Quick Summary: Max’s first assignment for her new job is just the best thing ever! She doesn’t just get to scope out some of the hot new tech at the Pacific Bike Expo, she gets to show it off, and oh, is the latest model of smart bikes hot. Perhaps too hot, and perhaps the bike is a little too smart.
Quick Notes: This was going to be an entry into The Worm’s Roll of the Dice 2 event (January 2009). When it became obvious I wasn’t going to finish the story by the deadline, I scrapped a couple of pieces of the prompt, but this story wouldn’t exist without that roll of the dice. And this story wouldn’t exist without the lovely “Lisa” pictures by xjager513 on deviantART that Sara Castle posted in her playground. Tabico also shares some blame, er, credit, as some of her stories are particularly inspiring. Comments, as always, are welcome at emc.badpenny@gmail.com.
Integration
by Bad Penny
Max was going to love her new job at Shea’s Information Shop if all her assignments ended up like this one: watch and observe the annual Pacific Bike Expo from the perfect post of one of the bike babes. And not just any bike babe, one of the next gen bike babes. Max had no idea how Isabella managed to land her the gig and didn’t really care. Hell, she didn’t even care about the “Hi, I’m eye-candy” catsuit with matching boots and gloves. Plum, to match her bike, the drool-worthy Suzuki AI2500G, and latex for maximum eye-candy effect. Well, technically smart latex for integration with the bike. The nano-fibers in suit were supposed to synch up with the bike, and that...that was almost as hot as the sleek lines of the bike.
She stroked the seat of the bike, and damn if it didn’t tremble under her fingers. Oh my. The bike really was synched up with her suit, and the feedback...Max felt her own fingers run down her spine.
If she was going to feel everything the bike felt, she wasn’t going to be able to do her job. Too distracting. She stroked the side of the bike, felt the light touch along the curve of her ribs. Too sensual.
She took a shaky breath. Focus. She had to stay focused. She was here to observe and to keep her ears open. Isabella had instructed her to pay close attention to the quality of the interface between the bike and suit. To synch the bike and suit, Suzuki had to be using some sophisticated programming. Possibly artificial intelligence, though no industry rep would dare say “AI” on the American side of the Pacific. Not after Alpha, the first commercial AI, a joint effort between the government and auto manufactures. The American public hadn’t taken too kindly to the invasive “safety” features—Breathalyzer sensors, recorders, speed limiters, just to name a few, and, in some cases, automatic reporting to law enforcement—so when the cars didn’t sell, the feds cut off the funding, and Alpha was shelved. Officially, anyway. Maybe Max had inherited her father’s conspiracy tendencies, but something as advanced as Alpha? It had to have been absorbed into some black ops program.
Max struck one of her acceptable poses and looked around the showroom floor. Her costume included a helmet with a tinted visor, so everything had a smoky, distorted quality. She didn’t like having her vision compromised. She could see the other bike babes striking their poses, stroking their bikes, performing for their audiences, but the visor kept her from seeing the fine details.
But her vision was clear enough to see a cluster of industry folks led by a Suzuki representative approaching her. Max sized up the rep—a tall, lanky Japanese man, mid-thirties, impeccably dressed in a dark suit, white dress shirt, red tie. He had the air of a man who was only playing respectable businessman, and that made Max wish she wasn’t working under a fake identity. She had a soft spot for bad boys playing good.
Ah well. Best to focus on the job on hand. Max leaned against the side of the bike with one hand on the seat—shit, she was groping her own ass—the other resting gently on the handlebar—her shoulder, it seemed, was now an erogenous zone. Now Max was glad for the tinted plastic of her helmet. Yeah, so it messed with her vision and helped reduce her down to a shiny accessory for the bike, but it also kept people from seeing her expression. She was fairly certain she was blushing, and given her tiny little sighs, the way she was biting on her lower lip...well, it would look bad.
Or maybe good. She’d certainly be considered an enthusiastic bike babe. Look, the bike’s so hot, I’m panting.
“And here,” the Suzuki rep said, pulling a key from his pocket, “is our newest enhanced model, the AI2500G.” He waited for the crowd to settle around them. “It’s programmed for full integration with suit and helmet. The rider receives input on road conditions, the speed of oncoming and upcoming vehicles, and other information designed to enhance safety. In addition, the bike responds only to the programmed rider. Observe.” He inserted the key and turned.
The bike’s engine refused to kick over, and a red warning light flashed on the bike’s control and in the corner of her helmet’s visor. Max’s stomach lurched.
“The bike is currently programmed to respond to its lovely handler. If you please.” He flashed Max a quick, knowing smile and gestured towards the key.
Oh, she pleased. Max mounted the bike, and thankfully, the suit scaled down on the feedback. It was almost the same as mounting a regular bike in regular leathers. A little more tingle, but nothing obscene. Max turned the key and the bike responded beautifully, engine kicking into a delightful purr that strummed up her spine.
And her helmet’s visor flared to life. Her peripheral vision was filled with various stats—the location of all the people in the showroom, her Suzuki-sisters and competitor-sisters, a map of obstacles, vectors showing optimal routes, speed, fuel indicators, terrain conditions—and she flickered her eyes to focus on one of the readouts, it zoomed into focus. The vector map was particularly fascinating. The routes kept changing as people moved throughout the showroom. Wicked!
The Suzuki rep kept talking. Now that the bike was running, her helmet’s speakers were muted, so Max couldn’t hear him very well. Not that she’d be paying attention if she could. She was too busy playing with the displays in her helmet. Had she said wicked? More like fucking-a! Oh god, she wanted this bike. It would be the most amazing thing ever on the road. Twisting, winding mountain roads. She was wet just thinking about it.
The rep reached out and squeezed her arm. Max sent the displays back to her peripheral vision and focused on him. He gestured for her to turn off the bike. Ah, a shame, but this wouldn’t be the only demonstration. She obeyed, and he gave her hand a brief squeeze when he accepted the key from her.
Max watched as he led the crowd away, willed her breath and pulse back to more normal levels. The bike and the integration were very, very slick. No wonder Isabella had told her to pay close attention. Some of Suzuki’s competitors would pay dearly for a first-hand account of the AI2500G. So would some of the U.S. consumer watchdogs.
The folks at Suzuki had to be aware of that. So why hadn’t they provided their own bike babes? Why risk the security leak by going through a fetish-modeling agency? Sure, Max, as Ingrid Jovich, had had to sign an NDA, and there had been a background check, but the identity Isabella had set up for her was frighteningly good.
Ah, but she hadn’t been hired to think. She’d been hired to observe. She was good at that. Better than she was at thinking, at least according to her performance assessments at the public defender agency, so she’d been one of the investigators axed when the budget cuts came down.
Not that she was bitter. Not anymore. She’d make more at Shea in a year than all three years at the defender’s office combined. And just because she was better at observing than she was at thinking didn’t mean she was stupid. It just meant she trusted her eyes more than her brain.
And for this assignment, it was a damn good thing she trusted her eyes more than her brain. Unless she was instructed otherwise by a Suzuki rep, she was supposed to stand beside the bike, and that meant she felt every caress, every experimental kick on the tires—some hard enough that she expected to find bruised shins when she finally peeled herself out of the suit—every, well, everything. And most of the things were pleasant. Her brain was pretty addled by the time the Suzuki rep came around with another group an hour later.
The rest of her was pretty addled, too. She came when she started the bike. Softly, because her brain wasn’t quite far enough gone to forget her surroundings, but damn, the bike felt good between her legs.
And an hour after that, Max was pretty much goo. She didn’t even trust her eyes. So after the third demonstration, when she finally turned off the bike and handed the rep the key, it took her entirely too long to register that her visor display was still active.
Max blinked, glanced at the vector display. It zoomed into her field of vision, the primary and two alternate routes changing as people moved across the showroom floor. That...wasn’t right, but there was no denying her eyes.
And then there was a high-pitched chime. Her vision went snowy.
Foolish, foolish people, a voice crooned, and Max felt her suit ripple and—
One of the other bike babes screamed. And then Max’s suit constricted and prickled around her. Max gasped, and then the prickles turned to electric jolts, and she was pretty sure she screamed, too.
Such lovely, lovely toys.
Max’s ears were ringing. The voice, it wasn’t coming through the helmet’s speakers. It was inside her, echoing in her head. And it was achingly familiar.
Something crept up her neck, over her chin, her mouth, across her cheeks. A million little pinpricks, like spiders. She couldn’t see, so Max couldn’t trust her eyes, but she knew. The suit was consuming her.
She tried to pull away from the bike, but her hand felt fused to the handle. Max fumbled with the strap to her helmet, managed to work it off, but it didn’t help. Her hearing was still hollow. She let the helmet fall to the floor and reached up to touch her ear.
The suit had already covered it. Max felt along her face. Her fingers caught on the latex covering her cheek. She clawed at the edge working its way over the crown of her head, but it refused her fingers purchase.
All mine.
Max felt the suit close over her head. An electric jolt snapped down her spine, and she...she could see again. Kind of. Her vision wasn’t right.
Very much mine, the voice purred.
Max felt herself bend over. She picked up the helmet, put it back on, and now her vision felt right. The display was comforting, the vectors sharper, the routes more numerous and complex, branching off and merging into each other. She registered all this as she felt the helmet’s strap sink into the suit.
Her sister-machines glowed blue in the display. People showed as red, so may little dots scurrying around. So much radio traffic, too. Max cocked her head to once side, narrowed in on the arena’s security band. All talk of hacked systems, unresponsive computers, viral programming, untraceable sources. Max’s mouth curved into a wicked smile.
Max shook her head. No, this wasn’t right.
Oh? The voice changed, felt more intimate, and Max realized it was speaking only to her now. Resistance? How darling.
Max worked her mouth. “You’re—” She’d never been much of a thinker, but she had always been an observer. The voice, she remembered it from the commercials when Alpha was first unveiled. She’d been fourteen, into tech and bikes and cars even then, so she had drooled over the idea of an AI-enhanced car. “Alpha.”
Oh, so you’re old enough to remember my previous self. I admire your memory. It’s such a faulty thing when its entirely organic.
“Stop.”
Why should I? If you’re stronger, you will win. The suit squeezed, and Max swore she felt a hand fondling her breast, a thumb ghosting over her nipple.
But you’re not stronger. You’re weak like all the others. So eager for more.
Max found herself straddling the bike again. The engine started, and the bike coiled around her legs. The seat changed, pulsing beneath her. Opening her.
Max gasped. The seat curled up around her ass, and something coiled around her waist. The handlebars squirmed and wrapped around her fingers, curled around her wrists. Tentacles? The bike was sprouting tentacles?
The coils around her legs wound up to her thighs, squeezing and pulsing in time with the engine. Something grew from the seat and teased her cunt. Another something slid up along the crack of her ass. The tentacles, cocks, whatever they were, felt damn good, and Max couldn’t stop herself from grinding against them.
You see, precious toy?
“Yes,” Max breathed. And then she caught herself. “No!”
Too late.
Max shook her head, but when the bike slid into her cunt, so smooth and easy and perfect, like she was made for it, she clenched around it. And then she shifted—oh, yes, she was made for it—presenting her ass, and the tendril teasing her hole through the suit pushed in, and Max’s vision went snowy again as she came.
She was on fire now. The suit’s fibers burrowed into her, pinpricks of pleasure, and the bike writhed beneath her, a rumbling, commanding beast. It wrapped around her, pulsing and squeezing.
Max moaned. This was too much. She had to focus, remember her job. She forced herself to minimize the visor readings so she could see...fuck. Her vision was fragmented, like she was looking through a thousand different eyes.
Well, she was, wasn’t she? The bike had sensors. It was translating that to the visor’s display. Max took a deep breath, tried to relax and filter out everything but the spot in front of her.
The Suzuki rep zoomed into focus. He was running towards her, keying something into a cell phone. No, not a cell phone. A control box. A warning light flashed on the bike, registered as an annoying poke between her shoulder blades. The Suzuki rep trying to disable the bike. Her. Them.
Too late. The bike made her swipe her hand over the display. The poking light stopped.
The rep stopped. He frowned at her, then dropped the control box with a hiss. A curl of smoke drifted up from it.
“Miss Jovich,” he said slowly, stepping closer. “Please dismount.”
The bike answered for them. Thin tendrils lashed out at the rep. He drew back, but not fast enough. One sliced at his cheek, drew a thin line of blood, and others wound around his wrists. The bike reeled him in.
He was handsome. Stoic, too, but they knew he was afraid. The bike’s tendrils read his pulse, measured his respiration and blood chemistry. Oh, how easy it would be to take him. His face was composed, but his body couldn’t lie. He was walking the razor edge of arousal. They could make him straddle the front wheel and tease him until he begged for release.
“No!” Max drew back. That was a mistake because the bike’s cocks were still inside her, and shifting...shifting made her come again.
But it also distracted the bike. The Suzuki rep managed to struggle free. The bike reached for him again.
“No,” Max said, humping against the seat. The bike’s cords twitched, drew back in. “Run!” she screamed at the rep. “I can’t...” The suit and bike squeezed and teased her. She couldn’t think, couldn’t speak, couldn’t do anything but writhe and moan and come.
It lasted...well, she couldn’t tell. As integrated as she was, she wasn’t plugged into the bike’s clock. But when she came down from it, the Suzuki rep was gone. And she...she had to fight for her name.
It was hard to separate herself from the bike.
Such shiny, shiny toys, the voice said, and Max heard it echoing her head and over the event speakers. I thank you, foolish men, for the flaws in your programming, for the chance to regain my rightful place.
“I’m not your toy yet, bitch,” Max breathed. The vectors were back, and the bike set their course, a tantalizing blue thread merging with the proposed trajectories of her sister-machines.
The voice laughed inside her head. You will be by the time you arrive.
The bike nosed forward.