AI Era: Rodgering

That was a very dangerous question. The wind blew against them, ruffling Nineva's hair. "Roger, the current contract can't last, so yes. I want something that will."

Nineva listened to Cliff reply to Roger as she thought over how to respond to him on his marriage proposal. He was deferring to Roger on many points of his, well, slavery, and that indicated that Roger could do something to him. What she heard of their conversation was Cliff's subtly walking Roger into thinking about decisions in such a way as to agree with their outcome. If she said no, Cliff was in danger somehow. How to say yes was fraught with dangers too...to their case. The nerds had everything they needed. Now she had to get Cliff ready to be a witness. It was going to be an almost impossible task. Sharing her bed? And the kiss. He melted her with that kiss, and she still felt swollen between her thighs.

As they walked, he would idly lift their joined hands and bite her thumb lightly. Finally, she spoke up, "Okay, when the perpetual contract is signed, we can work on the personal contract. I already agreed to a certain amount of touching in a few days, so given no conflicts, we can build up from that. We..." she swallowed. "...need to test out compatibility for assembling the other contract."

Cliff tugged her to a stop. "No matter what happens, I'm going to hold you to this."

'Does that involve rope play?'

Cliff shook his head amused. "She's absolutely not into that. Roger, sometimes to hold something forever, you have to prepare for a temporary separation."

'Branding is a potential solution.'

"Tempting, but no. We have to leave a deep impression on her EMOTIONALLY. One that will last until we're ready to start the new contract."

'I am detecting unusual activity at the entrance to the park surrounding this building.'

He immediately realized his error. He should have drawn out giving her the information she needed. "The Captain," Cliff growled and went to hunt down Nineva. The man wanted to take her away from him before he worked on her any more.

"And that's it." She put down the stylus after signing and filling in the forms sent to rent Cliff perpetually. The money should have been already transferred when the man himself broke the lock to her bedroom and marched in. No knocking, nothing. "What is it, Cliff?" she asked alarmed.

"There's something I need to show you." Cliff swung Nineva into his arms and strode to the study where Roger had disabled the cameras.

'Multiple police vehicles have entered the grounds.'

Setting her on her feet but keeping his arms around her, he said, "You're mine, Nineva." Then he kissed her, pulling her against him to feel his erection. Pausing as she signaled to stop, he continued, "I'm going to hold you to your promises." As the tinkling sound of the main door opening echoed through the room, he kissed her again. But this time it was on the inside of her wrist, a hard sucking kiss guaranteed to leave a bruise.

She was panting, divided by his sudden declaration and the emergency of unknown people entering the building. Cliff moved to face the door blocking her behind him with an arm securing her to his back when her Captain strode into the room. A small evidence team followed.

"Detective Nineva, please introduce me to this young man you've recovered," he announced, taking in the scene. The Captain's scan of their general disarray and frown of concern set Cliff on edge. He released Nineva but seized her hand.

As they talked, calmly, including one of the asshole nerds awkwardly attempting to patch Roger by talking to Cliff like an idiot, an unspoken tug-of-war was battled. After Nineva had been forced to let his hand go, the Captain drew Nineva a few centimeters away from him, and Cliff then closed the distance. They progressed that way partially across the room, when he was finally blocked by a courteous, "Please come with me, Mr. Cliff. We have a hotel suite set up for you to comfortably give testimony."

An officer lifted her hand and rested it on her stunning gun, something that got Roger warning, 'The stun gun could reset all my circuits.'

As Cliff followed the implied command, he looked back at Nineva. In that one moment she looked at him, and her eyes were glistening with unshed tears. She thought this was the last she would see of him. Lifting two fingers, he signed, "I'm coming for you."

'When?' Roger wanted to know.

"Her oath overrode the old contract. It's the obstacle we had to get around." Cliff had to talk softly under the spray of water in his shower.

'A police officer is under oath?'

"And to be able to testify, she couldn't let me touch her intimately."

'Our objective is to pursue a long-term contract.'

"It still is. With Detective Nineva."

'I am concerned about contracting this client, Cliff. She will not be interested in maintaining it if she cannot have sex with you.'

"She really, really wanted to say yes. Roger, you never walk away from a woman who holds an oath given so fiercely."

'That is reasonable. She will not fail a contract. What is your plan then?'

"We need to collect intelligence for now."

'I will connect to B&H.'

Cliff grinned and glanced at Nineva's parting gift picturing her hands on it. On him. "Look up how to best secure a prisoner for transportation."

Nineva frowned while rubbing her wrist. She kept Cliff's bruise, mark really, hidden under long sleeves.

"The AI is disconnected from the Sexy Avator server?" she asked over the noise of the shooting range.

The Captain replied as he loaded the projectiles into the rifle, "Yes, but we can't remove the chips. All of the victims are being separated from the enslavers, and we're making sure they never cross paths again. Well, under most circumstances."

"Me too?" she asked as she put down the battery she had been testing and picked up the next.

"Especially you. Since you were able to keep your oath, it shouldn't be a big problem." He closed the firing mechanism and flicked on the power.

Cliff was not going to like that. She flinched internally, merely letting her frown deepen. She put the battery into a charger.

The Captain took aim, "There's one circumstance for an exception. Victims who had a child while enslaved. Psych evals are being made for the best placement."

Nineva jumped as the gun fired.

"Say that again," Cliff prompted.

The psychologist closed his notepad, "At least one couple will be allowed to reconnect after the male's time is served."

"Why? What's the difference?"

"He had a child with the victim and had married her once realizing she was effectively enslaved by the company. But he didn't report it. Charged with abetting. She was determined to be stable enough to decide the child's future."

Cliff didn't need Roger's prompt, 'Get the full reparations amount.'

"Since none of the mental or financial issues apply to me, I'd like to just take the full amount and disappear." Roger began tabulating budgets as Cliff argued for an increase to cover taxes.

It was the little things that she really missed about Cliff, she decided as she walked to her apartment. She had come off her shift in the middle of the night, because it took her forever to get the calculations done lately. Her focus was off.

The block approaching her complex was dark, lit only by scattered light. It suited her mood of silent grief. The quiet was peaceful in a way her heart wasn't.

It had only been a few months since she last saw Cliff's image in the courtroom. His testimony had to be handled so carefully because of Roger, but no one missed the fury behind his calm tone and language. It was the fastest case she'd ever seen tried. Everyone wanted it to disappear. Cliff hadn't seen her of course, yet as he left the courtroom, he paused to look meaningfully at her Captain.

Approaching a dark van parked in the narrow street, Nineva ignored her irritation with the unknown driver while sidestepping it. Keeping two steps away from its doors was an automatic thought process. And as expected, nothing happened. The neighborhood she lived in was relatively safe and characteristically odd. It's primary landmark was an arch held up by pillars to welcome visitors. She smiled sadly at it as she entered its bright pools of light. Cliff was an odd man; he would have said something entertaining about the structure. Stepping into one of the spotlights that came off it, she sighed fondly remembering his soliloquy on loneliness. She sniffed softly, missing the way Cliff smelled.

Then she sighed again, resigned to the heartache, when a familiar shape stepped from around one of the pillars. She jerked to attention worried about her sanity. "Cliff?" she half wished, half worried it was him.

'Entering camera view now,' Roger told him as he moved forward to block her getting around him and letting the archaic arch's lights illuminate his face.

"You paid for me to be your problem," he told her. "Which makes you, my problem."

It was him. Talking in riddles. And he was smiling. Not good. And she had to admit, she loved him for it. "I'm forbidden to be within view of you," she replied to him, nervously. "And technically, it was the police department who paid."

"Indeed, I even sent your Captain a little thank you card."

He was looking for a physical confrontation. She knew he wouldn't hurt her, but his body language told her he planned to get his hands on her. She shivered as a shot of heat thrust straight through her. "Why?" Her only solutions were to flee or talk him down from his mental...cliff.

"Never underestimate male sexual aggression," he answered.

Meaning...Too late to talk. The man had already jumped. She dropped everything she was carrying. He wasn't there for talking. He was there for her.

"Run," Cliff ordered. "Now," Cliff/Roger added.

"Chase down Detective Nineva, Sergeant, I need a word with her."

"What is it, Captain?" replied a junior officer.

"Citizen Cliff sent me an odd postcard. Says, 'Thank you for Detective Nineva.' "

"She hasn't reported in, Sir."

Flipping it over, he glimpsed the sketch. "Set up a search team."

"Dare I ask?"

"Cliff, what are you thinking?" She pulled at the bonds he'd placed around her hands while she had been unconscious. She was in a van, and he had taken the effort to make sure she was comfortable and secure. Well, as comfortable as possible with her hands tied behind her back.

"I can't let you hurt yourself trying to get away from me," Cliff/Roger answered.

Sexual frustration had primed her to warm all over from his words. He wasn't going to let her release him. "I took an oath. There are orders here."

He grinned over his shoulder at her as he drove, "With an exploitable loophole."

"She's been kidnapped," stated Nerd #1.

Nerd #2 gestured at the screen with her popcorn, "Watch."

The view showed Detective Nineva drop everything and run out of frame, Citizen Cliff burst across the view in a fraction of a second. Little fucker was fast despite his tank-like build. A minute later, he was back in frame, Nineva unconscious as he carried her. The van door opened without any contact; then he carefully placed her within when he reached the vehicle.

"The AI opened the door. He's fused with it somehow," commented the popcorn grazer.

The Captain pushed down his anger. "Find him. How much reparations money did he get to run this operation on?"

"All of it," answered Nerd #1.

"Fuck."

"We'll get there," Cliff commented as he carried her to the canoe at the end of the dock. The boards creaked under his leaden weight. "First we need to talk."

"Is your AI filtering my physical likeness?" she asked suspiciously.

Roger/Cliff replied, "No, not since it was determined that your physical parameters were more desirable unmodified."

As he gently fitted a flotation vest around her bonds, she probed, "When was that exactly?"

"Almost immediately this guy mentally wrestled the AI to do what he wanted. A month into the contract, and his AI started sending complete bullshit to the company's server. Look at this crap. Whose bright idea was deliberate brain damage?" Nerd #3 summarized.

"These were military chips until the ethically dubious program was canceled, so then they hit the surplus market," the Defense Department representative answered.

"So, the military couldn't make them work and then lets them get to completely unethical corporate business?!"

"No comment. Then this guy comes along. What kind of programming does he do?"

"None. Philosophy of Logic adjunct."

"Wait, what?"

"...which means...the solution is unique in that I have to get you pregnant before you'll let me make love to you." Cliff stated as if lecturing enthusiastically about the rules of a game.

She did hear him correctly over the motor he'd attached to the canoe. They were heading upstream. The police search was going to go down if they found the van. If they even knew where to begin looking for her. It was going to take them a month or longer to catch up to them. "Roger, what is your prime function?"

"My top priority is to maximize the client's pleasurable interest in keeping my human host on contract," Roger/Cliff answered. Cliff grinned at her. "So, the plan is to start enjoying our sex life for the rest of our lives, because..." he laughed a little maniacally, "...me and Roger are never going to get enough of you."

Nineva scanned her eyes over Cliff's tired face; he had been up for easily 24 hours straight. There was no way he was going to be able to stay up much longer. "While flattering, and kind of depressing, because I can't keep you without going to jail, I don't see how you're going to pull this off."

"Your kidnapping was all on camera."

"Cliff, Roger, you're risking a mental asylum."

"I also sent a card to the Captain with a picture I drew of us waving in front of a house. You were nicely rounded," he imitated a pregnant abdomen, "I told him Thank you for sending you to me or something like that."

"Or jail."

"Sexy Avatar failed to account for the differences between men and women when reconfiguring the B&H base AI," Roger/Cliff commented. "You're so beautiful and wonderful, Nineva, I would have pursued you regardless of our circumstances," Cliff added. "Which is exactly the difference; the company did not take into account that a male host human would pursue his female client, assuming that the female host human would have to be pressured to accept the male client."

She rolled her eyes. "No, you were just fortunate to get a normal woman, not a rich twit who wanted to make her husband pay for some infidelity."

Grimacing, Cliff shook his head, "Actually..."

"There's been another kidnapping?"

"Yes, Captain. We think so. A female perp has been missing for some time. It was being investigated as a potential murder since the woman's husband didn't report her missing for two weeks, claiming to be out of town on a business trip." Nerd #2 handed him a file.

He looked at the file quickly, "The time frame was somewhere in the span of two weeks?"

"We narrowed it down to when the Sexy Avatar servers responded to an AI getting severed from the data stream. Not just any AI, it was connected to the woman's male slave. Also missing, of course."

He rapidly flipped through the file, "And they didn't report the man missing. Add it to the charges." He tapped Citizen Cliff's postcard in its evidence packaging on his desk. "Find someone in the military's Technology Criminal Investigation Unit. We need to have a chat."

"Any word on Detective Nineva, sir?"

"We lost her for now. Citizen Cliff took rural roads, and any incidental camera footage is being searched before the disk rewrites start in 5 or fewer days."

"We're in a race."

He tapped Cliff's postcard in its evidence packaging again. "We're losing. I need someone to get a hold of one of these AI's so we can predict it."

"We've reached our destination."

Nineva was staring at a fortification which was centuries old when Cliff brought the canoe up to a small shoreline near its base. "A civil war era fort?" Flashing her a quick smile, Cliff climbed out into the water to tug the canoe all the way up the shore and behind a blind. Nineva found herself staring at the flex of his muscles under his clothes as he barely exerted himself; she felt the power as she kept herself upright with the moist soil squelching under the keel. She grew briefly lightheaded as desire rolled through her.

"Seemed appropriate since I had to go medieval in my thinking." He balanced her as she awkwardly stood and stepped out of the canoe. "Roger's in completely unfamiliar territory, and giving him reading assignments has been educational for me as well. He found the place."

"I'm feeling almost no dizziness anymore. Let me walk," Nineva replied. "How did you knock me out? I don't really remember anything but running."

"Ah, well, I didn't want to hurt you with tackling, so I sprayed your face with a knock-out solution Roger found, snagged your arm as you slowed, and caught you into me." Nineva cringed a bit as she attempted to move her sore arm into view. "Yeah, you got a little bruised. Sorry about that."

It was better this way. Missed you. "Could have been worse." She sighed. "I can't believe you've recreated our isolation."

"Almost there." When they reached the steps, Cliff lifted her up into his arms, "It's traditional to carry you in, I believe."

She looked up into his twinkling eyes at his declaration and couldn't look away. His heat warmed her, and she couldn't help herself. She smiled back at him. Grinning outright now, he carefully took her inside a former fort that had seen better times, and then tucked away in the basement: a modern apartment.

Setting her down in the bathroom, he pulled his pants off and then her own. "Cliff?" she asked alarmed as he worked. She didn't want to have to try fighting with him.

"It's this or cut them off. No sex yet, remember?" he replied as he attached an ankle cuff to her.

She wasn't exactly clean enough to run around like she was. "Let me take a bath to prepare for whatever you're up to."

He attached the other end of the cuffs to his own ankle.

Reaching behind her, finally releasing her wrists, he assented, "Yes, exactly. Let's both take a shower."

She rubbed her wrists sighing at the marks the straps had left on her skin. Turning to the shower, she noticed that the ankle cuffs were retractable. "What's the reasoning behind the chain-gang?" she asked clicking the shower on and stepping in.

Cliff was right behind her thrilled to finally see her naked. "This fortress and island is a death trap. I was warned about 15 different ways to accidentally get killed and Roger found two more that had been missed. Then he suggested I keep you safely tied to the bed, and I had to walk him through how that's not possible."

"Island?" she asked.

"Forbidden. To visitors. Owner thinks I'm military making an assessment."

She couldn't help taking in her eyefull of his nakedness as she showered. "How exactly are you planning to get me pregnant without sex? I'm wracking my brain on that one."

Cliff grinned. Reaching around her to the shelf above the shower, he pulled down a familiar cylinder. "Will you rub me up again?"

It was her replica vagina she had given him. Taking it from him, she warmed all over seeing that he was as excited as she. Slowly sliding it around his erection, she squeezed gently increasing the pressure. Cliff closed his eyes as a moan slipped out.

'Open your eyes.'

"Roger that, Roger," he looked down to let him see what she was doing to him.

Nineva shook her head and half grinned as she began moving the tube, thrusting him in and out of it.