Brave New World Ch. 03

"Hmm..." she sighed. "Yes, lover, yes, like that... A little more... Hmmmmmm..."

When he felt her movements become more urgent and he knew she was almost there, he reached down to caress her breasts with the palms of his hands. When he felt her nipples harden under his caresses, he took them between his thumbs and forefingers, and gently squeezed, until he felt her thighs clamp down on his hips as she came.

"Oh... Oooooooohhhh!! Yesssss!! OooOOOOHHHH!"

He felt her pussy grip his cock as her orgasm hit. He continued to move inside her, timing his short strokes to match the contractions of her inner muscles, as they rode out the wave of her pleasure together. Having cum just a short while ago, he was able to hold back his own release until he felt her relax under him.

He kissed her face, his rigid cock still deep inside her. She opened her eyes and smiled dreamily. Then she put her arms around him and pulled him against her.

"Your turn to cum, Roy," she whispered. "I know you must be close."

He smiled and nodded.

She lifted her legs and folded her ankles around the small of his back. "So do it," she whispered. "Don't hold back. Fill me."

He started to move again, pulling out of her almost entirely, then all the way back into the hot folds of her pussy, now sopping wet after her climax. The feeling of her hot, slick inner velvet across the head of his cock was pure ecstasy, and he felt the familiar pressure build.

"Roy?"

He looked into her eyes.

"When you cum... Cum deep inside me. Please? I want to feel it, deep in there."

His grin was all the answer she needed. His thrusts, while still slow and relaxed, soon became more urgent, more powerful. Faster and faster he pumped into her, feeling it build and build... Until, all too soon, the delicious sensations in his cock peaked, then erupted, and he pushed himself into her as far as he could go. His moans of pleasure turned into an animalistic grunt, and his cock pulsed as he shot his load deeply into her most intimate part, spurt after spurt of it jetting out of him, filling her...

When it was over she lay in his arms, her head on his shoulder, her eyes closed and a dreamy, satisfied smile on her face, and Roy realized that he felt happy. Intensely pleasurable as all his sexual experiences since his awakening might have been, this feeling of comfort, of closeness and belonging, and of simple happiness was of a totally different order. He held her close and sighed contently. His finger played idly with one of her nipples, but he knew they were both sated.

"Tami?" he whispered.

"Hm-mm?"

"Thank you."

"For what?" she mumbled sleepily.

"For everything. For caring. For being with me. For making me feel good. For... making me happy."

"Love you too," she whispered, smiling softly.

"What?"

But when he looked up, she was asleep.

* * *

"I know how you must feel, Roy," Reesh said, as they both walked through the garden under the star-filled dome. "But you're going to have to get used to it sooner or later."

Roy nodded. "I understand that, Reesh. But I simply can't shake off a lifetime of taboos and social standards in a few weeks."

Reesh smiled. "You may surprise yourself, Roy. Once you've done it once or twice, it will be the most natural thing in the world."

Roy looked skeptical.

"Think about it," she continued. "At first you were uncomfortable with your nudity, weren't you? But now it's a natural thing. If you can do that with one old taboo, why not with all the others?"

"Because some taboos were actually functional, Reesh," he said. "Incest, for example. Sex between relatives usually leads to a lot of grief. A lot of people can get hurt, and if it results in pregnancy there's a good chance of terrible birth defects."

Reesh nodded. "Alright, you do have a point there. In the case of incest we still do need to be cautious. The most important risk has been eliminated because now we have complete fertility control, so birth defects are not an issue anymore. But unhappiness... yes. It happens. You can get away from a former lover if things don't work out in the end, but with family that's a lot harder. I like to think that most people these days are a lot more emotionally mature than they used to be, but maybe that's just wishful thinking. I don't know. But it's not a universal principle, Roy. Things have changed. Just like we don't think twice about going naked in an environment that allows for it, we don't have problems with a lot of other things that used to be taboo for a variety of reasons. Take Chia, for example. She's been having sex for years, and I think she only waited as long as she did because I taught her better ways to masturbate. Like everyone else she had pretty much picked up the basics by herself by the time she started puberty, of course, but I thought it might not be a bad idea to teach her some of the more advanced masturbation techniques."

Roy looked at her, not knowing what to say.

"I showed her, Roy. We sat down together and I showed her how I can make myself cum like a volcano, and she watched. She was very interested, as a matter of fact. After I'd had a few big ones she asked me to take her through it step by step. So we did it together, and she came like never before. We both did. I taught her a lot about pleasuring herself. I did that with all my children. Even the boys, although they needed less instruction." She smiled. "In fact, they were doing it years before they hit puberty. Still, a nerve-stimulating lube and a few tips that I'd picked up over the years on how to make a man go wild with pleasure did go a long way for them, too."

"So..." Roy began.

"So when it comes to taboos, what I'm saying is that most of them no longer exist," Reesh went on. "Including the ones that you need to get over. The whole idea of underage sex has become meaningless, because everyone decides for themselves when they're ready, and when it comes to that, most people actually do have some common sense nowadays. The main problem with sex at a young age has always been that humans mature sexually long before they mature mentally and emotionally. But in today's society we recognize that and we accept that as a fact, and we deal with it by preparing our children for it and guiding them through it, which pretty much solves the problem. Because sex is a normal part of our lives, sexual guidance is a natural thing for our children. So as long as it's between consenting partners making informed decisions, there's no problem whatsoever. And having sex in front of other people is also considered normal, because outdated terms like voyeurism and exhibitionism have gone the way of the dinosaur, too."

Roy sighed. "I feel like a caveman sometimes, you know that?"

Reesh smiled. "You are not a caveman and you are not outdated, Roy. You just have a little bit of catching-up to do."

"Why not just let me be, old prejudices and all?"

"Because you will need to fit in sooner or later, Roy," Reesh said as they reached the rim wall that circled the garden. She turned left and led him past a number of doors. "And the sooner you start, the easier it will be. You have had a few first experiences already, so you're much closer to shedding the rest of your discomfort than you realize. And you will need it sooner than you think."

"Why?" Roy asked.

Reesh looked at him. "Jaru tells me that the data transmission that corrupted your autodoc into trying to kill you definitely originated dirtside."

"Dirtside?"

"Down on Earth. Which means that we're likely to go down there sooner rather than later."

"So what does that have to do with..."

"With sexual taboos? Roy, we're lucky up here. The habs have lots of room and right now they're barely populated. These days they're mostly used to grow foodstuffs that are being shipped dirtside. So when we want privacy, it's easy for us. Down there things are different. Most areas are uninhabitable. People live in shelters. Shelters that were cramped more often than not, especially in the early days. Shelters without much privacy. Having sex in front of others is something they often can't avoid there, and right after Nuke Day when things were really bad down there, they never could avoid it. So they did the only thing possible, which was not to make a problem of it." They reached a door and she punched a code into the keypad next to it. The door slid open and she led him through the passage behind it. "You need to get comfortable with that, Roy, because I can see you needing that particular skill before all this is over."

Roy slowly nodded. "Alright, I see your point. Still..."

"Still it makes you feel awkward," she finished his sentence. "I understand that. But that will change very soon."

She stepped through a door into the side wall of the passage. "Hi, Chia," she said.

But the room was empty.

Reesh walked over to the bank of consoles mounted into the side wall of the room and tapped one of the screens. "It looks like Chia's out in the field," she said. "She logged a service call to troubleshoot one of the harvesters. But..." Her voice trailed off as she looked at a list of numbers scrolling across the screen.

"What?" Roy asked.

Reesh frowned. "She should have been back long ago."

"So where is she?"

Reesh peered at the screen. "Plot E39," she said. "Harvesting robot CR384. Which should be right... here."

"How far is that?" Roy asked, looking at the small map that appeared on the screen next to the one she was working on.

"Close," she said, turning around. "Let's see what's going on."

She opened a door set into the back wall, revealing a row of protective suits. She took one out and handed it to him, then took one herself. Roy followed her lead in putting it on. It was a one-piece affair, somewhat like a pair of overalls, but made out of a thin material that resembled neither plastic nor cloth nor leather. It fit around his body tightly but comfortably, even covering the soles of his feet. On Reesh it looked incredibly sexy. The thin material clung to her body tightly, revealing her every curve, especially her glorious breasts and her beautiful butt. Her nipples and the slit of her pussy were clearly visible in the suit's profile, which somehow seemed to accentuate them in a way that he found quite distracting.

She walked out the door and followed the corridor to the end, where bright sunlight poured in through a set of heavy double doors. She touched a panel set in the wall and the doors slid open. Heat beat down on them as they stepped out into a vast stretch of cropland.

He followed her, ignoring the heat and trying not to get mesmerized by the sight of her gorgeous buttocks swishing back and forth under the tight fabric of her suit. She marched ahead of him, her concern clearly showing in the pace she set. They walked through a field of what appeared to be grain of some sort, although it looked different from what Roy had ever seen before. It grew on short, thick stalks and had oversized ears with multiple rows of grain kernels almost as large as peanuts. Genetic engineering? Whatever it was, the field was enormous, stretching to the horizon and beyond. While he walked, Roy idly wondered what the normal range of visibility would be like in the hab. Was the floor flat or curved?

After a few minutes they reached a huge, blocky machine which was standing quietly in the field. It reminded Roy of the combine harvesters he'd seen as a boy, but vastly larger and more bulky. Incongruously, the thing was painted bright orange. As they came closer, he could see that the machine had no cabin, but an almost flat front face, studded with what seemed to be a row of sensor arrays and camera's. It had a large gaping maw at the base with rows of gleaming steel blades in it, flanked by a pair of spidery, articulated arms ending in a set of claw-like manipulators. The machine sat on four heavy bogies with large balloon tires on each side. As they came closer, the size of the thing became more apparent, until it towered over them like a large building on wheels. A chute at the back of the thing sloped down to about three feet above ground. In spite of the machine's bulk, the chute made it look vaguely like an insect.

On the side of the machine, which was right in front of them, a pillar had been lowered almost down to ground level. In its side a panel stood open, revealing a screen on which some kind of readout was visible. Reesh looked at it, tapped it a few times to bring up more information, and frowned.

"As far as I understand it, this says it's in manual override mode," she said. "It looks like she has been working on it. So where is she?"

Roy looked around. "There are footprints here," he said.

"Yes, but are they hers?" She peered at the readout again. "The last command entered here was to open the rear grain tank door," she said. "But that's closed. At least, I don't see anything standing open." She tapped out a brief sequence. "And if I repeat that command, nothing seems to happen. That's weird. Either that door should be open, or the command to close it should show up in the log."

Roy stepped around to the chute at the back of the machine. "More footprints," he said . "And it looks like there's some kind of hatch here. Let me see..." He pushed against the hatch, straining to move it. "Nope... It won't budge."

A soft sound came from behind the hatch.

"Hang on, Reesh," he said. He knocked on the hatch. "Hello?"

A soft thump came from inside the machine, then another.

"Reesh? I hear something!"

She came running to the back of the machine and banged her fist on the side of the chute. "Chia?" A soft thump came from inside the machine. "Gods, Chia! Chia! Roy, she's trapped inside."

Roy looked around. "The mechanism to open this hatch seems to be..." He peered under the edge of the rear panel. "There. And the motor for it is right... Ow!"

"What's wrong?"

He sucked his fingers. "Nothing much. It's just that this motor casing is hot. Very hot. Which means..."

"Which means that there's power running through it," she finished his sentence. "So before we can try and open it by hand, we need to switch that damn thing off."

Roy walked underneath the machine and peered up. The floor was about two feet above him. "There's a conduit up here," he said. "It runs from the motor to... Let me see... Yes, it goes to that shaft there." He pointed at the pillar holding the controls.

"There's another panel down here," she said, looking at the back of the shaft behind the control panel. She flipped a pair of latches and the panel popped open.

"I think these are circuit breakers," she said, peering inside. "At least they should be here somewhere. And if this is the cable you followed, then this might be the one we want. I hope." She tapped the front panel of a rectangular, transparent box filled with colored lights, some of which blinked on and off. It looked to Roy like anything but a circuit breaker, but the pattern of lights inside the box changed, and Reesh looked up. "Let's try and see if we can't force that rear door open now," she said. "Quickly."

Back at the rear side of the machine, Roy put his hands around the lower edge of the hatch and pushed. It moved slightly, and from somewhere there came a sound of reluctantly turning gears. Reesh stood next to him and also gripped the edge of the steel hatch.

"Right," he said. "I think it's moving. Let's try this together. One, two..." He put his back into it, and the hatch slowly moved up. "Keep going..." he strained.

The hatch moved up further, slowly, until there was a gap of well over a foot wide. Reesh peered inside.

"There's a light here. Just a second..." She reached in, and a dim light came on. A faint sound came from the interior of the machine, then a soft moan. "Chia!"

Roy peered inside through the gap below the hatch. In the dim glow he could make out a foot, then a leg, both clad in a protective suit. The air inside was very hot and stuffy, and almost unbreathable.

"Roy, lift me up," Reesh said.

He squatted down beside her. "Climb on my shoulder," he said.

She did, and he lifted her until they managed to get her upper body inside the machine.

"I've got her," she said, her voice strained. "Help me..."

Roy gently lowered himself until her feet touched the ground. Then he stood and reached inside. Together, each holding on to one of Chia's legs, they managed to pull the semi-conscious girl out of the machine and gently lowered her to the ground.

Reesh held Chia's head and gently rubbed her face, which was sweaty, dirty and smudgy, the golden glittery makeup almost invisible under a layer of grime. "Chia?"

Roy sat next to her as she held Chia's head cradled in her lap. Soon the girl's breathing grew stronger, until she sighed and opened her eyes.

"Mom?" she said, her voice weak.

Reesh smiled, but the look on her face was worried. "I'm here, honey," she said. "You're alright now."

Chia looked up to the machine that towered over them, her face worried. "Mom..."

"Relax, honey," Reesh said. "You're safe."

Chia slowly shook her head. "No..." she said. "Something's wrong..."

"What happened?" Roy asked.

Chia turned her head to look at him. "Roy..." she whispered, and then she smiled weakly.

"What happened, honey?" Reesh repeated.

Chia frowned. "I'm not sure..." She slowly pushed herself up. "The unit had been acting strangely since yesterday morning," she said. "Erratic. And then it rebooted a few times. So I put it on manual and I went out to run a local diagnostic. I checked to make sure it was on manual. I checked. I always do..."

"So did I," Reesh told her. "It was on manual."

Chia looked at her. "Are you sure?"

Reesh nodded. "Yes, honey. I know almost nothing about those damn things, but you showed that to me the other day, remember? It says it's on manual, and the last command in the log was to open the rear door."

Chia looked scared. "So what..."

"What happened after you opened the door?" Roy asked.

"I went in to access the main computer," Chia said. "There are two ways. One is via the top inspection hatch, but that's a lot of climbing. The other is via the grain tank, which is much easier if the tank's empty. It was, so I climbed in, and the next thing I knew was the hatch closing behind me. I pushed, but it wouldn't move. Like something held it closed. Then the light went out." She stared, a look of horror on her face. "And all I could think of was the heat, and that nobody knew I was in there." She shivered. "Then I guess I passed out..."

"You're safe now," Reesh tried to comfort her.

"But mom, you don't understand! This should never have happened!" In the wake of what had happened to her, she now became angry.

"Okay," Roy said. "You mentioned the top hatch to get to the onboard computer. Why don't we use that to see what's going on?"

Chia nodded. "There's a ladder on the other side. When you lower it, you can get up to the upper deck, and from there on up to the top access hatch. Just give me a minute..." She rubbed her eyes.

"Take your time. I'll see what I can find," Roy said.

He walked up to the corner of the huge machine, then around the front. He went past the maw and started around the far corner. There was a loud clank, followed by the sound of an electric motor and spinning gears.

"Chia? Something happened," he called out.

Suddenly a heavy smack on his back knocked the air out of him and threw him forward. He struggled to get up, but a vast weight pushed him face down into the soil, and all he managed to do was to get sand in his mouth. There was the metallic whine of electric motors. Somehow fear gave him strength, and he managed to turn his head and look up. One of the articulated arms had deployed and was now holding him down onto the ground.