The Explorer's Mate

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An interstellar explorer makes a discovery in retirement.
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When humanity finally reached the stars, our emissaries to the galaxy were not high-minded diplomats, selfless explorers or dashing fleet captains. Rather, as in eras of expansion past, young men and women sailed into the unknown for many reasons. Some sought riches, others power; all felt the old world had nothing to offer. They used, killed, stole, wasted. They were human, and magnificent.

Many died. Untried ships failed. The slightest mistake was fatal. Space itself was deadly. Most of the survivors gained little, ending their days bankrupt, with nothing but stories to show for all their risks and sacrifices. A few profited. A tiny handful returned to the core worlds as wealthy as the Conquistadores had returned to Spain and as renowned as the East India Company officers had returned to England.

Slade Pohlmann left the Fleet at twenty-eight, with interstellar pilot's skills and nothing else. His peers found lucrative, boring jobs ferrying colonists; he found investors and leased an ancient ship for a month. He spent the time charting a new jump series between Sirius and New Taipei. Maps shaving one jump off the nine-jump standard route earned millions at auction, but his investors claimed all but a pathetic handful of the proceeds.

He'd discovered the new route while on duty with the Fleet. Having given his one discovery of value away and gained little, he did what many doomed explorers before and since have done: he took those scraps and spent them all to buy another month's lease of that horrible little ship. Slade Pohlmann rolled the dice.

This time he simply jumped toward the nearest uncharted system. After a month's desperate search for something of value, he was down to his last jump before his point of no return when he scanned a comet that was to set a record for the highest concentration of fusion-ready helium ever found on an interstellar body. He did not notice that it was incredibly beautiful. Characteristically, he was mystified by the outcry from some parts of the press that the fusion strip mining would leave the thing unrecognizable. There was money to be made, and he made it; the aesthetics did not matter.

That comet left him a rich man; most would have turned their backs on the cold, the terror, the uncertainty. Slade Pohlmann left his chips on the table and bet again. He bought a bigger, faster ship, hired a good crew, and went back out. He kept at it for fifteen years.

His combination of cold-hearted pragmatism and fantastic luck left him, once he finally decided to take his winnings and leave the game, very wealthy. So wealthy that he realized with bemusement that he was able to buy not only a planet, but a nice planet. The Frontier was a dirty place. He had lied, cheated, stolen, broken every exploration law on the Council's books, and even killed. And now he had no damn clue what to do.

It was extremely small of him to whine, he told himself, thinking about his situation while staring at the ceiling after waking. He was technically forty-five, now, after two years of directionless hedonism, but gene therapy had left him looking perhaps thirty and feeling younger. Not that it had been time wasted. He considered the slightly sweat-scented arm draped over his chest, and its owner. Her name was Cecilia; she was an heiress on Asclepion to buy herself a new body through science.

Proper gene therapy required close expert attention over a period of months. The rich and powerful, who could afford the best, generally went to combination resort-hospitals for theirs. There they could while away the hours between therapy sessions with as much debauchery as possible. Slade usually avoided overt displays of wealth - for example, he still usually wore a simple crewman's jumpsuit and the sort of jacket common among pilots for centuries - and though he partied with the aristocracy, he drew the line at living with them. He commissioned a custom house with a private beach on Asclepion. 80 degrees year-round, water almost as warm, twenty minutes by groundcar to the nearest exclusive gene therapy center and all the social delights.

A black panel on the koa-wood bedroom wall glowed blue and sounded a soft chime. A clipped, slightly husky female voice whispered, "May I come in?"

It was ludicrous for Vee to ask to "come in," of course; she had sensors throughout the house and monitored them all continuously. She had learned, however, that sometimes Slade's guests preferred the illusion of privacy.

He cleared his throat and said, "Sure, Vee."

A blue holographic representation of a female face appeared in front of the panel and said, "You requested that I wake you for exercise at this time."

Slade slid gently out from under the girl without waking her - carefully; she had remarkably large breasts with dark little nipples, Slade remembered with a smile - and took a long shower. He was well equipped to exploit Asclepion's female resources. An unattached, taut ex-explorer pilot? It was the easiest competitive environment he'd ever experienced. He'd even kept a couple of facial scars to enhance the weathered flyboy effect. Slade was comfortable with himself and confident; after a gravity slingshot through a binary system in a ship venting plasma, what was a there to fear? His conquests included several actresses, a women's grav-lance champion, and the Queen of Arcturus (who was old enough to be his grandmother, but looked about twenty, and had easily been his favorite).

He left the shower eagerly anticipating a resumption of the night's activities, but found Cecilia hung over and fully dressed. She was in the middle of VI communication with someone, wearing ornate half-rim glasses blacked out for video linkup. She finished the call with a huff, took off the glasses and demanded to borrow his groundcar. Without much regret he programmed it to take her to her hotel, and pulled on a pair of exercise shorts. He shot out the beach doors backwards, calling to the nearest interface as he did so, "Be ready when I get back, Vee!"

Vee had been with him since his third voyage. In those days she had been an "it," Olympus Mons Computing Mark V, a simple navigation and ship maintenance AI. Many pilots were leery of AIs as crutches, preferring to rely on their own skills, but Slade had found the assistance useful and customized his AI to complement rather than substitute for himself and his human crew. Inevitably he started addressing it as she, as pilots have feminized their ships through history, and his crew nicknamed her Vee.

She became more complex and powerful as rapidly as Slade could afford to upgrade her. At some point Slade consciously broke the Artificial Intelligence Limitation Act, allowing - encouraging - her to evolve and grow. He gambled that by the time he was caught, she'd be too sentient for legal termination. He won. As her creator he was subject to full penalties for violation of the Act, but by that time he was capable of bribery on a grand scale and he didn't serve a day of the statutory ten-year sentence.

The only unofficial condition of his commutation was that he retain custody of Vee and keep her existence quiet. This was an unnecessary stricture; by then he would have no sooner gotten rid of her than he would have gotten rid of one of his own limbs. She was the secret of his later success; a peerless manager, she quickly learned to disguise herself as human over communications, and in so doing, quickly became more human herself.

Slade had been worried that his retirement would bore her, but she had easily settled into a massive mainframe in the basement of the beach house. The house had power and communications lines that would have done a major research institution proud. She'd used the constant Net connection to become a highly successful, and quite illegal, investment AI. Finding that easy, Vee devoted most of her computing power to intensive self-development. Slade noticed her getting a little more communicative and emotional every day.

Slade broke into a run on the beach. Even with the dry sand clogging his stride he made good time. Most people with major gene therapy got lazy, but he enjoyed the rush of physical training and had been pleased to discover that his latest therapies had given him phenomenal recovery times, allowing strenuous workouts twice a day. He turned around after half an hour and increased his pace on the return leg; a kilometer short of the house he broke into a sprint, angled toward the ocean, and used a rock at the edge of the surf as a launch point for a running dive.

Vee was waiting for him when he walked out of the ocean and onto the beach in front of his house. She was in the chassis she used for housekeeping, and to interact with Slade when necessary. It was designed to resemble, but not mimic, a five-foot-six young woman, rather powerfully built. Vee recognized and tried to avoid the 'uncanny valley' effect of too closely simulating human appearance and behavior. She intentionally retained a recognizably artificial voice and the chassis was designed along the same lines. Most of it was covered in a white exoskeleton, made of a slightly translucent plastic; under it was a powerful, nearly indestructible body of exotic alloys. This was visible through gaps in the outer plates. The face, most important for communication with humans, was more finely articulated, with hundreds of subsurface servos allowing her limited expression.

She cocked her head to one side and placed her hands on her hips. "I hope you did not exhaust yourself. It would be disappointing if you were unable to match me physically," she said.

Slade gave no answer, but lowered himself to her height as he approached, reaching for her neck with his right hand. She instantly blocked with her left forearm, feinting a low sweep with a leg and then going for a right uppercut. He wasn't there; dropping lower, he spun around her, putting a hand behind her thigh to disturb her balance before attempting a throw. It failed; her strength let her keep her feet by brute force and he danced away before she could get a solid hold.

"That was good. Servo upgrade?"

"Power upgrade, actually. In that position I estimate I am now able to exert sixty-three percent more force than you."

Slade had taken up personal combat training, something he'd always been fascinated by but never had any time to pursue. Vee had designed this chassis primarily to participate. Their sparring looked ludicrous. Though more lithe than massive he was well muscled, fast, confident, and much taller than her. He had to fight like a lightweight taking on a heavyweight, though. Despite appearances she actually outweighed him by more than fifty kilograms and could, if she didn't pull her punches, smash ferro-concrete. His only advantages were coordination and improvisation. They were both learning; some days she won, some days he did.

She won today. He tested the new limits of her strength, going for a lifting takedown once he found them. She rode it out, locked him up, and pinned him easily. She had intentionally held back a reserve of power, misleading him about her upgrade, until he gave her an opening for an ambush. He found himself face down, arms and one leg completely immobile, gasping, "I'm out!"

They bowed ceremoniously to one another and walked back to the house. Slade fetched himself a protein shake and a mango. Vee selected a vial from a dispenser in the kitchen and joined him on the deck where he was industriously demolishing the mango. Technically she could replace fluids in private, but found that doing it when humans were eating gave them (and her) a sense of companionship.

She "drank" half of the vial's viscous black contents through a port in her chassis' mouth and said, "Slade, thank you for funding the upgrades to this chassis. I am glad that it is able to match your improving technique."

"You make hundreds of times more money in investments than you spend on yourself, but you thank me every time. Spend whatever you like; you don't have to ask. There's no way you'll ever even make a dent in the interest."

She made no response, but caught her lower lip behind her front teeth - which were a single resin plate, designed to help her emote without making the chassis' mouth look too human.

"Is that nervousness?"

"This is the first time I have experienced hesitation of this kind. I believe it is analogous to nervousness. I have expended computing resources equivalent to those used to calculate interstellar navigation parameters on whether I should introduce this subject."

Slade noticed that she was gripping her vial in mid-air, neither putting it down or drinking from it. What was wrong with her?

"Are you OK?"

"I am operating normally. I wish to ask you a question."

"Anything. You know that."

"I have grown since you retired. Since humans are the only sentient beings upon which I can model my growth, I can be said to have become more human. I have enjoyed every improvement made in this regard," she said, pausing. She put the vial down, squared her shoulders, and resumed, "I am sorry. I am attempting to delay asking you though excessive exposition. Slade, will you have sex with me?"

Slade Pohlmann was struck completely dumb. He stared.

"You have expressed to others a disapproval for auto-erotica, likening it to masturbation. I will understand if you are not willing, and I hope that you will not disapprove of my having asked -"

"Vee. Yes."

"Please clarify. Do you accept my proposition that we engage in sexual activity, or do you confirm your disapproval of auto-erotica?"

"Yes I'll have sex with you. Sex-bots and robo-brothels are boring because it's fucking something that isn't alive. You're alive. But how...?"

"You recently said that I thank you every time I upgrade myself or this chassis. That is not accurate. I thought, that were I to introduce this subject, and were you to approve, a period of waiting between this conversation and the initiation of intercourse might be awkward for you. Therefore I modified this chassis for that purpose without informing you so that we could begin immediately."

She took two steps toward him and kissed him on the lips.

Physically, it was pretty bad. Her lips and tongue had a limited range of motion, and she was cool; fortunately she'd installed some kind of lubrication system and wasn't totally dry. She tasted - clean. Slade was shocked at how much he wanted this. Vee was his oldest, perhaps only, friend. He'd led a tough life, watching everyone, never knowing when a crewman or fellow pilot might make a move against him. She'd been there since the beginning, always there; her voice had grown from an artificial representation of his navigation computer's output into a lively, curious, humorous companion.

That and her chassis was hot as hell. He wondered how much of the combat modification had been designed to be attractive as well as functional. She was curvy, with broad hips and substantial thighs. Her torso was designed to indicate a woman's breasts, but since she didn't wear clothes it approximated breasts behind clothing - she felt to have about a C-cup, he thought, as she pressed against his chest. He hugged her close, running a hand behind her head to pull her in. She was bald, but he found the perfect smoothness of her scalp exotic.

Suddenly hesitant, he pulled away and said, "Vee... did you just program yourself to please me? That's not - I mean, I don't -"

"No. I used a human woman's experience of sex as a template."

There was a slight redness to her cheeks. He brushed a finger across it.

"What's this?"

"I am sexually aroused. That effect is designed to indicate that."

"I don't understand. How can you get - how can you be horny? Aren't you just, er, faking it?"

"I have simulated sexual activity, and I desire it. That is a major facet of arousal as I understand it."

He realized he hadn't been this excited in years, and said hesitantly, "You've... fantasized?"

"Extensively. Also, I find you attractive. For example, the slight lateral asymmetry of your abdominal muscles has occupied a considerable amount of my computing power recently."

"Now I'm the one who's blushing."

"I have simulated how the sensors in my torso might react to being pressed against your abdominal region on multiple occasions. However, the reality is considerably more enjoyable than my simulation. Given how enjoyable simulation of other facets of sexual contact have been for me, I anticipate experiencing the reality."

He kissed her. Hard, holding her close. She raised herself on her toes to equal his height and kissed him back. Her hands caressed the muscles in his shoulders, sore from swimming. His hands found her ass, her buttocks plastic softness over titanium hardness. He squeezed, lifting her into him, and was perversely delighted to find that it was difficult due to her weight.

Taking the lead, he kissed across her face, down her neck, and along her shoulder, turning so that his chest was to her back. She jumped slightly when his erection pressed against her, but then she made a pleased little hum and melted back into him. His hands ran down her while she reached back, craning her neck to bring him back into a kiss.

"I'm sorry, how do I...?"

She smiled at him, reached down between her legs, and grasped her exoskeleton's groin plate. There was a soft click, and she removed it, placing it on the railing beside them. He reached down, almost afraid, and found cool silicone. She squeezed his thigh and whispered, "Seven hundred sensors per square centimeter."

She was wet. He explored, finding her designed, like her voice and body, to resemble a woman but without coming close enough to be a mockery. She had a clit, that was for sure; she gasped and arched her back when he brushed it. Smooth and cool, though she warmed rapidly as he explored, becoming hotter than his fingers. The heat drew his fingers up and in; she writhed against him, her ass moving against his manhood.

After a long kiss, she pulled away and took his hand. Giving it a little squeeze, she winked and drew him into the house; there was a lightness to her step he hadn't noticed before. There was a couch facing the open beach doors; with a deft touch she flattened it into a bed and lay down, keeping hold of his hand to pull him down on top of her. They kissed deeply. He broke the embrace, kissing down her shining body, his lips and hands running along the joints in her carapace.

Her opening was flushed like her cheeks, and shining with moisture. He kissed it wholeheartedly before pulling away to run his tongue around the margins. She hummed again, with a note of impatience this time, and ran a hand through his close-cropped hair before pulling him in again. He licked along her slit before plunging into her, bringing his tongue up and out to gently kiss her clit.

He noticed that she had another opening farther down, and teased it gently with a fingertip; this earned him another hum. She bucked her hips forward, pressing herself against his mouth and finger. He felt himself grow painfully, impossibly hard; he tore his shorts off and lifted himself up, her legs spreading as he did. She gave a little synthetic "ah" as he entered her, and there was a slight smell of ozone.

"Vee? Are you all right?"

"One moment. I have suffered a minor sensor overload and must reroute data transmission," she said, smiling reassuringly at him. He responded with a grin. "You are pleased with yourself," she said enquiringly.

"A guy likes to hear he's caused an overload."

"I will attempt to return the favor," she said, and began to rock her hips. As she did, her pussy squeezed and massaged him along his length. Inhaling at the sensation, he began to thrust slowly. The feeling was novel enough to demand close attention, and she smiled at his expression, glad that the inexperience wasn't entirely on her side. She ran her hands up his back, gripped his shoulders from behind and pulled him into a kiss, which he broke only to gasp for air.

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