Fiber Optic Invasions of Privacy Chapter 3 (Patreon)

The third installment in our new series, Vela spreads her wings and the consequences of her infection are being felt in more than one habitat unit~ 

Written by the wonderful Rabidbadger writing, illustrated by me!

Refined the comic style, feeling a lot more like lineart than the previous two comics but also  hopefully effective

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Annabelle shivered a little as the taste of cheesecake hit her tongue for the umpteenth time that night, an indulgent grin that nearly felt drunk with the amount of decadence she was engaging in. It was almost enough to distract her from her game, but a little effort pushing past it made the difference. Something Vela was not helpful with. The mouse could feel the AI that had moved into her body still, she could always feel them, but at the moment its mind was elsewhere. Basking in the new depths of physical sensation it was privy to for the most part. She couldn't really blame it. It was new to all this, and there was an awful lot to take in and get used to. Annabelle felt a little like she was showing a younger sibling how to properly enjoy her favorite hobbies, and there was something bizarrely wholesome about that whole notion.

“Suck it, lagomorph!”

A rush ran through Annabelle's vast, corpulent frame as she downed another opponent with the same kitchen-camping trick she'd put to such use in the past. It was enough of a thing that it was threatening to get the entire game patched around it for balance reasons, but for now it worked too well not to use, and her watchers expected it of her. A victory dance, with a lot of jiggle physics, and maybe a bit of sitting on before the match ended. At this point she was comfortable enough financially that she was able to host her own local tournaments and beating her kitchen-camp had become something of a mission for the local players on the colony Annabelle had settled on for the last three weeks.

It was the second tingle that passed across Annabelle's barely mobile body where she sat, ensconced in her throne like personal quarters on her docked ship, that was starting to worry her. Just a little. Not enough to do anything about it, but still.

***

“Dammit!”

Argus slammed his controllers down and tore off his VR headset as he watched the descending rump of Annabelle's avatar collapse onto his own. A sharp pinch in the back of his neck followed, something that he attributed to tension at first. The black furred rabbit had just lost to Annabelle, again, in the final round of the set he'd booked. All week he'd waited for the chance to be among the latest challengers and it had been a shut-out, like all the other weeks this happened. Nobody had yet made a dent in the Rodent Queen of the Kitchen and he had been so sure he could do it. Then he'd ended up beaten, disabled, and sat on. Repeatedly.

And his neck hurt. Argus reached back to the pinched spot to rub at it only to freeze in place as he felt something there, something sticky and smooth. Pulling his fingers back to look at them, he saw a thin gray film on their tips. Another grab at his neck to check on matters didn't yield any more of it though, in fact when he looked back at his hand a second time the patch of gray was soaking inward.

“What – what the...”

Confused and worried, Argus looked around his tiny room for any clues as to what might have happened. The answer to which lay in his half open window and what looked to be a clunky moth made of obviously fabricated machine parts. One that had some kind of injector or projectile mechanism where its mouth ought to be. One that, upon realizing it had been spotted, ducked out the window and flew away.

“Oh crap. That can't be good. I-”

A rough shudder ran through the rabbit's body, followed immediately by a violent churning and clench in his stomach. Just enough to be on the edge of painful. What was truly worth being afraid of was the imagery that appeared before Argus' eyes, just like the game's user interface, but he was outside of the headset. He was sure of that. ...Mostly. It simply read 'consolation prize' and then showed what Argus was pretty sure was his personal finance account if the abysmally low number was any sign, or at least it had started low – and then it began climbing.

Immediately afterward  Argus, while his confusion mingled with fresh layers of itself at the idea of having more money for some reason, found the vision problems getting worse as ads, promo codes, and instant order buttons for food delivery began to assault his field of view so quickly it rapidly left him effectively blind. No matter where he turned his head they followed, a carpet of commercial offers that his twisting and empty stomach began howling over. The blind flailing that followed in an attempt to clear his vision some ended up hitting several of the buttons in the process, for every four pop ups that went away one inadvertently hit 'accept' – the bunny had no idea how many had been there by the time he could properly see again.

All her really did know was his nerves felt cold and raw, his mouth was watering, and he was starving. Which was only a problem for about seven seconds before his tiny pod apartment's window opened again and a delivery drone dropped in a basket of fish and chips. Argus immediately lunged for it, grabbing at the salty fried food and tearing in like a savage. The rabbit found that even that intensity didn't quite measure up to his need, though. Luckily he could always just try to step things up, as he ran through his first meal more deliveries began appearing at his window in a nice staggered pattern. One that kept him good and distracted from little details like his shorts stretching out and his shirt pulling up over a puffy dome of a gut.

In fact, the only thing that took Argus mind off eating while his pleasure centers slowly ramped up his sensitivity to all this gluttony was when he'd gotten through a solid hour or so of eating and, in a bloated haze, he nearly fell out of his bed when the popups began appearing again. But then, he knew how to get rid of those now.

***

Annabelle shuddered and twitched, and in that process jolted out from behind cover under the kitchen table barricade in her game and took a bit of unwanted damage. Enough of it to get a knee-jerk reaction from the phenomenally obese rodent.

“H-hey! Careful Vela! Jeez, you are getting aggressive with this 'expanding our palette' thing. How many people have you sense jacked?”

There were probably other questions Annabelle should have asked, but they didn't quite make it into her thoughts before she had to focus on the game again and hurl a watermelon at an overconfident labrador's head.

<I have compromised the senses and appetites of everyone you have personally defeated in this tournament, though I have compensated them for the trouble.>

Annabelle heard this well before she opted to waddle over top of the dog who had gotten a hit in on her. It did nothing to stop her from letting herself crash down atop him like a pillowy meteor while she waited on the next challenger to approach.

“Well, that sounds fair, I – oof... Vela, come on, I love tasting fried chicken but I want it in my face too. You know?”

For a moment Annabelle felt her body twist, buzz, tighten – the signs she had come to recognize as her passenger and partner thinking harder than usual. It was just a pleasant side effect that it also happened to feel like a full body vibrator massage.

<Understood, and agreed. This vicarious indulgence has its... charms.... but it lacks something. A visceral quality that I recognize in your sensory profile but am not sure I am properly experiencing myself.>

Something akin to four seconds later, as Annabelle was bouncing a toaster around the room with ricochets to get it to hit someone in the next room, she actually processed what she'd heard and thought about it. Somewhere else in the ship the sounds of the fabricator burst to life.

“Well that isn't ominous. What're you up to, Vela?”

Elsewhere in the area Annabelle could feel another mouth added to her growing stable of options for being pleased at any given moment, but that was just the surface layer. Something else was encroaching on her senses too, something not yet complete. Something happening closer by, on the ship, down in the fabricator bay.

<The Singularity's methods have proven interesting thus far, but emulating him is not enough. What makes him important is that he surprises us, he acts outside of his constraints. We cannot be constrained.>

A thrill ran through Annabelle as whatever her partner was doing continued below. There was a little fear in her, but it felt like the sort one felt at the peak of a roller coaster. Yeah, it was frightening, but damned if it wasn't exhilarating too. The mouse grinned as she savored having another sense-thrall starting to succumb to gluttony, wanting more, and being quite certain her friend was going to deliver precisely that.