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)
“Why does it look… like me?”
“That is you,” he murmurs. He still has that trance-like air about him. He is absolutely entranced by the thing he made, and I know somehow that he made this. As many hundreds or maybe thousands of aliens are here, this creation is specifically and personally his. So when he says it is me there, I know that cannot be true. I know it must have taken years to build, and have been here a matter of weeks at most.
“How can that be me?” I squeak the question in a very mundane, very human way. That is not me out there, redirecting the courses of various asteroids. It cannot be. I am not large. I am not powerful. I am a silly little human who is constantly getting spanked for her misbehavior and trying to sneak poisonous alien food because I believe, deep down, in the power of my gut.
“That is what you have been learning to control all this time,” he says. “All that training was so that you could become one with the goddess.”
“Is that why it only has two arms?”
“That’s right. You can’t map four arms, so neither can she.” He turns to look at me with a mad passion in his eyes. “Do you understand what you are looking at? Do you feel what all this has been building to?”
“It’s the most incredible thing I have ever seen,” I tell him.
“Of course it is,” he says, smirking. “It is the most incredible thing you will ever see, I have no doubt of that. It may surpass incredulity for generations of all kinds of sentient and semi-sentient beings. There are those who will be born thousands of years from now who will know of her, and by proxy, you.”
It’s hard not to get caught up in his enthusiasm.
“Can I try it out?”
His expression collapses into something close to contempt.
“This is not a tricycle with training wheels. One does not ‘try it out.’ This is the engineering project that will define our civilization for millennia to come. She is the Fematrix.”
“The Fematrix?” I repeat the word he uses in sort of hushed tones. It does sound very powerful, if a little kinky. But, given how they’ve trained me, should I be surprised?
“However, now that you ask,” he says. “Actually, yes, I’d like to put you in a more direct connection and see that you are able to operate the various facilities.”
I let Drak escort me to another booth. This one, thank god, does not have any sexy sucker probes. I have to wonder if they were ever necessary, or if Arkon is a very particular kind of kinky boss.
Drak sits me in a chair, which is a luxury I have not often been afforded, and he puts a cap on my head and gloves on my hands. “These contain wireless receivers that will map your brain and physical activity,” he says. “Take a moment, center yourself, and then I will connect you to her.”
“Will I feel it?”
“Yes,” he says. “When you are in sync, you will know.”
I sit and I wait for the thing to happen. At first there is a faint humming, sort of like a deee doooo dededelidooo doooo dooo deeeeeeee reeeeee bongily bongily bong sound that reverberates across my skull and fingers. It feels like an old handshake, an ancient incantation of connection.
And then I am connected. It’s just as he said. I know it instantly, and I feel it in every part of my body. It feels like being at the very peak of orgasm, though there’s nothing overtly sexual happening.
“You can move,” he says. “Though do so carefully. Flex a finger first. Point at yourself, in your new incarnation.”
I do as he says, flexing my hand. On the screen I can see the fingers of the Fematrix stretch out, each one of them the size of an island archipelago.
I can feel the size of this thing, this body that is auxiliary to mine. She moves as if she is me. Is she me?
It is uncanny, how fast my body accepts this new augmentation.
“It will be even more powerful when you see through her eyes,” Drak says. “But you are doing very well.”
“Good girl.”
I feel a flush of excitement as Arkon’s voice emanates from near me. He’s back from wherever he went with the juniors. I immediately feel safer. The chair I’m sat in is facing a monitor with the Fematrix displayed on it. When I look around, I can’t see him exactly. But I know he’s there.
“Don’t get up,” Drak says. “We don’t want her doing too much in space right now. You’ll see your boss soon enough.”
“We could turn the transmitter off for a moment and fit her with the ocular interface,” Arkon suggests.
I feel the invisible line go dead, and I know Drak took the suggestion. I get up and go and find Arkon, who is just around the corner. In an act of impulsive affection, I wrap my arms around him. He’s so tall I’m pretty much head high with his second set of shoulders, but those lower arms wrap me in a very warm embrace immediately.