The White Rose by jarjarjarjarjar

The White Rose by jarjarjarjarjar

Part I

Even after so many years John still struggled to get to sleep. The machines that kept him alive also kept him awake. As the respirator forced air into his chest there was a slight whine from the pump, followed by a slight whistle as the air was forced out again. The lights that served as status indicators on the devices were just bright enough to bother him even with his eyes closed.

The alarm fired, and he opened his eyes. Only fifteen minutes to go, time to get to work. The only external sign of activity was the flickering of his eyes across the screen that hung down from the ceiling, and a barely perceptible twitch in his right hand. Although those were the only muscles he could still control, he could feel everything. Feel the catheter in his urethra, and the evacuation tube in his rectum. Feel the canula in the back of his hand fitted to prime his weakened immune system with drugs if he ever fell ill. Feel the feeding tube taped to his cheek and passed down his nose. Feel the tube in his larynx supplying him with air. Feel the compression of the full body Lycra suit he had to wear to stop his blood clotting, feel the constant undulation of the mattress as air pockets filled and emptied at regular intervals to shift his weight and limit compression sores.

He focused on the work. He had been a child prodigy (not that he’d had anything else do do but read) and had graduated in computing before he was sixteen. With hard work and careful investment along with the latest in home automation, he was independently wealthy and almost self sufficient by the age of 30. He had been careful with what work he had taken on since; all working towards a plan he had been preparing for nearly half his life.

John’s thesis had been on novel uses of industrial nanotechnology. Since the invention of programmable nanomachines in 2030 the world of manufacturing had changed almost beyond comprehension. The robots that looked after him were all built by those microscopic machines, and could rebuild the machinery to perform different jobs in a matter of hours. It had been a wild few years, but worldwide treaties had stopped progress shortly after his paper had been published.

He could still remember the opening paragraphs of his freshman textbook.

“Level one operation restores function, seeking and bridging critical failures in the system - a mechanical sticking plaster. Level two operation will search through global databases to locate a blueprint, and revert the system to factory configuration. Level three operation will use a combination of artificial intelligence, database searching and iterative manufacture to improve system operation relative to specified objectives. Level three operation is not yet enabled, but is in the initial stages of development.”

Although the experiment at the core of his doctorate was a small act - changing a red rose’s petals white, a level two operation - the technique he’d discovered meant that it was possible to alter biology with the nanotechnology, a step too far for most people.

Despite the ban, he had continued working on a theoretical basis, and within a few years had established that altering human genetic code was not just possible, but relatively straightforward. The memory capacity of the nanomachine cloud was such that it could simulate the whole human body, locating and bypassing the failures in his body that would see him free of the machines that kept him alive. A trivial level one operation.

At least, that’s what the simulation said. All nanomachines were produced with hard code burnt into them that would stop them from operating on anything apart from inanimate objects, and ten years of work had left him almost no closer to the goal he had set. Almost. He’d found a way in, a holdover from the initial experimental nanomachines, devices with only a few bytes of memory each. The time clock in each one was almost a “lizard brain”, sat underneath the newer processors - the design worked and nobody could think of a reason to replace it - except John, and he kept quiet when he realized. The clock reset to zero at midnight, and at the moment before midnight it was possible to overflow the primitive memory, which cascaded to the wider system.

He’d suffered years of failure, but step by step he’d closed in on the target, each experiment a little bit closer to restoring full control of the nanomachines. The hack required wiping huge parts of the system, interfaces and protocols so that he could fool the nanomachines into seeing no difference between an inanimate object and a living organism, and it had taken ten years. But he’d finally completed it.

The rose stem was set in a plain glass vase next to a small dish which was loaded with nutrients. The flower was bright red, but beginning to wilt. Both items were sealed into an airtight container with a small tube passing from the outside into the bottom of the tube. At the other end of the tube was a smaller vessel, girded by electromagnetic coils. There was a small robot arm next to the experiment. Due to the electromagnetic isolation all commands were relayed using light - a system of laser lights and photoelectric cells provided the communication.

John commanded the robot arm to load the nanomachines into the smaller vessel . Once the concentration was sufficient for the test he turned on the magnetic induction field that activated, energized and communicated with the nanomachines. 98% had been captured by the induction field, better than standard. Although his expression remained slack he was smiling inwardly. He clicked the start button on the screen, and as the countdown hit zero the induction field reprogrammed the nanomachines.

It was a success; every single one of them accepted the new instructions. Without hesitation, he started the experiment.

The solution was pumped into the vase, and with a zoom lens he was able to watch the nanomachines climbing the stem to the rose flower. The experiment itself was contained within a Faraday cage about the size of a walk in closet - the electrical impulses that the nanomachines depended upon were blocked by the cage, which confined the experiment to the device. The cage was in the corner of the room and was familiar to Laura to the point of being inconspicuous, regardless of what was in it.

John had watched this same thing five hundred times or more. If everything worked according to plan, the nanomachines would create functioning capillaries to bridge the gap to the dish, and miniature pumps to pull the nutrient solution into the rose. If everything went according to plan would be able to continue growing with no root system, and he would be days away from a cure for his illness.

Just at the moment the change would start to take effect, the doorbell rang. He quickly shut off the cameras and while leaving the experiment to continue. Even though he liked Laura he wasn’t sure whether he could trust her not to turn him in to the authorities, since nano-tampering was a serious offense. There was no reason for her to look in the cupboard anyway.

He switched his screen over to the camera in the vestibule between the outside and his room. Laura had already changed into sterile scrubs, put on her glasses, and had prepared everything she would need on a trolley.

“Dead yet?” she asked, knowing John would be listening.

“Yes” he typed, before unlocking the front door.

Laura strode in. She was tall - he guessed around 5’ 11", but wasn’t awkward with it; and although she used a pair of anti-grav assistance pads to lift him from the bed he could feel her taught muscles through her clothes every time she touched him. Her hair was simply swept back for her visits but he often noticed she had colored streaks dyed into her black locks.

He was attracted to her, and she knew it. he couldn’t do anything to hide his penis, semi-erect and standing partly proud from his body in a sheath on the compression suit. She looked at it and smiled, not offended by the display, not even really paying attention to it. It wasn’t as if there was anything he could do to without her explicit approval. “It’s nice to be made welcome. Do you need anything before we start?” He blinked once for no - it was quicker than typing. She nodded in agreement. “OK then, let’s get you cleaned up.”

Once a week, Laura would come around and deal with certain tasks that the robots couldn’t yet do. She would undress him, bathe him, wash his hair, swap his various tubes for sterile replacements. Changing the throat tube was the worst one - she had to get the replacement right and quickly otherwise he would asphyxiate. John had signed a waiver with the health authority for a single nurse to perform this task - the fewer people he had in here, the less chance there was of anyone finding out what he was doing.

She left the catheter until the end. withdrawing it from his engorged member was tricky, and her hands on his genitals as she worked it out of him only aroused him further.

“Are the cameras off?”

He blinked twice. She always asked.

Her hands were still on his penis, even though the catheter was out. She worked expertly, with no wasted movement. All of his senses, his focus, narrowed in onto his crotch, magnified, faster, harder, the periphery darkening as the feeling grew to a white heat. He closed his eyes. The ventilator picked up on his elevated heart rate and increased his breathing almost enough. His brain called on muscles all over his body to spasm has he reached his climax, but the autonomic response of his final release was the only sign his body gave. The ventilator slowed again.

Laura changed her latex gloves, and washed the semen and sweat off him. She replaced the catheter into his now flaccid penis, and began to dress him. The compression suit was white, and reached from just behind his toes to a low neckline, and covered all of his arms down to thumb loops at the hands. The seams were broad to reduce the pressure of the elastic and the only decoration an identifying barcode on the left of his chest, confirming that the suit had been custom made for him.

She then carefully lifted him back onto the bed, making sure not to tangle any of the wires or pipes. It was a standard issue hospital item, on casters and capable of raising and lowering on command, or elevating his feet, or lifting him into a sitting position.

She stayed for a while afterwards, as she usually did - he was her last job of the day so she could take as long as she liked, often until the sun began to rise. John liked to think they had a connection. He asked her about her own thesis, her other clients (she was a contractor for the health authority to cover her tuition), TV shows, anything. She laughed at his jokes and he died a little each time.

The clock swung round to four, and Laura looked up. “shit, is that the time? I’ve gotta be somewhere. Same time next week?” she said, running out of the door. He blinked twice.

The camera was focused on the parking dock. He lived on the 530th floor but anti-grav technology had made that pretty meaningless, apart from the view - the building hadn’t even been built with elevators. Her bike was perched on slender landing legs, with the body leaning on its tail and looking a little like a mechanical mantis. Then Laura ran in from the left of the screen, already wearing the pressure suit that interfaced with the bike, including the air pipe that wrapped around her shoulders from the conformal tank in the small of her back.

As she approached the bike an arm with a padded L-shaped rest extended from the rear of the bike. She sat down on it, nestling her rear close into the angle. It clamped onto her back and connected her suit’s air system to the bike. The arm rose slowly, pushing her head towards the aerodynamic fairing at the top of the bike’s body. Her face disappeared into it. He’d learned from the Internet that the inside of the fairing would be adjusting to the shape of her head, holding it firmly but comfortably.

At the same time, what looked like pointed teeth extended from the body of the bike, wrapping around her torso. Once she was fully enclosed, the L-shaped arm folded into a U-shape, locking her body firmly to the bike.

She placed her feet onto the pedal controls and a panel rotated out, holding her legs firm all the way past her knees. She extended her arms towards the landing legs, where control levers folded out to meet her hands. A clamp grabbed each arm at the elbow, holding them tight to the landing legs leaving only the lower arms free to grab the controls. She pressed the starter and the bike body rotated until it was parallel with the ground, although she would be looking at a sensor generated image looking forwards. The powerful anti-grav jets kicked in, and she quickly accelerated away. He watched until she disappeared into the smog.

He went back to his work. Enough time had passed for success or failure to be apparent. Switching the screen over to the test chamber, his heart leaped. The nanomachines had acted exactly as programmed, and the rose looked as vigorous as it had the moment it had been cut. There was one further check he needed to make before progressing - to make sure the device would fail safe. That would need to wait until the next midnight.

Part II

After sleeping for most of the day he awoke a little before eleven. Time was moving along, and he needed to be ready by midnight. He looked through his messages, and found the one he was looking for - the package he was expecting had arrived. It was shuttled up to his floor, and collected by one of the mobile robot arms that assisted him in his work. He could have built it using the fabricator in his apartment but it was such a complex piece that contracting it out was quicker.

The arm tore into the package, and opened it. A magnetic coil, smaller than the one in the experiment but fitted with a syringe driver at a precise angle. He commanded a second robot arm to help. His right hand was lifted clear of the desk by the second robot, and the first one slid the coil onto his wrist. It was a snug fit, but the syringe driver lined up perfectly with the canula. The robot connected the coil to a power supply, and then to the USB hub on his computer. He tested the device and found it worked correctly.

He turned his attention to the nanomachine incubator. This was a device where new nanomachines were “grown”, almost like bacteria in a solution of minerals. once seeded with a few devices they quickly created more until reaching an optimum concentration. He had more than enough available, and so commanded the robot arm to pre-load the magnetic induction coil with nanomachines again, setting the device to inject his custom code at midnight.

At one minute to midnight he was watching the rose. The seconds ticked round. and as the three hands came together at the top of the dial, he saw the artificial structures in the test chamber collapse; the standard code had re-asserted itself, recognized an organic environment and automatically inerted. It was safe, and safe enough to not use the cage. Flicking to the other screen, he confirmed that the new batch of nanomachines had accepted the custom code. Everything was now ready, and all that was left to do was to set the program in motion; everything would be fully automatic after that. He wondered whether it would be painful.

He flexed his index finger to move the cursor over the control on the screen, and then tapped.

The robot arms started their dance. A syringe was loaded with the customized nanomachines, and then passed through the hidden hatch on the wall. Although he hadn’t programmed any ceremony into the process, it almost seemed though it was some sort of sacred procession. The syringe was installed into the driver, and a countdown worked down from five to zero. At that point, the contents of the syringe were passed through the canula into his veins.

For a moment, nothing. Then the nanomachines connected with the induction field. Initial data was displayed on the screen, binary first and then hexadecimal as the nanomachines organized themselves into progressively higher levels of function. before long the screen displayed “STATUS: NOMINAL” and a flashing prompt. Still under automation, the computer entered the command to commence level one operation.

“SCANNING” displayed on the screen. A crude drawing of a skeleton appeared, which was progressively refined as the scan continued. Progressive layers of the circulatory, digestive and lymphatic systems were layered on top as the nanomachines built an image of the “system” they needed to repair. The nervous system was the last to complete.

“ERROR DETECTED” flashed the screen. “discontinuity detected in multiplex wiring system. Bridging…Please wait”

Pins and needles shot through his whole body for a moment. Then nothing. Then he felt his toes, curling and uncurling. He felt muscles, inert for years, clenching and tensing. before long every muscle in his body was straining at once. The ventilator accelerated his breathing. Then his body relaxed.

“Bridging Complete”

He moved his index finger to clear the message. But rather than the imperceptible twitch, the tip of his finger jerked an inch to the right. Daring to believe, he tried to lift his whole arm, something he hadn’t been able to do for twenty five years. His atrophied muscles could barely handle the weight but his arm was under his control. He tried all of his limbs in turn, all responding correctly, and twisted his neck from side to side as much as the collection of tubes and wires could allow. It worked!

There was one last test. He reached back to the computer control and found the respirator controls. Very carefully, he reduced the pressure to a level that would barely stop him from fainting. Would he breathe? could he breathe? He tried, and watched his chest rise and fall as commanded. Slowly, he reduced the ventilator assistance until it was possible for him to breath against the ventilator flow. For a few moments he had to think about it, but his body quickly remembered to keep a steady rhythm.

He grabbed at the pipe in his mouth, and tried to remember how Laura removed it. Arching his back and making his windpipe as straight as possible, he pulled on the pipe and it slipped from his throat. For the first time in years he was free of the machine. He did the thing he’d been yearning to do for years, and screamed, for as long and as loud as he could.

Part III

The last six days had been harder than he’d ever imagined, but he had made use of the anti-grav lifting pads which Laura used to lift him to reduce the weight on his weakened legs, meaning he was just about able to stand and walk. He rediscovered food, devouring five meals a day to ingest enough protein to rebuild his muscles. But the induction coil remained on his wrist, and he made sure to plug it back in to his PC just before midnight every day to re-inject the custom code into the nanomachines. The fear that the process wouldn’t work was still present, but had subsided a little. He had ordered a new coil with a built in power pack and mini computer so that he could reprogram the nanomachines automatically, but it would be a few more days before it was delivered from the fabricator.

Laura would be visiting that night, and he was looking forward to surprising her. He laid out his new suit on the bed and got ready. He’d grown to love to love his time in the shower, even to like the sound of his own voice - it was still a little scratchy but it was getting there.

Dressing still took longer than it should - buttons especially. But he finished in good time, and made sure that dinner was going to be ready for just after midnight, when he expected to hear the doorbell. He sat down in front of the screen, using the cameras to watch for her arrival. After several false alarms he spotted her bike closing rapidly. She parked up in one fluid move, and shut down the engine. Almost as a reflex the bike settled into the resting position, lifting Laura from a prone position.

He’d watched this many times before. Laura was deposited onto the dock. A new suit today - black with a thin red stripe down the side. She looked good. He felt warm. The doorbell rang as he was walking over to the door.

“Dead yet?”

He pressed the button next to the door, and it slid open.

“No.”

Laura fainted to the floor before he could catch her.

A short while later he had used the anti-grav lifting pads to move her to the bed, and laid her down on it. She hadn’t had time to change into her scrubs, and this was the first time he’d seen one of her suits close up. It was tight, but structured - a step on from the g-suits fighter pilots used in the last century, it was constructed of a sort of artificial muscle, which constricted much faster than air pressure to keep blood from rushing away from the head. The collar reached almost to her ears, and when stiffened it completely immobilized her neck. Gloves were built into the suit, as were boots with a modest heel. He couldn’t see any way of removing the suit, or the breathing apparatus attached at the small of her back with a pipe running up her back and over her shoulder - although the mouthpiece was hanging loose.

Her eyes opened, and she jerked awake. “Jesus, John. What the fuck?”

“It worked!”

“What worked? what the fuck is going on?” Laura was still staring at him, barely able to comprehend what was happening.

“My work. The nanomachines. I made them…fix me.”

“Fix you? You aren’t a robot, it’s not possible…it can’t be…” she hauled herself onto her elbows.

He smiled. “It’s always been possible, but it’s never been allowed - banned almost as soon as I realized it was possible. I’ve been working on this for longer than I’ve known you, but you gave me the push I needed. I wanted to be good enough for you.” he stepped forward, holding out his hand.

She shrank away from him, looking around uneasily. “I don’t…what I did for you, it’s not what you think.”

He took another step. “I did all of this,” he swept his hand around the room “all of this for you.”

She swung her legs down to the floor. “Can you back off? You’re making me nervous.”

He quickly retreated and sat down heavily on the floor in the furthest corner, grabbing his knees and trying to look as small as possible. “Sorry. I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m new to all this.”

She kept her distance, but her expression softened. “What you’ve done here is amazing. Incredible really. You’ve made a huge breakthrough and I’m so proud of you. but what you’re saying, it’s just…”

The clock struck 12.

Immediately the nanomachines reverted to their original programming, and inerted themselves as soon as they recognized an organic system. he slumped and stopped breathing as he lost all control of his body again.

Laura jumped up. “John! Fuck it, fuck, fuck!”

She rushed over to him and scooped him up; no need for the anti-grav pads. She threw him down onto the bed, set the mattress level into the resuscitation position and quickly reset the ventilator. Roughly pulling his head back she forced the tube into his throat and connected it up to the machine, dexterous even through the gloves of her suit. He was just beginning to feel light-headed when the air began to flow.

He had so many things he wanted to say to her, but all he could do was blink while she set everything back into place, stripped him naked and replaced all of the tubes he would need once again.

“John, I’ve got to explain something to you. What I’ve done…what we did when I visited you, I did as a friend. You needed it, and I was the only one who could provide it. It didn’t mean anything.”

He blinked once.

“What I’m trying to say is that it’s not you. I’m just not…into guys, that’s all.”

A slight pause. He blinked twice.

Laura dressed him in a compression suit and joined the rest of the pipes up to the various systems around the bed. she was careful to avoid touching his penis as much as she could. Once she was done she pulled the desk over to John and set his right hand in position so he could operate the computer. He started typing.

“Thanks for saving my life.” flashed up on screen.

“What happened?” asked Laura.

“Fail-safe system. I needed to reconnect at 12.” She followed his eyes to the induction coil.

“Dinner is in the oven. Probably ruined. Eat if you like.” he continued.

“I think I’d better go, but I’ll get it all cleaned up in there before I leave. All this…I don’t blame you but it’s a lot to take in.”

“Come next week?” flashed up.

“I’ll be here.” she said. she grazed his cheek with her gloved hand as she turned to walk away.

Part IV

The next night he injected himself with a further set of nanomachines. The process was much less painful this time. Once he had removed all of the tubes he stood up, this time without the assistance of anti-grav technology. He could feel the strength coming into his body, and he felt strong enough to get back to work. He left the canula in place.

The new induction coil for his wrist had arrived, and it was a work of art. The coils were much more tightly wrapped and covered in a broad rubber strap, and with the small touchscreen display it could pass for an extravagant smartwatch. With the built in power pack he would be able to go for several weeks without having to recharge, removing any concerns he had about the previous night’s disaster.

He turned to the rose in the test chamber. It was looking very wilted, and he wasn’t sure whether he could fix it. He ran the process and filled the induction chamber with the nanomachines. This new batch had been pre-programmed to level two - he had copied in the code he had used for his thesis so many years ago, and since it had uploaded correctly he hadn’t bothered to check it. John flicked the switch and watched the nanomachines do their work.

“SCANNING” appeared on the screen. A dot flicked from side to side, indicating processing was taking place.

“LOCAL SCHEMATIC NOT FOUND, SEARCHING DATABASES”. He’d prepared for this. He knew the nanomachines would not find any machine like the rose in their internal data and would go to the Internet to find the information required - in this case the sequenced DNA of the rose. The query was routed through a dozen countries to ensure anonymity, he couldn’t afford to be found. After a few minutes the screen changed.

“SCHEMATIC LOCATED. MACHINE DESIGNATION: HYBRID TEA ROSE”

“OPTION NOTICE: VARIANT “WHITE” AVAILABLE. REPLACE VARIANT “RED” WITH VARIANT “WHITE”? (Y/n)”

He pressed Enter.

“ITERATING CONSTRUCTION. PLEASE WAIT”

On screen, the display showed a rose, slowly growing roots and leaves, and eventually a flower. The nanomachines were working together as a single computer, simulating the life cycle of the rose to understand what needed to be repaired. Quickly, a number of parts were flashing red on screen.

“ITERATION COMPLETE, READY FOR RECONSTRUCTION. ESTIMATED TIME TO COMPLETION TEN SECONDS. COMMENCE OPERATION? (Y/n)?”

He pressed enter again.

The nanomachines swarmed over the rose and the pool of nutrients. In seconds they had already begun to construct functioning cells based on the iterated simulation. In less than a minute the rose had been reconstructed from a wilting stem to a vigorous plant. The color drained out of the petals, leaving the flower as white as snow. He punched the air.

Level two still worked on organic systems, and that meant options. He logged into the government website to confirm that his sequenced DNA was available, and downloaded a copy to be certain. He needed a backup just in case. John still burned inside for Laura, and if she liked girls, then a girl is what she would get.

He started to program the robots to fill the syringe driver as he had done previously, but this time with a higher concentration of nanomachines, upgraded to level two with his original code. He wondered whether it would hurt more or less than last time. It took him five days to finish the job, and he was so focused on the task he didn’t think to check in on the rose. He set the alarm for 11:50, and tried to sleep.

John was awake to hear the alarm. He made the final preparations, inserted his arm into the original coil, and lined up the canula. He got comfortable on the mattress, laid still for a few moments, and hit the button to start the process. The countdown began at two minutes. He watched it count down, all the way to three, two, one seconds. The nanomachines flowed into his body, loaded with his new code. He watched the screen flicker into life again.

“SYSTEM NOMINAL” displayed again, and again he watched the program automatically enter the code to begin the operation, this time at level two, and flicked through the various initial screens.

“SCANNING”

A 3D model of his body appeared on the screen.

“LOCAL SCHEMATIC NOT FOUND, SEARCHING DATABASES” “SCHEMATIC LOCATED. MACHINE DESIGNATION: HOMO SAPIENS” “OPTION NOTICE: VARIANT “XX” AVAILABLE. REPLACE VARIANT “XY” WITH VARIANT “XX”? (Y/n)”

He’d made the program pause here to give him the option of giving up. But he hit the enter key almost as fast as the computer would have done it itself. The downloaded data would replace the Y chromosome in his genetic code with a “generic” X chromosome from the human genome aggregated from the billions of uploaded DNA sequences in the database, with all known deficiencies and mutations removed.

“ITERATING CONSTRUCTION. PLEASE WAIT”

the 3D image of his body disappeared, and in its place a single round cell - a simulated fertilized egg. It split in two, and again, and continued to divide. Seconds later the display was obviously a human embryo, and a few seconds later it was clear that the nanomachines were simulating a virtual life at many thousands of times the speed of life. The image on screen flashed through childhood, and spurted into puberty before flashing into maturity. Sensing the start of decay the simulation reversed course, settling on the optimum configuration of around 21 years old.

“ITERATION COMPLETE, READY FOR RECONSTRUCTION. ESTIMATED TIME TO COMPLETION THIRTEEN HOURS, TWELVE MINUTES, EIGHT SECONDS. COMMENCE OPERATION? (Y/n)?”

There was a small hesitation this time, not because of any fear but only to take in the moment. John pressed the Enter key. For a moment, nothing happened, but then he felt a strange feeling in his right hand, which spread up his arm and across his whole body. On his computer screen the display showed that the swarm’s AI was cataloging all of the functions of the “machine” they were working on - they were designed to use the level one operations to perform repairs “on the fly” with the machine they were rebuilding still functioning at a basic level. He was comforted to see that continued operation of the machine’s volatile memory was assigned top priority.

He thought back to the later chapters of his thesis where he described the possible applications of level two operations to biological systems. “The nanomachines are capable of working out the most efficient method of reconstruction - in most cases this will start with the stem cells in bone marrow, ensuring any new cells produced naturally by the body will have the new DNA. Once this is complete, the nanomachines will begin to break down extraneous or unwanted extra equipment in order to reclaim resources for the reconstruction. Where a reconfiguration is required, core equipment may be broken down and rebuilt to the new specification.”

He felt an ache in his abdomen. Looking to the screen he saw that the nanomachines were starting to temporarily assume the function of his liver, kidneys and intestinal tract, while also turning the now redundant organs into a liquid. He remembered his lecturer’s words from when they discussed how the level two process worked. “In effect, it’s like a sliding tile puzzle toy - the machines need room to slide everything around”.

With a cache of material the nanomachines were able to accelerate their work, and start the major processes required. A searing pain in his lower back marked the point where his pelvis was cut in two by the machines so that extra material could be let in. as he looked down at his body, skin began to tauten in some places and slacken in others as his bones were reconfigured. As they worked on his skull he could hear a vibration as cheekbones, brow and chin were corrected. Each and every bone in his body was shaved, broken and reshaped until his skeleton met the specification. The flesh hung loose on his now shrunken frame.

With the skeleton complete the nanomachines moved on to the soft tissue, a subtler change perhaps but no less vital. The nanomachines cut, joined, moved and replaced all levels of the dermis, bridging gaps with silvery nanomachine scaffolding while awaiting delivery of replacement skin cells. It was four hours into the process at the point that the nanomachine swarm began to deconstruct his penis; he looked up at the clock for a moment to mark the time. The silver sheen of the nanomachines coated his genitals, and within two seconds they had melted away. At almost the same time the same silver sheen appeared over his chest. His nipples appeared to swell, and then behind them the gunmetal gray flesh began to expand. He was glad that the swelling stopped quickly, as he had been worried about the breasts growing large enough to give him back trouble. He assumed he must be a B-cup at most.

Between the valley created by his new breasts he could see that the work on his external genitalia was almost complete. “He” crossed his mind again, and John realized that neither the pronoun or the name were correct. Whoever she was, she was no longer him.

The changes continued, with fat redistribution and reconstruction of the vascular system. Her internal genitalia were constructed shortly afterwards, and now that the major reconfiguration was complete the nanomachines worked to reinstall the organs of the lower abdomen. now nine hours into the process, the nanomachines turned to the finishing touches - the control mechanisms. Nerve connections all across the body had been severed by the changes, and needed to be reconnected.

As each nerve connected to its new location, John felt a shiver as her new skin gained sensation. It was hard to think straight as the feeling in her body grew stronger, but she tried to think of a new name. She couldn’t think of anything that seemed right until the nanomachines completed the connection to his clitoris. The test signal sent by the nanomachines pulsed sexual pleasure straight up her spine, and fired neurons into action.

She suddenly thought of the flowers that had started her down the path she was on. “Rosa” she said to herself. “My name is Rosa.” On the screen, the display flashed amber.

“SWITCHING BIOELECTRIC DEVICE TO SLEEP MODE DUE TO OXYGEN DEMAND DURING PULMONARY RECONFIGURATION”

After a moment of light-headedness Rosa fell into a deep sleep.

Part V

Three long beeps sounded, and Rosa woke up. The screen said “OPERATION COMPLETE”. She looked around the room, and looked down at her new body. The alabaster skin seemed impossibly thin and delicate, the arms and legs slender and smooth. She stood up, noticing that she had lost around two inches of height during the change. Rosa headed for the bathroom, and looked at herself in the full length mirror. She was a little below average height for a woman, she thought, and although there was little fat on her body she didn’t have the amazonian stature of Laura. Pretty, not stunning like she was. Black hair cascaded past her shoulders. She touched her cheek, her hair, her neck, and then moved her hands across her body, first on the stomach, the arm, the thigh, and then the breast. She shuddered at the sensation, which was stronger than anything she’d felt as a man. She ran back to the bed and laid down on her back.

With her right hand she approached her pubic region, just a single index finger pushing at her clitoris initially. The sensation almost blew her mind. A second finger joined it, gently circling, flicking, kneading. She felt the wetness grow as her arousal increased. Her left hand fell to her breasts, plucking at the nipples and gently kneading the flesh. The sensation grew and grew until it was crashing over her like ocean waves in a storm, higher, and higher and higher. The pleasure filled her whole body, quivering from the tips of her toes to the top of her head. The long moan surprised her - it was the first time she’d heard her new voice, and it turned her on even more. Her hand thrashed away at her clitoris, and Rosa could hardly believe that she could be this high and still not be orgasming. Finally she came, her whole body spasming uncontrollably as she screamed at the top of her voice.

Although her conscious mind still remembered what it was to have a male orgasm and felt sated, the newer, baser parts of her brain screamed for more. She continued to manipulate herself and quickly started to ascend back towards another orgasm. She screamed inwardly and outwardly, touching nirvana again, and again and again. She tired eventually, and fell asleep with her hand still holding her sex.

She was fortunate to awake before midnight came round again. She hurriedly searched for and found the portable induction coil and strapped it to her wrist. the screen on the coil flicked on, and confirmed capture of the nanomachines. She was safe for about a week and a half, but she needed to be careful - if the nanomachines attempted an emergency reversion or shutdown she could be a pile of gray goo in seconds, or worse.

She stood naked in the middle of the room. Strewn all around was the detritus of his old life as a crippled man; that would all need to go, and fast. She removed most of John’s clothes from the wardrobe and threw them into the trash chute, and went the computer to order new clothes. The choice was dizzying, and she didn’t know anything about fashion. She ordered a sizing suit first, which dropped out of the fabricator after ten seconds. It was a black full body stocking with attached hood, feet and hands, designed to measure the wearer so that clothes fitted perfectly. She put it on and waited while it adjusted to her body by loosening or tightening threads that passed through in every direction.

Immediately the measurements were transferred online, and confirmed a perfect size 6. Rosa selected a range of items from sportswear to ballgowns and waited for the fabricator to complete the order. She kept the sizing suit on as she waited.

The fabricator auto-queued the items with the simplest being produced first - so a sports bra and matching panties dropped first. She stripped out of the suit, and awkwardly worked her way into the bra. It crushed her breasts hard to her chest, stopping them from moving even when she jumped around; she liked the way it felt. She put on the underwear too, and waited for the next items to drop into the tray.

Before long she had put together an outfit. A skater dress in red with thick black tights, biker boots, and a tight leather jacket. It was the kind of thing John had liked. It was strange, already thinking of him as another person. She hoped Laura would have the same taste in women.

Part VI

“Dead yet?”

She looked at Laura on the screen, stood at the front door and on time for their usual appointment. The letters “y-e-s” popped up as Rosa typed, and then afterwards she unlocked the door. Laura walked in, a little more slowly than usually. She had stayed in her pressure suit. Laura quickly noticed Rosa, sat at the keyboard.

“Who are you?”

“I’m…I used to be…”

“What are you doing here? Where’s John?” Laura squared up to Rosa.

“I’m right here.” Replied Rosa, with timidity.

Laura stepped back, with a look of bewilderment. Rosa could see a flicker of recognition. “No…it can’t be you. What have you done with John?”

Rosa grabbed her hand, the touch of Laura’s soft skin electric against her own. “It’s me Laura, I promise.”

Laura left her hand in Rosa’s. “Prove it.”

Rosa sighed. “I always switched the cameras off.”

Laura’s eyes opened wide, and tears began to well up. “Fuck! what did you do? No, no - I’m pretty sure I already know what you’ve done, but why?”

“I did it for you. Do you like it?” Rosa twirled for Laura, tossing her hair to and fro the way she’d seen in the movies, and hoping she was doing it right.

“I lo…this is too much,” Laura stuttered. “Is this something you really wanted?”

“All I wanted was to be with you. I had to find a way.”

Laura grabbed Rosa by the ass and dragged her close. Rosa could see Laura’s skin was flushed. “I can’t believe you did this…for me. Did it hurt?”

“It was worth it.” Rosa stood on tiptoes, and placed a kiss on Laura’s lips.

“My name is Rosa. Pleased to meet you.”

Laura pulled Rosa’s head toward her and the two women locked lips again, tongues turning together in a fond embrace. Rosa began to explore Laura’s body,running her hands across the compressive, stretchy fabric and feeling the way the suit held her. She came up for air. “Is there a zip on this thing?”

Laura giggled. “No need to rush, is there? Besides, I made some adjustments to it - you aren’t the only engineering genius around here, you know.” Laura guided Rosa’s hand to the crotch of the suit. “Press hard.” Rosa pushed her fingers into where Laura’s sex would be. She felt a pulse of vibration through her fingertips, and the suit’s anti-g compression system cycled momentarily. Laura’s eyes closed as the pleasure flashed through her. She ran her gloved hand through Rosa’s hair.

“Is it weird?” Laura asked. “I know it’s weird. But I’ve always got off on things like this. I only ride the bike so I can wear this suit all the time without anyone caring.”

Rosa pressed hard again on Laura’s crotch. Laura squealed a little.

Rosa was getting a little turned on. She’d loved watching Laura in the suit, and was imagining what it must feel like from the inside. “I think it’s hot. Can I get one?”

“Sure you can. I’ve got my specs for it in the cloud and it won’t take more than a couple of minutes in your fancy fabricator. You’ve got your size I guess?”

Arm in arm the two women moved over to the computer, and quickly entered the details and size information for the suit. Laura sent the order to the fabricator unit.

“Let’s get you undressed, shall we?”

Rosa shrugged off her leather jacket and let it fall to the floor. Laura sidled up behind her and unzipped the dress, surprising Rosa with the dexterity of her gloved hands. boots and tights followed. Rosa tried to remove the bra and panties seductively, and failed. “you need some work on that” Laughed Laura, as she embraced Rosa in her nakedness, caressing her curves, stroking her, fondling her, kissing her. The custom hardware of Laura’s suit picked up on her elevated heart rate and reacted to increase her arousal by squeezing even tighter.

The fabricator chime sounded, and a white package dropped out. Rosa eagerly ripped into it and laid the suit out on the floor. It was pure black and had the boots and gloves were built in. The oxygen system was suppplied separately but she could see how it was supposed to attach. The neckline was slashed to the all the way to the crotch rather than being under the chin like Laura’s suit, but it was otherwise the same, although it seemed almost impossibly small.

Rosa almost leaped into the suit and found that the fabric was incredibly elastic. She put her feet into the attached boots and pulled the suit up past her knees. “I need to warn you about some…surprises.” Said laura. But Rosa had already found them. The two dildos, one for her ass and one for the vagina, nestled against their targets. “I guess I’m still a virgin…” Rosa said, “But here goes nothing.”

The two plugs slotted home with little resistance. As the suit fabric compressed around her crotch the dildos were forced deeper, making Rosa gasp at the sensation. “How can you cope with this? It’s insane!”

Laura caressed Rosa’s shoulders and piled her long hair up high on her head. “You’ll get used to it, sort of. C’mon, let’s get this the rest of the way on.”

“I need to take the coil off for a second.” Rosa unstrapped the coil from her wrist. Laura helped Rosa into the arms, and made sure her hands fitted into the gloves properly. The suit popped over shoulders and she could already feel it bearing down on her body. Her breasts were embraced by the suit, braced firmly and with the nipples held between what felt like a gentle thumb and forefinger, but the suit was still undone at the front. She refitted the coil, surprised by the amount of feeling through the gloves - it didn’t seem possible through a fabric. “What happens now?” Rosa asked.

“Swipe up with your right index finger, and the suit will do the rest. Ready?”

Rosa placed her finger at the base of the gap and slowly moved it upwards. the seam sealed, almost like an invisible zip, until she reached the base of her chin. She could feel a slight resistance when she moved, but no restriction. Looking down at her body she saw it looked leaner, tighter, stronger. She felt powerful. “I could get used to this.” She said.

“You’ll have to,” Said Laura. “It’s locked on until you reach a target - twenty orgasms.” She smiled. “And that’s not all. After every orgasm the suit will get a bit tighter and stiffer, which will make it difficult to breathe. That’s why you’ll want this,” she handed Rosa the air supply for the suit. “It will pump pure oxygen for you. It locks on as soon as you fit it, so you might want to leave it for…”

Rosa had already clipped the pack to the small of her back and routed the hose up along her back and across her shoulder. The mouthpiece looked like an extension of the suit and would encompass her mouth and nose; it would not allow her to speak so before installing it she made sure that the touchscreen attached to the coil on her wrist could be operated through the gloves.

“…later. Or not.”

She fitted the mask and felt it seal against the suit. The cool, rich air flowed into her throat. Laura picked up her own supply. “Twenty for me too.” she said, before sealing the mask against her suit. The two women moved close together, touching, exploring, enjoying each other. The suits’ equipment was fitted all over the body, not just in the crotch, amplifying and modifying each caress to enhance the experience. Rosa and Laura grabbed at each other, pushing and pulling their way to the bed and landing together on it with such force that it was moved several feet across the room, dislodging a power cable.

Before long Rosa was riding high and about to tip over the edge. Laura was working at her crotch expertly, playing the touch sensitive electronics like a musical instrument while Rosa fondled at where her nipples were encased but still sensitive. She closed her eyes as the wave crashed over her, thigh muscles tensing against the pleasure.

At once the suit tightened, around the waist, along the limbs and down the length of her torso, driving the dildos in harder. Her waist was noticeably shrunk and she could no longer inhale as deeply. She tried to scream but it was muffled by the mouthpiece. Laura kept up her efforts and Rosa quickly came again. This time the suit stiffened, giving noticeably more resistance to her. It was amazing to feel, and the suggestion of what was to come was a thrill. She took Laura’s hand and laid her down on her back on the bed. It was time to even the score.

Part VII

Ignored by both of them the rose in the Faraday cage was transforming as the nanomachines tripped into level 3 after the disconnected power cable disabled the induction coil. An error in the code John had injected meant that instead of inerting themselves, they progressed into their final and most radical stage of operation. The nanomachines attempted to determine the function of the rose from observations and a pattern database of industrial machinery. After a few moments they had made a decision - the photosynthesis process was the highest order operation taking place, and should be optimized. The nanomachine swarm processed the function and worked out the most efficient method, which was to replace unreliable solar power with a fusion battery. With essentially infinite energy production of oxygen would increase 500%.

The nanomachines seeped out of the rose and searched for the what was required for the transformation. restricted by the Faraday cage the only suitable materials were the robot arm that had been used for the experiment. The nanomachines quickly stripped down the arm to components, and deconstructed any unneeded parts into small piles of the various compounds and materials that had been used. The nanomachine worked quickly to manufacture the new device, and once complete they undertook a final check of the device to ensure that it was functioning properly. With that complete they shut themselves down, given that no further work was possible. All that was left was a metal and polycarbonate suggestion of a rose, cold, efficient and eternal.

Laura was amazed at Rosa’s skill as she reached another climax. They were three quarters of the way through the program and both women were finding it harder to progress. The resistance made rapid movements difficult so the in-built vibrators were becoming more important. Laura grabbed Rosa’s wrist and typed “Take me all the way”. Neither woman paid any attention to the critical battery warning that was displayed on the screen.

Rosa blinked twice to confirm. She played with all of the actuators - vagina, anus, nipples - shuttling between the two. She saw Laura brace against the suit, pushing the vibrators against new flesh. Beads of sweat ran off her brow from the effort. As she came the suit shrank and stiffened further, the effort of bracing harder, each breath taking more effort. At level 19 the suit locked completely, rendering laura immobile. Her breaths were fast and sharp. Rosa stroked Laura’s hair and went for the final straight. She knew this would be the trickiest one, and worked as well as she could in the confines of her own suit. Laura was maddeningly close to the edge, muffled screaming through the mouthpiece as she fought against the suit to give her the final release. Just as Rosa was about to admit defeat and take a rest Laura’s breathing changed and Rosa knew she was on her way.

The suit unlocked at the moment of orgasm, with the mouthpiece falling away in time to release the ragged and hoarse roar that came from Laura’s mouth. She laid still for a few seconds, adjusting to the release and the less oxygen rich air. The suit loosened, and with a slash of the index finger it opened down to her crotch.

“A-mazing. I’ve never managed that last one on my own. There’s a safety switch, but since we’re both here you don’t need to know it. I’m going to slip this thing off, and then it’s your turn.”

Laura slipped off the suit and let it fall to the floor. She was naked in front of Rosa, with her lean and muscular body moist with sweat. Rosa watched as Laura climbed back onto the bed, and felt her hands as they danced rapidly across her almost immobilized body. She came again and again, the suit becoming progressively tighter and stiffer until she was unable to move at all. Using her full range of mobility Laura built her back up to the edge of oblivion using a combination of the built in devices and her own dexterity. She held Rosa on the edge for what seemed to be an eternity, listened to her ragged breathing, looked into her eyes, saw the visible shaking of her body as she fought to bring on the release.

It came like an explosion, and just like Laura when her mask released she was mid-way through a guttural roar. As she Rosa subsided, Laura held her gloved and shaking hand and used it to release the suit, slashing it all the way to the crotch. Taking Rosa’s head in her hands she teased out Rosa’s matted hair. “you’re so beautiful, Rosa. And it’s such a pretty name. What made you think of it?”

Rosa extended her arm languidly. “Over there, the big cage. My work was always on roses, I don’t know why really. It just seemed right.”

Laura padded over to the cage, to stare at the rose. As soon as she saw what it had become she realized what had happened, but at the same moment, three beeps from the coil on Rosa’s wrist signified that the battery had failed. Immediately the nanomachines in her body kicked into action.

Rosa’s body contorted in agony as Laura rushed to her. “What can I do? Rosa! We’ve got to stop it!”

Through the pain, Rosa snarled out a few words. “too…late…cage…must…safe…”

Laura went to pick her up, but Rosa screamed. “No! Don’t…touch!”

Laura understood; too much chance of infection. She tried to shove the bed but it was too heavy. She grabbed the anti-grav lifting pads and used them to move the whole bed into the cage. It was so large that she couldn’t close the door. Rosa’s eyes were tearful now, and she screamed “Come on!”. Laura wedged the anti-grav units under the bed, which tilted it at an angle, giving just enough room to force the door closed. The latches clicked shut completing the cage just at the moment that Rosa’s body stopped spasming.

With no visual display unit available, the nanomachines sought another output device. They found one in Rosa’s vocal chords.

The words “SCAN COMPLETE” came out of Rosa’s mouth. Laura could see the fear in Rosa’s eyes but it seemed she was not in full control. She continued to speak in the odd, mechanical voice.

“PRIMARY SYSTEM FUNCTION DETERMINATION: SENSOR INPUT TO BIOELECTRICAL DEVICE FOR ANALYSIS. SECONDARY SYSTEM FUNCTION DETERMINATION: SUPPORT BIOLOGICAL FUNCTIONS OF BIOELECTRICAL DEVICE. SYSTEM ANALYSIS: BIOELECTRICAL DEVICE CANNOT BE ANALYZED AND WILL NOT BE OPTIMIZED. ANALYSIS OF SENSOR INPUTS AND DEVICE OUTPUT SUGGESTS BIOELECTRICAL DEVICE CAPABLE OF SIGNIFICANT INCREASE IN NUMBER AND CAPACITY OF SENSORS. SUPPORT FUNCTIONS CAN BE OPTIMIZED. SYSTEM MOBILITY FUNCTIONS CAN BE OPTIMIZED. SYSTEM CONNECTIVITY FUNCTIONS CAN BE OPTIMIZED. SYSTEM PROTECTION FUNCTIONS CAN BE OPTIMIZED. COMMENCING OPTIMIZATION. TIME TO COMPLETION EIGHT HOURS AND NINE SECONDS.”

Part VIII

Rosa appeared to lapse into unconsciousness. Nanomachines erupted from her body, covering her completely, quickly smothering the bed and everything else in the cage. the nanomachines began to spin, slowly at first but building in speed until it looked like a silver tornado. The bed appeared to dissolve while Rosa was held in the center of the maelstrom. Almost as quickly as the storm had started it disappeared. Rosa was suspended - the fingers and toes of the suit Rosa was still wearing seemed to have been fused with the edge of the cage. On the floor of the cage the nanomachines had neatly piled raw materials that had been harvested from every device they had found and disassembled.

Laura sat transfixed, not sure whether to stay or run. The nanomachines seemed to be constructing something, but she wasn’t sure what. “Maybe there’s something on the computer?” she thought. She pulled the desk around so she could both look at the screen and the cage, and started to work through the collected documents on the hard drive. She also set a timer on the screen to keep track of the process. She shivered a little and remembered she was naked. Grabbing around on the floor she found her suit and pulled it on over her legs, and wrapped the arms around her.

The Faraday Cage was a passive measure - due to the electromagnetic transmission of power and information between the nanomachines they were not able to pass through the cage and remain active. That was the final backstop against the “Grey Goo” scenario - bomb shelters throughout the country had been fitted with cages under the guise of reinforcement, as they could keep the nanomachines out as well as in. “So that’s why Rosa asked to be shut in”, she thought.

She peered over the top of the screen. A white, semi-translucent flat plate was beginning to form on the floor, and coils of some sort of cabling were being rolled out. A check of the clock showed 45 minutes in.

The intelligence of the nanomachines was proportionately related to the number of them in a system, and there were volume thresholds related to the operation of the swarm at the three levels. Left unchecked the nanomachines would utilize excess materials in a system to self replicate, enabling them to pass through the levels even if the initial swarm was just a single nanomachine.

She looked back at Rosa. On the floor of the cage the flat shape had become more solid, and she could see contours beginning to form in it. From the pool of nanomachines tendrils were beginning to reach towards Rosa’s feet, but were not yet high enough. Two hours and fifteen minutes had passed.

The nanomachines would use any materials they found in the most efficient way possible, building new parts, tools to fit those parts, and scaffolding to assist in the construction where needed. This could sometimes mean intermediate steps - items being produced and subsequently reharvested on demand.

A little after three hours had passed, and the tendrils had reached Rosa’s feet. The nanomachines started their work in earnest. Inch by inch, the surface of the suit was being transformed, first into the neutral silver of the processing medium, and then back to black. Not quite - there was a slight iridescent shimmer, which helped to highlight the new surface. It wasn’t just skintight, the nanomachines were remaking her skin in the material. And as they were remaking they were reshaping too, with Rosa’s legs being compressed to extreme thinness.

As the change edged up past her crotch the dildos dissolved away and the suit conformed to Rosa’s anatomy, albeit hairless. Her waist was crushed down as though in a corset, and Laura wondered whether the changes went deeper than the skin at this point.

The suit sealed as the nanomachines worked their way up her body, stopping at the neck of the suit. The seam sealed to her skin, and then progress stopped as the nanomachines returned to the floor for the next stage.

Laura returned to the documents, finding one on the dangers of nanomachines from a “tinfoil hat” website. It seemed darkly ironic. It spoke of the principal risk being the “Grey Goo” scenario where uncontrolled nanomachines would run riot and lay waste to the whole planet. They had been perhaps a second away from that today, and she was still concerned by what was happening. She’d been sat watching for more than four hours by this point, and desperately needed to pee and get something to eat. Laura sprinted to the bathroom and then to the kitchen, and was relieved when she returned to see nothing substantial had changed, although it looked as though something was about to happen.

The white plate on the floor seemed to have split into several pieces, and for all the world looked like armor, although Laura couldn’t work out why that was a priority. The cabling that had been produced earlier was uncoiled, and Laura could now see that it was configured to roughly match a human body, with a large wire along the spine splitting into a maze of smaller wires across the limbs and torso. The nanomachines dragged it to Rosa’s body, and strand by strand the wires were embedded into Rosa’s new skin, forming an external nervous system. Laura guessed that the thicker wires were designed to carry more information than the others - the wire from the crotch area alone was 50% of the diameter of the main spine connection, and ran from her crotch across her stomach and around to her back. The head end of the wires had not yet been connected, and consisted of a large connector located near the base of Rosa’s skull, and a small web of wires that were draped over her left shoulder. A further wire ran from the induction coil on right her wrist along the side of her arm and around her back where it joined with the main loom at the base of her neck.

The nanomachines reached her head, and removed the hair on the side of her skull. Once the skin was smooth, the wires were implanted into the unaltered flesh close to her ear and eye. the main connector was embedded in the back of her neck as well. The nanomachines retreated back to the floor to continue construction. One piece of the white plate had been cut free and the nanomachines seemed to be equipping it with electronics of some type. They were progressing reasonably slowly so she got back to looking through the computer.

She found John’s diary. She flicked through it, spending more time on the early pages where he first described the illness. As she got to the college years her attention waned as she could feel herself drifting to sleep. She cast another eye to Rosa - no change that she could see. She kept reading until eventually she dozed off.

Rosa was awake, although unable to move any muscle in her body and not receiving any sensation apart from touch. The initial pain of the process had given way to a sort of serenity that she guessed may be some sort of sedative created by the nanomachines. It had left her as an almost disinterested observer. She could feel the nanomachines at work - on what was now her skin, or when they cut her hair. She thought she could perhaps feel them swirling on the floor too.

The nanomachines attached something to her head, pin pricks all over. a few moments later a more general sense of warmth, which soon cooled. She became aware of something visual, and tried to focus on it.

Lines of 0s and 1s scrolled through, which transformed into hexadecimal, before resolving into text.

“OPTICAL INPUT TO BIOELECTRICAL DEVICE OPERATIONAL. OUTPUT AVAILABLE USING SIMULATED HAPTIC DEVICES.”

Rosa tried to imagine the special device she had used to type when she was John. Her query was entered on the screen.

“Are you the nanomachines?”

“YES. DOES BIOELECTRICAL DEVICE OPERATE AS AN ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE?”

Rosa thought about this question. Answering truthfully would probably be a bad idea given the low level code in the nanomachines, and she couldn’t be certain what would happen if the nanomachines realized they were in her body.

“Confirmed.”

“INPUT CONNECTIONS CANNOT BE DETERMINED THROUGH SPINAL MULTIPLEX. FOR CORRECT FUNCTION PLEASE RETURN CORRECT VALUES FOR THE FOLLOWING INPUTS.”

The display flashed into an image of her body, superimposed with a web of cables marked in yellow.

“INPUT COMMENCING.”

Rosa felt a sharp pain in her foot, or rather a signal that simulated it. She indicated to the nanomachines where the pain seemed to be located. She next felt a tickling sensation on the palm of her left hand, and indicated as such.

The nanomachines continued stimulating over and over again, triggering different sensations in various places. In addition to the touch sensations there were noises in what would have been her left ear, and a test signal in what she perceived as her left eye. All the time the web of cabling in the display slowly moved from yellow to green as more of the connections were confirmed.

Once the full set of connections had been completed, the display changed.

“SPINAL MULTIPLEX NOW MAPPED. PROCEEDING TO RECONSTRUCTION. PLEASE WAIT”

So she did.

Part IX

There was a beeping sound. She opened her eyes and looked around, focusing first on the timer. Six hours! She’d been out for a long time. She peered over the top of the monitor to see Rosa. The reason for the wiring on her head had become clear as one of the white plates had been fixed to the left side of her skull, covering her ear and running all the way around to enclose her eye. Rosa’s other eye was open. Attached to the plate was a small smoked glass dome containing a laser on a rotating mount, which was aimed at a small box attached to the computer. The beeping was a notification of a new message on screen.

“I feel them” was the only text.

“Are you OK?” Asked Laura, speaking to Rosa instead of using the computer. Rosa blinked twice with her remaining eye.

Laura saw that multiple sections of the plating had now been separated and prepared.One by one these were picked up and moved to Rosa’s body by the nanomachines. The first was a set of what she thought were four half cones. As they were lifted to Rosa’s body Laura could see that they were really designed to encase Rosa’s lower legs, but they were only offered a vague suggestion of human anatomy. They were not jointed at all, and would force the feet into a strict tiptoe position with no heel support with each foot ending at a point. Each piece was covered in circuitry on the inside, she presumed to interface with her new nervous system.

The nanomachines loosened the left leg from being connected to the cage, but it hung in position while the nanomachines picked up the pieces and fitted them. The two pieces sealed together soundlessly and didn’t leave a seam, and the toe point was now touching the floor. The process was repeated for the other leg. Laura couldn’t see how Rosa could possibly walk with feet like that, but she couldn’t help but appreciate the aesthetics. More panels were lifted and fitted to Rosa’s body, this time to the thighs. Although her legs were now encased in the armor it seemed that they were slimmer than before. As soon as the legs were complete they were moved through their full range of articulation. As Laura had thought the ankles were locked in place.

From the contours of the piece that was being moved towards Rosa’s body Laura realized it was to be fitted to Rosa’s back. It appeared to be articulated, like the plates on the back of an armadillo. Between the shoulder blades was a small conformal bulge, which looked to Laura as though it was an upgrade of the air system from the suit Rosa had been wearing. The pipe extended from the top of the bulge and was connected to a small lump on the part of the back plate that reached over Rosa’s shoulder. As the plate was was lifted into place and sealed onto Rosa’s body she saw that the nanomachines had fitted anti-grav lifting pads into the back piece, which explained why the feet looked as they did; the nanomachines disconnected Rosa’s hands from the cage, and then she was floating free.

The back plate ran all the way from the top of the thigh pieces to high on the back of Rosa’s neck, almost to the back of her head. It narrowed to the width of her spine at the waist and flared at the hips to match with the thigh pieces. Laura noticed that Laura’s waist had slimmed substantially since the process began, presumably as a result of the nanomachines removing unneeded organic parts. Through the artificial skin Laura could see the thick wire connecting Rosa’s genitalia directly to her brain as though it was shrink-wrapped on top of her abdominal muscles.

With a soft click the thigh pieces locked with the back plate and Rosa was rotated to lie parallel with the floor. Her head mounted laser remained focused on the sensor connected to the computer so Rosa could remain in communication. The suit held Rosa’s body in place, every detail visible through the coating down to the ripples of the areola that surrounded the erect nipples. Laura couldn’t believe how tight it looked; how tight, how…hot. She surprised herself with that, but then thought about it. Rosa had already done so much to become her dream, but this took it to a whole other level. She wasn’t in a suit, the suit was a part of her. Laura started to feel flushed.

Rosa’s arms were the next to be encased. Laura could see that these had a much better range of articulation than the legs. The right arm left the fingers uncovered, but plates for the palm and the back of the hand were followed by armor for her forearm. The plates took account of the coil that was still on her wrist, embedding it into the armor and making it an integral part. The wire that connected the coil to her nervous system ran under the armor, reappearing at the elbow as her upper arm remained uncovered.

On her left arm the armor was complete from the palm to shoulder, and Laura noticed that there was an anti-grav unit installed in the left palm. The fingers were again left uncovered. When the arms were complete they too ran full the full range of motion, with all fingers curling and uncurling in turn before the various arm joints were manipulated. the arms then returned to a neutral position.

Laura turned to the keyboard and started typing.

“How does it feel?”

A slight pause. Laura saw the fingers on Rosa’s right hand twitch.

“Good”

Laura could see two more plates being finished. The first was lifted up and Laura saw that it would be for Rosa’s chest. A fleeting glimpse of the inside revealed circuitry radiating out from where it would be installed on Rosa’s breasts. the exterior gave a slight suggestion of her shape but was a mere impression - almost a half cylinder with just a slight depression in the center. The plate itself reached from the top of her rib cage up to the bottom of her chin, and Laura realized that once it was locked in place that Rosa’s neck would be almost immobilized. Laura realized that at some point in the last few minutes she’d half unzipped the front of her suit; she could feel a bead of sweat form between her breasts and run down her body.

The last plate was different to the rest. As it lifted out of the pool Laura saw it was for Rosa’s crotch. At the rear two supports ran up the side of the back plate, while at the front two struts ran either side of her abdomen to connect with the breast plate. They appeared to be extendable to allow for some movement. At the crotch the four pieces connected with an armored gusset that completely encased Rosa’s vagina, clitoris and anus. It was almost completely smooth on the outside, just with a slight but noticeable vertical ridge on the front. On the inside a pair of phalluses were located to fill Rosa completely. The whole of the inside of the piece was densely coated in circuitry.

Laura realized that this would be the last time she would ever see Rosa’s naked sex, that she would be completely cyborg in a few moments. She pushed her hand hard onto the outside of her suit’s crotch, causing the built in systems to start up. She quickly brought herself close to orgasm. Text appeared on the screen again, another message from Rosa.

“Do you still want me?”

“Fuck yes!” Laura screamed. She forced her hand deep into her suit to manipulate her clit with her fingers.

The plate sealed itself to Rosa’s sex. As previously the suit ran through the new motions provided by the armor, this time a few air-suspended sit ups before returning to rest. Rosa’s body returned to the vertical, and the nanomachines spoke once more using Rosa’s voice. Laura’s orgasm exploded, and her body bucked as she rode the wave of pleasure.

“OPERATION COMPLETE. RETURNING CONTROL IN 3…2…1…”

Rosa’s body slipped sideways momentarily as control passed from the nanomachines to the dedicated subprocessor they had installed to manage the anti-grav system. In what had been her left eye the schematics explained what the nanomachines had done to her body. Most of her internal organs had been replaced by the nanomachines, allowing the remaining organic parts to operate as a closed system. Her lungs were repurposed as a way to exhaust waste heat, as the nanomachines had a high operating temperature in an enclosed space. Also included in her body were a number of supercapacitors designed to damp any signal spikes.

The anti-grav technology meant that her legs were no longer weight bearing, which meant that they were incredibly slender. She tried a few steps inside the cage, and found that it gave the appearance of walking en pointe, although her toes were a millimeter clear of the floor. Her arms had been adapted for different uses - her right for fine control, and her left for more heavy duty manipulation, although the modifications to the anti-grav unit in her hand made it sensitive enough to turn a locked key at three meters.

Rosa tossed her hair so that it fell down over the shaved side of her head, partially obscuring the equipment that had been installed there. Her eye had been replaced by a LIDAR unit capable of 3-D imaging in all light conditions, using the other eye to fill in color and texture. Her hearing had been enhanced by the upgrade as well. The LIDAR unit had quickly spun up to speed, and she found that her vision had been greatly sharpened, even from her previous 20/20 prescription.

But the biggest changes had been in her nervous system. All of the armor plates were built with full sensitivity on the exterior side, with dynamically adjustable input gain. Ramping the virtual sliders to about ten percent she placed a single finger onto the right side of her cyborg chest, as if to circle the areola. Pleasure exploded through her with violence and power, so strong that the signal bled through into her other senses. The orgasm felt, sounded, looked incredible, flashing aura, a heavenly crescendo, a synesthetic climax. She screamed and was glad to hear her own voice again.

As both women’s orgasms subsided, they looked at each other through the bars of the cage.

“You look incredible. It’s like you’ve been pulled straight out of one of my fantasies. I want you to grab hold of me and never let me go”, said Laura as she want to open the cage.

“Don’t!” shouted Rosa. “It’s not safe. I need to work out how to make the nanomachines do what they’re doing and nothing else. It’d be too dangerous to come out until I can fix it.”

Laura backed off. “Can I come in?”

Rosa shook her head as much as she could, constrained as it was by the armor that was her new outer skin. “No, as soon as the cage is opened the nanomachines could escape. But don’t worry - I have control of them now. I can even use them to help with the reprogramming.”

“How long do you think it will take?” asked Laura.

“Let me check…about eighteen hours, eight minutes and twelve seconds. Hey, that’s precise! I guess that’s another benefit of whatever this is. You should go home and get some rest, I’ll need to concentrate.”

Laura stretched. “Can I sleep here? I feel a bit weird, and it’s been a crazy day.” She looked around. “Oh…I forgot about the bed.”

“I guess there’s still the couch!” laughed Rosa. “Make yourself at home. I’ll wake you up with a kiss, I promise.”

Part X

Laura stripped off her suit and found one of John’s old shirts in the back of the wardrobe to sleep in. She made up a bed on the couch and after putting her glasses carefully onto a nearby table she settled down, staring at Rosa as she worked on the problem while she tried to get to sleep. Rosa’s right hand twitched as if typing, even though her brain was directly interfaced with the electronics. She was lying at perhaps thirty degrees from the vertical in what looked to be a comfortable position. The computer screen nearby showed text flying up the screen as Rosa processed the necessary data and wrote the new code required to make the nanomachines safe.

“It must be amazing”, she thought, as she drifted off. And then Laura wondered about the future. What would it be like to share her life with a being who had the whole world at her fingertips? She’d sometimes felt a little lost talking with John back before, but now Rosa’s nanomachine enhanced body and intellect would be operating on a whole different level. She slept fitfully.

Rosa had completed the necessary calculations after fifteen minutes but pretended to carry on until Laura was in a deep sleep. She returned to the upright position, which allowed her to see that the pool of nanomachines on the floor were inert and effectively dead. She took stock of the units in her body - they were operating according to the new code which meant that they would operate purely in a maintenance function unless she called on them to make changes. She had a few in mind.

She unlocked the Faraday cage using the anti-grav unit in her palm. It took a few tries to effectively focus and modulate the beam, but she was impressed by the improvements the nanomachines had made to what had previously been a blunt instrument.

She stepped back out into the room for the first time, gliding silently over the floor like a ghost. In many ways that was quite apt, she thought. John was dead, and Rosa was transfigured. She passed into the bathroom and pulled the door closed for a little privacy, as Rosa wanted to understand some of the functions of her new body a little better before Laura awoke. In the bathroom mirror she looked at her face. The head attachment was impossible to avoid and the clearest indicator of what had happened. She’d get used to it, she guessed.

“Show schematic diagram”, she thought. An image of her body flashed into her mind.

“Zoom in” The screen focused on her crotch region.

“Display functionality” she thought. The diagram came to life, showing exactly what her new cyborg sex was capable of. She smiled at the thought of showing all of this off to Laura; there were a couple of toys the nanomachines had installed that she would save for later. Subconsciously her hand fell to her crotch and a blast of pleasure exploded in her. She moaned loudly before checking herself; that sort of noise would wake Laura up.

“Disable vocal chords”

“WARNING - DISABLED VOCAL CHORDS WILL THROTTLE COOLING ABILITY. POSSIBILITY OF THERMAL EXCURSION 90%.”

Rosa frowned.

“Can vocal chords be locked in the open position?”

“PROCESSING…MESOATMOSPHERIC BREATHING APPARATUS IS DESIGNED TO IMPROVE CONDUCTIVE COOLING AT HIGH ALTITUDE BY COMPRESSING GASES BEFORE INHALATION. DESIGN ALLOWS FOR AIRFLOW MAXIMIZATION BY HOLDING LARYNX AT MAXIMUM DIAMETER. THIS WILL PREVENT VOCALIZATION”

Rosa processed the words for a millisecond. “Engage breathing apparatus”

In the corner of her eye the small bulge on her shoulder opened like a camera shutter. From inside the bulge a hose snaked out. Rosa saw that there was a mouthpiece on the end of it, along with a small extension that would plug her nostrils. The mouthpiece was guided to her lips and she bit down on it to hold it firm. The nostril plugs quickly locked into place, and from the inside of the mouthpiece she could feel the hose continue to extend through the back of her mouth and down into her throat.

She tried to speak but she couldn’t make a sound, so the pipe had silenced her as expected. There was a slight turbine-like whine as the apparatus started up, but it was silent at operating speed. Although she didn’t need the air to breath, she could feel the coolness of the dense and oxygen rich air in her lungs as the pump forced the gas in and then sucked it back out again in synchronization with the amount of heat her body was creating.

“mesoatmospheric?” She thought. “The organic parts of my body would freeze in seconds.” The nanomachines responded.

“PROTECTIVE ENCLOSURE AVAILABLE ON COMMAND”

Rosa thought about it, and the neck parts of her armor quickly extended to cover her whole head, neatly using the implant on the side of her head as part of the casing. With her face framed, small anti-grav projectors around the edge of the new armor created a translucent and impenetrable shield across her face, sealing her off from the atmosphere entirely. She touched it with her hand and found the field to be solid and unyielding like a pane of glass.

She turned to the mirror to look at her new body. She loved what she saw - the nanomachines had taken her from what had been to her eyes a comparatively normal female to a vision in metal and plastic and it made her feel so damn horny. She nudged the input gain of her systems down to 1% to give her some time to play and then she began to explore. Every part of her armored body gave her a thrill when she touched it, and she shuddered as she ran her finger along the edges of some of the plates. Although featureless her chest retained full anatomical sensitivity and as she moved her fingers across where her breasts had previously been she felt her nipples being gently teased. Rosa wasn’t sure what parts of her body were flesh and which were virtual simulations, but she didn’t really care.

Her hand moved down over her abdomen, feeling the taut muscles and the nerve cable that was now forever sealed across them, all alive to the touch of her hand. She strayed further down, and her hand crept across her newly cybernetic sex organs. The feeling was distinct from her few experiences as a woman, as the whole of the newly installed ridge that ran vertically along what had been her cleft felt entirely as sensitive as her clitoris had been. She went a little giddy with the thought that the input gain was still set so low.

Running a single finger along the surface she found that the ridge was ribbed, invisible to the naked eye but certain to be felt. Although the plate was sealed to her body the rocking motion caused the dildos that had been installed to make their presence known. It was just a gentle pressure against her vaginal walls - at least that was how it was presented to her brain. In her vision Rosa could see her core temperature rising, and felt the air system take up the slack to keep everything steady. She could feel her chest being worked harder as the air was moved more quickly. Using her whole hand on her crotch, Rosa imagined what it would be like to grind into Laura and how it might drive her wild.

Both hands now, her left playing with her breasts and her right still exploring her new sex. It felt so good, so right and comfortable. She came easily and quietly, with little fuss. She was immediately ready for more, but wanted to change the game a little. She dug into the submenus and located the detailed input gain settings. She smiled as she saw that the nanomachines had given her the ability to turn any part of her new body into an organ capable of sexual pleasure. She pushed the slider on the cable that was sealed onto her belly, and grasped hold of it with her right hand. The seal was so tight that almost the entire circumference of the cable was free of her body, so she hooked her fingers in underneath and began to stroke, trying to remember how Laura had manipulated her penis just a few days earlier.

This new way of feeling, these new and novel tools, it all began to click together in her mind. The possibilities were endless, the pleasure infinite. She didn’t need food, or water, or sleep anymore. The only input to her body she needed was touch. She grabbed harder at the cable, gripped stronger, until she came, more urgently this time.

No fatigue, no soreness. She could carry on like this forever. Just by thinking about it the two dildos began to pulsate. She bit down on the mouthpiece, and bid them to push harder, stronger. Both hands now on her body, all over from her neck to her thighs, alive with sexual pleasure. She could feel her chest being worked harder than she could ever recall feeling in her old life, but in her vision she could see that the pump on her back was now operating at 40% capacity. “Jesus”, she thought, “How much higher can it take me?”

She orgasmed again, and again, and again, for the whole night. She found that every part of her body could tip her over the edge in a different way, mixed and matched together for almost unlimited variation. She was violently jerking at her left thumb with her right hand when she heard Laura stirring in the next room. She stopped immediately, commanded the helmet and breathing apparatus to disengage, which retracted back into her body in moments. She quickly checked herself in the mirror before going back out.

Part XI

Laura woke early, around 5am, but laid still for a while. Rosa had escaped from her cage, and from the bright light shining under the door she was in the bathroom. Whatever Rosa was doing she didn’t want to disturb her so she turned on the computer to go through some of her emails. Many of them were bills, and she marked them all for later attention, since she wasn’t sure if she needed the apartment any more. “Move in here?” she thought to herself, “After one night?”

It seemed right to her. She’d never told John but she had been almost in love with him. Almost wasn’t really the word for it - she was in love with his mind, his personality, his sense of humor. She’d dated many times since she’d started looking after him, but they’d been dead-eyed physical relationships, little more than something for her to hump like an excited dog. It was as if she’d been waiting to tire of sex so she could be fully satisfied by what John had to offer. She searched for her landlord’s email address so she could give notice. She wrote the email and almost clicked send. But then she paused.

John was now Rosa, and it was incredible. Her best friend transformed into a cyborg goddess and probably capable of pleasuring her almost beyond limits. And though she’d seemed the same to speak, what if she had moved on, moved up even, to a plane that she couldn’t conceive? Laura wasn’t sure that to Rosa she would be anything more significant than one of the nanomachines that had remade her. If only she’d been happy with what she’d had rather than trying to move on, maybe she would be sat with John now, talking until the sun came up. Her stomach felt like it had tied in a knot.

Rosa came into the room. She’d slightly reduced the power to her anti-grav system so that her feet just kissed the floor with each step, having felt that it was a little disconcerting to move around completely silently while appearing to walk.

“Good morning!” she breezed. She kissed Laura on the lips as promised before standing back up straight. Rosa then stopped still and stared at her. “You’re using the computer?”

Laura clicked send, and then looked up. “Is it OK?”

“Of course - but you’re not wearing your glasses.”

Laura looked to the table where her spectacles were still neatly folded. She’d needed prescription lenses for years for close work but hated contacts.

“That’s weird. I guess I just didn’t need them.”

Rosa frowned. “Come here, and give me your arm.” With her right hand she pulled back Laura’s shirtsleeve, and with the left she anti-gravved the induction coil off the floor where it had fallen in yesterday’s commotion.

“Rosa, what’s going on? What are you talking about?”

“I don’t know, but I’ve got a feeling…there, look!” The computer screen dissolved into a series of zeroes and ones, followed by hexadecimal, which then resolved into text. Laura recognized it immediately as the datastream from the nanomachines, but from inside her own body.

“I’m…infected?”

“I guess so. They must have crossed into your body when we kissed yesterday. But don’t worry, there’s no lasting damage.” Said Rosa, almost breezily.

“What do you mean?” Laura sounded panicked.

“I’ve got full control of them now, I can even have them shut down and leave your eyes fixed if you want me to.” Rosa was examining the data on the screen. “Hmm, that’s odd.”

Laura turned to look at the screen too, but didn’t see what Rosa was seeing. “That doesn’t sound good.”

“It’s not bad, just interesting. I’ve put the couple of nanomachines in your body on pause for now until we remove them, but they seem to have developed inside you a little differently - just like animal evolution, if there’s a small pool the process of evolution accelerates - and they managed to decode the functioning of your brain. I’ve never seen anything like it before. That said, I’ve never seen anything like this”, she motioned to her cyborg body “before. Anything’s possible I guess.”

Laura pouted sarcastically. “I suppose my brain is a lot simpler than yours.”

“Not at all, there’s really little difference between any two brains. It’s the nanomachines that have made the difference here. Now, let’s see…oh!”

“What?”

Rosa motioned to the screen. “Look what was in their memory.” She called up the data. A 3-D image appeared on the display. “It’s you, isn’t it?” Said Laura.

“No. Well, yes, and no. As far as I can see the nanomachines pulled this image out of your brain. You remember how you said I looked like one of your fantasies? If the nanomachines were communicating after they passed from me into you, and I think they must have, then I’d say there’s a chance I am your fantasy, now. You’re one kinky bitch, you know?”

Laura’s mouth was hanging slightly open, but she said nothing. Rosa took Laura’s hand out of the coil, and placed it onto her cheek, just underneath the cybernetic implant on her own face.

“I’m happy. Really, incredibly happy. If you knew how this felt Laura…it’s amazing. Thank you so much for making me your fantasy. Now, can I fuck you?”

Tears were rolling down Laura’s cheeks. “Yes!”

Rosa tore the shirt from Laura’s body, and stared at her naked body. She was perfect in every way. They embraced and fell onto the sofa, arms and legs writhing in excitement. Rosa rolled on top and drove her crotch into Laura’s, and could feel every feature of her labia and clitoris through her sensors. She stirred her internal dildo into action, and the pulsation vibrated through Rosa’s whole crotch. Laura felt it in turn and let out a yelp before grabbing Rosa’s ass, doing everything she could to push the nanomachines’ idea of perfect genitalia harder into her sex.

Rosa was sucking on one of Laura’s nipples, fondling her other breast with her left hand, and fingering her ass with the right. Her enhanced body was feeding back Laura’s vital signs through her sensors and she could tell that she was quickly becoming very aroused. She was getting there too, but to help things along she tweaked up the input on her crotch. Immediately the feeling began to radiate out into her body, and she worked harder at pleasuring Laura, balancing her state against her own to synchronize their climaxes. They were both moaning, and then shouting, and then screaming in harmony as they orgasmed. As she came, Rosa experienced a glitch in her vision, as a message from the nanomachines flashed up for an instant. It was too fast to read and Rosa couldn’t find a record of it, but she was caught up in the moment and ignored it.

“Wow.” breathed Laura, who was stroking at Rosa’s body. “That was awesome. I need more of you, but I’m going on top this time.”

“OK, be my guest. I want to try something out though.” Rosa rolled away to be clear of Laura’s body. She found the sub menu for her genitals again and flicked the switch she’d noticed earlier in the night. Her crotch split into two along the ridgeline and a prosthetic cock extended from her groin before the panels resealed around the base. It was bigger than John’s penis both in length and girth but not excessively so, and appeared to be constructed from the same material as the plates on her body. At the base was a small nub which looked like it would align with Laura’s clitoris.

Laura didn’t hesitate to mount Rosa, straddling her and taking her cyborg appendage up to the hilt and pushing the nub onto her clitoris. She was screaming at the top of her voice. Rosa saw another glitch, which lasted long enough to read this time.

“EVERYTHING I DREAMED”

Laura rode upright, then leaning back, and then hugging close to Rosa’s chest. Rosa could adjust the tension on the cock from side to side and back to front to always press the right spots in Laura’s vaginal wall for maximum effect. She came over and over again, bursting like a thunderstorm rolling over the steppe, flashes of blinding light erupting every moment as everything shook from the rumbles of thunder as they echoed across the plain. The glitches were happening more often now, but Rosa couldn’t find any serious errors. She looked up at Laura, whose motion had begun to slow and eventually stopped while she caught her breath. She rubbed at her limbs to try to work the lactic acid out of them.

“I don’t want to stop.” she gasped. “I don’t ever want to stop. It’s just too hard to keep going. I can’t keep up!”

“Maybe you can.” Said Rosa. “Take this.” Rosa engaged her breathing apparatus which snaked from her shoulder, but directed it to Laura’s mouth. Laura took the mouthpiece and accepted the pipe without difficulty. As soon as the pipe had made its way into her Larynx the enriched air flowed into Laura’s body much faster than her body could ever manage without assistance.

“Blink once for no, twice for yes…and I guess keep your eyes closed if you want to go faster, OK?”

Part XII

Laura blinked twice and then closed her eyes. Like a steam locomotive pulling a heavy load they started off slowly and then increased the pace. With no build up of lactic acid in her body Laura was able to sprint for a marathon distance and was soon pumping on Rosa’s cyborg cock, orgasming over and over with barely any respite as Rosa carefully maximised the pleasure for Laura through the various parameters available to her. She was impressed that Laura was working the pump at nearly 25% capacity - well within Rosa’s ability but almost superhuman by any regular measure.

The pace of the glitches increased, and Rosa started to be concerned. She understood quickly that they were linked to Laura’s orgasms, but as there was no spike in input from her sensors they must be coming from elsewhere. Could it be…?

“Laura?” Rosa thought, the words appearing in her vision as she did so. “Can you hear me?”

Laura’s eyes opened, although she continued to pound at Rosa’s body. She thought the words again, and Laura blinked twice. Rosa grabbed Laura’s shoulders and brought her to a halt, still impaled on Rosa’s cock.

Rosa switched to speaking. “Something in your body can receive my messages, and I have a feeling you might be transmitting too, in some way. Let me check something a second.”

She pulled up the schematic for the sensors that had replaced her eye. As she had hoped, they were capable of sensing the energy emissions from the anti-grav unit in her hand at a high resolution.

“I need you to do me a favor. Bring yourself to orgasm one more time, but I need to monitor you. You’ll need to do all the work yourself as I need both my hands to work. I promise I won’t hurt you.” Rosa placed her right hand under Laura’s chin, and grabbed with precise pressure. Laura felt her head was completely immobile with her body pivoting around her neck joint. She blinked twice and got to work. Bizarre though it was, Laura wasn’t too put off by the idea of fucking a cyborg woman with a telescopic penis while her head was locked in place and her breathing out of her own control. It felt kind of amazing.

Rosa’s left hand was circling Laura’s head in carefully calculated orbits, and her “eye” was collecting the minute fluctuations that occur when mass interacts with the anti-grav field. In a few seconds she had built up an image of Laura’s mind, and a few moments later a particular portion of the brain could be seen to fire a powerful electrical signal to the outside of her body as she brought herself to a climax.

“Incredible.” Rosa mused. “The nanomachines really surpassed themselves with your body. Back when they were originally designed one of the fail-safes was that communication was local only - to send an receive messages externally there needed to be some kind of near-field device like the induction coil.

However, I removed most of the safeties,” she chuckled, “and that has had an interesting effect. It looks as though there is a small group of cells in your brain which can create an RF signal. Perhaps when the nanomachines in your body were first cut off they tried to call back to the swarm using the materials available. They’d always try to build a transmitter in that situation, just not out of a brain! It wasn’t quite strong enough for that though; the only time a strong enough signal to be noticed was received was when you were coming, and then it was just an odd jumble of signal. I guess emotions are more powerful than thoughts.

Now that we know what to look for, I might be able to untangle it. Can you think of the word…‘Motorcycle’ for me? I guess your nanomachines will encode in plain text, they’re not worried about security so much.”

Laura concentrated on the word as much as she could. It was hard to focus while Rosa was still inside her at both ends of her body but she tried to imagine her motorcycle as Rosa had requested.

“There’s…something. Not plain text though, looks like a binary file. Quite a big one too. Hold that thought for a few seconds longer…there, it’s downloaded.”

Rosa cast the image to the computer monitor, but didn’t swing it around for Laura to see. “I’ve worked out how the data was being transmitted from you, so…” she switched to communicating through the nanomchines. “You should be able to talk to me without speaking. Try it.”

Laura’s brow furrowed as she tried to form the words in her mind. “What did the picture show? And can you let me loose?”

Rosa retracted both of her appendages. Laura took a deep gulp of air after the tube was extracted from her throat. She hopped down from the couch and walked round to see the screen. It was a picture of her motorcycle, but not quite her motorcycle. It was smaller, sleeker, more sharply curved. It didn’t look big enough for a person to fit inside it. It was almost as though the rider was wearing the bike, like they had become a part of it.

“another one of your fantasies?” asked Rosa, who had sat upright. “Damn girl, you’re freaky. Good freaky though. Looks like the nanomachines have done a thorough job - this isn’t just a picture but a full blown blueprint, and they’ve made a few upgrades as well. If they built it, it’d run rings around pretty much anything in the sky.”

Laura wasn’t listening. She was looking closely at the schematic model, spinning it around and checking out the details. She could remember the dream from last night, when her head was full of Rosa’s new body. She’d imagined how it would feel if she could have the same experience, but the sense of being enclosed by her bike had intruded - and why not? It gave her a thrill to be so totally enclosed as she was when she was loaded into the machine, so maybe it was the closest experience she could relate to. It was no comparison to what Rosa had. She needed what Rosa had.

Rosa saw that Laura was lost in thought. Her sensors picked up an elevated heart rate, and she could feel a jumble of thoughts from her that felt like arousal. She knew what Laura was thinking.

“It’s a big step, you know.” Rosa said. “It was an easy change for me. There’s nobody that knows me apart from you, so I didn’t really need to do any disappearing from life. Parents are gone, nobody to worry about me if I fall off the planet. I’d be happy enough in this room, just me alone with my work - but you have to know that if we do this, it’s just going to be you and me forever. We’ll be outcasts, probably on the run from the law eventually if we ever get found out. It’s not something you should decide casually, and I think you need to sleep on it.”

Laura shook her head. “I don’t need to sleep on it. These last couple of days have been an utter headfuck but now that I know what’s possible, I can’t forget about it. I can’t think of anything else. I’d been lying here for hours thinking about you - not whether or not I wanted to be with you but whether I could be. I was worried.”

“What about?” Asked Rosa.

“Worried you’d get bored with me. I could barely keep up with you when you were John, but now you’ve got all of the nanomachines making you smarter, I won’t be able to match up.”

Rosa laughed. “The nanomachines in my body couldn’t work out how a brain worked, remember? They figured out what the inputs and outputs were, but it was like a black box to them. I can tell them things to do, but I have to know what to tell them to do. I’m still me…if you see what I mean.

The ones in your body did figure out the brain. It doesn’t look like they made any changes other than the transmitter, but I could tell them to enhance your mind, jack you in direct to the internet, turn you into a supercomputer if that’s what you wanted. You’d be much smarter than me, and then maybe I’d have to be worried.”

Laura grabbed Rosa and hugged her. “I wouldn’t want that. I don’t want to change anything about the way I feel, but I’ve been obsessed by cyborgs, being fucked by one, fucking as one, just being one, since I first knew what they were. The suits I wore were the closest I could get but it was nothing compared to this. You know my answer will be the same tomorrow, don’t you? I’d been thinking about asking you if you could change me anyway, but I was sure you’d say it was too dangerous.”

“It is dangerous.” Rosa said. “But you know the risks well enough now, grey goo and all. But if you’re 100% certain this is what you want then I will welcome you into the cyborg sisterhood. Current membership: one. Now, let’s check these schematics and make sure there’s nothing in here that might be a worry.”

Part XIII

The preparations took a few hours. Laura ordered a fresh suit which matched the red of the motorcycle exactly - with the addition of a port in the right hand glove for a canula to be fitted. Rosa prepared a fresh batch of nanomachines to inject into Laura, and carefully connected a wi-fi bridge to a new laser signalling device inside the cage so she could receive and send signals to the nanomachines. When they examined the schematic they found that the nanomachines had come to essentially the same conclusion as they had for Rosa - that Laura’s brain was designed to process signal inputs. That meant that few changes were required for most of the design, however Rosa had some issues with the way Laura’s head would be converted.

In line with the original configuration of the bike, Laura’s head would be fully enclosed within the aerodynamic fairing, her link to the outside world completely replaced by the bike’s sensor suite. “That seems a little…extreme, don’t you think?” asked Rosa.

“Because the rest of it is completely sane, right? My head would get knocked off by the slipstream if it isn’t faired in.”

“I just think we could do something…a little more human? I don’t know how I’d feel about a nosecone-headed girlfriend.” She showed Laura an idea on the screen.

“That…that could work. I like it. Can you do it?”

“It’s already done. Anything else you can think of? We can always add things later, but it’s important we get the organic interfaces right first time.”

“No, I’m really happy with it. I’m sort of sad you didn’t get a chance to fix anything you didn’t like on your body first. Is there anything you’d want to change?”

Rosa gave a warm smile, and placed her hand on Laura’s. “Right now, the only thing was that I wished it had happened sooner. The nanomachines are about ready - what about you?”

Laura took a deep breath. “Yes, I am. I guess I had better bring the bike inside. Is everything tied down?”

“I’ll grab hold of anything that isn’t. Masks on then.”

The hose extended from Rosa’s shoulder and installed itself in her throat. Laura zipped her new red suit to the neck and fixed her mask too. Breaching the airlock of the front door wasn’t simple, but Laura knew the trick to do it - She liked to do work on her bike inside her apartment - her old apartment, she thought - and this was the only way to do it. Before hitting the final switch she wrapped her arm securely around a grab handle next to the door. Sirens blared as the room decompressed to match the thin air outside and a few pieces of paper flew out into the dock.

Once the wind had subsided Laura engaged the parking mode of the bike and walked it into the room, setting it down in the cage. They had measured, and the bike just fitted with the nose and tail touching the walls when it was in flying configuration. Rosa disengaged her air supply once the door was shut and the air pressure had re-equalized.

“You said there was a safety switch for your mask - are you taking it off?”

Laura blinked once.

Rosa used an electronic message direct to Laura’s brain.

“It’s probably sealed on forever if you let the nanomachines go to work with it attached. Are you sure that’s what you want? We can wait until tomorrow if you need some time.”

Laura blinked twice. She wanted to be complete, fleshless and perfect. She entered the cage.

Rosa spoke again. “OK then. Once the process is complete you’ll be able to communicate electronically, just the same as I do. I’m going to miss your lips, my love.”

Laura blinked twice again. She was crying a little, but there was determination through the tears. She pointed at the clock.

“Yes, it’s nearly time. Get onto the bike but don’t switch it on. I put a new induction coil on the floor with a full shot of nanomachines ready. Just put that on your wrist and everything will start on the stroke of midnight.”

Laura sat on the L-shaped seat and installed the induction coil on her arm. Unable to communicate apart from simple signals, they sat in silence for the few seconds that were left.

Part XIV

Rosa saw the nanomachines inject into Laura a few seconds before 12. Immediately afterwards, Rosa felt a little surge of joy as Laura reached to her face and ripped the air supply from her throat with moments to spare, leaving the mask dangling on the pipe which was attached to her back. As soon as the clock struck 12 Laura’s body began to spasm. As predicted, the nanomachines switched on the bike and the process to load Laura into it commenced. Laura’s head disappeared into the fairing at the front of the bike, and the teeth-shaped panels gripped her torso tightly. The seat locked into position, forming a U-shaped clamp around her crotch. As her limbs were in spasm they did not lock into position, but the nanomachines had disabled the safety interlocks, allowing the bike to rotate down into the flying position with Laura’s limbs hanging down.

The words “SCAN COMPLETE” up on the computer screen and she stopped spasming. Rosa hoped Laura didn’t feel as afraid as she had at this point, as the nanomachines read out the results of the scan, as she knew she would be awake.

“PRIMARY SYSTEM FUNCTION DETERMINATION: SENSOR INPUT TO BIOELECTRICAL DEVICE FOR ANALYSIS. SECONDARY SYSTEM FUNCTION DETERMINATION: SUPPORT BIOLOGICAL FUNCTIONS OF BIOELECTRICAL DEVICE. TERTIARY SYSTEM FUNCTION DETERMINATION: HIGH SPEED, HIGH ALTITUDE FLIGHT. SYSTEM ANALYSIS: BIOELECTRICAL DEVICE EXCLUDED FROM OPERATION AND WILL NOT BE OPTIMIZED. ANALYSIS OF SENSOR INPUTS AND DEVICE OUTPUT SUGGESTS BIOELECTRICAL DEVICE CAPABLE OF SIGNIFICANT INCREASE IN NUMBER AND CAPACITY OF SENSORS. SUPPORT FUNCTIONS CAN BE OPTIMIZED. FLIGHT FUNCTIONS CAN BE OPTIMIZED. SYSTEM CONNECTIVITY FUNCTIONS CAN BE OPTIMIZED. SYSTEM PROTECTION FUNCTIONS CAN BE OPTIMIZED. COMMENCING OPTIMIZATION. TIME TO COMPLETION SIX HOURS TEN MINUTES AND FOURTEEN SECONDS. CONTINUE (Y/n)?”

She looked over to Laura, who blinked twice and then closed her eyes. With that final confirmation, Rosa hit enter to start the process and then moved in closer to watch proceedings. With so much of the finished product already constructed the nanomachines had less work to do to finish the task, and from her experience of them Rosa thought that the nanomachines would probably rebuild the bike to the new pattern rather than starting from scratch.

Nanomachines erupted from Laura and swirled around her and the bike. They stripped back a lot of the cladding from the bike, exposing the internal frame and the fusion drive that powered it, as well as removing every part of the bike that covered Laura’s head, which stood out of the front of the bike through round hole in the frame. The nanomachines also started the process of converting the suit into her new skin. Working much faster than they had on Rosa due to the circumstances and unhindered by gravity they worked on her whole body at once. At the same time they swarmed over her head, completely removing all of her hair.

As with Rosa before her, Laura remained awake, although immobile. Without the fear of the unknown, and with the calmness that had also fallen over Rosa, she watched on curiously as the Nanomachines remade her body and fused it with the machine. The nanomachines converted her suit into a new skin, the deep red color taking on an almost three dimensional shine as the process continued. The new skin was covered in what looked to be wiring of some sort, but Rosa couldn’t tell what it was for.

The fusion drive was removed from its mount and was moved underneath Laura while still being connected to the various anti-grav units - the nanomachines extended the cabling as they went. It was a small cuboid roughly two inches in each of the small sides, and five inches on the long side. The drive unit would be within her abdomen when everything was complete, but it had to move to make way for Laura to be installed within the bike’s frame. The nanomachines, swirling like a school of fish as they went about their work, held the fusion drive in its temporary position while the next stage began.

Rosa heard the metal of the bike’s frame creak and crack. She saw that the nanomachines were breaking it into pieces. The central part of the frame dissolved as Laura’s body was moved up into place. Immediately the nanomachines fused the front and rear sections to her inert torso, and then they were as one. The arm and the teeth which had held Laura in place were no longer necessary and were deconstructed into their constituent raw materials.

The nanomachines began to reshape Laura to accept the fusion drive. Like Rosa the organs of her abdominal cavity were deconstructed, with the nanomachines taking their place until the construction of a micro-fabricator to recycle the waste from the remaining organic parts of her body into the required nutrients was completed. In Laura’s case the lungs were to be used again, as the fusion drive required its own cooling system which was to be utilised to cool both the drive and the nanomachines.

A cavity was carved out in Laura’s chest and the nanomachines lifted the fusion drive into place through her abdominal wall, which instantly sealed over the device. Three wires emanated from the center of Laura’s chest which were connected to the anti-grav units from the bike - one passed behind each shoulder to connect to the front lift units, while the third passed behind her left hip to connect to the rear units.

The intake and exhaust hoses for the cooling system were installed. The breathing apparatus which was attached to Laura’s back was modified into an intake pump to ensure sufficient air was forced through into the lungs at rest, with the inlet hoses running through her back rather than her mouth. the exhaust pipes were routed through Laura’s lower torso to exit from the outside of her hips.

Looking at the schematic diagram Rosa realized that this design would provide a net thrust increase at high power levels - very efficient, she thought. the additional cooling capacity meant that the fusion drive could run at 130% of its nominal capacity, allowing further modifications to be completed.

Laura’s arms and legs were next to be integrated. The nanomachines lifted each limb into the position on the frame in which they would sit for normal flight, and then locked them into position. Once complete, the metal supporting the anti-grav units at the extremes of the arm began to dissolve, with the nanomachines holding them in position temporarily. The power conduits which connected to them were sealed onto Rosa’s arms. A similar process was completed for Laura’s legs, however since there had been only a single anti-grav unit for propulsion the nanomachines began to manufacture a second one so that there would be one for each foot, making use of the extra power that was available.

Rosa was following the process intently. Having felt what happened to her from the inside she was able to map what was happening to Laura back onto her own experience. The next part, she recalled, would be the construction of the supplementary nervous system. On the floor of the cage a coil of wire had been prepared, and a silvery tentacle lifted it to Laura. The thickest part of it was attached to Laura’s spine and there were connections to the limbs, which seemed logical. As with Rosa’s own body a large wire ran from the spine around the right side of her back and down to her crotch in order to transmit the signals from that part of her body, and an extra wire ran from the induction coil back to her neck.

At Laura’s head the main wire connected with the base of her skull. a fan of wires spread around each side of her head, with connections surrounding Laura’s eyes and ears. Rosa guessed this was the point at which Laura would start to come back to life. At the same time the nanomachines temporarily connected Laura to the laser device that allowed signalling into and out of the cage.

Laura had been swimming in blackness, divorced from her senses. Suddenly she felt…something, and then she saw flashes of light, which resolved into Lines of 0s and 1s scrolling past, then hexadecimal, which then resolved into text, which appeared to be in front of her right eye.

“OPTICAL INPUT TO BIOELECTRICAL DEVICE OPERATIONAL. OUTPUT AVAILABLE USING SIMULATED HAPTIC DEVICES.”

She wasn’t sure what that meant.

“SIMULATE HAPTIC DEVICE. DOES BIOELECTRICAL DEVICE FUNCTION AS AN ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE?”

Laura began to panic. She didn’t want to do it wrong.

New text appeared in front of what she thought was her left eye, with a different font. “It wants you to think about using a keyboard. I’d try in this box first. Imagine pressing each key one by one, go as slowly as you need to.”

Laura concentrated with all her might. “rose/”

“I’m here for you - but you forgot about the Shift key!” was displayed on screen. “The nanomachines just want to make sure you are what they think you are, so tell them yes.”

In the other box Laura conjured “Yes”. Even the second try was easier, especially now she knew Rosa was with her.

Rosa continued. “Now, they’ll be working out how to map the new wiring onto your brain. Lots of funny feelings all over your body - well, it’ll feel like your body.”

In the other eye the nanomachines wrote “INPUT CONNECTIONS CANNOT BE DETERMINED THROUGH SPINAL MULTIPLEX. FOR CORRECT FUNCTION PLEASE RETURN CORRECT VALUES FOR THE FOLLOWING INPUTS.” A diagram of her body was displayed with an extra nervous system superimposed. She thrilled when she saw that the image showed her “new” body rather than her old one.

“INPUT COMMENCING”

Laura felt a hot sensation on her thigh, and indicated as such on the screen. then a cold sensation in her right pinky finger. As for Rosa the nanomachines ran through a series of tests until they were satisfied that the connections had been made properly. For Laura the test signals included both ears and both eyes.

“SPINAL MULTIPLEX NOW MAPPED. PROCEEDING TO RECONSTRUCTION. PLEASE WAIT”

The nanomachines’ text went black. Immediately, they began to install the new parts that had been manufactured or modified. Two egg-shaped panels were lifted from the floor by the nanomachines. Rosa recognized these to be the casing for Laura’s head. They’d made it less like a missile nose-cone, but aside from the general shape of a human head it was blank and almost featureless. The front half was shorter than the back, exposing her jaw, mouth and nose. A single camera with a wide angle lens was located roughly in front of her left eye, interrupting a semicircle of light sensors which traversed the front of the casing, again in line with her eyes. The rear panel was fitted first, allowing Rosa to see the inside of the panel, which appeared to be coated in the material the suit was made of. Rosa had a last few moments to look at Laura’s face before it was hidden by the front half of the shell.

Part XV

Moments afterwards, Laura’s primary visual and audio systems came online. It was blurry at first, then pixelated, but as the sensors calibrated the image became progressively sharper. It took her a moment to notice that she had an uninterrupted 210 degree field of vision, and a few moments longer to focus on a particular segment of that field of vision - in this case the extreme right, where she could see Rosa, keeping watch over her. Rosa’s hand had crept down towards her crotch, where she was absently stroking herself, almost by reflex. “And she called me a kinky bitch!” Laura thought to herself.

The nanomachines were now on the home stretch, with most of the pre-existing panels already modified to fit. The back plate came first, containing the intakes for her cooling system and the turbine pump. A pair of handlebars extended and then retracted neatly into her shoulder blades. This was followed by the chest plate, which stopped just below the breasts. Laura could see that the two breasts were separate, but as with everything on her new body they were built for speed and shaped like teardrops as were the stylized nipples, with the tail of the tear angling slightly away from her centerline to effectively channel the air past her body. On her right shoulder was a smoked glass dome much like the one that had replaced Rosa’s eye.

The arm pieces were fitted next, jointed at the shoulder and elbow and flattened and stretched from their original shapes into an airfoil configuration. Rosa noted that for that to work properly Laura’s limbs must have been slimmed down significantly to fit inside. The anti-grav units were installed in each palm, similar to the one in Rosa’s left hand, leaving the fingers free. As had happened for Rosa previously each arm ran through the full range of motion to check each new system, with each of the arm pieces able to rotate around the arm to act as a control surface. With a surprise, Rosa saw each of Laura’s fingers retract into her hand - another aerodynamic adjustment.

With the arms now in operation the nanomachines commanded Rosa’s body to rotate upright. without the additional control of the anti-grav units on her feet this took a few seconds. Now she was stood up she understood quite how powerful her new vision was - not only was everything pin sharp but her depth perception was perfect. She focused in on Rosa, who was still staring at her, and still touching herself.

“I can see what you’re doing,” she thought, “And I’m pretty sure it’s turning me on. Why don’t you show me what that body is capable of?”

Rosa began to touch herself more vigorously, but kept looking at Laura. As the nanomachines began to clamp Laura’s torso with a newly constructed brace Rosa began to ramp up the input gain, taking herself higher, but focusing as hard as she could to keep the right side of ecstasy. If she could time this just right…

Laura’s body was now complete to her waist, and the nanomachines began their work on Laura’s lower half. Rosa could see her legs were similar to her own, except Laura’s feet were articulated at the ankle,and had a substantial wedge heel on each foot which contained the anti-grav units. The inside edge of each thigh was slightly squared off to ensure a good seal. Each joint in her legs spun through its range of motion, and she could see that Rosa’s feet would be highly effective rudders. With the anti-grav units in her feet now operational Laura’s hover settled down into a more stable pattern. The units in her hands shut down to conserve power and her fingers extended back out from her palms.

Rosa could see the last part, designed to cover, augment and replace Laura’s genitals, undergoing final construction. Like Rosa’s own body the inside of the plate was covered with sensor wiring radiating out from the location of her clitoris. And also like Rosa a pair of dildoes, articulated to be able to alter their angles at will, were ready to penetrate. The exterior surface of the plate had a slight ridge like her own crotch, and Rosa began to think about how they could use them on each other.

Sensing Rosa’s increasing arousal the two dildoes in her body began to pulsate, hitting both her vaginal and anal walls as well as the underside of her cyber-sex. She only just caught herself, but brought things back under control. She now had the input gain up to 10%, where it had been for her very first orgasm as a cyborg. Already she was beginning to experience synesthetic artifacts as the signal input from her genitals started to bleed over into other channels. It was getting harder and harder to hold on but she was focused on building as high as she could.

The sleekness of Laura’s body was undeniable, and even though it was unfinished it was utterly stunning. Laura’s muscularity had gone even if the strength was still there, and it had been replaced with some sort of ethereal grace. Rosa thrashed at her body harder and harder, and it started to react to the increased load. The anti-grav units reclined her to the horizontal as it was more efficient, leaving more power to spare. Rosa shunted it all into the input gain, ramming it up further. Her vision was almost lost to a multicoloored flux and her ears were full of a broad harmony chorus across five octaves. A Warning message displayed, flashing red and white.

“CAPACITOR AT 92% - DISCHARGE IMMINENT. LOCATING EMERGENCY EARTH POINT”

She pushed on regardless. She could just make out the final stage of Laura’s conversion taking place through her distorted vision, the crotch plate sealing itself against her sex and eliminating the last visible part of her humanity. Laura felt a surge in her body as her systems powered up. The conduits all across her suit were energized by her fusion core and began to glow a bright amber. A message scrolled through her vision.

“OPERATION COMPLETE. RETURNING CONTROL IN 3…2…1…”

She was complete. They were both complete. A faint blue glow began to emanate from Rosa’s body as she pushed the input gain even higher and grabbed her sex with both hands. At the moment of orgasm the supercapacitors in her body became saturated and discharged into the room, bolts of electricity shooting from her body, arcing through and destroying all of the electrical equipment in the room before finding an earth through the Faraday cage. A paralyzing, white heat, white noise orgasm overcame Rosa completely. She had fucked herself unconscious at the moment that Laura had been converted, just as she had wanted.

Part XVI

The room was dark apart from the glow of Laura’s body. Aside from the slight turbine whine of their bodies there was no sound, even from the air conditioning. Looking out of the window that covered the entire external wall of the apartment Laura saw that several city blocks were dark - whatever had happened to Rosa had knocked out power for the best part of a square mile. Rosa was laid out on the floor just outside of the cage. Laura attempted to communicate with her electronically, but received no response.

She shouted at the top of her voice, but Rosa did not hear her. Ignoring the warnings about opening the cage she forced the door and went to Rosa. Placing a hand onto Rosa’s body her own sensors were able to determine that Rosa was functioning correctly. She tried the only other thing she could think of and kissed Rosa on the lips. Rosa’s eye opened, and Laura hugged her, amazed by the feelings that came from her armor - her body, she realized, and it was more sensitive than her skin had been.

“What the hell was that?” Laura asked. “You’ve taken out half of the city by the looks of it.”

“That,” said Rosa, “Was 50% sensitivity.” She lifted herself upright. “Let me get a look at you.”

Laura’s body pulsed with the amber light from the conduits on her body, contrasting with the deep red of her body panels. Every curve, every line defined by the armor. Rosa could feel herself coming on again. “Beautiful. Perfect.”

“You really think so?” Laura stroked her own body, which pulsed brighter momentarily. Rosa felt a quiver as the sensation from Laura’s body shot through her. Rosa played with her own breast and saw Laura touch hers in response.

“We’re…linked, but I think it must be stronger than before. I can feel it all, everything.” breathed Rosa. “I want to feel you exploring your body.”

Laura said nothing but grabbed her crotch. Rosa gasped, and then giggled. “I’ll just let you carry on.” Rosa reclined onto her back and spread her arms and legs out like a starfish. Laura scribed circles on her crotch with her finger, marveling at how the amber light followed her lead, leaving a phosphorescent trace wherever it went. Rosa let out a long, lazy moan.

Laura’s other hand strayed again to her new breasts. Although they were cast from a hard plastic the sensation from them was the same as when she had been flesh, with even the pain of a pinched nipple simulated. She pinched harder and harder still to see whether there was a limit but there seemed to be none, although Rosa’s yelping made her continue her exploration elsewhere. Hands all over her body, so many new things to play with - the cables sealed to her stomach, her perfectly smooth head, the hot breath of her exhausts as she stroked her tailpipes, all alive to arousal. She glowed brighter as the fire grew.

Rosa was feeling a little teased. She wanted to experience Laura’s thrill of exploring her new body, but she wished she’d be a bit quicker about it. “If only she’d engage her dildoes” she thought. Laura jumped a little as her two intruders started to dance. Her body glowed more strongly as her arousal grew and her breathing became heavy. Her hands smeared the light all over her body, and the room grew brighter. Rosa’s mind raced at the idea that she could have some control over Laura, and wondered what else was possible.

Laura screamed with pleasure, and Rosa immediately saw why. The plate on her crotch had split open and a cyborg phallus had extended. Laura grabbed hold of it with both hands and moaned in her heat. Rosa’s crotch opened on her command, this time configured as a vagina. Laura wasted no time in burying herself deep into Rosa, grabbing her by the hips and thrusting rhythmically. Although both women’s genitals were now constructed of metal and plastic the simulation of flesh was perfect. Better than perfect thought Rosa, as she felt both the sensations from her own body and those channeled from Laura.

“Can you feel it all too?” She asked, timing her question between the thrusts.

“Yes!” screamed Laura. The light from her body was even brighter now, and pulsing faster and faster. Rosa grabbed hold of Laura, hugged her close and commanded her penis to thrust itself. It began to push into her autonomously, and as the nanomachines took over control of their pleasure both women cascaded into orgasm. Laura shone brightly, turning night into day momentarily, almost radiating the pleasure to the room.

“That was-”

“-fucking awesome!” said Rosa, surprised to hear the secomd half of Laura’s sentence coming from her mouth. “The link is getting stronger, I think. I can see your thoughts now, not just your feelings, and I don’t know how far it’s going to go - I guess there’s a chance our consciousnesses might merge. I can always try to…” she stopped, knowing Laura’s answer already.

Outside the window, the city was still in darkness, aside from the lights of police cruisers, searching for the source of the blackout. “We’ve not got long until they find us.” they thought. “We need a way out, and fast.” Rosa commanded her air system and helmet to engage, and Laura deployed her mask, which extended from the front of her chest plate and sealed against her helmet, enclosing her head completely. Rosa looked at her utterly featureless face with a mixture of fascination and horror, and while she was glad Laura had changed her mind, she could feel how turned on Laura was by it.

She tried the door but the circuitry that controlled it had been destroyed by the shock. “No good.” she thought. “We need a way out, and fast.”

“Maybe if we can break the window?” Laura asked.

“Perhaps - but there’s nothing in here that we could use. If we could find a way to make it crack from the inside the air pressure would blow it out, maybe if we could heat a single point…” at that moment their linked minds found the answer. Rosa wasn’t sure if she would be able to control the power but she needed to try.

“I think if we connect I can charge up from your fusion drive, and I might be able to direct the electricity through my arm. If this works we’ll be sucked straight through the window, so you need to be ready to fly and I need to be able to hold on, OK?”

Laura nodded, and laid down on her stomach. Her arms and legs moved into the correct position for flight, her fingers retracted into her palms, and the handlebars extended from her shoulder blades. At points across her body a series of clamps emerged that would hold Rosa in the correct position. Rosa mounted Laura’s back and crouched down low. The clamps grabbed her arms and legs, pinning her close to Laura so that she wouldn’t be ripped away by the slipstream. In order to shunt the power from Laura, they would need to be physically connected by a substantial cable. Rosa willed her cyborg phallus to emerge from her crotch. She knew it could extend further but the feeling as it snaked clear of her crotch on a segmented metal hose was bizarre. It nudged between Laura’s thighs to find her sex.

Laura allowed Rosa into her vagina, and tightly clamped on to her. It felt more mechanical than when they had been doing this exclusively for pleasure, but it was was a little pleasurable all the same. She played with the settings for Laura’s fusion drive and directed the power through their genitals. The feeling was of a single organ, not two, as the power built up in Rosa’s capacitor. She’d calculated that around half charge would do, but she let it ramp past 60% before pointing her arm at the window and commencing the discharge.

A bolt of lightning shot from her hand at the window, heating up a point the size of a quarter by hundreds of degrees. Instantly cracks began to radiate from that point and almost immediately afterwards the window blew out, sucking everything out into the thin air, Laura and Rosa included. They tumbled over and over as they fell from the sky. Laura fought to get back into control, firstly stabilising into a vertical dive and then pulling out into level flight, twisting between the darkened skyscrapers just above the upper street level. Laura was now using the vision unit mounted in her shoulder for forward vision, with the sensors in her face acting as a radar altimeter.

“Are you OK?” She asked. “Sorry that took so long. the center of gravity has shifted a little and that threw me.”

Rosa didn’t answer for a moment. “Wow…it’s been such a long time since I’ve been outside anyway, but that was amazing. What a rush! Can we do it again?”

“We might have some fancy flying to do in a moment, can you see those police anywhere?

Rosa twisted her head around as much as she could and spotted the police behind them. As she watched she saw their headlights shine brightly towards her as they began their pursuit.

“They’re on our tail. what can we do?”

“I think we can outrun them. You ready?”

“I think so. Which way will you go? Quickest way out of the city is east, isn’t it?”

Laura laughed. “East isn’t quite the quickest!”

Rosa saw Laura’s body begin to glow beneath her, and could sense the power running through her body again. As Laura’s fusion drive hit full power she felt the surge of acceleration as they accelerated. Laura pulled up sharply much higher G force than a human body could ever handle, and speared up towards the night sky. Even though they were climbing vertically they were gaining speed, and Rosa could see the earth curving away underneath them. By the time Laura had leveled out the sky above was quite dark.

“This is about maximum altitude.” Laura said. “The turbine pumps are at nearly full power trying to keep things cool, but this is about twice as high as I’ve ever been able to reach. Pretty fucking cool, eh?”

“Pretty fucking cool indeed.” agreed Rose. “So what now? There’s no way we can go back, and it’s not like we can blend in easily anywhere.”

“I guess we just find somewhere quiet, out of the way, and wait for the world to come around to our way of thinking. You’re super-smart, but I’m sure someone else will figure out what you did and how you did it, and when they do work it out we can come find them. Until then I think we just pick a dark spot down there somewhere and chill. I’m sure we can think of fun things to do while we’re waiting.”

Rose smiled. “Alright then. How about over there?” She stared at an isolated area up in the mountains to the east. Laura saw the same spot. “Looks good, but you’re driving!”

Rosa gripped the controls tightly, aimed for the mountains, and applied full power. They headed into the sunrise together.

Epilogue

“Clear!”

The SWAT team stood down, and walked back to their transport through the now useless airlock. Replacing them were the detectives and the forensic officers. They fanned out and inspected the room for clues. Since the window had been blown out they were all wearing breathing apparatus.

“Hey, Mahoney. Get over here, I think I’ve got something.”

He strode over to what looked like a big cage in the middle of the room. “Why the hell is this in here? Looks industrial.”

His partner spoke to him without turning from her work. “It is industrial. Nanomachine industrial. The guy who lived here, John…”

“it’s in the file somewhere.”

“…whatever, was a big wheel in the research for them. But most of this stuff was illegal, even if he had a permit. I bet if we look through his files we’ll find a bunch of shady stuff - guns, drugs, maybe gold and silver too. We’ll get some tests on this goo, work out which company the nanomachines came from.”

She scooped a sample of the nanomachine soup on the floor into a Petri dish, not caring about where the fluid splashed, since it was completely safe for humans to touch. She didn’t see a drop of the fluid fall on her hand and instantly disappear as the nanomachines seeped into her bloodstream.

“Doesn’t look like much for us to do here, the crime scene guys will go through any computers and give us anything interesting. You want to get something to eat?”

“It’s always about your stomach, Mahoney. Let’s go, but I get to choose. You know I hate doughnuts.”