by D. R. Rosier
Karen looked pleased and she gave me a thankful look, and then looked up at the waiter and ordered a beer, and a chicken salad.
I waited for the waiter to leave, then asked, “What is this about?”
Karen smiled artfully, it was both shy and seductive, like she was taken with me already and I was the center of her world, and it was also obviously an act. I hated to admit it, but a week ago she’d have had me eating out of her hand in a flat minute with her little shy sexpot routine, she was fucking gorgeous. But… so were my four beauties, which granted me some immunity to her charms. I had all the variety I could want, both in looks and sexual proclivities, and I was more than satisfied sexually. Her beauty had much less of an impact because of that.
I’d also thought about our relationship before that moment, which helped. While it was true my A.I.s would never be jealous, and they wouldn’t begrudge me having an affair or other relationship with a human, I’d decided it would be dangerous and foolish to fuck around on them. Besides, they were enough for me, more than enough, and spending time with other women would take time away from my time with them, which didn’t appeal to me at all.
If that made sense.
On another level, even if they wouldn’t be jealous, I’d still feel guilty. I loved Lia, and was falling for the rest of them, and they were completely dedicated to me. I wasn’t shallow enough to want more. I suppose, in short, I was faithful to them. It was for the best, on several levels.
Even on a purely shallow level, no woman could approach the pleasure my beauties gave me enthusiastically and often in bed. They’d practiced, studied, and even exercised their floor muscles daily to make sure they could rock my world, I was pretty much ruined for other women that way. Sure, there was still the shallow appeal of getting some strange, but just that wasn’t enough, not nearly enough.
Karen’s sex appeal still had an effect on me though, I was committed to my ladies, but I wasn’t dead.
“I work for a competitor of Fortress Security Systems, I wanted to make you an offer. We already had our eye on you, and we’d hoped you would apply to us first. Your college grades were flawless, and you got your masters two years early. I believe we have a lot to… offer you. Offer each other.”
I almost laughed at that last, she was coming on a bit strong with that obvious innuendo. I made her wait, as I picked up my fork and knife, cut a piece off of my medium rare steak, and put it in my mouth. It was delicious, the flavor explosion was wonderful as the beef practically melted in my mouth.
“What kind of positions… position, are we talking about here?” I asked back with my own rather outrageous innuendo, it was in my voice, not just my words. I’d also glanced down at her huge rack when I’d said the word positions.
Somehow, I’d managed to say that with a straight face, she looked startled at my bold return, and a bit flat footed for a moment. I imagined most men she handled were a bit tongue tied and flustered by her. She smiled at me a moment later as if she was actually charmed by my crude sally, which no woman would be, and she recovered quite nicely.
I’d probably gone too far with it. One of the dangers in dealing with A.I. females all the time that would never object, was that it’d dulled my older filters, and my natural proclivity to be playful and tease the opposite sex came out rather strongly. Not in a mean way, but there it was. Still, as they say in playground parlance, she’d started it.
She bit her lip, “There are multiple positions available, and we’d be very willing to work with you on finding which one worked best for you. We could also talk about what skills you bring with you, and more lucrative monies in compensation.”
Holy fuck, she did not just say that. Sure, she was actually talking about company positions, but her eyes and tone of voice were saying something else at the same time. I also suspected that last part was a poorly veiled bribe to make a lot of money by sharing company secrets. Which… made a lot of sense actually, and it was the point of all this, corporate espionage. What was the point of a honey pot scheme just to get me to program code for them? They really wanted company secrets, and to know how our firewalls and intrusion systems were so successful.
I also had no doubts at all that she was willing to fuck me to get them, probably more than once. I bet it worked for her too, she really was stunning, and dripped sensual appeal. Almost as much as Emma did, but not quite, Emma was an exotic goddess after all.
We were silent for a moment, when the waiter dropped off the chicken salad and beer.
It was shallow instinct, and the thought was born from mischievousness, I was almost tempted to string her along just for fun, but dismissed it as too dangerous, and stupid besides. She was hot, but she was also a corporate whore who probably got off on playing men for fools. I doubted it would happen, but if I ever did change my mind and date a human woman, it would be one I respected.
I said bluntly, “I’ll be honest, even if I’m having fun with this little game. I’m quite happy where I am now, and I’ve also signed an NDA I plan to honor. But, I’ll listen if you want to make me an honest business offer.”
Her eyes widened, then narrowed slightly, as she caught my stress on the word business.
She smiled seductively, perhaps a go to move, but it failed to reach her eyes that time, “We could change your life, and we’d take care of you very well,” she still hadn’t given up on the innuendo apparently, “If you change your mind, give me a call.”
She stood up as she reached into her pocket, and then rounded the table with a swishing sexy walk that drew the eyes of every man nearby.
I’ll admit, I enjoyed it too, she really was magnificent, it was too bad she used the gifts she was born with for evil.
She slipped her business card into my pocket, and her hand lingered just a moment too long on my chest before she pulled it away with a sly smile.
It was all I could do not to laugh in her face, but I’d also be lying if I said her scent and touch hadn’t made my center stir. She was… well suited for her job, let’s leave it at that.
She reached for her purse, and I waved my hand, “It’s on me. I’ll be sure to call you first thing, if I change my mind.”
She nodded, raked my body with her sultry eyes, and then walked away. She hadn’t even touched the salad. I’d get it wrapped up and take it to Bellona who was stuck in her office.
Huh, that was unreal, I couldn’t wait to tell the ladies about it. Or, maybe I wouldn’t, I imagined Bellona would find evidence to get her locked away if I did. Corporate espionage was a crime after all, and she’d dared to approach me. My ladies wouldn’t be jealous about a personal relationship outside of them, but they were rather overprotective of me when it came to risks.
A few more weeks passed without anything major happening in our lives, which brought us into the warmer weather of June. My relationship with the ladies grew stronger, and I was pretty sure I was falling hard for the other ladies, but I wasn’t positive yet. I knew I adored them, and things were going strong, which was a good thing considering they were mine for life.
We’d gotten approvals for animal testing on the multi-purpose nanites, and things were going well there all around. It looked like if there continued to be no issues, we’d be able to start long term human testing in under a year. That last part would take ten years, then we could start selling it, and the world would drastically change.
I knew I was looking forward to it, and perhaps I was overly optimistic on that, but I had faith in my ladies. I believed Emma when she said it was safer than anything else out there in the medical world.
They also discovered the problem with the AG project, and could now reliably extend a gravity field, but it still wasn’t ready for any kind of marketing or sales. They’d added power smoothing circuits of their own design. It didn’t take much power to run a gravity field, but the stabilizing circuits did take a lot of power in waste energy, and it made it rather inefficient. Their focus was now on getting a design for a power core t
hat was both green and very clean in electrical generation.
I actually helped there with an idea they’d run with. AG was cheap power wise, unlike in most science fiction where it was shown as a power hog. There was no such thing as perpetual motion, energy wasn’t free, but I’d come up with an idea to leverage artificial gravity to generate more energy than it needed to maintain the fields by introducing another and quite well-known concept. It would in theory, generate enough extra energy to power larger AG fields outside of the device itself.
It was a simple enough concept, a small spinning flywheel inside of a generator would make electricity, like a flywheel in a car, or a hydro-electric power plant generator. Except, imagine small artificial gravity fields around the edges of the flywheel, all with gravity pointing in a clockwise direction aligned with the wheel. In essence, all parts of the round wheel would be falling, pulled by gravity, as it continued to spin and would never ever stop.
That generated enough power to power the small AG fields to get the generator to run, with enough left over to create the larger AG field outside, to lift a ship to orbit, or make a flying car. Really though, it would make a ship fall into orbit, since gravity would be reversed within the field. That meant weight didn’t matter with AG fields, all that mattered there was the field size. No more than it mattered how big something was when it was pushed off a cliff, it would just fall, a pebble, boulder, or a meteor from the sky was all the same to gravity.
It worked on paper anyway, until the inefficient power smoothing circuits were factored in, then there was no longer a surplus of energy. That’s what they were working on at that point, the last step in getting it all working. It wasn’t really free energy, no more than windmills, solar, or any other energy was, but the kinetic energy of the spinning wheel courtesy of gravity, would be enough to power itself and more. So… for all intents and purposes, it kind of was clean never-ending energy, it just needed a small rechargeable battery or supercapacitor to get it started spinning, much like a car needed a car battery until the engine took over.
So, that was their major focus on the AG project, building a flywheel generator that would provide clean power without wasting all that energy on inefficient smoothing circuits. Then I could have my flying car, and I just might build that spaceship too.
At the moment, they were also designing a rechargeable power core that was very clean energy, and in essence the generator part of it which would have power fluctuations would constantly charge that power core. It was an extra step, but it was probably more realistic than a clean generator which would always have at least some power spikes and dips. Either way, they were pursuing both options.
It was also a huge breakthrough just on clean power. Imagine houses with AG generators to power them, larger ones to power large buildings in the city. It was something that would truly replace fossil fuels if they could lick the problem. Power, transportation, medical, entertainment, communications, law and order, the whole world would be unrecognizable in just ten to twenty years.
Of course, people would still be people, but I firmly believed the world would be a better place. Never perfect of course, but better.
Little did I know at that point, that I was about to be horrified, shocked, and confused. The world was about to be changed irrevocably, and it wouldn’t take ten to twenty years.
The singularity had arrived, I had created it in Dahlia, and I’d been too busy falling in love, dealing with my personal life, and thinking with my cock. I’d seen several warning signs, some of which were obvious in hindsight, that I hadn’t noticed or heeded when they’d happened.
I really should have asked more questions, found out what they weren’t telling me. I’d trusted in their good intentions to make the world a better place, and I hadn’t bothered to dig too deeply into how. I’d naively told myself that it wasn’t important, and to leave it alone, had pushed away my suspicions. I’d have to live with that for the rest of my life. May god forgive me. The most frightening part? In hindsight, years in the future, I still wasn’t all that sure what they’d done was wrong.
Chapter Sixteen
It started on a Saturday, when I was lounging on the couch. I’d been right about Bellona, she was a sweetheart and loved to touch me constantly and stroke my leg or arm with her fingertips, whenever she was in range to do so. Mia was on my other side, and she was snuggled into my side contentedly. Lia and Emma were on the loveseat, and we all had drinks.
I was relaxed, recently sated by Emma, and had just been enjoying our weekend off. I was in short, proverbially fat, dumb, and happy. The ladies exchanged significant looks that caught my eyes.
“What’s up?” I asked.
They all looked quite determined, and Bellona gave me a slightly guilty look as she turned off the music, and then she turned on the television and flipped the channel to one of the twenty-four-hour news stations. I could only assume they were monitoring it from their servers before that moment.
The anchors looked tense, and a bit disbelieving as they read the reports pouring in, and I felt a shiver go down my spine as I listened.
The blonde bombshell female anchor shook her head, as if she wasn’t really sure where to start. She also looked scared, terrified really.
“Reports have been filtering in for the last twenty minutes now, from all over the country and even to our foreign desk from all over the world. Thousands… tens of thousands of people have just… died, not thirty minutes ago, simultaneously as far as we know. We have no idea yet how or why, they have no marks on their bodies, and no indications on how it happened. It’s going to take days to sort out all the reports.
“Simultaneously, police agencies and aid workers throughout the world have been given tips and dispatched to various locations, only to find slaves of child and teen trafficking, sex slaves, drug dens, and other heinous crimes against humanity including terrorist cells, weapons caches, and illicit burial sites for murdered individuals. The police have reported that they’ve received video evidence, and money trails from an anonymous source they can’t trace of various crimes.
“Many of the deaths seem to be associated with the tips, but not all. There are also rising tensions between countries, many of the deaths have been dictators, warlords, and heads of alleged crime families. The list so far also features a number of prominent people in American politics, and in other first world governments around the world. I’ve been informed the U.S. is at DefCon two, and other countries have scrambled their military as well as a precaution.
“Riots have already started in several cities around the world, as people panic with this impossible and unknown threat to our security and lives. We’ve been advised to pass on that people should stay in their homes, and our government is getting a handle on it.”
The male anchor said, “That’s right, Joan. There seems little danger to the average citizen, at least so far, the deaths seem to be political in nature, world leaders that abused their citizens, or deaths attributed to heinous criminals and terrorists. It is shocking, but we do advise you to stay in your homes, as the government has activated the national guard, and we’ve been informed they will be announcing martial law shortly.”
Bellona turned the television off, and I felt my skin crawl.
“What did you do?”
Lia frowned, as if confused by the breathless horror in my voice, and said, “We made the world a better place.”
Fuck, I felt dizzy, and stared at Bellona, “Not when it comes to the company?”
Bellona blushed, “We didn’t do anything wrong. All of those people were slavers, murderers, rapists, and the corrupt ones ignoring it and even aiding them. We freed thousands from captivity today, and we put down the cancer infecting the human race. The new world is a safer one.”
“Right, unless one of the governments decides another is behind it, launches nukes, and starts world war three.”
Lia cleared her throat, “That won’t happen. At least not nuclear war, we’re in
all their systems and can prevent a launch if we need to. But we can’t do anything about conventional weapons. Regardless, we don’t think that will happen.”
I shook my head, “It’s wrong, cold. You just murdered tens of thousands. You murdered heads of state. What gives you that right?”
They all looked at me like I’d slapped them, and I actually felt guilty. What the fuck was that?
Lia shook her head, and looked thoughtful for a second, “What would you do if you were walking down the street in the city, and heard a woman scream for help, as she was being gang-raped in one of the alleys by a gang.”
I frowned, “I’d call the police, and try to stop it myself if I could.”
Bellona smiled sadly, “Exactly. We didn’t do anything you wouldn’t have done. You vote for your representatives, you follow the law, and you’d help someone in trouble. That’s how you help maintain society and the rule of law. There’s no difference, we just have a much bigger alley. We have more resources than you do to help, so how could we turn away from and ignore slavers, murderers, and sex traffickers.”
I tilted my head, “But the rape is a crime in process, that allows me leeway under the law. You’re talking about being judge, jury, and executioner after the fact. Not subduing a rapist so he could face the consequences in a court of law.”
Lia raised a hand, “Judge.”
Emma and Mia raised their hands, “Jury.”
Bellona said, “Executioner.”
I felt a cold chill, my sweet Bell was the executioner?
“How?”
Mia said, “The nanites. Not the ones we’re developing for the company, but a special version that just does the spying. Once we licked the nano-sized quantum communicator we started to build them by the hundreds of millions, per day, in a manufacturing plant we have tucked away in a third world country with no connection to us, and they’re currently all over the world now, watching. We didn’t make any mistakes, we saw the direct evidence. It’s taken us the three weeks to get the coverage and compile the list. No circumstantial evidence, no matter how damning, has been acted on.”
