Dream Hunter

Note to reader: This is the longest story I have ever written as I dive deeper into my curiosities and interests in different and darker ways to bring about sexual tension, connection and exploration (and ultimately character metamorphosis). I did struggle to decide on whether to publish this in Sci Fi/Fantasy or Erotic Coupling, but given that the Sci Fi / Future tech contained within this story is more of a targeted plot device and not the active, central backdrop of the story, Erotic Couplings still felt like the proper nest. Thank your interest in my story.

Dream Hunter

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Chapter 1

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Susan awoke to the mechanical whir of nearby health monitoring equipment in the MindMars, Inc. lab around 5:45 AM. She was covered in sweat, her muscles ached, and her the triangle between her thighs was thoroughly soaked. Her breathing still had not come down, and the heart monitor read 140bpm. Not surprising. She was able to easily remove the electrodes from her chest, arms neck and head because of her perspiration.

Only forty-five minutes until the day-shift arrives. More than enough time for her to clean this place up and get everything in order. As she sat up, she brushed her damp hair over her ears and ran her finger over the tiny scar left after her Neuramod chip had been installed. All lab workers at MindMars were authorized to receive them upon hiring after they passed all of the physical stress tests and health history interview.

Though the clock told her she should have at least another half hour, the outer security camera showed that cocky sonofabitch Michael pulling into his spot fifteen minutes early. It would be so nice not have to interact with anyone, Susan thought. It was entirely why she chose the night shift, to be as far away as possible from any human as best she could. No matter, she was prepared for his antics and had the Mind Elixir lab completely clean and untouched well before Michael even got through the front security.

She was able to quickly wipe the beads of sweat from her forehead and neck, and the religious attentiveness to her cleanup routine naturally reduced her heart rate. However, there was nothing she could easily do with the soaking mess between her legs. At least her underwear absorbed most of it. She removed her navy blue, no frills panties and shoved them into her purse and got her work pants back on and exited the women's private bathroom.

She got to the end of the corridor that lead to the elevators to the left and the labs to the right. Of course, there he is.

"Hey Suzy! Did ya keep the keyboard warm for me?" Michael asked in his normal, jocular manner.

"Please don't call me that," Susan pleaded, deadpanned and annoyed.

Her dark brown hair spilled down to her shoulders in a semi-unruly fashion. It looked a little like she had just been on a run. Although she wore a fairly thick sweater, Michael could somewhat trace the shape of her not quite petite, but not exactly curvy figure.

"Sheesh. Well, I'll let you call me Mikey... on Fridays only!" Michael quipped back.

Susan rolled her eyes behind her thick, almost too large black rimmed glasses. She then restrung her thinly strapped black leather purse over her right shoulder and walked toward the biometric scanning security door to leave work.

"Hey, Susan, I'm just messin with ya. Just because we work in a sterile lab doesn't mean we have to sterilize our greetings, you know?" Michael said, with his half-assed effort to chip away at the ice block between them.

The massive steel bolts clacked internally as Susan's retina scan passed. As she strode through the automated security door she turned her mouth to the side and slightly behind her, "I prefer sterile."

The electronically controlled door slowly closed after she left, and the automatic security bolts clacked back into place.

"Jesus, she needs to get out," Michael said out loud to himself in the echo chamber of the barren elevator bank corridor.

Michael made his way to the lab, sat down to the shared console and logged in. Even with his double Ph. D in both mechanical engineering and biology/neuroscience, he could not, for the life of him, ever consistently remember his pass phrase.

As he made his second attempt at keying in, now actually paying attention to the screen, he realized the problem. Susan's credentials were still logged in and he was typing in his pass phrase into a notepad instead of a login screen. Right before he manually logged her out, he noticed the Mind Elixir secure console was still live. He knew he should immediately close everything and log out of her account, but his curiosity hijacked his conscience, and he alt-tabbed into the console.

The console was text based and had a DOS oriented command shell, which took text based inputs to run executable files or do simple file manipulation. The Mind Elixir lab is a highly secretive, experimental human interface program that works with the Neuramod brain chip to create a lucid dream work space that can create a fully interactive simulation where all five senses can feel and respond to the environment using direct nerve induction.

Prior to the interface with Neuramod, the Elixir simulations had trouble translating and simulating actual touch and taste because the "lucid" mind was too powerful and worked against the ability of the program to convince a human subject of sensations if they happened to be out of context or too complex. The Neuramod interface changed the game entirely, and no matter how strongly willed the human subject was, the person's sensations were entirely at the mercy of whatever immersive experience they were in. Some of the feelings and sensations were approximated with the use of AI, but it was more than 98% accurate according to aggregated feedback from the users of the system.

The first time Michael went under the Mind Elixir lucid dream state after his Neuramod chip was installed, he could not tell dream from reality, yet he could completely interact in an awake state and feel everything. He remembered slapping his hand against a brick wall and the pain was immediate, the dulled and muted sound was accurate, and the bricks were even programmed to leave trace amounts of rocky dust in his hand, just like real bricks.

The current practical use of the software, and the entire purpose of the MindMars company, was to provide an accurate simulation of the rigors of operating in a life sustaining habitat on the planet Mars without incurring the massive expense of simulating it in reality.

Michael and Susan's primary and time-complementary duties are to perform quality assurance testing of new code to simulate the habitat and run simulations with the prospective astronauts who will eventually apply to be the first to live on Mars for a sustained period of time.

There are typically between four and five astronauts in the Mind Elixir lab in a lucid dream state operating cooperatively in the simulated Mars habitat at any given time. There is always a free bed and interface in the event that there is a problem and either Susan or Michael have to insert themselves into the Elixir simulated environment and communicate with the astronauts. There is no other way to communicate with them other than to wake them up, which would be extremely inefficient and disorienting for the astronauts.

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Chapter 2

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As Michael debated the ethics with himself to look at Susan's command shell console, he evaluated what he knew of her. She obviously has an aversion towards him or his personality, he surmises, and guesses that she must also not be very fond of herself. She works the late shift, and has maintained that schedule steadily for the past two years without modification. Without missing a single day of work. Without being late, and without a single day of vacation.

When he asked her out to get a drink in the first three months of her arrival, she didn't flinch, blink or even respond. Her version of 'no' was to turn about face and walk the opposite direction. Message received, for sure. But Michael, being an affable person, took no deep offense and moved on. Since then, however, her status as a mystery grew steadily in Michael's mind with the passage of time.

Michael shoved the angel on his right shoulder aside and proceeded to look at the command history on Susan's shell prompt, realizing he would have to clean his tracks once he's done snooping on her work. As he reviewed her last few commands executed, he saw a long string of typical executables for the Mind Elixir simulation. Absolutely nothing out of the ordinary. Boring confirmed. As he was ready to close the shell and log out, he noticed one of the commands was a simple 'x', which was a little odd, but if anyone but him snooping around, it would have gone unnoticed. It's a rather pedestrian way to hide what you are running, but someone would have very few options to obfuscate on this system.

As he typed out a command to view the location of the 'x' executable, it was a file pointer to a binary file stored within a hidden folder that was on an encrypted drive. This was highly unusual and against protocol.

"What the fuck?" Michael said in an hushed voice to himself. He tossed a look to the front, back, right and left to ensure nobody was snooping on him.

With his level of access, and having implemented the system, he easily accessed the encrypted drive and decrypted the hidden folder. He typed the Unix command 'ls' which then revealed a ton of files he did not expect to see, including biometrics output from the 'floater' Mind Elixir lucid dream insertion bed, system and runtime logs and an unrecognizable executable file named 'la_naranja_mecanica'.

"What the ever luvin fuck...?"

Not wanting to leave any additional footprint on Susan's console, he typed in the cryptic, Spanish-sounding words into a search bar on his phone. The search engine provided a response that the words translated to 'A Clockwork Orange'.

Michael sneered at his phone as if it was displaying an alien language. Thoroughly confused.

"MICHAEL!" A loud voice boomed from behind him. Michael swiveled around on his office chair and his eyes met one of the supervisors, Eric.

"Jesus, man, you scared the hell out of me, what is going on?" Michael said.

"You were supposed to be on a videoconference with me with the D. C. lobbyist team five minutes ago, and you aren't answering your phone!" Eric said with an annoyed tone.

"Oh shit, I'm sorry man, I had my phone on silence this morning. My bad. I'll get right on it," Michael said.

"Ok, thanks, that's all I needed. Why are you on Susan's console?" Eric asked as he rubber-necked his head over Michael's shoulder.

"Oh, she must have left it logged in, it was like this when I found it. Just a simple mistake, I'll take care of it," Michael continued, "See? Done."

What Michael actually did was execute a few keys to simply put the screen to sleep, it didn't actually log Susan out. But Michael knows that Eric is a bit of a technical nimrod and is more of a figurehead in the company because he was one of the early investors.

Michael quickly disabled the auto logoff timer and joined the video conference. He was distracted the entire time, pounding his brain for answers of why the fuck Susan had an executable named "A Clockwork Orange". He vaguely remembered the movie from his youth, but could not connect any dots and was completely flummoxed.

With the conference finally over, and absolutely zero action items assigned to Michael, he turned his attention back to Susan's hidden folder. Putting aside the strange executable, he double clicked the biometrics output folder.

Michael opened the first file, which was a body temperature reading. The measurement was taken just this morning! What the fuck is this? Michael turned to a separate console to check whether a planned insertion into the Mind Elixir was required overnight for Susan to communicate with the astronauts.

Negative.

He turned back to the Susan's console. As he scrolled through the body temperature readings, it remained constant, more or less, 98.3, 98.5, 98.2 for the first twenty minutes from about 5:00 AM until 5:20 AM. Not sure of what he is expecting to find, but all of a sudden around 5:30 AM the body temperature rose an entire degree to 99.5, and remained there for approximately 15 seconds.

A few minutes later, the same phenomenon, and again, about five minutes apart more or less. This occurred at least five times. Are these measurements of Susan? Dummy measurements?

Unsurprisingly, the other biometrics showed elevated measurements at the same time. Breathing and heart rate.

Michael surmises elevated pulse and respiration could be due to anxiety and stress induced by the Mars habitat simulations that introduce errors and failures that require the user to solve the problems with time constraints and sensory distractions. However, Susan should never be involved in those simulations, she would only have to communicate benign information and then log out.

He then opened the brain activity files. Michael's eyes widened at the output; stunned. Reading through, and scrolling to 5:30 AM

............. HYPOTHALAMUS MONITORING ACTIVE

BRAIN ACTIVITY READING INITIATE.....5:00 AM

SUBJECT: ANONYMOUS

5:01 AM NORMAL ACTIVITY DETECTED

5:06 AM NORMAL ACTIVITY DETECTED

5:11 AM CORTISOL RELEASE DETECTED - SUBJECT STRESS HEIGHTENED

5:16 AM CORTISOL RELEASE DETECTED - SUBJECT STRESS HEIGHTENED

5:21 AM BRAINWAVE ACTIVITY INDICATES POSSIBLE SEXUAL AROUSAL

5:26 AM BRAINWAVE ACTIVITY INDICATES POSSIBLE SEXUAL AROUSAL

5:31 AM SEXUAL CLIMAX INDICATED

5:36 AM SEXUAL CLIMAX INDICATED :: CO-DETECTION STRESS HEIGHTENED

5:41 AM SEXUAL CLIMAX INDICATED

This can't be Susan, Michael thinks. Can't be. Having sex in the Mars habitat?

Wait! That other executable. The wheels in Michael's double Ph. D brain began firing on all eight cylinders. Somehow Susan was able to hide all of the reference data around the Clockwork Orange executable, as he attempted analyze the file itself. Guess I will just have to run the damn thing, Michael thought to himself. As he executed it, it immediately errored out, "REFERENCE FILE NOT FOUND: drencrom. lib."

What the fuck is drencrom. lib and where the fuck is it? Michael did a systemwide search on his own console for the drencrom file and also ran the same on Susan's console. Nothing.

She must bring it with her on an external drive, and she figured out how to bypass the security on non-sanctioned external usb drive connections, Michael pondered. I am sure she cleared all logs of the connection.

Michael looked up and around him for a moment, again, to make sure he wasn't being watched. The astronauts slumbered in Lab Two, all activity looks normal, no missed calls and no new emails, and no requests for insertion. He then began writing a small script to automatically copy any. lib files that are detected in Susan's account.

Ok, it's done, he thought to himself. It'll also copy the executable into a temporary folder, wipe the copy logs, and then rename it and copy to my own folder. It's not completely foolproof, but it should work.

Michael looked down at his watch. Blasted. It's only 8:30AM. I have seven more hours to sit here and wonder what the fuck Susan is up to, and then hope all night that she doesn't detect what I've done, and again, hope that the files copy.

Michael immediately had a pang of the ethical dilemma in which he's inserted himself. Why am I not reporting this to Eric right fucking now. Jesus, what am I doing?

He weighed his options of just backing off now, reporting the incident, or following the rabbit down the hole.

What he wasn't allowing to reach the surface of his conscious mind is the twinge of desire he felt, deep down, to know what it was that Susan was doing - even more, to know who she was. She has maybe said a total of twenty words to him in the last six months.

Apparently her work has been impeccable, and her coding on the failure simulations using artificial intelligence was far more advanced that any other coder was able to produce. Can't live with her, can't code without her, is apparently the mantra around her retention at MindMars.

Michael's desire to pull the string from the sweater beat out the other other options. Having set his little e-trap, he logged out of Susan's console. With any luck, everything he needs will be on his drive when he gets into work tomorrow.

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Chapter 3

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Michael arrived at home around 10:00 PM after a happy hour and dinner with a few of his college friends near the waterfront. His ramshackle forest cottage is a far cry from the home in Laguna Beach that he and his ex-wife owned for the twelve years of their marriage. This place suits him astronomically better. Though he loves the social life, he has an equal affinity for the secluded flora and fauna of his secluded hut.

He opened his fridge and grabbed a bottle of Coors. "The banquet beer," Michael said as he attempted an impersonation of Sam Elliot's Coors commercial with a deep country drawl.

He twisted the top and and his malted beverage exhaled a satisfying hiss. He then sat and popped on his aging TV and searched through some of the free streaming services for a distraction. Nothing was on, but it really wasn't for lack of programming. Michael could not bend his mind away from the events of today at the lab. For six months, he couldn't get a peep out of Susan besides some quippy responses to his attempts at camaraderie. Although he made a pass at her, it was for the best that she ignored him. For one, there was little to no time for that with working opposite shifts in, and two, his job was too important to risk on some workplace drama. Though... she was so stoic, beautiful - closed off.

Michael took deep swig of his barley nectar and settled on some M. A. S. H. reruns.

Michael tossed and turned until about 1:30 AM when he finally drifted off into sleep replaying the information he learned during the day at the lab. Hours of the black time ticked by, and the wind whistled through the evergreens that congregated in his curtilage.

DING.

DING.

DING.

It was 3:00AM, a notification on his phone let him know that some files were copied to his home drive.

Satisfaction washed over him and he easily drifted back to sleep.

Michael woke up the next morning and executed his normal routines - most importantly, brewing a quad espresso. Though he felt groggy from his inability to fall asleep at a decent hour, combined with the 3:00 AM alarm, his curiosity bought him more than enough energy to motivate him to get to the lab to finally get a look at those files.

He grabbed his work stuff, turned off the espresso maker, and left his house for work.

As Michael drove toward MindMars headquarters, he manhandled his classic 1987 Porsche 928 through the hills and twisty turns as the vintage V8 motor grunted pleasingly at his command. He approached the front security gate and flashed his badge to Marge.

The tollbooth styled checkpoint had a long blocking rail with white and red barber polled markings. While he waited for his badge to flash green, he could see the entirety of MindMars parking lot from this slightly elevated vantage point. Susan's Jeep was not there. His eyes continued to scan back and forth...

"Sonny, I don't serve pancakes here, and there are three cars behind you," Marge said, in her most endearing tone of voice.

"Oh, sorry Marge, I was looking for something," Michael replied distantly.

"Me too, a briefcase with ten million dollars, let me know if you find it in there," Marge joked with her typical, life-didn't-work-out-the-way-I-thought, but I'll be happy anyway smile.

"Thanks Marge," Michael said, as he extended his hand from his window and made a Queen-of-England pseudo wave with his hand.

Michael let his car idle forward a few feet and he hit the brakes.

"Marge?"

"What, honey?"

"Did you see the blue Jeep this morning?"

Marge squinted her knowing eyes, "you mean, Susan's Jeep?"

"Yes, I mean Susan," Michael replied petulantly, flustered that Marge was insinuating something.

"Actually, she left around four AM, oddly enough," Marge said.

"Ok, thanks," Michael said as he fed some fuel to his German auto and sped into the parking lot.

As he keyed into the front entrance of the building with a biometric scan of his hand, he was thrown off by the report that Susan had left early. There is nobody there to monitor the astronauts, and it would be completely against protocol.

Michael made his way to the third floor by elevator. He fixed his collar as he looked himself over in the broken-glass-by-design interior mirrored walls of the elevator car.

The elevator doors opened to his floor, and he briskly strode towards his work area.

"I'm glad you are here early, Michael," Eric surprised him around the corner.

"Jesus! You scared the shit out of me!" Michael snorted.

"Sorry, Michael. Listen... Susan quit. She sent me a note this morning around 3:30 AM. Told me all readings were nominal, and she had to leave and she was resigning. She took all of her stuff, which wasn't much," Eric reported to him.

What the fuck is going on? Michael thought to himself. Did she detect what I had done? Maybe a family emergency? But Eric told me a year ago, though he wasn't supposed to, that when she was hired, she had no living family members, no spouse, no children, i. e. perfect for the nightshift job.

"Listen, I already have several candidates responding to emails that are interested in the night shift job. I'm not asking you to interview them, but I kind of need your 'no assholes allowed' assessment of them, if you could maybe sit in the interviews?" Eric implored.

"Sure, no problem," Michael responded.

"One other thing... uhhhh... I need you to take the night shift until we hire the person," Eric said, with great hesitation, realizing what a pain in the ass the request was.

"Oh my god, dude. I have a date tonight, and another one in a few days. And then I have family coming in from St. Louis," Michael whined.

"I know, Michael, but we have no other options, and I am going to have to stand in during the day shift, and you'll have to be on call, because you know that I don't know the systems the way you and Susan do," Eric implored and continued, "and you get overtime/hazard pay, and I'll put it through with no problem - it should only be for a few days until we can get the new candidate."

"Ok ok," Michael sighed, resigned. "I got it, Eric, you can count on me."

"Thank you, Michael, I mean it. I've got it today, take today off and be here tonight at six, please," Eric said, with genuine gratitude.

"I just have to grab something from my cubicle," Michael said.

"Of course. I'll see you tonight," Eric replied.

Michael did his best to not sprint toward his cubicle to see if the files were copied. As he approached it, he saw the empty chair where Susan sat. There was literally nothing there. Not that there was anything substantial, but not even a pencil, a pen or even a piece of paper in the trash. Like she just vanished.

Mixed emotions washed over him. Anger that he now had to cancel plans and stay up all night in this quiet lab like a mortician with sleeping astronauts in their Elixir MRI-like stasis tubes. Fear crept in that perhaps his computer espionage of Susan's files more resembled a bull robbing a china shop and she detected what he did. He was just annoyed that he was annoyed in general. Worry and intrigue is not Michael's typical modus operandi.

He logged into the system and checked his hidden, encrypted and MFA protected file folder.

Bingo!

A massive. lib file was there, approximately three terabytes of data, which would translate to about a twenty to thirty minute immersive experience to go with the executable he found the other day. Now, when to see what the hell it is, he pondered.

Tonight! Works out perfectly, he figured, now that he's got the files. He'll have the entire lab to himself. He moved all of the files to his USB drive with little trouble since he has all of the security overrides, and he cleared the logs of that activity. Self-justifying by considering himself a sleuth to find out if Susan had done anything to harm the company. But he ultimately knew deep in his heart from where his motivation had sprung.

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Chapter 4

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Michael had arrived on time for his 6:00 PM evening shift. He tried to nap in prep for the graveyard shift, but sleep eluded him like a gazelle executing evasive maneuvers under the attack of a lion. The anticipation of figuring out the contents of Susan's files overtook every available processing power of his brain. Michael took care of his initial tasks to hopefully make the time pass more quickly until the hour when the non-essential workers would leave him some solitude. The early spring sky was not quite dark, but the setting-sun had painted the walls a crimson, dragon-fire glow.

Tedious checklists and menial tasks seemed to drone on forever. Finally, workers began filtering out.

With the lab now empty except for the slumbering astronauts, he was free to continue down the 'Susan issue' red pill path. None of his analysis of the drencrom. lib file yielded anything, but that was not surprising. The only way to find out what was in it was to run it while he was in the Elixir state.

Because of the complicated signals in Elixir environments, there was no way to "play" the file on a video screen. He had no idea what to expect. It also felt like a bit of an invasion of privacy on Susan. Of course, this was all MindMars property, and nothing is private and blah blah blah and all that legal jargon, but it's still something she wanted to keep hidden. Whether she was right or wrong, or whether the work policies don't support her privacy, this was still an invasion.

Michael sat and stared at the screen with the files and deliberated. He glanced over at the free Elixir bed with all of the monitors and hookups. He could feel his curiosity winning an arm wrestling match against his concern for Susan's obviously failed attempts at occlusion and obfuscation.

After a few moments of pondering, debating and staring at the ceiling, he knew he wasn't going to just drop it. His mind had already gone too far down the path of intrigue to turn around now. One foot in the Elixir, so to speak.

Michael proceeded to set up the program and prepare the Elixir bed. Michael had Susan's program loaded and set it to auto execute in five minutes. He connected himself to the monitors and the Elixir lucid dream insertion connectors that communicate directly to his Neuramod chip via wifi. The connections required close physical proximity because of the extremely high bandwidth demands of the Elixir interface.

No backing down now, he thought to himself, as he strapped his own legs down to prevent himself from lurching out of the bed. He took one more look around the lab and confirmed nobody was stirring, and he was confident that all of the file manipulation he had done would make it look like he was entering a routine Mars diagnostic simulation program in the event that someone would check on him. Plus, with the Mind Elixir software, he is able to exit at-will at any time and he can receive live notification from the outside world while in a lucid dream state, such as a security message that someone is entering the building, though it would then pull him out of the simulation.

Satisfied he had covered every corner, he closed his eyes. Approximately twenty seconds until execution.

As he relaxed and concentrated on his breathing, he felt and saw the arrival of the new world explode around him. It never ceased to amaze him, or anyone else, each time one entered the Mind Elixir loading experience. It is truly the ultimate brain ride. A voice, inside his head, the Elixir equivalent of 'Siri', stated the following:

"Safety protocols disabled", "User controls disabled", "Entering Ludovico."

What the fuck? Fear gripped every sense.

Calm down, he told himself. It's only thirty-five minutes. And mousy little Susan apparently does this on the daily. But user controls being disabled injected a jolt of fear.

Suddenly he was in a forest at dusk. This was not Mars, and this was not space, this was not what he was expecting.

Immediately, he noticed this was not an interactive immersion at all, it was a pre-recorded event. He had no control.

He attempted to form the words "Elixir, end program!" But this was futile given that he could not control the body that he was in.

There was no facilitation for his voice within a simulated recording.

He heard nothing but the whistle of wind through the surrounding pine trees. His eyes blinked, but not at his command. It was a bright half moon. He heard an owl calling out for mates. Twigs snapped underfoot as he felt the body he was in navigate the terrain carefully and slowly, as if waiting for something or someone. It was disorienting to be fully immersed in someone else's body but move at their whim and not his own. His only experience in Elixir has been lucid dream immersion - never a recording.

It was alarming to not move his head or eyes in the direction that he wanted to go, or address a particular angle from which he heard sounds.

Suddenly the body he was in apparently heard the sounds he was hearing, and the head he was riding in turned to see what was coming.

Three figures exited the dark brush into this small clearing. Completely out of place, each wore a different venetian mask. The person's body into which he was inserted did not run, but also did not directly address any of these people. The figures then circled his avatar in almost a pre-ritual mode. The body he was in, he just realized, was female. How he didn't feel the feeling of having different body parts until this moment is incredible, but now that he has felt it, he can't un-feel it. Anxiety struck him like a shuriken of lightning out of the sky.

Only five minutes have passed and this is far beyond what he ever worried this experience would be. Although the biometric output from Susan's files suggested she was experiencing sexual pleasure, this was not what he had pictured, and certainly never anticipated he wouldn't be able to exit or control the environment.

The figures came closer and it was clear that two of them were men and one was a woman. Their clothing was unremarkable, and they said nothing.

Michael struggled as a prisoner in someone else's body, feeling every sense, though his thoughts and his presence of mind was his own. As immersive as the Mind Elixir lab has been, and truly, the reason he decided to work for Mind Mars in the first place, was because of the pushing-the-envelope technology. It was interesting to him, it was the mind's version of sky diving and surfing. But this situation was never on the menu.

One of the larger men stopped behind the body he was in and grabbed him from behind his body's waist. His pre-recorded avatar did nothing to fight it. Did not protest verbally or physically. He felt the body he was in relax into submission apparently. Still, no words spoken.

The feeling of his avatar's muscles contracting and releasing to do simple and inane movements, but not at his mind's command, was both intimate and dissociating in equal measure.

The other male and female NPCs approached Michael and began removing the clothing he was wearing. Again, not a word escaped their mouths nor the one he was wearing for the time being. He forgot for a moment that he had no control and attempted to resist, but it was useless. It felt like the equivalent of trying to flex a hand or foot that has completely fallen asleep. Worthless brain signals firing impotently into the ether. He, or his host body, was now completely undressed. He felt the conductor of his body, which must have been Susan at some point, look down at herself. He saw the shape of her breasts and an untrimmed bush. Pretty much exactly as he had pictured Susan. Strange thoughts to have as he sat, as a passenger in her dream, or nightmare. He felt the cool air of the sylvan surroundings brush against against her/his private parts, and felt the distinct feeling of nipples stiffening.

A familiar feeling of arousal began to surround his senses. However, this would normally be accompanied by a stiffening of his cock, but now he was experiencing a wholly separate feeling. He felt the same heat and awakening of nerves between his legs, but it was more focused. He felt the desire to be touched, though he had no desire to be a woman, nor any desire to be touched by a man, but he cannot avoid the simple feeling of arousal. Truly, he was a slave to the electro-chemical processes of this avatar's body, but fully within his own mind.

He then felt gravity change as the large man behind him pushed his avatar to the ground, and he felt the the pine needle and twig bedding beneath his hands and knees.

He could hear the garments of the other participants falling to the ground, and against his will, he, for the first time, felt what it felt like to be dripping between his legs. It was the strangest sensation, and he felt incomplete without his own genitals. Extreme vulnerability gripped his mind. He tried to close his eyes, but then cursed himself for not remembering that he can't do that.

Suddenly, he felt a finger trace down the his avatar's ass and rest between his newly acquired labia. A finger jolted inside. Holy fuck. No no no! To his chagrin, however, the body hosting him apparently craved more, and moved against the finger for more penetration, and he felt the aroused feelings in his brain at complete odds with his conscious thoughts and desires, like a holy war between his hypothalamus and frontal lobe.

The other male character got beneath him, but sideways, and the female character, completely naked, got on the ground, legs spread in front of his avatar's face. Her genitals were smooth and hairless. From the moonlight, he could see puffy labia and a hooded clit within inches of his face, and could smell her sex. With her legs spread wide, her outer, asymmetrically beautiful labia were also spread, giving view to her dark hole, covered only by taut inner lips. Without giving any mental command, which would have been futile anyway, he felt his neck crane his face into the cunt in front of him and immediately he felt the taste of her arousal in his mouth. This was not exactly unpleasant, except he knew this wasn't the end of it. The female character beneath his mouth exhaled and groaned in pleasure.

Suddenly, he felt something much larger than a finger from below swirling around in his avatar's labia, apparently lathering himself up. It was the male NPC lying sideways between his body and between his/Susan's legs. Perhaps only ten minutes remaining - enough to scar him for life; surely, he thought. He then felt the most foreign feeling of penetration. Again, he felt the body he was in get exactly what it was craving, but the exact opposite of what his brain desired. It wasn't pain exactly. It was a fullness he had never experienced. He again could tell that he was soaked and dripping, and felt a moan exhale from his mouth and vocal chords involuntarily. The second man lingered behind his avatar.

He heard the other male behind him spit several times, forcefully. This might be too much to take, and put him in a psychosis. His tongue was now fully pressed into the vulva of this woman below him/Susan, and the cock from below was jackhammering into his new anatomy. He then felt two powerful hands spreading his avatar's ass cheeks, and what had to be this NPC's cock began to press against his/Susan's asshole. He felt like a fish being filet'd on a table.

In his struggle, time seemed to slow down and he had the distinct feeling again of different parts of his brain competing. This apparently is where the company, and his, understanding of the true limits of the Neuramod and Elixir software were not fully known or mapped out. He could almost physically feel some subterranean, primal desire in his brain stem and the deepest recesses of his physical mind desiring to be fucked into oblivion, no matter which way. But the part of his mind that makes up him/Michael, that is indubitably heterosexual, was fighting this neuro-chemical battle where the senses meet the mind.

As this mind battle raged in his head, he then felt the other cock pressing, forcing his last remaining hole open, and then darkness.

A steady, low beeping sound prevailed over the lucid dreaming state he was in. His eyes were opening and he was in the lab. He drew in a sudden breath.

He was sweating, and breathing harder than he was ever breathing in his life, even in all of his extreme sports. He immediately started to receive the signals again of his own body, and immediately realized his cock was stiffer than morning wood and tenting his pants up uncomfortably. Jesus Christ, he screamed in his head, and looked around to orient himself to the lab again.

He ripped off the brain and heart monitoring leads, and ran to the computer console in the neighboring observation room. He forgot to disconnect a lead that was connected to his calf and a piece of monitoring equipment crashed to the ground.

"Fuck!", Michael yelled.

He reached down and ripped it from his leg and pulled about forty leg hairs with it, but his brain didn't even react to the pain.

Michael tapped on the spacebar, the lock screen popped up and he entered his password and authorized the MFA request. He went into the logs of the la_mecanica_naranja executable in his hidden folder and opened the error. log file.

.......... ERROR LOG:./LAMECANICANARANJA. BIN

7:22 PM BETA AND GAMMA BRAIN WAVE LIMITS EXEDED

7:23 PM EXECUTION HALTED.

Apparently the safety protocols within the executable were turned off by Susan, but she couldn't figure out how to override the neurological safeguards built into the kernel of the Elixir Unix system. Billions of tax dollars hard at work, Michael sarcastically thought.

Michael then sat in his lab chair and let the quietude of the office and the whir of computers calm down his racing heart as he tried to wrap his mind around the implications of what he found, and the significance of Susan quitting, and why. More importantly, why the fuck he cared so much.

I mean really, good riddance. This is fucking craziness. Has to be deleted. But do I report this? Eventually someone is going to find it in an audit. I would never be able to clean up everything Susan did. And this is just the stuff I found. Who knows what other shit she was doing.

But as he rampaged through these pragmatic and detached thoughts of duty, his mind turned to Susan and what he had just experienced. So she was here, in the middle of the night, getting gangbanged by men and women, and and having orgasms into oblivion. And then tidying herself up, and making her almost non-responsive remarks to me in her mousy lab uniform (she actually chose the gray color for god's sake). She even wore those huge repulsive glasses. But now Michael lived in her body for fifteen minutes and saw a different world.

---------

Chapter 5

---------

Michael cleaned up his station, threw away a napkin from his midnight snack and the chincy paper cup from which he drank the shitty lab coffee. Externally, he was pensive and quiet. Internally, he reeled from where he just was. Still not internally permitting a full acknowledgment of the Pandora's box that he had opened in the Elixir lab.

As he was packing up his backpack, Eric walked in to take over for the morning.

"Morning, Michael, how did the first night go?" Eric asked.

"Fine... uneventful," Michael responded.

"Good, very good. Listen, I know I said I'd get your input, but given the crunch, I already hired someone, and they've worked at a similar lab, and they are going to start tonight. Are you ok with that?" Eric asked.

"Yes, man. Yes. I can't do the night shift stuff, and I'm sure they will work out. Umm, Eric?"

"Yea, what's up?"

"Can I ask if you know any reason why Susan quit?" Michael asked in his best voice to not communicate the depth of his concern and his interest in the answer to the question.

"Well, she didn't really authorize me to tell anyone this, but she said she had a family emergency out of state, and she had to move, permanently. I found it strange," Eric continued, "I shouldn't even tell you that, so please, keep that between us."

Susan doesn't have family, Michael thought, and Eric knew that too, but this is where the conversation has to end, and Michael simply responded with, "Strange, very strange, well, I hope everything works out for her."

"Yea, me too," Eric responded - but they both looked at each other knowing full well that wasn't the reason, but now was not the time to discuss it, and perhaps not ever.

"Ok, I'm out, man, going to go eat and then hopefully sleep, and I'll be back on Monday for the day shift, ok?" Michael said in parting.

"You got it, Michael, I will see you then, I've got the day covered and Susan's replacement, Joel, will start Monday evening. I will send you his resume just so you know his background and contact information," Eric said.

"Ok, sounds good. Seeya," Michael replied.

As he drove his Porsche out of the parking lot, and felt the acceleration and purr of the German v8 under the hood, he was soothed that he was back in control of something in his reality, even if it was as simple as the car he was driving. But like a ringing in one's ear, the issue with Susan created discord in Michael's normally harmonious life that he can't un-hear. Why did she leave? It was not fucking family, no fuckin way, Michael thought. His brain was paging through still images of Susan on her way out of the lab, her cold-steel stare, the shape of her naked body from the fleeting glances he got from the Elixir experience. His brain attempted to recall any detail in his memory of the movie A Clockwork Orange to discovery the connection or reference.

He pressed on the accelerator to give himself some jolt of a semblance of control. He carved through the twisty roads roads exiting the MindMars campus and decided to to head down to the beach and maybe take a nap in the sand and ground himself in a place that brings salve and succor.

He parked his car on the street, activated his nostalgic 90's sounding alarm system in his Porsche, and walked down to the sand with nothing but his cell phone and a big thick pullover to use as a pillow and then later as a windbreaker if it gets cold.

The hot sun beat down on the sand like a death-ray gun from a cheap 70s sci-fi movie, but he found some shade created by a rock formation. Small waves crashed rhythmically against the tide pool rock outcroppings. An occasional high altitude jet's engine droned and whined far in the distance. Even the distraction of the sounds of kids boogie boarding, and people smacking volleyballs could not tear his mind from Susan.

He laid there for twenty minutes without feeling even slightly tired enough to doze off. Rare for Michael, as he self-touted among friends that he could sleep on the hood of a Jeep speeding through the jungle at sixty miles per hour if needed. He prided himself on a contented, no-regrets, peaceful mind, disabused from stress and anguish. But now his mind no longer rested like a boat in Sargasso still waters. His soul's ocean was now riddled with riptides and white caps.

He popped in his wireless headphones and decided to rent A Clockwork Orange as a bit of research to perhaps coax his mind to sleep, but he had forgotten how violent and sexually charged the movie had been.

"Ah", Michael actually said out loud to himself. 'Drencrom'. In the first scene, the main gang characters are drinking Milk or 'Moloko' at the Korova milkbar where apparently drugs are added to the milk in this dystopian future watering hole where the 'Droogs' get tuned up for a bit of the old 'ultra violence', and one such drug additive was named Drencrom, which is what Susan labeled the library reference. lib file.

Even within the first ten minutes of the film, a group of men manhandled a voluptuous and naked woman in an abandoned building. As the group of young and disorderly men lewdly handled her pouty, tan-lined tits and peach shaped bouncy ass, they apparently set out to harvest what they wanted from her until the main characters and protagonist of the movie pounced on the gang, permitting the "weepy devotchka" an escape from the mayhem. The two gangs battled with brutality. But he couldn't help but feel a twinge of arousal when the scene mixed a little danger with sex.

As the movie went on, it became even more sexually charged and violent. Michael began to remember some of the other Stanley Kubrick films and remembered that they always did have a way of slapping the viewer in the face with his no-pulling-punches directing approach. Oh yes, Eyes Wide Shut, as Michael just remembered the secret society orgies in the mansion where the participants wore venetian masks that looked terribly similar to the ones in Susan's Ludovico simulation.

As he continued through A Clockwork Orange, he now scoured any scene for any clue that revealed anything about Susan. Though nothing in the movie was some sort of direct source for what he experienced in Susan's recording, there was definitely a thread of gratuitous use of women, which, in hindsight, was exactly what was happening to Susan in the recording - like she was the central feast at a human buffet.

Later in the movie that he now watched with keen interest, the "Ludovico" program was elected by the sex-crazed and violent protagonist as an alternative to prison wherein he, Alex DeLarge, had his eyes pried open mechanically, and he was forced to watch sexually violent material while being injected with nausea inducing drugs to 'cure' him of his sexually violent cravings.

As the credits rolled, he felt no closer to understand his subject. Exhausted from pulling the night shift and exerting himself in the Elixir lab, his finally nodded off with the ocean's salty breeze tickling his furrowed brow.

Five hours went by, and he was awoken only because the long shadows of the afternoon cooled the air down by more than twelve degrees Fahrenheit. Not unusual for Southern California when the onshore winds kick up in the afternoon and the cool ocean drafts prevail over the thermal influence of the waning sun.

He looked at the time on his watch. "Holy shit," Michael said out loud as he saw it was already 5 O'Clock. He felt great from the sleep, but was now afraid he won't be able to fall asleep tonight. He dusted off the coarse Laguna sand, stretched his arms wide while he yawned, grabbed his effects and headed to his car.

Bwop-Bwop! His Porsche greeted him with its vintage alarm sound, and he marveled at the perfectly tight THUNK the German crafted door expressed as he pulled it shut. He fired up the v8 and pulled out of his street parking spot and spritely guided his car back towards his neighborhood, which was about twelve miles from the beach.

---------

Chapter 6

---------

He pulled into his private driveway which was twisty, tree-covered and at least three hundred feet long; quite rare for the area where he lived. It was entirely gravel from the roadway to his house. He had to drive slowly to avoid damaging his car. He looked to his right and a squirrel cloaked in almost pure white fur was sitting on a branch just watching him pass by. An albino squirrel - he could almost see the telltale pink in its eyes. Must be one in a million or something. He remembered a line from the western movie Tombstone about a pale horse from the bible verse in Revelations. Something like, 'death rode a pale horse and hell followed him', or something, Michael paraphrased in his head. He shivered at the sight.

He passed the squirrel and heard the gravel under the shoes of his German sports car and babied the wheels over a few ruts in the driveway near the last bend toward his small cottage of a house. When he turned, the blood ran out of his face when he saw Susan's Jeep parked close to his house.

Never mind the fact that he had no idea how she knew where he lived. Just what in the fuck was she doing there? He pulled out his phone and remembered that he doesn't have her cell number, and her work email address was deactivated the moment she quit. His mind raced and he thought to call Eric at work, but then he closed the phone app and locked his phone. No, not yet. Nothing to worry...

"Stop!"

A high alto voice pierced his left eardrum from outside of his car window, and he slammed on the breaks.

He instinctively craned his head to the left and saw Susan standing there in a gray sweater and and a long and thick skirt. Hardly the attire for a skirmish, he joked nervously in his head. She was holding a huge canister of bear spray pointed right as his face. It was nearly a comical sight, though he chose wisely to stifle a laugh.

"Turn off your car and hand me your cell phone or I'll make this a really bad day for you, and your mid-life crisis car," She said, with as serious a tone as you could make with her girl-like vocal chords.

"It's actually not a..."

"Shut the fuck up! I'm serious, give me your cell phone and get the fuck out of the car," Susan commanded.

"Ok, ok. Just watch it with the mace. I'm listening. Here is my phone, the car is off, and I'm getting out. Just take it easy," Michael said.

As he handed her his phone and glanced at the bottle of bear spray she was holding, he noticed she had not even removed the safety wedge and didn't even remove the hard clear plastic packaging. He was in no real danger. She must have just purchased it.

She grabbed his phone angrily while still pointing the impotent bear repellant nozzle toward him like she was holding a revolver.

"Go open your door and let us in the house," Susan said.

"So you took up kidnapping?" Michael quipped.

"Do you ever just shut the fuck up and listen? All of the time, joke after joke. Well now it's not a joke. You ruined my fucking job. You ruined everything!" Susan cried out, obviously out of control, visibly trembling.

"Hey, you quit, and what do you mean I ruined everything. What are you even talking about?" Michael asked, knowing full well she obviously knows he copied her files at this point.

"Go in the fucking house, I'm not talking out here," She said, as she attempted to control the situation.

Michael keyed into the house. For being a techno-junkie and multi Ph. D, he he ironically had absolutely no security in his house, no 'smart appliances', a tiny old TV with a first generation computer casting device, and no public sewer to boot.

They walked in, and Michael closed the door behind them.

Susan walked ahead and stopped at the kitchen counter near the threshold of the living room, and just stared at him, apparently seething with anger.

"Look, I am sure there is just a misunderstanding that we can work through," Michael said, with a genuine tone.

"You broke into my private files! Don't deny it," Susan said, with a burning hot look in her face, the first time Michael has ever seen a real expression.

Well that ends that debate. Fuck. I have got to be very careful about what I say here, Michael thought.

"Those are company files and a company system, and creating separate, undisclosed instances of the Elixir binary files is against company policy. You know it, and I know it!" Michael shot back.

Susan's face froze in an angry, detached look as she contemplated what she would say, but it appeared as if she forgot to plan what would happen next in this ridiculous siege.

"Susan," Michael said calmly.

"What!"

"I ran the simulation. The Ludovico simulation," He said.

"You what? You couldn't have. You didn't!" Susan yelled, clearly disturbed as the facts were being revealed to her.

Michael looked down at his feet, feeling a bit sheepish for taking the cloak and dagger spy game one toke over the line. "Yea, about that. I got the 'drencrom' file, too. I didn't know if what you were doing was dangerous to you, or the astronauts, or if you were trading company secrets or opening a wormhole to Alpha Centauri for fuck's sake."

Righteous indignation rose in Michael's countenance as he remembered the horror of going through the recording.

"And yea, I fucking ran it, in the Elixir lab, and you know what I experienced. Imagine how that felt to me, I mean, fuck!" "I couldn't exit it, you disabled that, remember?"

Susan's face morphed from anger to a far off stare, obviously unable to process the full onslaught of new facts that she had not anticipated.

Michael closed the distance to Susan slowly, taking advantage of the internal processing of her brain overwhelming her guard.

Susan just stared at him and then down to the floor. Tears welled up in the corners of her eyes."I... I can't..."

Michael slowly approached to within inches, and it was as if she was staring at a planet a million miles away, unable to take input from her current surroundings.

He then leaned in and touched his lips to her chin.

Susan lurched out of her trance and pointed the bear spray at Michael's face.

"What the fuck are you doing? Are you serious? Don't touch me!" Susan roared.

"I'm sorry, I just... I went through that experience that you created. Ludovico. I... learned..." Michael stuttered.

"You know nothing about me, NOTHING!" "Fuck! I cannot believe this," Susan ranted.

"I want you to do something... I want you to get down on your knees," Susan said.

"What?"

"Just do it. Now!" Susan said aggressively, and continued, "and close your fucking eyes, and do not open them or I swear to god I will empty this bear spray right in your face."

"Ok ok, I'm doing it, I'm fucking doing it, Jesus," Michael responded, with a touch of faux fear.

Michael got on his knees and closed his eyes. Racking his brain, he could not for the life of him figure out what the fuck she was going to do with a locked can of mace. I could jump at her right now and easily overpower her, he thought. I don't believe she is capable of violence. She is volatile, indeed, but not a real threat.

As he snuck the tiniest of tiny peeks through his thin-as-paper eye slits to ascertain just what the fuck she was doing, everything went black as some fabric was pulled just over his eyes. It was a winter beanie hat he had hanging next to his front door. Fuck me. I should end this.

"You stay right there until you hear me leave, do you understand?" Susan asked.

"Yes, I think I've got it," Michael replied.

He heard what sounde like Susan placing the canister of bear spray on the quartz counter next to his head. Now thoroughly caught in limbo in the midst of the most ridiculous set of circumstances, he was completely dumbstruck and unable to process his next move or thought. Susan must know full well at this point that she has no real ability to intimidate him or keep him captive. He then heard the rustling of clothing in front of him; now utterly confused.

Suddenly, he felt the warmth of skin close to his face, and then felt delicate hands wrap around the back of his head. He then felt her push against him, and he smelled what could only be her sex, and felt the tendrils of her untrimmed bush against his face, slightly velcro'ing and tugging at his beard.

Desire welled up within him uncontrollably as the tone of the encounter grew from preposterous to astronomically gobsmacking. She continued to say nothing, but as she stood higher on the balls of her feet, and used that leverage to push Michael's head back, her wet labia finally met Michael's lips.

Susan let out a subdued and muted sigh almost as if she was attempting to muffle it, but failed.

Michael then wrapped his hands around her and grabbed the back of her thighs.

Susan backed away and forcefully removed his hands.

"Don't fucking touch me! Just don't. Do you understand?" Susan yelled angrily, and she meant it.

"Ok. I won't," Michael replied.

Michael then felt her approach again, and she reacquainted her wet triangle with his willing mouth. The moment her wet, inner labia made contact with his mustached lips, her knees buckled and her body pulsed.

Wrapping her hands around the back of his neck again, she began to grind on his face. He could hear the tendons in her knees flexing, doing their best to articulate her body against his face.

He then decided to take a chance and extend his tongue to meet her flesh. As he pushed his tongue out and into her warm and wet folds, he felt her body jolt and respond.

Her body was rocked again with a wave, and she let out a guttural grunt that was somewhere between woman and lioness.

"Fuck! Uhhh. Take what I'm giving you. Take it. It's not your choice." Susan yelled.

Her words engorged every pleasure receptor in his brain. His loins lit on fire. His cock began to snake down his tight pant leg, looking for room to expand.

Her fingertips and nails at this point were now cinched around the back of his head like a female praying mantis gripping its prey. She was the personification of a triggered Venus flytrap.

Susan fucked his tongue like a man fucking a woman from behind who's finally been let out of prison after a forty year sentence with no conjugal visits. She thrusted and pumped her hips like a crazed beast.

Michael shifted his head slightly so he could breathe. Susan hissed and growled, "Don't fucking stop, stick your tongue out.... Oh fuck!"

Susan then thrusted against him without pulling back; clenching and pulling his head close. He felt her engorged clit on the skin between his nose and upper lip, and suddenly felt her inner lips and vaginal opening contract on his tongue.

"Fuuuuuuuuuuuck!" Susan growled.

Susan's wetness gushed into Michaels mouth and around his lips. He kept his tongue flexed as Susan's contractions continued to course through her electrified body.

Susan pulled her hips back and flexed her abdomen one last time in synchronicity with the last mini orgasmic pulse as if trying to pull Michael's entire body into hers, as a female mantis destroying its male mate.

Michael's body was tense. He felt an odd but deep satisfaction from serving as an erotic artifice for Susan's obviously unhinged, animalistic needs. His simple task and presence acted as a surrogate to help birth Susan's repressed uncontainable sexual rage into the real world from the simulated; though she being afraid that her desires were some abomination that the the human race could not stand to gaze upon, she finally relented and could not extend its gestation period any longer.

Susan's fast breathing now became the only detectible sound in Michael's cottage. He could feel her heart beating through the arteries and capillaries in her vagina, which was still pressed against Michael's face and tongue as if they were lewd Roman statues, frozen in time and space.

Susan finally withdrew, and her wet sex dripped down her inner thighs. Michael remained, motionless and sightless.

He heard rustling of clothing. He fantasized about what she looked like only a few feet away - inanely pulling her underwear up her legs. He heard her struggling to pull her skirt up quickly, and probably unstable from exerting the muscles in her thighs and calves.

"Hey, umm... I need to talk to you," Michael said, with his eyes still obscured with Susan's makeshift blindfold.

"There is nothing to talk about, leave me the fuck alone, and stay the fuck there until I leave!" Susan angrily snorted.

---------

Chapter 7

---------

Still reeling from what had just happened, and still on his knees, he heard her footsteps, the door opened and then closed, and he could hear the faint crush of his driveway gravel under Susan's shoes as she walked away from the house.

Michael tore off the beanie blindfold and re-oriented himself to his kitchen. His feet had gone to sleep while he was servicing Susan, and he had to awkwardly and painstakingly stand up and walk off the pins and needles for a moment.

He looked over at the countertop and noticed she left the brand new bear spray. He grabbed his cell and ran out of the door. Susan had already turned her Jeep around and was already heading down his driveway.

Fuck, where are his keys? Then he felt them in his pocket.

He jumped in his 928, quickly turned around and hammered the gas pedal. Gravel and flecks of rock peppered the front of his house and chipped the rear fenders of his rear-wheel drive 'baby'. He didn't care, and hit the gas harder, hitting bumps along the way that caused his shocks to bottom out.

When he got to the end of his driveway and hurriedly looked left and right, he just caught the site of her circular brake lights heading south and left out of his cottage drive. At least, it was a fair gamble that it was her, as not many cars pass by on the secluded back road to his house.

He unleashed the full 316 horses of his vintage German v8 towards her. Now 6:00 PM, dusk enveloped his part of the world at a brisk pace.

The barren roads offered an opportunity to follow her at a significant distance to avoid detection. Where the fuck is she going? He popped on his GPS. He noticed they were approaching route 74. He knows this road. It has no turns and no intersections for almost forty miles and leads to Lake Elsinore. The train-rail like road will let him stay even further back as he trails her into the darkening Southern California horizon. As he followed her eastbound, he could see the dark crimson sky behind him in his rear view mirror.

Unsure why he felt the need to pursue, but compulsion now thrusted him forward as if nothing else mattered besides resolving the last dissonant chord in unfinished magnum opus composition in which his life depended on finding the right notes.

All of a sudden he lost sight of the Jeep's rear lights. He downshifted to third gear and raced ahead to close ground with her, wherever she was. He felt the satisfying push of inertia on his chest against the bucket seats of his vintage coupe as it growled into the forested landscape.

As he crested a hill near Lion Canyon, he spotted the faint brake lights at a turn far into the distance. She had sped up, possibly considering Michael had been following her. He laid into the gas pedal to close the distance.

He could still taste her in his mouth, and feel the pressure of her silken petals against his nose and tongue.

Michael figured they had already gone thirty-five to forty miles now and they were not far from Lake Elsinore.

He had lost sight of her again, and gassed his car back up to around fifty miles per hour, a fast clip of speed for these windy roads. No red lights. Fuck, I lost her, exclaimed to himself. Literally a road with nowhere to go but forward and I fuckin lost her!

"Jesus!", Michael yelled, as he saw Susan's Jeep fly past his vehicle. It was pulled off to the right. There was nothing there but forest. He slammed on his breaks and cranked a hard U-turn and headed back.

As he pulled in slowly behind the Jeep, the vehicle appeared to be off. No lights on inside or out. He killed his Porsche's engine, put his manual five speed into first gear and let out the clutch. He got out of his vehicle and closed his door gently. It was as quiet as an Egyptian sarcophagus in this canyon full of trees, except for the whistle of the night breeze against the needles of the Douglas Firs and spruce.

He walked slowly toward the left side of the Jeep. Trepidation filled his guts, though he could not put into words exactly why. He activated the tiny LED light on his cell phone and carefully walked up to the driver's side window and shined his makeshift flashlight into the vehicle.

Nobody.

He continued walking to the front of the Jeep and looked toward the side of the road. There was a guardrail, but as he squinted, he could see a path leading into the woods. Just then, he heard something. Yes! He heard twigs cracking underfoot, and he started running toward the path.

"Susan!?" "Where are you going?"

Silence.

He followed the trail. Climbing over trees that could have fallen ten days ago or ten months. Hard to tell, but the path was clearly worn despite the obstacles. The dry climate lended its hand by not providing too much overgrowth, as he swashbuckled his way towards the unknown. This is crazy, he thought to himself. Why the fuck am I doing this? He swatted madly at his head as he felt a spiderweb's gooey strings attached to his hair and ears. Gross! Fuck!

Then, there she was, in a semi-clearing within a copse of trees. An owl greeted his presence, as if speaking for Susan as her guardian, asking, "who goes there?"

This place was eerily familiar.

Susan sat on the ground with her knees pulled in, using a downed tree as a backstop.

"Susan? What are you doing here?" Michael asked, using the lowest volume of voice above a whisper.

Without looking up, Susan replied, "This is where it happened."

Michael looked around, bewildered. "Huh?"

"Ludovico," Susan said.

Michael looked around and finally placed it. Literally the same trees, the same clearing, the same twigs underfoot, and owls as witnesses. Though in the recording the moon was bright. Tonight is a half moon, providing barely enough for them to see each other. The canopies darkened the area further - hiding this delicate exchange from the heavens, from everyone.

She saw the realization on his face, and for the first time, realized he might be the only person in the world who might actually understand something about her because of his uninvited dalliance in her fantasy/nightmare.

"You mean that place was real? And what happened in it was a real thing?" Michael asked, incredulously.

"Yes," Susan said, with her face still buried between her knees. She looked tiny, all balled up and guarded. Guarded against whatever past she is referring to. Guarded against any future that might be possible.

"Can you tell me what happened?" Michael said.

"I can't... I just need you to leave," Susan trailed off - now apparently crying.

Michael sat down, but kept his distance to not spook her.

"I'm not leaving. I can't. I can't leave you out here, but that's not even the real problem. The real problem is. Well. Fuck. You know what the real problem is! I went through this too, and it was traumatizing. I still haven't dealt with it, it just fucking happened yesterday!"

"You went through this? You!?" Susan looked up, indignantly, and eyes almost on fire, "You broke into my files. You literally invaded my memory!"

"I had no idea! And you fucking did this at work? And what are you doing with it anyway, you just relive the same thing over and over?" Michael prodded.

Silence plodded along for what felt like minutes.

"I was going to UC San Diego for undergrad. I was a junior. I didn't have many friends, I had never even had a boyfriend. All I cared about was my school work. I had a few acquaintances, and I could talk a good game. Inside I was this closed off bookworm, but I wanted to be accepted.

I was at a party one night. A few classmates urged me to go, and someone had a house all the way up here near Lake Elsinore. Actually the house is less than a mile from here. Anyway, I broke off with a smaller group. We were drinking heavily. The conversation turned towards sex and eventually towards the idea of orgies and group sex. I was still... a virgin. I hadn't even really kissed anyone, but I wasn't stupid. I didn't want them to know about me so I played it off and acted like it was no big deal. The two guys kept pushing to do something, and the other girl was drunk and was just going along with it, too. They found these venetian masks in the homeowner's closet, and I can't remember exactly what led to it, but we were all in a car driving down the road, still drinking.

We were only in the car for maybe five minutes and they pulled off and ran into a path. I don't know why we didn't just stay in the house, but here we were running into the woods. I was filled with fear, but I was driven by the fear as well. If I told them at this point I had never been with a man, or a woman, I just don't know what would have happened."

"You know the rest," Susan concluded.

Michael let the story sink in, and took enough time to passively signal to Susan that he was really listening and not just reacting.

"Jesus Christ," Michael continued, "So why would you keep replaying it?"

"Because I haven't been with anyone since. That was twenty years ago. It was traumatizing, and I've never been able to let it go, and now that I was able to recreate it in a full simulation, I thought I could get over it - but instead, I got obsessed with it," Susan said, deflated, embarrassed.

Michael reached out and gently grabbed Susan's left hand that was wrapped around the front of her shin. Though he felt her body recoil slightly, she did not pull away. He cradled it with his other hand, and turned it upward and began massaging the inside of her palm.

Though benign and non-sexual, Susan had never felt anyone, in real life, touch her in that simple way. She felt a few chips of obsidian fall from the top of her mental guard towers and felt her face soften slightly.

"I felt everything you felt in that simulation that you made. You know, I read the biometrics, so I knew something in that experience was causing arousal, and yes, I was too curious. I had to run it. I'm sorry. It was a poor choice, and unprofessional," Michael confessed, and continued, "I should have just talked to you."

"I would have just blown you off and would have probably quit at that point anyway. I am sorry for what I did to you at your house. I had no idea what I was doing and I wasn't in my right mind."

"Well, I didn't bring your bear spray. Sorry to say," Michael said with a slight laugh.

"I wouldn't have actually pulled the trigger, at least I don't think I would have, I literally bought it at a store on the way to your house," Susan said, looking down and feeling stupid.

"I know, because you didn't take the safety feature out, and the plastic was still wrapped around the nozzle." "I would have done what we did in my house regardless." "I wanted to," Michael said.

Susan grabbed Michael's hands and pulled herself on his lap and wrapped her legs around him and awkwardly moved her face in to kiss him and their noses blocked Susan's fledgling attempt.

"God, I'm sorry, I should go...," Susan, clearly embarrassed.

Michael reached his arms around her small frame and scooted her bottom further up his thighs and gently cradled her chin. He looked into her eyes for a brief moment and then clamped his lips on her bottom lip and flicked his tongue furtively into her mouth.

As Michael's tongue slivered across her lips, she felt her pelvis flex and push into Michael involuntarily and she let out a breathy sigh onto his face. She could still smell a little bit of her sex on his lips as she kissed him. Euphoria swarmed her like a palpable aura as she closed her eyes and remembered what it looked like when she was fucking Michael's face with her cunt. But this new exchanged was far more intimate, and she felt her vulnerability bubbling to the surface, almost uncontrollably. What she did in his cottage was yet another simulation - keeping him at a distance, and now. Now he was really here in front of her.

"Are you sure you want to do this? Are you really here with me?" Michael asked, vulnerably.

"I don't know anything anymore, but I know I don't want to stop. Please keep kissing me. Pl..."

Michael's mouth was on hers, but not just kissing. He was breathing for her. He was literally and figuratively using his mouth to tell her everything is ok, that he is safe, that he understands what she felt in this very place where they were on the ground in the dirt.

Susan pulled back and lifted her sweater over he head and tossed it against the downed tree. She then flipped her bra cups upward haphazardly and urgently over her small but well formed tits. Her nipples were disproportionately large, long and erect with small, quarter sized areola.

Michael raised his thighs with his powerful body, which had the effect of elevating Susan's breasts to mouth level. He took her left nipple into his mouth and coaxed it to the back of his throat. Half of her breast was in his mouth and he sucked powerfully. He felt his cock stiffen as her hard and ample nipple tickled the back of his throat.

He changed to her other breast and again, took it all the way into his mouth. Now he flicked his tongue on her nipple and pulled back and stretched it out further and grazed her areaola with his teeth, and sucked it back to his throat again.

Susan had never felt such attention to her tits. She had always been embarrassed at the disproportionality between her nipples and her overall size, but now she felt nothing but the need to push her tits into his throat and smother him. She felt his cock growing beneath her and putting pressure on her perineum. She was soaking through her panties and probably into her skirt.

"Fuck... Please suck my tits harder. Please," Susan gasped. "Take it all the way into your mouth."

Michael did as she said and sucked her nipples hard enough to the point that he thought it would be painful if it were him on the other side.

She humped her soaking pussy against his engorged rod and rocked her head back and looked up at the darkened canopy of trees.

"Bite, please, bite it!" Susan exclaimed, suddenly drunk with the simple power of asking for exactly what she wants at that given time and miraculously getting it!

As Michael bit down, Susan felt an orgasm rock her insides. She felt all of her skin flush and raise a few degrees in temperature as her clit and pelvic floor muscles clenched.

"Uhhhhhhhhhhhhh!"

"Bite!!!" Susan hissed almost demonically.

Michael did as she asked.

She flexed against his cock and squeezed her thighs around him, and pressed her chest into Michael's face as he tweezed her nipple into exquisite pain.

"Oh my god that felt so good," Susan sighed, breathing heavily, panting almost.

Michael looked at her with marvel, concern and longing all in the same countenance.

Susan slowly lowered herself backwards onto the ground between Michael's legs. Her contractions continued, and her state of arousal persisted. Not even aware of her surroundings anymore, nor her self-consciousness, she hiked up her skirt, and pulled her panties over her knees and removed one leg. She laid all the way to her back and invitingly ran her fingernails up her thighs and brushed them suggestively over her mound of hair.

"Please do it. Please," Susan asked with a certain timbre and enunciation that indicated both needfulness and insistence in equal measures.

Michael wasted no time and unbuckled his belt and trousers and began sliding them off - feeling his bare ass on pine needles and dirt felt primitive and almost like childish horseplay.

Susan looked like some otherworldly being with her eyes wide open and looking at him, looking at all of him. Her look was arresting. It was as though it was the first time she was laying her eyes and thoughts on another human.

With his eyes adjusted to the dark, he could see the creamy whiteness of her body contrasted against the untamed bush between her thighs. Her nipples were standing straight up, dark skinned as well, exquisitely long. She remained an enigma, even at this moment.

He lowered himself down and his heavy cock rested on her pubic bone, and his scrotum, large and heavy with his amply sized balls, rested on her clitoral hood. She pressed against him to feel his hardness, and scratch that itch in her clit - wanting to come again.

As he snaked his head beside hers, he licked the inside of her neck, and he felt her hips flex and push against him again.

"Michael?"

"Yes."

"Remember, I haven't actually physically done this in twenty years, and I don't, erm... use any toys. So can you please go slowly?"

"Of course. I'll do whatever you ask. You know... I've wanted you since I first saw you. I've wanted to know who you are since I met you, but I didn't think there was any chance," Michael said.

"I didn't give you a chance. But this isn't normally how I get to know people. I actually, normally don't want to know anyone. But I think I want to know you," Susan contemplatively rationalized out loud.

"Well, good to meet you," Michael said with the slightest slice of friendly sarcasm.

Susan reached down and felt the length of Michael's hard cock and scooched herself back to make room for his cock to angle toward her hungry cunt.

Michael just hovered over her, planking himself just inches above with his wiry arms - drunk with desire and anticipation. He felt her delicate hand position his tip in her wet and warm folds, daring him to push.

Surprising him, she reached around and gripped his ass and pulled him forward, and his cock slid in easier than both of them had anticipated.

Susan immediately felt that exquisite and uncanny feeling of her vulva being spread open. It was a satisfying pressure - pain would not be the right word.

"Ohhhhhhhhh my god, you feel amazing," Michael half groaned and half sighed the words.

"Are you ok?" Michael asked.

"Yes. Go Deeper. I like it. The simulation doesn't quite do this justice, but I guess you would know that too," Susan said.

In that moment, though Michael had been traumatized by the experience, to now feel himself entering the exact hole that he rented when he snuck into her nightly simulation, he felt a connection to her that transcended beyond sex. It added a layer of complexity the way an expensive italian espresso plays a symphony across one's tongue compared to fast-food drip brewed sludge.

Michael felt Susan now guiding him, and pulling him deeper. She was wet as she could be but oh so tight. As he thrusted forward and pulled back like a slow locomotive, the friction generated a palpable heat. Pleasure arced between their nether parts like 500 volts of uncontrolled electricity. He felt her fingernails dig into his ass cheeks as he was beginning to pound her according to the rhythm she demanded.

Michael lowered his head and used his nose to coax Susan's face up to his and he planted his lips on hers, and brushed his tongue across her bottom lip. She darted her tongue into his mouth in sync with his latest hard thrust of his cock into her secret world. She felt herself dripping more as the shape of his cock provided a kind of pumping action and made a mess of the inside of her thighs and crack of her ass. She oozed everywhere. She was slippery and silky.

Susan then reached for the bottom of Michael's long-sleeve T-shirt and pulled it over his head. As he lowered himself back down, her long nipples buried into the thick hair on his chest.

She then wrapped her legs around his in such a way that her calves were now on top of the backs of his calves rather than wrapping her legs around his hips, which gave her a certain leverage to control the rhythm and depth of thrust. She loved the ability to use her body and muscles to pleasure herself with Michael's completely available physique.

She felt like a machine beneath him, taking what it wanted. Her size was so much smaller than him, but somehow she felt like she had the strength of a hungry lioness. He gave into her rhythm and let her take what she wanted.

"Oh FUCK, I think I'm about to cum, I'm so close!" Susan yelled.

"Do it, Susan. Fuck me. Fuck me until you cum. I want you to cum all over me. Cum for me," Michael pleaded.

His demands and dirty talk pushed her over the edge, and she felt her already tight cunt grip him in a death coil. She felt this one all the way from her asshole to her navel.

"OH my god.... it's.... so powerful.. uhhhhhh," Susan groaned like an otherworldly being.

She dug her nails into Michael's ass and spread his cheeks as she flexed her legs, putting as much pressure from his cock into her vagina and his pubis bone into her clit as she could. She gritted her teeth as the fourth and fifth pulsation rocked her from the inside out.

He let her catch her breath as her body went limp. A final aftershock gripped his cock, which was hard beyond it's normal operating parameters and Michael was teetering on the edge of orgasm himself.

"Susan, I'm not wearing a condom, and I'm really really close, I don't know how I even held it together," Michael said, with concern.

"I want you to cum in mouth. I've never done that. I'm forty-fuckin-seven and I have no idea what it's like," Susan said, hungrily.

"Are you sure?" Michael asked.

"I am."

Michael pulled his dripping rod out of Susan's thoroughly worked cunt. It felt so wicked to just pull out of her and have the opportunity to plunge it into her virgin mouth.

"How do you want me..." Michael began to ask.

"I want to stay lying down," Susan replied tranquilly.

Michael straddled over her face. Susan took his cock with her hands and gently urged the tip into her mouth. Susan's wet and hot tongue licked the underside of his dick, which almost immediately put him over the edge. For someone who has never had a dick in her mouth, she must have done her homework somewhere.

"UHNNNNNNN... OH MY GOD THAT FEELS GOOD!" Michael called out.

Susan reached one hand around to the back of his ass and pulled him in further. He glanced downward and could see in the twilight that his dick was stretching her lips as she swallowed him deeper, grazing her uvula. Susan moaned, but it was muffled by his cock. She steadied his thrusting with her left hand gripping his ass.

Susan then traced her hand further around his thigh and closed her fingers around his balls, which immediately drew a shudder from Michael's body. She squeezed, but somehow knew just the right amount of pressure to keep his balls somewhere between pain and pleasure.

"Susan I'm going to cum!... yes... yes... fuck!"

Susan groaned deeply and squeezed his balls harder and pushed her face further onto his cock.

Michael felt the first spurt of his white hot load expel forcefully. His cock must be halfway down her throat. He pulled back slightly and thrusted in, feeling his orgasm exploding inside her mouth. The pressure on his balls sent him to the moon.

Susan swallowed several times, and pulled and prodded balls as they emptied into her mouth.

She ran her tongue from the bottom to the top and split open the tip of Michael's cock, which was overly sensitive now. He tried to withdraw, but Susan kept him in place and kept sucking, as she was figuring he had the same sensitivity after his orgasm as she did, and playfully prevented him from backing up with a stern grip on his balls.

"Heyyyyy!" Michael exclaimed.

Susan finally released her death grip on his nuts and let his cock out of her mouth with a loud suction sound.

"That's for breaking into my files," She giggled devilishly and licked her lips.

"If that's the punishment, show me to your home computer, I'll fuck all your shit up," Michael jested.

"Who says I will ever let you into my house?" Susan asked playfully.

"House? Surprising. I figured you were more of a wilderness girl with how you handle the bear spray," Michael quipped back.

"You know... I hated you up until about ten minutes ago. Now I just strongly dislike you," Susan returned fire.

Michael lifted his leg over Susan's legs and leaned against the dead tree while Susan was lying straight back looking up at the black sky that twinkled with stars through the thick canopy.

"Susan, if we are just stuck in one of your midnight simulations, let's just stay," Michael said.

"Elixir, end program," Susan called out.

An owl hooted in response, and their reality remained.

"Are you ready to get out of the dirt?" Susan said.

"You got it."

Michael grabbed her hand and led her out of the forest and toward their respective cars, both of them overflowing, almost childishly, with the hope of what might be around the next bend in the road. They moved onward with eyes wide open, having manifested, albeit involuntarily, their separate, yet inextricably intertwined, metamorphoses.

The End.