Full Self Driving, part 1
Thanks to GE for the idea. I don't know if this exactly goes where you were hoping, but it was definitely interesting and different for me to write!
Chapter 1: Null Pointer
The pain in my lower back had settled into a dull throb, located specifically between my fourth and fifth lumbar vertebrae. It was the coder’s burden — a physical tax levied on a body designed for farm work but forced to sit in a Herman Miller chair for fourteen hours a day.
I shifted, the cheap fabric of my khakis sticking to the back of my thighs. I could feel the film of oil on my forehead, the tacky, humid sensation of my own skin. I was thirty-four years old, and I felt like my own sedentary existence might cause me to melt into an aging puddle of goo before I solved the problem in front of me. "Come on," I whispered, my voice cracking in the empty silence of the server floor. "Where are you?"
The office of Security Dynamics was currently bathed in dim lighting, just enough to meet regulations for off-hours but not really enough to work by. I was the only living thing on the twelfth floor. My reflection in the darkened monitor was a smudge — high receding hairline, shoulders rounded forward in a permanent slump, a face that looked like uncooked dough. I was invisible in the daylight, gray and forgettable. At night, I was just a silhouette blocking the cleaning crew.
But inside our company's machine, I was a god. I tapped the enter key, executing the trace again. The screen cascaded with lines of text, a waterfall of logic that made more sense to me than any human conversation ever had. I was supposed to be debugging the navigation subroutines for the Series 4 Logistics Droid — a glorified crate-lifter destined for Amazon warehouses and military supply depots. It was grunt work. It was beneath me. But I had a mortgage on a one-bedroom apartment that currently smelled like damp laundry, and I had a stutter that made job interviews a form of torture, so here I was.
The Series 4 had a glitch. That was the official ticket: unit displays erratic center-of-gravity shifts during idle cycles, no additional context. The kind of bug report I groaned to receive but secretly loved, where the investigation could go in any of a thousand different directions and my expertise might actually be needed.
I pulled up the visualization. On the secondary monitor, a wireframe mesh of the droid appeared. It was a blocky, ugly thing, all hydraulics and treads. I scrubbed the timeline forward to the timestamp of the error.
There. I froze the frame. I zoomed in on the hip servos.
It wasn't a mechanical failure. The gyroscope data was within spec, the servos were responding to input. The problem was the input itself - the droid wasn't malfunctioning; it was strutting.
For three distinct seconds, the crate-lifter shifted its weight to the left, rotated its pelvic chassis, and rolled the motion through the upper torso. It was a fluid, biological, almost feline movement. It was a movement that said, Look at me.
"That's not logistics code," I muttered, my fingers flying across the mechanical keyboard. The sound was a comforting clatter, like heavy rain. "The damn thing shouldn't even be able to move that way…"
I traced the call stack. The command didn't originate from anywhere in the navigation module or even in the unit itself - a pointer referencing a memory address that shouldn't exist, couldn't exist on this hardware. It was externally provided, and I frowned; it came from a partition of the server I didn't have clearance for.
I should have logged it. I should have written a ticket: External call interruption from Subnet 9. I should have gone home, iced my back, eaten a microwave burrito, and masturbated to something lonely before passing out.
Instead, I opened a new terminal window. My pulse kicked up a notch, a wet flutter in my throat. This was the only time I felt adrenaline. Not in sports, not in love, but here, standing at the edge of a digital cliff. I typed in a bypass script I’d written years ago, a little piece of digital origami that folded security protocols back on themselves.
Access Granted.
The screen cleared. A single directory sat blinking at the command prompt.
/USR/RESTRICTED/PROJECT_CHIMERA/
Chimera. The beast with three heads. I asked for the list of files in the directory, and as it scrolled down, the air in the room seemed to get colder. These weren't driver files for treads or hydraulic pincers.
micro_expression_joy_v2.dat vocal_synthesis_baritone.exe skin_texture_warmth_regulation.sys phero_release_trigger.dll
I stared at the screen, my mouth hanging open. A drop of sweat trickled down my temple, stinging my eye, but I didn't wipe it away. Vocal synthesis? Pheromone triggers? Security Dynamics made kill-bots and bomb disposal units. They made things that crushed, burned, and shielded. They didn't make things that showed joy.
I opened a file named locomotion_bipedal_alpha.
The wireframe on my screen changed. The blocky logistics droid vanished. In its place appeared a human form. No, not human. Better. The proportions were idealized — broad shoulders tapering to a narrow waist, long femurs, a spinal column that possessed a perfect, serpentine curve.
I hit play.
The skeleton walked. It didn't clomp or shuffle. It prowled. It moved with a predator’s grace, a liquid transition of weight that was mathematically sublime. It was beautiful. It was the code I had been seeing in the logistics droid, but here, on this frame, it made sense.
I was looking at the future. And the future looked like a man.
Suddenly, the monitor flashed red. A harsh, dissonant buzzer cut through the silence of the office, making me jump so hard my knee slammed into the underside of the desk.
SECURITY ALERT. UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS DETECTED. TERMINAL LOCKDOWN INITIATED.
"No, no, no," I stammered, my hands hovering uselessly over the locked keyboard. The screen went black, save for a spinning white cursor.
The air pressure in the room changed as the glass doors at the far end of the hall hissed open. I spun around in my chair, the wheels squeaking in protest.
Two men in dark tactical gear marched in, their boots heavy on the polished concrete. Between them walked a man in a charcoal suit that cost more than my entire education. He was silver-haired, trim, and moved with a calm and an efficiency of movement that terrified me more than the guns.
Director Vance. The head of R&D. I had seen him once, at a Christmas party, from across a crowded room while I hid near the shrimp cocktail. My heart hammered against my ribs like a trapped bird. I stood up, my legs shaking. My back seized, a sharp bolt of pain that made me wince.
"I… I was just…" The stutter hit me like a physical blow. The 'I' stuck in my throat, repeating, a broken record. "I-I-I was d-d-debugging…"
Vance held up a hand. The security guards stopped ten feet away. Vance kept walking until he was standing right in front of my desk. He smelled of sandalwood and expensive scotch. He looked at me, his eyes gray and unreadable, then looked down at my locked terminal.
"Mr. Reston," Vance said. His voice was smooth, a cello bow across a string. "Josiah Reston. Heuristic pathfinding algorithms. Developer level… four, I believe."
"I-I didn't mean to…" I wiped my sweaty palms on my trousers, leaving dark streaks on the fabric. "The d-droid. It was d-dancing."
Vance’s right eyebrow lifted a fraction of an inch. "Dancing?"
"Hip r-rotation," I managed, forcing the words out through the constriction in my throat. "It was passed a p-pointer from o-outside, someth-thing in the Ch-Chimera directory. I was just t-tracing the error."
Vance stared at me for a long, uncomfortable moment. He looked at my stained shirt, my nervous posture, the way I couldn't meet his eyes. Then, he smiled. It wasn't a warm smile. It was the smile of a man who had found a missing screwdriver under the workbench in his garage.
"You bypassed a Level 9 military-grade firewall in under forty seconds, Josiah," Vance said softly. "To fix a glitch in a logistics droid."
"It was sloppy c-code," I whispered, defensive of the logic even as I feared for my job. "It was m-messy."
"Messy," Vance repeated. He reached out and tapped the black screen of my monitor. "You're right. It is messy. We've been having trouble integrating somatic feedback loops with autonomous motor functions. The hardware is lightyears ahead of the software. We built a Ferrari and we're driving it with a lawnmower engine."
He turned to me, his gaze sharpening. "Pack your things, Josiah."
My stomach dropped out. "Am I… am I f-fired?"
Vance laughed, a dry, singular sound. "Fired? God, no. You're promoted." He gestured toward the elevator. "Bring your laptop. You're done with logistics. You're coming upstairs."
The elevator ride was silent and swift. I watched the floor numbers tick upward, past the executive suites, past the boardrooms, all the way to the unlisted numbers at the top. My ears popped.
"Do you know what the uncanny valley is, Josiah?" Vance asked, watching his own reflection in the polished steel doors rather than deigning to look at me.
"Yes," I said, my voice steadier now that I wasn't being arrested. "It's the dip in emotional r-response when something looks almost human, but not q-quite. It evokes revulsion."
"Precisely," Vance said. "Revulsion. Disgust. Horror. We are hardwired to reject the almost human. It’s a survival instinct. It tells us to stay away from corpses and diseased things." The doors slid open. "My goal is to bridge that valley. I want to pave over it."
We stepped out into a corridor that looked more like a hospital than an office. The air was scrubbed and sterile, smelling of disinfectant. The walls were white lacquer, the floor a seamless white epoxy. It was blindingly bright.
"We call them Chimeras," Vance said, walking briskly. I had to trot to keep up, my sneakers squeaking loudly on the pristine floor. "Part machine, part biological. The ultimate infiltration unit. Imagine a soldier that can walk into a secure facility, seduce the head of security, upload a virus, and snap three necks before anyone realizes he’s not on the payroll. Or a pilot that can withstand twenty Gs without passing out."
"Bio-androids?" I asked.
"Suits," Vance corrected. "Android implies a robot. These are… vessels."
We stopped in front of a heavy blast door. A biometric scanner swept a red laser over Vance’s retina. The heavy locks clanked and hissed, the sound of pressurized air escaping.
"The hardware is perfect," Vance said, his hand on the door lever. "The muscle fibers are synthetic polymers, stronger than steel cable. The skeleton is carbon nanofiber. But the skin… the skin is real. Lab-grown, genetically sequenced for perfection, but biological. It sweats. It bleeds. It feels warm."
He pushed the door open.
"But without the right driver, they're just expensive mannequins. Or worse, they move like that droid downstairs. Twitchy. Wrong." He looked at me. "I need someone who understands movement, Josiah. Someone who understands the code of the body."
Vance halted me as we entered. "Clean room protocols. You put on a bunny suit." He pointed to a rack of white, sterile coveralls. "It's a lab, Josiah," Vance said as he pulled a suit over his expensive clothes.
I jammed my legs into the tyvek suit and zipped it up to my neck, hiding myself away.
"Boots, hood, gloves," Vance instructed.
Once I was fully encased, looking like a clumsy astronaut, Vance cycled what was clearly an airlock. A blast of air hit us, stripping away dust and dead skin cells. The inner door opened.
We stepped into the Cathedral. That was the only word for it. The room was vast, dominated by a central circular platform. Banks of computers and monitors lined the walls, manned by technicians in similar white suits, all working in hushed tones. But I didn't look at them. I looked at the center of the room.
Suspended in a rack, held upright by clamps around the waist and shoulders, was a man. No. Not a man. "This," Vance said, his voice dropping to a reverent whisper, "is Unit One. We call him Isaac."
I walked forward, drawn by a magnetic pull I couldn't explain. I stopped three feet away, staring up. He was breathtaking.
He was tall, at least six-three, with the build of an Olympic gymnast — lean, dense muscle that looked carved from marble but held the unmistakable softness of flesh. His skin was a rich, warm bronze, glowing under the harsh laboratory lights. His chest was broad, the pectorals defined and heavy, tapering down to a stomach that was a topography of perfect abdominals.
He was naked. The detail was shocking. He wasn't a Ken doll; his anatomy was complete. The curve of his hips, his thick thighs, the heavy hang of his genitals — it was all there, rendered in terrifyingly high fidelity. It was aggressive in its perfection. It made me keenly aware of every ache, every pocket of fat, every imperfection in my own failing body.
I looked at his face. High cheekbones, a sharp, strong jawline, lips that were full and slightly parted. His eyes were open, staring fixedly at a point in the middle distance. They were amber, the color of aged whiskey, flecked with gold. They didn't blink.
"He's… o-offline?" I asked, my voice barely audible.
"Idle mode," Vance said. "The autonomous AI is running background diagnostics, but motor functions are disengaged. Go ahead. Closer."
I stepped up to the edge of the platform. I could hear the faint, high-pitched hum of the machinery inside him. It wasn't the clunky whir of a fan; it was a vibration, a frequency that I could feel in my teeth.
"Touch him," Vance commanded.
I reached out with a gloved hand, then hesitated. "The gloves?"
"Take the right one off. Feel the product."
I peeled the glove off my right hand, which looked pale and fragile next to the god in front of me, my fingers shaking slightly. I reached out and laid my palm against Isaac's bicep.
I expected cold plastic, or maybe the friction of silicone. I gasped.
He was warm.
It was the heat of a living thing, radiating through his perfect bronze skin. The texture was impossible — soft, yielding slightly to my pressure, but with the rock-hard density of the synthetic muscle beneath. I could feel a pulse. A rhythmic, hydraulic thrumming that mimicked a heartbeat perfectly.
And then, I felt the static. It wasn't a literal electrical shock, but it felt like one. A zap of recognition traveled up my arm, bypassing my brain and hitting me straight in the solar plexus. It was the sensation of plugging a USB cable in the right way on the first try. It was the click of a lock tumbling open.
Completeness.
For a second, his amber eyes seemed to shift. Just a millimeter. A micro-adjustment of the focal lens. It felt like he was looking at me. Not at my face, but inside me. Looking at the messy, chaotic code of my mind.
I pulled my hand back as if burned. The skin where I had touched him tingled. "He's… incredible," I breathed.
"He's a masterpiece of engineering," Vance agreed. "But he's stupid. His social heuristics are garbage. He can walk, run, fight, and fuck, but he can't pass for human in a conversation for more than thirty seconds. He lacks nuances, stutter steps, hesitations. The things that make us us."
Vance walked around the rack, running a hand possessively down Isaac’s spine. I saw the faint seam there, a vertical line running from the base of the skull to the tailbone. "We designed these to be piloted," Vance said. "A human operator steps inside. The suit opens up. The pilot’s nervous system is integrated directly with the machine's. You don't use a joystick; you think about moving your arm, and the arm moves. But the neural load is immense. Most pilots wash out. The rejection rate is eighty percent. They panic; claustrophobia breaks them."
He looked at me over Isaac's shoulder. "But you… you understand the code in a way others don't. After what you pulled downstairs, I want you to be the lead software architect for the Chimera project," Vance said. "I want you to fix his brain. I want you to teach him how to be charming, warm, human. How to be… irresistible."
"You want me to p-program him?"
"I want you to debug him," Vance corrected. "Directly."
I looked from Vance to the golden, silent god hanging in the rack. "Directly?"
"We can't do this with a keyboard anymore, Josiah. The lag is too high. You need to feel the feedback loops. To fix the gait, you need to walk in his shoes. Or rather, in his skin." He was asking me to get inside. To open that seam and step into that body.
Fear spiked in my chest — fear of closed spaces, of losing control, of the unknown. But it was instantly drowned out by a wave of longing so potent it made my knees weak. To be inside that. To be tall. To be strong. To look in a mirror and see amber eyes and bronze skin instead of my own tired, pasty reflection. To be perfect.
I looked at my own hand, the one that had touched him. It looked small and weak. Then I looked at Isaac’s hand. Large, capable, veined with power. "I can fix him," I said, and for the first time in my life, I didn't stutter on the verb.
Vance smiled, a shark smelling blood in the water. "Good. We start tomorrow at 0800. Get some sleep, Josiah. You're going to need it."
Vance turned and walked toward the technicians, barking orders.
I stayed for a moment longer. I reached out and touched Isaac's hand, my fingers brushing against his. The skin was so warm.
Hello, I thought, projecting the word toward the silent face.
Isaac remained silent, save for the hum of what was going on around him. But as I pulled my hand away, I could have sworn I saw the corner of his mouth twitch. Not a glitch. Not an error. A welcome.
Chapter 2: Bolting On
The air in the prep room was kept at a constant sixty-four degrees, a temperature designed for servers and biological samples, not for shivering, naked men. I stood on the sanitizable rubber mat, my arms wrapped around my torso, trying to cover the soft, pale dough of my stomach.
"Heart rate is elevated. One-ten over eighty. Try to breathe, Josiah."
The voice came from a speaker in the ceiling. Behind the wall of thick, impact-resistant glass, Dr. Aris Thorne and three other technicians monitored a bank of screens. Director Vance was there too, standing with his arms crossed, watching me like I was a particularly interesting lab rat.
I hated this. I hated the exposure. Every fluorescent light overhead felt like an accusation. My body was a roadmap of bad choices and genetics. I felt sticky, despite the chill. A thin sheen of nervous sweat — sour and cold — slicked my armpits and the small of my back. I was a biological error, a creature of mucus and hair and failing joints.
"I-I’m ready," I stammered, the words bouncing off the tiled walls. The heavy hydraulic hiss of the airlock announced the opening of the inner sanctum. The door slid back, revealing the clean room. And there he was.
Isaac. He hung in the suspension frame in the center of the room, illuminated by a halo of surgical lights. If I was the biological error, he was the correction. His skin was just as perfect as I'd seen the previous day, rippling with potential energy. He was naked, suspended by the clamps at his shoulders and waist, his head lolling slightly forward as if in deep sleep. The sight of him, motionless and serene, made the breath catch in my throat. He was beautiful in a way that made my teeth ache.
"Proceed to the integration platform," Vance’s voice commanded, smooth and dispassionate. "Step onto the footplates."
I walked forward, my bare feet padding along the polished floor. I felt small. As I approached the hanging suit, the scale of him became apparent. He was 6'3", a tower of synthetic muscle and carbon fiber. I was 5'9" on a good day. I stopped behind him. The proximity was intoxicating.
"Initiating posterior access," the intercom announced.
There was a sound like a wet sheet tearing.
The seam along Isaac’s spine, which I had only glimpsed before, began to part. It didn't unzip; it retracted. The synthetic flesh pulled back, revealing the interior. I had expected chrome, wires, a cockpit.
It looked like the inside of a throat.
The "Hollow," as the documentation called it, was lined with a deep, crimson material that glistened under the lights. It was wet. A nutrient-dense, conductive gel coated every inch of the interior surface. It pulsed gently, a rhythmic contraction that beckoned.
"It looks…" I swallowed hard, the dryness in my throat painful. "It looks alive."
"It is," Vance replied. "Bio-reactive polymer lining. It feeds the skin and interfaces with your nervous system. Step inside, Josiah. Don't overthink it."
Don't overthink it. I was about to climb inside another man's skin. I placed my hands on the rim of the opening. It was warm — hot, even. Fever-hot. I lifted my right foot and placed it into the suit's leg.
The sensation was immediate and shocking. It was like stepping into warm mud, thick and viscous. The gel squelched around my calf, sucking at my skin. I shuddered, a visceral rejection reflex firing in my brain. It felt gross, invasive.
"Keep going," Thorne urged from the booth. "Once the seal forms, the sensation changes."
I grit my teeth and stepped in with my other leg. I was now standing inside the suit's calves, my own feet resting on the internal sensor pads in Isaac’s heels. I was already taller.
"Arms," Vance ordered.
I reached up. The suit’s arms were positioned above me, creating a Y-shape. I had to slide my arms into the wet, tight sleeves. The gel coated my skin, sliding into my armpits, cool and heavy. My hands found the internal gloves—tight, pressure-sensitive grips that squeezed my fingers.
"Head forward. Lean into the cavity."
This was the hardest part. I had to surrender my head to the machine. I took a deep breath, smelling the antiseptic air of the lab one last time, and shoved my head up into Isaac's. The wetness closed around my ears, muffling the hum of the servers. Darkness swallowed me.
"Sealing."
The world contracted. With a sound like a vacuum seal locking, the back of the suit snapped shut.
Panic. absolute, primal panic.
I was buried alive. The suit was too tight. It pushed against my chest, crushing my ribs. It pressed against my eyes, my mouth, my groin, every particle of my exposed skin. I couldn't breathe. The gel was everywhere, filling my ears, coating my lips. I opened my mouth to scream, and the internal lining of the mouth pressed inward against my tongue.
Let me out! I screamed internally. Oh god, get it off, get it off!
My heart hammered against the casing, a frantic bird trapped in a box. I tried to thrash, but my limbs were held fast by the synthetic muscle. I was drowning in warm meat.
"Subject is spiking. Heart rate one-eighty. Cortisol levels critical," a technician said, his voice sounding distant and muffled, vibrating through the skull of the suit.
"Initiate Neural Bridge," Vance said calmly. "Do it now."
I felt a sharp, cold sting at the base of my neck. Then another at the base of my spine. Then a dozen tiny pinpricks all over my back, thighs, and shoulders.
The neural needles. The pain was sharp for a microsecond, a flash of white heat. And then—
Click.
The silence was absolute. My claustrophobia didn't fade; it was deleted. The sensation of the heavy, wet gel pressing against my skin vanished. The crushing weight on my chest disappeared.
I gasped, drawing in a lungful of air. But it wasn't my lungs expanding. I felt the powerful, hydraulic lift of a massive chest cavity. The air tasted crisp, digital, filtered.
Light flooded my vision. It wasn't the harsh glare of the lab anymore. It was a high-definition video feed, crisp and color-corrected. A HUD flickered into existence, floating in my peripheral vision.
SYSTEM ONLINE. NEURAL SYNC: 98%. PILOT INTEGRATION: COMPLETE.
"Josiah?" Vance’s voice was right there, inside my head, crystal clear. "Can you hear me?"
I tried to speak. "Yes."
The voice that came out wasn't my reedy, stuttering tenor. It was a deep, resonant baritone. It rumbled through my chest — my new chest — like a purring engine. It was the voice of a god. "I can hear you," I said again, just to feel the vibration.
"Good. Release the clamps." The metal restraints holding the suit upright hissed and retracted. Gravity took hold. I expected to stumble. I expected the suit to be heavy, a suit of armor I had to lug around.
I hit the floor, and I felt… light. I stood up. I really stood up. I unfolded to my full height, the servos in the knees and hips engaging with a silent, powerful grace. I looked down. The floor was so far away.
I looked at my hands. They were large, bronze, and powerful. I flexed my fingers. The response was instantaneous. No lag. I thought 'clench', and the fist closed with the force of a hydraulic press. I could feel the tension in the synthetic tendons. It felt like my tension.
"How is your back pain?" Vance asked.
I paused. I scanned my body for the familiar, grinding ache in my lumbar region. The dull throb that had been my constant companion since college. Gone. There was only silence in my spine. A feeling of structural integrity. I felt like a skyscraper—steel and glass and unyielding strength.
"It's gone," I whispered. "It's all gone."
"Run the diagnostic loop," Vance ordered. "Basic motility. Walk to the mirror."
A full-length mirror had been wheeled into the corner of the room. I turned. The movement was fluid. I didn't have to think about balance; the suit’s gyroscope managed our center of gravity automatically. I simply intended to turn, and the body executed a perfect pivot.
I walked. Stride. Stride. Stride. Every step was a power trip. The impact with the floor was dampened, turned into a spring-loaded return of energy. I felt like I could jump through the ceiling. I stopped in front of the mirror.
The man staring back at me was a stranger, yet I knew him intimately. I knew the code that governed his micro-expressions. I knew the tensile strength of his jaw. His amber eyes stared back, piercing and intense. I tilted my head; he tilted his. I smiled.
The smile on Isaac’s face was devastating. It was a predator’s smile, full of white teeth and confidence. It wasn't the shy, closed-lip grimace I used in photos. It was a movie star’s grin.
"I look…" I trailed off.
"You look like the product," Vance said. "Now, let's test the sensory feedback. We need to calibrate the tactile sensation return you as pilot are getting."
"Okay," I said, unable to tear my eyes away from the reflection. "What do I do?"
"Touch yourself," Vance said.
I froze. "Excuse me?"
"Sensory mapping," Vance said, his tone purely clinical. "Run your hands over your chest, abdomen, and thighs. We need to make sure the haptic needles are translating the texture of the external skin to your internal nervous system correctly. We need to ensure the suit feels like you."
I swallowed. The command was professional, but the act felt illicit. I was standing in a room full of people. "Go ahead, Josiah. We're recording the telemetry." I raised my hands — Isaac's hands — and placed them on my chest.
The sensation was a loop. My internal physical hands were touching the inside of the suit’s goo-filled gloves, but the neural override made me feel what the exterior of Isaac’s hands were touching. I felt the warmth of the bronze skin. I felt the hard, sculpted ridge of the pectoral muscle.
It was electric. I slid my hands down over the ribcage, feeling the serratus muscles ripple. It was firm, unlike my own soft, doughy midsection. It felt incredibly good to touch this body. To be this body.
"Sensitivity levels are high," Thorne noted over the comms. "Dopamine receptors are firing. Good sync with the host."
I moved my hands lower, over the washboard abs. The sensation was maddening. It was a caress that I was both giving and receiving, but the receiving end felt better than my own body ever had. My real skin, buried deep inside the wet gel, was tingling. The suit was stimulating my nerves, translating the touch into pure pleasure.
"Continue," Vance said. "Lower."
My breath hitched in the suit’s throat. My internal heart rate was climbing again, but not from fear. I traced the V-line of the muscle leading down to the groin. Inside the suit, my biological body reacted. I was getting hard. The blood rushed to my crotch, pressing against the tight, wet lining of the suit.
"Vascular dilation detected in the pilot," the computer voice noted dispassionately.
"Excellent," Vance said. "Arousal sync is working. The suit should accommodate."
As my erection grew inside the hollow, the suit responded. The gel around my groin shifted, becoming less viscous, more lubricated. It pulsed, massaging me. And in the mirror, I watched as Isaac changed.
His heavy, sculpted cock, which had been soft, began to stir. It filled with fluid, thickening and lengthening in perfect sync with my own. It was a surreal, hypnotic sight. I was watching a pornographic idealization of an erection, and I was causing it. I was feeling it.
"Test the genital feedback," Vance ordered. "Full stimulation."
My face burned, but nobody could see my blush inside the mask. To the world, I was a stoic, golden statue. I reached down and wrapped Isaac’s large hand around his erection. The feedback loop snapped shut. When I squeezed, I felt the pressure on my own penis. The suit’s internal lining contracted, mirroring the grip of the external hand.
I gasped, a low, guttural sound that the suit synthesized into a husky groan. "Oh god." I began to stroke.
It was masturbation, but it was evolved. It was masturbation in stereo. I watched my hand — strong, tanned, perfect — slide up and down the shaft in the mirror. I felt the texture of the skin, hot and smooth. And simultaneously, I felt the suit stroking me. The internal liner was perfectly textured, warm and wet, moving with a precision that my own hand could never match.
I pumped my hand faster. The pleasure was visceral, overwhelming. It wasn't just physical; it was psychological too - I was jerking off the man I wanted to be. I was making him feel good.
"Oxytocin injection triggered," the system noted.
A wave of chemical bliss washed over my brain. It was a warm, golden haze that softened the edges of my thoughts. I felt loved. I felt safe. I felt powerful. My hips bucked involuntarily. The suit moved with me, a perfect dance partner.
"Telemetry is off the charts," Thorne whispered.
I didn't care about the telemetry. I didn't care about Vance or the technicians. I was lost in the amber eyes in the mirror. I stroked harder, faster, my breath coming in ragged gasps that the suit smoothed out into heavy, rhythmic exhalations. The friction was perfect. The pressure was perfect.
"I'm… close," I growled, my modulated voice husky, needy.
"Let it happen," Vance said.
I squeezed my eyes shut, but the HUD remained, flashing data that I couldn't read through my haze of pleasure. I arched my back, driving my hips forward into the perfect pressure of my synthetic hand. My climax was violent, a full-body seizure of ecstasy that started in my toes and exploded in my brain. I cried out, a loud, wordless shout of triumph.
Inside the suit, my body released into the gel. Outside, in the mirror, I saw Isaac ejaculate. A clear, synthetic fluid shot from him, landing on the pristine white floor of the clean room.
I slumped, breathing heavily. My knees buckled slightly, but the suit’s did not; it continued holding me upright, chest expanding and contracting slightly more deeply than it had before our shared orgasm, but otherwise giving no external sign of the bliss I'd just experienced.
As I started to come back to myself, I realized with post-coital clarity that I felt no shame despite having put on a show for these technicians; I felt a profound sense of rightness. The suit pulsed gently against my skin, internal fluids cycling to clean me, whisking away my mess instantly. I felt warm, dry, and clean within seconds.
"Eject," Vance said.
The word was a bucket of ice water. "No," I whispered. "Not yet."
"Test complete, Josiah. We need to analyze the fluid data and the logs of your neural load. Step back to the rack."
I hesitated. Every cell in my body screamed against it. I didn't want to leave. I belonged here. I was him. But the command override initiated without my input. My legs moved without my permission; Isaac turned and walked back to the suspension frame.
"System disengaged," the HUD flashed.
GOODBYE, JOSIAH.
The back of the suit split open and the air of the lab hit — freezing, aggressive, hostile. Then gravity had its way: as the suit pushed me out, I felt the unwelcome weight of my own body return, and with it my spine compressed, my knees ached, and my flabby stomach felt heavy and loose.
I stumbled on the metal grating, shivering violently. I was covered in a thin film of the transfer gel, naked and small. I looked up at Isaac. He was closed again, hanging in the rack, staring into the middle distance. He looked pristine. He looked like heaven.
I wrapped my arms around my pale, flabby torso, my teeth chattering. The pain in my lower back bit with a vengeance, a sharp stab that made me wince. I looked at Vance, who was walking toward me with a towel.
"Well?" Vance asked, his eyes gleaming. "How was it?"
I looked at the towel, then back at the golden skin of the machine. I felt a hunger so deep it felt like starvation.
"When can I go back in?" I asked.
