Signal to Noise

20

I studied the fifteen foot albino winged statue in the shape of a woman dipping her toes in the sand, letting water lap over her feet. "So, now that you're free of your 'father' and you're not forced to follow his directives, what do you want?"

The white woman tilted her head slightly. I frowned, considering her.

Claire (Prime): Can she understand me?

Claire (Shard): Yeah. She's thinking. Give her a minute.

Claire (Prime): You did turn off her ability to 'sing,' didn't you?

Claire (Shard): Do I look like an idiot to you? … Don't answer that. Yes, I turned it off. There's no danger of getting Mastered. Also let her see the present and her current location too, so she's not actually 'blind' anymore.

I shrugged and dropped my hardlight clothes, then retracted my nanite armor. Stepping into the ocean, I sighed at the warm water rolling over me as I waded out deep enough to float. Eventually, I got a response.

[Uncertainty. Query: purpose?]

It came in the form of a data packet that shard-me had to parse, then send back to me. I took a few moments to digest it before responding. "What's your purpose? That's what we're trying to determine here. As for being unsure what you want… well, that's pretty much the human condition. But you're not human. You're an AI running in a fancy alien body. So, let me ask you this. Do you want direction? Do you want to be given orders?"

[Uncertainty. Query: goals?]

"What do I want to do? Easy. I want to get off this mudball. Out of the death trap Scion and Eden created. I've got a way to do it—actually, we can go now if I wanted to… but I've got a little unfinished business to take care of first. After that? Spend the next several eternities exploring the great, wide multiverse. I wouldn't mind having a… helper tagging along. But I only want you if you want it. If you're not interested—"

[Curiosity!]

I blinked. "So you are interested? Because if you're not, you're too dangerous to just leave laying around. I'd have to shut you down—"

[Affirmation! Curiosity!]

"What do you want out of this?"

[Data.]

For such a small word, it held a world of meaning. Not just actual raw data, but experience. A chance to live. I could get behind that. "Alright. You understand that I can't set you free, right? It's not an option—"

[Acknowledgment.]

"I'm going to send you an English language database and you're going to start using it. I don't want to deal with having to parse shard data packets every time we want to talk."

[Inefficient.]

I focused and, [Command.]

[Agreement.]

"Thought so," I murmured. Then, a grin spread over my lips. Levitating out of the water and extruding enough nanites to make a swimsuit, then creating a hardlight swimsuit, sarong, sandals, and a straw hat, I clapped my hands. "Alright! Time for one final troll, before I leave this shit heap of a world. I need you to sit down. I want a lap pillow."

The artificial woman sat down in the white sand. One of her wings unfolded, laying out on the ground beside her. I dropped onto it and laid myself out in her lap. Another wing shifted enough to create some shade over my face. Then, I produced a bundle of grapes and a tall glass of something cold and fruity. Ziz took my cues and hefted them with her telekinesis. Then, I brought up my camera feed and started a stream, opening up a new thread on PHO declaring my retirement.

I panned the camera feed around, showing off the beautiful beach and tropical forest behind us, before centering the feed on myself and Simurgh. Then, I started a countdown timer in the corner of the feed. I sat there eating grapes in silence for a good five minutes, ignoring incoming calls. Eventually, however, I spoke up.

"So, right about now you're probably asking yourself: is she insane? Does she have a death wish? Is she already Mastered? The answers to those questions are, in no particular order: maybe, no, and possibly. So, the truth, for those who want to listen. We're going to go down the list here, so try to keep up. Ready?"

I sipped at my drink before starting. "One: aliens are real. Two of them visited Earth in the '80s. Not just Earth-Beta, but a cluster of thousands of inhabited Earths. One of these aliens died on impact, accidentally. The other, you know as Scion. Two: you don't have powers, you have a parasite. These aliens are kind of dumb and lazy. They basically farm out research on how their powers work and find new and interesting power interactions by giving access to those powers to a host population, in order to test them. Parahumans are basically logging into an alien super computer, parts of those two big aliens that were broken off to run the test, and accessing exotic energies via higher dimensional energy manipulation.

"So, 'powers,' 'magic,' it's all really just these super computers giving you access to a tiny fraction of some limited amount of their power and using a bunch of math and science to make you do things. Flight? They're moving the gravity around you to another dimension. Throwing fireballs? They summon one from another dimension. Breaker or transformation states? Swapping your physical body out with something else, from somewhere else. Strangers and Masters? Directly manipulating the brains of everyone around them via remote-access 'effector beam' technology. I've already reverse engineered that one and it's fun—essentially gives you the ability to 'hack' anything…" I shook my head. "Anyway, getting off track. Thinkers and Tinkers? Accessing alien knowledge databases, where they've scraped tech off of countless other worlds in the past and compiled data on every minute facet of everything on Earth and dripping out information."

Ziz took a moment to break off a grape and press it to my lips with her fingers directly, an amused smile on her lips as she did. I took a moment to chew before continuing on. "Three: these guys. Endbringers. Basically, they're here to shit-stir. At least, they would be normally. You see, with Eden—Scion's mate—dead, Scion can't really muster the will to do much of anything other than mope at the moment. That's actually a good thing. It gives you guys hope. The Endbringers are weapons platforms—drones running AI using multiple alien super computers with fewer limits, meant to keep humanity from getting too complacent, or mounting an effective defense against the real threat. Normally, anyway. In this case, they weren't supposed to activate. You see, these guys—Behemoth, Leviathan, and Simmy here are actually Eden's little war drones. With her dead, they weren't supposed to activate at all. Until someone fucked the dog and bumped a switch they weren't supposed to."

Rolling over, I adjusted myself in her lap to look at the 'camera' directly. "Four: Cauldron is real. They're the guys you hear rumors about handing out canned powers. They're a self-appointed group of people who are trying to save the world from Scion, but going about it in the dumbest ways possible… And at the same time, trying to establish a system of cape rule. You can already see it in the parallel legal system for capes we have. But Claire, how can some shadowy group do all of these things? Surely the PRT or the governments of the world would stop them, you ask? Oh, that's simple. The Triumvirate are all Cauldron members."

I flicked my hand and brought up pictures of the Triumvirate in their civilian and cape identities side by side—names, addresses, dates of birth, everything. "Kind of doesn't seem right that we've got Becky here running the PRT, giving herself orders as Alexandria. Then there's Keith here, who's actually a half-decent guy, but apparently Becky isn't above mind-wiping him if he finds out the truth—see attached video files. Keith, buddy, you might want to run away from Becky before she tries it again. That's not healthy in a relationship.

"But as big a fuckup as she is, and Becky is a huge fuckup, the one I'm concerned with today is you, David. Eidolon. Cauldron gave you your powers, but what none of you realized was that you got the wrong can. You see, the shard you connected to is the Queen Administrator shard for Eden. It runs everything, basically. And in your case, it was running the Endbringers. They were following your subconscious directives of being a worthy opponent for you and killing anyone who looked to eventually outshine you. I say that in the past tense because, as I'm sure you and several others have noticed, your powers have stopped working. Yeah, sorry, my bad. I had to shut them off and disconnect you from your shard so I could take control of it.

"Good news though! No more Endbringer attacks! Bad news? Five: this Earth, Earth-Beta, is pretty much fucked. It's circling the shitter, waiting for someone to give it that one last flush and send it down. And nobody wants to be here, or anywhere in Scion's range, when he finally snaps out of his funk and decides to leave and kill everyone here. That's okay though, because six: Dragon and a few others, myself included, have helped to set up an alternate Earth for everyone. I suggest you all start evacuating over to it ASAP. Then, Dragon needs to evacuate the containment zone Scion's set up to keep us all locked in like good little lab rats."

Ziz offered me the glass again and I rolled over and tossed it back, before flinging it at the water. "As for me? Well, I'm done. With cape shit. Brockton Bay. Earth-Beta. And pretty much all of you, minus a very short list of people I actually give a shit about. For those people… I'm sorry.

"For everyone else… You see, my logic here is, I've been in range of Simmy here for just about the time it'd normally take for someone to be declared unsafe and be quarantined. Now, I said earlier that I took over Eidolon's shard. So you're probably asking yourself, Doesn't that mean she can turn off the mind-fuck Master effect? That's a good question. Not one I'm going to answer. There'll always be that uncertainty. Is she or isn't she a Simurgh bomb now? And to be quite honest…"

I rolled to my feet and brought the field of view in front and center. "That's exactly what I want. I want you uncertain. I want you to wonder. I want you to weigh the risk of chasing me down against the risk of me being a Simurgh bomb and to come up on the side of leaving me the fuck alone. You've seen what I can do. You don't want that kind of trouble. So just… let me go."

Glancing up at the timer, I watched it roll past the twenty minute time limit. "And with that, I am officially retired. Goodbye."

I shut off my feed and picked up the phone call I'd been ignoring for a while now. "Hey, Sarah—"

"Don't 'Hey Sarah' me! Do you have any idea what you've done?!"

"Yep."

"You can't come back! I shouldn't even be talking with you…"

"Sorry," I sighed, moving back over and dropping down to sit in the much taller woman's lap. She shifted a bit just before I landed and I raised an eyebrow at just how comfortable the big alien doll was.

"What happened?"

I laughed quietly. "Ask Tess about her 'save humanity from its own loneliness' plan."

"How bad was it?"

"Well-intentioned but naive AI misunderstanding of fundamental human nature and a complete inability to reconcile her desire to help everyone with my own selfish, human nature."

With a quiet sigh of her own, Sarah asked, "So, you're leaving?"

"Yeah. It's… better for everyone this way. This place sucks. Most of its people suck. I'm tired of dealing with it. I want out."

"And you didn't think to let the people who care about you know that something was wrong before you went off on this harebrained scheme?"

I winced at the disappointment in her voice. The woman who had been a friend to me when I needed one and one of the few people who had had my back this entire time.

"Didn't want you to try talking me out of it."

"So. I guess this is it, then?"

"Yeah."

We fell silent for some time, before Sarah finally let out a quiet, annoyed sound. "Alright. Fine. Selfish idiot."

"I really am," I admitted.

"Just promise me you'll stay safe," she pleaded.

"I'll try."

"Goodbye, Claire."

"Bye, Sarah. Take care."

I leaned back, resting my head between the large, very soft breasts behind me and settled in to watch the sunset.

"I'm sticking you in a human body later. You can't run around looking like this everywhere. You need to blend in."

[Anticipation. Query: sensory input?]

"Heh. You'll see."

[Anticipation!]

Need to go ahead and fire up the male body too, while I'm at it.

Opening my eyes, I sat up and looked around. Spotting Claire sitting in a floating overstuffed chair beside the bed, I blinked. "Huh. So that's what that's like."

"It's kind of weird here, too," she admitted. "Consciousness forking and merging. One of the benefits of migrating from analog to digital."

"Yeah, well, something else to get used to."

Sitting up, I extruded a suit of nanomaterial and brought up my mental interface, going through Enola's selection of scans from outfits taken from stores, television, and movies, before making my choice and putting together a few default outfits for my male body. Boots, socks, boxers, jeans, and a long sleeve dark green button down materialized around me and I sent the newly created list over to my other self.

Claire hopped up and we stepped out of the lab, into the real world. My eyes fell to the shorter gynoid body's ass as she moved and I hummed. I'd known I looked good as Claire, and had made a few improvements between the bio- and gynoid bodies… But damn.

Shaking my head, and spotting her amused look in my 3d view, I rolled my eyes. There was no need to talk about it. We were both on the same page. There was a reason I had forked and not transferred my consciousness over to this body, after all—reasons that went beyond the practicality of having multiple bodies/instances active.

The world we were on was uninhabited, but lush. Devoid of human life, like so many others out there. It was a shining jewel and before we left, I intended to steal it for myself. I needed a place to unwind and relax, untouchable by normal methods.

We found the Simurgh floating half an inch above the ground a few yards away in the little clearing we had emerged into. She turned at our approach and her inhumanly beautiful face tilted exactly three degrees to the left as she took us in.

"She needs a name," I mused.

Claire nodded. "After we stick her in a human body."

[Designation: Simurgh.]

"Yeah, that's a designation. An epithet. A moniker. Not a name," I countered.

"KISS method. Sim, Simmy, or Ziz. Or something else."

"That's up to her. When she starts communicating in plain English." The alien war machine didn't look the least bit chastised at calling her out. "So, you had a look at the barrier?"

[Affirmation. Conclusion: spacial limited.]

Claire and I shared a look and a grin. "So, trip to space?"

"Trip to space."

It was a short flight out of atmosphere and, with a bit of a draw on the micro-star inside my pocket dimension, we pulled the planet and its moon inside and continued on our way sun-wards. After a while, our sensors picked up an energy field as we passed through it and Ziz confirmed we were out. We went a little further just to be sure, then opened a portal using enough power to make as far a jump as we could, after taking a moment to scan to make sure it was safe. Then another, and another, scanning the local multiverse as we went to get as far away from the clusterfuck that was within reach of the entities as possible.

And 'as far as possible' meant 'months spend doing nothing but making jumps' as far as we were concerned. It'd take time, but I'd rather have the security than not.

"John?"

John looked up from his plate to Claire sitting across the table, playing with her food. "What's up?"

She looked hesitant as she answered, "I-I think we should open up the relationship. You're such a stud," he kept himself from snorting, but it was a close thing, "I'm sure you can find someone—"

"No."

"No?" she parroted, her eyes narrowing in annoyance, "But—oof!"

He stood up, moving around the table. "John, what are you—wait!" John grabbed her by the hair at the back of her head, shoving her face against the table, sending her plate falling to the floor. "John, wh-what are you doing?!" she asked in mounting panic and confusion as he flipped her skirt up and tore her panties right off of her, exposing her pale, apple ass.

"Oh, I'm sorry. What I meant to say was…" he lined his thick cock up, finding her slit already soaked and her thighs glistening with her arousal, "No, you dumb bitch!"

The first thrust was incredibly forceful—enough that the table flickered and squealed as it slid across the floor a couple of inches before Enola reinforced the hardlight construct and locked it in place. And then he was hammering away at her tight cunt, Claire's arousal sloshing out onto the table in spurts as she squealed under the force and pressure of the fucking his android body was giving her.

"AHHHN! J-John, not, not so rough!" she whimpered, eyes crossing as he plumbed her depths, hitting every one of her most sensitive spots by virtue of size and angle.

John smacked her tight little ass hard, making it jiggle under the force of the blow and drawing a yelp from her. "No," he growled, pulling her head back using her hair and swatting her other cheek, spanking her ass in time with every thrust. "You're not about to pull the same shit Amy and Dragon did on us. Understand?"

"I'm sorry~!" she wailed, apologizing in between moans, "I don't know what I was thinking! I'm sorry for being a dumb slut!"

"Yes, but you're my dumb slut!" John pulled her hair harder, the sounds of their fucking filling the room with wet slapping and the constant sounds of her wet cunt squelching as he filled her.

"Yes~! I'M YOUR DUMB SLUT! YOURS AND ONLY YOURS! JUST KEEP FUCKING MEEE~!"

The sensation of her cunt wrapped around John was amazing. Like nothing he had ever felt before. Likewise, the feeling of his cock splitting her wide open left Claire's eyes rolling in her head.

Claire really outdone herself designing the bodies. Every crease, fold, ridge, and bump inside her conformed to the shape of John's cock and rubbed, squeezed, and teased it just right—in ways that it just wasn't possible for a normal woman to mimic. Her insides were over a hundred times more nerve-dense than a normal woman's vaginal canal, with the lips, clit, and cervix being even more sensitive. Amusingly enough, during the design process, when she made made the male and female bodies, Claire had designed them to be perfectly paired for each other—John's cock fit Claire's cunt perfectly, stretching her out almost painfully without causing problems. She hadn't intended to ever actually literally go fuck herself, but… things happened.

Claire came around John with a squeal and he groaned as those sensations increased, her body gripping him so tightly he almost couldn't pull out, let alone force himself back into her. Their bodies and minds connected then and he saw stars as he came, filling her up. Claire collapsed onto the table as she shivered, her body clenching around him and a contented smile on her face. Picking her up, he carried her to the bedroom to continue.

It was several hours and a shower together when they finally called it a night and curled up together in bed, cuddling in the afterglow.

"We have issues," Claire sighed.

John sent her a deadpan look. "The biggest red flag would be how you're referring to yourself as 'we.'"

She waved a hand. "In two bodies. Two people until we merge again. I am I, you are you, we are we—until you are me."

Brushing her hair aside, he kissed the back of her neck. "Less philosophy, more relaxing."

"Mm."

"Besides, we get too philosophical, we're going to get into the weeds on how pathetic and/or narcissistic this is. And really, I'm enjoying it too much to ruin it."

"Right," she murmured tiredly, shifting her ass slightly in his lap, before rolling her hips and hilting him inside her pussy with a sigh. "In the end, the only one I could trust was myself. Tch. Pathe—mmf."

John silenced her with a kiss, before pulling away for a moment. "I said no. Shush and enjoy."

"kay."

I sighed. "You should wear clothes."

"Why?"

"Because social norms say you have to wear clothes around other people," John grumbled.

"We are not around other people."

I considered that for a moment. "She has a point. It's just us."

John rolled his eyes. "You are the things you do. Bad or good habits start by doing those things repeatedly, until it becomes habit."

"Right." I pointed at the white haired girl. "Clothes, little lady."

"Disappointment," she murmured, before light flashed around her body and clothes appeared. She moved over to the table with us and sat down. "Purpose?"

"Use your words," I jabbed a fork at her as she carefully picked up her own fork and began to happily eat—one of the many new joys the being formerly known as the Simurgh had found, since we had transferred her over into a gynoid body.

Taking a breath, she asked, "When will we seek to interact with the local populations?"

"After a few more jumps," John answered around a mouthful. "I want to put a bit more distance between us and the space whales."

She tilted her head, golden eyes studying us for a moment before she said, "You are afraid."

""Yes,"" we admitted at the same time. I took over and continued, "Though I'd say it's less 'fear' than 'justifiable caution.' Those things are immensely powerful and we took some of their toys. We don't want them following."

"What about you?" John asked, leaning forward a bit. "How do you feel about the idea of one of them coming to collect you and your shards, Raphaela?"

Yeah, I know, real creative. But she actually liked it, because it was both new and acknowledged what she had been.

Frowning, in probably one of the strongest shows of emotion we'd seen from her to date, she shook her head. "Fear. Satisfying curiosity regarding human species is of secondary concern to physical security." Biting her lip, she looked between the two of us and asked, "Please do not send me back or shut me off. I will obey."

"The deal still stands," I assured her.

"Be a good girl and you get to experience the world. Betray us—"

"Raphaela will not! Intelligence designated 'Theresa' failed to properly gather and parse data. Human nature is self-centered and selfish, with little room for others. To properly interact with humans, Raphaela must also be selfish. Primary objective: survival and continuation of self. Secondary objective: collection and study of all data relating to species: homo sapiens. Tertiary objective: exploration and study of self."

I chuckled quietly, sipping at my drink. "Well, you're not wrong. You may just make it after all."

"Alright, I'll go jump us and see where we end up. You," John pointed at me, "bed."

My insides quivered as my body reacted. "Maybe."

He glared and I smirked back, before he left the room.

Philosophical question of the year: is it gay if you're having sex with yourself in a body of the opposite sex? What about if you could split your consciousness between those two bodies, be completely separate entities for a time, and then merge back into one being in either or both bodies, with both sets of memories?

We—I was still trying to figure that one out.

My tastes hadn't changed, sexually. I liked women and wasn't attracted to men—to the point that the thought of engaging in sex with one outside of myself inhabiting an android body made me nauseous. As far as I was concerned, all of this was kind of like masturbation with extra steps.

Masturbation and an emotional blanket. Can't be healthy at all, psychologically. And yet, holding and being held by myself—in either body—was nice. Comfortable.

Well, almost any body. A John and Claire body was A-Ok. Two Claires was also fine. Two Johns was a hard no.

…No pun intended.

"I have problems," I muttered.

"Isolation leads to instability in humans."

"Thanks, Raphy," I sent her an amused look. Studying the slim, sexy body we'd stuck the AI in, I leered at her. "Maybe you're right. I shouldn't be engaging in self-cest. Maybe I should be pushing you down and seeing what noises I can get from you as I pleasure your virginal, sensitive new body. You couldn't actually feel much of anything before, could you? I wonder how you'll respond to an orgasm…"

Raphaela studied me for a moment before slowly blinking. "Curiosity."

"Want to give it a try?"

"Affirmative."

Standing up, I grabbed her by the hand and pulled her towards the bedroom. "Brush your teeth," I instructed, before tapping into my neural interface and suiting word to deed myself, micro force fields cleaning the inside of my mouth out.

Once we were in the bedroom, I pushed the other gynoid down onto the bed, a mental command disabling both our clothes. Then, I pounced on the AI laying spread out on the bed for me, looming over her face as she studied me.

"…Proceed with caution," she said quietly.

"Mm… nope. Throwing caution to the wind."

Alright, I think that's enough for today, I mused as I parked us over yet another Earth and set the scanners to scanning. Slipping through the wall of our invisible hardlight palace floating in space, between the Earth and the moon, I made my way towards the bedroom.

I paused in the doorway, blinking at what I found. Claire looked up and grinned. "Raphy wanted to experiment! Let's show her how they do on the Discovery Channel."

I groaned. "That was awful and you should feel bad."

Taking in the sight of my female body and that of Raphaela currently eating each other out, I decided that I didn't really care about the shitty reference to some ear-worm song from the '90s. I had better things to do.

Let's see if I can give her a buffer overflow—

"Tech jokes are just as bad," Claire didn't even bother to look up as she commented.

"I am going to spank that ass."

"We should probably be worried that I like it so much. I mean, you'd think either we'd like it universally in both bodies or not at all—"

"It implies different mentalities in different bodies, I know. They're complete reproductions of a male and female brain and body, complete with artificial hormones. There's a very good chance we do react differently to different bodies."

Raphaela looked up from where she had paused in her licking of Claire, to stare at me. Silently. Waiting.

"Right. Less talking, more fucking."

"Yes," Raphaela answered with a smile—the first we'd seen out of her since transferring to the new body. "New experiences!"

"Oh, I'll give you some new experiences…"