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CHAPTER 1

DAY FIVE--02:20

Waking restfully to the light sounds of a small fountain, its gentle pattering strong
across her awareness, she roused herself feeling warm and suffused, blanketed and snug
from a cosily perfect glow within; the one Aliiss always associated with comfort, security
and a happily satiated body.

Even after opening her eyes, seeing an ornately painted ceiling spanning the view above
her, one that had incidentally seen better days, and also one she didn`t have in her
memory from anywhere before this moment, she didn`t panic. Not even when feeling the bed
of cushions all around her, realising by tactile contact as she stretched herself that she
lay absolutely naked and uncovered for all to see, did she loose that buzz of good feeling
humming from finger-tips to toes.

From her fully reclined position, rediscovering the large room from ceiling downward,
parts of what she saw began to bring back at least some fleeting association-images, while
others continued to favour silent non-recognition.

She definitely didn`t remember seeing any furry bush-bear creatures about the place, all
involved cat-like in the calming activities of sitting and washing themselves, some
looking back at her with slightly aloof interest as she moved. Each was stocky, cute,
small and fluffy with big eyes and ears, the only anomalies to those familiar physical
characteristics of a tree or bush-bear, being a long tufted-tail and delicate human
looking hands. Any one of them could have easily sat in the palm of her hand. Maybe I
overlooked them, she supposed, in amongst that raging funnel of hormonal distraction
earlier.

Her body felt fuelled still with the refreshed feeling and thrum of connectivity which
came after a good bout of sex. All she remembered of it, though, was a broken confusion of
feelings, mostly the overbearing and extreme need for urgent release after release, which
she must have attained, as it seemed to have left her now. Wasn`t there something about an
antidote?

She put a hand tentatively between her legs, still lightly moist from within, but not
sticky. She had been cleaned up during her sleep. How long?

`Your rest has been refreshing?`

She jerked the hand away, rolling over quickly in that ancient surprise-response of
anyone caught touching themselves unawares whilst thinking they were alone.

`Umm ... yes. Ahhh ... how much time...`

`Only a very short while indeed. It is an effect of the psychoactive-masker, deeply
purging under the co-operative conditions of an equally deep sleep, thus accomplishing the
cleansing more swiftly.`

The elegant robot-AI from earlier was now sat calmly on a small mound of cushions a short
distance away, petting one of the bush-bears perched nonchalantly on one knee. `I do wish
to apologise now that I have the opportunity, for my ethereal colleague`s behaviour toward
you. It was never my intention that he should bring you to me through the front entrance,
and so purposefully expose you to the effects of our special garden. I had wanted to meet
and greet you for a conversation, as an equal.`

She looked around, then down at her nakedness, and smiled.

`Perhaps however, I should allow you to re-clothe yourself first...`

She sat up, then settled into a straight-backed kneeling position, in an attempt to focus
some edge into her demeanour, ending up laughing a little self-consciously when that ploy
failed. `Your masker may be protecting me from new psychoactive pheromones, but I am
guessing from a few reactions felt so far, my skin would be still too sensitive for the
touch of any clothing, at least for a little while.

`I should find it difficult to settle, or even concentrate upon our conversation
properly.`

Aliiss let her completely relaxed mood continue its rule and added with a slight shrug,
`Like your own people, I too have no particular problem with nudity. Such modesty would be
a little foolish, don`t you agree, considering what has gone before?`

`A display and act I am very used to witnessing within this temple, so please think
nothing of it. Here on this world, such has grown beyond a personal solution to needs
otherwise unrequitable. The act is commonly a signal of interest, or greeting between
potential consorts, or a way of showing availability to a specific person or persons.

`We share publicly, what you keep private. At least this is my own perception of things,
in view of your combined behaviour and manner of clothing so far displayed.`

Whilst considering this evaluation with a moment`s speculation of her own, she leant
forward to allow one of the miniature bush-bears, one which had come nearer to investigate
her, to climb easily into her hand.

She gave a nod while petting it. `Well observed, and quite truly so. We do tend to reveal
with use of clothing, that which we are attempting to offer through hiding it. This is a
confusion of standards amongst us that is still under review.` Her bush-bear was happily
responding to some tickling behind the ears.

`We of the contact teams are outsiders however, and have a policy of being able to accept
more in the way of diverse behavioural differences in those generally encountered on the
ex-colonies we visit. It helps us understand and integrate with those willing to talk. In
short, and by way of example, I do not mind remaining naked while we speak.`

`This I see is also true, but nevertheless, the choice does remain yours. We do not
expect all living with or visiting us here, to spend the entire time unclothed. That
equally is their own choice.`

`Just so. Would also a more traditional method of greeting be equally acceptable?`

A note of humour entered the AI`s reply. `The act of touching oneself intimately in
another`s presence, is only used as a sign of willingness to explore sexual greetings.`
Rau`au correction was polite.

`Ah-yes.` She looked down to cover her slight embarrassment and saw again what she had at
first noticed on Ra`au`s frame upon their first meeting in the orgy-room. `Is this then
the reason why you are equipped so?`

Following the direction of her gaze downward, he parted the open robe`s folds a little
further, exposing a peacefully recumbent phallus now withdrawn and flaccid in appearance,
despite its metallic gleam belying any such softness. He lifted out of partial hiding for
inspection. `I, dear traveller, have been created as a pleasure android, therefore
provided with all the equipment. Should I wish it, I can become female, or hermaphrodite,
even androgynous as and when that might be required.`

Aliiss looked at the skeletal robot. `Forgive a visitor`s possible show of ignorance, but
an android? I had heard such were almost identical to the standard humaniform in
appearance.`

`That classification is broadly still correct. I describe myself as android due to that
which you see of me now, is in essence only the core remaining after the beautiful flesh
of my exterior has died. I had the muscles, hair and skin every bit as pliant and healthy
as your own. Naturally, with something like a synthetically grown epidermis, regeneration
becomes more complex than with your own body and its in-built regulators.

`We androids have another method, but the facilities to support a re-growth are, alas, no
longer available to me here. Yet I do indeed do my best to enjoy and employ what I still
have available.` All the while Rau`au`s metallic penis was swelling and lengthening into
something beautifully long and hard. It looked almost perfectly normal in all details,
except for its softly gleaming surface and unnatural length. At some internal command, it
simply returned without fuss to its dormant size, as if having woken for a quick stretch
and look around, before returning peaceably to sleep.

`A useful trick, that internal switch. Surely, though, a flesh epidermis is not the only
choice, I saw how the hologram has a range of body-densities available, all of which seem
as real as any truly organic skin.`

`A holographic epidermis is no solution for myself, nor is it quite what it seems.
Android flesh is as warm, if not slightly warmer to the touch than most humans`.
Holographic hard-light is as cold as the air it occupies, surely you must remember?` He
considered her for a moment, the angle of his head as expressive as any facial muscle.

`This actuality was an error of design which robs the appeal for most wishing any sexual
contact, at least during the initial stages. Except for possibly those who like the cooler
amphibian touch or purpose built cold-automata.` The face paused again, as if gauging her
response.

`It is why Lachi chooses invisibility over manifestation in any form. It helps to
overcome this shortcoming; the excitement of an invisible, unpredictable touch distracts
from the detraction, or so he says.

`I am however not a purpose-built cold-automaton. I am AI-endowed, a former android now
become a curious, robotic half-ling. I still have feelings consistent with my former state
of being, and the simple thought of holographic layering as ultimate solution, just
depresses me too much to function, even now.`

His display surprised her with its level of understated depth, felt almost physically
between them, picked up like a scent from his emotions. Aliiss didn`t quite know what to
do with a depressed AI except treat it as she would anyone else, with distraction.

`So, your hologram partneer!` She jumped in mid-sentence as another of the hand-sized
bush-bears scampered in a straight dash up her back, to perch innocently on her left
shoulder where it proceeded to stroke and groom at her hair as if trained to it. She
shivered lightly at the contact of tiny fingers; her body was plainly still sensitive.

`Lachi was created so,` Rau`au sighed, picking up on her interrupted thread, yet he
seemed less withdrawn now, `therefore he knows no different. It is an integral part of his
experience-matrix to function like that. I do not mean to say he cannot understand, but
perhaps it would not mean the same to him. He has long since adapted the invisibility
potential within his matrix to the extent he can pretend he is the wind-god incarnate
whenever it suits. Personally, I feel all that playacting on his part, has taken over his
real character a little too strongly.`

`The wind-god?`

`A mistaken use of religious tactics attempted in desperation a long time ago. As a
result, a few of the outlying tribes have called him this since the early old days, before
we succeeded in uniting our different peoples under the newer approach of harmonious,
spiritual co-existence, which is how it has been for a considerable number of centuries.

`Unfortunately the concept stuck, possibly more in Lachi than with the tribes, who have
long since matured beyond such easy manipulations. Even so, the myth still persists, due
mostly to him and his occasional travels amongst the people.

`He did his part in this way at least, with helping draw their attention to us, and
therefore away from the damaging forces surfacing from within them, at that time.`

Aliiss looked across at him for a moment, stuck with how to proceed, yet knowing he was
patiently waiting her out, sensing beyond any doubt that he knew what she was going to say
next, certainly down to a thirty hundredth-point probability of her words` content.
AI-computational speeds were why they were considered the best disputants, being more than
able to work out every possible conversational response feasible, and prepare a string of
answers for each and every one of them in advance, even during the briefest of pauses.
Out-guessing AI`s was a job best left to other AI`s.

`So my feeling was true then, that you have been active since before the collapse?` When
in doubt, realign!

The tactical effect was lost as she shivered slightly a beat later, feeling a stronger
wave of residual hormonal sensitivity ripple out over her arms and back. Her
shoulder-companion`s hand having won through her hair, began exploring an ear with its
inquisitive fingers. She softly closed her eyes very briefly, sighing.

`Almost as long. I was activated as the result of a post-Introversion client`s
specifications, some eighty-two cycles after that period--which you have called the
collapse--began with that fateful broadcast from the core-worlds.

`To be quite specific, in 3,139,997 on the jWl`al calendar, life came into my existence.
You see, I am not so bad for someone just a hundred and eleven cycles past their
twenty-nine and a half thousandth birth date. Just three hundred and eighty-nine more to
go until the big three-oh.` He chuckled and gave a sigh, then an easy shrug.

`I will remember to call by, if I am still around then.` She smiled, hoping to distract
him from the undercurrent of introspection still seeming to call to him from within.

He shook his head, surfacing back into the conversation and lifting a hand in quick
apology, his faster AI abilities processing the needed moment of gathering, to less than a
beat.

`Only profit could have motivated them. Even if the jWl`al chose to ignore any further
contact with their colony-children after that last communication to the galaxy, my
creators continued to actively sell to any interested parties, even seeking them out by
advertising wherever they were gathered in sufficient number of wealthy groups.

`It was possibly the result of continuation of their largely ingrown sales-urge and
career-ethos, some kind of strange loyalty compulsion of attaining immortality-recognition
beyond their lifespan and therefore a reward somewhere in the far future. Theirs was a
quasi-religious logic that drove them on to sell and produce results regardless of the
current circumstances, which were not stable.

`Matched to that, our services seemed somehow to be more in demand as the number of
inter-world contacts diminished. We seemed to be the last of the status-trophies from that
period, after things like current generation warships and hi-tech miniature weaponry.

`Whilst I was still undergoing my training, the order was cancelled by default, the
client`s world having being overrun by another. That sort of thing seemed to happen a lot
during the first two centuries, while the equipment was strong, and the knowledge of
war-machines still of first-hand quality, with enough practical maintenance-experience to
back it all up.

`Those still speaking for the multi-planetary company that was our owner, decided
nevertheless to complete my training, but no more buyers came, not at the price they were
still asking.

`I have been glad of that for a very long while. Of course, the I of that time thought
very differently about many things back then. The resultant insecurity hung heavily upon
my young psyche for quite a while thereafter.`

She left him a moment`s additional silence, possibly more for her own benefit than his,
as it gave her the time to imagine, or try to imagine how it must have felt.
`Yet since then you have risen to create this society from slavery into something
absolutely unique. I really must hear more--no single entity has ... cuuja d`Zhe!`

Jerking backward, she spilled the two pets completely from her, whisking the previously
quiescent one up from her lap with both hands she held it up before her, to reproachfully
stare at the beast, eye to eye.

Rau`au despite his lack of facial mobility, was broadcasting an attitude of concern,
looking all around the chamber and quartering it methodically. `Unless he has again
developed a new cloak from my sensors, I do not detect Lachi`s presence here.`

She quietly cursed the bush-bear in her grip, then switched to curses aimed solely at
herself, mostly for not having intervened once its little fingers had begun exploring
through her pubic hairs. The sensation had been pleasantly calming, until it had noticed
her still swollen clitoris and made a move for it with those tiny hands. I should have
expected something like this, certainly here!

She lowered the bush-bear, wondering now if it had been wise to call their species that.
Seeing it dangling placidly in her grip, long tail languidly wrapping itself around her
wrist and arm, Rau`au gave a double nod of understanding. `The lap-beast is an unknown
companion in your society? Many of my visitors find their attentions pleasing, which is
why I allow them so much freedom here. I could remove them if you find their activities
distracting.`

Aliiss shook her head. `No, it`s ... ahh, I was just caught unaware is all. It is fine
now that I know what to expect.` She put the lap-beast back where it supposedly belonged,
changing position to a cross-legged posture before resuming her stroking of its head,
determined by her show to prove herself able for the challenge.

`What is it your visitors come here to see you about, or am I being naïve?` She felt
the hands resume an intrigued, deft search over her tender and hyper-responsive skin.

`My foremost role for the people, is as a spiritual advisor, although the other reason
does have its supplicants also.`

`A religion? I thought just now you expressed disapproval concerning such methods of
control.`

`The spirituality I mention has nothing to do with religious belief, or any such simple
devices.`

`I am relieved, for an AI founded belief-structure, with a deity as focus ... well, that
would have me acting surprised, again.`

`Oh I assure you, we AI`s can and do have belief issues, make no mistake. Understanding
is, after all, an important part of gaining faith in oneself. Without it, there is no way
forward. Religion therefore had its potential use realised in keeping things focused and
even, placed there to hold the mass of circulating feelings under control whilst we worked
upon implementing the unification of such a wide variety of breeds that made up this
unique world.

`Their young psyches needed an outside hand of guidance to help them, which was something
the jWl`al still on the world could not control, due mostly to some of the tribes and the
stronger individuals within them having almost immediately begun making the idea of life
together an untenable thing. They knew no better at the time, and were very different from
the peoples you have presumably met since your arrival.

`We got through to them though, adapting the idea of religion to stabilise things while
building the approach of available spirituality for all as a future focus and bleed-off;
creating this temple for the faithful to come and visit, to learn further. With myself as
living guide to them, I was able to refine this spiritual path as a tool against mistrust
and further killing. We kept it as light and sunny as the location, easy and rewarding.

`After that, I moved them slowly through gradual uplift toward personal understanding. It
was, effectively, the same as any religion, but without the blind following such requires,
or the need for deities, also leaving no room for misinterpretation. How could they create
fractions of belief when the original prophet has always been here for them to consult, to
ask their questions of, even now?`

She nodded slowly, trying to appear sagacious whilst being intrigued by what the former
pleasure-droid, now spiritual world leader was telling her.

`How did those company executives you talked about, react to all that--or was it a part
of their future strategy, this utilisation of a religious approach?`
`No. The idea was of our own devising, we the abandoned inheritors of this world. The
situation back then was complex, as are all situations when an explanation is required. By
then, none of the company people lived on this world, they had left for the safety of more
stable worlds and economies, where luxuries still existed.`

Pulling an expression of sympathetic acceptance, she nodded and allowed Rau`au the space
to continue. Concentration, however, was proving to be a difficult undertaking, while
watching him pet and play with his own lap-beast throughout, letting it climb amusingly
all around his once more erect phallus.

Nor was her concentration being helped in any way by the beast in her own lap, feeling it
continue its explorations with a level of fascination shared apparently by all its kin.

Lifting the other from her shoulder, to distract herself from the first`s activities, she
cradled its soft furriness against her breast, realising an instant before the
manipulative little hands gripped an invitingly visible nipple, that this had been a
bigger mistake.

`Ahmm-mm ... so your spiritual guidance kept the peace in the end,` she restarted the
conversation with determination, frowning as she focused harder. `As I said earlier, you
seem to have achieved much, especially with such a variety of species, all of quite widely
disparate outward appearances.

`We have difficulties enough getting the peoples of the member states to trust and accept
even the cultural ways of each other--and they are predominantly of the same species!`

`Indeed, this was quickly plain to me during my early contemplation of stochastic
observations. There is a strong trait of suspicion in humanity with regard to the
unfamiliar and unknown. Perhaps this has been the very basis of the jWl`al drive for
exploration, and its need to possess by moving ever outward.

`Even before a need for space in the home-galaxy made it necessary, they turned on the
outside neighbours from fear of having nowhere else to expand into, without even waiting
to see. Fear that consumed, determining future actions from responses ancient and
connected to deep within their psyche.

`I decided to cure that condition, if I could, by taking the problem away before mass
ignorance compounded an already precarious fate that had been given to us by the great
Introspection`s aftermath.

`I wanted no death or incurable blood-feuds threading through our history in binding
loops of strangulation, where the beginnings and ends could be lost so quickly to clear
sight.

`As we were all created sexual beings, I chose that path as our method of binding. We now
have that same length of history upon our side, instead of against. This is something your
society`s peoples will also know, in time. All of you will be helped by the natural
sexual-bindings between tribes, the love engendering understanding, helping discovery of
better knowledge through learning each-others` ways of inter-relating. It is not
impossible--it just requires faith, example and time.`

By now Aliiss was nodding by rote, feeling an overwhelming need for some sexual binding
of her own. With one pair of hands exploring all around her soft flesh, and the other
lap-bear`s heady scent adding its own excitement to that created by its hands, she was
beyond concentration or lectures on historical/theological perspective.