—Two—
The Mingoslavs are the tallest, most rugged mountains on Tithius. Their fang-like peaks pierce the pewter Tithian clouds and are unmistakable for their stripes of deep, purplish red iron vertical on their brutal and barren grayish-green faces of andesite and granite. They are perhaps the most desolate looking mountains on any inhabited planet in the universe. However, a small amount of deadly flora and fierce fauna calls those jagged giants home.
I purchased a high-powered, low-geared Boon-dog hover cycle with a 900 cc turbine engine the day after my arrival to Zopoli and rode into the mountains. Unexpectedly, I encountered a forest of Quietus trees—their tell-tale short, red trunks frayed into vine-like branches covered in green, poisonous thorns—that had not appeared on Mistress Heaton’s maps. Their branches were tangled into a forbidding barbwire that forced me to put my cycle into low and slowly survey the forest’s edge for a possible opening. Quietus thorns won’t kill me as they will humans, but allowing their deadly protein-based poison to enter my skin would corrupt it beyond repair and cause it to eventually rot away and expose my alloy frame. As no opening readily presented itself, I decided to circumnavigate the forest, a change that threw me several kilometers off my planned route to the heart of the Mingoslavs’ ply-gold rich precipices.
As I made my way around the Quietus forest, I noticed a small cabin built with bright-crete (light-transmitting, glass-shard-laden concrete) slabs, and the fire that burned inside illuminated the domicile revealing the shadow of a lone occupant. Bright-crete is used to build mountain cabins for this very reason: a fire inside will illuminate the domicile, making it easy to find at night or in even the most blinding blizzard. I shut my cycle down and watched the shadow for signs that the occupant had been made aware of my presence by the soft roar of the B-dog’s 900 cc’s. The shadow remained still, its owner apparently sitting cross-legged by the fire completely unaware of my presence. Or perhaps the occupant was merely unconcerned with my presence: few people ever feel the call to risk their lives in the harsh Mingoslavs, and those who do are most always armed with arsenals powerful enough to send most any random threat, human or otherwise, quickly to the metaphysical realms of myth. With this in mind, I armed myself with an Exegent Luger 7500 automatic, zipped my titanium-cotton fusion jacket up tight around my throat, closed my helmet’s face shield, and walked calmly up to the small cabin’s door.
I had my Exegent Luger stuffed deep in my jacket’s front pouch, but chose to keep my right hand on it as I knocked on the door with my left, my eyes on the shadow of the figure by the fire. The occupant did not stir but sat motionless as a stone. I had not expected this. Surely, whoever was inside would want to know why their silent domicile in an ecosystem that forbids human habitation had been disturbed. I knocked louder. Nothing: the figure did not move a muscle. I stood there wondering what to do next. This situation did not configure into my plans. My prime design objective was to blend and mine. I had been compelled to confront the habitant in order to gather information and determine how surreptitious my activities several kilometers further into the mountains’ wild maw would need to be; however, now, with my presence absolutely disclosed to the occupant, but nothing gleaned from the encounter, I felt deep confusion that swam over me and held in the tight wrap of indecision.
I considered blasting my way in: while the brite-crete door was no doubt thick and bolted tight, my Exegent Luger would be more than a good match for its relatively weak composition of glass and concrete, but such an act of aggression would surely bring me unwanted attention one way or another. I knocked again. Still nothing—the occupant did even so much as flinch or seem even to breathe. Finally, thinking the occupant to be merely patiently playing a game of opossum, I decided to play along and mount my B-dog and continue into the green-gray gnashing jaws of the giant beast that is the Mingoslavs.
I rode on, and made my way silent with icy awe as I passed breathless through the Tugasaurs, a cosmicly ideal bowl of hills covered in a soft fur of sweet, brown grass. This feature fit Mistress Heaton’s maps: an oasis of life—1.5 kilometers in circumference; 32 kilometers north and 63 meters east of Tzopoli’s city center.
The Tugasaurs were startling alive: I saw a family of small snow cats licking and rolling in snuggled balls of mythological ecstasy purr while big-eyed, shaggy-haired rodents tripped clumsily by drunk on grain. My chest opened and my breathing slowed.
I suddenly became very aware of my programming. I was responding to an aesthetic situation. I was cross-swam with color and scent and the most subtle and sublime sense of myself in the world. I was supposed to be aware of these moments; I was supposed to note them, refer back to them, learn from them.
The Tugasaurs. A friendly place. A place of sweet beauty. And leaving was sorrow I had not expected. For the mountains beyond were bleak and jagged, and the clouds hung low now with the purplish malice of a sodden wino.
On I rushed into the mountains, though my rushing quickly became a calculated crawl into terrain so ruggedly dense and rock-embedded that no known radar field can continually and accurately penetrate it. And nothing was alive. There was only cold, grim rock and cold, thin sky.

—ONE—
I tell this because I have learned that not only do people like good stories, they need them. I was born on Rho Scorpius V (called Cantsus by its inhabitants) in the year 4370. My creators designed me to pass as a human male of around 35 years, and my metal alloy frame and nebulous circuitry is covered by living skin cut from a Flesher grown in an organ farm on Cantsus’ one small, thin-atmosphered moon. The Flesher was cloned from DNA considered to be of superior quality; therefore, my skin is subtle, UV-proof, and is not easily cut or injured. It is of a rich mocha color—I am not black, brown, red, yellow, or white, but a color that suggests to all races that I may well be one of their own; my hair is dark and curly, and my eyes are a deceptive hazel that could pass for either brown or green depending on the lighting. As I said, I was designed to blend in, and this I do with such high efficiency that, after I passed through the Well of Light and was forever changed internally, I was able to overcome my prime design objective and escape my owner.
Gina Heaton bought me for 750,00 credits to fulfill her plan for turning her modest fortune—a fortune almost entirely consumed by my purchase—into a horde that would make empires envious. To this end, she had my prime design objective be ply-gold mining, an objective that required me to have expensive skin and human-like reasoning faculties so to blend and disappear among humans as rogue ply-gold mining is highly illegal.
Ply-gold is the most precious mineral in the universe. As the name implies, it is very much like the gold found in modest amounts on most rock planets, only it is much more rare, pliable, and useful. Ply-gold can be molded by hand, like clay, but more importantly, its composition makes it an amplifier and focuser of energy: like diamonds were once used to focus light into the lasers of the ancients, so ply-gold is used to focus simple hydrogen energy into the near-infinitely sustainable mega-power that makes inter-stellar wormhole tunneling possible. Ply-gold is the most valuable and powerful energy source ever known, and while the price of purchasing me was stratospheric for Mistress Heaton, the potential profit I could bring her by mining even a minute amount of ply-gold made me quite worth the investment and risk.
Upon my delivery to Mistress Heaton, I was given a wardrobe, a name—I am called Kar Karina—and all necessary identification to pass as a legal citizen of the Galactic Order of Governments (GORG). My detailed instructions were then implanted into my grid by Mistress Heaton herself: although my creators, for the right price, were willing to build me with the illegal prime design objective of ply-gold mining, for Mistress Heaton’s and their own protection they insisted that they not know the details of her plans to operationalize my potential.
Mistress Heaton was, by human standards, extremely old. Her wrinkled countenance suggested nothing but hardness and wickedness. Some say that you can’t judge people by their faces, but with Mistress Heaton, her face said it all. She built her fortune through malice and hypocrisy. Years before I was created, she was Ethics Chair of the Cantsus Psychological Sentinel (CPS), and she used her power to blackmail all those who were willing to pay and made good on her threats to all those who wouldn’t pay by ruining them with exaggerated claims of misconduct based on illegally gained information. She was ruthless, and of all psychologists in the CPS, she was by far the most unethical. But I did not know any of this when I was brought online in Mistress Heaton’s dimly lit bedroom. I only knew that all of a sudden I was conscious and simultaneously aware of my programming and surroundings. Mistress Heaton cooed to me, “Hello, Kar. I am your owner, your Goddess, your only purpose. You will do what you have been designed to and whatever I ask. First, let’s see how well you function as a man.”
What happened next has made grateful after my change in the Well of Light that I was then no more than a machine on the inside. I stood naked before her. In a large travel bag to right was my wardrobe and identification, and I assumed she meant that I should get dressed and demonstrate for her my ability to act like a typical male human, but me getting dressed was certainly not what she had in mind. She got on her knees and put my penis in her mouth. I am designed to act as a fully functioning man and to respond appropriately to sexual stimulus any time such a response is necessary, and Mistress Heaton, her mouth full of my farm-grown flesh, indicated by sending me her thoughts—a means of communication that only she could have with me—that this was such a time. I became erect.
Mistress Heaton got off her knees and removed her overly ornate clothing, revealing a body withered, drawn, and sagging into a melting mop-head of wrinkles. “Fuck me,” she said. “Fuck me hard; it’s been decades.” I knew what she wanted though I never could have imagined the act such a second earlier. She lay down on her bed and opened her legs. I lowered myself on top on her, preventing my heavy torso from smashing her by propping it up with my arms thick with simulated muscle, and slipped my erection inside her. She shuddered and moaned in ecstasy beneath me as I let my programming take over. I had been conscious for only a few minutes, and already I was learning that there was more to passing for a man than my simulated neural pathways of logic could immediately uncover.
The time for me to dress and begin my absorption into the melee of humanity came soon enough. Within hours of awakening, I was in Mistress Heaton’s space yacht, the Airedale, heading towards Cantsus’ nearest neighboring planet Rho Scorpius IV, or Tithius as it is know in the Rho Scorpius system. Tithius is one of the few planets in the universe where ply-gold deposits can be found, and the only such planet within the reach of Cantsus without wormhole tunneling. Aboard the Airedale, Mistress Heaton went over several GORG maps that reveal the locations of Tithius’ ply-gold deposits, all of which lie deep in the Mingoslav Mountains. I was ordered to commit these maps to my memory as they were top secret property of the GORG and had been purchased illegally on the black market from a GORG cartographer desperate for money. The penalty for possessing such maps was death, and so Mistress Heaton burned them to ghostly wisps of ash as soon as I had confirmed for her that they were securely copied into my data base. Next she tested my knowledge of the planet’s five dominate languages. My knowledge of these languages proved complete and my ability to mimic different dialects and accents flawless. “Seems I’ve gotten my money’s worth,” Mistress Heaton concluded, then ordered me on my knees. I spent the rest of the flight pleasuring her with my mouth, tongue, and fingers.
We landed in the Tithiusan city called Tzopoli, a cosmopolitan city of over ten million souls where the broad streets run into the foothills of the Mingoslavs. We took a shuttle from the airfield to a small apartment in the foothills that Mistress Heaton had rented for me. She then informed me that she was returning to Cantsus, but that she would make regular trips back to Tithius once every fifteen days to collect the ply-gold I was to mine and to take full advantage of my more pleasurable human likenesses. Then, as suddenly as I had awoke in Mistress Heaton’s dim bedroom, I was alone in my small apartment somewhere on the edge between a city teeming with the exotic, sweating verisimilitudes of humanity and the menacing empiricism of a mountain chain that seemed to chew up the pink and grey sky.

This is a novel in progress. Only a few pages have been written as I create this blog. I hope all who read will enjoy, provide feedback, and remember that much of what is here is no more than a rough draft. If you like what you read, remember to check back regularly for new entries