The Machine

(Author's note: I FINALLY found a way to come back to this in a way that made sense to me... The Machine 1&2 were going to remain just a short story about a fantasy that I had after watching too much device torture porn. (*wishful sigh* I have a TOTAL fangirl crush on The Pope... ehem. What was I saying? )...oh yeah... just a short story because I didnt know what to do with it as a broader piece.

Then it hit me: put this in the "I Love Luci" universe. I always knew who Hugh was... I just didnt know how to CARE for who he was and give him a voice. Now he has one. 💕

Fun Fact: Because this started as a fantasy for me, I imagined myself as the main character (I often do at first until they become their own people over time.) When I worked for Alaska Airlines in 2000, we were allowed not to use our real names. My pseudonym was "Dierdre", stolen from my favorite vampire heroine in a little known book series I loved at the time.

"Jack" is the name of a LARP -live action role play- character my Alpha-hubby used to play in our local Werewolf:The Apocolypse/Garou games. The character was just a regular guy with eerily bad luck in a world of gods and monsters. It seemed fitting since this fantasy was about him taking his insatiable wife to be "serviced" in order to calm her slutty ass the fuck DOWN so she'll be a good, respectable lady in public when he takes her out.

Funner Fact: Said same hubby got a motorbunny for Xmas for just that very same reason. 😳😅🥰)

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Chapter 3: Divine Intervention

"These readings," Eris mused, looking over the screen as she delicately took a sip of whatever designer coffee Shannon had sent some intern to fetch. Imagine if she had the Sight to look beyond those beautiful faces? Shannon, the coolly efficient office manager, would likely lose her mind.

That Hugh had made Eris swear on the River Styx to never play with his employees was the only thing that kept Shannon safe. She was too buttoned up... Eris reasoned. She needed a little chaos to make her interesting, in Eris' opinion.

"These readings," she repeated, waiting for Hugh to acknowledge her. His hand gripped the end of his cane, and she saw him frown down at his twisted leg. He'd merged magic and tech to create the imaging amulets his assistants used; he also used the same item to make his shape more pleasing to the judgmental eyes of humans... and those were nothing compared to the judging eyes of his wife, who could barely stomach him without his false imagery.

"The McKinnon woman? Were you paying attention to these numbers? Maybe she is one of the ones we're looking for."

"Maybe." Hugh turned. "We will have to watch her. Is Ant coming in tonight? He has been conspicuously absent." His low bass growl had an edge of irritation in it.

"Can you blame him?" Eris said simply. "You built this to spite his parents. Did she even try it, your wife?"

"No," he rumbled and turned back to stare out over the machine room Dierdre McKinnon had been just mere hours before; her petite, curvy frame so full of lust and energy, poor Paulodoris had struggled to keep control of the fantasy being generated and fed into the woman's mind. And Cyclopes were actually quite nimble and good at problem solving on the fly; the McKinnon woman had caused him some distress. And that alone should have made Hugh curious. But it wasn't that.

It was the way she looked at him. He intentionally kept his augmentations as limited as he could. He didn't feel he should have to hide... but he did so, because he couldn't stand the way *she* --his faithless wife-- looked at him when he stood before her as he truly was. He refused to make himself appealing to the woman, who had hated the sight of him from the moment his father had insisted on his adopted daughter truly becoming a member of the family by marrying his eldest son. What a damn shame it was never the eldest son she wanted. Might have saved them all a lot of misery....

So, it was rare that he received much attention. His features weren't at all traditionally handsome. He was tall, yet awkwardly limbed, his hands a little too dexterous, his fingers too thin and long. His face was narrow with a hawkish nose, above an ironically well-formed mouth, currently surrounded with salt and pepper stubble. He had great hair; his mother was always quick to remind him, as if she had searched for his singular handsome feature and latched onto it, unwilling to acknowledge the burns here and there over his body from carelessness at the forge, the twisted wreckage of his legs, the too keenly intelligent eyes that were like the cold, grey clouds his father was well known for.

Hephaestus, or as the humans now knew him "Hugh Estes", closed his eyes as he leaned at the railing of the second story metal balcony above his masterpiece and tried not think about how Deirdre McKinnon's hand had touched him as she smiled up at him, her energy effervescent upon his tongue. He didn't want to think about how hard he had been, directing the scene she was living in her mind as his creation became his hands and will. How he had finally told Paulo to get out of his way once she had broken through the illusion for a third time... Once begun, it should never have seemed unreal to her. But repeatedly, her brainwaves fluctuated, causing an end to her suspension of disbelief. The mix of herbs, chemicals, hypnotic suggestions embedded in the optics and audio... really, she should have been little more than a mindless puppet to him. Unable to think or feel beyond what he electronically told her she should. But the woman fought. Even cumming and losing control, she fought him so hard she lost consciousness.

It had been for him, personally, that her imaginary orgy guests had prepared her body. While he didn't share the knowledge, that final tool that had slid into her stretched and spasming canal and left her feeling almost bruised inside... that particular phallus was designed to match his own... and he admitted to himself on some deep, twisted level he had created it that way so that he, in his own way, could fuck just as many people as his wife ever had... maybe more. It was his own private vindication.

But for the first time, guiding his work of art to do what it was built for, Hephaestus had felt a moment of envy. Not for the machine... that was just a tool he had used to lure this new and strange woman to allow him access to her body and her mind. No... it was the way the woman's husband had looked up at her, as if under a spell himself, and gave himself over helplessly, covering his wife in his cum and she-- drugged, helpless, and completely under the demand of her body and deeply immersed in the various levels of hypnotic suggestion and neural manipulation-- still managed to throw off his control to see her mate, despite her eyes being covered; see the devotion on his face and scream out *his* name despite all his mechanical and mental control over her.

And Eris wasn't wrong. Something had happened when she had reached the final peak. His computer recorded more than a simple surge of conflicting energy, like a feedback loop that nearly crashed the system.

But he didn't want her to be different. She had seemed... gentle. Kind. He didn't want to be fascinated with her... especially if she was what Eris suspected.

"What is the big emergency?" Ant walked in through the main doors that led to the lobby halls, and he paused to regard his uncle and the husband of his mother, still leaning at the balcony railing. "Uncle?"

That Ant was the child of his wife and his brother was rarely something that Hugh liked to be reminded of. Anteros was pleasant enough, less gregarious than his half brother, Eros, perhaps. It had been his idea to take this enterprise and use it to their mutual advantage. He had funded the entire operation through his own company, a network of event planning companies focused on creating "experiences" for events like proposals. Anteros mostly just wanted humans to feel a certain requited adoration via Hugh's device; he saw it as a way for those without partners to feel sated and at least temporarily fulfilled. He saw this as a service he could help provide that had an very unexpected side affect. Humans became so enamored with this place, and what his invention could do for them that they had begun to worship at this place like an ecstatic temple to Hephaestus' half-brother, Dionysus. As Eris and Anteros were lesser known celestials, that worship was literally all that kept them alive some days. Eris fed off of the chaotic intensity of the sessions. She loved to do the research on each client and discover which buttons to push to truly break through the natural societally-induced resistance they had ignored and hide what they truly desired. That she also kept a file on every person of interest that had a kink that could destroy them was just intelligent precautions, she always claimed when Ant bristled at her hobbies.

But for Anteros, it wasn't something he took lightly, the worship, even if the people who came to them didn't truly know to whom they gave their devotions. He generally vetted all couples where only one wished to use the machine. He worried about addictions and the machine becoming little more than an inanimate homewrecker. He still was what he was -- a god of love. And he wasn't interesting in losing who he was in favor of merely surviving.

And it was a genuine fear, that addiction, that loss of self to perpetual ecstasy. That was, after all, how he had designed it. Hugh never managed to convince his wife to use his machine... maybe Ant and all his siblings wouldn't exist if he had. Because she never would have strayed, Hephaestus was certain. She would have finally let him love her through his tools, his craftsmanship... with his mind, the way he had always wished she would have trusted him enough to allow. He didn't give a damn about her body -- it didn't need to be his physical hands touching her. They were all his hands, each attachment, each sensory item, mechanical phallus and carefully calculated chemicals that rendered these users helpless.

Other men had and would always continue to have her body... but he knew, even if she didn't realize it herself, that her body was the key to her mind. And it was that part of her he loved most of all. Still loved, if he was honest. He could have fucked her so beautifully and completely had she but let him.

The way Deirdre had. He usually didn't pay much attention to the mortals that came here; some for curiosity, some for hedonistic desires, some to finally feel fulfilled. Why had she come? Why had she looked at him, why had he sensed her desire when she'd touched him? Not for the experience or the forthcoming orgasms... for him. For some old, crippled man whom she had looked on with such innocent wonder and admiration, it had left him breathless. She had no idea how old and ugly he truly was, he knew. But... for a moment, he didn't feel like either of those things.

"We had an interesting new client," Eris said, leaning back in one of the office chairs and crossing her ankles top the desk in front of her. "Come see these readings."

Anteros arched a brow and, noting none but the three of them were present, shifted to allow great black moth-like wings become visible upon his back and he lifted himself to he upper levels without a glance at the rolling stairs leaning against the far wall. He was otherwise clad in a simple heather grey suit with a pale rose colored shirt, sans tie. His pale yellow hair was mere shades off from his mother's, Hephaestus noted dispassionately. He looked like a young Armani model, save for the bizarre wings, all chiseled cheek bones and full lips. Hugh didn't even waste the effort being annoyed at the kid's good looks; he was his mother's son, after all.

Ant's deep amethyst gaze, darker in purple tone than any of his siblings', looked over the data from Deirdre McKennon's session. He even went so far as to pull up footage of both the programmed fantasy and of the room when it was playing out. His eyes widened noticeably at how she completely shed the fantasy and, as if she could see or hear what was happening outside that forced chemical, magical and technological haze, how she came, screaming out her husband's name.

"What the actual f--" Anteros rewound the footage and looked closer. "Great Gaia." He shrugged his shoulders and his wings faded back into nonexistence, as if melting into the soft linen of his suit jacket. He sat down in a chair without even looking at it, his eyes on the screen. "She's a psychic of some variety-- when I view this with my Sight, I see the markings of an astral traveller. She didn't just have your usual le petite mort orgasm... she literally had an out of body moment."

Hephaestus said nothing. If she was what they were looking for... her life was over. She would be seduced, stolen, manipulated.

She could also save their lives.

And at this moment, Hugh Estes, Hephaestus, God of the Forge, fire, industry and craft, wished he had never made the damn machine in the first place. Because he suspected it was about to be the downfall for Mrs. Deirdre McKennon.