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In computer engineering, Halt and Catch Fire, known by the assembly mnemonic HCF, is an idiom referring to a computer machine code instruction that causes the computer's central processing unit (CPU) to cease meaningful operation, typically requiring a restart of the computer.
I’m walking down one of the lesser-used corridors on Preservation Station when I receive a ping from Gurathin.
Fuck.
In the 5 seconds I know I have to prepare, I manage to duck behind one of the larger plant biome display things and disable my vocal output speakers just before a wave of sensation makes me drop all my other inputs. I don’t manage to lock my joints in time, so my knees buckle and I hit the ground – an impact that would have undoubtedly damaged a human, but is effectively negligible to my reinforced inorganic legs. The same legs that are now trembling uncontrollably as I curl in on myself, unable to think about anything other than the feeling of thrusting, pulsing fullness pressed exactly where I need it. I open my mouth in a soundless moan, one hand sliding down between my legs to press hard against the smooth expanse of skin there – even knowing it won’t do anything, there’s something reflexive and intrinsic in my systems that demands it. My body rocks, riding out the onslaught of sensation, getting closer, closer, closer, and–
It stops.
Right as I’m about to tip over the edge, the sensory input withdraws and I’m left writhing, muscles clenching, unable (by the rules of this stupid game) to finish myself. I’m breathing hard, overstimulated, desperate, and more aroused than I think I’ve ever been in my life.
And I’m going to absolutely fucking murder Gurathin.
In my media, this is the point in the story where there would be an audio glitch / freeze frame effect and the main character would do a voiceover saying: “Yep, that’s me. You’re probably wondering how I ended up in this situation.”
In my defense, I didn’t intend for it to become a competitive thing – but there’s just something about Gurathin that makes everything feel like a win / lose scenario, even when it’s objectively not. When he mentioned that the new sex toy he bought was something I could connect to and receive stimuli from via the feed, I know he meant it in an “Isn’t this great? Here’s a new thing for us both to enjoy!” kind of way. It was my idea to turn it into a game, which means the current situation I find myself in is (by extension) entirely my own fault. Shocking, I know; one of my own plans has backfired and left me completely shitcreeked. This has literally never happened before.
(I’m going to assume the sarcasm there is heavily implied enough that I don’t need to metatag it.)
Anyway. Gurathin bought this masturbator toy that’s basically just a glorified hole for him to stick his (disproportionately large) sex organ into. He had one that was kind of like it already, but the part that’s interesting and different about this one is that users with feed interfaces or implants – even ones who don’t have that kind of sex part themselves – can connect to the toy and it will simulate the associated sensations via some kind of complicated mapping between the user’s neural receptors and the device sensors. No, I don’t know exactly how that works on a technical level: I’m a SecUnit, not a human sex toy engineer.
I may not have any of the human-standard sex parts myself, but I do still have all the various nerve endings for them (this information will be relevant later, I swear). Turns out, it’s actually harder to go in and remove that kind of stuff from cloned tissue, so the corporates just hardcoded in a nerve block and called it good. It’s the kind of cheap, cut-corners solution that’s common in the CR – but it worked out well for me. If you can hack yourself out of a governor module, deleting a single line of code is a piece of sucrose-and-carbohydrate-based baked good, as the humans (probably) say. Basically: that “empty” space on my body where human sex parts normally go may look unremarkable, but (with a little research and experimentation) I’ve found it to be quite the opposite.
And so has Gurathin.
Which brings us back to the toy. We were all set to have a very normal (at least by our standards) sexual encounter until he said something along the lines of “…and you can connect to it from anywhere!” – which, naturally, made me curious. So I said “Really? Anywhere?” (you know, like an idiot) and Gurathin made an expression shockingly similar to the Sanctuary Moon villain from season 4. My systems tag that expression as “mischievous”, but it would be more accurately categorized as Completely Fucking Evil.
Turns out, as long as the device and user are on the same feed network, there’s no proximity limit. He could use it from his quarters and I would feel it from pretty much anywhere on the station. So, we picked a cycle when he wasn’t working and set some ground rules:
- Gurathin must ping me 5 seconds before interacting with the toy. Of course, this wouldn’t be nearly enough warning time for a human but it’s basically an eternity in terms of SecUnit processing speed. The warning is really just to ensure that I’m not about to be dangerously interrupted while any kind of weird, unexpected security-related situation is happening (yes, I know the chances of that happening are basically zero here – but I’m a paranoid and / or traumatized asshole based on past experiences, and “basically zero” is not zero). If I ping back with a halt and desist, it ends the game.
- I can disconnect and / or drop the sensory input of the toy at any time, for any reason. This is less of a rule and more of a fact; if I want to drop an input from my own brain, there’s nothing (short of like…malware or some kind of override module) that can stop me. And if that’s happening, I have bigger problems than our weird sex game to deal with. I guess the rule-related part of this one is that my dropping the input would also end the game.
- Finally, I have to temporarily re-enable the nerve block for my genitals so that I can’t receive any kind of external sexual stimuli (see previous, when I noted that this would be relevant – I believe this is called “foreshadowing”). The only direct sexual sensation I can have has to come from the feed input of the toy. If I break down and disable the blocking function again to pleasure myself, that ends the game.
In case it’s not clear, today is the day the game started. I was surprised when I got a ping from Gurathin first thing in the morning – almost immediately after the time when he normally wakes up. I hadn’t even left my own quarters yet. I remember thinking that if I were in his position, I would have waited until later in the cycle to let the other person get distracted (or maybe even forget about the game entirely), in order to catch them off guard more effectively. I stretched out on my couch leisurely, pulling up the drone view from Gurathin’s quarters and looking forward to a pleasurable start to my day. I was even laughing a little at Gurathin’s evident lack of self-control.
(Note: I’m pretty sure this is also “foreshadowing”.)
Gurathin was still in his bed. My drone camera automatically zoomed in on him squeezing a blob of lubricant from his usual bottle into the device’s silicone hole, then pulling down the waistband of his soft sleeping pants just far enough to expose himself. All of this meant it was slightly more than 5 seconds between when he first pinged me and when he slid himself into the toy with a soft gasp, but I guess there wasn’t technically any rule against that. Humans have never been all that great with precise timing, anyway – even the augmented ones.
2.3 miles away, on the other side of the habitat ring, I was also gasping – at the shockingly detailed, feed-transmitted sensation of Gurathin’s sex part penetrating a hole I don’t actually have. I think Gurathin must have known that it would be a pretty new and overwhelming sensation for me, because he was moving really, really slowly. His initial push into the toy only took an objective 3.8 seconds, but felt like a subjective full minute. I was treated to the feeling of every centimeter of him stretching me open and filling me up. Once he was fully seated in the toy, he held still for an additional 8.5 seconds before starting a lazy kind of in-and-out rhythm. I guess it was still early and he had just woken up – maybe I shouldn’t have expected him to go at it hard and fast first thing in the morning. Regardless, I wasn’t complaining. The slow and steady thrusting felt really good, and I decided to just let myself indulge in this new method of stimulation.
I spread my legs, let my head slide down to rest against the arm of the couch, and tilted my hips up to meet the invisible, impossible pressure of feeling Gurathin inside me. I had never experienced anything like it in my (admittedly limited) life. Sure, I’ve had my body penetrated in non-sexy, impalement-related ways, but this was a whole different thing (thankfully). It felt incredible. I started to rock in time with his movements; movements that I kept expecting / hoping would speed up, but never did. I was getting antsy; I needed more. But just as I was about to ping him and tell him to get on with it already – he pulled out.
With another deeply evil expression (and a look directly at my drone camera), Gurathin set the toy on the small table beside his bed and switched to manually stimulating himself.
Hey – that’s cheating!!!
I have no idea what you’re talking about. Everything I’m doing is completely within the parameters we established.
You’re not supposed to fucking touch yourself without using the toy!!
Gurathin sped up his strokes a little, arching his back and putting on a show of how good it felt (it looked like it felt very good).
No, YOU’RE not supposed to touch yourself. There’s nothing in the rules pertaining to me touching myself.
Angrily, I pulled our shared document back up in my feed workspace and saw that (of fucking course) he’s correct. Now that he was no longer using the feed-connected toy, I was totally cut off. Almost reflexively, I pressed a hand between my legs and started rubbing – but with the nerve block in place, it was like having 20 layers of thick cloth muting the sensations. I could still feel – just barely – that I was being touched (after all, it would be hard to do normal things like walking and sitting with literally no feeling there), but there was no chance I’d be able to make myself feel anything strongly enough to actually get off from it.
For 0.03 seconds, I considered disabling the blocking function. It was my own body, after all, and nobody could stop me – I get to make those decisions for myself, now. It would be so easy. Trivially easy, in fact. Basically a thought away…
But then the game would be over.
Reluctantly, I withdrew my hand and flopped over to lie face-down on the couch. My drone inputs helpfully supplied a view of Gurathin, heels digging into the mattress as he worked himself closer and closer to the edge. His hand was moving quickly now, no longer just teasing. That asshole was seriously going to make himself come, just to taunt me. I made a frustrated groaning noise (mostly muffled by the pillows) and thrust my hips against the couch cushions. I don’t know why I bothered; going through the motions without actually being able to feel anything was arguably worse than just lying there in defeat – but good luck telling that to my increasingly illogical organic parts.
I watched Gurathin finish, sex organ pulsing and spilling fluids all over his stomach and hand. Meanwhile, my own sex parts throbbed and ached with neglect. I had never felt empty before, and I was very quickly deciding that I didn’t like it. I squeezed my thighs together, willing the feeling to go away…but no such luck. It’s a common trope for humans in my serials to take a cold shower in situations like this (if you can really call any situation “like this”) and I was always skeptical about whether that actually did anything. Suddenly, I was feeling much more willing to give it a try. I sent Gurathin a string of extremely rude sigils and backburnered his drone view as I dragged myself up from the couch, over to the hygiene room, and under an icy spray of cleaning fluid.
This was going to be a very, very long day.
After the eventful morning, I decided I had more than earned some media binge watching recovery time. Which is why I didn’t notice the second ping from Gurathin when it came several hours later, while I was stretched out in bed and entirely absorbed in the plot twist at the end of the most recent season of MedCenter Argala. Or rather, I noticed but immediately disregarded it, the same way I always treat Gurathin’s pings on normal days. Unfortunately for me, today was not a normal day.
The feather-light touch of fingertips stroking between my legs startled me into dropping the media playback input. I reflexively locked my joints, freezing my body into stillness while my organic mind struggled to keep up with the sudden shift in priorities. It took me an embarrassing 0.7 seconds to figure out what the fuck was going on – but once I did, I pulled Gurathin’s drone view back to front and center in my feedspace. He was sitting on the edge of his bed and holding the toy, still completely clothed. One hand was tracing gentle, teasing circles around the entrance of the hole. Sometimes, he would curl a finger in to the first knuckle, but no further. Occasionally, he would press his palm across the entire top of the toy, which felt like he was cupping my sex parts in his large hand. The phantom sensations were driving me wild; I needed to be able to wrap my thighs around something real. I grabbed a pillow and wedged it between my legs in an attempt to sate the strange, organic desire to have something– anything there. Which, of course, is when he removed his hand from the toy.
I sent a ping, hoping that would encourage him to keep going. I’m sure my own desperation was bleeding across our feed connection, but at the moment I just couldn’t bring myself to care. After being denied once today, I needed him to touch me. Satisfied that he now had my full attention, he smirked before bringing the toy up to his face and dragging his tongue over the hole.
There’s not a good word for the sound I made in response to that (trust me, I’ve looked). It wasn’t a groan, a moan, a keen, or a shout. At best, it was a kind of strangled gasp that somehow included audio output; at worst, it could be mistaken for some kind of dying fauna. I was just grateful he couldn’t see or hear me at that moment. I couldn’t stop writhing on the bed, grinding my swollen sex parts against the pillow, verbally begging (not over the feed, where Gurathin would have the satisfaction of hearing me) for harder, faster, more.
His mouth was doing wonderful, terrible things to that fucking toy. He scraped his teeth over it lightly, sucked on the synthetic “skin” around the edges of the hole, flicked his tongue back and forth. Meanwhile, I was drowning in stimuli – riding the toy inputs as closely as I possibly could, wringing every possible byte of feedback from them. I watched in a novel mix of arousal and horror as he pulled back and spit (!!) into the hole before sliding his tongue inside. I think, at that point, it would be accurate to classify the noise I made as a shout. He continued to tongue-fuck me for a while, and the toy sent back its constantly updating readings of heat, pressure, and (somehow) the feeling of slick, wet skin. Our physical separation meant that I couldn’t press myself against him, couldn’t ride his face, couldn’t shift my hips to get him aligned with the specific places I was craving his touch, couldn’t twist my fingers into his hair and pull him deeper the way I wanted to. My hands clenched into fists around the sheets, instead; distantly, I heard the sound of fabric tearing.
He pulled back from the toy, a long line of saliva briefly stretching between the hole and his tongue. His whole face was wet, lips flushed pink and glistening. I saved a screenshot to permanent storage. I thought he was just catching his breath for a moment, but…
The time stamps show that I pinged him 0.02 seconds after he set the toy back on the bedside table. This time, he wasn’t touching himself – in fact, he was standing back up and leaving the room, still fully dressed and looking completely unaffected. You’ve got to be fucking kidding me! I quickly sent a follow-up message when it became clear he wasn’t intending to respond to my ping:
Are you seriously doing this again?!
Are you tapping out?
What. An. Asshole. He thought he’d be able to fuck me over again, but there was absolutely no chance in hell that I was going to quit now. I wanted to come (fucking hell did I ever want to come), but picturing the look on his face as he doled out my “losing” pity orgasm was enough to rebuild my sense of resolve.
No, I am NOT fucking tapping out. I was just asking, politely, what in the everloving fuck you were doing?
I’m getting ready to head out and meet Ratthi for the mid-day meal. Why? What are you doing?
Premeditating a murder.
Best of luck with that.
And then the fucker toggled his feed status to [Do Not Disturb].
I wish I could say that I calmly went back to my media marathon at that point – but that would be a lie. Instead, I gave into the overwhelming sense of sexual frustration as I moved my hips fast and hard against the now-crushed pillow, desperately seeking the last bit of stimulation I needed. I wanted to punch something. I wanted to scream. I wanted to fucking climax. My arousal was like an itch deep inside me, and I delusionally wondered if I could reach it by pulling open my abdominal maintenance panel. It didn’t matter; I couldn’t do it. Not without losing whatever unhinged game we were playing. A game that had now (I was forced to admit) spiraled far further out of control than I originally planned. Bravely resisting the urge to take myself apart piece by piece, I instead stretched out flat on the bed. I attempted to regulate my breathing again and ignore the insistent, pulsing need between my legs – while also wondering just how much more of this I could actually take.
The afternoon was torture, pure and simple. I was somewhere beyond oversensitivity and into desperation, painfully aware of every sensory input: the brush of my own soft clothing against my body, the movement of air from the recirculator, the pressure of the chair or sofa beneath me when I sat, the flexing of my thigh muscles when I stood. My skin felt tingly and I was hyper-aware of everything that touched me. It wasn’t just physical, though; even my inorganics were affected. I could feel Gurathin in our open feed connection, brushing past me casually as he went about his day (like he wasn’t at all bothered by the distraction of being my personal sexual tormentor). Sometimes he would ping me, just to skim his fingers over the entrance of the toy once or twice. Other times, he would ping me and I would feel my whole body brace – only for nothing to happen.
After another couple hours of distracted attempts to watch media, I was pacing my quarters like caged fauna. I needed to get out, I needed to do something other than sit here and wait for him to touch me. I needed to check the perimeter.
Look, it sounded like a good idea at the time, okay? In my defense, I wasn’t exactly firing from all power cores – for reasons that I assume are understandable at this point.
And now we’re caught up. That’s how I ended up in the miserably compromising position from the beginning of this story: on my knees behind the plant biome display, one hand bracing myself against the wall, the other between my legs. He’s actually fucking the toy again this time, not just teasing. My hips are moving in short, aborted thrusts, matching the rhythm of his movements. He’s going hard and fast now, and I can feel him further inside me than I’ve ever felt before. It feels good – Deity, it feels so fucking good. My body is shaking with the relief of finally getting what it needs: deep, forceful thrusts soothing the ache that’s been steadily growing stronger all day.
Does he know I left my room? Does he know I’m only barely out of sight, tucked behind some big stupid leafy flora? Is he going to make me come, out here in the middle of Preservation Station where someone could walk by at any time? The thought sends shivers through my body, sparks of hot molten pleasure dancing across my circuits. I curl further in on myself, unable to force myself to stay upright. I’m going to come. I’m finally going to come. I don’t fucking care where I am right now, I don’t care who sees me, I don’t care about anything, I just need to–
Gurathin pulls out again, and that feeling of emptiness – muscles clenching around nothing – sends me into a ruined orgasm that twists through me like a knife, sharp and nearly painful. I’m relieved that I managed to toggle off my vocal output in time, because I hear the sharp exhale of breath that’s punched out of me and can just tell that the actual sound would have been mortifying. My teeth are clenched tight and my body feels like a rubber band about to snap. I pull up the drone view of Gurathin’s quarters and see him laying in bed, undressed, looking up at the camera with a smug fucking look on his face.
NO! No, no, Deity, fuck– are you SERIOUS??
I’m sorry, is something wrong?
Shut the fuck up. Give me my FUCKING orgasm or I’ll fucking TAKE it from you.
You know how this works. There’s nothing you can do until I decide it’s time for you to come. I don’t think you’re ready yet, so you’ll just have to wait.
Oh, absolutely fuck that.
I’m up in a flash, sprinting down the hallway towards the habitat ring at top speed. To be clear, that’s top SecUnit running speed, which is much faster (3.2 times faster, specifically) than top human running speed. Under normal circumstances, I always keep my Act Like A Human code enabled when I’m on Preservation – but (as mentioned) I genuinely could not care less who sees me right now. A human-speed walk to Gurathin’s place from my current location would take about 15 minutes. A fast human runner could probably do it in 7 minutes. I’m standing in front of his quarters in 2.3 minutes, hacking my way through his pathetic locking system with barely a thought and kicking the door open with a loud bang. Gurathin startles from where he’s still laying naked in bed, the abandoned toy resting an arm’s length away on the mattress.
“What the–? what are you–?”
I literally tear my own clothes off my body, leaving the ruined scraps of fabric on the floor, and leap onto the bed to straddle Gurathin. I’m on my knees above him, one hand wrapped against his neck to hold him in place. With the other hand, I reach over and grab the void-forsaken toy. He looks up at me, flushed with shock – his eyes are wide and his hands are clenched into fists. I pause, hovering the toy above his still-hard sex organ, and it twitches at the attention.
“If you’re not going to use this thing correctly, I will. You’re going to sit back and take it while I make myself come with your useless sex parts, since you’re clearly not up to the task. Is that crystal-fucking-clear?”
He nods, and I feel his throat work beneath my hand as he swallows nervously.
“Out loud, Gurathin. You understand my plan and you agree this is within the bounds of the rules we both agreed to?”
I slide my hand down from his neck to press against his chest, still pinning him to the bed – but this way, at least, he can catch his breath and speak clearly.
“Yes, I– fuck, I agree. You can use it on me.”
That’s all I need to hear. I start sliding the toy down his length, feeling the now-familiar simulated stretch and fullness of him entering me. He makes a soft, punched-out kind of “ha” noise; I moan, embarrassingly loudly. I press the device down so the entrance is flush against his body, enveloping as much of him as physically possible. He thrusts up into it and I feel the jolt of his movement like it’s echoing through me. Unthinkingly, I spread my legs wider so I can lower my body enough to rub my sex parts against the hard muscle of his thigh. I know, I know – the nerve block is still on, I can’t feel much of anything from that. But again, there’s this frustrating need to have something there, and I’m in no mental space to fight it right now. He gasps when our skin makes contact, propping up his leg slightly so he can press it harder against me.
“Holy shitting Deity, you’re so hot here!”
I grit out a response from between clenched teeth: “Don’t sound so surprised. Exactly whose fucking fault do you think it is that all my processors are overclocked right now?”
I don’t have any patience remaining – I need him deep and hard and fast, and I need it now. I start moving the toy, probably faster than Gurathin is even capable of doing himself. He throws his head back with a shout, and I grind my hips down seeking more, more, more. I’ve been so worked up all fucking day, this isn’t going to take long. I can feel it building, the orgasm I’ve been repeatedly robbed of crashing towards me like an asteroid. Just a little further and–
“I’m– ha, SecUnit! I’m gonna come, I’m close, I–”
I bend over so I’m right above his face and growl at him, never stopping the movement of my hand.
“No the fuck you aren’t – not before I do! You’re going to – ah, fuck! – you’re going to stay hard for me because I’m using your stupid fucking sex organ. You’re just– Deity! You’re just going to lay there like a slitting SexBot and do the one fucking thing you’re good at.”
He squeezes his eyes closed, mouth a tight line of self-control, and his communication switches to the feed:
Fuck! Yes, SecUnit. I– I’ll do my best.
I want to tell him that screw his best, he’ll fucking do it because I told him to do it, but I don’t have the capacity for words – verbal or otherwise – right now. Sensation is overtaking me, drowning me, like a current dragging me under. Fullness, heat, tightness, hardness, depth, pressure – the tactile inputs are pinging through my system, triggering alerts I can’t dismiss in time, crashing into my carefully architected partitions. Finally – finally – pleasure explodes through me like a supernova. I throw my head back, riding him through the overwhelming cascade and into a shutdown.
And I guess Gurathin probably comes, too.
I wouldn’t know; I’m technically offline for that part. But the evidence (ew) inside the toy implies that everything ended up just fine for him, so I’m not too worried about it. When my systems reboot, I’m laying flat on the bed next to Gurathin. I’m a little impressed that he managed to wrangle my limp, unresponsive body off of him and into that position, although I’ll never tell him that. I turn my head to look at him and he looks back – smiling that soft little smile of his and making very brief eye contact. I know he’s just checking to make sure I’m functional again and I appreciate it (although I’ll never tell him that, either).
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen an orgasm knock you into a full shutdown like that before.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t think I’ve ever been edged for an entire day before. Actions have consequences, it seems.”
“Fair. But you’re alright? Everything still working as intended?”
“Yeah. I’m good.”
Better than good, if I’m being honest – performance reliability is at an all-time high of 96% (I add it to the list of things I’m not telling him).
“So…you enjoyed it? I’m forgiven?”
I glare at him. “Yes. It was enjoyable.”
“Which means…you might like to do it again sometime?”
He’s looking up at the ceiling with a very carefully arranged innocent look on his face, like he wants nothing but the best for me – but I’m not falling for it this time. And anyway, I’ve got a better idea. It takes 0.8 seconds for me to make a feed purchase and forward him the details.
I watch him glance at me, nervously, as he skims through the data packet I just sent him – which includes the order confirmation for a feed-enabled anal plug and a single, short message:
Oh yeah, we should definitely do it again. After all, it’s your turn.