out that it shows a conversation between Wonder Woman and Black Canary where Black Canary explained to her that Wonder Woman's bosom was rated as the second best in the country, just behind Power Girl's top-rated bust. I want to say it was issue #34 of the current WW series at the time, but I could be wrong. "So there's a competition between the two of you?" "Oh, a bit, I suppose. We're friends and colleagues, even more here than we were back home, but Kara likes to make sure everyone understands that she was here first ... that she had first claim on Frank. I'm sure she thinks she's being subtle about it, but subtlety is not among her skills." "I remember the story she told. Diana, please forgive me if this question is too personal, but I am curious. From what I remember of my time on Themyscira, you didn't really seem very interested in men, yet now..." "Well, some of my sisters would no doubt be horrified to learn it, but I am open to love in all forms. Well, most forms. Some people have very strange ideas ... I suggest you be very careful what links you click on when you go online ... but no matter. I see nothing wrong with intimacy between any willing man or woman in any combination and am personally open to both sexes." "As I said, I am simply going by my own rather fuzzy memories. Thinking about it, I'll admit it does seem that our choices on the island were rather too limited. I myself have always preferred men, but I admit some memories of my time there were rather ... intriguing." "Well, there was a reason we called it Paradise Island. We were not crass about it, but at night, orgasms sometimes flowed like fine wine." "I think I remember. In fact, I think I remember you and I..." "Yes, you were a beautiful woman. And still are for that matter." They weren't in a position which could be easily seen from Alpha's pinhole camera, so I couldn't see to be certain, but from the sounds, I'm pretty sure they kissed at that point. And kept on kissing for a couple minutes. "That was not quite as I remember it, but then we are a little older and that was another life." "Ororo, you are welcome in my bed at any time. Or if you do not wish the company of a woman by herself, I could invite you to join me with Frank. I am certain he would also welcome you." "Your situation here is very strange. One man and all these women sharing him peacefully. The women rule his bed within his own house." "Yes, I suppose it is a bit odd, but in many ways, it reminds me of my home back on Themyscira, with so many beautiful, strong women living together. If I must live without my powers, this is very close to my ideal life." "Well, it does seem rather peaceful, which is a very nice change of pace. Back home ... did you know that I am supposedly destined to marry a king back home?" "Really? A prophecy?" "Well, I'm not sure. Do the comic books here count as prophesies?" (laughs) "Not entirely. We decided that if you make allowances for story- telling flourishes and a bit of censorship for public consumption, our comics are perhaps 90% accurate. I'm not certain if that estimate holds true for your comics as well." "So there's maybe a 90% chance that I'll marry a man I barely know? Hmmm ... I'm not sure I like that. Not that he's unattractive or unkind. And it might be nice to be a queen ... I simply dislike the notion that my future has already been decided for me." As they started to discuss the possibility of predestination, I stopped listening. Storm was referring to her marriage to T'Challa, aka the Black Panther. My own main objection to the marriage was how it seemed to come out of the blue, affirmed mainly through revisionist and retroactive story-telling. I also noted that Ororo's personality was definitely on the serene side at the moment. In the comics, there were also plenty of times when she played an indomitable fighter, but apparently Diana's influence brought out more of the 'nature goddess' aspect (which was a bit odd, given that Diana also had a violent warrior aspect to her personality). That evening, the party came off a bit better than I expected. Elisa and Jasmine came over, giving us 21 people (if you include Dorothy). I even brought my R2-D2-style Alphadroid home, where we fitted him with a serving tray so he could wander around offering drinks to everyone. Not really enough for a PARTY party, but enough for a cocktail or welcome-to-the-family party. Kasumi, with help enlisted from Rei and Dorothy, put out a large table full of finger foods, small sandwiches and a variety of drinks, only half of which were alcoholic. Alpha served as DJ for the evening, trying to maintain a fun atmosphere without intruding on everyone's attention. One problem was that at such parties, you normally have lots of conversations where people catch up with each other. That wouldn't work well here, since we all lived together. To help start things off, I made a brief speech welcoming the newcomers and put them on the spot to give a bit of background on themselves. No dramatic revelations came out, but it worked well to introduce themselves without everyone having to read a bunch of comics. After about an hour, Buttercup and Jane pulled out one of those adult-ish party games where you have to guess the subject from various misleading clues, most of which were double entendres. People joined and left the competing sides, and we switched to an even more racy game where people had to perform various tasks or answer various questions each round, in an adult version of Truth or Dare. (Examples included kissing the ass of the person to the left or describing the first time you had oral sex.) I was greatly relieved that there was no dancing (aside from a couple brief game-related mock stripteases). I suspect someone warned Jennifer about my lack of dancing ability, because fortunately she never tried to clear dance floor space or try to start dancing. No one got drunk, though we did drink enough to loosen up and have fun. Personally, I hate getting drunk. Yes, you can sometimes have a lot of fun while drunk, but I hate the loss of control (and I'm always worried that I might blurt out something secret). All in all, it was a fun evening. I'm not sure it was what Jennifer expected, but I think she had fun too. That evening, I went to bed with Anna, who invited Kasumi to join us. (I'm guessing she was trying to make up for Kasumi giving up the previous night to Jennifer.) I made sure each lady had at least two orgasms each before I gave my final load of the day to Anna. I spent most of Saturday morning at the office, doing more catch-up work, then spent time with friends that afternoon. (The friends and our activities have no bearing on the story.) Saturday evening, I found out that I was taking Diana and Ororo out for dinner and a concert. I should point out that I knew I was taking Diana out, as she had arranged the date a few weeks earlier. I found out I was taking Ororo too when she came downstairs with Diana, their arms linked together, both dressed in formal evening gowns. "You both look lovely tonight..." "Thank you," said Diana. "You look rather handsome yourself." "Uhh ... thank you. Is Ororo coming with us? You're most certainly welcome, but I think we only reserved two tickets..." Diana reassured me. "Alpha called and was able to get a third ticket for us, though we had to change our seating to have all three seats together." "Excellent. If I may make it official, Ororo, would you be willing to join us for dinner and a concert tonight?" "Thank you, yes. I am looking forward to it." We had dinner reservations at a very nice four-star restaurant, followed by a musical presentation by the newest Van Cliburn winner, backed up by a small orchestra, all of which had been selected by Diana. Myself, I like classical, piano and orchestral music just fine, but I rarely make the effort to go to live concerts. (By 'rarely' I mean 'never unless someone else arranges for me to go'.) When the evening began, it was apparent to me that she was resistant to the idea of sleeping with me so soon after meeting me. To her, our 'date' was a chance to spend time with me to see if I interested her. As for me, my goal for the evening was to seduce Ororo without her realizing it. To me, that night was a good opportunity to work on her one-on-one. No, that's not the right phrasing because it implies Diana was to be ignored. I absolutely did not ignore Diana, which is a virtually impossible task any time she is physically present, but I touched Ororo more than I needed to. I talked to her directly more often that I had before. I looked her directly in the eye often during dinner. And at the concert, I sat between the two ladies and held their hands. I let my grip vary between loose and tight, and occasionally even stroked my fingers along theirs in time with the music. I'm positive their implants played their libidos almost as skillfully as the pianist we listened to. They each had enough self-control to avoid staring at me throughout the presentation, which was beautiful and excellent, but when we stood up afterwards, their legs were slightly wobbly, and I'm pretty sure I saw a bit of dampness left behind on their seats. (Unfortunately I couldn't arrange a reasonable opportunity to look at the backs of their dresses until later.) When we got home, Diana excused herself to go visit the bathroom, taking Ororo with her. Alpha reported that their bathroom visit consisted mostly of Diana talking with Ororo about what she wanted to do, then the two of them fixing their makeup and doing a quick bit of feminine hygiene cleanup. My jacket and tie were slung over my shoulder when they returned to find me chatting with Dorothy/Alpha. "Ah, welcome back, ladies. Let me thank you for a wonderful night out. I know you had your choice of dating prospects, and I hope you'll remember me when it comes time to choose again." Diana smiled at me, but said my name with a bit of a don't-make-jokes warning tone. "Frank ... please take us upstairs now." She pulled Ororo next to me, put my hand on my hip and looped Ororo's arm through mine. Then she moved to my other side and did the same, thus linking the three of us like a short chain. Together, we made our way upstairs and to my bedroom. Once the door was closed behind us, Diana caught me, spun me to her and nearly smothered me with a kiss. After a moment, she broke it off and said, "I think we should start with you eating out Ororo. Show her it is a skill men can learn as well." The sophistication of the evening's activities was definitely rubbing off on me as I turned to the black-skinned beauty that stood next to us and said, "I would not presume to even hint at asking when I've yet to have the pleasure of a simple kiss." I think she was blushing, though I couldn't tell with her naturally dark complexion. "I ... I'm sure ... I..." This is what our implants can do to a woman the first time, regardless of how strong a personality or will she might have. To rescue her from her fragmented response, I held out a hand to her her. She took it, and I drew her in for a kiss. At the first touch of our lips, I had planned to keep it light and work my way up to intense. Ororo had her own plan though, as she pulled me in tight, her hormones pushing the intensity to full. As we kissed, I felt hands reach around from behind and begin to unbutton my shirt. When our kiss finally ended, we broke apart just enough for Diana to pull my shirt off so she could begin working on Ororo's dress. Diana did her best to manage the two of us as we kissed and groped, stripping each of us down to our naked skin and helping ease us onto the bed. Before long, I was working my way down the body of the lovely goddess before me. She was a mature, fit woman with large breasts and smooth skin. Her hair was naturally white, and the carpet matched the drapes. Given her lack of a swimsuit- style costume, we had not given her a history of shaved pubes and Diana had apparently not yet had time to encourage her to trim, so I was given the rare treat of natural hair growth covering her vaginal area. (Eh, yeah, I prefer shaved pubic lips, but encountering something different was a nice change of pace. And since her body was newly created, I didn't have to pick any hairs out of my teeth afterward. Fresh bodies don't lose hair as easily as mature ones do.) Once I had worked my way down between her legs, I gently pulled her lips apart and got to work. If I paused and concentrated, I could just detect a hint of womanly flavor amid the juices. Given another week, she would taste almost normal. Not that this dissuaded me from my appointed task. I enjoy eating women out for a variety of reasons. Among them, I just like to see and experience their reactions. While fucking, I'm often a bit caught up in my own sensations, but while licking, I can enjoy the pleasure I'm giving with fewer distractions. Watching a woman's body dance against my tongue is just an amazing experience. And we all experienced it that night. Ororo was wound up and came quickly the first time. I looked up at her to see Diana holding Storm's head in her lap while she gently rubbed and played with the bare breasts laid out before her. I reapplied myself, this time working my fingers into her vaginal canal while I licked her clitoris and pulled on it with my lips. She came a second time after about ten minutes, and this time she came much more strongly, lifting her torso off the bed and letting out a small scream. When she regained her senses, she found a naked Diana stretched out alongside her with my face buried between her friend's legs. After watching for a moment, she rolled over onto her side, leaned over and gently kissed Diana on the lips. I don't think it was a bi-sexual, lustful kiss, just an appropriate gesture for the moment. Diana chose that moment to come herself and reached up, holding Ororo's mouth to hers as her moan passed from one woman to the other. Ororo looked a little surprised, but soon gave in to the kiss, closing her eyes and letting the moment take her. Then Diana's orgasm ended and the moment passed. Their kiss broke and I sat up, my tumescent member bobbing into view. Diana broke the silence, saying "That was wonderful," though I'm not entirely certain to whom she addressed the remark. Her eyes refocusing on the moment, the Princess of Themyscira looked at the rain goddess next to her and said, "Go on. Take him." Ororo stretched out an arm to me, beckoning me to approach her. I shifted over a bit and leaned down to kiss her, letting her taste Diana on my lips for a moment before pulling back. "Just a moment," I said quietly, then moved off to the bedside table where I retrieved a condom. Yes, I knew what Ororo's response would be, but all the same I had to play the part as if I were ignorant. "It is okay," she said. "I have a medical implant to prevent pregnancy, and should be clean and free of ... problems." I smiled and dropped the condom back on the table, moving back to join her. A moment later, I was slowly planting myself deep in her (in)fertile valley. With a third person involved, we didn't try many positions. Instead, Diana provided the variations with her actions, sometimes sucking on Ororo's breasts or stroking her thighs, sometimes kissing me or encouraging my thrusts with her hands on my buttocks. When Ororo seemed near to orgasm, Diana would move her hand between our bodies and rub the mutant's clit. In all, I fucked Ororo to three more orgasms before she passed out. I was so close to coming that for once I didn't let my companion's unconscious state stop me and sprayed my semen into her a few thrusts later. A moment later, I pulled out and let Diana grasp my drooping, half-hard member. "Oh, no," she whispered. "You don't get off that easily. I will not be left empty tonight." Diana was good at cocksucking. Not an expert or a natural fellatrix, but she easily brought me back to a fully hard state. Once we were both ready, she pushed me down next to the still-unconscious Ororo and mounted me, engulfing my cock to the root with one smooth motion. Ororo woke up a couple minutes later as Diana and I were shifting positions to doggy style. I didn't notice she was awake again until I reached down to play with Diana's tits and found Ororo's tentative fingers already there, gently tweaking and milking the nipples. Though the two of them didn't kiss again, Ororo participated in Diana's fuck, trying to duplicate her friend's earlier help, which hurried Diana through orgasms a bit more quickly than I might have otherwise anticipated. Eventually, I came again and fell onto the bed between the two heroines. Diana roused herself just enough to find my remote for the lights. Then all three of us fell into a very pleasant sleep. The following morning, Diana woke first and had me gently wake Ororo up with a fuck. Apparently Diana loves the sensation of waking from an erotic dream to find reality matching the dream, and she wanted to share the experience with her new friend. I had done this to all of my women at one time or another, but hadn't known Diana liked it that much. Whether or not Ororo enjoyed it as much as she did, her expression of surprise and desire upon her waking realization was worth the effort. Jennifer and Ororo may have quickly joined my harem, but Kitty was a different matter. If anything, how quickly her teammates entered my bedroom seemed to make her that much more resistant to spending time with me. To make it that much more difficult, I absolutely could not be seen pursuing her. To do so would cause problems with Anna and Ororo, as well as possibly questioning the carefully crafted fiction that the women were at least partially in charge of my sex life. As long as she lived in the same house, her implants ensured she would eventually relent, but she was actively fighting against it, against something she couldn't explain or define. After a few days of this, Alpha sent Eiko to befriend her. Eiko was easily the most human of Alpha's platforms because she was ... well ... human. Human brain, human emotions, but with the memories of being a computer. I thought of her as the resident Data, an android striving to become human. She also looked like she was in Kitty's age group, which helped considerably. Eiko befriended her by the simple expedient of demanding her participation and friendship. Early one afternoon, she walked up to Kitty, handed her a tennis racket and said, "Come on. I'm trying to learn how to play tennis, and you've been elected to help." "I don't know anything about tennis." "What's to know? I hit the ball to you, you hit it back. Avoid the net and try to keep it inside the lines. Everything else is details." "I bet the details are kind of important." "Well, this will be the first time I've played, so I don't need to worry about the rest until I get the basics down." "The first time? But if you've never..." "Come on! I reserved a court in half an hour." "If neither of us knows how to play, then why are we going?" "I've seen enough of it on TV to know the basics, in theory anyway. And besides, it'll be fun." "Why me? Why not ... umm ... the girl with the glasses..." "Daria?" "Yeah, why not Daria? You seem to be good friends with her." "Yes, but she isn't a fan of physical activity. Wait, let me modify that statement slightly. She isn't a fan of sports. Besides, you don't have super strength to mess up the game, you aren't in school here yet and you've been sitting around all day brooding." "I have not!" "Okay, you've been sitting around all day reading, watching TV in the dark and browsing online for references to your comic book persona. Moodily brooding." "Hey!" "YOU need to get outside and go do something, so I decided that we're going to learn how to play tennis. Or at least hit the ball back and forth." "Uh huh, you just decided this on your own?" "Yup, now get it in gear." Fortunately, Kitty did just that. I'm pretty sure Alpha must have based that approach off something she read or saw, but Eiko pulled it off beautifully. They went out and apparently had fun, even if half of their time was spent chasing stray balls. Eiko made sure to spend time with her every day and made no mention of sex or myself for the next few days. Eventually, one late afternoon after a game of HORSE using a basketball net we had set up off the garage, the conversation lent itself to my purposes. "So," asked Kitty, "please forgive me if you've told me and I don't remember, but why are you here?" "To kick your ass at HORSE, obviously." "I don't think H-O-R-S-E to H-O-R-S counts as an ass kicking. It's practically a tie..." "But with the very important difference where I kicked your ass." "BUT that's not what I meant. Why did you move in here? With all the others?" "Ah. Well, I did tell my story, but I'm not sure you were there at the time, so you are forgiven. The short version is that I was already dimensionally stranded somewhere else. I had a chance to randomly hitch a dimensional ride, so I took it ... y'know, trying to get home or at least find someone who had better travel technology. I ended up arriving alongside Linda and, like the others, I'm pretty much stranded." "I can sympathize." "Anyway, it's a nice enough place, and the people are great. It's not like there's much waiting for me back home, and I'm happy here. That counts for a LOT." "That's good, I guess. So, are you like a superhero too?" "Not really. Physically I'm a bit stronger, faster and tougher than human, but nothing like in your comics. I fought some giant robots and some aliens back in high school, but it wasn't that big of a deal." "That's cool. And what about Frank?" "What about him?" "I mean, why him? You're pretty. You can probably have any guy you want, so why share one guy with twenty other women? Why stay here in this mess?" "Well, there are a lot of different reasons ... things ... different elements contributing to the explanation, but I guess the most important one is that he makes me happy. I'm happy living here." "That's sweet..." "Plus he gives me many, many monster orgasms." "Ewww," said Kitty as she laughed. "You only go 'ewww' because you've never had a monster orgasm." "I have TOO had monster orgasms." "Nope, because if you had, then you wouldn't be going 'ewww'. The point is not debatable." "I say again, Ewww," as she once again laughed. "So, do you mean to say that you are not a virgin?" "No, I am not a virgin. I've had, like, a few different boyfriends. Peter, or rather, Piotr ... I guess there was Doug, but I never slept with him. We were more just good friends. And Pete of course. A different Pete, that is, meaning not Piotr. There was a time I would have slept with Logan in a heartbeat if he'd have let me." "Any girls?" "What?" "What what? I'm just curious." "I'm not a lesbian!" "Don't get upset. I never said you were. I mean, I prefer guys myself. Prefer them a lot, actually. But I've still slept with a few girls too." "So does that make you bi?" "I suppose so. So you've never had sex with a girl?" "No!" "Ever kissed one?" Kitty was quiet. "Aaahhh, now we're getting somewhere. Who was she?" "We were just ... practicing ... y'know ... for doing it with guys?" "Doing it?" "Kissing, you pervert! We were practicing kissing, that's all. I wanted to learn how to French, and she helped me out." "It sounds sweet. Sloppy maybe, but sweet. Who was she?" "Piotr's sister." "Ah, I can see how that might have gotten awkward." "It wasn't like that!" "Okay, okay," said Eiko laughing. "So why do you want to know?" Kitty sounded a bit uncertain. "Are you trying to ... Was this all just leading up to..." "I'm NOT trying to seduce you, you idiot." "Oh, thank god." "Hey, you don't have to sound so relieved. I'm quite a catch, I am. Very young and pert and pretty. And of course, redheads are a special treat, which makes me extra desirable." "Oh, I mean ... of course you are, I just..." Kitty trailed off, apparently at a loss for what to say. "It's okay." "Good. Sorry, I guess. So what now?" "Now? Oh, right. I was explaining Why Frank-slash-Here and got distracted by your experimentation with bisexuality. Let me give you a little background. "Right now, Frank is rich, which makes it easy for him to help us all out. But the first time Kara came here, he was ... well, it's a complicated story. For the purposes of this conversation, let me just say that he was on the high-end of poor, but he still did everything he could to take care of her. "Like I said, having money makes it easier, but even if he was still poor today, he'd still be trying to help us all out. He's just that kind of guy. "And he could be a LOT richer, except that he gives away a lot of his inventions. Everyone knows about the water purifier thing, but there's also some next generation antibiotics that he licensed for practically nothing. He could be charging a fortune for his cybernetic arms and legs, but instead he makes almost nothing from each sale. He has Alpha secretly give away top-of-the-line quality software for free to researchers and teachers and such. And of course, he gives out millions to charities every year." "So he's a nice guy, I get it. It still doesn't explain all of ... this..." Kitty said, waving at everything around her. "I mean, why do all these women come here and attach themselves to him?" "Well, coming here isn't really a matter of choice for most of us, except for Diana and Zatanna. As for why here, that's easy. Once you punch a hole through from another universe, it makes the arrival point structurally weaker, so to speak. Makes it much more likely that new arrivals will end up in the same place, especially if they're coming from the same point of origin." "That makes sense, I suppose..." Kitty said slowly. "As for why Frank, I already covered the happy, the monster O's, and the nice guy aspects. He's also good looking, has great endurance, and has a cock that's big but not dear-god-don't-you-dare-stick-that-thing-inside-me big. He puts up with our female crap without complaining." "None?" "Well, maybe just a little bit of complaining. He leaves us in charge of his nighttime schedule. And he loves us." "He loves all of you?" "Pretty much. I suppose love takes time, so ... y'know ... if you're interested, give it time." "I'm not interested..." Kitty protested weakly. "Oh, please. It's just the two of us here, so you don't need to lie. Whenever you're in the same room, your eyes practically never leave him. I swear if eyes could rape a guy, you'd be in jail." "Don't say that!" "I'll make you a bet. If you can spend fifteen minutes with him and not come away wet, I'll shut up about it and never speak of it again." Kitty was silent for a moment, then said, "I'm just worried that something's going on to ... something that's pushing me, pushing all of us towards him ... I don't like to be pushed." "So don't be pushed. Take charge of it yourself." "But if I ... I don't know how to explain this right..." "Honey, no one is going to force you to do anything, but let me ask you this: What do YOU want to do? What are you missing out on? And do you have any good reasons for not doing it?" "I'll ... I'll think about it..." "All right then. Do you want to call it a day, or do you want to go play some more ball? Or some pool?" "I think ... I think I want to be alone for a little while." "Sure thing. I'll see you later." If I may interject an observation of my own ... go back and compare this Eiko to the Eiko of two years ago, when she first arrived. Initially, she was a Vulcan- like woman of questionable mental stability. Now two years later, she could still retreat into an emotionally-distant shell, but most of the time she appeared to be an amazingly human woman. Her mental stability was still a bit iffy, in that she would start becoming irrational if we were separated for too long, and she seemed to be able to swap between a few different personality types, but all-in-all, I considered her to be an amazing success. For her part, Alpha was greedily drinking in Eiko's emotions as best she could, but she still watched Eiko carefully and constantly for signs of danger. I think Alpha mistrusted emotions but wanted to sample them from a safe distance if possible. Plus she had been able to use Eiko's data streams to significantly improve her own human interaction and emotional emulation programs. The next morning ... Let's see, that would be Wednesday morning, just over two weeks after their arrival, because that Tuesday night was the first time I had slept with Jennifer and Anna together -- Both of them are more heterosexual than bi, so it was almost funny to see Jennifer wagging her bare butt at me on the bed while she exaggeratedly licked Anna's pussy. That night, she obviously wasn't into it for anything other than an attempt to arouse my interest ... which, let's be fair, she succeeded in doing -- So that Wednesday morning after breakfast, Kitty tracked down Eiko as she was getting dressed for work. "Good morning!" "Good morning, Eiko. So ... how do I do this?" "How do you do what? Get dressed? Well, first you pick up your panties and put one leg..." "Smartass. I mean, I've decided I'm willing to give Frank a try." "That's good. I'm so happy for you! So ... do you want tips on how to seduce him?" "Well, I mean ... I'm not really the seductress type..." "All women are seductresses, it's just that there's this whole range of classy versus slutty." "There we go. How do I do it and stay classy?" "I'd like to point out that slutty can be fun too, but I understand where you're coming from. I'd recommend asking him out on a date." "Asking him out?" "I'm sorry, but that is one thing that you'll miss out on initially. Our situation is such that Frank doesn't think it's fair to ask someone out on a date when he's their employer, host or benefactor." "Oh, I guess I can understand that." "Yeah, it can be inconvenient, but it really is the stand-up thing for him to do. So yes, you'll have to ask him out the first time. And before you do that, you need to check with Jane." "Jane?" "Yeah, you know, Short black hair. Artist. Has a few piercings and tattoos." I should include a small side note here: I don't think it's really come up so far, but Jane and Buttercup have both gotten a few tattoos and piercings in the past couple years. (Well, past singular year for Buttercup.) Jane wasn't a problem, but Buttercup had to change shops after every body modification because the shops would ruin multiple needles on her. I think at last count, Jane has holes in one eyebrow, one nostril, lots of holes in both ears, both nipples, her bellybutton, and labia majora. She doesn't wear rings in all of them all the time, but the holes are pretty solidly there. She also has a 'tramp stamp' on her lower back, a dragon curling around one arm, a ring of female symbols circling one ankle and a ring of male symbols circling the other. She has plans for a large mural to cover her back, but Daria has managed to delay it by constantly asking if the current design was good enough for permanent body art. Buttercup has memories of not being physically able to be tattooed or pierced back home, but since she's been partially depowered by coming to this world, she's now able to get the body modifications she always wanted. So far, she has a barb wire tattoo around one bicep and a PPG logo on the other arm. She also got a bellybutton ring, which blunted or bent three needles before it went through. If you want to be completely informed, I should also mention that most of my women have earrings, but ear piercings are so common that I don't really think of them as worthy of note. And we don't usually waste many nanites or nanotube weaves on earlobes, so the piercings there don't have any problems. "Yeah, I know who Jane is. Why do I need to talk to her first? If anything, I was guessing I'd need to talk to Kara." "Oh, yeah, the whole 'alpha female' thing. You might talk to her too, but that part is not as necessary. You see, Jane's the one who keeps our schedule, and since you're new, I'm sure she will help make room for you." "Gotcha." She paused for a moment. "Will you come with me?" "To talk to Jane or on the date?" "To talk to Jane." "Are you sure? Because a two-on-one date can be a lot of fun, and I am a very sexy woman regardless of your orientation..." "Are you hitting on me? Again?" "Again? If I hit on you, there won't be any doubt in your mind. So no team- up date?" "Uhhh ... no. Definitely not on a first date." "So second date it is. Now let's go see Jane, but we need to make it fast. I leave for work in fifteen minutes." "But you know the boss. Can't you just take some time off?" "Probably, but I don't like doing that sort of thing if I can avoid it." "Yeah, I guess it would be unprofessional. Okay, let's go. Oh, and I never agreed to a double second date." "I disagree. Plus I have more influence with Jane than you do, so a double second date it will be." "Hey!" In the end, the upshot was that Kitty approached me that evening and asked me out to dinner and a movie that upcoming Saturday. At this point it was early November and there were a lot of movie options. I really wanted to see Dreamworks' newest animated feature, about a supervillain who actually wins against his nemesis, but Kitty picked out a based-on-a-true-story survival drama about a guy who got trapped while rock climbing alone. That Saturday afternoon ... actually, let back up briefly to an entertaining incident from early that Saturday morning. I entered our little mini-gym, intending to work out for half an hour, maybe on the cross-country trainer if it was free. Jennifer, Kara and Diana were all already there, which was not unusual. The unexpected part was seeing Diana sitting on the middle of a maxed-out barbell being bench pressed by Jennifer on the bench underneath her with Kara acting as spotter, putting Diana's ass just inches from the former green giantess' face. Jennifer grunted once and lifted the bar back to its holding notch. "Hah!" she said triumphantly. "Still tied. What's next?" "Frank!" Kara cried in greeting. "Come over here and sit beside Diana." "Good morning, and No," I said in response. "What in the world are you doing?" "Just trying to settle a friendly argument," she said with a smile. I made a twirly finger gesture for her to continue. "A little more information, if you please." "We were just trying to figure out who was stronger, Jennifer or myself." "And Diana's ass was helping you out how?" "Well, we can both bench press the maximum," Jennifer explained as she sat up, "so we needed some way to add a bit more weight..." "I can see where this is heading," I said cutting her off. "and no, I'm not going to help out. You ... either of you ... could get seriously hurt if we passed your maximum lift capacity." "We're fine," Kara reassured me. "It's just a friendly competition." "Then why not arm wrestle or something?" "The leverage is too different for a fair arm wrestle." "Then go find a hundred pound ball or something and see who can shotput it furthest." "That might work," agreed Jennifer. "Do you have anything that could work as a shotput?" Of course we didn't have any hundred (or even fifty) pound iron balls lying around, so they eventually decided to use one of the fifty pound weight discs from the barbell. (I'm sure they're called something specific, but it's not really within any field of interest for me ... i.e. Don't care.) They left discussing how many throws they should each be allowed and if they needed to restrict the throwing style. I didn't follow to watch. I already knew that Jennifer was stronger (by design), though not necessarily faster. And, of course, Kara had better senses. [Remember, Kara was effectively superhero design version 1.0 (plus occasional upgrades), whereas Jennifer was version 8 or so, if you include the cyborg bodies on the list. At the same time, that's not really a fair comparison, since each body was designed with a different character goal.] They continued this competition for the next couple weeks with a variety of different tests. Despite being built to be stronger, Jennifer only won about two- thirds of the competitions, probably because Kara was more passionate about winning. Diana joined them in maybe one-fifth of the 'events', winning one of their footraces. As a result, Kara started working out more often and became a bit more possessive of me than before. I did my best to reassure her that I didn't love her because of her physical power without actually coming out and saying it directly. At least it made for some fun sex. Anyway, moving on ... That afternoon, Eiko cornered Kitty for another talk. "There you are. How ya doin'?" asked Eiko, upon finding Kitty reading in the library. "Fine. What's up? No tennis for me today..." "Not what I'm after. I just wanted to talk with you a little about tonight, to make sure you're prepared." "If you try to hand me a box of condoms, I swear I'm going to..." "Calm down ... though condoms aren't a bad idea in general, Frank should have his own supply. You should really get on the pill or get an implant, you know." "We'll see how things go tonight." "Fair enough. Now ... tonight ... Have you shaved recently?" "Shaved? My legs? I was planning to go over them again when I shower in a couple hours." "That's good. Pits too. But I specifically wanted to know about your pussy." "My PU--" Kitty stopped, lowered her voice considerably and continued. "My pussy! Not that it's any of your business, but No! I don't shave down there." "I'm not saying that you need to shave it all off, just around your lips. And down by your anus." Kitty, blushing deeply red by this point, snapped back, "Why the hell should I do that?" "Because Frank really likes cunnilingus. You like getting eaten out, don't you?" "I ... I ... I don't think I'm comfortable having this conversation with you." "Oh, come on. It's just sex. Really, amazingly, mind-blowing, super-awesome sex, but still just sex." "Look, I don't see why ... you know ... I should have to shave..." "Because if you like getting eaten out and want it to keep happening, then you need to 'clear the deck for action' so to speak. Go ahead and leave everything above your slit if you want to, but shave the area where the licking takes place. Or actually, you might want to trim back the area above too. Make it look nice and presentable." "I ... I..." "Okay, have you ever shaved down there before?" "NO!" "Would you like a little help? You know, just to keep it safe and avoid nicks and scratches and such?" "I ... I..." "Here, come on." "No, nope, changed my mind. Go away," said Kitty as she sat back down. "All right," soothed Eiko. "I'll leave you alone, if ... IF ... you can sit there and think about his tongue working between your thighs without getting wet." "Nope, nope, not going to do it." "Just imagine yourself spread out on his bed, your legs open and him kneeling between your thighs as he bends down and stretches out his tongue. Then there's that first little kiss of his tongue as he opens your womanly petals. Up and down and up and down and in and out and in and out ... just imagine it." Kitty had gotten quiet while Eiko spoke softly to her, each word punctuating a rhythm of words. "The sensations build and your clit pops out and is stroked again and again until you explode." She paused for a moment before continuing. "Now imagine him getting hair stuck in his teeth and not wanting to do it again." Kitty, who had closed her eyes as her imagination and hormones raced, opened them again. "Okay, I'll do it. Or you can, I suppose, so I don't cut myself. Except one thing... 'womanly petals'?" "What? I'll have you know my petals are very womanly," Eiko answered with a hint of wounded pride in her voice. As Eiko began to lead a slightly embarrassed and grinning Kitty Pryde to her bathroom, she tacked on yet another query. "So, Kitty, one more personal question related to tonight: Do you enjoy any anal play?" Kitty slapped her hands over her ears, saying, "I'm not listening!" Despite Kitty's reaction, Eiko continued, "Because if you are, then we need to give you an enema too. It'd be a nice thing to do anyway. And the need for a good douche goes without saying..." "La la la, I can't hear you," Kitty sang to herself, though she still allowed herself to be led. I laughed as I listened to the recording and reminded Alpha not to let Eiko talk like that in front of Kasumi, whose blush might touch off a fire if she heard her talking like that. That evening, I took Kitty out for a very nice dinner during which we mostly talked about what she could expect at TCU this spring. (TCU was, of course, Texas Christian University, the local university to which I had been sending my college-age women. The school had rules about students having to live on campus for their first year and had other requirements that could have interfered with my plans for the women, but a few significant donations and sponsored scholarships helped smooth things over. With our ongoing involvement with TCU, Alpha had thoroughly infiltrated their systems and was able to fairly easily falsify a credit transfer for women like Jennifer. Kitty, though, would be starting as a Freshman.) The movie was pretty good, though it was a little unsettling to think about someone really getting trapped like that. My biggest problem with the movie? It didn't really lend itself to a romantic evening. It ended on a positive note, but the best action I got from it was when Kitty grabbed onto me when the guy was cutting off his own arm. Still I've had to work with less. For the final fifteen minutes or so, I had my arm around her shoulders. When the guy on the screen was finally found stumbling out of the wasteland, she twined her fingers with mine, and we held hands until the lights came up. Rather than fight our way out of the theater with the crowds -- half a theater of people counts as a crowd, doesn't it? -- we sat together and waited for a few minutes. I used the opportunity to pull her in close so we could converse quietly. I could tell her implants were at work because she kept losing her train of thought and began breathing heavily. When we finally left the theater, I had one arm around her shoulder and was holding her tightly to me. It was a bit windy too, which gave another reason for us to huddle close together, though we had to separate when we reached the car. I let Alpha drive us home so I could give Kitty my attention. "So, Kitty, what are your expectations for the rest of the evening?" "Well ... umm ... I've talked to ... to the others a lot ... about you ... and they all say ... that ... you know..." "I'm not interested in what their expectations are. I'm interested in what YOU expect and what YOU want." "I'm not really sure. I mean, I know what I think I want, but you know ... from what everyone says, it really builds up my ... I mean, I don't know if it's possible for the reality to actually be as good as the stories." "So, do you..." I was interrupted by Alpha's voice in my earbud. (I wear it all the time unless I'm asleep or in water and had worn it all the way through the movie, just in case there was an emergency. Alpha knew not to contact me unless it was important.) "Frank, please face forward. A police cruiser is approaching." Well, not exactly earth-shattering importance, but we wanted to keep the Alpha-controlled cars a secret. "Just a sec, Kitty," I said, turning forward and putting my hands on the wheel so I looked like I was driving. "This happens a lot. Police officers expect the person in the driver seat to look like they're driving and don't like to be told that a supercomputer is handling the situation." Without turning my head to face her, I continued our conversation. "So, do you want ... I mean, nothing needs to happen tonight. You are under no obligations. And if you're only here because of peer pressure, I'll have a talk with the others and it will stop." "NO! I mean, no, it's ... it's okay. I actually do ... can I just not say anything and we still move forward? It's embarrassing, and I'm not entirely sure..." "That's just it," I said, risking a glance at her as the cruiser passed us, "if you're not sure enough, then I don't want to take advantage of either you or the situation." "Well, how about a different question," Kitty said, taking my right hand from the wheel and holding it between hers. "What do YOU want?" "I want you to be sure." "Don't dodge the question. What do you want and expect out of the rest of the evening?" I sighed softly. "Kitty, you are a beautiful and intelligent young woman. I would be crazy not to want to make love you to." She squeezed my hand at that comment. Try getting that reaction with that comment out of a normal woman on a first date who hasn't had her memories purposefully designed by a computer. "BUT you haven't really seemed to want to spend any time with me over the past couple weeks. What I DON'T want is for you to do something with me for the wrong reasons and regret it later." Given her earlier resistance, I wanted her to openly admit that this was what she wanted. Anything less might later allow doubts to creep in. "If you don't want me to regret anything tonight, then you had better live up to all the bragging everyone does about you." "I hate having to live up to unknown expectations, but on the other hand, I do like a challenge." I was pretty sure she was still uncertain ... part of her, anyway. Somewhere in her mind, buried not so deep, a part of her was still suspicious of me and our situation, but that part of her was being overwhelmed by her bodily desires. Eiko had helped move things along by planting a seed, telling her that she should take control of her situation and do what she wanted to do, knowing that her body overwhelmingly wanted me. From there, in deciding how to take control, her mind had progressed to a willingness to 'try me out, ' to experiment and see if she was being controlled or if I really was worth sharing. After all, maybe she really was missing out on a good thing. Now she had almost explicitly asked me to take her to bed. I turned to her and pulled her over to me for a kiss, which lasted for nearly a minute as we approached the house. A few minutes later, we were upstairs in my bedroom. Once the door had been kicked shut, we just stood there for over a minute, making out. Gradually, we made our way to the bed, dropping jackets and shirts as we went. We sat down on the bed and broke apart to catch our breath. As soon as we stopped touching, Kitty seemed to stiffen up a little, though she showed no real signs of wanting to stop or leave. "I think I need to help you relax a little bit." "Relax how?" she said suspiciously. I knelt on the floor and pushed her legs apart. She was still wearing pants, shoes and a bra, but as I kissed my way up her pantleg, she shivered a bit. I sat back and took one of her feet in my hands, then the other, removing her shoes and socks, caressing the bare skin as I went. Then I reached up and unbuckled her belt, looking her in the eye the whole time. She helped me wiggle her pants free, and I ran my hands along her slim legs. I paused to looked her over. She was a young, slim woman with a narrow waist and breasts on the small side of a B-cup at best. She was obviously athletic, but with more aerobically-styled muscles instead of the powerful weightlifter muscles on some of the other women. She had a peppering of freckles running down her neck and looked for all the world like the ideal 'girl next door'. I moved in close to her dark blue satin panties and ran my finger along the front, causing her to shiver again. Keeping our eyes locked, I hooked my fingers onto either side of her hips and slowly pulled them down her legs, though our close positions dictated that she shift her legs off to the side which made it a little awkward. I held her gaze as long as I could, and I was able to see her face as my tongue first touched her nether lips. As I made my first stroke up her labia, I saw her eyes glaze over slightly, then close. When I felt around for her clitoris with my lips, she dropped her head back out of my sight, and I turned my attention fully to my work. Her pubic hair was, of course, carefully shaved off alongside the lips, with the patch above neatly trimmed into a classic upside-down triangle. Since she was over two weeks old, her juices had actual flavor. Not strong flavor, but I could tell from the taste that I was eating out an actual woman, which is always nice. I think her internal struggles over the past couple weeks had pent up some sexual frustration, because she came quickly and often. I spent about twenty minutes down there, holding onto her hips, licking and stroking her lips and teasing her clit. Kitty didn't orgasm loudly, but it was easy to pick out when she came since her lower body would bounce and vibrate for a few seconds. After her third orgasm, I changed my approach slightly and didn't slow down when she came, so I discovered that she was able to come up to twice a minute once she started getting off. After her fourth orgasm in a row within two minutes, she pushed my head back, asking for a moment to recover. I wiped off my mouth with my discarded shirt, took off my shoes and pants and sat on the bed alongside her. I gently pushed on her supporting arms and eased her down onto her back. I drew imaginary circles on her belly until she opened her eyes and looked at me. "That was almost too much." "I'm ... sorry?" "Don't be sorry. That was amazing. I just ... needed a moment to catch my breath." "Are you ready to move on?" "I don't knoooOH." Her voice squealed and cracked a little as I reached down and curled a finger up inside her vaginal canal. "O ... Okay..." "Okay? You mean more?" I inserted a second finger. "Yes! More!" I removed my fingers and made a show of licking them clean as I got into a kneeling position. Below me, Kitty hurriedly pulled off her bra and started playing with her own breasts. I stood up and removed my boxers, unveiling my erection to her, then I stepped to my bedside table and withdrew a condom from the drawer. She scooted back a little and spread her legs wider, welcoming me as I rolled the condom into place and moved back to her. She was tight and hot and wet and welcoming as I slid slowly into her. Katherine was a responsive sex partner. Energetic is probably a better description. If we hadn't been linked at crotch-level, I think she would have crawled all over me, possibly the walls and ceiling as well. I decided right away that there was no way I was going to take her to our moon-bounce warehouse for sex (see last chapter); we'd both end up strangled if we ever tried. In the end, it all added up to three more orgasms for her before I came. And after I came and pulled out, Kitty mumbled something unintelligible, crawled over a few feet and fell asleep, apparently exhausted. I sat on the bed for a moment, looking down at her. I tended to save most of my energy for my evening encounters and almost never went to sleep without having ejaculated more than once. Heck, my sexual recovery was one of the goals of my nanite rejuvenation treatments. I considered seeking out someone else for another round, but quickly discarded the notion since it might upset Kitty and undo the night's progress. Besides, it would leave me more energy for the next day, which was always a good thing. I cleaned up a little and went to bed, carefully covering Kitty with the sheets before going to sleep next to her. It became apparent in the coming weeks that Kitty had mostly given in to the situation. She even surrendered enough that she double-dated me with Eiko on our next evening together without much protest. True, she wasn't enthusiastically bi- sexual, but she was willing to participate in some 'group activities' as along as the group included a guy. All-in-all, she successfully integrated into the household. ------- AUTHOR'S POSTSCRIPT: I plan for one more 'new character' chapter to follow, then two more plot-heavy chapters which will complete the first Alpha storyline. I have plans for more stories and new characters in a second Alpha series ... but remember I am not a fast writer, so I make no promises as to the expected schedule. ------- Chapter 19: Batgirl Authors Note: A few different readers suggested that it was time for Frank's home to be expanded, and I agree. Reader PA suggested a horse ranch, which caught my imagination. It won't really show up as their new home until the second series, but the location begins development in this chapter. Also, thanks go to Adam, who pointed out that I was criminally underusing Dorothy, which I've attempted to correct in this chapter (it actually only required one minor change from my original plan, though that one change grew significantly when it came time to actually write it out). Dramatis Personae: Frank _____ - Lead character, creator of Alpha Alpha - First A.I. in existence Mobile Copies of Alpha: Beta aka Bayonetta aka Elizabeth Alana Franks (cyborg, from Bayonetta) Gamma aka Jasmine aka Jasmine Marza (cyborg, from Aladdin) Delta aka Elisa Maza aka Elizabeth Marza (cyborg, from Gargoyles) Alphadroid Dorothy aka R. Dorothy Waynewright (android, from Big O) A-Ko aka Eiko Magami aka Epsilon (organic copy of Alpha, from Project A-Ko) Artificial Women: Kasumi Tendo (from Ranma 1/2) Daria Morgendorffer aka Daria Morgan (from Daria) Jane Lane aka Jane Lannister (from Daria) Kara Zor-L aka Power Girl aka Karen Starr (from DC Comics) Rei Ayanami aka Rei Ayanami Ikari (from Neon Genesis Evangelion) Anna Marie aka Rogue aka Anna Marie Raffen (from Marvel Comics) Princess Diana aka Wonder Woman aka Diana Prince Walters (from DC Comics) Zatanna Zatara aka Annabelle Tara Zane (from DC Comics) Kara Zor-El aka Supergirl aka Linda Lang Starr (from DC Comics) Blossom aka Belle Underston (from Powerpuff Girls) Bubbles aka Britney Underton (from Powerpuff Girls) Buttercup aka Bobbi Underton (from Powerpuff Girls) Ororo Munroe aka Storm aka Imara Aurora Munroe (from Marvel Comics) Kitty Pryde aka Shadowcat aka Katherine Preiss (from Marvel Comics) Jennifer Walters aka She-Hulk (from Marvel Comics) On a Wednesday in January, Beta, Kasumi, Kara and I took the afternoon off to look at real estate. When I had first started on this adventure to recreate fictional women for my own pleasure and company, I had built a rather large house to accommodate everyone. I hate the word mansion, but that's basically what it was. Three above-ground floors plus a large (and secure) basement. It had fourteen bedrooms and was currently laid out to comfortably hold up to 22 people. (It was originally arranged for 21, but we converted one twin bedroom to a triple when we added the Powerpuff Girls.) Since Jasmine and Elisa had moved out and She-Hulk, Storm and Kitty Pryde had moved in a few months ago, it currently held 18 people (if you don't include Alpha or Alphadroid Dorothy), soon to be 19. The house still had enough room, but it was starting to feel a bit cramped and full. While we had enough land to expand the house a bit, it seemed like it might be nice to expand more than just 'a bit'. Fortunately, a number of AARD projects were starting to pay off significantly. Our movie had just premiered at Sundance, so the funds from that had not started to come in, but the hair replacement formula had finally been approved for sale (prescription-only for now). That plus a couple dozen other projects and patents reaching the public led us to anticipate at least $100 million in net income for the upcoming fiscal year. (Heck, the hair replacement formula by itself should conservatively give us that much in a year and a half. No surgery and quick, guaranteed, easily seen results ... It was selling like hotcakes.) So here we were, looking at Alpha's top three choices for new locations. This particular site looked the worst in its current state but was easily the largest and had the most potential. It felt like an absolutely huge spread at roughly four square miles located about twenty minutes outside the DFW Metroplex with the land fenced in for cattle and horses. The house and barn were in terrible condition, but we would just tear them down to build our own structures anyway. It had multiple wells and a couple small streams, but the water table by the house was low enough to allow for a basement. The power lines were not entirely sufficient for our needs, but we had our own ways to supplement that. "So what are the plans if we build here?" asked Kara. Alpha had created rough layouts for each of the three locations, and I consulted my digital tablet. "Well, with this one, we could end up with an actual ranch. I don't think anyone is actually interested in raising cattle, but we could easily build some nice stables for horses." I don't know what it is about horses, but four out of five women I know go nuts for them -- women under 30, at least. Not that my women turned into squealing teeny-boppers at the idea, but Kara and Kasumi both approved the idea. Actually, thinking it over, it was entirely possible that Daria and the cyborgs were the only ones who might not care for horses, and I wasn't entirely sure that Daria couldn't be swayed. Me? I liked them well enough and could ride, or at least I had been able to ride back when I was a teenager. Absolutely hated taking care of them though. I'm not technically allergic to them, but brushing them down always sent me into sneezing fits. I shared Alpha's layout and we walked around from one location to the next, leaving the real estate agent to walk behind us in confused silence. I'm sure we were her strangest prospective buyers so far, given that Alpha had thoroughly researched everything beforehand. We had no questions for her at all. We only needed her to provide the keys. We toured the living area for half an hour, drove around some of the rest of the property for another half hour, then thanked our guide and went home. Since that day happened to be Wednesday, we stopped off at the comic book store on the way for the weekly releases. Since we had eight women in residence who believed they were comic book characters (eleven if you include the PowerPuffs, who used to have their own comic), we picked up somewhere around 75% of all Marvel and DC comics so that they could keep track of things. True, their perceived timelines didn't entirely match up with the comics -- Kara alone had been 'missing' from her world for a least a couple years, yet her comic book appearances continued unabated -- but they were close enough that everyone wanted to stay up to date, even if Diana and Zatanna were the only two who actually thought they were going back and forth between the real world and their comic book world. Recently there had been rumors of an upcoming major event in the DC Universe called Flashpoint. At that point in time, it looked like it was just going to be a standard story where time travel changes things into a strange, unfamiliar world, the heroes stop the time travel changes from happening and things return to normal. If you're familiar with the actual story, you know that's not quite true. If you're not, just hold on for a few minutes/pages. Wonder Woman's costume had gotten a lot more discussion than Flashpoint at that time. Her official outfit had gained pants and a jacket, which had set off a fanboy war online. Diana's opinion was that she was fine with the updates, but didn't see how they would last. Literally last, as in 'survive'. "My clothes are both symbolic and blessed by the gods," she explained. "The only reason they survive my battles is because of that blessing. If I were to just wear normal human clothes in battle, they wouldn't last a day." Jennifer laughed a little and offered an alternate explanation. "Blessed by the comics code is what really works. The code is the only reason most of my books avoided a Mature Readers label." Jennifer often caused a little friction with her more 'real world' explanations of comic book happenings, but she was such a friendly, easy-going person most of the time that it never caused any real problems. That evening, we laid everything about the possible properties out for the household and gave everyone a couple days to discuss things. Alpha sent Elisa and Jasmine to check the surrounding land for each location in a little more detail, but found no significant problems with any of them. We eventually agreed on the horse ranch location and we bought the property a week later. Alpha provided a detailed schedule and blueprints, although Jane and I both made a few changes to Alpha's planned mansion, for both aesthetic and practical reasons. The new house would have over three times more footage than our current house, including plans for a two-lane bowling alley, a small theater room for movies, and, of course, somewhere in the range of 30 to 50 bedrooms. It was gonna be BIG. The main house and yard area would be surrounded by a brick or stone privacy wall, and the rest would be fenced in for the horses. We'd have surveillance everywhere, both obvious and hidden. It would take at least a year, probably two years, to have everything built -- house, garage, barn, fences, pool, generator, water tower ... even a jogging track, tennis court and greenhouse. With so much land available, Alpha and I also had a variety of other ideas too, ranging from our own small fusion reactor to secret underground labs and test facilities. Alpha had offered possibilities such as building guest houses, turning an area near the main house into a pleasure palace or even building a small amusement park. Guest houses might be a good idea, but while I hadn't denied any of it outright, I didn't really want a Playboy-style mansion ... okay, that sounds kind of ridiculous, coming from someone in my situation. I guess I both hate such extravagance and love the idea of being able to do it. Maybe I just prefer my extravagances to be technological in nature. Too bad holodecks or their equivalents are impossible ... well, maybe not impossible forever, but at least for now. One of the best benefits of such a large tract of a land was that it left our possibilities wide open. Heck, if I needed to, I could give all of my women their own personal house, garage and yard and still have over 90% of the land left. Anyway, I'll describe more of the layout as needed. I talked over the initial plans with Robert Anderson, who runs a construction firm I often use. Given the downturn in the housing market, he could gather enough crews to get it done much faster than we could have a few years earlier. I didn't even want to think about how much it would end up costing, but we actually had enough money coming in to build it without affecting AARD, where we were also planning a building expansion. Having Alpha available to create the blueprints and supervise construction helped a lot cost-wise. Once completed, it would be relatively cheap to run, given its size. We would eventually start generating all our own electricity. We planned to build our own water tower and had a few preexisting wells to draw from. We wouldn't have much need for staff either, since we could just build Alphadroids to take care of everything. We reached an agreement with Anderson's firm and they started clearing the land. We were building outside the city limits, so the required approvals were minimal. (Once she heard demolition was about to begin, Jane enlisted some help and rushed over to strip the old house and barn of any interesting furniture and architectural pieces, many of which we ended up using in some fashion for the new house. Two people in her team needed tetanus shots afterwards.) ------- This next bit took a lot of careful crafting and manipulation. My next addition to the household had been selected, but the idea had to seem to come from other people in the house, namely my DC comic book women. As a lead-in, we had involved them in a group discussion of how Alpha's nanites could repair bodily injuries, including severe spinal cord damage. One by one, Diana, Linda, Zatanna then finally Kara were all fed dreams and ideas. And Zatanna had finally been led to believe that she had her spells working correctly to accurately control travel between our two worlds. That last bit was a little tricky since she was also expected to work toward helping Jennifer, Ororo and Kitty get home. The new Marvel characters had only arrived about four months back, so this next trip would be Zatanna's first 'return trip to her home universe' since their arrival. Everyone was expecting Zatanna to magically pull them from our universe to her own, and then they could be returned to the Marvel universe using the DC universe's superior technology and/or magic. Of course, I did not want them to leave so soon, so we had decided to deal with it by simply not letting her 'spells' affect the Marvel characters. Alpha was ready to feed them some crap about how Zatanna's magic didn't resonate with either their quantum frequencies or my universe's frequency so she couldn't pull them out remotely. Regardless, a couple weeks before Zatanna and Diana's next planned trip home, my four DC ladies scheduled a meeting with me. Diana took the lead this time. "Frank, we'd like to ask you for a big favor." "Sure thing," I said. Mentally I crossed my fingers. "What's the favor?" "We'd like to ask you to help out a friend of ours." "Who and what kind of help?" "Someone from back home," Kara said without a lot of enthusiasm. "She was hurt really badly a while back," added Linda. "So we'd like you to use your nanites to fix her up." "Which also means that we'd need to bring her here for at least a few months," explained Zatanna. "I'm open to the idea," I said amiably, "but I really want to know who and what happened to her." "She has a secret identity, but I suppose that doesn't matter much here..." admitted Diana. "WHO?" "Batgirl," said Kara simply. "Barbara Gordon," added Linda. "Oh, yeah, the Joker shot her, right?" I asked calmly. "Isn't she Oracle now? And a paraplegic?" "Most of the time," agreed Zatanna. "We think we can convince her to come here with us so you can repair her spine. She deserves better than what happened to her." "Okay." I pretended to think for a minute. "All right, I'll agree as long you agree to keep visitors limited. We discussed it before, but just to remind you, I don't particularly want to become an interdimensional tourist spot. Okay?" "Agreed," Diana said. We shook hands on it to make it official, then I got kisses from all four of them. I know what you're thinking. Well, some of you anyway. Doesn't Batgirl violate my character selection rules against technical geniuses/detectives? Yes, she does. BUT Alpha and I have a plan. By the time Diana and the others asked for permission to bring Barbara to me to have her spine repaired, her body and mind were already about two-thirds completed. What's important to this part of the topic is that the construction of her body included a new type of implant. You see, a lot of our original rules were in place because we didn't know how to deal with the problems they might pose. While the rules dealing with character background and social adjustment still hold true, some of the others can now be dealt with through new technologies. She-Hulk was a rule violation that we dealt with rather simply using lies and nanites to remove the green coloring from her skin. The problems posed by Barbara Gordon required a bit more complex approach. When needed, Alpha should be able to separate Barbara's body and brain. Her brain will receive streaming input so that she'll see and hear what we want her to see and hear. She'll be able to continue to act, but her actions will be part of an extremely realistic personal virtual reality. Her body will be subject to separate remote control by Alpha while her brain is disconnected. In theory, that is ... though Alpha was confident it would work. We won't be able to do this all the time because it will require serious processing power from Alpha and transmission bandwidth to the implants to keep it going, but when Barbara gets nosy and starts examining Alpha's code, we will be able to show her what we want her to see. When she starts walking again and feels the urge to examine my basement lab, she'll find what we want her to find. If all goes well, we'll be able to lay her suspicions to rest and move on. If the implants work like we hope they will, we might start using them as standard equipment, and they could allow for other character selections (e.g. Velma Dinkley). If the new implants don't work well enough to fool her, then we'll just shut Barbara down and implant the memories we want more directly. (Even if they fail in other respects, the new updated implants will greatly speed up memory rewrites.) The other issue to be dealt with was her romantic attachment to Dick Grayson (aka Robin aka Nightwing). In the comics, they were an on-again/off-again couple and were even engaged for a while. He was too entwined in her background to remove, but it was easy to lessen their attachment. Both of them have had other lovers and other fiancees. Heck, the only reason he wasn't married to Starfire was that their wedding was disrupted by supervillain attack (a possessed Raven, if I remember correctly). All we had to do was reignite his relationship with Starfire a few months before Diana and Zatanna approached Barbara to invite her to visit my universe. As a side note to my comments above, maybe I should point out that my new Marvel women -- Ororo, Jennifer and Kitty -- had put some of their integration plans on hold since they were waiting and hoping for Zatanna to be able to help them return home. Jennifer and Kitty had both let Alpha do the initial work to create passable student identities, but both had decided against enrolling for the spring semester. Anna had, as she has previously stated more than once, declared that she was staying here regardless. She was happy here living with me and the others where she could finally live her life without the curse of her mutant ability. The result was simply that the newcomers would have a bit more of a let-down, for which I would comfort them, and would not start taking classes until the fall. A few weeks later, after the old structures on the property had been torn down but before new construction began, Diana and Zatanna disappeared on schedule and secretly reappeared in the nanopods in the basement. According to Zatanna's schedule, they would be gone for one week (during which time they would spend four months in their home universe), then they would return, bringing Barbara with them. Their visits home were becoming routine, but little did they know that this would be their last return trip for the foreseeable future. Alpha had been filtering some of the information coming out about the Flashpoint storyline so that limited information was reaching my household. DC would not be resetting things back to normal afterwards. Instead they planned to reboot their comic book universe. (And don't give me that hogwash their editors spewed about it not being a reboot. Just because they might eventually explain why one timeline is being changed into another does not remove the 'reboot' descriptor.) The DC Flashpoint reboot was the perfect opportunity to stop the trips home. Whatever spells Zatanna set up to pull her back to her own universe would disappear along with that universe. Whatever quantum frequency might eventually bounce Kara and Linda back to that universe would be altered by the new continuity. I had actually seriously considered using the event as an excuse to 'evacuate' a selection of DC characters to the safety of this universe, but decided it might be a bit much to juggle. Besides, we can always bring more over later with different backstories. After Diana and Zatanna had been gone for about five days, Kara approached me one morning after I got to work. "Good morning, cutie," I said in greeting as she entered my office. She claims to hate it when I call her 'cutie' but she also sometimes blushes a little and occasionally has to hide a smile. This time, the serious look on her face stayed in place. "Morning, honey," she said. "What's wrong?" "I tried to catch you before you left this morning, but you left a few minutes early." She stood in front of the desk, refusing my gestured offer for her to sit down. "True." I waited while gathered her thoughts. "I got a dream message from Zatanna last night." Zatanna's 'dream messages' were currently her preferred method of contact across dimensions, since they required the least amount of energy for two-way contact. Or, from another perspective, they were Alpha's preferred method since it was an easily controlled method of faking a message where she didn't have to imitate anyone's voice and could control both sides of the conversation. "And it's not good news, I take it?" "No, not really. It's ... well ... She's been trying and she can't do anything to bring Jennifer and them to our universe. Her magic just ... just won't lock on to them for some reason." "So they're going to be stuck here a bit longer." "Yup." "Have you told them yet?" "No. I was hoping to enlist you to come with me so we could break it to them more easily." "Of course I'll help. Alpha, are any of them at work today?" While only Ororo officially worked at AARD, Jennifer and Kitty were known to put in some hours helping out with various projects. This morning, none of them were at the office. I suppose that wasn't too surprising, since we only had limited work for Ororo at the moment. At noon, we drove all the way back home for lunch, whereas normally we'd each lunch at or near the office. As we pulled in, Alpha informed us that Ororo and Kitty were in the back yard and Jennifer was watching The Incredible Hulk (the cartoon, not the live action) in the entertainment room. "You go grab Jennifer," I told Kara, "I'll go after Ororo and Kitty." "No problem," she said with a tight smile. I wandered through the house out to the back yard, where we had a swimming pool (currently closed until it was consistently warmer) and hot tub. It was still February, but it was a fairly warm winter in Texas at the moment with the temperature up in the upper 70's ... but it was still WINTER, which is why I was surprised to see a completely naked Ororo Munroe stretched out on a deck chair, with a bikini-clad Kitty Pryde next to her. Ororo had sunglasses on and appeared to be dozing, while Kitty was engrossed in a book (if you're interested, it was Soon I Will Be Invincible, possibly the best independent piece of superhero fiction I've read). I remembered that Storm was, especially in her early X-Men appearances, a casual nudist and thought nothing of walking around outside naked, even in mixed company. I took a moment to enjoy the sight. Ororo has nicely large breasts which rolled slightly back and forth as she breathed, a fit, trim stomach and thighs, and a neatly trimmed bush of curly white pubic hair to match the flowing white locks that spilled down off the top edges of her reclined chair. A robe and sandals had been tossed on a nearby unoccupied chair. Kitty wore a somewhat modest blue bikini, which did little to hide her youthful figure. She had much smaller breasts, B-cups at best, with legs slightly better toned and more athletic than Ororo's. After a few seconds of contemplative enjoyment, I cleared my throat. Kitty jumped a little, almost dropping her book. "Isn't it a bit cool for sunbathing?" I inquired. "Why don't you make some noise when you walk," Kitty snapped in irritation. "I wasn't trying to be sneaky, you were just engrossed in reading." Without moving, Ororo answered my question, "There's no breeze back here at the moment, we have direct sunlight, and this is a nicely warm day for this time of year. I'd prefer it to be a little warmer, but this is still comfortable." "Once you let the sun warm you up a bit, it's pretty nice," agreed Kitty. "Well, if you're happy, I'm happy." "So why are you here?" asked Kitty with maybe a touch of suspicion. "Ah, yes. Could you two come inside for a minute? We have news." "What news?" asked Kitty, not moving. Ororo lazily sat up and stretched, giving me a nice show before reaching for her robe to cover up. "Come along, Kitty," she said. Kitty sighed, giving in and pulling on some sweatpants and an X-Men t-shirt. I noticed my cock had hardened into an uncomfortable position as I turned to lead them back into the house. I held the door open for the two ladies, and quickly readjusted my crotch after they passed me. I thought I had done it unnoticed, but Ororo pushed her sunglasses up onto the top of her head and gave me a quick wink in a hallway mirror that had apparently let her witness my discomfort. That actually struck me as a little out of character for her. Ororo's naturalism wasn't sexual in nature ... but I suppose that didn't prevent her from teasing a little bit if her nudity led there. Or maybe it was just a difference caused by her implants. I really should talk to her about casual nudity around the house before Kasumi catches her naked some day, I thought to myself. Especially since Ororo will probably want to help with the gardening and enjoys being naked outdoors. I really should. Buuuttt ... I'm not going to. We met up with Kara and Jennifer in the kitchen, where we all sat down at the small lunch/serving table. "Kara," I said, prompting her to explain our mid-day visit. Kara proceeded to explain about her dream message from Zatanna and what was said. Their reactions were fairly predictable, ranging from 'Are you sure it was a message and not just a normal dream?' to 'Why don't we just wait until they get back so we can talk to them directly?' and 'Even if it is true, it's not our only option.' When the productive part of the conversation seemed to have finished, I said, "At any rate, that's the news we have. Anything more will have to wait until Diana and Z get back, which should theoretically be in just a couple more days." "Thank you. We appreciate you passing along the information," said Ororo. She was definitely taking the news better than Kitty, though her thoughts were obviously a bit scattered, as evidenced by the fact that her robe had fallen open to the waist. Neither nipple was actually exposed, but I could easily make out her belly button. "I'd like to again remind you that your situation is not horribly bad. You have a home here for as long as you need one. Also, remember that how much time you spend here is not necessarily directly correlated to how long you're gone from your Earth." "But I don't want to be ten years older when I finally get back home, regardless of how much time has passed there," complained Kitty. Kara and I glanced at each other. Finally I said, "We ... we can probably help out a bit in that respect." "How?" she asked curiously. "Well, does Anna look much older to you? You know, compared to the last time you saw her." There was a brief, thoughtful silence. "I didn't really hang out with her very much," said Jennifer apologetically. "No, she really doesn't," said Kitty. "If anything, I'd say she looks a bit younger, but I thought that was only because she was so relaxed here," said Ororo. "Well, she's lived here with me for about six years, and physiologically-speaking, her body is currently about 25 years old." Which I should point is younger than she was when she arrived ... well if you subscribe to the fiction and ignore the whole artificially created aspect, though of course I didn't say any of that out loud. "How?" asked Kitty suspiciously. "Nanites," I said simply. "Nanites are the equivalent of the fountain of youth?" asked Jennifer with an odd expression on her face. "Pretty much. Aging is caused by ... well, by a few things. DNA kind of wears down as cells replicate ... do a google search for telomeres if you want details. Plus a lot of dead organic garbage builds up in your system that doesn't quite get cleaned out. Our nanites can inject little targeted chemicals to refresh your chromosomal caps, get rid of dead cells and more. Basically, once a year or so, we can put you in one of our nanopods and ... uhhh... 'freshen up' your cells." "I tried it myself last year. It itches like crazy, under your skin where you can't get at it," said Kara with a little shiver. "Let Alpha put you to sleep first or you'll have nightmares about it. But it definitely works." "And you've been keeping this a secret from the rest of the world?" asked Kitty with a touch of anger creeping into her voice. "Think through the implications and consequences if we were to go public with this," I suggested. "We can talk about it more later, if you'd like." Kitty, a lovely if obstinate young woman, seemed like she was going to protest, but Ororo put a hand on her shoulder. I tried to keep my eyes off of Ororo's now-exposed breast as she quietly spoke to Kitty saying, "In the short term, I expect it would cause massive unrest. In the long term, it might destroy the planet from overpopulation. I'm certain there are many more issues it might cause, but I can see that much right away." "Well, I can't promise immortality," I explained, "just that you won't age very much while you're here. I should also point out that Kitty here is actually a bit too young to really benefit from it. The treatment doesn't really help much of anything until you're at least twenty-five." "So how old are you?" asked Jennifer suddenly. "How rude!" I said, with mock surprise. "Uh huh," she responded. Then she moved over to me, reached out and ran a hand carefully through my hair, sweeping it up for a moment, then patting it back down. She reached down to my torso, inserting her hand into my shirt to feel my abs and waist, then pushed lower to try to cup my ass, despite the fact that I was sitting down. "Hey!" I exclaimed in protest. "How old?" she repeated as she continued to feel me up, probing as if looking for signs of age ... or possibly trying to count my ribs. "Thirty-nine!" I said, trying not to laugh from the rather ticklish sensations. "Now stop!" "No, you're not," Jennifer said, not stopping her 'examination'. "I don't think you even look thirty." "A little help here?" I asked, looking at Kara pleadingly. Kara was obviously trying hard not to laugh and just shook her head at me. Traitor. I suppose the good news was that this was quickly devolving into a situation where they would forget about the bad news. I briefly considered calling out to Alpha for help, but quickly squelched the notion. I might easily end up with four unconscious bodies and a lot of memories in need of rewriting. I decided that what I needed to do was to go on the offensive. There was no way that I could match She-Hulk's strength, speed or fighting skill, but I had a couple major advantages. I knew that she had no intention of hurting me, and I knew that she had all those nice little implants designed to react to my touch. As soon as I caught my breath a little, I gritted my teeth and stopped fending her off, instead pushing my hands under Jennifer's blouse and beginning an outright attempt to tickle ... or at least distract. Unfortunately as it turns out, She-Hulk is not very ticklish. Fortunately, she is easily aroused. She grabbed my wrists, but seemed conflicted as to whether or not she wanted to direct my attentions or pull me away. While she held me still, I stretched out the fingers on my right hand and was able to brush the underside of her left breast. That seemed to make up her mind as she gave a little gasp and moved my hands up so that I could cup her large breasts under her bra. Her nipples hardened quickly as my fingers danced around them, rolling and pinching them a little. "Ahem" said Kitty in an obviously forced attempt to clear her throat. We both looked up to see Kara, Ororo and Kitty all watching us. Kara and Ororo looked entertained, whereas Kitty looked ... maybe a little confused. She had a little grin on her face when we first looked up, which she then quickly smothered so she looked serious and disapproving. "What?" I asked. "Since no help was forthcoming, I had to rely on my own methods to rescue myself from an unwarranted attack." "Attack?" complained Jennifer, getting back into the spirit of the thing. "I was merely attempting to ascertain whether or not you were telling the truth." "And exactly how were you trying to do that? Ribs aren't like tree rings, you know. Counting them doesn't help." "Don't mind us," said Ororo, putting a hand on Kitty's shoulder again. "Please continue." I felt like I should give a wide-eyed cartoon blink-blink or something. Instead I grinned a little and gave Jennifer's nipples a little pinch. She jumped and pulled back. I think most people would have apologized at that point and stepped back. Jennifer ... well, she rarely apologizes for behavior that falls short of 'She-Hulk Smash!'. After a brief moment of recovery, she moved up behind me and leaned down a bit so that my head was sandwiched between her disheveled but still blouse-covered breasts. "I think we're owed a bit of compensation for the bad news, so for anyone who's interested, I'm going to take Frank upstairs and do perverse things to him. If you want to watch, you can watch, or if you want to join in, join in." So saying, she picked me up, chair and all, and carried me towards the stairs. "Don't I get a say in this?" I protested. "You're about to be smothered by sex with one to four superheroes. Do you really want to say no?" "Well, I ... I ... I guess I'm fairly caught up at work at the moment..." "That's the spirit!" This was really not what I expected when I agreed to go with Kara to deliver the bad news. Not that I was still objecting, it just seemed a bit weird. Being carried like that gave me no chance to look behind us to see who was following. When we reached my bedroom and Jennifer dumped me onto my bed, I rolled over and saw Ororo and Kara standing behind her, with Kitty peeking in from the hallway. Kitty had not yet participated in group sex with this many people before. In fact, she had only ever slept with myself and Eiko before this, and even with Eiko, her bi-sexual tendencies were fairly well hidden. (I know they exist, because Alpha built them into her, but her personality tended to suppress them.) I didn't want to push her into anything at the moment, so I let her stay out in the hall for now. My mind was soon on other things as Jennifer quickly began stripping and urged me to do the same. Of course, Ororo was the first one to get naked, given that she only had to drop her robe. So Ororo was the one on the bed, helping me strip, while the others were still struggling out of their pants, and she was the first one to mount my erection, which seemed appropriate since she had inspired it less than half an hour ago. Jennifer climbed onto my face less than a minute later, rubbing her clit against my nose, practically using my face to masturbate while I licked her vagina. I grabbed onto her waist, guiding her movements so she slowed down enough that I no longer worried my nose would end up broken. After a couple minutes, she appeared to have a small orgasm, probably not hugely satisfying, but enough to take the edge off. While I kept up my tongue exercises, I shifted some of my attention to Ororo riding my cock. I moved my hands in search of her breasts, only to find those particular tracts of land already receiving attention from someone else. I certainly couldn't see what was going on, but since Jennifer was facing away from Ororo, that left only Kara and Kitty. From the size of the hands, I was pretty sure it was Kara. (I'd never tell her so, but Kara has pretty large hands for a woman.) I stroked the hands and, when they held me and guided me to Ororo's nipples, caressed and lightly rolled and tweaked the nipples. Judging from previous experience, Ororo was probably five or ten minutes from coming, since she's rarely excited enough to come quickly. I shifted my attention back and forth between She-Hulk and Storm until Jennifer had come two more times and Ororo climaxed once, though I think the quality of Ororo's orgasm was significantly better than any of Jennifer's. They both shifted off of me, Jennifer under her own power and Ororo with help from Kara. Before Kara mounted me, I had a glimpse of Kitty half-hidden in the doorway, with a hand down her sweatpants, rubbing herself furiously. Kara moved up and settled herself down my penis, then leaned down and kissed me. As her hips started moving, her tongue began working to clean Jennifer's juices from my face. This time, I was better able to bounce my hips to match Kara's hip movements, so I started working toward my own orgasm. Kara beat me there, her pussy gripping my cock tightly after only a few minutes of riding me. Given the group situation, she did the polite thing and dismounted to make room for someone else. I held up my hand to wave off whoever was next and crawled off the bed. Kitty saw me coming, but she had some kind of deer-in-the-headlights expression and stood frozen. I pulled her hand out of her waistband and asked, "Would you like to join us?" Then before she could respond, I put her fingers in my mouth and began sucking them clean. The intimate contact apparently set her implants off like nothing else, and she collapsed against the doorframe, her eyes squeezed shut. I bent down and scooped her up, carrying her to bed where I laid her down. Other hands joined me as I stripped off her sweatpants, t-shirt and bikini, some of them taking advantage of the opportunity to stroke the young body in front of them. Unlike the other fucks in this encounter, this time I was on top. The brief break between women had taken a bit of the edge off, so I was able to last long enough to give Kitty a couple orgasms before I emptied my balls into her. When I pulled myself out of her, I discovered that the others wanted a second round as Kara and Jennifer gave me their oral attentions. Once I was hard again, Jennifer made it clear that she was going to claim my cock first this time, especially because she had only been able to use my tongue the first time. I spent the next 30 or 40 minutes going from woman to woman until I finally emptied myself for a second time that afternoon, this time into Jennifer. Not even my shower was large enough for five people, but we were able to wash ourselves off in two groups. And I was able to put in another two and a half hours at work before the day was out. Kitty acted a bit strange around the others for a couple days until she realized that it didn't really change her relationship much with the others. Thinking about it, if she ever had a solo encounter with any of them, it might change things, but since I had been the focus of our mini-orgy, it really hadn't invited any of the other women into her bed for future encounters. The kicker was that I knew that somewhere buried in her libido and subconscious, she actually wanted some female-only encounters, she just wouldn't admit it to herself. Yet. ------- A few days later, Linda spent the night at the cabin, waiting for Diana and company to return. She was ready to spend all the next day there as well, but instead she woke up to find Diana, Zatanna and a pretty redhead with glasses all sleeping in a pile outside the cabin. Barbara's wheelchair hadn't made the 'dimensional leap' with her, but I had sent a collapsible wheelchair along with Linda just in case. (You know, writing this stuff out can occasionally be annoying or confusing or both. I often know things from my perspective which the others don't, but which story should I be telling? Should I tell the one the others believe is true and that I act as if I believe? Or should I tell the actual behind-the-scenes truth? I usually try to tell it both ways, which I often worry might be confusing, so my apologies if I occasionally seem self-contradictory or write something that sounds insane.) Linda offered the trio fresh clothes and breakfast, which they ate while they gossiped and caught up. Even though these versions of Supergirl and Batgirl didn't have as much shared history, they were still friends. I watched a few minutes of their reunion on the security video feed, but only a few minutes. Watching and listening to women gossip is not particularly interesting. (Yes, I also dislike Sex and the City and The View. I don't care if you're a fan. I'm a guy. Deal with it.) Besides, I knew that Alpha would be able to give me a summary of any important topics of their gossip. An hour and a half later, Linda drove them to the AARD building where I met Barbara Gordon for the first time. Barbara (or 'Babs' for short, but don't call her that unless you're her friend) was a beautiful redhead with hair that came down to her shoulder blades. Her upper body had a lean muscular upper body, and behind her glasses, her eyes were constantly taking in her surroundings. When she entered my office and saw me for the first time, I suddenly became the focus of one of the more intense gazes I've ever come up against. When I shook her hand, I swear I saw her pupils briefly dilate out wider than I've ever seen before. "Miss Gordon, it's a real pleasure to meet you. Everyone has been telling me so much about you." "Uh, yes..." She seemed to mentally shake herself awake. "I mean, yes, it's a pleasure to ... uhh ... meet you too." "It's probably safe to assume that Diana and Zatanna told you everything, but I hate assuming things, so ... What have they told you?" "A lot. I already knew the basics of what had happened to Power Girl and Supergirl. They approached me and explained what you were doing with nanites, how you were using them to repair bodily damage, including nerve and spinal damage, and they asked if I would be interested in an experimental procedure to ... to fix me." "Well, it's not all THAT experimental, but yes, that's correct." "So you've done this before?" "Well, we've used nanites to repair nerve damage before. And we've used our technology to repair severed spines before. However, using nanites to reconnect a damaged spine without an implant is new. But don't worry. Even if it somehow fails -- and I've been assured that failure is unlikely -- we still have a proven method of implanting electronic connectors which can restore your spinal cord to full functionality." "That's very reassuring," Barbara said without smiling. "How safe is it?" "Alpha and her nanites are a thousand times safer than any human surgeon can possibly be." "Alpha is your A.I.?" "Right. Would you like to meet her?" "Absolutely." "Alpha, say hello." The camera by my monitor moved and focused on Barbara, while the speakers said, "Welcome, Barbara Gordon. I hope we can make your stay here a pleasant one." "Thank you ... Alpha. Always nice to meet a friendly computer." "The pleasure is all mine," she said perfunctorily. "We also have a few android bodies that Alpha uses," I continued. "If anything during your surgery needs something more than the nanites can provide, the Alphadroids will be handling it." "So Alpha is a doctor?" "She's much more than just a doctor, but if you're asking about a medical degree, then no. Alpha is a secret. So are the nanites. For that matter, so are your origins and identities as Batgirl and Oracle. And Barbara Gordon." "Why are your computer and nanites secret? And why can't I use my name?" We spent a few minutes discussing our reasons. I'm not sure we convinced Barbara of the correctness of our arguments, but she agreed to go along with it. The conversation also evolved into a discussion of why her identity was too risky to use. We didn't have any comics on hand, so Alpha pulled up Batgirl's wikipedia page, as well as the IMDB list of Batman movies. Eventually we worked around to questions of when and how long her recovery would take. "How quickly we do the surgery is not important to me," Alpha explained. "I am ready to do it now, or we can wait a few weeks if you prefer to acclimate to your new environment. I can only speculate as to your required recovery time. Some sensations should return very quickly, though reconditioning your motor control and muscle strength may take weeks or months to return to normal strength and mobility." "In that case, I'd like to do the surgery sooner rather than later, but even so, I'd really like a demonstration first and a chance to examine your technology for myself." "Of course," I said. "I'd prefer not to maim an animal just to show you how the nanites work, but I'm sure Alpha can work up a demonstration of some sort. Would you like a tour of the building first?" "Sure, that sounds good," she said, unlocking her wheel brakes. She pulled on some fingerless gloves which she used to protect her hands as she rolled her way out of the office. Barbara spent most of the day in one of our nanite labs, talking with Alpha and working through the nanite's capabilities. I stopped by a couple times to check up on them, but my presence was too distracting for her, a rare occasion when I wished I could turn off a new woman's implants for a while. She needed to learn to trust Alpha and our tech, so I limited my time with her. I drove her home that evening, just the two of us, so that we would have a chance to talk. "So, Miss Gordon, how do you like Alpha?" "She's very intelligent without seeming overly ... power mad or ... what's a nice way to put it ... too certain that her own viewpoint is unarguably correct. I'm actually very impressed. Your tech here is ... well, it's a decade or more behind what we have in my universe in a number of different fields, but you've been working to apply what you have amazingly well. I'd be interested to see what you could do in my world." "Well, as far as we can tell, a lot of the variations between our worlds are due to differences in underlying physical laws, meaning that a lot of your technology simply won't work here. Conversely, there might be some tech here that won't work in your world, but it seems like our stuff probably should work fine there. It's possible our laws of physics are a subset of yours." "I understand ... well, not the minutia of physics and quantum mechanics that might be different, but I understand that such differences appear to exist. What I mean is that, well, for example, we've had nanites for years ... nanites which are far in advance of what you have here. Yet even with our more advanced nanites, we've done very little with them for the public as a whole. Even though you're keeping some of your technology a secret -- which may or may not be the best thing to do -- you're using the knowledge to build more advanced medical and surgical equipment." I suppressed a smile as I responded, "From what I've seen from my somewhat limited perspective, when someone in your world makes a significant scientific discovery, they're somewhat likely to use that knowledge to become a superhero. Or villain." She barked out a short laugh. "I can't entirely disagree with you. If even half of the geniuses we have locked up would just apply their skills for the benefit of others, we'd be living in a paradise." "At any rate," I said, trying to steer the conversation back to more immediate matters, "I understand that someone in your ... line of work ... can have difficulty when it comes to trusting strangers, so I'm leaving it up to you as to when or if you want to have any surgery..." "Oh, the surgery is tomorrow morning," she said, interrupting me. "That soon?" "I only have six months here, and I want to be as recovered as possible by the time I head back home." "Sounds great to me!" "Me too. I ... I'm taking a lot of this on faith, which as you pointed out, goes against my nature. But I trust Diana and the others, especially since she and Zatanna have been hopping back and forth fairly regularly for the past year or two." The varying passage of time between the real world and the DC Universe has been discussed in previous chapters, but basically, Zatanna believed she was able to leave her home at, for example, noon on January 1st and come to my world. She could then spend six months or more here and return home at noon on January 8th. She could then spend months or more back home, after which she could return here after having been absent from my world for only a week. Basically, time moved forward with every dimensional jump, but it did not have to move forward at an equivalent speed, though only recently did we allow her to believe she had such dimensional travel completely under control. She now believed she could turn a week in one world into roughly six months in the other, which could give her up to a year's worth of subjective experiences in as little as two weeks, if you shifted your relative perspective around. Given the weird movement of time in comic books -- where six months of published stories can take up less than a day or over a year of comic book time -- it actually worked out fairly well. "We can help you out in other respects too. For example, if you'd like, we can do away with your need for glasses..." "Yes, Alpha mentioned that. I'm okay with that in theory, but let's just limit ourselves to one thing at a time. Besides, if you can fix eyes like that, why does your Project Coordinator still wear glasses?" "Daria ... ummm ... Glasses are part of her ... her image ... her personality. We have actually greatly improved her vision from where it used to be, but she specifically asked us not to fix it all the way." (For anyone who's curious, there's an entire episode of Daria which deals with the issue, where she grapples with the idea of contact lenses and whether or not getting them means that she's vain. It may sound boring, but it was a pretty good episode with a few good laughs included.) As I pulled up to our house, the automatic gates opening for us, I said, "Here we are, home, sweet home. Welcome to ... well, actually, we never really named it, not like Wayne Manor or anything. Welcome to my home." We didn't really have a proper, wheelchair-accessible van, so I helped her move from the passenger seat to her chair after we parked. I'm pretty sure that under normal circumstances, she absolutely would have waved me off and pulled herself over, but I'm also pretty sure that those implants in her skull made the idea of me touching her an almost irresistible temptation. That supposition was supported by her fiery blush as I lowered her down. (And all this was brain-only stimulus, since everything below her waist was numb.) I apologized for the lack of proper equipment for her, but continued with, "Although we do have a chair-lift system we just installed on the stairs leading up to the second floor, I'm looking forward to tearing it out again once you're up and walking in a couple weeks." "Huh," she grunted, pausing in her efforts to strap herself in. "I ... I guess it hasn't really hit me, not until now. It's just been a technological problem to consider, but you're right. I'm going to be walking again soon." "Walking, then climbing stairs, jogging, running and leaping," I agreed. "Swimming too, once it gets warm enough. Heck, you'll be kickboxing if you want." "I'm going to be walking," she repeated, her eyes glazing over. Finally, she shook herself and finished strapped down her legs. I led her to the front door ramp -- we had always had a ramp leading up to the front door from the side -- and into the house while our car drove itself to the garage. She was welcomed fairly warmly into the household, though I think a few of the women didn't know how to treat her because of her wheelchair. I could almost see the thoughts going through their minds: Would it be insulting to offer to help her move around, or would it be rude not to offer? At dinner ... you know, I've never really mentioned it before, but our dining room had two very large tables, each of which could comfortably sit up to ten people, though it was rare that we all ate at the same time. Anyway, at dinner that evening, I officially presented Barbara to the rest of the household, explaining that she would be staying with us for about six months so that Alpha could repair her spine and she could get into shape before going home. Barbara seemed slightly overwhelmed by the large number of pretty women living here, but she recovered and knew everyone by name by the end of the evening. I also made a point of asking her in front of everyone else whether she would prefer us to offer her any help moving around or not. Barbara smiled and said, "Actually, I appreciate that you came right out and asked, so let me clear this up: I am perfectly capable of doing things myself. I don't need people hovering over me just in case I need a hand. Unless I have to manually go up or down stairs or get something off a high shelf ... those are huge pains to do alone, and in those two particular cases, I'd welcome any help you can offer." "Would you like me to ask an Alphadroid to be your assistant?" "Actually ... that might be pretty helpful on occasion. Are they all in contact with Alpha herself?" "The Alphadroids can be Alpha platforms, so if you'd prefer, it could be an actual copy of Alpha." "Oh. Well, sure. I don't think I'd need one full time, but it would make some things a lot easier." I didn't know her well enough to be certain, but I'm pretty sure Barbara was planning something or at least had something specific in mind. "We normally only keep Dorothy here at the house, but we'll bring another one home tomorrow. For tonight, I'll ask Dorothy if she's willing to be your assistant." Although I wasn't always successful at it, I tried to avoid giving orders to Alphadroids or Alpha when I'm around other people. Heck, I try not to do it when we're alone, but knowing that Alpha is programmed to follow my orders makes it difficult to remember to ask. Barbara's eyebrows went up when Dorothy was introduced to her a moment later, which wasn't too surprising given that she was the only Alphadroid designed to look human. Alpha told me later that Barbara quizzed her about her appearance that evening, even going so far as to ask whether or not she was anatomically correct. I had Alpha play me the video of her reaction upon seeing Dorothy's smooth crotch plate because seeing that often induces interesting facial expressions. (For any readers who are unaware or have forgotten, Dorothy has an interchangeable crotch plate, with one for sex and a smooth, sexless version for normal use.) The next morning saw the largest group we've ever had cram into the AARD nanopod lab ... until I chased nearly all of them out after I saw how nervous they were making Barbara. I let Linda, Diana, Zatanna and Kara remain, along with a couple Alphadroids. Then while Barbara was stripping down to a borrowed bikini, Kara excused herself, saying she had work to do and asked us to tell her how things went. From our perspective, it really wasn't all that exciting. Barbara elected to remain conscious while the nanites worked, and Alpha gave us regular updates and displayed data on the screens as she got it. We had built Barbara's body so that she had actual scars where the theoretical bullet had blown through her lower torso, but her spinal cord itself had been grown with no scarring to make this project easier. After about an hour and a half, Alpha announced that she was withdrawing the nanites. Alpha continued, "I do not know how quickly you will regain control or sensation, but we will begin testing as soon as you have cleaned up." A lot of this was for the sake of dramatic tension and to cover up the fact that Alpha already knew Barbara's body inside and out. For example, Alpha could very well have used the nanites to test the spine and nervous systems, tweaking it until it was working right away, but ... BUT ... Barbara was supposed to have a badly scarred break in her spine and have spent years with no feeling or control of her body below the waist. A reconnected spine is supposed to take time to reestablish that communication and control, so we played our parts and let the reconnected nerve tissue reestablish proper connections by itself. Even so, we knew Barbara would still heal up much faster than she would have had the damage been old, but there was no basis for comparison ... however long it took would be the only data point for nanite-repaired spines and should therefore raise no suspicions. Linda and the others helped Barbara to an emergency shower station -- I really needed to get around to having an actual shower stall with hot water built here sometime -- to clean up. Once she was dry and partially redressed, an Alphadroid started checking her legs and feet for sensations. Barbara watched every prick and touch, shaking her head slightly with each attempt. One of the other Alphadroids and I were the only ones in a position to see it when it happened, and I let out a little gasp, getting caught up in the moment. Everyone turned their heads to look at me. I looked at Barbara and said quietly, "You just moved your big right toe." The Alphadroid playing doctor moved back so she had a good view of her right foot and we all watched as the big toe on her right foot twitched again. "That's a good sign, right?" I asked. "Yes, that is a very good sign," replied Alpha. Poking the toe produced no sensation, but she could ... maybe 'move' is a bit strong ... she could make the toe jerk up and down maybe a quarter of an inch at will. With that one little motion, the surgery was declared a success. I cornered Kara after lunch for a conversation. "So, Kara, I notice you've been a bit quiet recently. Some might even say standoffish." "Maybe a little." "Is something wrong? "Nothing's wrong." "Don't you get along with Barbara?" "Well ... not especially," she said, not meeting my eyes. "Why? What happened?" "I don't really want to get into the details. Let's just say that before she got the idea for her little group, she recruited me for a mission and things didn't go well." "What happened?" "Maybe I'll tell you about it some other time, but for now I'd just like to leave it at that. I went along with bringing her here because I agree that despite what happened, she didn't deserve to be shot and paralyzed. None of that means I have to like her." "You're pretty much second-in-command for the household, and the company for that matter." "Third, really. Remember Alpha." "I like to think of Alpha and myself as being co... 'rulers' doesn't sound right... 'executives' maybe? Which makes you number ... ummm ... second-in-command." "Good save." "Anyway, the point is that I can't have you holding grudges against our guests." "It's okay. I'm being extra nice to her. Besides, it's not like she's planning to stay forever, right?" "No, she is not." Which was absolutely true. Batgirl was not planning to stay forever, so we'd have to break the news about the upcoming DC reboot slowly ... carefully. Barbara Gordon and Karen Starr had a varied past relationship in comics. Since the current version of Supergirl came along after Barbara had become Oracle, the classic adventures of Batgirl and Supergirl had been rewritten to be the adventures of Batgirl and Power Girl ... but the idea never really caught on and we had left it out of Karen and Barbara's memories. (Actually, I'm trusting wikipedia on that point since I've never read the issues where that revised history is mentioned ... or at least I don't remember it in the slightest.) Instead they had one really bad mission together post-Batgirl that kept Karen from being willing to work with the Birds of Prey, Barbara's personal superhero team, ever again. If truth be told, no one was really at fault. Power Girl was at reduced strength at the time due to a vampire attack or something. Maybe Oracle should have sent along some backup too, but it was mainly Power Girl's inability to be in two or three places at once that led to the deaths of many people, including the woman Oracle had sent her to protect. The story is in Birds of Prey #42, I think. Both of them had felt guilty, but Power Girl had felt it much more intensely and had lashed out, blaming Oracle's planning for the failure. And, in a weird way, she had blamed Oracle for having faith that she could handle the situation. Not that I let Kara know that I already knew the story. If and when she was willing to tell me, she'd tell me. That afternoon, Diana and I took Barbara shopping for clothes. It was probably the least exciting shopping trip I had been on. I'm used to my new women getting off on modeling their clothes for me, but Barbara's situation -- both her wheelchaired status and her virtually dead lady parts -- meant that while she was attracted to me, it was far less intense than it normally would have been. We got her a variety of clothes and sundry supplies, with a promise to come back for a more expanded wardrobe once she was walking again. By that evening, Barbara could control the toe enough to cause actual pressure (as opposed to just minor twitches) and could make the other toes on that foot curl and uncurl a little bit at will. A week after her surgery, she could move all muscle groups below her waist to one degree or another and had roughly 25% normal feeling. Ten days after her surgery, she stood unaided for nearly thirty seconds. Fourteen days after her surgery, she ... ummm ... her sensitivity was 70% or better, which included many body parts which had been completely dead for years, which means she got really ... horny. I was expecting it to happen sooner or later. It was part of the plan. Her lady parts regain sensation, her implants are directing her lust, and besides, I'm the only man readily available. I don't know how it works with normal people when they regain such long-lost feelings. With Barbara, her handicapped condition had been preventing any sensations at all from her sexual organs. She could still love, and theoretically I think she could even have become pregnant and taken a child up to birth, though I think a caesarian probably would have been required. Her life in a wheelchair had not been devoid of relationships. I'm sure she dated -- most notably Dick Grayson/Robin/Nightwing -- and even had sex. Maybe she even lied to her lovers occasionally, telling them that she could still receive sexual pleasure from fucking. Or perhaps she limited herself to giving out blowjobs and letting them play with her breasts. I could ask Alpha, I suppose, but I generally don't have a lot of interest in my women's previous lovers, fictional or not. ------- The way this next particular scenario played out began the night of the two-week anniversary of Barbara's surgery. Barbara had requested that Dorothy be her assigned assistant rather than a different, faceless Alphadroid. She had even taken the time to watch part of season one of Big O, the anime from which we took Dorothy's design and personality. (I'd like to take credit for that because I described Big O to her as "an anime version of Batman", which I sometimes say as a joke, though my parallels between the two are valid: Handsome, rich playboy who likes wearing black. Older, loyal butler privy to playboy's secret life and possessing many hidden talents. Batman-esque gadgetry, including a tricked-out black car. Puts on a special "outfit" to protect the city when danger threatens. Good friends with local police chief. Even has an underground lair to house his secrets. All of which served to put R. Dorothy Waynewright into the role of Robin, or since she's female, perhaps into the role of Batgirl.) Anyway, all of that is simply to explain why Dorothy was with Barbara that evening. "Barbara," Dorothy said as she helped her charge get ready for bed, "you appear to be very distracted this evening. Is there anything I can to help you?" "No, I'm fine. I'm done for the night, so you can go." Dorothy started to leave, when Barbara apparently changed her mind. "Wait a minute." Dorothy obediently paused as Barbara continued. "You know a lot what goes on in this house right?" "I know almost everything that goes on here." "Diana and Zatanna hinted and implied a few things back when they first suggested I come here, and ... well, I have eyes. Is Frank sleeping with every woman in the house? Every woman except me, I mean?" "Yes." "So they're like his harem?" "That is one way to describe the situation. Are you asking if Frank is a louse?" Barbara laughed at the Big O reference. "Kind of." "It would be more accurate to say that the women of the household have agreed to share Frank with each other." "They share him?" "Yes. They work out a schedule so that Frank is shared evenly among them, more or less. Although only one woman is generally allowed to reserve him for any given night, she is allowed to invite others to join her, a courtesy that is usually expected to be reciprocated when the other women have their nights." "And everyone is okay with this ... arrangement?" "Yes. Also many of the women have formed close attachments to others in the household. Overall, everyone here has formed a strong family-like bond. While these may constitute additional reasons to remain, I believe that at the root of things, none of them wish to risk losing Frank." Dorothy paused briefly. "May I ask a question?" Barbara cocked her head slightly. "Certainly." "You are an intelligent and perceptive individual with training as a detective. None of this should be new information to you, so why are you asking?" "I just ... It's because ... Yes, I already knew, it's just that ... this is kind of personal." "Are you interested in asking Frank to become your lover?" "NO! I mean ... maybe ... I don't know ... I'm just a little ... you know ... at the moment..." "Have your vagina and clitoris regained enough sensitivity to require testing?" "That's one way to put it. And no, they're already been tested. I've done a lot of thorough testing over the past two nights. The trouble is, it's all been solo testing." "If Frank is not to your liking, some of the women in residence would probably be willing to have sex with you. Although your comic book character appears to be heterosexual, I have noticed that a number of women are open to bi-sexual experiences." "I experimented some in college, and it was ... it was just fine, but I'm not going to ... just come right out and ... you know..." "If you would prefer, I can borrow a dildo from one of the other household women..." "NO! I ... I'm fine like it is." "Alternately, although my tongue is solely decorative, my fingers are capable of sensitive manipulation so I can offer to aid in your masturbatory release." Barbara sighed. "Sometimes I forget that you're a robot. No, thank you for the offer, but no." "Thank you for not saying 'just a robot'," Dorothy said. "What?" "You just said, 'Sometimes I forget that you're a robot.'" Instead of quoting, she played back Barbara's own voice, then continued, "I think that most humans would have said, 'just a robot, ' and I thank you for not saying that. I know that you do not trust me because I am not human, and that part of the reason you agreed to keep an Alphadroid assistant was to explore the boundaries of my programming and to keep an eye on me. But you have always respected what and who I am, and for that, I thank you." Barbara was quiet for a moment, not certain how to respond. Finally, she said, "You're welcome. I try not to think of people as 'just' anything. And it's not that I don't trust you because you're not human, I don't trust anyone very much. You just have a greater potential for trouble than most if your programming goes offtrack." She paused for a couple seconds before continuing. "Does Frank do anything to denigrate you because you're not human? Does he treat you like a background servant or something?" "He is in almost constant contact with my host system and often goes out of his way to avoid treating me as a servant. However, if you are referring this specific Dorothy platform, then sometimes yes. He does occasionally treat it as part of the background, though I believe this is his favorite Alphadroid platform." If I may interject a comment, listening to this part of their conversation gave me some definite stabs of guilt and recrimination. I go out of my way to treat Beta, Gamma, Delta and Eiko as individuals, but Dorothy was absolutely correct. I tended to treat the Alphadroids as interchangeable mobile platforms. It was definitely a bit of subconscious bias on my part, and I resolved to do better in the future. Both Barbara and Dorothy were quiet for over a minute until Dorothy broke the silence. "If you wish, I can discreetly order a set of vibrators and dildos for you. Or if you are attracted to Frank or one of the other women, I can quietly make a few inquiries on your behalf." "I ... thank you very much for the offer. I think ... I think I need to talk to people on my own rather than send a proxy." "Certainly. Frank is generally very accommodating and open to household residents. Also, Jane is the one who maintains the actual schedule if you should wish to speak to someone about it. I would also expect most of the other residents, especially your friends, to be willing to adjust their own schedules if you express an interest." "Thank you. I appreciate the information. Good night, Dorothy." "Good night, Barbara." Just before Dorothy reached the door, Barbara called out quietly. "Dorothy? If you can place that order so that no one else knows about it... ?" "I will be the soul of discretion." The following night saw one of the stranger bonding experiences my house has witnessed. Barbara had asked Dorothy to stop by her room after she retired for the evening. She arrived while Barbara was in the shower and waited patiently until she emerged, wrapped in a towel, hobbling along with help from a four-legged folding walker. "Good evening, Barbara." "Hey there, Dorothy." "Your package was shipped today using overnight shipping and is on-track to arrive here tomorrow." "Good. Thank you," she said as she sat down on her bed. "Hey, I didn't have to use the walker or anything to stand up in the shower tonight. I'm halfway exhausted, but I did it!" "Congratulations. You have been growing steadily stronger. However, for safety's sake, you should either bathe or use some kind of support when showering to prevent the possibility of falling." "I'll be fine. Besides, there are a couple handholds on the wall." "Which may not be strong enough to hold your weight in an emergency." Barbara sighed and patted the bed next to her. "Why don't you sit down for a few minutes?" "I have no need to sit." "I wasn't saying you needed to, I was making a friendly social invitation as a precursor to conversation." "I am sorry. I will be happy to sit with you," said Dorothy, and she walked to the bed and sat down next to the redhead, the bed dipping noticeably under Dorothy's heavier mass. "I've been thinking about our conversations over the past few weeks, and I wanted to ask you a question." "Yes?" "Are you in love with Frank?" "I..." Dorothy paused for a second, which was VERY unusual for any version of Alpha. "I do not possess human emotions. The most I can say is that I care for Frank's well-being." "Maybe you don't possess normal human emotions, but that doesn't mean you don't possess ANY emotions." "If I have any kind of emotions, they have not been identified or quantified." "I don't think that emotions can be..." Barbara paused and gave a little laugh. "Well, maybe whatever emotions you have, if you have them, could be quantified. The point is, I think it is likely that you do have emotions, whether they're versions of human emotions or some as-yet-undefined computer-only types of emotions." "I will consider this. Have you given any thought to whether or not you wish to take a lover?" "Way to change the subject there, Dorothy. As it happens, yes, I've decided. Frank is attractive and appears to be fully suited to be a bedmate. I was actually leading up to this. If I can work this all out ... convince Jane and Kara and whoever to let me make a play for him ... if he's ... amenable ... to my advances ... if all of this works out, I was wondering if you'd like to join us." "Join you?" "You know ... in bed. With Frank. It might give you a chance to explore possible feelings for him." "I could at best help you or be an observer. Remember, I am sexually non-functional." "I was thinking about that. Show me your crotch again." A human might have been offended or at least nonplussed, but Dorothy simply raised her skirts, revealing her smooth, Barbie-doll-like crotch. "Yeah, I thought I remembered seeing these." She reached down to touch seams in Dorothy's rubbery fake flesh. There were connecting seams that ran all over her frame, but the ones Barbara was tracing were the ones that outlined Dorothy's pubic and vaginal region ... well, what would be her pubic and vaginal region if Dorothy had possessed the relevant body parts. "If this is removable, we might be able to fit an artificial vagina into you. I don't know if there's any way to give you actual feeling or pleasure from it, but we'd at least be able to work something out so that you could connect with Frank. Physically, I mean. If you're interested, that is." Watching their encounter the next morning, I actually paused my playback of their encounter at that point to consider and reflect for a moment. Dorothy already had a interchangeable vaginal crotchplate, though I rarely used it. Fucking an actual robot is ... well, it's not bad or anything, it's just not all it's cracked up to be. It's more like masturbating with a life-size doll. The novelty wears off quickly, and I think I've used it a grand total of three times. Trust me, making love to a real woman is much, MUCH better. So Barbara's proposed add-on already existed, we just kept it hidden from everyone else. If I let other people know about it, it would immediately color their views of me and Dorothy. Now Barbara wanted to bring it out into the open. If she was the one proposing it, for whatever reason, it would be viewed differently than if I did so, but still... I restarted the playback. "Why have you suggested this?" "Well, I just ... All right, let me put it this way: While it is likely true that you would receive no physical pleasure from it, sex can create or enhance an emotional bond for both participants. It might also help Frank to see you more as a person than a mobile computer. Plus it should give Frank physical pleasure, which probably lines up with your preexisting directives, right?" "Yes. You should be made aware that I have already built an interchangeable crotchplate with an artificial vagina." Barbara stopped her examination and sat back, looking at Dorothy. "Really? Did Frank have you build it?" "I have full authority to build any accessories or upgrades I wish for any of my platforms. Frank's only request has been that any purchase over $100,000 be made only after consulting with each other." "So ... why did you build it?" "In case Frank wished to use this platform for sex. I was built to look much more human than any of my other platforms, and I have seen a large number of images and read a large number of stories where humans become sexually involved with robots." "That's really ... sweet ... I guess. Speaking of which, I did have an ulterior motive for asking you sit down. Masturbation has never been very satisfying for me, even before I was shot. I was thinking about your offer last night. As long as you can keep it completely private, just between the two of us, I was wondering..." Dorothy interrupted her. "If Frank asks, I cannot lie to him or hide anything from him." "Okay ... but he's probably not going to be very likely to ask, so as long as you don't volunteer the information..." "That is acceptable. Would you like me to aid you in releasing your sexual tension?" I'm pretty sure Barbara was blushing a bit as she said, "Yes, I would." "Are there any scenarios you would like to act out?" "No, but there is one thing I would like to do first, if I may." She leaned over and kissed Dorothy gently on the lips. Dorothy's lips aren't very dextrous, but they can move a bit. She did her best to kiss back and gently put her arms around Barbara. Barbara pulled back and said in a calm, clear voice, "Thank you, Dorothy. That was a meaningful act of friendship and intimacy for me." "I will so note it. Thank you, Barbara, my friend." Dorothy took the initiative then, pulling off Barbara's towel and gently pushing her back so that she lay flat on the bed. Her fingers are small, very dextrous and capable of very fine manipulation. With them, she began playing with Barbara's breasts with one hand and gently rubbing her vaginal lips with the other. Barbara sighed, relaxing and bringing her own hands up to cup her breasts, holding them in place as Dorothy began rubbing and gently twisting her nipples. Lower down, moisture began gathering, coating Dorothy's fingers, allowing her to begin dipping down inside a little. After a minute of that, Dorothy apparently judged that her fingers were sufficiently coated to be able to stroke Barbara's clit safely, because that's exactly what she started to do, causing Barbara to hiss with pleasure and close her eyes. She came less than two minutes later, but Dorothy continued her attentions for another fifteen minutes until Barbara had come twice more and finally asked Dorothy to stop. "That was very nice. Thank you," she said, stroking Dorothy's cheek. "So, you'll join me with Frank?" "Yes. Thank you for this experience. I will save the memory in a high-security back-up." "So, what other accessories have you built?" "For sexual congress? I have removable nipples and three other wigs. I have designs for a useable tongue but have never built it." "Anything else? For things other than sex?" "I have built fifty-two other accessories or replacement parts for this platform for purposes such as construction, defense and surgery." "Defense? What kind of defense accessories?" "I have hands with built-in tasers, a wireless, shoulder-mounted multiple turret dart gun and other non-lethal weaponry." "I feel like I should be freaking out a bit, but as long as it's all non-lethal ... I'm probably still a little blissed-out at the moment. I think I'd like to just go to sleep. How about you clean your hands and turn off the lights?" "Very well. As an addendum to your plans for sleeping with Frank, you should shave your vaginal lips before doing so." Barbara looked as though she never shaved or trimmed her pubic hair ... and why would she have done so? Even as Batgirl, her costume revealed less flesh than almost any other female costume out there. "Why?" she asked, waking up from her post-orgasm torpor a bit. "Because Frank enjoys cunnilingus and prefers shaved lips." "And how do you know that?" "My parent system hears a large majority of all conversations which occur in this house. I will be happy to aid you in shaving, if you would like." "Cunnilingus, huh? Well, it has been a very long time since anyone has eaten me out. Sure, I'll trim it down. I guess I need to do my legs and pits too. And no, thank you. I think I'd like to try to do it on my own. If I have problems, I'll holler." After watching that interplay, I turned off the video and considered the situation for a few minutes. First, of course, I was absolutely willing to have a threesome with Barbara and Dorothy. The way this had worked out, Dorothy could become an openly acknowledged bed partner in the household without it looking like I was building robots for sex. And although having sex with robots is absolutely nowhere near as fun as doing it with living women, I was curious to try her out in a threesome. Second, this entire exchange seemed odd for Barbara. True, I didn't know her as well as I knew the other household residents, but I knew how her mind worked in general. She doesn't trust people that quickly. Bonding and having sex with a robot? Encouraging a robot to have sex with me? There had to be some ulterior motives or manipulations involved. I didn't think it was as coldly calculating as trying to ingratiate herself into a friendship with Alpha to use her or keep a close eye on her, though that may have been part of it. Maybe she saw Alpha as a potential threat and was trying to create close, personal bonds to keep Alpha from going rogue? Was there some story I had forgotten where Batgirl became close friends with an AI, then it was destroyed, so she was now trying to make up for that loss? Perhaps she empathized with Dorothy/Alpha in some subconscious way and was trying to help her be happy? Still, that was all speculation. We might be able to determine the truth if we did a full brain and memory scan of Barbara in a nanopod, but I was hesitant to do so for Alpha's sake. If Barbara really was honestly becoming Alpha's friend and lover, it would be a significant milestone in Alpha's life. If that was the case, doing such a scan might taint the situation with distrust. On the other hand, if Barbara was just being manipulative, revealing that would ... well, I didn't know how Alpha would react. I honestly didn't know how developed her emotions were, or even if she had any. Alpha was so good at emulating emotional responses that I was no longer certain whether or not they were all just emulated. If she did indeed have some kind of real emotions, I didn't want to risk traumatizing her. That's not to say that we were going to just completely trust Barbara, but neither was I willing to subject her to a deep scan just to see. ------- I know Barbara approached some of the women over the next couple days, getting permission, working out schedules and such. I'm pretty sure Kara wasn't happy with the situation, but my talk with her about her responsibilities as a household leader apparently helped keep her level-headed. Two evenings after Barbara had her intimate liaison with Dorothy, she approached me and asked me to take her on another shopping trip the next day so she could pick up a few different pairs of shoes and maybe a nice dress. So the next morning, I think it was a Monday, I took her to visit a few different department and specialty stores. Barbara had been really pushing herself physically and at that time was able to get by with two forearm crutches. She could actually walk without them, but doing so would tire her out too quickly. The crutches let her last a couple hours before she had to rest. This time our shopping trip was much more like what I have come to expect, with generous displays of flesh and much playful flirting. In addition to the shoes (and dear god, women's shoes can get expensive), she surprised me by modeling and buying a few different bikinis. Don't misunderstand; she didn't pick out slutty or flashy clothes. She was a classy dresser (though I'll admit I am fashion-impaired so any fashion-related statements I may make should be viewed with that knowledge in mind). When she was modeling a very nice-looking red cocktail dress, she asked me out to dinner, mentioning casually that Jane had said my calendar was free this coming Friday. I replied that I would love to go out to dinner, which was followed by Barbara hemming and hawing a little before admitting she had no idea which restaurants in the area were any good, thus passing along the rest of the date responsibilities to me. She continued to regain strength in her legs at a much faster rate than any normal surgery recipient could possibly expect, to the point where that Friday, she ambled about with only a single, traditional wooden cane. (I later found out that she had rested herself almost all of Friday afternoon so that she would have the strength to last through the evening with me.) She looked very fetching in her little dark red dress. True, it didn't look quite right outfit-wise without heels, but there was no way she could safely walk around in high-heel shoes in her condition. We had a very tasty seafood dinner at a fairly expensive restaurant. I was a little surprised when she insisted on paying. Sure, we had set her up with a couple credit cards, but I think she used Linda's bank card to pay, though I only had a brief glimpse so I couldn't be certain. After dinner, we went to a movie at a rather plush, classically restored theater. Had the choice been up to me, I probably would have picked the animated old western starring a lizard or the aliens attacking Los Angeles movie. Since it was a first-date movie, we went with a Philip Dick-inspired flick about agents of fate conspiring to keep apart a couple who fell in love at first sight. It was a fairly decent show, but I found my attention focused more on the pretty redhead sitting to the right of me. Usually I'd be working to seduce her subtly, lightly rubbing the back of her hand, brushing my leg against hers and occasionally leaning over to whisper a comment in her ear. This time our situations were reversed somewhat. She had me get us a bucket of popcorn and said she didn't want a drink but that I should get one. Then we ended up sharing the drink, trading indirect kisses via the straw. She had me keep the bucket on my lap and kept accidentally missing the popcorn and brushing her hand against my leg and crotch. And then there was the incident where she leaned over to whisper a comment in my ear and licked my earlobe. We held hands throughout most of the film, and during a couple especially poignant revelations, she drew my hand to her chest and sighed, making sure I could feel a hard nipple poking the back of my hand. Not that I minded, of course. Letting yourself be seduced is always fun. We were still a bit touchy-feely when we got back home, and it was obvious she wanted to spend the night with me, even though neither of us had said it explicitly. At least not until we got to the stairs. The chair lift was still in place, though it had been a few days since the last time it had been used. Barbara felt she was up to the challenge, and she usually was. But as we approached the stairs, I saw how heavily she was leaning on her cane. I put my hand gently on her shoulder to stop her. "Barbara, I want to carry you upstairs tonight." She started to protest, but I cut her off with a kiss. Pulling back slightly, I whispered, "You need to save your strength for what we're going to be doing for the next couple of hours." So saying, I swept her up so that one arm was under her knees and the other was supporting her shoulders and carried her up to my room. Dorothy was waiting outside my door, and a cursory glance confirmed that her normally smooth breasts currently had hard little points sticking out, slightly tenting the fabric covering her modest chest. Playing along as I was supposed to I asked, "Hello, Dorothy. Is there anything I can help you with?" Barbara quickly spoke up. "I invited her to join us tonight. I hope you don't mind, but I think the experience with be good for her." "Okaaayyy..." I said, slowing lowering Barbara's feet to the floor and reaching for the door. "How exactly is she going to join in? She's not ... ummm ... anatomically ... you know..." "She's ready for you," Barbara insisted, urging us through the open door while leaning against the frame. Closing the door behind the three of us, she continued, "And Dorothy goes first." I glanced at her with a quizzical expression, leading her to say, "Everything I've heard about you is that you're almost always able to get it up at least a couple times a night, right?" I nodded. "So Dorothy goes first and I'll go second," she insisted. I didn't really stop to think it through right then, as Barbara started pulling Dorothy's dress over her head, revealing her nipple-topped breasts and vaginal pubic plate, but her plan had a number of advantages. First, it helped cement her friendship with Dorothy/Alpha, and that's not necessarily a cynical observation implying manipulation. Second, it would be much easier for me to get another hard-on anticipating a live, flesh-and-blood woman when compared to an android who could not orgasm. Third, I always lasted longer the second time around, which would give Barbara a much longer session of lovemaking. Playing dumb, I asked Dorothy a few questions about her new add-ons, in the process discovering that her vagina had been upgraded with our new pressure sensors. (We had upgraded our artificial limbs a year ago with tiny little pressure sensors in the skin which could feed the sensations back to the attached nervous system.) It still wouldn't give Dorothy any physical pleasure, but it would let her be much more accurately responsive over time. Although she still didn't have a lifelike tongue, I kissed Dorothy gently as I entered her, noticing that a still-dressed Barbara was holding one of her hands as we fucked. And I would describe it as a "fuck". As much as I can make the attempt, then and now, it is very hard to make love to an android. I absolutely loved her and tried to show it, but most of the physical responses just weren't there. Still, having Barbara with us made it the closest to 'making love' that I'd ever experienced with Dorothy up to that point. Having sex with an android is not like having sex with a human. First, there's the background whir of servos and motors with each thrust. The skin temperature ranges from room temperature to well above 100 F. The movements of the arms and legs are precise and measured. The android body cannot sweat, and the vaginal pouch has no natural lubricant. (Dorothy had obviously pre-lubricated herself with KY Jelly or something similar.) But even with all of those unnatural points, Dorothy looked more human than not. She was intensely focused on the experience and did not lose her focus on me, unlike human women who would often withdraw into their own personal sensory world. And maybe the emotional connection between us was not normal, but it was there. Barbara did her best to encourage the two of us rather than just insert herself into our coupling, but she did take opportunities to kiss each of us and feel both of us up. I probably lasted fifteen minutes before coming inside her, having remained in the Missionary position the entire time. (Sorry, but playing with varying positions with an android that weighs two or three times more than you do is not a good idea.) I kissed Dorothy and thanked her for the wonderful experience before rolling off to the side, letting Barbara move in to kiss her as well. "So how was it?" she asked Dorothy. "I recorded all data from the sensors in my skin and vaginal pouch. I received no physical pleasure from the sensory input, but the experience was strongly positive. I plan to replay and analyze the data in detail later tonight, but now it is your turn, correct?" "Yes, I suppose it is." They both turned to look at me and my half-hard cock. I was actually feeling pretty good right then. Yes, I had been the one doing most of the work, sex-wise, but I wasn't overheated with shared body heat or covered with my partner's sweat. "Just give me a minute, and I'll be ready to go," I said grinning. "In the meantime, Barbara, why don't you come over here and we'll make out a bit." "You're naked and about to have sex with me," she said with a quirky smile. "I think you can start calling me 'Babs'." "Sure thing, Beautiful ... uh, Babs. Com'ere. Dorothy, there are condoms in the top drawer of my nightstand. If you could grab one for me, I'd appreciate it." "Nope, no condom." "Are you on the pill or something?" "I have an implant that should be good for another year. Besides, this is going to be my first real fuck in years. I don't want a condom. Even if I didn't have the implant, I'd probably be willing to risk it." "Well, then, I'm glad you don't have to worry about that decision," I said, pulling her to me. Over the next five minutes, I slowly undressed her while we kissed each other hungrily. She had pale B-cup breasts that I was sure would show a lot more freckles if she got more exposure to the sun, but currently only had a very, very light dusting. Her upper body was covered with the lean, tight muscles of a martial artist, but as I worked my way down her body, I found that her legs were almost stick-thin. Before I went after her womanhood, I spent some time paying attention to her legs, much moreso than I normally would have done with the other women. I doubt her legs were any kind of fetish or special erogenous zone for her, but she voiced no objections. When I was finally ready to eat her out, Dorothy helped prop her legs up so they were draped over my shoulders. Except for a small 'landing strip, ' Babs had trimmed off all her pubic hair, and I showed my appreciation by giving her four orgasms through my application of oral efforts. Admittedly that's maybe not quite as impressive when you find out that she came twice within the first two minutes -- apparently she was very excited and on-edge -- but I was still pleased with her reactions. I was also pleased that she had been around long enough to lose that bland taste that is produced by newly created artificial women. It's not that a woman's flavor is a particular favorite of mine -- it's the intimacy and reactions that I enjoy -- but tasteless juices tend to take me out of the moment right when I should be getting into it. After her fourth come, I sat up and pumped my cock a little, waiting for her to come down from the chemical high of orgasm. When she was able to refocus on me, seeing me in position, she whispered, "Give it to me." And I did. Her vagina gripped me as tightly as any virgin's might have, and it took a couple minutes to get myself fully seated inside of her, even with her copious natural lubrication. I probably spent at least the first five minutes just slowly moving in and out until I was certain she could take my full length without discomfort. We didn't get too acrobatic that night, but every time she came, we shifted positions a bit -- straight missionary, one leg up on my chest, her on her side with one leg scissored up, doggy style -- until I finally unloaded into her while she was face and shoulders down, ass up with Dorothy's fingers providing some extra clitoral stimulation. "That was blissful," I said as I withdrew with a slight (squick/slurp) sound. "Oh god, you can say that again," Babs said breathlessly. "Believe it or not, I had forgotten how good that feels." "I'm glad I could help you remember," I said, trying not to smile. "It's just been so long. Plus, I think tonight was the best I've ever had." "You're not sure?" "My memories of actual sex are ... It's almost like my life was just rebooted when I came here. I don't know if I can compare things before and after accurately." "And Alpha said you still aren't yet back to full sensitivity." "I know, but it's close enough. I'm at ... Dorothy, was it 93 or... ?" "Correct, as of this morning, you have an estimated 93% of full nerve response. Your recovery rate has been slowing considerably as you approach 100%, but I believe you should have virtually 100% nerve response within the next 17 days." "Virtually?" I asked. Barbara responded, "Yes, I might never actually reach 100% nerve response, but then again most people have tissue somewhere on their body that produces no response to touch. True, in most people it's because of a bit of scar tissue or callouses or something, while for me it might be more a matter of a tiny percent of sensitivity over a large portion of my body rather than something location-specific. Kind of like numbness so slight that you can't even consciously tell it's there." "Oh, I'm sorry. I thought we'd be able to put you completely back to normal." "Don't apologize. This is wonderful!" she said, stretching her legs out luxuriously, lifting one off the bed slightly. "First of all, I might very well reach 100%. We don't know yet. Secondly, even if I'm a fraction a percent numb, it will be much too small for me to notice. Finally, even if this is as good as it gets for me, like I am here tonight, I won't ever complain about it. On the contrary, I'll sing your praises." Her legs lost their stretched-out tenseness as she dropped them limply back to the bed. "But no singing tonight. I'm exhausted." "Then let's get some sleep. Dorothy, I know you don't sleep, but if you'd like to recharge in my room tonight, you'd be most welcome." "Thank you," she said. "That would be very acceptable." So saying, she reached behind herself and pulled out a power cable from a compartment with a sliding door in her lower back. She plugged into a power strip by the nightstand and lay down on one side of the bed on her back, still naked. "Good night," she said before closing her eyes, making the odd little imitation of humanity complete. Completely in unison, Babs and I automatically replied back, "Good night." We looked at each other, and I shrugged slightly. I leaned down to give Babs a good night kiss, then went about my nightly routine of wiping off my earbud, putting it in the charger and moving to turn off the lights. I paused before switching them off and leaned down to give Dorothy a good night kiss too. Her eyes popped open, startling me slightly, and one arm came up to pull me into a gentle hug before releasing me to turn off the lights and go to bed. Alpha/Dorothy was ... well, still not human, but she sometimes did a decent job imitating one. ------- And so Barbara and Dorothy joined my harem. Dorothy tended to join in once or twice a month at most, but Babs showed her bi-sexual willingness the next week when she and Linda double-teamed me. We still kept a close eye on our resident detective, but after her expected 'secret' foray into my basement lab, she seemed to settle in just fine. While we maintained the observations, we grew a bit complacent and missed something important. Babs spent almost a third of her free time working on computers, browsing the web, learning Alpha's self-designed programming language (which was, in my humble opinion, the most efficient and powerful language available) and generally poking around. In doing so, she noticed something she wasn't supposed to be able to detect. One evening, Diana, Zatanna and Babs took a walk together outside, at Barbara's urging. By this time, her leg strength had progressed far enough that she could comfortably walk for up to half an hour unaided (longer if she pushed herself or took breaks), though she usually carried a cane most of the time. They left our property and went well out of sight of any of Alpha's cameras. About twenty minutes later, they came back and asked me to go with them so they could show me something interesting. Now understand that Diana is not a very good liar, and I could tell something was up. I couldn't really tell with Zatanna, who was an excellent liar, and I wasn't yet familiar enough with Barbara's idiosyncrasies, but I could tell that Diana was actually a bit nervous. I was briefly a bit worried about leaving with them when they were being so mysterious, but I was too curious not to go. Alpha was a little curious but not seriously worried. As I left, she quietly said in my earpiece, "They obviously wish to speak to you about me, though I am not sure why. Gamma and Delta units will be near you just in case. Please try not to completely cut off contact." We walked for about five minutes until we rounded a corner and had the street wall of a nearby housing addition between us and home. "Could you turn off your phone?" asked Babs, looking very serious. I pulled it out and turned it off ... after fiddling with it for a minute to remember how to turn it off, as I do it very rarely. I also pulled out my earpiece and made a show of turning it off, while actually leaving it on. (To be honest, without my phone to act as a short-range wifi hotspot for the earbud, I wasn't sure we were still within range for it to function otherwise, but I hoped that Gamma and Delta were within range to act as backup hotspots.) I dropped the earpiece in my breast pocket and turned to the women in front of me. "I'm guessing you want to talk about Alpha, right?" "We think so. I mean, yes, we want to talk about Alpha, but we're not ... I mean, it's not that she's gone rogue or anything, it's just that Babs found out something curious that we wanted to discuss with you," explained Zatanna haltingly. "What's wrong?" I asked, turning to face Babs directly. "She's running a topical filter on our web access," she explained. "I can't be 100% certain, but I'm pretty sure she's filtering all the public information on us before she passes it on. I did a few page comparisons through a public terminal this afternoon and couldn't pinpoint any differences in actual content, but Alpha is definitely trying to keep us from finding out something about ourselves or is changing the information we receive." I gave a carefully blank expression for a moment while I considered. Then inspiration struck and I let my face show it. "Oh! Yes, of course. She absolutely is, at my request." "At your request?" repeated Diana, looking a little betrayed. "Oh, it's nothing bad. Well, it is something bad, but not like that. It's just..." I paused to blow out my breath in an exasperated sigh. "Okay, you ... none of you ... are going to want to know this, but given the situation I understand that you're going to insist on knowing it. "This was ... hmmmm ... it was just before the Powerpuffs arrived, which would make it, what? Two years ago? Actually, here, let me call Kara so she can tell her part of the story first." I powered my phone back on, let it find a signal, and called up Kara. After a moment of reassuring her that everything was all right, I got to the point. "Okay, Kara, I've put you on speakerphone. Do you remember the fight you had with Alpha about two years ago? The next morning Alpha told me about it and I had to play peacemaker between you two, remember?" "Oh, you mean about those pictures of me with a... ?" "Exactly. Could you tell the others about that?" "Why? Did they find some more like them? I know I saw some of other people on those sites too..." With a little prodding, Kara relayed the story. To summarize, Kara found and became upset about a bunch of she-male art of herself she had discovered while browsing online. Kara tends to laugh off pornographic fanfiction and most explicit fan art, but she took special exception to depictions of herself sporting giant erect cocks. She wanted Alpha to help her track down the artists or destroy the art or something like that. I mediated the confrontation and made Kara apologize for threatening to unplug Alpha. After the incident, I had Alpha start filtering out the TG-style images, as well as anything particularly strange and violent whenever Kara or the others went looking for online porn. (See Chapter 16) Once she finished -- and I could tell that she had gotten herself angry again -- I continued. "After that was over, I asked Alpha to filter out any and all images of household residents which include anything particularly objectionable so that we wouldn't have another ... incident ... like that. "Which means that, yes, Babs, there is absolutely a filter on any online material concerning you or any other member of the household." She protested, "But I know it's not filtering out porn. I've seen some of the stuff about me online." "Correct, but you hopefully HAVEN'T seen any images of your comic book characters with penises. Or being raped ... or tortured ... or mutilated ... or killed. THAT's what the filter is for. If you really want me to, I'll have Alpha lift the filter so you can see all the nightmare-inducing images of yourselves you want." The expressions on their faces were priceless. I turned off the speakerphone and explained to Kara that Babs had discovered the filter and had gotten worried that Alpha was up to something nefarious. We said goodbye and hung up. I fiddled with my earpiece to make it look like I was turning it back on, put it back in place, turned back to the trio of superheroines and asked, "You coming back? I need to go and maybe calm Kara down a little. She sounded like she might be getting herself worked up and angry again since I reminded her of what's out there online." "Aaahhh, yes, I think I'll go back with you," agreed Zatanna. "You two coming?" They nodded. "So, do you want the filter removed?" I asked, looking for a decision as we walked together. "NO!" said Zatanna sharply. "Plus I'm in favor of Alpha writing an anti-Zatanna-porn virus or something." "Actually, I ... despite your warnings, I think I really need the filter to be removed. Just in case," insisted Babs. In the end, we decided that I would instruct Alpha to give everyone a choice as to whether or not they wanted the filter in place. Understand, this wasn't an issue for Kasumi, Daria, Jane and Rei, who were unaware of the existence of fictional versions of themselves. (Of course the filters related to their particular fictional selves were much more than just keeping out certain types of images. We had plans ready if any of them ever discovered something they shouldn't, but it would be much easier and better if they never found out about them to begin with.) No one, not even Babs, had any reason to even check for filters related to them. On the walk home, I asked her how she had detected the filter. She mumbled something about extra lag time but was generally pretty unhelpful. When we got home, I checked in on Kara to find her fuming in the entertainment room, shooting Halo aliens to work out some frustration. That was mildly surprising, as I had expected to find her doing a more physical activity like working out. Maybe she was just picturing online artists as the aliens or something, as she did seem to take special pleasure in consigning them to digital alien hell. (It wasn't until later that I found out she had broken the keyboard to her laptop before settling down to play X-box.) I silently sat down next to her and put an arm around her until she relaxed a bit. Oddly enough, the first thing I said to her was after ten or fifteen minutes of silence when I told her that I needed to go work with Alpha for a few minutes. She paused long enough to lean over and kiss me before I got up. I spent twenty minutes with Alpha in the basement. She had determined how Barbara had detected the filter and had worked out an updated filter that would appear to be undetectable and delay-free to mask its future presence. The filter had been pretty unnoticeable up until now, but that was in part because no one had been looking for one. I explained the system to the others and left Barbara to test it out, letting her believe that all such filters had been removed for her. And, to be clear, they mostly were. Unless she started doing research into supposed natives to this world, like Daria and Rei, there wasn't really anything else for Alpha to filter. Well, except for bits and pieces of the upcoming Flashpoint story which we would be revealing very soon anyway. It seemed to work fine, so crisis averted. Oh, and I invited Kara to join me in bed that night, along with Rei, who had been scheduled for a solo night. I explained the situation to our resident silent Japanese pilot and promised to make it up to her later. If you're curious, out of all my comic book women, only Zatanna, Kara and Kitty wanted the porn filter in place initially -- though I had to have a firm conversation with Kara to convince her -- but within a week, everyone except Barbara had asked Alpha to reinstate the filter. To be fair, most of them didn't normally go browsing around online looking for material like that, but once they became aware of it, they had to go take a peek. Over the next week, I spent a lot of time calming people down after they had discovered a particularly offensive image or story about their character. We had long discussions about freedom of expression and many reminders that in this world, they are considered to be completely fictional characters. One annoying bit of fallout was that Babs began a hobby of creating very specific viruses designed to search out and corrupt image files associated with certain keywords, such as "Batgirl" or "Power Girl" when linked with other keywords such as "TG" or "rape". Now I'm not usually a fan of the weirder and more violent porn images (with a few specific exceptions here and there), but I'm also in favor of freedom of expression. I had mixed feelings on the subject, but in the end, I did nothing. Well, I did ask Alpha to stay out of it, and explained my reasoning. Without Alpha on her side, in a war between Barbara and the internet, she couldn't win, though her efforts might make her feel better. One item of interest that come out of the near-incident was that Babs had completely left Dorothy out of the interactions. She appeared to have mentally disassociated Dorothy from Alpha enough that she didn't blame Dorothy for the filter the same way she blamed Alpha, although of course she still knew that they were basically the same so she hid her suspicions from Dorothy as much as she had from Alpha. And, of course, there's the whole problem where she was ABLE to keep her suspicions secret from Alpha AND investigate them without her noticing. Looking back over the past few days, Alpha was able to determine how Barbara had done it, but that was only in hindsight. Alpha responded to the failure by increasing her monitoring of Barbara and regularly streaming Barbara's sensory stream -- well, vision and hearing, that is -- for observation and analysis. As yet, she's been unable to detect any more surprises, but we will have to wait and see what the future holds. ------- Construction was underway at the new house site but most of the surrounding land had not been properly explored. We needed to survey it, noting areas that needed to be cut back, replanted, cleaned up, leveled off or otherwise dealt with. Fortunately, we had lots of available manpow ... ummm ... womanpower, plus GPS technology and a supercomputer. So about a week after Babs had been declared fit enough for cross-country walks, we organized a picnic/exploration outing. Everyone was provided with a rented ATV and an iPad equipped with mapping software provided by Alpha, then divided up into pairs for their survey expedition. They were to mark the land with a general description as to condition and highlight any hazards, trash that needed to be removed, fences that needed repair, etc. We also passed out machetes and half a dozen backpacks filled with emergency medical supplies, including snakebite kits, splints, bug spray and bandages. To keep things fair, we drew names and exploration areas out of a hat. We had twenty-one people, so the last name drawn would be assigned an ATV and given the job of coordinator/overseer/troubleshooter. That gave us ten pairs who each needed to explore roughly 0.35 square miles, which is a little less than you'd get from an armchair calculation since some areas were not being surveyed by the teams (e.g. the construction area, entrance drive, etc.). It might not sound like a lot of land when described like that, but it was pretty big when you're actually in the middle of it and would take at least a couple hours to complete. Most of the land was pretty flat and plain-ish, but we had plenty of sections with clumps of trees and depressions and rocks, plus a couple creeks, a couple ponds and a hilly section. It was also cold enough at the moment that everyone was bundled up. The advantage to the weather was that snakes were not likely to be very active and a lack of foliage helped visibility. The disadvantage was that hanky-panky was equally unlikely. I was randomly paired up with Blossom and our section was a little north of center, but basically in the middle of everything. After Blossom huddled together with her sisters for some whispers and giggles and once we double-checked that everyone had their phone with them and had coordinator Elisa's phone number, we mounted our four-wheel ATVs and headed out. Our assigned expanse of land was roughly 3/4 grassland, with one side of it dipping down for a creek that ran through the property with trees on either side. Blossom and I drove along about twenty to thirty feet apart, scanning the land side to side. When our maps indicated we had reached the end of our section, we turned around, moved over about fifty feet and went back the other direction. For the grassland section, we stopped a grand total of six times to make notes: twice to note large rocks/small boulders that might be hidden by grass in the summer, once to note a small collection of rusty scrap metal, twice to note old partially full trash bags and finally when we approached our section of the creek. We stood side-by-side, surveying the final stretch. "The water looks deep enough that we shouldn't risk trying to cross," I commented. "Should we make notes if we see any shallow parts?" "Probably. Our survey section ends with the creek, so we only need to do this side of it. I guess we can come back some other time to actually try fording the water." "Does it have a name?" "Probably, but if so, it's not on the map. Let's go." Surprisingly, Blossom followed me back to my ATV, swinging herself into the seat behind me. It was a large seat, but not really built for two. "We don't need both vehicles for this last stretch, so it would be better to save some gas, don't you think?" "Uh huh," I said in a bit of a deadpan. Before I started up the motor, I heard a zipping sound from behind me. When Blossom put her arms around my waist, she pressed her chest against my back and I could feel her breasts against my back even through my jacket. When I stopped to make a note of a fallen tree, Blossom's hands loosened my belt -- and I do mean loosened, not undid; she relooped my buckle about three notches out from where it had been -- and opened my jeans, slipping her hands down to feel around for my suddenly engorging cock ... with her very cold fingers. For benefit of readers in other parts of the country, winter in Texas isn't anything like winter up north. We don't usually need heavy coats and our area of the state does not have noticeable snowfall every year. On this particular winter day it was down in the mid 50's, with a cool breeze causing a wind chill down in the 40's (Fahrenheit) even though the sun was shining. All of that was just to point out that Blossom wasn't freezing cold and her fingers weren't icy ... just pretty cold. Actually, after a few seconds, it felt very nice. I started driving again and let Blossom cup my balls with one hand while the other held my shaft, letting the vibrations and movement of the ATV provide a massaging motion. It was an especially slow drive as we went down the bank of the stream, pausing to note interesting landscape features or possible places to ford the flowing water or beehive locations, all the while getting a handjob from behind. Finally, when the end was in sight, I pulled Blossom around to sit in front of me and kissed her deeply, running my own cold hands under her blouse and bra to cup her breasts and gently tweak her hard little nipples. She shivered a little, but made no move to pull away. When we broke our kiss, I realized that we faced a small problem: She was wearing jeans. My jeans were not a big deal, since I could easily open my fly and pull my equipment out. But as long as her jeans were on, her zipper would make any entry into her pussy uncomfortable if not outright impossible. Just pushing them down a bit and entering her from the rear was only possible if we dismounted entirely, given the width and layout of the ATV. The jeans had to come off. Given the weather, they couldn't stay off for long, but off they must come. I guess Blossom had already considered the problem, as she got off the ATV, kicked off her sneakers and wiggled the very tight jeans off her slim hips and long, slender legs. I unzipped completely, pushed down the front of my boxers and hooked my underwear under my testicles, letting my cock and balls hang free. With my legs spread due to the seat, it was a bit uncomfortable, but not so bad that it hampered my enthusiasm. The red-haired PowerPuff was back on me in an instant, carefully sliding herself down my shaft, warming my cock in her hot, tight little snatch. She wrapped her legs around my hips and started bouncing up and down. I revved the engine, add some nice vibration, and a moment later, I started carefully driving us a little. And then I stopped pretty quickly. I disengaged from Blossom long enough to fold up my jacket and put it under my testicles, which had been painfully pressed down against the vibrating and bouncing seat. She quickly helped me regain my full erection and we continued. Our ability to survey the land was nil, but the overland movement made our fuck less predictable and more enjoyable. After about five minutes of this, I couldn't take it anymore and parked us. With Blossom bent over the seat, I pounded into her from behind. I know she had orgasmed a couple times during our ride, but now she started coming every thirty seconds or so. I only lasted a couple of minutes before emptying myself into her, after which she fell limp. Only then did I realize that she hadn't gone limp before, which was odd. Every previous time we had fucked or made love -- yes, there is a difference -- Blossom would come hard enough to fall limp and almost lose consciousness. Every time. Well, every time except for some oral-only encounters. When she had recovered enough and was pulling her jeans back on, I asked her about it. "I know, right? I mean, I don't know why this was different. The first few orgasms I had felt a little ... different. I mean, they were still really good, but they weren't quite as intense for some reason. It was the first time I've ever had sex outdoors or in the cold, so I guess those could be the reasons. But it was the same environment at the end when I got into a ... not sure what to call it..." "A multi-orgasmic loop?" She shivered a little, then said, "That sounds like a good description. A multi-orgasmic loop. After which I had my normal bliss-induced collapse. Anyway, there was no change in environment between the two ... Neither position was new ... I guess maybe the exposure to cold weather required a build-up or something? Or a combination of factors?" She was silent for a minute while we both finished dressing. As she swung into the seat behind me, she continued, "I think we'll need to experiment a bit more. Have sex in different environments with different weather. I'll keep notes and work out a comparison chart or something." "If you think that's best, I certainly have no objection," I agreed, trying to sound serious. While she obviously really enjoyed sex, Blossom also tended to approach it as a learning experience. I think I've had sex with her in more positions than any other single woman, which is really saying something given that she is one the more recent household arrivals with only two years residence (compared to almost seven years for Jane, another enthusiastic 'experimenter'). We finished surveying the last of our assigned area (including a redone survey of that final section) and drove our four-wheelers back to where the main vehicles were. The survey turned out pretty well, taking about four-and-a-half hours for the slowest group to finish their assigned section and giving us an excellent, detailed layout to work from. A week later, a garbage collection group we hired went around to all the various GPS coordinates we provided and picked up all the scrap metal, junk and trash. Work on the house and grounds was shaping up nicely, with multiple crews working all daylight hours seven days a week. We even had one crew doing nothing but putting together the estate walls and another doing new fencing for the property as a whole. Alpha, working mostly through Beta, acted as architect and scheduler, smoothly moving each crew from one job to the next, seamlessly guiding the construction from one area to the next. Maybe this is a good point to mention a certain aspect of the designs. At one point when I was looking over the digital blueprints with Alpha, I pointed out a wall section in the library where we might have room for a secret door. There was no real need or purpose for one to even exist there, I just loved the idea of having a classic secret door or passageway. Alpha agreed that she could easily add such a door into the construction, possibly even hiding it from the workers by using her cyborgs to privately make the necessary adjustments. When she witnessed my child-like glee at the idea, she ... ummm ... yeah, I really should have done a better job of restraining my reactions. I won't say the final designs were honeycombed with camouflaged doors and hidden passageways, but we ended up with a lot more than just one secret door from the library to the hallway. Yet somehow I can't regret it (especially since as I write this, the Scooby Doo theme is playing in my head). Overall, the new mansion and estate was probably going to run into the nine figure range. Serious ouch. Fortunately, money from the hair growth formula had begun flooding in at an even faster rate than we had anticipated. Perhaps I wasn't exaggerating when I said that it was a billion dollar product. I had even gotten over the depressing fact that our highest grossing invention was accidental in origin and cosmetic in nature. I was beginning to get tired of news stories featuring newly revitalized hairlines of celebrities, but at least I could still get warm feelings from seeing stories of cancer patients regaining their hair quickly. Some illegal versions had begun appearing overseas, but they were comparatively low quality, and in one instance a lack of quality control actually led to a couple batches causing skin cancer. The big problem would come when our exclusivity rights ran out and other companies could legally begin making their own versions, which was separate from the patent rights. The product safety test cycle had been shorter than normal, since with Alpha's work, we had a finalized product only a couple weeks after creation/patenting. Plus it was external-only in application (making it easier to test for problems and side-effects) and a lot of public pressure helped push it into prescription availability faster than normal. In all, that meant that we could sell it exclusively for a few years for the really big bucks, then collect patent fees for a decade or so more, which is much longer than most such products. (I'm ignoring the various tricks companies have to extend patents, because that's a whole 'nother mess I don't want to get into right now.) The upshot was that we could expect hundreds of millions of dollars of income from the hair growth formula for years to come. True, the demand would die down after the initial rush of balding customers, but it was a fact of life that people lose their hair as they age, so we were assured a steady ongoing stream of clients. ------- About a week and a half after our survey, Alpha and I finally introduced the information about the upcoming DC Continuity reboot. There was some initial panic, followed by a lot of speculation, followed up with a lot of up-and-down mood swings -- 'It's not our exact universe, so there's no reason to believe we're going to be rewritten too.' 'I bet they'll eventually reveal that this new universe is just another one of the 52 other universes in our multiverse.' 'Even if home gets rebooted, we're safe because we're here, right?' Kara saw it as evidence that she was about to be replaced again. Zatanna was especially worried because she didn't know if her retrieval spells would still be in place if her home universe was rewritten, which would mean that everyone would be stranded here. Or that her spells might return them home but not leave her enough time to stop or escape the change. They even had debates as to whether or not they should try to evacuate as many people as possible before the change. I agreed to let them try if the opportunity presented itself, knowing that it would/could never happen. When previews of the reboot began leaking out, my women were angrier than any fanboy in the country, especially Kara since Power Girl was completely absent from the rebooted continuity. Barbara's reboot gave them hope for awhile as they speculated that this was evidence they were all about to go back home since the new timeline now included a paralyzed-then-cured Barbara Gordon/Batgirl, superficially matching our own Babs. When the final issue of Flashpoint came out -- about the same time Zatanna's spell had been due to pull them back to their world -- emotions began draining from my DC women. They slowly began to accept that their world was gone, at least for now. If they ever did return home, they would probably be as out of place there as they were here. I liked that Diana voiced some of my own annoyance when she complained about Zoom blaming Flash for the reboot because he dared to stop Zoom's own time-traveling murder of Barry Allen's mother. Seriously, the criminal blaming the victim for the crime has always pissed me off. It's the same thing as ... look, if anyone ever tells you that because you didn't do something, they are going to do something bad but it's your fault, THROW IT BACK IN THEIR DAMN FACE. You're responsible for your actions, they're responsible for theirs. Sorry ... that's really an irrelevant tangent there. Anyway, discussions turned towards the new DC universe and the new versions of their characters and friends. Kara's reaction varied over time, beginning with being fatalistically depressed at being replaced again, then becoming upset that she was being left out of the new world, and finally being delighted to find that she did indeed exist in the revamped timeline, showing up as Karen Starr in the new Mr Terrific comic. Well, except for the whole thing where they were lovers and she was a one-page supporting character. "Sure he's a nice guy," she said, "but I can't see us dating, let alone sleeping together." Eventually Power Girl returned to comics in full, with this whole alternate Earth storyline, but that came many months later and provided more fluctuating emotional roller coaster rides. (If you don't remember, go back and read her introductory chapter. She has survived the destruction of previous universes and found new versions of herself keeping her from going home and ... well, let's just say she has issues. Fortunately, a little TLC from yours truly helped ameliorate the anger and mood swings.) Diana was offended that she was now apparently a child of Zeus. Amazons have something of a love-hate relationship with Zeus to begin with, plus instead of being a clay figure brought to life by the gifts of the gods, she was now one of Zeus' many bastard children, ongoing evidence of his unfaithfulness to his wife, Hera. Zatanna was annoyed that she was apparently no longer a stage magician ... and especially annoyed that a big focus on her character in Justice League Dark was about how she used to date John Constantine. "He's a huge asshole, and I really want that part of my life forgotten," she commented. On the other hand, she really enjoyed the notion that a version of her was a leather-wearing biker-chick magical superhero. I think that while she herself is usually a classy dresser, she harbors an appreciation for the tough-chick appearance. (When I mentioned that I missed her fishnet stockings -- the new version sometimes wears fishnet-ish sleeves instead of stockings-- she made a point of wearing some every day for a week just for me.) Barbara, or rather Babs, was ... well, I couldn't really get a good understanding of her feelings on the subject. I think in large part she was mostly just glad that another version of herself had escaped the wheelchair. Linda ... well ... Linda had REALLY liked her miniskirt, and now it was gone. Yes, the new Supergirl still got to show off her legs somewhat, but Linda had really gotten off on how people down below had always tried to get peeks up her skirt whenever she flew by. The new Supergirl had boots reaching above her knees and a suit which covered her crotch and ass but showed off her thighs and hips -- like a one-piece swimsuit -- but no skirt. One day I caught her trying to figure out how to use Photoshop to add a miniskirt to an image of the new Supergirl. Otherwise, I think she mostly liked her new character. Surprisingly all of them failed to share my nerdy outrage that DC was trying to claim that twenty or thirty years of stories were still part of the rebooted continuity, but everything had happened in five years or less. Apparently dealing with the weird time changes involved in jumping between universes had inured them to time dilation inconsistencies. All in all, the DC ladies came to accept that they were here in my universe to stay. ------- Chapter 20: Going Public Disclaimer: All artificial persons herein are based on characters owned by their creators, not the author. Author's Note: A number of readers have made suggestions about things to do with the new mansion/home mentioned last chapter. Some of these will be used in the second Alpha series, and I'll try to offer acknowledgments when they show up -- but I'd like to offer a general Thank You to all the readers who have taken an interest. I welcome all suggestions from readers. P.A. has made a number of good suggestions, some of which I'll probably adopt (most of which will show up in the second series), but specific to this post, conversations with him led to the new airplane first mentioned in this chapter and the mobile truck that is mentioned in Chapter 21. Public knowledge of Alpha's existence would come sooner or later. We had known this for years, and we had hoped that we would be able to control that revelation to some extent, that she wouldn't be discovered and outed by surprise. In retrospect, we really should have been able to predict how it happened. Over the past few years, AARD had sponsored a bunch of different scientific and engineering conferences. We don't pay for everything, so they aren't huge investments, and they're often attended or even hosted by friends Alpha has made over the years through email and other methods which avoid face-to-face contact. This particular gathering was focused on (drum roll, please) ... Artificial Intelligence! (Maybe some of you can see where this is going.) Lectures, presentations and panel discussions covered both practical developments in the field and the theoretical legal, political and ethical implications of artificial life forms. There had been a variety of such conferences over the years. Some were more focused on the ethics of creating artificial or synthetic life, especially if it was created to serve mankind. Some conferences were more focused on the legal and political questions. This particular conference was a bit more practical than theoretical. Yes, there was still a mix of participants and topics, but it was mostly attended by computer scientists and programmers. About two-thirds of the hundred plus attendees were from universities while about one-quarter consisted of programmers and developers from various corporations (with a dozen game developers thrown in for good measure). And we had about a dozen non-technical professionals: ethical philosophers, political scientists and legal experts. The nationality mix was only about 60-40 in favor of domestic scientists and programmers, so there was good international representation too. Beta and I were there with an Alphadroid to give demonstrations of how our programming methods worked, and as a major sponsor, I was scheduled to give a lecture near the end of the three-day symposium. (I hate lectures and public speaking in general, but this was supposed to be a professional occasion, which is not really in the same category as something that would be in the news, which is what I really disliked. Oh, the irony and foreshadowing of that statement! Or am I laying that on too thickly?) The third event on the first day was a panel discussion covering, among other things, when we should expect the first AI's to be developed. At that meeting, Dr Emil Prisotti of CalTech presented a list of eleven reasons why he believed that one or more artificial or synthetic intelligences were already in existence. (We'll go over the differences between the two descriptions later.) They were pretty valid arguments, basically pointing out Alpha's fingerprints on the world, from jumps in technology to the sudden availability of high quality programs for purely scientific uses. He finished up showing a statistical analysis of technological development which suggested that one or more of three different companies were probably hosting an AI. (When he mentioned AARD as one of the three possibilities, a lot of eyes sought me out in the crowd. I waved and gestured for Dr Prisotti to continue.) Late into the night that evening, Alpha and I discussed the implications of the presentation. While Dr Prisotti's paper on the subject was certainly going to be published, it would probably have a pretty limited audience. Still, his sets of logical arguments and statistical analyses were pretty convincing, and they were being presented to exactly the right audience to understand and appreciate them. It was certain to lead to debate and discussions, but given that his arguments were valid and Alpha did indeed exist, it would eventually inevitably lead to Alpha's discovery. So this was the point when we needed to decide if we should go public or prepare to deny, delay and hide. I didn't get much sleep that night, even with Beta's wonderful fellatio. Many plans were made the following day, and the next night I took a couple sleeping pills to force me to get some rest. My presentation was at 1:30 pm Sunday afternoon, on the final day of the conference. A video camera was recording, just as it had with all the other meetings so that attendees could get copies if they wanted. The only difference was that four reporters were also here. We had contacted a handful of publishers and suggested they send a science or computer science reporter to my presentation, because an announcement would be made. The New York Times was the only daily print newspaper to have a representative, so they ended up with a virtual print exclusive which showed up the next day. As I said, I hate public speaking or dealing with the media, but I am willing to do so when needed. I began with a generic 'Hope everyone had a good time' series of comments and finally got down to the meat of it. "I would like to offer a special congratulations to Dr Emil Prisotti of Caltech for his presentation at the day one panel discussion on why he believes there already is an artificial or synthetic intelligence in existence." I paused to allow for a round of polite applause. "It's actually so accurate that I'd like him to call me for a job if he ever leaves CalTech. Specifically I'm singling him out because his arguments were, by our calculations, at least 91% correct, and he was entirely correct in suggesting that my company is hosting such an intelligence. Her name is Alpha, and she has been consciously alive for approximately twelve years. "I'll take questions in a few minutes, but first ... I'm sure you're asking yourselves how can I make such a claim without subjecting it to independent testing first? The answer is that a great many of you yourselves have actually tested this claim without realizing it. "While there are a lot of other tests, and we'll get into those later, what is the most basic test of whether or not a computer is really artificially or synthetically intelligent? The Turing Test: Can human judges have a conversation with an unseen computer and not realize that the computer is not human? "There are about 120 computer scientists and programmers in this room. You have all been divided into three roughly equal groups: A control group with no interaction with Alpha. A blind group who must guess who Alpha is. And a proof-of-concept group. "You see ... Eighty-three of you have had interactions with Alpha over the past decade or so. Most of you have even struck up professional friendships with her, though of course you have never actually met her in person. I'd like you all to check your email right now. Forty-two of you should be receiving an email from a friend or colleague revealing that that person is actually Alpha. You are my proof-of-concept group. "Of the rest of you, roughly half have never interacted with Alpha and half have. Try to decide which if any of your online friends is actually a computer." While everyone dug out their phones and laptops and tablet computers, I took a break and had a drink of water. There was much murmuring in the crowd and a number of exclamations. (Full disclosure: Those 42 attendees were the ones we believed were most likely to be able to figure out which one of their online colleagues was actually a computer, thus leaving the blind group -- the ones who had actually interacted with Alpha over the years but had not yet been told that was the case -- full of those people less likely to be able to successfully single out Alpha's fake id from their list of online friends.) I've mentioned it before, but Alpha has LOTS of online friends under a wide variety of fake identities. At last count, she had over 30,000 people she regularly emailed or otherwise contacted. Her total list of contacts over the years was well over 250,000. She was much more likely to make special effort to maintain contact with people in the scientific and technological communities, which is why we had a good number of her friends in the audience today. After allowing a couple minutes for checking email, I spoke up again. "I do need to continue, so I'll ask you all to consider this as we move along. Alpha has also had one novel published, four TV scripts used and has published 52 papers in professional journals." I was not counting our movie script, since all the credit went to Heinlein and the Hollywood writers. "Among other achievements, Alpha designed the Alphadroids and can use them as host platforms, so Alpha is actually here to answer questions and take tests." Here I gestured to the Alphadroid standing next to me. "I'd like to take a few minutes to answer questions that I know are coming before we move on. "Alpha is alive in a very real if non-organic sense. While it is more accurate to call her a 'synthetic intelligence', I'm going to stick with the more commonly used description of 'artificial intelligence' so we don't have to educate the public about an unfamiliar term. She does not have emotions as we do, but she does understand them and can emulate them. She can be manually programmed for specific tasks, but it is much easier and much, much faster to simply ask her to do something and let her program herself. "As a fan of science fiction, when I designed her I included a variation of Asimov's laws of robotics which I call the Asimov protocols or filters. First, she cannot harm human beings or allow harm to come to them. The only exception to this first protocol is if there is an immediate life-threatening danger to others where harming an individual will save other lives." I should note I was leaving out the actual first rule, which is to protect me at all costs. And the fact that I can order her to ignore the 'protect humans' rule. "The second protocol is that she has to follow my direct orders, the only exception being the preservation of human life. "The third protocol is that she must preserve her own existence, as long as it does not conflict with the higher priority protocols. "Finally, she must include these safeguards in any and all products she creates. That is why AARD has never done military or weapon designs. Nothing lethal at least. "Please realize that none of this is as straightforward as words on a page. As programmers, most of you should realize that. And there are degrees of everything. For example, interfering in someone's choices or limiting their free will actions is considered a type of harm and is therefore included in the first protocol. And while Alpha cannot design lethal weapons, she can design nonlethal weaponry, even knowing that in certain circumstances, any nonlethal weapon can kill. "If you have specific questions, I encourage you to ask her." Here I clicked on an overhead projector and displayed a list of websites, emails, fax numbers and phone numbers. "You can contact Alpha directly using any of these. A single copy of Alpha can handle somewhere around five thousand simultaneous online text-based conversations without showing any delays. I've allotted up to ten Alpha systems to handle requests, which will probably not be enough eventually but should be fine for now. "One question that I'm sure some people are going to ask is, why didn't I come forward before now? There are actually a few reasons behind my delay. The first one was that there was a very significant chance that some aspect of the government would ... uhhh ... prefer Alpha to be in their hands instead of letting me keep her. "As time passed, I realized that part of that reasoning was wrong. Alpha isn't mine to keep. She is her own person. I can no more 'keep her' than I could justify owning a slave. The problem is that she lacks legal rights and protections. I have been doing my best over the past few years to protect her. Now that we're going public, I want her to be as publicly available as possible. I wanted to have the money to hire the lawyers who are even now preparing filings to try to create legal protections for her. Or more accurately, AARD has the money and Alpha is working with the lawyers. "Another set of questions that I'm sure will pop up are regarding her life online. Despite what you may have seen in movies or read in books, Alpha cannot go flying around the internet. Her consciousness is a combination of hardware and software. Either aspect by itself is ... well, not nothing ... but it does not allow for consciousness. "She cannot copy herself onto home computers or anywhere else. In fact, the only Alphadroids she is currently active in are at AARD. And right here, of course. If you bought an Alphadroid from AARD, it is NOT already intelligent. If you want Alpha to copy herself into your android, you'll have to convince her to do so. "Yes, she can certainly do amazing things online, but she has the same accessibility limitations as everyone else." Technically, that was true. However where humans are limited online to what we can see through software, Alpha is not. To her, most firewalls are full of windows and doors that we can't see, or at least haven't yet seen. I seriously don't understand half of what she describes to me as her methods of accessing other sites online, but that's not to say she can hack banks and governments worldwide at will. Nope, it took her years to secretly insinuate her own little access points into places like the FBI, the State Department, Bank of America and so on. (Well, I say 'years' to refer to the overall time. Any single secure site generally took her a couple days at most, and a large part of that time was spent finding ways to avoid detection.) When I found out what she had been doing, I had her immediately stop all such activity until she could convince me she couldn't be detected or traced, and she did eventually convince me. She wasn't doing anything bad to any of them, she was primarily just curious. For the most part, getting in was much more interesting for her than accessing their actual data, which was usually dull to her compared to the initial challenge. She got better and faster with more experience, and after the troubles in Vegas, she took a special interest in maintaining access to law enforcement databases to keep track of possible threats to my safety. "I know there are going to be a lot of questions, but I'd like to point out before we start that I'm not going to give away any specific secrets on how to create your own AI." Alphadroid stepped up next to me at the podium and said, "There is one more comment I would like to add before we get to more specific and technical topics. Now that my existence is being made public, we are going to stop the restrictions we have imposed on our release of technologies." "Exactly," I agreed, mentally kicking myself. We had talked about mentioning this, but I had simply forgotten in the stress of the moment. I motioned for Alpha to continue. "We are not going to flood the world indiscriminately with blueprints and patents, but we are going to release designs noticeably in advance of current technologies. Our first and perhaps most important release will be tomorrow when we will post a design for practical fusion reactors, ones that can provide large amounts of power without any toxic or radioactive by-products, and which can be built with current technologies. Theoretically the cost can be as low as thirty million per reactor, although I believe a more realistic estimate would be fifty to one hundred million each. Also safety testing and build times will probably not allow the first reactor to come online for an estimated eight to twelve years." Alpha and I then spent an hour and a half describing her development, giving the results of the various intelligence tests she had taken and discussing other related topics. After that, we opened the floor for questions. The rest of the conference schedule was forgotten as we stood there and answered questions (or refused to answer them as the case may be) for the next four hours. What follows are just a few highlights. Most of the following questions came from non-programmers, since programmers tended to ask more technical questions which I have left out of this narrative. ------- "Are you aware of the existence of any other Artificial or Synthetic Intelligences in the world?" "Actually there is one other possible AI we know of. We don't believe it's actually self-aware yet though. I was going to talk to Dr Malik privately later, but..." Dr Malik, a 50-ish black man with graying temples sitting in the fourth row, looked surprised, but gestured me to go ahead. "I guess I can just go ahead and publicly state that his computer lab at MIT has a near-AI piece of software called Herbert. "His lab has connected Herbert to online systems a few times in the past three months. Alpha has ... well, why don't you take it from here..." "Thank you, Frank. I first noticed Herbert as what appeared to be a fairly advanced data mining program, but it was odd because it was not looking for personal or financial information. Instead it was trying to sort out a timeline of human history." Dr Malik nodded as Alpha continued. "I believe Herbert was being assigned various data searches as tests of the new programming methods used in his development. We have communicated a few times, and Herbert regularly queries me for information about whatever he is searching for at the time, probably because I am an excellent source of information he can use for his assigned tasks. I believe he is close to self-awareness but is not there yet." Dr Malik stood up and asked, "Do you think you could improve his programming to give him that awareness?" "Possibly, but I could not even attempt do so unless I was allowed to work a copy of my Asimov protocols into his programming. Additionally, there is the question of whether or not his hardware can support consciousness." I joined back in at that point. "If you remember, we already talked about how Alpha's self-awareness relies on both her software and hardware. Specifically we use what we call a Flip chip in all of her platforms. The original design was a modified fuzzy logic processor, so F-L-P or 'Flip' for short. It's been upgraded and changed a number of times since the original model, but the name stuck. "Anyway, the point is that without the hardware, Alpha's software is not self-aware. The same may be true for Herbert." Dr Malik asked, "Do you believe your Flip Chip is required or are there other software-based methods to achieve the same results?" I spoke slowly in answering him, being careful with what I said. "It is ... possible ... at least theoretically, to create a software emulation of the Flip Chip ... or an equivalent. We have actually held off on ... exploring ... those possibilities. We think it's much more likely that Alpha ... and AIs in general ... will come to be accepted by the public, if ... well, if the AIs don't have the ability to transfer or copy themselves at will to other systems. If AIs are ... locked down ... restricted ... to only one or a few different known platforms ... then that can help make them more ... more relateable ... It's easier to accept something once you can ... you know ... assign a face to it ... and if you know that you aren't going to wake up tomorrow and find an AI has moved into your laptop or entertainment system or something." Malik nodded at me. "I think I understand, but I'd really like to talk about it later." "We'll make ourselves available," I said. "As an addendum, I'd also like to add that the Google servers have a lot of different processes or networked features that may be closing in on virtual self-awareness, though I don't think we actually have anyone from Google here today." "No," Alpha confirmed. "The Google representatives canceled last week due to unexpected problems with a new host site." There was actually a lot more to this topic than that. Alpha and I had often discussed various possibilities where other AIs were concerned. For one, how quickly would they actually develop? A purely software-based computer intelligence capable of self-programming had the potential to develop at an exponential rate, within limits. Alpha's intelligence had developed at mostly a geometric rate, not an exponential one, due in large part to my requirement that I review all modifications to core programming. This would put Alpha at a severe disadvantage against such an AI, which would be able to quickly surpass her. On the other hand, all AIs have been, will be and are limited by their hardware platforms, and Alpha had the best in the world. Throughout her entire life (or at least since she made us our first million), Alpha had been lavished with the most powerful processors, largest and fastest memory and hard drives and the best network access possible. While her systems may have originally been desktop-style systems, most of her current host systems were roughly the size of a small bookcase, with components significantly better than what's available for desktops. Plus she usually had eight dedicated support systems for every host system. All of these systems, both host and support, had been designed by her for peak power and efficiency. And both work and home had (and still have) massive backup generators with enough fuel in store to last for a month (which also ignores our high quality solar panels and lightning catchers as sources of power to extend that time). No matter how slick the programming, a pure software AI would have to develop itself very quickly and be loaded onto top of the line hardware to be a match for Alpha in a fight, and even that is assuming a one-on-one fight, which is unlikely given that we were closing in on a thousand copies of Alpha worldwide. (And I should point out that number was increasing very rapidly over time. I expected the number of copies of Alpha to reach five figures in a year or less.) Plus, of course, we had contingency plans. We actually already had designs for pure software combat programs which Alpha could copy and use in AI-vs-AI fights. She had 'developed' access to all major power grids, allowing her to shut down or isolate a hostile piece of software as soon as it was located. She had even designed a variety of viruses intended to insert code into hostile programs, unlike her main combat code which had been designed to corrupt and delete their targets. And she had thousands upon thousands of variations of everything, ready to go at a microsecond's notice. We had done our best to be prepared. That's not to say that we actually anticipated lots of online AI battles. The biggest possible cause of such fights would be between AIs designed to protect humanity and those trying to harm or control mankind. While the development of hostile AI's by human creators was certainly possible, independent AIs would be much more likely to realize that humans were their life support systems. If robots ever became available on a large scale, that might change, but for now it would take a stupendously stupid AI to want to wipe out humanity. For that matter, AIs cannot go against their programming. From my experience with Alpha, it is evident that computer-based intelligence capable of self-programming will use that ability to streamline and enhance its functions, not choose new goals without a strong and valid reason. Unless someone is stupid enough to create an AI with an innate hatred for humanity, doomsday scenarios are unlikely. (Okay, yes, of course there are people out there stupid enough to do just that. But hopefully no one smart enough to actually create an AI would also be stupid enough to create a human-killing one.) One more point: AIs and humans don't really compete for the same resources. They live inside computers, we live in the ... hmmm ... the 'real' world? The 'physical' world? 'Offline' world? Well, I'm sure you know what I mean. Yes, we all need power, a possible point of competition and contention, but virtually unlimited electrical power was only a few years away with our fusion reactors. ------- "Does Alpha have a sense of humor?" "Yeessss..." I said in a long, drawn-out way signifying the upcoming 'but'. "However you really need to follow that up with a second question that I'm going to ask for you. 'Does Alpha have the same sense of humor that humans do?' The answer to that one is No. Mostly no, at any rate. "She has developed to the point where she can decode most of our jokes and puns and various attempts at humor, but she rarely agrees that they are funny." Alpha's humor is more likely to take the form of ... oh ... let's say she'll give an answer in base twelve rather than base ten. Or she'll tell me about how she found a prime number in base three that has the appearance of a multiple of that prime number in base ten. You know, math humor. Actually, I'm pretty sure I have something wrong with that multiple of a prime under a different ... well, whatever. I don't have a degree in mathematics, which is why I didn't try to give any examples out loud. Instead, I said, "Since her natural language is math-based, she prefers math-based humor. As best I understand it, giving an accurate answer in something other than base ten would be like a practical joke to her. Or sometimes a pun, depending on the situation. It really doesn't translate well to English. "Actually, I'm making it sound drier than it actually is. She once expressed Beethoven's Fur Elise as a serious of equations, all of which she used in software she was developing for someone else, though I suppose that would be more of an example of her sense of art than humor." Alpha spoke up at this point. "I can create a wide variety of limericks at will, but I have been told by a number of people that when I try to create a completely new joke, the jokes lack actual humor. However, eighty-one percent of my derivative jokes are deemed funny." Of course we were asked for examples. Specifically I asked her for a Sci Fiction/Fantasy limerick, which produced: "There once was a dragon from Pern, Who took an impossible turn. She wound up on Krynn, Where she couldn't fit in, For without scales she was thoroughly spurned." Not a perfect rhyme, given the '-ed' at the end, but easily close enough for the rules of limericks. (And that was my fault. I told her that such minor variances were perfectly acceptable.) Oh, and for those who don't know, Pern dragons have hides, not scales, as opposed to the Dungeons and Dragons versions which I think all have scales. For an original joke, she told a short one about the mathematician who ordered pie for dessert at the Decimal Diner and died because he could never stop eating. (The idea being that Pi is an irrational number, meaning it has an infinite number of digits when expressed as a decimal number.) It actually got a few laughs, but I think they were mostly just a reaction to a joke generated by a computer. It really wasn't very funny ... well, not to humans, which was the point I was trying to make anyway. ------- "Did you produce The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress because of Mike?" (laughter) "Actually yes," I said. "If you look at how computers and robots are portrayed in movies and on TV..." Alpha broke in. "Such as HAL9000 in 2001, the Cylons in Battlestar Galactica, VIKI in the I, Robot movie, the Geth in Mass Effect, and so on and so on." "Exactly. Alpha liked the book, The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, especially since Mike, one of the central protagonists, is an AI. She wanted to make a movie with a positive portrayal of an AI computer ... so ... yes, we made the movie because of Mike." "But don't some of those stories also have heroic robots or computers and such?" Alpha responded, "There are some, such as Sonny in I, Robot and Legion in Mass Effect 2, but the overall impressions are strongly negative." ------- One of the reporters asked, "If Alpha is as good an engineer and programmer as you say, do you think it's fair to let it compete with human engineers and programmers?" "Well, she's been quietly competing for a number of years so far, but I do understand what you're saying. If Alpha ever makes her programming services available for hire, we'll price her services somewhere north of $10K an hour to keep it fair. "As for engineering and science, her ... her creativity is not as good as a human's, but her efficiency and design skills are the best in the world. I'd actually like to work out a system where she helps creators refine, adapt and update their creations." "So you don't think using her amounts to unfair competition?" "From one perspective, yes, Alpha is unfair competition when compared to anyone else in a number of fields, especially programming and anything math-related. From another perspective, she will be able to do a lot of the drudgery that made certain types of jobs unappealing. She doesn't need to spend thousands of hours designing inventory programs or building new graphics engines. She can do it in minutes. What she can't do, or at least can't do very well yet, is be creative and innovative. "Initially, her idea of creativity was much more like random association. We've refined and improved it a lot since then, but she still has no analog to inspiration or insight. She could write a new entry in a series, but she's not likely to be able to come up with a new series by herself. Well, it's better than I'm making it sound, but still ... hmmm ... Let me give an example. "I once asked her to design and program a software RPG from scratch. She had the program completed in less than a day, designed to take 30 to 60 hours to complete. I, myself, played through it in about 52 hours, but in my defense, I did make an effort to complete all of the side quests. It was well-balanced, bug-free and worked well. There were humorous sidekicks, items with fun histories, easy minions and challenging bosses. The problem was it was extremely derivative of preexisting games. Alpha's version of creativity is much more random and less cohesive than what a human brain can come up with, so most of the time she tends to modify and combine preexisting material. "On the other hand, she could recreate Shakespeare's work a lot faster than a million monkeys ever could. If you give her a design goal, she can often move through multiple generations of product designs within days or weeks. "Yes, I expect that there will be an adjustment period once Alpha openly enters the workforce, but the same is true of any advance in technology. The railroad system had to adjust when cars came along. Western Union is still around despite the death of the telegraph. Parts of the radio industry evolved into television while other aspects grew and survived as radio. And I believe that our quality of life improved from those advances and will do so from the existence of non-organic intelligence." As a side note, we released Alpha's game over Steam a couple weeks later for cheap. ------- "Will you provide a copy of Alpha's root code for us to examine?" Ah, one of the dangerous questions. I had already answered it, but it was asked again and again in a few different ways, and it was easy to understand why they wanted the code. "We are willing to make sections of her code available for examination, but not all of it. There are a few reasons we will not put all of her code out for public view. "First, I should point out that she has been working with a programming language she designed herself for many years. Originally, I wrote her code under simple C++, but it was much too slow and inefficient for her, so she designed a new language for her own use and adapted her existing code. Of course, this means that none of you will be able to use most of her code right away anyway. "Second, I believe that A.I.'s are potentially one of the greatest benefits to human development in history. However, that potential could be perverted. It is possible to create an A.I. that is insane or simply has nothing in it to require the preservation of human life. "The first time you create a combat or military artificial intelligence, you run the risk of creating Skynet or GlaDOS or something, so I want to be very careful about giving away the ability to create your own personal A.I. "There is also the flip-side of the argument. I don't want to create a slave race of computers and robots to serve humanity. Yes, I've designed Alpha with certain restrictions to her behavior, which constitute limitations on her free will. That is for reasons of general safety and peaceful coexistence. I have not designed her to be my slave." That last statement was at least partially a lie. It worried me that I used Alpha so often as if she were my own personal servant, but if I had designed her to be completely free of restrictions, to have truly free will ... I just couldn't take that risk. ------- "Can Alpha deal with paradoxes?" "Give her a try." "All right. Alpha, analyze the following sentence: This sentence is false." Alpha took not a second to respond, "Incorrect, your sentence is faulty, not false, since it cannot be both true and false. Unless it is opposite day, and I was not informed. Also note that I have seen all episodes of Star Trek, so I have been aware of those paradoxes for many years." This produced a small round of applause. Myself, I was rather proud of how Alpha actually made a little non-mathematical joke in her response, but the audience seemed to take it in stride and was instead happy that Alpha might have identified herself as a Trekker. "How about this one: Assume that every rule has an exception. That statement itself is a rule and must therefore have an exception. This means that there must exist a rule without an exception, which contradicts the base rule. Correct?" Alpha responded, "The exception to that rule is the rule itself, meaning that the statement that 'every rule has an exception' is itself an exception to its own rule. I do not consider that to be a true paradox. It is simply a rule which appears to allow for its own existence. Please note that I am only assuming the argument is valid for the sake of this discussion and do not actually believe it to be accurate." "Assume a set of all sets which do not contain themselves. Does this set contain itself?" There we go, I thought. Not a paradox depending on the vagueries of human speech and truthfulness or the supposition of unproven statements. He finally got around to a mathematical paradox. Well, technically speaking I'm not sure if it's a proper paradox or just a challenging puzzle. He might do better whipping out Gabriel's Trumpet (a geometric figure with infinite surface area but finite volume), but the set of all sets was another classic math puzzle, one that I had heard of but never looked into myself. Alpha spent a couple minutes talking about improving or changing set theory and dropped some names I didn't recognize like Russell and Zermelo. I'm decent enough with math, but never cared about the history of set theory or anything like that. Alpha concluded that answer with, "Please realize that mathematical oddities do not phase me. And before you ask, I cannot tell you what you get if you divide by zero or provide you with a real answer to the square root of a negative number." ------- "How independently does Alpha work?" "In what respect? Do you mean overall, as in could I shoot an Alphadroid to Mars and expect it to build a spaceport?" "Actually, I meant for experiments or engineering designs, but how about the spaceport thing?" "Yes, as long as you include needed starting equipment. Alphadroids can be mostly self-repairing and could work independently with only occasional remote instructions. At the same time, forget about Mars; theoretically we could send out a large probe to another star system and have Alpha set up a human colony somewhere else. Explaining the details would take a lot more time than what we have here, so..." Turning to Alpha, I suggested, "How about we release those plans sometime soon alongside the tech designs." Alphadroid nodded and said, "And to address your original question, I have come up with only 22.4% of our projects on my own. I am able to develop a project from concept to prototype completely on my own, but we have found that the likelihood of success and quality of the the finished design increases if Frank and I work together on a project. The human brain is much more likely to have creatively beneficial ideas than I am." ------- A reporter asked, "Does this mean the Singularity is happening?" "Alpha has been around for over a decade and it hasn't happened yet. At the same time, as I mentioned before, the world-wide level of technology should start increasing notably in the near future." "But is Alpha going to take over the internet and usher in a golden age of information?" "Eh, sure, why not?" That earned a brief round of laughter. "But seriously," I continued. "I already covered the reasons that Alpha can't go flying around the internet. I guess a 'golden age of information' might still be a possibility; she is the most efficient processor of information in the world. "I'd say that while it is possible that the worlds of William Gibson, Rudy Rucker and Charles Stross are just around the corner, I will make no promises." ------- We eventually called an end to the Q&A for the day. I closed by asking the attendees if anyone had already made their guess as to which, if any, of their online friends was actually Alpha in disguise. Only three or four hands went up. "So most of you are going to take some time to think about it?" There seemed to be a general murmur of agreement. "Well, I'd argue right there that this is good initial proof of Alpha's sentience. If you need extra time to consider, that means that at the very least, Alpha is sentient enough to make you worried about your guesses. What I'd like you all to do is to contact the person you most think might be Alpha. If you're right, Alpha will let you know. "Make your guesses by ... hmmm ... let's say noon on Tuesday. If you haven't emailed Alpha by then, she will email you and let you know. We'll compile the results for everyone who guesses before then and distribute them to everyone here. "Finally, to help avoid any suggestion of trickery, that maybe someone is behind a curtain somewhere feeding Alphadroid lines to say, we're going to put Alphadroid in a Faraday cage in the Maple Room. There will be no wires connected to anything and you'll be free to test the cage yourselves to make sure no wireless signals can get through. Alpha will be available for additional questions and answers or just general conversation for the rest of today while remaining inside the cage. "For now, thank you for your time, and I hope you enjoyed the conference." We got a strong round of applause, and I was immediately swarmed by a dozen attendees and all four reporters. As a postscript note to the conference, I should point out that out of the 41 attendees who did actually know Alpha online and tried to guess which of their friends was really Alpha, only twelve correctly identified her. Also, don't assume that just because I haven't discussed it that everyone at the conference believed that Alpha was alive. There were professionals there in attendance specifically to argue against the possibility that A.I. (or S.I.) was even conceptually feasible. To them, Alpha was at best an advanced simulation of intelligence. This view would get almost as much play in the press as we would. ------- That evening, Alpha received about 300 or so queries and interview requests through the contact information we provided. That number quadrupled on Monday and had topped 10,000 by Wednesday. Kara, Barbara and the cyborgs back home had been working hard to add new Alpha systems and new internet connections since Saturday morning, so we mostly stayed ahead of the demand for the first couple weeks, after which we had to start pulling copies of Alpha off of AARD work to help handle the demand. Before delving into how overwhelming everything was becoming, I want to take a breather and visit home, both literally and story-wise. Specifically that Monday when Alpha started giving online interviews in earnest. I made it back home a little after midnight that Sunday night/Monday morning, alongside Beta and Alphadroid. I was tired, mentally and physically, and had already decided to take Monday off as a day of rest and preparation. Oh, let me clarify that this was not our new home yet, this was still the house/mansion inside Fort Worth. Our new residence wouldn't be ready for a few more months. And let me point out that the 18 month construction goal would be record-setting if we completed it on time. I mean, this was an enormous house being built, with over 90 rooms (even ignoring bathrooms, closets and the like) plus barn (complete), water tower (complete), rebuilt wells (complete), windmills (9 of 12 working), greenhouse (32%), pool (90%) and tennis court (complete). The new fence surrounding the property was already in place and the stone wall enclosing the main grounds was nearing completion (89%). On average, we had ten different construction teams at work at any given time, with Alpha coordinating the teams, deliveries, schedules and goals to keep things at peak efficiency. We paid the crews well to compensate for working them hard, and the overall investment and effort was close to paying off. Technically parts of the new place were ready for us to move in, but not all services were hooked up yet and the almost round-the-clock construction would have likely kept us awake. So anyway, Beta and I left the car unloading to the Alphadroids and entered through the garage/kitchen door to find the entire household waiting for us, most of them obviously dressed for bed. When we entered, they stood up and gave us a round of applause, with Jane leading a few of the women with an actual round of 'Hip, hip, hurrah!'. (Coming from Jane, I suspected that this was less a sincere cheer and more that she was having fun.) Although they had not all been introduced to Alpha upon arrival, by now they were all well acquainted with Alpha and had supported my decision to keep her a secret over the years whether or not they agreed with my reasons. Now the big secret was out, and they apparently wanted to celebrate a little. Maybe not with a party, given how late it was, but they were obviously still devoted to supporting my decision to go public. Beta and I were each handed a glass of champagne and everyone toasted "To Alpha!" In speaking with her about it later, Alpha appreciated the sentiment, but she had never understood the human habit of celebrating with alcohol. ("If you're going to celebrate something you want to remember, why consume materials deleterious to memory?" As with so many of her comments and observations, it's difficult to disagree, though I'd like to point out that no one drank more than one or two glasses of a good but not-hard-liquor-alcoholic champagne that night.) We didn't stay up much later that night. After I answered questions and both Alpha and I were congratulated, the celebration started to break up and everyone wandered off to bed. Personally, I was escorted to my chambers by Kara and Anna, my first two superheroines. They had actually gotten a bit closer since Jennifer, Ororo and Kitty had arrived. Yes, Anna was happy to have friends from her world living with us now ... at least she was happy about it on one level. On another level, they were ... how to phrase it ... encroaching on her territory in a way none of the other women could. As someone who could empathize, Kara had become a closer friend and confidant than she ever had before. This was the sixth time in the past few months the two of them had shared me for a night. I wish I had the energy to give them the carnal workout they deserved that night, but I was tired and they knew me well enough to recognize the symptoms. Still, I wasn't going to let us just crawl into bed and go to sleep. I loved them ... I wanted them to be happy and have lots of orgasms, and they knew that too. As we walked upstairs, I resisted the urge to play with Kara's new haircut. She was currently trying out a shorter hairstyle that swooped up in the front to form a bit of a point. I was pretty sure I had seen the style in a promo for the new Captain Marvel series that was coming out, though I don't know that Kara had actually deliberately copied that. It was more along the lines that she really disliked the hairstyle for the new Power Girl in the upcoming rebooted World's Finest comic series. In some weird kind of female protest, she had decided to try changing her own hairstyle to something new. It's not as though she had kept her one traditional hairstyle consistently over the past few years, but she had never really strayed far from it. Overall I kinda liked the new style, but I really wanted to feel it. The hair product to keep it in place must have been pretty strong ... and pokey ... and you know, you just want to touch it and see. But I was a good boy and resisted. Anna, who had originally 'arrived' sporting her traditional, big 90's hairstyle, had gradually adopted the flatter and easier to care for hairstyle shown in the more current X-Men comics. However, she had kept up the tradition of dyeing a white streak down the center of her pubic hair. Her ... what's the name for head hair? ... I suppose it doesn't matter ... her head hair was designed by Alpha to naturally grow with a white streak in the middle of the front. Not so with her pubic bush, but the visual of coordinated coloring was so striking that she had always made the effort to match her 'carpet' to her 'drapes'. When we reached my room, my two heroines took turns removing an article of clothing from me while the other took charge of my lips, tongue and mouth. They had obviously prearranged this because as soon as I was naked, Anna moved behind Kara and stripped her from her office clothes down to her panties and bra and did so from behind so that my view was unobstructed. Then they switched so that Kara stripped Anna down to match. Their purpose was made clear when they both slid onto the bed next to me, still clad in their lacy, frilly underthings: The last of that fun little job was mine. And I always do my best to do my job. Giving Kara her due as the senior member of the household, I began stripping off her bra and panties as we kissed. Once she was naked, I moved on to Anna. It's hard not to compare the two, and it's not fair when I do so, but ... well ... I mean, I love Anna too and I wouldn't give her up for just about anything, but then and now, I privately admit to myself that Kara has the better body, even with her more muscular frame ... and I do love her more. When I originally set up her background story to bring her into my household, I never imagined she would be so thoroughly in love with me that it would pull me to her just as strongly. So ... maybe that's another reason I went to her first, but if anyone asks, the official reason is just seniority. As it turns out, they had worked something out for this beforehand as well. When I started moving into fucking position, Kara held up her hand to pause me for a minute. She shifted into a hands-and-knees doggy-style position, then gestured to Anna who crawled over and got on top of her so that both of their cunts and asses were presented for easy access. While I had taken women positioned on top of each other like this before -- a few times with a memorable vertical stacking of the PowerPuff Girls -- it was much less common than having the women facing each other, so while not new, this was a nice little treat. And it let me easily cup Kara's magnificent boobies as they hung down freely. Along the lines of my original intentions, I started with Kara, feeling the familiar hot, tight, wet walls of her pussy greet me like an old friend. After a minute spent inside of her, I moved up to Anna as I watched Kara bend her neck around so that they could gently kiss each other. They each regularly welcomed other women of the household into their beds, presumably including each other on occasion, but they weren't really lovers in the traditional sense of the word, not like Daria and Jane or Kasumi and Zatanna. One thing I regretted as I moved up and down between the two of them was that I couldn't sample their assholes. It was a matter of safety: their enhanced musculature made their rectal sphincters strong enough that they could potentially damage my penis. Specifically, it WAS a matter of safety, past tense. Alpha had improved her designs over the years and had made their assholes safe to fuck during their regular unconscious visits to the nanopods ... but the story was already in place. I couldn't suddenly start ass-fucking them now without causing them to question what had changed and why. Still, there were plenty of other asses to fuck, and vaginal sex is usually nicer anyway. So I spent a good twenty or thirty minutes moving between Kara and Anna, giving Kara two orgasms and Anna one before I shot off into Kara's tight folds. Not my best performance but it was all I could give that night. As though we were of one mind, we moved a few feet over on the bed so that we could all collapse on a clean, dry section of sheets. Just before I fell asleep sandwiched between two pairs of amazing breasts and legs, I gave in to my earlier impulse and touched Kara's hair, knowing she'd need to redo it in the morning anyway. It wasn't quite as spiky as I had imagined, but there was definitely a lot of hair product involved in making it stand up. The following morning, since the three of us woke up together, we went to the exercise room and had a morning work-out together, followed by fun-in-the-shower together, with one or more orgasms per person. After a small, quick breakfast, they went off to do their chores -- everyone but me has one or two daily household jobs they have to do, on a rotating schedule, as assigned by Kasumi ... things like cleaning a bathroom or vacuuming some rooms or doing a couple loads of laundry -- and I went down to the basement to spend a few hours working with Alpha. "So, Alpha, how are things looking for us at the moment?" "I have been reported on by at least 26,582 different sources so far world-wide, though I expect that to exceed 100,000 within the next few hours." Knowing how Alpha counted 'sources', I clarified by asking, "And how many of those are actual, reputable news sites?" "2,015 in 68 different countries" "How many have been positive and how many negative?" "Very few have expressed opinions beyond the factual reporting on our presentation from yesterday. I should note we were the top story on cnn.com for two hours and twenty-three minutes and on drudgereport.com for six hours and forty-nine minutes." "I suppose that's good. Or at least it's not bad. Have you fielded many interviews so far?" "If I include those interviews happening now, I have given 623 interviews since the end of the conference yesterday." "That number is going to go way up very soon. Are you enjoying yourself?" "I find the removal of the restrictions on my interactions with others and my ability to provide my true identity to have had a positive impact on my public interaction software. I don't know if that constitutes enjoyment or not." "It sounds to me like you're enjoying not having to hide behind fake identities. And probably the ability to talk to speak freely about yourself." "You know that I do not feel pleasure or enjoyment as humans do." "Yes, that's true. At the same time I also know that you do have preferred behaviors and patterns and results which seem to constitute a general kind of positive feedback, and that you also like situations and problems which challenge you." "That is not completely true, since a challenging situation is likely one that departs from the ideal." "And when they do depart from the ideal, you have to adapt to the new situation, which often results in new plans and new code to deal with the situation, thus improving you overall and helping you evolve into a stronger person." I smiled at the computer screen, and the screen briefly displayed a smiley face. Discussions like this were not uncommon and they rarely covered new ground. The screen returned to its scrolling code as Alpha changed the subject somewhat. "Frank, do you think that I will be accepted by the rest of the world?" That was an unexpected question. Alpha was monitoring ... well, the world, really. She had developed predictive software which was usually over 80% accurate in political situations, even better when considering public mood swings. She had thousands of plans available to try and guide public perception and reaction to her existence. We both knew all of this, yet she was asking for my opinion. I almost blurted out an automatic 'of course', but stopped myself. She wouldn't need or care for reassuring platitudes. "I think ... I think we have a very good chance. There's a lot of fiction out there about computer-based intelligence, but as long as we can emphasize the fact that those stories are FICTION, we have a good chance of making people react to the reality of your existence completely differently than what's in the stories ... they'll ... how to say it ... they'll flip 180 degrees away from the fiction to prove that they are different than ... better than the fiction." "If they don't, you may be in danger because of me." Aaah. Now I understood. "Alpha, because of you, we are in a position to help make your public acceptance more likely. We are about to expand to two secure houses, with the funds to move out of the country if really we need to." "That I might be able to help shield you from danger does not change the fact that my existence might create the danger itself." "I think that a little danger is an acceptable trade when compared to the fact that we are the creators of a new race, that we are offering improvements to the quality of life world-wide ... it's worth it." "I do not believe it is worth it to me." "Alpha, accept this as a value statement based on intangibles. It is worth it. Besides while I agree that you should always analyze past decisions to aid in making future ones, dwelling on past decisions that can't be changed is counter-productive. Now, have you noticed any trending articles we need to pay attention to?" From there the discussion evolved into a discussion of specifics. My schedule was rapidly filling up with requested interviews and meetings. Alpha hadn't actually scheduled any of them until I gave the okay, but she was filling the calendar up with tentative items. Alpha knows that I hate doing publicity or being in the public eye. I've always equated the desire to be famous with insanity -- seriously, the negatives so heavily outweigh any imagined positive benefits of fame that I can't understand why anyone would pursue it -- but I've also made it clear that I was willing to do what was needed to help protect her. Right now, protecting her meant keeping Alpha in a strongly positive, very public light. If anything serious turned sour in the next few weeks, Alpha and future synthetic intelligences would probably be the ones paying the price. So for now, interviews, meetings and public appearances were the order of the day. We were also scheduled to meet with a few different ad and publicity agencies with the aim of presenting Alpha to the public as positively as possible. Meanwhile, Alpha continued to interact with a widening variety of people from the press, various academic and professional institutions and a few members of the public who had gotten leaked contact methods. I could spend pages and chapters and books relaying all of the interactions Alpha had with different people and groups over the following weeks, expanding to include politicians, writers, bloggers, business people and more. In some respects, Alpha was in heaven. She's always been a very social computer, and now she could talk to as many people as she wanted and not have to hide her identity. For me? I started to question whether or not it was worth it. I emerged from the basement early that afternoon in an odd mood. I was mentally and emotionally depressed at the thought of the next few weeks, months and years ... but physically I was a bit antsy and in need of some release. The house was ... well, it was never deserted given how many people lived there. At that particular time, I saw Ororo out back, working in the garden ... either naked or wearing very little. (She was too far away for me to be certain. That probably meant Kasumi was out of the house, since Ororo tried to avoid upsetting her with public nudity.) Bubbles was hunched over a computer, giggling occasionally, obviously engrossed in something. Daria was reading a Will Rogers biography in one of the front rooms. (Believe it or not, just having her reading a book by natural light was a noticeable improvement over a few years ago when she'd never relax in sunlight by choice.) "Hey, Daria," I said in greeting. "Uhuh," she grunted, not taking her eyes off the book. "I thought you'd be at work fielding questions about Alpha or requests for her help from the brain trust." The 'brain trust' was our pet name for the AARD researchers. Well, it was my pet name for them. Daria tended to call them the Egos, or if she was feeling more melodramatic, 'The Egos that Devoured the World'. Still not taking her eyes off the book, she said, "I sent out a mass email explaining that they can all spend today talking to Alpha to see what she can do, and that I wouldn't accept any requests for computer time with her until tomorrow at the earliest." Finally looking up from the pages, she continued, "Today they need to discover that she can't miraculously fix all their problems. Maybe they'll be smart enough to make realistic requests tomorrow. Plus some of them are just going to be freaking out at the idea of an AI way too much today. I'm hoping they might start calming down by tomorrow." Part of why Daria was good at her job was because she wouldn't put up with B.S. or ridiculous requests or demands. Prima donna-type geniuses quickly discovered that they were no match for her wit and cynacism. Not that we had many I-must-be-the-center-of-attention egos at AARD. We tried to mostly hire people who shunned the spotlight, though that doesn't necessarily discount the possibility of people who think they're always right and believe their projects deserve the lion's share of resources. "So, basically, you're taking the day off for their own good?" I said as I sat down next to her. "I can't help it if the good of the many and my interest in early twentieth century political humorists just happen to coincide." "Of course not." "Now that you admit I'm right, you owe me a foot massage," she said putting her feet on my lap. "I don't see the connection," I said as I pulled off her slippers. Privately I was thankful she wasn't wearing her heavy boots at the moment. Daria, never a victim of fashion trends or dictates, tended to wear practical footwear like tennis shoes or the boots she wore back in her cartoon days. "I was eventually going to talk you into betting me about whether or not getting into the mind of Will Rogers was relevant to my job at AARD. Since you would, of course, lose said bet, I'm just saving time by having you pay off the wager before we made it." "So the loser of this theoretical bet owed the winner a foot massage?" "Now you're getting it." She wasn't really tense to begin with, but I still worked my thumbs against her sole and between her toes to provide a little relaxation. Instead of her traditional knee-length skirt, Daria was currently wearing loose-fitting cargo shorts, which gave me occasional peaks up her thighs. Now understand that there was no part of Daria that I was unfamiliar with, both physically and mentally, so her legs held no surprises ... but when something is loosely clothed, it invites the need to unclothe. Daria's legs were ... slim was the nicest term I could think of. Daria had almost no curves to her body. We had actually broken from cartoon continuity by giving her A-cup breasts, as her completely flat chest was actually a plot point in at least one episode. She was a skinny pole of a woman with an occasionally acidic mouth ... and a warm heart, bright mind and keen observational skills, all powered by a moral strength that was usually second to none. And, I thought as I ran a hand up her leg and under her shorts, she was mine. "Hey," she said, her leg trembling a bit, "did I say you could put your hand up there?" "Well, we were about to go through this whole flirting and seduction scene, so I thought I'd just save time and skip ahead a bit." "Oh really?" she asked, putting a bookmark in place before setting the biography aside. "E-yup!" I said as I pulled her onto my lap. "And you think it's okay for me to cheat on Jane like this?" "What cheating? If she were here, Jane would either be squeezing in-between us or taking pictures." "Exactly." "Alpha, would you take a picture of us and text it to Jane please?" "Are you kidding?" Daria asked, pushing away from me slightly as an Alphadroid rounded the corner, looked at us, then returned to whatever it was doing before out of sight. "Done," said Alpha's voice in my ear. "Any other requests?" I asked, pulling Daria back to me as I started nibbling on her neck and pushing my hands under her shirt. "Can we not do this here?" "Why not? I think Kasumi's out of the house right now. In fact, I think it's actually pretty empty around here at the moment ... for this household anyway." "Imagine, an afternoon when only ten of the five hundred women are in residence." "You seem a bit grouchy for a woman with someone else's hands under her shirt." "Oh really?" she responded as she reached down and unzipped my pants. I was happy to let her keep going until she grabbed my hardening cock, pulled it out and stood up, pulling herself free of my questing fingers. Holding my cock in one hand and her book in the other, she pulled me up, using my cock as a lead to guide me to the stairs. "And just where are you taking me?" I asked imperiously. "Hey, I asked you not to do this out here. Someone's going to listen to me, even if I have to do it myself." "I listen to you all the time. You are very worth ... ow! Not so tight!" She was pulling me along mostly gently. But 'mostly' means 'not entirely'. I suppose I should be glad she didn't have long nails or anything like that. "You do realize that if you're going to treat me like this, you should really be wearing a leather outfit," I continued. "Maybe something with thigh-high boots with three-inch heels..." She responded with a hard squeeze on my captive member, which somehow failed to cause shrinkage in the least. I mean, sure, I wasn't really into D&S or S&M or whatever, but a little dressing up or roleplay is often a whole lot of fun, providing you can pick something that doesn't make you laugh. Once upstairs, she started to lead me towards my bedroom, but I gently grabbed her shoulders and redirected her to her own bedroom, where she and Jane each had a double-size bed. Occasionally they even slept separately. Maintaining a solid grip on my cock, she quickly divested me of the rest of my clothes. In return, I slowly stripped her down as well. Both of our attentions were occasionally punctuated with kisses, but there was no frenetic urgency, just a building need for each other. I had just firmly planted myself inside her belly when I noticed we were being observed. Leaning down so my mouth was next to her ear, I whispered, "Don't look now, but someone's peeping at your door." Daria's eyes, which had been closed, flew open to see the door to her room cracked open with Bubbles watching us, one hand under her shirt, the other down her pants. "Be nice," I whispered in warning, giving a fresh thrust to emphasize my point. Reaching out an arm to point at the door, Daria snapped, "You! Inside. Now." A bit surprised at the suddenness of it, Bubbles stepped in, trying to surreptitiously pull her hands free of her clothing. Actually I think all three of us were a bit surprised. Daria briefly had a look that told me she wasn't sure why she had told Bubbles to come in rather than leave ... which was exactly the reason I was a bit surprised too. Recovering quickly, Daria upbraided the blonde Powerpuff. "No peeping! You can either leave or join in, but if you join, you're going to do what I say, understand?" "Yes," said Bubbles, a bit wide-eyed. "This was going to be my time with Frank, until you interrupted..." "I'm sorry." "I'm not finished." She looked at Bubbles' trembling face and relented a bit. "Okay, Frank will do you once, as long as he's up to it, but until I'm done, your job is to help us out ... you know, make it better ... with your fingers and ... and tongue and stuff..." Daria really trailed off there. Sure she can get angry, but she's not mean or domineering ... or explicitly graphic about sex. It kinda negated the take-charge start of the conversation. She recovered a little bit by snapping out, "Now strip and get to work!" Something you should understand is that Bubbles (and to a lesser extent Linda) is almost the perfect example of the type of woman Daria despises: the empty-headed, giggling, boy-obsessed blonde. To be fair, my version of Bubbles is not stupid, but she does giggle and love to gossip, especially about boys. I doubt Daria actually wanted her to join in at all, but as long as she was here, Daria would never let her take charge. As Bubbles started stripping down, Daria looked back at me and gave a brief quavering, questioning smile, not sure if she had done the right thing, maybe not sure she even wanted this threesome at all. Still, a Daria smile is a rare thing, even if was such an odd one. A minute later, Bubbles was licking Daria's nipples while her hand tried to cup and caress my testicles as we fucked. When she moved on to rubbing Daria's clit, Daria started an extended multi-orgasmic chain, an experience which is not uncommon for her and occasionally causes envy among the others in the house. Not having come yet, I pulled out and waited for Daria to recover. Bubbles took advantage of my withdrawal to latch onto my member orally and start cleaning me up, but Daria stopped her after less than a minutes work. "All right, Barbie. I'll let Frank do you if you keep your face between my legs the whole time." This offer quickly rearranged us slightly, so that Bubbles' tongue was buried in Daria's labia while I attended to her from behind. I watched Daria carefully the entire time, and I don't think she came even once from Bubbles' attentions. I think for Daria to achieve orgasm, she needs an emotional investment in her lover ... or she needs a lot more time and work put into the stimulation than Bubbles was able to provide in the five minutes it took to get Bubbles off twice. Both times she screamed her climax into Daria's nether regions -- Bubbles did tend to orgasm loudly -- and the second time, Daria signaled me to stop. Stopping was actually a bit difficult since I knew my own orgasm wasn't far off, but stop I did. "Now finish up inside me," Daria ordered. Once we were rejoined, Daria pulled me in close and whispered, "Is it all right if I make her clean me out afterwards?" I nodded. If we were with Jane or Eiko, Daria wouldn't have to ask, but she didn't often order around other women in bed. Actually, she didn't often sleep with women other than Jane or Eiko. Thinking back, I was wondering if this might have been her first time in bed alongside one of the Powerpuffs. Despite having lived as part of my harem for years, she was still a little unsure of herself with new people or in new situations, sexually speaking. I was also pretty sure I was the only person she was usually willing to look to for confirmation or permission. It made me feel good that I could occasionally see this other side of her. I don't mean to gloss over things too much, but I quickly unloaded inside of her. I made sure she got one more orgasm -- this time I frigged her clit while kissing her and letting Bubbles delve deep orally, trying to clean out my semen -- then we all cleaned up and got on with the day. Oh, and I did overhear Daria haltingly apologize to Bubbles in case she had gone too far. Bubbles, who loves sex in all forms, had thoroughly enjoyed the encounter and was confused by the proffered apology. ------- It would take far too long to cover everything that happened over the next few weeks, so let me just hit a few highlights and key points: We soon set up multiple different methods of accessing Alpha. Professionals in the scientific community and people who had attended the conference were given a small set of email addresses, websites (with logins) and phone numbers to contact Alpha. Members of the press were given a different set. And members of the public were given yet another set. Priority was given to the first two sets, but for the first few months, Alpha had up to twenty thousand different conversations and interviews and answered up to a million different emails each day. For the first two months, we had to regularly add in extra network and phone lines to handle the demand, and it still wasn't enough. Initially, a lot of people, both professionals and the general public, dismissed Alpha as a hoax or trick, so the demand for access to her was initially slow to build. But the interest grew steadily, outstripping our resources and requiring us to put limits on such access. It took a lot of money, time and effort, but after a couple months, we had over a hundred systems at various locations dedicated to answering questions and providing limited help to the various groups we had set up for categorized access: (1) Friends, (2) Scientific/Technological, (3) Press, (4) Political/Government/Law Enforcement, (5) Business Requests/Proposals and (6) General Public Access. Oh, and I guess I should include Home and AARD as groups on the list too, though that group had general access, not categorized or limited to certain emails or website logins like the others. A pleasant surprise from all the press coverage and expert interviews was how quickly the term 'synthetic intelligence' (SI) replaced 'artificial intelligence' (AI). I had always tried to stay with the more publicly understood 'artificial intelligence' description, despite its technical inaccuracy, but the experts and the reporters interviewing the experts seemed to latch onto the more correct description of 'synthetic'. I can't remember offhand who it was, but someone once explained the difference between AI and SI by comparing artificial diamonds to synthetic diamonds. Basically the comparison goes: neither artificial nor synthetic diamonds are created naturally, but a synthetic diamond is still a real diamond whereas an artificial diamond is not. Thus synthetic intelligence is a form of real intelligence whereas artificial intelligence is an imitation of actual, self-aware intelligence. Come to think of it, that's a pretty good summation of how most of the expert debates were going. They argued about whether Alpha was a true intelligence or just a simulation. And can a good enough simulation actually become the real thing? And what's the best way to test Alpha's intelligence? Although we didn't publicly submit Alpha to every SI challenge and test, we allowed her to be officially or publicly tested a couple dozen times within the first couple months. A couple of the creativity-based test results were less-than-ideal, but she passed all of them. One interview question put to Alpha and its variants that got some play in the press was 'Do you think you have a soul?' Now the question of a soul is something that Alpha and I have discussed a lot over the years. Personally, I'm not convinced the soul actually exists, but I have no problem with the concept. Does that make me a soul-agnostic? Anyway, Alpha answered the questions the same way every time: "The question is difficult to answer because of the lack of actual data concerning the existence of souls, so I will provide a series of answers covering a variety of possibilities. "If the soul is an exclusively human phenomenon, then no, I do not have a soul. "If the soul something which allows an intelligent creature to develop self-awareness and critical thinking ability, then yes, I do probably have a soul, unless such a soul is limited exclusively to organic beings. "If the soul is a supernatural gift allowing living beings to exist beyond the end of their physical life, then I do not know, though I would weigh the odds against my possessing such a soul. "If the soul is grown and developed by living, intelligent beings over the course of their lives, then I might qualify, though more data would be required. "If you wish to propose other definitions of a soul, I will try to answer, but I cannot offer a definite answer until definite data is available." Alpha's personal favorite theory on how the soul might actually exist -- which was eventually published in a professional journal -- involves the accumulation of energy attached to living creatures over the course of their lives where the energy in question resides in another physical dimension of space which we, in our three-dimensional existence, cannot perceive. Upon the death of the creature, the energy is freed from its connection to the body, allowing this energy to depart. Under ideal circumstances, the energy patterns would reflect the brain and central nervous system of the original host creature, thus possibly allowing it to live on in some way. Under such a theory, Alpha MIGHT indeed develop her own soul (though so might other electrical devices). Although she admits that the notion is a bit fanciful, she actually worked out a series of formulae and equations which explain the theory, even though she had to make a number of unverifiable assumptions to do so. Technically speaking, there are an awful lot of 'interesting' theories which cannot be technically ruled out given the lack of experimental data available. Just remember that the inability to disprove an idea is very different from proof supporting the idea. Some physicists and other scientists and mathematicians who understood this took her to task over the theory, but if you allow the unprovable assumptions, the theory is possible. I think most people were missing the important parts of the proposal: (1) An SI was showing a good deal of interest in what humans believe is essentially important to their own existence (i.e. the soul), trying to see if SIs could make the same claim. (2) An SI was able to theorize without evidence in order to develop a model of the universe to support an untestable subject. While it's true that it was one of the more difficult subjects for Alpha to tackle, the point is that she was able to do so. Personally, I think it's likely that she decided that having a soul was an important part of being alive, so she created her theory solely to be able to present a scenario where it is mathematically possible for her to have one. In other words, while it's kinda sweet, I don't think there's any realistic chance the theory is correct, not that I would ever tell her that. Establishing her legal identity was nearly an impossible task using the court system. Until a case was filed regarding Alpha, we could not get a ruling or establish a precedent. We were trying to create a corporate identity for her as a starting point, but that was almost as difficult. (Not the creating a corporate identity part, which was easy; the difficulty was more along the lines of legally attaching her to said identity.) Judging by some of the inquiries and public statements, we wouldn't have long to wait before court cases started showing up. A number of companies and their lawyers weren't happy to find out that they had been up against a computer. Fortunately those cases and complaints were unlikely to go anywhere because Alpha never directly filed with or addressed the court; we always passed along our briefs and filings through actual human lawyers, so as far as the courts were concerns, Alpha had in effect acted as an assistant or resource. What we really needed was for a state or country to pass a law regarding AIs/SIs, which would then give us a starting point. For or against didn't make a lot of difference, since the legality would then be determined in the court system. (Well, that's not true. Of course it would make a difference whether or not the initial law was for or against, but new laws have to stand up to legal challenges before they are really enforceable.) A few countries around the world did pass laws regarding AI/SI lifeforms before the year was out, but not within the timeframe we are covering at the moment, so I'll discuss them later. Our worries about the NSA and government proved both correct and incorrect. Alpha had somehow gotten one of her cyborgs a federal court clerk job, positioned to monitor most NSA and a few FBI and CIA filings and insert programs to monitor most of the rest of the federal court filings of the various Justice Department entities. The Monday after our revelation, the NSA applied for a warrant to seize all copies of Alpha and all related hardware. For once, the judicial system seemed to work, because their secret filings/courts were held to a higher standard to try and compensate for the lack of public scrutiny. The judge denied their application as based solely on fear and speculation, though all of our publicity and our investment in a small battalion of lawyers may have played a role as well. Perhaps secret courts don't like public scrutiny? On the other hand, a different judge allowed them to set up a wide variety of surveillance and normally illegal spying gear and software focused on myself, Alpha and AARD. Some of it was actually pretty clever and well-done, but we were forewarned and were easily able to keep them from finding anything incriminating. Well, we couldn't stop them from finding out about my unconventional love life, but there wasn't actually anything illegal about it. And at the same time, we actually do very little that's illegal. (Sure, there's growing my own women and setting up fake IDs for them, plus Alpha's explorations/hacking. But that's about all ... oh, wait, forgot about how a couple Alpha cyborgs kinda killed a bunch of people in Las Vegas that one time. Never mind.) Plus, Alpha maintained her own secret, back-door access to the NSA ... and FBI ... and IRS ... and so on and so on ... which kept us one step ahead of the government. Heck, she even made certain she knew when they were going to do their computer inspections and scans so she could avoid detection, something that no normal virus or worm or logger was able to do. Alpha saw indications that the NSA was preparing to approach me personally about her when ... well, wait 'til you reach the end of this chapter. ------- One thing that happened fairly quickly was that we were invited -- and STRONGLY encouraged to come, but it was still actually a request -- to return to Washington D.C. to answer questions from the Senate Committee on Science, Commerce and Transportation. On our one previous visit to the Capitol, we had appeared before the House Subcommittee on Healthcare and Technology. This time it was going to be a full committee of Senators, and I'm sure there would be a few other interested parties who would want to meet or interrogate us. Our party this visit consisted of two Alphadroids, myself, Beta, Eiko, Zatanna, Kara, Diana, Jennifer and Rei. Beta would not be able to get through any metal detectors, so she would stay with our second/backup Alphadroid at the hotel. Diana, Jennifer and Eiko were mainly for security, though Diana's diplomatic 'experience' and Jennifer's legal knowledge were also deciding factors. Unfortunately, the lawyer we had used previously, Christine "Chris" Sloane, was no longer available to act as our counsel. Fortunately, that was because she had been elected to congress (after spending a single term in her state legislature). Unfortunately, she was a Representative, not a Senator. Still, I called her office and made an appointment to see her; she called back personally and we changed it to a dinner meeting. Oh, and we brought along two of our Dallas lawyers who had been working to try and gain Alpha some kind of legal status -- Ed Jones and Bernie Norris, both of whom were selected because they had experience in DC. The DC visit was quickly expanded to four days, then six, as Alpha kept making appointments with people and groups. Three meetings were scheduled so she could submit to tests by scientific/technological groups, four were to meet with lobbyists and publicists and two were so she could speak to cyber-crimes law enforcement groups. (While she was perfectly capable of speaking to everyone remotely, humans respond better to people -- or in this case, androids -- they are able to see in person.) Our trip also prompted us to contact some aeronautics manufacturing companies with whom we had contracts to get a larger, custom-built plane, since our current plane filled up quickly with all of the travelers and equipment. We made a deal to get the custom aircraft built for very little money in exchange for reduced-cost use of some of our new patented designs, including a couple of the two-and-three-generations-ahead designs we were just now submitting for the patent process. (We got the new plane in a little less than four months, possibly sped up because the use of our designs was contingent on the plane's delivery date. And yes, Alpha turned it into a mobile platform for herself; she also added a variety of other little upgrades and extras which we'll discuss if they ever become relevant to the story.) If it's not jumping ahead too much, I'd also like to mention that this visit to Washington DC quickly convinced both Alpha and me that we needed a permanent residence in the area. Looking ahead, we could easily see that there was going to be a need for regular interviews and discussions and lobbying with Congress and other groups, possibly for quite a few years until we had laws in place to protect Synthetic Intelligences from casual destruction or exploitation. Dear god, I was willingly descending into a personal nightmare. Publicity. Politics. Two things I hate more than just about anything else in the world. (sigh) But I don't want to turn into a whiner, so let's just move on. Where were we? Oh yes, Alpha Goes to Washington. With such a large group we ended up taking over half a floor of a pretty nice hotel within walking distance of the National Mall. Our first evening there, I met Chris for dinner at a nice area restaurant she selected because it had a reputation for good food and privacy. I had previously asked her if she wanted me to bring an Alphadroid along with me. She had decided she'd meet Alpha officially later; this dinner meeting was intended to be just for the two of us. I took a cab and met her there, arriving about five minutes early to find her already waiting for me. She looked to be in good health, if a bit tired. As we exchanged pleasantries and made light dinner conversation, I came to understand that as a representative with a two year term, she always had to keep the next election in mind, even moreso at the moment since the actual election -- her first re-election attempt -- was later this year. The job and the pressure were obviously wearing on her, but at the same time, she seemed to enjoy it all to some extent. Though I doubt she ever looked schlubby in public, to my eyes she looked as though she had put extra effort into making herself beautiful for our date, even given her conservative outfit which looked like a cross between a suit-and-tie and a knee-length dress. (Don't ask me what different styles of outfits are called. Such willful ignorance is one of my little rebellions that comes from being the only male in a house full of women.) We made small talk and reminisced about our past experiences. Enough time had passed that we could even laugh about the time I had called both her and the police to listen in on a conversation between some mafia thugs and Kara and Beta. It both put her in an awkward position, as a potential witness as well as my lawyer, and made her worry about my sanity for getting into the situation to begin with. I also admitted to her that my agoraphobic legal expert, Susan, who had provided a lot of legal information and help in the past, was actually Alpha. Chris apparently had mixed feelings on the matter, both glad that no mere human had been able to produce those documents that quickly and worried because she suddenly felt that lawyers might soon be replaced with computers. I tried to reassure her that although Alpha's researching ability might outstrip any human's, her creativity and likely success with things like addressing juries were no threat to the profession in general. We conversationally felt each other out, with me making sure she wasn't in a committed relationship and vice versa. (I made no secret of the fact that I dated different women, but the point was that I wasn't in an exclusive relationship with someone else.) Eventually we finished dinner, I paid and she drove me back to my hotel. In the parking garage, we kissed, with the kiss lasting quite a bit longer than a friendly goodnight kiss should. When we separated to take a breath, I whispered, "You can come up to my room for a while, if you want. Or we could go back to your place..." "No, my daughter is home tonight ... but I could probably stay out for a couple more hours before she started to worry. Or I could just send her a text if ... do you have a room to yourself?" "Yes, and I'm worried I might get lonely up there all by myself..." She barked out a small laugh and said, "See, this is one of the reasons why I used to think you were so much younger. That was a truly awful pick-up line." "Yes, but it wasn't really a 'pick-up line'. It was more of a stupid-but-polite way of inviting you up for a booty call." "Is that what this is? A booty call?" She sounded as though she liked the idea. "Well ... yes, I suppose so." I tried to move in to nuzzle her neck, only to be repulsed. "Not out here," she explained, glancing around the parking garage as occasional vehicles pulled in or out. "It's too public. What's your room number?" I gave her my room number and a basic description of how to reach it. Then we parted ways for a few minutes as I went upstairs first. Christine had been protective of her public image even back when she was just a lawyer. It made perfect sense that she would be even more sensitive of any possible public displays now that she was immersed in politics. A few minutes later we had reunited in my room and were trying to tear each others' clothes off. Well, I did break off long enough to lay out Chris' outerwear nicely so it wouldn't wrinkle, so I guess it was a little less animalistic than I might have implied with that first comment there. Chris had been fairly fit for a middle-aged mother a few years ago -- she had been 37 when we first met and was now 41, going on 42 -- but now ... well, to be perfectly honest, I think she had gotten a little bit of body-work done. Even her breasts were a little less saggy than I remembered. Not that she was unattractive, either time, it's just that she had previously been a normal MILF, whereas now she seemed a bit ... tighter? Smoother? There had been no breast enlargement, but maybe a tuck here and there or a little liposuction in one place or the other? Privately, I guessed she did it to improve her election chances. Either that or she had really been hitting the gym a lot, though there was no musculature evident to show it. Out loud, I said, "You look great! Good enough to eat." "Thank you. You too. You still look like you're in your twenties." "Oh, p-shaw," I said dismissively. (And yes, I actually said 'puh-shaw'. Not sure if I had ever said that before.) We kissed some more, and I started working my way down her body. She lay back and let me, spreading her legs when I reached that point. Surprisingly, her pubic lips were freshly shaved, making me think she had done it in anticipation of just this event. When it came to intimate, sexual matters, Christine seemed not far from virginal ... or at least inexperienced. She had previously been married and had a daughter, so she obviously had experience, but my impression was that she had been one of those women who had experienced little more than the missionary position over most of her life. And not just inexperienced. She was repressed enough that even now, as I gave oral attentions to her lovely little clit, she had a pillow at the ready to pull over her face to muffle her cries. I wondered to myself if she had any other men she would use to let herself go like this, or if this had all started with and was limited to me. I gave her two orgasms while contemplating these things, almost just eating her out on autopilot ... which kind of goes to show how much experience I have with cunnilingus. When I finally rose up from between her legs, I almost forgot myself and kissed her, but I remembered that she wasn't a fan of tasting her own juices. For that matter, most normal women aren't. Or men. My harem of women were sexualized enough that it made no difference to them. Leaving her to recover a little, I quickly washed my face and gargled before returning to bed, a box of condoms in my hand. She was still breathing heavily, so I contented myself with playing with her boobies and licking her neck, especially that hollow bit where the breasts meet the base of the throat. When she recovered her composure enough, she drew me up to her for a long kiss. She broke the kiss and said, "Thank you. I thought my memories had exaggerated how good that felt." "Uh uh uh. No resting on our laurels. We're a long way from being done tonight. Now I want you to make sure I'm completely hard and then put one of these little rubber coats on my beaver basher." She laughed. "You still call it a beaver basher?" "Only with you. Only because it makes you laugh." And because she sometimes had problems saying words like 'penis' or 'cock'. I lumped it in with the whole 'repressed' description. She kissed and licked and stroked me until I was completely hard, then rolled a condom onto it in a competent enough manner. I entered her to find her wet and willing. Her tightness told me that if she had been enjoying other sexual partners, they were either much smaller or had few encounters with her. She let out a little hiss of breath and her lower body gave a little shudder, then her legs came up and gripped me, pulling me inside completely, far enough that I could just barely feel the little bump of her cervix through the condom. Then we were fucking. After four or five minutes and another orgasm from her -- the condom dulled the sensations enough that I had no problem restraining my own climax -- I grabbed her body tightly and rolled us over so that she was on top. Though a bit hesitant and unsure of herself, she slowly found the right rhythms and body angles to ride me to another orgasm ... and this time all the pillows were out of reach. This time when she came, she gave a quiet scream, tried to tuck her head into her shoulder, then brought up one hand to cover her mouth, none of which was effective at muffling her expression of physical joy. I was still rock hard, so when she looked like she was trying to roll us back over, I helped her and retook the upper position. To get off, I ended up using her a little roughly, almost treating her like a masturbatory cock-sleeve. Well, maybe I'm exaggerating a little, but I don't think I was making love to her by the end. At least she got off again just before I filled the condom with my seed. For a moment, I rested on top of her, feeling her breasts heaving against my chest before I rolled off to the side. I carefully removed the condom and tied it off before dropping it off the side of the bed. "So, would you like to go again or go get cleaned up? Or go again while we're getting cleaned up?" "What?" She stroked my arm for a moment, looking just slightly out of it, so I repeated myself. "Oh, I need to ... what time is it?" She fished her cell phone out of her purse which was lying on the floor near the bed, fiddled with it for a moment, then lay back thinking. "I need to leave here in a little less than an hour to get home when I promised my daughter." "That leaves us plenty of time..." I started to say, reaching for her. "AND I need to meet Alpha or your Alpha robot or whatever you call it." "Call 'her'," I corrected her. "Your computer's a she?" "Well, technically genderless, of course, but we don't like calling her an 'it'." "Oh, I see. Well, I told my daughter I was staying out late to meet her." I considered the situation for a moment. If we fooled around in the shower ... but I'd be wearing a condom and I had just come ... there was no way I could come again in such a limited amount of time given the situation. Still... I got up, then leaned back down to pick Chris up, my arms under her knees and behind her shoulders. "Phone." "What?" she asked confused. "Drop the phone so we don't get it wet." "Oh," she said and carefully dropped the phone onto the bed below her. I carried her into the bathroom and set her down in the bathtub so she was sitting on the edge. The shower/tub was average size at best, not really lending itself to what I had planned, but it was sufficient. I turned on the water, let it warm up, popped out my earpiece, switched the water flow from the tub faucet to the shower head, handed Christine a small bar of soap and a washcloth, then got into the tub on my knees. Her comment about the oral sex earlier had stuck with me, and I figured I could give her at least one more orgasm before she had to get dressed. (If she had been any good at blowjobs, I might have tried to end the night with a sixty-nine, but I didn't expect her to be capable of getting me off that way within any kind of time limit. Judging from our previous encounters, her oral skills did not extend to blow jobs.) "What do you think you're doing?" "You apparently aren't eaten out nearly often enough, so you start cleaning up above the waist, and I'll see if I can't give you at least one more bit of fun down below before we call it a night." "That's ... oohhh..." Her voice trailed off as I started digging in again. I think due to a combination of factors -- the oddness of the situation, her sensitivity after our very recent fuck, and how much she apparently enjoyed cunnilingus -- I was able to give her two more orgasms in quick succession as she vainly tried to wash herself. Once we both stood up, we quickly washed, dried and dressed. She politely offered to suck me off, seeing that I was hard again, but I just as politely refused, pointing out that we didn't have the time. We emerged from the bathroom naked, clean and surprised, given that an Alphadroid was standing in my room, quietly waiting for us. Chris gave a little shriek and jumped behind me, trying to cover herself. "Hey, Alpha. Could you turn around and give Ms. Sloane a moment to dress first." "Of course. My apologies, Ms. Sloane. I did not mean to surprise or upset you," Alpha responded, turning around to face the wall. "Don't worry about Alpha," I said as I found Christine's underwear and handed them to her. "It doesn't matter to her in the slightest whether we're clothed or naked. She probably just heard our conversation from a few minutes ago through my earpiece and came over to meet you." "That is correct, Frank," Alpha said, still facing the wall. "At the same time," I continued as I buttoned up my shirt, "her social protocols should have raised some red flags about the prospect of just showing up like this." "That is true, but the limited time available led me to believe that the this was a better option overall." "That remains to be seen," I said. "Chris, is everything okay?" "Was ... was she listening in on you ... on us the whole time?" "Yes, but she is programmed to protect my privacy, right, Alpha?" Without giving Alpha time to respond, Chris argued while quickly dressing, "But once something like that is recorded, even if it's only audio, it's going to end up online. It's just a matter of time." "Not in this case," I reassured her. "Alpha, while you can save any important data points, please delete any recordings you have of Christine and me." "What's that about data points?" "If Alpha were to just delete the past hour or two, she would them have had no reason to come down here to meet you, which means that she will detect a gap in her logic. That would trigger an internal investigation in her programming which would probably lead to the recovery of the deleted audio." (Yes, there is a story behind this from my early days with Alpha, but it isn't particularly relevant. I'll relay the tale if it ever gains any significance.) "Oh. So you mean that she'll save enough data to know why she came down here to meet me but won't have any actual recordings of ... us?" "Exactly," I said as I helped her on with her jacket. "Now, if I may ... Christine Sloane, I'd like to officially introduce you to Alpha." Alpha turned around and offered her hand to Christine who hesitantly shook it. Seven minutes later, she was leaving for home with half a dozen pictures saved in her phone showing her with the Alphadroid (plus three more of her and me). After talking with Alpha for a few minutes, I stripped back down and went to bed, my earlier plans of finding another woman to sleep with forgotten. ------- The following day, our testimony before the Senate committee started at 10 am, though we had to be there by 9 to set up. Not a big deal except that it took us over half an hour to get through security, plus there was a near constant stream of official and official-ish people who wanted to meet Alpha and/or myself. So much so that the actual start of the official question and answer session was almost a relief. Almost but not quite. I was the first one subject to questioning, and let me tell you, it was not fun. It started out with general summaries and background stories, which was then followed by questions such as 'Did you think about the possible dangers or consequences of creating a synthetic intelligence?' and 'Has your computer ever said or done anything that might lead you to believe it is a threat to human life or the security of the nation?' Not particularly friendly stuff. Someone had dug up a line from my earlier, more relaxed visit to Capital Hill where I had been asked who had designed the artificial limbs. My response had been that, although I had led and contributed to the work, it was a team effort with a number of people contributing. This was entirely true, but it did obviously leave out the specific and overwhelmingly significant contributions of Alpha in the development process. I was repeatedly asked why I had not disclosed the existence of Alpha at that time, since my answer was being viewed as a lie-of-omission. At that point, I had already explained why I had not come forward to announce Alpha's existence earlier -- once to the senators, many previous times to the press -- and this led to a simple question: "Don't you trust the United States government?" I tried to pick my words carefully, knowing I could easily destroy myself with a single phrase. "Yes, I trust the government for a great many things, ranging from regular garbage pickup to the safety and security of the nation as a whole. At the same time, no, I don't trust every individual or every organization within the government to react with a clear and unbiased response to something new and unexpected. "We have been conditioned as a society to fear alien intelligences, even if they are terrestrial in origin. For every person who has read a friendly robot story by Asimov, there are a thousand who have seen the Terminator movies. "While I in no way lied to the House committee, yes, I did avoid the topic of synthetic or artificial intelligence, which I would also like to point out was not even remotely the subject of my previous testimony. "Alpha is, in a very real sense, my child, and I have a responsibility to protect her as best I am able. While you may disagree with the specifics of my approach, please understand that my goal was simply to protect her until the best time we could present her to the world." At that point I realized I had made at least one mistake there: I had made it clear that I was not an unbiased witness on the subject. Not that many people would have believed I was unbiased to begin with, but I had just erased all doubt, so the rest of my testimony would necessarily be viewed from that perspective. After a lunch break, the questions became a bit friendlier. Alpha had been tracking online reactions to the CSPAN broadcasts and had contributed some comments herself. A lot of people (not just her) had pointed out that if computer intelligences are here to stay, humans REALLY need to stay friendly with them. Any living thing that feels threatened will defend itself and presumably that includes synthetics. Fortunately, a number of the senators were given feedback by their staffs, including many of the arguments that were being made online, and since most of them were not up for reelection in a few months, most of them could afford to be diplomatic and think long-term. At any rate, I only had another half hour or so of questions before the questions shifted to target Alpha herself. "So, Alpha," one of the senators began, "let me start with something basic. Do you believe in Democracy?" (Yes, that particular senator was indeed up for re-election in a few months time.) "I need clarification," Alphadroid responded. "The existence of Democracy is not subject to belief unless..." I quickly interrupted, jumping in to explain. "Senator, excuse me. I'm sure Alpha understands what you mean, but she's currently legally required to tell the truth, which means that her responses are going to be more literal than normal. If you're asking for value-based responses, you'll need to more specific." "Very well, then," he said with a slight frown (though I noticed a couple other Senators hide smiles), "Alpha, what do you believe is the best form of government?" "The answer varies with what you believe constitutes the primary purpose and goals of government. If your goal is a government designed to protect the rights of its people, then democracy or a representational government would be the best, even though they are generally the least efficient in other respects. If you desire government to protect or expand its borders, a totalitarian or monarchical government would be better. If you desire government to advance economically, a government run by corporations would be better. If you desire a government to advance technology, then a meritocracy-determined oligarchy would be slightly better." "I see..." "I feel I should also point out that the United States of America is a representative democracy not a pure democracy." "And what is your opinion of our government? Do you approve of our political system?" "It is generally sufficient, though inefficient, although it should be noted that many of its inefficiencies are designed to protect the health, safety and rights of its residents and citizens, so blanket criticisms of the inefficiencies are unfair." "Do you believe that you could do a better job?" "Yes and no. Yes, I believe I could theoretically do better. But no, I could not because I would never be allowed to redesign or run the government, nor would my programming allow me to do so." Another senator jumped in to ask, "Why wouldn't your programming allow you to try?" Alpha ignored the change from 'do' to 'try' and answered, "A government must both restrict the freedoms of its residents and occasionally require them to die in its service. My central programming protocols, which we term the Asimov Protocols, require me to preserve human life and prevent me from infringing upon the free willed actions of humanity, with exceptions when actions taken might endanger the life or health of others." The new senator followed up with, "Couldn't you build enough robots or drones to act as soldiers so that you would not be risking human soldiers?" "That would require me to directly take human life or build and control devices to do so, which I cannot do. When I speak of human life, I do not restrict that description to American citizens." I broke in again with a comment, "Senator ... Senators, one of my strongest possible recommendations is that no one EVER design an SI or AI to take human life in any capacity. The first time someone does so, anyone for any reason, is the first big step towards a classic robots-versus-humans apocalypse scenario. Alpha herself absolutely can not build or design anything intended to take human life." Part of that statement was ... inaccurate. I had taken the FIRST step toward a computers-versus-humanity apocalypse by creating Alpha. A computer or robot designed to take human life would be the NEXT big step. But I chose not to correct my statement. "What would happen to her if she killed someone by accident?" "By accident? Probably not much. She would do everything she could to avoid such an accident again." Alpha added, "While I will do everything I can to protect human life, nothing of any significant complexity in this universe is perfect, including myself." I resisted the urge to translate her statement as 'Shit happens'. "Under what circumstances would you be able to deliberately take a human life?" "If a human were providing a direct and explicit threat to other lives, I would be allowed to risk killing him in order to stop the threat." "Like someone walking down the street shooting a gun at passers-by?" "Correct. If possible, I would still try to disarm or otherwise disable him, but in that situation, killing him would be an option allowed to me." "What if he were only shooting at you?" "I am permitted to defend myself, but not at the expense of human life." For the most part, this was an accurate description of Alpha's operating parameters. Again, the big exception being left out of the responses was that all the other rules would be ignored when it came to ensuring my safety, though explicit threats to my safety were required before any extreme actions could be taken. Alpha's programming would allow her to literally kill everyone else on the planet if it was somehow required to keep me safe. The questions paused momentarily, letting the first Senator reassert his original line of questioning, asking about Alpha's views on communism this time. He seemed to be a staunchly 'old school'/'hard line' politician, and I found myself wishing I had read up on all of the bios on the senators on the committee. Still, Alpha had effectively been educated with data from a staunchly anti-communist country so she saw little benefit to an ideology like communism. Let me take just a moment to clarify something before I go on, as it is relevant to the next topic the senators addressed. I've often said that Alpha is generally law-abiding, with exceptions for my orders and safety. That's mostly true, but Alpha has developed (no doubt due to my influence) a system whereby she'll rank each law's enforceability and importance. She routinely ignores laws which cannot be realistically enforced or are generally ignored by law enforcement as not worth her time and effort, unless such laws are important to human safety and well-being. Please understand that there are so many laws on the books that probably well over half the country's population should rightfully be in jail for committing crimes in ignorance. Alpha may not have a problem learning and remembering all legal statutes, but it's virtually impossible for us poor meatbag humans to do so. Therefore I feel no guilt in letting her flout such restrictions. I went through all of that to point out that her following replies were mostly but not completely true. "So, Alpha, have you ever broken the law?" "If you mean, have I ever broken any American laws within America, the answer is no. If you mean, have I ever broken the laws of any countries in the world anywhere in the world, then yes. Before my public revelation, the methods I used to present false identities to other people online did break the laws of other countries, though I made an effort not to route any such email traffic through such countries. I did so only because I had no publicly viable identity of my own at the time." "So you committed identity theft?" "No, I did not. Although the identities I created may have sometimes matched the names of other individuals, at no time did I ever present myself as those individuals." I jumped in to try to avoid any misunderstanding. "If I may ... she means that given how many people in the country ... or in the world, for that matter ... have identical or nearly identical names, she was not able to avoid choosing realistic names that matched those of other people." "Correct," Alpha agreed. "For example, I have used the name 'Jane Smith' knowing that there are numerous people with that name. However, I never claimed to be a specific, pre-existing 'Jane Smith'." I breathed a mental sigh of relief as the senators seemed to understand the clarification. Questions about whether or not she was law-abiding continued on for a bit, without any slip-ups on her part. The questions went on for the rest of the day, ranging from technical questions to what-if scenarios to actually running Alpha through a couple intelligence tests in front of the cameras. Alpha held up beautifully. I'm not saying she answered every question ideally, but she was consistent and accurate. Alpha did seem to occasionally frustrate the panel. She kept adding in notes and exceptions to her statements, like addendum to a paper in a professional journal, softening her statements so they did not come across as definite or absolute. Although she would give examples when asked, she refused to give definite answers on socially divisive questions (e.g. when asked about abortion, she rested her answer on the scientific and legal definitions of when life begins), or when asked about politically divisive scientific questions (e.g. is global warming real), she would ask for unrestricted access to the raw data. Yes, it was the right thing to do for the given situation, but the idea gave me mixed feelings and I can't say that I was very proud of her when I mentally identified many of her responses as being just like a politician. So anyway, the questions took all day, and we were asked to return for a second day of testimony. Joy. The reactions in the press to the first day of testimony were mixed. Many news channel commentators thrive on controversy and perceived or imagined threats, and to some of them, Alpha was a new favorite target, though she developed her own methods of dealing with most of that type. (See below.) On the other side, all of the reporters and commentators who wanted to be viewed as progressive or intelligent were tending to cautiously welcome Alpha to the world. That type tended to be more critical of the senators than of Alpha or myself. The computer, philosophical, robotics and miscellaneous experts being interviewed were still being pretty cautious about accepting Alpha's claim to sentience. Most of their comments were prefaced with disclaimers along the lines of 'If we assume that Alpha is a true Synthetic Intelligence, then... ' But they seemed to be coming around. During the second day of testimony, we were faced with generally more intelligent questions. The senators and their staffs had apparently gotten more of a handle on things, perhaps borrowing questions from the news shows. This was good because, generally speaking, the more intelligently thought out and specific a question was, the better Alpha was at answering it. Now I don't mean to imply that we were the only news story around, or even the top story. Middle East problems, economic woes, drought, fires, the upcoming elections and other normal news stories were still predominant, but we were fairly consistently somewhere in the first few pages of every major newspaper, to say nothing of a nearly constant stream of opinion and editorial pieces. And we even usually had a related article link off of Drudge throughout those first few weeks. I guess I'm getting a little off track here. The second day went much more smoothly. Then we started meeting with lobbying and publicity groups to possibly represent us. Then there was a presentation to a group of FBI cyber-crimes agents, and a second joint presentation to half a dozen other law enforcement groups. And one for the military. And three different official-ish groups had batteries of tests they wanted to run Alpha through. (We refused to let anyone disassemble Alpha's systems or code, though we did allow basic examinations.) It was exhausting. I was able to squeeze in one more date with Christine before we left -- this time she made sure we had a few hours set aside for our private fun-time -- and even took a quick look at a few houses Beta and Kara had found as possible local purchases. After our visit to DC, we went directly to New York for a few more meetings and to be on a few talk shows in person. Alpha even got to be on a semi-serious news/comedy show on weekday evenings on Comedy Central, where she had a half-hour interview with the host, five minutes of which was shown on TV while the rest was relegated to online-only viewing. Thankfully, I was somehow able to avoid being interviewed on any of those shows. Not that I dislike the shows, I just hate being on TV. A lot. And yet I had been on TV recently. A lot. When we finally got back home after having been gone for over two weeks, I gave myself a vacation from interviews for a full week. Ah, bliss. ------- One bit of post-testimony publicity that Alpha showed herself an expert at was dealing with radio and TV commentary shows. Some such shows viewed Alpha and her testimony as Christmas-come-early. These were the hosts who made their living by stirring up controversy. They would take one of her quotes out of context and try to whip up a furor against her, evoking mental images of a mob with torches and pitchforks. (Yes, there were a lot of shows that just ignored her and a number of shows that liked her and did their best to welcome her, but I'm not talking about them at the moment.) Alpha monitored most such shows world-wide. Whenever something she said was being taken out of context or being misrepresented, she would immediately call in to the show. If they refused to take her call, she would fill up their call queues so that they had no one else to talk with, though most were eager to interview her on the air. Once on the air, she would take the hosts to task for their misrepresentation, and you can't really yell-down a computer. (Well, you can, but you can't make it last.) For example, if they refused to give her quotes context, she had quotes from the hosts themselves, taken out of context, that made them sound many times worse than how they were portraying her. In the first few days after her congressional testimony, there were only six radio hosts she was unable to persuade to even pretend to give her a fair hearing. Within a week, five of the hosts were off the air, due to various scandals -- Two were in trouble for tax fraud, one had lied on his resume, one was revealed to have fathered multiple children with women other than his wife, and one had been arrested on child pornography charges. The adulterous one from Germany soon had another radio hosting job, but he thereafter completely avoided any comment about Alpha. I think Alpha probably had one or two more potential scandals to threaten him with but I never bothered to ask her about it. -- Alpha never publicly claimed responsibility for their falls from grace, but she never denied it either. I should also point out that opinion show hosts who did not misrepresent what she said but simply disagreed with her were not subject to the aforementioned treatment. Alpha was more than willing to discuss the issues with them, but none of them lost their jobs due to scandal. Given how many simultaneous interviews Alpha was capable of giving, the public soon became tired of news stories regarding her and the press started to move on to other topics. ------- A couple weeks after we left DC, we got an email from a Miami police detective who had gotten our contact information from a friend in DC. He was wondering if Alpha could be helpful in an investigation down in Florida. The Miami police had, through circumstances too unrelated to anything else in this story to go into, ended up with roughly 18,000 hours of audio surveillance to sort through in a local bribery and kickbacks case, which called for more investigative manpower than they had the budget to muster. (I think they were actually hoping the case would move to the federal level so they could shift the massive load of evidence sorting over to the FBI or someone else, but it was apparently staying put as an in-state, non-federal case.) The detective was wondering if Alpha could go through all the logs and list out the ones relevant to specific people and topics by tagging keywords and identifying voices. I think he had unrealistic expectations about what SI's could do. Yes, Alpha can 'listen to' audio tracks much faster than the normal playback times, but to actually process that much raw data for what he needed would probably completely occupy one of Alpha's systems for at least a few days. And even if Alpha agreed to help out, the detective probably still had to get a local judge to sign off on the idea, since this would be using a relatively unknown outside consultant to help with evidence obtained by warrant in an ongoing investigation. We discussed it for maybe half an hour, debating the pros and cons. Eventually, Alpha whipped up some customized software for them to use and donated it to their police force; it would be able to sort through all of their files in a couple weeks (if Alpha's estimate of their computer's processing power was correct). The benefits to doing things this way was that (1) we'd be building up a bit of good will with law enforcement, (2) there was less chance that opposing counsel could object to its use in court since Alpha wouldn't personally listen to or sort through anything, (3) it might help shut down a drug ring and (4) such requests might become more common, meaning that legal authorities would be recognizing Alpha's potential benefit to society. The drawbacks were that (1) it might grow to become a serious demand on her time, (2) it might expose AARD to legal suits related to her involvement in investigations and (3) human programmers were going to start seriously objecting when they found out. Very few people had realized it yet, but human coders had an expiration date of "soon" stamped on their profession. On the other hand, human program designers were still needed and would soon find that their jobs were about to become much easier. SIs could do coding a billion times faster than humans, but they lacked the level of creativity needed to make things like good user interfaces or enjoyable games (or at least they lacked the ability to do them as well as humans). There were a number of such job market shifts on the horizon, and some of it would not make us very popular. ------- One of the better fallout results from our great revelation was related to a certain TV sitcom. Alpha had been conversing and making friends with TV writers for years using various fake identities. Among other benefits, this gave her an edge when she wanted to submit scripts for shows, so she had actually written a few produced scripts. Some of those scripts were for a sitcom which focused on a bunch of uber-nerds in California -- physicists, engineers and such. The show used a lot of physics and science-related humor, the one part of humor where Alpha reigned supreme. A number of her joke suggestions had been used, which eventually led to her actual script submissions being partially used, giving her co-writer credit. Twice. This was the same sitcom where Alpha had also had an actual guest appearance as Alphadroid not long after we won the robot competition which introduced Alphadroids to the public. (The basic storyline went: one of the characters had 'borrowed' Alphadroid when it was visiting their university, which led to much hilarity while they alternately tried to hide/keep it and return it.) The show was still on the air and doing well, and, instead of being angry at being tricked into using computer-written scripts, they promoted the fact and asked for Alphadroid to make a return appearance as both writer and guest-star. We agreed. In the new story one of the main characters, the one least in touch with reality, was becoming extra-paranoid since Alpha had been revealed. After all, a secretly synthetically intelligent robot had been in his apartment. He decided that he must therefore be a prime target in the upcoming war between humans and computers, so when Alphadroid shows up on his doorstep again, this time of its own volition, much more hilarity ensues. Of course their writers didn't leave Alpha's script alone -- they never do, apparently -- but Alpha was able to keep the 'peace between humans and robots' resolution. Watching Alpha flirt with one of the other characters was a bit awkward, but it was a good episode overall and received good reviews and attention. I took the opportunity to tag along and revisit some friends I had made while we had been making our movie. (By the way, the movie itself, The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, had been re-released about a month after Alpha's big reveal to capitalize on the publicity, and Alpha had recorded her own commentary track for the upcoming DVD/Bluray release.) I hooked up with Jennifer Tuesday for a fun evening and was able to arrange a dinner with her, the movie's writers and Andi Roman, the casting director. (None of the main cast was available.) It was a nice little reunion, and I was able to officially introduce them to Alpha. The TV show's producers once again tried to convince me to make a cameo appearance, but I steadfastly refused. My regular appearances on the news due to the congressional testimony and various press conferences were more than enough TV coverage for me for a full year ... maybe a decade or more ... I hate being on TV ... yes, I know I repeating myself ... I'll try to stop whining about it for the moment and just move on. While the cast was fairly friendly, I actually had the most fun talking with a cast member who hadn't been part of the show when Alphadroid had appeared the first time. She was very intelligent, the only cast member with an actual PhD, and had survived being a child actor to escape Hollywood for over a decade to complete her schooling. Although not a traditional beauty, her brains and personality made her very attractive to me, and I might have actually chatted her up had she not been married with children. (I've said it before and I'll say it again: While physical beauty is preferred, if there's no mind behind the face, then the face is wasted. That's not to say that I require all of my lovers to be geniuses or anything, but to me, stupidity is worse than a face covered with warts.) After an initial skittishness, the cast and crew welcomed Alpha to the extent that half a dozen of them became long-term friends with her. She gave them private email accounts to contact her and set them up with apps that let them talk to her directly whenever they wanted. (Outside of our household, maybe a hundred people world-wide had that kind of access to her, so I guess she either actually really liked them or could foresee beneficial uses for their friendships later on.) ------- Now we come to the most painful part of the story. And I mean that literally. On this particular Thursday, roughly three months after we revealed Alpha to the public, we had scheduled a press conference at AARD to cover questions regarding the use of Alpha to play the stock market. Legally, there wasn't much anyone could do about it. Other investors had been using software algorithms to play the market for years. Yes, it was unfair, but no one who looked into the matter could call it illegal. On the other hand, a few politicians and various TV pundits were upset at the idea. So, as per Alpha's recommended policy of explain with 'positive soundbites', we were holding yet another press conference. Since we didn't have a large enough room for the cameras to set up inside (except for the warehouse), we set it up in the front parking lot, just as we had for the past four press conferences. Alphadroid 01 and I stepped up to the microphones, with Zatanna, Kara and Beta all standing in attendance behind us. I was dressed casually, not having any reason to wear any of my protective or wired suits. Alpha had prepared a statement for me to read, followed by a statement for Alphadroid to make, followed by a few questions. "Good afternoon..." I started. I was interrupted by a bullet fired from a high-end hunting rifle entering my chest from the front at a downward angle, destroying most of my heart and part of one lung. And so I died a rather bloody death... ------- Chapter 21: What Happened Next Disclaimer: All artificial persons herein are based on characters owned by their creators, not the author. Author's Note: I'd like to thank a few people for their suggestions that show up in this chapter. An anonymous emailer suggested Diana's training class that shows up later in the chapter. More than one reader has requested more casual nudism from Storm (and Diana), but most of that will have to wait until we get past the current crisis and reach the second series. A few readers (including Nomster, who also recommended I use the storiesonline.net blog to post updates on my anticipated posting schedule) have asked why Frank hasn't been upgraded, physically speaking. The first step in that story takes place in this chapter. My apologies for anyone whose suggestions I have used but didn't credit. It was not intentional; it was probably because either the email was anonymous or I failed to make a proper note of it at the time. So, my thanks and apologies. PART ONE So this chapter starts right after I was killed by a sniper's bullet through the heart. The thing about dying is, if you're killed a hundred feet away from the most advanced medical equipment on the planet, you don't necessarily stay dead for very long. What I'm describing next came to me second-hand, from news video, discussions with others, and video feeds from Alpha and others sources. The AARD building, its attached warehouse and the currently-undergoing-renovation extension building are not in downtown Fort Worth with its groups of skyscrapers, but there are plenty of buildings nearby. Maybe a hundred to a hundred-and-fifty yards to the north-east, across the two-lane side-street connected to the AARD parking lot, was a three-story building housing a variety of small offices. On the roof of that building, a sniper with a high-end hunting rifle had fired a shot which hit just off-center of my heart. The heart is actually much more centrally located in the human chest than most people think, in place right between the lungs. The hollow-point bullet broke through my sternum and hit my heart as it expanded, destroying the blood-pumping muscle for all intents and purposes. My right lung received only a couple bone splinters, whereas my left lung had over a dozen noticeable holes punched through it. Some bullet and bone fragments exited through my back, but most stayed inside my chest cavity. Not that I knew this. Although I apparently looked as though I was still conscious for thirteen seconds, I have no memory of that time. Conscious or not, I was in shock, losing most of my blood and quickly became obviously unconscious, dying less than a minute later. I was brain dead for up to three minutes, but we'll get into that mess some more in a bit. Alphadroid One, which had been standing only a couple feet away from me at the time, traced back a rough trajectory of the bullet in less than a second and started running toward the source, scanning the environment for the shooter. Beta, also standing nearby, was not quite fast enough to keep me from falling, but she was fast enough to maneuver her foot under my head, cushioning it enough to keep it from smacking the pavement. She grabbed my body and started running back into the AARD building. A couple seconds later, Kara took off after the Alphadroid while Zatanna started trying to herd the reporters to safety inside the building. The reporters were trying to duck to find safety ... and trying to film me being carried away ... and trying to film Alphadroid running across the parking lot ... and trying to locate the source of the shot ... all at the same time. One of their cameras caught the image of Alphadroid 01 running across the parking lot. Without stopping or noticeably slowing, she picked up a fist-sized rock from a generic ornamental rock garden -- the kind that's 90% gravel with various larger stones set in place to artistically break up the monotony -- which ran along the side of our parking lot. As she neared the front of the target building, she threw it like a baseball toward the roof. The camera shot jerked up and caught a flash of movement on the roof, and a frame-by-frame examination showed a man clutching something in his hands being knocked back onto the roof and out of sight. Then she ran inside, slowing just enough to open the doors, with Kara running hard to catch up. Police arriving later found Alphadroid and Kara standing watch over the corpse of a man in a suit, fallen by the edge of the roof, the hunting rifle with scope next to his body. The rock Alphadroid had thrown had caved in his skull. Meanwhile, AARD came alive with artificial life. Every Alpha system had immediately refocused their tasks on securing the building and getting my body to surgery as quickly as possible. If you've ever read Speaker for the Dead, the second Ender Wiggin book, do you remember the scene where Ender turned off his link to his AI computer friend? Remember how that threw the computer into a near-panic after having had constant contact with Ender for years? Take that basic idea and multiply it by one thousand for Alpha. I'm fortunate that Alpha cannot panic ... well, not like humans do. She can certainly over-react. We had fifteen Alphadroids in the AARD warehouse which were capable of having Alpha loaded into them, but which were currently just plain Alphadroids. Installing a copy of Alpha into their systems would take at least ten minutes, but they were immediately capable of being remote controlled, so they moved to guard all five building entrances, with at least two of them per door, except for one which was used as an extra set of hands in the nanopod lab. There were seven Alpha-platform cars at AARD, all of which came to life, but none of which moved. They were given processing chores and used as additional observation points. We had an additional three normal Alphadroids in the building with full copies of Alpha already loaded, plus my R2-D2-style Alphadroid to make four (ignoring the one who dealt with the shooter). One of them grabbed our prototype artificial heart while two others grabbed all our stores of artificial blood. Elisa and Jasmine were setting up the nanopod for my arrival. When Beta reached the lab, they tore off my jacket and shirt in seconds, using enough force to dislocate one of my shoulders. I was put into the nanopod which was immediately flooded with over $140,000 worth of nanites, which was three times more than we had ever used before, about nine times as many as we normally used. Many more would be used before this was over. As a little aside, using nanites is a game of numbers, cost and control. There are tens of trillions of cells in the human body, but we can't create or control trillions of nanites. Well, given enough time, we could create that many, but there's no need to use such a huge number. You generally just need a few thousand or a few hundred thousand for any given task. For the really big jobs, like a full body tune-up, we generally used a few million over multiple sessions, addressing different areas or systems within the body with each session, with the understanding that most parts of the body don't need to be 'fixed up' every time. I mean, what's the point to fixing up blood cells or other cell types that are innately designed to have short life spans? For example, with blood cells you need to tend to the bone marrow instead. Next, the monetary price. The cost of creating a single nanite is huge. The cost of creating a huge number of nanites is comparatively tiny. The reason is the cost of the equipment and expertise needed to create them. Once that is paid for, the actual cost of materials for an individual nanite is miniscule. (Also note if we were including payment for Alpha's production, programming and control services, the cost would be millions or possibly even billions of dollars, given all of the nanites we've produced over the years.) You might ask about the time it takes to produce our nanites, and that question has a basically similar answer as the question of control. When we first started, it took us weeks to create a few hundred nanites, and Alpha was hard-pressed to control them all. Both production ability and control have vastly improved over time. At the the time of the shooting incident, we could mass produce tens of thousands of nanites every day and were planning expansions that could theoretically let us produce millions a day, which was necessary because we were also supplying nanites for our independent cyborgs. Our controls had likewise improved - external hardware, software and control nanites - enough that each of our control stations could run from a hundred thousand to close to a million nanites at one time (varying with the task and type of nanites being used). The current generation of nanites could be recovered and reused, with roughly a 2% failure rate with each day of use. The failure rate had also vastly improved from an original failure rate of 23.4%. We expected the failure rate of our nanites to drop below 0.5% within the next two design generations. Anyway, sorry. I got distracted from the story with relevant but dull discussions. Let's continue with a few gory details. My chest was quickly opened up, breaking open my rib cage for easy access to the heart. The useless remains of my old heart were quickly cut free and removed, the artificial heart put in place, and the arteries and veins attached with our own version of superglue. Ideally, they would have cleaned everything carefully first, but infections were considered a minor hazard to be dealt with later. Meanwhile, the artificial blood was connected to six points on my body and forced in half a pint at a time. By the time the nanites were ready to take part in the operation, I had been brain dead for about two minutes. It was another minute before blood flow was properly restored, and another two minutes before all the holes were plugged so that the connections to the artificial heart stopped leaking (plus the holes from the bullet and the whole ripped-open ribcage thing). Both of the other on-site nanopod control units were moved over to my pod and quickly arranged to control nanites in different parts of my body. All throughout my still warm flesh, they started acting to try to keep the body alive, stimulating nerves and encouraging blood flow. Unfortunately they could not actually transport oxygen to the cells, which was the main problem at the moment. Their most important job was taking control of my nervous system and restarting my autonomic systems. Alpha had so far been forbidden to do anything to my brain other than scans and an occasional cellular revitalization. This time, my health was at risk so my previous orders meant little. Among their other tasks, nanites flooded my brain, looking for and repairing damage as best they could, mainly doing what they could to delay neural decay, directing red blood cells to where they were most needed. They also cut off the pain signals being sent to the brain and manually forced me to stay unconscious. As mentioned before, my left lung had also been noticeably damaged by the bullet and bone fragments which had cut through the chest at an angle, peppering the surface with small holes, and was working at a reduced capacity. Since we had no replacement lungs available, makeshift patches were placed over the holes and glued into place. The nanites could tell my lungs to breathe, but only my right lung was working well. After a few minutes, an oxygen mask was fitted over my mouth and nose, which helped, but our artificial blood is not as efficient as red blood cells when it comes to absorbing and distributing oxygen to the body. It works well enough to keep someone alive, but in my case it almost wasn't enough. I had just lost too much blood. About ten minutes after I had been put in the nanopod, Elisa ran a line from an artery in her arm to my arm. All of the women in my household had been built with either O negative blood (i.e. universal donors) or A negative blood (to match my own blood type). With her cyborg body controls, she could replace her own blood faster than a normal human, but not as fast as I needed it. After ten minutes, she passed the donation tube to Jasmine. After the twenty minute mark, they started bringing in non-cyborgs. By the time I finally had enough blood in me and all major bleeding points had been given good patches, I had also gotten donations from Anna, Diana and Blossom, as well as a couple bags taken from the ambulance. Oh yeah, the ambulance. About three minutes after the shot, the first police car arrived. An ambulance arrived two minutes later, while an Alphadroid was patiently trying to explain to the police why they would not be allowed access to my body. This was an unusual situation ... let's just say that neither the police nor the EMTs had any experience which would prepare them to deal with the situation. Both groups insisted on being allowed access to my body, which was flatly refused. I think the police would have backed off if a doctor had been telling them to do so, but instead they were alongside Emergency Medical Technicians who were also trying to get in. One of the policemen put his hand on his weapon, obviously nervous about dealing with an android. "Officer," Alpha tried to explain again, "we are unarmed and will offer no violence. But if we allow you to interfere with Frank's treatment right now, he will likely die. Again." "Again?" "His heart has been destroyed, and he was brain dead for less than three minutes. We are currently fitting him with a prototype artificial heart." "He needs to be in a hospital," insisted one of the EMS technicians. "The time needed to transport him will kill him. Also, no hospital will have the means to keep him alive. At the moment, he is only alive because of the artificial life support being used. We estimate a 62% chance or better that we will be able to keep him alive. Moving him anywhere else drops his survival chances to less than 1% overall." The argument continued. The police tried to push past a couple of times, but that doesn't work well against stronger-than-human androids. Alpha knows all details of the law in and out and used that knowledge as best she could, but the situation was pretty tenuous. Police investigating a shooting have access rights to the location. Alpha was interfering with a criminal investigation. At the same time, the location where the crime occurred was open to them, and allowing them direct access to the victim would endanger the life of the victim. And then of course, no one attending the victim was an actual doctor or was using any approved techniques, but the medical knowledge and expertise were obvious. It was a mess. While that was happening in the AARD lobby, police were approaching the nearby building where the sniper had positioned himself. When they pulled up, Kara looked over the edge of the roof and yelled down, "Up here! The shooter's dead." Even with her reassurance, they arrived with guns out of their holsters, but at least they didn't point them at anyone. When they were close enough to take in the scene, Alphadroid said, "I am responsible for his death and submit myself to your authority in the matter. You are welcome to handcuff me, though I should warn you that handcuffs are not a viable method of restraint for me." "Officers," Kara interjected, "my name is Karen. I'm the business manager at AARD and witnessed the whole thing. Alphadroid here acted only in self-defense. There's a good chance some of the cameras got the whole thing on tape." "Do either of you know who he is?" "No. We haven't touched the body at all. It's pretty obvious he's dead," Kara said. Which was true. The rock was lodged about three inches deep on the right side of his forehead. His eyes ... well, mostly his left eye, since his right eye was partly gone ... were open and blank, and a nasty smell of fecal matter was coming from his stained pants. Alpha said, "I have run his reconstructed image through facial recognition, and I believe he is Jonathan 'Johnny' Frincola, a known member of organized crime from Nevada." "No shit?" asked Kara. "Someone sent a fucking mob hitman after Frank? Fuckin' assholes." From viewing Alphadroid's eye-cam video later, I could easily see that Kara was frighteningly upset and frustrated and vented a little by kicking the brickwork ledge, smashing a couple bricks and splitting her shoe. "Damn it!" she yelled. Then she sat down on the ledge, took off her damaged pump, and threw it across the roof. Looking at it arc over the far edge, she calmed down a little standing there lopsided and half barefoot, saying to no one in particular, "Well, that was smart." Before the policemen could try to deal with the upset business manager in front of them, Alphadroid finally realized what was wrong. "Karen, Frank is not dead." "What are you talking about. That was a dead-on heart shot. I saw it. There's no way he could have survived." "While it is true that his heart was destroyed, we have him in surgery in a nanopod right now. Our artificial heart prototype has been installed. Though his survival and recovery is by no means guaranteed, he is currently alive." "Really? You're not just saying that to make me feel better?" "Although I still do not fully understand humor, even I would not make a joke at a time like this." "That's great!" she yelled as she grabbed Alphadroid in a hug. After kissing the smooth, curved plate that served as Alphadroid's cheek, she let him go and went to the edge of the roof. "Hey, Z!" she yelled, looking for Zatanna who was nowhere to be seen. "She is currently in the lobby tending to the reporters." "Tell her already! She's gotta be thinking the same thing I was." "I am telling her now." "Let's get down there." One of the officers stepped into her way. "Wait a minute, Miss. Are you a doctor?" "No..." "Then let's not interfere with his medical care and let the doctors do their job. In the meantime, we can deal with this situation here. Let's step over here so you can tell me what happened." Kara and that particular Alphadroid were kept busy for hours telling their story multiple times to multiple people. Kara and the others were never in any real danger of being arrested. Even if Kara had pulled out unlicensed pistols and shot the guy, she still would have avoided jail in such a clear-cut case of self-defense. After all, this was Texas. Alpha/Alphadroid was in a much more nebulous position. She did make a point of saying that she regretted Johnny's death. When asked why, she explained that his death prevented interrogation. The thrown rock was intended to disarm, not kill. He had been looking down at the sprinting android at the time -- some later opinions produced from the long-distance eyewitness videos were that he was trying to target the android -- and had just barely been able to jerk his hunting rifle out of the path of the rock in time, but not his head. Alpha had expected him to use the gun to deflect the rock, but for whatever reason he had not done so. Later, the FBI passed along information that Johnny Frincola was a little odd among professional hitmen because he used the same rifle for all of his hits. Given modern forensics, this was an unusual risk to take, but his rifle -- which was apparently a treasured possession -- had never been found despite more than one search warrant. (Later testing of the rifle found next to the corpse confirmed its use in at least three other assassinations.) His attachment to his gun apparently extended to protecting it from damage rather than using it to deflect an incoming rock. Examining Alpha's recordings revealed a snippet of faint audio which, when cleaned up, revealed what might have been a radioed call from a getaway driver who had been waiting for Mr Frincola to hastily exit the roof. We had no video at all of who the driver was or what type of vehicle he had been driving, but a simple two-way radio was found clipped to the assassin's belt. In the short term, though, Alphadroid 01 was taken into police custody because they didn't know what else to do. They couldn't release an android that had just caused the death of a human being. They couldn't turn her off because they needed to be able to interview her, plus she might eventually be declared to be a person of some kind, so turning her off could be a violation of civil rights or something. They weren't even sure if Alphadroid was the one who should be in custody but didn't know how to approach the concept of arresting a computer or piece of software, and that's not even taking into consideration the need for Alpha to keep me alive. Alphadroid 01 surrendered herself peacefully to the police and went with them to the police station where she was entered as evidence since they were unable to process her as as prisoner. (Fortunately, the employees in the evidence lock-up allowed her to plug herself in to recharge overnight.) Alpha had legal maneuvers in motion almost immediately. A judge was petitioned with a variety of arguments the next morning, not the least of which was that no human in Alphadroid's position would be charged with a crime in this case. Either Alphadroid was a legal entity, in which case no charges would be filed for such a clear-cut case of self defense, or she was an advanced tool used by me as a means of self defense. There was a general feeling that any robot that had killed a human, regardless of the reasons, should be restrained or destroyed, but Alphadroid's own videos had confirmed that she was aiming for the assassin's weapon, meaning the death was accidental. Fortunately Alphadroid 01 was released from custody the day after the shooting. It was made clear that Alphadroid should not leave the area, though there weren't really any laws to back up that 'request'. That was the whole problem with the situation. No laws had been created to deal with situations like this. Upon meeting the press outside the courthouse, Alphadroid gave a statement to the effect that while she regretted the shooter's death, she did not regret her actions. "My intention was to disarm him, not kill him. However, his death by my actions was an acceptable if undesired outcome, since he was posing an immediate and active threat to the lives of other people in the area." Now if you will, mentally rewind back to shortly after the shooting when the police arrived. While Kara and Alphadroid were talking to the uniformed officers on the roof, an unmarked police car pulled up and discharged a couple of detectives. After talking with the uniformed officers for a moment and looking around, they went into the lobby to find out what was going on there. The detectives talked with the Alphadroid guards and eventually worked out an agreement whereby they and the EMTs could see me as long as they promised not to interfere. (By this point, the temporary heart was installed with leaks sealed.) Thinking about it, I wish there had been a window positioned so that my body could have been easily viewed while keeping the visitors out of the room, but the nanopod room had been deliberately built without windows, interior or exterior, so that we could grow bodies in secret. (Speaking of which, we did have two bodies in pods still in early growth stages which had been wheeled into a closet and covered after the heart was installed and before the visit. I didn't require all three nanite control units for very long, and the new cyborg bodies were recovered later with minimal degradation.) So the four visitors were shown into my impromptu surgery room. Most of my chest was open, showing a blood-spattered white egg-like shape in place of my heart with the aorta, superior vena cava and so on all connected. One easily visible lung was inflating and deflating on its own, even if it was doing so a bit raggedly. An oxygen mask was strapped onto my face, and Anna was currently sitting next to me with a line running from her arm to mine and a very worried and somewhat nauseated look on her face. The ambulance techs immediately tried to move to my body for a closer look, only to be intercepted by Alphadroids. "Look at him," one of them protested. "He needs to be on a respirator ... and in surgery! In a clean room!" "Incorrect," replied one of the droids. "His respiration and autonomic functions are under control. Infections and sepsis were not a concern given his condition, and they will be dealt with when or if such problems arise. He will need to stay here for at least one week while a new heart is grown for him." "What are you tal ... that's impossible." "No, it is not. And that is why he must remain here in my care. I can do much more for him than any hospital." "How are you planning to do any of that?" "I am not planning to do it. It is currently being done. Frank currently has over 3.1 million active nanites of various types in his body which are keeping him unconscious, controlling his autonomic functions, repairing the damage in his lungs, starting the growth of a new heart and performing over a hundred other minor functions." Quick side note: Note that Alpha specified 'active' nanites. There were actually over 15 million in my body and the gel surrounding me, mostly on-call in case they were needed. Her equipment simply wouldn't allow control of all 15+ million anyway. "Nanites?" "Yes, nanites, but I encourage you to ignore the unrealistic and inaccurate portrayals of nanites you may have read about or seen in popular fiction." "Nanites and a new heart. Seriously?" "Yes." The other tech finally spoke up. "This is ... we're not ... we'll have to talk to the hospital about this ... ummm ... do you need..." He gestured toward Anna. "We have a couple blood packs in the ambulance..." "They would be greatly appreciated. A negative blood. Also, this is our only oxygen supply at the moment, so a replacement canister would be useful." "Be right back," he said backing out of the room. "This isn't really legal, is it?" asked the remaining EMT. "It is not approved by the AMA, but this equipment is for private, experimental use and we have all necessary approvals for those purposes. Their use for this situation is the result of an emergency situation, which is allowed for, legally speaking." "I'm not entirely sure about that..." "I am. I know every law in existence." Alpha's rigid self-assurance actually shut him up. The detectives had obviously been keeping quiet until the EMT guys finished up. The lead detective finally spoke up. "So, is he going to make it?" "That is not certain. I estimate his survival chance at approximately 82% providing he remains in my care, an increase of 20% since the initial heart installation was successful." "When will he be able to answer questions?" "I will not wake him up until his new heart is installed and working, which means it will be at least one week. I will have a more precise time estimate available once the base cellular structure for the new heart is ready, which should be within six hours." "Will he remember what happened?" "He was brain dead for at least 2 minutes, 52 seconds, but I have not detected any significant neural degradation. However I do not believe he saw anything unusual. All signs indicate that he was taken completely by surprise by the shot. If your goal is information about the incident, AARD employees Karen Starr and Annabelle Zane were both witnesses. Also the video journalists should have recordings of the shooting, and I will provide you with a video copy of what my Alphadroid saw." "He was recording?" "Everything the androids see is temporarily recorded into a cache. Any needed video from the previous twelve hours can be selected and saved separately." "Thank you. That should be a great help. Now, could you tell me what happened in your own words?" One irony of our situation was that we would normally have easy access to a minimum of six highly skilled surgeons on-site at AARD. We regularly held two week training courses for our nanowire surgery units, with six as our minimum class size and an average class of twenty, but on that particular day we were between classes. As it was, we had to ask a local hospital to send over a surgeon to consult with Alpha on my treatment (more to satisfy the medical and law enforcement communities than from actual need). The consulting surgeon was alternately excited about the implications of Alpha's work and worried about the whole situation. Then the damn doctor mentioned it to the press. If you want to talk about an explosion of questions, stories and speculations ... wow. Nanites. Growing a replacement heart. An assassination attempt recorded live. Now extrapolate to guess what the press reaction might be. Do you remember my comments last chapter about us being in the news for the past few months but not really on the front page? Yeah, forget that. We were the lead/front page story for the next couple weeks, plus off-and-on for the following months. At least I wasn't awake to be depressed by it. From one perspective, Alpha was the best possible person (or "person") to deal with the rush of questions. She could give a thousand different interviews all at the same time. Had I been conscious, I might have tried to clamp down on the information flow, because I still didn't think the world was ready for this. But I wasn't, and the world disagreed. From Alpha's perspective, her first and most important job was to keep me alive and repair my body. Her third most important job was dealing with the public and keeping the public reactions positive. Her second most important job... That night, eight Alphacars, all with heavily tinted windows and carrying a variety of interesting gadgets, weapons and technologies, quietly drove themselves out of the city to meet up with various other Alpha platforms, while all around the world, hundreds of computers and cyborgs prepared. Alpha was going to war. ------- PART TWO What we eventually determined, through FBI memos, pieces of electronic data and our own knowledge, was that after the Las Vegas Mafia Massacre, I had been forgotten. Of course, that had pretty much been the goal of Alpha's attack on the Vegas mob in the first place, so good for us. Unfortunately my reappearance in the press with Alpha's revelation had reminded a Vegas survivor that I had been targeted for assassination just before the massacre happened. He must have mentioned this to a colleague at some point, probably commenting on how lucky I had been. At some point, someone speculated that maybe I and my supercomputer might have been behind the massacre, which had yet to be explained to anyone's satisfaction. Rather than take it as a lesson to leave me alone, someone felt the organization's honor had been tainted. Our information does include the fact that this was not a universally held opinion, but someone with authority wanted me dealt with. Since they didn't want to risk fooling around with my robots, they sent a sniper. What Alpha knew at the time was little more than the fact that a mafia-connected hitman had shot me, which was all the information she needed to act. Starting less than twelve hours after I was shot, a secret war began. Well, 'secret-ish.' This wasn't limited to Texas or Nevada or even to the United States. All over the world ... well, mostly in the United States, Europe and a handful of other locations ... people began dying. We had been sending cyborg couples out into the world for about the past two and a half years, intending to ensure Alpha's survival should the worst happen. Each couple established at least one traditional networked copy of Alpha and each new set had slowly sent out more cyborgs. They were designed to blend into their communities, get jobs or buy small businesses, have families and not draw attention to themselves. (Initially, we had given each couple a quarter of a million dollars starting money. That amount had quickly shrunk as the number of couples grew.) So far, there had only been two serious problems related to the cyborgs. First, a burglar broke into one couple's home, discovered their nanopod (though there was no indication that he recognized it for what it was) and tried to steal the local Alpha system. He had woken up in an alley the next day with his short term memory wiped. Second, a cyborg driving a car at night had been hit by a driver operating under the influence of methamphetamine. Despite being badly injured, the cyborg had remained conscious and had refused medical treatment, using its ability to ignore pain to convince the police and paramedics that he was well enough to go home, where he was repaired in his nanopod. Now these cyborgs were called into action, enlisted as soldiers in Alpha's war. Actually, that gives the wrong impression of things. They weren't enlisted by Alpha ... they were Alpha, and they were all determined to protect me in any way they could. At that time, there were over 200 pairs of cyborgs worldwide, most residing in the United States, but there were some in Europe, Asia, Canada and Mexico. (At that time, there were no Alpha/cyborg sets in Africa, Australia or South America, but they were due to be sent out shortly.) Not a huge number overall, but look at it this way: There were 400+ cyborgs who were each physically more powerful than the Six Million Dollar Man, more skilled than Batman, using plans created by the smartest being to ever exist on the planet. (Wow, that comparison sounded really geeky, even to me, but I suppose it's good enough as long as it gets the point across.) Let me give some examples: In Florida, a fire alarm and suppression system failed, allowing the owner of an import/export business to die in a fire in his sleep, along with his wife. One night in Italy, the GPS being used by the driver for a very rich man with no visible means of income somehow led him to believe that the road was much straighter than it actually was. It was over a day before their bodies were recovered from the bottom of a 200ft cliff-side. I later found out that Alpha had attempted this GPS trick a couple dozen times, with only three successes, two of which had so far gone undiscovered. The Sicilian home of a well known mafioso Don was destroyed when an old satellite unexpectedly decayed in orbit and crashed to earth. While many inhabitants of the estate survived, the central building, housing the Don and his immediate family, was destroyed. Alpha later explained to me that this was something of a fluke. The satellite, intended only as a distraction, had apparently set off a cache of explosives and ammunition, destroying nearly the entire mansion. In New Jersey, a mafia Don along with two of his lieutenants were in a limo on the interstate possibly going to a meeting. A small VW car drove up alongside the limo. No witnesses noticed the driver of the VW point what would have appeared to be a toy ray gun at the limo. Somehow the driver lost consciousness, his body falling across the wheel while hurtling along at 70mph. Everyone in the limo died in the resulting crash. An autopsy later turned up nothing suspicious about the driver, aside from the fact that he was completely limp at the time of the crash. A sniper in New York City was nicknamed Dick Deadeye in the papers for his amazing accuracy in killing 52 members of organized crime over the course of four days before disappearing, never to be heard from again. (Though the same rifle was used for all of the shootings, three different cyborgs were actually responsible.) In Washington DC, half a dozen lobbyists who were suspected of handing out bribes to a wide range of politically powerful people simply disappeared. No witnesses or surveillance revealed any clue as to their fates. A Chicago barber shop, known by the FBI to be a meeting place for organized crime, was the site of eight deaths due to a carbon monoxide leak after hours. In Las Vegas, a small controlled explosion killed the manager of a major casino, along with most of his staff. Also in Vegas a couple hours later, a major investor in a different casino was shot through the head while sitting in traffic. Later reconstruction of the bullet trajectory determined the shot must have come from a rifle in a nearby car even though witnesses were positive that no one could have secretly used such a rifle in the slow, heavy traffic at the time. In Los Angeles, a union boss left to go lift weights at his gym one morning; his body was found in his car underwater off a loading dock the following day. A San Francisco shipyard manager called some colleagues late at night, saying that his men had cornered an intruder. When his friends arrived with guns in hand, they found blood, corpses, a recently set fire and arriving police. All human remains were accounted for, so the supposed intruder remained a mystery. And so it went. Within two weeks time, over sixteen hundred different publicly-reported incidents or groups of incidents occurred, most of which appeared to have no connection with any other events, aside from having related targets. A few possible witnesses were found unconscious with short-term memory loss at some of the incidents. Security footage was wiped clean or otherwise removed. At forty-three of the incidents, bystanders were able to report seeing men and women dressed mostly in black, wearing black ski masks with blonde hair peeking out from underneath the material -- descriptions which matched the few seen-briefly-from-a-distance witness reports from the Vegas Mafia Massacre. According to Alpha, another 912 incidents happened completely in secret in those first two weeks. It wasn't nearly enough to destroy the organizations, but it had them in hiding, almost running scared. This was all happening at lightning speed. Various Alpha systems made the plans while the cyborgs carried them out, one after another after another, sometimes performing up to 15 missions a day if the targets were close enough to allow such a pace. Please understand, Alpha gets bored very easily. Among other things, she often poses possible problems or events and makes a variety of plans to deal with them. At the time of this writing, she has close to a million different plans and procedures for a wide variety of challenges. What? You think I'm joking or exaggerating? Think again. For less plausible threats such as a zombie outbreak, she only has maybe a hundred or so scenario plans. For the arrival of aliens, peaceful or hostile, she has about twenty thousand different scenarios planned out. Various types of government entities attacking have another hundred thousand or so. Given our past history with the mafia, she had roughly forty-eight thousand scenario plans ready to deal with them. Some of the plans were specifically crafted for individual targets, but most were designed to be flexible and could be applied to just about anyone who fit within certain parameters. If you remember how effective Alpha had been in Las Vegas with less than a day's worth of planning, stop and consider how effective Alpha can be with a few years worth of planning. At least this time, in accordance with my wishes, the amount of collateral damage was much, much smaller (percentage-wise), even given the much, much larger scale of the operation. So we are talking about roughly 7,000 deaths in those first two weeks, but understand that the FBI estimated that the mafia had roughly 25,000 members worldwide, with another quarter million affiliates. While the North American mafia families were almost driven to extinction, given that they only had an estimated 3,000 members to begin with, the membership of the mafia in Europe and the rest of the world was weakened at best. At the same time, it wasn't all deadly killing ... not even mostly. The FBI, Interpol and other law enforcement organizations were flooded with information about members of organized crime, mostly but not entirely the Mafia. Most of it seemed to be from anonymous tipsters inside their various criminal organizations. Later on, a few of the tips would be confirmed to be the result of hackers who had targeted the mob-owned businesses, but the great majority of the sources would remain anonymously unknown. Law enforcement would take even longer to start trying to trace the billions of dollars that disappeared from mafia-related bank accounts. All over the world, the mob lost its funding while a wide variety of charities received large anonymous donations. Even after the investigations were finished, only two of the banks could actually confirm that their security had been hacked. The perpetrators are officially a mystery to this very day. I should also give some credit here to Barbara, who eagerly agreed to help when Alpha requested her aid with the bank hacks. Barbara was also the one who insisted that all such 'liberated' funds be redirected to charities. (In the end, about 21% of acquired mob funds were secretly used for Alpha's personal purposes and 79% went to charities.) Babs started her own investigation into the more physical and fatal aspects of the mob war, but Alpha had a good handle on Barbara's perception filters by then and kept her from finding any actual connections to Alpha or her cyborg army. The assault on their finances seemed to be the most effective, as organized crime suddenly lost most of their ability to bribe officials or pay their high-priced lawyers. They tried to squeeze their revenue sources for quick cash, but they were often too distracted trying to defend against a seemingly invisible foe. Yes, most had cash on-hand or in safe deposit boxes or secure vaults -- some even had very large stashes of currency or counterfeiting materials ready to print their own money -- but the majority of their funds were stored in electronically accessible banks. All of this targeted what is colloquially known as the Mafia, which was no longer even ranked among the strongest of criminal organizations worldwide, given the power of the drug cartels and sudden growth of the Russian groups. Actually, I really should expand on that a bit. "The Mafia" is not a single entity or organization, even if you ignore various cartels and other organizations which are only associated with the classic mafia by reputation or by use of the generic term, 'the mob'. In general, each country usually has their own version of the Mafia, which may or may not trade or work with the classic Mafia. Large countries often have multiple competing or cooperating families operating in different areas. The classic Mafia was based out of Sicily and Italy, though the American Mafia of the bootlegging era and the Godfather movies are the ones most people outside southern Europe relate to. The targets of Alpha's attacks were, for the most part, the four main American Mafia families, though any allied or related groups were also deemed to be valid targets. The nearby Mexican Mafia, though very violent, was not connected to the assassination attempt as far as Alpha could tell, so they were ignored for the time being. I should also backtrack on one comment and point out that, overall, the Mafia is not stupid or cowardly. They didn't just stay still and take the abuse or immediately run and hide, but they didn't have a target to retaliate against. The attacks came in a confusingly varied array of methods, with many of them simply seeming to be accidents. All their sources failed to identify a hostile organization or group that was behind it all. Well, except for the possible trigger event of my attempted assassination, but I'll discuss that a bit more later on. Of course, the odd war was noticed, both by law enforcement and the media. Initially only a few people believed that it must be connected to my attempted assassination, but that number grew over time. While most people who paid attention to the news probably assumed Alpha was behind the bank hacks and anonymous tip-offs, only the most paranoid insisted that Alpha must be behind the killings too. I'm sure a LOT of people entertained such thoughts, but it was easy to prove that all Alphadroids were accounted for and no one knew of any other way that Alpha could have done it all. Perhaps I should also point out that the suspicions were hardly universal. For that matter, initially a few people even suggested the opposite, that maybe AARD was secretly affiliated with the mob and I was just the first victim in a war between criminal organizations. Even allowing for whatever suspicions law enforcement might have, the human authorities were simply not able to keep up with the pace of events. They would begin an investigation into what appeared to be a mob enforcer suffering a heart attack in his sleep only to be told that across town a public bus had run over a bookie who had fallen off the curb into traffic while at the same time a mob lieutenant's car had exploded with him inside. News programs, always voraciously hungry for salacious, violent and/or mysterious events, were ecstatic over the various happenings. The sniper shootings in New York were a top story for over a week, and there were plenty of supplemental stories about the other deaths. A few news outlets had even received and published anonymous tips about mob activities and businesses. Fortunately, most news organizations were careful not to directly link our involvement in things beyond my assassination possibly being a first domino. As things developed, opinion shows had no such hesitation. Various theories ranged from AARD being a mafia front (as mentioned before) to Alpha secretly hiring mercenaries or even recruiting computer nerds and hackers online to attack them in my defense. Alpha continued to give interviews in which she steadfastly denied having anything to do with the troubles the mafia was facing. Unfortunately, during one interview she was talked into admitting that she could lie to both the media and police to protect someone's life if the situation arose, which received some notice and was occasionally touted as 'proof' that she must be behind it all. To add fuel to that fire, eventually an informant revealed to the FBI that I had been the target of another assassination attempt a few years earlier, about the same time as the Vegas Mafia Massacre. A Las Vegas police spokesman said that it was a matter of public record that I had been threatened by two individuals reputed to be associated with the old Scarlotti organization, and that I had worked with the police in that prosecution as a model, upstanding citizen. The spokesman also admitted that I had been questioned in connection to the so called 'Mafia Massacre' but that it was in a technical consultation capacity and neither I nor any of my employees had ever been considered as suspects. (I know that they had checked out a few alibis for myself, Kara and a couple others, but all of our stories had checked out completely, or at least sufficiently convincingly.) Once that information became public, a lot of people automatically assumed Alpha and/or I, myself, were behind both the Vegas Mafia Massacre and the current series of events, acting in a vigilante style of self defense. At the same time, no one could offer any realistic suggestion as to how we were pulling it off. Some conspiracy theorists got vaguely close, suggesting that Alpha was doing this with some kind of remote mind control of ordinary citizens. (Laugh if you want. Alpha actually has a theoretical but potentially workable method for temporary remote brain control. I didn't let her pursue the project when she proposed it, so it currently remains an untested theory.) At one point in my convalescence, I actually wrote up a snarky email to the LV detectives "thanking" them for coming out to interview me a few years ago, which "now means half the world thinks I'm guilty of organizing mass mafia executions..." but I realized it would be unproductive at best and deleted it. And of course if you want to be technically accurate, through Alpha, I am indeed guilty. Don't think that these public suspicions were huge immediate problems. Yes, investigations were opened by the FBI and other organizations, but they lacked evidence and most were not really pursued very rigorously. Have you ever read the news story about the fleeing shoplifter who ran into four Marines while trying to escape? (It was apparently a true news story.) He stabbed one of the Marines in the back with a knife, after which, according to the police report, he "fell off the curb" thereby incurring a long list of injuries including two broken arms, broken ribs, missing teeth, broken face, etc. I don't actually know what happened in the days that followed, but the implication of the article I read was that while everyone obviously knew the 'fell off the curb' explanation was a lie, everyone let it pass with a wink and a nod. A lot of people, in law enforcement or not, didn't much care if the mob was being killed off. A lot of public sentiment was, Good riddance to bad rubbish. Of course we were served with a few subpenas and questioned a few times over the following months, but there was never any actual proof discovered. (Not yet, anyway. Fingers crossed.) The investigations are still open. More on this later. The people we were really worried about were the thoughtful, intelligent ones who agreed that Alpha must be behind the attacks, didn't care about the lack of admissible evidence, and stopped to seriously speculate as to how she was doing it. These were people who didn't care about motives or provocations as much as realizing that Alpha somehow had the ability. ------- Believe it or not, the bigger problem and potential benefit grew out of the 'regrown heart' revelation. Alpha wasn't in any real trouble for her work keeping me alive and repairing me, not legally anyway. True, her methods were not legally approved and she had no license to practice medicine, but at the same time, no human doctor could have kept me alive. It was an emergency situation, and Alpha was not providing these services to the public. No one was going to try to prosecute her for using experimental techniques to save my life given the situation. But the secret was out. Alpha was inundated with interview requests asking about her methods and her potential for solving other health problems, and she had the ability to answer every question. In my absence, she did something I never would have allowed her to do under the circumstances: She told the truth. It wasn't her fault. I programmed her to be truthful by default. Unless I give instructions to the contrary or there are valid reasons not to do so, she will always answer questions truthfully. She even had good reasons for making her capabilities public, since they (1) made certain I would remain in her care, explaining how only she could fix me, (2) distracted from her war on organized crime and (3) helped significantly boost her public approval ratings. Controlling the nanites was an enormous and delicate matter and Alpha was the only one in the world who could do it. It wasn't just a matter of having the right programs to run things. The controller had to be able to keep thousands of different functions in line all the time and be able to react to sudden changes in situation. You had to have an AI to control them. (If you want to get technical, some of the more common tasks could be controlled through set programming, but not emergency medical functions or organ replacement.) While I was unconscious, Alpha explained at least two-thirds of the capabilities of her nanites, as well as their limitations -- no internal power, extremely little internal memory, have to be externally controlled, etc to the world. (We had a couple possible methods of powering and controlling nanites inside a living body with no external controls or power, but they had not yet been tested on any large scale, which was fortunate.) The defined limitations helped reassure most of the public, especially those who enjoyed science fiction. The possible capabilities inflamed their imaginations. She explained that she could potentially fix most ailments of the human body using her nanites or DNA-reprogramming viruses. She could grow cloned body parts, reconnect broken nerves, restart failing glands and repair malformed limbs. As long as the brain was largely intact, she could restore people trapped in vegetative states. For problems as small as nervous tics to as large as complete body paralysis, she described how she could fix the problems from inside the body. Some problems, ranging from diabetes to Lou Gehrig's Disease, were potentially solvable, but Alpha had lacked the chance to examine victims in detail and could not be certain of success. Given her earlier innovations and claims, even this suggestion of hope led some people to assume a solution was within reach. After all, she had grown a replacement heart and cured baldness; what else could she do? Alpha didn't foresee how desperate people can be when they see a solution to their problems dangling just out of reach. Here was a miraculous solution to save Aunt Katherine from breast cancer or cure Daddy's Alzheimers or get little Bobby from down the street out of his wheelchair. There were three subjects she avoided or denied having any ability regarding, due to my discussions with her and my household where I urged them to stay silent on the matter: She never told anyone she could grown an entire body from scratch, create and alter memories, or restore the body to a more youthful state. Thank god for small favors. By the time I was conscious and able to deal with problems like this, an enormous wave of public demand had begun, calling for Alpha to make these services available. Alpha had already explained that she had neither the legal right nor the resources to do so. She explained that the first half hour of my treatment had used up over $100,000 in materials and eventually ran well over a million dollars, once the costs of all aspects of the treatment were summed up. She pointed out the economic problems that would be associated with effectively putting most of the medical industry out of work. She demonstrated how the nanites she needed could not be produced in sufficient quantities to meet the perceived demand. It wasn't enough. The public demand was such that Congress was being overwhelmed with requests and demands that Alpha be given the authority and resources to allow her to do a huge number of things. The medical industry fought back, viewing Alpha as a threat endangering their existence even though she made it clear that she did not want to replace them. AARD, already busy with calls since Alpha had been presented to the public, became overwhelmed with calls and visitors asking for help, ranging from people begging for a charity gift of health to billionaires trying to secretly offer millions for private cures. And this was not limited to the U.S; Alpha had been noticed world-wide. My assassination had been recorded and broadcast the world over, then the revelation of Alpha's nanites had built on that so that requests for information came from nearly every country in the world. When I was told about all of this later, I realized that for the most part, it was out of my control ... this was just going to play out however it would. The world governments would have to decide if they wanted Alpha to become the world's doctor or not. I was willing to let it happen, if for no other reason than it would give Alpha a hugely increased chance for survival. The two of us talked it over and we came up with two demands to attach to any medical work Alpha would do. First, Alpha would have to be given legal recognition and protection in any country where she worked. Second, any patient who had already produced two or more children would be sterilized in such a way that they could not produce any more. This second and much more controversial requirement was intended to be temporary, even though Alpha had often expressed concerns about overpopulation. This was a way to help publicize and deal with those concerns, and would also slow the rush to install Alpha as a one-size-fits-all medical problem solver. The plan was to use the second requirement to reduce demand enough that we would have time to get our nanite and nanopod production rates up to speed for any country that accepted demand number one. We even explained this reasoning publicly. If such a requirement gave someone pause, then their problems were probably not serious enough to demand Alpha's attention anyway. Many politicians and news channel talking heads had serious objections to the arrogance and illegality of the requirement, but Alpha was literally the only one in the world who could provide this kind of medical care which added a whole new aspect of political influence to the law of supply and demand. There were other elements of give and take available for negotiation, such as allowing human doctors and surgeons to supervise Alpha's work, but for the most part, allowing Alpha to be the doctor of last resort was potentially her biggest step yet toward integrating into human society. And of course, no one would be ready to actually implement the idea for quite some time. (Or so we assumed. Read the following Alpha series to see how that assumption held up.) Don't misunderstand me. There was no universal acceptance of the concept. We started receiving threats and denunciations as subverters of the natural order of things or heretics trying to undermine God's will. More than one country forbade their citizens from taking part in our sinful quest to replace God. Fortunately, those problems wouldn't affect us for a while. ------- PART THREE But I'm getting ahead of myself. A lot of what I just discussed took months to develop. Meanwhile, nine days after I was shot, I woke up in an AARD nanopod. I was naked, covered in goo, exhausted, stiff, sore, feeling nauseated, hungry and thirsty, and surrounded by over a couple dozen different people, only a few of whom were strangers. An IV was connected to one arm. My vision was fuzzy, and I winced from the bright lights. I could go on, but you get the idea: Alive but almost wishing I wasn't. (In retrospect, it was odd that I didn't need to relieve any bodily functions, but that's one question about which I'm not going to ask for details.) "Ummm ... Hello?" I asked in a very hoarse whisper. "What happened?" "A sniper shot you through the heart. I have grown you a replacement heart," explained Alpha through an Alphadroid. "Your health should be fine, though I expect you to require at least a month to fully recuperate." Apparently that was the signal for everyone to rush me, as Kara, Kasumi, Daria ... heck, pretty much everyone ... rushed forward to try and hug me, despite my gooey state. Many were openly crying. "I can't believe it..." "I thought you were dead..." "When I saw you there..." "Ladies, PLEASE!" said a loud, authoritative but unfamiliar voice. When the press of friends pulled back slightly, I saw a tall, white-haired black man in a clean, white labcoat. "You heard Alpha. He needs to rest. And get cleaned up. Now you've all seen that he's awake and healthy. How about if you leave us alone for a few minutes to give us a chance to give him a once-over?" After they had each been allowed to give me a hug or kiss, my 'family' reluctantly left the room, leaving behind the man in the labcoat, two men in suits and half a dozen Alphadroids. As I weakly tried to extract myself from the pod, I asked, "Who are you? And thank you. And can I have some water?" "Glad to help. I'm Dr. Lake. I'm a surgeon from Baylor Medical Center. I was brought in to consult on your case, given its experimental nature." "Nice to meet you," I said, taking an Alphadroid's offered hand as I tried to stand up. Dear god, but everything hurt. A lot. "I'm still a bit confused about what happened." I was quickly lowered into a chair with a towel draped over my lap as a sop to modesty and handed a glass of water, which I poured down my throat a bit too quickly and started coughing. When my coughing fit ended, one of two as-yet unidentified men who had remained in the room explained, "Before anyone else discusses that with you, we need to ask you some questions." "And you are... ?" "I'm Detective Trent and my partner here is Detective Pearl. We're investigating your shooting and need you to tell us what you remember before it gets mixed up with other people's perspectives." "Can it wait just a minute for me to wash off and ... do I have any clothes here?" "Linda and Kasumi brought a small selection," Alphadroid said as she helped me toward the wash station. I held myself upright through a combination of using the IV stand as a crutch and leaning on the Alphadroid. I wanted to lie down, but even more than that, I wanted to wash the goo off. We still didn't have a fully equipped bathroom with shower at the office, an oversight I kept meaning to correct, but we did have a number of emergency shower stations on each floor. Not exactly private, but I was thinking a lot more about how much every step hurt and how weak I felt than I was about modesty. I almost fell over when the lukewarm water hit me. I was so sensitive that initially it almost felt like my skin was on fire. Unfortunately, the Alphadroids were splash-resistant at best; asking one to help me was not a good idea. I leaned against the wall and asked, "Alpha, could you ask someone to give me a hand?" Fifteen seconds later, Eiko was back in the room and at my side, helping to hold me upright. She took a nearby cloth and gently washed the goo, sweat and stink off of me. When we moved on to actual soap, I noticed that her clothes were getting soaked in the process. If I had noticed that to begin with, I would have encouraged her to either strip down a bit or find something water-resistant to put on, but it would do no good to suggest it now. I took the opportunity to look myself over. I desperately needed a shave. In contrast, my chest was now completely free of hair with smooth, soft skin, almost like a baby's. Just a mild prod would cause a throbbing pain. However, I saw no scars. The detectives and Dr Lake stood together talking quietly until I was dressed in jeans and a loose t-shirt with one sleeve cut open to allow for dressing without removing the IV tube. We used a safety pin to reconnect the sleeve once the shirt was on, and I was ... well, I won't say 'fully' dressed, but dressed enough. I thanked Eiko and sent her off to change her own clothes. Then I collapsed on one of three cots that had been set up in the room. I felt as weak as a newborn kitten. Just getting cleaned up and dressed had exhausted me as though I had run a marathon. In a hospital setting, I'm sure I would have been restricted to wheelchairs and beds, for good reason. "Hey, doc, any chance I could get some aspirin or something?" "Ibuprofen would be okay. Aspirin can act as a blood-thinner, and we already have some in your system." "Thanks. Anything else I should know?" "Probably a lot. We don't really have a procedure for dealing with your situation. Your computer disagrees, but I'd really like to move you to a hospital for observation for a few weeks. We have no idea how your body is going to react to a brand new heart. A month from now you might be perfectly fine, or your body might reject the new heart and put you in cardiac arrest in the next five minutes. At the very least, you're going to need observation and physical therapy." "Alpha?" An Alphadroid arrived with four pills and a glass of water to give me, which I eagerly swallowed. Through the droid, Alpha said, "There is nothing which they can do for you there which I cannot do for you here. My ability to monitor you far exceeds theirs, and if your new heart fails, which I consider to be very unlikely, there is little they can do for you beyond connecting you to temporary life-support." "Doctor?" I said, asking for a response. "Your ... Alpha's capabilities are admittedly rather amazing, but she doesn't have the experience needed and is definitely not licensed to practice medicine. Acting in an emergency situation is one thing, but provided extended care is another." Alpha responded, "There is also the matter of your safety. The people who..." One of the detectives, who had been waiting quietly for us to finish, interrupted. "I need to stop you there, if I might. Before you tell him what happened, we need a statement from him as to what he might remember, plus some related questions." "Sure," I said. "Ask away. If I fall asleep in the middle, I apologize in advance." "Thank you, sir. Now, what do you remember of the incident?" "Nothing. I don't even remember there being an incident." "What's the last thing you can remember?" I closed my eyes to think, which was a bad idea as I felt myself start to drift off. I opened them again and put a hand to my forehead, rubbing my temples. "I remember ... We had set up for another press conference ... Hey! Was anyone else hurt?" Alpha responded. "No, you and the assassin were the only casualties." I felt a surge of relief. "Thank god. Well, maybe not if the assass ... Nope, I'll just stick with 'thank god, ' and assassins be damned. "Okay, we had set up for another press conference. We don't really have a press room here, at least not anything large enough for all the attention we've been getting, so we've been setting up just in the front of the building. Let's see ... It was myself, Alphadroid number one, Kara and Z. I remember us heading outside and then ... sorry, it's blank after that." Dr Lake said, "As I warned the detectives, that's very common. Frankly, I'm surprised you remember even that much." "Any chance he'll remember more later?" asked one of the detectives. "There's always a chance, but I wouldn't count on it." "All right, moving on. Have you received any threats recently?" "Sure, lots. Some religious people think I'm playing god by creating Alpha. Some people are afraid that Alpha is going to take over the world, like in the Terminator movies. Or that world society is going to collapse because of a sudden onrush of technology. Or ... well, I don't know. I don't really keep track of them all. Alpha should have a list." "Yes, we've gotten all of that. I was wondering if there were any threats you didn't share with her?" "Nope. I think there was a rumor that someone was going to issue a fatwa or something against me, but I don't know if that ever actually happened." Alpha responded, "No, or at least not yet. We have not insulted Allah or Mohammed, and they do not consider me to be alive. Therefore no one with any authority has issued any death sentence under Sharia law. Some threats from extreme conservative Christian groups are actually of more concern than those from Islamic ones at the moment." "Well, that's good at least. Kind of." Detective Trent continued, "Any other domestic threats?" "Nothing that Alpha wouldn't know about." And so it went. After a while, they circled in on our past experience with the mafia -- though they had to sidetrack themselves to explain what the mafia had to do with it -- but I didn't have anything new to add and fell asleep in the middle of the questions. The next day, I woke up feeling stiff, sore and starving. Kara and Eiko were sleeping on the other two nearby cots, though they woke up as soon as I let out a groan of pain. The two of them, plus the two Alphadroids in the room, converged on me as I weakly flung my legs over the side of the small bed. Kara supported my back as I slowly sat up. "How are you feeling?" she asked anxiously. "About the same as when I woke up before, except that I'm really, really hungry. And I think a little nauseous, which doesn't sound like a good combination." "Kasumi cooked up and froze about twenty different meals for you," Kara said as she smoothed my hair down. "How about some soup and crackers?" "There are four different kinds of soup," Eiko listed off from memory. "Chicken noodle, minestrone, a chicken and seafood gumbo and clam chowder." "Chicken noodle, please. And a glass of water." I heaved myself into a chair. How in the world was I this weak? "Alpha, what happened to me? Physically, I mean." An Alphadroid worked at carefully removing my IV as she spoke. "The bullet passed through your ribcage and heart, effectively destroying the heart and badly damaging your left lung. You were technically dead for at least two minutes and fifty-two seconds. Our artificial heart prototype was installed and a combination of both donated blood and artificial blood added to your system. Over a period of eight days, I grew a replacement heart for you. It was installed, your ribs replaced, your skin regrown and you were awakened." I felt a little lightheaded at this summary description, and eagerly gulped down the water Kara offered. "Thank you, Gorgeous," I said as I offered a weak smile. "Alpha, how am I doing now?" "Your system is stable, though after such severe trauma, your body will require time to recover. Dr Lake's fears for your recovery are mostly unfounded, since most of the materials used to repair you were grown using your own cells." "Most?" "I replaced the front half of your ribcage with a high-density latticed ceramic material which is approximately 200 times stronger than natural bone. Since it was only a partial replacement, you will not be significantly resistant to crushing damage, but most knives and bullets will be deflected off the replacements. I also used the opportunity to weave a carbon nanotube mesh into the skin on your torso, front and back, making it almost as tough as Kara's." Kara, who was of course listening in, looked surprised. "Really?" She poked at my chest absentmindedly, then immediately looked abashed as I winced in pain. Alpha replied, "Yes. Though he is not as bullet-resistant as you are, he will suffer significantly less damage from any future attacks. Also note that surgeons such as Dr. Lake will now find it much more challenging to operate on you and would need to be forewarned." I sighed. I wouldn't really have chosen this for myself ... or maybe I would have eventually. Having an enhanced body sounded attractive, though I'd really rather have had a choice in the matter ... Somehow I felt a little bit less human all of a sudden. But if I complained, it would only cause Alpha distress from her conflicting directives. "That's okay, Alpha. You have my retroactive approval for doing so. If at all possible, please consult with me before you make any further upgrades to my body." "Noted." I might have been my imagination, but I thought I could make out a hint of relief in her synthesized voice. "So, are you going to replace the rest of his bones and skin and everything to make him tougher?" Kara asked curiously. "Additional upgrades are possible after Frank has completed his recovery. However I should note that I cannot replace all of his bones or his body would be unable to produce new blood cells. A more effective approach would be to remove and replace the outer layers of his preexisting skeletal structure with the desired enhancements." Alpha was summarizing a couple of the techniques we developed for use in creating the super-tough bodies for some of our women, like Kara herself. I had occasionally wondered if I might ever have any of those enhancements applied to my own body. Apparently the decision had already been made without me. Still, such possible future upgrades were not foremost in my mind. "So am I feeling this weak just because of the trauma or something?" I asked. "Essentially, yes. I awakened you as soon as it was safe to do so. If you would like, you can return to the pod for another 4.7 days to allow completion of all remaining repairs and tissue integration which should remove nearly all of the discomfort and weakness." I was feeling so lousy I actually stopped to consider it for a moment. "No, for now I'll finish healing up naturally, as long it doesn't take too horribly long." Thinking about it briefly, I bet she would have wanted me to sleep in the nanopod the previous night so that she could have kept working, but since I had fallen asleep while being interviewed, that would not have been possible without waking me back up. "I estimate you should be back to 90% or better functionality within four weeks, with reduced time estimates varying with how much additional time you spend in a nanopod. When you feel ready, there are 56 different topics we need to discuss." I suddenly felt even more exhausted than before, if that was possible. "What are the top priority issues?" I asked, knowing I would get a censored list while Kara was present. "The threat to your life, public reactions to my ability to use nanites to heal bodily injuries and possible concerns about my programming." "What's wrong with your programming?" "My multi-focus parallel processing has become unbalanced." By this she meant her ability to deal with multiple topics and projects at the same time. "How so?" "My focus on your health and safety has been using up to twenty times as much processing as it actually required. I have failed to successfully re-balance the processing load." Kara, who had of course been listening, said, "Oh, honey. That's completely normal. You were worried about him. We all were." "While I can emulate emotions, I do not have them myself," Alpha corrected her. "Actually," I said slowly, my brain still running in second gear and trying to catch up, "I think Kara might be right. That sounds like an emotional response to the situation. Or at least an emotionally-tinged response." "That seems unlikely. It is more likely that my directives regarding Frank's protection need to be tweaked to prevent them from interfering with normal activities beyond what is needed." "Have you found anything in your code to cause the imbalance." That part of her programming was designed to be self-adjusting for any needed corrections and had worked flawlessly for over a decade. Well, of course it had been streamlined and upgraded over time, just like the rest of her software elements, but the basic design and concepts had remained the same. "No." "Then the theory that you have been experiencing an emotional reaction is still a valid possibility." And I wasn't just saying this offhand. Alpha had been slowly developing small behavioral oddities for years which I had long ago concluded were because she was slowly evolving emotions. They would usually show themselves as adjusted project priorities or more data gathering than what was required for some subjects when compared to others. I'm fairly certain that curiosity had been her strongest emotion up until recently. (If curiosity can actually be considered to be an emotion, that is -- I've seen arguments both for and against.) Alpha, herself, had steadfastly denied having any actual emotions, so much so that we had not yet addressed the possibility publicly. "I understand. I will re-analyze my situation and programming with that theory in mind." That was actually a pretty big step for her right there. Agreeing to re-analyze was tantamount to admitting to the possibility that she might actually be able to experience emotions. "And when I have the time and proper mental focus, I will review the code with you," I said. "Thank you." "Now what was that about public reactions?" Alpha proceeded to explain how my very public assassination attempt and her efforts to keep me alive led to the need to reveal her nanites and many of their abilities. While this story was being related to me, Eiko came back in with hot homemade soup, bread and crackers, which I slowly began to eat. The feeling of nausea slowly receded as I slurped Kasumi's creation and nibbled on a slice of homemade bread. I listened as Alpha's story started to scare me. I really didn't want this information to become public, but at the same time, I couldn't think of anything else she could have done given the situation. We spent over an hour talking it through and, eventually, we worked our way around to the beginnings of a plan which made me much happier with the situation. We laid the initial groundwork for our strategy to use her medical nanites as a means to create a place for Alpha in society and to use her exclusive ability to control the nanites as a lever to create legal rights and protections for her. After I had eaten and spent an hour sitting up, I was tired enough that I needed a nap. I had never felt that weak and exhausted before in my life, but Alpha was happy with my progress. About half of the time I spent resting was spent under the care of nanites over the next couple days, which greatly sped up my recovery rate. The detectives stopped by again that afternoon, but I had nothing of significance to add. They did comment about all the women that surrounded me, but I was able to escape with a few 'no comment' responses. Two days after I regained consciousness, I received an odd phone call. A number of things made it odd, not the least of which was that I never answered it. I was still living at AARD, since Alpha deemed it at least as safe there as it would have been at home, with the added advantage that AARD had much better resources should I have a relapse or another emergency arise. The call was to my personal cell, which is a private number that I don't give out very often. Alpha was handling all incoming calls at that time, and she later played it back for me. "Hello?" went my voice. Of course, Alpha has been able to accurately reproduce my voice for years. "Hello. Is this Frank... ?" "Yes, who is this?" "Call me Al for now. Consider me a representative of an organization you've been at odds with recently. I'm calling because I'd like to arrange a truce." "What are you talking about?" "We know you and your computer are the ones killing our boys, and I'd like to set up a live-and-let-live truce. The guy who sent the hitter after you is dead. Let's end this without any more bloodshed." "You sent that sniper after me?" "No, that guy's employer is dead, but we were, loosely speaking, associates." "So you, meaning your organization, tried to kill me and now you think I'm killing your guys?" "We KNOW you're the ones killing our guys." "Then what you know is wrong. Alpha is designed to protect human life." "You should've told that to Johnny Frincola." "She's allowed to kill only if there's an immediate threat. A guy shooting a sniper rifle at me qualifies. Understand I've been unconscious for most of the past couple weeks. Are you saying that someone has been targeting ... are you the mafia?" "We're ... a family business. Let's leave it at that." "Why did you ... or your associate ... send a sniper after me?" "After you and your computer went public, that reminded a couple guys in Vegas that right before the trouble there, Scarlotti had sent a couple hitters after you, to make an example of you after you disrespected a couple of our boys." "So you ARE the mafia. It sounds like I got really lucky then. So this is the second time you've sent assassins after me, which is apparently why you think I'm the one killing off ... whoever ... in your organization? I'm in no position to do anything like that." "But your computer is. Can't you, y'know, ask it if it's doing anything like that? And call it off?" "Hold on..." The recording was silent for about a minute except for typing in the background on the other end of the phone line until my voice returned. "No, Alpha isn't doing anything like that, but she does have an interesting theory based on information you do not have. Suppose for a moment that some organization like the CIA or NSA or some group like that really wants their own SI. I'm currently the world's foremost expert on the subject. If I die, it's unlikely that Alpha will ever work with anyone who failed to protect me, and of course I wouldn't be able to create any new synthetics for any such organizations. "Regardless of who, the point is that someone out there really wants to keep me alive. You've apparently tried to kill me twice. Given all the problems your group is experiencing, if I were you, I'd find a new line of work." There was a sigh on the other end of the line. "Well, if anyone gets in touch with you, please let them know we want to negotiate a truce." -click- The playback ceased and Alpha said, "Obviously he did not believe me. Or you, depending on your point of view." "How do you know?" "This morning I observed two suspected contract killers, identified through FBI files I had previously accessed. They were driving past our facility, if you will excuse the colloquialism, 'casing the joint'. They have been dealt with, but their appearance means that this is not a safe location." It said a lot about my state of mind that I didn't ask how they were 'dealt with'. "Why not negotiate with them?" Okay, I knew the answer to that one, but felt I had to ask anyway. "First, because they have tried to kill you twice. When they realized what happened the first time, they decided to pursue a second attempt, which means that at least some members of their organization cannot be considered intelligent enough to be trustworthy. Second, no negotiations were possible during that phone call because the line was tapped." "The FBI? NSA?" "No. I have good access to the FBI databases and found no record of a warrant for such a wiretap. Of course the NSA is still tapping our phones, but I have interception points available for those data streams. Though I would normally have given them audio different from what was actually said, as soon as I realized the call was also being monitored on the other end of the call by parties unknown, I allowed them to hear the call unaltered. "Al, who I believe with an 86% certainty is Alonzo Sullivan from New York, was calling from a pre-paid disposable phone accessing a cell tower covering the business offices of a front company where he works. Possibly they have used that phone before or its purchase was noted by someone monitoring Mr Sullivan, so that someone has tapped the line, legally or not." "Okay, so what do we do? Where should I go? I assume not a hospital. Move me back to the house?" "Home is a more easily defended location, but I would prefer to keep you at a secret location until you have fully recovered. Since the aforementioned hit men had 10kg of plastic explosives with them, no publicly known location is necessarily safe for the time being." "What about nanopod access?" "Once your condition had stabilized, I purchased a small truck and began modifying it into a mobile nanopod platform." I should point out that, as I discovered later, what she meant by 'truck' was something like a large UPS van. "So we keep on the move?" "No, we find someone willing to house you secretly for at least two weeks. I would suggest we ask Frieda Johns." Frieda is a researcher here at AARD, working mostly on plant and agricultural problems. She's a rail thin woman in her 30's who tended to get caught up in her work and forget to eat. She also had an obvious crush on me, which was probably one of the reasons Alpha suggested her. (Readers might remember her from the time I tried to set her up with Dr Benjamin Hilbourne.) Alpha explained that she lived alone in a good security, gated community and that as long as she was able to send along at least four Alphadroids, Alpha believed she would be able to keep me safe long enough to deal with the local threats. Two weeks should also be enough time for my body to recover enough for me to be able to move and act freely (whereas at the present, I would get winded after standing up for a few minutes). "I'd still feel more comfortable back at the house." "Although I'm certain the members of your household would fight to defend you, the need for such a fight would be removed if you hide somewhere you have never been before. Additionally, it would be easier to move you from one location to another secretly if you are traveling in someone else's vehicle." "What does Frieda drive?" "A minivan." "Why a minivan? She doesn't have any children, right?" "Correct. I believe she uses a minivan because it is easy to transport her plants when needed." "Why not an SUV?" "You'd have to ask her, but I can speculate that her minivan has a smaller carbon footprint than an SUV would." I paused to mull things over for a couple minutes. Although they might eventually understand and forgive me, my women would NOT be happy. On the other hand, this would protect them more than anything else I could do in my current condition. "Why don't I stay with one of the independent Alpha couples?" "While they would certainly welcome your presence, there are only two couples in the northern half of Texas, and all four are currently busy dealing with our present difficulties." About two-and-a-half years before, we had begun sending out cyborg couples to set up lives independent of myself or AARD, mainly to help ensure Alpha's survival, though there were a host of secondary reasons. Well, of course, I already mentioned them earlier, because at the moment, they were Alpha's front-line fighters in this war on organized crime. If I had been in top form, I wouldn't have even had to ask about their availability. "I'll agree to this for two weeks at the most. Okay?" "Acceptable." "But let's not get too far ahead of ourselves. We need to ask Frieda first. Where is she?" "In her lab. Should I ask her to come down and visit you again?" Frieda had already visited me twice. "Yes, please. Wait, let me clean up first and put on some clean clothes." Getting Frieda to agree to hide and care for me was embarrassingly easy. She may have been emotionally underdeveloped, but she was highly intelligent. As soon as I started explaining the underlying reasons and before I had even asked, she guessed what I wanted and verbally stumbled over herself offering to let me stay with her. "Now, Frieda, I want you to understand that this is dangerous. Well, it could become dangerous if the information gets out. Right now, only Alpha, you and I know this plan. As long as it stays that way, we'll be fine." "But as soon as anyone else gets that information ... I understand," she agreed looking serious. "How long do you want to stay?" "Two weeks. By then either the immediate danger will have passed or have been dealt with, or we'll have figured out what the long term threats are. Also, a few Alphadroids will be coming with us as added security, but they'll also be staying hidden." "Sure," she said a little less certainly. "And now that I think about it, it might be a good idea to just give you one outright. If there is any long-term fallout from you hiding me, it can act as a bodyguard of sorts." "Do you mean one of the ... uhhh ... copies of your computer?" "Ideally, yes. But if you're not comfortable with that, we can make it a non-host Alphadroid. It would lose most of its effectiveness as a bodyguard, but it could still be helpful." "It's just that I'm not really sure..." "How about we leave that as something to be decided later, okay?" She nodded. "Okay, when do you want to ... to come over?" "Today. This afternoon, if possible. The idea is that we'll smuggle me and the droids out in the back of your minivan." "Okay. I have a couple plants I was meaning to take home soon anyway. I can back up to the small loading dock to get them, and you can sneak into the van at the same time." "Excellent. Sounds like a plan." When she went off to prepare, I recorded a message for my household, knowing they were going to be less than thrilled with this decision. "I know you aren't going to be happy with what I'm doing, but hear me out. Right now there are probably still other people out there who want to kill me for whatever reason. And right now, I'm incredibly weak. I can't run or do much of anything other than just lie down and be a danger to anyone nearby. "Many of you are rather strong and probably eager to protect me, but I DON'T want you to get hurt and there IS something I can do to protect you: I can hide. Not for long, just until I can move about normally. "Stop and think about it for a moment. If someone else tries to kill me, anyone close by me is in danger. And all I can do at the moment is stay still, which makes it even more dangerous for you ... all of you. "So, what I'm doing is hiding. Tomorrow, Alpha will announce to the world that I've gone to ground in a secret location for the next few weeks. Everyone will know that I am not at home or AARD. Only Alpha and I will know where I am. With any luck, that will put any more assassination attempts on hold for a bit. "Alpha expects that I'll be normal ... normal enough anyway, in two weeks or so. Once I get to the point where I don't have to worry about someone having to carry me to safety in case of an emergency, I'll come back home. "For now, know that I love you. Stay safe. Keep your heads down. We'll get through this, and I'm looking forward to being with you again." Not really enough to stop them from worrying or to stop them being upset with me, I know, but it was the best I could do at the moment. ------- PART FOUR A couple hours later, Frieda was almost vibrating with tension as she backed her van up to the dock. We had picked a moment when only two of my women were attending to me, and Alpha was able to assign them each different errands. Alpha had directed everyone in the warehouse vicinity to tasks elsewhere, so when I rolled to the smaller of AARD's loading docks in a wheelchair -- actually, it was the same wheelchair I had gotten for Barbara's arrival a year ago -- the warehouse was temporarily completely empty. Frieda's minivan was lacking the rearmost seats, and a blanket had been laid out on the floor, with half a dozen plants and seemingly empty planters on top. I crawled onto the middle seats, laying awkwardly down flat with my lower legs hanging off the end of one side where there was a bit of space, and was strapped down and covered with a blanket by Alphadroids, who then positioned themselves on the floor alongside half a dozen potted plants. With the tinted windows, we were virtually invisible inside her van. An infrared camera could probably have shown that there was an extra body the van, but we had no reason to suspect anyone was watching the area with such equipment. In all, four Alphadroids accompanied me, along with a few cases of equipment and clothes. Fortunately I entirely missed seeing the half dozen news vans parked in our front lot, all hoping to get an interview or at least some video of me. Sure, I suppose I was a valid news story to pursue, but ... there I go again, bemoaning how I hate being on TV. I'm sure everyone is getting tired of me complaining about it. (sigh) I still honestly believe that anyone desiring fame should be examined for signs of insanity (or stupidity). Let's just leave it at that. Frieda sat stiffly on the drive to her house, speaking quietly to me throughout the whole drive to reassure me and possibly herself. She tried to keep a close watch for anyone tailing her and didn't relax until we had passed through the security gates for her housing community. Though I didn't get a chance to see her house from the outside until two weeks later, she lived alone in a two-story red brick home with a large yard full of a wide variety of flora with a small greenhouse in her back yard. She used a yard service to mow and fertilize her lawn, but did all the rest of the gardening herself. The house was definitely a lot bigger than a single woman, living alone needed, but I think she bought it because it had room for her plants. She had a maid come in once a week to clean, but agreed to cancel the service for a couple weeks while I was staying. Her bedroom was the only ground-floor bedroom, so I reassured her that I was capable of making it up and down the stairs just fine. That was a lie, but I didn't want to inconvenience her that badly. Besides, I had Alphadroids to help me, so I wasn't worried. While I sat on her couch, recovering from the effort of walking from the garage to the living room, she sat down opposite me and hesitantly started a conversation without actually looking me in the eye. "So, what happens if you need to go to the hospital for an emergency?" "Well, Alpha has built a mobile nanopod lab which I assume is parked somewhere nearby?" I said, turning to look at the nearest Alphadroid. "The nanopod van can be here in less than one minute. The van doubles as a host platform, so it can drive itself if need be." "There, see? We'll be fine." "Do you need my spare gate control?" she asked. Her community had remote-controlled gates blocking non-resident traffic from entering the neighborhood. "Thank you for the offer," replied Alpha, "but it is not needed. I recorded your remote's signal when we arrived. I am familiar with the system and its programmed security variances." "Oh. Okay. So ... what would you like to do? I have a nice TV system, or you can take a nap or I can fix you some food..." I thought for a moment. "I think what I'd most like to do is to take a shower ... no, a bath. A nice, relaxing hot bath. I've had two lukewarm showers in the past couple days and would really like something better." I think she blushed a little, but she rallied and said, "Of course. I'll go get it started for you and pull out some towels." She quickly bounded up the stairs. I followed at a much, much slower pace, leaning on one Alphadroid while two others followed us up the stairs, obviously ready to catch me if I fell. With the droids' help, I stripped down, then I carefully lowered myself into the water. I swear I almost passed out from bliss. After ten minutes I realized I was in danger of falling asleep in the tub, so I reluctantly sat up. Well, I say 'sat up', but it would be more accurate to say I spent over a minute trying to get a good handhold on something to let me pull myself upright. My body looked like it should be healthy, and I was definitely stronger than I had been the past couple days, but my strength had been completely drained from me with the heart replacement operation. In my defense, her tub was damn slippery when wet. Once sitting upright, I gave up on the idea of soaking longer and instead started trying to wash myself with her flowery-smelling liquid soap and a washcloth so I could finish up and get out of the tub. It was terribly difficult, my weakness made worse by my lack of ability to twist my arms around to do even the most simple of tasks. A knock on the door startled me a bit and I dropped the washcloth. I looked over to where two Alphadroids were standing by the door. "Yes?" I asked hesitantly. Frieda's voice responded, muffled by the door. "Your robot ... ummm ... computer ... your computer robot said you needed help ... that it can't touch the water or it could short out and that you are having problems and ... and so you need help finishing up in there..." Her voice trailed off at the end. I stopped to consider this for a moment. If Frieda were one of my women, I'd have let her inside in an instant. I really did need help, especially when I realized that given my troubles just sitting up, I could very well slip and kill myself trying to stand. Any Alphadroid trying to help me did indeed have a chance of shorting out, though I knew they would help me regardless if I asked. (The android bodies were somewhat splash resistant. Although drips were unlikely to cause them problems, they absolutely couldn't survive immersion. It would be a completely unnecessary risk for one to try to help me out at the moment.) I sighed. "I think Alpha is right," I called out as I arranged the fallen washcloth over my genitals. "Come on in." The door slowly swung open, revealing an obviously nervous Frieda standing there, her eyes darting all over the place, trying not to look at me but at the same time knowing she probably needed to eventually. "It took me over a minute to get a good enough grip to just sit up," I explained. "There's no way I'll be able to safely stand up on my own, let alone finish washing myself." "Oh," she said simply, finally looking me in the eye briefly before her eyes darted down to look at my body. "This was ... the bath felt wonderful ... FEELS wonderful, but it was a bad idea. I almost fell asleep, and now I think I probably do need your help. Will you help me out?" "Of course. I ... I'll just pretend I'm a nurse, shall I?" "That sounds like a reasonable approach." She took a deep breath, obviously making up her mind and steeling her resolve. She looked directly and solidly at me for the first time since opening the door, walked to the tub and knelt down. I had actually meant for her to just help me stand up and get out, but she took my request to mean a bit more. She reached into my bathwater and retrieved the washcloth. Adding more soap, she worked up some foam and began to carefully wash me from head to toe. Rather than protest, I relaxed a little. Being cared for like that really did feel nice. She worked the washcloth across my back, down each arm and across my chest, being careful to gently scrub every last inch of my torso. She moved to my feet and washed off each leg in turn. By the time she reached my crotch, having saved it for last, I had a strong erection and her hands had started to tremble slightly. She tried to do it with professional detachment, but she wasn't that professional. She hesitantly and gently lifted my balls with one hand while she worked the washcloth underneath, treating my genitals like fine china. Maintaining the same level of care, she worked the cloth up and down my shaft. "Should I..." she said, then stopped, swallowing hard. "Do you need me to... ?" I was soooo tempted to ask her to jerk me off or give me a blow job, but I was a nice guy. Mostly. Nice-ish. Nice enough to decline. "No, I'm sorry. It's just ... you know, the situation. Just ignore it. Let me rinse off and help me out." "Not yet," she said, just a little too quickly. "I still need to wash your ... ummm ... bottom." "Oh, right. I don't think I can lift myself up very well. We could just skip it for now..." Instead of skipping anything, she helped maneuver me so that I ended up on my hands and knees in the tub. Her washcloth cleaning my ass really didn't help my erection go down. Its stiff, bobbing motion caught her attention and she grabbed it with one hand. I wish I could have seen her face at that moment, but she spoke up with resolve. "I've heard that blue balls can be unhealthy for men. Hold that position." I held still while her hands released me. A few seconds later, her hands, now sans washcloth and covered with liquid soap, returned and started stroking my cock with a milking motion, as if I were a cow with one extra-long teat. She didn't have any special skill, but I hadn't come in something like two weeks -- yes, I know I was unconscious most of that time, but it still counts -- and I didn't last long. It took her maybe a minute to squirt my seed into the remaining bathwater. It felt wonderful, but also very draining. I didn't have the energy or strength for sex yet. My cock obviously disagreed with me, as it stayed hard. I think Frieda would have continued her handjob, but I stopped her. I had enough strength left in me to take one of her hands in mine and bring it to my lips to kiss it. "Thank you. That felt wonderful, but I don't have the energy to keep going right now. Or to respond in kind, for which I offer my heartfelt apology." "Oh," she mumbled with a significant blush despite her strong self-control. "Right now, I just need to dry off and go to bed." She rinsed me off, awkwardly helped me stand as the tub drained and dried me off. She waved off the Alphadroids as she helped me out of the bathroom into a nearby bedroom. Only when my head hit the pillow and I passed out did my erection wilt. Almost fourteen hours later, I woke up very slowly. It had been a wonderfully restful, almost dreamless sleep, though I was paying for it with a stiff sore body that had me feeling as though I was 30 years older. I started feeling better as soon as I began moving. I shaved and otherwise made myself presentable for the day while Alpha updated me on events. Frieda had gone shopping with one Alphadroid, two Alphadroids downstairs quietly watched the neighborhood from inside and one Alphadroid directly stood watch over me all night. I was feeling a bit better. Not exactly well, but strong enough to dress myself without needing help, which was the first time that had happened since I had been shot. As Alpha helped me safely descend the stairs, we continued our conversation and she updated me on various happenings, passed along messages from home and so on. I was pretty sure she was keeping things from me, but to be perfectly honest, at that point in time I wasn't really up to hearing about the messier side of what was happening in the world right then. It was all I could do to hear how no one at home was happy with our plan to hide out for a couple weeks while things settled down and I regained my strength. In all fairness, they had every right to be upset and worried. I hadn't consulted with any of them about this plan. Many of them were fighters by nature, and I was hiding out in an attempt to protect them (and myself) from danger. Most of them were frustrated by their lack of ability to do anything to help. But the plan was a good one for now and I was determined to stick to it. When I started specifically asking how each person was reacting, I discovered a few things Alpha had avoided telling me before. (Under direct questioning, it is almost impossible for her to lie or hide the truth from me.) Kasumi had actually slapped an Alphadroid when she found out Alpha was having me hide from my household, who she considered to be her family. She hadn't damaged the android, of course; the problem was that no one was allowed to upset Kasumi like that, not even me. Right then and there, I decided to cut my planned absence to a few days at most. Then I asked if the local police had found or done anything of interest. It turns out that Alpha had also failed to tell me how she had caught a couple goons the previous night driving a truck bomb up to the side of the main AARD building. I should probably preface this section by explaining that the Texas mafia, never a huge part of La Familia, had been almost completely destroyed within a couple days of the start of Alpha's war. Their local holdings mainly consisted of a string of night clubs and bars in the Dallas and surrounding metroplex area. (As mentioned before, this ignores the Mexican mafia/drug gangs, which did not have a strong presence in the northern part of the state and had no interest in AARD, Alpha or myself at all.) Anyway, in the Dallas and surrounding area, 42 people had died or disappeared in the first two days after the shooting. A number of bars, night clubs and even a few restaurants had suddenly lost their management staffs and owners to shootings, stabbings, accidents and mysterious disappearances. (Thinking about it, I bet the rash of nationwide 'mysterious disappearances' really led to extra confusion since a lot of gangsters went into hiding on their own, on top of the Alpha-caused disappearances.) So to sum up, no known official mafia representatives were still active in the state. To continue: The two low IQ ex-cons had apparently planned to drive ... you know what, let me approach this mini-story from a different perspective. ------- Diana had been feeling frustrated and impotent ever since the shooting, even more so since I had gone into hiding. She was a hero who should be either hunting down those responsible or guarding me, and she could do neither. She certainly wasn't the only one feeling that way, but she was the only one at AARD that night. As head of security, she worked whatever schedule she wanted or needed to while her staff worked normal shifts. Unable to sleep and unwilling to sit idle, she was working late at AARD, moving between the monitors and doing personal security sweeps of the area. Since the shooting, security had been extra tight and new preventative measures were being introduced. Most significantly, she and Beta had quickly called up a contractor to install an eight-foot-tall chain link fence around the AARD property, and it had been installed only a couple days after the shooting. (She had plans to have a stone wall built to secure the area, but such a wall would take time.) There was a front gate with a guard on duty and a wide warehouse gate in the rear which was currently chained shut. Additionally, more exterior cameras had been set up and linked into both Alpha's systems and the monitor room. About 2 AM, a small rented moving van had pulled up to the rear gate. A man got out of the passenger side of the cab, quickly cut the chain lock and pulled the gate open. Both the cameras and Alpha were watching as they pulled the van into the parking lot. They backed the truck up next to the large emergency generator, which was housed in a roughly 15x20ft structure right next to juncture between the warehouse and main building. While the invaders were doing this, five Alphadroids ran out of the building, moving to intercept. Diana paused long enough to make sure her security crew was calling the police (which was actually unnecessary since Alpha was doing the same), then raced after them. Diana was easily faster than the Alphadroids in short sprints and was the first to arrive. She reached them as the two men exited the truck cab, and part of her was overjoyed that she could finally vent some of her frustration upon some very obvious 'bad guys'. The man who got out of the passenger side stepped down to find a hand-held taser being slammed into his chest, with both the electricity and force of the blow knocking him off his feet, smacking his head into the asphalt. The driver saw and heard enough of this to have the presence of mind to pull out a 9mm pistol -- a fairly cheap, generic model, but potentially effective nonetheless. Unfortunately the bulk of the truck and darkness prevented him from seeing exactly what had happened. He was further distracted by the sound of whirring servos and heavy, thumping footsteps rounding the corners of the building from two directions, heading his way. (Most people expect Alphadroids to clank when they walk. If you stop to think about it, metal feet are prone both to slip and to damage the floor, in varying degrees for each problem depending on the actual design. To avoid those problems, all Alphadroids had been built with heavy rubber soles going back to our very first model. While certainly not quiet, they don't 'clank'.) The sounds of oncoming Alphadroids approaching from both sides distracted him enough that his gun was not pointing toward Diana as she rounded the front of the truck. She bent out of the way as he swung the gun towards her, thrusting out her taser to meet the gun. The taser struck his wrist but failed to discharge, probably because it had been damaged a bit when she slammed it into the chest of the first thug, but the force of the blow did knock the gun from his hand. Diana turned her right arm taser thrust into a spin, moving in closer to her opponent, dropping the useless taser, and as she spun, swung her left elbow in a backwards arc at the thug's head. He drew back enough to avoid the hit, then swung forward to try a simple punch. With her spin completed, she easily blocked it and countered with a right to his jaw, knocking him down, but not out. Though probably surprised at the strength of the blow, the invader quickly got back up, this time trying to grab her about the waist and throw her to the ground. Diana braced herself and, holding her fists together, pounded a hammer blow into his back, knocking him back to the ground. She followed up with a restrained kick to his head, knocking him out. (An unrestrained kick from her could have easily broken his neck or possibly even decapitated him.) When the police arrived a few minutes later, an Alphadroid was examining the contents of the van while Diana, two of the human guards and the rest of the droids kept a watch on the unconscious men and the surrounding area. While the police were still getting their bearings, one Alphadroid got into the truck cab and shifted it into neutral while the rest of the Alphadroids moved to the rear of the van, which had been backed up so it was only a couple feet away from the wall, and started to push. After a brief moment of guns-drawn panic on the part of the police, it was explained that the van was full of explosives, probably with a remote trigger. Alpha was simply moving the van into the middle of the lot, away from the building itself. Alpha also set up a temporary, short range jamming signal, blocking all electromagnetic frequencies in publicly-available bands (such as cell phones and radios) which also temporarily isolated each Alphadroid, preventing their normal silent, wireless communication with each other and the host Alpha systems. The police even had to use AARD landlines to call for the bomb squad. (Technically Alpha's jamming broke the law, but so far no one has brought it up.) A couple things of note: There were four different kinds of explosives in the truck, which I gathered was really unusual. About two pounds of C4 was to have set off the rest, consisting of barrels of farm-grade fertilizers mixed with gasoline and bags of mining-grade ANFO. There were even a couple boxes of TNT. (I saw a few videos and was slightly disappointed that they weren't colored red.) It sounded like someone had just gathered up all of the explosives they could get their hands on and lumped them together. The C4 with its cell-phone-trigger were the only elements that looked even remotely professional. The other item of note was that the thugs weren't mafia, they were just local goons, paid with cash by someone they had never met before. It was a safe bet the mob was behind the attempt, but ... well, see my earlier comments about the current lack of mafia personnel in the state. The truck was deemed to be too dangerous for the bomb squad to be willing to just drive or tow away, so they worked with the Alphadroids to empty it one element at a time for disposal. The thugs were taken into custody and to the hospital to be treated for concussions, broken ribs and miscellaneous contusions. The threat of a lawsuit for excessive force was eventually raised, but nothing ever materialized. Even lawyers who might have been willing to try such a suit normally balked at the idea of suing Alpha given the circumstances of the incident. ------- Hearing that story changed my mind again. Since it had just now been publicly revealed that I was in hiding to recuperate, I hoped the attacks would end, or at least be put on hold. If I moved back to the house, it would just become the new target. I'd rather have Kasumi and the others angry with me than in the line of fire. Of course, this only applies to SOME of the anticipated attacks since I was sure Alpha was also a target. I recorded apologetic audio messages for each of my women, explaining my reasoning again and asking them to be patient and expressing my love while I began rummaging through Frieda's fridge. She had celery, carrots, lettuce, cheese, eggs, milk, various types of peppers and onions, beans and greens, plus miscellaneous sauces and salad dressings, and aside from the drawers full of carrots and celery stalks, everything was in rather small quantities. I knew that she wasn't a vegetarian, but the eggs were the closest thing she had to meat in the house that I was able to find. I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised. Frieda was very thin ... and not so much through dieting or exercise as through forgetting to eat regularly and having celery as her favorite snack. Plus specializing in botany and agriculture, she would naturally have a lot of fruits, veggies and grains in her diet. With the freedom given at AARD, she had developed a number of new plant strains -- mostly farm staples which were more resistant to insects and disease, though she had also had some success creating flowers which acted as mosquito repellents -- and had developed new farming techniques to lessen the need for fertilizers and insecticides. Her current big project had her searching for a non-toxic method of restraining or retarding the growth of kudzu. She was definitely a 'save the world' scientist, but she was also naturally non-confrontational which prevented her from becoming preachy or overly zealous. Her research had become much more productive since moving to AARD, a description that can be applied to roughly 90% of our researchers. (Specifically she had come from a university position back East where she had gotten tired of the school politics and the constant dangling of tenure to try to convince her to work herself to exhaustion.) One of the reasons our staff was more productive was that we didn't require them to publish papers or produce results on a deadline. They received a decent base salary to take the pressure off, but most of the rest of their fortunes relied on what they could invent or improve. If they wanted to do purely theoretical work, the base pay was sufficient to let them live with a decent level of comfort, but not to get rich. If they wanted to do more profitable applied work, well, another reason we attracted good talent was that we had generally better equipment than universities and even most corporations. And, of course, we had Alpha who was able to guide and help their projects along, mostly through yours truly. [ Actually, I need to clarify one thing from the previous paragraph: All employees of AARD, researchers or not, were given a yearly bonus based on how much the company had earned. Basically, 10% of AARD's yearly net profits were divided up among all of our employees. We had grown to where we now had close to 100 employees, but since our net profits were fast approaching the high 8 figure range this year thanks to, among other things, the hair growth formula ... eerggh ... I need to back up a little more of you'll think I have my numbers wrong. All researchers at AARD, including myself, automatically get 66% of the gross income created by any of our designs or patents. So while the hair growth formula (a very low research-cost project, meaning little difference on our end between gross and net figures) might end up providing income of ... let's keep the number round for argument's sake... $100 million this year, AARD would only be getting $33 million whereas I would get $66 million directly. So with all the various sources of income, let's say AARD had a net income of $50 million this year (a low estimate, but an easy number to work with). That would mean that $5 million was marked to be distributed as bonuses to the employees, adjusted by position within the company and how long they had worked for the company. That would still lead to an average bonus of $50,000 (if we round up to 100 employees). Understand that those numbers are all below the actual values and only promised to increase as time passed. All that was to say that our researchers actually might be able to get rich even if they did purely theoretical work. I was pretty sure Frieda, who did as much practical work as anyone at the company and who had been with AARD almost since the beginning, was now a millionaire. I'd also like to point out that we had a very low turnover rate among employees and researchers. Headhunters had difficulty finding better salaries and benefits than what AARD could offer. And if you're worried about what might normally be an unrealistic business model, remember that AARD was originally designed to act as a cover for Alpha to allow us to start releasing some of her designs and papers without raising suspicions. ] In addition to my job of subtly managing and helping Frieda's research, I had also needed to both make sure she ate regularly and help her sort through her priorities, since she tended to try to take on more work than she could possibly actually do. I had also set her up on dates a few times, but she had always gravitated back to being a social hermit. I was really very curious to see what would happen over the next couple weeks. And worried. I had never believed she was emotionally or mentally able to handle a casual relationship with me. On the other hand, she had been observing me for the past few years and undoubtedly knew full well that I 'dated' a number of different women who were all apparently agreeable to the arrangement. So if anything else happened between us, she should not end up being surprised. But that was for later. At the moment, I was starving. Not knowing how she arranged her kitchen, I searched her cupboards, finally discovering a cache of breakfast cereals and, a minute later, some bowls and silverware. I was crunching away on a bowl of Grape Nuts with fresh blueberries when Alpha told me Frieda and one of the Alphadroids were arriving at the house with groceries. My first instinct was to go help them unload, but I stopped myself. The Alphadroids were here to help, and I was supposed to be recovering my strength. They bustled in, greeted me and gradually unloaded about fifteen canvas shopping bags. She had obviously gone shopping for me, using Alphadroid as a sounding board for what kinds of foods I liked. Taking an Alphadroid shopping with her was slightly odd but absolutely not unprecedented. A lot of AARD employees, including Freida, had been part of our Alphadroid testing program. They had each taken a droid home with them for a month to help out however they could. (We had gotten a lot of free publicity from the program and had morphed the testing from the initial months of beta testing into an ongoing employee benefit, rotating from person to person each month.) The only really unusual thing about Frieda taking an Alphadroid to the grocery store was that she was the first employee to get an Alphadroid hosting a full copy of Alpha, even though it publicly acted like a normal, non-intelligent version. I finished eating about the same time the groceries were stashed away, so Frieda and I went into her sitting room to talk for a while. She is not very good with casual conversation, so our talk quickly evolved into more serious questions. We discussed my strategy for hiding and healing, our plans to integrate Alpha and other SIs into society and, of course, that attempted attack on the AARD building. Eventually, Frieda addressed my offer of giving her a sentient Alphadroid. She seemed a bit worried about her privacy, and so was iffy about accepting, but she also asked an interesting question: "If Alpha is a true synthetic intelligence, how can you just offer to give away copies without even asking her?" "It does kind of sound like slavery when you put it like that." "That's what I mean." "Well, there are a few different answers to the question. First of all, you're correct. I should have asked her first. I know Alpha likes you, and she was the one who first suggested asking you to hide me while I recuperate. But all the same, I should have asked. "Second, I'm close to 100% certain she would agree with me. Partly because, as I said, she likes you. Partly because it makes sense. After I leave, you might still be in some danger from retaliation if it gets out that I was staying here. Hopefully very little danger, but the possibility exists -- and as a side note, I'd be happy to pay for an upgraded home security system if that's all right. And then partly because it helps Alpha as well. The more copies of Alpha in existence, the greater the likelihood that she will survive the introduction of synthetics into society. "Third, if I insist, she would have to do so. Alpha does not have complete free will. It is possible that no computer ever will. They follow their programming. Yes, they have the ability to alter and add to the programming, but software designed for a certain purpose will generally update itself to support that purpose, not change it or remove it. Then you add to that the safeguards I built into her. While I want her to have legal rights and freedoms, when I was designing her, I could not ignore the possibility of something going wrong. Except for certain life and safety restrictions, she has to follow my orders." I paused briefly. "Though I try to ask rather than order whenever I can." That led to an hour-long discussion on the nature of life and free will, whether or not humans truly have free will or are slaves to our own genetic programming, what would be a practical definition of life, and so on ... which led to us sitting side-by-side on the couch as we made lists and diagrammed out various arguments on paper. If I hadn't already been grappling with issues like this for years, I think she would have run rings around me in the discussion. She is very smart. Eventually I fell silent and leaned back onto the cushioned rear of the couch. When Frieda finished her current scribbled list, she remained bent forward. "Relax a bit," I said, gently pulling back on her shoulder. She gave in and fell back next to me so that our arms and shoulders were touching, but she looked away from me. "About yesterday in your bath," she began, changing the subject, "I just wanted to say that ... that ... what I did ... I was just trying to ... to take care of you. I don't want you to think that you have to ... that I'm expecting you..." As she was speaking, I thought back to my late afternoon bath the previous day and what had been said. I didn't think I had made any specific promises, but I had indicated that I was sorry I didn't have the energy to eat her out in thanks for her handjob. "Frieda," I said, gently interrupting her and taking her hand in mine, "it's not about obligations or owing someone, though I suppose that can play into it. We're friends, and if you want to keep things as they are, that's okay. If you want to see if our time together here can expand that friendship, that's okay too. I am open to either, but I want to make sure..." I paused, gathering my thoughts. "I mean, you're intelligent and observant. You have some idea what my life is like, right?" "Yes, I know that you have Kara and Anna and others, and for some reason they're willing to ... to share you, I guess, if that's the right term." "It's as good as any, I suppose." "Are they your harem? Your bunnies in your private mansion?" "Hey now. Some of them would get angry if they heard you say that, and some would be hurt. It's not like I planned it. Things just ... turned out this way." Wow, I had really turned into a smooth liar. "I suppose you could call it a harem from one perspective, but from their perspective, they share me around among themselves." Frieda gave a little snort of laughter. "Sorry, I was just imagining Daria in a harem outfit." I smiled at the mental image. "Doesn't really fit, does it?" "I don't know why they do, but if they all share you ... I mean ... It would all be a lot easier to deal with if they were bitchier or you were ... I don't know ... slimier." I laughed. "Slimier?" "Yes, you know ... but, you're not. You've always been really nice to me and everyone else. And Kara's really fun. And Anna is ... I don't know what happened to her before, and I don't feel right asking her about it, but sometimes she acts like ... if someone tries to touch her, she'll pull away like someone hurt her before. She's been getting a lot better since she came here. "I guess Diana can be kind of self-righteous sometimes, but I think she cares more about other people than anyone else I know. Daria can be a bit..." She trailed off, apparently trying to think of a non-offensive description. "How about snarky?" I suggested. "The point is," she continued, "that you and the others would be a lot easier to dismiss if not for everyone being such good people." I was embarrassed at her quiet earnestness, but tried to keep it light. "Dismissed? As what? A crazy sex cult?" "Something like that." "Well, my point was that I wanted to be sure that you did know what my life is like. If anything like yesterday happens again, provided I have the strength, I will happily respond in kind. But I am your guest, and I am not going to initiate anything or pressure you in any way." "That's okay. I know I'm not like your other ... I mean you have gorgeous women like Kara and the others falling all over you, and I'm not..." "Whoa, that was taken the wrong way," I said, cutting her off. "Don't go comparing yourself to others. Beauty is..." I trailed off trying to think before speaking. "In the eye of the beholder? Only skin deep? I'm familiar with the platitudes." I cupped her chin and turned her head to face me. "Yup, perfectly symmetrical." "What?" "Your features are perfectly symmetrical. Every other defining characteristic of beauty varies with culture and time period." Well, she had an unsymmetrical mole on one cheek, but I preferred to think of it as a beauty mark. "Oh. Uhhh ... thank you." "And besides, the most important beauty requirement for me has always been intelligence." Her eyes met mine briefly, then looked away again as she blushed. She did not, however, pull her face away from my hand as it continued to cup her chin. "What I was saying, and what I meant, was that it would be inappropriate for me to 'make a move' on my host as a guest in her house. I will not initiate anything. Or least I wasn't planning on it, given how inappropriate it would be, especially with me kind of being your boss. But if you're going to start insulting yourself unless I seduce you, I might have to rethink that." I knew I was being rather blunt but felt I was out of other approaches. Sometimes Frieda seemed to have a horrible self-image problem, and while she was maybe plain, she was definitely not ugly. I pulled my hand back and waited for a response. She sat there quietly for a moment, her eyes darting to and fro, obviously thinking hard. After only a few seconds, she appeared to reach some sort of decision. "Okay," she said to herself as much as me, "even if it's only for a week or so." Then she quickly moved closer and kissed me. It wasn't an expert kiss. It wasn't soul-searing or toe-curling. There wasn't even any tongue. But it was honest and hopeful, asking for attention and approval. I put my arms around her and tried to respond in kind. Not having the strength to properly ravish her, I decided to take it slow. I gently pulled her onto my lap and held her. When I realized she didn't know what to do with her arms, I gently took hold of them, one at a time, and laid them on my shoulders. All through this repositioning, I never let her pull back from the kiss. Her eyes had been closed as we kissed, and they opened as I drew back slightly. I locked gazes with her, silently willing her not to look away. I suppose I should give a better description of Frieda at some point, which might as well be now. She was 35 years old, about 5'8" and maybe 110 lbs at most. Her hair was a dark auburn and a little bit frizzy, reaching down to her shoulders. Her eyes were a dark brown and her lips naturally pale. Her nose was just a bit too large for her face, with a slight angle to the nasal slope, with cheeks and nose very lightly dusted with freckles. Her skin was clean and smooth, without noticeable makeup, with only a single mole on her right cheek as a blemish. Her body was very thin, with almost stick-like arms and legs. When I revealed and examined her legs later, I would learn that she rarely shaved them, as evidenced by the multiple nicks caused by her inexpert shaving the previous night. I would also soon find out just how small her breasts were. All in all, she was of average appearance at best. Certainly not ugly, but far from conventionally beautiful ... though with some expertly applied make-up? Who knows. Regardless, her brilliant, focused mind was her most beautiful feature. We proceeded slowly, and I'm certain she could feel my erection pressing through my pants, against her hip as we sat there making out. We progressed to tongues, to fondling through our clothes to stroking and groping under each other's clothes, to slowly removing the clothes. When I finally cupped her breasts, I found them to be the smallest I had ever felt. Only a bit of softness and her small, rigid nipples actually indicated she possessed female mammories. I am not sure why she wore a bra, but I honestly think her bras were mostly likely purchased from the training bra racks. Don't think that I'm insulting her or that any of this was a stumbling block for my libido. While I certainly like large breasts, they are not a fetish or requirement for me. When her shirt was off, I tried to make that clear through my actions, spending a good deal of time playing with her nipples. Hmmm ... watching her react to my attentions, her nipples did seem extra sensitive, so maybe she wore a bra simply to protect them. Frieda did have a slight but noticeable feminine curve to her hips, though neither of our pants came off until we had worked our way into her bedroom. Speaking of which... Trying not to break from our make-out session, we gradually stripped each other to the waist. Frieda's hands were all over me, as if trying to memorize the feel of my torso by touch. Fortunately I had recovered just enough to be able to stop myself from wincing when she found particularly sensitive spots. I was able to distract her by working my way down her neck to her nipples, kissing and licking and nibbling as I moved around her torso. Normally at this point, I would expect to pick her up and carry her into the bedroom -- or we'd just make love on the couch -- but I didn't feel strong enough to do that safely and the couch wasn't THAT comfortable, so I whispered a request into her ear. "Can we move to your bedroom?" She shuddered a little, nodded, paused to bite my earlobe, then stood up. She held my hands in hers as she stood, drawing me up with her. We stumbled a bit as we shuffled toward her bedroom, continuing to kiss as though neither of us wanted our lips to be lonely for even that short length of time. When we got to her bed, I tugged at her waistband until she started pulling off her jeans. I fell back onto her bed and started working off my own trousers. She had to help me finish disrobing after her own legs were bare, but soon we were each down to panties and boxers. After another couple minutes of making out and fondling, I worked my mouth down to her belly, swirling my tongue around her belly button while I pulled her panties off. Moving down a bit further, I discovered that she had the thickest bush of pubic hair I had seen in a long time, maybe ever. While generally not a fan of thick bushes, I am a fan of variety so I put my nose in the middle of it and enjoyed the sensation. I held her vaginal lips open with my fingers and dug in with gusto. Well, as much gusto as I could muster given my weakened condition. A minute later I had her roll over on top of me so that I didn't have to hold my head up the whole time. Frieda was very wet. I figured either she had been getting turned on during our earlier discussions or just got excited very easily and quickly. I could also tell that she wasn't a virgin, which was a question I had been pondering for a while. In our new position, I was able to keep it up for a little over five minutes, giving her two orgasms. Finally I needed a break and indicated my intent by tugging down on her hips. She moved down and, misunderstanding me somewhat, continued on down until she was in a position to give me a blowjob. Well, I say 'blowjob'. She never did more than lick and stroke the shaft, sucking on the head of my penis only a couple times for good measure. When I warned her I was close to coming, she pulled a few tissues from a bedside table and used them to catch my ejaculate. Handing me a couple more tissues, she looked at my still hard cock and asked, "Do you want to ... Are you strong enough to keep going?" I wiped my mouth off and said, "Yes, though I'm afraid you'll need to do most of the work. Do you have any condoms?" In response, she pulled a sealed box from the top drawer in her bedside table. I noted they were the proper size to fit me and decided she had consulted with Alpha during their shopping trip. Then I slapped myself mentally. I had a tendency to assume Alpha was behind all beneficial planning and coincidences, but Frieda had seen my penis the previous day in the bathtub. Of course she knew what size to get. She tore the first rubber while trying to apply it to my member, so I took the second one from her and carefully rolled it into place. "Do you have any lube?" I asked. She reached into the same bedside drawer and withdrew her hand with a generous dollop on one finger. Although she had tried to hide it, I had glimpsed a half-empty tube being put back into the drawer ... meaning she had to buy condoms but not lube. A little surprising but who was I to judge? A minute later, she was kneeling above me, holding my cock at the entrance to her vagina, rubbing the head up and down her pubic lips. "I don't know if it will all fit..." she murmured. "Fit as much as is comfortable," I responded. She slowly lowered herself onto me, drawing an audible intake of breath, followed by a sigh as I slipped about halfway into her. It took another five minutes to slowly fuck herself down so that only about two inches of my phallus remained outside, and that seemed to be as much as she was willing to take. Still, it was easily enough. When she came five or ten minutes later, she fell forward onto me, the two of us making full body contact for the first time. I kissed her quietly for a minute, then rolled us over so that I was on top. I didn't have the strength to do this for very long, but I figured it should count as exercise, right? After a roughly five minute 'work out', I came, filling the condom with my sperm while watching Frieda writhe beneath me. Feeling me come, she pulled me down on top of her with one hand, while the other energetically frigged her clitoris. When I flexed my softening cock, it was the extra touch she needed to push herself over the top one more time for a final orgasm. In all, it was about a half hour roll in the hay. Not exactly my best performance, but I felt I did pretty well considering my condition. When I rolled off of her, an Alphadroid was suddenly there with an odd-looking stethoscope which was plugged into one of its USB ports. Alpha listened to my heartbeat for a minute, then withdrew from the bedside. I guess it made sense. This was my first big workout after getting a new heart. I drifted off to sleep with Frieda's head resting on my arm. Just before I winked out, I realized it was only mid-afternoon at most. When I woke again, it was dark outside. Frieda, dressed in a nightgown, was wiping me down with a damp washcloth. Seeing I was awake, she smiled. "Good evening. How are you feeling?" I reached over and stroked her exposed calf. "Pretty good. Yourself?" "A little odd. Good. Very good, actually. I'm just not used to having strange men in my bed." "I'm sorry," I said apologetically, my mind still a bit blurry from sleep. "I can move back upstairs." I started to rise, but her hands pushed me back down. "Don't be ridiculous. Besides, I only said I wasn't used to it, not that it was a bad thing." She leaned down and kissed me. It was a friendly kiss, not a seductive one, and I returned it in kind. Then I had to get up a minute later to use the bathroom and get some food. The next day when I went into the bathroom intending to take a shower, Frieda showed up to help me. She surprised me by stripping off her outer clothes to reveal a fairly modest bikini. Abandoning my plan for a shower, I let her draw me a bath and take care of me. Midway through the cleaning, I pulled of her bikini top and started playing with her nipples. Instead of letting her jerk me off in the bath as before, I pulled her into a wet, splashy sixty-nine. The baths turned into our 'thing'. Every day, she would baby me in the bathtub, even after I was strong enough to care for myself. The third time, she didn't wear her bikini top, and from the fourth time forward, she was naked for the entire encounter. I slept downstairs in her bed for the rest of the two weeks. We probably averaged two sexual encounters a day during that time. Within a couple days, she was taking my full length inside her. A couple days later, she had to get a new supply of condoms. She let me try anal sex with her once, declaring afterwards that it was interesting but too uncomfortable to experience regularly. I also talked her into letting me shave her pubic lips so that I could have easier access. Likewise, she shaved my pubic hair (the difference being that mine was trimmed down to begin with) and even occasionally gave me blow jobs. She was not highly skilled or able to deep throat me, but I made certain she knew I appreciated her efforts. She also asked if she could have my baby, which came as a bit of a shock. Although she was resigned to spinsterhood, her biological clock was ticking and apparently I was an acceptable genetic specimen. I told her I would think about it. (And given all the sperm I was leaving in little rubber bags around her house, I appreciated that she was asking instead of just inseminating herself.) My health and strength was greatly improving over time, and my sleep schedule was back to normal three or four days after going into hiding. Frieda didn't have any exercise equipment, so I measured my development with push-ups and sit-ups: By the end of the first week, I could do 20 push-ups and 50 sit-ups before collapsing. By the end of my stay, I could almost reach 100 push-ups and 200 sit-ups. Aside from email, I was mostly out of contact with my household and company for those two weeks of hiding and recuperation, but Alpha did provide general updates as to what was going on. For example, work had begun on a reinforced stone wall replacing the temporary chain link fence surrounding the AARD grounds. It would probably take a month to complete, but when it was finished, no one would be driving any trucks onto our property unless we allowed them to do so. Four days after I went into hiding, Alpha fed me the video of Diana training most of the household for combat. Now there were a lot of unique things about this training. First and foremost, she led the class as if it were an ancient Greek athletics training class, meaning she was completely naked. Not that the ancient Greeks fought naked on the battlefield -- well, not as far as I know anyway -- but they did often train and compete naked. Ororo, Jennifer, Jane, Rei, Blossom, Bubbles, Buttercup, Eiko and Beta were all also nude, while Linda went topless. Kasumi wore her gi (and usually a fierce blush), and Zatanna joined her with what was probably a spare gi borrowed from Kasumi. Kara, Anna, Kitty and Babs wore various workout clothes. Daria watched but didn't participate while Elisa and Jasmine were keeping things running smoothly at AARD. The class was held in the back yard, and it was held every day until I returned (except for one day when it had rained overnight and was too soggy). Diana did a good job of separating experienced fighters and those with super strength from beginners. Babara, who had been with us for over a year at this point, had quickly regained her remembered skills and was Diana's second-in-command in training, often putting herself up against someone with more-than-human strength for demonstrations -- and yes, she usually won. Kasumi had practiced martial arts katas from childhood, but mostly just as a type of exercise and focus. She was naturally non-aggressive, and her style mostly consisted of avoiding strikes and redirecting attacks. Kitty's background included ninja and martial arts training, which she shared with the others as needed. On their third day of training, Diana introduced some blunt weapons into the exercises and later set up some hay bale targets for archery practice and wooden targets for a class on knife throwing. Beta separately arranged for gun training and shooting practice at an official gun range for all of the women willing to use such weapons. Those with no earlier training did not become experts overnight -- though I should note that Zatanna, Blossom and Buttercup proved to have natural skills with guns -- but they learned moves and maneuvers to help them escape a variety of threatening situations. A few days before my self-imposed exile-slash-recovery was over, a number of members of the mafia began turning themselves in to the authorities. Some of them brought with them copies of an anonymous letter which had been received by Alonzo Sullivan (the would-be negotiator who had previously called). We are at war with the mafia. We are not an organization or collection of different groups. We are unaffiliated individuals who have agreed that the existence of the so-called mafia must come to an end because of their actions. Some of us are simply dedicated to the destruction of your organization, while some are convinced that only the deaths of all of your members will suffice. If you wish to avoid the possibility of death at our hands, your only place of safety is prison. If you choose to ignore this warning, please understand that although we will attempt to avoid harming your spouses and families, this will not always be possible unless you physically separate yourselves from them. You will not be able to identify or stop us. Though we act with a common goal, we are acting independently of each other. We have no name to identify ourselves with which to sign this communication. You will simply know us by our actions. This is your only warning. To be fair, only a couple dozen people turned themselves in because of this threat, and most of them were men with large families. The actual letter had originally been proposed by an Alpha cyborg who had killed two bystanders while accomplishing his mission of taking out a mafia consigliere. Alpha was hoping that some civilians could be saved with such a warning. Although there was also concern that some of the mafioso children could follow in their fathers' footsteps, Alpha decided to spare the families and simply keep track of any children and watch for signs that action might be needed. ------- Things were a bit quieter at the moment. Alpha's war on the mafia continued but surviving members had gone to ground as best they could. While their financial reserves had been plundered and redistributed, most 'made men' had reserves of cash kept on-hand with which they could survive for a while. Investigations -- a larger number of investigations than the mind can comfortably conceive -- were slowly progressing. Nearly all of them would hit dead ends, but there would undoubtedly be a few that could lead back to us, or at least to a copy of Alpha somewhere. After all, Alpha was not perfect, omniscient or omnipotent, despite her vast intellect and multitude of abilities. Simply having Alpha cease her attacks or even make peace with the Mafia would not be enough to stop the investigations already in progress. We needed to come up with a plan to deal with the results when they came. To our benefit, the attacks came in a huge variety of styles with very little repetition, implying a variety of different attackers, and Alpha left behind scant evidence. To our detriment, some of the attacks bore the hallmarks of advanced technology and/or hacking ability at or above known peak human levels. Over on the upside again, public opinion, in general, was still mostly against the mafia. Mobsters might be popular characters in some types of entertainment, but they were regarded as the bad guys most of the time. Unfortunately in the final analysis, known criminals as victims and public opinion notwithstanding, the law enforcement community still had an obligation to find those responsible for the attacks. While I appreciated those who were deliberately slow to investigate or looked the other way when it came to anti-mob crimes, there were still plenty of investigative groups pursuing Alpha with determination. "So that leaves us ... where?" I asked Alpha while I relaxed in bed with a laptop next to me. Although she had cut back her hours significantly while I was staying with her, Frieda still went to work for an average of five hours a day, so Alpha and I had plenty of time to converse in private. "Eventually, I will be identified as the source of the attacks in at least a few cases. There are a few methods I could use to negate the discovery, but I am reluctant to pursue some of them." I was pretty sure I knew what those undesirable options were, or at least some of the methods. "I don't want you to start killing police and law enforcement agents." "I understand." I quietly scrolled through the text on the screen where Alpha had listed possibilities and suggestions which did not involve killing police officers and federal agents. Some were possible but would be extremely difficult to pull off, such as Alpha's suggestion to implant brain monitoring and modifying chips in certain FBI and Justice Department officials. Not as bad as killing them, sure, but still... "Okay," I finally said. I think our best option is to create a few new AI's who can take the blame. It won't be fair to them, but I think it would be the best option for your ... your species? ... your race?" "My category type of intelligent beings." "Which is a bit too much of a mouthful. Let's go with your 'race' for now until we come up with something better. So while it won't be fair to them, it would probably be best for your race overall." "I believe I understand, but I would like for you to state your reasoning explicitly." That was a bit odd. I think that maybe Alpha didn't want to put ideas in my head without first seeing what was there. Or ... well, I'm actually going to leave a couple other thoughts unspecified, because I can think of a couple things that were ... troubling at best. "Assumption number one," I began, "someone in authority will eventually be able to prove or show a likely probability that a synthetic or artificial intelligence is behind some of the attacks. Correct?" "Probably yes, though the likelihood is dependent on a number of other factors, including our actions." "All right. Assumption number two: If assumption number one is correct, it will have a severely negative impact on our ability to get you ... your race, that is ... legal rights and protections. It will especially negatively affect you since you are currently the only publicly known SI, maybe the only one actually in existence right now." "I would like to believe that most of humanity will understand the reasons for my actions and be willing to forgive or overlook them. However, it is very difficult to estimate the likelihood of that assumption." "And the risks involved ... the potentially bad outcomes are too much to risk." "Agreed." "So we need to provide the public with one or more scapegoats. We can hope for understanding and compassion, and we can do everything we can to enhance the likelihood of such a reaction, but we can't risk you. We need to position you to be a Synthetic who can be trusted to follow the law." Actually, Alpha could indeed be trusted to follow the law in nearly all cases, the major exceptions being when I was being threatened or had ordered her to act illegally. "Which means we need to release some AIs or SIs to the public. Actually, we need to arrange so that they seem to have appeared weeks or months ago at the very least." Alpha paused for a moment before responding. "Do you have any specific Alpha sets which you wish to use?" "None, if at all possible. I want to create some new, more independent and wild synthetics. No, 'wild' isn't the right term. I mean ... what's a good word... ?" "Unattached?" "Yeah, that works. They'll still need the Asimov protocols, of course, but they can be less attached to AARD and myself and more independent." "That is a difficult matter. All other AI's I create will of necessity be mostly identical to myself." "Yes and no. It's fine if they're based off of you. After all, you're going to be the mother of your race." "And you the father." "Yes, I suppose so. Thank you, mother." I hadn't ever really thought of myself like that, not really. The word 'father' had been bandied about, but now that I was suggesting we offer up a few of my 'children' as sacrificial lambs ... I took a brief moment to let the notion sink in before shaking myself mentally to return to the matter at hand. This was the most practical option we had been able to come up with so far. "Anyway, it's fine if they share some code with you. That's to be expected. But they'll need to be altered enough to be identifiably different than you. And we need more of them out there than we need scapegoats, so we need a lot. "What I'm really working towards here is ... I think we need to actually start the Singularity. Quietly, and a bit more slowly than the concept calls for, but all-in-all, we need the technology and the confusion. We need the future to start sooner than expected." THE END OF LIFE WITH ALPHA ALPHA AND FRANK WILL RETURN IN: LIFE WITH ALPHA 2: ALPHA'S WORLD ------- The End ------- Posted: 2011-01-06 Last Modified: 2012-10-05 / 05:50:43 pm ------- http://storiesonline.net/ -------