Spark the Runner

Like, the fact that he'd bitten off a lot more than he could chew. Chasing down the origins of a construct could get really dangerous, really fast. And one that was as perfect as she was... well, that would be for the suicidal. Constructs could get very complicated. And complicated could be dangerous. By jacking into her, he was going to be exposed to every piece of sub-programming she had. Which was probably going to be a lot. A lot of sensory information which, if he survived it, would help him trace her patterns on the dataplex to their point of origin. Provided the owners of the archives didn't fry him with some Black Ice first.

If he made it out of this initial contact, he was going to have to politely refund their money and decline the rest of the job...

JESUS!!!

The sync hit with the force of a tsunami slamming over him, dragging him under.

One moment it was a pulsing darkness, the next a riot of vivid colors forming generally into streams racing past him, flowing around him. What he sensed, what he saw, heard, tasted, felt and smelled, was as if he were immersed in a river flowing around him with its occasional eddies and backwashes. He collected his focus before he could be washed away in the datastream.

She wasn't just a construct. She was a pure construct. No clutter from the minds of her creators. No imperfections swirling along on her perfect stream of everything. Everything she knew, everything she thought, everything she sensed, just everything... Pure data in its rawest form. Data which touched him everywhere. Feelings of perfect bliss and stark terror bathed his mind, while he was simultaneously burning hot and freezing cold. He could feel his libido responding to the rush of sensation whether he wanted it to or not. He could feel the fight-or-flight adrenaline rush seize his body and begin to wring sweat out of it. Sweat which he could feel oozing out of his pores and dripping down his skin with excruciating pain, while his gonads felt ready to burst, he was so swollen.

And then everything shifted. Like the wave passing over him on the flow, and then catching him from behind on the ebb. And this time, he could feel his own energy being drawn to her, as if she were some kind of Energy Vamp, sucking his life from him. But he didn't care. It felt so good. So wonderfully good that he just wanted to flow along with it. Until a very well trained part of him jerked him back from the abyss.

Ground it, Spark, he coached himself. Find an anchor point and ground it out. Let it flow around you, not through you. She is the most exquisitely beautiful and most horribly lethal creature you have ever known. Don't get lost in her...

Watch the stream... don't be it. Admire the patterns but stay detached. Get to high ground. Get a vantage point. You need to know the topography of the datamesh. The patterns that make her, that give her existence. You need to find her core.

He was centering himself, exerting his will against the maelstrom when it changed again. The chaos died down and the datastream was like a gentle breeze, caressing him and making him feel like a child being caressed by its mother, evoking those kinds of emotions. And the patterns began to take shape... he could make out the ghostly image of Tonya in her physical perfection, now made of swirling Fermions, Bosons, Hadrons and others...

"Who are you?" he wondered aloud, surprising himself with the pounding sound of his own voice on his ears.

At once, he heard who would you like me to be? in his head, his wired net in particular. She didn't need to speak. She could think directly to him.

I have the memories they gave me, she went on. Would you like me to be a child? A cute little girl, all soft and cuddly? The ghostly swirl gave way to a scene. A scene where a beautiful child of three or four ran through tall grass towards him, a brilliant smile drawing him in, making him ache, wanting her. She leapt as if he should catch her, but as she flew, she transformed. The cute young girl became a teen of leather and steel, Goth to the hilt, grabbing him by his throat and putting him on his back.

Or maybe the rebel... the bitch... the street samurai who will fuck you silly while she cuts out your heart...

She lifted him up towards her lips, filling him with a burning desire for a kiss, then disappeared as she moved around behind him, only to reappear with her mouth tantalizingly close to his ear while dressed in soft, flowing gauzes. And still, she was in his mind.

Or maybe the desirous young woman, the one who wants you to be hers, to be her first, to be her only...

She was too perfect. Too fucking perfect. There wasn't going to be anything easy about her and Spark seriously turned his thoughts to surviving her.

Or maybe... and she had shifted again, this time to Tonya in the red dress, the Tonya that had invited him into the limo... maybe all you really want is a companion, she suggested in very soft, neutral tones. Someone to run the datastreams with you, to understand their allure, the pull, almost like they have their own gravity and are drawing you in... and the exhilaration of chasing the shadows, finding the secrets, diving deep into the collective subconscious of the living, breathing datasphere.

I am alone, Spark, she beckoned him. I have no why. No reason for my existence. I simply am. And yet, those shadows, those secrets on the edges, they are after me. They are following me. They are afraid of me. Who am I, Spark? Why am I here? What am I supposed to be doing? I am always in the twilight world between the material and the meta. I am always chasing butterflies that do not exist.

I want to know who I am, Spark. I want to know who created me and why. And I want to know if I can ever completely step out of the shadow world. I would like to know what it feels like to feel. To have emotions which are mine and not programmed. To make memories that are spontaneous and joyful, and nobody's business but my own. I want to be, Spark. I want to be me.

A shudder ran through Spark as he felt the agonizing despair. The very real feelings of a very real, very self-aware construct that could... that probably should... be human. Spark gathered every ion of focus he had, to distance himself from her overpowering aura, to be able to distance himself and communicate.

Whoever made her, he thought, they've created another Helena... it's R. U. R. all over again... how the hell do I track a construct with no faults, no discernible, traceable pattern? I need more...

Of course you do, Tonya broke in and Spark realized that joined, she had as much access to his mind as he had to hers. You need to infuse me, absorb me, be me, she added. We must join, for you to find the subtleties.

"We are joined," he said aloud, more out of habit than need. "That's why you can be in my head."

Do you like sex, Spark? The question was so incongruous that it threatened his focus. Because if you experience sex with me, you will be filled with the meta patterns you are looking for.

"Excuse me... what?" he responded. The idea that physical sex would somehow give him the metaphysical patterns he needed just didn't compute.

I work on many levels, Spark, simultaneously, her soothing voice filled his consciousness. I am... complicated. Physical sex as you perceive it isn't just physical. It is energy. Many kinds of energy. The one behavior I have been able to identify whose energy patterns are not synchronized with my core programming is sex. Of any sort. The stimuli must be physical... manual, oral, anal, vaginal... but the result is to access a part of me that is unique and will probably give you what you need to find my origins. You are not repulsed by me, are you?

"What? Repulsed? No. No, no, no.." How could he be repulsed by something so perfect? "No, if you mean because you're a construct? Then absolutely not. I have several... acquaintances... who are Pleasure Units, and I find them a lot of fun. I'm not repulsed by you at all. Scared shitless, maybe, but not repulsed."

Do not fear me, Spark, the soothing tones filled him again. Fear that which hunts me. I must know how to break my bond with them. A bond so deep in my programming that it is hidden from me. The allusion to Rossum may not be as far-fetched as you might think.

Spark sighed with his entire being. Sex with Tonya would probably kill him. His neural net enhanced all data flow, sensory included, and he avoided sex for exactly that reason. It was far more intense than a mere mortal would understand. An onslaught of sensation he could not filter out once it got started. She was telling him it was the way to find out what was different about her so that he could run the dataplex, tracing her origins. But he'd have to survive it.

"Tonya, you're going to overpower me," he tried to point out. "I am wide open to you, and you know it. The sensory overload could fry me."

That is why the Professor is with us... to monitor us and to use his selective cerebral screening device to make sure you do not overload, Tonya reassuring voice floated through him once more.

"Kinky... a threesome..." Spark's attempt at levity fell flat, even on his own ears.

If you wish, Tonya agreed and brought Spark up short. He could join with us if that is your desire. It is my belief, not shared by the Professor, that the imperfections will be in my physical construction and responses. We will need, in human terms, to fuck our brains out for you to discover precisely where and how my creators did not know what they were doing.

"Why do you think your creators didn't know what they were doing?" Spark truly was curious about why she would think that.

Because when I have had sex with other females, there has been something lacking. An excitement I feel with males is not there. And although I am very well versed in giving pleasure to any human being, regardless of sex, I believe my creators were men who did not understand women. And therefore, made mistakes.

"Tonya, every human male on this planet qualifies as a man who does not understand women. You really should have hired a female Runner for this."

It would not have worked, she patiently explained. Those things that are missing are patterns not easily recognized by a woman. They are part of who she is, and yet not quite, as if some sort of Meta worked differently for them. I chose you because I believed you were asexual.

"Tonya, I am far from asexual," Spark felt compelled to tell her.

I know that now... I did not at the time. I thought you were celibate for non-sexual reasons. I now understand that I may have inadvertently 'grabbed the tiger by the tail'. On the other hand, you taste so deliciously complex to me, and you have such phenomenally high sensitivity to Meta energy, that I now believe you might actually be the one to succeed. Your pattern retention capabilities are vast... you have been scanning and categorizing me non-consciously since we first coupled.

It was true. One of the reasons Spark was at the top of his class was his innate ability to absorb, sort and file everything around him, all the time. Which is why he had to pay almost 500KCr for the little plug-in that let him shut down and sleep. Without dreams. And wake him up at a set time or if there was a disturbance in his environment. Like people looking for him. Not always with good intentions.

In this case, he was hypersensitive to her. All of her. From the simple, low frequency energy of her voice and heart beat... and yes, she actually had a heartbeat... to the ultra-high frequency energy of her interface to the global Plex, it was all registering, being recorded, being sorted, being stored for future reference.

Spark... please disrobe...

It seemed like a simple request. So simple, he complied automatically. There wasn't much to it. Kick off the sandals, drop the baggy pants, remove the remains of the shirt. There wasn't anything else to take off.

Please... sit down...

It wasn't a command, per se. It was more a suggestion. A compelling suggestion. One that made Spark look around the physical plane to discover a low padded bench along one wall. He ordered his body to move to it, and it did. He ordered it to sit and it sat. The incredibly sensuous construct Tonya moved to stand before him, and he could not help but drink her in.

She held up a small device that looked like a micro-USB transceiver. When Spark could tear his mind away from her perfect breasts and her perfect abdomen and her perfect mons... he registered it as a remote.

If you do not mind, Tonya thought to him, we can use this instead of the wire. The Professor assures me he has his board synced to it. No harm will come to you. Not from us, anyway.

There didn't seem to be any question. Of course she wouldn't harm him. She was perfect.

"Sure," he mumbled. "Plug away. But we'll have to reestablish the link..."

Probably not, her soothing voice returned. Apparently she had really done her homework. She found the maintenance port in his perineum and plugged in the remote. The fact that she had to move his testicles to do it and shot a bolt of lightning through him was not wasted on the Runner. He was, for all practical purposes, instantly erect.

Very nice, her voice came again. She moved to sit beside him and unplug their mainlines. There was the slightest of transitions and then they were coupled through the remote. And Spark was still experiencing her as a vivid datastream concentrated into a feminine form via her presentation software. She chose how to appear to him and for now she was choosing the adult female form which had hired him.

In his perception, she solidified as she sat next to him. Massive control over her heterogeneous displays, he thought as she became "real" to him. There has to be several hundred million creds in her interfaces alone. Somebody put a lot of money into her and they're not going to give up getting her back.

Your estimate may be a little low, Tonya's voice entered his head as she solidified into the perfect naked her that had been standing in front of him, before she had connected them. It is possible, but untested, that I might be able to become pregnant and bear children.

Oh, holy goddess... Spark thought as their shared reality adjusted to a corporeal one, the datastream only an echo in the background, but an echo which did not escape Spark's autognostic scrutiny. A construct that can replicate via human reproduction? Jesus! How does that work?...

I do not know... Tonya's soothing voice filled him again.

"What?" Spark was caught a little off-guard and a little confused.

How that works... Tonya clarified. I do not know how that works. There as several areas in my design which I know exist but cannot explain.

Spark's confusion got a boost from Tonya's next action. She straddled his legs with her naked self and eased down to sit on his thighs, pressing her nude pudenda against his swollen cock. And it was real. Very real, as she leaned forward, pressing her perfect breasts into his chest, taking his face softly in her hands and guiding herself into a long and gentle kiss.

Spark could not have resisted if he had wanted to... and he definitely did not want to. She had shifted the paradigm again. This was a physical run, a corporeal one. Most runs avoided the physical, concentrating on the datastream. She was making this one physical, merging the tactile and the ethereal, melding the datastream of her existence with her existence. It was real and unreal simultaneously, physical and metaphysical, substantial and incarnate. And Spark allowed himself to be swept along as if he had any choice in the matter.

Please trust me, Spark, her soft, seductive voice entered his brain again. For this first run, this is the most direct path to giving you my basal patterns... She sheathed him. She guided his cock into her pussy and sat all the way down. And fundamentally altered the datastream.

He was suddenly rocked by a wave of libido more intense that any he ever remembered experiencing before. He came. He couldn't help it. He felt himself pumping his seed into her at the same time that patterns of sexual conduct ripped through his mind, manifesting as energy, becoming quantifiable, storable... different. Different than any other human libido patterns he had ever known. And all of them were being filtered and stored as they washed through him.

She continued to sheath him, rocking slightly, and he came again. He hadn't gone down. And now he felt something different. He felt the amplitude of her energy rising, rapidly.

I am going to have an orgasm, Spark, she thought to him. Be ready to store a massive amount of pattern data.

She was true to her word. She kept rocking on him and as he came down from his orgasmic high, she exploded.

Like trying to capture and store a supernova... her raw, animal energy ripped through him, shredded his self-control, threatened to render him unconscious... or dead. And still, his innate ability to filter, categorize and store kept trying valiantly to keep up with the flood of her essence.

Something bothered him about the datastream. It wasn't so much like a woman, but more like a man. Immediate, insistent, raw, focused on her pudenda rather than the dispersed, full body pattern of a woman. This was what she was talking about. Her creators didn't know how a woman came. He flagged that one as important and went back to experiencing her.

Physically, she came like a hypersexual woman, with strong contractions and a massive flush, her nipples standing out like diamonds. Metaphysically, they'd programmed her to have the all-body flood of endorphin driven satisfaction. And they'd programmed her to be multiorgasmic. But they'd blown the focus of her energy and he could use that to search the dataplex.

He tried accessing her subsystems, specifically the ones involved with sex and reproduction. And got another major shock. The predictable routines were there. But there were constructs in her reproductive programming that didn't make sense. They didn't seem to have been created by human designers. The integrations and transforms weren't right. As if an AI computer had created them. He stored that information as well. Any differences, no matter how subtle, would help him when he ran the dataplex, looking for their origins.

The unsettling realization hit him that she was much more like a human than a construct. He realized it was possible she had altered her own programming. And that idea was scary.

Still sheathing him, she leaned forward and kissed him again. The intensity of the kiss almost derailed his ability to gather data. And it certainly amplified his human reactions. He was hard again and on the edge of cumming. He tried to hold back. It didn't work.

"Oh, God, Tonya!" he cried out. "You're going to make me cum again!"

Do you have what you need? he heard her voice in his head again. If not, we can keep this up until you pass into unconsciousness.

"Please, let's stop before that," he begged. "You are beyond awesome and I don't know how much more I can... OH, FUCK! CUMMING!!!" Now he was close to passing out. The velvet was creeping in from the sides and he was losing his focus on the datastream. "I'm going to lose it, Tonya," he tried to tell her. "I'm going to pass out..."