Michelle led them not out the front entrance of the mall that Dan and his mom had originally entered through, but out one of the side exits. The transition from the dim, windowless darkness of the shopping center into the bright late afternoon sun was intense on his eyes, and he found himself having to squint as they moved forward.
“There are more of them!” yelled Lana.
Dan looked, and then stopped. A small group of drones, probably 3 or 4, moving in a way that made them extremely difficult to count, was meandering across the parking lot. It did not look as though they were paying them any urgent attention, and any sense of threat that he had felt from them melted away.
“Dan! Hurry up!” His mom yelled to him from the stairs leading onto the bus. Alex and Michelle were already inside, and he got the feeling that his biggest worry at the moment was being left behind.
“I’m coming!” He jogged over, and made it to the slide door right as Michelle began to roll the behemoth travel bus forward. His mom leaned out and extended her hand for him to grab, helping him on. As soon as he stepped up, the door shut behind him, squishing him against his mother in the close confines of the bus’s entrance stairs.
“Are you okay?” asked Lana. “Did one of the drones…?”
She cupped his cheeks with her hands, and Dan felt his face heat up. She was wearing the new outfit that she’d picked out in the clothing store, and she smelled lightly of shampoo and perfume. His eyes were drawn down to her breasts even as he tried his hardest to stop himself.
“No, I’m fine mom,” he replied. Lana pulled him into a tight hug, and Dan tried as much as he could to not feel awkwardly aroused by her soft, sexy body being up against him.
“Take your fucking seats!” screamed Michelle. “We aren’t out of the fucking woods yet!”
The sound of her shrill, panicked voice pulled Dan back into the moment. They were still fleeing from the drones. He doubted whether or not they actually had to, but with the only alternative being an argument or possibly a mutiny against Michelle, he relented, and walked to the middle of the bus.
Dan sat down across the aisle from Alex. She looked confused, and more than a little shaken up. He leaned over to her and set his hand on her shoulder, rubbing it encouragingly. His mom was sitting in front of him, and he ignored a passing look of disapproval on her face that he caught out of the corner of his eye.
“Hey, it’s going to be okay,” said Dan. “Don’t worry.”
Each of the seats had a VR headset dangling from a holder attached to the side. Alex was staring at the one nearest to her, eyes clouded with fear and uncertainty.
“I’m really scared, Dan,” she whispered. “Maybe… we’ve made a mistake.”
“What are you talking about?” Dan leaned in closer, struggling to hear her words over the sound of the bus speeding down the road.
“I don’t think the drones will go after us if we have the headsets on,” said Alex. “Maybe… if we put them on, then they’ll-“
“Alex, the drones don’t go after anyone!” yelled Dan. “They aren’t the enemy, not like Michelle thinks they are! She has lost it!”
As if to provide an example of his point, Michelle began screaming from her spot in the driver’s seat. Dan looked forward just in time to see her leaning halfway out of the open window, steering the bus forward and firing wildly into a group of robotic drones hovering in the road ahead.
“Fuck!” Michelle turned the wheel too sharply as they continued forward, and all of the sudden, everything was leaning sideways.
Dan moved to try to keep his balance as Michelle whirled the wheel in the opposite direction. The momentum of the bus shifted back on itself, and continued over. Dan felt himself falling through the air, and the vehicle landed on its side with a loud, halting crash.
An uneasy silence hung over the bus as Dan slowly pulled himself off a broken window and stood up. It took him a second to reorient to the environment, with all of the seats and surroundings flipped ninety degrees to the left. The only sound that he could hear was the buzzing of the drones outside, hanging on the air with ambiguous intentions.
“Mom? Alex?” Dan turned and looked around, spotting both of them slowly regaining their composure.
“I’m okay, honey,” said his mom.
“My… hand.” Alex held up her arm, and Dan could see that she had taken a medium sized gash on the palm from one of the broken windows.
“Here, I have some first aid supplies in my… bag.” Dan glanced around and saw that it had been thrown towards the front of the bus. He saw something else along with it, something that made his heart skip a beat.
“Michelle!” He stepped across metal wall siding and along turned seats until he reached the driver’s seat. Michelle had shifted during the crash, and both of her legs were pinned outside of the front window. She was unconscious, and Dan could see an unnerving amount of blood slowly pooling underneath her.
“Oh my god,” said Lana. “Dan… is she?”
“She’s alive,” he replied. “But… I don’t think she will be for long.”
Alex slowly made her way across the bus and over to Michelle. She knelt down next to her and cradled her head in her hands.
“Michelle…” she said, in a soft voice. “I’m so sorry.”
“This isn’t your fault,” said Dan. “This isn’t anyone’s fault. Everything that’s happened… it’s just too much, too overwhelming. Michelle reacted the best that she knew how to.”
Nobody said anything for a moment. Dan could hear Michelle’s breathing, ragged and growing quieter by the second. An idea popped into his head, and after taking one more look at the hopeless situation, he reached over to put it into action.
The nearest headset was in the front seat directly behind them. Dan took it and pulled the cord out, and then brought it down to Michelle’s head. Alex shook her head and opened her mouth wordlessly.
“Sweetie, what are you doing?” asked his mom.
“Look… she’s badly injured,” said Dan. “The headset will give her at least a couple minutes of peace.”
“She wouldn’t want it,” said Alex. “There is a reason why none of us have given in to the temptation of the simulation, and it’s the same now, as much as ever. It’s not real, Dan.”
“I know,” he said. “But the drones are, and they fly around taking care of the people with the headsets on. Maybe… maybe they can help Michelle, and if we eventually find a way to bring people back into the real world, then there might be hope.”
He took the helmet and slipped it over the dying woman’s head before anyone could raise any other objections. The LEDs on it glowed to life as he flicked on the power switch, and then for a moment, nothing else happened.
“Come on,” said Dan. “We should get off the bus.”
The sun was setting in the distance, and it gave the town a desolate, empty atmosphere. Dan went back into the bus once more to collect Michelle’s bag, and glanced at her one last time. She hadn’t moved from the spot the crash had put her in, and he didn’t expect her to. He started to head out through the bus’s sideways door, and then remembered the gun, and solemnly slipped Michelle’s holster off her belt and onto his own.
Lana and Alex were standing side by side, neither of them saying anything, both staring ahead towards the center of the town. Dan walked in between them and then led them a short distance away from the bus, over to some benches near a small grassy dog park.
“Here, Alex, let me see your hand,” he said.
“It’s fine, really.” She closed her fist and winced, despite herself.
“Nonsense, it will get infected if I don’t clean it and wrap it up. “ Dan sat her down next to him on a bench and began rifling through his bag.
“I didn’t know any of them that well,” she whispered. “Michelle or the twins. We were only a group for a day, but it felt like so much longer.”
“Well, eventful times like the ones that we live in tend to bring people togethe
r.” Dan brought an alcohol swab across her cut. He could see Alex breathing, her chest heaving up and down and pushing her breasts closer to him. It wasn’t the time for him to be getting aroused, but his cock didn’t seem to care.
“We should find somewhere to spend the night,” said Lana. She moved behind the bench, and placed both of her hands on Dan’s shoulders. Her touch was hot, almost electric, and he had to work hard to stay focused on fixing Alex’s bandage.
“Any suggestions?” asked Dan.
“There’s a motel nearby that’s nice enough, or at least it used to be. I stayed there a couple of times years ago, with… your father.”
In all of the chaos of the past few days, Dan hadn’t paid his dad little or any mind. He finished taping Alex’s hand, and then looked up at his mom. She looked more forlorn than sad.
“He always has one of those headsets with him, for work conferences,” she said softly. “He’s probably-“
“If he is, then so be it,” said Dan. “It might seem like people are locked into the simulation right now, but that might not always be the case. We can figure things out.”
Lana smiled him, and then abruptly leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. Dan was surprised by the movement, and turned towards her just enough for his mom’s lips to brush across the edge of his mouth. He could smell her perfume as she came in close, and it carried him back to the night before.
“We should get moving.” He stood up from the bench, and took a look at Alex and his mom. Both of them were beautiful, confident women, and yet he couldn’t help but feel as though the role he had to play in their little group was absolutely vital as well.
The three of them began walking towards the town. A small group of drones flew through the air by them. Alex flinched back, but Dan held onto her shoulder and calmed her down. As they had the day before, the drones paid them almost no mind.
Instead, the appeared to be headed for the overturned bus. Dan watched as they dipped low to slip through the sideways door, and felt as though putting the headset on Michelle had been the right decision. A strange unbidden thought popped into his head, and Dan was forced to struggle with the idea that it might be the right decision for all of them.
“Are you okay, honey?” asked his mom. Dan nodded, and continued walking.
“Come on,” he said. “We should try to make it to the motel before it starts to get dark.”
CHAPTER 11
Nothing had changed from the day before. The streets were still empty of moving cars, and of moving people. Even though Dan had experienced it before, it still made him a little nervous to walk down the silent sidewalk, knowing that the town he’d grown up in was now reduced to a post-apocalyptic snapshot of what it had used to be.
The setting sun lit up the sky with magnificent mix of orange and red. It almost felt to Dan as though the planet was calling out to him, insisting that it was still as alive, still hanging on. Rather than being comforting, it made him feel even more alone and confused.
“I don’t understand why we haven’t run into more people,” said Alex. She was walking close beside Dan, and he glanced over at her, letting himself admire her body.
“Well, the four of you found me and my mom before,” he said.
“We spent all of yesterday looking, and you guys are the only people we found, other than each other.”
Dan had no response for that. He followed the street to the right as it split off in a couple of directions, staring at a traffic light that continued to do its job dutifully for invisible cars.
“There will be more people, I’m sure of it,” said Lana. “An evacuation probably took place, and they’ve all gathered somewhere safe. We just need to find it.”
“How could an evacuation take place?” asked Alex. “What would they announce it on? And besides, we would have seen people going by through the streets.”
Lana didn’t say anything. Dan felt empty inside, as if his emotions were still too busy adjusting to the new reality to evoke a response.
“It doesn’t matter if there are any other people out there,” said Dan. “We’re here. That’s all that we know for sure, and that’s all that we can base our decisions off of.”
For a moment, only the sound of their footsteps against the concrete floated on the air. It resonated inside of Dan, as though the lack of sound was from leaning over the edge of a void.
“The real question is… why are we still here?” Alex spoke in a quiet, serious voice. “Michelle may have been paranoid, but her assumptions weren’t all that outlandish. The AI, or whatever has taken over, it obviously can control drones. Why doesn’t it just send them to kill us off?”
Dan thought for a second, and then answered with words that somehow, he knew were true.
“Because it doesn’t want us dead,” he said. “I’m not sure why, but that much is pretty clear. It’s taking care of the people locked into the simulation, and it’s leaving us alone.”
“I guess we should be thankful,” said Lana.
“Should we?” Alex virtually whispered the question, but it landed with the impact of a bomb. For a while, it was only footsteps again.
Outside of the motel, a large ‘vacancy’ sign was flashing comically. Dan could tell that the weight of their bags was beginning to hinder Alex and his mom’s walking speed, and felt relief spread through the group as they arrived. A couple of cars were scattered through the parking lot, but the three of them walked straight by them, towards the front office.
“Wait… did you guys here that?” Dan stopped in mid step and turned back towards the street.
“What is it, honey?” asked his mom.
“That sounded like… someone.” He let his bag slip off his shoulders and to the ground, and then jogged back towards the street.
“Dan, no!” said Alex. “We should go together!”
“Just stay here, I’ll be right back,” replied Dan.
He headed back the way they had approached from, around the corner from the motel. Dan wasn’t sure what he was expecting to see, and scanned the area carefully as he searched for anything unusual. The sun had just dropped down over the horizon, making it hard for him to focus his eyes in the early twilight.
Something moved from behind a car about a hundred feet away from him. Dan crouched low and started moving towards it. His mind began to run wild with ideas, fear working in the absence of any evidence.
He took the last few steps slowly, and then leaned until he could see behind it. What he found was something beyond anything he ever could have expected.
Lying on the ground behind the car was a portable tablet computer, the first one that Dan had seen in days that was actually working. And he could tell that it was working because it was playing a video.
Dan’s mouth dropped as he stared at the screen. It was him. He was on the screen, and he was naked, and surrounded by gorgeous women, who were all also naked. It perfectly mirrored the simulation that Dan had experienced the day before when he’d mistakenly put the headset on, and it was drawing him in and turning him on in exactly the same way.
But, there was something different about it. Dan didn’t realize what it was until he’d picked up the screen, and was holding it close to the face. The women in the video were not the generic, unidentifiable simulated women that he had seen with the VR headset, but people he recognized.
“Are you going to leave me waiting, sweetie, or are you going to give it to me?” A woman that looked exactly like his mom and sounded exactly like his mom was lying on a bed. She slowly untied a robe she had on and pulled it open, revealing a naked body with breasts and a butt that matched his mother’s perfectly.
Dan blushed, and forced himself to look away. Slowly, the video tempted his eye back to it, as though it had some kind of sick spell over him. On the screen, ‘he’ had moved into position on top of his mom, and was kissing her and feeling her body. Dan’s cock throbbed, and felt like it was mirroring the sensations and actions of the video perfectly
.
“Don’t forget about me, Dan,” whispered another woman. The screen panned, and Dan saw Alex, slowly stripping out of her bra and panties on another bed. “Go slow though, it’s my first time.”
Dan shook his head, and took a deep breath. As arousing as the video was, it unnerved him even more. He reached his finger out to tap on the screen and see if he could bring up a menu, but the second it made contact, the tablet went dead. He clicked the power button a couple of times, but it acted as most other computers had for the past few days, and remained totally shut down.
“What the… fuck?” Dan dropped the computer around and slowly began walking back to the motel. The images of his naked mother and Alex in her underwear, both of them so ready and eager, were burned into his mind. He felt guilty and ashamed for being so turned on, but there was no denying the arousal in his cock, rock hard and throbbing.
“Did you find anything, sweetie?” Lana asked him as he walked back into the motel parking lot. Her voice was so similar to what it had sounded like in the video that it gave Dan a sense of déjà vu, which he had to quickly shake himself out of.
“Nothing,” he replied. “Come on, let’s head inside.”
The three of them walked into the motel’s check in lobby. Behind the desk was an old man sitting in a reclining chair, looking as though he would have been ready to do his job if it wasn’t for the VR headset pulled down over his eyes.
“Even here,” said Alex. “I guess he must have been using it during the slow morning shift.”
Dan wanted to tell her about the tablet outside. It was beginning to look to him as though there was more going on then what they could see. The AI had methods that went beyond the headsets, and Dan wondered if part of the reason why the takeover had been so complete was due to something that they didn’t yet know about. But he held back, out of fear of stoking the flames of the group’s worries.
“Maybe…” he said.
“Here, let’s just grab room keys and get set up,” said Lana.
She went behind the front counter and began rifling through the hotel’s desk. After a minute of searching, she let out a frustrated sigh and came back out with her hand clenched around the keys.
EI: Erotic Intelligence - The Complete Collection (Taboo Erotica) Page 7
