(Draft) Remiel's Enlightenment - Chapter 3 (Patreon)

I'm betting this is already pretty close to the final version, but I'd love feedback if you got any. Gonna post the finished version in a couple days.

(Draft) Remiel's Enlightenment - Chapter 3
by Zmeydros
(Edited by Tiliquain and Secretskunk)

###There's one thing with hash marks at the end, please tell me what you think.##

Even though I was in a building so tall that it literally touched the sky, the stars felt profoundly out of reach. Working for Miramanna was much like being back at Trinity, the only exception was that I had a better idea of what I was missing out on. Being closer to the stars, or the grass on the other side of a prison fence didn't make one any freer.

Soon after I’d woken up this morning, I'd sent a message to Ramda telling her everything I told Luke and Hosanna last night. Then I’d spent my whole workday looking forward to her reply while hoping Josiah stayed busy enough to ignore me. I'd gotten a tight chest and shortness of breath from thinking about scheduling my haircut over a dozen times. I was the world's biggest idiot for trying to rebel in the first place. There was no way around me having to throw away the twenty-something months I'd spent growing it out. It was just dumb luck that it had been overlooked by my superiors until now.

Even now that I was home I still couldn't get myself to make the appointment, so I was just laying on the bench in the sunroom, looking up at the stars while feeling sorry for myself.

When I finally managed to get myself off the bench, I walked over to the kitchen and opened the freezer to see if there was anything incredibly lazy to make for dinner. Just as I got my hand on a box of taquitos, a notification popped up on my implant's HUD.

It was Ramda's video reply to my message. Putting the taquito box back, I shut the freezer and leaned on the counter before playing the message:

Ramda was wearing a thin night gown that did nothing to hide the dark fuchsia of her six nipples. Her large bulge was making the nightgown catch on her crotch while her dark reddish-purple fur was damp like she'd just gotten out of the shower.

There was a slight frown on her wolf muzzle as she said, "I'm going to miss your hair a hell of a lot, but I can help you buy treatments to get it to grow out a lot faster once it's safe to do so. On my ship I have lots of power, but outside of it, I have to get my legal team involved. Miramanna has lawyers like a swamp has gators. And even if you did win, they'd find an excuse to fire you. My advice is to play nice for now and start collecting data on their workplace shenanigans. If you keep good records of the shit they do to you and other employees, you can help me build a case against them. You're not alone, there's other employees looking to fix Miramanna's Earth operations."

Gripping the counter, I held back tears. The fact that Ramda didn't think I could keep my hair destroyed what little hope I had left.

"To counter that bad news, I know the head FTL historian at the Vegas Space Travel Museum and she’s interested in meeting you. Her contact info is attached."

My jaw dropped open and I forgot how to close it again while I thought about meeting an actual FTL historian. I already had questions…Wait, this was one of Ramda's friends. I bit my lip. Did that mean she was a hybrid or one of Ramda's sex partners? Was she a herm like Ramda? No, no, no, there was no way she was all those things and an FTL historian. I was getting way too excited about this.

"Good luck with Cuber. I'm glad you two get along, but I sometimes fear I gave you more to deal with than I should have. I can't even imagine what teaching her how to use human language would be like. Honestly, if Cuber were here with me now, I’d try teaching her. I’ll try anything at this point. This route pays well, but it’s super boring. And you’re not helping with that boredom since you didn’t even mention the new toys I sent you. Did you cum so hard you were too embarrassed to mention them?” she said with a toothy grin. "If you don't let me know what you thought of them, I'm going to arrange to send them to someone who’ll give me more details about their enjoyment of them."

I bit my lip as I watched her message a second time. There was no way to avoid talking about her gifts and therefore I most definitely couldn't give her a video reply back.

So, while blushing and squirming, I sent, "I loved your gifts, they had the exact same effect you described. I'll contact your friend sometime in the next week, thank you for everything."

My dick was half-hard when I sent the message and it stayed that way all the way through me making and eating my taquitos. Then I got a message back.

Ramda was naked and the tip of her prick was poking out of her sheath. "Mmm, thinking about you playing with them has me a bit worked up. Want to see more? Contact Ezzie right now and I’ll give you some quality fapping material." She rubbed her finger on the tip of her cock and slowly worked two inches of it out of her sheath. Then she winked and ended the video, leaving me with a rock-hard erection.

Damn her for knowing I needed encouragement to contact Ezzie. I just went with a simple:

*Hi, Ezzie.*

*Ramda said we should get in touch and I thought I'd ask what your availability is this week.*

*Thank you for your time,*

*Remiel*

Then I messaged Ramda telling her I'd contacted Ezzie and got out Ramda's toys. By the time I had them all ready, she’d sent me another video.

In it she was straddling a huge equine dildo which was attached by a suction cup to her weightlifting bench. Moving the handheld camera so I had a glorious view of her triangular canine snatch, she lowered herself onto the dildo. Her pussy lips spread wider and wider until the head popped in. She gasped and growled as she slowly made the dildo disappear inside her.

I lowered the masturbator that looked and felt almost exactly like her sex onto my shaft in time with the video, moaning.

Soon, she was rubbing her paw-padded hands all over her six tits. Her moans became higher pitched as she popped past the medial ring and started bouncing.

I grunted as I thrust into the toy, my hips lifting off of the bed and slamming back down over and over. Blushing, I realized that I was conditioning myself for the next time she rode me. I was getting a very nice workout, Ramda was so hot, and this felt so good. Fuck! Sex was so awesome and I loved it!

Positioning the camera behind a thin pane of transparent material, she stroked her thick canine dick while riding the dildo. I now had a really good view of her entire front looking upwards so her erection appeared utterly titanic and got to be the star of the show. Her moans and gasps made me hot all over and watching her six breasts bounce with her motions was enthralling. I sucked on the dildo she gave me, getting pre in my mouth.

There was no hesitation in her movements, nothing to stop her from going right over the edge when she got there. So I didn't worry about lasting and just thrusted while giving her simulated cock the best blowjob I could. Matching her pace was making me starved for air, but I didn’t want to slow down, I couldn’t slow down. As I wondered if my body could keep going, she started growling and taking the dildo all the way to the base while jacking her cock so fast her hand was a blur.

Then, as her knot inflated, she sat on the toy and ground her muff against the base while grabbing behind her knot. Grunting and squirming, she carefully aimed her twitching shaft before she firing cum directly at the camera.

“OH REMIEL!” she cried as she covered the pane of transparent plastic with ropes of her thick, creamy jizz.

“AAH! RAMDAAA!” I screamed as I buried my dick in the masturbator and orgasmed so hard I was moaning and writhing in passion.

Then the dildo came, giving me a huge load to swallow. My imagination went wild, putting me right at the end of Ramda’s cock as she flooded my mouth with her tasty load.

Before the toy dick was fully spent, the same urge I’d had before got me to put the tip behind my balls. As it kept cumming, I moved the tip around until it was just above my hole. I saw stars as my voice cracked from yelling so loud. Then I was staring up at the ceiling while trying not to chew on my lip too hard. Why did it feel so much better to have something between my legs when I was cumming? Maybe I was more gay than I initially thought?

Yeah, that had to be it. Me being trans was so unlikely and the fact I didn't like myself was more due to how nervous and awkward I was all the time than something like gender dysphoria.

What would it feel like to have someone inside me? Their throbbing hot cock spreading me open, filling me. Grabbing a pillow, I buried my face in it. I'd never thought seriously about using my back door like that and my full body was blushing. Did I really want to try anal sex?

A wave of disgust hit me so hard that I got sick to my stomach. It was the same feeling Trinity’s anti-gay advertising gave me, and even though I knew that, I couldn't shake it. I rolled off my bed and headed straight for the shower. Why was I so bad at everything?

At least washing myself gave my mind something to do other than relive the thoughts and emotions I'd been trained to feel. Sometimes I wondered if there was even a real me under all the conditioning Trinity had given me. The more I learned about Earth, the more I felt like some alien creature that had never been human to begin with. All the Earthlings I'd met had zero hangups about gender and sexuality. Everything I viewed as rigid, they viewed as flexible.

A message from Ezzie came in just as I was toweling off:

*Hey Remiel,*

*I'm not going to be all that busy on EEEFriday. Could you get to the museum by 18:45?

*Sure,* I sent back.

*Do you like bahn mi sandwiches?*

I looked up ‘bahn mi’ and my mouth watered seeing grilled meat, cilantro, and shredded carrots laying in a fresh baguette. *I’ve never had them, but I really want to try them.*

*Great! There’s this amazing bahn mi place in the museum’s food court and at the end of the day they sell the extras for nothing. I’ll pick some up and we can eat them in the employee break room. By the time we finish eating, it’ll be past 19:00 and the museum will be closed so we’ll practically have it to ourselves. Sound good?*

I nearly jumped up and down thinking about getting a private tour from an FTL historian in an empty museum, but then my heart started pounding from anxiety: What if I all the questions I was thinking to ask were actually really dumb or Ezzie got annoyed by my social awkwardness?

Trying to push that thought out of my mind, I sent back, *Works for me!*

*Yay!* she replied. *Just mention you have an appointment with Ezzie when you get to the ticketing desk and I'll come out to meet you.*

*Okay,* I said.

*Looking forward to meeting you :D,* she said.

*Me too,* I said.

Before I went to bed that night, I looked up the manual for Cuber’s model of maintenance robot, trying to get an idea of how hard teaching her language would be. The answer was: hard.

The next morning, I woke up from a nightmare where a giant pair of scissors was trying to cut off my tail even though I didn't have one. Somehow I was still terrified and I couldn't even get myself to look up places to get my hair cut. All I needed to do was just go in and ask for a short style and have a boring conversation for a quarter of an hour. Heck, I could even go get one from a robot in a styling booth and not have to talk to anyone at all.

My heart pounded every time I thought about it. It was hard to feel good about myself when proof that I was useless was so abundant.

Work was exhausting because Josiah needed help with some data that had gotten entered so badly that our database cleanup algorithms couldn't sort it out. I asked him multiple times if I could write a script to help with some of it, but he declined. The monotonous work didn't keep my mind busy enough to prevent me from worrying about Noah showing up and chastising me for still having long hair.

When I got home, Cuber was in the entryway holding my VR headset. She trilled and handed it to me.

I grabbed it out of her three-fingered hand, saying, "You got it working?"

Cuber bounced her entire boxy body, nodding.

"Thank you!" I said.

She pointed at the part of the wall the VR crane was in, making a rising chitter of beeps. She was as excited for me to try it as I was.

After getting into the VR crane and putting on the headset, I started up my VR rig. Seeing that the stereo vision was no longer screwed up, I said, "It works!"

Cuber cheered.

I played a puzzle game where I was an engineer trying to fix a planet's weather control system. It was a really hard game because some of the puzzles were linked to each other all across the planet. The world was beautiful with animals and vegetation everywhere. Sometimes I just sat there looking at the nature around me, wanting to enjoy the view. I got a bit sidetracked feeding some raptor-like toucan things some of my rations. They fought, chirping and snipping at each other as I gave them bits of MRE mashed potatoes. Then one stole my spoon and I had to chase it down since I didn't know where to get another one.

A couple hours later, I shut down the VR system and put everything away.

Finding Cuber near her electronics pile, I asked, "Want to learn how to write?"

Without looking at me, Cuber trilled and bounced.

"Both of us can look into giving you the ability to send text messages, but you can just type on a screen for now," I said. "Meet me in the living room in a few minutes and I'll have stuff ready for our first lesson."

After making the large screen emerge from the wall, I sent a command for it to split into two screens, each on a separate section coming out of the main arm holding the screens. I opened up a document on Cuber's screen and then opened that same document on my screen, giving myself editing privileges.

Cuber came over just as I was bringing up an on-screen keyboard.

I used my implant to type out, "Hello Cuber, this welcome to your first English lesson."

"You know what that means, right?" I asked.

Cuber nodded.

“Try writing the same thing under it," I said.

She typed it so fast that I didn't even realize she'd started by the time she’d written the whole sentence.

"Okay, typing won't be an issue."

She trilled and typed the sentence again.

"Let's have you write down something you hear." I thought for a moment. "Try this sentence: roll a ball."

She paused for a small fraction of a second and then typed, "Roll a ball."

“Wait, how can you do that? Your quantum neural net is only configured for understanding speech, not transcribing it. You don’t even have a phonetics library.” I said.

“Me hear + see words,” Cuber typed.

My eyes widened. “Oh wow! I actually understand your first sentence!" I raised my arms in celebration.

Cuber did the same, chittering in excitement.

When we calmed down, I said, “You aren’t even supposed to be able to generate human language, you weren’t built for that at all.”

“Me = outlier,” Cuber said.

“Yes, you absolutely are. I think you’re co-opting your general problem-solving neural net to try and solve English,” I said. “That’s probably why it’s so hard. Language is actually really chaotic.”

“Yes and yes and yes,” Cuber typed.

“Luckily, you have a lot of extra general neural net nodes so you can take on new skills. You should probably be pretty generous in allocating those resources to help you learn language,” I said.

“Already doing,” Cuber replied.

"Good! Now try typing: A light on the ceiling."

"A light on the sealing," Cuber wrote.

“The last word is that.” I pointed up at the ceiling. “Not the stuff we use to keep air from escaping through joints and stuff."

"Both sownd sealing," Cuber typed.

"Only a couple things we need to work on. The thing that's above us is spelt C-E-I-L-I-N-G not S-E-A-L-I-N-G."

Cuber made the wrong answer sound.

"Hey, it's not my fault that English is full of exceptions to the phonetic spelling rules. There's a rule that states: I before E except after C. It's how you know what to do after the C in ceiling. Okay, now try spelling 'weird.'"

"Wierd," she typed.

"Nope, W-E-I-R-D. It, and a lot of other words, randomly disobey that rule."

She made the wrong answer noise and wrote, "No!"

"English is a heavily-fermented language. Like, it’s been gaining exceptions and confusing problems ever since it started being spoken and no one’s ever successfully given it a spelling reform," I said.

"Ceieling, Weierd. There, fixed," she typed.

I chuckled. "Maybe we should stop for today."

"Seieling, Wyrd," she typed while chittering in a way that closely resembled curse words.

"Yep, we're stopping," I said.

She cursed a bit more and then typed, "Cealing."

I took the screen away and then hugged Cuber. "You're adorable."

She hugged me back, still swearing like an eight bit sailor who only had beeps and boops.

I laughed.

After the hug ended, I went to bed. In the morning, Cuber was watching me from my doorway and the moment I started to sit up, she left.

I called after her, but she didn't respond and the microwave started running. She kept messing around in the kitchen as I stumbled out of bed and got on clothes. Rubbing the sleep out of my eyes, I went after her only to find a plate of leftover waffles with chocolate syrup on them.

At first, I thought everything was normal, but then I noticed the chocolate syrup spelled out, "Mor words," and Cuber was holding a butter knife.

"Are you threatening to stab me if I don’t teach you more English?" I raised an eyebrow.

She let out a frustrated flurry of beeps and then pantomimed cutting a waffle.

I smirked, knowing exactly how her mind worked. “Are you trying to make some sort of deal with me? Cutting my waffles for more language lessons?"

She nodded and then motioned for me to eat.

I put my fork in a waffle, wondering what exactly she was planning, but then I saw a flash of movement and there was a bite-sized piece cut out around my fork.

"Thank you," I said, popping the waffle bite into my mouth.

As I ate, she seemed a bit impatient, but the gesture was so kind, so thoughtful, that I started getting teary-eyed. Cuber was making my prison of a life so much more bearable. And soon I’d be meeting Ezzie. Hopefully, I wouldn’t make a fool of myself.

I set another reminder about my meeting with her tomorrow and then taught Cuber more English before I had to leave for work.

###I’m not sure whether it reads better with or without this last tiny paragraph. I could just end at the end of the last one, possibly.##