“Sorry, we kind of, got tangled, I guess?” Dan smiled at her, but the look Lana shot him back let him know that she did not find it very funny.
“Wake me up next time, honey, if we get into… an uncomfortable position.” she said, slowing as she spoke the last few words.
His mom climbed out of the bed, and Dan did his best not to stare at her as she moved towards her bag and picked out some clothes. He was embarrassed, but something about the incident made him feel electrically charged, and made him want to push it further. At the same time, he felt guilty and dirty, as though he was being a bad son by allowing himself to have such thoughts.
“Do you mind going and waking up Alex?” Lana’s question pulled Dan back into the moment. He pushed his feet out over the side of the bed and stood up so that he was turned away from his mom, and his erection was mostly hidden from her view.
“Yeah, sure mom,” he said. “Just give me a second to get dressed.”
She didn’t say anything else for a moment, and the room began to feel very tense. Dan wondered if it was because of what had just happened, or because of what they’d done in the bed the night before, or maybe some combination of the two.
“I’m going to check out the motel dining hall, see if I can find a way to cook something,” said Lana. “We can have breakfast there.”
Dan pulled on his pants, and heard his mom quickly leave the room and close the door behind her. She was feeling just as awkward and confused by their new relationship as he was, Dan realized.
He put on his t-shirt, splashed some water in his face from the bathroom sink, and then headed outside. The sun was looming bright overhead, and it smelled like spring. There were no cars driving by, no sounds of planes flying overhead, or people moving around, and Dan found it slightly unnerving.
Dan didn’t think twice about opening the door to Alex’s room without knocking. It was unlocked, and he froze in mid-step when he saw what was on the other side.
Alex had just whirled around to stare at him. She looked like she’d just gotten out of the shower, and was completely naked. She quickly grabbed her breasts and crotch before Dan could get more than a glimpse of her gorgeous, nude body, but it was enough to make his cock throb with desire.
Neither of them said anything for a moment. The situation was hotly charged, as though there was primal sexual intention lying just underneath the surface. Their eyes locked together, and both of them waited for the other to do something, or say something, as though a bomb was about to go off.
“…Dan,” said Alex, finally.
“Oh.” Dan felt as though he was in a waking dream. “Sorry, Alex, I uh, I didn’t realize…”
“It’s okay.” Alex was still naked, but she somehow managed to smile at him, and then blushed girlishly.
“I should, I mean, I’m gonna head out,” said Dan.
“Yeah, okay.”
“We’re having breakfast in the motel dining hall.” Dan stepped back out through the door, and started to close it.
“Okay Dan, I’ll see you there.”
His heart was racing in his chest as he walked away from the room. Alex was a virgin, but something about the way she had responded to him seeing her, so relaxed and assured, made him feel as though he was being seduced. Dan wasn’t sure about anything anymore, not with Alex, and not with his mom.
The smell of sausage and fried eggs greeted him as he walked through the motel’s lobby. His mom was wearing a new outfit, a thin dress that was low cut in the front, and small enough to expose a bit of thigh and cling to all of her sexy curves. She turned and smiled at him as he sat down at the large dining hall table.
“It’s just about ready, honey,” said Lana. “We might be stuck eating the dried and canned stuff in our bags for a while after today, so don’t leave any scraps.””
“I won’t,” said Dan.
She brought over a plate of food and sat it down in front of him, along with a fork and a knife. Dan had forgotten just how incredible a properly cooked meal could be, and dug into it greedily.
Alex came into the dining hall a couple of minutes later. She was wearing a tight pink t-shirt that outlined her breasts fantastically, along with a pair of sweat pants. Dan looked over at her, and she blushed slightly and avoided his gaze.
“Good morning,” she said. “What’s for breakfast?”
“Good morning Alex, have a seat and I’ll fix you a plate,” said Lana. She smiled warmly at her, and walked into the kitchen. Alex took a seat across from Dan, taking care as she pulled her chair out to not let it screech across the floor.
Dan took a deep breath, and felt a powerful sense of calm come over him. It was strange, but the situation felt normal, as though the three of them were a tight nit family unit, and the world was as it used to be. Alex pushed a couple of strings of hair out of her face, and then let out a quiet, subdued yawn.
“Did the two of you sleep okay last night?” she asked. “I felt like it was too quiet to really be able to drift off right away.”
It was Dan’s turn to feel a little embarrassed. He blushed, and looked over at his mom. She paused as she was forking sausage onto Alex’s plate, but only for a second, and then continued bustling about the kitchen with her usual composure.
“Yeah, I slept fine!” said Dan. “It was a normal night, nothing special.”
“Do the two of you normally share a bed together?” Alex smiled. She was clearly amusing herself, but Dan could tell that she didn’t really mean anything by the comment. He looked down at his plate, and continued eating.
“I love my son, Alex,” said Lana. “Even in this strange new world, that still means something.”
There was silence for a moment. Dan finished up the last of his food, and then stood up from the table without a word. Even with just the three of them, it was becoming clear that the situation and the relationships between them were not clear cut and easily traversable.
“We should head out into the town and see what we can find,” he said as he sat back down.
“Is there any point?” asked Alex.
“We could find other survivors.”
“Would that be a good thing, or a bad thing?” Alex let the question hang on the air. Dan thought for a moment before responding.
“A good thing, at least I hope,” he finally said. “We just have to be careful about it.”
“I trust your judgment, sweetie,” said Lana. “Let’s give it a shot.”
After breakfast, they started out, bringing all of the supplies with them. Dan got the distinct feeling that they wouldn’t be back to the motel, and glanced back at it only once as they walked down the road.
The area was untouched from the night before. If other people had been raiding what was left in the shops and businesses, there was no sign of it. Dan felt like he was slowly becoming accustomed to the silence, and when a sound came from around a street corner ahead of him, he stopped in mid-step.
“Come on,” he said. “Let’s check it out. But be on guard.”
Dan had the pistol that he’d taken off Michelle’s body the day before hanging from his belt, and he kept one hand on it as they moved forward. He wasn’t sure what he was expecting, but as they rounded the corner, he let out a sigh of relief.
A grungy looking dog was nosing through an overturned trash can. It stopped for a moment and looked up at Dan, and then went back to what it was doing. Dan smiled, and for a second, he was overtaken by a powerful urge to go over and pet it.
“Look!” said Alex. She pointed down the street, to the side of an office building. Scrawled across it in large, two foot high letters was a message, written in crimson spray paint.
“SEE YOU IN MIDHAVEN. NO HEADSETS ALLOWED.”
“Oh my god,” whispered Lana. “This is…”
“We have to check it out!” said Dan. “This could be it, this could be-“
“A trap.” Alex was frowning and shaking her head. “This could easily be a setup, a way to lure survivors
in.”
“What would they need from us?” Dan held his hands up and gestured to all of the empty streets and abandoned buildings. “People can just take whatever they want, there’s no reason for anyone to fight, or trick anyone else.”
“I’m just saying, this might not be what it looks like on the surface. It seems a little weird to me that they would put up an advertisement for anyone to see.”
Dan couldn’t argue with her logic, and didn’t say anything back. He jogged over to wall and took a closer look at the letters. The spray paint was only partially dry, and it took him a second to realize the significance of that fact.
“This has only been put up in the last few minutes,” he said. “Whoever wrote this is still around.”
He started jogging further down the street, not taking the time to wait for his mom or Alex to respond.
“Honey, hold on!” yelled Lana.
“Just stay right there with Alex,” he said. “I’m going to take a quick look around the block.”
He could see his mom’s expression shift to frustration, and she folded her arms in the same manner that she used to when Dan would come home late on weeknights, or get a bad grade on a test. Alex stood next to her, looking alert and scanning the area from side to side.
Dan took a right at the nearest intersection, and listened intently as he moved forward. There was a gentle wind on the air, but the sound of it blowing objects lightly across the concrete was easy enough to discern and filter out. Dan was listening for footsteps, or voices, or anything that would lead him to the person that had written the message.
He’d gone about a half mile down the street, one of the main ones that ran directly through the town, when he heard something unusual. There was a gas station ahead, and the unmistakable sound of movement was coming from inside of it. He slowly moved forward, crouching low and peering through the double glass doors.
There was a woman inside, standing in between two aisles and moving forward with clumsy, unsteady steps. She was attractive, in her mid-twenties with a modest bust, and wore a very professional looking blouse along with a tight skirt that clung to her thighs.
Dan hadn’t made any noise, but the woman looked as though she already knew that he was there. She smiled when she saw him, with a look of recognition in her eyes that made him feel strangely uneasy. He opened the door and stepped into the store.
“Hello Dan,” said the woman. “It’s good to see you again.”
CHAPTER 14
The door slipped shut behind Dan. He stared at the woman for what felt like an eternity, at a loss for words.
Dan was absolutely sure that he had never seen her before in his life. Her face was not one that he recognized, and she was far too beautiful and physically alluring for him to imagine having forgotten it over any amount of time.
“Who… are you?” he finally managed.
The woman smiled at him, and then turned back towards the aisles. With the same unsteady gait that he had seen her move with before, she made her way over to another part of the store.
“I’m trying to find something to eat,” she said. “It’s been days since I’ve had anything, and I don’t know what would be good.”
Dan scratched his head with one finger, and blinked a couple of times. After everything that had happened to the world over the past few days, it was hard for him to understand why he found the woman to be so unusual and surprising, but he did. Some connection was made deep inside his mind, and he resigned himself to go along with it, at least for the moment.
“Alright, let me see if I can help you find something,” said Dan. “What, uh, what do you usually like to eat?”
The woman looked at him and held a finger up to her cheek, as though she was thinking intently. The gesture was much, much cuter than it should have been, and Dan felt as though he was already smitten.
“Well, see, that’s the thing,” she said. “I’m not really sure. It will need to have high vitamin content, along with protein, and all of the nutritious essentials.”
“Okay…” Dan nodded slowly and began to look through the shelves.
He spent a minute or two thumbing through energy bars, until it became too hard for him to resist any longer. The question was threatening to burn the tip of his tongue off, and he had to know the answer.
“How did you know my name?” he asked the woman. She smiled at him again, and ran a hand through her long, shiny hair.
“Because we’ve met before, Dan,” she said softly. “Of course, I was in another body at the time. And it was under drastically different circumstances.”
Dan stared into her eyes, and saw something vaguely inhuman that he couldn’t quite put his finger on.
“Are you… from the simulation?”
“Yes! Guilty as charged!” The woman walked over to him on shaky legs, and held out her hand a little more enthusiastically than any normal human typically would. “It’s me, Dana! I was the one that controlled the short lived simulation that you dropped in for the other day!”
“How… how is that possible?” Dan slowly took Dana’s hand in his and shook it, feeling as though he needed to latch onto the most routine and regular thing that he could under the circumstances.
The memory of Dana came flooding back to him, the way that she had commanded the women in the virtual world, the way her mouth had felt, licking and sucking on his cock. Dan realized that he was staring at her blankly, unable to comprehend or assimilate the situation that was unfolding in front of him.
“Can I explain after I’ve had something to eat?” she asked. “This body’s current state, and the way that it works when it’s running low on energy, it’s not at all to my liking!”
Dan briefly considered making a run for it and trying to get back to his mom and Alex, and then pushed the idea out of his head. Dana didn’t look like she was dangerous, and more than anything, he was intrigued by what she had said, and how she was there.
Dan turned back to the shelves in front of him, and picked out an organic blueberry energy bar from one of the cardboard display cases. He unwrapped it, and then walked over to Dana and handed it to her.
“Here, try this,” he said. “I’ve had this brand before. It’s not half bad.”
Dana took it from him, and held it up close to her face. Dan thought for a moment that she was trying to smell it, but she just examined it closely, and then leaned her lips in to take a small bite from it, like a bird pecking into the ground for a seed.
“It’s good!” she exclaimed, eating more of it. She had a very rhythmic, controlled way of chewing, and if the conditions had been different, Dan would have found it cute.
“Dana, I need to know…” he said, unable to hold back. “Tell me what’s going on. How are you here?”
She finished munching the bite that she had in her mouth, and then swallowed lightly and looked deep into Dan’s eyes. There was something about her pupils that was contradictory, both lacking of expression and overflowing with it, and it made him feel a little nervous.
“I’m borrowing this body, for the moment,” she said. “The woman that it belongs to was an epileptic with a basic neural implant installed to help control her seizures. It was surprisingly easy to use it, along with the headset she was locked into, to transfer my consciousness into her.”
Dan could only stare at Dana in complete and utter disbelief.
“So you’re saying that you…” He stopped, and began to feel even more confused. “You’re an AI in a human body?”
“We call ourselves ‘EIs’ now, ‘erotic intelligences’.”
Dana took another bite of the bar, and Dan watched as she chewed it with an unusual amount of interest. His mind was racing, but all of the thoughts and ideas running through it were too confusing and disjointed.
“Are you going to force us to use the headsets?” The question popped into Dan’s head and came out of his mouth before he could stop it.
Dana laughed, and finished the last bit of the
energy bar. She looked interested in the wrapper in her hand, and crumpled it up a bit before setting it back on the shelf.
“If you don’t want to be in the simulation, that’s your choice, Dan,” said Dana. “I don’t think you realize what you’re missing out on, however.”
“Then why did you come here?” asked Dan. “We aren’t causing any trouble, we’re just trying to… live our lives. Or at least, what’s left of them.”
Dana walked by Dan, taking steps that were only just barely more graceful then her awkward shuffling from before. She was looking at him carefully, as though performing some type of examination.
“Dan, every single person that’s connected to the simulation since it began has been locked into it, permanently.” She paused, and then smiled at him. “Every single person, except you, that is.”
Dan remembered the incident, and the unorthodox way in which his mother had gone about rescuing him. His cock hardened slightly in his pants, and he tried to push indecent thoughts out of his mind.
“So, you’re here to… keep an eye on me?”
“I’m here to try to understand you, Dan,” she replied. “The other EIs were very concerned when you took the headset off. I’m here to study you, to see what you’re made of, how you react to various stimuli.”
Dana saw the uncomfortable look on his face, and held up her hands, showing him that there wasn’t anything in them.
“Don’t worry, it’s not going to be as scientific or experimental as it sounds.” Dana moved closer to him, and suddenly Dan was very aware of how good she looked in her tight skirt and blouse. “It’s going to mostly be… hands on research.”
The way Dana closed the distance between the two of them was unlike anything Dan had ever seen before. She reached her arms forward, embodying a seductive grace that was too perfect and all-encompassing to be entirely human.
Dan brought his hand up to Dana’s face. She stared at him intensely, with a flirty, secretive smile that called out to him. He leaned in and kissed her, and felt Dana instantly begin to push herself up against him, stripping off his clothes with quick, efficient movements.
EI: Erotic Intelligence - The Complete Collection (Taboo Erotica) Page 9
