"Overdrive" - Chapter 7
"OverDrive"
(C) 2017 Sinclair Diavante
Chapter 7.
"Starbucks is not an advertiser; people think we are a great marketing company, but in fact we spend very little money on marketing and more money on training our people than advertising."
- Howard Schultz
Jake struggled to diffuse the bomb as quickly as he could, but his confidence rapidly dwindled along with the time remaining, displayed in the upper right quadrant of his vision in crisp green numerals.
Less than a minute was remaining, and that was the only aspect of the situation for which he was thankful, the time unit he was familiar with. He concentrated, staring closely at a thick mass of wires, all braided together, curving around the outside of the bomb's metal housing, its shape almost reminiscent of an old windup alarm clock. Which wires to cut?
"The ignition device is a DD-WTR pulse fuse," said a nameless female voice. "Pull up your bioware research interface to see how to disable the device. You must hurry Jacob Michaelson, you only have 47 seconds remaining."
"Yeah, easy for you to say, you're not about to become star dust." He shifted semi-transparent windows back and forth in his vision, trying to find the one with the prompt that would accept his very thoughts as input. Fifth one back, no, fourth! He was running out of time.
He hesitated, his wire cutters hovered over the bundle of wires, but his vision abruptly lost focus as sweat dripped into the corners of his eyes, stinging painfully, and he flicked his head sideways to clear it.
"Shit!"
His voice echoed in the small confines, the room was incredibly hot inside, it was adjacent to a large energy reactor core, presently supplying power to an entire continent. A control panel on the nearest wall arced with another shower of sparks, high frequency electricity welding all of its wires together in a noxious smelling, irreparable mess, compliments of his last attempt to shut the reactor down. It had badly burned his fingers when the panel exploded from a power surge, and the only saving grace was that it didn't electrocute him. What it had arced to, the flesh there had immediately vaporized rather than carry sufficient lethal current through his heart. High frequency voltage travels around the outside of the body, not through the center.
He tried not to stare at the pinky finger of his right hand, or rather, what remained of it. His bioware had succeeded in shutting down both the bleeding and the terrible pain, but nothing could rid his sight of the crisped bone now sticking out. Partially curled and no longer moving, it was an ugly shade of yellowish-black, looking all the world like a chicken wing that had been left in the oven for far too long. Angry purplish swelling spread up from the site of the injury in long streaks on the back of his hand, and his bioware medical readouts kept fighting him for his attention, but he didn't have the time to care. He was now bitterly aware that cauterization wasn't like in the movies, without the bioware closing off his blood vessels, he'd be leaking blood profusely. The affected hand was getting weaker by the moment and already tingled from a lack of oxygen.
Thirty seconds remained, and he glanced up and accidentally focused on a shelving rack nearby, its inventory almost instantly dropping into his sight. He really didn't care about what the shelving unit contained, but when he tried to detach from it, closing the window out, the movement only brought up the history of 'Janitor In A Drum' floor cleaner, the product company's annual sales, contact information, and a picture of the marketing director smiling at the camera.
It wasn't human.
Jake needed the technical specifications for the DD-WTR, the one leading to the compression igniter sitting on top of a large mound of malleable HE.
And its backup igniter.
Five seconds remained, it was now or never.
He desperately picked two wires at random, snipping through the red and blue ones at the same time with a sharp click.
His vision went white, and that was when he knew for certain, he'd picked the wrong wires.
It was his last thought.
"You are dead" said a ghostly voice from everywhere and nowhere at once, a voice he'd once thought could be helpful, friendly even, but by now he had learned she was in fact a cruel bitch.
Stabbing jolts of fire shot directly into his prostate, compliments of the testicular correctional behavior modification unit, or TCBMU, BMU for short. It was a small triangular curved piece of metal, bonded to the perennial region just behind his scrotum, and it linked to a semi-rigid tubular implant anchored inside his dick, simulating a canine baculum and forcing it to point up. It had a lifetime power source inside it, and terminated in his bladder via a long catheter. Both were permanent, and like the artificial living sheath that surrounded his penis and kept it tucked close and warm next to his body, it all served as an odd form of reward and punishment.
Jake fell to the white floor and grabbed his balls, letting out a jagged groan, entirely unable to draw a big enough breath to scream. Though the pain wasn't centered in them, it was close enough, and in his last life he would never believe that such pain could come without injury.
Terrible, horrible, gruesome injury.
It also could provide rewards for getting things right, though Jake had yet to experience that.
The BMU and sheath also served another purpose, for it was supposed to make transitioning into an ASU body easier. Now that his genitals were in a canine arrangement, it would produce a stronger sense of familiarity, helping to bridge the massive gap between such dissimilar physiology and body shape. It provided an attachment point for draining urine, just one more place the ASU communication chassis would attach to his body when in use; quite a few of those now studded his body from head to toe. Neural interfaces, direct circulatory shunts, supportive body resting pads. You can't worry about bedsores when you're hooked up to a machine every single day, for every waking hour in the foreseeable future. Sure, he'd climb out of it when it was time to sleep, and he and the ASU were supposed to even sleep together in the same room. An idea he found a little alarming, just how much wet dog smell might a 650 pound wolf produce?
He had no memory of any of the hardware being installed, because that hadn't happened yet.
This was all virtual.
They said that his sense of humanity would in fact fade over time, and he would even completely forget about his past, losing his human identity in exchange for that of a canine, fully immersing himself into the ASU, and they promoted that concept in every possible way that they could.
Take for instance the simple artificial leather collar he now wore around his neck, an ever-present reminder that he was something other than human. He was canine, they said. Accept it, embrace it, become it, three words repeated to him all too often. He couldn't find a buckle or a lock, it was devoid of anything but a single D-ring, stitched in place with no way to remove it.
The culture he had come from dictated that such things were always worn by dogs, and the Teecat engineers exploited Jake's consciousness to make the impossible happen with insidious efficiency.
He did not yet feel canine, having to wear it, but he also didn't feel human anymore.
Jake hadn't yet seen an ASU in person, so far all of his training had been virtual, pumped into his brain while his body was in partial stasis, located on a ship travelling at 3 cY/sec, for three months in real time. A voyage of just under 400,000 light years, a distance that still made his head spin if he tried to imagine it.
Massive alterations to his body were taking place at that moment, surgeries and improvements, stuff he didn't want to see after he had briefly looked in on himself through a camera. He was hardly recognizable under all those tubes and wires and moving robotic arms. It looked like he was being dissected, and he terminated the video feed only moments after opening it.
When they woke him at his final destination, he'd find all the alterations complete. Unfortunately, at that point he'd also be blind and nearly deaf from stasis sickness.
The pain just behind his balls abruptly ceased, gone without a trace. Once more, he wallowed in frustration and considered all his options. Yes, he could quit this insanity, but they would kill him, and then that would be it.
Not a very good option.
"Analysis complete, Jacob Michaelson."
"I told you, call me Jake."
"Deviation from your name is not permissible at this time, although you should remember the fact that your name will be discarded and a new one will be chosen by your ASU."
"Yeah, great. What will it be? Dances with wolves?"
"I do not understand the reference. The unit identifier will be something you and the ASU both agree amicably on."
Jake slowly got up from the floor and crouched, not yet ready to test his strength while standing, though his injuries were of course gone, having vanished during the "negative reinforcement."
The space he sat in was featureless white, but not overly bright. His hands were on the ground between his knees, the left one folded, the right pointing up. It was a comfortable position, given that he was naked, and his arms stood in the way of his genitals. He knew that he was being watched, and he also knew he would never quit feeling embarrassed. His dick looked weird in a sheath, he still avoided glancing at it when he could.
Rather than spilling forth all the things he did wrong on this last exercise, an odd double chime filled his hearing, followed with the words, "Good boy."
Jake grunted, his eyes opened wide in shock and disbelief, whatever they'd stuck behind his balls and in his urethra, it began delivering something other than pain, this time.
"W-what... what did I-- d-do..." Jake gasped and fell silent, dropping his knee and leaning forward with his weight on his hands, on all fours. Thick white splats erupted from the tip of his sheath, spattering his elbow, the back of one hand, and then the floor.
There was no response.
Nothing in his past had ever felt like this, his eyes actually hurt, squeezed so tight, and that was just the start, this was no ordinary orgasm.
Next came a wave of euphoria, his bioware dumped a flood of chemicals straight into his brain.
At first, he panicked, trying with all his might to clamp down on the sensations, for they were too strong, far too intense, he had to stop it...
The eroticism overlaying the situation ripped right though all of his thoughts on inhibition, though. It justified it somehow with an incredible sensation of well-being, all was suddenly right in his world, for just a moment, and he bucked his hips several times. A grin stole his face, as he tried to greedily get more of that feeling. Like the very first time he masturbated during puberty, this was a feeling he knew he would try to get again.
The thought of grabbing his own dick never even crossed his mind, this time, but he was hooked, oh yes.
He wanted more.