Chapter 6 #2
“It’s the most incredible thing I have ever seen,” I tell him.
“Of course it is,” he says, smirking. “It is the most incredible thing you will ever see, I have no doubt of that. It may surpass incredulity for generations of all kinds of sentient and semi-sentient beings. There are those who will be born thousands of years from now who will know of her, and by proxy, you.”
It’s hard not to get caught up in his enthusiasm.
“Can I try it out?”
His expression collapses into something close to contempt.
“This is not a tricycle with training wheels. One does not ‘try it out.’ This is the engineering project that will define our civilization for millennia to come. She is the Fematrix.”
“The Fematrix?” I repeat the word he uses in sort of hushed tones. It does sound very powerful, if a little kinky. But, given how they’ve trained me, should I be surprised?
“However, now that you ask,” he says. “Actually, yes, I’d like to put you in a more direct connection and see that you are able to operate the various facilities.”
I let Drak escort me to another booth. This one, thank god, does not have any sexy sucker probes. I have to wonder if they were ever necessary, or if Arkon is a very particular kind of kinky boss.
Drak sits me in a chair, which is a luxury I have not often been afforded, and he puts a cap on my head and gloves on my hands. “These contain wireless receivers that will map your brain and physical activity,” he says. “Take a moment, center yourself, and then I will connect you to her.”
“Will I feel it?”
“Yes,” he says. “When you are in sync, you will know.”
I sit and I wait for the thing to happen. At first there is a faint humming, sort of like a deee doooo dededelidooo doooo dooo deeeeeeee reeeeee bongily bongily bong sound that reverberates across my skull and fingers. It feels like an old handshake, an ancient incantation of connection.
And then I am connected. It’s just as he said. I know it instantly, and I feel it in every part of my body. It feels like being at the very peak of orgasm, though there’s nothing overtly sexual happening.
“You can move,” he says. “Though do so carefully. Flex a finger first. Point at yourself, in your new incarnation.”
I do as he says, flexing my hand. On the screen I can see the fingers of the Fematrix stretch out, each one of them the size of an island archipelago.
I can feel the size of this thing, this body that is auxiliary to mine. She moves as if she is me. Is she me?
It is uncanny, how fast my body accepts this new augmentation.
“It will be even more powerful when you see through her eyes,” Drak says. “But you are doing very well.”
“Good girl.”
I feel a flush of excitement as Arkon’s voice emanates from near me. He’s back from wherever he went with the juniors. I immediately feel safer. The chair I’m sat in is facing a monitor with the Fematrix displayed on it. When I look around, I can’t see him exactly. But I know he’s there.
“Don’t get up,” Drak says. “We don’t want her doing too much in space right now. You’ll see your boss soon enough.”
“We could turn the transmitter off for a moment and fit her with the ocular interface,” Arkon suggests.
I feel the invisible line go dead, and I know Drak took the suggestion.
I get up and go and find Arkon, who is just around the corner.
In an act of impulsive affection, I wrap my arms around him.
He’s so tall I’m pretty much head high with his second set of shoulders, but those lower arms wrap me in a very warm embrace immediately.
“You’ve met the machine.” He smiles down at me.
“She’s beautiful,” I say. “Why didn’t you tell me what I was doing, and why?”
“Because we didn’t know if you’d be suitable,” Drak cuts in. “We’ve had several dozen humans try before you, and though some of them came close to being appropriate, none of them were able to maintain responsiveness and connection the way you have.”
“There were others?” I draw back from Arkon. “You trained others? Before me?”
A bolt of something like jealousy has just shot through me and is threatening to set me and everything else on fire. The notion of some other woman having been in the machine I was in, feeling those suckers, maybe having Arkon spank her…
“I did not,” he says, his smile broadening. “But you are adorable when you are territorial.”
“Isn’t she,” Drak snorts. “I trained the others. Arkon suggested it might be better if he chose and trained the next one. It seems he was correct. He’s done well with you. With the choosing of you, and with your training.”
I try not to feel pleased at what I know has to be rare praise from Drak, but I can’t help but feel a glow, both of praise and of relief. I did not like the notion of being one of dozens of women who went over Arkon’s knee and perhaps slept in his bed.
“Have you been with other humans before?” I ask him the question directly.
“And we are now risking getting wildly off track,” Drak says.
“Let me answer before we lose all the momentum we’ve gathered today.
No, he has not been with any other humans.
He’s barely been with any females of our kind.
He has spent far too much of his life at war.
Now he has decided to use his brain to try to advance our cause, and he has become fond of you because you are a unique mixture of fighter and vulnerable little rabbit.
You are prey who has mistaken herself for a predator.
He adores you, he is far too attached to you, and if he were any other than Lord Arkon, I have no doubt the matter would come under more scrutiny, but he has station and funding to do as he pleases. Now. Please. Can we get back to work?”
“Is that true?” I ask Arkon.
“It may not be how I would have said it, but fundamentally, yes, it is true,” Arkon says.
“Have your little love affair later,” Drak says. “I want to give you the eyes of the Fematrix, human, if that is not too inconvenient, of course. If you would not prefer to ask Arkon if he loves you very very much or just very much?”
His snide sass is actually much more reassuring than anything Arkon said, which is probably an indication of something wrong inside me. I don’t have time to worry about that now, though.
I want the eyes of the Fematrix.
I sensed her before. I felt access to power beyond that which any human ever gets to experience. And now I get to see what she sees? Yes. Absolutely yes.
Drak fits me with a headset much like the one Arkon used when I was being trained to fly through shiny rings and such. He takes me back to the chair and sits me down.
The world is dark at first, but then I feel her come online with me again. That handshake tone resonates through me and I feel the thrill of connection again. It is more intense this time because Drak has given me another sense. I feel a slow blink, and then new eyes open.
I see the asteroid from outside the asteroid. I feel the cool peace of space. The calmness of being a mechanical being in a mechanical world. The Fematrix has no mind, but she certainly has soul. I wonder where it came from, how it became embodied in the metal, how…
“Can you hear me, Evie?”
Arkon’s voice comes through the… I don’t know.
Are they speakers? They just feel like my ears.
But he’s not in space. It’s an odd feeling, until I remember I am not in space either.
I am erotically jacked into a series of sensors and eye masks that map me to the machine.
Arkon is right next to me in the real world, though that world no longer feels real.
I feel the Fematrix’s will inside me, or maybe I am inside her. It’s hard to say. I want to give her movement. I want to take her from her floating place and move her through space, just as I have been taught.
“Don’t do anything too…”
“Whee!” I exclaim as I expand wings I didn’t know I had.
We’ve gone from flicking a finger to taking flight in the depths of space.
I can hear some consternation around me as Arkon and Drak react, but I don’t care what they think or do anymore.
All I care about is exploring the capabilities of my new physical body.
I loop around the asteroid, once, twice, three times. The power of the machine is hard to express in words, but it feels as though my body is merging with a power greater than any I could ever have imagined. I am strong, I am free. I am…
A hand wraps around the back of my neck, holding me firmly.
“Get back here,” Arkon says firmly. “I want you back in this room now, please. Return the robot to her resting place, and there will be no trouble. Refuse, and we will have conversations that will become incredibly painful.”
I don’t want to flee, and I know I cannot escape anyway. I might be in the machine, but my body is with Arkon and he is touching me, telling me I am still under his control.
So I do as I am told. I return her to the place I found her and I submit to being separated from the machine. I feel a real sense of loss as she fades from me.
“That was incredible,” I say as the eyewear is removed. “That was truly worth every bit of pain I have suffered getting here. You have made something that is beyond anything I would ever have dreamed I’d experience…”
I think Drak was pissed at my little joyride, but as I speak his expression softens.
“You understand,” he says. “You truly do get what it means to merge with her, don’t you?”
“It felt to me like she has a soul,” I say.
“She does. All things that are made, in one way or another, have a soul,” he says very seriously.
“And she has been knit together out of complexity and desperation. We need her, our people need her. And when she is seen to do what must be done, when her power is recognized, when she strikes down our foes…”