Chapter 11

"I'm surprised you're letting me go back to Claiborne," Jared told his father. "Especially after what happened in Denver."

"You thought I'd take you out of school?" He shook his head. "The education you're getting there can't be matched anywhere else."

"But what about mother?"

"That's between her and me. I'm not going to let that get in the way of your education. I have an obligation to you, and I intend to fulfill it. Now hurry up, or you'll be late."

Jared slung his coat and book bag over his shoulder and left. That had been an hour before. Now, as he settled in the chair, he mentally crossed his fingers and hoped that Shannon would be back.

The week after the meeting in Denver had been lonely. That time in the hotel room had been better than he'd ever imagined. He'd felt a real bonding with her, and he couldn't get her out of his mind. Fortunately they'd had e-mail and texting, but it wasn't the same. He wondered if it would change anything between them, especially at school. You couldn't stay true to just one person. That much he'd learned. You ended up involved with other people, no matter how hard you tried.

He'd seen the guys while he was waiting for the bus. Elrod had stared holes through him, but Tim and Josh had half-waved. He nodded back, but didn't have to do more because the bus turned the corner and slowed to a stop. That was more or less finished business. Now that he looked back on it, he was glad he'd ended up at Claiborne. Elrod was nothing but trouble, and the other guys fed off of him.

He was curious about just what was going to happen when he got to school. Would Shannon be there? Her mother, his mother, might keep her out, but it was hard to tell. It depended on how angry she still was at Dad. He'd have to check with Alex to see if he had an email address for her. He had a sister, and he didn't want her to vanish from his life again.

He faded into the world of Claiborne, just like always. The bus—now he saw it as a transportation metaphor—pulled up to the curb. There were other buses unloading, and a stream of kids headed for the doors. Standing near them, and near the office doors, he could see Mr. Saunders, Alex, and Cynthia.

"And to what do we owe the honor of your visit?" he asked Mr. Saunders when he got near enough.

"I wanted to see you before you went inside," Mr. Saunders said. "We've made a couple of changes, and I have approval for one more you requested."

"There's a place we can do our programming studies," Alex said.

"It's just off the lower level of the library," Mr. Saunders said. "One of your classes this term will enable you to do that. There are also some changes in how you'll do your work. There's more visual input, and you'll have access to the Claiborne test clone site."

Alex, Cynthia and Jared exchanged looks. "No more obtuse code?" Alex asked. "That'll help."

"We also have one of the original programmers for Claiborne available to review any changes you want to make."

"Will he implement anything we want changed?" Jared asked.

"He'll put it in the change queue," Mr. Saunders said. "It won't happen overnight. We get very cautious about making changes to something that's working."

"Will we be able to make changes to the Claiborne clone?" Cynthia asked.

"Temporarily," Mr. Saunders said. He shrugged slightly. "Actually, what you'll have is a copy of the clone. Any changes you make will last a week, and your copy of the clone will be synced with the actual clone on Saturday night. We do this because we've seen what can happen if you make changes without thorough testing."

"That's true of the entire history of IT," Alex said. He looked around. "Is Shannon going to be back?"

"We're not sure. Irene's supposed to help in the interim." He looked at his watch. "So take a look at things and let me know. I'll still be your main contact, other than Hanna Gibbons, the programmer."

He looked around to see if there were any questions, nodded, and walked away. Jared and the others looked at each other. "What do you make of that?" Jared asked.

The other two shrugged. "I guess we'll find out later," Alex said.

They headed into the school. As they were undressing, Jared asked, "Sex first, or do we go find this room in the library?"

Cynthia cupped her breasts and pinched her nipples. "You have to ask? It's the first say of the term, and they're giving us an extra hour to get reacquainted, or didn't you notice."

"I really hadn't," Jared said. "You this won't be like Denver."

"That was making love," Cynthia replied. She took his rapidly stiffening cock in hand. "This is sex.

"There's one thing, though," she added as she found a cushion for her knees. "You know we're going to end up with other people."

"I've already thought of that. I know it can't be helped, either. That's just the way it is here."

"Good." She sucked down his entire length. When she pulled back she smiled up at him, her eyes glittering. "Just wanted to get that understood."

She sucked him slowly and lazily, clearly enjoying every moment of it. He held on as long as he could, but when the urgency overtook him, when he couldn't hold back any longer, he gritted his teeth, sucked in his stomach, and came, pumping his load into her mouth and across her face and tits.

When he finally ran down, Cynthia wiped up one or two errant drops. "Your turn, now." She lay back on the carpet, her head resting on the cushion. She continued to lick up the spatters of his climax while Jared buried his face between her legs. He used everything he'd learned, licking, teasing her clit, probing her insides, trying to push her to that mind-blowing moment when she'd come. Eventually he did, and she clung to his head while her body exploded.

"Now this is what I really had in mind," he said when he slid up her body. His cock found its own way into her heated depths. She smiled dreamily and caressed his face.

"I did, too. It's good to be back in school. Only there's one thing."

He stopped. "And that is?"

"Stop talking and fuck my brains out."

He kissed her and began thrusting. She clung to him, and he could feel her insides quake every so often. Her nipples were as hard as pebbles, and her arms and legs pulled them close.

He lasted and lasted. She stopped breathing three different times, recovering from her own climax with a grin and a gasp. Finally he could feel his excitement rising. He sped up, trying to ram his cock into her throat from the other end. She wailed, her fingers squeezing his shoulders hard, and her pussy fluttered against him.

He came again, filling her with spurt after white-hot spurt. All thought was gone as he held himself in her depths. Finally he ran down, breathing hard, his body relaxing as he tried to recover from his climax.

"Welcome back to school," Cynthia murmured in his ear.

"Welcome back yourself," he replied.

They still had time before Home Room, so he and Alex switched partners. Irene was just as hot and tight as before, and she coaxed his third climax of the morning out of him. He finally relaxed beside her, struggling to catch his breath.

"I'm not sure I can move," he confessed.

"There'll be more of this all day," she said. "So you'd better."

"Hopefully nothing like the last day of the term."

"I hope not," she nodded. "I prefer to put a name to a face and body." She squeezed her tits, and a few drops of milk formed there. "I need these sucked, but I'll wait until later."

"I could do it for you."

She shook her head. "No, I know you're not that excited by the idea. I'm going to see what John Davis can do. He gets excited when he sucks my milk. Nothing against either you or Alex, but John is passionate about it. Sometimes I think he'd rather do that than screw."

"That makes him a rarity around here."

"Tell me about it." She looked up. "Um, we'd better get going. I'm afraid we'll have to clean up after Home Room."

Jared followed her glance. They had just 10 minutes before Home Room, not enough time to clean up. He got up and helped Irene to her feet. But he held Cynthia's hand as they headed for class.

"I don't think anyone had a chance to shower," Cynthia said as they made their way down the aisle in the classroom. "This place reeks of sex."

"And how is this bad?" Jared asked.

"I'm not saying it is," she said. "This is the only school we could say that about, though." She found an empty desk and sat down, Jared beside her. "I just realized, I'm a good Claiborne girl. I'm holding hands with my boyfriend while some other boy's come oozes out of me."

"And my dick is wet from another girl's pussy."

She laughed and fondled him. "True. I guess that makes us a good Claiborne couple."

The teacher—a new one—handed out copies of their class assignments. Jared scanned through the list: Trig, World History, Computer Lab, College German, Physics, and English Comp. It looked like what he'd had the last term, except the classes were more advanced. The only real difference was the Computer Lab, which had to be the one Mr. Saunders had mentioned.

They had half an hour following Home Room. After a quick shower, the four of them went to the library. The librarian checked their IDs with a touchpad, and opened a door behind her. "You'll have to check in any time you want to use the room," she said as she opened the door.

The room had five consoles with VR headsets like they used to attend school. There was also a computer monitor on a table in the corner.

"Doesn't look like much," Alex said. "But it should be enough. Who wants which place?"

"We'll decide that when we come back here," Jared said. "We should probably get off to our first class."

Cynthia nodded and started for the door. "Yeah, we'll have plenty of time to sort things out."

Cynthia was right about one thing, Jared thought a couple of hours later. You couldn't limit yourself to one person at Claiborne. He had been following a girl out of his History class, admiring the way her butt moved and clenched, and somehow they'd ended up on one of the couches. She'd rested her ankles on his shoulders as he rocked back and forth, seeing how much of his cock he could push into her.

She moaned repeatedly, her large tits flopping back and forth. He thrust harder, making her whole body shake. The look on her face seemed to go right through him. He knew he was going to come. The only question was if he could hold on long enough for her to join him.

"Come ... come ... come on my tits. Come on my tits!"

He pulled out, aiming at her face. His come spattered across her body, some of it running down her body. Her hands went to her breasts, massaging his come into her skin.

"God, I love the feel of come," she said, grinning.

"If you give me a few minutes to rest, I can make some more."

She laughed. "Thank you, but no thank you. I'll have to be content with this." She got up. "Everybody wants to come inside me. That's fun, but I like to watch their stuff shoot out."

Everybody likes something different, he thought as he followed her to the bathroom. Nice ass, though.

"You looked pleased with yourself," Cynthia said a few minutes later.

"You look like the cat that got the canary," Jared replied. He touched the side of his chin. "Um, but you missed some cream."

"Sorry." She wiped the semen away and licked her finger clean.

"Being just as faithful as I am," he said.

She laughed and looped her arm through his. ""Like I said, I'm a typical Claiborne girl."

The last class of the afternoon was Computer Lab. The four of them were shown in and settled down at the stations. "Do we just jump in?" Jared asked.

"Might as well," Irene said. She slid the VR helmet into place and pressed the contact button on the side.

Jared did the same.

He was in darkness. He turned. There was a large golden mass off to one side. Without being told he knew it was Claiborne. Yellow filaments led off in various directions. He 'touched' one of them; it was a link from a student in an office to the school.

There were other colors, and as he sorted through them he cataloged them: controls, background, access to databases, and one, an off-green filament that led off into the distance. He 'touched' it; this led to the cloned Claiborne.

He followed it, sensing a barrier of sorts in front of him that he could push through. When he did he found himself back in his body, in an empty hall. Moments later the others joined him.

"Seems spooky," Irene said, looking around. "I wish there were people."

"Just a moment," Alex said. He vanished, reappearing a minute later. A few seconds later the halls were filled with students.

"Everyone's dressed," Cynthia said.

"Oops. Let me fix that." Alex vanished. This time he stayed away for nearly five minutes. While he was gone the others retreated to the corner.

The clothes didn't vanish, though Alex returned. He looked around, saw them, and came over.

"I can't access the clothing sub-routine," he said. "I tried to put our clothes in our locker, but we'll have to see what we can do about it."

"I'll check into that," Irene said.

"Good. These are all avatars, and I made a change so they act as if we're clothed."

"This is going to seem weird," Cynthia said. She sighed. "Well, we're here, what do we do first?"

"Isolate each of the social tendencies," Jared said. "Just like Alex just did."

"You guys do that," Cynthia said. "I want to see what else is different about this place."

Jared, Alex and Irene 'left', going back into the blackness. Alex showed them where he'd found what he'd changed. They spent the rest of their time ducking in and out of the clone. Irene disappeared, but came back a short time later.

Thought I'd check how much time until the end of class, she said.

And?

You know how we get an entire 12-hour day compressed into just over three hours? They're doing something like that here. Only 15 minutes have gone by, but the timer on my console said we've been here for two hours.

That means more time to work, Alex said.

So what have you guys found?

Quite a few things, Alex said. We'll have to organize our work rather than just jump in like this.

Why don't we do that right now, Jared said.

I'll get Cynthia, Irene said. Something I saw says I should go find her, not one of you guys. She vanished into the clone.

Minutes later they were all reunited in the room just off the library.

"It's a good thing I went after her," Irene said. "Their restrooms are segregated into boys and girls, and she was in the Girls Room."

"I was noting everything that's different," Cynthia said. "It has the traditional segregation between boys and girls, and a whole lot less furniture than we see." She smiled. "I checked the rugs, too. We'd all have rug burns if we used them like we do here."

"So this isn't a real clone," Jared said. "I guess we'll have to ask Mr. Saunders if this was deliberate."

"Probably," Irene said. "This way they could see what we do, when we had the chance."

"Let me see if ... yes," Alex said, "I can e-mail him from here. I'll do that."

"Makes me think this isn't really part of Claiborne," Jared said.

"The floor doesn't have radiant heat," Cynthia said. "All of the floors in Claiborne are heated. It keeps your butt warm when you're on your back."

"While he does that," Jared said, "let's see about listing what we want to do."

By the time class ended they had a response from Mr. Saunders. "You'll be granted access to the actual clone on Wednesday," Alex read. "The changes you made to the Parents Version were deemed minor and acceptable to the system."

"So after all of that talk," Cynthia said, "they didn't trust us."

"Why should they?" Irene asked. "We're inexperienced Programmer Trainees messing with a complex system. This was a lesson."

"Yeah," Jared said, "to be careful." He considered the list they'd made. "All right, I guess the first thing we put on here is to figure out how to isolate our changes so we can study them and make them bulletproof."

Irene nodded. "The most frightening thing in the world is a programmer or system administrator who wants to tinker with a production system. They don't realize that production pays the bills, and as long as production is running properly, those bills, and your paycheck, get paid."

"Good points. So we just got a lesson we should take to heart." Alex closed his session. "I think it's time to go home."

The others looked at the clock. The last class was just ending.

"Funny thing, though," Alex said as they walked up the stairs to the main room of the library. I'm not feeling a certain urge that I normally have this time of day."

"Me, neither," Cynthia said. "Though I suppose if we just wait a few minutes..."

"Or we could just get dressed and leave," Irene said. "Look, nothing against you guys, I enjoy sex, but there's more to life than humping each others' bellies."

"Something the gal who first created this should have learned." Jared crossed the halls to his locker and began pulling on his clothes.

"Congratulations," Cynthia said as she got dressed too. "We're now adults." When the others looked at her she shrugged. "Our hormones aren't doing the thinking for us. At least not any longer."

"I'm not sure if I like that," Jared said. "I like having my little head do half my thinking for me."