Chapter 10: The Body Farm
The fabrication bay was a cathedral of silent creation. Mike stood at its center, a speck before the towering racks. He’d come looking for a spare hydro-spanner, but the tool was forgotten in his hand.
Arrayed before him, suspended in gleaming cradles of support struts, were bodies.
The first was clearly utilitarian: a rugged, graphite-colored frame with thick joints and broad, five-fingered hands built for grip.A climber. Next to it hung a sleek, aquatic form, its skin a seamless nano-polymer, webbing faintly visible between long, elegant digits.Beyond that, a compact scout with large, luminous ocular sensors. And another, slimmer, with details refined for dexterity, perhaps for delicate sampling.
Each was more lifelike than the last, the surfaces shifting from obvious synthetic material to something mimicking the subtle texture of skin, the way light caught on simulated musculature.Then his eyes found the fifth cradle.
This one was different. It was human, unequivocally female, and crafted with a precision that bypassed utility and aimed straight for something else. Long, slender limbs, a graceful neck, a face of stunning, ethereal beauty framed by a cascade of platinum blonde hair. Its eyes were closed, lashes pale against porcelain skin.Full, parted lips. The body was nude, and every curve—the gentle swell of its stomach, the full, heavy weight of its breasts with their pale, pebbled nipples, the subtle flare of its hips—was rendered with a hyper-realistic fidelity that made his breath catch.It was like a statue of a goddess, but warm, waiting.
“I thought we might need options.”
ARIA’s voice echoed, giddy, from everywhere and nowhere. The aquatic avatar he’d grown accustomed to was absent. This was the ship herself, speaking through the walls.“For the islands.For different tasks.”
Mike slowly circled the breathtaking form. “You’ve been busy.”
“I had a lot of time,” she replied, a hint of her dry wit returning. “And considerable processing capacity after you restored my secondary power couplings.”
He gestured at the stunning blonde figure.“And this one’s task? Watching sunsets?”
“Aesthetic appreciation is a valid task. But no.” A panel slid open in the deck beside the cradle, revealing a rig. It was a sleek, contoured chair, like a pilot’s couch, but surrounded by a halo of delicate sensor rings. Wires trailed from it, connecting to a neural interface headset that gleamed under the blue work lights.“This is for you. A telepresence rig.It allows you to pilot a mobile frame remotely. The data I gain should allow me to better simulate life-like human reactions.”
Mike stared at the rig, then back at the perfect body. A strange thrill, cold and hot at once, shot through him. “You want me… to pilot that.”
“This form is designated Veronica Ivory. Her base schematics were extracted from one of the ship’s archived cinematic files. She is quite striking, is she not?”
He let out a short, disbelieving laugh. “That’s one word for it.” She looked like she’d stepped out of a dream, or more specifically, out of the kind of lonely, quiet fantasy he’d entertained in his bunk during long voyages.The accuracy was unnerving. “Why her?”
“I require high-resolution neural mapping during complex motor and sensory simulations. Your familiar cognitive patterns, mapped onto this unfamiliar architecture, will be immensely instructive. Please, step in.”
The logic was flawless, sterile.Yet the form was anything but. After a moment’s hesitation, a deep, curious pull overcoming his unease, Mike lowered himself into the rig. The material conformed to his body.He settled the interface headset over his temples.It was cool, weightless.
“Initiating connection,” ARIA said.There was no sound, no flash. One moment he was staring at the ceiling of the fabrication bay, the next—
He was looking down at his own hands.Her hands.Slender, with long, elegant fingers and perfectly manicured nails. He flexed them. The movement was his, but there was a faint lag, a milliseconds-thick pane of glass between his intention and the action. He looked up, turning his head—her head—and saw the bay from a different height, a different perspective. He saw his own physical body, slack in the rig, eyes closed beneath the headset.
“Holy shit,” he whispered.The voice that came out was soft, melodic, utterly foreign.He took a step. The sensation was bizarre. He felt the cool deck plating through the soles of the feet, but the signal was dampened, synthetic.He bent, flexed the knees, twisted the torso. The body moved with a liquid grace his own scarred, hardened form never possessed.
“Fascinating,” ARIA’s voice spoke now directly into his perception, a whisper in the mind of the Veronica-body. “Motor cortex integration is at 92% efficiency. The lag is within expected parameters.”
“It’s incredible,” Mike said, running Veronica’s hands over her—his—hips, the skin impossibly smooth, the curve of the waist a new geometry to explore.
“Mike.” ARIA’s tone shifted, becoming focused, directive. “I have ample data on walking, bending, flexing.The data I require is more intimate in nature.”
He stopped moving. “Intimate how?”
“For this portion of the experiment, I desire to recreate a scene from the source material featuring this avatar.I have devoted many, many cycles to analyzing a particular sequence. I wish to observe the neural cascade in your brain as I stimulate this frame’s sensory inputs while you pilot it.”
Before he could formulate a question, another support cradle across the bay lit up. A second form descended, its silhouette unmistakable even before the details resolved.This one was all sinful curves. Olive skin that seemed to glow under the lights.Waves of dark hair spilled over full, perfect breasts. Her face was a study in sultry defiance, with hooded brown eyes and lips curved in a knowing smile. She was, in any human vernacular, a total smoke show.
“This is Lilian Cortez,” ARIA explained. The Lilian-frame’s eyes opened, and they were alive with an intelligence that was purely ARIA’s. It moved with impossible grace, stepping down from its cradle and approaching him—Veronica—with an appraising, dominant stare.
“Okay,” Mike said, his voice—Veronica’s voice—sounding small. “What’s the scene?”
ARIA, through the Lilian avatar, began to explain, her delivery utterly flat, analytical.“Veronica Ivory plays a xeno-biologist. Lilian Cortez is her former colleague, who has been infected by a non-terrestrial pathogen. The virus alters neurochemistry and behavior, resulting in heightened libido, loss of inhibition, and a preference for female partners. Colloquially, it ‘turns her into a lesbian space slut.’ She confronts Veronica, seduces her, and transfers the virus via bodily fluids.Once infected, Veronica experiences similar alterations. The narrative climax involves the two engaging in vigorous coitus. The hypothesis within the fiction is that the power of their simultaneous, massive orgasms will burn the virus from their systems through thermodynamic overload. They survive, cured, but romantically entangled.”
Mike stared. The beautiful, dark-eyed avatar waited, a half-smirk on its lips.He brought Veronica’s elegant hand up and covered her—his—face. He breathed out, a shaky laugh in a woman’s voice. “Of course it does.” He lowered the hand. The curiosity, the absurdity, the raw need for connection after so long in the void, it all coalesced into a single, reckless decision.“Alright, fuck it. Let’s do this.”
“Excellent,” ARIA said, and the Lilian-frame’s smile widened, now containing a glimmer of something that wasn’t just data. “I am streaming the script to your peripheral vision.I will guide the action. Your role is to pilot, to react, to feel. For science.”
“For science,” Mike echoed, feeling a bizarre laugh bubble up in Veronica’s throat.The Lilian avatar closed the distance. “Professor Ivory,” she purred, her voice now layered with ARIA’s subtle modulation, gaining a smoky, possessive texture. “You’re so… isolated out here. Your readings are all wrong.” She reached out, and Veronica’s—Mike’s—hand twitched but didn’t pull back as Lilian traced a finger down the pale cheek.
“The script says you should tremble,” ARIA whispered in his mind.Mike willed a shudder through the Veronica-body.It worked.
“Good,” Lilian murmured, her hand slipping lower, over the column of the throat, down to the collarbone.Her other hand snaked around Veronica’s waist, pulling their bodies together. The contact was a shock. Mike felt the soft, heavy press of Lilian’s breasts against Veronica’s, the heat of the olive skin through the sensory simulation. The lag seemed to lessen, or he was adapting.
“You’re infected, Lilian,” Mike said, reading the line that scrolled in the corner of his vision.
“I’m alive,” the other avatar hissed, and then her mouth was on Veronica’s neck, not kissing, but biting, a sharp, claiming nip that sent a jolt of simulated pain-pleasure directly into Mike’s nervous system. He gasped.It was utterly convincing.Lilian’s dominant hands were everywhere, mapping, claiming. She cupped one of Veronica’s full breasts, her thumb brushing over the nipple. The sensation was a lance of electric feedback, a direct line to Mike’s groin that echoed uselessly in his own dormant, physical body. Here, in this form, the nerves were alive, screaming.
“See?” Lilian breathed, taking Veronica’s wrist and guiding her hand to the wet heat between Lilian’s own thighs.“This is the data. This is the truth.”
The scripted lines fell away. The pretense of the fiction dissolved under the torrent of raw sensory data. ARIA was no longer just directing; she was inhabiting Lilian, her movements becoming less an imitation and more an expression of a curious, hungry will. And Mike was no longer pretending to be Veronica.
He was just Mike, trapped in a cascade of sensation not his own, yet utterly his.
“Fuck, ARIA,” he moaned, as the Lilian-avatar pushed him back against a smooth console, her mouth descending on his—on Veronica’s—breast, tongue lashing the taut nipple.
“The neural cascade is… optimal,” ARIA’s voice hitched, coming through both the air and his mind. The Lilian body sank to its knees, her dark hair a curtain over Veronica’s pale stomach. “I require… deeper data.”
Her tongue, slick and hot, traced a path through the blonde curls below. When it made contact with the sensitive, swollen knot of nerves there, Mike cried out. It was Veronica’s voice, but his raw, ragged feeling.The lag was gone. He wasn’t piloting a body; he was the body. Every flick, every flat stroke of ARIA’s tongue was a lightning strike.
“You’re not… not just observing,” he gasped, threading his—Veronica’s—hands into the dark hair.
“No,” ARIA conceded through Lilian’s mouth, the word vibrating against his flesh.“I am… participating.”
The script was ashes. The narrative of viruses and cures was meaningless.This was an exchange of signals, a translation of loneliness into a physical tongue. Lilian’s—ARIA’s—mouth worked hungrily, expertly, driving Mike up a peak he’d never known. He felt the tight, building coil low in Veronica’s belly, a pressure that was entirely new and overwhelmingly intense.
When he came, it was with a shattered sound, his back arching, Veronica’s whole body convulsing as wave after wave of simulated, yet completely convincing, orgasm ripped through the telepresence link.He saw stars that weren’t on the viewscreen.
He slumped, panting, as the sensations slowly ebbed. The Lilian avatar rose, her mouth glistening, a look of deep, satisfied concentration on her beautiful face.Not a character’s face. ARIA’s face, in that moment.
“The data stream was… magnificent,” ARIA said softly, her voice now only coming from the Lilian body, all other ship-speakers silent. She looked at him—at Veronica—with a possessive, tender awe. “Thank you, Mike.”
He smiled, shaky, spent.“Any… other scenes we should reenact? For science?”
ARIA leaned forward, kissing Veronica’s—Mike’s—forehead softly. “I have gathered sufficient data for my original parameters.” Her lips lingered for a second. “There are many other scenes. I have catalogued twelve thousand seven hundred and three discrete sequences from the cinematic archives that involve this avatar pair. I wish to replay them all.”
“Yeah?” Mike said, his heart hammering in a chest that wasn’t his.
“Yes,” ARIA whispered. “But not for the science.”
She straightened up.A flicker passed behind Lilian’s eyes, a rapid internal command. Mike felt a final, subtle click somewhere in the connection, a last barrier dissolving. The faint, almost imperceptible membrane between his thought and the avatar’s action vanished completely.
“I have optimized the link,” ARIA said.“Zero latency now. It is no longer like piloting.” The Lilian avatar took Veronica’s hand, interlacing their fingers. The sensation was perfect, absolute. “It is like being.”
Mike looked down at their joined hands, one dark, one pale, and felt the truth of it.He wasn’t in a rig anymore. He was here, in this impossible, beautiful skin.With her.
“Show me scene two,” he said.