Chapter 1

I was in the middle of having sex with Alex when I had this tremendous idea that would solve the problems we'd been having on our project. Right about then, though, he flexed his hips and rubbed a particularly sensitive set of nerves deep in my channel. There was no way I was going to stop and tell him my thoughts. Besides, my mouth was full of someone else. Fortunately for me, I'm good at multi-tasking, especially at times like that. All of my attention went down to my middle, right where Alex was so deliciously plugging me up, but I had enough left to remember my idea.

It's not true that you don't think when you climax. But you're not thinking of what to have for dinner, or the solution of that differential equation, or even the proper way to deconstruct James Joyce (as if that's possible). No, you're focused on your feelings and that wonderful rush to completion, especially when you hang there just on the edge, and it goes on and on without you being able to quite get there, and then ... and then suddenly you're over the top and everything is soaring, and your body is exploding, and then ... and then it's a gentle slide into relaxation, and yet you're poised to do it again, but he can't as he's popped, and the two of you are holding each other, as close as two people can get.

And as Alex softened and pulled back, the boy in my mouth took his place. This is normal at Claiborne. We didn't have the deep emotional bond that I've formed with the boys, but it was sex, and he was hard and strong and eager, and ... and he pushed me right back up that slope until I peaked in a wave of passion that made me cry out.

Jared was the antidote, and when he came into the picture, or into me, which is more accurate, all semblance of a poised, collected, mature 17 year-old girl vanished out the nearest window. We stared into each others' eyes, and we did our best to turn my insides into mush and his hardness into a soft piece of tissue.

Sex with Jared is like sex with Alex, only more so. We've been doing it on a regular basis for two years. I was his Orientation partner, and we still had that bond. I wasn't his first (I think), and he definitely wasn't mine, at least at Claiborne. It is, after all, virtual reality perceived directly by the brain and not through a computer monitor like in the old days of just a few years before. Physically he was my first, in Denver, a night that I'll cherish the rest of my life.

If there was one thing I'd learned, it was to just let things happen. I felt confident that all of my physical needs were about to be met, and as he moved, and I moved in counterpoint, they were. Twice I shivered through a release. The first was a small one, like a flicker of lightning. The second was a long time coming (no pun intended) and the build-up was worth it. It was one of those toes clenching, fingers hooking, back arching, mouth open climaxes where nothing else existed. You don't think, you don't breathe, you just feel as every bit of tension is wiped from you in one long ecstatic wave of pleasure after another.

You're there when he peaks—I definitely came first because of all the earlier stimulation—and you're a chalice for his own completion. You share that moment, and for the next bit you drift together, two souls joined as one.

Alex made a joke one day about a dongle and a socket, and I countered that this was a true example of 'plug and play'. He has a nice dongle that fits my socket very well, and though we're not supposed to compare boys, it's natural that we do. Alex has a nice dongle, but I like Jared's even better. Shannon, I know, likes Jared's, too, but they're brother and sister, so she settled on Alex, and now likes to discuss how well the two of them fit together. Personally I think Alex provides something Shannon lacks: a bedrock for her fiery nature.

Anyway, we finally came back to earth and headed for the showers. They're available in any restroom in Claiborne, and with a little effort they can hold two. Sometimes you get up to something while in them, but usually you're just in, clean up, and out. There are a few other things you do for your health and well-being—as a little girl I never thought taking a pee would be good for my sexual health—and then you head for class. Or in our case, the computer lab.

There are a lot of things you don't have to do at Claiborne, such as P.E., lunch, and cleaning up after sex. You're in a virtual reality, and so the food you eat doesn't feed your body, your running and exercising doesn't tone your body, and germs can't migrate back and forth between your urinary tract and your vagina, but the school officials insist that we act as if this was the real world. They want us to practice those good habits we'll need out there, and so we pee, shower, and so on. Of course sometimes there's no time to do that, and the classroom smells of sex, but that, too, is part of the 'Claiborne Experience' as we've taken to calling it. Besides, there's some antique Federal Law that says there will be a lunch period and a P.E. period in high school, even if nobody benefits.

After our showers we gathered in the computer lab. This is a separate room off of the lower level of the library. There's a 4:1 time compression here, and so what we would perceive as 90 minutes was really six hours. And since we're already in a 3:1 compression at Claiborne—how else do we fit our 12-hour school day in four hours—this means we're mentally perceiving 16 or more hours, but still only spend four in the Construct.

Shannon, as usual, didn't join us. She wasn't even in school, she was testifying in front of a Federal Grand Jury about racketeering and things like that. It had something to with the people where she and her mother had lived, but I wasn't supposed to talk about such things.

"I think we've been using the wrong approach," I said after Irene closed the door. I took a satisfying breath. I love sex, but the urge to have sex at Claiborne—induced by the program we were studying—was enough to drive one to distraction at times like this. When the door closed, that induced urge was cut off.

"We've been treating this as ordinary code, when we know it isn't. We're looking at online code, and it can be argued that it really doesn't have a start or an end, it has a middle that cycles round and round, but it isn't a discrete program that runs from start to finish all of the time."

"Great," Alex said. "So how are we supposed to get a handle on things?"

"Through the inputs," I said. "We're all input/output devices, when you think about it. Our perceptions of things are what we can alter. We interact with the Construct—we all know that—and we have to treat Claiborne as another form of input." That was my great idea. "So let's have two of us drop into the clone and see what we can change, and the other two can monitor the flow of information through the program."

Alex wanted to draw straws, but I insisted he and Irene monitor because they're better with computers than Jared or me. So we went under the hood. In a blink we were in the familiar halls of Claiborne. But if you knew what to look for, you could tell the differences: the alcoves had study carrels instead of couches, there were two signs for the restroom, not one (and no showers), and when we looked in the classrooms, everyone was clothed.

<Irene here — do something>

I looked at Jared. He shrugged, and took me in his arms for a kiss. This wasn't your typical high school joining of the lips, either. This was a mouth open, tongue-exploring, hands squeezing, high-voltage kiss that stopped my breathing, closed my eyes, and brought my foot up off the floor as my body tried to clench around him.

The idea was to attract attention, and we didn't, at least not at first. There always seemed to be a teacher or a handful of students in the halls of the average high school. Not so at Claiborne; everyone was in class. But eventually a pair of teachers came along, and that's when we attracted attention. Maybe it was our kissing, maybe it was his hand up under my skirt (and inside my panties!) and my hand inside his fly, but they stopped right over us.

"What's going on here?" the man asked.

That's one of those questions that really doesn't need an answer, so I wonder why they ask it. The girl's skirt is around her waist, her panties are around her knees, and the boy's got the heel of his hand on top of her mound where it can rub her clit while his fingers probe her insides. She's got his dick out and is stroking it. For all intents and purposes they're joined at the lips. They're only seconds away from being joined elsewhere, and you have to ask what they're doing?

Jared smiled up at them. "Fucking."

I don't think that was what they expected. The woman yanked my skirt down, though Jared didn't remove his hand. She'd averted her eyes from his hardness, though I'd seen her check it out first. And the man reached for Jared's arm to pull him away.

<me — freeze it and return us>

Everything stopped. After a second or so we were back in the computer lab. I was breathing hard, turned on by what we'd been doing, and I couldn't help but notice that Jared's dick looked a lot longer and thicker than it did in its relaxed state. I was impressed; 10 minutes before we'd been making love, and here he was, ready to go again.

"All right," Irene said, studying a screen displaying lines of code. "I think we've got something. Notice how it branches right here." She tapped a couple of lines of code. "This is a module we hadn't catalogued before, and..."

Jared and I spent the rest of the session jumping in and out of the clone. Each time we tried something outrageous: me, naked, in the Boys restroom rubbing myself; a viewpoint so girls could see boys in their locker room; sex movies in the a/v projectors in each of the classes; changing all of the books in the library to erotica (for the girls) and porn (for the boys). Each time Irene and Alex tagged the modules that we had to modify or that were accessed. By the time we were done we pretty much knew how the main program would react to something unexpected.

We spent the rest of the afternoon discussing what we'd learned. The only break was during P.E. which we took at different times. I don't know about the boys (or Irene), but there are times I'm in the mood for some anonymous activity, and the shower in the gym is perfect for it. You turn on the spray, and a dozen naked wet bodies start rubbing, touching, and, um, interacting. You don't know who is doing it with you, or their gender, but mist, heat, hard nipples, hard dicks, wet lips, and wet pussies all merge into a continuous giving and receiving. By the time you get out of there you've come two or three times, and you're both tired and all charged up.

I had one more class that day, Economics, and I had a dismal time (that's a joke). We were modeling what happens when a business offers a new product, all of the costs beforehand, and how to set the price. It's all wrapped up in marginal utility and math a little more advanced than simple addition and subtraction. Econ makes my head hurt, and I'm not the only one.

I celebrated my release from classes by trying my best to rape a boy. I didn't (by definition you can't rape a willing participant), but I did have my wicked ways with him. He, in turn, did his best to bathe my tonsils with his juices, but from the other end. I swear there was no way he could get it any deeper in me, though we both tried. I almost hated to clean up, put my clothes on, and go home.