|
Caterpillar
Thanks to: Jodorowski, for the image The sky overhead was blue, an impossibly bright shade of blue, fading very slightly to a darker colour towards the horizon, broken by the ragged grey shapes of statues. There were no clouds. At about forty degrees off the horizon, a pale sun glowed, orange-red, dim enough to look at directly without harm. It was triangular. Every so often, tiny solar prominences licked from the downward-pointing corner, giving it the appearance of a melting metal fragment. This was Syndaine, a simulation of reality which was generated inside a network of computers hidden somewhere in the bowels of the Ruhr district. Its physical location was largely irrelevant; high-speed network lines carried its information all over the world instantaneously. 'Inside' this simulation, comfortably sunning himself atop a fluted column made of blood-red sandstone, Genesis was listening to Jo's one-sided conversation as it darted from one inconsequential topic to another. She finally realised what she was doing, and sat down with a hmmphh of disgust. "This is ludicrous," she muttered. "I can not believe that I am so bored ... that I am willing to discuss simulated rugby league football!" Genesis lifted the damp face-washer from over his eyes and regarded her with an insufferable air of superiority. "This is simulation, Jo. You can do anything you want. Why don't you-" She turned on him, dropping to her knees next to him, poking him in the chest with an accusatory gesture. "You can do anything you want, you bastard ... you're the one with all the supernatural abilities -" He sighed, smiling languidly and raising an index finger. "Yes ... it's tedious, really ..." A puzzle-box appeared, dark red wood with gleaming copper inlays, balancing on one corner, hovering in the air above his finger. With a strangled cry of frustration, Jo batted the box away, gashing the palm of her hand on a sharp corner. Genesis' smile vanished. He got up, moved over to where Jo crouched, her fist clenched around the painful (albeit simulated) injury, and took her hand. He unfurled the fingers and kissed the ragged edge of the wound, which sealed over magically. "We can't give sysop level powers to everyone," he explained kindly. "Can you imagine what a circus it would be if everyone had the ability to change the environment to suit them? We tried it, once - ability could be purchased, like time." Jo looked up, interested. "What happened?" "Oh, it was abused, of course. You'd think that once people had their heart's desire, they'd be happy. But instead of creating their own pocket-environments and living in them, no-one was content unless they could burrow into the next system and mess it up - something like 'the grass is always greener' syndrome ... as Gary Clail said: there's something wrong with human nature..'' he quoted glumly. After a moment's thought, he continued. "That's not really it ... personally, I think it was a case of too few people with creative imagination and too many duds with none ..." "Duds?" "You know ... users that sponge off everyone else ... the sort of tourist who will purchase minimum access rights, storm through a system knocking things over, vandalise the existing structures, get bored and leave. These days, you have to prove yourself by making a real contribution before they'll upgrade you from mundane." Jo turned her head to one side. "How the hell can people make a real contribution if they have only mundane access? I mean, for all the creative possibilities of simulation, I might as well be living in the real world. I can't get creative access until I prove that I can use it to good effect ... and I can't prove that until I get access. Great," she said sarcastically. Genesis held up his hands in resignation. "Okay, okay ... anything to keep the peace. I'll arrange for a closed simulation. It's a temporary structure within the main system, so any permanent changes you make won't be kept, but I'll be recording it all. And, I'll be paying for this, so don't fritter it away on a re-enactment of Caligula, hey? It's been done before." She grinned up at him.
She emerged from the ragged crevasse, which was overhung with vines and dead branches, a darkened tunnel into the heart of the mountain. The sudden glare of the light caused her to shield her eyes with her arm, which was weighed down by the clear plastic shield strapped to her wrist. She looked around. The landscape was not so much hilly, as ... ravaged, was the only word that came to mind. It looked as if a giant had been uprooting trees and hurling them around; craters torn in fresh soil dotted the scene; she scented the rich fragrance of damp earth as she passed. Having become accustomed to the light, she looked up, squinting. The sky was dominated by a slowly-turning ring of eleven bright spheres, tiny silver suns. Each one had a halo of smaller objects orbiting it, casting shadows; momentary eclipses. The suns' orbit was parallel to the ground; their centre was about ten minutes' walk south of her current position. She started towards it, delayed by having to detour around the larger holes. Peering down into one of them, she saw a cluster of translucent eggs, each one about a metre across; on closer examination, she could just discern a writhing tubular shape within each one. Wrinkling her nose in distaste, she passed on. As she approached the point over which the suns were circling, the terrain grew even rougher, more holes torn in the ground; more of those eggs at the bottom of each one. She stumbled around the lip of a crater that was almost as tall as she was, and found: A wide section of flattened earth, as large as a football field. At the centre -directly below the axis of the silver suns - stood a golden caterpillar, standing upright like a Saturn-V rocket (and approximately the same size). She slowly approached it, staring up in reverence. It swayed slightly as she came closer. The last dozen or so pairs of legs were dug into the ground, parallel to it, supporting the upright segments. She walked around it until she was facing its belly and the ranked rows of legs. The trunk of the body was, at the base, about three metres in diameter. She felt as if she were dreaming as she took off her shield and moved up to the caterpillar. The first pair of legs that didn't touch the ground opened as she approached, and she stepped into its embrace. The underside was slick with some sort of camphor-like substance; she rubbed her hand along the belly-plates, inhaling deeply. The legs closed around her waist, hugging her closely; segments shifted around each other, and by adroitly manipulating combined pairs of legs, she was slowly pushed up along the underside of the caterpillar, becoming liberally smeared with fragrant fluids of varying textures which became thicker and more musky as she ascended. She was coated in an inch-thick layer of gel by the time she reached the uppermost segment. Peering past the legs which held her (each as thick as her thigh), she could just catch a glimpse of the huge, golden eyes on either side of the caterpillar's head. The uppermost pairs of legs writhed and contracted, pushing her up further, until she could rest her hands palms on the curved head-segment, palms flat down. She was standing with her feet on the second-highest pair of legs, the highest pair wrapped around her waist. She wiped some of the gel from her face and inhaled raggedly; the fumes made her sway dizzily. The caterpillar's head was divided, as if it was formed of two spheres pressed together, reminiscent of the animals drawn by early ray-tracing programs which appeared to be constructed entirely from spheres of various sizes. Near where the head joined the first segment, she wiped aside the gel and found something like a pair of vaginal lips over a metre long; by bending her knees and bringing them together, she could push between them and slide half-way inside the lips, her arms over the sides, her feet resting comfortably inside, almost like kneeling in a hammock. Something twitched inside; runnels of warm gel overflowed and covered her back. She closed her eyes and sank further into the caterpillar's mouth, or ovipositor, or whatever it was. The something twitched again, then pressed up between her legs. It felt like a tongue the size of a surf-board, warm and wet; it curved up around her behind and pulled her in slightly closer. She let her head drop back and made a sound somewhere between a sigh and a laugh, smiling as the tongue squeezed her, sliding back and forth between her legs as if it felt the need to arouse her even more than she already was. Triggered by the sensation, almost a binary switch-feeling - one moment it wasn't there and the next, she felt herself sliding open along a line underneath her, as if she had a zipper installed along her perineum. The tongue arched, folded into an inverted v-shape with her legs trailing down either side, a saddle into which she slid snugly, the lips holding her gently but firmly, sealed along a line under her arms, her breasts resting on top. They held her down while the tongue pressed up, sliding back and forth underneath her, gently teasing apart the lips of that odd opening between her legs. Suspension of disbelief escaping for a moment, she tried but couldn't tell how it was mapped to her physical nervous system (drastic departures from the human form didn't work very well in VR; they couldn't properly report sensation to the brain). The tongue folded more sharply, licking inside her slightly - the entrance it pushed against felt like something halfway between her vagina and her anus. The VR mind-map probably included components of both. Eyes closed, head thrown back, she couldn't determine exactly what was going on down there (and when she tried to get one hand underneath the lips, they pursed tightly against her sides), but she felt the rounded end of an egg - about the size and shape of a football - being slowly presented. She arched her back and spread her legs wider, feeling the perineal opening stretching to accommodate the shape. It was a decidedly unusual sensation; it combined elements of sexual penetration and giving birth in reverse. There was a slightly painful stretching as the widest part of the egg entered, then in a rush it slid inside, nestling into the cradle of her pelvis. She gasped with relief as the perineal opening closed up again; the lips around her waist tightened and the tongue pressed hard against her vagina, sliding back and forth with a halting motion that, in combination with the feeling of the egg resting within brought her to orgasm within seconds. She pressed her legs together against the tongue and shuddered deliciously, opening her eyes, she saw that the caterpillar had bent back into a question-mark shape, bringing its head close to the ground. Slowly, it tipped forward, a thick globule of gel running out of the lips and onto the ground to lubricate her passage; the tongue licked against her again with sufficient strength to force her out of the lips, into a soft blob of gel which stuck to her like honey. The fumes had dissipated somewhat, but she was still very dizzy and not at all inclined to move; almost half an hour passed in this semi-ecstatic state before she tried moving and found that she was too weak. She managed to struggle over onto her back, the gel acting as an efficient restraint; panic lent some strength to her limbs then, and she pushed her hands through the stuff to feel her belly, which had swollen, hot and tight over whatever was inside - "Genesis, I think that's enough." she sent on the general channel. There was no response. "Genesis! This isn't funny -" Abruptly, she was back on the red column with Genesis, in something resembling her real form. He was surrounded by glittering points of light, which (she knew) would be other simulants, visible only to him; he glanced from one to the next as if soliciting opinions, then nodded, smiling. The points of light vanished one by one. He looked up at her, still with that smile. "They were all very impressed with that demonstration. You're in." He held out his hand, which she cautiously accepted. They clasped hands - an ordinary contact, she thought, until she saw tiny arcs of purple energy leaping from his knuckles and into her skin. It tickled, burrowed inside her arm, quivered its way along her nerves until it reached her heart, where it exploded into pink hyper-orgasmic light. Her last thoughts as a mundane were, This is better than sex - |
|
|
( top )
All work on this site is © Nikolai Kingsley unless otherwise stated. |