Carver awoke with a start, as well as a massive erection. Sensations of sex and the images of a woman's silhouette quickly emptied from his memory as alertness took over. It couldn't be a NeuroSexNet signal bleeding into his DataNet stream, as he was light-years from any subspace hotspots. Plus he had turned off the implant before leaving the station anyway. Still, the sensations ebbed their way out of his memory as dreams tend to do, leaving only lingering fragments to piece together. And a rock hard cock to deal with, as well as a throbbing headache.
As masturbating without an NSN connection wasn't his idea of a good time even without a headache, and the nearest human was many light-years away, Carver decided to go check on the mapping program Oscar was running to see if there were any interesting results this early on. Maybe this system would provide substantial water or hydrogen supplies, ore, or even habitable planets. None of the others had so far, which was making for a rather boring six month expedition.
He got up out of his bunk and shuffled out of his quarters, pausing for a glass of water in the galley as he made the short trip to the command center directly next door. He was glad he designed his ship with the galley its focal point, the remaining eight rooms encircling it, while storage, power, and other systems were down in the "basement". It was quite a comfortable setup, even if he was alone this voyage.
"Hi, Oscar! Anything in your prelim scans sticking out tonight?"
His ship responded via Direct Interface, and kindly kept his volume and tone low and comfortable.
"You are awake early, Carver. I can only detect one thing sticking out, and it is connected to your groin. Is everything OK?"
"Funny," he replied out loud. "Just a dream is all."
Having a ship's command computer with new AI AND personality subroutines can have interesting side effects. At least the conversation was never dull.
"Nothing extraordinary here, other than heavy asteroid activity, though not enough to worry too much about. I can keep us well out of the path of any stray objects...."
The proximity alarm sounded as Oscar spoke. Carver instinctively jumped to the command chair and started looking for the offending object's location and path. The ship had no real weaponry to destroy a large object, instead relying on standard shielding and deft piloting.
"Don't worry, I have already adjusted for it. I AM much faster at this than you now, you know. The asteroid somehow sneaked up on us. It would have missed us by a few meters anyway, but I nudged us a little to play it safe." The ship sounded smug about his skill, yet bothered that he had missed the asteroid.
"Thank you. You definitely have surpassed the teacher, no doubts about that." He felt odd still stroking the ego of a computer, but knew from long experience that positive feedback was important. "That was a big one, how did that manage to get by your sensors?" He knew that Oscar was probably more concerned than he was, and would run some background trajectory scans to figure out what had happened.
"I do not know, perhaps there was a collision which changed its path, but I haven't fully analyzed the scan data. The asteroid field is fairly large and I have not yet projected the trajectories and orbits of all the major bodies."
"I don't think I'd bother with this one if you think it's safely out of the way."
"It is. in any case, that spike you have there probably would have shattered it if necessary." He paused for effect, then continued:
"You really should reconsider your choice of attire, or rather the lack of it. I am finding it distracting."
"I didn't hear you complaining last month."
"You had different bits sticking out then."
"I am going back to sleep, Oscar. Sweet dreams!"
"You already seem to have had one yourself. Good night, Carver."
Carver headed back to his bunk, regretting one more time both Oscar's still-developing personality subroutines and his lack of NSN recordings. Thankfully, sleep returned quickly.
Dark, hazy swirls of sex AGAIN filled Carver's sleep. Feelings of desire, of need, of pure lust. The touch of unseen fingertips caressing his cheek, of hair brushing his chest. The surprise of lips caressing, then enveloping his already hard cock. The sound of his moans of pleasure. He tried to open his eyes, hoping to discover who this dreamlover was. All he could see was the shadow of a woman surrounded in a swirl of red.
All he could feel now were the lips and tongue working their way up and down his cock. Oddly, there was a coolness about that mouth, yet it didn't diminish the pleasure as the mysterious, faceless lips perfectly fit around his shaft, exerting just the right amount of pressure as they rose and fell. The anonymous tongue flicked expertly on his head as the lips paused there just a touch before plunging down again, making him gasp with each little pause. He tried to touch the face of the shadow-woman, but his hands could not find anything.
The dreamlover's mouth was now getting warmer as the tempo increased, absorbing and reflecting the heat of Carver's hardness. The lips began fluttering, impossibly vibrating as they worked their way up and down his shaft. The tongue danced around, having it's own agenda as it pressed and flicked against his cock. The tempo slowly increased until it almost became a spasm. This made him moan more and more, accompanied by sudden and frequent gasps as the tongue lapped the head of his cock at the top of each stroke. He arched his back as the tension built inside of him, the gasps and moans merging into one unreal sound. Finally, he was allowed to release in his own spasm of an orgasm, his hands grasping in the nothingness for something to hold on to as he cried out in pleasure and release. But again, there was nothing to touch.
All he could see as he left the dreamworld was that swirl of red as the shadow-woman's silhouette faded away.
"Who are you?" he asked the nothingness.
There was no reply, just a sense that she was nearby.
Carver woke a few hours later, eager to look at Oscar's preliminary scans of the sector. It could take a few days to fully map this sector, even with his ship's multiple sensors. An interesting anomaly or the chance of a significant deposit of minerals, water, or gases would sure break the current monotony in this mapping mission. A little profit wouldn't hurt, either. The mapping itself payed well enough, but it was an unwritten policy that the location of anything interesting was a ship's Captain's to sell, trade, or keep as he saw fit. There probably wasn't much to recommend this area to anyone, however, with its small, dim sun.
He got up, climbed out of his bunk, and decided to dress for the day, to appease his Command Computer's apparent unease with his recent gender change. Could Oscar be a "male", a straight one even? Or was it just the fact that it's (his?) sentience occurred while it's (his) Captain was a woman? He grabbed a work kilt, wondered how Oscar would react to
that
if he was alive when Carver was a young man, so very long ago. He chuckled to himself as he dressed, happy for a distraction from his nighttime escapades.
His distraction was short-lived, however, as he pulled on a t-shirt while he walked to the command deck. He hadn't had dreams like
those
since he was very young man. He had purposefully disabled his NeuroSexNet interface for this mission specifically to break away from the growing distraction it was creating. He needed a break from the rampant hedonism it was creating. This of course made the previous night's stained sheets all the more puzzling. He hoped it wasn't some sort of withdrawal symptom or some sort of defect in his NeuroSexNet implant. He did not relish the though of having to remove it while alone and so far out.
He slid onto his seat and the multiple displays came on automatically. He looked over the ship's system logs for any errors. This was pure habit as Oscar was more than qualified to handle most things on his own. Ancient habits were hard to discard, however, and the computer never commented on the subject. After seeing that everything was in order, he then called up the various preliminary sector scan reports, placed them on separate screens, and then asked for a summary report:
"Oscar, what's your initial opinion, based on what you have scanned so far?"
"Good morning, Carver. Overall I don't believed that there is much of note here at first glance. Type K sun, only one gas giant with a couple of good-sized moons, so nothing for the real estate market. There is slightly elevated asteroid activity, which could bring some mining possibilities, but that would depend on the results from more thorough scans."
"So, overall, just another boring system then," Carver replied with a slight hint of disappointment.
"Not quite. As usual I save the good for last. Or at least the possibly interesting. Take a look at screen 3."
Carver did so; the image he saw was not too revealing at first glance, just a round, blob of reflected light. Looking at the scan data below the picture revealed some astounding facts. He wasn't sure if he was interpreting the data correctly, but if he was, that object was not a natural one
"Is it...round? As in a disk?"
"It is round, yes, but I do not believe it is a disk. Rather I think it is a ring. It is around 1800 m in diameter, 150m wide. A classic Stanford torus, perhaps."
"Holy Shit! Are you sure? Can you determine it's origin or anything more about it?"
