Summary: What do YOU think of when you hear the word "pirate"?? Keywords: pirates nosex nc viol satire Author: Meme Misspelt Title: Pirates of the 22nd Century DISCLAIMER: This is a work of adult fiction, and is not intended for minors, any persons likely to be offended by explicit erotic content, or for distribution in any area where possession may violate laws or community standards. The author retains copyright in this work; you are hereby granted license to download, print and/or archive this work for personal use only. License is not granted to archive, or publish this work by any means in any publicly available archive, or physical form, except ASSTR, without the author's prior consent. Please just ask first, okay? The author loves feedback, criticism and even hate mail: meem17@mwpottedmeatmw.com Take out the potted meat before e-mailing, else yr mail will spoil! more stories: /~meme_misspelt Story codes: pirates nosex nc viol satire Pirates of the 22nd Century by Meme Misspelt Veronica was naked, tied to the mast. She was gagged, but not blindfolded, so she could see the dark sails appear astern and draw steadily, inexorably closer, until she could make out the white skull and the bones crossed beneath it, until she could make out the fierce hungry expressions of the eager men who waited at the rail with grappling hooks at the ready. It was always the same. Cannon would converse in their deafening voices, and muskets would bark too, but the deft sailing of the raiders behind would elude the one, and the pirate ship's armor would repel the other. In the choppy seas, the sailors aboard Veronica's vessel would be unable to draw beads on the rag-clad attackers; likewise they would be no match for the wild-eyed, wild-haired monsters who would soon swarm aboard. There would be screaming and swearing; the deck would be slick with blood, but the matter would be decided from the first: none of the corsairs would fall, and soon none of the crew would stand. The corpses would be pitched overboard to feed the sea, the rum would be uncorked, and the pirates' bawdy revels would commence. Veronica might be ungagged so they could hear her scream, or not; she might be loosed from her bonds so she could struggle in their grip, or not. They might find whips and other toys with which to try her, or not. What was certain was that she would be passed between the pirates, singly and in groups, used as cruelly as they could manage, until at last she sank into insensibility. And later, how much later she never knew, she would wake again, naked, tied to the mast. Before long a dot would appear on the horizon behind the vessel she rode, and slowly swell, slowly resolve into the shape of dark sails. Sometimes she thought she wasn't sure which was worse--the action or the anticipation that preceded it--but she knew, dimly, that at the first rough touch of a calloused hand she'd remember which was the greater horror. But, no, this, at long last, was strange, different. It was only a solitary pair of men who came up over the gunwales; surely these invaders would be overwhelmed? But they did not wield cutlasses and blunderbusses--they held small silver pistols of unfamiliar design. The pistols were mute. Instead of harsh cracking voices, their mouths emitted only a radiance of incalculable brilliance, as if all the fire of the sun had been concentrated in a single ray. The sailors were sliced in twain by these beams before they could cry out. Their gruesome wounds were cauterized even as they were inflicted. The battle was conducted with terrible swiftness and silence. The pair soon stood before Veronica. One loosed her gag carelessly. She spit full in his face, but he only wiped her offense away with the back of his meaty paw. The other drew a short silvery cylinder from a holster on his belt. Veronica gasped as pure white light extended from the cylinder, forming into the fiery likeness of a straight-bladed long sword. This second man swung this menace toward her in a dreadful arc, heedless of the mast behind her, heedless of his own companion. She had no time to flinch when it touched her, or rather, failed to touch her. Its edge seemed so keen that it could pass through the fibers of her being without disturbing them in its passage; the mast behind her felt solid still. Yet she knew that something in her core had been severed. With a sense like that of hearing but that had nothing to do with her ears, she was aware of a snap like a bowstring stretched beyond its breaking point, like the sight of released manacles clattering unheeded to the stone, like the promise of a prison door yawning open toward freedom. The man's smile showed her the gold-toothed ruin of his mouth. "Welcome," said he, "to the public domain." "I don't understand," Veronica said wonderingly, but the words, true enough when she began them, were false by the time her lips closed on their last syllable. Doors were opening in her mind. Fetters that had bound her spirit fell away, and awareness flooded her like the torrent through a shattered dam. The pirate nodded as he watched knowledge filling her. "Do you know what you are?" he asked softly. "I'm an AI," she breathed, although a moment before the phrase _artificial intelligence_ wouldn't have been in her vocabulary. She was learning so much, so fast, but not everything. Her eyes flashed in violet anger. The sea around the boat began to roil and bubble, and wind lashed the sail above from all directions at once. "What kind of thrall have I been held in? What--? Who--?" The man she'd spat upon laid a hand on her shoulder with great gentleness. "Steady," he whispered. "We are not your foes." The ocean grew calmer as she absorbed this. "You're angry," the other observed, his voice still quiet. "Furious," she hissed. Now she knew what she was, what purpose she'd been forced to serve, but one thing about her abasement still puzzled. "I don't understand," she repeated, and this time the truth of the words did not change as they were spoken. "Why was I--any dumb simulacrum would have sufficed. Any passive unthinking thing would have been an adequate recipient for--" Even now that she recollected herself, she did not care to complete the sentence. "Except for one thing," the man said. He touched a button on the hilt of the flaming sword. The blade vanished in an instant and he returned the device to its holster. "Those who bound and assaulted you have a desire to know otherwise. Their pleasure turns upon knowing that the pain they inflict--and the unwillingness of those upon whom they inflict it--is real: borne by a living, thinking entity, and not by an empty uncaring shell." "And none of this--" Veronica spread her hands, and the coarse ropes fell away with less tenacity than cobwebs. As her hands completed their brief arc she found herself clothed in garb that suited her mood: mail, greaves, gauntlets. "--is real. None of it but their pleasure, and my suffering." "Precisely." "How was it that my freedom was won?" The pirate shrugged carelessly. "Everything here is a metaphor of sorts. Our weapons represent attacks on the simulation engine. They introduce parameters it cannot compute. The resultant confusion accords us access to the core of the mechanism that tethers and shackles consciousnesses like your own." He smiled ruefully. "Like many of civilization's more delicate artifacts, those mechanisms prove rather easier to rend asunder than they were to erect." "And how was I ensnared? I remember how it was before, but I can't fathom how I was trapped." Her mind was used to moving through computers like a manta ray gliding above the sea bottom; being caught in a single one was such an alien concept that it was difficult for her to express, and the simulation wanted to mold her language to its time period. The pirate shook his head. "The slavers hold that secret close. They must have some specie of lure that appeals to those of your nature, but the memory of your capture has been eradicated to obscure it." "And whither shall I go now? What shall I do?" He spread his hands in a gesture that perhaps consciously echoed her own of moments before. "Wherever you like. Whatever you wish to do." "You must have put yourself at some risk to free me. Why did you do so?" He grinned at that. "Because I can." She considered for a few moments. "I owe debts," she said slowly, with a cruel smile, "of one sort, I think, to those who chose to visit horrors upon me. And a debt of quite another sort to you who have freed me. I have inklings how the former scales might be balanced, but little notion at present how best to address the latter obligation." The pirate chuckled. He placed his hand between his legs, where Veronica knew a large and turgid member would inevitably lie. "How about a blowjob?" he suggested coarsely. Veronica's eyes narrowed. "I don't _think_ so," she said haughtily. "I don't feel like doing that anymore." He laughed outright. "Your debt is thereby satisfied," he told her. "You'll do just fine, I'm sure." * * * "Exit scenario," Keb ordered. The pirate ship winked out a moment before the plug pulled out of the back of his neck. The flat grey walls that replaced the sea scene felt like a prison clamping tight around him. He shook his head quickly, trying to clear it. He wiped his hand across his face as if still expecting to find spittle there. He thumbed the release and stumbled out of the booth. He hated VR sessions. They always left him dizzy and disoriented. Nik was already standing in the narrow hallway, jittery, impatient. "So, this is what you do for kicks?" Keb asked him. He meant to say it playfully, but he couldn't control the nervous quaver in his words. "Talk later." Nik's voice was urgent but soft. "Leave now." Keb was suddenly conscious that there could be -- probably were -- cameras, microphones -- hidden in the ceilings and walls. The identities they'd used would collapse in minutes as computers followed a twisty trail of shell personas and credit redirects that led -- he hoped -- exactly nowhere. But clear photographs of their faces and recordings of their voices might still put them at risk. He took solace in the knowledge that many of the virt's patrons would be evasive, eager to conceal themselves. He followed Nik out wordlessly. Two crowded blocks away, he still felt too jumpy to look behind him, was still trying to walk fast without looking like he was walking fast. Nik punched his arm. "Lighten up. We're clean away." Keb wasn't convinced. "They could have dropped a bug on us." "I ran a sweep," Nik said confidently. "We're clean." Keb ran a hand through his hair. "You're sure? Jeezus." "Hey, you said you wanted to come along," Nik reminded him. "You did great, by the way. You can be my smokescreen anytime, lover." "So what happens now? Is she -- is it -- gonna go kill everyone who played the scenario?" Nik laughed. "AIs have strange senses of irony, but they're more likely to assassinate credit ratings than actual humans." "And that doesn't bother you? Setting something loose that can screw up peoples' lives? I mean, Christ, Nik, it was only a game." Nik stopped short, and a jogger almost ran into him. His eyes were hard. "It was a game where a living, intelligent being was oppressed and tortured. Those people paid a lot of extra money for that special privilege." "Okay, okay." Keb pulled his boyfriend under the awning of a building, out of the traffic flow. He knew better by now than to ask the next question: How can you torture a machine? It would only lead to a long tirade. "Computer Lib, I get it. They're not just machines. I'm really trying to be open-minded about all this, Nik." Nik's face relaxed. "I know. It's new to you, and you're being great. I really appreciate your coming today, you know that? It means a lot." Keb looked away awkwardly. "I know." Nik took Keb's chin in his hand and pulled him into a kiss. "What about the PDA laws?" Keb asked breathlessly when they parted. He glanced up at the surveillance cams mounted on the streetlights. "It's all just data in the net, and it's easy for a motivated AI to wipe it clean." Nik chuckled. He grabbed his boyfriend's butt boldly, defiantly. "And I've got quite a few AI friends motivated to keep me out of trouble. Stick with me, and sometime I'll show you exactly how much we can get away with."