I mentally winced when I heard Anna mumble vaguely as my boilers lit, there’s a distinct disadvantage to sleeping on a timer, other people don’t. I listened for further activity, but I think her breathing returned to something more restful which let me relax a bit. My power turbine will be going in like twenty minutes and that’s comparatively loud but it has been somewhere around eight hours if my timer was acting as it usually did, so with luck that’s enough for her to wake up normally.
It’s a bit lame that I know she is right there, but I can’t even feel her, I can hear her breathing though, at least that’s a nice thing to listen to. Without anything better to do I lost myself focusing on it, with time it changed as she began to wake up.
“Morning Sam.” She said slowly with satisfaction in her voice, I still couldn’t respond beyond making a ding with my math unit prompting a sleepy chuckle. “Oh, I can hear you’re thinking, it is slower. Heh, not a morning person then are you.” I guess she had put her head against mine, ah this is lame as hell I want to feel that. I dinged a response at her, eliciting another chuckle then I heard a motion of some kind. “Well, I got lots of time before class, so I will stay right here until you’re ready.”
I dinged again while trying to figure out where she was relative to me. With my brain going this slow I can’t even really figure that out accurately, it sorta sounded like she was above me though which I couldn’t quite understand.
“Oh, I can feel you warming up. That’s so neat!” She said with obvious interest in her voice some indeterminate time later, she mostly seemed to be content to wait for me to wake up as this was the first time she had said anything since she had woken up herself.
I was pretty close to being able to move at this point, I guess my outer surface only begins to reach normal temperature when I’m almost to pressure, in just a few moments my power turbine spun up and I was able to move again.
Slowly blinking my eyes as she came into focus above me but before I could say anything she planted a brief kiss on my lips, the fact that this was at the same time as my other sensations were returning meant it was wonderfully exaggerated in intensity. I think my thoughts almost lost coherency at the sensory overload, particularly with being able to feel her draped over me at the same time.
I managed to get a hand up to caress her face as she pulled back though, and I decided it was possible to wake up feeling better than my normally high baseline. “Good morning, Anna. You look wonderful.”
“You flirt, I have bedhead and everything.” She said with a laugh, I guess she did but I couldn’t really care.
“Mmmmm, yes but seeing that means that I was in bed with you.” I answered with a mischievous grin.
“It does doesn’t it?” She softly answered a smile on her face, before resting her cheek against mine for a moment that we both got lost in. Her phone started jangling with an alarm, prompting a sigh from Anna that I was only half-conscious of. “I guess I need to get ready.” She admitted before somewhat awkwardly clambering out of the small bed before heading to the washroom. I was most appreciative of the view; I wasn’t lying when I said she had a wonderful butt in the mall.
I took the time while she showered to collect the discarded clothes from last night, I couldn’t really know if she wanted the hoodie and sweats washed so I left them aside on the stool, but the underwear went in the laundry hamper. With her clothes handled for the moment, I began to carefully arrange my maid dress onto a hanger before putting it into the cleared space on the clothing rack she had made for it, its assorted accessories got stored either on the hanger or the floor below.
I glanced at my joints, I decided between a lack of rags and their relative cleanliness that they could wait till I got back home. I had cleaned them before coming over yesterday, not wanting to risk getting any oil on the dress, which also looks to have had secondary advantages. My bunkers were low, but I probably had a couple of hours even if I didn’t find anything to eat, but I think Anna probably had snacks for me.
I wondered if I should have gotten dressed as the shower stopped.
Nah.
Glancing down at myself I had the thought that maybe I should look into getting something like garter belts or other ridiculous undergarments, my lack of anything might benefit from something distracting to go with it. Electing for the next best thing I sat on her chair facing the bathroom, one foot up on the seat as if I had something to hide behind it while resting my arms on my knee to cover my equally smooth breasts. After all, the implication of something can be far better than reality.
She opened the door to the washroom a minute or two later after and walked out, stopping shocked with her face beginning to flush.
Aha! Success.
Wait I hadn’t planned for the next bit, ok improv time. “Welcome back, Master.” I said while sliding my foot off the chair and leaning forward a touch offering my left hand forward while the right remained across my breasts but turned into an exaggerated bowing stance.
I can’t see her expression with closed eyes, so I held the pose for a moment longer.
“Oh, you’re evil.” Anna moaned. “I have class.”
I opened my eyes while straightening up and smiled up at her. This appeared to overpower her will to some degree as she leaped onto me causing the chair to creak, a rough kiss later and she growled into my ear. “I will expect compensation for this you know.”
“Of course, Master. Anything for you.” This master thing is awfully easy to use on her, I think I should be cringing but it’s as natural as her name.
“Fuck Sam, I think you’ve given me a maid fetish.” She said pulling back to give me a mock glare that was incredibly cute.
I laughed. “I love you too.”
“Oh, now you pull that? Sam, I love you and your insane desire to tease me.” She said with a grin, that turned mischievous. “I need to get ready and I think I know how to buy the time for that.” She then pulled me close to rest her cheek on mine and apply as much of her naked body against me as possible, causing my mind to be thrown out of cohesion. Eventually, I pulled myself together blinking to discover her in jeans with a different hoodie and a gentle smile on her face. “You really are adorable like that.” I steamed up a bit unsure if I had said anything. “Now we need to get breakfast and since Reiko is in the house you probably want to be dressed for that.”
I was still out of it enough that Anna offered help as I groggily attempted to dress, but I was mostly back together when we went upstairs. When we got to the kitchen she surprised me with a container of kerosene from one of the cupboards, she had picked it up when she had been in a hardware store for materials recently it turns out.
Reiko didn’t appear while we were having breakfast, giving me an opportunity to raise a topic I was feeling a touch weird about still.
“Hey, Anna?” I asked pausing between sips of water.
“Mmm?” She asked around a mouthful of cornflakes.
“Is it weird that I might have liked calling you master?” She choked but managed to clear her throat.
“Fuck Sam give a girl a break.” She said while recovering, then got a guilty smile. “To answer your question, that’s hardly the worst fetish to have and it’s really fucking hot so uh I won’t make you stop.” She cleared her throat and then ducked her head before continuing. “I might encourage it too.”
I giggled at her response, then made an admission. “I think I will keep it to the bedroom though, I think I might melt my face if someone I know hears me say that.”
She laughed at that.
Reiko appeared suspiciously well-timed as we got our shoes on to leave, her smile was also wider than it had any right to have. After offering us farewells, she said she needed to find breakfast, before she could turn away, I did the two fingers ‘I’m watching you’ motion and she walked back towards the kitchen rolling with laughter.
While I could have parted ways with Anna and ridden a bus straight home, it wasn’t really much difference in time to take the express bus to campus with her and then a different one to my place. So, I got to have a frivolous conversation about laundry with her and enjoy my hand in hers.
Little did she know I was learning her habits so I could do her laundry for her, muhwahaha.
Wait, why am I excited by that, stupid robot maid brain.
“The games night is tomorrow, right?” She asked a few minutes later, getting a mumbled confirmation from my place under her arm. “I have a condition for going.” I pulled myself back a bit to look up at her concerned, but she continued before I could say anything. “Well two, you are going to wear that swishy skirt from our first date and we are going back to my place afterward.”
I blinked at her serious expression a few times, then laughed startling the guy sitting across from us. “Is that all? Why that’s barely a condition at all!” I leaned up to kiss her on the cheek then whispered in her ear, the air from my voice getting the slightest shiver from her. “If anything, it’s a bonus.”
I think I quite like how assertive she can be at times.
I saw her off after walking part way to her class, then headed back to my place. There wasn’t an immediate greeting party or something waiting for me so I got a chance to address my hygiene needs without harassment and changed into a different set of clothes. It was mostly unneeded unless something actively got dirty, but I preferred going in something different each day even if I just put what I had been wearing away without washing it. Semi arbitrary choice resulted in a blue tank top and white skinny jeans, although with how stretchy they are the separation between jeans and leggings seems tenuous at best.
I was mostly caught up on assignments, so I elected to waste some time watching tutorials for making props on youtube on the couch until class.
“Why Sam, I didn’t hear you come in last night.” I jumped when Mike’s grinning face appeared over the couch.
“Uh, yeah. Hi Mike, you just get up?” I asked desperately trying to change the topic while pausing the video.
“It go well for both of you?” He asked refusing to take the bait as my face started steaming up.
“Y-yes, we h-had an n-nice night.” I stammered back, he chuckled before patting my head.
“Good to hear, don’t worry I’m not going to interrogate you.” He started in the direction of the kitchen. “I need to get breakfast after all, what with having just gotten up.”
----------------------------------------
I was a bit early to the CRD meeting, so I selected a random chair and then waited for the others to arrive. I was a bit curious as to what would be in the meeting when I saw Kat on the invite list along with the usual core of people I was starting to expect. I got a bit distracted messaging Anna when she started asking about games night, so I didn’t pay attention to who was entering the room until I felt a hand on my shoulder.
If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.
“Oh, hi Kat!” I greeted after I looked up. “Nice to see you, I missed having you on the run today.”
“Mm, well that’s what having a job with regular hours does, even if I don’t start till ten or eleven.” She acknowledged. “What are you doing here though, the meeting is all internal department leads and then you.”
“Oh, that’s easy, Molly would tell me everything anyway and it’s useful to have both of our field agents up to date on developments at once.” I explained seriously then grinned at her. “Or that’s the excuse I was given.”
“Good enough.” She said with a chuckle as she settled into the chair beside me while opening her laptop, it looks like she has slides and everything, so I am assuming she has something interesting lined up. She then switched away to another document and started reading through it with a look of concentration that made me think she was probably trying to memorize it for her presentation.
Molly tumbled into the chair beside me a few moments later, managing to not spill any coffee despite the full mug in her hand, she looked rather tired but was cheerful anyway. “Hello! How’re you two?” She asked then made a spirited attempt to drink half the mug in a go, but before we could respond Summers started speaking.
“Good afternoon everyone, thank you for coming.” He started then waited for a second to give people a chance to quiet down. “I was told we have some breakthroughs to hear about along with a few other updates, so not to waste any time I will ask Katherine to get right into it.”
Sis startled a bit but nodded and pulled a cable over to link her laptop, she cleared her throat before starting with her ‘lecturing’ voice I had encountered when auditing a lecture of hers before. “We have been attempting to build an understanding of the functionality of the portal devices, or screamgates as some know it.” She gave a grinning Peter the stink eye while speaking, evidently not approving of the nickname sticking. “I will admit to having had a far better basis to work from than I was expecting as I was already studying some of the concepts that went into them.”
Heh, Serena was right.
The projector finished its boot cycle and then came up with a timeline to activity chart of some kind, but Kat ignored it for the moment. “The most surface-level description of what they do is that the dais and arch combine to use an object’s personal dimensional pocket to link to its place of origin, allowing for a temporary hole to be punched from one dimension to another. I believe this matches one of the initial guesses for how they function, it certainly fits with a concept I was previously aware of.”
She glanced around before continuing, not hearing any interruptions. “Unfortunately, at the moment it looks like the destructive nature of the process is unavoidable with our current understanding.” She looked back to her laptop for a second to check something about the chart without stopping her lecture. “Peter was able to provide us with equipment that can track the existence of a pocket, by modifying a clash warning device if I am not mistaken, and as you can see by this chart the operation of the device seems to result in a decrease in the volume of the pocket so long as the portal is active.”
“We had to extrapolate this off only a few moments of operation with the device set to the smallest possible portal size since we dare not risk letting something through in either direction. As a further precaution, we currently have the portal opening in a sealed chamber and are using minor artifacts from a known to be similar dimension to ours.” She had clicked through to a picture of the device disgorged from the trailer into a small concrete room with cables running from it through holes in the wall, some object sitting on the dais that was shaped rather like a desk lamp.
“It’s possible the pocket could recover either over time or through another method, but we haven’t observed that yet. The desiccation of the subject seems to be some side effect of the process rather than something direct, possibly some side effect of their pocket being linked to the bridge. We interviewed the individual who has previously been exposed to the device and while he wasn’t certain, he didn’t believe he perceived accelerated time or anything like that. Further investigation will be needed to know what’s happening.”
She hesitated for a second before continuing. “We were able to confirm his dimensional pocket is significantly degraded compared to what is a baseline for major changees, according to a few preliminary papers I was able to find anyway, but without apparent immediate effect to his health.” She shrugged. “Honestly we don’t know if this is something which could be threatening in the long term, but he has agreed to regular check-ins for the foreseeable future to see if anything changes.”
Molly was frowning next to me, clearly concerned for Roger. Kat offered her a weak smile before continuing, a bit more liveliness returning to her expression. “Now back to the portal device itself, we believe we have a crude understanding of how the portal works from a practical point of view and can give a timeline for its operation.” There were a few murmurs of excitement while she was speaking. “Now, this is the most simplified explanation I can give, and as such is entirely wrong, but it would appear that the portal activation is a three-step process.”
She clicked to another slide, another timeline with events labeled together with more pocket dimension states. “Just to preface, I will use a lot of words that are analogies, so when I say slice or look or whatever it’s just so that you can conceptualize the general idea, it’s a lot weirder than that.” Her academic mask was slipping a bit as we were getting into something she evidently found exciting.
“Ok, so the first thing the dais does is prompt the emitters in the ring to make a slice in our dimension so that it can look through it into the, how do I put this, not-space between dimensions. Then what it does is use some internal device to slice a microscopic piece off the subject’s dimensional pocket before letting it drop into the not-space with a fishing line formed out of our dimension attached to it.” She explained while tapping her keyboard causing points to highlight on her timeline with each step. “It seems that these dimensional pieces get dragged back to their origin, which the device uses to create a path to its destination.”
“Once that piece glues itself back to its original dimension, the dais starts stripping the subject’s pocket as material to expand that fishing line into a tunnel to the other dimension. Once it’s to full scale it then continues to feed in the pocket to maintain the size of the portal.” She reached the end of her timeline with this, it had a marker labeled ‘Steady State’ with the timeline continuing off the screen. “We aren’t certain why it doesn’t or can’t use our dimension to feed that tunnel instead of the pocket, but we suspect it might be so it doesn’t accidentally sever the connection or possibly that it’s too difficult to do so.”
She got a slightly uncertain smile. “Now the next bit is very much guesswork, and I don’t want to give too much hope, but we think we could potentially alter the dais to better suit our purposes.” Summers leaned forward in his chair, causing Kat to swallow before continuing. “We don’t see any reason why we couldn’t use different sources for the initial, er, glue versus the fuel to maintain the dimension.” Some excitement crept into her voice. “The big thing is that piece needed for glue is tiny, someone could probably do it a million times and remain fine given how much was torn off Roger to maintain a full portal. We even have volunteers from our guests to open the connection if we can’t get artifacts that would work instead!” She beamed around the room. “Peter can speak to the technical side of implementation since the theory of operation isn’t really any different.”
He grinned back at her, before addressing the room. “Honestly it doesn’t even seem like it’s going to be that difficult to do, it seems more to have been a design choice made by the creator of the dais rather than any limitation.” He paused thoughtfully for a second. “Making the changes needed might take as little as a few weeks maybe? It’s mostly looking to be programming and some minor hardware adjustments to support moving between sources, mostly just adding safety systems really. It already supports a wide range of shapes on the dais so we mostly just need to prevent it from trying to use the wrong target as fuel. We do need to be extremely careful given our lack of replacement parts for the stuff not from our dimension though, even if we have the damaged portal for parts and practice if we don’t try to fix it.”
“Anyway, we really do think that it will work out.” He got a broad grin then. “We have a lot of dangerous artifacts we can burn for fuel, so imagine the possibilities of gaining potentially safe connections to other dimensions! Hell, it would mean we might be able to get Sam OEM spare parts!”
I blinked a bit then a smile formed on my face. “We need to do a lot of testing once we do the actual modification to know it’s not got other risks.” Kat warned her own smile still on her face. “Nor do we know it actually will work, regardless of Peter’s optimism.”
“That is excellent news.” Summers said as she finished while sitting back from having literally been on the edge of his seat. “Let me know of anything you might possibly need, getting those people home is right at the top of our priorities.” He got a thoughtful look. “Perhaps we should look into getting a diplomatic delegation together for when we can get that portal up, Jung-Hoon could you get Ottawa into motion with that? It might take them a while.”
“Already working on an email.” He said glancing up from his laptop with a smile.
“Anything else for the moment Katherine or Peter?” Summers asked turning to them and getting ‘no’s from both. “Thank you for that update, now moving on, I hear we have some intelligence boons from your team Mr. Wilson.”
“Two in fact.” The guy said bobbing his head without looking away from his laptop. “The first is not of our own, but we have been told via Sofia-” He glanced across at the liaison who nodded. “That the Americans have gotten a couple of assets into Org A cells in North America, but they told us to not expect anything more than a warning if something were to happen in one of them. Reading through the lines says at least one is in Canada, but our contact is being cagey.” He paused for a drink then continued. “The other is more homegrown, we got the person responsible for leaking student data in Turner University, a one Dr. Connor Simmons-“ Kat sat bolt upright wide-eyed. “It looks like he had been exchanging records for assistance with research. He has already been taken into police custody, we aren’t sure what if-”
“That’s my supervisor!” Kat blurted out.
“Indeed, don’t worry we know you weren’t involved otherwise you wouldn’t be here.” Wilson commented.
“Motherfucker is that why the scope kept changing? The fucker knew what to point us at!” Her frustration was visible on her face. “Fuck, no wonder this stuff is so close to what I was working on.”
“Also making you a perfect fit for us.” Summers interjected wryly. “That might complicate your thesis, but we can work something out in time Katherine.” She nodded then flopped back into her chair still looking shocked.
“Thank you Wilson. Mary care to share your progress?”
She nodded. “I have secured the transfer of an understrength platoon to be on-site, along with their supporting logistics personnel. That would be about our limits for our quarters though, so I can’t really get anything beyond that on a long-term basis.” She leaned forward to look at Molly and me. “This should mean that we have heavy support with a far faster response time in the future. We are limited as to equipment space, so they are ‘only’ bringing a single LAV and two G-Wagons for vehicles, but we will have a full armory and dedicated armorer.”
“I will be working on procedures for how they will integrate with us, but don’t expect them to be a regular presence in our day-to-day operations. They won’t be here immediately either, there will be weeks before all the paperwork makes its way through the system.” She settled back into her chair. “That’s all for now.”
There were a few other more mundane updates, like another physicist joining next week or that a few artifacts of ‘my’ dimension had turned up in other provinces and would be making their way to us for analysis. Turns out we handle all of Canada’s artifacts under normal circumstances, which explains both the number of things in the Artifact Engineering backlog and the size of that team compared to everything else.
I also learned how small Wilson’s team was when he said that one of his team members being out on maternity leave starting next week was going to leave them at only two people. I guess it makes sense when our focus is narrow and there hasn’t been a need to handle any groups on the same level as Org A before. When I asked about it, he sheepishly answered that most they just had to deal with wannabe super villains, petty gangs, or lost person type stuff, and for that they were just applying their specialization to the work already done by local law enforcement or other government bodies usually. Turns out he was already working with Summers on hiring more people, but that it was going to be a balancing act of more help versus losses in on-boarding ramp up.
Once the meeting broke up Molly and I joined Kat in the caf for a bit, Molly was going to wait to eat till after training but my bunkers were a little low. A thought crossed my mind between mouthfuls of the sort of soup thing I was having, so I interjected in a break in the conversation. “Oh, yeah Kat, your friend we met in the mall back home has cosplay friends and stuff, right?”
“Adalynn, and yeah, she doesn’t do it herself but she goes to cons with them a lot. Why?” She asked pausing from her more conventional soup.
“Oh, she goes too? Well, I’m going with Anna to a con in Toronto in a couple of weeks, so if she’s there I might see her.”
“In cosplay?” She asked with a raised eyebrow. “I know you’ve mentioned Anna’s into that but I wasn’t sure if you would be ready…”
“Yep. We’re nearly there on both our costumes, I need to do my prop but she wasn’t worried time-wise and I tried the rest of it on-” I paused as last night entered my thoughts derailing my train of thought, I hadn’t had it on for very long after all. Then steam started to curl out of my face as it heated up, the memories of the rest of the nights occupation quite vivid.
“Sam?” Kat asked frowning.
Molly suddenly started laughing her drink forgotten on the table, causing Kat to turn to her as I buried my face. “Oooh, did you find the thing that did it then?” Molly asked between guffaws, I guessed from her voice that she probably had a wide grin on her face. “Your sister is adorable with Anna, you shoulda seen her a couple of weeks ago.” Molly said addressing Kat. “It’s like a switch is thrown when that girl is nearby, Sam teases her so much I’m surprised it took this long.”
“Molly.” I hissed while glaring out of my hands at her.
“What was it? Was it the maid uniform, I bet it was! No wait, wait, wait did you tease her while wearing it?” She started cackling when steam poured out of my face at her guess.
“Molly please.” I groaned avoiding looking across the table at Kat.
“I take it things progressed in your relationship.” Kat said with mirth in her voice, all I could respond with was a wordless hissing moan as I flopped onto the table while covering my head.
Kill me.
Good bye cruel world.