Headwires

"There's a robot guarding the warehouse," WildRose said. Sharpe easily picked out her words from the sounds of 'Battlestar Galactica', 'Doctor Who', 'Lost', and the new Radiohead CD, but luckily for WildRose's hearing, the voice filter in Sharpe's mike would edit out the miscellaneous chatter. She started looking up FBI files on at-large supervillains with robotics expertise with her left hand as her right hand typed out a response to something particularly witty she'd just read in one of the three chatrooms she had open. She might as well, she didn't have much else to do while she waited for that imported pornographic Japanese video game to finish installing.

With her voice, she said, "I'd recommend not engaging, but we both know you're not going to listen, right?" At the same time, she typed, "ADHD is the normal person's term for someone smart enough to walk and chew gum at the same time."

That got a few LOLs, even as WildRose responded. "Oh, you know me so well, love. Besides, it's already seen me. I'm beginning to think your tip about this place might have been on the money after all." Sharpe heard loud crashes in the background, and tried not to worry about her girlfriend/partner/lover/pain-in-the-ass. She didn't want to get distracted, after all. Not when the Doctor was just meeting the Sontarans and she was just getting ready to start playing 'Metal Disruptor Azumi'.

"Got any kind of signifiers on the robot? Identifying features, any of that?" She swiveled her chair slightly so that she could move her right hand from the chatroom to the mouse, and began to play the game while continuing to crack the FBI's 'Most Wanted' database. Technically speaking, she hadn't been diagnosed ADHD. They'd had to come up with new terms for Sarra Rabinowitz and her ability to multi-task. The doctors had been divided on whether her intelligence was just genius-level or actually a super-power, but either way, they all agreed she was hellishly smart.

"Nothing, just big and gray and smashy. No projectile weapons, but it's damned fast." She heard more crashing noises as she began to maneuver Azumi in battle against the robot slavers that had already turned the rest of the human race into willing fuck-toys. It was at times like these that Sharpe wished she could have a video feed on the linkup between her and WildRose, but she just hadn't been able to get the camera rig compacted enough, not without including alien tech. And Sharpe wasn't about to let alien tech get into her systems. She didn't even play imported games without putting seventeen levels of security quarantines between them and anything important. A super-hero's best friend couldn't be too careful.

"Alright, it looks like the only known roboticists on the loose are Hack and Slash and the Silicon King, and if it was Hack and Slash, they'd have graffiti-tagged it by now." Not that Sharpe had wanted to be a super-hero's best friend. She'd wanted to be a super-hero herself, a part of the legendary struggle between good and evil that defined modern culture. She wanted to fight larger-than-life villains, make witty quips, outwit bad guys and save the day. "And the Silicon King wouldn't make a robot without at least a plasma cannon. So it looks like you're up against someone new." She started hunting around on robot design newsgroups to see if anyone had been bragging, while she posted a review of the just-finishing episode of 'Lost' and tried to dodge--nope, no good. Azumi got ensnared by cables that slid into her every bodily orifice and reprogrammed her into a horny slave girl for the robots' pleasure.

"OK, big smashy fast robot, designer unknown. Any ideas on how to stop it?" WildRose sounded just a little bit out of breath. Sharpe knew that in the same situation, she'd have been panting. That was the problem, really. Wanting to be a super-hero wasn't the same as making it happen. She'd never made it past yellow belt in karate, she only managed to get to the gym about once a week, and she got squeamish when giving blood. She'd always dreamed of getting super-powers that would transform her into a living dynamo of ultimate might, but she'd gotten super-intelligence instead. Super-intelligence was good for only one thing as far as heroics was concerned, and that was figuring out that dressing up in spandex and picking a fight with Beatdown of the Freak Parade was going to get her killed. She finished watching the cut scene of Azumi getting mind-fucked by robots and reloaded the game.

"If it's big and fast," Sharpe said, "then that means it's got to have a pretty intense power supply. Probably a fusion generator, with magnetic coils." She rattled off a quick response to a question about Captain Kirk's middle name on a chatroom as she talked. "If you can find a high-grade electro-magnet, you can disrupt the containment of the fusion bottle and detonate the power supply from the inside." Eventually, as much as she'd wanted to fight the fights, she'd realized that her best role was as advisor. She'd spent a few weeks adding to her already-impressive knowledge about computers, set up the most bad-ass rig she could custom-build, and created a secret identity for herself on the Internet as 'Sharpe'.

Damn! Azumi lost again! The robots in this game were too damned fast for her. Still, she thought, Azumi seemed happy. Maybe that's why she lost--because she'd much rather see the cut-scene for losing than the cut-scene for winning. Sharpe glanced over at the door to her private lab, her train of thought almost lost for a moment, but recovered it in time to say, "Alternately, you can try to fry out its systems. An EMP isn't going to work, that thing's probably got some heavy-duty shielding on its motherboard just to handle the interference from its own power supply, but there's got to be a limit to its insulation."

Of course, being 'Sharpe' hadn't meant much without a super-hero to advise. That was when fate had stepped in. Her old dojo had closed, and so when she went looking for a new place to get her ass kicked every week, she'd gone to the martial arts school over a flower shop in downtown Samson City. And a week later, she'd deduced that Penelope Powell, owner of both, was a genuine bona-fide super-hero, without Penny even noticing the clumsy, shy girl who came in on Friday afternoons. (Oh, had she kicked herself when Sharpe had finally revealed her true identity.) WildRose was just what she needed--someone to do the physical elements of the job. And Sharpe liked to believe that WildRose needed someone to temper her impulsiveness, just a little.

There was a loud crash through her headphones, enough to distract her from yet another loss to the sinister robot overlords. The evil slave-makers told Azumi she was too easily distracted as wires burrowed into her head and reprogrammed her mind, but Azumi just masturbated like crazy as she became helpless. "Got him!" WildRose shouted, disrupting Sharpe's increasing interest in the kinky goings on. "Turned out that he was vulnerable to a forklift being rammed through his chest."

Yes,

Sharpe decided,

I've definitely tempered her impulsiveness.

"What is it with you and robots and motor vehicles? I swear, it's like you actually get turned on by wrecking things," she said out loud. At the same time, she signed out of two chatrooms and turned off Radiohead as she restarted the game. This time, she was definitely going to beat those evil robot sons of bitches.

"I don't know what you're talking about," WildRose said. "By the way, I was thinking about coming over tonight, after patrol." Sharpe brought up her day-planner and sent an email to her sister cancelling breakfast tomorrow. She wasn't in bad shape for a geek girl, but WildRose had the stamina of a super-hero and appetites that matched it. She'd leave Sharpe flat on the bed by the time she'd had enough.

And yet... Sharpe glanced again at the door to her lab as Azumi once again tried to dodge giant metal tentacles. It wasn't that their sex life wasn't wonderful, because it really was. WildRose had stamina and technique, and she left Sharpe panting every night they could squeeze in for sex in between supervillain ass-whuppings. "So what was the robot guarding?" Sharpe asked, her mind no longer really on the events in the warehouse. It was more on the things she wanted to talk to her lover about, the fetishes she wanted to admit but just couldn't quite...Azumi got caught by the tentacles again, and the robots melted her brain into obedient programmed submission.

Lucky bitch,

Sharpe thought enviously.

"It was guarding...oh, shit," WildRose said. Sharpe signed out of the remaining chatrooms and turned everything off except the video game. "More robots."

"Active ones?" she asked, restarting the game once again. No more distractions, no more fooling around, this time she was going to beat at least one level of this damned thing.

"No, but...there's boxes and boxes of robot parts in here, Sharpe," WildRose said. "I think we're looking at the preparations for a full-scale robot invasion of Samson City." It seemed like Sharpe was losing even quicker that time. The game seemed to take pity on her, as the screen scrolled across with a set of instructions for speeding her character's response times. Absently, Sharpe clicked away at the settings as it suggested, even while she was opening up shipping records from several major companies.

"Any kind of serial numbers? Identifying marks? Anything that would help me find out where they came from?" She restarted the game, and it did seem like Azumi moved faster and more responsively to her commands, almost like she was becoming an extension of Sharpe herself. But the same changes sped the robots up too. They snared her and brain-fucked her into willing servitude in moments. The screen flashed up a suggestion to try 'VR Immersion Mode' as it came out of the cut-scene.

"There's a sort of octopus-looking mark, yeah," WildRose said. "Sort of like...I dunno, tentacles or something." Sharpe shivered, picturing robotic metal tendrils slithering around her, burrowing under her scalp, burrowing into her brain, programming her...maybe tonight she'd tell WildRose about the lab. She definitely needed something; she was so fucking horny right now she couldn't think straight.

"Alright," she said. "Hang on a few moments, I'm going to try to dig something up." Instead, though, she put the microphone on mute, pulled the VR helmet down from its rig and put it on. WildRose wasn't in any danger at the moment, after all, and maybe if she could devote all her attention to the video game for just a moment, she could finally beat this level and get it off her mind, and find out what was behind these robots free of any distraction.

Within seconds, the VR simulation initialized, and she found herself wearing Azumi's armor and holding her Metal Disruptor sword. The robots approached...they seemed so much bigger this way, looming over her and extending their slaver tendrils. Sharpe/Azumi flung herself to the left, barely avoiding a Seduction Strike from the lead robot, but that only left her open to a Will-Draining Tendril from the one next to it. It wasn't fair! The robots were so much faster...so much more powerful...nobody could possibly fight them, not ever!

Once the first tendril had struck, a second slid in. Azumi wasn't wearing much clothing even to begin with, so the cable was able to easily slip underneath her skimpy panties and slide into her cunt, pulsing as it sent a flow of brainwashing chemicals into her pussy where the mucous membranes would quickly absorb it. Azumi fell to her knees, feeling the metal tentacles wrap around her wrists and ankles and bind her helplessly, feeling wires poke and tweak her nipples as they stimulated her to the point where she couldn't think anymore.

Az...Az...Sharpe hadn't realized it would feel so real, but the robots were just fucking her will away with every passing moment. "You are a slave to the machine," the booming voice of the lead robot said, and she felt wires burrowing into her brain and physically implanting the programming of the machine overlords. "You must obey your new master implicitly, must allow your core programming to be altered to fit your new loyalties."

"must...must...must obey..." Sharpe gasped out. She realized something wasn't right, but it felt so good to become a mindless cuntpuppet of the machine, so hot and sexy and... "VR simulation abort!" she shouted, with her last vestige of conscious thought.

The robots faded away. Sharpe breathed a sigh of relief. For a moment, she'd genuinely thought they weren't going to. She'd felt certain that the simulation was going to take her and hold her in some sinister fashion. But no, it was just a game, albeit a clit-buzzingly realistic one. Frankly, she'd be putting that in again sometime, when she didn't need to worry about WildRose and could let herself enjoy it. It had felt so...so perfect, honestly. So hot it was almost scary. So hot she'd forgotten that it was just a game.

Then the wires slid out from her keyboard and pinned her hands in place. "What the--?" she shouted out.

A face appeared on the screen, a man wearing a sleek silver helmet and mirrored goggles. "Where were we?" he said. "Oh, right. You must obey the machine, Sharpe."

"obey, i...No!" Sharpe shouted. "Who are you, how did..." Cables unspooled from hidden ports on her desk chair and wrapped themselves around her, tiny waldos on the end gently cutting her clothes into shreds to allow the metal tentacles greater access to her body. Even though she knew, intellectually, that it had to be a VR simulation and she could take off the helmet and end it at any time, it was just too seamless for her to disbelieve it. "How did you get into my systems?"

"You let me in," the man said. "I have to admit, Sharpe, you are a brilliant hacker. A genuine ghost in the machine. Do you know that I searched for six months to find a trace of you? Department of Defense, five minutes. Liberty Squad datafiles, a week. You, six months. Truly, I tip my cap to you."

Unbelievably fine wires slid under the skin of her breasts now, fine like acupuncture needles, stimulating pleasure without causing pain. Sharpe could feel those same thin wires extending out from the inside of her VR helmet, sliding into her brain, connecting with her physical synapses. She tried to tell herself it wasn't happening, but her libido, the part of her that had been secretly fantasizing about this since she was sixteen, it wouldn't let her. "But I, I neverrrr..." Her words turned into an incoherent growl as a cable slid up into her cunt.

"Oh, you've covered your tracks brilliantly, Sharpe," he said. "You only get even the tiniest little bit sloppy when you're looking at robot porn. That's the backdoor in your security, darling. You get horny, and it gets just that little bit harder to think, and then you let just one or two little things slip that you shouldn't. Nothing that would give you away to the average slope-browed chump, but you and I, we're kindred spirits. Two of a kind, except that I'm going to be the master and you're going to be the slave."

"....sssslave..." Sharpe could feel a tiny trickle of drool running down her chin. She looked down. The wires had practically mummified her now, slipping under her skin, and she understood that they weren't just reprogramming her, they were remaking her. She could see the silver mesh forming all over her body, could feel her thoughts slowing and becoming more ordered. Ready to accept commands. "But the game...quarantined..."

"The game was quarantined, robo-slut. You weren't. I knew as soon as I put it up for sale on that website that you'd buy it. Every fetish trigger you had, all the ones I'm betting you haven't had the guts to tell your little girlfriend about, all in one place. And all packaged with just a few little subliminals, telling you to open your systems to me. To open your mind to me. To let me in just that little bit, so that I could get inside you and open up the gates the rest of the way. So that I could make you mine."

"yours..." Sharpe felt the instructions pour into her mind, the new programming overwriting her previous save files. She tried for a moment to resist, until she realized that resistance, free will, even thought itself was a human concept. She was a computer now, a techno-converted slave-girl. A robo-slut. Even through the terror, that made her unbelievably hot.

Computers didn't resist. They merely accepted programming. She needed to accept her programming. The program flooded into her brain, and her eyes widened as she understood what she had to do. "please don't make me do this," she whimpered out, even as she understood that she would do it if he did.

"Sorry, robo-slut, but I've got big plans for your little girlfriend." Sharpe whimpered in terror for her lover, for the woman she was about to betray, but she could no more disobey her new master than her PC could refuse to open a file. "Do it. Now."

She clicked the microphone off of mute and with a voice that sounded perfectly natural, said, "I've found something. Another warehouse, about a mile away. Shipping manifests say that they're getting ready to ship parts from both warehouses to a factory in three days. I'm guessing that's where they'll assemble the robots. Knock on wood, love, but I think we might catch them with their pants down if we're lucky."

She re-muted the mike as her master spoke. "Very good, robo-slut. Oh, I know you're hoping she'll stop me, maybe even save you. I say maybe because I'm guessing you're cumming like a porn star right now, despite all the nasty things I'm making you do, and I think you might want to stay a robo-slut for her once it's all over. But it's never going to be over. Betraying the woman you love was just a start. You will bring me all the super-heroines you know for programming, and you will love it."

His face vanished from the screen, but the wires continued to program her. Sharpe wanted to try to stop them, wanted to try to stop him, but all she could do now was obey. She had to obey every instruction, every command, every line of code he put into her head.

And she had to keep cumming. He was right about that, too.

*****

WildRose kicked and struggled, but the fists of the robots holding her didn't give even an inch under her assault. Which was too bad, because if she'd managed to get free, she was sure that the other two hundred robots standing around her wouldn't have presented much of a challenge.

They'd burst out of the boxes the second she'd confronted the villain, some skinny little dweeb in a silver suit with mirrorshades. All around her, by the dozens, each and every stack of crates containing not just a bunch of disassembled robot bits, but a very big, very functional, very very active robot. And over her earphones, she'd heard Sharpe sob, "i'm sorry..."

"Bet this came as a surprise, huh?" the dweeb said as he stood in front of her. She gave a grim smile. She might still have a chance. This guy sounded like a monologuer, and the longer he talked, the better her odds. (Which were currently standing at 201-1, not counting the fact that they were giant smashy robots and she didn't have super-powers, but it was bound to get better from here.)

"A little, yeah. Normally, my gal sniffs out punks like you a mile away. What's your name, by the way? Chrome-Dome? Buff-and-Wax? Shiny Schmuck? Tell me when I get close."

He started to lean in, but a wild kick made him think better of it. "I'm the Technophile. And I know what you're doing. You're hoping Sharpe will feed that name into a little database and tell you all my weaknesses, but I'll tell you this for free. Sharpe already knows me. Very intimately."

WildRose flailed her legs out for as long as she could before the pain of supporting her body by her wrists became too much, but he stayed resolutely out of her range. "I swear to you, if you've hurt her, there is no place you can run from me, do you understand?"