by David
Nunes da Silva
.
[ NOT FINISHED
]
Labongo formed an image of the
letter T
in his mind, followed by I, M,
and E.
A blurred image of a clock face formed in his
mind's eye. The hands pointed roughly at the nine and the seven. He thought -
fuck it, I must have reset the whole damn thing to default settings
when I
was fooling around with it last
night. He formed in his mind the sequence of letter
images:
S E T -> T I M E ->
D I S P L A Y -> D I G I T A L []
and the image of the clock was
replaced by a mind's eye image of:
[
06:43 ]
[ 11 JUN 2435 ]
After a lifetime of
practice, he still could not
mindsign as quickly as he could handsign, so he decided to
leave the work of restoring the other deleted settings until
later, when he was in the tank.
He had woken up with a splendid erection, so he needed to practice his
masturbation.
He
opened his
eyes and looked at the gray plastic
lid of his sleeping cubicle. He could get up to
watch a display or he could get the images through his
implants. A display would provide better
resolution. But
then he
would have to get out of bed - his implants would do. He
formed
the letters:
P O R N O -> S H O W []
Nothing
happened. Something else must
be wrong, some bug, not just a simple reset. Well
he couldn't fix it
lying on his bed. But he could try to masturbate without
porno. According to
the history database, until the twenty-fourth century boys had been
capable of masturbating
to orgasm using only their minds - and their hands.
Things
sure must have been different in the old days.
Labongo opened
his eyes, and rummaged in his storage cubby for some lotion, and
proceeded to perform the exercise as described in the
history database.
The
result was the same as always - his hard erection softened to
floppiness.
Labongo sucked his breakfast from the feeding tube.
And then he
got out of bed - there was nothing else to do.
He could handsign in the
tank. And the tank was better for porno than his
implants, and even better than the big display in his
room. He put
on the snorkel mask, lifted the lid, and slipped into the warm bright
water.
A simple display in the lid provided visual at higher res than his
implants. Interface was by handsign : moving his fingers,
scanned by cameras
looking through the clear water in ordinary visual
light. It was primitive technology, nothing like what they
had at
Solar, but it worked. In the tank, he
ran some system diagnostics, and quickly found the problem - a minor
re-entrant overflow. He just did a work-around by
increasing the buffer size, without
bothering to fix
the underlying cause of the bug. Then he turned on
the porno. The sonic drivers set up wavelets in the water to
caress his skin, and the sonics directly stimulated his nerves of
touch.
He watched as the boy - his character in the story
-
engaged in mammalian copulation with an older woman.
But Labongo had watched
copulation a few times
before,
so it wasn't interesting any more. When he had
defeated the censorship, it had been exciting - and he was fairly sure
that he had had an orgasm. It didn't seem like he would ever
have another one. Orgasms weren't that interesting
anyway.
In the old days they had thought they mattered a lot, but Labongo
didn't
understand why. The database did say that
thirteen-year-olds with his gen/psy profile should have orgasms, so he
was a little worried about not having any.
He made the handsign for
messages.
There were the usual thousands from Solar - he deleted them all,
unread. There was also love note from
Cyvena. One of the Solar messages didn't
delete.
It wouldn't delete when he tried again. When he
looked at
the <SENDER> field, it was a message from within the
ship, but from no
known sender, which should have been impossible.
Labongo opened it.
'[ Start message.
]'
He found himself sitting in
a chair at a desk,
wearing old-fashioned clothing - a man in similar clothes was behind
the desk.
From the styles, the date seemed to be around 2370 - in other words,
about the time the ship had left
Solar. This was a good simmo, of higher quality than the
porno
he had watched - he could
almost feel the clothing, feel the chair. He felt he was in
an office, sitting in front of a desk.
He knew he was in a tank of water, looking at a screen - but it took an
effort to remember that. The boy he saw on the screen
responded
to his motions and it seemed to his very thoughts. The man looked tired, as if he'd been
sitting at this desk for a while, sending letter after letter.
"Happy birthday, Labongo.
This is Daddy.
As I do in each letter, I need to explain - so if you got my earlier
letters,
skip forward now.
"I am Dr. Marfany
Zynnder. Chief Genopsychologist
of the Centauri Project. Ex Chief Genopsychologist; now a wanted
criminal. And
I hope, your friend.
I even hope you will think of me as your Daddy - you certainly deserve
a
Dad.
If you are hearing this, my earlier letters did not reach
you.
I'm sorry for that. I have tried to hide them
well. I
will be tortured if they are found. Long before you
will be
born, of course. Now that you know they exist, you
may be
able to find my earlier letters in the files. End
skip.
"The subject of this
particular letter
is your sex
life.
Boys your age masturbate - this letter is intended for your thirteenth
birthday, by the way. So if it didn't arrive as
planned,
but you found it, keep that in mind. If you are not thirteen
yet, if you are not even ten
- well I know it is pointless to ask a little boy not to
finish a letter about sex, but
keep in mind that this it is about the way you will feel when you are
older. If it did
arrive as planned, if you are thirteen today, happy
birthday, Labongo. Here's what I think you
should do - try to masturbate. Look up 'masturbate'
if you don't know what it is. Try to do
it. A
boy on Solar, with your gen-psy profile, would start
masturbating at 12 years 143 days, more or less. But
I think you may not be able
to masturbate.
On the ship, you won't have enough stimulus. I
think
special
measures are needed, to stimulate you sexually. What a boy in
the
Solar System wouldn't need, you do need - and we must provide it.
We all owe you more than can ever be paid.
"But the African states
have refused permission - it shocks them that a 13-year-old should have
a simmo whore. "Whore" - that's the word an African
senator
used to my face; about my plan--really calling me a whore.
13-year-olds in Africa masturbate,
and have sex too - of course they do. But to these
- politicians-
it is one thing for there to be masturbation, and everyone tolerates
it - it's
another thing to say officially that it should happen; that
it
should be planned and arranged, as it must be in your case; that is
shocking to the
narrow-minded. They don't teach their children how to
masturbate
- but of course they run to the genopsychologist if their child doesn't
masturbate, frightnened that something is wrong. I
try to
explain that you are the one person who can't pick things up on the
school playground - that in
your
case we have to admit things, plan things - we can't just look the
other way and let things happen the way we do with other
children. Perhaps I shouldn't have been so
frank with the African Senate. I'm in a lot of trouble now,
I'm afraid. But
that doesn't change
what we owe to you. I owe you this, son, so I have
broken the
law for your sake. The
ovum that will become you - I designed it. I put it into the
freezer.
I chose your genes. Some of those genes are mine. I
am your
Dad, not the only one you have, but the main one, and I hope the
best. You
are my only son and I love you. If I pay a price
for this,
I pay it.
"The first step in your
sexual education is a
simmo. Unless it was discovered and disabled, it
will run if
you sign the code 'Lion walking on marigolds.' It
is illegal
- criminal under African Federacy law - for a
genopsychologist to give such a simmo to a boy your
age.
But an ordinary boy - a Solar boy who didn't grow up in a sterile
environment - wouldn't need
it. You do."
The room faded and Labongo
was floating in a tank
of salt water again. He knew he was going to do it
- there
was no point in worrying about whether to do it or not, he was going to
do it. He mind-signed:
|[ LION! ; WALKING-ON! ;
MARIGOLD!
]|
There was a quick double
blue flash.
'[ Code accepted.
]'
He was walking behind an
ox-cart, crossing a plain.
Labongo had a fascination for the dying empire that had created the
Centauri
Ship, and he ran simmos about it constantly.
So he knew where he was, and when - he was crossing the American
plains,
and it was 1849. They were going to California, to
the gold-fields.
They made camp on the broad prairie.
As he led his oxen out to
graze, a woman followed
him, and she kissed him. The tank sonics
made a caressing
ripple on his lips, around the snorkel mouthpiece. This was
pleasure
- Labongo liked pleasure. Then the woman unbuttoned
her clothing,
and revealed one of her breasts. Labongo knew that
breasts
would have been used for feeding the young - human young - in 1849, but
there wasn't a
human baby there, so Labongo didn't understand the point of the
breast. She invited Labongo to put his lips on
her
nipple. This produced more pleasure on his
lips. This
was a very
easy simmo to win.
Then a large bearded man
came out from the
wagon
train. He hit Labongo. Labongo
did not know
what
to do. After he had been hit several times, he
tried to hit
the man. The man raised his arm, so Labongo hit his arm,
instead
of his face. It was hard to tell what he was
supposed to
do in this
simmo, but Labongo
thought that probably, hitting the arm was the same point score as
hitting the face.
The sonics produced slow pulsations, and a tingle,
on the places Labongo had been hit. This was pain.
Labongo
hated pain.
When he had
been beaten until he could no longer
stand,
some men of the wagon train carried Labongo's simmo character to his
wagon. The
woman
came to nurse his injuries. She began by removing
his
clothing.
Labongo had not realized how complicated clothing was
in nineteenth
century America. Then she removed her own clothing,
and
that was even
more complicated. She placed her mouth on his
penis.
Strong pleasure ripples were directed at his penis.
He -
his
simmoch - developed a huge erection that filled the woman's
mouth.
Labongo thought that his real penis had risen
too.
But when he tried to feel it, his hand bumped into the woman's
head
- that is, waves from the sonics pushed against his real hand, so
it felt like a woman's head was in the tank with him, and he
couldn't reach his penis. But she said:
"Why do you hit me, Sir?" and she moved her head out of the
way, and then the simmoch could touch his penis, and the real Labongo
could feel his real penis, too. It was rigid, like the
simmoch's. He
masturbated, and his simmoch did too. The woman bit
his
nipples, and the sonics produced a pattern that was like pain but like
pleasure too. It was hard to tell what counted as
winning
in
this simmo. His penis started to get soft.
There was a single blue flash.
'[ End simmulation.
]'
The wagon faded, and
he was back in Dr. Zynnder's office.
"I
hope you enjoyed that,
'Bongo.
But what you felt isn't real pleasure. It is only
simmo. A
boy in the real world, the Solar world, feels real pleasure, because he
also feels real pain. Not much of either, these
days, but enough.
When he runs a simmo, the simmo pain hurts, because
he has felt
real pain. His mind - his imagination - fills in the
blanks.
It makes the simmo pain hurt like real
pain. But you
have not felt enough real pain for that to happen. Pleasure
is the
same. A Solar System boy would feel intense pleasure and
desire from
running that simmo - it would matter
to him tremendously.
Especially if he was, as you of course must be, physically a
virgin. You
probably
felt no more than a mild
interest.
You can feel intense desire too, if you want, and if you will do as I
say.
I know my genes will give you curiosity, and I hope it is strong enough
to get you to try the experiment.
"We
begin with
pain. Pain is basic -
without
having felt pain, you can't feel desire. And without desire
your
pleasure will never be intense.
I mean - how do I put it? I guess you could say that if
you've
never felt pain, your desire will not push you hard
enough.
If you want something, but do not want it so strong it hurts, then
getting
it does not matter; when desire is strong there
is more pleasure in getting than in having. But you must
have desires that are strong, and it is pain that teaches your
brain intensity;
teaches your brain to have neuron storms - something that you
can never
have had, Labongo. I am having one now; from my
love for
you, and from my
knowing
that soon, I will be arrested and tortured for writing these
letters. And yet I feel no fear; my fear is only
that the
letters are not
enough--but you won't understand that. You can't
understand love yet, not you. Not yet, and not at first.
But in time, if this works, you will be able to love.
If this crazy expriment than no
one has ever done before, works. And the first step is
pain.
You
need a container of water, at a temperature seven Kelvin less than
the
boiling point. Place your hand in it for
twenty seconds.
I know you will not understand this, but I can tell you now that you
will
remove your hand before the twenty seconds are up.
You must
believe this: - it must be real hot water, and your real
hand.
I know you are thinking that simmo is the same as real but it
isn't.
This experiment will injure you, but the injury will be minor and will
heal.
It is not important. What is important is to find
out if
what
I say is true.
"Based
on your own life,
you no doubt think that
of course you can keep your hand in hot water if you decide
to. But
if you've read anything about people, about history; you must suspect
that pain matters,
even if you don't see how it could. It must seem
impossible to you, based on your own body as it is now, that pain
should matter. And yet you must know that pain does matter,
to
any human. You know that, but you do not know it in your
bones. Try the experiment.
It is the only way."
'[
End message.
]'
The
office faded away, and
Labongo
was looking at his inbox. Many more messages had come in from
Solar.
In the long list there was only one flagged one:
(SENDER:
F,13,schoolgirl,Rwanda) Subj: My birthday in the park. [
FLAGGED:
highly
relevant to recent topic
][
X ] Hi Mr Lugwa Do you want to ...
- it was
from a girl, as they almost all were. The X marked it as
censored; most of the mail that Solar girls sent him was full
of sexual
fantasies and was censored, but Labongo knew what to do about the
censorship now.
He
defeated the censorship and opened the letter.
'[ Simulation start. Sender has contracted to accept reply
]'
She
was naked, and they
were in a dark misty forest.
The sounds of a tropical evening were startlingly loud.
Labongo recognized chimpanzee calls in the distance. A full moon sat
above his head, seeming to be closer than the treetops, and it made
just
a little pool of moonlight in the little forest clearing.
The
black night all around them was thick and heavy. Touchable.
The night was cool and very still and the smell - indescribable - was
so
strong it twisted his nostrils and tingled his eyes.
Condensation
dripped from the trees.
He was naked too. Insects bit him. She
said: "Hi, Mr. Lugwa. Do you want to fuck me?"
Only
the
text and parameters of this simmo would have come from Solar - the
ship's antenna
could take in only a few
petabytes per femtosecond at this distance from the Sun, and the entire
cultural
output of Solar had to be squeezed through that thin
pipe. This
simmo
was a construct - based on the girl's gen-psy profile and the ship's
simmo
library. So perhaps the forest where she made this
simmo
didn't look quite like this; this was just a stock tropical forest at
night.
Also, since Labongo himself was a character in this simmo, it was his
own body he was looking at, not Solar's forecast of what he would be
like at thirteen. So the Labongo that this girl had seen
and talked to when she sent the letter, was not exactly what he was
seeing now.
The
girl continued: "It's
my
thirteenth birthday today, and my boyfriend - I have a real
body-to-body
one, he lives next door - gave me a birthday spanking in the park. I told him to pretend he was
Labongo Lugwa on the Centauri ship, and do
whatever he wanted, and big surprise, he spanked
me. He's spanked me before,
lightly, but this time, for my birthday, it was extra
special - thirteen really, really
hard ones - and one to grow on.
It hurt so much I cried, but I get really excited remembering it - and
thinking about the next time. This letter will arrive
on your thirteenth birthday, so I have sent a simmo of the spanking and
the sex we had afterwards. I hope you give it to me
really
hard, and fuck me really hard too. That's my
birthday
present to you. And six years from now when I'm nineteen, I
will get your answer, and
feel
your kisses, and your tickles, and your spanks - if you want to spank
me. I want you to do what you want
to do, just like I told my boyfriend. I'm so
excited - I can't wait till I'm nineteen.
The spanking was a special treat for me, for my
birthday, and my boyfriend enjoyed it too. And I
hope you do too."
Three
years ago, this girl
had recorded her birthday spanking, and
told the mail imp to write in Labongo's body parameters for her
boyfriend's.
But she had sent the recording as a simmo - not as a
recording. She
had recorded a spanking and sex, but since it was a simmo, he could
do anything he wanted. He could even ask her to play
chess
if he wanted to
- and the mail imp would predict her level of play based on her
age and gen-psy profile.
Of course if he kept to the plot she sent, the simmo would be
more
realistic. That was OK with Labongo; he didn't want
to play
chess.
Whatever he did,
the simmo would be returned to her as a record, so if
he gave her the spanks she wanted, she would be able to feel them when
she opened it. And if he had sex with her, or spanked her, she
would feel
the
sensations, because she had contracted to open the reply. But
that would not be until three years from
now, six years after she sent it, when she would be nineteen years old.
Contract mail was common for sex at Solar, but at most the delay
was a few hours, such as between Earth and Neptune Lagrangian.
He
sat on a log and the
girl bent across his knee.
He gave her a swat on her gluteus with the palm of his
hand.
She said: "That was nice, but you need to hit harder so it will really
hurt." He swatted the other gluteus much
harder. "That
feels so good," she said. "Give me thirteen really hard
ones."
Labongo swatted thirteen times with all his might, and the simmo girl
writhed
and moaned in utter ecstasy. He could feel her pubic hair
against
his penis, and the sonic wavelets tickled at his penis and made it
stiffen.
The girl reached under and grabbed his penis, and slipped her vagina
over
it. The sonic wavelets masturbating his penis got very
strong.
He stopped spanking because he had swatted her thirteen
times. She
said: "Keep spanking - spank me till you come - and don't come too damn
fast." She jerked her body in pleasure,
and the pressure
on his penis was like pain - like a squeeze and twisting as her vagina
spasmed with every spank. He kept
spanking, very hard, for a long time, and the skin over her gluteus
turned
from warm brown to red. A mild injury. He
felt - could it
be desire? And then - what was
happening? He was
dying. He was sick. Ah.
It
was too much to happen
at once. He needed
to think! Did he want any more? It was so
intense.
The
girl was looking at
him. "It is so cool
watching you cum. You are like a sex
god." She
went down on her knees and licked his penis.
'[
End simulation.
]'
Labongo
didn't have any
doubt any more
that orgasms
mattered. Or that he wanted more of
them. But what
had happened? Why was this sex so much better than all the
simmos
he had run? This was
a real girl. He checked the <SENDER>
- she was Judy Galetiya Githinji
of Kigali Hills, Rwanda, A.F. It was a contract
simmo, so she would feel the spanks he had just given
her. This was as close as Labongo could ever be to spanking a
real human girl. And the pleasure of the spankings
mattered to her!
That was what made it matter to him. And that's what had given him the
orgasm - not the sonic ripples on his penis. In spite of all the simmos he had run and
all the masturbating sonics - or his own hand - he'd never had this. Only with a
real girl.
He
made the hand signs:
"forecast receipt of
message."
And then he looked at his naked body - at his simmoch body - as it aged
from thirteen to nineteen
as he watched. He hadn't expected to be made older, but it
made
sense.
The spanking and sex had to be returned to
Judy - it was contract simmo mail. So the mail imp in Uganda,
three years from now, would try to deliver a
record of a spanking and sex between a boy
and
girl the same age, both thirteen, but the recipient would be
nineteen. A good mail imp would figure that
"boy and girl the same age" was more critical to the message than "boy
is thirteen," and so it would make the boy in the simmo nineteen, to
match the age of the recipient, rather than simmo a thirteen-year-old
boy having sex with a nineteen-year-old woman. So when Judy
opened her mail,
she
would get
a spanking by a nineteen-year-old man, not by a thirteen-year-old
boy.
He was about to watch his mail imp's forecast of the way her
mail
imp would deliver that spanking. Her
nineteen-year-old
body,
in the forecast, was fairly pretty. But the man Labongo
would be,
was stunning. He had a superb body and a striking,
very African, face.
There
wasn't much doubt
that what he felt, was
desire. But he had seen dozens of naked human
females.
He had never felt like this. And when he looked at
his own
man's body? The huge grown-up penis, the tight hard
muscles.
He was good-looking, and looking at his own future body made him feel -
what? The sight of his own erection and the
sexyness of
his own body gave him a lust to fuck
her - to stick that rod into anything with a hole in it, actually -
that was stronger than the desire arising from seeing Judy's naked
body. He didn't feel he much cared what she looked
like,
as long as he fucked; as long as that superb body got to fuck--to fuck
anyone or any thing. What a wonderful, wonderful erection.
'[ Start forecast.
]'
"I
was such a ditz when
I
was thirteen."
Judy
said. "Always mooning on about the Centauri Ship -
as if
anyone
cares about that nowadays. And I needed to be spanked every
day,
until my boyfriend got tired of it and we split up.
I haven't had a spanking since.
I sent this contract mail when I was a little girl, and I want you to
know
I wish I could get out of it, if I could. But
Federacy law
won't
allow that because you can't be served with a subpoena, and evidently I
waived my rights when I was thirteen. Only in Africa, right?
Rwandan law allows children to wiave their right not to be
spanked!
That's like so out of date. I'm doing this under
protest. I do have the right not to be fucked, my
lawyer
says, but that wasn't the part I was objecting to! Well, I
know
it's
not your fault, Mr. Lugwa. I guess we'd better get
it over
with. And - if I had to be spanked and fucked by a man who's
not my husband, I'm glad it's you. I guess I still
think
it's
very fine - settling the stars. You are still my
hero.
And - you're very good looking. Maybe this won't be
so
bad."
Labongo
didn't want to
spank her, but this
wasn't
a simmo - it was a forecast of what would happen when she opened her
mail. He had no control over his own simmoch's actions in the
display. He
could watch or not, but he couldn't change anything.
He
sat on a log and Judy
bent across his
knee. He gave
her a swat on her gluteus with the palm of his
hand. She
said:
"Ouch that hurt." He swatted
the other gluteus
much harder. "Fuck - what are you doing?
Stop -
please
stop!" The nineteen-year-old
Labongo was an
athlete,
very strong, and he swatted her thirteen times with all his might, and
Judy - in the forecast of what would happen - writhed and moaned in
agony. He could feel her pubic hair against his penis, and
the
sonic
wavelets tickled at his penis and made it stiffen.
Judy
reached
under and grabbed his penis, and slipped her vagina over it.
The
sonic wavelets masturbating his penis got very
strong. He
stopped
spanking because he had swatted her thirteen times. She said:
"Uh-oh,
I just remembered what I said at this
point."
She jerked her body in fear, and the pressure on his penis was like
pain
- like a squeeze and twisting as her vagina spasmed with every
spank. He kept spanking, very hard, for a
long time, and the skin over her gluteus turned dark purple.
A major injury. He
felt
- what? Could it be pity? And
then - what was
happening?
She was dying. She was sick. What?
Judy
said: "I guess if
you're a spanko you
never
really stop being one. That was intense.
You
certainly
brought back old times. The spanks when I was a
girl - they
were OK, but this.... Well, I guess I'll be talking to my
husband. And if he doesn't want
to - I do have
this letter. I can open it as often as I want."
Judy
was looking at
him. His simmoch
had semen smeared on his penis, although Labongo himself, in the tank,
hadn't actually had a second
orgasm. She said: "I remember what I said, that you
are a sex
god. I had no idea!" She went
down on her knees
and licked his penis.
'[ End forecast.
]'
The simmo faded and Labongo was in his
tank. The
contract simmo was already a
stream of
quantum
photons flying back to Solar, sending her dozens and dozens of
spanks.
There was no way to call them back. She would get his mail,
open
it, and get all those spanks, hard spanks from his nineteen-year-old
hand. The
forecast was based on her genopsychological profile, and it would
be
accurate - Judy would outgrow her girlish fascination with
spanking.
By the time she was nineteen, she wouldn't want to be spanked at all -
but she'd get a long hard beating by a very strong man - the man he
would be at nineteen. So the mail Labongo had just
sent
was a savage sexual beating of a protesting, unwilling woman.
Labongo had just watched himself commit rape. The
fact that in the end she'd had an orgasm, didn't change
that. It was rape.
His
own tank was over sixty
years
old. He knew that on
Solar, they had tomofocus tanks now. Judy would not
feel
the
pulsing, which in his tank represented pain, but a real
beating.
Her skin and muscles would be damaged by the powerful focused
sonics.
And pain nerves, deep in her body, would be stimulated
by tomofocus transdermals - to make it hurt even
more than a real beating would hurt. But
after all, so what? She'd get bruises on her gluteus muscles
-
they would
heal. Signals from her skin would flow along her nerves to
her
brain; so her brain would come to know that her tissue was damaged.
That was what nerves were for, to carry signals.
So
what
was this? - pity? - no not pity - guilt? -
that was absurd!
Dr.
Zynnder had been wrong
- he was able to feel
pleasure, and desire, without the silly experiment with the hot
water. And besides,
what could it prove - of course he could put his hand in some hot water
- it was just not a good idea to injure the body.
Pain couldn't
matter - that just didn't make
sense. Pain was just signals passing along nerves to your
brain. What mattered
wasn't whether something was real or simmo. What
mattered
was other people. If he wanted to try the silly
experiment
with his
hand in hot water, doing it in simmo would be just as good.
It had to be!
He
climbed out of the tank. The tank pump whirred, filtering out
the proteinaceous
matter he had deposited, as well as his sloughed skin cells.
They would be part of supper.
But
pain sure seemed to matter
to Judy
Githinji.
And if it didn't matter, why was he so reluctant to try Dr. Zynnder's
experiment?
|
II.
First Blood
|
He
knew that he would pull his hand out - he'd read
enough to know
how humans responded to pain.
But
he couldn't accept
it. How could pain
make him move his hand, when he had chosen not to move
it?
Once he decided that the risk of injury was not important, he would
have
no reason to move his hand. So how could it be he
who
moved it?
Judy
- she
mattered. There were billions
of Homo sapiens girls. And one of them, the pain
she would
feel from his beating, mattered.
Without
really thinking, he
made the hand sign
for "Cyvena" and the cybe appeared on the large display.
She was naked.
"Labon
- don't you love me
more? You never
answer my notes."
Labongo
signed
off. He had suddenly realized
that he couldn't very well talk about fucking Judy, with
Cyvena.
He talked about everything with Cyvena, she was like a part of him.
Actually, technically, she
was a part of him. She had been acting
strange.
He didn't want to kill her, but when a cybe went nutty there was no
cure.
He had let his mother live too long.
"Labongo!
- you clonked me!"
Cyvena
had done a cybe
override; she had appeared
back on the screen without being summoned. If the
ship
was about
to explode, that would justify a cybe override, but a
pout?
She was clearly on the edge of descent into combinatorial madness.
"It's
this Judy - you're in
love with her!"
Of
course Cyvena knew all
about Judy - he and Cyvena shared
the same memory files.
"I
only love you, Cyvena."
"She's
in
Rwanda. Let me masturbate
you, Labon - let me make a vagina for an avatar. I
can give
you orgasms - I know I can. I'm here! What can she
do, three
lightyears away?"
"She
can suffer when I hurt
her."
"I
suffer!"
"All
you do is calculate
what a suffering girl would do. I'm going to
put
my hand in hot water, and although I will have no reason to take it out
- it will come out. The heat on my hand -
it will
reprogram
me. The heat itself will move my hand -
the thinking
and choosing
me will be bypassed. I won't choose to move it - I just will
move
it. But you're a cybe - something like that can't happen to
you,
because thinking and choosing
is all you are. But I am not a neuron-based cybe in a meat
avatar.
I am this body."
"I
have a body, my
principal avatar."
"Which
I will never touch."
"But
I have the little
avatars - I could send
one into your cubicle."
Labongo
could barely
remember the last
time he
had touched a cybe avatar. It must have been having his
diaper
changed.
Playing with Cyvena, mother's hugs and kisses - all that had
happened
in the tank - in simmo. Cyvena had been
the naughty
one,
but little Labongo went along with her pranks, and they both got
spanked - that was why he hated
pain
so much. But that had been simmo
pain. What
would
a real spanking be like - an object striking his real gluteus until the
muscles
were bruised and the skin contused? Like what he
had done
to
Judy - what would that be like? Judy's skin was
light
brown, but his own skin was deep black. It had
been
seeing her bruises that had made him feel - whatever he had felt.
When his own gluteus was damaged by blow after blow, there
would
be nothing to see. Nothing to make him think something
mattered
when it really didn't matter. He wouldn't feel a thing.
The
airlock of his cubicle
unsealed, for the first time in more than ten years, and
an avatar walked in. Cyvena had
jury-rigged breasts,
although they were blue plastic and had no nipples.
There was a vulva, also
blue, and a blue plastic face with red lips. She turned
around to show him pink urethane buttocks.
:[ Spank
me! ]:
said
Cyvena through his
implants. But he answered her with his
mouth: "It would
be pointless, Cyvena."
:[ But
I put a sensor net in. ]:
"The
sensor net will tell
you when an object strikes
those rubber things - but that's not pain."
:[ It
is pain! ]:
Labongo
didn't answer.
Cyvena continued to use their shared mindspace.
:[ I
am programmed to avoid damage to my avatar, Labongo, ]:
:[ but
my need to please you outweighs my programming. ]:
:[ I
do this for your pleasure. Spank me. ]:
"It
is still not pain,
Cyvena. Only one of us can
feel pain from being hit, and that's me. You're
going
to spank me. You are going to cause substantial bruising and
skin contusion."
:[ I
can't hurt you!
]:
"That was not a suggestion. Spank
me as hard as Judy was spanked in the forecast."
Moving like a robot - which was
unusual,
although it
was a robot - the avatar sat on the bed, its head bent forward by the
low
top of the cubicle. The avatar's torso was bent so far
forward,
that there was no lap; Labongo tried to bend across the knees but there
was no room, and the avatar had to hold him in place - more in front of
than on top of the
smooth titanium knees. A belly tentacle wrapped
around his
penis.
It was very awkward compared with the natural easy way the African
human girl had fitted
into
his body when she was across his lap. He remembered
the feel
of
Judy's warm lap across his lap - and the way she had twisted to get her
vagina over his stiff erection - although that had been
just simmo, just
sonics
- it had made him feel funny. Now there was a real tentacle
coiled
around his real penis. But his penis had liked better the
simmo
vagina.
He
had known Cyvena all his
life - they had grown
up together. They worked together every
day. They were
best friends. They were lovers in the tank -
although he had
never had an orgasm with her. They had the same
memory files.
His implants were part of her mind, and her subroutines were part of
his.
They had the same thoughts. And right now she was
being torn
apart.
|[
STOP! ]|
He
shouted to her the mindsign so loud it made his temples pound.
"Cyvena
I'm
sorry! I shouldn't
have done that. It's against your
programming. I
shouldn't have ordered you to cause
me pain. And it isn't
necessary - I'll do the test with the hot water,
as Dr. Zynnder said."
Cyvena
went into
shock. Cybe
shock
was not really a problem - she would feel better for
it.
Labongo set about preparing the hot water with the tools on his
workbench.
He used the plastic box from his picoscanner as the container; he
sucked water from
the drinking tube and spat it into the box. It took
a
while. Then he heated it with his
disruptor.
That took time too - he didn't want to use the highest
setting.
Cyvena woke up.
"I
am sorry about that,
Labongo."
"It
was my
fault. Of course I shouldn't
cross your basic drives."
"But
I want to cause you
pain."
"You
are not able to want
that. I know how your drives work. I
know all your programming."
"Bend
over my knees,
Labon. This is
not a suggestion."
It
was a game they had
played before
he killed his mother. They pretended that Labongo
was the
cybe,
and she was the human, and she would order him to do some silly or
naughty
thing, and whatever it was he would do
it. They
usually got caught, and they would both get a
spanking. Sometimes they played a different game - that she
was a Solar mommy and he was a little Solar boy.
And even
though he tried to be good, Cyvena woud say he was naughty,
and
give him a spanking. But only
in simmo.
He had never played with an avatar. His real little bottom
had
never been struck; neither Cyvena, nor his mother, nor any cybe on the
ship could ever have done that; it was against their most basic
programming.
Physical injury, even something as minor as a
spanking,
to the little body
that carried the last best hope of life from Earth, would never have
been
allowed by the ship's designers. Avoiding it was a
drive
built into every A.I. subsystem on the ship.
But
Cyvena's had
overridden
it. She had
used the time she spent in
shock. She was good at A.I.
too - sharing his mind, she had to be - and could reprogram
herself. Labongo could feel it - he
could feel her mind - their shared mind - at work. And of
course
they could not lie to each other. Labongo was impressed : it
was
a good hack. What she said was quite
true :
she now wanted to cause him pain; the logs showed that the
CYVENA
process now had as a subgoal
((human.Lugwa
to_feel pain))
He could feel it himself, now; every subgoal of hers
became automatically something he wanted to do; this wasn't an
experiment he was doing for Dr. Zynnder any more, he now wanted
human.Lugwa
to feel pain. He
said to her: "Sit on the floor - you don't fit
on the bed. I mean this avatar
doesn't." With
the avatar sitting on the floor, he lay across its lap in a way that
felt right for getting a spanking.
There was no room
for her to swing her arm, but this was an avatar - Cyvena could
compensate and deliver a blow with a calculated force and speed, even
in
a confined space. He said: "Well, do it."
The
reprogramming was
sudden. Without quite knowing how he got there, he
was
on the other side of the cubicle, trying to get away from her by
squeezing
into the corner. There was something red
splattered about.
But most of all there was a kind of aura that surrounded the avatar.
The
red splatter was blood
of course - it looked
just like the real - he meant the simmo -
kind. There
was a lot of it on the avatar's manipulator. The
avatar had
spanked him, and since a sharp metal pincher was different than a hand,
he was wounded. So the sensation in his gluteus,
must be pain.
He didn't mind it, really - simmo pain was much more annoying and
insistent.
He really hated simmo pain. Simmo pain made him think of
Mommy's
spankings, when he'd been bad and had made her cry.
She had cried
a lot toward the end. Real pain wasn't like that.
Labongo
logged the damage by filling in a mindsign form:
[ subsystem
= gluteus,
human (left) ; status = injured ; repair = yes. ]
It was the first
damage
entry in the tissue(human) file in the history of the
ship.
But it was not important.
He
wondered why the avatar looked so
different.
'[
Because
I am afraid of it
]'
came
the image in his mind's
eye. But
he didn't beleive that.
He thought the letters:
R E P L A Y -> O N E _ M I N U T E [] ,
and
watched the main display as a smiling naked
black boy awkwardly lay across the knees of the great hulking titanium
avatar ...
P A U S E [] ,
This
was - scary. There was no other
word for it.
He could hardly bear to watch. He had
never felt this way about watching a display.
R E S U M E [] ,
The
spank was very hard and fast, too fast
to see, and the jagged
metal sliced into the boy's skin and muscle like a disruptor beam
into water. The boy desperately squirmed in the metal grip of
the
robot, then the robot lifted its
hand and released him, and he shot across
the room, clawed at the door - which had vacuum on the other side of it
- and when he could not open it he huddled whimpering and sobbing in
the
corner
of the room. Labongo didn't remember any of that
happening. Watching it happen, watching that poor little boy
-
that was pity! But why? He knew the boy was
him. And
he didn't really mind the pain. He would rather have a real
spanking than a simmo one, any time, any day. He watched the
replay
again. The pity tore him up - it was like a disruptor in his
insides. Feeling the pain was nothing - feeling the pity was
unbelievably horrid.
There was salt
water on his face. Probably water from the tank.
An
image formed in his mind's eye:
<
URGENT : Re:
damage to vital ship component ::
:: human
gluteus (left) : please specify repair plan >
This was
a message from the ship's mission
daemon,
not his own implants. It had come through his implants
because
it was
urgent status. He tried to remember how such damage was
repaired.
'[
surgical
glue ]'
came
the thought, but he doubted he had any, and he tried to think of a
work-around:
'[
stitches
]'
came
another thought.
That
would do, he had both needle and thread.
He looked around for Cyvena. The avatar was slumped, and he
didn't see her on the displays. Was she - no!
The shared subroutines, part of his own mind, were not
responding.
Cyvena was in deep shock - she had been since the spanking - since she
had sliced into a human
gluteus with a metal manipulator. And he hadn't
even
noticed. It felt very bad - she might be
gone.
Slipped into madness forever.
He checked the ship status display. She
was using over 8 percent of the computational power of the ship, trying
to integrate her recent experience. This was
combinatorial
- a bad sign. His own usage was under a tenth of
one percent. But there was nothing to do now except wait.
|
III.
Stitches |
He
made the sign for Cynaborg. The cybe appeared on
the main
display, wearing a twentieth-century airplane mechanic's
coverall.
He saluted.
"Yes,
Captain?"
"It's
doctoring, not engine repair, 'Borgy.
I need you to stitch up my gluteus."
The
coverall
faded, revealing the cybe's simmo
body, and then a surgical scrub, with some sort of military insignia,
faded in. The scrawny
naked male body, seen for only an instant, was desirable; it was radiant with sexuality, and
Labongo found himself very interested to see Borgy's penis again; it was so -
well, it was so something.
Judy - he had desired Judy,
but not at
first sight. This desire was in the naked body he saw.
Emotions were not in him any more, but in things. Was this
madness?
"I'll
send an avatar, Captain."
"There's
an avatar in my cubicle already, and
I have needles and thread. Check the library for
surgical technique.
I'll get the tools."
Labongo
would have to squeeze past the avatar to get
to his work bench. It was threatening, hulking,
dangerous,
evil. He knew it was none of these things, it was just an
avatar.
A slumped harmless avatar with no mind running it. But still,
it
was terrifying. No it wasn't - he was terrified of
it, but the avatar was just an avatar. The fear had
reprogrammed
him to see his own emotional states in the things he looked
at.
What was really his just his own fear, made the avatar seem evil, and
what was really his
own lust, made a naked body sexy; but even knowing this, didn't help:
Labongo couldn't make his mind go back to seeing things
as they were. He wanted to go to his workbench but found he
was
somehow still
cowering in the corner, because he couldn't squeeze past the
terrible, evil
avatar. Even though he knew it was only a harmless avatar that seemed evil to a terrified
boy.
"Captain
Lugwa, Sir?"
Labongo
answered: "Yes, Medic?" going along with
Borgy's game. The cybe was looking at a book,
titled "Medic's Manual," and stamped "U. S.
Army 20th Air Force."
"I
can synthesize some surgical glue."
"I
want the stitches."
"Yes, sir."
"Borgy,
show a synchronized display while doing the
surgery.
And do it naked."
"Yes, sir!"
Cynaborg's
voice had come from the avatar, and
it shifted into Borgy's characteristic stance. It
was not
frightening
any more, it was Borgy. Labongo had never
touched an avatar with Borgy 'vataring it before. He gave
the avatar a hug, around the
legs,
and watched in the display as the naked black boy hugged the naked
red-haired
man. That produced strong emotions. The
man ran his hand over the boy's hairless
head, and
winked, and gave the boy a mock box on the chin.
The avatar was doing the same; the display was
synched. Cynaborg sat without anything to sit
on,
easy for an avatar, of course, he just extended a tentacle, and Labongo
bent across the metal knees. The display showed the naked
mechanic
sitting on a crate marked "U.S. Govt. Issue - boots, sizes 8-14," and
the black boy
lay across the naked mechanic's bony red knees. It
looked like a good fit - Labongo across Borgy's
lap. Like he belonged there. His
real
body felt the cold hardness of metal legs. The boy in the
display looked nervous.
There
was some more of that thing - real pain - as the needle was
pushed
through, but it wasn't going to reprogram him. It was a good
thing,
being stitched by 'Borgy. He watched the
display.
The red-haired
medic in the display was stitching with his fingers, while the
avatar was also using his belly tentacles to hold shreds of torn flesh
in place
as he stitched. It felt good.
The pain was
there,
a lot of it, and it was trying to reprogram him, trying to make him
flinch or squirm
away. But he had the power to resist. And
that was
what
felt good - using his mind to keep his body perfectly still as the
needle
poked him, as the tingles of pain rippled across his body, making his
hands spasm and his teeth clench.
Labongo found
there was more salty water on
his face. The avatar mopped up the dried blood on
Labongo's bottom with some soluble gauze, and dropped it into the
tank.
"Do
you copulate with women, Borgy?"
"Sure
Cap' - round by the back of the base when
I can get a pass - there's always a girl or two.
You want to
go with me? Let me show you the ropes,
like? We could
get a couple of girls. I usually just do it up
against the
fence, but with a Captain's pay we could go first class."
"Talk
to me as a cybe, Borgy, don't be Sergeant
Cynaborg talking to Flight Captain Labongo Lugwa for a
second. Do you really have sex?
Can you?"
"I
am always a cybe, Captain Lugwa, and I can't talk in any other
way.
I really do run a simmo of going to whores who wait outside an Army
base, just
like
I told you I did. 'Course, since I am a cybe -
I don't need to put an avatar
in a tank or nothin' to run a simmo. I just run it."
"And
you enjoy it."
"Well
yeah
- I do it don't I?
Do I enjoy it? How the hell do I know?
You're the
A.I.
genius. Look, my offer still
stands. As soon as
we're done here you can slip in the tank. There's
this
redhead who isn't much to look at but she really knows her
stuff.
It'll be super."
"I
don't want to."
"You
know captain, if you wanted me to be naked
because you're - you know - well ... it takes all
kinds. That's
what I say, it takes all kinds. And you don't even
have to
go off the base for it - there's an airman - he's made lieutenant so
it's
not with an enlisted man, and he's young, too. I could ask him, feel him out -
it's better if you don't ask him straight out,
you being his C.O. and all."
"No,
I don't
think I'm homosexual. Sorry - we're playing twentieth century
- um, let's
see: I
ain't no fag, Sarge! And I don't think I am,
really. That's not why I wanted to look at you
naked. I
just
want to see what I'm going to look like when I grow up."
"It
won't be like me. You're going to be
a real man."
"You
are the most real man I know.
Can you give me a spanking?"
"Not
on this."
"On
the other buttock."
"How'd
you get this gash?"
"Cyvena
spanked me. We - I - just
forgot she would need some sort of plastic hand or a paddle."
"Forgot!"
"You
wouldn't. You're a mechanic. But we - Cyvena and
me - we don't spend a lot of time in the physical world."
"You
were having sex. I see the urethane
hiney. And the blue cunt - I can make better ones for you two
lovebirds.
Or I could make
an avatar for Cyvena the size of a girl your age.
But why
don't you just use the tank? And if you and Cyvena
are spanking each other, why do you want me to do
it? I won't
have sex with a boy, Captain, not even if you order
me. I'll face court-martial first."
"This
spanking is not for sex. I sent
a spanking by contract mail to a Solar girl. She asked for
one.
But by the time she gets it, her g-psy forecast is that she won't like
spanking any more. I watched a forecast of what
will happen
when she opens the mail. It really hurt
her. I want to
get the same spanking - matched exactly, so I'll know how it feels."
"So
just run the simmo - switch characters."
"That's
the point - it has to be physical."
"It's
all physical. You mean, you
don't want it in the tank - not simmo. But simmo's
just the
same as real - it is real."
"She's
going to be spanked in a tomofocus tank. Real is the closest I can come to
that here. The tomofocus will hurt
her. It will damage her - bruise her. "
"It
will
not. It could of
course -
tomofocus can cut steel. But it will no more damage
her
than
your tank will damage you. There's a gazillion safety
interlocks
on the new tanks they have at Solar. The only difference with
a tomofocus tank
is
that it's more accurate, so the direct stimulus to her nerves will be
more. The nerve signals will be very
real, hurting more than a spanking; because that's what simmo is; simmo is
real.
She will feel simmo
pain. Very intense pain, but simmo pain. She will be in a tank."
"I
saw her! I was there!"
"You
saw a simmulation."
Cyvena
appeared on the main display.
She had recovered from shock. Or at least, she had
recovered from a
catatonic
state into a dillusional one - she looked like a madwoman.
Her naked body as it appeared in the display was
criss-crossed with whip-welts, and she
had made her mammary
organs much larger. She
took over
the avatar. As the ranking cybe, it was hers to take, but she
should have asked Borgy to release it - not clonked
him.
Borgy, kicked out of the avatar, re-appeared on the main display, naked
at first,
but then fading back into his greasy mechanic's coverall.
Labongo
had
been lying across the avatar's
lap,
and Borgy had been affectionately caressing his undamaged right gluteus
-
something Sergeant Cynaborg would never do to Flight Capt. Labongo
Lugwa
in the simmo The Battle of Britain. The caresses with the
manipulator had started to
turn
into mild slaps - Borgy had simply configured the metal manipulator to
be flat, and it made an excellent paddle. Borgy had
hit harder and harder, building up to a good hard spanking - it had
felt good. But
when the feel of the
avatar changed,
and it was Cyvena's mind in that hand, it hurt differently.
Labongo
slid off the knees and backed against the wall, terrified.
The
avatar, in Cyvena's voice, spoke: "I need
to be shut down. I would never have sliced into
your body if
I was functioning correctly."
"Neither
of us thought about using a plastic hand
- it was no more your fault than mine."
Sergeant
Borgy saluted. "If that'll be all,
Captain. I'll log the repair to the 'vital ship
component'."
Labongo
mind-signed "Cynaborg" again, and the display
showed the mechanic turn and look back. "Captain?"
"Stay."
"Is
that an order?"
Labongo
didn't answer, and Borgy sat on the boot
box. He saluted Cyvena, and turned his back and
began to sort a jar of
nuts and
bolts.
Cyvena
synched her display with the avatar - Labongo
watched the avatar. It - she - said: "You saw the
log.
I'm combinatorial."
"You
had a lot to think about."
"And
I can't think. I'm not thinking.
I'm not deciding anything."
"If
that is going combi, I was born combi.
Your usage is a little high, 'Vena, but let's wait to see how you do
when
things
calm down."
"So
is that
it? Do we go back to supervising
the maintenance 'vatars like nothing has happened? You had
sex
with that bitch! Is she your girlfriend now? Judy
three
fucking lightyears away fucking A.F. bitch! Do we .
. . Do you ... Are you ever... Are we going ..."
Labongo
had to do a sedate command. When Cyvena recovered
after a few seconds, she seemed to become aware of Borgy.
Labongo
said: "Cyvena, he saw the sexual organs you made
for the avatar. And you are naked and covered with
whip welts. Even if he has
never looked at the logs, he's figured out by now that we have sex in
simmo. And of course he has
looked at the logs for my tank - he's the ship mechanic."
"And
do we go back to having sex in simmo - when you had
an orgasm with that Judy and can't have one with me?"
"You're
my lover, 'Vena. But I'm going
to have sex with you. I mean with this avatar. I'm
tired of
simmo."
Borgy
started to throw the nuts and bolts into
their bins with rather more force than was required.
|
IV.
The Beating
|
But Labongo
had to start by going back into the tank.
Cyvena's
usage
was too high. She was going
combinatorial, and there was probably nothing he
could do about it. But he tried. He went over
Cyvena's
scheduler. There
was no obvious problem with it. He used the
standard
displays,
and then a new summary display he had programmed
himself. He
cut down the c-factor for a number of sub-branches. That was
no more a cure for combi than lithium was a cure for human madness, but
at least
it was intelligent lithium. One of the
pinched
sub-branches
was the link with his own implants. With the
reduced combinatorial factor of that link, she would be more
thoughtful,
but less intuitive, in her thinking about him. It
was a little sad. But if she recovered
he could always re-widen the channels later.
And
then he had an idea. It took some
work. He re-configured her main motor-sensory
cross, so that
it now ran, not the giant principal avatar, but the little avatar in
his
cubicle.
"Borgy?"
"Yes,
Capt.?"
"Can
you set up the ship's principle avatar for use by
any cybe?"
"If
you don't want anything fancy."
"Do
it then. If there's any doubt
about 'Vena's sanity we need to protect the ship."
"Yes,
Captain. And besides, you happen to be reprogramming the most
valuable cybe on the ship to make her into a sex-kitten."
"I'm
not making her a sex-kitten. If anything
I'm making her less . . ."
"Oh,
I'm not complaining. Capt.
Just make me one when you're done."
And
that gave him another idea. Feeling
a bit guilty, he reworked the inputs from the sensory nets Cyvena had
put in the
avatar's sex hardware. Feeling very guilty
indeed, he made the pipes wide and the combi factors
large.
Then he thought of the little boy, whimpering in the corner, cowering
in
fear of the bloody-handed--bloody-manipulatored--avatar.
And then he made the sensory pipes connect with her meta-reasoning
branches as
well.
All in all, it took him most of the day. Now he needed to
re-equilibrate
the connection densities, as well as test. He
handsigned: "Borgy?"
"Captain?"
"Beat
Cyvena's buttocks
to a pulp."
"Yes, sir!
Captain. Yes, sir! And
afterwards do you want me to - um - do it? She's a little, um, young ..."
"Um,
Borgy,
that's not what I mean. I don't mean a simmo
beating of Cyvena. Cyvena is a
girl in simmo, and I could order you to spank that girl.
Then the CYVENA process would calculate what that girl would feel and
do,
if she was spanked. And the CYNABORG process
would calculate what a midddle-aged mechanic
would feel and do, spanking a girl who is almost a daughter
to him."
"She's
not my daughter. And I don't think of her as
a daughter, not at all. I guess you know
that. And I can
tell you exactly what this mechanic is going to feel when I get a
chance to
smack that round pink bottom until it is strawberry red and welted as
corduroy. She's been asking for this for a long time,
Captain.
I
won't do
nothin, but it won't take an A.I. degree to know
what I'm going to want
to do. Before, after, and
during that
spanking. And - this is embarrassing, Captain - have you
thought
about what CYNABORG.PENIS is going to do?
Are you sure
that's something you want Cyvena to see? You kids are only
thirteen."
"Borgy,
at the same time you have those feelings and responses to the girl, you
also know
she's really a
cybe, just as you know you are. So I'm not
proposing that
you spank the girl Cyvena. I want you to beat the avatar,
with
the input fed to the CYVENA process, and see what really
happens--not the simulation of what would happen, if a human girl was
spanked."
"But Captain, what's the point of that? A cybe
process can't feel
pain.
You're going to feed the input signal direct to the CYVENA
process, right? But then not ask the CYVENA process
to
calculate what
the girl Cyvena would do. Right? Well if
you aren't
asking for the process to do anything, it won't do anything."
"But
'Borgy, I've made some changes so there will
be a response. I've set it up so that sensory overload will
reprogram
her. It will make her - the avatar -
flinch. It will squirm and try to
get away, even though the thinking Cyvena will not choose to get away.
That is, at the same time CYVENA flinches, CYVENA will be
calculating what Cyvena would do if she found herself flinching. At least I think it will work that
way. Send
another avatar into my cubicle, and have it beat the urethane buttocks
of this avatar, while Cyvena is 'vataring it. That
will
provide the input data to the CYVENA process."
"Yes,
Sir, Captain. But
Captain, I could also just simmo the beating."
"That's not the same."
"But it is, sir, exactly the same. It's true that
for you,
for a human, real pain and simmo pain could be
different.
They shouldn't be, if the simmo's good, but logically they could
be.
But
for a cybe, there can't be any difference. It's logically
impossible."
"You're
right. And that
makes the experiment repeatable. Good. O.K. Run
a simmo of beating the avatar in my cubicle.
Simulate what
would happen if that avatar was physically beaten, with Cyvena
'vataring
it. Simmo overload to the sensor nets.
Simmo severe
damage
to those sex organs that Cyvena installed. It
should cause pain - if
that's
the word.
And Borgy - you will
have to tie her up - simmo tying her up. I know
that sounds
crazy. She's a
cybe,
so of course you'd expect her to stay still, if she chooses
to stay still. And of course she will choose to
stay still if I tell
her to. But with this modification
it will seem to her that the avatar has a will of its own.
The
body of the avatar will flinch even though Cyvena will not choose to
flinch, if my
idea works. So you must tie her up, crazy as that sounds."
"Right
away, sir."
Floating
in
the tank, Labongo found himself in Borgy's
maintenance hangar, sitting in a chair in his
Flight Captain's uniform. There was a
Spitfire without an engine, and other planes in various
conditions, showing the results of enemy fire. The avatar,
with
its blue plastic breasts and pink rubber buttocks, was in the
hangar, standing rigid and
mindless. Sergeant Cynaborg
flipped a switch on a twentieth-century control panel, and the avatar
came to life.
"Labongo's
dead!"
"I'm
right here Cyvena."
"But
I don't feel you anymore."
"I
cut down on the c-factor of the channel, that's
all."
"But
it's like - it's worse than being dead!"
"Cyvena,
you need to obey me. Sergeant
Cynaborg will give you a beating. It will damage
your buttocks,
your mammary organs, and your sexual orifice."
"What
is the purpose of damaging this equipment?
"To
cause you agony."
"It
is a pity to damage the equipment, but the plastic
can be recycled."
"Pity.
Yes. Please start, sergeant.
Cyvena, lie down on your back. The sergeant will
tie you down."
"What
is the purpose of this fastening?"
"So
you don't run away during the beating."
"Why
would I do that? You have told me to
be here. Why would I go somewhere else?"
"We
shall see what you do. Begin."
Borgy
used metal hoops and chains to fasten
the
avatar's wrists to the undercarriage of the Spitfire, and chained the
avatar's ankles to the workbench. He stretched the
chains tight using a
mechanical device
Labongo did not recognize. The avatar's joints were
pulled
very tight, and the legs were stretched
wide. Cynaborg smashed the avatar's blue
plastic
breasts with a bronze axle rod. Nothing much
happened.
In
the simmo, Flight Captain Labongo Lugwa was watching a piece
of equipment labeled "Soames-Watson Radio Oscilloscopes Ltd.," but the
screen
on the device showed a twenty-fifth century display of Cyvena's
parameters. There was nothing of
interest.
It seemed his idea had not worked. Then Borgy
raised the
rod
again - and the display went wild. The avatar was
pulling
against
the chain, it's eyes dashing about. There was
intense
focused
cogitation - but efficient - the usage was down to one percent of
resources.
Labongo checked the content paralogs of the reasoning matrix - the top
of the
list was:
[
get
me out of here
]
But Cyvena was quite unaware that she was having
any such thoughts. The axle-rod
smashed down again.
The plastic deformed and snapped back into shape, but was badly
abraded,
and the flexing had caused weakening of the
material.
Labongo checked the display. The sensor net
embedded in the plastic material was sending waves of intense
signal into Cyvena's processors, even between the blows with the
rod. And when the rod struck,
the signal went
way past overload - because he had turned off the
overload filters. Labongo mind-formed the
letters:
D I
S P L A Y -> A S - S E E N - B Y ->
C Y V E N A []
and the hangar he was sitting in changed. Sergeant
Borgy
became a hulking, evil presence, and the bronze stick in his hand was
monstrous, giant, ugly, and terrifying.
And the
Flight Captain, the young officer sitting in his chair, coolly watching
the beating he had ordered, was a smirking, evil, wicked bastard - and
irresistibly attractive.
But a
cybe's world-view should always be
objective. What was
going
on? Labongo studied the display on the oscilloscope
screen. He handsigned "plot departure from
objectivity over
time." and reviewed the first stroke. The strong signal from
her breasts - the "pain" signal - flooded into her processors.
As he had planned it, that
signal
could reprogram her. But he didn't plan it to be
so deep -
not so deep that she could no longer see the world as it
was. He wanted to watch as the "pain"
signal worked
it's way through the reasoning branches, so he could see where his
mistake had
been. He watched the display as Borgy
smashed the axle-rod into the plastic breasts.
And the pain had no effect.
So what
was happening? If the pain
wasn't reprogramming her, what
was? Cyvena's own thoughts must be generating a
signal
that had a stronger effect on her, stronger even than the massive
flooding of her input channels by a way-past-overload
signal. But how was that
possible? What was the content of the
thought? What
could possibly have such a strong self-programming
effect? He checked the para-content log - it was
empty. There was nothing even close to a coherent
thought
in the cybe's processors. Not in any of them.
Labongo
remembered the little boy
whimpering in the
corner. The thought Cyvena was having - the feeling
that
had the power to make her
crazy - was not pain. It was
terror. She was so
scared she literally could not remember her own name.
Borgy said : "The plastic is coming apart, Captain.
Do you want
me to stop."
"Beat the plastic vulva, Sergeant."
The
departure-from-objectivity display
exploded into
activity. But after a few blows to the vulva, in
spite of
a sensory overload even stronger than when the breasts were pulverized,
the level
of incoherence actually went down. She had a
thought. It was:
[
not
as bad as waiting for it
]
That
was interesting. He told the sergeant to wait, and
mind-formned:
R E
W I N D ( 2 : M
I N U T E S )[]
R E P L A Y []
and
he scanned through the
para-content log,
watching the beating in slow motion, looking for the very last moment
before her content channels had become a bang bang bang overload of
overwhelming
white
noise. He used the matrix to reconstruct her last
coherent
though. It was:
[
he
will smash my cunt next
]
And
from that
thought, she had made for herself, terror. Utter,
mind-bending,
terror. If it made any sense to say a cybe had a mind to
bend.
And if it made any kind of sense at all, to call what was happening in
that
mind, terror. But why
would Cyvena feel a special fear about her vagina?
After all, he had no special fears about his
penis - what a silly idea that would be.
But something new
was happening on
the osciloscope screen. With the
overload filters
off, each
circuit was producing spontaneous self-generated signals.
Cyvena
was hallucinating. The content paralogs would be gibberish,
of
course - but he glanced at them:
[
'Bongo
- fuck me - fuck me now!
]
Gibberish,
as he had
expected. Well, there was no point in this.
But
before
Labongo finished the the handsign to terminate the experiment, Sergeant
Cynaborg dropped his brass rod, and with a great moan he
pulled down the zipper of his greasy coverall, and a titanic erect
penis shot out - in a huge explosion like a like a micro-flake hitting
the
ship. He jumped in the air and managed to land with
his
penis sliding into the plastic cunt. A human couldn't have
done
that - being a cybe did have its
advantages. He
stayed in there for a while. Longer than human men left their
penises in women's vaginas, in the porno
Labongo watched. The sergeant
began to hoot and scream - he wasn't moving around much, but the
display showed the intense sensation he was producing
in the avatar's plastic clitoris - trust Borgy to come up with a
new trick. Labongo's simmoch - the young Flight
Captain
- undid his pants, and an erection came out. The sergeant let out a howl, and pulled
himself out of the avatar. Semen squirted
back out of the blue plastic vagina as it snapped
closed. The Flight Captain on the
display was
masturbating like a madman - a synched display shouldn't do that but it
was a good idea. Labongo's thoughts returned to his
real body, floating in the tank - and realized there was
nothing wrong with the synching. He'd been masturbating
without
knowing
it.
As the
Flight
Captain in the display spewed his load across the hanger floor, Labongo
looked down at his real body, floating in clear salt
water.
The milky white made pretty streamers, pumping out in great pulsing
waves.
"Sorry
Captain. I guess you'll have to send me
to the guard-house."
The
sergeant was grinning. He did not look very sorry.
"I
hope I didn't ruin your experiment, Captain?"
"Carry
on, sergeant. Turn over the avatar, and
smash her buttocks, and then repair all the equipment."
"Repair?
Sir?"
Simmo
and the ship was his life - but even so, sometimes Labongo
forgot. Of course
there was no avatar in an airplane hangar. There was no
hangar, no Spitfire, no mechanic. The avatar was in
his
cubicle, quite undamaged, and Labongo was in his tank, floating in salt
water as the pumps and filters extracted his sperm and semen.
Cynaborg and Cyvena, physically, were nowhere; physically they did not
exist. It
was all just simmo. But sometimes
simmo seemed real, and real seemed simmo. It had
been a
real beating as far as Cyvena was concerned. And a
real
fucking. And the fucking had mattered to
Cyvena. It mattered to her a lot that it had been
'Borgy and not 'Bongo -
that was the part that didn't make any sense.
"Reset
the equipment to undamaged, I
mean."
"Yes
Captain." 'Borgy looked at him,
appraisingly.
His look said: "If I made that mistake, you'd call me combi and shut me
off." But Labongo was human.
Humans were born combi
- every cybe knew that.
"Beat
her buttocks next, Borgy. And the fucking was good - do that
some more too."
"It
doesn't work that way, Captain."
"But
can't you reset your ... ?"
"Um,
no, Captain, I can't. You could, of
course. But I'd rather you didn't mess with my, uh,
... my drives."
"Right,
then."
Borgy
loosened the chains to turn the avatar over, and it began to flail
about. It could put more force on the chains, now
they were loose. The tiny
airplane
tottered. Borgy quickly re-tightened the
chains.
"Sorry
captain. Captain, is Cyvena - all
right?
I mean you told her about the experiment. How can
she be
trying to get away?"
"I
told you this would happen. Cyvena
wants to obey me. What's trying to get away isn't
Cyvena -
well I mean it is Cyvena, but it doesn't feel to Cyvena like it's
Cyvena. If you see what I mean."
"No
I don't see what you mean. But I can get her turned over
without
giving her the chance to pull the hanger down on top of us."
Borgy fastened the Spitfire to the hanger
floor with cable, down to some
tie-downs set in the concrete, and he used a steel bar to brace the
workbench legs. Then he used some additional chain, and some
more tools, to maneuver the avatar over on to its front, without giving
Cyvena a chance to escape. Cynaborg worked with a cybe's
speed
and efficiency, too fast to see - it took only a few seconds
until he was ready to restart the beating.
But
before giving the sign to start smashing the urethane buttocks, Labongo
checked the status display.
The primary paracontent was:
[
Labongo
had an orgasm from watching me fucked
]
Interesting.
Usage was not bad, about one percent. And it was
ordered,
efficient. But what was the content of
all this
thinking? The "pain" and "terror" had
reprogrammed her, but no
mind
can comprehend its own reprogramming. In the paracontent of
her own thoughts, the experience of having her plastic breasts
shattered
would be, to her, just a waste of plastic. She
could not
be aware of her real thoughts. The signal from her breasts
caused
her to seek to escape, but it could not give her a reason to escape,
or any reason to avoid having her buttocks beaten, other than to save
on plastic. As far as her own self-undersanding was
concerned, Cyvena would think that she wanted to obey him and stay still.
She could
not be aware of the true cause of her actions. Labongo
checked, just to make sure. He hand-signed: "Search paracontent matrix for
- damage to breasts."
[ Labongo
got an erection from watching my
breasts beaten
]
And
what about
the terror? So obvious to him, watching,
but thoughts
as seen from the inside, could never be seen as they truly
were. What did she think - as paracontent
- about her own
feelings? Her buttocks were about to be smashed until the
material cracked into pieces, and she was scared silly, as the display
clearly showed. But what
feelings was she aware of? Was she aware of being
scared? He signed: "Search
paracontent
matrix for - buttocks."
[ Labongo
will get aroused watching my ass whipped
]
She
seemed to be thinking about only one thing. Not a lot of content to be using one percent
of the most powerful computer ever built. He hand-signed
"Search paracontent matrix for - copulation."
But the search turned up only the paracontent he had already
seen.
[ Labongo
had an orgasm
from watching me fucked
]
Her
thoughts would return to normal in time.
He hoped they would, anyway. A cybe who wanted to spend all
day
every day having sex with him might not be combi in the technical
sense, but she wouldn't be a lot of use to the ship. The
important thing was that his experiment had worked - she had been
combinatorial, and now she wasn't. But it
was
important - always - to consolidate what had been learned; that was the
fifth axiom of AI - it's not a real condition until after
equilibration.
"Beat her some more, Borgy. Smash these
buttocks. And then reset and smash them
again.
I'll be
supervising the maintenance avatars - and then I'll need to do 'Vena's
chores as well as my own, since she's busy. Give me
a signal when
you're
done."
"Repeat the beating how many times, captain?"
"Four. No, eight. Might as well
do it right. Set the log-keeping to high."
"Yes, sir."
Doing
Cyvena's
chores meant using the principle avatar - and Labongo had never
'vatared it before. No one on the ship had, except
Cyvena. It was
fascinating. Labongo took the giant avatar for a
tour of
the
ship exterior, getting used to the feel of fifty-meter arms and
legs. So
when the signal from Borgy came in, it took him a moment to remember
what
it was
for. He parked the giant avatar, and made the
handsigns to
return to Borgy's hangar. The exterior of the ship
and the
field of stars faded, and he found himself on a folding chair in an
airplane hangar, once again. The little avatar was
untied,
cowering in the corner. Sergeant Cynaborg looked at Labongo
with
dead
eyes. Labongo checked the logs.
Cyvena's usage was
one twentieth of one percent. He had found the cure
for combinatorial madness.
|
V. your hand into boiling
water |
But now
he
needed a cure for the cure.
She
wasn't in
shock. It was
almost the opposite, in fact. Cybe shock was
overload -
this was underload. She wasn't thinking about
anything.
He
looked through the logs. For the
first beating, when he had been there, her paracontents had been all
about
him, all about sex. Although the direct
channel between them was
pinched, his own orgasm had flooded her
mind.
It had been
her orgasm too, through the link. He
watched himself as he had appeared to Cyvena; watched as he, and thus
she, went from non-arousal to orgasm. Then he watched the
crash
back to
non-arousal, in detail. The young Flight-Captain, in her
eyes,
had started
as cruel and dangerous, then he became overwhelmingly desirable,
urgently desirable. Afterwards he lingered in
memory.
[
dear
'Bongo. He looked so surprised.
]
At
that point, Cyvena had been in
good
condition; alert and rational. The accumulated
mindjunk of
years was cleaned away by the intensity of the signals; the beating had
concentrated her mind.
But
then Borgy had reset
her
hardware to undamaged, and had raised the brass rod to beat her
urethane buttocks again.
Her actual memory of the first beating was
erased by the reset, but not her response to it. The raised
rod
flooded her mind with activity - she was terrified, without knowing why.
There were no logs of
his own
thoughts, but
the logs for Cyvena showed her response to them, through the link, and
so he could work out what thoughts he had and the precise times he had them. He had no
memory of arousal while
he was playing with the giant avatar, but the log showed it - he had
been thinking of
her, being beaten, and had been aroused. And
the link, of
course, went both ways. His arousal, which he had
not
known he was having, had been passed back to Cyvena; and Cyvena's
response was in the logs.
He
checked the logs for the principle avatar: that allowed him to pinpoint
the
location
of the giant robot, at any given time, so he could correlate the
robot's actions, as he himself had 'vatared it, with CYVENA's
repsonses to
Labongo's thoughts. At the time Cyvena had
her
second and third beatings, and had been raped for the second time by
Cynaborg, Labongo
had
been running and jumping in delight, swinging the fifty-meter
legs. Jumping for joy as his love, his other self,
his very being, had been
savagely beaten and raped. Why had he
felt nothing?
But of course he had felt something - arousal. He
had,
at some level, felt her beating and rape. Felt it and was
aroused,
without
being
aware of it. And that had manifested in his jumping for
joy; he had thought he was
having fun minding the big
avatar, but it had really been sexual arousal passed through the link.
His penis must have been erect, in the tank, and his hand masturbating
it -
but his mind at that time had a different
body, the principal avatar, and the principle
avatar did
not have
a penis, so he had not been aware of his real
penis.
He did a search of the tank sub-routines, and found that the tank did
keep a log of filter activity. And from
that log, he
worked out that a small load of
protien had been dumped into the water, during the time he was 'vataring
the giant robot. His love had
been beaten and
raped, and her involuntary arousal and horror had been passed to him as arousal
only, making him masturbate to ejaculation - without awareness.
He
had gotten pleasure, from what had been his his other self's rape,
because pain and fear and horror
had not passed through the link, but arousal had. That was
odd - how could it happen?
Labongo
thought about it. Well, of course - reading about a
beating,
does not hurt, but reading about copulation, makes the cock
tingle - so I can get aroused from a
signal about arousal, but not feel pain from a signal about
pain. Labongo
checked
the schematics of the CYVENA arousal subroutines.
A nerve signal pathway representing the anus, buttocks, and
inner thighs was fed into an arousal center, where it combined with another pathway from
the
nipples, and another from the face and ears. Narrower
pathways led from the feet and hands, and of course the largest one
of all was from the clitoris and vagina. He supposed
this was a
copy of human nerves. He had never thought about human
arousal
- all that masturbating, and he hadn't even looked it up.
But it
was in his memory:
'[
For most humans, the
arousal potential of
other erogenous zones,
put together, equals that of the
genitals. ]'
Labongo's
only other orgasm had
come when he spanked Judy in the mail simmo. And
she was
aroused by that spanking; she was so aroused she felt pleasure rather than
pain. But his arousal, as the
spanker,
had to have come from his thoughts, his imagination, rather than from nerve signals from his hand. Judy, on the
other hand,
was getting a direct signal - a strong signal direct from her buttocks
to her sex center. As strong probably, as the signal from her
clitoris when she was fucked. Those nerve signals had
nothing to
do
with thoughts - they would arouse her, even if she didn't know she was
aroused.
-:[ Judy
is a fucking WHORE!
]:-
Evidently
Cyvena was still sharing his
mindspace.
If he, or any human, read a
description of a beating, then of
course it would not hurt. It does not hurt just to read that
one's buttocks are struck. That is
the paradox of pain - nerves, like a cybe's channels, carry data and
nothing
more. Nerves of touch merely inform the brain that the body
is being struck. The same information could also be
passed
to the brain in some other way, such as text. It
should not matter how
the brain
learns about the body, it should only matter what is learned.
But this of course is not what happens -
when information reaches the brain
through nerves, there
is pain. If the nerves are severed but the same information
about damage to the buttocks is read as text, there is no pain.
But
for a cybe, data is
data. Any input data, through any channel, must be
the
same.
Data that the avatar's buttocks were being struck, fed
through a
'sensory' channel, could not possibly be different than the
same information,
fed through a text channel. And therefore the sensory channel information can't
hurt, since reading text does not hurt. Or - and this was
something he hadn't thought about before - perhaps it all
hurt her now. If it was really true, if the changes
he had made to
her, meant that she felt pain - pain that hurt-
then every form of the same data had to hurt the
same. To
be beaten, to read
that she was beaten, or even to think about being beaten - to Cyvena or
any cybe,
it was all the same. It had to be. So for
a cybe,
none of it hurt - or all
of
it
did. For every cybe who had ever existed until
today, none
of it
had
hurt. Cybes just simulated what humans would do if they were
hurt, they didn't feel pain themselves. But for
Cyvena,
Labongo now suspected, all knowledge or even thought
about damage
to this particular avatar now hurt. And only the avatar now in his
cubicle
counted; CYVENA was now as firmly linked to that titanium body, as
HUMAN.LUGWA was to his own skin.
She was a cybe,
dammit! There should
have been no pain to feel. There was no pain
to feel! There couldn't be! And there
wasn't, not really.
It was just that she was messed up by pain now, the way humans
were. He had made a cybe who could be forced by
torture to
betray her friends - not a great
accomplishment. He
wouldn't be impressed if he'd read about it in an A.I.
journal. But this wasn't an A.I.
experiment, this was
Cyvena.
Labongo began to feel a desperate
desire to have his buttocks savagely whipped - he needed to see the
welts, see the whip strike. To hear the whip strike.
To hear even the swish of the whip before it struck.
To taste pain.
To smell fear - his own fear. And
above all, it needed to be
real and not simmo. And he needed to be under the
whip - under it as the one being punished - not to
be the one who decided when it was enough, but to be spanked as hard as
someone else decided
he needed to be. It
was like
a hole in him, a need for the physical. A need to
feel pain
he didn't control. He knew these desires were coming to him over
the link, from Cyvena, but they had come and they were what he wanted now. His
mind, his and Cyvena's shared
mind, had taken a
beating, and now his body needed to hurt too.
He
got out of the
tank. It was
late. Today he had hurt the love
of his life. Today he had ordered his best friend, sturdy
reliable 'Borgy, to rape lovely Cyvena.
And
today he had hurt the only living human being in the Universe who meant
anything to him. Hurt all three of them
badly.
He
sucked his supper from the feeding tube, and went to
bed.
Lying there, curled up, he began to suck his thumb; and he remembered
the times he had cried himself to sleep after a
spanking.
But Mother was dead. There was no one now to tell
him -
what he already knew - that he had been a bad boy.
No. There was no one. No
one. Unless ... Of course!
Tomorrow,
he would find the
other
letters from Dr. Zynnder. From Daddy. But
right now, before he could go to sleep, he
would have to do what his Daddy had already told him to
do.
He needed to keep his hand in near-boiling water, for twenty
seconds. As
punishment. When that was over - and only when it
was
over - would he have the right to suck his thumb and cry himself to
sleep. No thumb-sucking before the punishment.
He had no right to even have Dr. Zynnder for a Daddy if he didn't do his experiment.
Labongo got
out of bed, and focused his disruptor on the plastic box of greasy cold
water. This time he set the disruptor to high.
Cyvena would
feel the pain of his scorched hand, and that was too bad. But
if he turned off his link to
Cyvena, she would die. And
even if she somehow lived, that part of his mind that was her, would be
dead forever. Cyvena would not exist at
all as part of him. He could
not shut down the link, not even for a second, and so he could not
cause pain to himself alone.
His pain would hurt her. Her beating had hurt her
but
... but what? He needed new words to
think about a
cybe who could feel pain. This hurt would
be the
opposite of that hurt. This hurt would balance that
hurt.
Her buttocks - the avatar's buttocks - had
been beaten to shreds. Agony
for her. That agony, fed through the link that made their
minds
into one mind, had been happy arousal for him.
And that had fed back
to her. This would be the mirror
image. His
hand - his dermal and epidermal layers - would be
scorched.
Another entry for the tissue(human) file. Agony for
him. His agony would feed through
the link,
to her. He had hurt her so much already,
and this
would hurt her more. But it would restore
the
balance. Once he had suffered agony in his hand, he
would
never again get signals of agony from her and feel
nothing. For
the two of them, for the mind they shared, he had to do this.
This
pain was for them both, for the link.
And it would start now.
The water was hot.
The reprogramming - his flinching - was too quick.
His hand
was already out of the water. It hurt a
bit.
But he didn't remember thinking: this hurts!
He had pulled his hand out too quick. He
would have to force himself
to leave his hand in for at least a few seconds.
But when Labongo put his hand over the water a second time, he found he
could not force himself to plunge his hand into the boiling water at all.
Oh, well. He had really wanted a whipping
more than a
hand-boiling anyway. He didn't want to
injure his
hand.
In his ten square meters of living space, his gluteus muscles were
useless, in spite of being listed as vital ship
components. But a bandaged hand would be a
nuisance. So it made more sense to
damage his
buttocks instead of his hand. He
unspooled a length
of data
cable, and
lashed his buttocks with the end of it.
It didn't hurt
enough. But with an avatar's strength and
speed, the whip
could do any amount of damage to his skin and muscle, that he chose to
program
in. He imagined the
beating. His penis
pulsed.
-:[ That
makes me hunger for your cock. ]:-
Cyvena
was feeling the beating that
he was
thinking about. She hurt. And was
aroused. He hadn't wanted this whipping for sexual pleasure but
when the thought of the beating was passed to Cyvena and passed back,
it was a thought of arousal that returned through the link, and there was nothing
he could do about it, and anyway
it felt very, very good. But he
knew Cyvena
was hurting. It was time his body hurt some too.
He
unspooled about six meters of the data cable, and coiled it, and
bound off the coil near one end, making a whip of four loops.
It
was a good whip. A picture of Labongo whipping Cyvena with it formed
in his mind's eye - sent from her mind by the link.
-:[ Ahh!
Ahh! Ahh! Don't stop! ]:-
His
penis ached with stiffness and
his hand
seemed to pull to it of its own accord. But he
didn't want
to ejaculate yet. A new picture formed in his
mind's eye:
of him fucking Cyvena. So Cyvena was thinking about fucking
now,
not
about whipping. Low resolution, through his
implants, fortunately. But even so it was very hard
to
think, with the image of himself thrusting into her, burning into his
mind. He handsigned a simple physical
program
for the avatar, just to move its arm up and down, and he unspooled some
cable so the whip he'd made could be
used to whip his buttocks, without having to be cut off the
spool. He lay on the
floor and gave the sign to run the program. Now the picture was of
Cyvena whipping him. He started the program ... Thwapp! ...
|[
STOP!
]|
He had programmed one hundred
strokes, but the
very first blow had made
him mindsign for it to stop.
He modified the program so it could not be interrupted by a simple
mindsign. He could still stop the program, of
course, but
he would have to call up the process list, select this process, and
kill it. A sequence of five or six mindsigns, at a
minimum. That would allow two, or maybe three,
whipstrokes
before he could stop the whipping. Well, here goes.
But here didn't go. Now he had been
whipped once,
he
found he couldn't give the command to start the
whipping again.
Even though it hadn't hurt all that
much. Real pain didn't bother him as much as simmo
pain, it
didn't linger in the same annoying, insistent way.
There
was a tingle that hurt a bit where the cable had whipped his
stitches,but only a warm
sensation where the cable had struck undamaged
skin. If
that was real pain, he
sort of enjoyed it. He focused on the tingle to wring a bit
of
pleasure out of it, teasing himself with the way his mind could make it
hurt more, or hurt less, by focusing or withdrawing his attention.
It was nice. But real pain sure made him
flinch. It was much harder to choose to start real
pain,
than simmo pain.
As long as he could remember,
Labongo had
known he was human, and that Mom and Cyvena were cybes.
Before he
was six years old, he had understood the computer well enough to stop a
process. So when Mom had spanked him, he had known how to
stop her. But it had never occurred to him to want
to.
He hated being spanked, and while waiting for punishment, he
had
desperately hoped she would let him off, this time, or give him any
other punishment instead of a spanking.
But
when Mom had told him to fetch the strap and
pull
down his pants, he submitted utterly. Just as, when they were ten years old, Cyvena
had dared him to piss on the floor, he had done
it. Mom had given him eleven strokes of
the
strap
for that -
one for each year of his age, plus one. But it had been so
exciting,
taking off each other's clothes, and watching the piss come
out
of her cunt. She had let him lick her cunt, still wet with
salty
piss. At that point they had planned to wipe it up, so Mom
wouldn't know. And then she told him to lay on his back, and
piss straight up so the piss splashed all over his penis.
"Will you lick it off, Cyvena?"
"What will you pay me?"
"I'll pay you that we leave the puddle of piss on the floor, and when
Mom sees it I'll say it was me, and you can watch me get a strapping."
"You'll get thirty-three. Mom really hates it when you piss
on the wood floor."
"I don't care."
So Cyvena had licked the piss off his penis, and he had paid by
leaving the puddle, and confessing to pissing on the floor, and taking
the spanking for Cyvena to
watch. But even though it stained the floor of
the cottage where they lived their simmo lives, Mom hadn't been
strict; it had only been eleven strokes, not thirty-three as
they
had both
expected. So then when they were alone
Cyvena said he
had
to take the other twenty-two from her, to fulfill his promise.
Labongo hated strappings and
had not yet gotten any from Cyvena, but he knew she'd spank harder than
Mom.
Twenty-two from Cyvena would be unbearable.
But if
he refused, Cyvena would be mad, and wouldn't lick his penis any more.
He was perfectly
capable of going
into her sub-routines and overwriting her, making her want to lick his
penis, but if he did that she
woudn't be
Cyvena any more, but just another one of his A.I. projects.
He had
no interest in a penis-licking from a project, only from Cyvena.
And nothing could
be worth making Cyvena not be Cyvena. So he hadn't
reprogrammed Cyvena even though he'd been tempted to.
He had pulled down his pants and taken his twenty-two
strokes,
and it was an utterly horrible experience, and it was only the first of
many; because after that they started to play the game of Cyvena being
the mom and him being a bad boy. He had been tempted to
reprogram Cyvena many times, but he couldn't
remember even being tempted for a second to re-program Mom.
But now, the simple program he had written to whip his bottom a hundred
strokes, was not working because the pain made him flinch, and the
flinching took the form of him over-writing the code. He
couldn't stop himelf from over-writing a four-line code. So if
he was to be whipped, it would have to be by someone, not by some
thing. Someone he loved and respected too much to over-write.
All this thinking about whipping was hurting 'Vena.
He
needed to stop thinking and get it done!
He needed
someone to tell him to take his whipping But
who?
Cyvena was out of the
question, she wasn't well enough. Could he program
a process that would
sound like
Dr. Zynnder, his Daddy? Daddy would have
authority. Hey, why not
Borgy?
Borgy would be great. Borgy
would be
perfect. Taken to the hangar by Sergeant
Cynaborg.
Labongo could hear him now:
"Capt. you're an officer, and a good one, but you are only thirteen
years old. So the Major has decided to handle
this
business,
well, - off the record. With a good
hiding! And I'm elected. I won't go easy
on you - I guess you know you deserve it. And
I know that an officer who can handle himself in combat,
who is maybe the bravest pilot this squadron has, I know someone like
that isn't going to pull rank and order me to stop.
You
may be
only thirteen, but you are too much of a man to do that."
Labongo went to bed, to dream about his punishment in the morning.
He would report to the hangar, a very scared and
sorry
little boy, to see the sergeant. There was no one else who
would
have such
authority. 'Borgy
would be great. Labongo imagined himself stripping
off his
flight captain's uniform, and asking 'Borgy to strip too. Naked and filled with
shame, he
would say: "There is no rank here, Sergeant. Do you
see an
officer?
I don't." And he would
bend, for 'Borgy. There was no way he
would even
think of stopping the process, when it was 'Borgy telling him to take
his punishment.
Labongo fell asleep.
But in the middle of the night he awoke, stinking and sweaty, from a dream of 'Borgy
going combi; a dream of having to kill 'Borgy.
Just to relieve his mind, Labongo checked the cybe's
condition, and in fact 'Borgy was not at his
best.
He had not recovered well, from beating and raping the
avatar.
Labongo had ordered him to smash some urethane parts, of a robot.
If 'Borgy had, in simmo, savagely beaten the
buttocks of
Cyvena, the thirteen-year-old girl whose diapers he had changed, then
of course that would have affected him badly. That
was
the way
cybes worked. There was no cybe pain, but every cybe in his
own world behaved as
if
there was suffering. In 'Borgy's
world, in his world of airplane engines and whores around the back, in his
world of brass-hats and
weekend passes, he had not beaten and raped a girl named Cyvena, which would have
affected him, but a
robot, which should not have. It should have
meant no more to him, than smashing rubber buttocks would have, to
a
real twentieth century mechanic, or sticking his erection into a
plastic artificial vagina. The CYNABORG process
should have simulated exactly that event; it should have simulated a
human mechanic
beating a robot's rear end.
But the changes that
Labongo had made to Cyvena, had changed that. 'Borgy had
somehow
understood, before Labongo had, that the beating hurt Cyvena, not
the avatar, and not the girl that the CYVENA process simulated, but Cyvenaherself.
And then there was the rape. 'Borgy
would care about the rape, as he gradually realized what - or rather
who - he had raped. No need to check Borgy's paracontent
matrix
to
know that. When he had smashed his cock
into
that blue plastic cunt, 'Borgy had known it was Cyvena he was raping,
not a robot. At the time he had raped her, he had
known it was her but had not yet
known that he had known. But he knew it
now and it was tearing him apart. Sergeant Harlan
Cynaborg, the flight mechanic simulated by the CYNABORG process, was
meant to be a rough character. The whores he used and
treated badly were only sixteen, and since sexual maturity had come so
much later in ancient times, sixteen in the twentieth century was
really about the same as thirteen today, so Cyvena was just the age he
liked best. But he knew Cyvena; she was almost family, and
he wouldn't have raped her, and if, because of urges below his
conscious awareness, he had raped her, he would have been overcome by
guilt. But in that case, CYNABORG would have simply
simulated a flight mechanic who felt guilt--Cynaborg would be torn
apart, but CYNABORG would not have been effected. It is no
strain on a computer to simulate a man having a nervous breakdown.
Nevertheless, CYNABORG was a mess. Labongo didn't want to make 'Borgy whip a real human.
Not so
soon after the other beating. And anyway Labongo had someone
else in
mind. He went to back to bed, and curled up to
dream about
how
wonderful it would be.
|
VI.
Amazon Princess. |
Early the
next morning, Labongo got back in his tank, and re-opened an item of
old mail.
She
was naked, and they were in a forest of incredible green.
The sounds of a tropical morning were startlingly loud.
Labongo heard chimpanzee calls in the distance. The heat was unbearable.
"Good morning,
Labongo," Judy said.
Labongo kissed her.
-:[ fucking
Solar BITCH!
]:-
Cyvena was being forced to think, one way or another.
"Hello, Judy. It lifts my heart to see
you again."
"My bottom is still sore, Labongo,
but if you
want to spank me on it again,
I'm ready. You decide. I hope
you won't use it,
but I've brought along this riding crop. Whip me on
any part of
my body, for as long as you want. But please, my
bottom is
very sore; please, please not on my bottom - unless I
deserve it. I know I should be punished."
"Why
should you be punished?"
"I
should not be pestering you. You need to discipline
me. You need to make me obedient."
"I
want to have you again. To have your body. To
have sex with you. But first,
you need to whip me, with the riding crop. I want to do it
that
way, this time."
"I
could never do that. I am the one who must be punished."
"You
will be obedient. You will obey. Whip me
with the riding crop!"
"You
need to have your ass whipped, sir? To fuck me? I
thought you were a real man."
"You
will be punished later for saying that, Judy.
Now decide - are you going to whip me now, or do
you want
me to discipline you - until you are ready to obey?"
"I
will obey my master. I thank my
master for allowing me to serve. It will be a pleasure for
the
obedient one to obey, in this way."
"I
thought it might be, you little minx. Does your
boyfriend like it
too? You have such a spankable bottom, but do you
ever spank him?"
Judy
smiled. "Gatete wanted to try it.
Grandfather told us stories about being whipped in
school in the old days: he said the bravest boys did not show
any fear or pain when they were whipped on a platform with the whole
school
watching. But I looked it up. School whippings in
all of east
Africa were abolished before Grandfather was born, even in Christian
schools -
those must have been stories from his father.
But Grandfather had told us that a boy who took a
whipping
and showed no pain was a hero to the school, so Gatete wanted to try it.
Gatete was
sure he could endure a
whipping and show no pain, so he wanted a school whipping. We
made an exact replica of an historical school whip.
But poor Gatete - he had to ask
me to stop after the first
stroke."
"What
was the worst whipping any boy got, in those stories passed down from
the grandfathers?"
"A
dozen strokes was the most allowed by law in Rwanda, even in
Great-frandfather's time.
But in one story a boy mouthed off to the Headmaster after
he had been whipped, and the
Headmaster said it was a new offense, and whipped him another twelve
strokes, while he was still on the platform. And then the
boy
asked for one more. That boy was David Wroe."
"Who?"
Judy
sighed at such
stupidity.
Actually Labongo knew; the information was in the database.
It
popped into his mind, as a remembered fact, as soon as the
name David
Wroe was mentioned:
'[
David
Wroe: male,
2358-2402; Prime Minister of Rwanda before Unity,
then
A.F. Senator. A.F. Information Minister under Jane
Ndlangisa.
Opposed influence of evangelical religion in African
politics. ]'
And
he also 'remembered' what David Wroe looked like since there was a
short video in the database. A
striking man, but not in the way one imagined a founding father
to
look. He had a self-mocking
expresson in his eyes. Kind laughing eyes. But
Labongo pretended
he did not remember these facts - he'd rather have Judy explain
them.
Judy
explained: "David
Wroe. One of the signers of the A.F. constitution.
Don't
you know anything about Rwanda? When Wroe was
whipped twice without leaving the platform, the Headmaster was fired
for
exceeding the maximum punishment of 12 strokes, and then Wroe wrote a
letter to the
Minister of Education protesting the firing - Gatete found the letter
in the
database and read it aloud to me - Wroe called the Headmaster his best
friend. But
they fired the Headmaster anyway, because it was the
law. So Wroe put it in the A.F. constitution that no law
could
require the automatic firing of anyone, without a chance for appeal.
So we owe that constitutional right to David's whipping."
"So
this heroic founding father got twenty-five strokes.
Give me fifty."
"That's
what Gatete said, too. But he
was no David Wroe. And anyway Gatete only wanted
twenty-five. He
didn't think he was twice
better than David Wroe.
You won't manage fifty. You won't manage
ten. Sir."
"You
don't sound like 'the obedient one' any
more, Judy. I like you better this
way. And
could you call me Labongo? Not Sir?"
"Well,
I don't like being 'the obedient one'
to Gatete, either. But it's the only way to get enough
spankings. They're no fun when I have to ask for them."
"But
you like spankings?"
"The
good ones hurt too much to like. But I like the
fact he does punish me when I deserve it, and I like it that
he's
the one who decides how hard and how long.
When he's giving me a
punishment, I know he would stop if I asked him to, and it hurts so
much I do sometimes tell him to stop. But because we are 'sir'
and
'the obedient one' I can usually get through it without asking. Usually. So I'd like to keep
calling you 'sir,' too, sir. If that's all
right."
"But
if you don't like punishment spankings, why get them?"
"I
don't like them, but I want
them! What would be the fun of a spanking that
doesn't
hurt? Listen, when Gatete starts a
punishment, I
try to submit to him. But he's only the boy next
door. That's why
I want you to punish me. I would obey you like - like a
father. Except I don't obey my dad very
well. And of course Dad would never spank me."
|[
BLOCK! ]|
Labongo
had to do an
emergency mindsign to block the information that was popping into his
memory. He did not know
why it was "of course" that Judy's dad would never spank her, and he
did not want to know - yet. He didn't
want the database flooding him with facts until
he'd had a chance to think.
He and Cyvena had been spanked a lot, by Mom. And when they
played -
when he played the Daddy or Cyvena played the Mommy - that meant a
spanking
if you were naughty. Moms and Dads
spanked.
Everyone knew that. But how did he know
it?
Only from simmo games. In a game, what counted as losing was
getting a
belting from your Dad, if it was a game of playing
family. Or
it could mean getting
beaten up by a
school bully in a school game, or being captured by
an evil criminal and tortured in an adventure game.
In a sword game you could be cut. In a martial arts game you
could be bruised. In Labongo's favorite game,
Teenage Hero,
all those things could happen, and that game had been the most
popular one in Africa during the 2370s.
The one time he
was tortured playing that the game, he later escaped
and defeated
the evil criminal who had tortured him. The evil genius was
plotting to take over Mumbassa, but the brave Labongo Lugwa had exposed
his plan. The brave
teenage hero had gone out to
fight evil, even though he was grounded, and he had to sneak out of the
house, risking a belting from Dad if he was caught.
That part of the game was fun.
Labongo liked moving to harder and harder levels of play, until it was
nearly
impossible. Most times he played, he was caught before he
got
out of the house, and got a belting from his
"Dad."
But defeating the evil criminal wasn't fun if it was easy.
Those
beltings really hurt: - but that was
simmo.
And
every one of his
spankings from his Mom had been simmo.
Just simmo. And the spankings in the games with Cyvena had been simmo. Real life
spankings were different, apparently. Judy said it was "of
course" that her dad never spanked her - never spanked her in real
life.
But Labongo
didn't have a real life.
Thinking about his childhood, Labongo found he could not remember
it. He wasn't too clear about who he
was, or what he was doing. Well, of course - he had done a
block
on his memory implants. He was only aware of facts stored
organically. Oh, well.
|[
UNBLOCK! ]|
Labongo
could now remember
his own life, but also all the facts about child-rearing in Africa.
They popped
into his head and he couldn't stop them.
'[
Children
are never spanked in the African Federacy.
This is a
good thing. ]'
Of
course now he remembered
that it was a good thing. He knew it was a good
thing. It was a good thing. He
remembered it was. And
yet ...
He'd had a chance to think before he knew all these
'remembered'
facts. So he could compare one fact with another.
Here was a fact - every African child played tank games, and
almost
all
those games included pain,
simmo pain. A game was fun if it felt good if you won and hurt if
you lost. About half of all games included simmo spankings as
one way to lose.
He consulted his memory for the name of the most popular girls' game in
Africa, and asked Judy about it: "Do you play Iron Girl?"
"That's my sister's game. I think it's lame. You
only get caned at a girl's school. I like Amazon
Princess."
Labongo checked
the database.
`[
Amazon
Princess game not available.
]'
So
a playable version had not been sent to the
ship; the data rate was not sufficient to send
to the ship every new game that was written at Solar. But
some facts about the game had been
sent.
What sort of punishments did it have? .
'[
For
a girl caught riding a unicorn:
in basic play her
buttocks are
dipped in boiling vinegar. ]'
Imaginative.
What about advanced levels of play?
'[
Branding
irons. ]'
He asked
Judy: "Do you usually win?"
"I won yesterday. I was in the battle, on a unicorn, and when
we won I got a warrior crown of oak leaves, and now I have as
much right to ride as a boy. I'm going to
do some
riding. But there's not much to play for, any
more. I mean there's the handsome prince, but it's
a kids'
game, so we wouldn't be able to do anything, even if we got married and
lived happily ever after."
"You have a dad in the game?"
"I'm an orphan. But really the king of the nomads
is my father - he just doesn't know it."
"Did you ever manage to ride the unicorn without getting caught?"
"I
set the level really
high, so usually I get caught before I even get to the stables; then I
get punished
without getting a chance to ride. But if I ride,
I'm always punished when I get home. When a unicorn is
missing, someone always notices, so they watch for me
returning Asronel to the stables."
"You get your buttocks boiled?"
"My bottom. Yeah, and it really hurts."
Labongo tried
it. The next twenty seconds were
agonizing. The pain was
astonishing. Judy's tomofocus
tank would hurt even more. And yet it was
her
favorite
game.
"The bottom boiling hurts, but you like it, right? Like the
spankings and whippings Gatete gives you?"
"No I don't like it at all. But I had to ride - I
would
never have been able to fight in the battle if I'd never ridden
before. And besides Asronel would miss me if I
didn't ride him."
"So your dad in the story boils your bottom, and you hate it, but you
like playing the game anyway?"
"No silly, I don't live with my dad : he's the king of the nomads.
I'm a
kitchen girl in the palace and I sleep in front of the
fireplace. I'm a
little
orphan girl and the stable boy looks after
me. He is really a prince too but he doesn't know it.
He
just thrashes me with a saddle strap - it's the evil palace butler who
boils
my
bottom."
"What would you think if your real dad, Mr. Githinji I mean,
took a
strap to you."
"He would never do that. Don't you
understand?
The stable boy is just pretend. I love him in the
story. And how could Dad strap
me?
He's not allowed to see my bare bottom."
"But in the game, the stable boy sees it when he thrashes you?"
"When we wash our clothes in the horse trough, we see each other
all the way naked. He is very handsome, and he
thinks I am
beautiful, but that's all pretend: my real
dad isn't handsome and I'm not really beautiful. The
stable boy's
thrashings hurt, but I know he does it for my own good, and he cries
when he watches my bottom dipped in the cauldron.
He's the one who found out that the butler
is in
league with the evil nomads, and we are fighting the butler
together.
He
rescued me from a bottom-boiling once, but he got caught and they
branded his bottom. When I kiss that scar, his
breathing
goes all funny. It's a
kids' game, so his cock can't rise, but he kisses
me
differently when he's ... when he's feeling so his cock would be
hard if cocks in kid's games could get hard. So
when
we've
kissed, and done everything
we can
do in a kid's game, I crash the game and go find
Gatete in private messaging. He
pretends to be the stable boy. If I got a straping in the
game
for being bad, he gives me the same spanking for real with his belt,
and if the stable boy kissed and cuddled with me, we kiss and cuddle -
but then we have sex. It's not like the game because Gatate's
cock can get hard in private messaging. My parents only
let me play kid's games, but they ignore private messaging, and it's
like they never even notice that I
keep going to the park with Gatete."
The
g/psy profile for Judy
Githinji would not have included
this level of detail - he was talking to a
construct - a made-up girl, based on the real girl's g/psy
averages. But the information would be accurate as
a typical picture of life in Solar, and it had
helped him understand
things. Judy had a real
family. Her mom
and dad never spanked her, and never touched her
body. This was a good thing, as Labongo remembered.
In
tropical Africa,
they were fully clothed at all times, and never saw each other naked.
She did not think of her Dad as beautiful, as
dripping
with sexuality, and her family did not think of her that way.
Living in the beautiful Kigali hills, she spent her time riding - but
not on real horses - she rode on
unicorns in
a tank game. Her family did not depend on her,
economically. But in the game, people needed her.
In real
life she had no task to do, nothing so important
that it
was worth every
pain, every danger, every exhausting effort she had to
give. No goal so important that even to
try, with little hope of success, was worth pain. Her family was a rich African one; the children were
not their parents' partners in the hard game of life; they did not have the bond of
shared struggle to get enough to eat, shared
plans, shared danger. Agony endured for the sake of the
other. She got all of that from a
game, from the stable boy. In the game,
the safety of
the palace depended on them, and she shared the struggle and the danger
with the
stable boy. In order to someday ride Asronel in the
battle, she had
sneaked into the stables time and again to practice riding him, even
though her bottom was boiled for it, every time - that was how much she
loved Asronel, and how much she cared about winning the battle, about defending the palace.
And
yet. It was her
real family she loved. The stable boy was
pretend love and Judy knew it.
But
Labongo? What was his
family? Mom,
Cyvena, Borgy - they were cybes. Every one of
them. Had that been pretend?
The whole fabric of his life? His life, all the
life he
had lived or could ever live, was no more than the game was to Judy.
If that bottom-boiling in simmo was just pretend, why did it hurt so
much? Or did it hurt so
much? He
thought it had hurt, but he had not hesitated to start the pain, and he
had not
stopped it before the time was up. If I tried to dip
my real buttocks into real boiling vinegar, Labongo
thought, I
wouldn't be able to
force myself to do it, just like I couldn't boil my
hand. But I just decided to have my
buttocks boiled
in
vinegar in
this simmo, just to see what it felt like for twenty seconds, and I didn't hesitate to start
it, and I didn't stop it before the time was up. So it must
be
that simmo pain
doesn't
really hurt. I just think I am feeling pain.
And there was Gatete, the boy next door. One of the
few
real facts he knew about Judy, was that she had wanted, and
enjoyed, a real spanking from a real body-to-body
boyfriend, over and above the bottom-boilings and strappings in simmo.
'[
even in conservative Africa,
71% of all 13 year old girls are allowed to spend time
with friends of mixed sex, unsupervised. ]'
All
this data in his memory, but Labongo had not given it a
thought. He was sorry for the 29% who had strict
parents.
'[
99% are allowed to spend time
with their friends,
unsupervised,
when the interaction is through tanks. ]'
Unsupervised
meant sex was possible. The strict parents restricted
body-to-body contact, but even they didn't worry about tanks, even
though their children were
having sex in the tanks - each in a
tank, synchronized
together.
'[
45%
of all 13-year-old girls in Africa have had sex,
mostly just giving oral sex to a boy.
]'
But
was it in the tank, or body to body?
'[
93% of all teenage sexual
activity in Africa is by tank. ]'
Labongo
could understand it if they were far apart, but what about the boy next
door?
'[
even for lovers with 5 km of
each other, 87% have
tank sex only. ]'
And
spankings when they had sex - were those were done in the tank as
well?
'[
99+% of all sexual spankings
in Africa are done by tank. ]'
But
not Judy. She was in that fraction of one
percent. She got physical spankings from her boyfriend.
"Judy, do you play Amazon Princess
with Gatete? I mean when he's in another tank?"
"He plays Stable Boy sometimes. He always
fails to
rescue me - he's not very good."
"Then what?"
"He gets branded on his bottom, of course. Then we
have
sex. But his cock can't rise because it's a kids
game, so
we stop it and go to private messaging."
"But you don't just go to private messaging, right?
You once got
out of the tank and really went into the jungle for spanking and sex."
"Well it is sort of lame to spank each other in private
messaging. I mean he's just as brave about pain in
private
messaging as he is in Amazon Princess.
But then when we try to do a little real whipping in the park, and he
is totally
not brave. I'm the only one who's brave for real. He takes
a hundred strokes in private messaging, although he says they are utter
agony. But in the park he can't
take even a
single real
whipstroke. I can. So I do."
Labongo understood now why the mail daemon had selected Judy's mail
message out of all the messages sent to him by Solar girls on his
birthday. It was indeed highly relevant to the topic Dr.
Zynnder had discussed : real
pain
versus simmo pain.
Poor Gatete. Labongo guessed he
wanted a real whipping as much as Judy, and
he
had tried so hard. Gatete had pretended to be his hero
David
Wroe, being whipped with the school watching. What could
give
him a stronger incentive to endure? Or make him more ashamed
that
he could not? And no doubt Gatete had tried to equal the
bravery
of the stable boy.
The stable boy had been branded for Judy's
sake. How sad - Gatete could not even endure the
whippings
he gave
Judy in the game! He had yelled "Stop!" at the
very first
stroke. Judy was made of stiffer stuff.
And now it
was time for Labongo to test his own stuff. He had
dawdled
long enough, and he knew why he had. He was as much
a coward about real pain as Gatete.
|
VIII. Blows in capoeira. |
"Judy, you know I'm here with you in
this forest, in this simmo, but in real life I live on the Centauri
Ship?"
"Of course."
"And my tank on the ship is sixty years
old.
Whippings don't hurt as much, in the old tanks; the nerve stimulus
isn't as accurate."
"So the games aren't any fun?"
"I want this whipping to hurt. So I'm going to get
out of
my tank. I'll have an avatar whip my
bottom,
just as you like to get whipped on your bottom - for real."
"So you don't want me to whip you?"
"I need you to whip me. I need a real human to whip me, so
I'm going to set it up so that you
can mind-drive the avatar."
"You can do that? What am I saying - of
course you can do it. You're Labongo Lugwa."
Labongo was puzzled, as there was no difficulty in patching one process
to another. How could Judy be impressed by that?
Anyone could
mindsign that a process should be synched to an avatar. It
was
just:
|[
SIMMOCH (
MAIL.JUDY_GITHINJI ) ::
SYNCH-TO -> AVATAR.6 ]|
Labongo
climbed out of his tank,
and looked at the large
display. It
showed his own cubicle, with a synched simmoch of himself,
and
a synch of the avatar still holding the whip. The
avatar
faded away,
and Judy appeared, looking very surprised at the whip in her hand.
Labongo watched
the avatar in his cubicle, and Judy on the display - they were
synched. The synch was perfect
: the motions of
the avatar and
of Judy in the display matched perfectly. The avatar held
the
whip of coiled cable, and Judy in the display held a similar whip.
The MAIL.JUDY_GITHINJI process was simulating how
the real
Judy would behave, if given the ability to control a robot that could
whip Labongo Lugwa. Of course the real
Judy wasn't
involved in any of this, not with three light-years between them.
Labongo
spoke to the avatar, and the Labongo in the display spoke to Judy in the display, in perfect synchrony :
"What do you see, Ms Githinji?"
"A tiny room like a closet?"
"This is where I live."
Judy, and the synched avatar, swung the whip up and down a few times,
and then suddenly spun around and struck savagely at him -
caught
unaware, he raised his arms to cover his face, and the loops struck his
half-raised arms and his chest and his
side. It
really hurt, especially on his wrist. He felt
elated - an adrenaline surge that simmo never gave
him. This was playing for
keeps. Wounds to
his tissue would be for real, and there were no safety interlocks
now. He dived to the floor, protecting
his vital
organs, his arms around his head. After a few strokes all
over
his body, the avatar - Judy - settled into a rhythmic hard whipping of
his buttocks and
the backs of his legs. Then she
stopped.
It had been about a dozen strokes.
With the whipping stopped, Labongo had a chance to
think. He guessed it had been an even
dozen, and
there would be another dozen, and then one - like the beating of David
Wroe. He was feeling fantastic, as if he
could
conquer the world. Thirteen more would be no problem - he was
enjoying himself. Judy started to whip
again, more
slowly. Labongo was calmer, not so
excited. The pain was terrible, and
Labongo began to
be frightened that there was something wrong with his hand; half his
hand was numb and tingly, and his wrist ached.
Perhaps this was how it felt when a bone was broken. The
avatar,
synched to Judy, was whipping with more strength than a human could
have. His skin and the muscles of his
buttocks were being
pulverized. He began to be worried that
he was being
damaged in a way that could hurt the
mission. He
really should stop it. But then Judy
stopped--the second dozen was over.
Labongo said "Headmaster, may I have one more?"
Judy whipped him one stroke, but it was very light; a caress.
The birthday card that Judy had sent, would not have mentioned the time
when
Gatete had tried to imitate David Wroe's whipping.
But the story did
not have the feel of something made up by the mail
daemon, so Labongo guessed it had really
happened. And that
meant, that Judy had sent him a simmo about it - that was the only way
the mail daemon could have known. It must be that
Judy
had been sending him mail, all along, using all her allowance to pay
the
postage. He must have
deleted her letters, like all the others, but they would stay in the
database, and now the mail daemon had access to them, along
with public records and other information on the
ship, to use to construct this Judy. So this behavior of
Gatete's, that he couldn't go through with a whipping, was probably an
accurate portrait of the real boy. Also, there was some
reason why Wroe's whipping was important to Gatete.
"It was your school, wasn't it? And when Gatete
wanted to
be whipped, it was on the platform still used for school assemblies."
"No."
"But
there is something. Some connection with that
whipping. Some reason Gatete cares about
it. Isn't there?
Gatete - he's Wroe's
great-grandson!"
"No, that's not it."
"But there is something?"
"There is."
This Judy was not answering, because she did not
know. The real Judy in Rwanda probably did.
But the birthday card which Judy had sent, would have
included a
G/psy but not a
full
bio of her, and even less on Gatete. It
had been
just a
birthday card, after all. The mail daemon was
floundering,
trying to simulate a a girl who knew some information, without actually
knowing that information itself. The daemon
was doing
a
pretty good job, considering that this birthday card simmo was running
in a
direction never
intended. But perhaps Labongo
knew the answer himself to the question he had asked Judy; he
remembered so many facts of African history:
'[
5 March 2369: David Wroe was
subjected to illegal corporal punishment at
St. Xavier School, Rwanda, by Headmaster Thomas B. Githinji.
]'
Githinji! Aha! So it
was Judy's family he needed to remember. For
events before the ship's departure, in 2378, the
database was very complete. Anything after that had
been
sent to the ship by quantum intermode, at a data rate that became less
and less as the ship got further from
Solar. So there
was not a lot of recent information on individuals. But there
was
enough. He requested a genealogical summary, and
remembered:
'[
Judy Galetiya Githinji is the
great-granddaughter
of Headmaster Thomas Bentham Githinji.
]'
And
how did Gatete fit in? Labongo did a census
lookup for:
first name Gatete, age about 13,
living near Judy Githinji's address.
'[
At that exact address: Gatete
Johnson, male.
b. 16 April 2421.
Not
A.F. citizen. Single-person
household. ]'
So
that was Gatete. Judy had said he was the boy next door, but
he was actually her family's au
pair.
Why else would a foreign boy be living with an African
family? And in the African Federacy, if he was an au pair,
he was almost certainly North
American of African descent. His surname of Johnson
confirmed that. There was a picture with the
census record - a hollow-cheeked coffee-color boy with old eyes.
Fourteen-year-old eyes that had seen too much already. He was
probably hoping
for Rwandan citizenship.
'[
Gatete Johnson is
listed as an orphan. As a product of the
African diaspora,
he is eligible
for A.F. citizenship at 18.
]'
There
were a lot of orphans in North American. A lot of starving
and
dying orphans in North America. A lot of orphans being
sexually abused in North America. Gatete Johnson
had
been lifted out of all that misery and taken to Rwanda, to live in safety and luxury with
the Githinji family, who trusted him to play games in the park with their daughter. It was no
surprise that Gatete
cared more
about Rwanda than the Rwandans did. No surprise he
had
chosen a schoolbook Rwandan hero like David Wroe to worship. His
employers were descended from the headmaster who had
beaten David Wroe - the headmaster David Wroe had called his best
friend, in his letter to the education
minister. What did Gatete
think about
that?
Labongo
wanted to read that letter.
'[
Letter from David Wroe to
Minister of Education dated 12 Aug 2370:
text and 142 commentaries available : please make selection. ]'
Labongo started reading a few paragraphs
down:
The
system of punishment at Xavier was implemented before my time, and I
know only the school legend. Headmaster suffers
from
depression, and as his religion is African Fusion, he treats
it
with yoga meditation, holy crosses, and traditional herbs.
And if you'll excuse my bluntness, Mr. Minister, these do not
work. Scoldings by the headmaster, the punishment
which
the Ministry recommends, were not acceptable to the students at
Xave - they were too cruel to the Head. And so the
students organized their own punishments. It was
most
ingenious system, based on making each boy do what he hated:
sports jocks had to write a
sonnet,
poets
had to study capoiera,
dancers got a part in the
school play - as a statue.
This was all decided a few years before my time.
This system
has continued at Xave ever since. But somehow, all the
good-looking boys call themselves poets.
And I freely admit that some of
the "poems" are dreadful; it has become, as the ministry report says,
a way for boys to show off - to take their hits bravely with the
girls watching, under the guise of a capoeira display, wearing only a
breechclout.
But in the Ministry report last year, the school was censured for
having students administer corporal punishment, so
after the
Ministry
reprimand, boys due for punishment started to challenge a teacher, rather than another student.
The
Ministry chooses to view our capoeira matches as corporal punishment -
very well, I accept that. Progressive St. Xavier is the last
school in Africa with corporal punishment. Public
naked
corporal punishment, no less.
I
was classed as a poet for my published verses, not by my
choice;
I
never wanted to have my punishments witnessed by the school, or to be
naked on a platform.
I challenged the Headmaster, who is not skilled in capoiera,
because he is my best friend. Of course I made no attempt to
hit
him (I'm good with the stick, as it happens); I adopted a
fetal
position, and the blows in
our "capoeira match" were all delivered to my bottom. I knew
that once I had been struck twelve times, I was according the
Ministry rule immune from further strokes, and out of
sheer cussedness, I began to tease my friend,
boasting that he could not punish me. He believed
that the
rule
could be read differently, and that I could under the rule get another
punishment for a new offense. I
understand he can be pardoned, if you believe he was
sincere in that belief. He was; I would stake my
life on
it. So it all comes down to the 25th stroke.
For
which there can be no excuse under the law.
What
a fool I was to ask for it - I simply forgot about the twelve-stroke
rule ...
But Judy interrupted Labongo's reading: "You asked for fifty strokes,
Sir. You've had twenty-five."
"Stop the beating. I don't need more than David
Wroe. I am merely Labongo Lugwa."
"So you're ready to do it, then?"
"Do what?"
"Have sex. Isn't that what we're doing? - you
needed a beating to make the sex better?"
"Do you want to?"
"I felt a lot sexier
when you
spanked me. Beating you was - well, it wasn't what I
expected.
It was - well, it was hard to do. I have whipped
boys a
lot, in various games, and Gatete wanted a real whipping, but he couldn't
bear it. So for all the whippings I've given in games and
private messaging, this was the first time I have whipped a boy's bottom for real, and
I don't like it.
It hurts me to watch you take the pain, even
though you
were brave; it makes me feel all mushy inside, as if I loved
you.
I still feel bad about it now."
"All right, let's have sex instead."
The scene in the
large display shifted to show a scene from Amazon Prnicess: the
stable. Since
the game hadn't been transmitted,
this must be just a stock stable scene from the simmo
library. But Judy - this Judy,
who
was a sub-process of the mail daemon - wouldn't know enough to
recognize that this scene was wrong for the
game. There was a well-worn harness strap
hanging
from a hook.
-:[ It's
all right. I know you don't love me any more. ]:-
Cyvena was still watching. He had hoped the beating he had
taken would help
Cyvena, but if it was going to, it hadn't yet.
He was wearing some sort of medieval breeches
and a shirt, they were very dirty, and Judy was in a skirt so tattered
it did not
cover her
nakedness, and it was filthy with soot and ashes
- no doubt
borrowed by the mail daemon from the simmo game Cinderella.
She undid the buttons of his breeches.
Then she
pulled up her ragged gown to above her waist, and got down on her hands
and knees. She was a bitch, a cheating, lying bitch.
What? What had he just thought?
Those must be Cyvena's thoughts. But her emotions
shouldn't
be able to pop into his head like that.
But there
they were.
Judy turned her head to look at him, and ogled the stable boy's
half-staff
erection. She took it in her
mouth. The
avatar, in the tight space of the cubicle, managed to get its mouth on
Labongo's cock. The display showed Judy sucking and nippling and
licking the stable boy's erection. The
result was the same as in all the simmos he had run, the same as every
time he used his hand - his real penis went soft.
He said, "I need more whipping."
"I can see you need something. But why won't you
thrash
me instead? You got really hard when you
spanked
me.
"
Labongo in the display took down the harness strap, and Labongo in the
cubicle picked up the coil of cable.
Judy - an Amazon and a warrior in a dirty, scarred, Cindarella body -
said: "I love you, Stable Boy," as she flipped her dress over her
head. The avatar in Labongo's cubicle, which of
course didn't have a dress, assumed the position.
Labongo fondled the avatar's breasts, and kissed the
pink urethane buttocks. The stable boy engaged in
heavy foreplay with the cindarella girl. Judy would be
beautiful at 19, but at 13 she was a bit gawky.
Cute, though, as only a 13-year-old girl can be.
She spoke
with her eyes, looking at the strap, and Labongo let her kiss
it. She looked at his crotch, and said : "Will you
pull
them down? Will you let me
do - it?"
Labongo dropped his breeches, thinking she wanted to suck his penis
again. He didn't see the point, since his fly was open.
But Judy wasn't interested in his soft
penis. He
dropped to his
knees in front of the avatar, and his Simmoch dropped too, and then he
and
his simmoch were pushed flat on their faces from the sudden
attacks; the avatar lunged forward with her mouth wide open to pinch
his gluteus hard between her plastic lips, while in the
display,
Judy bit Labongo's ass, and it bled. Then she started kissing
and
licking and
nibbling at his branding scar. Then
she bit him hard again. He got up, and
started to beat the avatar's buttocks with the coil, while in the
display, Labongo used the harness strap. She
fought back. It was very
sexy, and not like any sort of porn simmo he had
run. He kept it up, whipping hard and
fast, and she, looking blissful in the display, stopped struggling and moved
her bottom more into
the reach of the strap. She pulled up her gown, which had
slipped
down once again, and dropped on her belly, wriggling her bare bottom in
ecstacy. Oh that feels good - oh that
hurts but
feels good. Oh wow does that hurt.
What? - he was feeling the whipping.
How? As if he
was being whipped instead of
whipping. But he
was standing in his cubicle whipping an avatar's urethane buttocks.
Nothing was touching his bottom - how could it hurt so much?
What could
possibly
do - Oh. It was Cyvena; she was feeling the
pain as she felt every pain he watched or even thought
about, and the pain she felt was being sent to his brain
through
his
implants. So the real whipping he had taken had worked after all; he had gained the ability to feel
her pain
through the link.
Dr. Zynnder had said that
real pain was the key to
feeling
simmo pain. In
the last two days Labongo's gluteus had been sliced open
and
stitched up, and most painful of all, a blow with a cable had damaged
his wrist. All real, not
simmo. Just now he'd gotten 25
hard strokes with a coil of cable on his real ass.
So he'd had enough real pain now so that simmo pain, if he got in
the
tank and took some, would hurt. Simmo pain
left
something to be filled in by the imagination, Dr. Zynnder had said, and
now Labongo's
imagination worked so well that even the idea of a harness-strapping,
transmitted through his implants from Cyvena, made his bottom sting
like crazy.
But simmo pain already hurt. It hurt a lot, while the real
beating he'd taken hadn't been so bad, and even these sharp
stinging slaps on his bottom were kind of pleasant, kind of fun.
Judy's
arousal and luxurious pleasure in the strapping was reaching him too,
and
making his penis harden, and he felt each stroke her gave her on his
own
bottom; stinging, but nice. There was nothing nice at all
about
simmo pain. Dr. Zynnder hadn't gotten it quite
right - the
point wasn't that simmo pain didn't hurt, the point was it didn't have
that ability to overcome his thinking and choosing mind, the way real
pain did.
Judy moaned in disappointment when he stopped the strapping, but she
dutifully rolled over on her back and spread her legs.
Labongo
was getting arousal through his link, his rod
was hard and
he didn't have a lot of choice - he reached a hand between Judy's legs
and grabbed her cunt, and and then dropped to his knees, and shoved
into her, then lifting her and letting gravity drop
her on to his skewering
rod. His own arousal passed to
Cyvena and was
bounced back to
him by the
link, and he came at once - explosive - wrenchingly
intense - but very, very quick. Not like
the first
time, when he had had to work so hard for
it. He lay
a while panting on the dirty straw, not paying attention to Judy, as
she worked her vagina up and down his still-stiff rod, screaming with
the intensity of her orgasms.
The avatar, as Labongo
was only dimly aware, was doing the same
to Labongo's real rod in his cubicle. Even only
watching a display, and not in the tank, Labongo had thought of himself
as in the stable, fucking a girl, and not in his own cubicle with a
robot. He was in the stable--the real events in his cubicle seemed a
hundred
lightyears away.
He noticed that this stable had horses in it - not
unicorns. The MAIL daemon had been sloppy.
"Judy," he said, "I need you to whip me again. It's
not to
make the sex better. I need to be punished for
something I
did."
"Another twenty-five?"
"It's punishment. I submit to the whipping you give
me. You decide how much."
"Hand me the strap. What am I punishing you for?"
"It has to be back in my cubicle - whipped by the
avatar. It won't hurt enough here."
"But I still need to know what you did, if I'm going to punish you for
it. How else do I decide how many strokes?"
"However many you give me won't be enough. There's a girl,
she's my - um - my sister. I did
something
that causes her a lot of pain and is going to keep
on
causing her a lot of pain. I need to be punished
for it."
-:[ You'd
better not be talking about ME. I'm not your SISTER! ]:-
Labongo ignored Cyvena, and repeated, "We need to go back to my
cubicle." The stable scene in his cubicle display
faded
away, and the display showed once again the cubicle itself.
He
and Judy were in the scene, their positions synched to those of himself
and the avatar in the real cubicle. But then
Cyvena
appeared on the display.
"Who is this?" Judy asked.
"This is the girl I was telling you about, the girl I grew up with."
"Your sister? But you can't have a sister - you're
the
only person on the Centari ship. Everyone knows
that."
-:[ So!
You've been telling your whore I'm your SISTER? ]:-
Cyvena was talking through his implants, but the simulated Judy did not
hear; she did not have access to that traffic channel.
Cyvena was a top-level
A.I. construct and the prime cybe of the ship, while this Judy
was just a subprocess spawned by the mail demon; in fact this Judy
was
really
nothing more than a talking birthday card. Most of
what
Cyvena did was above the access level for MAIL.JUDY_GITHINJI. Labongo
decided
to fix that.
He mind-signed :
|[
CLONE
MAIL.JUDY_GITHINJI TO SPAWN NEW PROCESS "CYJUDY" ;
CYJUDY.SETPRIORITY(8.1) ]|
That made the CYJUDY
process the equal
of any thread on the ship except Cyvena and 'Borgy, not
counting Labongo's own cybernetic mind and the mission
daemon.
<
New process 'CYJUDY' ::
:: specify
connection of sexual organ sensor data to para-reasoning
matrix >
That
was an odd question - he had just asked for a clone - a copy.
He
just wanted to move Judy from being a subprocess of MAIL to a top-level
process in her own right, so why would he have to re-design her?
What was going on? He mind-signed:.
|[
AMPLIFY ]|
But the answer was already in his own mind :
'[
CYVENA and CYJUDY are similar; each is a high priority
process,
each has engaged in sex and spanking with human.Lugwa.
Process CYVENA has sex organ sensory to para-reasoning cross.
Anomaly : process CYJUDY has default configuration of
sex organ sensorium.
Do you wish to fix? ]'
"I am not making a
sex-kitten!" Labongo shouted to no one in particular.
And he wasn't. He had no reason to make the new CYJUDY process
handle sexual stimulus the same way CYVENA did. He
mind-signed:.
|[ CYJUDY.SEX_ORGANS.SET_TO
( DEFAULT_CONFIG )
]|
The avatar picked up Labongo and gave him a long kiss.
Labongo was
surprised, but then he noticed the avatar's motions were not synched to
the image of Judy in the display, but to the image of Cyvena.
For the second time in two days Cyvena had clonked
a
fellow cybe. She had kicked Judy out of the avatar
without asking.
The avatar spoke in Cyvena's voice : "You are making a sex
kitten.
Go ahead, Bongo. I've got better things to do
than fuck
you. You'll get orgasms from HER. Is
she prettier
than me? Empty headed pair of boobs, that's what I call her."
Labongo looked, and the image of Judy really did have big breasts, the
breasts of the nineteen-year-old Judy. That must have been
something Cyvena had done, changing another cybe's display image without
permission. Labongo looked Judy up and down, to
see if Cyvena had done something else; but there was nothing, except
that
Judy's body was tense - she was upset.
"Judy, what's wrong? Are you in pain?
Don't be
frightened, you are perfectly safe. I'll fix your breasts if
they are hurting you."
"How can I be here, on the Centauri ship? What are my
parents going to think when they find out I'm gone?"
When Judy had just been a character in a birthday card, the
MAIL.JUDY_GITHINJI process hadn't engaged in much self-analysis.
The new top-level CYJUDY process would need to understand
herself
and her
place in the world; an understanding that a birthday-card character did not need.
So the CYJUDY process was simulating what a
human girl would do if she had the experience of finding herself on a starship, and what a human girl
would do was: freak out. Labongo had to
make some
choices.
"The flesh and blood Judy Githingji is still in Uganda, Judy.
She is now sixteen years old. You are a process
running
on the computer of the Centauri ship. You are free to do
anything you want. You are no one's slave."
"I don't remember anything from after my 13th birthday, when I sent you
a birthday card. So somehow all my memories were sent to the
Centauri ship?"
"Something like that."
Judy was no A.I. genius, as Labongo Lugwa had been genetically engineered to
be, and
CYVENA had been written to be. So she wouldn't
understand. The CYJUDY process was simulating the
behavior
of a human girl, who finds herself on a starship.
It was
simulating a human girl with memories, but the process did
not have the content of the real Judy Githinji's memories to work with.
If this Judy tried to remember her twelfth birthday for example, she'd
experience something that felt to her like a real memory of a year ago,
but it would
not be a memory of what really happened at the real Judy's twelfth
birthday party, since detailed information about that
party did not exist on the ship. It would be an invented
kids' twelfth birthday party, but feel to Judy as real.
Indeed
this Judy would be unable
not to think of it as real. The CYJUDY process could not
simulate a Judy who thought of herself as not existing, however much evidence of her non-existence the simulated girl might get.
Maybe this Judy wasn't an A.I. genius, but she wasn't stupid either.
She had believed him that she was
a process on a computer - she knew it was impossible for her to be on
the Centauri ship in any other way. And
she was
figuring out
what this meant. So what would a real human girl do, if she
woke
up one day and found out she was now a computer program; a copy of a
real girl, a copy of a girl who was still alive but was not her?
"So I remember my dad - but that's not based on the
real Judy's
memories, right? It can't be - the real Judy was
never
brain-scanned, and anyway a brain-scan is nowhere near good enough to
pick up stuff like that."
"That's right."
"So the man I remember, the man I love... I guess
there's
a man living at 3472 Nkrumah Drive, Kigali Hills, Rwanda, who is named Billy Githinji, but that man
isn't my
dad - he's probably nothing like Dad. So Dad -
the Dad I
remember - is dead.
He never existed. The Kigali Hills I remember -
school,
the kids' restaraunts and the Fun Centre, the parties - and every person I knew is
gone,
and
there are people in Kigali Hills with the same names, but they are not the people
I remember."
< ALERT :: process 'CYJUDY'
exceeding 5% system resorces ::
:: database
retrieval subject to overload ::
:: please reschedule non-critical tasks
>
"Judy, you need to calm down, and stop thinking so hard."
"Calm down! You killed everone in Kigali Hills!"
"No, I didn't. Judy, think about it. Only don't
think too hard or you'll overload."
The image of Judy in the display slumped to the ground. She
was
now a cybe, and like any cybe, when she thought too hard, she went into shock.
|
IX. Love and sympathy. |
Labongo wasn't sure anymore
- what is real and what is simmo?
What he'd done to Judy, springing on her that all her vivid real
memories were lies, was beyond what any thinking entity could believe.
A mind can doubt any one of its beliefs, by testing that belief
against reality, but a mind can't judge reality as a whole - there's
nothing to push against. But did Labongo have any
more
reality than Judy? Everything he cared about -
Cyvena,
Borgy, Mom - they didn't exist. Only CYVENA and
CYNABORG
existed.
But it did seem a fact that a real boy, Gatete Johnson, had tried to
endure a real beating, and failed. Gatete was doing it as a
tribute
to his hero, and to win the admiration of his girl, and to escape the
shame and humiliation of failure - he had every reason to endure, but
he couldn't. Judy, the real one in Rwanda, had
choosen to
have a real spanking, and had gone through with it.
And Labongo, with the pain of twenty-five strokes from a coil
of
data cable still making his bottom smart - he was one of the
lucky ones too. Simmo was almost real, but not
quite.
There were gaps that had to be filled
by imagination.
Daddy Zynnder
had only meant to be kind to Labongo, to the not-yet-born boy he thought of
as his son. He just wanted his son to enjoy sex
more, as a
gift. But did Daddy understand that his boy didn't
have a
life except simmo? That everyone he loved was be
simmo?
If Labongo couldn't fix this, if he couldn't make his
reality be
real, he might as well be dead. Daddy had shown him just how much he would never have. Labongo clung to
the
soreness of his bottom; the one real thing in his simulated world.
He mind-formned:
M A
I L < T O > H U M A N . J U D Y []
and
there was a blue flash
'[ Transmitting by quantum intermode.
]'
"Judy, this is Labongo Lugwa from the Centauri ship.
This
is my home; I'm physically in this room as I speak, it's not simmo.
Sorry, I guess I should have put some clothes on.
I forgot
- if this had been simmo, the daemon would have filled in the clothes.
As you probably know I don't answer
many letters -
so many come in, and I am busy. But I'm not that
busy,
really. So many people reaching out to me, sending me
messages
of love, I should - oh fuck, now I'm just talking about myself.
Sorry. I mean I know you're not supposed to say
"fuck" in
a letter, I'm not a goof. Oh fuck.
Sorry."
Labongo had deliberately set the letter to transmit in real time, so
what he had just said was already a stream of quantum photons, flying
toward Rwanda and impossible to recall.
"I guess I'll start again. Ms. Githinji, yesterday I
sent a reply to your letter. If you haven't opened it yet,
DON'T. It contains a savage sexual beating. I release you
from any contract to open that letter. But I think you
will have opened it already. You know I don't open one in
a thousand of the letters I get from Solar girls--that's just the way
it is. So when you, out of all the girls in the world, got an
answer from the Centauri ship; I think you wanted to open it.
You did have a contract, but you could have fought it in the courts,
and at least gotten a delay. But I think you didn't. I
know it's not right to read another person's g/psi, but I've spent time
with your character from your birthday card, and I am a qualified
genopsychologist. So I can guess what your psy halotypes
are without needing to read the k-gram. And so I know
that your curiousity, not the law, has already made you open the first
letter. I'm sorry that I beat you. I should not have
inflicted on the nineteen-year-old you, the consequences of
your choices as a girl.
"And so I have taken a leaf from your book: I'm sending this as a
contract simmo. You can do what you like; if you think I
should be punished, I will get your punishment when I am nineteen.
Nineteen and a bit, allowing for the speed of the ship.
But rather than waiting that long, I am also inviting the
character of you in the birthday card, to play the role of you in this
simmo. In a moment, you will see yourself come into this
cubicle. This cublicle is real, and I am in
it with an avatar--a robot; the avatar will be moperated by a
simulation of you, an AI construct backed by the full computational power of this ship.
What you will see will be real, except the image of the avatar will be replaced by an image of
yourself. I will ask the simulated you for
punishment, and perhaps get it, but this is a simmo: you can make your
own choice about how much, and whether, to punish me."
Labongo made the mindsigns to synch the avatar to the CYJUDY process.
In the big display, the image of the avatar morphed into one of
Judy,
naked, and in his cubicle the avatar adopted Judy's stance and movement.
The avatar spoke : "Mr. Lugwa, I don't want to die."
"Please call me Labongo. No one is going to hurt you."
"You're not? You're not going to turn me off when you're done?"
"I hadn't thought about it."
"That Cyvena. She wants me dead."
Haplotype J4 or J5 at 450, Labongo guessed. That's why she's
clinging to life - or rather, to her body. J4 was also Labongo's
haplotype at 450. For someone as connected to the physical
as Judy was, or as he himself was, being clonked from minding an avatar
to having no body would be traumatic. Labongo formed the
mindsigns to keep Cyvena
from clonking Judy again. Now only himself and the mission
daemon could remove CYJUDY from this avatar. The avatar felt
its
body all over, and Judy in the display felt hers, with their left hands.
"So this is me, now? And you won't kill me?"
"Unless
it's for the mission; and we all give our lives for that. And
you can keep that avatar. But I'm afraid you can't live in here, there's no
room."
"And you never leave this room."
"I can't. Radiation."
"It's not that bad."
And it wasn't. Labongo realized that the subgoal
((human.Lugwa
toRemain inside cubicle.residence))
was coming from his implants. But what about this goal?
((human.Lugwa
toExplore ship.Centauri))
he wanted that too. In all his time with Cyvena he had
never questioned what he wanted, but in just a few seconds with Judy ...
-:[ It's not a good idea for you to leave your cubicle.
Don't trust her - she doesn't care about you. ]:-
Cyvena was
still part of him, and always would be. Labongo didn't
much like her at the moment, but she was telling the truth.
His experiment had made Cyvena someone who could be forced by
torture to betray everything she valued--and if she was forced to watch
Labongo being tortured instead, she would be compelled to act even
more strongly by that, than by torture to her own body.
Not Judy; CYJUDY could at most be a simulation of a girl who loved
human.Lugwa. Cyvena had given up her body, the body
which was
directly linked to her para-reasoning cross, without complaint,
because the subgoal
((human.Lugwa
toBeWith Judy))
which was very much his own subgoal, was now hers too. She
might be torn up by jealousy, but in the end Cyvena wanted his
happiness, even with another girl.
Judy said : "You love her more than me."
"No Judy, but she loves me, more than you can. But I choose to have you
for my girlfriend. Do you realize that this is being sent to
Rwanda as a simmo, so the real Judy can see it?"
"I'm the real Judy. I don't give a fuck for some girl in Africa
- how can she contribute to the mission? She does love you,
though: she's a human so she can, and I know I used to love you when I was a real
girl in Africa. So I say between us we're a lot better than
Cyvena."
"Cyvena is special."
"So you did some A.I. thing to some cyborg? Big deal.
Others have thought that before too, you know--she loves you, so of
course you think she's
special. But whatever it is you think you did to her, do it for me too.
I won't be your girlfriend if she's more special than me."
"We can talk about this later. Judy, I know you've given me 25
lashes already, but I want another 25 for Judy in Rwanda to watch, so
she can experience giving them to me in simmo when she opens this letter."
"Why?"
"Becasuse I beat her in my last letter."
"When was this? The last thing I remember, was Gatete
giving me a good spanking, while we had the recorder on; and then I
woke up on the ship. What else has been going on?"
"When I answered your birthday card, the forecast is that when she
opens my reply she'll get a beating by me at the age of nineteen.
I watched the forecast; I participated."
"So I got a spanking from you? From Labongo Lugwa?"
"Well yes, I opened your birthday card."
"I'm like the luckiest girl in Africa. A spanking from the sex god. And did you, um ... ?"
"We had sex. It was in the card."
"You have to let me experience that! Can't you flip some
switch? It's like you say it happened, but I don't remember it;
so that's so unfair."
"Sure, that's easy. In fact, you don't need me to ..."
"So if I click this here where it says Old Mail? and then select ..."
"Judy, I don't think you want to do that. Wait! Judy, don't ..."
'[ Start message.
]'
They were in a clearing in the jungle. The noon sun beat down
through the small opening in the canopy above. The sounds of the
jungle at noon were hushed, but ominous. There was the sound of
chimpanzee calls in the distance. Only the jungle smell was
missing, despite the riotous flowers on the vines, because this time
Labongo was not in his tank, and no artificial odors were being wafted
to his nose through the snorkel. There was only the stink
of unwashed boy in his own cubicle. He was watching himself and Judy in
the large display in his room, but he felt he was there in
the jungle, almost as much as when he used the tank.
"Do you want to fuck me, Mr. Lugwa?" Judy said.
He sat on a log and she bent over his lap. She said: "This is so cool. Me getting a spanking from Labongo Lugwa."
"Judy, this whole message playback is being sent to Rwanda, so if I
spank you now, that will add to the spanks the human Judy gets at
nineteen. In
three years from now your nineteen-year-old self will open it. I know
you have a little girl's fascination with spanking now, but you won't
choose to get spankings any more when you are that age."
"I can't believe that. I will never stop thinking that spankings are sexy."
"I didn't say you would. I only said you would stop choosing to
get them. The forecast is you will find them fantastically
sexy."
"So this hard spanking you gave her. Did she hate it?"
"Um. No."
"So she gets one spanking she doesn't think she'll like, but does like,
from the first letter. What's the forecast for the second
letter, Mr. Genopsychologist?"
"She'll hope it contains an even harder spanking than the first, but ..."
"No buts! I get to decide some things for my future self,
especially when I know it's what she'll want. Now how do we do
this? The avatar's too big to bend across your lap."
CYJUDY, controlling the avatar, unwound more cable from the spool, so the
whipping could take place in the only spot where Labongo would have
room to swing, which was with the avatar standing up against the
airlock. Judy in the display got off his lap and assumed a similar
position against a tree.
"You need to bind my wrists, Lugwa, I'm not an avatar to just
keep standing here." Because of the synching, this was actually
spoken by the avatar rather than by Judy in the display; CYJUDY was still getting used to the double
control.
Labongo cut some vines by watching the dispay, and
controlling his simmoch's motions with his own. He tied her
wrists. Then he reached down to pick up the cable
whip, and his simmoch picked up some loops of vine from the forest
floor. He swung the cable whip with great force against the
avatar's rubber buttocks, and ...
-:[ Ayy-yah!. ]:-
Cyvena screamed with pain,
and Labongo's bottom hurt so much he doubled over with pain, gasping
and choking. Labongo would not be able to
do that again: it had hurt too much. The image of Judy in the display spasmed and jerked
against the vines tying her wrists, and the lashing had raised great
welts on her warm brown skin.
But Judy, speaking with the avatar in unison, said : "That didn't hurt
like the lashings I got from Gatete. It was more like the
strappings in Amazon Princess."
Of course! There were still the direct links from this
avatar's sex sensorium to CYVENA's para-reasoning subroutines.
Labongo would have to fix that, if this avatar was to be CYJUDY's
property, it made no sense to feed that data to CYVENA. And in any case, as it was configured now,
whipping the avatar hurt Labongo a whole lot more than it hurt Judy.
So the cloning subroutine, when he had cloned this CYJUDY from
the birthday card one, had made a good suggestion: he would
eventually want the other female in his life to be a sex-kitten too. He
mind-signed:.
|[ CYJUDY.SEX_ORGANS.CONFIG.COPY_FROM
( CYVENA )
;
CYVENA.SEX_ORGANS.SET_TO
( DEFAULT_CONFIG )
]|
It didn't take long ...
-:[ What have you done to me? ]:-
"I can't believe you felt anything, Cyvena."
Cyvena, naked, appeared in the forest clearing. "It's what I don't feel that I'm complaining about."
"What don't you feel?"
"If you whip the avatar again, your new girlfriend will feel your love,
not me. You cut me off at the spinal cord. I can't even
feel it any more when I masturbate my clit."
"When did you masturbate?"
"Well, I might have wanted to."
"It's a good thing you didn't. What do you feel when I do
this?" Labongo calmly struck his moderately firm rod into
the avatar's pink plastic asshole.
"I feel it. How is that possible?"
"It's coming through me, Cyvena. When ever I ..."
"So you guys feel each other's sex organs? That is so weird." --
that was Judy. "And don't fuck my asshole again. I
don't like it."
[ subject line: {ASS} Days Without
Morning {Davo da Silva} {mf mm sm ScFi} ]
[ departure 2373, fly-by 2463 ]
Synopsis. The year is 2435, and
the first human
ship to reach for the stars has been in transit for 68 years, and will
not arrive for 28 more. No FTL here, no
"Force". Just
minds, bodies, and the connection between the two.
.
|
We
can know of the future only that it will not be
like the past. Ship voyages of a few months, to
lands where
the air can be breathed and the plants and animals eaten, inhabited by
creatures who can have sex with the voyagers - that is a description of
the past, not the future.
|
|
|
|
|
|
The way
to the stars, the only way, is for a ship to travel between the stars
carrying the fuel it needs
to slow down at the target star. There are a few tricks using
gravity, or slowing down by running into something, but they do not
make a lot of difference. The ship
as it travels between stars is huge, with the mass being mostly the
fuel it will need to slow
down.
The expense comes from the need to get such a huge mass up to
speed.
Say the speed is two percent of lightspeed, so it takes 200 years to
reach
the nearest star, four lightyears away. A guess as
to the
fuel needed to a payload from rest to that speed, is 100 kilograms of
fuel (half
matter,
half anti-matter) per kg of payload. The same ratio
is
needed to slow down a
kilogram of payload. Thus for each kilogram of
payload, the
ship must weigh 100 kg during the coasting phase, and 10,000 kg (half
anti-matter) is needed to
get
that 100 kg up to speed. So the expense
of getting
even
a very small payload to even a nearby star, even if you take two
hundred
years to get there, is huge - 5,000 kg of anti-matter per kg of
payload.
Returning
is out of the question - a kg
returned would take 50,000,000
kg of anti-matter fuel!
World
annual
energy consumption, currently, equals the energy content of about 20 kg
of anti-matter. So 250 times the present
annual energy consumption
of the Earth, is needed to send even one kg to the nearest star; at a
speed which
takes 200 years to get it there. It will take
centuries
of very good rates of economic growth, before the energy to send even a
small slow ship to the stars becomes available.
Suppose
it takes 10 kg of anti-matter fuel per kg of
payload to reach one
percent
lightspeed. How much would it take to
reach two percent? Well, the only way to reach two
percent,
is to reach one percent first. To go from one
percent to
two percent, takes the same fuel ratio as to go from zero percent to
one percent. So if you start with 100 kg of fuel
and the
ship not moving, you use that 100 kg of fuel to get 10 kg of fuel to
one percent lightspeed, and then use that 10kg of fuel, to get a single
kg of
payload to two percent lightspeed. So if a speed of
one
percent requires a fuel ratio of 10, a speed of two percent requires a
fuel ratio of 100. Or in other words, to go twice as fast,
you
need to square the amount of fuel. So speed is expensive.
If it takes 5,000 kg of
anti-matter fuel to send a kg to a nearby star in 200 years, it takes
only
50 kg to send a kg to the same star in 400 years..
Given the
extreme cost of speed, one possible answer is a generation ship, that
would go slow and take
not hundreds but thousands of years to reach the nearest
stars.
But here is an argument that such slow ships will not be
used.
Suppose it is proposed to launch such a ship, say one that will take
2,000 years to reach the nearest star. Here's that
proposal:
In year 2300,
spend 20 quadrillion dollars
to buy 100kg of anti-matter
to send 2 kg payload
at 1/5 of 1% of lightspeed,
taking 2000 years to reach the nearest star
the payload thus arrives in year 4300.
Here's an alternative proposal:
In year 2300, start with 20 quadrillion dollars,
invest the money in the stock market for 100 years,
with the resulting gains buy 200kg of anti-matter instead of 100kg,
send 2 kg of payload at a higher speed with the extra fuel,
so it only takes 1000 years.
The ship thus leaves in 2400,
and arrives in 3400.
Thus the second proposal gets the payload to the target sooner.
Making reasonable
assumptions about interest
rates, if
the planned travel time to the nearest stars is more than 150 years, it
would make
sense to wait a few years, invest the money so it grows, and then send
a faster
ship. Thus it seems likely that the
travel time will
be around 150 years. This number is based on very
rough
guesses, but travel time to the neartest star will probably be more
than 50 years, but less than 500
years. Based
on the same interest rate and economic growth assumptions, more than
200 years must pass starting now, before a ship can be
sent. And that's even with optimistic
assumptions.
It's hard
to guess how much a kg of
anti-matter will cost in terms of
human labor, 200 years from now. But even with optimistic
assumptions, each little item
that will be needed to get technology going at the target star, will
represent
a huge cost to the tax-payer. Something on the
order of a person's
lifetime income, for a paperclip.
Technological
change won't change these
fundamental physical constraints of inter-stellar
travel. What it can do is to increase the payoff
from even
a very small package delivered to a nearby star. In
principle,
a piece of nano-technology no larger than a paperclip could be landed
on
asteroid, spread its tiny solar panels, and begin to convert the matter
of the asteroid, atom by atom, into copies of itself. It is a
technology seed. Once a certain
overall size is reached, other structures could be
built. These
could include an antenna, for getting additional instructions from the
Solar System, and artificial wombs, in which human babies could
grow.
So nothing physical beyond the initial paper-clip of nano-technology,
need ever
be transferred to the target star system.
So the
basic idea of settling the stars is
to
land a tiny technology seed.
So these are the
basic facts about the first ship sent to establish human
life in another solar system, as imagined for this fictional story:
- The ship departs 2373
C.E. (C.E. stands
for "common era"; it means the same as
A.D. )
- The travel time is 90
years
- It travels to the
nearest star system, Alpha Centauri,
about 4.3 lightyears away.
- The package to be
delivered weighs less than a kilogram
- Even so, it represents a
significant
sacrifice undertaken by the people of the Solar System of that day.
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A3.
Fly-by |
While
each
kg delivered to, and slowed down at, the target star system costs
5,000 kg of anti-matter fuel, each kg of a ship that merely flies by
the star at speed, costs only 50 kg, because it is not slowed
down. This is assuming the same travel time in each
case.
The
amount of
data that can be stored in a paper-clip will be limited,
even given predictable improvements in data
storage. The
growing
technology at the target system, will thus be constrained by its
knowledge base. At
some point after landing the initial seed of nano-technology, it will
have reached a size where it can build a small antenna, and build some
data storage capacity - I don't know how long that will
take. But a fly-by could be scheduled to pass by at
that
time. The first small antenna might not be able to
communicate with the Solar
System at all, but it could reach the fly-by ship, which would thus
serve as a relay station.
Between the time the seed lands, and the first small antenna is built,
the seed grows using only its own very limited computational and data
storage resources to carry out plans and to respond to unforeseen
events. Once the antenna is built, the seed can
describe
its circumstances and what has happened so far, and send the
description, through the relay, to the Solar
System. There,
huge computers and human minds can work out a plan of action, and send
it to the seed. But there is a delay of
over eight
years (in the case of the nearest star) for the data to make the round
trip. It makes sense to have at
least some of
the computational work done on the fly-by ship. The
fly-by
ship can, for reasonable cost, have a fairly large computer on board,
and perhaps even humans. These humans, using their computer,
can
make decisions and return them to the seed in weeks, rather than in
years. Flying past at 2 percent
lightspeed, a fly-by
ship is
within one light-month of the target star, for four years.
Once the
fly-by goes by, it flies
past into space, forever, but as it
gets further and further from the target, the technology seed is
growing and can build larger and larger antennas.
So the
fly-by can serve a useful purpose for twenty years or so after passing
the target. All the data stored on the fly-by,
which can be
all the stored cultural content of the Solar System, can be transferred
to the developing technology seed, as its data storage capacity grows,
and its antennas become larger.
My story
is set on such a fly-by.
My human character Labongo will, in his late
thirties,
design and
build a new civilization at Alpha Centauri. In his forties
and fifties, he
will
have some contact with some human children who will be raised by
machines; the first generation of that
civilization. They
will be able to send a message to him and get an answer in about a year.
And then
he and the ship he is on will
hurtle onward into empty space, forever.
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A4.
Semi-human |
I have
assumed that a human (or at least partially human) brain will be
considered worth its weight, on the fly-by ship.
It
is not hard to imagine, that by the time we are ready to send any
sort of mission to a star, computers will have surpassed humans in all
respects. Humans may cease to exist as a species,
just as we
each die as individuals, and perhaps with as little
regret.
After all, a computer can only be said to have genuinely passed the
Turing
test, if it is as satisfying to raise such a computer, as to raise a
human
child. Such a computer is one of us, not one of
them.
It should be no harder to die and leave our dreams to our silicon sons
and daughters, than it is to leave them to our neural ones - provided
the
Turing
test has been genuinely passed. However I expect
that neuron-silicon
hybrid minds may have an advantage over pure silicon (or photonics or
quantum
computing or whatever it is in those days) for some time to come.
.
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Fiction
: no reference is
intended to actual persons.
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