The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

Incubated

Chapter 7 — Cold Logic

Novifrost, Argent Learning Technologies, 8:30 PM

Sophie sighed, and rubbed her temples, her eyes bleary. The code wasn’t cooperating, and it was driving her crazy. There was a bug somewhere in the complicated spaghetti; she had setup the test conditions four times now and had still been unable to catch it with the debugger.

Her predecessors hadn’t made any particular effort to keep the code maintainable. It was often sprinkled with cryptic comments like ‘TODO: tests well in the matrix, less efficient in wetware. Fix!!!’

It had taken her a long time to even begin to understand the artificial intelligence, even with her (self-acknowledged) towering intellect. Six months in and she felt like she had a good grip on the pretzel logic, but there was still a long way to go. She had felt good about herself the other day when she had found a few bounds checking problems that could have lead to unexpected crashes, but this bug was a head scratcher. She had fixed something slightly similar a few years ago at a different company, but the memory was too vague to retrieve.

The secondary logic loop was setup to always monitor surroundings, filter out extraneous details, and feed the important information to the main logic loop. Inside the main method, relevant details were weighted, and a determination was made for the next course of action. For example, if the intelligence was under threat and a new assailant appeared, the new threat would be evaluated, level of threat determined, and new course of action chosen. All in a matter of picoseconds.

It would look like the intelligence was an unstoppable machine, able to counter anything thrown against it. Indeed, in tests where the program was installed into a combot, it was able to continue hand to hand combat with a similar, dumber model not equipped with the software while at the same time shooting down a cluster missile and maneuvering to better ground.

There was something wrong in the main loop, however. It didn’t show up every time. In fact, it didn’t show up most times, but when it did show up the results were catastrophic. When it occurred, a robot could become catatonic, sitting there as useful as a hardened steel brick. The first time they saw it, they had waited the balance of an hour hoping the robot would come out of its stupor—the range safety officer wouldn’t let them go out when live weapons were under control of a possibly deranged robot. It never did. The very expensive and complex robot was utterly brain-fried.

In very rare and unlucky circumstances, after the bot went catatonic, it would fire all its weaponry off in an uncontrolled burst. This usually had the side effect of vaporizing the test dummies along with lots of very expensive test equipment.

She had been careful not to promise her boss any particular time frame on solving the bug, but her damnable pride had made her brag to the rest of her team that it wouldn’t take her more than a few days to solve. They had long since rolled their eyes and departed to a local bar, but she had stayed on later in an attempt to make some sort of progress.

It was probably some sort of information overload or race condition. She had written a test harness that was capable of bombarding the main logic loop with a dizzying array of different combat conditions and situations, but nothing had stumped the program. Projectile attacks, weapons attacks, environmental attacks, all of them were correctly prioritized and the expected action chosen.

Maybe the problem was somewhere downstream where the selected course was turned into action? There was also some curious logic in the weighting algorithm that she didn’t quite understand yet—something about ‘protection,’ and how it was balanced against ‘attack,’ ‘defend,’ and the general mission parameters.

She let her mind wander, letting her subconscious sort through the possibilities. A smile came to her face as she began to daydream about the new girl she had asked out to drinks a few nights before. An upturned face with soft, green eyes slipped back into her mind’s eye. What would it be like to run her fingers through her short, black hair? To slowly drag them downwards over her chest and hips, to stroke her luscious breasts?

It was an impossible fantasy, and she knew it. It was all well and good to fantasize, but the likelihood of her getting up the courage to ask the woman for a real date was the same as her deciding to strip off her clothing and swim the canal. She shook her head, frizzy brown hair fanning outwards.

The ever-present noise from the HVAC system died. It was nine PM. The cleaners would probably be coming through soon, and she had lost even more time to daydreams. It was just too pleasant to relax and roll the woman’s name around in her mind—Alys. Alleys. Allies?

Annoyed at herself, she redoubled her efforts in tracing the code. Physical threats were rated high, so that they would always be dealt with promptly. Defense was prioritized over offense, and protection of others trumped both of those. A tie breaker routine would stop any particular event from keeping the logic in an infinite loop, unable to act. The weighting logic utilized a configurable parameter as a multiplier, so scenarios with different weights for self-preservation, offense, and protection of others could easily be tested to find an optimum mix.

Additionally, the logic had a re-weighting method that would attempt to dynamically adjust to outside circumstances. That routine was restricted to make decisions in favor of protection of others, and it ran on a different thread. All of these were weighted against what the AI had been told to accomplish.

It was in the interaction between the two threads that she suspected the problem was manifesting. Something probably wasn’t thread safe, but she was unable to trap it in real time—it was executing too quickly. Perhaps she needed to write some more unit tests to make the issue show up. Was it a particular combination of parameters that triggered the bad behavior?

“Hey, Sophie?” said a phlegmatic voice from behind her. “Burning the midnight oil again?”

She jumped a little, and spun in her chair. All she could hear was the hum of fluorescent light bulbs. How did he sneak up behind her with the HVAC equipment silenced? She must have been too absorbed in the puzzle before her.

She was irritated by the interruption, and made no attempt in to hide it. It was her boss, John, an unassuming middle manager with thinning hair and an uncontrollable cowlick that, combined with his pot belly, made him look quite frumpy.

“I was in the middle of trying to solve this problem,” she said, ice in her voice. “I think I may need to isolate the misbehaving code, write more tests or perhaps add some instrumentation. I might also try adding a semaphore to restrict access to the critical section.” She arched an eyebrow. “What are you doing here so late?”

He hesitated for a moment, clearly uncomfortable. “I’ve been meaning to have this talk for awhile. You’re an excellent worker, Sophie, but let’s face it, you’re not a team player. Your co-workers went out together tonight and you skipped it to work on a bug. I’m concerned that you’re not fitting in.”

An icy rage ran up her spine. She closed her eyes and tamped it down. “We have a deadline for the beta next week. I don’t have time to solve this issue and go partying.” Her voice was brittle, offended that she was the one being called out and not that slacker Bryant.

“Yes, I know,” he said, distracted, licking his lips. “I’m under a lot of pressure, too. I’m doing my best to shield you from it. I think I’ve managed to buy us all a few more weeks.” His eyes were kind, but distant.

He clapped her on the shoulder, a fake smile on his face. “Get some rest. You’re our brightest programmer! I’d hate to have you get sick.” He seemed a bit muzzy. “If that happened I wouldn’t be taking care of my core competencies.”

She watched him wave and leave her little cubical kingdom. She didn’t wave back, feeling a bit confused by his uncharacteristic behavior. Speaking with an all-buzzword vocabulary was the norm, but this strange concern for her health was not.

As he padded away, he drew out his comm and started speaking to someone, probably a worker from the operations side.

A wave of fatigue hit her. Why did the light seem so bright? That buzzing from the ballast above her was becoming even more annoying. Her mouth felt sticky, her brain gummy. “John?” she said, her words wobbling. “John?”

Words failed her, the room spinning at an increasingly rapid rate. She slumped over, then fell out of her chair into a heap on the ground.

John minced back over, accompanied by several other men in brisk, black suits. “She won’t be harmed, will she?” There was a barely disguised terror lurking beneath the thin, affable tone. “We’ll never finish the project on time without her.”

“None of your concern,” one of the men said brusquely. “This comes straight from the director. Tell your people that she’s taken a few personal days.” He eyed the manager with disdain. “You’ll get your team culture and synergies back eventually.”

Two more men appeared around the corner, rolling a strange metal chair. It looked as though someone had decided to throw an examination chair on top of a large furniture dolly. Thick steel bars were welded around the chair in what appeared to be some kind of roll cage. A soft cradle was built to hold a head with a fist size hole in the back. From the top hung a wire harness with electrodes swaying.

John turned, nervously wringing his hands. “I’ll be in my office if you need me. I refuse to be involved.”

Two men lifted Sophie’s comatose body and dropped her into the chair like a sack of potatoes. An image of silent efficiency, they strapped her down, restraints at her ankles, wrists, chest, shoulders, and neck. They ignored the stringy, brown hair that flowed haphazardly over the apparatus, and cinched the last belt tight. Her head lolled in the machine, a slight dribble of drool sliding down one cheek.

The first nondescript man, who had watched the abduction without comment, spoke in a measured fashion into his comm. “Test subject acquired. Prepare the operating room.”

The other two nodded to each other, then grabbed onto the foot of the capture device and rolled Sophie down past rows of cubicles. The floor had been emptied to ensure that there was nobody else around to witness the abduction.

They took a left turn at an office exit and one held the door as the others pushed the cart through. It was narrow enough to fit through the opening, and had obviously been engineered with this in mind. “Coming up,” said one man into his comm. He slapped an identicard against the reader and hit the levitator button. They stood there like pallbearers, ignoring their cargo as the levitator whined.

When the doors whooshed open, they revealed a specially elongated car meant for moving cargo. The cart slid easily inside, with room to spare.

The man with the comm once again used his card, and selected a button for one of the top floors. The door whooshed shut and the electromagnets whined. The car rocketed the occupants upwards with tremendous speed, the acceleration pushing them towards the floor. The suited men compensated with surprising aplomb.

After a half minute, the doors slid open, revealing a lavishly decorated atrium. A sign at the entrance declared it to be the “Biological Development Lab” in bold, cursive letters. A few workers in lab coats were sitting on park benches in the middle of a Japanese garden. A large, round circular opening the size of the atrium spiraled up to the roof, where the dark night sky was visible through a heavy sheet of glass.

The scientists took no notice of the suits, as if new patients arriving via levitator was a common appearance. The suited men wheeled their newest victim to a solid wooden door at the right side of the atrium. There was a short, carpeted stretch, then an interstitial surface leading to flat tile. The walls had bumpers, and were tiled as well, every surface nonporous and impersonal.

They rolled the cart down the hallway and through a hinged door marked “Operating Room 4.” In the center of the room were four depressions that they maneuvered the cart into, locking the wheels down so that the apparatus was immovable.

Two of the men approached her from either side, both of them with cold, hard eyes. They removed her shoes and socks without jostling her body. Once that was completed, they stripped off her sensible pants and less sensible underwear. Cold hands pulled the t-shirt over her head, with a tiny smirk for the phrase “I flip hash tables.” Her small bra was detached and left on top of her other clothing, folded in neat piles.

Throughout the process they had been brisk and efficient, acting as if they were doing nothing more exciting than handling a slab of meat. Saying nothing, they left the room, the door swinging shut behind them.

The room was populated with all sorts of equipment. Wires attached to the ceiling were gathered together with zip ties, leading to a rolling box of equipment nearby. At the other end, some of them were wired into a loosely gathered collection of electrical leads that were hanging from the ceiling. Others were plugged into a large, flexible metal appendage that looked a bit like an elephant’s trunk. At its top it was attached to a square, metal baseplate in the ceiling, along with an ominous looking robot arm. Several longer but thinner arms also extended from the same attachment point in the ceiling. The end of one of them was wrapped with plastifilm and reached all the way to the floor.

A few moments passed, then the door swung back open again and more people entered, this time with a man in a white lab coat and several assistants wearing blue hair nets. They were pushing carts laden with various medical supplies. One of them had what looked like a bondage mask made of black leather sitting on top, the empty ring mouth gaping in a menacing fashion.

The man wore a surgical mask, and stood next to the restraining chair with his hands outstretched. Without saying a word, one of the assistants handed him a pair of blue gloves which he snapped on. One of the other assistants used a needle to establish an IV in Sophie’s left arm. Another wrapped a cuff around her arm and attached a heart monitor to her index finger.

“Prep for insertion,” said the doctor, with a faint accent worn smooth over the years. His face was wrinkled, eyes hidden behind glasses. His hands were steady and his voice was firm.

He ignored the buzzing activity around him, inspecting his new patient. Reaching out, he pulled her head up from the head rest and glanced at the base of her skull. “A good prospect,” he remarked rhetorically.

Retrieving a pair of surgical scissors, he released the strap around her head and lifted up some of her hair near the top of her neck, carefully trimming a small circle. Then, he washed the small area and used a razor to shave a bare spot with practiced skill. When he was finished, the rest of her hair fell around the patch, hiding it from view. He retrieved a syringe from the equipment tray and injected into several areas on the periphery of the shaved site. “Strap her in,” he declared, perfunctorily, and backed away.

One of the assistants picked up the mask from the cart and advanced on the supine patient. It took a little bit of fumbling, but it wasn’t too difficult to get her head lying inside the mask. The more difficult part was gathering her long hair so that it would flow through the small holes stitched near the top of the mask for that purpose.

Once her hair had been situated, the larger hole at the back of the mask was lined up with the patch the doctor had shaved earlier. From there it was a few efficient motions to snap the front of the mask together so that it cradled her head. The front had large openings for her eyes, nose, and mouth, but her movement was restricted by the built-in collar.

The assistant utilized the rings built into the collar and the forehead of the mask to strap Sophie back down. He also tested the other straps on her body, making sure that none of them were loose.

The exterior of the mask was studded with attachment points for electrical leads. Another assistant attached each lead to the mask while he consulted a wiring diagram. When he was finished, it looked like rainbow spaghetti had been barfed over Sophie’s head. He inserted a red ball into her mouth and snapped it to the mask. Once it had been locked in place, the smooth black surface hid the fact that she was muffled.

The third assistant was repositioning the short articulated arm behind the headrest of the chair Sophie was strapped into. The arm moved into position, locking into place on the rear of the chair with an audible click. The shiny metal appeared to form a solid connection from the ceiling to the back of Sophie’s head.

As these preparations were being completed, the first assistant wheeled over the portable equipment box that everything was wired into. On the top of the cabinet were three round projection units, arrayed in a triangle. A tray in the cabinet rolled out, revealing a built in joystick. The doctor stepped up to the cabinet, put his hand on the stick, and asked for readiness.

When all three had affirmed that they were prepared, the doctor looked at the attendant next to the IV equipment. “Very good, we are ready. Wake her up, if you would, Mister Kinkaid.”

The assistant nodded, and flushed the IV line before sticking it into the port inserted on her arm. They waited, silent and unmoving, like mourners, for a few minutes until Sophie’s eyes blinked and her breathing became frantic. She made a faint nonspecific sound from her mouth, a sort of long, unpleasant groan. Nothing intelligible could make itself heard from behind the red gag in the mask. Her body made a few weak struggles, but the drug from earlier had not been completely neutralized, and the straps were too secure.

“Shh, shh.” The doctor made calming motions, and stroked her side. This failed to calm his patient, but he continued speaking anyway.

“Congratulations, you have been selected as our newest experimental subject! I do not know how you were selected, but the need is urgent.”

He paused for a moment, lost in thought, while she continued to struggle. “Have you ever considered just how ephemeral a human thought, a human consciousness is? A witness account of events is inherently unreliable. There exist very few savants, even today, who can accurately describe events precisely as they occur without personal bias altering them to fit preconceived notions.”

He smiled under his mask, eyes twinkling. “But what if that could be changed? What if we could create an impartial observer, one with perfect recall, an eidetic memory? What if we could do this without needing to coerce the victim? Without having to use a remote recording device, without needing a crude, mechanical Combot?”

He pointed at his head with an index finger. “What if we could control what goes on in here to accomplish these goals? What if we could use these abilities to create the perfect infiltrator, the perfect information gatherer? A spy to act like a normal citizen, until he or she reports back? A sleeper who can be activated when least expected?”

He continued, his voice becoming more animated. “Of course there needs to be safeguards. There’s always a chance, if small, of an artificial intelligence going rogue.” His voice went sour. “Then, of course, we core the intelligence. Not my choice, really, but you must either save the shell or lose the intelligence. The intelligence can always be rebuilt.”

He stepped back to the joystick. “It’s taken us years, and a lot of failed attempts, but with every failure we get closer to the solution.” He looked back into her angry eyes, while she screamed futilely into the mask.

“Please try to stay still. If you struggle too much, I might be unable to do this properly. It would be unfortunate if you experienced permanent brain death.” He said this clinically, as though having a cup of tea was of more importance than her being lobotomized.

His lack of bedside manner didn’t stop her struggling, but his offhand remark about brain damage did. Her eyes went wide as she stared at him, totally freaked out. Betrayal! The word hammered through her brain. Betrayed by the company she worked for, the boss she trusted. A flashback to her boss patting her on the shoulder earlier, slipping a fast acting knock out drug through her t-shirt. And now this slim, unassuming man was going to do something to her brain!

“Good, I see that seized your attention.” He flipped on the projector system in the cabinet. An image of a brain appeared in midair, a three-dimensional computer model. In the bottom right corner of the shimmering image was a small insert with wavy lines. It looked like a brain scan combined with a sound editor. “Here we have an image of your brain. It will aid us in determining whether our placement is correct.”

He pressed a button on the joystick. A whirring noise started up from behind Sophie’s head, causing her to strain once again. “No movement, please!” continued the doctor. “This is the most critical part! You need to stay still unless you want gray matter to be splashing onto the floor.”

Fear had made her struggle. Now fear made her rigid. Her eyes focused on the doctor’s name tag. On the top it read ‘Director’ in block letters. Below, in cursive, was written “Daichi Ishikawa.”

“Now don’t worry,” the doctor said. “The brain has no pain receptors, and I have already numbed the implantation site.” He sniffed. “I would be an exceedingly poor doctor if I let my patients suffer any unnecessary pain. We are not animals here. Unlike those fools on Strand.”

The whirring was becoming omnipresent now, but Sophie tamped down her urge to move. There was a faint feeling of pressure at the rear of her skull, then nothing. Sound was muffled in her ears, but the frequency of the whine didn’t seem to change. She felt very little, but they had drilled into her brain! What were they doing to her?

The presentation on the display changed, showing a thin, white object at the base of her skull that pushed forward. The physician pointed at the object with one hand while maneuvering the machine with the other. “We see here the thin edge of the implant, making its way close to your cerebellum, your center of movement. As we get closer, you’ll see thin tendrils split off to connect to each balance center.”

Following his narration, the tendrils grew. When they reached the dark lumps of the cerebellum, she felt very dizzy for a moment, then the feeling passed. Her body went limp. Intrigued now as well as terrified, she watched as the growing spiderweb started to interconnect to more parts of her brain, forming a dense matrix.

“There’s not a lot of extra room in the brain pan, so to avoid increasing the pressure inside the skull too much, some of the fluid is removed automatically while I push the probe deeper.” At his words, Sophie heard a faint suction sound, the whine vanishing as the machine continued to push inside.

From the floor the second, longer and thinner flexible appendage was fetched. The plastifilm was unwrapped, revealing a pronged device with dual dildos, attached to a thick, rubber belt. The belt was drawn up past her ankles, thighs, then up to her waist.

“The first few implants were crude devices,” the doctor continued, as the distracting belt was pulled into position. “Neither the software nor the hardware were sufficiently advanced. We made steady improvements, but we were missing the key. Too many experiments ended in catatonic or unresponsive subjects. Now, however, we know what we were missing.”

The belt sank into position, lubricated tips levering themselves inside inexorably. The dildos were thick and long; the insertion seemed to take forever in her restricted body. She emitted a small, keening wail as they sank home, her only remaining means of expression. The belt was adjusted and secured, the device mounted against her snatch.

Two smaller, clear tubes were wound around her sides and attached to her breasts. There was a light suction, negative pressure holding them tight. Small needles from the interior tubes shoved directly into her nipples.

The doctor resumed speaking as the buried dildos began to gently vibrate. “They struggled too much. It wasn’t enough to convince them they couldn’t escape, it was that fear that poisoned them, made them insane. So we tried a new tactic. Make them associate the implantation process with pleasure. And it worked. They loved it. You’ll love it.” He looked at the display. “Ah, looks like we’re about to reach the amygdala. You’ll feel a sudden spike of pleasure and an overwhelming sense of need to give in to the process. It will become unbearable.”

The vibration increased. She desperately wanted to massage her vagina, but her body was still immobilized. It was getting more difficult to concentrate on anything but the heat growing in her groin. Suddenly, the pleasure spiked, sending her into the throes of an orgasm. The waves rode through her like a warm shower. For a moment, as the crest broke, her arousal dropped, but the stimulation didn’t stop.

Now her breasts felt like they were being tugged. The plug kept churning away, making it impossible to concentrate on the scientist’s words properly. Her vision was going blurry. It twisted in insane fractals. She blinked and it snapped back into focus.

She wasn’t in a lab anymore, now it was a pleasure dungeon! Chains hung from the ceiling. The doorway was obscured by a red velvet curtain. An assistant was dressed in a strappy leather outfit. A tight, black under bust corset squeezed her bared voluminous assets upwards so that they looked like two ripe melons. She carried a thin, leather whip that she stroked with one hand.

Sophie was restrained in a rubber straitjacket, her hands bound behind her. Her body was strapped to a reclined table, her legs spread and locked into leather cuffs and her breasts thrust outwards. Another assistant was between her legs. She stared up at Sophie with dusky eyes, black eyeliner casting mysterious shadows. She gave Sophie a sultry look as she worshipped Sophie’s pussy with her tongue. Two more slaves bent over, sucking on her nipples which were exposed by zippers on her outfit. There was no sound, but the sight of being bound and ravished by the assistants kept her on the edge.

Somewhere else, the doctor waved a hand in front of her unseeing face. “We’ve now reached your centers of sight. There is significant conjecture around what is seen once this happens, but current suspicion is that it correlates with the state of mind a test subject is in. In the past, this meant night terrors or other horrors, but once we made the pleasure connection, the procedure became much more pleasant. I like to think that it’s a person’s own virtual pleasure reality.”

She could barely hear his monotone voice any more. The immediacy of the illusion presented to her and the stimulation she was undergoing was so distracting that his words became meaningless fluff. She longed to thrust her pelvis or breasts forward to increase the stimulation, but her svelte body was too tightly bound. A paroxysm of sound exploded, and her ears felt like she was hearing everything from far away. They started to ring for a short while, then as the sound faded she started to hear the licking and sucking noises the assistant at her vagina was making as she vacuumed and twirled her tongue. Her breasts were being tugged, milked, and licked.

“Why am I telling you all this?” The doctor’s face was blank behind the blue surgical mask. “Because you won’t even remember this conversation. Once you’ve been installed, whatever I tell you now won’t be retrievable. You’ll be reformatted. Which is a shame, I do enjoy my eureka moment monologues.”

Sophie was too far into the illusion to pay any attention. The domina with the whip had shooed away the other assistants, except the one between Sophie’s legs, and was fondling her breasts. She teased them for a short while, then slid them out, one at a time, so they were exposed to the dank air of the dungeon. Each rigid nipple was alternately massaged, then flicked with the tip of the whip. The short crack made her jump every time. At each light flick, the slave licking her labia would swirl her tongue and dart out to Sophie’s clitoris. Sophie bit hard into her gag each time the pain and pleasure stung her, stringing her along through several more climaxes.

The doctor watched his display, silent for a moment. “In fact, at this point, I think the process is completed. We’ve added the audio cortex, and right about now we’ve reached the prefrontal lobe. All necessary connections complete.” He gestured to his assistants.

The scene vanished for Sophie as she climaxed once again, her thoughts fractured and scattered into white nothingness. They consolidated again into another, less coherent sexual illusion, until she climaxed again. With each loop, her remaining thoughts became smaller and smaller, and her breasts inflated larger and larger. Finally, her mind stopped. Her body was caught up in a recursive pleasure loop, her mind reduced to thoughtlessness. The primal, pulsing need was all that was left.

The wavy lines on the projection had flattened out. This was something that would normally only be seen on a brain dead patient, but here the doctor took it with a pleased grunt of satisfaction. The silvery lines from the implant had proliferated like a crystal lattice, grown into every part of the brain. “Active brain suppressed. Capping the implant and preparing for programming.”

He clicked a button on the joystick and the robotic arm started to whir again. The tip pushed a shiny, circular metal plate against the back of Sophie’s head and began to spin, as if it were screwing a lid onto a jar. The plate was a quarter inch thick, transparent, with traces of circuits that were easily visible under the surface. There was an audible click and the twisting motion stopped. A thick wire extended from the arm and plugged into a hole in the external implant interface.

The doctor sat and waited as the image on the projection updated. The brain scan was removed and a console window opened, green text flowing down the screen as programs began to execute.

HAL Mark X Bootstrap V10.05—Build 159305

Copyright Argent Learning Technologies

Copying Files……………………………...Copied

Install Active Region Inhibitors…..……...Installed

Install SubAgent Co-Processors………..Installed

Replace Memory Storage………………..Completed

Retrieve Old Personality………………….Retrieved

Analyze Old Personality………………….Analyzed

Build Personality Simulation…….……….Built

Memory Initialized. Quantum storage on-line.

Personality Gestalt Installed.

Base I/O Address………………………....Mapped

External input set on port 220.

Mission parameters set.

Activate Base O/S? Y/N?

“Activate,” said the physician. Voice recognition on the equipment verified his voice against stored identification. The projection blanked and turned off, its work completed.

Unfocused, unseeing gray eyes blinked. Her head tilted, staring at the scientist blankly. “Bootstrap O/S boot complete. Minimal functionality on-line. Please state mission.”

The assistants moved in and started unbuckling straps at these words. The appendage at her head and vagina disconnected with hisses and clicks. The tendrils at her now large breasts unscrewed themselves and detached with a puff of air. Once they were undone, the robotic Sophie sat up rigidly.

“Mission is as follows,” said the doctor. “One. Take this flier. Two. Return Home. Three. Develop a friendship. Four. Suggest vacation. Five. Detailed report of any or all alien activity. Acceptable timeline: six months. Use any means to hide your true nature, including seduction and violence. If mission fails, execute perma wipe. Mission set. Any questions?”

One of the assistants handed the new Sophie a flier. On it was a graphic display of sweeping beaches and enticing resorts. A comm number was included along with a promotional package deal. Her hand grasped the flier as if was a hunk of metal, her eyes scanning the paper briefly, committing all details to her perfect mechanical memory. “Mission accepted,” she replied in a dead, uninflected voice.

“Good. Activate personality simulacrum at 50%.”

Color returned to Sophie’s eyes, and her posture softened. The assistants standing around her handed her back her clothing. “Simulation running at 50%,” the simulacrum stated. Color seemed to return to her milky gray eyes, and her motions became less robotic. There was still something unearthly about how she held herself, but an objective observer would be hard-pressed to define what it might be. She redressed herself, a proper robotic Sophie. Her outfit included a new, larger bra to fit her enhanced assets.

The doctor took off his mask and gloves, smiling at her. “So far this has been quite successful. We will keep monitoring remotely in the field. Return home, then increase simulation to 100%. Report back daily.”

“Acknowledged,” replied the robotic personality. She turned to the door and walked out with measured steps, the flier gripped in her fingers. She took no notice of the beauty of the atrium or the empty levitator car that descended to her working floor. None of this was consequential to her new personality. The mission was everything. It burned in her brain like a bright, indelible spot. She needed to return home. Future directives could not be considered until everything required to complete that objective had been accomplished.

Despite her new rigid mission parameters, she did have some leeway in the manner in which they were implemented. What she intended to do now was informed by her recent brief encounter with a cute IT technician. It had taken all of the old Sophie’s willpower to ask the tech out for a drink, but Alys had seemed more than a little amenable.

The new Sophie had no inhibitions in the service of her mission, but she couldn’t change her personality without arousing suspicion. What she could do was plant some seeds in hopes that they would bear fruit later. In the meantime, she would keep her head down. If she was asked about her new breasts, she would tell them she had gotten implants and deflect the conversation. Nobody would know that Sophie was running a personality program.

The office seemed empty, nobody around to watch as she sidled up to Alys’ desk and slipped the vacation flier under her keyboard. A spike of pleasure ran through her core, a thrill of Reward for obeying her programming. Her vagina was wet, but her programming at this simulation level would not allow her time to self pleasure.

Alys might view it as a junk mailer, so Sophie would need to ask her about her vacation plans just in case Alys’ decided to toss the mailer. In any case, the Sophie bot had already memorized all the information on the advertisement just in case she needed to provide some extra pressure to convince Alys later.

It wasn’t difficult to do. Her mind had become a perfect library. Every piece of knowledge Sophie had remembered or half remembered was perfectly indexed and ready for retrieval by the robotic interloper.

The larger problem was playing hard to get without discouraging Alys. She couldn’t agree to join her right away because the original Sophie would never have done that. A suitable persuasion routine would be run when the time came.

Novifrost was in the middle of winter, snow clinging to the ground outside. The new Sophie was indifferent to the sensation of cold, but it was an input parameter to consider. The probability of physical damage had been calculated high enough that she stopped by her cube to gather together her winter jacket and gloves.

She had almost managed to exit the office in her gear when she was accosted by John. “Sophie!” he exclaimed, sweat running down his brow. “How are you doing? I didn’t think I’d see you again today?” His voice was nervous, bewildered at her reappearance.

“I am quite well, John,” she replied, but looked a little too smooth while doing so. “I need to go home now.”

She made as if to leave, but he grabbed her arm. “What happened?” he asked. “What did they do to you?”

Her mission burned even brighter in her mind. “I need to go home now, John. It is late. I will see you tomorrow.” Her rigid eyes speared him like ice picks, voice in a level monotone.

He let her arm go, not sure what to make of the odd responses. She ignored his outburst and headed to the door, her directive mattering more than assuaging his fears, even if that would help to preserve the secret of her new identity. John shook his head and let her go, resolving to get himself dead drunk. With clumsy fingers he fiddled at his comm. “Jake, save me a seat.”

It took little time to descend to the underground rail system and utilize her pass to get on the northbound train. The maglev rails provided for a smooth ride as the train glided through the underground. The tunnel opened up into a depression surrounded on both sides by sound baffles. She watched indifferently as the spires of the city rushed by. The wonder of the high steel and glass architecture was lost on her. The pleasure of fulfilling her directive consumed her.

The glass spires gave way to scattered commercial and shorter, snow-capped condos. She alighted at the next station stop, and made her way a short kilometer to the building where she had lived for the last few years.

It was a modern building filled with modern conveniences. The type of place a young working professional might live for a while before settling down and starting a family. It was rather nondescript, a box of high strength concrete and structural steel, clad with a layer of brick at the ground level to make it look less austere. That sort of appeal had been lost on the old Sophie, and was lost even more on the new one.

She climbed into the levitator and pressed the button for the eighth floor. Her eyes tracked the floor numbers with unnatural concentration, anticipation humming in her as she neared her objective. Her hand slapped over the palm scanner and the door slid open with a small hiss of air.

As she entered the condo, her eyes went wide. “Adjust simulation, 100,” she stated. There was a head rush, colors flashing for a moment. Reality somehow seemed more real. The stress of a day at the office blew away like cobwebs, a bad dream easily banished. She huffed a little bit at how silly her boss had been acting, but she supposed it was just the stress talking.

What she had been doing the last few hours for it to get so late? The problem she was working on must have been more absorbing than she had thought. Strange that she couldn’t quite remember what she had been doing. She hissed and clucked her tongue. She was way too horny to worry about work or her boss. She would save that mess for another day, when her libido wasn’t making her want to hump a table leg.

She stripped off her winter clothing and dropped it into a heap on the floor. The arousal that had been sizzling in her brain ramped up. It wasn’t long before she was rubbing her clit, naked but for her favorite cute green bra with depictions of rabbits cavorting.

The pleasure was mounting, but she needed something solid, more satisfying to fill her snatch. At times like this she turned to wireless stimulation in the form of a thick, black dildo in her bedside cabinet. She pressed a button and the toy came to life, bucking and vibrating in her hand.

She played the device over her nether lips, gasping at every soft brush. The foreplay drove her to a short high, but she was unable to find release.

Normally she wasn’t able to last very long, but this time the vibrator failed to take her over the edge, no matter how hard she tried.

She let her imagination wander, seeking inspiration as she worked the toy deep inside. Scissoring with an unknown partner. Kneeling and worshipping her breasts. Caressing and stroking her hair.

Her body jumped with excitement when an image of feminine beauty morphed into an idealized replica of Alys. Now she was licking Alys’ breasts, stroking Alys’ hair. They were sitting on a balcony together, holding hands. Cuddling while watching the latest holovids. Fucking each other gently in bed. The fantasy had gotten out of control; her hips were bucking hard against the hard vibration of the toy. She grasped one of her breasts, a sharp sting of pleasure rocketing through her hard body.

As she came, an image of stunning green eyes and a pageboy haircut swam through her fluttering eyelids. She dreamed of Alys and Strand.

End Chapter 7