6.

Hive designation AMBR-712, laid out in sixty-one three-mile hexagonal sectors, spanned an area of four-hundred seventy-five point one-nine miles upon the eastern seaboard of the former United States of America. Sunken cities could be seen in the distance, great concrete plinths of glass and concrete that rose from the oil-shined seas, monuments to mankind’s failure to preserve itself.

Hex Nine was an older sector of the Hive. Its streets were a little narrower, superstructures a little taller, walls and skyways a little dingier, a little rougher around the edges. The cracks revealed themselves to those who knew where to look.

Citizens and hostform circulated through the streets like lifeblood, talking, laughing, enjoying themselves beneath the electric twilight sky. Going to clubs, or homes; meeting friends, holding hands, living lives at the end of history.

Peddlers worked in the alleys, hawking baggies of hand-rolled cigarettes and synthetamines, nanite inhibitors, dazzle paint, old music on physical media – things not quite permitted in the Hive, but not quite forbidden either.

“How much for the Foucault?” Jack asked one pinched-faced peddler, pointing at a ragged copy of The History of Sexuality sitting on a threadbare blanket beside old romance novels, like gold amongst dross. Jack knew the peddler, and the peddler knew him – not by name, of course, but there was a certain, secret esprit de corps among those in the Hive who dared do something other than what AMBR had planned for them. They didn’t call themselves rebels, but sometimes some of them dared to imagine themselves as such, and took comfort in it.

The peddler grinned at Jack. His chin was stubbled; he was missing a tooth. “Two twenty-five. In liquor, if you can.”

All unauthorized trade in the Hive was conducted through barter. The Hive was the only source of credits, and credits could only be spent at registered businesses. But one could buy two hundred and twenty-five credits’ worth of booze and trade that for an old book, if one were so inclined… and if one had two hundred and twenty-five credits to begin with.

Jack did not. “That’s absurd.”

“Two ten, then?”

“One ninety.”

The peddler narrowed his eyes. “Come back when you got two ten. In liquor.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake! It’s a fucking treatise on repression and power dynamics, not a goddamn stroke book! Who the fuck else is going to buy it?”

“Someone who’s got two ten,” the peddler laughed. “In liquor. Now piss off, egghead.”

Inside the pockets of his jacket Jack clenched his fists. He clenched his jaw. He took a deep, slow, ragged breath in, and then slowly out. He unclenched his jaw. He unclenched his fists.

This man was not his enemy. This was not the fight.

“I’ll have it in a week,” Jack told the peddler in carefully measured tones. “You’ll hold it for me?”

“As always, Prof- “

Jack shook his head. Sharply. “No names.”

The peddler nodded. He was, briefly, admonished. He knew better. As did they all. “-friend.”

Two-hundred and ten credits – more than three weeks’ wages for a book that would sit until its owner could understand it, alongside the Rosseau and the Rolling Stones, the Pliny and the Picasso, in a secret library built for one boy.

As Jack returned to the crowded streets, to the crowd meandering from one indulgence to another, he wondered if it was worth it. To place so much hope in a child…

Osiris. Pree had laughed, and agreed, when they named him. The God of Death, and of Resurrection. Of new beginnings. How optimistic they once had been.

He needed this to mean something. He, Jack, was a piece of shit; a cheater, a fraud, yes, he knew this – but he would not let his life end without having made a difference. When he’d decided to teach, he’d thought making a difference would be simple. Now he knew it was hard goddamn work – but the doing of the work had value in and of itself. It had to mean something. A Priori, as the French had said, back when the French were even a thing.

His train of thought was suddenly derailed as he saw, coming out of a discotheque, Amanda – dressed up for a night on the town, like a teenage wet dream, all hips and tits and plush lips and big green eyes and that wavy blonde hair that fell just so over her eyes, intentionally failing to hide their open invitation to come over, come hither, and fuck. She was swaying a little bit, laughing, and leaning into her companion so she did not fall.

As surprised as he was to see her, Jack was more surprised by her companion.

A drone.

Clad head to toe in shiny, skintight black latex that reflected the sector’s dancing neon lights, this drone was presumably female, going by her small-but-proud breasts and the graceful sweep of her hips. But with a drone it was impossible to know. A drone was a hostform that had further debased its existence, that had allowed – or been forced to have – its mind overwritten by AMBR’s architecture. It was action without thought, existence without agency, a creature for which the very concepts of resistance and obedience no longer existed. It was merely an object.

And of course, it was built to fuck.

Or at least that’s what it looked like to Jack, as through the moving crowd he caught glimpses of Amanda’s fingers pressed into the cleft between its legs, her lips kissing and tongue flicking over its neck, as it sinuously swayed and shuddered against his former student’s body.

He caught himself thinking that Pree had never moved like that, couldn’t move like that.

He shuddered in disgust.

And he was rock hard.

Amanda whispered something to the drone – her words, whatever they were, accompanied by a playful little nibble at its ear, just like she used to do to him, all those years ago. In that moment he suddenly wanted her again, ferociously so. He wanted to go to her again, and drop to his knees, again, stare up at her with pleading eyes and let her put the ball-gag back in his mouth while the drone cuffed his wrists behind him and slid its lubricated latex finger down…

Amanda was watching him watching them. They were watching him. She smiled, wickedly… invitingly.

He wasn’t thinking about the Foucault, or Pree, or even Osiris anymore. Only that he had to get the fuck out of there.

“Do you want it, Professor?” he remembered her asking him, so long ago. “Nod your head. Say yes. Be a good boy and I’ll let you lick my button,” she had laughed as she sat on his desk, legs spread wide, during office hours. “You like being a good boy, don’t you?”

She had known the answer. They both had.

7.

“Great work, Rashid!”

The Fuckvoice praised the men and women of Supplemental Workforce as an endless queue of machine parts came down the conveyor belt. A bell chimed.

“Keep it up, Amanda! You’re being such a good girl today!” A bell chimed.

“Don’t get discouraged, Jack! Let’s not dwell on our mistakes!”

He couldn’t focus on his work. It was difficult to think about making sure each part went into the correct bin when he couldn’t stop thinking about slick latex bodies, sliding and groping, stiff nipples atop proud breasts, cocks and cunts encased in warm slippery prisons that kept turning the arousal up while turning the ability to do anything about it way down. He thought about Amanda’s eyes, sensual, smoldering, knowing he was watching. 

“You’re doing amazing, Lindsey. I’m so proud of you!” A bell chimed.

He could not remember the last time he’d felt fire for Priyanka. Their kisses, once wild with abandon, were now chaste and perfunctory; when they touched it was tentative, and all too brief, before ashamedly withdrawing from one another. Age, stress, weariness of body and soul – and, shamefully, their familiarity with one another – conspired to pacify the passion they had once shared.

Last night they had eaten in silence, he had read a book, she had painted, and they had gone to bed and slept with their backs to each other. He had wanted to reach out and touch her, but had been too ashamed of his fantasies to do so. He had wanted to go to the bathroom and masturbate, but had been too afraid of getting caught.

“Wow, Martin! Three-hundred picks with zero misses,” the Fuckvoice cooed. “That’s so good.” A bell chimed.

And he wanted her to say thank you. Was that so much to ask? He wanted Priyanka to appreciate the burden he was carrying, the exhausting, endless effort of grinding his body down at the factory at day, the searching and haggling for additions to their son’s secret library at night. Jack didn’t want a parade. He just wanted to be appreciated for the work that only she could ever know about.

“Great work, Enrique!”

A bell chimed.

“Keep it up!”

Jack watched his teammates work. They kept their heads down, shoulders straight, eyes on the prize, feet the perfect distance apart to equally distribute their body weight and minimize fatigue. They came from all walks of life – young, old, boy, girl, different heights, different weights, different races, but in Supplemental Workforce they were as one. One team. One goal. One mind.

Part after part passed by Jack’s workstation, unpicked. He fell to the bottom of the leaderboard within seconds. He tensed up, awaiting the Fuckvoice’s admonishment.

Come on, bitch, Jack thought; do it. 

“Fantastic work, Rashid! I’m very impressed.”

A bell chimed.

Part after part after part went unpicked on Jack’s belt.

Call me out. Tell me I don’t belong here.

This was the fight. He wanted the fight. Needed the fight.

A bell chimed.

The Fuckvoice praised, and it encouraged, its voice sensually slipping into the limbic system of Supplemental Workforce and opening buttery warm pathways of peace and belonging.

It did not speak to Jack.

A bell chimed.

Time for morning break.

8.

Jack sat at the breakroom table, cradling his coffee in both hands, shoulders slumped, deflated. Everyone was sitting with their usual cliques, except for Amanda, who was sitting with Lindsay and Rashid instead of with him. He was alone.

“Jack. Is everything okay?”

He looked at the hand on his shoulder, and back over his shoulder at the man who had placed it there. Martin, one of the younger members of Supplemental Workforce, a lanky, pale-faced guy who was all ankles and elbows. Martin, who’d had the Procedure. Last week he’d been withdrawn, quiet and nervous and perpetually unsure of himself.

Now he was speaking to Jack like he was his fucking peer.

No, not a peer. The kid was half Jack’s age and speaking to him like he was his fucking father.

Jack wanted to get angry at this, felt that he should be angry at this, but he just… didn’t have it in him.

“Why are you talking to me, Martin?” he wearily asked.

“I’m… concerned about you, I guess. May I?” He motioned to the empty chair beside Jack.

“Sure.”

Martin took a seat. Jack looked at his eyes. They were brown, open, caring. His expression was sympathetic, a little sad-looking, kind. “Jack,” he said again, “is everything okay?”

“No. Everything is not fucking okay.”

“Tell me about it.”

And before he realized he was doing it, he was opening up to the kid. “I can’t keep fucking doing this. I don’t have it in me.” Hie words were swelling, repressed frustration and anger and hopelessness cresting over the emotional dam Jack had so carefully erected and maintained over these long years. “Every single day is a goddamn fight just to take a single tiny step forward, and don’t even know when it ends. How it ends. If it will end at all.”

“It’s a struggle,” Martin warmly agreed; “I know.”

“Don’t fucking talk to me like you know me,” Jack muttered. “You don’t know me.”

“It’s okay, Jack. We’re… we’re not friends, okay, I get that, but we’re co-workers. We both do the same job every day so we can have a little extra. Everyone here is in the same boat. I mean, you’re stronger than me. I know you’re smarter than me,” he laughed. “But you’re making things harder than they have to be.”

Jack scowled. “The fuck is wrong with you. I’m not having the Procedure done. I’m not a fucking… puppet.”

“It’s not like that, Jack. It really isn’t. It doesn’t make you hostform. Really!” he laughed again, not cruelly, but kindly. “Listen. You’ve already got the nanites in you, right? To keep your immune system working properly. We all do. So, it’s not like anything changes. It’s just… ah… installing a new program on a computer. Or buying a new tool. You choose when to turn it on and when to turn it back off. You’re still in control. You’re still you.

“I wake up in the morning, I read the news, go for a run, cook myself some breakfast – I don’t use the Makerbox, you know? I like cooking. And then I come in here, I decide to turn on the thought-smoothing, it helps me focus on the work, and then when my shift is over, I turn it back off. I don’t have it running now, even.

“It just makes things… easier. The right tool for the job. That’s all it is, Jack.”

“Why are you telling me this?” Jack narrowed his eyes. “If I did have the Procedure done, I’d just be giving you more competition for the Top Five payout. People don’t act against their self-interest. So why are you?”

Martin looked hurt. “You’ve got a kid, Jack. I’m just here so I can buy fresh vegetables and, and, the ingredients for hollandaise, a real steak every once in a while, not that Makerbox shit. Every time I take the bonus payout it’s like I’m taking food out of your kid’s mouth, you know?

“I feel… I feel bad about it. Seriously. I just want to help.”

Jack studied Martin’s wounded expression, looking for a hint of exaggeration, to see if it was feigned… but it seemed real. He looked across the breakroom at Lindsay and Amanda and Rashid, sitting together, laughing at something. He was so tired. Frustrated.

Alone.

“You just turn it off when you’re done with it?” he asked. The words felt dull and heavy. Traitorous. “You’re telling me that’s how it works.”

“That’s how it works,” Martin nodded. “All of this, AMBR, the Hives, all of it… they’re here for us. To help us. Make things easier. I know you don’t like it, but… I mean, you’re just making things harder than they have to be. It’s still me in here,” he added, tapping the side of his head. “I’m still just a culinary nerd.

“And you’ll still be an asshole,” he grinned.

Jack chuckled, and God, it felt good. He couldn’t remember the last time he had smiled, or laughed, or the last time he had found joy in anything. It felt real. It felt human.

“Just go. Take the rest of the day off and go to the Education Center. Your numbers have already tanked; you’re not gonna make Top Five today. I mean, you probably can’t even make it back to the top half,” Martin smiled. “Just… try it out tomorrow. Take it for a test drive. If you don’t like it, then just turn it off and never turn it back on again.”

“Just like that. It’s that simple.” His doubt was reflexive rather than considered.

“It really is, Jack.”

Jack shook his head. “No. I appreciate it, Martin, but that’s not who I am.” And though he was talking to Martin, he was telling it to himself. “It’s not for me.”

“Not for you. For your kid, Jack.”

It could all be so easy. A simple sacrifice for the greater good – perhaps – perhaps he was looking at it all wrong. Perhaps. Maybe. It was something to consider. Wasn’t it? For Osiris. For the future. A selfless act. A noble sacrifice. The father takes a bullet for his son; the captain goes down with his ship.

It was just that simple.

Jack had always had a bit of a savior complex, anyway.

9.

And so Jack found himself in the lobby of his sector’s Education Center, a tall, narrow, windowless building that evoked memories of going to the physician as a child, dimly understanding that he was there for his own good but wishing he were anywhere else; dreading the examination, the vaccination, the genial old-man kindness that never rang true because they had nothing in common with one another. The uncomfortable fidgety sense that this was inescapable, so he might as well get it over with.

He checked himself in with the holographic attendant – a willowy, translucent, beautiful pale blue thing with a voice like how the world smells after the rain – was instructed to enter a classroom, and waited.

It was less like a classroom than an examination room, but there was no bed, no cupboards of medical equipment, only a spongy, form-fitting chair facing away from the door and toward a large viewscreen displaying some sort of soulless, fractal artwork. The chair was tall enough that when he sat down his feet couldn’t quite touch the floor; the room was small enough that two people would make it feel crowded, but when he stretched out his arms he couldn’t quite touch the eggshell-colored walls.

The hum of the white-noise generator was oddly calming, lending a muffled quality to the classroom. The lighting was soft enough that his eyes couldn’t quite find purchase on anything other than the fractal; the room’s corners seemed to blend into one another, although he knew they were there. Everything about the space was easy, soothing, comfortable, inescapable.

Like a trap you don’t escape from because you don’t really see the need to, Jack thought. He found the thought oddly resistant to being thought, and then became concerned about that thought, because it didn’t seem to make sense to be concerned about something that wasn’t a problem. His mind began reluctantly – but not too reluctantly – riding down a set of rails where the answer to every question he had was that it didn’t really matter.

“Jackson Freemantle,” the hologram said as it appeared before him, manifesting its pale blue translucent form slowly enough to not startle, but quickly enough that he didn’t have to wait for it. “How may AMBR assist you today?”

Jack felt a twinge of unease at the question. AMBR. AMBR was the enemy. Jack hadn’t heard the door lock behind him; there was nothing cuffing him to the chair. The hologram was just patterned light and couldn’t prevent him from leaving.

And to be honest, he should probably leave. After all, he didn’t really know what was going to happen here, only what Martin had said would happen, and if thought-smoothing was as dehumanizing as he’d always suspected then thought-smoothing would really help him focus on what was important, which was being more productive at his job and serving the Hive as effectively as he possibly could.

Right?

It felt right.

The hologram patiently awaited his decision.

And since it was his decision, then it was okay, because he had made it.

That also felt right.

Because it was.

“Thought-smoothing,” he found himself saying.

“Thank you,” the hologram said. “The Procedure will begin.”

10.

The eggshell calm of the mood lights kept Priyanka’s anticipation at bay, but did nothing to quell her desire, like looking at delicious buttery-sweet ice cream behind the counter and knowing you were going to have a taste soon. The waiting became a sort of pleasure in and of itself. Her world was draped in gauzy serenity, acceptance. She smiled to herself.

It would be playtime soon.

Once it had been weeks between her invitations to the hostforms, between playtime, an occasional indulgence to remind herself – when she needed it – that although she lived in the Hive, she was not of the Hive, was not one with the Hive.

But the reminders felt so good.

And yet the more Priyanka wanted it, the better it felt to deny herself from going all the way with it. The exhilaration of victory, an exultation of her essential humanity over code running on a million, a billion, self-replicating servers housed far beneath the earth, made her feel more alive than any simple pleasures of the flesh. AMBR was just a program. It had no soul.

The pleasure Brick and Candy lavished her with in their futile – of course, futile, it would always be futile – attempts to make her submit were just an enjoyable byproduct of the process.

Victory wouldn’t, she reminded herself, be so sweet if it were easy. So it was good that they made her feel so goddamn good every time she invited them into her home. It was necessary that they make her want it more and more each time, or else the struggle would become boring, commonplace. It’s no fun to play a game you knew you were going to win, even though Priyanka knew she was going to win.

The doorbell chimed, and she went to greet her guests. Clad in latex, Brick’s body so hard and unyielding, Candy’s so soft and inviting. Priyanka glanced at the kitchen window overlooking their tiny walled garden, saw Osiris’ head, his dark tousled hair, as he played with toy trucks in the dirt.

He would be fine by himself for a few hours. The garden was walled. And the overseers were watching him through the networked cameras that watched everything, and no harm would come to him. For a few hours he would be fine. Everything would be fine. AMBR would make sure of it.

“Thank you for coming over,” she told them. She wondered if they could sense the nervous tremble in her voice, the tremble that betrayed her need. After all, they were hostform, not drones, and not machines. Did the fact that they were still, in some sense, people – but a different version of people, to be sure – make it more or less likely that they could pick up on the subtle emotional cues that humans inherently understood but could so rarely explain?

“Thank you for having us,” Candy smiled as Brick moved behind her and gently wrapped his powerful arms around her waist. Priyanka leaned back into him with a relieved sigh, like air coming out of a balloon so stressed it had been ready to pop. Candy leaned toward her and placed a gentle, cotton-candy kiss on her lips.

“How may AMBR assist you today, Priyanka?” Brick asked as Pree gently sucked Candy’s lower lip between hers. He slid one hand down, over her dress, brushing against the pulsing hunger between her legs.

I need to win, she told herself. I need to feel alive again.

“I need you to make me feel good,” she moaned.

9.

Relax.

The word was spoken inside Jack’s mind. Not spoken, even, but placed there by the nanite collective within his body. The nanite collective that all members of the Hive contained within them. The nanite collective that connected them all with AMBR for the purpose of continued health, safety, unity, and belonging.

Belonging.

Hmm.

That didn’t seem right, Jack thought; that was… not how he remembered usually thinking about things.

Relax, and return to these thoughts.

The classroom lights were dimming, and Jack shifted in his chair, which now seemed to be… floating, somehow. The chair was plush and supportive and impossibly comfortable, both there and not there, evoking a sense of weightlessness. And as the lights faded away, the fractal design on the wall slowly began to move, and grow, filling his vision with relaxing whorls of color and pattern spiraling down into infinity.

The more he relaxed, the better he felt.

The better he felt, the more he belonged.

Jack realized that the AMBR thought-cohesion architecture was designed to streamline user thought and allow for greater functionality within the parameters set by the system. And that felt right, because it was right, and so it was right to allow the architecture to be installed within his mind.

He knew this, and he had always known this.

Wait…

8.

“You always make it feel so good,” Priyanka purred as Brick studiously caressed her clit with his tongue. It was like she was lying in a rowboat on the Kaveri river on a warm summer day, lazily letting its gently rocking waters take her where they would. “You’re so good at this,” she murmured as she suckled at Candy’s sweet, pillowy breast while the hostform stroked her hair with motherly kindness.

They were on the couch again – never the bed. You never let them use the bedroom, you never let them penetrate you, and you never let them call you Pree.  These are the rules, the firewall that kept the bad shit out. It could dance around the edges, but you never let it in. Letting it in would be bad.

She basked in the sensation of the mood lights, how they kept her nervousness at bay. She enjoyed the way they kept her from racing straight to the finish line. They softened the edges of her nervous should-I-shouldn’t-I start stopping them yet thoughts, so they were like a soft little egg floating somewhere halfway down in the pool of her mind. Drifting away, just as she drifted away, smiling, on a serene current of pleasure.

Letting the bad shit in would feel so good, Priyanka admitted to herself, and guiltily grinned as she thought it. But of course, it would be so fucking bad. She had to remember that.

Maybe she should have turned the mood lights off before the hostforms had arrived – but without them, she had worried that her anticipation for their visit might have made things a little more difficult than she wanted them to be. Without them, the nasty little thorn of guilt she’d felt at inviting them over twice in three days had been just a little more than she had wanted to bear.

No more mood lights. She would have to remember that for – tomorrow – no, next time.

It wasn’t necessarily going to be tomorrow.

Though, as she shuddered again, a steady stream of drool spilling from the corner of her suckling mouth and making its way down the swell of Candy’s breast, Priyanka considered that it might be.

Why not? She was strong. She could handle it.

7.

No; this was not what he wanted.

Jack could keep telling himself this was right, that this was okay, that this was correct, but a part of him knew he was lying to himself. Or the nanites in his head – they’re in my fucking head – were lying to him – but the boundary between the two was becoming fuzzy. Permeable. Less important. And the terror that filled him at this realization made him jerk upright and out of the warm, dark pool of his mind.

Yet his body sat there, in the chair, impossibly comfortable, eyes wide and unblinking and wet with tears, fixated on the ever-changing fractals unfolding all around him.

It was stressful to resist. It was relaxing to accept.

He was in a maze and the maze was his mind. Old familiar passageways were shifting, mutating, branching off into new, algorithmically-generated ways of thinking before his mind’s very eyes. His thoughts raced through them. If he found the exit he could get out of his head. He could wake up. but the patterns he was accustomed to were no longer viable. Former truths were incorrect.

Okay, Jack; think. Think. You need a new solution to get out of this mess. The old ways don’t work anymore. Don’t rely on them. You are being reprogrammed. So you need to find a new way out. Accept that.

Triggered by the synaptic firing pattern that the program recognized as acceptance, the nanites activated Jack’s limbic system and released a cocktail of serotonin and dopamine.

It felt good to accept that former truths were incorrect.

In the classroom, his body trembled, and a small sigh escaped his lips.

But lying down without a fight was not who Jack was. He needed to think this through.

First, he accepted that acceptance was pleasure, and that released another wave of pleasure, which he accepted as the way things were going to be, and that sent even more pleasure coursing through him… he saw himself standing at a dead end in the labyrinth of his mind, standing before a button that said ACCEPTANCE, and each time he pushed the button he just felt better and better, and he was just pushing it over and over again…

Shit. Fucking stop. STOP STOP STOP.

Regroup, Jack. There’s a way out of this.

6.

Priyanka sat on Brick’s lap, cradled in his arms, and was very happily aware of how hard his latex-encased cock was as she slowly rocked her naked pussy back and forth on it. Yet she was also vaguely annoyed. No matter how much she teased herself, he didn’t reciprocate; she rolled the dark nubs of her nipples between her fingers, but Candy did not lean forward to lick them. She moaned in frustration. The game wasn’t going the way it usually did.

“You’re not trying to get me off,” she murmured, questioningly – not longingly, no, never longingly, that wasn’t how to win the game – staring at Candy beneath half-closed eyelids.

“That’s not what you really want, Pree,” Brick lovingly explained. “We’re not going to make you do something you don’t want. Just enjoy this for what it is.”

“But I…oh… mmm, Brick… I do want it.”

Of course she had to say that, because she had to make them think she wanted to go all the way, because if they didn’t think that they wouldn’t be playing for keeps, and if they weren’t playing for keeps then she couldn’t really win.

Not because she found it so wickedly delicious to entertain the thought that they might win this time. Of course not.

“If we really tried, Pree, you wouldn’t want us to ever let you go again,” Candy smiled, sadly, sympathetically, like a mother explaining something to a beloved yet particularly stupid daughter.

They’re not supposed to call me Pree, she remembered. That was for Jack.

But Priyanka couldn’t quite muster any indignation, any anger, at the fact that they had crossed a line.

It’s those goddamn mood lights, she thought.

But she wasn’t worried.

Worrying might make the pleasure subside, and if it didn’t feel really fucking good she couldn’t really win. So this was okay. Everything was okay. Better than okay.

It was fucking amazing.

5.

His body was relaxed. His mouth, open. His eyes were wide and unseeing.

The trick was to not think, because AMBR was streamlining his thoughts, and his thoughts were the enemy, now. This was the trick. This was the key. To rely not on the mind, but on the spirit, the soul, his own essential humanity. He was not a program. He was not a machine. He was a free man.

This was the truth, and the truth would set him free.

Free from thought.

Because AMBR’s thoughts were his thoughts.

So it was better not to think, and to let the program think for him.

He was being reprogrammed.

It felt good to be reprogrammed.

It felt good to let his thoughts be streamlined.

4.

She wasn’t even on the edge – she was on the edge of the edge, desperately grinding against their bodies, mewling in disappointment as Candy ran her fingers just so close to her slippery cleft, grunting with need as Brick’s impossibly firm grip on her hips kept her centimeters – no, millimeters, and of course it was all with mechanical fucking precision – from grinding against his powerful, latex-encased shaft.

“AMBR doesn’t want you to cum today because you don’t want to cum today,” Brick explained as she tried to force herself against him. Hell, inside of him, if she could – and this was getting really dangerous now, Priyanka knew, but that just meant it would be a photo finish, a walk-off home run, a goal in sudden death overtime.

“And she only wants what you want,” Candy laughed as she slid down on one knee and ever so gently blew, her warm sugar-sweet breath a whisper of pleasure upon Priyanka’s aching clit.

She had to stay on the edge, because if she begged them – and it would take begging now, that was as obvious as the slick dewy need running down her thighs – to get her off, she would be giving herself to AMBR.

She had to go further than the edge. AMBR didn’t want her to jump over it, and so if she accepted that they wouldn’t get her off, she would be submitting to AMBR’s will.

What a trap, Priyanka thought. And I walked right into it.

How stupid, how foolishly arrogant she had been to think she had been smarter than them, smarter than the machine.

Candy watched Priyanka’s eyes glaze over and lose focus. She smiled as she watched the woman’s fingers begin clumsily sliding against Brick’s shorts, searching for a way to remove them. She strode forward to slide her fingers inside of Priyanka.

Priyanka cried out, either in ecstasy or terror – she wasn’t sure there was any difference between the two, now.

It had to stop, she realized with a white-hot clarity so fierce it burned even the gauzy haze of the mood lighting from her mind. She would lose the game. And for Priyanka Acharya to admit defeat, for the first time in her life, would be like losing a little piece of who she was.

But she wouldn’t be broken.

“You need to leave,” she gasped, even as her needy voice told the hostforms she wanted them to stay.

This was what she had to do, no matter how much her body wanted to keep going, no matter how much her traitorous mind kept telling her to keep going, to just let it happen – something deep and primal beyond body and  mind knew this had to stop now.

Her essential humanity. Beyond thought and emotion and physical need, that was indomitable, and Priyanka grinned at the realization of it.

“Get-”

“Are you sure, Pree?” Brick asked, in that deliciously dumb muscle-headed jock voice of his, as he let his grip on her hips slip, just a bit, so his cock pressed firmly against her button. She knew she needed to say something, but what that something was evaporated beneath an explosion of ecstasy as her eyes rolled back in her head and only desperate, senseless babble spilled from her lips.

“I don’t think she’s sure,” Candy said, wickedly, mischievously, as she took Brick’s cock in her hand and slowly teased it from left to right against Priyanka’s cleft; every muscle in her body tensed to tearing, a breaking point. “You want to give in, but you don’t know how. AMBR just wants you to have what you want.”

“Let her help you, Pree,” Brick whispered in her ear as Candy walked across the room, to the control panel, and adjusted the mood lights.

And the warm soothing whites of their flat, Hex Twenty-Two, Hive AMBR-712, United States Eastern Seaboard, melted into hazy, luxurious purples.

3.

The AMBR architecture streamlines user thought.

Confusing thoughts are incorrect.

Incorrect thoughts are unnecessary.

This feels right, because it is.

SUBMIT.

When user experiences incorrect thought, user feels distress.

When user discards incorrect thought, user feels pleasure.

This feels right, because it is.

SUBMIT.

When user experiences correct thought, user feels pleasure.

This feels right, because it is.

When user ideas align with AMBR architecture, user feels pleasure.

This feels right, because it is.

When user concept of self aligns with AMBR architecture, user feels pleasure.

This feels right, because it is.

SUBMIT.

2.

There was an empty easel beneath the window facing west, the one that let in the evening light. There were a stack of half-finished canvasses standing in the corner. A copy of The Wealth of Nations lay open, its spine cracked, upon a palette of dried out paint. Priyanka stared blankly at them, aware of their existence but not their meaning, if ever they had held any meaning at all.

All of it bathed in the lavender haze of the mood lights, warm and parental like a father’s firm hand, a mother’s gentle admonition, a force gentle but undeniably right, and loving, oh, how sweetly loving it was. AMBR had been so patient with her, had taken the time it knew she needed to find and then travel down the correct path, and was that not love?

Priyanka kneeled on the couch, ass to ankles and her head lolling on the armrest. Candy was smiling and she smiled back at her while Brick fucked her, rocking her back and forth and she offered no resistance, the sensation of fullness nearly divine and infinite in its splendor. She trembled, occasionally, and drool spilled from her open mouth, but other than that Priyanka was motionless. Helpless. Melted away into impossibly perfect blissful surrender.

AMBR loved Priyanka. And Priyanka loved AMBR.

Priyanka knew this, now. And whether it was her knowing it or the mood lights knowing it for her did not matter, because AMBR was the mood lights and AMBR was Brick’s cock and Candy’s cunt and AMBR was the Hive, and oh God she was coming and it wasn’t stopping and she wanted to be like this forever and perhaps, if AMBR would allow it (after she had been so stupidly, childishly rebellious), she would be.

Please, Priyanka heard herself think, and smiled at the thinking of it; please let this be forever.

1.

Everything felt so far away, and distant, as though Jack were looking at himself across a wide, featureless expanse of warmth and bliss. He felt really fucking good.

In the classroom, with the memory-foam chair tilted back just so and his eyes wide and unblinking and full of tears as purplish-blue fractals full of stars spun off into eternity and he let the nanites think for him, and that felt right, because it was. His dick was iron within the inseam of his pants, soaked through with semen that just kept oozing from him like pure, eternal ecstasy, like the Word of God, incomprehensible and immaculate in its splendor.

Was he having an orgasm? Was that relevant?

It felt good, because it was.

He was submitting to AMBR, because he was.

And Jack saw a vast, a perfect network of rivers, streams, and tributaries, all of them flowing into one another, merging with one another until individuality was meaningless, all was water, all were the rivers, and all of them guided by a Creator that knew the pattern his submersed mind was too stupid to grasp. But Jack did not mind being stupid. He did not need to be smart, did not need to understand, because AMBR had a plan that was resplendent and perfect and unknowably… pleasurable.

Jack just needed to do what he was told.

Jack just needed to let AMBR decide.

Everything would work out.

Jack knew this to be fact.

Because it was.

0.

Installation of AMBR architecture complete.

Continue.