The Ballad of Jack and Priyanka Act 02

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 tor 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 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.