Looseleaf's Diary - 24 / 02 / 2120

This blade sharpens the more it is used
Yet will rust and crumble with time.

"Memory," I answered, and the digital doors opened as my log-on was approved to the data vaults of the University of the Grey Havens.

The iconography of this part of the Matrix was like one of the ancient libraries of old. Files depicted as heavy books, bound with leather, some chained to the wall—representing the secondary IC programs that would try to bar my access. I had spent days combing through all the publicly accessible data on the Matrix about that patch of Mordor, careful to hide my digital trail. There was almost nothing there more recent than the end of the Third Age, just geographical and archaeological surveys.

Which is where I had found it. Another of Tû's eels, the patient search program so carefully hidden deep in the code that I almost hadn't registered it trying to report on my own search. Since then, I had learned to look for them...and sure enough, the search programs had often highlighted relevant results. Every surveyor, every archaeologist that had gone within a hundred miles of Mount Doom had their reports logged and sent to the mysterious Tû. What they had done with that data, I didn't know...but I was starting to get a picture by dissecting the eels to get a look at their other search terms.

Artifacts. Rings. Forges. Ancient hand tools. It took me days of cracking one archive after another, from university library to museums, to get an idea of the extent and age of this search. Some of these programs were woven into code that was over a century old, almost the bedrock root-code of the Matrix itself, back when it was an academic project called ArdaNet, before the megacorps had established their cores, or the Goblins had wired in their dark nets. Someone, or more likely some organization, wanted to know the very second anybody found anything related to rings or ring-making in the area around Mount Doom.

I told Aubert about that, when I'd logged out.

"I mean, I know the old stories," I said. "They tell us about Frodo of the Nine Fingers almost as soon as we're weaned. There's erotic fanfiction so old that the first artist renderings are priceless antiques."

"Could be military," Aubert said. One his fingers lazily traced one of my nipples. He was less excited when I was awake and talking. "Or the old families. The genes of Numenor are...prized. Especially the descendants of the house of Elendil. There are old men and women that will do anything for a drop of Elf-blood in their veins."

I looked at him. I'd never thought about it, but he had some of those oldblood features. The sharper ears, the almond-shaped eyes...of course, there were plenty of folk that made themselves look that way. Cosmetic surgery was rampant. Half the reporters on the newschannels made themselves look like the half-Elven. I think he saw me stare and sighed. His hand moved to cup my breasts, instead of just teasing the nipple.

"I don't like to talk about it. My family. My parents didn't have sex. Political marriage. But the all-important geneline had to be maintained. So they grew us in surrogates. We were the first batch. 'Old-fashioned.' Not everybody made it. When I was old enough, they showed me how they'd improved the process. My brothers and sisters in the tubes. They...were already talking arranged marriages. Based on genetic potential. Some of them would never leave those tubes. When they get old enough they go straight to artificial hibernation, until they were due to be thawed out, inseminated. I used to...look at them. Naked. In the tubes. Like they were dead. Frozen."

Aubert's voice was steady as he said it, but I saw his cock stir. I sometimes thought he had a head full of bad wiring, but now I began to understand that maybe he'd been designated as a broodmare, but he wanted to be was a stud.

"I escaped when I could. Disappeared into the undercity. I think...I think they let me. That they keep tabs. But they don't need me. I'm redundant."

His hand slid down over my stomach. As if he contemplated my womb, my ovaries. Fertility locked down by my implant. Aubert couldn't impregnate me unless I wanted it...or unless he'd hacked it. My throat went dry at the thought of that. After all, he'd had full access to me when he had amputated my arms and legs and installed the ports. He could have done anything to me.

The Man's eyes were grey today.

"Say something, Looseleaf," he said. Always my handle. He'd never asked for my meatworld name.

"Did you...do anything to my reproductive system, when you cut off my arms and legs?" I asked.

He cocked his head to the side. Licked his lips. "Sortof. You know how you can trigger your ovulation? Resume normal function? Open the baby factory back for business?"

"Yeah..." I said. My mind mentally clicked through the menus in my own headware. Most people needed an external interface to deal with their own cyberware, but I had insisted on wiring all of mine to central processing, so to speak.

Then I saw it. A new option on the interface menu for the 2110 WombWareBasic installed in my pelvis. One I hadn't seen. A crude little button like a white squiggle, thicker at one end.

Aubert's fingers traced down to just above my clit.

"There's a little transmitter. Not big. You have to be about this close for it to work," he said, voice little more than a whisper. "The receiver is between my balls. Triggers release. See, the spunk I shoot, it's all blanks. Zero chance of getting anybody pregnant. Unless you press that button."

He was at full mast now, the blue shaft a thick, vivid purple. Bumps and ridges deformed the surface in complex patterns.

"You gave me control of your virility," I said, unable to comprehend. He nodded, a little shyly. "It's like...when I do breed someone, it's only with your permission."

His mouth twisted into a crooked smile. Embarrassed at how unbelievably fucked up and yet oddly sweet that was. A part of me wanted to impulsively hump him right here and now. After all, if he was telling the truth, we were both safe enough...until I decided we weren't.

"That's a lot of responsibility to put on me, Man," I said.

His fingers ran over my clit. Found my hot little cleft.

"I...need...someone to have a little control over me," he said, and then he laid his head on my breast. "Just like I need to have a little control over someone else. Co-dependence. It's what they built me for. To try and shape me for...for what they had planned for me. Except by the time I came of age, I was already obsolete. They didn't need me for that anymore. Like a musket in an age of **** rifles."

"A musket doesn't have to shoot blanks," I said, and didn't realize why I said it as he opened his mouth wide and drew as much of my tit into it as he could. Sucked hard as I shuddered, already getting wet as his big plastic dick began to dig into my thigh.

It felt like a terrible power, the ability to get pregnant. There was no way either of us could afford a kid, and this was no place to raise one. Maybe if I had a big score. Maybe if this Tû was willing to pay for what I'd uncovered. I needed more of the big picture. Needed to go deeper.

Aubert rolled me over. Flat on my stomach, stumps spread out, I turned my head into the pillow as I felt his cock, smooth now, pressed against my pussy. Smooth meant less resistance, meant he could plow me faster. That usually made my cunt burn like crazy. I bit into the pillow and let him slide in, like a glass rod through a silk handkerchief, all the sparks rippled up my spine and into my brain.

Wasn't even sure I wanted a kid. Yet.