Pussy Pirates
Chapter 2
Month 48—December in Los Angeles
WE GOT V1 of Pussy Pirates out in time for Christmas sales. The whole coming alien invasion thing had gotten so out of hand, people ate up the new game. It was a way for them to practice killing dickheads.
It seemed to me that US pickups had fallen off except in certain areas of the country because of the increasing violence and resistance of new political factions and right wing fundamentalist religions. Hardly any news at all came from the Midwest. I wrote that off to low population, but cities like Detroit, Montgomery, Miami, and pretty much all of New Jersey might as well have been Confederacy-free zones. It wasn’t safe to either test or to be involved in a pickup. In California we got off easy. There hadn’t been the level of Earth First activity in the State seen elsewhere in the country, because there was nothing here for the fuckers to be against. We’d already kicked the Confederacy out. Australia and the UK both elected Earth First governments and banned pickups in their countries. People fled to New Zealand and France by the thousands to increase their chances. But ‘stupid is as stupid does,’ in the words of some movie idiot.
We’d been working on the game for nearly six years. There were a couple hundred players who contributed to the code when we started. News of the Swarm had been welcomed at first. It gave us a concrete enemy for our online game. We wrote the scenarios as we went and coded them for each other to play. But the community began to fall apart within a year of the announcement.
Friends kept disappearing from the net. Hundreds had played, only knowing each other by online handles. I could have been playing against Aunt Di upstairs and never would have known it. But soon, the number of those of us who were really committed to development shrank to just a couple dozen, and we started getting more serious. We decided to develop a commercial version. And our brainstorming sessions were epic!
“What if there are collaborators?” Mastermind asked. “It could be that this whole Earth First thing is created to give the world away to the Swarm.”
“That’s evil, man,” Battlestar Houston said. “How about if it’s those bird-thing Darjee who are the collaborators. Like they’re taking away Earth’s top warriors so the Swarm won’t have as much resistance when they get here.”
We dreamed up all kinds of devious variants. And paranoia began to set in. What if they were watching the game development and targeting our small group of hackers for extraction to get rid of us?
We were all hackers. There’s no polite way to say it. We dug for news on the dark web and wrote it into our game scenarios. But we quit talking to each other through direct contact. Instead, we buried messages in the code. Nobody ever reads the developer notes in software. We could say anything we wanted to, including setting up places and plans for where to meet if we needed to escape. We’d all reached the same conclusion. Our game needed to teach us Earthlings how to fight. Get us used to shooting dickheads so we never hesitate.
Now that the first version of the game was a commercial success, we were getting a whole new batch of input. Gamers talked and made suggestions. That was what had initially prompted my meetings with Dakota Wind. One of the beta testers had asked that we develop an avatar that looked like a popular porn star.
“Why create an avatar? Why don’t we just get Chelsea to act the part and film her?” Space Cadet had asked. “Put her against a blue screen and we could cut her into any background we want.”
“As if Chelsea Tourneau would give us the time of day,” Duck had responded. “Although if we could get one of those artificial pussies modeled by her and distribute it to gamers, I bet we’d sell a bundle.”
We all knew toys would be a big add-on for the game.
Month 50—February in Los Angeles
AFTER MY MEETING with Dakota Wind, the idea caught fire. She got it. Not only did she get the game concept of using porn stars in action shots, she understood a deeper possibility that I hadn’t shared even with the developers.
“How much of what you are planning is actually doable?” she asked. “Not just for you to develop; I mean for people to put in action when the Swarm gets here? Are the scenarios real enough that people would know what to do when they were facing the dickheads? Can the weapons be developed that really work?”
“I don’t know, Dakota. I’m not sure we have the people on our team who could make weapons that really work. We can spec them, but we’re code nerds. It’s something to think about, though. Maybe we can find a company that will manufacture them. Right now, the most usable things we can sell are the toys. We have a controller design we could ship that would improve the game response. And the whole idea of selling masturbators that were modeled on some of the actresses we use is sure to be a hit.”
“Well, it’s something to keep in mind. We’ve got the first round ready to film,” she said proudly. “Want to watch?”
I gladly went to the studio to watch the first girls film their spots. There’s a library of animation moves for first person shooter games and individual combat games. It wasn’t difficult to film the actresses performing the moves and start cutting them into prepared backgrounds. A quick kick to the head of a combatant was a lot more interesting when the actress’s pussy was exposed in the process. Guys were eating the game up.
And some girls. Most notably, the models and actresses who had taken part in the filming. Dakota was flooded with requests from women who wanted to take part in the project. There were some knock-offs of the game appearing within four months of the release of Pussy Pirates, but they were way behind our development curve. They could put out video that looked like clips from their games but they couldn’t get the interactive connection down. They didn’t really have a game.
“Teddy, this is going great!” Dakota said. “I had my doubts, but you made a believer out of me. When can we release another level? I have girls falling over their tits to take part in this.”
“We had the first two upgrades almost ready for release when we released V1,” I said. “But the moves get more complicated. And we really need to move into VR for the rewards. Watching on flat screen is totally boring compared to being in front of KC Cutie while she talks about taking my hot dick into her wet pussy and shows it to me.”
“There are a lot of 3D viewers out there. And having an actress focus on a male that isn’t really there means I have a lot more women willing to work with us. Over the past few years, the actresses who will do only solo or gg scenes have completely overshadowed the old-style porn. This year’s awards were the first that had more solo and gg awards than bg. The status of the actresses has changed, too. The solo actresses are commanding the highest dollar value.”
“We didn’t get nominated for an award,” I groused good-naturedly.
“We were too late in the market. The awards were in January and we didn’t release V1 until December. Teddy, next January, you are accompanying me to the ceremony and walking up on that stage with me to receive our award.”
“Uh… Not really, Dakota. Look at me. I’m a fat bastard.” If that brings to mind an image from Austin Powers, you got the right idea. Just without the fake Scottish accent and all that hair. Five-ten and two-eighty. That and a Big Mac will get you a heart attack throughout most of the world. I didn’t fucking care. I’m an asshole and I know it. Everybody else knew I was an asshole. Even Dakota knew I was an asshole who went home alone after watching each filming and jacked my cock the rest of the night.
“But, Teddy, you’re the brains of this outfit. You’re the Boss. You should get the recognition. This could get even you laid.”
“Thanks a heap, Dakota. I don’t see you stripping. Face it. You’re the Captain of this ship. You point the way and I’ll kill anyone between us and where you’re going.” I was a little discouraged regarding my own role in things, but I could see Dakota’s talent in everything she touched. I was comfortable writing code and scripts and making things work, but I lived in a different world than the starlets. Dakota had flair. Dakota had wit. Dakota had tits. Dakota had a wife. Dakota had a life.
“Don’t lose hope, Boss,” she said. “I’ll lead if you want me to, but I’ll only lead where you tell me to go. When it comes to killing dickheads, you’re in charge.”
Month 52—April in Los Angeles
UNCLE REG KNEW where to find me; he just didn’t know what to do with me. After my parents were killed, Reg became my official guardian but left me in the care of Aunt Di. She was reeling from the shock of losing their sister and I was an orphan. Of course, she took me in and Reg supported us. I flourished in the manner of a mushroom. I cleared a space in Di’s basement, turned out the lights, and lost myself in the world of ones and zeroes.
Reg lived in Wisconsin, and officially, that was my residence. But in Los Angeles I was home schooled and “off the grid” as far as my residence, who I was, or how I progressed. Di monitored my lessons but they were all completed on my computer. After finishing the high school curriculum at sixteen, I went to an online college and got a computer science degree. I grew up… and out… in that basement with no social interaction aside from my online friends. Just before my nineteenth birthday, I was five feet ten inches tall and weighed two-eighty.
I was surprised when Uncle Reg paid a visit that day in April.
“Teddy,” Reg said, “we’ve got to get you out of here.”
“Why?”
“Things are too closed off here. There is no opportunity for you to get picked up. In the rest of the country there are pockets of Earth First resistance that are targeting sponsors as well as Confederacy Marines. The pockets are expanding. Just going out in the company of more than one woman can make the entire party a target.”
“Not much chance of that happening here. I don’t go out… with or without women. Earth First is more of a club here than a movement. There’s nothing for them to be against in California,” I answered.
“It’s still not safe. I want you to go with me.”
“Are you going to force me to go?”
“You’re almost nineteen. I can’t force you to do anything. I’m asking you to come out there where you can do the most good.”
“Come? As in with you? You’re leaving?”
“Yes. I’m in negotiations with the Confederacy. I’ve acquired an island in the Caribbean and am moving the company soon. If you’re there with me, you’ll get extracted with the rest of us. I’ll make sure there are plenty of beautiful women for you to choose concubines from. All you have to do is be there.”
I looked at Uncle Reg and then at Aunt Di, who was nodding her head. “You’re taking Aunt Di, aren’t you?”
“Yes. There won’t be anyone here to look after you and we can’t organize a pickup in California,” Reg said. I sighed.
“I guess you should know I’ve been in touch with them, too,” I said at last. “I’ve got a card around here somewhere with a phone number on it. All I have to do is call the number and two Marines will be here within an hour to collect me. In fact, I’m due a meeting with their recruiter on my birthday.”
“That’s great. All we need to do is get you set up with your concubines and you can get out of here,” Reg said. He was enthused and already thinking of where he could get girls who would willingly fuck me.
“Last week I was on set watching a dozen porn stars shoot scenes for our game. I could have called that number and taken eight of them.”
“Eight? You scored over a 9.0?”
“Yeah. They have a pretty cool game at the testing center and I played well. They knocked it down a couple of points when I told them I wouldn’t go. They said that was just a warning and they were sure they could get the original score restored. I’m not going, Uncle Reg. At least not to the stars.”
“You’ve got a plan then.”
“Yeah. I just need about a hundred times more computing power than I have here. Want to give me your company when you leave? Just the computers would help.”
Reg looked at me and I detected new respect. Maybe he’d buy that idea. “Tell me about what you’ve got going. I thought you were just developing a video game.”
“We are. And we aren’t. The game itself is doing well. We’re cranking out sales like you wouldn’t believe. The next release, coming up this summer, will have a whole new array of weapons and a lot more pussies for the pirates. We’re not just getting them to play the game. We’re teaching them how to defend Earth.”
“Where are you getting these new weapon concepts?”
“Did you know there’s a Darjee wiki of what they call ‘redundant knowledge?’ My partners and I have been downloading segments of it ever since we found out. It’s huge. We’re talking data storage in the exabyte range—or more accurately, exbibyte. 1024 to the sixth power. I’ve got a guy who is doing nothing but writing search algorithms to find stuff on it.” [See In the Name of the Prophet by Duke of Ramus.]
“That’s all outdated information. The Confederacy has moved thousands of years beyond that. And there’s no information on weapons in that database.”
“It all depends on how you use it. The Confederacy thinks of this as old and outdated information. But stuff that is 10,000 years old to the Confederacy is still 10,000 years ahead of anything we’ve got on Earth. The problem is that even with a dozen of us downloading the shit, we don’t have near the memory or processing power to grab it all. We need our own server farm for it.”
“I’ll see what I can do. I still don’t know what you hope to do here.”
“Reg, the A-rabs are building a fucking spaceship at the Russian space station. It’s all over the dark web. They claim to have the specs for a hyperdrive from the database. I plan to build a ship devoted to defending Earth instead of fleeing it.”
“Fuck, Teddy. It almost makes me want to stay. I’ve got other responsibilities, too, though. I need to get Di away from here while I still can. It will take me a few more months to get everything moved to the new corporate offices on Anouilh. I’ll see what I can do about that server farm.”
Month 55—July in Los Angeles
I SPENT A LOT of the next two months watching the production of our porn clips for Pussy Pirates. It was good that I didn’t need much sleep. When I got home from the shoots, I could jerk off for a while and still spend the rest of the night working on the code with my partners. And watching the girls gave me ideas for new scripts for them. Scripts that were customized to particular girls whose chatrooms I frequented when I wasn’t there in person.
Geographically, I didn’t even know where most of my development partners were located. All our business transactions were conducted in cryptocurrency. I thought The Liquidator was in India somewhere. Mastermind was somewhere in Europe. I made that assumption based on the kind of shit Mastermind had seen. Battlestar Houston was probably still in Texas, though he may have fled the city. The others were scattered as well. Red Star, Master Chief, Silver Bullet. Names didn’t mean anything to the dozen developers. We all got regular downloads of the sales and expenses. There’d been no personal withdrawals from the accounts because everything went into production and distribution—which included my payments to Dakota and her crews.
But in July, we were all online to count down the release of Pussy Pirates Expansion Pack 1. We hadn’t changed the game or the way it was played, but there were new scenarios, more characters, and a lot more pussy. We planned V2 in a year and a half, but would probably do two more expansion packs before then.
“Look at the money roll!” Duck posted.
“God! Look at the pussy on that bitch! Boss you are a lucky son-of-a-bitch to be working on the video with these sluts,” Master Chief shot back.
“They’re not nearly as slutty as you think. They’re all pretty nice girls,” I responded. I hadn’t intended the moniker, ‘Straw Boss,’ to get shortened to just ‘Boss,’ but that was what the crew all referred to me as. I was the team lead. Especially after Dakota joined the conversation and started calling me Boss. Now macro-decisions were deferred to me. Sometimes, I consulted with Dakota before making a commitment. Others I just took care of as the de facto CEO.
Would we really make a lot of money on this? Money was beginning to have a grossly fluctuating value, which is why we used the international black market currency. We protected our intellectual property, but a lot of the clips of the girls had been posted on streaming sites like PornForFree and others. There wasn’t really anything we could do about that. Dakota had a lawyer who kept cease and desist orders flying, but pirating the Pussy Pirates was alive and well.
Obsolete Confederacy technology—what was it worth on Earth? How do we decide? When Uncle Reg took Aunt Di with him to prepare for extraction, one of the first things he’d done was get a black market replicator installed in my kitchen. He figured that would be the only way I’d be able to feed myself. Big vote of confidence there, Uncle Reg. Being cut off from the Confederacy meant I couldn’t scan a new dish and have it replicated, but as long as I kept it full of recyclables, I could order what was already on the menu when the machine came.
It wasn’t long before I disassembled part of the replicator so I could look inside. What most people saw was just the menu of items available. When they selected an item, a door would pop open a few minutes later and they’d remove it. When I looked inside, I saw two processes—actually three. The first was the recycler. Dump raw material into it and it was broken down to component parts. The second was the resulting selection of ingredients stored from the raw materials. The third looked almost like a 3D printer, spitting out the ingredients into a cohesive product.
Through experiments with the replicator, I discovered subtle differences in ingredients affected the quality of the output. A protein derived from meat and a protein derived from vegetables could both produce a steak. But the flavors were slightly different. On the other hand, the kind of animal protein fed into the recycling portion of the replicator didn’t seem to make much difference. I soon figured out that the best results for a steak was to replicate the raw meat and toss it on the grill rather than replicating the cooked meat.
I’d become a replicator gourmet in the few short months my aunt had been gone.
“We need to introduce a mirror,” Space cadet said.
“What the fuck?”
“Lasers can be confounded by mirrors. A beam of light, even spatially coherent light streams, can be reflected. So, when the Swarm blasts off one of their lasers at us, we should have a mirror that bounces it back at them. You see it in spy movies all the time. Guy breaks the laser beam with mirrors so he can walk through the protected area.”
“That’s a different grade of laser. You’re talking about something with the power of a laser pointer, not a weapon.” Red Star answered. “We’d have to have some material that was so pure the light couldn’t penetrate it. Otherwise a significant blast would ablate the reflective surface of the mirror almost instantly.”
“Besides, the scuttle is that Swarm use plasma weapons. And torpedoes. What good is a mirror going to do?” Silver Bullet asked.
“Still, we need some way to redirect their weapons, not just disrupt them.”
“I agree,” I tossed in. “Say we invented laserium, a reflective medium so pure it will deflect an industrial laser. It’s a game. Now, do they have homing devices? Can we lead them astray? What about sucking a fucking torpedo into a transporter and tossing it back at them from another one? Using their strength against them is a good thing.”
“Okay, so as long as we’re talking about stuff we can put in a game, what about an FTL missile?” Master Chief asked. “They’d never know what hit them.”
“We could just scatter a bunch of gravel in front of a ship and let them run into it. It would be hard to target rubble and clear a path.”
“Wouldn’t shields take care of that?”
“What kind of shields can we use on Earth? Can we, like, put up an umbrella when they start tossing crap down at us?”
“We really need to be up there, you know? The best way to fight them is to not let them land.”
“I thought we weren’t leaving Earth.”
“The only way off Earth right now is through the Confederacy,” I said. “They take you away and dump you in some other system. I wouldn’t be opposed to operating above Earth if we had a way to get up there.”
“Yeah. All we need is a space ship. What are the guys at NASA doing these days?” Duck asked.
“Are there any left?”
“There’s a few of us,” Battlestar Houston said. “We just aren’t out exploring the galaxy any longer.”
“You’re there?”
“Shh. Don’t tell anyone.”
“Write it into the game. Let’s make it as realistic as possible. People will go nuts for it,” I said. “Right now, I’m going to sleep.”
That was mostly true. I was going to sleep as soon as I reviewed the rushes from the day’s production and jacked off to a few of them. Damn! Rainbow is a fine inspiration!
I reviewed the transcripts of our late-night conversation. Late night for me. I hoped the fucking Confed AIs weren’t monitoring us. We were going to get blocked or something. Or eliminated. That’s why I reminded everyone that we were talking about a game, not actually doing battle with the dickheads. Except, we all knew that was exactly what we were planning. Every suggestion on our list would be searched in the Wiki of Redundant Information to see if anything matched the concept. How were we going to make any of this work if we couldn’t at least get into the upper atmosphere? If Battlestar Houston could get us a space station, that’s all we’d need. We needed the high ground against the Swarm.
We fucking needed more computing power!
Comments
Please feel free to send comments to the author at devon@devonlayne.com.
