Snow White and The Seven Chapter Two The Queens Wrath
- 2 years ago
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-The Lab-
While Harvy and Skay busied themselves with the now unconscious Galtin on an operating table, James went to check on their new residents. He had intended for the two of them to come train with them today, but circumstances prevented him from properly inducting Fatty and figuring out what his deal was. Exsue, of course, had still been unconscious.
To his surprise, they both appeared to be awake and were pacing around inside their rooms. The moment he opened the door to Fatty’s room, Fatty shot back against the wall with both hands holding his ass. “Stop! Wait! You don’t need to probe me, I can tell you everything!”
James just stood at the doorway looking on with a strange expression. Then a smile broadened his face, and he walked back out. “Let’s go Fatty you crazy bastard. We only locked you up for a little bit for our safety and yours. You ate a lot of energy yesterday so we couldn’t be sure you wouldn’t explode.”
Fatty cautiously followed James out to the main floor space of the lab. James sat him down then started putting some equipment on him. He took a hypodermic needle and drew some blood out of Fatty’s hand, then turned on the computer screen as he placed it in an odd little device on the bench top. As the computer started whirling away, he got a detailed history paying particular attention to Fatty’s spirit energy.
He had to stop Fatty multiple times when he seemed about ready to launch into one of his crazy conspiracies. Instead, he focused on exactly how he triggered this element and what symptoms he’d had recently.
After he was done with his very basic check-up, he sat down with Fatty and spent an hour explaining everything. He’d told some of this stuff earlier, but this time he was going to fill Fatty in on everything he could.
Once that was done, he left Fatty to try and digest it all as Jessy started explaining everything again in simpler terms. James realised from this that he’d apparently gotten a little carried away when describing cultivation.
During his questioning, he’d come to a new conclusion on elements that reflected a strong emotion. They clouded your judgment and influenced your personality. He’d already been suspicious when he discovered Jessy had been taking men back to her room regularly, even after she’d unlocked the water element.
Now that Fatty had appeared, with what James could only describe as the gluttony element and was endlessly hungry, he was confident that unlocking an element that was an emotion would alter your personality slightly. If not your personality then it at least changed how your body reacted to certain stimulus. In Jessy’s case, she was constantly horny. Fatty was constantly hungry.
That meant that although these elements were stupidly powerful in comparison, they also had drawbacks. It also meant that just to maintain control, you needed to be strong willed enough not to allow it to consume you.
Thinking this far, he wandered back and let Exsue out. As if to contradict Fatty’s earlier cautions, Exsue threw herself towards the doorway with a huge smile and jumped onto James. No one was quite sure what to think when they saw James walking back trying to pry the girl off himself as she kissed his face everywhere and humped her hips into his waist with her legs and arms wrapped around him.
The moment she attached herself to him, James felt like he’d suddenly contracted an STD. No matter how he tried, he couldn’t get rid of her. Eventually, he just gave a loud sigh and let her come along sitting on his back. Although she wasn’t weighty, the constant hip grinding and gasping into his ear was incredibly distracting, for him and everyone else in the lab. Making it worse he felt a wet spot on his back that just seemed to be growing larger.
After some time, and some now empty phials of questionable content later, Skay finished up with Galtin, and he was tossed into a room to recover. Now everyone in the Guild was together. Skay, James, Jessy, Harvy and the two newcomers, Exsue and Fatty.
The first thing discussed as they all sat down was Exsue and Fatty. Jessy specifically questioned the nature of their relationship only to be glared at in a vile manner by Exsue and snubbed with a “Noneya business”.
Fatty, although still suspicious that everyone was disguised aliens, agreed to join the guild. They had the same goals, and they were people he knew, so he didn’t hum and haw too much over it. Exsue, on the other hand, said she “don’t give a rats ass about the stupid guild.” She made her position clear that the only thing she cared about was James.
That led to a discussion on exactly who she was. Most of which Skay had already somewhat guessed. Jessy just pinched her forehead as if she felt a headache coming on and Harvy remained partially dead as always and looked like none of this mattered to him.
Now that Exsue was awake James took the opportunity to ask about how the monolith worked and what the consequences of releasing her would be. Now that she was out, Exsue didn’t hold to much back. There were certain things she wouldn’t tell them about, but she explained with two words the general situation now that she’d escaped. “City’s Fucked.”
Apparently, the monolith was normally the limiting factor on its protective range. In this case, things would be different, though. Typically, the monolith took advantage of the spirit beast trapped inside it to help power and control it properly. That meant that the stronger the creature’s spirit was, the more it could accomplish and protect.
Now that the spirit was swapped out with a little True Spirit Realm spirit ... well, I’m sure your imaginations can tell what the result is. Not only does Little Blue now have to learn how to control and operate the monolith correctly, it also has to try and power it. This meant the range of the monolith had dropped to a radius of 4 km. Which was barely enough to cover a quarter of the city, let alone the thousands of square kilometres of grain it protected with Exsue in control.
Having realised just how fucked they would be if the city were attacked, the Brotherhood sent Skay to get Hao, Anvil and Song down here. They needed to start some brainstorming on what exactly to do. James was averse to the idea of evacuating the city. Even if they travelled with the Gau Clan they may not necessarily arrive at their destination.
To further reinforce his decision, was all the work they’d put into erecting a guild here. Now they may not be attacked by a horde. But even if they just had an increase in beast activity, it could be detrimental to the test subjects in the city ... err, the residents rather.
For another full night, the Brotherhood and Gau Elders discussed the potential damage to the monolith and countermeasures. They wisely chose not to mention any involvement in the events of the monolith and instead spoke entirely theoretically.
-Brotherhood Guildhall-
The next day, the number of people lining up had reduced significantly. A good deal of the population who could afford it straight away had already been processed by the guild. In their coffers was a silver coin from nearly 40 thousand people. Now the people queuing up were mostly people who had to save up some coppers to afford the hypno.
This meant that half the population of the city was cultivators. If Exsue were still in the monolith, she’d have noticed a huge jump in how far her control range had extended. Skay had seen a huge change in the cities average spirit energy as well. He concluded that spirit energy must be drawn towards areas that it’s being ... taken, from.
That meant the more spirit energy that was absorbed from the world, the more the world would try and fill the area with spirit energy. Amusingly, that suggested that the stronger the population in an area was, the more spirit energy would gather there. Indeed, the strong become stronger, and the weak become weaker.
Needless to say, Skay had no aversion to raising the average spirit energy of the city. The only problem was when Exsue mentioned how the spirit beasts would be drawn more quickly towards areas with high primal spirit energy. They were essentially lighting a beacon for a beast horde to attack.
James, of course, ignored this warning, he would never turn down the people’s money. He already had nearly 400 gold. That would be enough to keep the Guild running for a couple of years straight. It also meant they didn’t have to rush into selling any technology to the clans or guilds just yet.
As the commoners were being processed, James went to the main hall that had remained mostly unused until now. Recently, some loose cultivators not tied to any organisation had expressed interest in joining the guild. Although the rules of the guild sounded rather strict, they were actually fairly lenient in comparison to others.
They weren’t restricted in how they operate and only needed to keep the guild in mind. That mostly meant they could do whatever the hell they liked as long as they didn’t create trouble for the guild or give away information on the guild. In exchange, they got the chance to take any job they wanted and earn rewards. If this guild had the ability to hand out such a powerful meditation technique to commoners, then they surely had other far more powerful methods that could assist them in cultivation.
James stepped up onto the little stage in the main hall and looked over the 15 odd people sitting and talking to each other. One of them happened to be someone that James had met. “Haungshu, no need for you to join in this ceremony, go to the foyer and tell Harvy to take you down to the lab.”
After saying that. he glanced at the remaining 14 then read them the guild’s rules. Before they swore any oaths, he allowed them to ask a few questions. The first one came from an older looking lady wearing leather adventurer garbs.
“What sort of things can this guild offer us once we join?”
James just smiled and gave her another look over. “Oh? Offer? You make it sound like were going to just give you something for joining up. Like some kind of gift? You’ve already got the wrong idea about this place if you think that’s the case. You’ll get nothing but an opportunity. If you finish any of the jobs, then you can earn something.”
James then indicated to the two job boards on the walls. One of them already had about 10 different jobs on it. Each one had the outline of a star stamped on the bottom of it. This meant they had a Barrier Realm level of difficulty.
Next to the star was a number. All of these job cards had a 1 to 4 written next to it. This was the number of merits they could receive from the guild on successful job completion. At the end of the job board was a piece of paper with a list of things they sold only to guild members and a list of stuff they sold to anyone.
On the member-only list, starting at 5 merits was something labelled 616.3. The list went on and filled out to nearly 50 items or techniques from instruction on essential element control to the star point breathing technique that James had been working on recently. At the end of the list for 10,000 points was written two words. Arc Cannon.
There was only one more thing currently posted to the job board. It had 100 merit points as the reward and had no star. The only thing written on the Job notice was ‘Lab Assistant, 1 day’. James was somewhat apprehensive about having such a large reward for this job, but Jessy believed even 1000 points was too little. This meant they eventually decided on an in between of only 100 points.
In Jessy’s opinion, anyone that can survive a single day in the Laboratory either had to be as mad as the pair that inhabits it or already be dead, much like the first lab assistant, Harvy.
Once James had done speaking, 3 people got up and left. They said nothing and just walked out. Clearly, they were either scouting for other guilds or simply couldn’t see any reason to join if the guild wasn’t going to spoon feed them.
The remaining 11 people became the first recruitment intake of the Dark Brotherhood, and they all swore an oath of loyalty to the Guild on the spot. One of them was even brave enough to immediately head to reception and register for the Lab Assistant job. James just gave a wry smile and went down to the lab.
-The Lab-
The moment he walked into the lab Exsue was glued to him. “JayJay, you never come and play with me. All night you were talking about annoying things. Come and teach me how to cultivate again. I heard your bedroom is perfect for...” she paused in mid-speech and leant in close to his ear and whispered “Dual Cultivating” as she nipped his earlobe.
James was conflicted on exactly how to deal with this headache. He did want to try ‘dual cultivation’ with Exsue, but he was certain that would be like feeding a stray animal. It would just keep coming back and digging through his trash if he gave it anything.
“I thought you were some Ancient Lightning Dragon or something. Don’t you have your own cultivation techniques?” James asked in an attempt to assuage his curiosity, just as much as he was trying to distract Exsue from any thoughts of them doing anything.
Exsue made a cute pouty face at James’ suave evasion. “But that was when I was still a spirit beast. I’m a human now and need to cultivate with human methods.”
James was stunned. ‘Human now? Does that mean this isn’t just some kind of morphing into a human body dealy?’
He stopped at a bench and leant back onto it crossing his arms in thought. When he’d organised his thoughts, he whipped out his black-pad. A few button presses later Skay’s voice came through.
“Ah! Boy, perfect timing. I need a hand, the test subject from yesterday is acting up. He is refusing medicine. Come give him a little shock, so he doesn’t fight back so much.”
James felt a little bit dirty helping Skay subdue an abductee in his secret basement just so he could feed him something suspicious. Skay had made an attempt to make it look less suggestible by scribbling ‘medicine’ over the top of ‘Harbinger 3.0’. But the bubbling liquid in the test tube and the stinging in the eyes when it was exposed to air left James with no doubt of its questionable nature.
He chose to pretend that he never noticed this discrepancy. After all, one day Skay might invent something with these herbs like another 616. Of course, he’d never volunteer to test something Skay made without a thorough vetting process. At least ten subjects tested over the period of a week as the minimum standard of testing anything Skay had managed to squeeze into a test tube.
After their captive was once again resting in his room, they returned to the work benches. Now I say ‘resting’, but it would be more accurate to describe it as a catatonic death state coma. If he could even still breath through the black foam dribbling out his nose and mouth, James would be surprised.
“Old Madman, I gave you a call because I think Exsue may be able to spread some more light on beast cultivation for us. I suspect you’ve got a couple questions too?”
Skay immediately flipped his pad out and eyed Exsue. James just smiled at the uncomfortable look on her face with the old madman eyeing her.
Skay started poking his pad and scrolling through some lists. Then after preparing some easy starter questions and organising his lists, his trademark rapid-fire questioning began. Following this development the three of them spent an entire hour discussing beast and animal cultivation.
From what they learnt, beast cultivation was vastly different than human cultivation. Although their spirit realms were referred to in a similar manner, they didn’t actually have meditation or breathing techniques. Initially, they can intuitively draw in spirit energy.
Every beast had an innate ability to cultivate some form of spirit energy and usually that energy would be specific to their environment. The little forest hopper, for example, was moved into an environment where it received endless shocks and lightning arcs. With a little assistance from one of Skay’s potions, which James now assumed was 616.0, this helped it learn how to refine spirit energy properly, which a large number of spirit animals lacked.
This meant that until it could learn to refine energy it would still be considered a spirit animal, even if it generated enough primal spirit energy to be considered equal to true spirit or palace realm. If it just remained an animal forever, it would just endlessly absorb primal energy and become an unstoppable force of pure instincts. Hunt, consume, mate.
Eventually, once it had experienced a particular element enough, it would learn how to refine spirit energy, at which point it would develop a beast core. The beast core was a precious stone that a creature generated in their body with refined spirit energy and would essentially be their spirit realm, where all their energy was stockpiled.
When Exsue mentioned this Skay almost jumped up and down with excitement. “You mean to say that spirit energy can manifest as physical matter?”
Exsue gave him a look like he was stupid. “Well duh.”
Skay didn’t even bother responding to that. Instead, his questioning intensified twofold. Exsue quickly learnt not to make fun of Skay for not knowing something. His fanaticism for knowledge frightened even her.
In fact, as the monolith spirit, she never tried to read the old man’s mind. Not after the first time. She felt like, if she had a real head, it would have exploded at the endlessly changing quality and quantity of thoughts the old man could process.
His thought patterns were so fucking strange it mainly just came across as static when she tried to read his mind. Even James was difficult for her to read. Which was why she could only send short visions to him instead of creating a direct link and talking.
When she had to implant the language into their minds after they arrived, the monolith actually had to draw extra power from her because it was having such a difficult time trying to force a change in their heads. It could only be considered their luck they were unconscious when they came through. Otherwise, the monolith might have had some trouble giving them the common language.
Continuing on from that regression, spirit beasts were the first actual step of a creature onto the path of cultivation. It was them deciding to no longer follow the general script of the world and defying the heavens by reaching for the power of gods.
After that first step, they would rapidly develop conscious thought similar to humans. When they were at the ‘true spirit’ realm, that was them creating a spirit realm instead of a reflection of their subconscious mind like humans did. They discussed into detail a number of realms higher than that when Exsue decided to withhold anymore.
“For now you’re still only barrier realm cultivators. Even if I described higher realms of beast cultivation, it wouldn’t help you at all. Instead, it may distract you from the things that are more important. Like your own cultivations.”
With that, the discussion of beast cultivation ended. But not before James asked one final question which was the whole reason he even started the topic. “You said before that you’re a human now. That implies you’re not a spirit beast. Can you explain that to us?”
Exsue just gave a happy smile because James was acknowledging her existence and forcefully crawled into his embrace and encouraged him to wrap his arms around her. James didn’t want to upset her right now because she would undoubtedly be spiteful with her explanation. She was apparently using this as an opportunity to take some advantages of James.
Once she was nice and snug, she began to explain. “Well, it’s really simple actually. All beasts have one true goal in their cultivation. That is to achieve true sentience. By going against the heavens they are considered demons, and so the only way to truly escape their natural instincts is to become humans, who have two minds. One that controls your actions, and one that controls your instincts. I think you called it ... subconscious mind?”
James and Skay shared a look between each other. Their thoughts were written on their faces. ‘Intriguing’. Exsue then continued on.
“Well eventually once they reach that stage they will have two choices. They separate instinct from action and become human. This will allow them to reach godhood and climb into the heavens. Or they fall to their instinct and lose all the rationality that they have spent those millions of years trying to get. They descend into madness and become a true demonic cultivator.”
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In the video projected on the wall, was the view of Goliath screaming “Incoming!” at the top of his lungs and Fatty firing an Arc Cannon as 30 huge black rhinos charged towards them through a field. One by one they fell, but some of them still reached the pair. As the few who had escaped Goliath and Fatty’s cannon fire hurdled out of the grain field, Fatty roared loudly and launched forward to meet one. It was like smashing into an immovable object as the massive horn collided with Fatty’s...
For the next month anyone that could work, worked. The entire city was ripped up from the ground like an old tree and rebuilt. A wall 20 metres high was slowly raised around the city. Luckily the city had a massive reserve of grain, so anyone that worked was fed from the stocks. The Imperial Branch wasn’t too happy with that, seeing as normally all those reserves were sold to the capital city and if they didn’t get a certain quota, the Imperial Clan would jump up and down and probably have...
As the day dragged out into night James recorded each person’s breakthrough experience. What he quickly discovered was that anyone with an abstract element had a different experience. Instead of just coalescing a True Spirit, merging with it and then breaking the Barrier, they all suffered what they described as a tribulation. From earlier research on regular cultivators breaking through, James had learnt that it was all basically the same. When you create your spirit, it requires an...
Exsue started patting down his body while paying specific attention to sensitive areas and grabbed his face looking at his eyes then moving his arms around and tapping on joints all while asking questions. “Have you got any aches or pains? Headaches? Nausea? The uncontrollable urge to kill? A desire to eat human flesh? General hatred or disgust at the world or people?” As she fired off questions and poked and prodded him, Skay started to join in. “How long did your trial feel? Did you...
-Star City- James was mulling about the city rather early the next day and just as the suns were coming up, he sauntered over to the south-east corner were the guild plaza was located. This area was a vast open square with a wide cylindrical job board in the centre. Every few meters the background colour of the job board changed and was titled after a different guild or faction. Surrounding the plaza were an assortment of buildings all bought and paid for by guilds that wished to set up a...
Now that the zone was cleared of beasts and James was out of commission, Skay as the Vice Guildmaster was forced to start making some decisions. While he set up a basic outpost around the Quarry, the Guilds got news that James had disappeared since the Mole incident. They soon started trying to play some political games and skirting the rules both in the Empire and in Star City. They were only lucky that Jasmine and Jessy mostly cleaned up any messes. Had they not jumped in to stop Skay,...
-Guild Branch- The Tech City Guild Branch, that was somehow being managed and run by ex-Lackey 1, now Overseer Gary, was far more impressive than in the past. It was a 30 story building right next to the biggest plaza in town, which also happened to be the Monolith plaza. It remained mostly empty but was manned 24/7 and still posted Jobs that needed doing. Most of the cultivators that lived in the shadowy side of the city got their jobs here. The entire third floor was just 4 walls of job...
Seeing he’d managed to work up a response from James with that little play his subordinate just acted out, Artimus smiled and placed his tea on the ground next to his seat then crossed his legs and eyed James. “It’s rather simple James. You’ve only been here for 3 or 4 months, and you’re already achieved so much. You’re already running a city in my empire, you and your 3 companions have already stepped into true spirit realm 10 times faster than even the quickest cultivators in the entire...
-Tech City Spire- With 4 days left until the auction, things had been quickly ramping up in the city. More and more powerful cultivators were entering the city and with that influx was the increase of people taking advantage of the cities services. Namely, a lot of people were trying their hand at the Spire or at the Arena. On this day, James had been busy trying to ascend to the 22nd level of the tower when he got a coms from Jasmine. “James, it would appear that a new contender has...
-Tech City- Apart from the excitement of Ruff at being in a high-speed vehicle and his constant attempts to stick his head out the window while they travelled back to Tech City and supersonic speed, the trip back was uneventful. That is until they landed and the ground team on standby at the hanger realised there was a huge dismembered corpse in the back of the dropship along with the corpses of at least a hundred other dead spirit beasts. James called up Skay to come and take care of...
With the day of the Brotherhood auction finally complete, life in Tech City returned as close as it could to normal. The city and guild had a huge influx of new residents, guild and clan offices, money and resources. A few factions tried to use their newly acquired equipment to infiltrate and capture members of the Brotherhood only to quickly discover that nothing they brought from the guild could operate within 10 kilometres of the city walls. What they also didn’t know, was that every...
With the discovery of soul Pressure and soul sense, James now had a whole new element to consider in regards to his cultivation training. With that in mind, he once again secluded himself away in the HQ building and spent the next month focused on understanding it more, finding a way to train and focus it and discovering how it tied into spirit energy. After meticulous experiments and training, he concluded that he could only touch the tip of the iceberg in regards to spirit aura. He went...
-Tech City- Having spent the last two months sequestered away from the world doing forging, James returned to surface only to find that the city seemed to have once again started slowly expanding. With the restoration of the monolith, the city limits had been restored to tens of kilometres as opposed to its previous few kilometres. Thanks to that, the outskirts of the city now had people buying up land and building homes and businesses. Golden grain was once again filling fields off into...
As the core of the Guild sat in the office, James finally opened his eyes. Unceremoniously wiping away the tear on his cheek, James willed it, and his guild seal appeared floating in front of him. Much to the surprise of the others, not only did the guild seal appear on the round table, so too did the incorporeal, ethereal form of Jasmine appear. She sat in a seizer position on the table and wore a flowing silk gown, making her only more enchanting than ever. That is, apart from the obvious...
With all responsibility to the guild well and truly shirked, James now had the free time to ... well if being honest, not much changed for the first few weeks. For starters, James had long since shirked his responsibility to the city. He had given all of those duties to other people, namely Jessy and Jasmine. It also didn’t help that he was still affected by Skay’s death. The first few weeks were spent flipping between brainstorming for his future flying Headquarters and meditating alone. By...
-Dragon Vault- Deep in the underground of a world that spanned the distance of countless suns, lay a vast expansive cave network. This cave network stretched out and crisscrossed through the entire planet. It had caves as big as the entire planet of Ascension. In a shallow part of this cave system, far and distant from any other underground caves, was a relatively tiny cavern. This cave spanned only a few hundred kilometres and was carved entirely from a shiny black rock. In the centre of...
James walked into his guild master office and sat down at his round table. Already seated and waiting for him was his other 5 sins, the 5 Ghosts and what he was referring to as a knight in his own mind. He felt a profound sense of happiness as he surveyed his people. The sins were the foundations of the brotherhood. Goliath of Wrath, Jessy of Lust, Exsue of Envy, Fatty of Gluttony, Kelly of Sloth and himself, James of Pride. Unfortunately, they’d lost their greed thanks to the strange...
Having fulfilled his purpose, James retreated to his Forge in the Lab. He had so much he was trying to focus on recently and decided to distract his scattered thoughts for a short while to work on a project he’d been putting off for a while. In the forging room, James stood at a bench looking at an assortment of dark stones. These were his space stones. After some careful investigation, he discovered that the pocket space inside a stone was not relative to the size of a stone, but rather to...
The next two months, until the War of the Worlds, passed rather quickly for James. He spent most of his time training his combat and practising forging and alchemy. The incident with the mercenary army spread far and wide, and the tickets that had been bought up for the war of the world started to find their way onto the black market or disappeared from the hands of the smaller factions that had managed to nab one at auction. The two nations of Soel and Hastoel were starting to flare up even...
-Spirit District Arena- The third day of the arena battles came quickly. The number of competitors had been whittled down to only 26. Some of these competitors had managed to sneak into the top 26 only by sheer luck at having lucky draws from the box, while others had stepped into this position through a great deal of hardship. Of the 26 remaining competitors, 9 of them were from factions unaffiliated with a nation or super power and weren’t seed members. One of these people was the sword...
The arena was quiet and still. The growing invisible pressure was already at a staggering level. The spectators were sweating in expectation and excitement. It almost seemed that the viewers of this battle were even more anxious for it to start than the duo standing in the arena. James stood in a very relaxed manner, half facing Sword Girl, with his scimitar and pistol just dangling at the side. The Sword Girl lowered her stance with her left hand sitting on the sheath and the thumb touching...
The award ceremony that night was brief and uneventful. Hundreds of prizes of various qualities were handed out. Thanks to the numerous deaths of competitors both during the main competition and the ranking matches, a great many factions managed to step into higher positions and receive rewards beyond their capability to earn. The ranking matches were mostly just for the purposes of filling all the positions from 1st to 26th, which were the only individuals to receive any compensation for...
"Why are the Gods so angry with us?" Olivia screamed into the deafening roar around us.“We will all die before the day is out.” Clenched fists, she screamed again at the heavens.I wondered why I was there too, to make money I suppose; the city had been shaken by the gods for weeks, now hardly any buildings of note were undamaged. The city elders wanted surveyors to advise them and I planned to make my fortune. Now, standing in the bedchamber of the daughter of a rich merchant, with the god...
Historical"Nagi?" Some time later when at last she was alone the voice had come again. Having fed and bathed, just as Nagi was preparing to settle down in one of the well appointed staterooms. "Your back!" She whispered excitedly. Having begun to think she had somehow imagined the whole earlier affair. "Well of course." He replied obviously amused. "Did I not say we would talk later?" She remembered blushing, smiling having forgotten that detail in all the excitement. "I wanted to say...
Technocratic: Episode 1 : The Storm Begins By Robyn Tom Turner paced his office restlessly. It had been a long day at the Techno Center. A long day of quenching fires, pushing paperwork, and filing reports. All the tasks they had failed to tell him about when he applied here, but tasks which took more time than doing what he loved: finding and catching technologists. Ever since the second half of the twenty-fourth century when technology merged with the arcane, the Techno...
Technocratic: Episode 2 - Diving into Madness By Robyn You don't know how great being normal is until you're not. Oh you strive for individuality, to set yourself apart from the crowd, but deep down there is always a need, a desire, to be normal. To be differentiated, but not different. It was a pleasant May day when Tom's normal life shattered into abnormality. Before he had held no secrets, now he had one big secret. It had all happened so fast too. One moment he was staging...
Technocratic: Episode 3 - Mystery Revealed By Robyn Identity is a difficult concept to grasp. What makes a person a person. What makes you the person you are? How can the identity of the person be changed? By surgery? By magic? Or can it? Tom Turner had heard that one's identity changed eventually to fit their environment. At least that was what all the transgender experts told him when he explained how he had once been a man. Unfortunately, Tom's identity had never...
TECHNOSEXUAL By Dorothy StrangeloveHe was more than an ordinary man. He was far, far more than an ordinary man. One thought about the soft warmth of his skin and what lie beneath it made my heart beat faster and every nerve in my body tingle. I was sure as I was briefed on my latest patient my pupils had started to dilate but this was a busy place and no one would have bothered to check me for outward signs of arousal the way I was checking me. "He's a 20-51." My supervisor told me, "I thought...