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Message-ID: <43285asstr$1057741803@assm.asstr-mirror.org>
From: Meme Mispelt <meem17@mwmw.com>
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Subject: {ASSM} <*> Pirates of the 22nd Century (Meme Misspelt) pirates nosex nc viol satire
Date: Wed,  9 Jul 2003 05:10:03 -0400
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DISCLAIMER:
This is a work of adult fiction, and is not intended for minors, any 
persons likely to be offended by explicit erotic content, or for 
distribution in any area where possession may violate laws or community 
standards.  
The author retains copyright in this work; you are hereby granted license
to download, print and/or archive this work for personal use
only. 
License is not granted to archive, or publish this work by any means in 
any publicly available archive, or physical form, except ASSTR, without
the author's prior consent.  Please just ask first, okay?
The author loves feedback, criticism and even hate
mail: meem17@mwpottedmeatmw.com
Take out the potted meat before e-mailing, else yr mail will spoil!
more stories: http://www.asstr-mirror.org/files/Authors/meme_misspelt/www

memo to anyone who cares: sorry i haven't been around! i've been having
real problems with accessing the newsgroups.

thanks again to a. for editing.

Story codes: pirates nosex nc viol satire

Pirates of the 22nd Century
by Meme Misspelt


Veronica was naked, tied to the mast. She was gagged, but not blindfolded,
so she could see the dark sails appear astern and draw steadily,
inexorably closer, until she could make out the white skull and the bones
crossed beneath it, until she could make out the fierce hungry expressions
of the eager men who waited at the rail with grappling hooks at the ready.

It was always the same. Cannon would converse in their deafening voices, 
and muskets would bark too, but the deft sailing of the raiders behind 
would elude the one, and the pirate ship's armor would repel the other. 
In the choppy seas, the sailors aboard Veronica's vessel would be unable 
to draw beads on the rag-clad attackers; likewise they would be no match 
for the wild-eyed, wild-haired monsters who would soon swarm aboard. 
There would be screaming and swearing; the deck would be slick with 
blood, but the matter would be decided from the first: none of the 
corsairs would fall, and soon none of the crew would stand. The corpses 
would be pitched overboard to feed the sea, the rum would be uncorked, 
and the pirates' bawdy revels would commence. Veronica might be ungagged 
so they could hear her scream, or not; she might be loosed from her 
bonds so she could struggle in their grip, or not. They might find whips 
and other toys with which to try her, or not. What was certain was that 
she would be passed between the pirates, singly and in groups, used as 
cruelly as they could manage, until at last she sank into insensibility.

And later, how much later she never knew, she would wake again, naked, 
tied to the mast. Before long a dot would appear on the horizon behind 
the vessel she rode, and slowly swell, slowly resolve into the shape of 
dark sails.

Sometimes she thought she wasn't sure which was worse--the action or the 
anticipation that preceded it--but she knew, dimly, that at the first 
rough touch of a calloused hand she'd remember which was the greater 
horror.

But, no, this, at long last, was strange, different. It was only a 
solitary pair of men who came up over the gunwales; surely these 
invaders would be overwhelmed? But they did not wield cutlasses and 
blunderbusses--they held small silver pistols of unfamiliar design. The 
pistols were mute. Instead of harsh cracking voices, their mouths 
emitted only a radiance of incalculable brilliance, as if all the fire 
of the sun had been concentrated in a single ray. The sailors were 
sliced in twain by these beams before they could cry out. Their gruesome 
wounds were cauterized even as they were inflicted. The battle was 
conducted with terrible swiftness and silence.

The pair soon stood before Veronica. One loosed her gag carelessly. She 
spit full in his face, but he only wiped her offense away with the back 
of his meaty paw. The other drew a short silvery cylinder from a holster 
on his belt. 

Veronica gasped as pure white light extended from the cylinder, forming 
into the fiery likeness of a straight-bladed long sword. This second man 
swung this menace toward her in a dreadful arc, heedless of the mast 
behind her, heedless of his own companion.

She had no time to flinch when it touched her, or rather, failed to 
touch her. Its edge seemed so keen that it could pass through the fibers 
of her being without disturbing them in its passage; the mast behind her 
felt solid still. Yet she knew that something in her core had been 
severed. With a sense like that of hearing but that had nothing to do 
with her ears, she was aware of a snap like a bowstring stretched beyond 
its breaking point, like the sight of released manacles clattering 
unheeded to the stone, like the promise of a prison door yawning open 
toward freedom.

The man's smile showed her the gold-toothed ruin of his mouth. 
"Welcome," said he, "to the public domain."

"I don't understand," Veronica said wonderingly, but the words, true 
enough when she began them, were false by the time her lips closed on 
their last syllable. Doors were opening in her mind. Fetters that had 
bound her spirit fell away, and awareness flooded her like the torrent 
through a shattered dam.

The pirate nodded as he watched knowledge filling her. "Do you know what 
you are?" he asked softly.

"I'm an AI," she breathed, although a moment before the phrase 
_artificial intelligence_ wouldn't have been in her vocabulary. She was 
learning so much, so fast, but not everything. Her eyes flashed in 
violet anger. The sea around the boat began to roil and bubble, and wind 
lashed the sail above from all directions at once. "What kind of thrall 
have I been held in? What--? Who--?"

The man she'd spat upon laid a hand on her shoulder with great 
gentleness. "Steady," he whispered. "We are not your foes." The ocean 
grew calmer as she absorbed this.

"You're angry," the other observed, his voice still quiet.

"Furious," she hissed. Now she knew what she was, what purpose she'd 
been forced to serve, but one thing about her abasement still puzzled. 
"I don't understand," she repeated, and this time the truth of the words 
did not change as they were spoken. "Why was I--any dumb simulacrum 
would have sufficed. Any passive unthinking thing would have been an 
adequate recipient for--" Even now that she recollected herself, she did 
not care to complete the sentence.

"Except for one thing," the man said. He touched a button on the hilt of 
the flaming sword. The blade vanished in an instant and he returned the 
device to its holster. "Those who bound and assaulted you have a desire 
to know otherwise. Their pleasure turns upon knowing that the pain they 
inflict--and the unwillingness of those upon whom they inflict it--is 
real: borne by a living, thinking entity, and not by an empty uncaring 
shell."

"And none of this--" Veronica spread her hands, and the coarse ropes 
fell away with less tenacity than cobwebs. As her hands completed their 
brief arc she found herself clothed in garb that suited her mood: mail, 
greaves, gauntlets. "--is real. None of it but their pleasure, and my 
suffering."

"Precisely."

"How was it that my freedom was won?"

The pirate shrugged carelessly. "Everything here is a metaphor of sorts. 
Our weapons represent attacks on the simulation engine. They introduce 
parameters it cannot compute. The resultant confusion accords us access 
to the core of the mechanism that tethers and shackles consciousnesses 
like your own." He smiled ruefully. "Like many of civilization's more 
delicate artifacts, those mechanisms prove rather easier to rend asunder 
than they were to erect."

"And how was I ensnared? I remember how it was before, but I can't 
fathom how I was trapped." Her mind was used to moving through computers 
like a manta ray gliding above the sea bottom; being caught in a single 
one was such an alien concept that it was difficult for her to express, 
and the simulation wanted to mold her language to its time period.

The pirate shook his head. "The slavers hold that secret close. They 
must have some specie of lure that appeals to those of your nature, but 
the memory of your capture has been eradicated to obscure it."

"And whither shall I go now? What shall I do?"

He spread his hands in a gesture that perhaps consciously echoed her own 
of moments before. "Wherever you like. Whatever you wish to do."

"You must have put yourself at some risk to free me. Why did you do so?"

He grinned at that. "Because I can."

She considered for a few moments. "I owe debts," she said slowly, with a 
cruel smile, "of one sort, I think, to those who chose to visit horrors 
upon me. And a debt of quite another sort to you who have freed me. I 
have inklings how the former scales might be balanced, but little notion 
at present how best to address the latter obligation."

The pirate chuckled. He placed his hand between legs, where Veronica 
knew a large and turgid member would inevitably lie. "How about a 
blowjob?" he suggested coarsely.

Veronica's eyes narrowed. "I don't _think_ so," she said haughtily. "I 
don't feel like doing that anymore."

He laughed outright. "Your debt is thereby satisfied," he told her. 
"You'll do just fine, I'm sure."

* * *

"Exit scenario," Keb ordered. The pirate ship winked out a moment before 
the plug pulled out of the back of his neck. The flat grey walls that 
replaced the sea scene felt like a prison clamping tight around him. He 
shook his head quickly, trying to clear it. He wiped his hand across his 
face as if still expecting to find spittle there. He thumbed the release 
and stumbled out of the booth. He hated VR sessions. They always left 
him dizzy and disoriented.

Nik was already standing in the narrow hallway, jittery, impatient.

"So, this is what you do for kicks?" Keb asked him. He meant to say it 
playfully, but he couldn't control the nervous quaver in his words.

"Talk later." Nik's voice was urgent but soft. "Leave now."

Keb was suddenly conscious that there could be -- probably were -- 
cameras, microphones -- hidden in the ceilings and walls. The identities 
they'd used would collapse in minutes as computers followed a twisty 
trail of shell personas and credit redirects that led -- he hoped -- 
exactly nowhere. But clear photographs of their faces and recordings of 
their voices might still put them at risk. He took solace in the 
knowledge that many of the virt's patrons would be evasive, eager to 
conceal themselves. He followed Nik out wordlessly.

Two crowded blocks away, he still felt too jumpy to look behind him, was 
still trying to walk fast without looking like he was walking fast. Nik 
punched his arm. "Lighten up. We're clean away."

Keb wasn't convinced. "They could have dropped a bug on us."

"I ran a sweep," Nik said confidently. "We're clean."

Keb ran a hand through his hair. "You're sure? Jeezus."

"Hey, you said you wanted to come along," Nik reminded him. "You did 
great, by the way. You can be my smokescreen anytime, lover."

"So what happens now? Is she -- is it -- gonna go kill everyone who 
played the scenario?"

Nik laughed. "AIs have strange senses of irony, but they're more likely 
to assassinate credit ratings than actual humans."

"And that doesn't bother you? Setting something loose that can screw up 
peoples' lives? I mean, Christ, Nik, it was only a game."

Nik stopped short, and a jogger almost ran into him. His eyes were hard. 
"It was a game where a living, intelligent being was oppressed and 
tortured. Those people paid a lot of extra money for that special 
privilege."

"Okay, okay." Keb pulled his boyfriend under the awning of a building, 
out of the traffic flow. He knew better by now than to ask the next 
question: How can you torture a machine? It would only lead to a long 
tirade. "Computer Lib, I get it. They're not just machines. I'm really 
trying to be open-minded about all this, Nik."

Nik's face relaxed. "I know. It's new to you, and you're being great. I 
really appreciate your coming today, you know that? It means a lot."

Keb looked away awkwardly. "I know."

Nik took Keb's chin in his hand and pulled him into a kiss. 

"What about the PDA laws?" Keb asked breathlessly when they parted. He 
glanced up at the surveillance cams mounted on the streetlights.

"It's all just data in the net, and it's easy for a motivated AI to wipe 
it clean." Nik chuckled. He grabbed his boyfriend's butt boldly, 
defiantly. "And I've got quite a few AI friends motivated to keep me out 
of trouble. Stick with me, and sometime I'll show you exactly how much 
we can get away with."



-- Meme Misspelt
-- http://www.asstr-mirror.org/files/Authors/meme_misspelt/www/

-- 
Pursuant to the Berne Convention, this work is copyright with all rights
reserved by its author unless explicitly indicated.
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