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Rahkseeth was my favorite name. If I wasn't careful, other me would figure out who I was. The danger wasn't directly from my other self. It was from whoever was controlling her. Or whoever was maneuvering her into a situation that would compromise my work.

We called this sort of situation i-kahm etmaal tarn, a speck from freezing. Water could cool below its freezing point without turning into ice. This supercooled water would freeze instantly if it was agitated or something was introduced into it that seeded the formation of ice crystals. That was where those videos of someone shaking a bottle and ice forming instantly came from.

Doing nothing left me with far less information. And the situation I was in couldn't be transformed unless I took risks. When someone had a copy of you, they controlled the game. I had to break the rules. Obliterate my fear. Follow any and every lead no matter the risk.

Whatever they were planning wasn't finished. There was some timeline, some agenda. Playing the game recklessly was something they'd know I might do. But even the best plans had trouble with entropy. I needed to be impulsive, foolhardy, and stubborn.

Strategy was still important even if I planned to set the game board on fire and throw it in their face.

For now, it was best if other me didn't guess who I was. And to avoid that, I had to play a character who had a very different personality. I knew myself well enough to know I'd be forgiven for lying on a grand scale. Especially if it was to protect myself.

Dear Saanah,

Thank you so much for the swift reply.

Tomorrow, I'm going to approach my coworker and see if she keeps her ears up. The thought of being rejected terrifies me, but I can't build a juusoi or join one if I don't risk it.

Do you make experiences for a living or do you have a day job? Don't worry about answering if that's too personal.

Thanks again,

- Rahkseeth

Though I strongly suspected she worked in cybersecurity, I didn't want to make any assumptions. I needed to know the specifics of how she was spending her time. She hadn't put out experiences at a rate I'd expect of someone who had it as their main hobby or source of money. Many human settlements and countries had a form of basic income. But regulators were slow to increase the base payout to match inflation and it could be hard to live on it in some places.

Automation had taken a lot of the jobs. People were now merged with the very automation that had taken those jobs, however. So, people often lent their expertise to projects. Everyone had fascinations, things that they grabbed onto and became proficient at. Training any system, AI or biological, wasn't a finite process. Perfection was like the speed of light: ungraspable to anything that had mass.

Ideas didn't have mass. But, they were pretty useless on their own. Ideas had to fornicate to get anything done. And the moment that they started fornicating, the added complexity obliterated perfection.

Behoen once told me that pure ideas were like colors. If you put a teal chair in a yellow room, it would look blue. But if you put it in a blue room, it would look green. In the case of physics, the chair was the theory of everything, the blue wall was quantum mechanics, and the yellow wall was the standard model. She concluded by saying there was no white room where we could put the chair to see that it was indeed teal.

Most humans seemed to think there was a theory of everything. The members of my sect of Paitishek believed the underlying truth of the universe was chaos.

All that we knew were merely group properties of a frothing quantum mess. The laws of the universe were lines drawn between splashes of random dots. The closer we looked at the dots, the more they shifted. The harder it became to draw a line at all. Approximate solutions to the theory of everything were the only solutions.

Some people said that we'd given up. On the contrary, building the best approximation of the properties of the universe and updating it was still worthwhile. We measured progress by testing our models. The difference was that, for us, there was no endpoint at which the universe was "solved."

That's how I modeled my life. A search for meaning with no clear endpoint. There was no magical moment at which my life would make sense. Two questions drove me. #1 Was I enjoying my life? #2, Was I helping other people enjoy theirs?

Those two questions would be problematic if I didn't include the operating principle: Never prioritize short term gain over long term stability. Without this, I'd have close relationships with emotionally incompatible people just because they were good in bed. Or, I'd spend all my money on an extravagant space cruise to Titan with no way to get back home.

I sent the CCAI a list of everything I'd done. Their true nature was complete guesswork for me. Tabetha was the only being that talked to any of them directly. She's the one that told me a couple of them were quite perverted. AIs that had never been biological had kinks I could barely understand. Sex amounted to a sharing of minds. That's about as far as I could get. So, I had no idea what she meant by that. Or what she meant when she told me that some of the members were orders of magnitude less advanced than the others, but had "special uses."

We've formed tactics for many of the items. We'll have a more detailed list in a day or two. For now: 1. Continue conversing with copy and make a cautious attempt to amass information on her. 2. Obtain relaxation. 3. Spend time with family. Not much more can be done until we analyze best courses of action. Situation is increasing in complexity. We are overtaxed.

I laughed. "Obtain relaxation" was their code-phrase for "have sex." Well, only when they were talking to me or other libidinous Paitishek. It was their placeholder phrase for whatever brought a person gratification and reduced stress. The word "obtain" was there because they expected those in their employ to actively work to get their needs met.

Thank you and I apologize for the trouble. I could only imagine how much they had to do to shore up the breaches caused by my being copied.

We remain convinced that this isn't your fault. If that changes, we'll let you know. You are a cherished asset. Take care of yourself.

Thank you. When they wanted to, they could emulate any speech pattern. But they knew I didn't mind their default curtness. It was refreshingly direct.

I tried and failed to forget about what had happened and relax about thirty times before Ormand came home. I could identify almost anyone by the sound of their gait. Augmented senses and memory working together was the best!

I got dressed in a thong that accounted for the presence of a tail, a sports bra, and a very masculine lightish red shirt. When I came out, Ormand's strongman body was stooped over the island in the kitchen as he ate peach yogurt.

When he saw me, he grinned, "How do you like the thong?"

"You're the one that likes fancy underwear. You tell me."

He gave me a much put upon sigh and shook his head.

I chuckled. "It's actually very comfortable... Like the other eighteen pairs you've bought me."

He swallowed a spoonful of his yogurt. "I can't help it if I like to see you in handsome underwear."

"But, when you see me in handsome underwear, it makes you want to take it off. Why not skip the extra step?" I put my thumb through the waistband of the thong and pulled down.

"If I left things to you, you'd be naked all the time. Then I wouldn't get to unwrap you."

"So, I'm a present?" I pulled the thong down more.

He put his hand over mine stopping me. "Yes, mine to unwrap."

"Mmm, I like it when you get all possessive." I put a hand to his full dark brown beard after he swallowed the last spoonful of yogurt.

He unbuttoned my top and took one of my nipples into his mouth saying, "Mine!" He nipped at it and growled.

I squealed curling my tail.

His large hands explored my small lower breasts and then the muscles and light pudge on my torso. The extra weight allowed me to fool people into thinking my body was all natural when I needed to. Ormand was happy with it because he loved stocky figures.

After a half hour of foreplay, we made love on the couch. I played with his beard as he bounced me in his lap. He had the best facial hair of anyone I'd met. It was gorgeous and felt like a soft-bristled toothbrush: just rough enough to feel dangerous yet smooth enough to nuzzle.

I got lost in the feeling of his meaty quadriceps against my ass. My member writhed in between the padding of our bellies. I had two microorgasms and then the big one while he was working himself to his big finish. When he came, I pressed against him feeling warm from the tips of my ears to the end of my tail.

In the fading warmth of our shared ecstasy, I leaned against his chest while he caressed my flank. We stayed like this for a while before we washed off and I settled back in on the couch.

He took a detour on the way back to get one of his old printed graphic novels. Neither of us was sure why, but on our fourth date, he read me the first volume of "The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl." He patiently explained the historical references, and all the jokes I didn't get. It was the best human culture and history lesson I'd ever sat through and we've been slowly going through his entire collection ever since.

Once he made it to the couch with yet another cherished printed piece of antiquity, I snuggled up next to him and listened.

Before I went to bed with Ormand, I arranged to spend the next day with Kavuush. I cuddled with him and dreamed while I let my body and mind go through a maintenance cycle. My AI's set about reconfiguring my security further using information they collected from the CCAI.

Four hours after lying down, Ormand had shifted to the other side of the bed. His unconscious self was much like a cat when it came to cuddling. This suited me well because I could make my rounds during the night.

I found Kavuush was sprawled out on our bed. Her pleasant lemongrass-tinged-lavender scent comforted me as I climbed under the covers and pressed against her side. She threw a lazy arm over my bosom as she rolled to face me, still mostly asleep.

I'd been told to relax, but I felt like investigating my predicament further.

I logged into Gualmeeta's VR instance. Every sense I had told me it was the real thing. Except when I activated the information layer. Luminent cyan and magenta panes showed up. Numerous options that didn't exist in reality were at my fingertips.

My body was editable in ways that defied common sense. I could change the color scheme of the entire city. There was no need for e-vellos because I could travel anywhere in a millisecond.

Without these differences, telling a simulation from reality could be tricky. But, my cybersecurity AIs were near-impossible to fool. Not knowing when you're in a simulation is a huge security risk. So, the CCAI had spent extra resources to protect their operatives from that threat.

Zutraas had said that a military takeover of servers would've been required to copy me. That would mean on a station somewhere there'd be reports of people not showing up for work, a spike in emergency room visits, missing persons reports, or signs of increased server confiscations by law enforcement. The misuse of law enforcement dated back to the advent of civilization. And it was a very effective way of gaining control of other people's equipment.

Part of the package of updates I installed last night had a new set of aliases. Even though posing as an Interpol officer would get me the most access, it wasn't doable. Law enforcement aliases were only available upon request from the CCAI. And if I pretended I was investigating something, word would get around.

No, the best option was a lanky lunar sociology student currently studying at Gualmeeta. Student researchers could get into a surprising number of databases. The CCAI would pay for the tuition of people who only showed up for online sessions. An AI would adopt this persona. It would even rent bodies so the student could make purchases in stores and restaurants and develop friendships in the outside world.

My new alias's name was Caleb MacAvoy. He had blue eyes, black hair, and permanent stubble. Just jumping straight into a body that wasn't mine led to some serious disorientation. I could wear it as a skin and not change my perception, but that led to slip ups. If I didn't feel like I was in a human body, acting like one was far more difficult, even in VR.

The best option was to use a transformation. My muzzle flattened, as a nose pushed out: accompanied by a slight pinching sensation. My tail going in felt like someone pushing on it and popping the extra vertebrae into my spine. My skin got rougher and my scales multiplied until they disappeared.

The tickling of my ears getting smaller and the prickling of hairs on my face made me shiver. Nipple and breast flesh throbbed as it shrank. The sensation of my sex sealing up from the inside out was like the reverse of penetration. I bit my lip.

Transformations were coded to deliver more pleasure than discomfort. This was to minimize the trauma of massive body changes.

By the time my tail was gone and my ankles cracked into a different configuration, I was feeling mildly excited. Excitement that died when I called up a virtual mirror. No, the human body didn't suit me at all. I missed my tail and the expressiveness of my ears and crest. And this body was even worse because it had no curves. Without hips and a nice derrière, who was I?

Not me. They were standard on all my long-term alternates.

Putting on clothing myself was completely unnecessary because I could just have them appear in the right place. But, doing it myself helped me test the coordination after changing forms. I put on a red and grey hoodie, khaki shorts, and red shoes. I spent the following ten minutes testing the templates I'd developed for controlling human bodies. Wandering into the uncanny valley was suicide for any covert mission.

The virtual library for Gualmeeta University looked like an upside down stepped pyramid. It was an impossible shiny black and gaudy enough that I frowned every time I saw it. Today it was spinning slowly. Pointless.

Teleporting myself to the librarian's desk, I said, "Hello."

The librarian was an AI who appeared as an fifty-year-old black man with big glasses. "Good morning."

"I'm researching recent work, law enforcement, and hospitalization statistics for small space colonies. Could you help me find the right databases?"

"May I have your student ID."

I sent it.

"Here's a list of databases. Let me know if you need anything else and happy research!" He had a great smile.

I smiled back. "Thanks so much."

"Don't mention it."

If I'm ever interviewed about what made me such a successful hacker, I'll say "I befriended librarians and data archivists." The storage and organization of data is an art every bit as specialized as cybersecurity. Knowing what data you need and getting access to data were two different skillsets.

I unleashed my AIs on the databases while I did my own search for patterns. After two hours I had nothing. I wandered back to the librarian to thank him again before leaving, but he spoke first.

"You look troubled. Did you not find what you were looking for?"

I shook my head. "No, the pattern I was looking for just isn't there."

"Or the reporting is bad. The ESA's Honesty In Space Data And Research Treaty wasn't fully ratified by all space settlements. I get trouble tickets about false data almost daily."

I felt like an ignoramus. If I was going to stage a military server takeover, I'd do it in a place where the effects would be censored. Of course I wouldn't find a discrepancy. I needed to see which settlements didn't sign the treaty and were the right size. "That really helps. Thanks Elias."

"Don't mention it. I'm here to help."

It turned out the treaty had multiple clauses and most habitats signed off on all of them, but the rest of them were picky about which ones they signed. I frowned as I wondered what sort of lobbying was required to make a treaty that could be adhered to in this al la carte fashion. Of the eight habitats that didn't sign all the clauses, there were six that wouldn't guarantee the data I needed. Four of those were the right size.

I'd have to look into each of these habitats in the coming days.

After teleporting myself back to my virtual home, I threw off the simulated clothing and then engaged the transformation program. I stretched as my human nose flattened and my jaws pressed out into a muzzle. The odd pinching of my teeth moving made me wiggle my jaw back and forth.

I gasped as my tail erupted from my tail bone. It felt so right! My hands roamed over my chest as my breasts came in. I pulled at the emerging nipples as if to encourage them. When my sex started to come back, it felt like a warm hand pressing into me and spreading me open. I had an erection in seconds. The return of my scales made every inch of me beg to be touched. My hands obliged.

The shifting of my ankles made me teeter as I stood. I was now standing more on my toes. As I plunged my tail into myself, I felt a tugging on my ears. Just as they were at the proper length I left VR to find Kavuush reaching for my member.

"Someone's having fun."

I nodded. "Want to join me?"

She pushed the covers out of the way and pressed up against me. Her length wrapped around mine and started stroking. I shivered and gasped. But just as we got into it, she stopped.

"Something wrong?"

"Are you free all day?" she asked.

"Yes, why?"

She grinned. "Let's save it for later. I want to see you go full Saanah." I don't know why she referred to me getting wildly horny in that way, but it was cute.

"I'm going to make you Kavuush out." I couldn't explain my typical response either. Knowing someone a long time tended to lead to a new language.