Total pages in book: 67
Estimated words: 61982 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 310(@200wpm)___ 248(@250wpm)___ 207(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 61982 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 310(@200wpm)___ 248(@250wpm)___ 207(@300wpm)
“Come down from there,” he says. “We will finish up this stage of the training later. Right now, you need to do something else.”
“What else is there to do here?”
I ask the question to cover how much I am blushing. He made me feel so incredibly vulnerable in that chair, but while I was in it I could also stay hidden from him. He couldn’t see my face, and I couldn’t see his. I could keep the whole experience almost like a secret inside me. But he’s looking at me now and he knows what he did. Every shameful sordid bit of it is written across his face.
“You’re blushing,” he says with some affection. “Are you feeling some kind of embarrassment?”
“No,” I lie.
He glances over at the machine readout and I know that I just absolutely gave myself away.
“Sorry,” he says. “One last probe on you.” He pulls the sucker out from the back of my neck. “Now you can pretend you’re not bothered by how sweetly you surrendered to the machine and to the sensations you enjoyed. But you were supposed to enjoy them, Evie. I am very pleased with you. It was the most submissive and cooperative thing you’ve done since you came into my employ, and I will not have you feeling shame about it. You were, and are, beautiful.”
There it is again, that word, that compliment that he seems to truly believe. I have to wonder how he finds me appealing. I feel so simple next to him. I am missing a whole set of arms and I am short and small. I have curves and obviously he likes the way I respond to stimulation, but the intense kindness and interest in his voice makes me feel like his interest is more personal than professional. And there’s the fact that he had me sleep in his bed, and all the rest of it. This alien likes me, and he is going to fuck me.
I blush again, furiously, as that thought tracks through my head. That’s such a big assumption. He already told me that this is all about getting calibrated to the machine. If he wanted to sleep with me, he could have done that when he had me in his bed.
This is not like any day of work I have ever experienced before. I try to return to normal, but I’m not sure what normal is anymore. On Earth, a normal day was swipe some office supplies, turn my annoying co-worker’s computer off at the wall so he thinks its broken and calls IT for the tenth time, then pretend to be immersed in lab studies when Eric from marketing is looking for someone to perform in his latest piece of online content. I’ve never had a day where my entire understanding of what pleasure is has shifted irrevocably.
My body is humming with need. My mind is running wild. I’m sure I’m staring blankly because I can’t manage more than that right now.
“Am I, uhm, doing this right?” I ask. “The work, I mean?”
“You’re doing well,” Arkon says with a knowing smile that contains a lot of approval. Enough to scare me. I may not be certain as to how good I am, but I know he is enjoying doing it to me.
“It just feels like I’m not really doing anything? It feels like stuff is happening? But I’m experiencing it more passively?” I put all my concerns in question form so as to make them more plausibly deniable.
“You are doing a great deal. You are becoming aligned with the machine. Or at least, you will be once I run a proper calibration sequence,” he smirks.
“That thing that was touching me was the machine? The actual machine I’m here to learn to work with?”
“A sexual interface provides the kind of sensitivity and specificity that any other controller couldn’t hope to replicate. When we are finished, you are going to be one with it, you will be able to control many things,” he explains patiently, much as he has before.
“What kind of things?”
“Anything from robots to ships, and beyond.”
“From sex?”
“That’s a reductive understanding of it, but yes, it’s a solid one too. We’re training the machine to read your body’s most sensitive responses. Your thoughts, your feelings, your desires. There will be little between you and the machine once the synthesis is complete.”
This sounds incredible. I’ve seen a lot of amazing tech, but I am starting to think this might be the biggest score in human history—and even better, I am going to have full control of it. I try not to look too pleased or too sneaky. I am probably failing in both regards.
“You look less flushed,” he says. “Are you feeling more normal?”
“Whatever normal is, I guess I am feeling it,” I say, knowing that response is less than entirely helpful, but going with it anyway.