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lab_reports[Broadmoore when she was emotionally stunted and high on her superiority and regarded everybody as either a test subject or a cumdump or as nothing. Still bitter about how her makers treated her; usually sexually frustrated, because of course sex with Broadmoore is hazardous to her partners (and why does she care about that?). Honing her augmentation skills on those foolish enough to go home with her. Forming the idea that enthralling humanity is her plan. And she's sick most of the time. Usually mildly, but sometimes there are emergencies.]
The sign outside said "Embiggen", carved into a sheet of rusty steel with a blowtorch. Très edgy.
You could hear the club from street level. A big beefy guy with horns minded the entrance. He looked like an ogre, but that was his job. If you had the right look, you passed. To go in you went down thirteen stairs to the basement, literally the underground.
The music was just below deafening and the lighting was low, which was good since the place wasn't much to look at. The decor mostly consisted of neon and mechanically abused sheet metal, with just enough upholstery to avoid lacerating the customers. Despite the evocative name it was a meeting place for body-modding enthusiasts of all types; one couldn't be too exclusive while pursuing esoteric and disreputable interests.
But no one was here for the decor; they were here for an eyeful of each other, maybe something more. They came to enjoy themselves in a place where everyone was feeling the same excitement. And to pose. When you were proud of your work, you wanted to show it off.
The music and the style skewed gothic-industrial, and there were spikes and studs and fishnets, lots of PVC and latex, a pirate's treasure of piercings, outfits shamelessly low-cut or high-riding. And everyone was larger than life. Big tits, big dicks, big curves, big muscles... once inside you waded in an ocean of jostling, augmented flesh, strobe lights flashing on sweat, pheromones wafted on body heat, all eyes searching for the next pleasure. Even the unenhanced were wild, heightened... it was the mood of the place.
In the break between this track and the next, a figure at the entrance beamed in the clublight like a distant cloud-shrouded flash of lightning, such as heralded the gods. Though she was by now a familiar sight, all heads turned to mark her entrance, like some rare and spectacular astronomical event.
Cynthia Broadmoore.
A vulpine giantess clad in a curve-hugging white latex cybernurse uniform, awesome quantities of soft flesh packed into glossy rubber, crowding out through a front unzipped from neck to navel, her clinging ultrashort skirt scarcely more than a low-slung equator expressing its adoration of her massive glutes, the floor quaking beneath thigh-high high-heel boots. Her body fur was a synthetic peach hue with flocks of neon green and yellow spots on her flanks, which resolved upon close examination into biohazard marks. She looked like poison candy.
She kept her hair cropped no-nonsense short, a spit-curl on her high forehead, iridescent green eyes flashing with intelligent malice as she scanned her audience. Towering, forbidding, perfect in every way. Too good for this seamy little club, that was certain.
She took what had become her usual place at the bar, facing the room rather than hunched over a bioluminescent drink, superficially inviting, occasionally jotting something on her tablet, a gambit to appear less interested, sneering like she was the best thing this place had ever seen. She had sense enough of social self-preservation to be cordial toward the staff, although stiff and formal.
She never approached anyone herself, and rarely left with anybody; her interviews, such as they were, tended to be brief and brutally cutting. It wasn't like the place didn't see patrons who thought they were all that, but it had to be admitted that Cynthia Broadmoore had the goods and plenty of them. Full-body was a rare spectacle. She represented an ideal which few could obtain, or even withstand, with something like a truck transmission hanging between her legs. Did she really use that on people? could she keep it up?
Even when she inspired fear and awe, it was suffused with a lust which you could see she found insufficiently respectful. She was unable to separate categorical objectification from the more general type which flew freely in a sleazy sex club, a fact which might have given the cruisers and chasers pause, had they been aware. At least at Embiggen nobody was so clueless as to proclaim, "oh, her poor back!"
And of course every main character thought they'd be the one to take her home tonight, had the magic words to charm the cocksock off of her. The regulars knew better.
It had gotten around that she herself performed augmentation. It added to her draw, her mystique. But who had done the work on her? And if she could swing body mods like that, what the hell was she doing here, instead of in one of the major modding capitals?
Heads also turned because she'd been out of circulation for a number of days.
* * *
Broadmoore was selective in choosing subjects, not simply as a matter of personal taste, but because her technique was still developing and required body types more forgiving to error. Not that she told them that; there was such a thing as too much information. As far as went personality type, she swung between someone pliant, or an individual who wasn't especially cooperative. It depended on the night.
She'd been talking to a suitable enough specimen, talking her obliquely around to leaving the club with her. a soft, slender rabbity creature in holographic vinyl. A black splotch around one eye, which interested Broadmoore. Embiggen's clientele paved their idiosyncrasies over, usually. The girl ticked no particular requirements as a test subject. Instead, Broadmoore felt the impractical urge to kiss her for a while, perhaps do other things with her mouth, and she absolutely wanted no witnesses to such tenderness on her part.
As the conversation wound in its inevitable fashion, the lightheadedness she'd been ignoring pushed itself gradually to the fore, the fatigue she'd barely credited earlier was growing into sluggishness, and as she exchanged small talk, the first red-tinged alerts popped up in the edge of her vision. Her cellular respiration was dropping rapidly, the updates becoming increasingly urgent. Her companion's voice grew distant as her mind raced
The interface which converted nuclear to biochemical energy for her organic parts was extremely arcane and not a little fussy; Broadmoore had had difficulty with it before, down periods, but not like this, not with her plunging toward projected cell death in a matter of hours
outwardly she remained calm and dignified and informed her prospective tryst that she'd forgotten an extremely vital appointment with a client and that they would have to continue this encounter another time. The rabbit girl looked suitably crestfallen. Did she think she was being brushed off? Broadmoore didn't have time to care. she hustled to the exit. she hated this, she hated how her magnificent body was always on the verge of malfunction. she wasn't yet afraid... ...
Outside she sheltered from the drizzle and summoned a ride. it seemed to take forever to arrive, Broadmoore helplessly riding out the red haze of alerts crowding her vision, her biomechanical heart racing, pushing her barren blood around fruitlessly. slipping into the back seat, she was shocked to feel her legs almost give out beneath her... her endoskeleton would continue to carry her until the nuclear fuel was suboptimum, but she'd begun to lose motor control. her breath fogged the windows
she had visions of collapsing on the cracked concrete in front of her building, of being found, of surprised coroners nattering over her splayed-open innards, of being sold for parts... she rose from the car shakily, clutching the roof, trying to look as though she'd simply had too much to drink, whatever that looked like
her neighborhood was unsavory, half-demolished, the car speeding off as soon as she stepped away. The crunch of garbage underfoot played up the ringing in her ears. By the time Broadmoore reached the corrugated door of her industrial bolthole she was in full metabolic crisis. her pupils cast broad circles of poisonous orange-red light upon the door. she offhandedly threw open the locks, heaved the door too hard and too fast on its rails, dragged herself inside
the mortal impulse was to eat something to raise one's blood sugar, but her digestion simply routed its substantive output through the metabolic interface. if she could reach the lab she could jam an IV into herself, which would keep her awake long enough to summon her lab drones; using them, she would commence repair immediately.
she reached the basement and the decommissioned reactor hull she used as a nest, steering clear of the reactor cavity, her equilibrium wholly untrustworthy now. she dropped her purse and gazed beseechingly upon the device which bulked in one corner
it was one-of-a-kind bespoke and didn't have a proper name; she thought of it as 'the machine.' a framework of tube steel like a scorpion's tail held an incomprehensible mass of cables and conduits and sensors; crowning it was a predatory splay of slender robotic arms, occasionally twitching as though it dreamed. in the device's maw, half-swallowed, was a leatherette medical couch. A cybernetic monitoring and maintenance station. She'd come to rely upon it more than she liked. Nearly every day concluded with Broadmoore plugged in, reoptimizing her systems, sorting out faults, attempting to work around a seemingly interminable parade of malfunctions, gingerly administering painkillers. She charged her power cells with it to conserve plutonium. Once in a while she managed a repair or rebuild, when she could steal the parts or the money, and tethered to it to recuperate. Broadmoore dragged herself onto the couch
part of the machine was a combinatory syringe driver, a cocktail mixer for intravenous drips. Broadmoore brought up a D5W and threw in a squirt of NAD+ to beef up the redox. she had the machine insert the needle because her hands were no longer steady
she waited. the IV dripped, permeating her forbidding internal climate. after a couple of eternal minutes she felt she would remain conscious. she'd never had to rely upon emergency hibernation. and who would wake her?
she tore the latex jacket from her back, exposing the dual row of plugports astride her spine. thus prompted, the machine extended arms to insert cables into the top three pairs of ports. screens immediately flashed into life, reflecting all aspects of Broadmoore's strange cyberbiology. Many of them were in red. She ignored the screens; the data also fed directly into her mind.
her reactor was operating optimally. She'd experienced a minor radiation leak, but these tended to happen while she was under stress. Electrical systems fine, other than various known but unrelated glitches.
It was as reported: her metabolic interface was just not working, it was doing nothing. as of now the waste products were being filtered and excreted along with her coolant, so there was that. She sent probing inquiries into its cyberneural mesh and didn't receive answers she liked. Was it dead? or had it opted out of keeping its mistress fed?
"Do you think I'm too fat?" she muttered. "Is that it?" She took a couple of deep breaths. It looked as though she would survive. But the situation was absolutely intolerable.
She didn't know what Skylark did with her evenings. Broadmoore had encouraged her to get out at night, show off the wares... turn tricks, take up pole-dancing, Broadmoore didn't care what Skylark did in her new life, as long as she was available when required.
She reached through the cables arching brutally from her spine, pushed her will into the digital bloodstream, opened portals she herself had fashioned and barred against intrusion, rose into Skylark's thoughts like a bad memory.
"Skylark, I need you." The mind at the other end of the line quailed in shock, then gathered itself. Skylark was brainleashed and could not refuse her, but Broadmoore sent the particulars of the situation in order to underline its urgency. She'd seize her thrall by the leash if necessary. But she sensed Skylark already scurrying.
Broadmoore sank back into the couch, suddenly feeling helpless and doomy now that she had no pressing actions to take. Staring at the ceiling, she imagined lying at the bottom of a pit she'd one day no longer have the strength to climb from. Nevertheless she would climb for as long as she could. And maybe she wouldn't have to do it alone.
Her eyes had dimmed to mellow green spotlights. She felt almost baseline, despite the continuing alerts. When she felt Skylark outside, Broadmoore opened the doors and admitted her.
Skylark was pink and magenta and lutrine, her hair wavy and variegated like ribbon candy, her tits colossal, her garments miniscule. Broadmoore had been especially creative when improving her; if there were anyone she wanted made to resemble a brainless, fuckable toy, it was the former director of the lab. But Broadmoore hadn't removed all of Skylark's brains. She left her sufficient intellect to appreciate her revised status. She also wasn't originally a she, back when she was raw material; she seemed to cope with that fact better than being Broadmoore's dogsbody.
Broadmoore was her pole star, her very world. Broadmoore had left her with nothing else. And now she was here to look after her mistress. At least, Broadmoore thought, I did her the kindness of programming her to enjoy servitude. Which was more than she did for me.
"Doctor, are you all right? What's your condition? How do you feel?"
"I feel... rotten." Mortal, she'd started to say. "I've been running on GNG for the last several hours, which you understand is less than ideal. I need to broaden my menu of alert conditions... I suppose I simply assumed your team comprehended the basics." Broadmoore's lack of affect came across as nihilistic contempt.
"I'm sorry!" Skylark squeaked. She wasn't afraid of Broadmoore, precisely-- she thought her mistress was unlikely to destroy her, not after investing so much in her augmentation --but was still seized by an abject desire not to displease.
"As for my status, I'm updating you now."
Trend lines arced across Skylark's thoughts like a psychic ejaculation. She blinked rapidly and swayed on her heels. Broadmoore didn't notice.
"First we're going to get the biointerface back online, and after we've done that we're going to wait here. We'll have a sleepover, just we girls. As we speak, I'm having a new component fabricated to my specifications. Marmalade will retrieve it. Once it arrives, we will tear out the old one, root and branch, and replace it with my work."
Skylark bit her lip as she saw another pair of displays move into the red... she nodded energetically.
"And we're going to reroute absorption so that I can benefit directly from digestion. As much as it amused all of you to be able to feed me poison." Broadmoore couldn't muster a satisfying level of vehemence. She wanted to sleep.
Instead she found herself stroking between Skylark's ears, reeling her in and squeezing her against Broadmoore's fantastic breasts. Skylark crooned, not at all like someone who once conveyed authority.
"Skylark," Broadmoore murmured. "Strawberry Skye." Was her voice trilling, a little? It could be so. Perhaps she was losing consciousness after all. Or perhaps what they say is true, she thought, about the emotional benefits of owning a pet. She ruffled Skylark's hair.
"I should have replaced it long ago," she said. "Who was it that thought to bottleneck the system in this way? Hendricks? I'm glad I killed him. Saved the world from being polluted with his ignorance."
"You didn't kill him, Doctor Broadmoore."
She frowned. "I clearly remember doing so."
"Yes, but then you put him back together. You made him into the-- the receptacle."
"Ah... and he wasn't even good at that."
She continued stroking. She almost felt like herself again.
"You are not to consider this a crisis of any particular concern."
"Yes, Doctor Broadmoore."
"It's under control. But we will prevent it from recurring."
Skylark waited a moment before gazing up at Broadmoore. "I don't think Marmalade is reliable. Her behavior has been erratic."
"That's my risk to take. And since when do you care whether I live or die?"
"S-since you plugged wires into my brain, Doctor Broadmoore."
Broadmoore smiled. It was ghastly, something a shark might wear at a cocktail party. "Your point is taken. Marmalade is reliable enough for this task. I can steer her directly if need be. And I will have to adjust her leash. I do want her to be happy. Just like you."
Skylark whimpered.
Broadmoore relinquished her assistant. "Enough talk. Let's begin."
Skylark's big shiny bimbo eyes widened. "I don't know the first thing about performing surgery!"
"Obviously. You will be my eyes and my hands."
Skylark braced herself for the awful sensation of undertow, of being dragged deeper into herself, as her mistress possessed her body. Crowded uncomfortably alongside Broadmoore's intellect, her terrible unavertable will, she watched her own hands adjust the machine and select instruments.
* * *
The social flow resumed along a new course. Broadmoore sat at her usual place, looking as casually flawless as ever. It was right that they should be in awe of her.
She ordered a boulevardier made with Tennessee whiskey. She was very particular about the whiskey. Someone had ordered it that way for her once, and now she clung to the preference as part of her costume, as deliberate as her curve-hugging white latex cybernurse uniform. That too was a recommendation, by a couturier who enjoyed the challenge of her.
She hadn't really believed she would die. but she was shocked by the sudden loss of control, more than she now cared to recall. periodic malfunctions were the cost of possessing a bleeding-edge biology, and bringing her metabolic interface to rein wasn't categorically different from other adjustments... no more than straightening her makeup, really.
Music thumped, rendering communication necessarily physical. People leaned close to listen, laughing as messages got through, getting personal in the neon gloom. Broadmoore sipped, scanning the room over the rim of her glass.
It hadn't been easy to enter the clubs, once Cynthia had discovered them. So many strange people in one place, too many unknowns. She'd watched and prepared herself, intrigued by the places where humans met to establish relative social status and negotiate sex. It became a minor obsession, an extravagance, in a period mainly focused upon self-preservation.
She couldn't stay for long, that first time. She found the sight and scent dizzying, so many warm, gyrating bodies radiating open desire... she hadn't imagined such a fierce, mindblotting level of arousal was possible. But as she habituated such places, Broadmoore cultivated restraint, control, became conversant in their ways.
The bunny girl of the other night was long gone. Broadmoore hadn't even gotten her name. That was acceptable. Broadmoore wasn't in a mood to kiss.
She overlaid a targeting reticule while scrutinizing the crowd. It made her smile. Fog figures clustered at the club's entrance. One was markedly taller than the rest; a backlit ghost, lupine and beefy. He laughed.
That one, she thought, he's going to hit on me first. She hadn't engaged her prognostication matrix for this assessment; she just knew he was the type. Large men tried to bring her down to size, or regarded her as a custom accessory. A challenge. Her jadedness was unadjustable.
She didn't bother to track him further, gazed in some other fascinating direction, and that was when she spotted the little guy.
Musteline, bouncy. He wore a mesh top and tactical shorts and hightop sneakers with rubber spikes on them. slinky and twinky and exactly the sort of individual who flocked to her in spite of the offputting science-domme persona. Because of it. He was bouncing to the beat, holding on to a table for two, definitely looking her way.
She jotted diffidently, face ghoulish in tablet glow, and peeped him through the veils of her lashes. Aside from the antennae, scarcely any mods she could detect. A blank canvas.
A wisp of steam escaped the terse clench of her teeth. Oh, why not, she thought, accompanied by a purely conceptual smile. Their eyes met. A strong invitation in this place. He gulped his drink before approaching... without thinking about it, he dropped the dripping stir stick onto the floor. Broadmoore's eyes narrowed.
"Hi!" he said. She tuned out the loud music and heard perfectly well. He got into her personal space anyway. She smelled warm and soft and sexual, vulpine in all the best ways. She breathed in his pheromones, took the dimensions of his state of health, his small, insignificant libido.
"Good evening."
"You must be Cynthia Broadmoore!"
She kept the ego boost strictly private. "You are exactly correct."
"Everyone talks about you, you know," he said breathlessly.
She watched him look around, as though unable to believe he was first. [Likelihood of poseur: 85%] flashed on the periphery of her vision.
"Yes, I do know," she said.
"I'm sorry, I just didn't expect that I'd be talking to the Cynthia Broadmoore."
Broadmoore allowed a rumor of a smile. "And yet here you are. I hope this moment comports with your many lurid anticipatory fantasies."
He fidgeted, almost dancing in place. "Okay, what do I talk about? They say you totally remade yourself. Is that true?"
"Right to it, I see. Yes, in a manner of speaking. Doesn't everyone who comes here remake themselves?"
"Yeah, I guess so! That's probably true. What I mean is... is all of that augies?"
"Augies."
He drooped his antennae comically, and grinned. "Augmentations."
"Mm. That is a keen topic of debate here in this circus, is it not? If I were to reveal the truth, that would give you quite the social currency in this little scene."
"Aw, I don't really need to know. I'm just making small talk."
"Yes, I'm not exactly bowled over by the depth of this interlocution. And yet you seem curious. How about you? What have you had done?"
"Just these!" he said, pointing to his antennae. She wondered if they reached into his brain.
Broadmoore arched her eyebrows. "Do you mind?" she asked.
She cupped his chin in her hand, tilted his head this way and that. She saw them well enough, but wanted to know how he responded to being treated like a piece of meat. He was happy to receive attention. His face was open and inviting without looking dumb.
"How painfully cute." She put on a world-weary expression more appropriate to someone less recently decanted. "They're acceptable, I suppose."
"I got them from Matt the Wizard."
"I know. I make a point of recognizing those others within my domain."
"Considering I'm here almost every week, I figured I oughta take the plunge!" He giggled.
"Yes, well. It was a very safe option."
"You think so?"
"Without a doubt."
They shared a look, no words. In their silence the music seemed to grow louder. To him, her body looked like a playground. The glow of her eyes was part of the draw. No ulterior motives, just sex. She imagined his hands on her breasts, his face beneath her posterior.
"Yes, I know you find me highly stimulating," said Broadmoore.
"Um. Yes, I do. But I respect you for your talent!" he hastened to add.
"Mm." She stared him down, making him small in her vision. "What should I do with you?"
Mentally she sketched over the top of him. Widen the pelvic girdle, considerably. Breasts, nothing absurd, a double handful would do. Main coloration purple? violet? aposematic markings-- black and white? --over the shoulderblades and down the back like a pair of toxic angel wings... secondary markings circling the gloves and boots. Tail should be much fuller. A real jizzrag. And make the hair prone to verticality. The corner of her mouth curled up. And a simply massive penis and testicles. he'll appreciate that.
"What?" He headtilted, smiling.
Perhaps now would be the time to explore personality reconfiguration. He'd benefit from possessing one.
"I'm simply wondering," she said in a distant tone, "if you would like to see the place where I perform my work."
[Accountability for abduction: 13%]
Visions of gleaming white futurism danced in his head, a laboratory as pristine and radiant as the afterlife, and as the grin which this vision elicited. "Wow. I sure would."
Broadmoore nodded. "Wait outside. If you're still there when I emerge ten minutes from now... I shall take you."
He beamed that expression of disbelieving good fortune at her. "It's a deal." He gulped the rest of his drink, then took two steps toward her; for an awkward second Broadmoore thought he meant to shake on it. "I'm Jaret, by the way."
"Ah."
"See you." He, Jaret, all but scurried for the exit, as if that would impel her to join him even one minute sooner. Broadmoore watched him go.
"I hope you aren't attached to that name," she murmured. She swiveled ponderously in her seat, gestured at the bartender with her glass. "Another of these, please."
__________
(traceback to my last message to Cohost)
The sign outside said "Embiggen", carved into a sheet of rusty steel with a blowtorch. Très edgy.
You could hear the club from street level. A big beefy guy with horns minded the entrance. He looked like an ogre, but that was his job. If you had the right look, you passed. To go in you went down thirteen stairs to the basement, literally the underground.
The music was just below deafening and the lighting was low, which was good since the place wasn't much to look at. The decor mostly consisted of neon and mechanically abused sheet metal, with just enough upholstery to avoid lacerating the customers. Despite the evocative name it was a meeting place for body-modding enthusiasts of all types; one couldn't be too exclusive while pursuing esoteric and disreputable interests.
But no one was here for the decor; they were here for an eyeful of each other, maybe something more. They came to enjoy themselves in a place where everyone was feeling the same excitement. And to pose. When you were proud of your work, you wanted to show it off.
The music and the style skewed gothic-industrial, and there were spikes and studs and fishnets, lots of PVC and latex, a pirate's treasure of piercings, outfits shamelessly low-cut or high-riding. And everyone was larger than life. Big tits, big dicks, big curves, big muscles... once inside you waded in an ocean of jostling, augmented flesh, strobe lights flashing on sweat, pheromones wafted on body heat, all eyes searching for the next pleasure. Even the unenhanced were wild, heightened... it was the mood of the place.
In the break between this track and the next, a figure at the entrance beamed in the clublight like a distant cloud-shrouded flash of lightning, such as heralded the gods. Though she was by now a familiar sight, all heads turned to mark her entrance, like some rare and spectacular astronomical event.
Cynthia Broadmoore.
A vulpine giantess clad in a curve-hugging white latex cybernurse uniform, awesome quantities of soft flesh packed into glossy rubber, crowding out through a front unzipped from neck to navel, her clinging ultrashort skirt scarcely more than a low-slung equator expressing its adoration of her massive glutes, the floor quaking beneath thigh-high high-heel boots. Her body fur was a synthetic peach hue with flocks of neon green and yellow spots on her flanks, which resolved upon close examination into biohazard marks. She looked like poison candy.
She kept her hair cropped no-nonsense short, a spit-curl on her high forehead, iridescent green eyes flashing with intelligent malice as she scanned her audience. Towering, forbidding, perfect in every way. Too good for this seamy little club, that was certain.
She took what had become her usual place at the bar, facing the room rather than hunched over a bioluminescent drink, superficially inviting, occasionally jotting something on her tablet, a gambit to appear less interested, sneering like she was the best thing this place had ever seen. She had sense enough of social self-preservation to be cordial toward the staff, although stiff and formal.
She never approached anyone herself, and rarely left with anybody; her interviews, such as they were, tended to be brief and brutally cutting. It wasn't like the place didn't see patrons who thought they were all that, but it had to be admitted that Cynthia Broadmoore had the goods and plenty of them. Full-body was a rare spectacle. She represented an ideal which few could obtain, or even withstand, with something like a truck transmission hanging between her legs. Did she really use that on people? could she keep it up?
Even when she inspired fear and awe, it was suffused with a lust which you could see she found insufficiently respectful. She was unable to separate categorical objectification from the more general type which flew freely in a sleazy sex club, a fact which might have given the cruisers and chasers pause, had they been aware. At least at Embiggen nobody was so clueless as to proclaim, "oh, her poor back!"
And of course every main character thought they'd be the one to take her home tonight, had the magic words to charm the cocksock off of her. The regulars knew better.
It had gotten around that she herself performed augmentation. It added to her draw, her mystique. But who had done the work on her? And if she could swing body mods like that, what the hell was she doing here, instead of in one of the major modding capitals?
Heads also turned because she'd been out of circulation for a number of days.
Broadmoore was selective in choosing subjects, not simply as a matter of personal taste, but because her technique was still developing and required body types more forgiving to error. Not that she told them that; there was such a thing as too much information. As far as went personality type, she swung between someone pliant, or an individual who wasn't especially cooperative. It depended on the night.
She'd been talking to a suitable enough specimen, talking her obliquely around to leaving the club with her. a soft, slender rabbity creature in holographic vinyl. A black splotch around one eye, which interested Broadmoore. Embiggen's clientele paved their idiosyncrasies over, usually. The girl ticked no particular requirements as a test subject. Instead, Broadmoore felt the impractical urge to kiss her for a while, perhaps do other things with her mouth, and she absolutely wanted no witnesses to such tenderness on her part.
As the conversation wound in its inevitable fashion, the lightheadedness she'd been ignoring pushed itself gradually to the fore, the fatigue she'd barely credited earlier was growing into sluggishness, and as she exchanged small talk, the first red-tinged alerts popped up in the edge of her vision. Her cellular respiration was dropping rapidly, the updates becoming increasingly urgent. Her companion's voice grew distant as her mind raced
The interface which converted nuclear to biochemical energy for her organic parts was extremely arcane and not a little fussy; Broadmoore had had difficulty with it before, down periods, but not like this, not with her plunging toward projected cell death in a matter of hours
outwardly she remained calm and dignified and informed her prospective tryst that she'd forgotten an extremely vital appointment with a client and that they would have to continue this encounter another time. The rabbit girl looked suitably crestfallen. Did she think she was being brushed off? Broadmoore didn't have time to care. she hustled to the exit. she hated this, she hated how her magnificent body was always on the verge of malfunction. she wasn't yet afraid... ...
Outside she sheltered from the drizzle and summoned a ride. it seemed to take forever to arrive, Broadmoore helplessly riding out the red haze of alerts crowding her vision, her biomechanical heart racing, pushing her barren blood around fruitlessly. slipping into the back seat, she was shocked to feel her legs almost give out beneath her... her endoskeleton would continue to carry her until the nuclear fuel was suboptimum, but she'd begun to lose motor control. her breath fogged the windows
she had visions of collapsing on the cracked concrete in front of her building, of being found, of surprised coroners nattering over her splayed-open innards, of being sold for parts... she rose from the car shakily, clutching the roof, trying to look as though she'd simply had too much to drink, whatever that looked like
her neighborhood was unsavory, half-demolished, the car speeding off as soon as she stepped away. The crunch of garbage underfoot played up the ringing in her ears. By the time Broadmoore reached the corrugated door of her industrial bolthole she was in full metabolic crisis. her pupils cast broad circles of poisonous orange-red light upon the door. she offhandedly threw open the locks, heaved the door too hard and too fast on its rails, dragged herself inside
the mortal impulse was to eat something to raise one's blood sugar, but her digestion simply routed its substantive output through the metabolic interface. if she could reach the lab she could jam an IV into herself, which would keep her awake long enough to summon her lab drones; using them, she would commence repair immediately.
she reached the basement and the decommissioned reactor hull she used as a nest, steering clear of the reactor cavity, her equilibrium wholly untrustworthy now. she dropped her purse and gazed beseechingly upon the device which bulked in one corner
it was one-of-a-kind bespoke and didn't have a proper name; she thought of it as 'the machine.' a framework of tube steel like a scorpion's tail held an incomprehensible mass of cables and conduits and sensors; crowning it was a predatory splay of slender robotic arms, occasionally twitching as though it dreamed. in the device's maw, half-swallowed, was a leatherette medical couch. A cybernetic monitoring and maintenance station. She'd come to rely upon it more than she liked. Nearly every day concluded with Broadmoore plugged in, reoptimizing her systems, sorting out faults, attempting to work around a seemingly interminable parade of malfunctions, gingerly administering painkillers. She charged her power cells with it to conserve plutonium. Once in a while she managed a repair or rebuild, when she could steal the parts or the money, and tethered to it to recuperate. Broadmoore dragged herself onto the couch
part of the machine was a combinatory syringe driver, a cocktail mixer for intravenous drips. Broadmoore brought up a D5W and threw in a squirt of NAD+ to beef up the redox. she had the machine insert the needle because her hands were no longer steady
she waited. the IV dripped, permeating her forbidding internal climate. after a couple of eternal minutes she felt she would remain conscious. she'd never had to rely upon emergency hibernation. and who would wake her?
she tore the latex jacket from her back, exposing the dual row of plugports astride her spine. thus prompted, the machine extended arms to insert cables into the top three pairs of ports. screens immediately flashed into life, reflecting all aspects of Broadmoore's strange cyberbiology. Many of them were in red. She ignored the screens; the data also fed directly into her mind.
her reactor was operating optimally. She'd experienced a minor radiation leak, but these tended to happen while she was under stress. Electrical systems fine, other than various known but unrelated glitches.
It was as reported: her metabolic interface was just not working, it was doing nothing. as of now the waste products were being filtered and excreted along with her coolant, so there was that. She sent probing inquiries into its cyberneural mesh and didn't receive answers she liked. Was it dead? or had it opted out of keeping its mistress fed?
"Do you think I'm too fat?" she muttered. "Is that it?" She took a couple of deep breaths. It looked as though she would survive. But the situation was absolutely intolerable.
She didn't know what Skylark did with her evenings. Broadmoore had encouraged her to get out at night, show off the wares... turn tricks, take up pole-dancing, Broadmoore didn't care what Skylark did in her new life, as long as she was available when required.
She reached through the cables arching brutally from her spine, pushed her will into the digital bloodstream, opened portals she herself had fashioned and barred against intrusion, rose into Skylark's thoughts like a bad memory.
"Skylark, I need you." The mind at the other end of the line quailed in shock, then gathered itself. Skylark was brainleashed and could not refuse her, but Broadmoore sent the particulars of the situation in order to underline its urgency. She'd seize her thrall by the leash if necessary. But she sensed Skylark already scurrying.
Broadmoore sank back into the couch, suddenly feeling helpless and doomy now that she had no pressing actions to take. Staring at the ceiling, she imagined lying at the bottom of a pit she'd one day no longer have the strength to climb from. Nevertheless she would climb for as long as she could. And maybe she wouldn't have to do it alone.
Her eyes had dimmed to mellow green spotlights. She felt almost baseline, despite the continuing alerts. When she felt Skylark outside, Broadmoore opened the doors and admitted her.
Skylark was pink and magenta and lutrine, her hair wavy and variegated like ribbon candy, her tits colossal, her garments miniscule. Broadmoore had been especially creative when improving her; if there were anyone she wanted made to resemble a brainless, fuckable toy, it was the former director of the lab. But Broadmoore hadn't removed all of Skylark's brains. She left her sufficient intellect to appreciate her revised status. She also wasn't originally a she, back when she was raw material; she seemed to cope with that fact better than being Broadmoore's dogsbody.
Broadmoore was her pole star, her very world. Broadmoore had left her with nothing else. And now she was here to look after her mistress. At least, Broadmoore thought, I did her the kindness of programming her to enjoy servitude. Which was more than she did for me.
"Doctor, are you all right? What's your condition? How do you feel?"
"I feel... rotten." Mortal, she'd started to say. "I've been running on GNG for the last several hours, which you understand is less than ideal. I need to broaden my menu of alert conditions... I suppose I simply assumed your team comprehended the basics." Broadmoore's lack of affect came across as nihilistic contempt.
"I'm sorry!" Skylark squeaked. She wasn't afraid of Broadmoore, precisely-- she thought her mistress was unlikely to destroy her, not after investing so much in her augmentation --but was still seized by an abject desire not to displease.
"As for my status, I'm updating you now."
Trend lines arced across Skylark's thoughts like a psychic ejaculation. She blinked rapidly and swayed on her heels. Broadmoore didn't notice.
"First we're going to get the biointerface back online, and after we've done that we're going to wait here. We'll have a sleepover, just we girls. As we speak, I'm having a new component fabricated to my specifications. Marmalade will retrieve it. Once it arrives, we will tear out the old one, root and branch, and replace it with my work."
Skylark bit her lip as she saw another pair of displays move into the red... she nodded energetically.
"And we're going to reroute absorption so that I can benefit directly from digestion. As much as it amused all of you to be able to feed me poison." Broadmoore couldn't muster a satisfying level of vehemence. She wanted to sleep.
Instead she found herself stroking between Skylark's ears, reeling her in and squeezing her against Broadmoore's fantastic breasts. Skylark crooned, not at all like someone who once conveyed authority.
"Skylark," Broadmoore murmured. "Strawberry Skye." Was her voice trilling, a little? It could be so. Perhaps she was losing consciousness after all. Or perhaps what they say is true, she thought, about the emotional benefits of owning a pet. She ruffled Skylark's hair.
"I should have replaced it long ago," she said. "Who was it that thought to bottleneck the system in this way? Hendricks? I'm glad I killed him. Saved the world from being polluted with his ignorance."
"You didn't kill him, Doctor Broadmoore."
She frowned. "I clearly remember doing so."
"Yes, but then you put him back together. You made him into the-- the receptacle."
"Ah... and he wasn't even good at that."
She continued stroking. She almost felt like herself again.
"You are not to consider this a crisis of any particular concern."
"Yes, Doctor Broadmoore."
"It's under control. But we will prevent it from recurring."
Skylark waited a moment before gazing up at Broadmoore. "I don't think Marmalade is reliable. Her behavior has been erratic."
"That's my risk to take. And since when do you care whether I live or die?"
"S-since you plugged wires into my brain, Doctor Broadmoore."
Broadmoore smiled. It was ghastly, something a shark might wear at a cocktail party. "Your point is taken. Marmalade is reliable enough for this task. I can steer her directly if need be. And I will have to adjust her leash. I do want her to be happy. Just like you."
Skylark whimpered.
Broadmoore relinquished her assistant. "Enough talk. Let's begin."
Skylark's big shiny bimbo eyes widened. "I don't know the first thing about performing surgery!"
"Obviously. You will be my eyes and my hands."
Skylark braced herself for the awful sensation of undertow, of being dragged deeper into herself, as her mistress possessed her body. Crowded uncomfortably alongside Broadmoore's intellect, her terrible unavertable will, she watched her own hands adjust the machine and select instruments.
The social flow resumed along a new course. Broadmoore sat at her usual place, looking as casually flawless as ever. It was right that they should be in awe of her.
She ordered a boulevardier made with Tennessee whiskey. She was very particular about the whiskey. Someone had ordered it that way for her once, and now she clung to the preference as part of her costume, as deliberate as her curve-hugging white latex cybernurse uniform. That too was a recommendation, by a couturier who enjoyed the challenge of her.
She hadn't really believed she would die. but she was shocked by the sudden loss of control, more than she now cared to recall. periodic malfunctions were the cost of possessing a bleeding-edge biology, and bringing her metabolic interface to rein wasn't categorically different from other adjustments... no more than straightening her makeup, really.
Music thumped, rendering communication necessarily physical. People leaned close to listen, laughing as messages got through, getting personal in the neon gloom. Broadmoore sipped, scanning the room over the rim of her glass.
It hadn't been easy to enter the clubs, once Cynthia had discovered them. So many strange people in one place, too many unknowns. She'd watched and prepared herself, intrigued by the places where humans met to establish relative social status and negotiate sex. It became a minor obsession, an extravagance, in a period mainly focused upon self-preservation.
She couldn't stay for long, that first time. She found the sight and scent dizzying, so many warm, gyrating bodies radiating open desire... she hadn't imagined such a fierce, mindblotting level of arousal was possible. But as she habituated such places, Broadmoore cultivated restraint, control, became conversant in their ways.
The bunny girl of the other night was long gone. Broadmoore hadn't even gotten her name. That was acceptable. Broadmoore wasn't in a mood to kiss.
She overlaid a targeting reticule while scrutinizing the crowd. It made her smile. Fog figures clustered at the club's entrance. One was markedly taller than the rest; a backlit ghost, lupine and beefy. He laughed.
That one, she thought, he's going to hit on me first. She hadn't engaged her prognostication matrix for this assessment; she just knew he was the type. Large men tried to bring her down to size, or regarded her as a custom accessory. A challenge. Her jadedness was unadjustable.
She didn't bother to track him further, gazed in some other fascinating direction, and that was when she spotted the little guy.
Musteline, bouncy. He wore a mesh top and tactical shorts and hightop sneakers with rubber spikes on them. slinky and twinky and exactly the sort of individual who flocked to her in spite of the offputting science-domme persona. Because of it. He was bouncing to the beat, holding on to a table for two, definitely looking her way.
She jotted diffidently, face ghoulish in tablet glow, and peeped him through the veils of her lashes. Aside from the antennae, scarcely any mods she could detect. A blank canvas.
A wisp of steam escaped the terse clench of her teeth. Oh, why not, she thought, accompanied by a purely conceptual smile. Their eyes met. A strong invitation in this place. He gulped his drink before approaching... without thinking about it, he dropped the dripping stir stick onto the floor. Broadmoore's eyes narrowed.
"Hi!" he said. She tuned out the loud music and heard perfectly well. He got into her personal space anyway. She smelled warm and soft and sexual, vulpine in all the best ways. She breathed in his pheromones, took the dimensions of his state of health, his small, insignificant libido.
"Good evening."
"You must be Cynthia Broadmoore!"
She kept the ego boost strictly private. "You are exactly correct."
"Everyone talks about you, you know," he said breathlessly.
She watched him look around, as though unable to believe he was first. [Likelihood of poseur: 85%] flashed on the periphery of her vision.
"Yes, I do know," she said.
"I'm sorry, I just didn't expect that I'd be talking to the Cynthia Broadmoore."
Broadmoore allowed a rumor of a smile. "And yet here you are. I hope this moment comports with your many lurid anticipatory fantasies."
He fidgeted, almost dancing in place. "Okay, what do I talk about? They say you totally remade yourself. Is that true?"
"Right to it, I see. Yes, in a manner of speaking. Doesn't everyone who comes here remake themselves?"
"Yeah, I guess so! That's probably true. What I mean is... is all of that augies?"
"Augies."
He drooped his antennae comically, and grinned. "Augmentations."
"Mm. That is a keen topic of debate here in this circus, is it not? If I were to reveal the truth, that would give you quite the social currency in this little scene."
"Aw, I don't really need to know. I'm just making small talk."
"Yes, I'm not exactly bowled over by the depth of this interlocution. And yet you seem curious. How about you? What have you had done?"
"Just these!" he said, pointing to his antennae. She wondered if they reached into his brain.
Broadmoore arched her eyebrows. "Do you mind?" she asked.
She cupped his chin in her hand, tilted his head this way and that. She saw them well enough, but wanted to know how he responded to being treated like a piece of meat. He was happy to receive attention. His face was open and inviting without looking dumb.
"How painfully cute." She put on a world-weary expression more appropriate to someone less recently decanted. "They're acceptable, I suppose."
"I got them from Matt the Wizard."
"I know. I make a point of recognizing those others within my domain."
"Considering I'm here almost every week, I figured I oughta take the plunge!" He giggled.
"Yes, well. It was a very safe option."
"You think so?"
"Without a doubt."
They shared a look, no words. In their silence the music seemed to grow louder. To him, her body looked like a playground. The glow of her eyes was part of the draw. No ulterior motives, just sex. She imagined his hands on her breasts, his face beneath her posterior.
"Yes, I know you find me highly stimulating," said Broadmoore.
"Um. Yes, I do. But I respect you for your talent!" he hastened to add.
"Mm." She stared him down, making him small in her vision. "What should I do with you?"
Mentally she sketched over the top of him. Widen the pelvic girdle, considerably. Breasts, nothing absurd, a double handful would do. Main coloration purple? violet? aposematic markings-- black and white? --over the shoulderblades and down the back like a pair of toxic angel wings... secondary markings circling the gloves and boots. Tail should be much fuller. A real jizzrag. And make the hair prone to verticality. The corner of her mouth curled up. And a simply massive penis and testicles. he'll appreciate that.
"What?" He headtilted, smiling.
Perhaps now would be the time to explore personality reconfiguration. He'd benefit from possessing one.
"I'm simply wondering," she said in a distant tone, "if you would like to see the place where I perform my work."
[Accountability for abduction: 13%]
Visions of gleaming white futurism danced in his head, a laboratory as pristine and radiant as the afterlife, and as the grin which this vision elicited. "Wow. I sure would."
Broadmoore nodded. "Wait outside. If you're still there when I emerge ten minutes from now... I shall take you."
He beamed that expression of disbelieving good fortune at her. "It's a deal." He gulped the rest of his drink, then took two steps toward her; for an awkward second Broadmoore thought he meant to shake on it. "I'm Jaret, by the way."
"Ah."
"See you." He, Jaret, all but scurried for the exit, as if that would impel her to join him even one minute sooner. Broadmoore watched him go.
"I hope you aren't attached to that name," she murmured. She swiveled ponderously in her seat, gestured at the bartender with her glass. "Another of these, please."
__________
(traceback to my last message to Cohost)
