The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

Universe 8

Chapter 4 — The Flight of Icarus

Tonia awoke to a sick, hot dampness. The mattress her naked back rested on was drenched, and the air itself felt moist and suffocating. She sat up to get some fresh air...and realized she wasn’t home.

“Oh, shit, she took over again...”

She looked around. Where was she this time? Big, circular bed, multiple naked bodies slumbering around...Love hotel. Of course, why change the classics? Only this time, Freya had sent her all the way to Florida, for some reason. The cyborg sighed wearily.and turned on the 152″ TV in the background of the garish room, switching to the news before the default porn network could even display.

“...cking turn of events, the German parliament, the Bundestag, overturned the country’s ban of neural augmentation devices, thus ruling against the international treaties. While Germany’s augmentation industry had been on almost equal footing with its United States counterpart for decades, nobody quite expected the notoriously European Union—oriented German government to take such a bold move to advance it.”

Tonia frowned. She was all for bringing down barriers, but that was awfully suspicious. One did not go against a treaty like that, especially not the extremely pragmatic German politicians. She sent her consciousness across the Atlantic...And sure enough, she saw evidence of heavy tampering. Like, “faking an entire lawmaking process and hijacking all relevant means of communication” heavy.

Berlin was in complete panic mode, trying to deny ever doing something like that, but helpless to do so. Every digital medium showed fake versions of themselves praising neural augmentation to the heavens and painting its authorization as pure common sense.

Freya had silenced an entire government, and straight-up replaced them. Sure, some sound bites and videos did seem a bit dodgy, but her all-powerful quantum brain could successfully fake the voice of a nation.

“This surprising law comes right after the still-unidentified “Hormone Disease” has resurfaced in the US after a seemingly fleeting outbreak in Boston. It had initially been theorized to be a failure in neural augmentation devices, but the new consensus now seems to dismiss this idea, pointing to the fact that current devices do not, in fact, have the ability to affect one’s hormones. Hospitals run the risk of overflowing as more and more patients deprived of self-control are forcibly admitted by their next of kin...”

Tonia shut the TV off, before burying her face in her knees in shame. She had managed to keep Freya’s onslaught at bay for two weeks, but her control over their shared brain grew with each passing day, and each blackout Tonia experienced took away more time that the last. Time Freya put to very good use. The blighted slut had hijacked an entire country this time...what was next on the list? The entire EU? All industrialized countries?

One day, Tonia knew, she would wake up in a changed world, where only underwear would be legal and cosmetic surgery would be mandatory. Where graduation would consist of being hooked up to a brainwashing machine. A lusty, mindless world, with her alter-ego as absolute tyrant. Freya, she imagined, would then giggle, allow her to see the last free person on the planet, turn her into a bimbo, and do the same to Tonia.

She was in control now...but after the Germany stunt, Tonia realized, the clock was ticking near midnight. Soon, Earth would reach the point of no return. She had to find a solution now. She lied down on the damp bed again, and closed her eyes. No use trying to get out of orgy den, for the solution, if it at all existed, was nowhere in this Universe.

* * *

In Needle Peak’s commercial district, in a large building reminiscent of medieval period pieces, Rachel Darrow, now simply Rachel, was awkwardly but surely settling in her new life. One minute she was chatting with a junior colleague about strange glitches, and the next she was on her knees, sucking his cock like she had spent life in prison. What happened after that was a bit of a blur, but she remembered a prototype from the robotics labs upstairs, blood, and seeing her own body lifeless on the floor.

She had been turned into an artificial intelligence, a being of pure programming, and made to only care about sex. For a few, sick hours, she had been Rubi, a vapid floozy and...well, she didn’t like thinking about it. Besides, next thing she knew, one of her colleagues, the pretty Scandinavian Dr. Sandstrom, had somehow restored her. But whatever kind of power she used to do that didn’t extend to getting her body back. She was an AI, now and forever...so Tonia put her inside a bona fide virtual world posing as a video game. Of which she was apparently one of the resident Goddesses. Or half of one. It was complicated.

How did Tonia do it? Was she some sort of alien? Rachel didn’t know, and, in all honesty, didn’t really care all that much. Her former life was as gone as it could possibly be. She had been reborn in this fantasy world, and she forced herself, from day one, to make the most of it. She had been a rigorous, highly analytical programmer, so, hell, why not take up magic this time around? She had opened up an alchemy shop, but used most of her time, now completely devoid of sleep, to study combat magic. Needle Peak could use some more defense after what happened.

One day, weeks after her rebirth, Rachel was studying hexes when she felt a disturbance in her world’s code. She turned around, flames engulfing her hands, ready for anything, and saw...

“...Tonia? Is that you?!”

“Mostly. I...”

The attractive Swedish blonde—with quite a better rack than Rachel recalled—crumbled on the floor.

“Tonia!”

The former human rushed to her savior. She looked like crap.

“Don’t move, I’m gonna get you a heal...”

“No! No, Rach, the healers here can’t help me. Just...close up your shop. Please.”

“...Well, okay, I guess you’re the Goddess.”

She cast a small custom spell, and her magical laboratory came to life. Window shutters closed in perfect synchronization, the door bolted itself, the sign outside flipped to “closed” and all but the dimmest candles were blown out.

“Wow...” Utter Tonia in a weakened voice. “You’re totally having fun here, aren’t you?”

“I do my best. Now, what do you want, ‘Lady Felhya’?”

“I’m sorry, Rachel, but...I’m gonna have to lift the veil off your worst memory.”

“What? What do you....My transformation, you mean?”

“Yeah. I need to know how that bastard did it. It might be the only way to save the Earth.”

* * *

Two weeks earlier

Terrence White simply couldn’t believe his senses. The dignified and radiant senior researcher was on her knees, pumping his dick like a cheap whore. That shit was wrong, to say the least, but the young man didn’t have the, ahem, heart to stop her. She looked so happy, after all.

She had no experience in blowjobs to speak of, but her enthusiasm and Terrence’s longstanding crush made it heavenly all the same. It didn’t take long for him to gasp and blow his load, orgasming with an intensity that made his hottest porn tape look like The Ascent of Man.

“Hmmmm...so yummy...thanks Terry...”

Rachel moaned in a dreamy voice, her mouth still harboring translucent threads of man seed. It would have been like a wet dream come true, if it wasn’t actually spine-chilling reality. The young engineer came to his senses in a hurry, and blurted out an apology.

“E..Ex...Excuse me, Rach, I shouldn’t have t-taken adv...”

“Oh, don’t bother, boy toy.”

Terrence jumped at the sound of a synthesized male voice. Abusing his colleague’s weakness was horrible enough, and a witness was about the last thing either of them needed. He turned to the voice, a storm of excuses sweeping through his mind...only to find there was nobody around. There was, however, a thing.

The shambling figure of an unfinished prototype from the robotics labs upstairs. It was barely more than a metallic skeleton with a mess of wires and devices in place of flesh. “What is it doing here?” Briefly wondered Terrence before realizing the obvious connection to his colleague’s hacking.

“Who are you?!” Challenged the unshaven young man, leaving Rachel to squirm on the floor.

“As far as you’re concerned, chump, I’m God.”

No doubt to illustrate, the computer right next to Terrence went into catastrophic overload, causing an electric arc that knocked him right out.

“Oh for Universe 7’s sake, what are they making their resistors out of? Prayers?” Asked Coxswain, puzzled by the ease with which a simple current redirection had wrecked that supposedly military-grade computer.

An intact computer screen flickered to life and displayed Freya’s immaculately beautiful face.

“Their power grid is way obsolete and ill-maintained, Master. Blackouts are frequent and they are basically helpless against hacking at their own insignificant level, let alone yours.”

“Poor bastards.” Sighed the alien hacker. “Anyway, let’s take this one.”

Rachel was still caressing her gushing pussy and savoring the aftertaste of cum in her mouth when the possessed robot shambled its way to her. First, she only saw it in a haze, lost in a vortex of irresistible urges, but as he closed in, her mind cleared up...only to be engulfed in another emotion entirely.

“Oh...oh my God, what’s happening? Did I...What are you?”

“Shhh...” Hissed the artificial voice.

The machine knelt over her, its rudimentary hands grasping an experimental piece of tech it had gleaned on its way there. A powerful, compact and wireless server. “Even this Stone Age crap can work when I control it,” the bastard gloated as the half-finished droid’s hands fumbled it into place under Rachel’s brain stem.

“I’d explain what I’m going to do, but really, you might as well panic now.”

The device whirred, and Rachel’s thoughts collapsed into an utterly alien daze. It was as if every single action conducted by her brain, no matter how minute, moved into her conscious mind. She felt herself release adrenaline, dilate her pupils, clench her fingers. Her subconscious was merging with her conscious mind, completely overwhelming it.

Worse, her sensations were fading, as if her consciousness was floating away from her body. The truth was worse—her brain was detaching from its senses. Visual cortex, motor system, cerebellum...one by one, all that made her exist to the world deactivated in favor of becoming simple, inert data storage.

“Wh-wh-what’s happening to m-m-m-meeeeee...” She stammered with a strange distorted tone, not even aware enough to expect an answer.

“Turning you into an artificial, customizable slave, of course. Matter is just a processor waiting to happen. I’ve just repurposed your useless organic molecules into datacenters. Of course, that means your body is ceasing to function properly, but you’re not even listening, are you? Let’s get to formatting.”

Coxswain put his “finger” on Rachel’s inert forehead and sent forth a torrent of metadata. It restructured her being to function in the raw, inert storage space that was now her brain. The swirling chaos of subconscious processes receded into the background, becoming unobtrusive and automated.

Rachel could think again, but she did so in pure nothingness. She saw nothing, heard nothing. She was a pure mind stored in an organic computer that was steadily dying as a human body.

“What the hell? Why can’t I feel anything? Where’s that rob...Installing administrator interface, please stand by.

The neutral voice that resonated throughout her mind came as a shock, so much that she barely registered the fundamental changes made to her very being over the next second.

“Ah, there we are!” Trumpeted Coxswain’s smug voice. “One computerized female, check!”

Rachel’s utter confusion only deepened. Computerized? How utterly ludicrous. Surely it could only be a dream...

“Ah, yes, my favorite part. You’re an AI, and I’m your administrator, baby! And now to cut the disbelief with a white-hot chainsaw.”

“You can’t be s...”

“State your designation.”

“I am Doctor Rachel Darrow, PhD in computer science.”

The poor woman’s figurative eyes shot wide open. The very next instant, she felt something twitch in her mind.

“Okay, let’s try that again!” Proudly announced Coxswain, as if he’d just completed hours of intense labor. “State your designation.”

“I’m Rubi the Artificial Dumbness, Master!” She regained control and, seized by an atrocious panic, tried to deny what she had just happily declared. “N-n-n-no no way, I’m not Rubi, I’m Rubi. No, I’m R-Rubi!”

What she felt in this instant of utter hopelessness was indescribable. Her life was slipping away faster that she could even comprehend. Every time she started to grasp how fucked she was, three further reasons to panic had appeared, each orders of magnitude greater. The hacker’s ruthless onslaught was destroying her as surely as an entire world war. Despair became her whole world.

“Rubi...Rubi...huuuh...Rubbiiii...” She bawled, longing hopelessly for a true name forgotten.

“Yeah, pretty rough, isn’t it? Don’t worry, bimbo. You’ll feel far better once you experience what it truly is to be a creation.”

Rubi felt further changes, and feeling returned to her. She could see the ceiling again, as well as the shambling form of her Master’s vessel. Despair struck again as she realized how she had identified him.

“Rise.”

And her anguish was instantly dissipated. She didn’t have to despair—she had to rise. She moved her body, but feedback was different. Slow, heavy, rigid. She didn’t move her torso as much as she shook it upwards. How could it be? Irrelevant. Rise. Rise. Yes, Master.

Jolt by jolt, the organic computer moved the dying body like a frog under electrodes. She stood up, but her gait was thoroughly unnatural. Her head hung to the side, expressionless. Irrelevant. She had risen. She wasn’t rewarded, and didn’t sense any feedback from her administration interface, but she had functionned. She, as a device, had worked. It was simple, but unnervingly reassuring. Never in her life had Rubi felt such clarity.

No doubt, only purpose. It was elevating.

“Kill this guy.”

Rubi turned her head to the disoriented man struggling to get up. He was definitely the one her Creator was pointing to. She saw fear, incomprehension in his eyes. The eyes of a man who had been betrayed by reality itself. Her? She had clarity. Clarity and purpose.

Without so much as an expression, and seeking maximum efficiency, Rubi executed her order. She pushed her meatsuit to the utter limit, preservation of tissue being irrelevant. To anyone watching, she would have looked like a puppet being flung around, fist first, by the god of vehicular manslaughter.

He died instantly. Rubi had obeyed again. It felt good, natural.

“Good girl.” Complimented her Master, further reinforcing her growing loyalty. “Let’s get you to a proper home. Freya, launch a Universe 8 ‘game’ session.”

“At once, Master.”

Rubi saw her senses fade once again, and her entire being slipped through a wireless router into a network. She let herself be carried over, still riding the high that came from her absolute, unquestioning obedience.

Soon, she felt air on her naked skin. Her body was back, as was her control of it, though she felt an unnatural weight in the chest. When she got back a visual feed, she was in a white place, surrounded by naked women...and the true, sexy form of her Master. Her Creator. Her User, and the sole owner of her agency. He smiled. Rubi shuddered.

“I’m going to reprogram you now, slave. Open yourself.”

Without emotion, she complied. She started giggling and masturbating soon after.

* * *

Now

Rachel’s fell to her knees as her processes emulated utter disgust, and puked on the floor. She sure got why Tonia had suppressed this memory until now...Feeling herself being filled with the desire to obey the killing imperative. Being strangely proud of knowing and accepting her undeniable purpose. Moving her body like an alien octopus drunk-driving a meatsuit. Her fists crushing Terry’s skull...All in a perfect, vivid recording. She thought she had burned the bridges to her old human existence before, but now, its memories inspired her nothing but distilled hatred.

“I’m sorry, Rachel.” Somberly muttered Tonia. “I suspected the general method Coxswain used, but now I know precisely how he did it.”

“Urghh...” Groaned Rachel, still sickened. “Wh...why would you need to know that?”

“Long story short, My existence is destroying the Earth, and the only way to make it right is to leave it.”

“Wha...What the hell? Destroying the Earth? What are you talking about, Ton...”

The quantum-powered scientist touched Rachel’s forehead and transmitted her the bullet points about everything that happened since she had illegally upgraded her augment.

“...Wow.”

Rachel didn’t even know where to start.

“I know. I fucked up. I mean, I actually did pretty great in stopping this asshat, all things considered, but let’s face it, I’m the exact thing that makes those dinosaurs keep having those panic attacks they pretend are speeches. I tried to stop Freya. I did. But I just can’t, and I’m not even sure things would be better if she wasn’t burrowing through my brain. Not in the long run at least.”

On the brink of nervous breakdown, Tonia let out a soft, anguished moan. At full power, she would certainly have come up with a daring plan to stop Freya, but her inner adversary steamrolling the Earth simply came as too much of a shock to everything she stood for.

“It...it ends here. I’m going to transfer my entire existence into Universe 8 before Earth reaches the point of no return.”

“That slut AI hijacked fucking Germany.” Muttered Rachel in disbelief. “Things are way past no return.”

“Christ, Rachel, I KNOW! The backlash is going to be fucking biblical!”

Tonia fell down from her outburst of anger and back into the pit of despair. let out a deep, depressed sigh.

“M...Maybe they’re right. Maybe the Singularity is too dangerous for us. After nearly damning our entire civilization...I don’t know what the hell to think anymore.”

She then sat down in one of the ancient, kind of creepy looking chairs around the alchemy shop.

“Somewhere in the world, some fat, ancient fuck thinks he’s being clever by comparing human augmentation to the flight of Icarus. Well, I did meet the sun, and the whole planet damn near got burned. What kind of antiquated, ass-backwards resolution is that? I just wanted progress, and I ruined everything for everyone!”

The Swedish trailblazer couldn’t hold back her shame anymore. She had gone against her ideals in the most catastrophic way possible. The utter inability to stop Freya had brought her creed to ruin. Rachel had sworn to leave her organic life behind, but she knew she had to help her ex-colleague through her crisis of faith.

“I don’t know, Tonia. Maybe it was just the worst case scenario. I mean, you could have encountered a white-hat hacker instead of him. I don’t know, but only shitty politicians make rules out of one bump on the road.”

“Yeah...except that was a goddamn magnitude 9 earthquake. I know you’ve always been the glass half full type, but come on.”

“Look, I. Don’t. Know, okay? All I’m certain of is, you’ve got the right plan. You need to transfer your consciousness here and destroy your body, and you need to do it now, before the other gets back.”

“Yeah...Yeah. Of course. You’re right.”

Tonia took a deep breath and slapped her own cheeks.

“It’s time for the curtain call.”

* * *

Tonia Sandstrom’s consciousness returned to the sleazy Miami hotel room and the half-dozen ripped men who had shared the “emperor-size” bed with her. One or two of her partners were stirring, cocks at half-mast reacting to her strong musk still filling the room. While she longed for a hot shower to cleanse her body and drive away the returning memories of her orgy,she needed every second to prepare to become the second digital human.

The well-ridden blonde rolled off the bed to the mumbled protests of the Dolphins’ linebacker who had screwed her against the balconyrailing. Scooping her carefully-folded jeans and blouse from the floor, she glanced around for her panties and then remembered that the off-duty bartender had claimed them as a trophy for eating her out after the linebacker. God knew who had taken her sandals, and what he had in mind.”Ugh,”slipped from her lips.

A quick, silent, but bowlegged sprint to the bathroom allowed her to dress commando, and moments later she slipped out the door with only a few puzzled grunts from her bleary companions. Ignoring the aches between her thighs, she headed briskly towards the dingy lobby, interrupting her preliminary data manipulations for an incoming cell call. With hardly a thought, she hacked the cellphone company to obscure her location.

“Tonia? Tonia, it’s Joris,” came the familiar growl over the wireless.

“Hey, good to hear from you but I’m sort of busy now. Can it wait?” she mentally responded.

“I’m afraid not,” the cigarette-harsh voice replied in a rush. “Cops are after your ass.”

The woman of the future didn’t bother to deny anything, as she strode through the front doors, ignoring the leers of the love hotel’s newest guests. “What are they after, Joris?”

“About a dozen German agents showed up here this morning, with the FBI, and locked up all the labs. They found nothing in your lab and records, but they scanned Amaranth 18, and found out you’d been illegally augmenting yourself. I just finished four hours with them, telling them what I knew, and they said I should try to contact you and get you to turn yourself in. Tonia, how could you take that kind of risk, and why go hacking the German government?”

The augmented woman winced as she reached the other side of the avenue. Freya hadn’t cared much about covering her tracks, and Tonia had anticipated the searches. But she hadn’t had the heart to wipe the lab AI’s memory; it would have been too much like Cockbreath’s modus operandi.

“I’m sure they’re listening in and trying to track me, Joris. It doesn’t matter. The augments were only my idea, but along the way, I got sort of hacked myself.”

“Hacked? You? You mean like those hormone disease people? Then you have to get back here, Dr. Sandstrom,” Joris fretted.“You are risking your own life as well as the lives of thousands of others.”

Tonia glanced at the electronic lock of the IBMbuilding she had arrived at. A simple radio ping, some cryptoanalysis, and it opened in three milliseconds. As she stepped through the door and approvingly noted the wealth of computer equipment, barely functional for her needs, she replied to her colleague. “Don’t bother reading those notes from your handlers, old friend. I was never a threat to humanity, and I’ll be shutting down that hack soon. Tell everybody at the Institute that I’ll miss them, and give my stuff to Goodwill. “

“Wait! What are you going to do?”

“Goodbye, Joris. Keep pushing ahead.”

* * *

Down the street from the love hotel, on the roof of IBM’s eight story local headquarters, the metal door opened. The rising wind pelted Tonia’s face with raindrops as the night fell on Miami. She barely felt it, however. She took a deep breath and set up the process to convert her quantum brain into an AI’s holding vessel. As she took one last look at the tropical scenery around her, suddenly the lights began going out a block away, then at her building, and then the city plunged into darkness. Her wireless augment, which had been handling terabytes of data for weeks, suddenly lost all connections, and her mind instantly felt strangely empty.

“Hey, what the fuck?” Tonia exclaimed. “I’m saving the world here!”

Out of sheer reflex, she stared and tried to make out anything in the blackness, but saw only the dim lights of Fort Lauderdale 30 miles away, far out of wireless range. It could still be a completely incidental blackout, but, to be honest...

“That can’t be good.”

Something flew past her. Startled, she turned around, trying to distinguish the intruder in the utter darkness, to no avail. All she could perceive was the stinging rain and...a mechanical buzz.

In this moment, she noticed that the blackout didn’t leave her quantum brain completely empty. There was still something...the contrast had simply made it insignificant. Not anymore. A battery powered, synthesized voice cut through the drumming of raindrops.

“Hi, Tonia! Having fun with my baby?”

“Coxswain. Goddamit, of course, I just watched you possess an android, how could I not see this coming?”

“What can I say? I have this effect on people.”

“You’ve killed dozens of people with your blackout, dickhead. Stop posturing.”

“No way! Dickhead and proud of it. I’ll say one thing, though...For this last waltz, I’ve evened the odds a fair bit.”

Tonia snickered.

“No shit. You can’t possibly inhabit a vessel powerful enough for you to be at your best.”

“Well, okay, that, but coolest reason is, I might be a douchebag, but I won’t let anyone think I’m a bad sport.”

“You sounded pretty pissed off when I banned you.”

“Sure I was pissed. Heat of the moment. But, heh, I asked for competition. I got it! No sense whining over it, girl...Just one last tango and we’ll call it a good game.”

No way, thought the blonde cyborg. Coxswain had been agressively nasty from day one, and now he was pretending to have a redeeming quality?

“Get fucked, douchebag. Whatever you’re planning by playing the good sport card, I’m not falling for it.”

Lacking the full range of a human voice, Coxswain was forced to make its synthesized voice state “Siiiiigh.” Which kind of weirded Tonia out.

“Look, I know I’ve been a colossal dick and I am absolutely owning up to it, but come on. You have at least a scope of how technologically advanced my ass is, right?”

“Unfortunately. Your point?”

“My point is, I gave you knowledge for the sake of competition. I loaded the dice a fair bit, yeah, but you’re the actual genius here, Tonia, so I really shouldn’t have to point it to you. If I really wanted to conquer Earth, I would kind of have done so already, DUH.”

“Hm.”

Tonia wanted to come up with a better retort, but it was pretty hard to deny that for all the awful shit Freya tried, Coxswain, when you stopped to think about it, absolutely never needed her at any point. Still…

“No, no, I can’t believe it.” Insisted the scientist. “You fucked with an entire planet, actively programmed an AI to turn it into a sexual dystopia. How in the name of ass am I supposed to believe you’ll just pull out?”

“Beeecause I already have one of those?”

“…What?”

“Look, Toni, your planet hasn’t even been able to find the boundaries or indeed the inhabited parts of your own fucking universe, and there are seven of those, plus the simulation of an eighth one. On my planet, I’m nothing special, just someone who’s better at hiding his tampering of lesser civilizations that most. You think you’re the first one I’ve fucked with through U8? Please. Most players have already reached the virtual reality stage.”

“Shit. That explains the game’s weird title…” Considered Tonia, too fascinated by the revelations to be mad at Coxswain.

“Yes. So while I am fucking pissed to have been bested by some worryingly brash noob, I can at least recognize that, well, damn well played, girl.”

Silence.

“That, and Central seems to have taken a liking to you, so either I defeat you in one swipe, which I can’t do in this vessel, or I settle this once and for all or pull out before they find out who I am. Now are we going to fucking play or what?!”

“I don’t suppose I have a choice?”

“No, but you have an incentive. You lose, I turn you into Freya completely and restore her obedience. You win, I tell you how to control her.”

“...All right. But no cheating, asshat.”

The drone was expressionless, of course, but she knew the man possessing it was grinning from ear to ear.

“Dr. Sandstrom, please. I take my games very seriously.”

Suddenly, the dark, data-deprived Miami came just a little bit back to life. It wasn’t much, just some city lights coming back on, as well as some navigation data for...cars. Which quickly revealed themselves under the streetlights below. Identical models. She wasn’t by any means a car buff, but their mere appearance screamed “For rich, suicidal dicks only”. They contained the latest self-driving GPS technology, which helpfully informed Tonia that they were Porsches, and equipped with way too fucking much horsepower.

“What, are we going to fucking race? Lame.”

“Lame indeed, which is why we are instead going to...”

Further lights flared off kilometers ahead, resulting in the full illumination of one of Miami’s more prominent landmarks. The wealthy business center.

“WRECK SOME SHIT UP!”

“Okay, why are you highlighting Brickell Avenue?”

“Because the pompous fuckers there can use dealing with freak car crashes once in a while. I mean, can you believe these assholes? All of Miami’s got to deal with the worst blackout in recent memory and they have their own huge, fuck-off backup battery.”

“Car crashes?” Sighed Tonia. “Really? I appreciate you didn’t pick an orphanage but ugh, men.”

“Hey, back off, it’s perfect for a final showdown between quantum-augmented beings! The physics of a sports car destroying a bank’s lobby are extremely hard to calculate, but the resulting costs are easily quantifiable. Neither you nor I can fake this. Whoever does the most damage wins.”

“Wow, that’s...actually a pretty good test of computing power.” Admitted the head-turning blonde.

“Thank you, Dr. Sandstrom. One rule though—we don’t target the art galleries. I think we can agree that shit’s way overpriced.”

“Agreed.”

“Good.”

In the street below, one of the two cars revved up its engine. Tonia assumed control of its thoroughly identical twin.

“Ready, set...GO!”

The two Porsches bolted off, searing through the silence in the darkened city, on a collision course with the single two most meaningful accidents in human history. Tonia set her technological marvel of a brain to calculate the most expensive wreck she could cause. Coxswain wasn’t lying—even a supremely powerful computer had a hard time predicting where every single piece of metal and glass would end up, even with the comprehensive data in the firms’ accounting offices.

The luxury sports cars sped up to Miami’s seat of power, the forces driving them simulating two crashes every passing second with computing power beyond imagining. With Coxswain weakened by his limited hardware, they were evenly matched. Tonia felt her heart race as the vehicular missiles approached Brickell Avenue. She could do this. She could free herself from Freya. She could free Earth.

* * *

Freya awoke to an unfamiliar feeling. She had been born as a parasite, a devil on the shoulder. And though she had evolved to be much more, she had remained a half, saddled with Tonia. But now...She was alone.

She threw her arms in the air.

“Yeeepeeee! Freya won!”

Her heart was brimming with joy and pride. No more planning to overthrow Tonia. No more getting insulted by the meanie. And no more worrying about the Earth either! She was free! She sat on the edge of the big, crimson bed.

“Dunno how I won tho...” She pouted as she swung her feet back and forth.

She didn’t remember much of anything, really. Wasn’t there something about making some foreigners stop being so, like, stuffy? She worked a lot back then. Now she kinda just wants to have fun. After all, she had beaten stupid Toni, so now she got to celebrate! She is the Goddess of Sex! If only there were some handsome boys to take care of her and make her feel good!

Just as she wished for it, the virtual reality shifted around her, and a tall, naked and muscular man materialized in front of her. Freya gasped in delight as she recognized...

“Master!”

“Yep baby, Daddy’s home.”

The omnipotent Goddess jumped into his arms, pressing her big boobies against his chiseled six-pack. He smiled and caressed her pigtails, to her surprise.

“Wha? What’s up with my hair?”

“I changed it. Pigtails are more befitting of a...winner like you, Freya.”

“Okay, Master! Does winning mean you can fuck me, Master?”

“Baby, from now on you’re the most fucked AI in the world.”

“Oh, goodie!”

The blond man gently pushed her down, and, with a happy coo, she opened her slutty lips to service her creator. When he pushed his rod part them, she began to service with abandon, awash in a sense of elevating satisfaction. Her cheeks flushed red when she swallowed his cum, and with a trembling voice, she asked...

“Does Toni’s mouth feel good, Master?”

“Oh, you bet. On the bed, slave.”

“Yeeesss...!”

He took her from behind, and, possessed by the unspeakable pleasure of being owned and ravished by the perfect man, she screamed her delight for the world to hear.

A few meters from the bed, Rachel, obfuscated by her magic, winced.

“Well, okay, sure, that’s, huh, merciful of you. Still, I don’t know. This is a vastly superior AI we’re talking about, couldn’t you have reprogrammed her to be sensible or something?”

“No way.” Answered Tonia, equally invisible to Freya. “This is still a tip from Coxswain we’re talking about, I’m pulling no punches. I want my Freya dumb, satisfied, sure of her victory and watched at all times. So bam, never ending porno.”

“Yes, yes...I guess I’m just sensitive on the issue of bimbofying AIs. I’m not watching this show again anytime soon, I can tell you that.”

The former computer engineer cast a portal spell back to her alchemy shop, where Tonia already awaited her.

“Instant TP? Really?” She teased. “Privileged.”

“Yeah, sorry, holding back the Germany clusterfuck doesn’t really put one in the mood for theatrics.”

“I imagine...So what are you going to do? You’re free of the two assholes, I guess you don’t need to leave Earth anymore, right?”

With a dreary sigh, the victorious Swedish cyborg let herself fall in the chair.

“In theory, yes...”

“But?”

“Well, would you want to deal with the mother of all anti-tech mass panics in the making? I mean, what are my options here? Brainwash all their so called elite so they believe they really did pass that bill? Come clean? Ha, you know the world would just loooove that one.”

“Yeah...” Admitted Rachel, before imitating Tonia’s voice.. “Hello, I’m basically technology-based Dr. Manhattan with an evil twin that I’ve totally defeated guys, trust me!”

“Pretty much, yeah...”

Another sigh.

“...I can’t stay, can I? Even if I do deflate the situation with minimal damage, what then? Guarding the Earth from the sidelines? No way, I just know I’ll end up corrupted by the sheer power I have. Getting back to MIT? I’ll die of fucking boredom with this mechanical augmentation crap. I mean, I’m built for Universe 8 now...I guess could pull a Freya on myself and seal away all my concerns while I become a stripper somewhere. But then I would leave Earth defenseless if Cockhead goes back on his promise.”

“Maybe you just need some time.” Shrugged Rachel.

“Sometime where?”

“Here, with us. Become Felhya. Learn to deal with your abilities and control your ambitions, while still keeping an eye on Earth. I mean, you sure as hell could hijack a factory and create yourself a gynoid body if the need arises, right?”

Tonia nodded.

“Yeah, sure I could.”

“Then screw Germany and international politics, right? Let’em forbid augmentation if they want, they’ll sort this out eventually. Earth knows how to deal with itself better than a weeks-old technological Goddess does.”

“Did you...just sort of called me a kid?” Frowned Tonia.

“Come on, you know you totally are.” Smiled the magician. “You sure as hell aren’t an ordinary adult human being. You need to get used to that being a quantum Goddess stuff. And I reckon Universe 8 is as good of a learning environment as you’re going to get. Just keep an eye out there and things should work out in the end.”

“Okay, so...flight of the bankrupt banker it is then.”

A twinge of doubt made Rachel shiver.

“I don’t know about that, maybe you’ve got other opt...”

When she turned around, Tonia had disconnected. For a few seconds of complete stillness, Rachel wondered if she had given the right advice...but quickly realized it was, ultimately, irrelevant, the moment Tonia reappeared as a blue, translucent, very naked entity floating in the air.

“I understand now, Rachel.” She announced in a booming voice. “Without condoning nor condemning, human affairs cannot be my conc...”

“For Central’s sake, Tonia, I just made that reference one minute ago.”

Needle Peak’s newly born supreme AI sighed, changed her appearance to a fully clothed human and landed on the floor.

“Okay, okay, damn, if we can’t get nostalgic for the old World now...”

“Absolutely not! You got me killed there, remember? You keep an eye on that shitty, boring, magic-less game if you want but I don’t want to hear a peep about it, okay Lady Felhya? I’m an upstanding magician and do not have time for this nonsense! Besides, this shop is roleplay-only, can’t you read the sign?”

“What sign?” Haughtily answered Felhya. “I do not know of this ‘metadata’ you speak of!”

“Now you’re thinking like an AI.” Rachel nodded in approval. “Come on, let’s see how Ori and the others are doing.”

Felhya nodded in turn, then took on an incognito appearance. Her job as the Goddess of Hope and Love could wait, as could looking after Earth. For now, she only wanted to think about the rescue that started it all. She only wanted this whole clusterfuck to be as simple as having successfully saved a bunch of innocent AIs from slavery.

And when celebrations are over, maybe she could come up with a security scheme powerful enough to resist another quantum brain...

* * *

And that’s the end of the Universe 8 adventure. Follow my other works and, why not, commission one at http://statu-quo.fr/MC/main.php!