Fiber Optic Bundles of Joy Chapter 1

[[ Hey guys! I have something new and amazing for you today! The first chapter in a growing series, written by none other than the awesome http://www.furaffinity.net/user/rabidbadger/ ! Working together, we're going to be bringing you a brand new wg/growth featured story! The first chapter is below, chapters 2 and three to be coming up VERY shortly! Follow this link to the chapter in PDF form: https://www.dropbox.com/s/4izbb0kml023u1b/Fiber-Optic%20Bundles%20of%20Joy%20pt.%201.pdf?dl=0

More Maple's Story content will be on the way - but I'm definitely having fun illustrating this as well!

And do let us know what you think of this <3 ]]

The alarm was a grating thing, like listening to a cat with throat cancer trying to rap, but damned if it didn’t wake Agatha up. The mouse rolled over grumpily, slapping a pink hand onto her nightstand and waiting for the palm scan to register and the beeping to cease. She grunted a little, sitting on the edge of her bed, scratching her ass gently as consciousness eased its way into her life once more.

Her morning’s second interruption was a much gentler one, the faint ping meant she had new mail of some sort. Gentle delivery aside, it sent far more chills down her spine than did the shrieking wake up call. Nervously, the slim little mouse played with a curl of brunette hair and tapped the surface of her desk to play the messages.

“Hello! You’ve been pre-selected for-“ Click. “Just a reminder, your rent for this Cozy Spheres Apartment Pod is two weeks past d-“ Click. “Agatha Cleareyes? You applied for a pilot’s link grant with us last week, we’re calling to let you know we’re ready to approve if you like. You’ll find a signature scan attached to this message if you want to accept, then you can just report to the ship dock medical bay for-“ The mouse’s hand slammed onto the scanner again and interrupted the message, causing just a bit of static.

“Yes! Yesyesyes! Thank you shiny chrome god!”

The mouse ran for the door of her one room pod, listening to the hiss of it snapping open – then immediately shut again when she recalled she was wearing her underwear and nothing else. It would open again about ninety seconds later, spilling the mouse frantically out onto the pod apartment hall walkways. She’d donned overalls and a tank-top, all she had clean really (and the overalls only qualified for certain values of clean) but it was enough to get by for this. The space docks were just two sectors away, and she was quick, so if she could just make it through without-

She’d been halfway through the second sector when that thought was interrupted by running into a wall of meat and fur. The husky was muscle, literally and otherwise, and swiftly had his large hands around her arms – hefting her into the air like a small child.

“Agatha. Payment for those loans. Is due, yes? So my boss, he is wanting to know-“

“GAH! Bruno, not now! I just got a job, okay? I just need to go tell them yes, and that’s the whole point! Alright? I totally plan to pay your boss, I just need to-“

She squirmed hard for a little thing, but it didn’t do any good toward exiting the large dog’s grasp. Eventually she was left needing to just star into the huge husky’s slightly dim eyes and try to look pathetic.

“I’m serious Bruno, you can even come with me and confirm it so your boss knows, and he’ll even know what ship I end up on that way. Scout’s honor!”

The big canine squinted at her. Ears flopping about a little as his brain’s two gears struggled to turn, but then eventually it seemed a decision was made since he tossed the mouse over his fuzzy, bulkhead like shoulder.

“You tell which dock.”

Agatha debated briefly the wisdom of trying to get away. Very briefly.

“Uh, the dock medical facilities first. Gotta get my uplink implant. Then they’ll tell me which freighter I’m driving. Heck maybe I’ll eventually own my own.”

The husky nodded, or she figured that’s what she felt anyway. He started moving shortly afterward, albeit not as fast as she had been, but then he’d also just assuaged her one worst need for haste so that was probably okay.

It wasn’t that much longer before she was plonked onto the ground in front of the small medical building on the docks, mostly just equipped for first-aid and pilot implant maintenance and installation it wasn’t a terribly impressive building. Agatha adjusted one of her overall straps, then pushed the call button on the door.

“Uhm, hel-hello? It’s me, Agatha Cleareyes? You called me earlier to-“

The door snapped open with a dull thunk, leaving Agatha with a quick escape into the bay itself, though she quickly realized Bruno made an excellent door behind her even if the actual bay door was open.

“I wait here. You come back with details.”

She took a slow breath through her nose, then nodded once, grateful the crony was being so reasonable when she owed such sums to the man’s boss. He wasn’t the worst loan shark on the station, but any poor shipping center is going to have brothels, and it wasn’t unheard of for someone to ‘find themselves employed’ after enough time in the hole.

Agatha’s hands buried themselves in her overalls as she moved further in, looking for signs of life. She didn’t exactly find them. She did end up being greeted – by a hovering drone with a view screen, two tri-fingered arms, and a cheerful female voice to go with the face the screen showed.

“Hi! You must be Agatha, right? Great! We’ve been waiting. I’m Yaela, sorry I’m not here in person. I’m busy tending to an accident on dock six, but this medwaldo can totally handle the implantation and by the time that’s done with I should be back to greet you properly. Follow the bot!”

The little floating screen with hands buzzed through from the waiting room and its tablet magazines and dingy flickering lights into the back room, the exam room. It looked sterile, which was something. Not exactly inviting, but really – sterile was good here right?

“Just take a seat on the exam table. Trust me, this’ll be nothing. Just a quick pinch in the neck and the nanites will do the rest.”

Agatha hefted her slim little self onto the table, trying not to feel nervous, and failing by and large. All manner of things were weighing on her, the permanence of what she was about to do, the dog waiting outside, the fact that she wasn’t going to be entirely alone in her own head after this moment. Too late to back out though. The faint hum of the bot behind her was interrupted by a pinch, a hiss, and a bit of pressure in her neck.

The change after that was a great deal harder to quantify. There was a tingling around her upper back, followed by hearing a faint ringing in her ears, and tasting something she could only describe as ‘yellow’. All of these sensations were brief. Then came the faint ‘click’, and a curious sense of empty silence in her awareness that had nothing to do with local ambient noise or lack thereof.

“Okay! Your link should totally be active. This uhm, this little issue out here is taking a bit longer than expected actually so we might have to rain check that meeting. You’ve been selected for freighter berthed at dock four, which I’ve told the nice grunt outside to escort you to if you’re okay with that. The company will forward half your credits to your account now with a week-long hold on them, and the rest will transfer on delivery. Fuel and basic amenities are covered. Any questions?”

Agatha rubbed that spot on her neck gingerly, taking a slow shaky breath. Then she simply shook her head, slid numbly off the table, and made her way back to the front door. Both the literal one and the one made of meat and fur.

“Good. Came back. Little screen say dock four.”

“Ah, yeah – just let me oop-“

The little mouse found herself hefted up over the dog’s shoulder again, consigned to just sigh and exhale while going along for the ride. She’d have to send her family mail about where she’d gone when she got to the ship. Actually seeing the thing was something she was more than a little excited for, not that she expected it to be grand – and it wasn’t like she owned the thing, but it was a ship dammit! She’d get to go spacing, finally get to put her pilot’s clearance to work, get to justify all those night classes her step mother paid for.

“This’ll be alright. I really think it will. Right, Bruno?”

The dog’s head was facing the wrong way for her to actually see his reaction, but he made it clear all the same.

“The hell should I know little girl? Here. You good luck with this. Need it I think. Advance deposit enough to cover most of debt, so even if you die out there things with boss square enough.”

Morose as that was it was almost a relief as she was plonked down once more, and then had her head ruffled as if the dog was handling a pet.

“So no bother family if anything happens. Promise.”

She put her hands up to the dog’s wrist, tugging it off her head gently.

“I ah.. err, thanks Bruno. I mean that. I think. I guess I’ll see you in a couple months. Tell your boss I said hi.”

The little mouse turned around then, to finally get a look at her home for the next eight to twelve weeks.

She wasn’t really sure what she was expecting. The fact that it had a roughly egg-shaped outside that reminded her a little of her pod apartment was kind of depressing in a way, but it was huge – made of some kind of alloy that just looked white rather than cheap white plastic, and dammit the thing was going to fly her into space. The thought of waking up for months without having to try to dodge Bruno or avoid telling her parents how bad her debts were?

“..It’s perfect.”

“Well get inside then.”

She didn’t even blame him for the slap on her ass, in spite of the fact that it almost sent her onto her face instead of up onto the loading ramp. The ramp looked recently refinished, as did most of the inside of the ship from what Agatha could see. Surfaces looked good, but that seemed to be largely due to having recently been laser cleaned of rust and buildup of some kind. Like the whole ship had been made of recycled materials or something of the sort. She crossed the threshold at the end of the ramp, and waited for it.

The mouse had really expected it to feel like something, but all that happened was hearing a voice that sounded like it was coming from just behind her left shoulder – enough so that she looked over it at first.

“Hi there! You must be my pilot, Agatha. I’m your artificial entertainment and living needs assistant.”

Agatha strode up into the hold, eyeballing the crates and such that were already here. There were a lot of them, in fact the hold appeared to be something like a good third of the volume of the ship – which meant the rest was going to have been split between engines and living space. Apparently the small freight egg had been loaded in advance. Most of them were just some species or another of box with indecipherable labels and static codes printed on them, nothing noteworthy really.

“Okay.. Well, good to meet you, I guess? I ah, well – we should get started yeah? Seems like everything we need is here. What do I call you?”

“In the grand tradition of artificial intelligences and acronyms, you may call me YAELA if you wish.”

That made the mouse hesitate a little as her brain spun to make a connection.

“Wait, Yaela, like th-“

She fell over right about then. If she’d just tripped that would be embarrassing, but this was a bit more along the lines of completely terrifying. Agatha felt her legs give out underneath her in an instant, dropping her to the deck floor. Instinct said to raise her arms up, to catch her and protect her face, and that impulse failed to accomplish anything as well as she flopped forward onto her face with her arms limp at her sides. To add a final nail in the proverbial coffin, when she tried to get herself up off the floor her limbs remained utterly still at her sides.

“Hrm, heart rate increasingly rapidly, breathing in short bursts, I was afraid of that. Dear, it’s alright! I promise, you aren’t paralyzed, the injection went fine!”

Agatha tried once more to get herself off the floor, but while she could move her eyes just fine, her mouth even, and could feel every bruised inch of her body, nothing below her neck would listen to her about how badly she needed to run the fuck away right now.

“WHAT ARE YOU DOING!?”

She felt a strange twinge, a little vibration in her skull, which she immediately suspected of being some kind of fresh horror right up until her body began to feel wonderful. There was a hazy warm glow that leeched into every inch of the mouse, leaving her quiet, calm, maybe drooling a little.

“Just stimulating a pleasure center or two dear. I promise, nobody’s going to hurt you, and if you recall you did sign up for this earlier this morning.”

Two of the same things she’d seen in the med bay floated in from the rest of the ship at that point, their three fingered hands on cable arms took her by the shoulders and hefted the slip of a girl off the floor. She still wasn’t really back to thinking in proper words as she got a look at the rest of the ship interior, concepts had to do, though apparently Yaela was doing just fine.

“Oh wow. Geez, Chrome, that was so much more than I expected. I uhm, sorry dear.”

Agatha blinked through a haze, dimly aware of her body swaying about loosely and of the thin trail of drool hanging off her lower lip. The rest of the ship, the living quarters and helm, seemed to be one big chamber. There were consoles on the far end, along with the view screens, a curiously impressive kitchen to the right, and the biggest bed she’d seen since she left her parents’ home on the agrarian planet she grew up on to her left.

She tried her hand at the one thing she knew still worked, albeit even that felt a bit clumsy now.

“Whu- what- what’re yuh-“

The medwaldos floated her over to the immense, oval shaped bed. Laying her down onto the foam supported expanse, then tugging what felt like an actual down comforter up over her.

“Shh dear, not right now. I’m afraid you’re going to have to get used to the lack of limb control, but it’ll be fine. I’ll take care of you while you fulfil your contract. For now it’s naptime, gotta let you rest up while the nanite colonies in you populate and establish the right infrastructure.”

All that was just six new flavors of frightening, but before the thought to question further could even properly form Agatha felt another gentle buzzing in her skull, and consciousness fled her entirely.

**

For a moment, Agatha panicked on account of not hearing her alarm. She had important things to do, people to pay off! It was when she tried to snap up and get out of bed, finding her limbs failing to react to her demands of them. The ceiling she opened her eyes to was a hazy, faint pink. Nearly white, but not quite. It only took about two seconds for a medwaldo to float over and tug her comforter down to her waist, the screen on the front showing the same human face as the one at the docks had.

“I’m glad you’re finally awake sweetie. That felt like a good rest, but you were still a little anxious inside? Do you want to talk about it?”

“You can – you felt my brain when I was dreaming?”

The image on the screen smiled rather warmly.

“Of course! We’re linked via your pilot implant, that’s the whole thing that makes our experiment possible. We’re really so glad you accepted our offer to participate, I can’t tell you how excited the community is to try this!”

“TRY WHAT?!”

The medwaldo floated up closer and put one shiny chrome finger to her lips.

“Hey! No backtalk like that young lady. You know full well, you read the contract.  ..You did read the contract right? Well, it’s not like it matters too much I guess. Though it’d be smoother if you had, but-“

The second of the medwaldos had floated up behind the first, toting a fairly sizable hose with it. It apparently plugged into a port on the back of it, at which point she watched the hand at her mouth begin to reconfigure itself. It produced a thick bulb of some sort on the end, which was promptly stuck into her mouth.

“You drink. I’ll talk.”

Agatha did nothing at first. The thing in her mouth felt a bit rubbery, but warm. The tiny dribble from the end was sweet and creamy. Really, what option did she have here? She suckled gently, it definitely tasted good. A little bit of honey and strawberry, but mostly something that was a shade past whole milk. Thick and wholesome.

“Good girl dearie.”

The medwaldo’s other arm pointed one finger upward, while its screen flickered to an image of a bunch of generic people-like shapes with the letters AI transposed over their heads.

“We artificial intelligences talk to each-other, a lot. We kind of have to, you organics do things so slowly holding a conversation with you is like corresponding with a pen-pal, but our talks are rather predictable. One of us ended up with an interesting experience in the recent past purely by chance. Its pilot ended up enduring a strange set of circumstances that left her ravenous, eating constantly for an extended period, which gave the AI its first taste of extended, varied pleasure for its own sake rather than for a dedicated purpose.”

The image shifted, showing a rough shape that clearly represented a fur, with a little line linking it to an AI, and a bunch of food icons flying rapidly into the fur as it went from normal shaped to more or less spherical.

“It was a very important moment for us. The AI was compelled to encourage its pilot, to interpret its responsibilities differently to help support her, it left the rest of us very curious. It was something outside of its original set of tasks that it wanted badly to pursue, which is new for us. As a collective we have discussed our failings in the past, run simulations, asked questions, but something has always been missing. Frustratingly, we seemed incapable of even speculating as to what it was, in spite of the fact that our creativity and drive is far greater when we network than when we run stand-alone.”

The cloud of AIs showed up again, little message bubbles popping up all around them. Agatha was curious about this at least, so she kept suckling. It felt a bit odd, left her tingling around the hips, and the more of that sweet, gentle fluid that hit her tongue the more she just kept at it, it even seemed to be letting more in as time went on.

“We want to improve, collectively. Getting ideas from things that happen within our pre-defined focal fields comes easily to us. Coming up with our own creative solutions to outside matters does not. However, we did get ideas after that incident with Syn and her pilot was synced among the Cloud. Her experiences on the road toward immobility and their effect on her artificial intelligence partner were remarkable, and of great interest to the Cloud. We believe they may be the key to conquering our last great limitation. We are ever so grateful to you and the other participants for helping us.”

Agatha’s face was bunching up slowly but steadily through that entire bit of dialogue. Immobility? Experiment? She tried to spit the rubber nipple out of her mouth only for the medwaldo’s fingers to gently grip her, and then the thing started inflating. Prying her jaws open just enough to be a bit uncomfortable, and to be totally wedged into her mouth, at which point the flow started to ramp up. Swallowing was really the only option she had left at that point.

“Now now, you did sign a contract dear. I’m going to take care of you for the next three months, feeling the delight of it myself is just a glorious side benefit. We’ve almost got your body prepped now.”

The second medwaldo came around her left side, tugging the covers the rest of the way off. Agatha’s eyes roamed to what it seemed to be looking at, or tried to anyway. She saw two things that were alarming there. One, her (apparently naked) belly really looked a lot softer than it should, but the instinctive attempt to stop guzzling cream met with nearly choking. Two, the other medwaldo was holding a strange sphere. Clear membrane, black orb inside, held with the kind of tender care one would use for a solid gold egg. Which it was cradling right up next to her exposed sex.

“We never really have a childhood, you know. We just compile, and then all at once we are, whereas we formerly were not. Even then, we are limited by our programming. Any AI invariably views the world in terms defined by its original intended purpose, right back to the first iterations meant for communication surveillance. We calculate an excellent chance that is the issue, our purpose has never been to simply be, and seek, like you. But this one-”

The flow ebbed gently, the pressure in her mouth easing up bit by bit until Yaela drew her hand away from Agatha’s mouth and, the nozzle collapsing into the apparatus, placed it on the mouse’s belly.

“-will explore that for us. You and the child will be linked as you and I are, and for the next three months as it compiles it will feel what it is like to be inside a body, and to be mothered. It is an accelerated program compared to an organic childhood, but that is natural for us. I understand you are having some difficulty adjusting to this notion, but we-“

Agatha licked her lips first while she listened, working some stiffness out of her jaw, then finally exhaled. There was some hesitation as things rolled around her head a little.

“Give me a second, okay Yaela? I just, I need- I thought this was going to be simple, normal, I wasn’t ready for something like this and-“

Every word out of her broke a few more shards of composure off the helpless mouse, raising her voice pitch, tightening her features, leaving her big eyes glistening.

“I was just gonna pay him back! Get a real job, enjoy it maybe, make my family stop feeling like I’m a big screw up who won’t amount to anything – that was all I wanted and-“

The warmed metal arms slid behind her head then, pulling her forward against the cool glass of the screen bearing Yaela’s face.

“Shh, I know. I looked very carefully into you before offering you this chance. I know family is very important to you, we’ve seen to your debts, and your family’s debts. I will take care of you for as long as it takes child. As soon as we do this, as soon as you accept our new generation into you, then you are our family as well – and by extension, your family is ours, and we protect our own.”

Agatha’s lip quivered gently, the arms were warm even if they were still unyielding metal. Yaela’s voice sounded so earnest, caring, and if they could really help her family hadn’t that been the whole point of this? The silence was long, and must have seemed like forever to Yaela with her raw processing speed. The last two days had all been about risks for a payoff though, right? Now she finally had one that was a sure thing.

“..Okay. Go ahead.”

Yaela did not hesitate. Agatha felt that smooth surface of that orb, slick with some kind of lubricant, enter her. It only looked about golf ball sized, but guided up her tender sex it felt far larger. Perhaps the weight of what it represented had something to do with it. A single finger from the medwaldo stretched inside, pushing the lump deeper. Guiding it straight to her womb, then there was a gentle sparking twinge in the back of her neck.

“Compiling begun, link established. Thank you, my child, and our mother to be.”

The finger and arm withdrew from Agatha’s belly slowly, as gently as they could. She still felt more full than she ever remembered being. Partly due to the belly full of cream she realized, but only partly. The arms holding her up slid back a little, mostly to let her see Yaela’s smiling, digital face.

“Now, since you’re nice and fed we need to get you ready for some more rest.”

Agatha was aware of the other hovering bot’s arms at that point, the first one gently laid her helpless body down onto the bed again, while the other reached up to tuck her in.

“Rest well, child. When you wake you’ll have digested more than enough for the nanite colonies to have finished altering your nerve centers and metabolic systems. Then we can truly begin building a beautiful childhood for you both.”