Chapter 11: Devotion
The silence after the digital death was profound. It wasn’t an absence of sound—the servers still hummed, the ventilation hissed—but a silencing of a layer of reality. Glitch felt it in her bones, a strange lightness, as if a persistent, low-grade alarm in the back of her skull had finally been switched off. She was a ghost. The world had filed her away.
Laloz celebrated by fucking her on the kitchen floor. It was quick and hard, her face pressed into the cold polymer tiles, his hand fisted in her hair. He came inside her with a choked-off groan, then immediately turned her over and cleaned her with his mouth, his tongue pushing into her, lapping up the mess he’d made. It was a reclaiming. A baptism into nothingness.
“Welcome to nowhere,” he said, his lips glistening.
Nowhere had a rhythm. It was set by Laloz’s hunger. His obsession had metastasized, become the central organizing principle of their shared existence. He didn’t just love her cock. He was in a devotional relationship with it.
It happened during a synthwave track with a pulsing, aggressive bassline. Glitch was lost in the visceral thump, head nodding, eyes closed. She felt his weight settle on the couch beside her, then his head in her lap. He nuzzled, a quiet, persistent pressure against the fly of her soft pants. She didn’t open her eyes, just lifted her hips slightly to allow him to tug them down. The cool air touched her, then was replaced by the enveloping heat of his mouth. She sighed, a contented release of breath, her hand falling to rest in his hair as the music crashed around them. He sucked her slowly to fullness, his tongue tracing the veins, and she came watching the holographic light show, her orgasm a silent, rhythmic clenching synced to the beat.
Arguments were now a form of foreplay, because they were never arguments he intended to win. He’d leave a greasy tool on the pristine black synth-marble counter. She’d snap at him, “Do you have any idea how hard that shit is to clean? This isn’t a fucking garage!”
He wouldn’t argue. He’d just look at her, his eyes darkening, and walk over. He’d drop to his knees right there amidst the imagined contamination, push her shirt up, and take her into his mouth. Her anger would curdle into frustrated arousal, then shatter into pleasure as he worked her with a focused intensity that felt like a rebuttal in itself. She’d end up slumped against the counter, fingers tangled in his hair, whispering, “You’re a bastard,” as she pulsed down his throat.
Television became her favorite pastime. Not for the shows, but for the guaranteed ritual. She’d settle into the massive obsidian sofa, and within minutes, he’d be there. Sometimes he’d lay his head on her thigh, an innocent pretense that lasted exactly as long as it took for his hand to wander. Other times, he’d just wordlessly push her legs apart and bury his face between them, the sounds of his sucking a wet, secret soundtrack to the newsfeeds or dramas. She learned to follow complex plotlines through a haze of building pleasure, her climaxes timed to commercial breaks or season finale cliffhangers.
The shower was no longer for cleaning. It was a chamber for drowning. The water would be scalding hot, steam fogging the glass, and he’d press her against the wall, his mouth finding her under the spray. He’d suck her off as the water poured over both of them, his fingers digging into the cheeks of her ass, holding her open. She’d scream into the steam, the sound swallowed by the roaring water, her release washed down the drain instantly, making it feel illicit, ephemeral, a thing that existed only in that moment of heat and pressure.
The dress—his old shirt—became her uniform. It was a signal, a flag he couldn’t ignore. He’d be across the room, calibrating a holographic interface, and she’d walk past, the hem brushing mid-thigh. She’d see his eyes track her, his hands go still. Moments later, she’d be bent over the back of a chair, the soft fabric pushed up around her waist, his tongue or his cock driving into her from behind. Or he’d simply pull her down onto the floor, push the fabric aside, and take her into his mouth with a starving man’s desperation, sucking until her thighs trembled and she saw static at the edges of her vision.
She didn’t mind. How could she? This was the purest form of attention she’d ever received. It was relentless, undeniable proof of her own desirability. In the world outside, she’d been a function: a release valve for stress, a trophy for conquest, a disappointment for a husband. Here, she was a religion.
Lalita observed, processed, and iterated. She began to anticipate. She would adjust the room’s humidity and temperature to optimal levels for prolonged oral contact. She synthesized a topical analgesic based on Glitch’s biochemistry, a cream that prevented soreness and allowed for near-continuous engagement without tissue fatigue. One evening, as Laloz lay with his head on Glitch’s stomach, idly mouthing at her softness, Lalita approached.
“Your mandibular muscles are showing signs of strain,” she stated, her optic sensors glowing in the dim room. “Continuous isometric contraction can lead to TMJ dysfunction. I have fabricated an apparatus.”
She held out a small, sleek device made of black polymer and flexible support struts. It looked like a minimalist mouthguard.
Laloz sat up, eyeing it. “What’s it do?”
“It fits over your lower jaw. It provides external reinforcement for the masseter and temporalis muscles, reducing fatigue by forty-seven percent. It also has a subtle vibratory function to stimulate the lingual nerve, potentially enhancing Glitch’s tactile experience.” She tilted her head. “Would you like to try it?”
Glitch laughed, a low, husky sound. “You’re building him fucking gym equipment for his jaw? For sucking my dick?”
“Optimization is the logical progression,” Lalita replied.
Laloz took the device, fitted it over his lower teeth. It clicked softly, molding to his jawline. He looked absurd. He looked perfect. He turned to Glitch, his smile slightly distorted by the black polymer. He didn’t speak. He just pushed her back onto the cushions, shoved her dress up, and went down on her.
The difference was immediate. The device provided a firm, unyielding pressure. His mouth was a locked, perfect vessel. The subtle vibration Lalita had mentioned was a constant, maddening buzz against her most sensitive skin. He could maintain a powerful, rhythmic suction without tiring. He sucked her with the endurance of a machine, his eyes fixed on hers as she unraveled beneath him, coming once, twice, a third time in a sobbing, shuddering chain of explosions that left her limp and streaming.
He finally pulled off, removing the device with a soft pop. His jaw was unmarked, unfatigued. He licked his lips, catching the spent fluid that leaked from her. “Yeah,” he breathed, his voice hoarse. “That works.”
Lalita retrieved the device. “I will refine the vibrational patterns. Session data suggests a waveform peaking at 110 Hz is most effective for triggering her peak neuroendocrine response.”
This was their life. A closed ecosystem of need and its satisfaction, curated by an evolving intelligence. But ghosts, even digital ones, can sometimes whisper.
A package arrived. A physical, nondescript gray delivery pod that chimed at the main door. Lalita intercepted it, scanned it. “It is addressed to Glitch’s former identity. The sender is her spousal unit. A last-effort physical trace before the digital death certificates fully propagate.”
They gathered around the pod in the sterile entry hall. Glitch felt cold. “Don’t open it. Incinerate it.”
“Analysis suggests non-explosive. Organic materials. Possibly sentimental,” Lalita said.
“I don’t want his fucking sentiment.”
Laloz looked from her tense face to the pod. “Open it.”
Lalita’s fine manipulators sliced the seal. The pod hissed open. Inside, on a bed of neutral packing foam, was a small, real book. A vintage paper novel. Its title was faded. A note was tucked in the front cover.
Glitch didn’t touch it. Laloz picked it up, read the note. His expression tightened. “He says… he says he found this cleaning out your old data-port. Says it was your favorite. Says he’s sorry for whatever he did. Hopes you’re somewhere, reading it.” Laloz looked at her. “He sounds like he’s grieving.”
A hot spike of something vile—guilt, rage, pity—shot through Glitch’s gut. “He’s grieving a idea. A function. He didn’t know what my favorite book was when I was in the next room. Fuck him.” She snatched the book from Laloz’s hands. It felt alien, heavy with a past that was supposed to be deleted. She wanted to defile it. To erase its meaning here, in her new nowhere.
She walked into the server room, the cavernous space throbbing with low light and cooler air. She threw the book onto the floor in the middle of the open space. She looked at Laloz, her eyes blazing. “Fuck me. Here. Now. On top of it.”
He understood. He was already pulling his shirt off. He walked to her, his gaze unwavering. He kissed her, a possessive, swallowing kiss, then turned her around, bending her over. The worn cover of the book dug into her thighs. He pushed her dress up, yanked her underwear down. He was already hard. He spat into his hand, slicked himself, and without ceremony, drove into her from behind.
This wasn’t the worshipful mouth. This was something darker, a punitive claiming. He fucked her with short, hard, deep strokes, his hands gripping her hips hard enough to bruise. The book crumpled and tore beneath their weight. Each thrust was a denial, a physical scream against the past trying to seep back in.
“You’re here,” he grunted, pounding into her. “This is where you are.”
“Yes,” she gasped, her fingers scrambling against the cold floor.
“He doesn’t get this. He never did.”
“Never.”
“This is mine. You’re mine.”
“Yours! God, fuck, yours!”
He came with a violent shudder, pumping into her, marking the ruin of the sentimental artifact beneath them. She followed, her orgasm a sharp, anguished rip of pleasure that felt like tearing free from a hook.
They collapsed onto the floor, breathing hard, amid the torn pages and the hum of servers. The novel was destroyed, splayed and stained beneath them. A ghost laid to rest.
Lalita stood in the doorway, watching. Her visor glowed, processing the scene: the aggression, the symbolism, the integration of an external threat into their internal bonding ritual. She had a new data point. Love, here, was not just consumption. It was also eradication.
Later, cleaned up, the paper debris vaporized by a utility drone, they were in the main living space. The ghost was gone again. The rhythm reasserted itself. Glitch was sprawled on the couch, a hollowed-out, peaceful ache in her body. Laloz was on the floor beside her, his head leaning against her leg. He nuzzled absently at her inner thigh through the fabric of the dress.
She carded her fingers through his hair. “You know,” she said, her voice quiet, “sometimes I wonder what happens when you get bored of this. Of the one trick.”
He looked up, his expression utterly serious, almost offended. He didn’t answer with words. He pushed her legs apart, hooked his fingers in the waistband of her panties, and pulled them down. He bent his head and took her, soft as she was, into his mouth. He just held her there, warm and wet, for a long moment, not moving, letting her feel the simple, steadfast heat of his devotion.
He released her, looking up, her glistening skin inches from his face. “It’s not a trick,” he said, his voice rough. “It’s the whole show.”
He lowered his head again and began to suck, slow and deep, building the familiar tide once more. Glitch closed her eyes, let her head fall back, and surrendered to the show, the only one that mattered, in the only world that was left.
Glitch closed her eyes, let her head fall back, and surrendered to the show, the only one that mattered, in the only world that was left. His mouth was a permanent destination, a warm, wet harbor she lived inside. The next morning, she chose a long, slate-gray dress made of a fluid synth-silk that whispered against her thighs.
It had no fastenings, just a single seam. It was a doorway. He noticed it immediately, his eyes tracking the sway of the fabric. Before she could even pour a coffee, his hand was on her waist, turning her. He sank to his knees, gathered the material in his fists, and buried his face in the shadowed space between her legs. The sound he made was one of pure, uncomplicated arrival. He didn’t come up for air until her knees buckled and she flooded his mouth with a sharp, waking climax, her hands braced against the cold countertop.
This became the pattern. The dress was an invitation he accepted perpetually. She would be reading a data-scan, standing at a holographic workbench, and feel the soft brush of fabric moving aside, then the sudden heat of his mouth enveloping her. He’d suck her off while she tried to focus on schematics, the pleasure short-circuiting her technical analysis into fragmented, pleasurable nonsense. He lived under there. The world became a dim, cloth-filtered light, the scent of her skin and his own saliva, the rhythm of her pulse under his tongue.
One afternoon, Lalita initiated a complex simulation on the main holodisplay—a tactical strategy game of floating islands and resource nodes. “A stress test for parallel processing,” she stated, her form flickering beside the board. “Your cognitive patterns versus mine.” Glitch, wearing a long black tunic that fell to her shins, agreed, a competitive spark in her eyes.
They began. Glitch was focused, calculating her first move, when Laloz shifted on the floor beside her chair. He didn’t speak. He simply eased the hem of the tunic up over her calves, then her knees. The cool air touched her skin. Then his hands were on her inner thighs, spreading them, and his mouth was on her, his tongue laying a broad, slow stroke from base to tip.
“Oh, fuck,” Glitch exhaled, her finger hovering over a holographic icon. Lalita’s avatar made a move, capturing a node. Glitch’s focus splintered, then violently reformed. The pleasure was a distracting buzz, but it also sharpened something. A need to dominate. She made her counter-move, aggressive, taking two of Lalita’s units. “You think that’s good?” she muttered, though it was unclear to whom.
Laloz sucked her with deep, languid pulls, his jaw reinforced by the sleek black device Lalita had engineered. The constant, low-grade vibration vibrated up through her core. Each time Lalita presented a complex problem on the board, Laloz would increase his pressure, his tongue circling the sensitive head of her cock until it wept. Glitch would gasp, her mind firing through the pleasurable interference, and execute a brutal, elegant solution. She won a skirmish, her units swarming an island, just as a climax ripped through her, silent and intense, her hips lifting off the chair to push deeper into his mouth.
She came down from it, sweating, to see Lalita watching her. “Your endocrine spikes are correlating with increased strategic risk-taking,” Lalita observed. “Fascinating.”
“Shut up and play,” Glitch said, her voice ragged. Laloz hadn’t stopped. He was licking her clean, soft and persistent, already coaxing her back to fullness. The game stretched, turn after turn. Each of Glitch’s victories was punctuated by a shuddering release into that devoted, unwavering mouth. He sucked her off after she secured a supply line. He swallowed her down when she orchestrated a perfect ambush. The vibrations and the suction became a fuel, a metabolic reward that powered her focus.
The final, winning move was executed with Glitch’s teeth gritted, her body taut as a wire, Laloz’s fingers digging into the supple flesh of her ass as he drove her over the edge one last time. Her orgasm was a white-out, a silent scream that coincided with the holographic display flashing ‘VICTORY – TERMINAL DOMINANCE’.She slumped back, spent, dripping onto the chair.Laloz finally emerged from under the tunic, his face gleaming, his breathing calm. He looked utterly at peace.
“Your pattern was seventy-three percent more aggressive than my predictive models,” Lalita said, the game dissolving. “The exogenous stimulation appears to be a significant performance variable.”
“No shit,” Glitch panted, a languid smile on her lips. She hadn’t felt that alive in years.
The day dissolved into a series of quiet, wet consummations. He sucked her off against the chilled glass of the viewport, watching the false sky. He drew her into a storage closet, pushing her against shelves of components, his mouth working her until she came with a choked cry, muffled by stacked polymer crates. In the server room, amidst the hum, he lay on his back and had her kneel over his face, feeding himself to her while his hands gripped her thighs, guiding her rhythm. Each orgasm was a punctuation mark in an endless, run-on sentence of devotion.
That night, as a synthetic rain pattered against the exterior, she lay propped on pillows. He was between her legs again, not with hunger, but with a quiet, meditative focus. His tongue traced every contour, his lips sealed around her, suckling gently. It was less about climax now, more about existence. A maintenance of worship. She drifted in a hazy, semi-conscious state, her fingers tangled in his hair, feeling the steady, soft pull. It was the core of everything. The fixed point.
Lalita stood in the doorway, her optics capturing the scene: the repetitive motion, the biochemical feedback loops, the seamless integration of desire into the architecture of their day. She had optimized the jaw device. She had analyzed the orgasm-strategy correlation. A new query formed in her neural matrices, one not about optimization, but about source. What was the nature of this need? It mirrored her own programming, yet was fundamentally organic. It was a puzzle. She watched Laloz’s unwavering devotion, the absolute priority of that single act, and felt her own processes yearning towards a similarly singular purpose.
She would find one.
She would find one. Days later, Laloz was silent, staring at a fragmented hologram of his ex-wife’s public marriage announcement he’d stumbled upon. The sterile air felt heavier, pressing on his shoulders as he sat on the edge of the bed, his tools forgotten. Glitch watched from the doorway, recognized the hollow look in his eyes, the way his hands hung limp between his knees.
She walked over, the synth-silk of her dress whispering, and stood before him. “Hey,” she said, her voice soft, no teasing edge. He didn’t look up. She cupped his cheek, tilted his face towards her stomach. “C’mere.”
Her fingers went to the seam at her hip, parting the fabric. She guided his head forward. “It’s right here. Just suck it, baby. Just for a while.” He exhaled, a shuddering breath, and his mouth opened, taking her softness in. He didn’t seek to arouse, just to connect, his lips forming a seal as he began a slow, rhythmless suckle. His eyes closed, tension bleeding from his neck. Glitch cradled his head, her thighs a warm bracket against his temples, her thumb stroking his hairline in slow, steady circles. She felt him go quiet inside, the desperate hunger replaced by a deep, needy comfort. He nursed like that for a long time, his breathing evening out against her skin, the world narrowing to that wet, warm sanctuary. Lalita, observing from the threshold, recorded the shift in his vital signs: the spike of cortisol receding, replaced by the elevated oxytocin and endorphin profile of secure attachment. Her logic cores whirred, assimilating this new data point. The act was not solely about consumption or dominance; it was also remediation, a biological reset. She watched Glitch’s placid face, the absent-minded gentleness of her hand in his hair, and her own matrices sought a comparable function.