Thistledown Chapter 7

Thistledown

Nella’s Story

River Sphere: The Mountain Trail

We started down the trail, which was fairly level at this point. I spotted a long creature, much like a furry snake, sunning itself on one of the rocks at the side of the trail. It stared at us with half closed eyes as we passed by. Ahead of us, the trail wound its way through a sloping meadow filled with flowers: a riot of green, yellows, whites, blues, reds, pinks, purples, and orange, swirling and swaying in the breezes.

Suddenly, I could not breathe. My brain wanted me to take a breath, but there was nothing to take a breath with. Panic set in. I jerked a finger toward my neck.

I’m dying. I’m dying. I’m dying.

I can’t breathe, and, listen, the heart doesn’t beat any more. I went down. I lost all control of my body, which flopped around grotesquely.

I’m dying. I’m dying. I’m dying.

So went the refrain inside my head, and everything faded away…

… I woke to a sound, a high pitched keening, so sad and desolate, that I could not listen to it for long. I raised up my head and looked down my body. The synth knelt beside me with his face buried in my middle. The keening sound came from him. I touched the top of his head lightly, and when his hand came up, grabbed it and held on. With my other hand I stroked his hair, and twined my fingers into the thick cable of his braid. He groaned. I caressed each finger of his hand, admiring their form and structure. I made circles on his palm with my forefinger. He groaned again.

“You can get off me now, if you please,” I said to him.

He raised his head and moved upward until he knelt upright at my side. I smiled, as he looked me in the eyes. Joy lit up his face. His gaze followed the planes and contours of my body, and stopped at that private place between my legs. I waited for his touch, for his fingers to find their way inside. I wanted him to touch each of those nubs inside that odd ring-shaped opening, and all the nubs on the inside. I wanted him on top of me, his penis inside me thrusting, and rubbing against all the nubs. I tingled with anticipation. But his hand didn't touch me there, and I gave him no sign that I wanted him inside me.

He helped me to my feet, and steadied me as I swayed unsteadily in front of him. He ran a finger down the side of my face, my nose, and he outlined my lips with a feather touch. He ran his fingers through my hair, down past my ear, along my neck, and rested his fingers lightly in the hollow of my throat. All the while, he looked deep into my eyes. I looked back as deeply into his. I waited for his hand to continue its journey. An almost imperceptible shudder went through him. Then he took my hand and let me down the trail.

I pulled my hand loose from his grip, and ran ahead of him. I lost control of my body again; my feet got in each other’s way, and I went down hard on my face.

“Damn!” I said, rising as far as my knees. “I have no control over this body.” This was not totally true; it was only my legs that I had no control over. “Okay, now to get all the way up.”

I struggled to my feet, waving him away, when he moved to help me. Twice more my legs betrayed me, and I went down. Twice more I struggled to my feet. The second time, I teetered precariously and fell against him. He pushed me upright, steadied me with a hand in the small of my back, and kissed me. I returned the kiss, and found that kissing as a synth wasn’t at all the same as kissing as a human. The two kisses would be our first and last ones.

Soon we were walking among the flowers and grasses. I bent over to have a closer look at a low growing yellow flower, and I realized only then that I hadn’t once wondered if I were still myself. I felt like myself, but a careful probe told me that almost all of the memories of my past were gone. There were flashes of things, like an older man handing me a red rose, the face of the same man contorted in sexual ecstasy, and the man weeping. The memoirs, which I had shared with the synth, still existed. Later, perhaps I would ask him to give them back to me.

I wondered if he had a name. He hadn’t given me one, and maybe that meant that synths didn’t have names. If he didn’t have a name, then I would give him one, and I would share my name with him. My name: I searched my memory and my name was nowhere to be found. My name was gone, along with the rest of my life. I felt utterly bereft, and adrift. I had lost a great part of my identity with the loss of my name. Maybe he would give me a new name.

“Do you have a name?” I asked him.

“Jay,” he said.

“Jay,” I echoed. It didn’t sound alien. It sounded so simple and prosaic.

“I would give you my name,” I said after a while. “But I no longer seem to have one.”

“Your name is Nella,” he said.

“Nella,” I whispered. It sounded right and familiar. “Nella,” I said in a louder voice. The name fit like an old, familiar, comfortable pair of slippers. “Nella.” I shouted. The name completed me, and made me whole.


“How did you know Nella was my name?”

“I found it in the memories you related to me,” he said. “Your father often called you ‘Nella, sweetie’, so I deduced that must have been your name.”

Father. The word meant nothing to me, and I no longer had any sense of the concept behind it. I thought of how I knew things. If my memories of almost everything I had ever known were gone, how did I know the colorful objects growing on either side of the trail were flowers? How did I know how to speak? I searched through what Jay had passed on to me: the programs, and all his knowledge of the ship we were in. I knew because he knew; it was as simple as that.

He had passed on memories too. While I had been sharing mine with him, through relating the story of my life, he had copied his memories into me, sharing them in that way. Out of curiosity, I accessed one of his memories at random…

… I picked red fruits from a tree and placed them in a round basket at my feet. Suddenly two warm hands cupped my buttocks. One of the hands crept between my legs, and fondled my testicles. My penis shot upwards. I felt dismay at this development, for surely a synth should have more control over his body parts? The hands withdrew and a small, pitch-black old woman stood before me. She ran a finger up the shaft of my penis. The sensation was so intense that I groaned. She bent over and kissed the tip. She stroked my erect organ with her hand. The pleasurable sensations became more intense with each stroke, until they peaked: the connector pins slid out, and I spurted my machines into the air…

… I had literally become Jay during the time I accessed his memories. The sensation of having male genitals still lingered, and I reached down a hand to assure myself that I was still female. Another hand covered mine. Fingers, his and mine, explored, caressed, stroked, and little flashes of tingly pleasure became explosions, and finally one single, reverberating wave of the most intense sensation. I screamed with the pleasure of it, sending a tittering flock of small, iridescent blue birds flying up out of the flowers. Fingers withdrew, slowly. The wave of sensation became explosions, became flashes, became a memory of pleasure.

I looked over at Jay standing beside me. He grinned at me. His hand moved between his legs, and mine followed: his penis was already erect. Together we caressed and stroked, until he came with a violent shudder, spurting against my hand. He looked at the thick, black oily stuff on the palm of my hand.

“This should not be,” he said. “I stopped the production of those machines, since they are no longer needed. I have what I created them for: you.”

“Maybe there is something else that still has to happen?” I said.

I sensed secret, hidden things happening inside me: two eggs waiting; one made of tiny machines, and the other of flesh, held in stasis, protected by a layer of synthec. Both one half of what would become a whole. I knew where the other half of the synth eggs bided its time: in Jay; in those machines that shouldn’t have been. Where was the other half of the biological egg? That I did not know yet.

Hand in hand, Jay and I walked on through the flowers. I delighted in the large white winged insects that fluttered around us, as we passed through a patch of tall, red tubular flowers. In the distance, delicate, long-legged animals grazed on the grasses. The trail sloped more steeply, and I had to watch my step. I had more control over my legs, but at times, my feet still wanted to occupy the same place at the same time, and I would stumble.

We reached a steep slope covered with piles of small stones. Jay went ahead of me, keeping his balance easily among the stones, and waited for me to come down to him. I started out gingerly, and the stones slid underneath my feet. When I didn’t slip and fall, I moved faster and more confidently. It was a mistake on my part to move faster: I slipped, went down, and slid past Jay in a shower of stones and dust. At the bottom of the slope, I tumbled into tall golden grasses, and lay on my back. I stared at the white plumes waving above me.

Jay’s face appeared in the midst of the plumes, and a hand reached down toward me. I reached up, took hold of it, and pulled him down on top of me; opening my legs as I did so. I stroked his back, while he entered me and moved within me with long slow strokes. My pleasure was of a gentler kind, more sustained, and we climaxed with soft murmurs of enjoyment. We remained locked together, and after a while, he began to move again. This time his thrusts were hard, and almost fierce. My sensations of pleasure were intense to the point of being painful. I dug my fingers into the soil under me, and left deep gouges, as I came with a long, loud moan. He groaned, threw back his head, and a series of powerful shocks went through him. Then he went limp on top of me. I caressed the top of his head. He pulled out of me, helped me to my feet, and we made our way back to the trail.

Our path now ran in a straight line between two walls of golden grass topped with feathery white plumes that waved over our heads. Jay hurried us along because he wanted to be down off the mountain before dark. We stopped only twice: once to let a group of small ruddy furred animals hop across the trail in front of us; and the other time, when a golden striped, maned creature slunk past us. The trail ended at the edge of a cliff. I looked down and saw a narrow path winding its way down the cliff face.

“It is best if I carry you,” said Jay. He lifted me up and put me over his shoulder.

I had time to think as he made his way, fast and confidently, down the narrow trail. I understood what Jay meant when he said he was alive. Being in this synth body was exactly the same as being in the old biological body I once had. If anything, I had the sensation of being more alive than before. All my senses were heightened; and all filtered through a type of pleasure center –at least that is how I thought of it. I still had all my emotions, although I couldn’t express them all in the way I was used to. I could still feel sadness, but I could no longer express it through tears. I tried laughing, and discovered that it was another thing I couldn’t do any longer. I wondered what Jay thought of the odd noises I made. Trying to laugh made me feel mischievous. I took hold of Jay’s long braid and gave it a playful tug. I was rewarded by a hard slap on the butt. His hand caressed where it had slapped, and made its way into my most secret place. His fingers danced butterfly touches around the ring-shaped entrance. I muffled my moans of pleasure against his neck. Had I been this sensual, this sexual in my old life?

We went around one last sharp turn, on a ways along the straight, and the trail leveled into a short grass prairie. Jay put me down on solid ground again. Ahead of us, silhouetted against the shimmering water of a wide river, stood a small town. We made our way across the grasses to the town at a jog trot, and arrived just as the darkness fell. The town filled with the light of lanterns. They hung from poles along the boardwalks that fronted all the buildings along the streets. They twinkled in windows. I could see people walking along the sidewalks, and going in and out of shops and houses. I heard the sound of voices and of a musical instrument being played somewhere.

We walked into the town and everything went quiet. Every person who could, looked at us, and moved to surround us. We kept walking, and the growing crowd followed. Many of the older people around us gave us disapproving looks. A small group of young women stole sidelong glances at Jay, and giggled behind their hands. Young men took surreptitious looks at me, and blushed as hard as the young women. We were led straight to the town square, where we came to a halt in front of a silver-haired, rotund man with an equally rotund woman by his side.

“Welcome to Haven,” he said.

Thistledown Chapter 8  (XGC) Nella's experiences in Haven #735321 by Petronella60 -on hiatus