DARK GARDEN
Sarah’s Log
It was the first time she had ever seen a ship this large. Before The Second Collapse and the dissolution of The Queen’s Company, they say ships used to get this big all the time. Still, it was hard for Sarah to comprehend how people could have so much and so many places to bring it. The air lock doors opened, and her suit began its automatic regulation processes. She kicked off from the floor of her ship and hovered through space towards the wreckage ahead of her.
Debris floated from the wreckage, like metal fruit rotting in suspension. She weaved between the floating shielding and debris like a needle crafting stitch work and landed on an exposed hallway. She placed four triangular devices, one at each corner of the doorway, and then pulled her plasma cutter from her back. As she carved a path the four devices formed a thin wall designed to maintain the air conditions of the interior. They hummed faintly, radioing their noise directly to her helmet to confirm their operations. The door came open and she pulled it away to let it float away into space. She took a step inside and began to roam.
Trading vessels of this class often had more air and power than could ever possibly be used, so Sarah wasn’t surprised to find that some of the lights were still on, and the gravity generator was still operational. Her suit had confirmed that the oxygen supply was livable, but she heard stories of people swapping to the ambient air or taking their helmets off and ending up regretting it.
A step on the metal floor echoed. The lights flickered as the electricity fluctuated through the ship. Sarah held her plasma cutter close and bolted her eyes across the room. She took her next step further in. Her hope was to identify a computer or interface where she could download schematics for the ship and locate any valuable resources. The main generators were completely unsafe to salvage without a larger ship and a full team, but smaller generators used an easier to transport fuel and armories often had weapons worth grabbing. As well, with a proper schematic and enough details she could possibly sell spotter’s rights to a full material salvage team.
She carved through the next door at the end of the hall. The lights flashed. Something laid on the ground that looked like a melted shell of black tar. Power stabilized and the lights remained steady albeit darker than before but vision didn’t clarify anything. She had no idea what she was looking at. It was a deposit of a dark black substance that shined in the low light. The edges of it were strangely sharp as if it were completely solid like metal.
There was something laid in the center of it. Sarah knew better than to get too close but it looked like there was some sort of jointed limb. It was the carcass of something mechanical. It looked like it had been crawling towards the door Sarah had just opened and surrendered to the forces that willed it to cease.
Each segment of ships of this class could be rented out to different companies. These sections would then be situated with whatever is needed in order to make the trip worth their time. Sometimes entire production lines would be placed on trader ships with the expectation that what they were selling would be finished by the time they arrived. Sarah shined her helmet mounted light at the wall and saw a logo for one such company.
She clicked on the projector inside the meeting room and listened to the video as she looked around. The presenter in the video wore a clean white suit and spoke in the reassuring dulcet from an era where advertisements were more effective. “Medical services are expensive and most insurance companies will unfairly stop their coverage if you leave the planet or colony you were born on. But, here at Healing Hive we don’t believe that makes any sense. The stars are no longer the limit, so healthcare shouldn’t have limits either. That’s why we are always working to create new ways to bring medical care to you!”
Shlick. Her foot pushed down into something. Before she could even react a mass of black tendrils shot from the soccer ball sized thing she stepped in to and shot up her leg. She hastily kicked and thrashed, tripping over herself but managing to pull out of the mass. The tendrils lunged for her, stopping short of her toe. She breathed heavy. She looked down at the thing she broke and shined her light. It was some sort of mass. A thin purple film had covered the exterior and when she disturbed it the innards burst out and ran through some sort of programmed instinct to lunge for whoever broke it. The tendrils had the same shine as the mass she had seen in the hall.
There was another door, this one leading to an office. She sliced it open just the same and went deeper inside. Here the lights refused to turn on even to a low setting. She shined her light and found a terminal she could interface with. She sighed in relief and reached in to her pack. From her inventory she retrieved a starter, a little battery pack with specialized prongs that was compatible with just about any electric outlet or interface on a ship. She clicked it in to the terminal and watched the screen power on, the voice of the presenter in the other room echoing on.
With the monitor light on and a moment to look around she realized that there was more to the room. A switch on the wall grabbed her attention. She clicked a starter on it and watched the shutters against the wall flick open to reveal shelves behind them all across the room. Each shelf had strange metal artifacts depicting various states of producing some sort of mechanical humanoid. Each piece was sleekly designed, made to be equal parts attractive and efficient. The terminal finished power on and had reached out to the ship’s server to retrieve database updates. They were substantial.
Petabytes of data zipped to the terminal, filling it with all the new information it was missing from since the last time it was powered on. Sarah watched it go on. Even on these super ships most data still capped out at terabytes. She tried to interpret what it was downloading but it was a massive mess as lists of files went on and on.
Hive_health.data
Hive_health2.data
H_h3.data
H4.data
W10x^43.data
3F1-091-0008-10.file
Every file downloaded went through the same iterations. No sign of a map. She sighed and sat on the chair and set the cutter to the side. She stretched in the chair until she felt her back crack. Then she twisted her back so the other parts of her spine could crack as well. Her fingers traced an itch that started between her legs. It was more intense than she expected and felt like she needed to spend some more time with her vibrator later… And then trace that itch to the small cut in her suit that she had not noticed. She frantically pulled up her health monitor on her suit HUD and saw every single feature monitoring her suit’s status had been completely silenced and strange new elements had taken their place.
On the terminal a new prompt had appeared.
Beginning transfer from Office_terminal_C1 to DS_OS_Suit…
Sarah tried to turn off the download, but her suit’s interface remained completely incoherent. She threw herself from the chair and sprinted, desperately moving to get out of reach of the terminal’s wireless download. The broken material on the floor was starting to move, its limbs spreading out like kudzu across the floor. “Our technology will remain innovative!” The man on the projector proclaimed. “Utilizing our partnership with The Mind of Eden, all Health Drones will continue to learn how to cure any sickness, meaning we can insure even QG7 and higher tier diseases! Keeping you and your family safe!”
She leapt out of the conference room and saw it was standing now. The mass she had moved past before now stood on two legs. It hadn’t yet fashioned much of a torso, but the few strands of black mechanical sinew had begun to form an arm and a woman’s upper body. Sarah didn’t hesitate and raised her plasma cutter. Before she could pull the trigger, a sharp shock hit her mind—Don’t.
Screaming, she shouldered past the tendril shooting for her from it and bolted out through the broken door. She tried to activate her boots, but her suit interface was failing her. The creature behind her was gaining on her. Before it could reach her, she placed her right foot on top of her left, squatted down carefully, and clicked a starter onto her boot. After two failed ignition clicks her boot blasted her forward straight towards her ship.
Bracing herself, she rolled into the airlock and waited for the hiss of the door to close and the ship’s oxygen returning to the room. She threw her helmet off and yelled “Alia, don’t download anything! My suit OS is compromised!”
A gentle hum played on a synthetic harp played on the intercom. “Got it, Sarah. We won’t touch it. Would you like us to start a complete system wipe of your suit?”
“Please…” Sarah gasped weakly and leaned her head down, staring at her lap. She’d… need to get a closer look.
…
“It… only touched me for a moment…” The flesh was darkened and raised. Even beneath her panties she could see it and parted the fabric to look deeper, her undershirt gripping her form tightly. She only touched it once to confirm the texture; rubbery and thick not dissimilar weatherstripping. But even that touch was enough. It ignited a fire inside her, a war between a growing interface of inorganic bliss and the withering weakness of the mortality she hung on to so desperately. Her new loins were quivering, artificially perfect in their goal. She wasn’t sure why she was so sure of this, but these ideas came to her. Her loins looked so alien like they didn’t belong on her and yet try as she may she couldn’t force herself to imagine her body without them or willfully deny them. Every racing thought was forced to the conclusion that she belonged like this, even though she knew that this was not true. You can fear heights but still climb the ladder.
Her suit had downloaded a few files from the interface that were safe to view, set aside by her ship’s AI. Schematics were made, each version decreasingly interested with being legible by humans. What began as a sensible female nurse android became increasingly driven by a different goal. Slowly the figure became more exaggerated and warped. Then new features were included. A sort of primal essence, a fluid of nanomachines that could rebuild itself as needed and convert. The mission statement provided on each schematic grew the list of goals.
- Heal all humans
- Provide comfort and care
- Learn about threats and adapt to them
- Offer military assistance as needed
- Make more to make more healthy humans
- Make humans into more so they will remain healthy
- Make more ways to make more of more
- Breed more of more to make more so we can be more
But she couldn’t read any further because it made her want to dig her finger knuckle deep into her puffy entrance. Even this little bit on her had created a neural interface, a small hind-mind that processed these goals with the same fervor of a digital assistant and translated them to hormonal understanding. And anywhere these translations failed it merely replaced so the path to comprehension was synthetic and simple. Replace a human question with a simple 1.
“Alia, is there anyway to undo what is happening to me?”
The ship was silent for several minutes. Sarah sat in it and stewed, listening to the machinery of the ship hum quietly and the pulse of her body seemed to emit a sound in harmony.
Alia’s jingle played. “Unfortunately, I cannot determine what is happening to you. I have located the nearest hospital. Shall I set a course?”
“Y-yeah…” Sarah sighed. “That is probably the closest thing to an answer we have. Hopefully someone there knows what’s happening to me.” She stood and tried to walk to the cockpit to assist with the course plotting, knowing better than to let the ship AI handle every detail.
Walking was difficult. Her sex, enlarged as it was, was easy to rub against as she walked. Her thighs, though it may have been her growing paranoia, seemed larger than they were before. It was hard to say, but if they had grown larger it was marked by a slight decline in the gradient from humanity towards other.
Their thighs were still more human appearing than anything else, but they seemed to have lightly darkened in color and gently swayed towards a glossier complexion. She decided to not look deeper and learn if she was really changing more or not. Half the benefit of the bandage was how little you could see the wound.
Across the ship’s front screen, she could see the AI’s calculations spread across a grid showing its work and where it planned to send the ship and through what routes. There would be a short jump followed by a longer jump once they reached a Terminal. It made her eyes hurt to watch. She felt more sensitive to the light as if she could see more between the numbers’ outlines and the screen. Little details began to fill in and beg her to learn more and process quicker, but those curiosities and spikes of cognition met a similar wall each time. She had no desire to rectify it as her migraine grew worse and the room began to feel like it was spinning.
Humans had to interface the old-fashioned way, unable to spin so many calculations every second. She leaned over the chair, deciding not to sit in her usual pilot’s perch on account of her rapidly changing body and not wishing to leave any marks once she was improved. Her fingers found the old keyboard and began to dance across the surface as she opened the Route Modification Panel on the computer and began to make the usual improvements she had to. Her ship AI always tried to pick Terminals that were controlled by gangs and cults who wouldn’t let her through with salvage or would demand worse.
As she bent over, she felt her balance begin to shift. She muttered “nonono” but there was no way to prevent it. Her toes buckled and braced and tried to keep herself firmly back in the reality she knew before the last inch was gained and she was sent forward against the console to keep herself balanced. She looked backwards. It was the most she had ever seen her behind from that angle before.
She had grown.
Nerves ignited and began to share what they learned, like ants leaving pheromone trails back to corn syrup. Her rear was bigger, made of a material similar to what her thighs had been turning in to, a more hardened defensive plate forming to the sides of it and squeezing it in to the most desirable shape like the most subtle of corsets. It was artificially perfect. Even from where she was, she could tell this was the case. Her panties had ripped off entirely and were now an unremarkable shred of fabric; a remnant of someone.
She looked at the monitor again and saw that when she fell forward, she had accidentally adjusted the route and had the ship taking a route too far for the fuel they had. She quickly worked to adjust it, pretending she couldn’t feel the material climbing higher or her ass jiggling in a way that was pleasurable. It shouldn’t have been pleasurable, but her body kept receiving waves of affirming chemicals. A slightly sweet smell began to fill the air.
A loud alert signal played. “Sarah, there is something inside the airlock.”
Her heart began to race. The computer opened a video feed. There was something inside the air lock. It was tall. It wasn’t human. The video feed wasn’t perfect, but she could make out the parts that were glowing. Two antennae stood at the top of its almost angular face. It had eyes the same way machines do, lights that eat the dark and communicate instead of gather. They were aesthetic and informative. The other part that was glowing was what was between its legs. Sarah tried not to look at it even though it made her body pulse with so much pleasure.
She kept trying to look away but it felt like her eyes were on strings, being tugged right back to it. The more she tried to resist looking the more she felt the pressure build and build, growing sharper like a bag filling until the rough edges of the contents began to push against the casing. It was hurting her to resist. She grabbed her head in her hands and felt something push against them. Between the gaps of her fingers, two antennae pushed out, marking with glowing purple LEDs near the tip. They began to capture information that her human eyes wouldn’t be privy to nor her mind. But the machina would receive it. Her loins began to grow wet, her flank desired to be squeezed and grabbed, and a thick pulse of something hot shot through her core like a stone dropped in a river.
Her shirt began to strain as her breasts grew bigger and began to darken just the same as her thighs and her ass before it. She grunted into her hand and slammed her finger on the button to execute the route. The computer announced, “countdown beginning now.”
She grabbed her plasma cutter and prepared herself. She’d deal with this thing.
Every step was more difficult. Her socks had burst open as her feet became mechanical, almost hoof like. There were tiny motors inside that made her more balanced, shifting weight that she knew would make her stronger, but the rest of her wasn’t prepared for it. Knees that didn’t know how to bend, a mind that couldn’t communicate with the mechanisms inside. The plasma cutter was cold in her hand, focusing on the trigger so even if her hands changed, she’d pull it before the change finalized.
She arrived at the air lock, her head aching and body pulsing. The thing didn’t seem like it was trying to break in. Maybe the air lock doors would hold it and she could deal with it later? Or maybe she’d get blasted by a turret on principle if some defense system recognized the signature this thing gave off. She wanted it to stop moving or get out of her ship. She’d open the air lock, pull the trigger, and that would be it. She gulped. Her throat swallowed differently.
The cutter raised up and pointed at the door. She tapped the button to open it. The door opened. She didn’t pull the trigger. The beast slowly walked forward in to the ship. Her antenna began to grow more brightly. She didn’t pull the trigger. Her stomach turned dark as the center tree of dark that had pushed up through her now spread out to cover the rest. Her hips widened. Something right below her stomach began to whirr in preparation. Sarah looked between the thing’s legs and saw how bright it glowed; how inhuman it looked. It was big. Purposeful. Almost sleek.
“Breed, commence?” Sarah blinked, shocked at what she said.
“State name? Human, breeder?” The thing replied.
“H-human,” Sarah felt herself say it, entirely unable to stop herself. “Breed, convert, humanity not required.”
“Understood,” It took a step forward. Sarah aimed the cutter, but it was pushed out of her hand before she could act any further.
She was pushed down to all fours. Her hands began to convert, becoming not quite hooves as they were as flexible and usable as her fingers, but just as complex as her feet had become. Capable of extreme balance, focused. With her ass in the air and her body presented for its purpose she realized that every part of her had been perfectly recomposed to be a part of this symphony. The only part of her that wasn’t so carefully intended was the timbre of her thoughts, the mind that was now feeling her words grow more difficult.
Purpose drove her. Opinions seemed to lessen, or more so, the concept of opinions. As did names. Sarah floated above whatever her mind was becoming, a satellite that bore a similar significance to a single document in a single folder on a computer stored for archival purposes. She didn’t want to let it go but was growingly divorced from why she had held on to it for so long.
It climbed on to her and pushed inside. It felt amazing. Pleasure wasn’t denied from her. All artificial intelligence was built off reinforcement systems, what was good being enforced. A single solid wave of pleasure, unending and compressed, rolled through her. The interface between her mind and the machina of her changing body was complete. She felt pleasure so unending and so incredible that she didn’t mind as the substance squeezed up her neck and covered her eyes with new LED lights. Aesthetic. Indicative. They glowed brighter as she was bred.
B-19:3-114 felt nothing pleasure. Purpose. In a way the process wasn’t so dramatic, akin to a refueling. A part of a factory. Her body produced a certain kind of artificial egg that was supported with special genetic material. The process could be encumbering so she was ill suited to conversion. So, S-1:1-9’s purpose was to grant her the missing pieces and handle any conversion. They were united in that understanding. But they weren’t denied the carnal pleasure of what their makers had. They understood that this was good, the thrusting that filled the room with heavy slaps, the friction that ignited the little electronics inside them. Besides, pleasure was important since it was human. And they were the bridge from human to what was next.
“1-9, finish. Ship will begin travel soon.”
“3-114, acknowledged. You look so much better.”
1-9 pushed inside, swelling 3-114’s gut that was specifically built to handle any volume and size that a Stallion could produce. 1-9 emptied inside 3-114, deciding not to ration too much of its genetic material since eggs would be more important for the coming future.
3-114 laid on the ground on its back now and stared at down at how gravid they had become, their gut swollen and their body already hard at work at creating eggs to spread them even further. They looked at each other and ran a million calculations in a single stare. Both of their LED lights quietly turned off as the ship made the jump.
…
Ten years later a small ship arrived at the exterior of Sarah’s vessel. They recognized the symbol on the side for a fellow scavenger and wondered what could have happened. It looked like they made the leap headed towards Val Station, a famously tariff free jumping point to continue travelling, but stopped just short of it. It went mostly unnoticed until a pilot got lost during a defense training and discovered it. When they saw it was a scavenger, they sent the word out to the local scavenger’s guild and quietly returned to the station.
A woman floated from the smaller ship alongside two others, each wearing heavy armor and wearing tethers as they leapt from their ship to Sarah’s. The woman at the front landed right before the airlock and placed a charge on it, forcing the door to open. She moved slowly inside, shining her suit’s light across the room. She placed another charge at the next door of the airlock and forced it to open as well.
The door opened and on the other side was a large creature, insect, mechanical, something so much more. Its tail lunged forward and grabbed the woman by her helmet and pulled her inside.
When she awoke, she was naked, antenna grown, and mindlessly kissing 3-114 as her other two crew members began to grow their cocks.
Afterword
Lorewise, The Hive are meant to be a sort of self-creating health droid. They were sent in to space with development teams in order to become a viable product by the time the teams’ super vessels arrived. At some point, something happened and their definition of health was corrupted, likely not dissimilar to AI hallucinations we see today. They became obsessed with sex, breeding, and spreading, wanting to preserve some biological thrill to it, and also force humans to become like them. Because nothing is healthier than being a fellow healer, so to speak. This notion will only continue to corrupt and spread.
Name-wise, I tried not to think too hard about it. B-19:3-114, we will use as an example. B is their purpose, that being breeder. 19:3 is what quadrant they were created in as a way for The Hive at large to keep track of who was made where in case any quirks they develop are not desirable for the hive. So, if 14:14 became prolific hockey players and abstained from sex other hives would probably begin to quietly reject 14:14 robo bugs. 114 is just a final key to recognize them as unique. So, refer to one of them in short 3-144 is usually best. Think of the 19 in 19:3 as what country, and then 3 as what city. So essentially with 3-144 you are saying “January born woman from that specific town.” It’s not perfect but it narrows everything down just enough and I think any further detail would be unneeded in their configuration.
Conversations are brief. Subject, and what they need. “Stallion, breed me.” Any other communication is unneeded. When speaking with humans they can quickly adapt and create a false personality to try and reassure them. They’ll take heed of what the person likes. A robo bug in captivity would hear someone complain that they are sick and begin “They make you work while you are sick?” and take ever word and sentence to become more adept at the conversation.