Ecstasy or Oblivion - Session 7 (Patreon)

Gualmeeta Habitat, Earth-Moon L5

Being the only naked person on that floor of Zutraas's building caused me to forget why I was there. Eyes peered at me from several offices through the picture-frame-like windows that looked out into the elevator lobby. There were Paitishek-style workplaces where clothing was scarce, but this wasn't one of them.

Zutraas said, "Please explain what's going on." 

I stared at her blankly. My crest was all the way up.

She narrowed her eyes at me. "Saanah? Did you invent this emergency just so you could come stare at my crotch?"

The white flesh from the underside of my chin all the way down to my breasts pinkened in a blush. Her bodysuit was a light enough grey that there was an attractive play of light and shadow between her legs. No wonder I was staring. "I, ah…" I moved my eyes up to her face. "Faraday cage."

"That serious?"

"Yes," I said.

"Okay, then." She hooked my left arm and turned me toward the elevator. When we were in the elevator, she said, "So, I'm guessing you like this outfit?"

"It looks tremendous on you." I nuzzled her.

She nuzzled back making a low purr deep in her throat and I reciprocated. It was our sound of contentment. We stayed like that until we got to the second basement level.

I looked at her raising an ear. "Wait, why did we go down here? I thought you had one up on your level."

"We had to use it for temporary storage."

"That's so illegal!" I complained.

"Tell that to the boss of my boss." She shrugged. "I tried and she said that it was only for a month and I should find other things to worry about."

I puffed out air and shook my head. The Faraday cages were emergency shelters from catastrophes both physical and electronic. If there was a killer computer virus or update gone horribly wrong, you could shut the world out until it was fixed. If something hit the colony and people were in danger of being maimed or suffocated, they granted refuge.

The Faraday cages were stronger than the surrounding material. Their composites had a higher concentration of carbon nanotubes and graphene than everything but the spokes.

"This problem better be worth the shouting I've endured," Zutraas said, "Not that it's your fault."

"I'm not so sure about that."

"Now I'm even more curious."

We walked out of the elevator and then to the five-meter-in-diameter vault-like door complete with a tiny porthole that revealed the pitch black on the other side. She grabbed the wheel that secured the door bolts and turned it hand over hand. To keep these doors from being hacked, no automation was used.

Once she had all the bars retracted, she pulled it open. It was awe-inspiring to see something that large move without even the slightest sound.

When she turned on the battery-operated lights, the bright white interior revealed itself. It was a sphere ten meters in radius with six levels. We were on the third level and we'd entered through the only door. I closed the door and the porthole before using the wheels on each to secure them.

On either side of the main hallway we'd just entered were two medical bays. I followed Zutraas into the right medical bay. She moved her tail up and out of the way as she sat on an exam table.

"Do we need to talk about you getting paranoid? Isn't my office secure enough?" she asked.

"Someone made a copy of me."

"What?" She stood up and put a hand in front of her neck.

I told her all the details.

She hugged me and held me throughout the entire explanation.

"What made me want to bring you down here even more is the favor that other me asked of Kavuush: to put a device on one of the wires coming out of your supercomputer."

"No."

"Yes?"

"Sorry, I mean, I can't believe it. I thought it was odd for her to ask for a tour of our clusters, but I couldn't imagine her being a security risk. I thought she was just making an excuse to hang out with me," Zutraas said, "Where did she put it?"

I sent Kavuush's memory.

"That connects our old cluster with the new one. It's one of the few non-optical connections. That device is small for Van Eck-style packet sniffer… I can't think of what else it might be, though." She started walking toward the door. "I've got to get our security department on this right away. Discreetly."

"Okay, but I still need your help."

"Sure, I'll be right back."

When she returned, I asked, "Can you double check the information I got on my copy? See if there's any clues or any chance it's not actually a copy of me?"

"Absolutely."

I sent her the files and she laughed at one point while looking through them, "Has your sex drive, that's for sure."

"How can you laugh right now?"

"Sorry." She sat on the exam table and leaned against me.

I took a deep breath, "It's fine. Just feeling vulnerable."

"Oh, I underst—wait!"

"What?"

"Wait, wait, wait, what? Why? How? Not possible," She got up and started pacing and muttering to herself. "If Saanah has my security AIs, but hers are a version ahead... then. Then what?"

My ears shot up."We have the same security AIs?"

"No, I mean, yes. Kinda?" She rubbed the back of her right hand with the palm of her left. Her pondering tic. "It's like your AIs are testing new features while mine are the stable version."

"That doesn't make any sense." It did, it totally did. I didn't want to say why. I didn't want to say that I suspected she was working on the side for my employer. She was a brilliant lawyer that dealt with difficult blockchain contracts. The CCAI made a lot of very non-standard contracts and hoarded brilliant people.

"I know that look." 

I frowned. "What look?"

"You don't want to tell me something."

"No, I'm just confused." I tried to smile. It was hard.

"That's not it and you—" she stopped and then looked into my eyes, "Fuck! We're in the same cell aren't we? From the data you gave me, I know you hack people and dig up dirt. You're the perfect testbed for security and cyberwarfare AIs. And they want to protect me, so they give me the best trained AI's they can create."

"We can't know this," I said.

"Of course we can."

"Can't!" I said louder than I meant to. "If we know we're in the same cell, it'll be impossible for us to act as if we don't have that knowledge."

"Shit, yeah, if they figure out that we know, they'll want to fix it. You've been compromised and with this knowledge you could end up compromising me too."

"Exactly." I slumped.

"And knowing we're in the same cell is useless info right now. It's not like we're trying to undermine the CCAI or anything. As long as your copy is out there, it's a huge risk. This explains why my security AI's were changed drastically yesterday."

"You need to erase the data on my copy and then we need to erase this memory."

"No, we'll encrypt it." She smiled. It was the smile she got when she was proud of her own ideas. "We encrypt the memory and replace it with a slightly different memory and then exchange encryption keys. We set the condition for restoring each other's memories to be the absence of any and all signals except our own."

"Like when we're in a Faraday cage. Brilliant! The only time we can talk about it or react to it is when no one else can see."

"We'll have to schedule a meeting that neither of us will cancel. Think about what you'd have to write that's subtle, but would make you realize you cannot skip it."

"Or we could just say we need to catch up on my copy situation away from prying eyes," I said.

"But if we resolve that situation, we might cancel it."

"Okay, I'm going to entitle my event, 'It's a secret,' followed by a heart emoticon."

She laughed. "Yeah, I think I'll do the same. It's not the sort of thing I'd ever put in my schedule."

"I'm putting the location as 'Faraday cage with Zutraas.'"

"Okay, I think that covers it. Let's make the false memories and then encrypt the stuff we need to hide."

"Wait," I said. "So, this copy is really me?"

"Yes, or close enough that the differences don't really matter."

"Then, there's still one thing we need to figure out. How did they copy me without my knowledge?"

She thought for a moment and started to say something and then said, "No, that wouldn't work." This happened six more times before she finally said, "I don't know. They would've had to breach a consciousness transfer contract without anyone noticing. Because of the issue with illegal copying, the hardware involved in transfers is locked down tight and only writes the number of copies agreed in the contract. After a copy is written, it's activated and once a consciousness is running it's near impossible to copy it without that consciousness noticing."

"Why does the consciousness notice?"

"File access. If I want to copy you, I have to access every file in your system in an amount of time that's less than the life of the universe. Accessing files at random is possible, but even randomness starts to have a pattern when every one of your files gets accessed over the course of a day or a week. There's porn I haven't looked at in years, but if someone was copying me, they'd have to access it because it's part of my stored memories. On top of that, getting to each file requires maintaining a breach in someone's security. The longer a breach is maintained, the more likely it is to be sniffed out."

"Then, how would they do it?"

"They'd have to—" She rubbed the back of her hand. "They'd have to get custom consciousness transfer hardware with fake credentials. That's incredibly hard because of how vigilant the 'Transfer Crimes' division of Interpol is. They control 'Consciousness Beam Inc.' to the point that some people say that company is just an extension of them. Some of the best security and training I've ever seen…"

"Or?" I prompted.

"Or they'd have to get a contract that allowed multiple copies by me and that just wouldn't happen."

"Are you saying it didn't happen?"

"I just can't see how. Wait." She stopped in place again. "For months, I've been getting these odd contracts that I kept having to decline. They got more and more clever, but eventually they just gave up. If you put some of the stuff they were trying together, it might've made a contract that let them copy someone."

"But they never managed to do it?"

"Let me take another look through my memory." She was silent for a few minutes. "No, I don't think they did. There's only one option left. It's supposed to be impossible, but it's easier to hide and less risky than fucking with the consciousness transfer hardware. They dominated all the servers involved in the block chain of their local cluster and showed you and me one contract while actually using a different one. What we signed off on wasn't actually what we saw. We're talking a covert military-like coup killing people or taking their servers away. There's no way you could do it on a colony this size. But a colony with somewhere between one and five million people? Maybe."

A chill ran down my arms. "A military takeover of servers?"

"Yeah, we're talking cell-based covert tactics and someone or some organization as powerful as a small government. It wouldn't work on a station that was too small because small blockchain clusters are pooled together with other ones to prevent this from happening. I could be completely wrong about this, but it's the only way I can think of."

"Well, it's a lead we can check out at least. I also have a guy who downloaded all the information from the site before it went down."

"He didn't give it to you already?"

"No, I suspect he kept some for himself so he could make a show of 'helping' me. He knows a lot about the dark web and seems to have spent more time on it than I have." I thrummed in frustration.

"Be careful with people that browse it a lot. Sometimes they're just curious, but other times, they're doing stuff on there that neither of us wants to know about."

"True," I said, "So, I think we can keep everything except the part where we figured out that we're in the same cell. I noticed you avoided referencing that after we decided we were better off not knowing. There's a problem, though. If we're messing with memories like that, we might cause a blip in our awareness and if either of us notices that blip, we'll wonder if something's been edited."

"True, consciousness is so messy! I'm not sure what to do about that."

I blushed, "I think we should have it go off during orgasm. The absolute peak feels like a blink in awareness to me."

She blushed. "That or getting hit in the head. Orgasm: the safest way to simulate a head injury."

I laughed. "Yeah, I can't even pick things up after orgasms sometimes. My fingers feel like they have immense inertia."

"I've fallen flat on my face after trying to get up right after one."

"Ha! I can totally imagine that," I said.

"Won't it seem funny if we just randomly have sex after all this conversation?"

"You know when I get too horny to think straight?"

She blushed more and nodded.

"What if you tease me and get me to go wild? Like think of a way you'd do it that would look natural."

"Got it!" She gave an excited bounce. "Now let's edit those memories."

We worked on constructing the false memories and then prepared a cover up for the editing process as well. When we were all done, we stared at each other for a moment.

Her face became impish as her crest unfurled. She put her hand on my thigh and then moved it up slowly. "Why did you come all the way here naked?"

My crest shot up. "Would you have wanted me to delay giving you that info?"

"No, but I bet you would've made it here faster if you weren't distracted by trying not to imagine sexing up people on the train. How many erections did you have to stop?"

"I dunno, three?" I guessed. The mere mention of me having to keep my erections down in public caused my crotch to warm.

Her hand kept moving up. "I bet you're struggling not to have one right now."

"Damn you!" I said as the tip poked out.

"You got hard on the train and gave everyone a show, didn't you."

"No."

She moved her fingers even closer to my balls. "Then explain why are you getting hard when I'm not even touching it."

"Because you're staring at it." I felt a hot rush as my heart pounded in my ears. Accurate simulated body responses really did add a thrill to life. She was brushing her claw-like nails on my inner thigh.

"I bet people on the train stared at it. Heck, you stared at my crotch and I didn't get hard. You're the one that's got the ridiculous libido." She brushed the tip of my emerging length with the pad of her index finger. "Look at how fast it's coming out. You just can't help yourself."

I moaned.

"How many people rode you instead of the train?"

She had me. I imagined that naked Paitishek that checked me out in the station bending me over and having her way with me. Out in the open, where everyone could see. Me losing myself to my lust. Me moaning and pressing back desperately against her.

I grabbed Zutraas's wrist and led her hand to my member. She kissed my neck, sucked at it, and then nipped my shoulder as she stroked me. I shivered as I said, "See what you've done? It's your responsibility now."

She leaned down and kissed my length and then licked her way up to my breasts. "Tell me more about this new responsibility." She somehow made the word "responsibility" sound racy.

"Well, it needs to be put somewhere warm and moist." I kissed away whatever retort she had to that. My body had way more to say than my mouth. Reaching for the zipper on her bodysuit, I pulled it down. Our long tongues mingled. My phallus curled in her hand. A low rumble of a growl came from me as I exposed all four of her breasts.

She moaned this time. Into the kiss. I indulged myself with her perfect spheres making her thrum. Paitishek scales somewhere between rubbery satin of a manta ray and the slick elastic of snake skin. Feeling her flesh give under my caress as she pressed herself against me made me desperate to escalate our coupling.

My mouth left the kiss to seek out her nipples as her hands felt up my heavy sac and the impatient heat behind it. I growled and pulled her bodysuit the rest of the way down. 

As she stepped out of it, she said, "After fucking all those people on the train, how do you even have the energy for me?"

My imagination devoured that last goading morsel. I imagined having an orgy with the Paitishek that had been next to me on the train.

I grabbed her legs and turned her so she was sitting astride the exam table. Her slick slit took three of my fingers into it easily as I sucked on her shaft. She cried out and thrust wildly. The moment she was desperate for things to advance, I hopped up on the table and touched my crotch to hers.

We grabbed each other's wrists and leaned back to make our sexes more accessible. I slid myself into her, feeling her clench and quiver along my mobile erection. When she entered me, I thrummed vibrating both of us. She did the same. Our lengths made waves sending a warm fizz throughout our bodies. We were so wet and hard.

In and out. In and out. We both had a microorgasm and trilled in passion. She added a twist to her shaft stirring me up and bumping my clit. As I did the same to her our breathing became thrillingly erratic.

My tail moved to her breasts. Her supple flesh felt so good against my scale-clad muscles. When her tail reciprocated, reverberations of pleasure subsumed my sense of gravity.

She clenched around me as she came. I was on the edge and squeaked as a gasp and growl tried to occupy the same space. I put myself in as deep as I could, my essence finally spilling into her. My depths came the moment I felt her member lurch inside me about to deliver its bounty.

It did so amply.

When my orgasm reached its peak, I almost lost hold of her wrists. Beneath my notice was a small blip, a half-second of my awareness failing. Afterwards I remembered things differently.

In that moment, enveloped by the safety and elation of orgasm, I thought of my other self. Did she know where she was? Was she aware of me? Did she even still exist? Joy or despair? Ecstasy or oblivion?