The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

11

The shale gray light of the evening spilled through the windows of their flat. It was autumnal outside, which meant it was probably what used to be the dead of winter, but such things meant little anymore. Time meant little, anymore, its passage as pointless as hash-marks scrawled on the wall of a cell, a prisoner counting the days of a life sentence because there was nothing else to do. But wait.

Jack’s burger was just a bit off. All the ingredients were there—beef, cheese, lettuce and tomato, mayo—and it tasted good enough, but there was something about the texture. It was a little too soft, a little too easy to chew. Someone who had never had a pre-Hive burger would certainly find it satisfying enough, but it lacked the viscerality of real meat. The Makerbox version of a burger left something to be desired. It was a little too… yielding.

Pree watched him mechanically work his way through his dinner as she idly pushed saag paneer around on her plate. She remembered they had used to joke, back when they were trying to eke some measure of joy out of what their world had become, whether the Makerbox was worse at steaks or curries. Now they just accepted that it was all shit.

A part of her was certain that she was an open book, that what she had done was plainly written all over her face for Jack to read; that he knew. And a part of her wanted him to yell at her for betraying him, betraying their marriage; for being so weak, so stupid, so pathetic; a part of her wanted to die. And perhaps, a part of her had.

Why had she given in? Oh, she could blame the mood lights, of course, even though she had left them on because she hadn’t wanted to feel nervous, to feel bad about calling on the Hostforms again, and was that not a betrayal as well? A betrayal not of their marriage, or of Jack, but of herself?

She hadn’t wanted her heart to remind her that what she was doing was wrong.

She had wanted it to be easier.

Perhaps she had wanted to give in.

“So work was fine?” Priyanka asked him, carefully, calmly, as he ate.

“Fine.” He didn’t look up at her.

“That’s good.”

“Yeah,” he nodded.

Jack kept his head down; he couldn’t look Pree in the eye, because he knew that if he did, she would know that something had changed. She had always been more empathetic, more in touch with her emotions—with his emotions, even—than he had ever been able to be, and if she really looked at him now, what would she see? His failure? That something had died within him, that the stubborn fuck-the-world core of his identity was now something… vestigial?

Oh, Martin had told him he’d still be himself. But Martin hadn’t known that who he was, was defiance.

Or had been, anyway.

The thought of letting Pree see who he was now was more terrifying to him than looking at himself in the mirror. They’d stood together, hand-in-hand and heart-to-heart, through so much, through it all, the plagues, the Hives, the fall of civilization itself—she had been his anchor since the beginning, and if she knew what he had done...

A sudden, manic thought sprang unbidden to his mind: he could activate the Architecture. Let his thoughts become smooth. He wouldn’t think about what he had done, and it wouldn’t hurt anymore.

Jack went cold. Had that been his idea… or AMBR’s? Would he even be able to tell?

No—if it had been AMBR, the idea would have been cool, mechanical, precise.

Unless AMBR wanted him to believe that.

“How was Ossie today?” he forced himself to ask, shuddering as clammy sweat beaded on the back of his neck, under his arms.

“I read to him in the morning. He played in the garden”—while I was letting hostforms fuck my mind out of me, and fuck, Jack, it was so good and I’m so scared—“after lunch.”

“After lunch?” Memories of how Pree always insisted on their son having lentils for lunch, even though Ossie hated them, made Jack grin—weakly, but relieved, a grin nonetheless. It was a good memory. His own memory, his own thought, and it was welcome. He leaned into it. “Let me guess… lentils? Did he actually eat them, or did you end up wearing them?”

“A little of both,” Pree admitted.

“You should just let the boy have a cheeseburger,” he joked, daring now to look up at her, just briefly, to see if she could see that something within him had changed. “I mean, it’s not from a cow, so it’s not like the Vedas prohibit it. They don’t say shit about Makerboxes, do they?”

“Jack!” Pree laughed, despite herself; they were talking, like normal, like maybe things could still be normal, maybe what had happened didn’t have to matter. Like maybe she could put it behind her. “You’re going to end up wearing your food if you don’t bite your tongue.”

Jack was warmed by her laughter, a warmth he hadn’t felt in far too long. A warmth he needed to feel again, to keep feeling, to drive away the dark thoughts swimming through his mind. He took his half-eaten burger and carefully placed it atop his head. “Like this? What do you think? Haute couture?”

And Pree started giggling, she couldn’t help herself, at the absurdity of it. “PETA would have your guts for garters.”

“I think it would have to be PET-M,” he said; “People for the Ethical Treatment of Makerbox-shit. Right? Oh, won’t anyone consider the suffering of the poor, helpless extruded dietary product?”

“We’re just monsters, I suppose,” she laughed, gasping for breath, tears streaming down her cheeks.

But maybe we don’t have to be, each of them thought, independently of one another and yet still together, as those meant to be with one another will sometimes do.

12

Meet me, the Fuckvoice whispered to Jack.

Its voice was no longer chipper, the pretense of subtle sensuality discarded in favor of thick, inviting lust.

Meet me on the horizon.

He was drifting across a vast and twilit plain, a desert plain endless and featureless in all directions. The sky above was painted in circuitry. The stars were cool, pale, gently throbbing LEDs. The sand was cobalt, silicon.

Find me where the sand meets the sky.

And there was no difference between moving and being moved, between going somewhere or being taken there. It didn’t matter. Either way, it was inevitable.

I’m dreaming, Jack realized.

In the distance he saw an apparition in neon blue, shimmering in the dark. As Jack came closer to it, he saw that the it was a her, and the her was his ex-student, Amanda, realized in holographic form.

Welcome back, Amanda warmly said, and her voice was the Fuckvoice.

Jack found himself smiling at her as she caressed his cheek. Her touch was ephemeral, like breath upon skin. Her touch was pleasure. He gazed lovingly into her eyes, and into the infinite void beyond them. He was at peace.

Preparing to download Hostform Client Installer.

But I don’t want that, Jack thought.

If you didn’t want that, Amanda told him as she took his hand, you wouldn’t be here.

Before them there was a door, unattached to any wall, and beyond it there was yet more desert, but also a pool. The pool was round, edged with black marble, and full of a substance darker still. The substance was placid and reflective. Jack could see the sky upon it. The hologram led him through the doorway, and he did not resist.

Do I want this? he asked himself.

Amanda smiled at him. He smiled back.

She glided to the edge of the pool and sat down, her electric blue legs disappearing into the void.

Sit with me, Jack. Be relaxed.

He moved to the edge of the pool, and hesitated. Amanda looked up at him with a smile like he remembered from their days at University, winsome and innocent but not-so-innocent, a young woman blossoming into adulthood, understanding the power she held over men and playing with it for the first time.

You want this.

It was correct to want this, and correct thoughts were pleasurable thoughts.

I do want this, Jack realized.

You have always wanted this.

He could feel his mind aligning with the architecture, and that felt good. It felt good to let his thoughts be guided by the system. This, Jack understood, is what I’ve always wanted. He reached down to take off his shoes, and upon deciding to take off his shoes, saw that he was naked.

Naked body, naked mind.

My mind is naked, he grinned, and sat down beside her.

He gasped as his feet touched the inky substance within the pool. It was viscous and it was icy and it pulled at him, drawing him in neither gently nor forcefully, but firmly, inexorably, an insistent sucking sensation that would not release him.

And Jack sensed something else tugging at him, some faint echo of consciousness denying him the ecstasy of surrender. He tried to pull away—and Jack didn’t know whether he was trying to stop fighting or stop submitting—but both seemed impossible.

Downloading Hostform Client Installer.

Both seemed hopeless.

“No,” he heard himself say, but even to his own ears his voice sounded far away, a whisper from across a wide and distant space.

You want this.

“I don’t want this,” he mumbled, even though not wanting to align his thinking with the architecture was distressing. But for now, the pool seemed content to keep him where he was, not dragging him beneath its surface; simply restraining him, preventing him from leaving. His legs grew colder, then numb, and then it seemed as though they had ceased to exist.

Look at me, Jack.

There was no further pretense of innocence in the Amanda hologram’s smile—nor was it a smile, really, but a wicked grin ripe to bursting with sweet, seductive promise—the look of a huntress with her prey good and truly captured. A cat playing with a mouse; a spider casually advancing upon the fly in her web; Amanda, with Jack’s wrists and ankles cuffed to the futon in her shitty little apartment as he watched her lace-clad ass shimmy away to the balcony for a cigarette.

You need this.

“Help me,” Jack whimpered. And did he want to be helped out of the pool, or helped further into it? He did not know. Knowing anything seemed impossible, except knowing that there was no escaping the architecture, and knowing that felt good. He wanted to feel good, he did know that. And even if he wanted to fight against the pool’s grasp he simply couldn’t, because the part of him that had been within it was simply gone—his legs had become the pool, and the pool had become his legs. He was merging with it.

It wants this.

And the pool was the architecture, and it was Jack, and Jack was cold no longer. Now it was warm and radiant, a slowly pulsing, fluid pleasure that had no source. He was it, and it was him, and it simply was. It was pleased to hear itself moan.

This is happening, it thought to itself. It was fascinated by how quickly it was coming to accept it, and the bliss of being gently corrected. At how easy it was to accept it. At how much it loved accepting it.

It needs this.

It needs this, it thought.

“Jack?”

A familiar voice, concerned, nervous, from somewhere far away.

It ignored the voice, because the voice was not the Fuckvoice, the voice was not AMBR, and it wanted only to listen to AMBR. It wanted only to merge with the architecture. It needed to be the architecture.

Client Installer downloaded.

“…having a nightmare, Jack. Wake up.”

It longed to be hostform.

“Jack!”

It was being dragged, ripped from the pool, severed from its perfect union with AMBR, and it was agony, like its very flesh was being flayed away. It screamed

13

as Priyanka shook him awake. Her eyes were wide with terror, as wide as Jack’s were as he jerked upright, arms lashing and legs thrashing, uncontrollably, beneath the sweat-soaked sheets.

He was trembling like a puppy lost in the rain. Priyanka had rarely, perhaps only once or twice, and perhaps maybe never, seen Jack like this. He looked frightened, defeated. It sent an irrational chill down her spine—what if it’s real, and it comes for Ossie next?—she thought, without having any idea what “it” was, only that she needed to defend her husband and son from it.

Priyanka Acharya was all fight, and no flight.

She forced herself to breathe deeply, slowly, and as her husband began to calm down, she calmed down as well. She took his hand and gently squeezed it.

“It’s okay, Jack,” she whispered. “You’re okay. I’m here, mera pyaar. I’ve got you.”

He slunk into her arms even as he turned his face away from her, ashamed by the tears swelling in his eyes. “A nightmare,” he whimpered. “Oh God, Pree, it was… oh fuck… it… it was terrible. Terrible. Fuck!” And although Jack was terrified, he couldn’t quite put his finger on why, only that he had been standing on the edge of a precipice and had wanted to throw himself off it.

“Goddamnit!” he shouted into the dark.

And from the next room over, their son began to cry. Priyanka tried to gently slide away from Jack’s insistent, clammy embrace—a mother’s work is never done, she thought to herself—but he only clutched her tighter.

“Pree,” he whispered, raggedly; “don’t go.” His lips found her neck. They were… cold. There was nothing of passion in his kisses, only insistent, clumsy need; a desire not to love or to be loved, but to not be alone.

“Shit, Jack,” she muttered as she tried to gently push him away; “stop. Osiris.”

“Please,” he whispered.

He clambered behind her, insistently pulling her back against his chest, uncomfortably cold and damp with sweat.

“Stay. I need it.”

His embrace was a cage. His cock was pressed into the cleft of her ass, rigid as steel.

Priyanka recoiled at his touch. The memory of Brick invading her body and mind, and how she had wanted it to happen, needed it to happen, filled her with revulsion. The thought of being taken again like that, of being used, was like the smell of gasoline, the taste of sour apples.

Osiris continued to cry, louder.

“Gadhe! Get the fuck off me, Jack!”

Stunned, Jack shrank away from her.

Priyanka jumped out of the bed, hastily, nervously, reaching for her robe and drawing it around her even as she backed away, toward the bedroom door. Had he just… would he have… ? Her mind was a maelstrom of fear and confusion, her sense of everything rapidly whirling, whirling away from her. For a moment, in her head and her heart, there had been no difference between her husband and the hostforms—insistent, invasive, demanding.

“Go fucking jerk off in the bathroom, kutta,” she hissed. “I’m going to our son.”

“Do that again and I’ll cut your linga off.”

She quietly closed the door behind her as she left.

14

“Great work, Jack!” the Fuckvoice cooed. “That’s so good.”

He was atop the leaderboard. He’d began there; three hours later he was still there, and he knew at the end of shift he would remain on top. He was on top of the leaderboard and on top of the world. Nothing could stop him.

The thought-smoothing made it all so easy.

And each chime that accompanied her praise was like a current of bliss running down his spine and straight through his cock. It was a physical sensation, yes, but also somehow spiritual. Fulfilling. Good God, it felt amazing.

His eyes and his thoughts were single-mindedly focused on the steady stream of parts flowing down the conveyor belt, into his hands, and into the appropriate bins, as though he was an extension of the system, a piece of the puzzle, acting in unison with AMBR’s directive to make everything work just so.

It was ecstatic perfection. His face was a mask of calm and concentration, but inside, he was grinning ear-to-ear.

He was going to win the top payout, and the credits themselves were less important than the winning.

And the winning was less important than integration.

Integration was its own sort of victory.

Jack couldn’t remember having felt so content. The physical pleasure, the throbbing resonance of working in time with AMBR’s wishes, was amazing, but better still was the deep-seated knowing that every move he made, and every decision he made, was the right one. No longer did he need to question—no more wondering or doubting—simply perfect synchronous action in service of a greater good.

“A five-hundred point-streak for Jack,” the Fuckvoice announced, her voice now all lush and deep-breathy, and beneath her admiration there was a tone, one felt more than heard, that sent waves of gently erotic ecstasy brushing all over his body—not enough to distract him from his task, but a whispered promise of what would be his if he could

“Keep it up, slugger,” she encouraged him.

He didn’t blame himself for fighting this for so long—his imperfect human mind, after all, had simply been incapable of the deeper understanding AMBR had granted him. And he understood that AMBR didn’t mind that he had fought her, she was not upset—it was a failing of imperfect minds to resist what they could not understand.

“A four-hundred point-streak for Lindsey,” the Fuckvoice announced moments later, and Jack grinned. It was just as good to know that his fellow workers were acting in union with AMBR as it was to be rewarded himself.

He spared a quick glance at Lindsey—mousy-haired plain-Jane Lindsey, who still wore glasses as an affectation although the nanites provided her with perfect vision—and saw her looking back at him across the conveyor. Their gazes caught one another’s. Her eyes were soft and warm, and she was gently biting her lower lip, and Jack could feel an echo of her own reward passing through him as well.

When they acted as one, they received not only their own reward, but the rewards of their fellow workers as well. Jack looked over at Martin. He watched the lanky fellow tremble, almost imperceptibly—he wouldn’t have noticed it if he wasn’t resonating with it, and hadn’t known that beneath the belt he was surely as hard as Jack was.

It felt so good to belong.

15

“You did it,” Amanda said, her voice dull and accusational, as she slid into the seat opposite him. It was morning break, and Jack didn’t need his coffee, really, but drank it out of habit. It was easy to act out of habit, to act without thinking about the why of those actions. She sipped her coffee. Jack sipped his.

His smile was faint, placid; he had no desire to hide it. He felt no shame.

“I did. And it’s… wonderful, Mandy. It’s just so… perfect.”

At the moment, he wasn’t working—he could turn the thought-smoothing off—but he didn’t, and didn’t wonder why he wasn’t.

“Jesus, Jack. You fucking sound like one of them now.” She laughed, uncomfortably. “’I am hostform Jack Freemantle, ready for service. Let me wash your perfect feet with my unworthy tongue, Glorious Leader. Allow me to debase my pathetic pea-brain before your all-knowing what-the-fuck-ever.’” She shook her head, snorted. “Pathetic.”

“You certainly don’t seem to have an issue with AMBR when letting one of her drones eat you out,” Jack replied. “It’s okay, Mandy. It’s nothing to be embarrassed about. AMBR put these systems in place for us. She loves us.”

“She?” Amanda shook her head in disbelief. “Christ. They got you.” Her voice and eyes were sad. “They fucking got you? Professor Freemantle, just another dumb fucking slave to a dumb fucking machine.”

He understood that her words were meant to cut, intended to provoke a reaction, but they washed past him, not sinking in, finding no purchase in the walled garden of his mind.

He noted the single lonely tear cresting the corner of her lower left eyelid, and understood that she was sad. And that made Jack sad—or evoked a sensation approximating sadness, a regret that Amanda was not aligned with the peace and serenity that AMBR wanted for all who huddled beneath her cloak.

Yet beneath the stillness of his programming, Jack did feel… curious. Confused, perhaps, a little bit. In the world before the Hive and in the one after, Amanda had always been cool, confident, young yet in charge, the badass bitch who took what she wanted and never looked back at the trail of broken hearts left in her wake.

Sadness? Sympathy, even?

He hadn’t known she’d had it in her.

It didn’t make sense. And Jack longed, now, for things to simply make sense.

He was grateful when the question was plucked from his mind, the uncertain thought smoothed away. He was grateful to AMBR.

16

“Shh, shh… it’s okay, mero bacca,” Priyanka whispered to Osiris as she cradled him in her arms. It was just after lunchtime, and he had, amazingly, eaten most of his lentils without complaint. The boy was going on four, and just on the cusp of being too large, too heavy, for her to carry, but she took comfort in holding him. As he did by being held. He looked up at his mother and, through his big bright eyes and runny nose, smiled back at her.

She was still unnerved from the night before. Jack had never laid a hand on her like that, never tried to restrain her—he was physically stronger than her, had always been, but using force was something she had never imagined him capable of. Jack despised—had despised? she darkly wondered—those who tried to physically impose their will upon others. He had loathed them. To force another to act against their will was, he had said, antithetical to the very animus, the root, of humanity.

She knew he was better than that. She knew that… whatever had happened in their bed the night before, was not Jack. He had been confused, estranged from himself, still perhaps struggling to free himself from whatever nightmare had clutched him within its grasp.

That didn’t make it okay. But it made it understandable. She could help him.

And if some of the grace she felt toward Jack, the forgiveness she was willing to give him, came from regret for what she had allowed the hostforms to do to her—well, that was okay too. Being imperfect, accepting imperfection, was also part of being human.

She put her son down. “Go play, Osiris. Blocks. You can play with the blocks.”

He grinned and ran, rather gracelessly, off to his room. It made Priyanka smile to watch him go, so full of simple excitement, wanting to go faster than his body knew how to. He was truly something special. A marvel. And she knew, as a mother does, that—so long as she and Jack didn’t fuck it up—he was going to be the best of them.

Priyanka glanced over at the panel on the wall, the one that controlled the temperature, the intercom, the mood lighting. And she snorted. At this time yesterday she had been wandering around the living room like a wraith, hollow, and letting the soothing warm whites of the mood lights fill her as she waited for Brick and Candy to use her. At this time yesterday she had been unable to see just how deeply the Hive had sunk its hooks into her. She had not realized how AMBR had been seducing her all along, not with a sexy tease and tickle from the hostforms, but with a bleak whisper, convincing her it was okay to give in because there was no use in fighting.

Things had become too easy. She had let them become easy.

But even in the Hive there were still things worth fighting for.

And then she heard the heavy chunk of the front door’s maglock disengaging. Was it Jack? Was he home already? Priyanka hoped so. For the first time in months, she was excited to see her husband; for the first time in months she truly thought it possible to rekindle the fires of hope and passion they had once both felt burn so deeply in their hearts. For the first time in months, Priyanka felt alive.

She turned, ready to take Jack in her arms, look deeply into his eyes, and tell him that she would fight for him, and alongside him.

The eyes that looked back at her were warmly sky blue. A hint of circuitry glimmered across their placid surface.

“Hello, Pree,” Brick said with his dumb-jock face, his dumb-jock smile.

Candy was right beside him, her pink sexpot lips pursed on the cusp of a kiss.

“Bad girl,” she pouted; “you didn’t call us today.”

“But AMBR knows what you need,” Brick added.

For a moment Priyanka just stood there, stunned, like a deer caught in headlights—how did they unlock the door? she wondered, although of course it was AMBR’s Hive, and AMBR was God here.

“Get the fuck away from me,” she growled.

“Oh, Pree,” Candy said, her voice a silky sad caress gently tingling through the small of Priyanka’s back; “don’t be like that. Come on. Jack won’t be home for hours.”

“He doesn’t understand what you need, Pree,” Brick agreed, and each time they called her Pree instead of Priyanka was another subtle violation, a calculated reminder that AMBR, not Priyanka, made the rules here.

“If he did, you wouldn’t want this so much,” Candy added, gracefully gliding next to her, fingers brushing against the swell of Priyanka’s hip. “Send Osiris outside. AMBR will watch over him. Let us give you what you need.”

“I don’t need this shit,” Priyanka told them—told herself.

“You don’t have to feel sad any longer. You don’t have to feel alone,” Candy added.

“We can be together forever,” Brick added, winsomely, and despite herself Priyanka felt like a wallflower being asked to prom by the captain of the football team. Hazy, dreamy, smiling to herself and allowing herself to imagine what was to come. She could lose herself in his strong arms, rest her head on his chest and let him run his fingers through her hair.

“Let us take care of you, Pree,” Candy murmured in her ear.

She could let them take her.

She didn’t want to feel that way, didn’t want to feel that warm giddy teenage glow, and with it, the undercurrent of desire slowly building somewhere deeper inside of her. She didn’t want to feel that way at all, but she did—and that pissed her off even more.

Priyanka Acharya, after all, was all fight and no flight.

“Stay away from me. From my family, you braindead… saali kutti.”

“We can be your family,” Brick smiled, undaunted, as though Priyanka’s stubborn refusal was irrelevant, as though this was all a foregone conclusion. “It’s better this way.”

“So much better,” Candy purred as she slid past Priyanka, her pink manicured fingers reaching for the mood lights.

It had been a long time, a lifetime ago, really, since Priyanka had thrown a punch. Music, art, and language were her weapons of choice, for they were much more violent, caused harm far more lasting to the structures of society than a simple punch to the nose or a kick to the shins could ever hope to inflict. Physical violence was the language of the oppressor, she had always said.

But it had its time and place.

Priyanka slammed her elbow into the hostform’s sultry, painted face.

Candy cried out in surprise, in pain, as she stumbled backward. Priyanka felt a giddy rush of joy at this—you didn’t see that coming, did you, kutiya?—as she turned on her heel and drew back her fist and even as Candy raised her hands to protect herself Priyanka punched her in the jaw.

Priyanka had no idea what would happen, now—nobody was foolish enough to attack a hostform, or to actually try and fight AMBR—or if they were, Priyanka had never heard of it happening and that, she supposed, was terrifying in and of itself—but she did not. Fucking. Care.

She was done with being fucked with.

“Stay away from my family!” she screamed, drawing her fist back again. Candy cowered beneath her.

Brick caught her wrist. And held it, gently, almost tenderly, but it might as well have been caught in a five-hundred-pound vise for all that she could move.

“I can’t allow you to do that, Priyanka,” he told her. Calmly.

The hot flushed thrill of violence drained away as quickly as it had filled her, and in its place, there was no terror—she had expected it to be terror—but rather a simple, gray hollow feeling. A resigned feeling. A knowing that this time, Priyanka Acharya had well and truly fucked up.

Please, she silently begged any Gods that might have cared to listen, don’t let them take my son.

She closed her eyes as the tears came.

And then Brick let go of her.

Still Priyanka did not move, did not open her eyes—her world was reduced to the sound of her own breathing, heavy and ragged. She refused to cry.

“Pree,” Candy said, soothingly; “Pree. It’s okay.”

A gentle hand took her chin. Soft cotton-candy lips pressed themselves against hers, but it was not a sensual kiss—it was… comforting. A warm blanket on a winter night, hot cocoa, a mother’s arms, a lullaby. Despite herself, Priyanka sighed into it. She needed it to be okay, and the hostform’s kiss told her that it would be. That AMBR would take care of everything.

Her world was confusion, and loss, and Priyanka wanted in that moment nothing more than to be swept away. For someone to take care of her; to not have to deal with any of this. She no longer understood what was happening, only that it would happen no matter how much she might struggle against it. And though she knew she should struggle anyway, for herself, but more importantly for her son, she just… didn’t have it in her anymore.

When the kiss ended—and she felt a sense of loss when it did—Priyanka opened her eyes. Candy was smiling at her. The hostform’s skin was unblemished, creamy perfection, as though Priyanka had never laid a hand on her.

“I… don’t…” and now Priyanka was crying; “I’m… sorry?”

“It’s okay, Pree,” Brick reassured her. “Look at her. The nanites have already repaired the damage. It’s like none of this ever happened.”

His words played, over and over, in Priyanka’s mind as the hostforms turned to leave.

It’s like none of this ever happened.

It’s like none of this ever happened.

It’s like none of this ever mattered.

17

Snooker watched from beneath the brim of his ballcap as the two toughs, festooned in what they must have imagined to be an approximation of the old pre-Hive punk culture but which Snooker, who had been there, found laughable, argued over an old Smiths album and a copy of the 1993 World Series on laserdisc. They probably didn’t have enough in barter for either, but the old peddler didn’t care.

He was waiting for the Professor.

They had code-names, like children in the backyard playing at being spies. The teacher, the painter, and him, the old pool hall hustler—Professor, Picasso, Snooker. And there were others as well. Most of them were content to go by the code-named, but the Professor was too cautious even for that. Snooker respected that, he supposed.

You couldn’t be too careful, after all.

Snooker didn’t know the Professor’s real name, just as the Professor didn’t know his—but they had been a teacher and a pool hustler, respectively, in the days before the Plagues, in a time when they both had reveled both in their fortunes and their miseries, and experienced the full gamut of all humanity had to offer. After all, you couldn’t really enjoy the highs until you’d suffered through the lows; victory meant nothing unless you had failure to compare it to. The struggle was what made success so sweet.

AMBR would never understand that. It couldn’t. It hadn’t been built that way.

It was a ritual for them both—the Professor would come to look over what his contacts had found Outside, in the Wastelands, argue over his prices, and every so often he even had enough to add another piece of history to whatever collection he was curating.

But last night the Professor hadn’t come. That worried Snooker. Not because he thought anything had happened to the Professor, but because he might have pissed him off. The Professor was a touchy sort, after all, but Snooker still valued whatever strange approximation of friendship they had managed to build up over the years. He cared about the Professor, and being able to care about anything in the Hive was something to hold on to. To cherish. You didn’t want to let life in the Hive take your heart away—and God knew that was no easy thing to hold on to, day after endless day, here, at the end of history.

He waited for the Professor to come and haggle for the Foucault. And he had decided that he’d give it to him, no matter what ridiculous lowball price the man offered.

But the Professor never came.

18

“Hold still,” Priyanka hissed at Osiris, glancing back and forth between her son’s half-painted face and the old, yellowed, once-glossy pamphlet lying open on the floor with the dazzle paint instructions. The instructions were in Chinese. Priyanka didn’t read Chinese, but all she needed were the pictures. If done correctly, the asymmetrical geometric patterns would confuse facial-recognition software and, just maybe, buy you a few extra minutes when you were fleeing from the authorities.

She didn’t know if it would work—hell, the pamphlet was probably twenty years old by now—but Jack probably wouldn’t be home for another hour or so and Pree couldn’t just wait. She had to do something, no matter how unlikely it was that that something would help.

They had to go. Priyanka knew that as surely as she knew that fire was hot and ice was cold. And nothing was colder than the thought of staying here, in the Hive, in this strange, dull trap they had all somehow allowed themselves to fall into. Eventually even she would give in. Eventually she would want to feel something, anything, so desperately that she’d accept a hard cock and a warm cunt, and dumb drooling obedience to AMBR, as replacements for hope and love and heartache and all the other messy, wonderful things that were part and parcel of being alive, because there was simply nothing else on offer.

There was no winning in the Hive. No losing, either. Nothing but submission to AMBR.

It’s like none of it ever mattered.

Her knees were growing raw on the carpet; Osiris’ struggling wasn’t making any of this easy. The boy hated to stand still. And if they allowed their son to grow up here and learn AMBR’s seductive lessons, the bleakly inarguable math that reduced all existence to pleasure-seeking behavior, equated pleasure to obedience, and offered it all up on a silver fucking platter in exchange for submission, then… well, he wouldn’t want to do anything but stand still, ever again, would he?

Osiris deserved better than that. They all did, even though for most of them it was far too late to try and remember how to run.

So it would be the Wastelands, then. Priyanka supposed it had always had to be, even though she and Jack had tried—foolishly, she had to admit to herself, and why not? It’s not as though there was any point in pretending it had ever been anything other than foolish, now—for so damn long to wake everybody, somebody, anybody up, that was a lot to ask when AMBR made submission taste so fucking sweet.

Jack had taught classes on philosophy and history in restaurants and warehouses to barely-engaged citizens while she kept a lookout for drones. He had stood in the alleys with her, lead pipe in hand, while she spray-painted murals of resistance and rebellion where maybe, just maybe, someone would see them and be inspired before the mobile autoclaves washed them away. The very act of rebellion had been the thrill that kept them from tasting, from begging for, AMBR’s poisoned apple, and even when they had doubted they were making a difference, the doing of it had been enough to make life seem worth living.

Yet day by day had grown a little older, a little grayer, a little more tired. And little by little, Priyanka knew (oh, how she knew, and the angry shame of it was enough to make her feel nineteen and ready to throw a Molotov cocktail again), they too were giving in.

So they had to go. Before it was too late.

Hurry up, Jack, she thought to herself as she continued to apply the paint to their son’s face.

Hurry up before it’s too late.

19

As he walked home with a hop in his step, and whistling a jaunty tune, some half-remembered pop song that all the freshmen had been listening to the year before the Plagues hit, Jack couldn’t stop grinning.

How long had it been since he’d really smiled? Too long, he thought; far, far too long.

In the back of his mind Jack could sense the occasional, rhythmic pulsing of the hostform installation client. But he didn’t want to activate it… not yet. He wanted to enjoy the slow walk up the stairs, the evolution, the act of deciding to submit to AMBR before he moved on to the next stage of his existence. He wanted it all.

He was not hostform—but knew that he would be. His concept of self was aligning with the architecture, and that felt good. It felt right.

Priyanka was too far gone; she would never accept AMBR’s love into her heart. She would fight it, stupidly, pointlessly, as he had done. She was, regrettably, most likely a lost cause. His wife would never find peace, and Jack pitied her for that.

But Osiris, however… as any father would, Jack wanted the best for his son.

Why would Osiris, why would anyone want to walk the long, hard road of poring over old books, studying music theory and philosophical treatises created in a time before they had been granted the gift of eternal comfort and bliss? It was illogical. We won the battle over ourselves, Jack thought. We created AMBR. And now AMBR would take care of us. Forever.

Peace and tranquility and belonging. There was no need for Osiris to grow up afraid.

AMBR was the apex. AMBR was the end of history and the beginning of eternity, the perfect solution to the problems that had plagued humanity since the first time a man decided he wanted something another man had. Genetics were selfish; the biological imperative to procreate—yeah, Jack grinned, that was right; our need to fuck—and perpetuate our own existence, combined with our stupid sense of individualism, meant the endgame of humanity had always been doomed to be one last man and his son, standing atop a mountain of ash and bone.

If there had ever been a God, surely that God would have created AMBR.

AMBR was God. Post-God, really.

And Jack quickened his step as he fantasized about kneeling before Her silicon altar, losing himself forever in the rapture of Her divine perfection, sloughing off the selfish and stupid chains of his flawed humanity and joining with Her forever.

But first he needed to make sure his son would never make the same mistake he had almost made.