by Aer-ki Jyr
“Only you have two.”
“And vaginas don’t bounce or stick out?”
“But when they’re hidden even more than breasts, the secret treasure factor does come into play. But yeah, the bouncing is a big part of it.”
“And now?”
“Now I see bouncing as a tactical disadvantage, and thus not an attractive thing…though still eye catching.”
“Which is why you like my slimmer build?”
“Better fitness equals better genetics, and on the most basic level, that’s what you’re sex drive is built upon…with a lot of nonsensical cheese to bait the reproductive trap.”
“So that’s why most guys like boobs as big as they can get them…” Kara said, staring off at the desert sands for a moment. “Don’t know why I never considered that possibility.”
“Because it’s stupid,” Paul admitted. “And if I knew why girls liked dicks so much, I’d probably think that was stupid as well.”
“Want to be let in on the secret?”
“Nah, I think this is one mystery box I’ll leave sealed, thanks.”
5
“You favoring ignorance now?”
“Less noise for my brain to process, and you always want to leave at least one Christmas present unopened. That way Christmas never truly ends.”
“So you did think you’d basically learned everything about the universe and found that knowledge boring, didn’t you, until you found Azoro and he opened your eyes?”
“Technically it was Cal-com, but yeah, I had fallen into that delusional trap.”
“So how many real Christmas presents did you leave unopened?”
“There are a few TV show episodes and movie sequels that I have deliberately not watched so the story never ends for me.”
“Always faking reality to grasp at something better. I think my crush on you increased a bit, and I’m not even going to analyze how or why.”
“Because it would be a letdown?”
“No. Because it would dull the sense that you just opened up in me. Just like the sense of wonder Azoro…or Cal-com…opened up in you. Too much analysis leaves us in the bleachers watching the game rather than on the field playing it.”
“Is that a pickup line or…”
Kara pressed a chip to his lips to silence him. “And mating would also be a distraction. Screwing the cheer leader in the locker room during halftime and missing the third quarter because of it.”
“Did you actually…”
“Not me, but my friend did…with the quarterback…in an away game…at Sectionals.”
“Of all the bone headed…”
Kara pressed the chip harder and into his mouth to stop him from talking. “Spoken like a true teammate and not a romantic. How disappointing,” she said sarcastically.
Paul chewed the chip to remove the obstacle. “Girls are always causing guys trouble.”
“And they like doing it because they’re self-absorbed twits who can’t walk and chew gum at the same time and have no life except what they suck off of others.”
“Who told you that?”
“It’s what I told my friend when she found out I was joining Star Force and not going to a Sorority with her.”
“What did you do in high school?”
“Cross country, gymnastics, and softball. State qualifier in the first two, but my softball team never was up to par.”
“What position?”
“Catcher.”
“And you were best friends with a cheerleader?”
Kara shrugged, bouncing on Paul’s hands ever so slightly. “She was my next door neighbor who I had nothing in common with, which made us opposites enough that we weren’t competition in the social pecking order, so we were each other’s relief valve.”
“And she didn’t like you joining Star Force and not going to college with her?”
“Ended the friendship right then and there. She wouldn’t have anything to do with me afterward, though I tried to keep in contact. She wouldn’t return a single text or call. She was a conceited piece of shit, and it was a wonder we didn’t have a falling out sooner. But then again, maybe she needed my sanity to help guide her.”
“Do you know where she ended up?”
“Dead three years later, overdosed on meth at a party. One life I maybe could have saved if I hadn’t left, but I would have had to betray myself to do so, so I never blamed myself or my decision. Just regretted the outcome. We walked parallel paths for a while, but they were destined to split eventually. You?”
“No close friends, but a lot of people that were more than acquaintances. Then I get to basic training and find I had 99 brothers and sisters I never knew about, and we were closer than any of my previous friends after about 2 minutes of talking on the ride to Atlantis.”
“You all rode together?”
“No. Just saying we gelled as soon as we met each other. Same for you guys?”
“Yeah. They selected us well. I haven’t thought about those years in a long time. It’s hard to remember not having Essence flowing through my veins and a jewel on my wrist.”
“You think they define you now?”
“They do. If you took them away I’d be severed. Same with you if you suddenly lost your psionics…or ability to mind link with a fleet.”
Paul cringed. “I see your point.”
“Not entirely. You’re looking at it as a reliance weakness. I’m looking at it as my current Pokémon evolution.”
“We have gone through a lot of those, haven’t we?”
“With more still to come, apparently, if the Neofan assumption is right. Ok, put me down. My boobs aren’t designed as hard points.”
Paul rolled one hand up to her right shoulder, took her weight there, then moved the other as she brought her arms back into position on his chest to remake her tripod as she gave Paul another chip.
“You’re going to make me fat,” he joked.
“As if that was possible,” she said, stuffing another three in his face. “Does your new body even have fat?”
“Good question. Yes, there’s obviously fat cells for storage. But I don’t know if we can actually put on excess weight. You’d think we could, but there might have been a change there.”
“Don’t try.”
Paul smirked. “Not a challenge I’m interested in.”
“Don’t even use that word with it or you’ll reconsider,” Kara warned.
“Might think about it. Wouldn’t do it.”
“See.”
“Ok, girlfriend,” Paul said, tossing her back over to her own chair in a very pretty arc that landed her exactly where she needed to be with barely a bump on landing. “You’re missing too much of the show.”
“Story of all my relationships. Over just when they get interesting,” she said deadpan as her eyes went back to the convoy of ships gradually approaching the portal that was only visible edge on as it was flat to their point of view.
“Because you were a Tom Boy?”
“I was called that…twice. Hit one of them.”
Paul rolled his head to look at her. “For calling you that?”
“No, for something else he did.”
“Did you have a rough time growing up?”
“Most of my growing up occurred in Star Force. If you mean the time I spent gaining height, then yeah. That’d be a fair statement. No scars remaining though. They turned to dust over time.”
“I’ve been pushing ahead so much I haven’t really looked back to narrate the past, but it does seem crazy that we made it this far. Even putting the near certain death of the V’kit’no’sat aside.”
“Regrets?” Kara asked.
“Battles I would have fought differently, but no regrets. Not now. Before the transformation, yeah.”
“Regret that all the hard stuff was over?”
“Bingo. Then the universe reminded me that it’s a never-ending story, and never-ending level upgrades.”
“Which is i
llogical. It can’t go on forever.”
“And what happens 5 minutes after it ends?” Paul challenged.
“A paradox we haven’t figured out yet, along with the start,” Kara said as if it was not an issue.
“But knowing there’s an answer that we haven’t figured out is calming.”
“As compared to thinking the universe can’t function unless we give it permission to?”
“I’ve done a lot of that, actually.”
“Giving permission?”
“Thinking I had to know or it didn’t exist. A side effect of trying to put the universe into boxes for analysis.”
“And you felt you needed to why?”
“Star Force needed answers, and if I didn’t find them I couldn’t expect anyone else to. Trailblazer problems.”
“See, I was totally opposite. I knew there was knowledge in my head that I didn’t have access to. I just had to dig it out over time. I was never the one in charge, and there were always more Easter Eggs to find.”
“Until you ran out.”
“I’m not sure I have. I’ve been over every facet of the programming and altered some of it to my liking, but those sneaky bastards instilled in me the instinct to always assume they have something else lurking waiting to manifest itself,” Kara said, waving at the next ship in line, then pausing her hand and extending her middle finger for a moment.
“I don’t see Vermaire,” Paul said deadpan.
Kara laughed and put down her arm. “How did Davis know to give us a practice OP bad guy?”
“He saw the strength of the V’kit’no’sat and wanted to teach us how to lose without crumbling, and how to learn from it. I think Vermaire was a little more enthusiastic than intended.”
“Well it worked. I still occasionally have nightmares…just not recently.”
“Replays?”
“No, just him running at me, me screaming before he hits me, then I wake up before the pain can register. It’s just pure fear, and it gets me every time my brain is shut down so much it doesn’t know better. I wasn’t the only one with those back then. You?”
“Nah. I just wanted to hit him, really hard, just once. A hit that would send him into the wall and crumple him. Never got that, but I did get a few satisfying thumps. He was just too big and heavy to move well.”
“No fear?”
“It’s funny, but after a while I was too focused and busy saving myself and others to feel it. Every second was spent figuring something out or working to improve. After I became an Archon I never had downtime. Sitting on a dropship my mind was always working on something. I didn’t have the luxury to fear.”
“Luxury?”
“I couldn’t be inactive enough to sit and soak in what was around me. I had to be the change agent.”
“We owe you guys a lot,” Kara said emphatically. “You did a lot of the heavy lifting for us.”
“You paid it back in spades. Jason may have died from the faulty Lachka development if you didn’t fix him.”
“Thank them,” she said, pointing at the ships. “As much as I hate to say it, their sticking this thing on my arm helped us a lot.”
“Not that arm though,” he reminded her.
“I will never forget that. And I will never forgive them for it. I wonder how many of their Zen’zat faced a similar fate.”
“I’m glad they’re leaving, but I also don’t like us dumping our trash in someone else’s yard.”
“The Neofan?”
“Whatever galaxy they end up in.”
“Hadn’t thought of it that way. They may end up doing this to some other poor bastards.”
“I don’t like leaving that hanging, but we can’t control them and we can’t conquer them. It’s out of our hands now.”
“Until later?”
“Part of me wants to write them off completely, but never say never. Unlimited lifespans can be a lot longer than you realize.”
“We don’t live in the past or future, we live in the now.”
“Another lesson I’ve had to relearn recently.”
“You’re just an unstable basket case, aren’t you?”
“The joys of growing. Stagnation is so predictable and boring.”
“You’re the one that marooned yourself onboard the Excalibur.”
“Thought I needed to. Now I know better.”
“Do you really?”
“I don’t actually like being plugged into the computer, Kara. I’m good at it, and it’s needed, but I prefer Commando work.”
“Haven’t seen you use a sword lately. That used to be your thing.”
“I like living or dying based on my skill more than relying on my team. A fleet is always a team. Sword play is just you and your opponents. A double blade doesn’t mean two people wield it.”
Kara giggled. “Did someone actually think that?”
“The joys of trying to discuss Star Wars with cheerleaders in study hall.”
“Do we still have those?”
“Which one?”
“I meant cheerleaders, but actually, both.”
“Davis nixed slave-based schooling when he created the original maturias. He made everything optional so people had to learn to be self-motivated or not advance. No fear-based progression. No drill sergeant scolding. No locking people in a room and telling them they study or don’t leave for an hour. Though to be honest, some of our study room teachers didn’t go for that either and let us do a lot of stuff the principal wouldn’t have condoned.”
“Such as?”
“Flipping pencils into ceiling tiles. Playing video games. Practice putting around desk legs.”
“I wish I’d gone to your school. We couldn’t even talk in our study halls, and if we put our head down to sleep we’d get a demerit. What about cheerleaders?”
“I don’t know if we have any or not. There are sex support clubs, but I don’t recall any cheering at events. They’d get in the way of the view of the spectators and take up room for additional seats. Plus, nobody needs to stare at cheerleaders when you have free nudes walking around the public areas to gawk at. Or the hall of statues.”
“Hall of statues?”
“You don’t pay much attention to Star Force civilian life, do you?”
“No, and I thought you’d pay even less.”
“I helped Davis design a lot of it, and our Clans were testbeds for different methodologies. So I occasionally browse how things have developed. Hall of statues are places where people go to stare at nudes who are locked into various poses. The viewers like the sight, and the posers like the stimulation of being exposed. Win/win. Kind of makes the lure of cheerleaders disappear.”
“I did not know about that.”
“They wear masks so they can’t see the people and the people don’t know who they are.”
“Did you ever do that?”
“Do you remember when some Archons started to incorporate a brief period of sex training to see how well they could stand up to it?”
“Yeah. Worst two weeks of my life after the initial euphoria. I forgot who I was and how to train because my body let go of stress management and just became a pleasure receiver. It totally wrecked my mojo. I never want to do that again.”
“You liked it when I kissed you?”
“I liked it during the two weeks too. It was afterward I realized how screwed up I was. Pun intended. Your kiss doesn’t seem to have any negative aftereffect.”
“Better not.”
“What did you do…back when that optional ‘addition’ to Archon training was added? I assumed you guys scoffed at it and said, ‘no fucking way.’
“We did at first, thinking it was just a product of weak minded second gens, but we also don’t like a potential weakness lurking unchallenged and a few of us decided to investigate for the others. Turned out to be a total waste of time.”
“You actually screwed each other? That’s a shock.”
“No, we didn’t. That would be a bin
ary equation, and the training doesn’t work unless you can narrow down the reactions to just one person and adjust to their weak spots.”
“Makes sense. Hall of Statues?”
“That was my attempt. I didn’t want a simulation, and nobody gets pregnant from looking, so I figured I’d see how I responded to some sexual exposure.”
“And?”
“Nothing. The poses just felt stupid. I figured if being a visual sex toy didn’t have an effect on me, nothing else would be as compromising as others were worrying about. So that was the beginning and end of my experiment. The others went further before they realized how easy it was to override pleasure with a little pain, or just slipping into combat mode. If I ever meet a super powerful telepath that puts me in that situation, I’ll just envision Goku going Super Saiyan and I’ll be fine.”
“So you never let somebody press your buttons?”
“Not going to either.”
“So you’re saying I went through two weeks of that for nothing?”
“Ignoring sexuality may be necessary in a lot of circumstances, but you can’t just leave a portion of yourself unexplored. That’s a much bigger weakness, so if you needed to find out better you investigated…why is it we’re talking so much sexual stuff?”
“Isn’t that what boyfriends and girlfriends do?” she said, sipping on her drink. “Or is it that Archons don’t like discussions about stupid topics?”
“The topic isn’t stupid, but it involves stupid content. I don’t think I could even go on a normal date now. Everything would feel stupid and I’d end up just sitting there staring hoping some fight broke out nearby that I could intervene in.”
6
“I know what you mean,” Kara said. “What do you suppose they do? Asexual dating with the mirror?”
Paul looked at the ships full of Zak’de’ron, who reproduced via laying eggs that required no fertilization from another of their race.
“Not many races in Star Force are asexual, and I was never around to poke into their minds during the time. Didn’t read up on it either, so I don’t know.”
“But they’re supposed to be so advanced. I wonder if it really drives them or if they’re like you with no wood in the Hall of Statues…I still can’t believe that exists. Just go to a beach, almost everyone is naked there.”
