The moment I woke up, something didn’t feel right. It wasn’t that I was lying naked on a chair and plugged into a ship that seemed to be run by an artificial intelligence, it was that somehow my routine had been broken. It was an odd feeling to have without having been on the ship even a week.
I glanced at the digital time read-out on the wall. 0742. Jerry hadn’t been waking me up until 0830, as it really didn’t take me much time to get ready for breakfast. In fact, the room was only lit by the emergency lighting, which was really just a single dim bulb in the corner.
I blinked a few times. I had never had a problem waking up in the middle of the night; I was used to sleeping on a very strict schedule. From my first conscious memory at the institute, I had always been kept on a rigorous system of waking up at exactly a particular point in time, so getting used to Jerry doing it for me while I was plugged in happened overnight.
My instincts just told me something was wrong as a result. I reached up and slipped my helmet off, setting it against the top of the chair as I rose from my seat. I yawned softly as I looked around. I could make out the black dome that signaled one of Jerry’s eyes as the lighting reflected off it, giving it the image of something glossy hiding in the dark. I thought perhaps he might have a suggestion for why I was waking up early. “Jerry?”
No response. I cleared my throat, speaking louder and more clearly. “Jerry?”
Still nothing. I scratched the back of my head. Maybe he went into a sort of sleep mode when the rest of the crew did. Of course, I wasn’t sure the rest of the crew even went to sleep. I found it hard to believe that Jerry would, too. Still, he wasn’t coming to life to answer me like he usually did. Perhaps he just didn’t monitor my room until he wanted to wake me up.
I wasn’t entirely sure what to do with myself. There wasn’t any pressing work I had to get to, but I wasn’t going to fall back asleep now that I was already up. I wondered if I could get breakfast early – maybe I’d find a use for the extra time after I’d had something to eat.
After getting dressed, I quietly opened the door leading out of my room and discovered the central room connecting to James’ and mine was also only lit with emergency lighting. Even the usual hum of electronics and fans didn’t greet me. I yawned again as I walked over to the pillar, tilting from side to side as I looked it over. “Jerry?”
I tried knocking on James’ door when Jerry didn’t answer me. The sound of it echoed down the catwalk leading out from the sleeping quarters. I didn’t really know if I was expecting an answer – he hadn’t been there the previous morning, there was no guarantee that he was supposed to be there that one, either. I didn’t hear him, either way. I tried the door, but found it to be locked.
I made my way to the mess hall, noting that almost nothing seemed to be running. There were only running lights on the sides of the floors of all the hallways through the ship, and I didn’t hear anything to indicate signs of crew working, customers fucking, or electronics buzzing. The mess hall didn’t have the usual bowl of sludge waiting for me, just the two chairs pushed in to the table. It looked like no one had been there since I was the previous day.
Setting my hands on my hips, I frowned a bit. Did everyone on the ship plug in when I did or something? I started back down the hallway out from the mess hall, making my way towards the video surveillance room. If anything, I figured I could take a look at the rest of the ship to see if I could find anyone who was awake.
As I made my way through the tunnel-like structures that connected various sections of the ship together, I tried calling out to Jerry now and then to see if he’d hear me. By the time I’d got to the video surveillance room, I gave up on the idea that Jerry was paying any attention.
What held my attention more than a missing Jerry, however, was that every one of the panels in the video surveillance room was off. Every screen just projected a black, fish-eyed mirror image of whatever it caught. The dim emergency lights were the only objects with any power to them. I hummed a thoughtful “hmm” out loud as I turned back towards the door.
I had never actually seen any crew sleeping quarters, though it never struck me as odd until just that moment. Of course, they were robots – or, at least, Jerry had said they kind of were. I didn’t think anything strange of that at the time, either, actually. After all, how is something “kind of” a robot? I figured he just meant that they looked human. After playing around with Jenny, I had discovered they were at least anatomically correct.
The bridge seemed the next logical place to check, so I headed off in that direction. My heeled boots echoed my footfalls from the metal in the hallways as I arrived to the door to the bridge. I paused for a moment, though I wasn’t entirely sure why. Maybe I just wasn’t ready for whatever would be beyond it – if the crew wasn’t there, I was going to start panicking. I took a deep breath, then let myself in through the door.
Emergency lighting, as well, and none of the monitors were active. As I slowly walked towards the captain’s chair, its back facing towards me, I was able to make out the forms of the crew, but they weren’t sitting up. They were all slumped over in their seats – some had collapsed to the floor and lay in crumpled heaps. I cocked my head slightly to one side, wondering if they had simply powered off with the rest of the ship. I made my way down to the front of the bridge, taking the remote from the pocket of one of the crew. I tried bringing up their virtual monitor, but their electronics didn’t respond.
I heard something from the top of the stairs leading back up to the captain’s chair. I looked over my shoulder and saw the silhouette of a female figure. As she took another step forward, the sheen of a silver uniform, cut to be quite revealing, gave away that it was Jenny. I put the crew member’s remote back into his pocket, turning to face Jenny as I walked towards the steps to meet her. “Jenny, what-“
“They’re dead.” She didn’t state it matter-of-factly at all. She sounded melancholic in her statement.
I blinked, looking at the crew again before returning my gaze to her. “What do you mean?”
She stopped in front of me, her eyes searching me, as if she had asked me the same question and I had the answer. “They’re… Dead, Tilana.”
I shrugged some. “Well, they’re just robots, Jenny, they can be re-powered, I’m sure.”
She reached out and took hold of my shoulders, staring unwaveringly at me. “No. They’re dead.”
I wondered if maybe she had been programmed to feel some kind of sympathy towards the rest of the crew. Maybe a robot saw another robot powering down as their version of death. “Well… What happened?”
Jenny let her hands back down to her sides. She looked off to one side. “Someone powered Jerry down.”
So the ship doesn’t just power down at night, something really is wrong. “How did that happen?”
She slowly shook her head. “I don’t know. When I woke up, I came to refill my daily supply of ZX7, and before I was able to, everything shut down.” She didn’t sound very torn up about it, but her voice patterns were off from how she had sounded the other times I talked to her. Like she was distraught, but confused by the feeling and unsure of how to act.
“You keep a daily supply of ZX7?”
Turning to face me again, Jenny lightly tapped the collar around her neck. “I’m not plugged in like the rest of the crew.”
I stared at her for a moment, but she didn’t continue. “I don’t understand.”
James spoke from the top of the steps, “ZX7 is what keeps the crew and Jenny alive.”
I looked up and over to him. “James! Where have you been?”
He had a rifle in his hands, carrying it across his front with the barrel pointed toward the ground. Despite all the dim lighting, he still had those sunglasses on, and he just stared at us from behind them. “You were asking about ZX7.”
I glanced at Jenny, then turned and faced James, still looking up the stairs at him. “What do you mean it keeps them alive?”
James tilted his head towards Jenny. “She’s not a robot. Neither is the rest of the crew. They are the resulting husks of ZX7 addicts with extensive modification done to them.”
For a moment, I didn’t say anything. I wasn’t sure I really wanted to believe what that would imply about the crew and what Jenny meant by her telling me they were dead. I wasn’t sure I wanted to press the question, but I had to know. “What are you talking about, James?”
He slowly stepped down towards us. “ZX7 was an experimental drug developed to keep people more docile. It was supposed to create a workforce that wouldn’t need motivation to stay on task. It was supposed to make its users follow orders unquestioningly.
“They thought they had the formula and the chemicals right, but when they tried it on their test subjects, they found the drug didn’t only affect the victim’s desire to follow orders, it also activated a number of areas of the brain related to sexual desire and physical pleasure. The subjects were submissive and compliant, but they wouldn’t get any work done, they couldn’t.
“The project was considered a failure in its original goals, but the team figured they had invented something that could be used recreationally. The owners and operators of the Medea decided they would take it on further trial testing, so they advertised it to certain sectors of the public and this ship’s business was born.”
James paused as he turned his head to Jenny for a moment. “There was a problem with the drug, however. After someone used it for prolonged periods of time, it started to negatively affect areas of the brain related to pleasure. The addicts were no longer getting a sexual high, and the drug started to affect parts of their personality and cognitive function. Its ability to make people docile remained, but it left them in a zombified state, unable to do much more than simple tasks when ordered to. Eventually, a person would become nothing more than a living robot.”
He motioned to the crew members. “The owners and operators didn’t want this kind of information to be leaked – it would be disastrous for their business. They saw their opportunity in using the addicts as a form of free labor, and offered them the choice of leaving and never seeing the drug again, or to stay on board as a member of the crew and be given as much of the drug as they wanted.
“All of them took the choice of being a member of the crew, of course. What they didn’t know was that they would be hooked into the ship and a new AI that was being installed.”
I shook my head slowly. “Jerry?”
James nodded at me, his lenses reflecting my face back at me. “Jerry was originally installed as a life support system. When a crew member was hooked into the ship, they were intravenously fed a supply of ZX7, but they also had surgical implantations that, if removed or shut down, would kill their heart function and ability to breathe.”
I looked over to Jenny, who had been standing silent and unmoving through all of James’ history lesson. She seemed to be taking all the information in with a blank stare, like it was going in one ear and out the other. I motioned towards her, “What about her?”
James stared at Jenny for a long time. “Jenny… Was the software engineer before you. She was more useful as a mobile member of the crew, so instead of being hooked in, a collar was fitted for her.”
Reaching into my pocket, I produced the collar Jerry had given me. “Just like this one?”
He nodded. “There are tiny pins around the inside of it that extend and inject themselves into the wearer’s bloodstream, feeding ZX7 almost instantly to the brain. It has the capacity to hold a day’s worth of the drug, so Jenny must refill it every day.”
I looked over at Jenny. “What happens if she doesn’t?”
“Good question. No one’s ever gone off the drug once they’ve become addicted to it.”
I took in a deep breath, letting it out in a long sigh. “Wow. This is a lot to take in, James.” I looked over to him. “So… What about the rest of the crew? I mean, the people onboard the ship before the drug came in?”
“They were fired once free labor was available to replace them, or became addicts themselves.” He pointed his rifle up towards the captain’s chair. “The captain was one of them.”
I followed the rifle up to the slumped over corpse of the captain before looking back to James. “And you? Where do you fit into all this?”
He studied me for a long moment. “I was brought onboard to modify and develop Jerry. I was an employee at your facility’s sister institute back on Earth, and they needed someone who was used to this level of…” James thought for a long time, letting his sentence trail off. “Well, someone who wouldn’t raise any complaints if he found out what was going on. They’d known me to be a tight-lipped worker, so they felt I would fit in well on the ship here.”
“You never got addicted to the drug?”
He slowly shook his head. “After discovering everything I told you, it was enough to keep me away from it.”
I thought for a moment, then glanced over to Jenny. “And… Why am I here? Was I going to be turned into a ro-…” I paused. Jenny wasn’t a robot. I didn’t know what to call her any more. I felt sorry for her, I knew that. “Well… Was I going to become like her?”
James shook his head again. “You were brought in as an experiment, to my knowledge. You apparently show high susceptibility to the influences of the drug, but whatever they did when they made you, you were supposed to be immune to the effects of addiction.”
I opened my mouth to say something, but found I couldn’t respond for a moment. I tilted my head to the side some. “And… My twin?”
He pointed at Jenny. “Created in the same project, taken away at creation, and the failed other half of the experiment.”
I felt dizzy. I reached out to support myself against something, taking a step back as I found the railing to stand against. I stared at Jenny for a long time, then looked back to James. “And… Why did you try to keep me off ZX7?”
James seemed to mull the question over for a bit. “No one monitors the activities of this ship any more except for me. Jerry became so advanced that he was able to keep an eye on everything and began sending reports back to headquarters.” He turned his head to Jenny. “I got to know her some before she became addicted to the drug. I liked her personality, and it was nice having some company besides the crew. Watching her degrade into what she is now was…” He looked at me for a moment, as if deciding how much he wanted to open up to me about it. “Frustrating.” He didn’t sound especially convinced that that was the word he was looking for. “I don’t know, I didn’t want to deal with the same thing again.”
I cocked my head to the side. “But if you made Jerry…?”
“I didn’t realize Jerry had become out of my control until he started fighting with me over your involvement in the experiment. That’s when I decided it was time to do something about this whole mess.”
I pointed to his rifle. “Then why do you have that? Did you expect the crew to try and stop you from shutting him down?”
He shook his head. “Jerry is also the life support system for the entire ship, not just the crew who are plugged in. If he gets shut down, the escape pods can’t be activated.” He hoisted his rifle up before turning towards the steps. “I have it because I’m not the one who shut Jerry down.”
The three of us all stood at the junction where the hallway split off in the direction of the main core and towards the escape jettisons. James nodded some, motioning in the direction of the core of the ship. “Jerry is integrated directly into the main drive, so I’ll head that way and get him powered back on. It’ll take him a little time to become fully aware of himself again, but longer than it will take me to get to the escape pods. That’s where the two of you come in.”
I nodded some, still trying to decide how I felt about the whole situation. I was frankly pretty numb to most of it, but I wasn’t sure how much of that was just letting it all sink in.
“When Jerry gets powered back on, everything else in the ship should also regain its power. You’ll have to climb into the escape pod and jettison it before Jerry gains enough control to lock it down. Once it’s detached from the ship, I’m going to shut everything off, emergency power and all. Then I’ll make my way to the main docking bay where you’ll meet me and pick me up.”
He paused for a moment, then reached into one of his pockets and produced a small data disc, holding it out to me. “Take this.”
I reached out and took it, holding it up as I turned it over, examining it. “What’s on it?”
“The formula for ZX7, as well as some archived footage of some of the experiments.” He unslung his rifle from his shoulder, holding it in his hands once more. “Like I said, I didn’t shut down Jerry, and it’s supposed to only be the three of us on this ship. If I don’t respond when you try to contact me after getting the escape pod out, I want you to take this disc to the authorities on Earth. It should prevent the drug from being produced commercially again if the company that originally manufactured it gets shut down.”
I quietly pocketed the disc, watching James, trying to see past his sunglasses, to somehow make out the faint shape of his eyes, but to no avail. “James… This is all so fast, I’ve only been here a few days, I-“
“Tilana.”
I stopped, watching him. He stared back at me. “… Go standby next to the escape pod. As soon as you see power come back, you get in and launch it.” Before giving me a chance to answer, he turned and disappeared down the hallway towards the core.
I glanced over at Jenny. “… You ready?”
She nodded. “Yes, Tilana.”
I had no idea what to think of Jenny. How far gone was her mind? Was there any semblance of her previous self still somewhere in her mind? Was I just bringing a shell of a person with me? I decided these were questions that could wait, as the two of us headed to the escape pods.
We stood by the hatch for a long time. I had no idea what to say to Jenny – I wondered if she could even hold an interesting conversation while we waited. I ended up just thinking to myself, trying to figure out how I should feel about everything.
All the people on the bridge, all the crew that I had been working on since the previous day… Those virtual monitors were linked into their heads, their minds. They weren’t just automatons I was messing with, they really were people. I wondered if I had only been making things worse for them. I wondered if Jerry knew I was just another part of the Gemini Project, along with Jenny.
Jerry… Jerry seemed like such an enigma to me. How could a computer intelligence became so aware of itself that it would argue with James and override his warnings? If James was right, then no one was controlling Jerry, they were all decisions Jerry had consciously chosen to make. It meant Jerry knew he was all but killing people, destroying their lives by turning them into mindless drones. He had to have known he was keeping James as a prisoner, that he… That he was doing some really terrible things to people.
I didn’t get to follow that line of thought for too much longer before I started to hear the whir of fans and the sound of machinery and electronics coming to life. The emergency lighting was replaced by the full flood lights warming up and shedding their glow down the tunnels. The panels next to the hatch leading to the escape pod flared up. I took a deep breath, glancing at Jenny. “Let’s go, Jenny.”
As I reached out to open the panel, however, I quickly found myself being thrown backwards. Someone had grabbed my throat from behind and forced me back, down onto the catwalk. I cried out in surprise as I hit the ground, looking up to see a woman dressed from the neck down in skin-tight black latex. I moved to tell Jenny to help me, but a swift kick from the woman sent me face-first onto my stomach. I shifted myself up to my hands and knees, but was quickly reprimanded with a blow to my back, forcing me back down and leaving me stunned.
My head spun, my body ached. This wasn’t anyone I recognized as a member of the crew – this wasn’t anyone I recognized at all. I tried to organize my thoughts, but was quickly rolled over onto my back as the woman straddled me. I suddenly remember the collar I had in my pocket, how Jerry had told me to use it on a crew member if they got out of line. I thought it had something to do with their programming at the time, but I knew then that it was just a quick injection of ZX7 – a go-to for just such occasion. The woman reached to produce a pistol from her belt, and as she did, I quickly fished the collar from my pocket.
Just as I was about to reach up, she put the pistol against my forehead and said, “Move again and you lose your face.”
I froze. All I had to do was reach up and clasp it, it would be one swift motion, but I had the feeling she would react by killing me faster than it would take the ZX7 to kick in. I wanted Jenny to help me so much, to step in, to do something. She just stood there, but I could see in her eyes that she seemed confused. It was that same level of distraught I saw on her face back on the bridge – like she knew she wanted to feel something, but just couldn’t figure out how to react.
“Who are you?” I ventured slowly, not wanting to set this woman off.
She shifted the pistol from my forehead to my cheek, pressing the end of the barrel into my jaw. “Shut up. You don’t get to ask questions, only I do. Understand?”
I nodded slightly.
She squinted her eyes at me. “Good. Where’s James?”
I blinked. She pressed the pistol more firmly into my cheek, forcing my head to roll to one side slightly. “I said where the fuck is James?”
I closed my eyes. “The drive core…”
The woman remained silent for a moment, then I felt her snatch the collar from my hand. My heart sank – did she know what the collar did? I was about to be in some serious trouble if that was the case.
She didn’t even ask any more questions about James, or anything else. The next thing I knew, I felt several pin pricks around my neck as I heard the metal clasp shut. I felt the needles extend and inject themselves into my bloodstream, and I opened my eyes in surprise. The woman stood up off me, looking off in the direction of the core. She pointed the pistol at me. “I’d love to stay and make you worship me, but I have something I have to take care of, first.” She pointed the pistol at Jenny. “You. Take over for me, keep her busy until I get back.”
Jenny stared blankly at her for a moment. I started to feel uncomfortable – all my muscles started to feel tingly, like I wanted to move everything all at once. I didn’t feel like I could sit still at all, I felt like I had to do something, I had to do something, I had to do something…
That thought filled my head and I heard it echo around. I couldn’t understand what the woman was telling Jenny – it sounded extremely sped up to me, like someone had put her speech on fast forward, then it sounded slowed down to the other extreme. She started to make her way down the hallway – a black latex blur that floated and melted down into a pool of lights somewhere far away from me.
I started writhing on the catwalk, my arms and legs moving on their own, just stretching out and curling back up, I couldn’t stay still. I felt so good, it was just too much torture to not move. My hands quickly found their way to my clothes, and I realized it would give my fingers something to do if they were taking my clothes off. I became completely oblivious to everything around me, the world became darkness except for me and my clothes, and my clothes felt like unwanted invaders in my world.
I felt like my clothes were choking me, were somehow trying to kill that wonderful feeling that kept spreading through my body. As I removed each piece, however, I felt like my world would open up, would start to fill in the colors and swirls of light and pleasure. I could see my pleasure, it melted and spiraled all around me.
I lost track of how exactly I got all my clothes off, but once I found myself naked on the catwalk, I found touching myself felt like the highest form of ecstasy I could possibly reach. I flicked my fingers across my nipples and was instantly rewarded with near-orgasmic pleasure. The catwalk felt like it melted into my body, becoming warm pieces of the pleasure that surrounded me that quickly became one with me, heightening my physical sensation even more.
Floating was all I was doing at this point. There was no floor, there was no wall, there were only patterns and swirls of bright and vivid colors. They all flowed into my body, coloring my skin in the same patterns, before flowing towards my slit. The colors dragged my hands to my breasts and to my slit. I couldn’t help but follow them as they flowed over my skin, I obeyed helplessly as a stream of red and orange pulled my fingers to my clit.
There they swirled around and through my clit, telling me to tease and play with myself. The colors sounded a lot like Jenny’s voice, and she was commanding me to rub my clit furiously. I moaned out to my new mistress, calling, “Yes, Mistress!” As I quickly came. I gushed my will out into the floating rainbow that surrounded me, my desire to obey beginning to become intermixed with the pleasure that hung in the air and fed itself into my body.
As my fingers deftly flicked over my nipples and my palms began to rub my breasts, I stared wide-eyed at the obedience and pleasure in front of me as they danced with each other, becoming wisps of smoke that found their way into my lungs and into my bloodstream, quickly filling my entire body with each other. Obedience meant pleasure, pleasure meant obedience, they were one and the same.
I fucked myself into another mind-altering orgasm as I felt the last shreds of my ability to think for myself flood out of my pussy. I felt all my resistance, all my willpower, all my concept of conscious thought except to do as I was told pour into a pool in front of me. They were quickly overwhelmed by the mix of pleasure and obedience that floated through the air, being melted out of existence.
The colors commanded me to bring myself to my knees, and I came again as I did so, my fingers pumping themselves in and out of my sex, slick and coated with my own juices, my own obedience. I saw something in front of me, but was unable to focus my gaze, blankly staring into nothing, yet staring into the spirals of color and pleasure and obedience at the same time. I felt my head gravitate towards whatever was in front of me, however, and quickly found myself buried between a pair of legs. I had no idea what they were attached to until the colors above the legs commanded me to begin licking and sucking. I quickly realized I had found myself between the legs of my incredible Mistress, and happily slipped my tongue out to lap at the set of lips in front of me.
Doing so caused me to start bucking wildly on my hand. I grinded myself against my palm, moaning loudly into Mistress’ pussy as my tongue penetrated her deeply. I could feel the warm rewards of my utter and unquestioning slavery flow onto my hand, soaking the skin, as I flicked my tongue over Mistress’ clit, entwining around it and sucking. My eyes rolled back into my head as I started to feel overwhelmed in pleasure, like I had reached the highest form of nirvana by being such a good slave for Mistress. My whole mind started to become hazy, and I completely lost track of myself as I felt myself ascend into a heaven of worship.