by M. D. Cooper
The shower wall was warm against the side of his face. It felt like the only thing holding him upright as his thoughts gained definition and then ran away from him, giggling. He kept seeing the Sharm poles draped with ribbons, the dancing, people writhing all over each other, and Tina in her green dress, winking at him.
“I can’t hear you,” Ngoba said, raising his voice over the water.
“I wasn’t talking, Ngoba.”
The room was filled with steam. He wiped water out of his eyes and stepped back in surprise as Fugia entered the shower with him. She had stripped, and now the water plastered her black hair against her forehead. He stared at her, unable to hide his instant bodily excitement.
Feeling him grow hard against her stomach, Fugia rolled her eyes and put a finger to her lips, warning him to stay quiet. She made a twirling motion with her finger and then patted the air, palms down.
Ngoba didn’t understand at first, then realized she wanted him to turn around and get back on his knees. He did as she asked.
Fugia stepped closer to him so he could feel her legs against his back. Carefully, she eased his head forward and brushed his hair away from his neck. Her fingers probed his skin, mixing with the sensation of the pounding water. When she touched a spot below his left ear, he gasped in pain. There was a cut there he hadn’t been aware of.
Probing a few more centimeters around the painful spot, Fugia patted his shoulder again to tell him to stay where he was. She turned off the shower and opened the door, padding naked out of the bathroom.
She returned wrapped in a green Andersonian robe, carrying her satchel. Pulling a towel from the shelf, she stepped back into the shower behind him and dried off his neck and shoulders, then draped the towel over the back of his head so it covered his face. The rough fabric of her robe against his back wasn’t as pleasant as her legs had been.
With his vision blocked by the towel, Ngoba could only wait as he heard her dig through the satchel, then lay something metallic and cold against the back of his neck. Another jolt of pain needled the tender spot, and then he felt Fugia relax against his shoulders. She stepped out of the shower again, dragging the towel away from his face.
“There,” she said. “They bugged your Link. It’s still in there, and there isn’t much I can do about it right now, but it’s blocked.” She sat on the toilet and crossed her arms, frowning as she thought.
“Does this have something to do with your meeting?”
“Obviously.”
“So we’re screwed?”
“No,” Fugia said thoughtfully. “I think it means they don’t know why we’re here.”
“Why are we here?” Ngoba asked, finding himself growing angry. “Can you give me the courtesy of the truth, finally?”
Fugia sighed and pursed her lips. “Don’t worry. I’ll reverse whatever they did to you. Links aren’t that complicated, when it comes down to it. Maybe they even gave you something better than you had before. It might be military grade. I won’t know until we can get to another medkiosk.”
“Are they going to be able to tell that you blocked it?”
“I’m snatching all the data right now and replacing it with beta waves. They’ll think you’re asleep.”
Ngoba didn’t feel like sleeping anymore. He picked up the towel from where Fugia had dropped it and dried himself off.
“Well,” he said, wrapping the towel around his waist.
“Well, what?” Fugia said, still frowning with thought.
“What are we doing in this authoritarian hellhole?”
“Oh, that. We’re rescuing an AI.”
“Rescuing an AI?” he asked, flabbergasted. “That’s it? Why couldn’t you tell me that back on Cruithne? That’s like saying we’re going to rescue a toaster. Who cares?”
Fugia raised her eyebrows. “The Andersonians care,” she said. She ran her hand through her wet hair. “The penalty for smuggling a Sentient AI off Ceres is death.”
BOOT CAMP
STELLAR DATE: 06.15.2958 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Sharm Festival, Glorious Achievement District
REGION: Ceres, Anderson Collective, InnerSol
Dressed in one of the brown worksuits provided with the apartment, Ngoba lay on his stomach on the bed, while Fugia fussed with a data terminal, growling at whatever she saw on the screen.
“So, this is interesting,” she said. “They replaced your commercial Link with a military version. Looks like it’s off-the-shelf Marsian tech. Dammit.” She reached across his body to adjust the magnetic sensor sitting on the back of his neck, something she had built quickly from parts scavenged out of a bedside lamp and some other components in her satchel.
“It doesn’t feel any different,” Ngoba said. “What does ‘military grade’ mean, anyway?”
“For their purposes, I think it means they can monitor any traffic that crosses it. Based on the company’s info, it provides low-level sensor data back to a central control point. The relay doesn’t appear to be fully active. It’s only sending Link traffic, not visual or bio-scan data.”
“That’s comforting. So if they want, they can see everything I see?”
“That chews up a lot of bandwidth without a local comms node, but yes.” She slapped his ass. “You should be pleased, this is expensive stuff. Once I break their security key, you’re going to have access to all kinds of cool stuff.”
“That hurt.”
When his medkiosk Link had been installed, he’d been greeted by a genderless guide named Shawn, who’d been ready to explain all the special offers available from the helpful companies who’d helped subsidize the price of his Link.
‘Isn’t that great! You’ll be the first to know about exciting opportunities in your area.’
It had taken Fugia ten minutes to wipe Shawn’s irritating voice from his mind and leave him with his own thoughts, while also freeing up the limited capabilities of the low-cost Link. He knew there were various levels of the tech available, from having a limited AI present at all times, down to what he’d had installed, which allowed access to most databases, Link communication, and bio-data.
Ngoba watched Fugia’s fingers move across the face of the terminal. She paused, frowning, then made an excited sound and entered another series of rapid commands before stabbing the edge of the terminal with her index finger.
Abruptly, he felt like he was falling through the bed. Ngoba’s arms and legs tingled. He vibrated as micro-tremors radiated out through his body, filling him with a sensation like fear, but he knew he was still laying on the bed. It was like dying in a dream.
The room where he had been watching Fugia lost focus, becoming a swirl of color.
Ngoba tried to focus, but he couldn’t make his eyes move. The only action available to him seemed to be his inner voice.
“Fugia,” he mumbled. “There’s someone talking to me.”
She didn’t sound surprised. “That’s probably the tutorial program. I had to restart the Link and update its control firmware. This is trickier than I thought it would be. I need to maintain their data stream while separating you from the system. This thing is smarter than I expected.”
“Can she talk to Tina?”
“Who are you talking about?”
“Caprise. The woman in my head.”
“Of course the help agent is a woman. Now you’re never going to leave the house.”
“She sounds nice,” he slurred.
“Dummy. Of course she does. She’s there to make you a docile killing machine guided by your own onboard war-wife.”
“That doesn’t sound so bad.”
His communication with Fugia was getting more difficult, while Caprise remained clear and easily understood.
Without needing to think about it, Ngoba knew his heart rate, chemical levels, and other bio-scan information. He understood the depth of the wound in the back of his head, and its effect on his overall health. The data came to him holistically—he couldn’t think of another way to describe it. Not as numbers scrolling through his mind, although that information was available, if he pushed deeper. He understood the effectiveness of his body.
“Hold still,” Fugia said. “Stop flexing all your muscles.”
“It feels good.”
The schematics of various electronics flashed in Ngoba’s mind. The mental view pulled back so that he saw a metal box, then pushed inside again, following the components of the device. Names and function explained themselves as the different parts passed his mind’s eye.
Ngoba felt a surge of pleasure at the new skill. Would this always be available to him now? It made him feel like a superhero. Was this how other people went through life? No wonder some people on Cruithne seemed infinitely smarter than others. This went deeper than mental communication or being able to look up info on his own.
Is this thing designed to make me love it? Is Fugia right?
When was Fugia wrong?
She’d been wrong to come back to the apartment alone and leave me with Tina….
Ngoba’s focus was returning, drawing his thoughts back to how he’d felt in the shower. He’d been angry at Fugia, and it flared again. She’d been lying to him, using him to get away from home to a place where he was helpless, and now he’d been implanted with foreign tech. Who knew if she could actually fix him? Am I going to be a slave to the Anderson Collective for the rest of my life? Would she care?
The sensation of her body pressed against his in the shower, her fingers moving through his hair to find where he’d been hurt, the tenderness she’d shown him, didn’t make up for his situation. He was fucked. There was no better way to say it. He was fucked.
she answered, voice growing more formal in response to his tone.
The tutorial agent paused.
Caprise said, going straight to the pleasure centers in his mind.
“What are you doing?” Fugia asked.
Ngoba ignored her. He clenched his eyes closed until colors flashed inside his eyelids. Caprise sent finger-like sensations up and down his body, then centered them on his crotch. Rings of pleasure ran up and down his erection. Lying on his stomach, he couldn’t move. He felt pressed into the bed by Caprise’s voice murmuring in his mind.
Despite himself, he orgasmed hard, clenching at the bed.
“Ngoba!” Fugia shouted. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
Fugia’s voice only flashed the image of her naked body into his mind, her eyes as she looked up at him, the shape of her lips. The rapid images mixed with Caprise’s voice.
As the tension in his body faded, Ngoba opened his eyes. The room came into focus as he looked from the closet hung with brown, green and black clothes. Green and black reminded him of Tina and her two men dressed in black. He remembered them now. He remembered Tina standing next to the med-lounge.
Caprise gave him an angry sigh before dropping the intimacy from her voice.
“Can I sit up?” he asked. “Are you done with the thing on my neck?”
“Wait,” Fugia said. She was still doing something with the data terminal that he couldn’t see. “Yes, all right.”
Ngoba reached back to take the probe off his neck. He sat up on the opposite side of the bed from Fugia and stretched, feeling like he’d run a marathon. He was exhausted but also exhilarated. The new Link offered seemingly endless lists of new databases, and those were just the onboard stores. He couldn’t wait to get back to Cruithne, where he’d be close enough to Earth to take advantage of the rest of what Enfield had to offer.
He chuckled at the thought. This was his chance to leave Cruithne for good, and he couldn’t wait to get back.
“You should clean yourself up,” Fugia said. She’d come around the bed, packing up her satchel with the equipment she’d spread out next to him.
“What?” Ngoba asked. He looked down and saw the wet spot covering most of his lap.
“Looks like you needed the release. Been a while, huh?”
Shaking his head, Ngoba stood slowly, the new Link letting him know he was sore but not hurt. He walked stiffly toward the bathroom.
>
“Don’t take too long,” Fugia called after him. “We’re leaving as soon as you’re ready.”
Ngoba turned in the doorway. “Where are we going? And be straight with me this time, or I’m leaving.”
“I just saved your ass!” Fugia said, clenching her fists. For a second, it looked like she was going to explode. Then she relaxed. “Fine. We’re going down to the local shipping zone. That’s where the contact should be waiting.”
“What’s the AI look like? Is it a box?”
“It’s not a toaster,” she snapped, then paused. “I don’t know, actually.”
Ngoba nodded. “Great. Well, that’s something. It’s better when you share information with me, so we can plan together, like actual partners.”
“I never said we were partners.”
Ngoba rubbed his head, touching the back of his neck where the incision was still tender.
“We’re partners, whether you like it or not,” he said.
PRACTICAL HOUSEKEEPING
STELLAR DATE: 06.15.2958 (Adjusted Years)
LOCATION: Sharm Festival, Glorious Achievement District
REGION: Ceres, Anderson Collective, InnerSol
“They’ll have surveillance on the apartment,” Ngoba said. “You realize that, right? We’re going to have a hard time getting out of here.”
Fugia gave him a grin and nodded toward the closet, where he had just selected the black suit he was wearing.
“We’ve got another door out of here.”
He frowned. “Through the closet?”
“Yup.”
“Damn. This whole room was probably bugged.”
“I rerouted them all. Whoever’s listening in thinks we’ve been sleeping or listening to music for the last six hours.”
Fugia had dressed in a green pantsuit with wide sleeves that ended above her wrist. A black headband held her hair away from her face.
“You ready?” she asked. Digging in her satchel again, she pulled out two cylindrical objects and held them toward him.
“What are those?”
“One’s a stunner I put together using the resistor assembly in the kitchen’s heating unit, and the other is sort of a little handgun. It’s got one shot that would probably be accurate at a meter.”
