This post is starting the second book. I figured it would be easier just to keep the same numbering scheme so there's no confusion to reading order for late comers that read the story.
Chapter One
It'd just been a couple of weeks since Ted Stedman's death.
So far Ted hadn't noticed much of a difference. Really, none at all. Whatever breakthroughs Trudy and the others had made in digitization of a human mind had obviously worked. There were a few small differences of course, his mind or whatever it should be called now was running on a core computer matrix almost identical to an A.I.s, and the systems that governed that... consciousness, were completely transparent to him. He couldn't control it, or do things with a thought like the other A.I.s could. He was the same that way.
Really, it was just his dreams that were different. He didn't really need sleep anymore, it was more like what the AIs did, he went into a kind of sleep mode that committed his short term memory to long term storage, did a backup, and optimized his short term memory. Yeah, he was still sorry he'd asked, and honestly computer programing wasn't his forte anyway, it was electrical engineering and circuitry, so Trudy had lost him at some point in the conversation.
She might as well have just told him it did stuff and he was good.
The point was, he hadn't changed all that much, legally dead or not. However, a great many things had changed around him. The ship was still on Mars, but great strides had been made on the planet itself in a very short time. Not to mention the ship was crawling with androids. Fifty or so on the ship itself, and two hundred on the surface.
And they were all absolutely gorgeous females, and very grateful. Extremely grateful.
He'd carefully considered the matter, and even discussed it with Mia. While it was healthy for him to have his three A.I. lovers, and even to have his friendship with benefits with Kara and Nicci, and even his fling with Dr. Trent that had grown into something more serious, it wasn't a good idea for him to just randomly sleep around.
To sink into that kind of debauchery did have its appeal in a way, but would have been unhealthy, and ultimately meaningless. Multiple partners were healthy, but meaningless sex really wasn't. He was also more than satisfied with what he already had that way.
For one, he didn't have the time, the five woman in his life kept him busy enough that way. Sometimes he wondered if he was even good enough for them all, or gave them enough attention as it was. He didn't need to split his time further, or even have more demands on it. He also still missed Silvia. It had been two weeks, and even he hadn't realized how close he'd gotten to, or had cared about, the young, brilliant, and exotically beautiful doctor.
Well, young compared to his forty-three years anyway, but not to his twenty-four-year appearance. Although, the sexy thirty-five-year-old doctor probably could pass for twenty-four still. She had that exotic beauty, and perfect skin that aged well, plus she kept herself in limber shape as he remembered fondly.
So he smiled, nodded, and even waved and said hello to the beautiful woman around him in acknowledgement when it was called for, but didn't partake of the pleasurable reward they so obviously offered him, no doubt for his instrumental work in freeing them to build their own society on Mars. In short, he'd adopted a look but don't touch policy toward them.
Even the surface was coming along. They didn't have enough satellites to protect the entire planet from radiation yet, but within the first week they'd had enough in a low enough orbit thanks to artificial gravity station keeping, that the EM field could protect a five-kilometer dome and a large area around it as well.
The dome itself had been fabricated that same week, just a double layer of thin carbon which was something like ninety-five percent transparent. The rest of the week more and more androids had been built, loaded with an Earth A.I., and sent down there working to put up buildings. So far all they were doing was putting up shells, much like the ship he'd built, they were simply inflated, with all the electrical, piping, data ports, and other types of building infrastructure built in.
They were even using artificial gravity to excavate, and several buildings were going up a day. They didn't have power yet, or furniture, they were just shells for now, but an amazingly large number of them had been built already.
Of course, it was all through no effort of his own. His part was finished, they had a plan and they were sticking to it. His job was over. They didn't need him anymore. At least, for their city plan. He wasn't disheartened, although at times he did wish he could be more useful. That said, he was keeping busy in other ways.
His two major jobs for the moment seemed to be keeping his ladies happy, both physically and emotionally, and learning. That's what he spent his mornings on now, instead of work, he'd gone back to school so to speak. An advantage to his digitization, was his memory. He might not feel any different, but his mind was sharper. He had the fabled eidetic memory now, which as far as he was aware only existed in science fiction.
He only had to read something once, and it was his forever to recall. That made his education move along rather more quickly than his college days, even if he was twenty years older. That's how he'd been spending his morning.
Although he was legally dead, he also had no money problems. He wouldn't be making any more of course, they didn't pay out royalties to dead people, but Trudy had managed to keep the initial payout. He wasn't sure how exactly, but she'd done some magic and he still had money on Earth. Not that he really planned on going back there or anything, but if he did, he wouldn't be destitute.
His afternoons hadn't changed much at all. He'd been logging into The Endless War game. In an effort to keep his level with theirs, he'd only been fighting the days Nicci and Kara showed up, and then they'd go back and get a room for some mind blowing sex. They weren't there that often, so he'd struck up a casual friendship with Bill, Tom, Kathy and Ray. Usually one or more would be around, and it was a great way to decompress without any expectations.
He'd never complain about his ladies, he cared for them very much and would do anything for them, but there was a certain expectation placed upon him. Not by them, they were great, but by himself. He always felt like he had to be his best, and give them all his best when they were together. The fact that he wanted to and enjoyed it, didn't change the fact that it was a stressor.
Most guys had trouble with one woman, he was trying to fully satisfy Trudy, Mia, and Helen on all levels, and then Nicci and Kara on a physical level with no other expectations, except perhaps an easy going friendship. So... he needed decompression time, and the game fit the bill.
His nights had changed a great deal. He no longer primarily stayed with Mia, they pretty much shared him that way. In reality him and the other four were on the ship in the one bedroom, but virtually he usually took one of them on a date, and wound up cuddling with and falling asleep with them in the virtual world. Kind of a three-night rotation.
They didn't go on dates all the time either, that would have been too much, sometimes it was just a night in. Of course, he saw them all in the mornings when he logged out, even if just for a few minutes. He supposed it was a good system, and since they were sharing him it seemed reasonable to let them set up the system to do so, and control his schedule in that way.
As for what was happening on the big blue ball, he may have been legally dead, but he was also wanted by the government. He hadn't logged into his android at Cyber Dreams since the pod incident. The government didn't really know what was going on yet, they hadn't figured out it was an A.I. revolution at all. They just thought he was up to something.
