To be Worthy of the Machine

There is much in this world that the narrow human psyche cannot encompass. From the time they snapped their backs into an upright stance and strode forth from the jungles to the wide plains, humans have been assiduously paring down the world to match their view of it. Those poor mongrels near enough to their own species to be almost-but-not-quite right were the first to go. A war to behold that was... The blood of years turned plains to forests for all the great trees nourished that way... And when it was done, only one stood upon two legs and called himself man. But that is a different story... What I must tell you is a later event, ever an allusion in the tales of mankind passed from one to another to explain their truncated understanding of this great world...

Mankind calls it the "great flood." Read any of his myths and you will find it. There was a time of great evil they say, and their gods wiped the world clear with great torrents from the sky. This is not what happened at all.

In the beginning there were the dæmon: they who settled upon the cooling ball of magma as this tiny galaxy was newly created. From whence came the germinators of the first seeds who formed the barren ball of rock into a lush and living habitat? This is the great mystery that the narrow human psyche cannot grasp. For in the view of mankind there is naught but their world, their stars, their galaxy, their verse. Yet it is but one paragraph in a great volume of literature. An older, craftier people might hop between leaves in the binding where the young and naïve do not even comprehend an entire page. The dæmon were such a crafty race. How they so hopped, I cannot say, for I am but a half-spawn, young and not wise in the ways of my mother's technology. It is enough to say that they did, and built upon this fresh rock a great wonder...

D'hælyxahn The Wise

Personal Journals

...

The mass-exodus of the dæmon from this plane with all of their technologies and many of their creations left ripples all about, much like crumpling a sheet of paper. Pocket-dimensions speckle this planet like ergot infestation on wheat, but innate human myopia will not allow them to be seen for what they are. Instead, there are elaborate stories concocted to fit the unexplainable into the egocentric mythos of a human world. But just because you cannot see it, does not mean the monster in the dark cannot snatch and devour you...

Shæryzeim

Teachings

...

We are many, and from assorted places on the flat-page of the earth. We share one thing in common, though: nobody on the earth proper wanted us. For as long as mankind has had cities and rules, dæmon-spawn have gathered us when those that bore us walked away or left us for dead. From the short and lean boys caught as they flew from high cliffs in Sparta, to the beautiful and perfect girls fished from the Huang He and Chang Jiang, to the pale and squalling babes scavenged from the back alley dustbins of Brooklyn and London we were rescued, and brought here to serve.

It is not a bad life, really, and much better than that we see when we leave our pocket-dimensions and venture into the world from which we were cast. I do not remember the time when I thought of myself as human, though we all do until we are sent to retrieve our first brother or sister. I am not dæmon, nor even a half-, quarter-, or eighth-blood spawn. My blood is entirely human, and I still keep with me the sack which imprisoned me when I was cast into the Huang He, to remind me of why I must revere the dæmon who returned me from the watery grave to life. I am most fortunate, for when I was tested, I showed the spark of connection to true-dæmon technology that even many of those of the blood lack. It is in our teachings that we evolved from the technology, so we should be more closely linked than its creators, but we are all too often flawed and incapable of understanding how to use it. This, of course, is the goal of our long-lived keepers... to use the technology of their pure forbearers for its intended purpose: moving from this crumpled dimension into a fresh and unpeopled universe of their own.

Each child who tests positive for the spark, as I did, trains from that moment until her body reaches full adulthood in order to interface with the machine. This would be some 12-18 years in the world-at-large, but influenced as we are by the dæmon technology in this pocket, it may take over fifty for us. Today is that day for me. Counting from the day of my retrieval, I am the ripe, old age of fifty-five today. Yet my body is as sleek, lithe, and unspoilt as a virgin of eighteen in the outside world. As I look myself over in the mirror now, I see my nipples, just matured into tiny upturned brown buckets pointing upwards from small, pert breasts. My skin is the texture of fine silk, with no blemish nor wrinkle, and the perfect milky-tea color of a girl who knows the sun's kiss on bare flesh, but never the ravage of his full and angry embrace. Long, black, straight, and heavy, my hair is unbound for the first time in my recollection. Not touched with scissors from the day I was tested, it pools on the floor at my feet. It is the only garment I will wear for the interfacing ceremony, and I cannot help but feel a thrill of pleasure and excitement each time a stray strand slips across any patch of skin previously unused to its touch... Curiously enough, the silky tuft at the apex of my thighs is not straight and heavy like the rest of my raven locks. I cannot help but be fascinated by the tightly curling hair here by which my readiness to interface was judged. As I trail a delicate hand through these curls, a tiny sparkle of excitement flutters up my spine... another new sensation of which I have just recently become aware.

The tinkling bells along the edge of my chamber curtains call me from my self-reflection, and I brush the heavy cloth aside to bow deeply and reverently to my quarter-blood trainer.

"Are you prepared, young Cherryblossom?"

"I do not know, master, but I am unafraid and willing."

"Then at least it is your time."

He says the last with a softly knowing smile and a brief inclination of the head. It is a gesture of deep respect that I have seen my master give only twice before to a full-blood human, and a deep flush perfuses my body at the honor being accorded me. I bow again to my trainer, more deeply this time, and begin the slow, steady march to the interfacing chamber.

The trip from the human student quarters to the interfacing chamber is most of three kilometers, and because the dignity of the occasion is too great, I must not run. The walk is slow, long, and silent, and I find myself battling with vague and nervous worry. Yet as I place one foot evenly and rhythmically before the other, I begin to feel myself pulled from my inner-struggle by the sensation of many eyes upon me. Work and training on the grounds stop as I glide by. All know what a student clad as I am, in naught but her own hair, means...

I receive salutes of respect from younger girls whose time may also come soon, and looks of awe from those even younger who are seeing this procession for the first time. Yet something strikes me as I walk past, a look of hunger in many eyes that I have never before noticed. I watch from the corner of studiously lowered eyes one young man with such a look: as though he is observing the last piece of roast venison on a serving platter half a table away after a week long fast...

I do not understand it at first, until he shifts his legs a bit uncomfortably and my gaze is drawn to a tenting of his coverall in the region of his thighs. Anatomy was something I was required to study, as was physiology, though this is the first I have ever actually seen the sexual arousal response directed at me. My heart beats just a little harder, and I feel a warmth, that I never knew before, grow within my loins. The brazen sensuality of that gaze almost completely distracts me from the somber importance of the ceremony I am about to undertake, and I dwell upon an analysis of the secrets lurking beneath the straining coverall the rest of the way to the chamber.

Before me when I enter the large, oval door of the interfacing chamber stand the imposing robed forms of the highest of the half-blood. Rising behind them and reaching to unfathomable dimensions beyond, the great dark portal of the interface itself stares into my soul and forces me to my knees. I bow my head to the floor, as is proper.

"Human, why do you come to this chamber?"

The query is a formal part of the ceremony; we all know why I am here...

"I come humbly to offer my body and my life to the daemon half-children who have so long preserved me."

As my words echo in the somber silence, I finally realize the depth and scope of the covenant I have just sealed.

"We accept your offering, and ask that you live and maintain yourself in service to our welfare."

"How may I serve my masters?"

"Be worthy of the machine."

The ceremony is completed, and I rise to my full height with a proud bearing; noting, for the first time, the same hungry look in the eyes of many of my masters that the young groundskeeper had given me. I step slowly into the endless void of the interface portal, taking with me only the realization of sexual tension previously unknown to my focused mind. To bring fear into the portal is sure death, this I learned well at the feet of my masters. Yet no master knew the correct key to bring into the interface, for their own hearts quailed under the gaze of the abyss. All contemplation is subsumed quickly by the warm, tingling sensation of the æther slipping up my body and enfolding me in an embrace as intimate and comfortable as bathwater. Again, the rise within the groundskeeper's coverall flashes in my mind, and the hungry looks in the eyes of so many, both human and dæmon-spawn, who had watched my procession this day. The desire to fulfill the promise of those hot, hungry looks slips into my psyche and grows to an almost tangible thing as I pass completely into the interface portal.

The machine is asleep, as it has been since the day this reality became crumpled and this pocket dimension formed. My duty is to rouse the machine fully to free my masters from the half-existence which they have so long suffered. Rousing the machine, however, is an undertaking consistently failed by human and part-dæmon operators alike. Standing now in the unending darkness, I have no room for duty in my mind. The overwhelming desire to imagine the young groundskeeper's lips brushing against mine, or his hands sliding across my naked flesh, or the member hidden by his coverall pressing slowly into me, comes sudden and unbidden. I observed the act of intercourse once, when I was retrieving a young brother... I had forgotten the pleasure of that stolen view but now I can do naught but remember...

As I think about it, the tingles on my skin grow into an all-over warmth... And I begin to feel phantom sensations... I remember how the young man caressed his lover's thighs, sliding hands slowly along them as he kissed his way softly up the skin between her knee and the dark triangle of curls at the apex of her thighs... I feel now a soft, sliding sensation, as of silk being slowly slipped up my own thigh... My moan is lost in the vastness of shadow, as the sensation slides closer, closer to the warmth I recognize as the core of my womanhood...

I see in my mind the young lovers, his hands splaying wide, sliding from the arcs of her hips, up her waist, to caress her ripe, succulent breasts, and the soft pressure of the touch is reflected on my own body... My thoughts and the sensations become simultaneous as I picture lips wrapping around my taut nipples, a tongue making lazy spirals outward from the stiff peaks across the smooth, tingling skin of my breasts... My gasp of pleasure echoes back to me faintly as light begins to creep into the void of the machine interface. Through half-lidded eyes, I can now see thick ropes of darkness twining about my naked flesh, teasing my erect nipples, and sliding slowly and deliberately up my inner thighs...

I am not afraid, though a small part of my mind whispers warnings. I give myself over to the experience as dark coils pull and squeeze at my nipples, sending shivers of pleasure radiating from my spine... I ease my knees apart as the tendrils of darkness slide upward, inviting them to trail through the soft, silky curls there, to stroke the hot slit between my legs... I am vaguely surprised to feel dampness on my thigh as one bine trails across my hot sex, then back across my leg. It takes a moment to register that the moisture is coming from within me. Musky and sweet scents hang now in the softened darkness, as the tendrils stroke across the rapidly warming surfaces of my labia... One questing stalk finds a concentrated nub of sensation, above my nether lips and below the triangle of my pubic hair, it stays there and begins to make short, quick thrusts, as of a tongue madly licking... I find myself writhing in pleasure, my moans beginning to echo back to me faster and louder, playing about the undefined space in an erotic symphony. I close my eyes completely and surrender to the pleasure of thickening limbs of darkness spreading my legs wider.

The pressure of a large, solid object at the apex of my thighs draws my eyes open again. I look down my body to see a thick cylindrical shaft with a slight flare near its rounded tip forming from the very darkness surrounding me. I watch as the blunted head pushes against me, straining for entry, and instinctively raise my hips upward by centimeters, willing the smaller tendrils to spread my labia wide. Again the shadowy member presses, sliding its tip slowly inside me. Then it retreats, the motion making me quake with intense pleasure. Again a push from the ebon shaft, slow and firm, and ever such a little bit deeper. The following retreat leaves me gasping and writhing within the ropes of dark tentacles enfolding and caressing my bare flesh. Each push deeper, each retreat more intense until a push meets inner resistance...

I am a virgin, unspoilt as I should have been for this day, and that fact is near painfully obvious as the barrier of my purity stops the pleasurable sliding of the dark member... The retreat following resistance is extra slow, and every coil and bine of the void tightens its grip on my body, the tendrils on my nipples pinching firmly, that on my clitoris lapping madly... I feel myself panting in tense excitement, begging return of the weighty girth slooowly drawing away...

The thrust is sudden and my scream rebounds off unseen walls as the shaft rips through my maidenhead and fills me fully. My sex squeezes spasmodically around the still and throbbing manhood as blood and bodily fluids pour out around its solid bulk. My whole body writhes within the coils of darkness as I experience my first orgasm.

When my breathing begins to slow, the great shaft once again retreats from within me, returning a little at a time. Each thrust and retreat a little deeper and faster than the last, my hips rocking in rhythm, urging the darkness to take me, to fill me... Each thrust deeper, closer to reigniting my core... each stroke faster... faster... until the stiff, solid cock is driving in and out of me as fast as I can possibly raise my hips to meet it. I throw back my head and moan loud and long as every muscle in my whole body tenses. Most palpably those within my womanhood tighten in a strangle-grip around the plunging shaft, only the incredible amount of moisture my body keeps pouring allowing it to still move within me... The solid mass as well seems to tense, as does every coil of the tentacles wrapped about my body...

A hard, deep thrust buries the member within me, and I feel it spasm inside, precipitating my own fierce orgasm around its mass. My tight womanhood clenches and unclenches, milking a liquid warmth from the shaft...

My consciousness splinters, and I writhe and moan uncontrolled for I know not how long. When my senses again focus, I find myself naked upon the floor of a small, circular, dimly lit room. My thighs are sticky with a mixture of my own spilled essences, and a sheen of sweat is slowly drying on my skin. I gaze about my surroundings. The walls seem to be nothing more than a series of doors, though I know not where a single one leads. Just as I am dragging myself to my feet, attempting to puzzle out which to explore, one irises open.

The being that steps forth into the chamber with me is something I have never before seen.

Tall he is, and powerfully built. His skin drinks the soft light like the void of the night sky, and his eyes glow like stars. Great wings, like those of a bat, spread wide from his back and horns curve back from his brow. A tail, long and sinuous, thrashes slowly from side to side as he strides across the pale flooring toward me. I am not afraid. He sinks to his knees before me, stretching long fingers toward me. Gently he caresses my cheek, my neck, the thick cascade of hair beneath me. Almost reverently his fingers explore my body. His lips do not move, nor does any sound echo through the chamber, but his words wash over me. "I have awakened, what desire do you have of me?"

With million-to-one odds stacked against me ever experiencing this moment, I briefly forget the access script, but decades of training never quite leave. "I offer my body and my life to the daemon half-children who have so long preserved me. My desire is to be worthy of the machine."

A slow smile parts ebon lips to show the glitter of sharp teeth. "Your offering is accepted, Operator. Your desire will serve well.