Monster Girl Base 4 Chapter 5

I looked around the pockmarked ground in search of the NAMSHUBs and settled on the five person tent. It had survived with only a few easily fixable holes, and everything inside seemed like it was okay. The supplies were still stacked in a corner near the front so I poked around, but the glasses weren’t there.

Outside, Floppy let out a dramatic toot as Emma and Fela gave his leg a break and worked on his other wounds. There were nicks and cuts along with the gouge in his back leg that had already started to scab over. He shook his head and let out several long whines before he buried his face into the ground and whimpered.

“The pocket dimension is secure,” Raz said as she strolled up to me.

The alien woman’s naked body swirled with green and purple that made her look like an oil slick, and her emerald eyes stared at me unblinkingly as she pointed to the matching canopy above us. The thin barrier would hopefully keep us safe from any more bots, and I was grateful that it seemed to be working like sunglasses lenses as it filtered out sunlight.

“Thanks,” I wrapped my arms around her smooth waist and stole a kiss. “You did a great job.”

“I am glad that you are pleased,” the alien woman said. “Though I believe that you need to have your wounds addressed.”

“Are you okay?” I asked and took a step back to study her.

“I do not suffer wounds like humans,” the beautiful woman said with a tilt of her head. “They were unable to puncture me.”

“Good,” I said and couldn’t resist the urge to run a hand down her slick skin. “At least one of us came out without any injuries.”

Floppy gave an indignant blast in response to what I’d said and then laid his head on the ground again with a dramatic sigh. Emma was almost finished with the last stitch, but the wooly mammoth looked like he was about to get up and run away.

“You have done well, Floppy,” Fela said from next to his trunk. “Good Floppy.”

The saber-tooth woman had suffered a few injuries of her own, but she’d moved quickly enough as she twisted and leapt around the bots that none of the wounds were deeper than small scratches. Some of the fur on her left calf was scraped off and dried blood stuck to what was left, but that looked like the worst of it.

Floppy laid his massive head in the cat-woman’s lap, closed his eyes, and then opened his mouth in a huge yawn. His breathing slowed as he drifted off into sleep, and Fela stroked his fur while she hummed a pretty song that I couldn’t understand.

“He’s all good to go,” Emma said.

She washed her hands with the rest of the alcohol before she bent down to survey her work. The stitches were perfectly even and held the torn skin together, but she still ran a feather light touch over them to make sure that they would stay in place.

“So he’s going to be okay?” I asked as I walked over to the two women.

I leaned down to look at the perfect stitches that Emma had made, and winced as the wound on my side ached. The blood on the gash had dried, and every time I moved it tugged on the scab that was trying to form.

“He’ll be just fine,” the Victorian era woman said. “But we’ll have to sterilize that wound a few times before it heals completely.”

She pointed a delicate finger at my wound and gave me a stubborn look that warned me not to argue with her. There was no use trying to change her mind, especially when she was right, so I nodded my head in agreement.

“This is gonna be fun,” I muttered.

“You two can suffer together,” Emma waved a hand at the sleeping wooly mammoth and smiled.

She pointed towards the table and followed after me as I trudged over to our outdoor dining room. The white wooden chair groaned when I plopped down into it, but it held together as I shifted until I was comfortable.

“Alright, let’s do it,” I grumbled and looked up at Emma. “But I don’t think it’ll need stitches.”

I trusted the beautiful woman to sew me up as neatly as she had Floppy, but the idea of being stitched back together like a quilt sent shivers up my spine. The jerky movement pulled at the wound and opened a few of the smaller tears I had in my hands and forearms. Blood bubbled up but the little dings weren’t big enough to produce too much, so the little droplets sat on my hands like they were an audience watching a medical procedure.

“Hopefully it won’t come to that,” the blue eyed woman said and knelt down in front of me.

Her cheeks turned pink when she motioned for me to take my shirt off, and my pants grew tighter as I watched the petite woman slip between my legs so that she could see the wound on my side. The pain became secondary as I tried to think of anything but my need to escort her back into the tent and fuck her brains out, and her gentle caress as she checked the gash wasn’t helpful.

“So how bad is it, doc?” I asked to distract myself.

“It doesn’t look too bad,” Emma leaned back on her heels and pulled out a jar of moonshine. “But I still want to treat it so it doesn’t get infected.”

“Okay,” I balled my hands into fists on my thighs. “Go ahead and do it. I’m ready.”

“It shouldn’t be that bad,” the ebony haired woman laughed. “But if you survive, I’ll give you a kiss.”

“That’s good motivation,” I chuckled.

I watched as she poured a bit of the moonshine onto a rag, and then bit the inside of my cheek when she applied it to the gash on my side. The almost pure grain alcohol hit my wound and burned like the heat of a thousand fucking suns, but then Emma leaned over to blow on it and the pain disappeared. I chafed against my pants as the unintentionally sexy woman put her hands on my thighs for leverage, and she gave me a saucy smirk when she saw the goosebumps erupt along my stomach.

“All better?” she asked as she pushed herself to her feet.

“Y-yeah,” I stuttered. “Much better.”

“Good,” the ebony haired woman said before she claimed a kiss. “I’m glad you didn’t have any more serious injuries.”

“Me, too,” I said as I forced myself to focus on the tasks ahead. I still had a lot of work to do now that I’d been treated, and the daylight had already started to wane. My watch showed that it was already well into the afternoon, so I pushed myself to my feet and resumed the search for my NAMSHUBS.

The last place that I’d seen them had been on the side of the cabin before it collapsed. The wood from the collapsed wall had mostly been cleared, but I remembered that I’d used the NAMSHUBs for our movie night, and I was pretty sure that I’d left them next to the futons when we’d finished with the last flick.

I crouched down next to the pile of bedding so I could look through it. The pillows didn’t have any weird bulges, but there was a lump in the first blanket that I pulled out. I shoved my hand inside and felt around until my fingers closed around the lenses.

They still had the attachment that Puck had given me so that we could watch the library of movies, but that was easy enough to take off. It had a dent on one side, but it looked like it should still work, and I quickly turned my attention to the lenses of my NAMSHUBs. They didn’t have any scrapes, so I slid them onto my face and hoped that they’d turn on.

“Good afternoon,” the friendly female tone said when they booted up.

“Good afternoon, Abby,” I replied. “This is Dave Meyer. I would like you to do a diagnostics check, please.”

“Of course, Dave Meyer,” the device said. “Your blood sugar levels are a little low, and your adrenaline is higher than the average male human of your age group. I suggest a few moments of meditation to lower your pulse as well.”

“I’m alright, but thank you,” I walked over to where I’d left the killer bot. “I have something that I want you to take a look at first.”

“If your heart rate continues at this pace, it could lead to a major pulmonary incident,” the computer generated voice told me.

“It’s no big deal,” I responded. “I just got out of a fight and I’m a little sore. I’m sure my pulse will go back to normal in a few minutes.”

“If you were in an altercation, Dave Meyer, then I should inform the authorities,” Abby said.

The right lens of the glasses lit up with the number for emergency services, but the call couldn’t connect. The phone emblem blined a few times, turned red, and then faded away to be replaced with an ‘out of service’ icon.

“Abby, I don’t think there’s anyone there to answer your call,” I said with a shake of my head. “And I’m pretty sure killer robots aren’t on the list of things the cops know how to handle.”

“If that is your desire,” the automated voice said.

“How about you run a diagnostic on yourself,” I said as I nudged the dead drone with my boot. “I want to know if you’re functioning on all cylinders and what exactly Rigs programmed you to do.”

“If that is your desire, Dave Meyer,” the female robot said again.

I tried to keep up with the display, but both lenses of the glasses were filled with numbers, pictures, and the ones and zeros that computers communicated with. The diagnosis ran so fast that I had trouble trying to latch onto anything. I recognized some photos of maple trees that I’d seen in the last world, but those were replaced with some geological study that I didn’t understand.

“Diagnostic complete,” the NAMSHUBS said after a few minutes of dizzying data. “I am ready to comply with your requests.”

“Are all of your systems running?” I asked.

“Affirmative, Dave Meyer,” Abby replied. “All of my systems are at full capacity. I am not connected to the internet, but I have seven point four exabytes of media and software data to pull upon for queries.”

“Woah!” I said with a bright smile. “That’s a lot of data. So, what can you do? Other than find me cheaper ways to get around the last world.”

“My systems include identification of local flora and fauna, chemical and biological surveys, and I am able to evaluate sources of food and water,” the robotic voice responded. “I can also hold the biological profiles for up to five million individuals. Currently, Dave Meyer is the only occupant of my database.”

“What does a biological profile look like?” I asked and glanced over at Fela.

“I can maintain records of blood sugar, cholesterol, weight, and vitamin levels,” the robotic woman said.

“Nice,” I replied. “You said you can identify flora and fauna?”

“Yes, Dave Meyer,” Abby said. “The current species in front of my camera is a saber-tooth humanoid. She seems to be of mating age, and her iron levels are lower than I would expect to see in a cat her size.”

“She probably needs to eat,” I muttered. “Abby, that’s Fela. Can you add her profile to your database? I’d like to make sure that she doesn’t get sick.”

“I am unsure what the levels of a saber-tooth humanoid should be, Dave Meyer,” the feminine voice said. “I will add a profile for Fela, and after I have gathered more information to create a baseline, I will be able to better judge whether her levels are acceptable.”

“Sounds good to me,” I said. “Can you make one for Emma, Acrasis, and Floppy, too?”

I looked at each of them in turn so that the robotic glasses could register each individual person and waited until a new profile was created on the left lens before I moved on. The folder for each profile had yellow warning labels on them to let me know that Abby still didn’t have a baseline for anyone, and the robotic woman reiterated that after she’d finished each one.

“Is there anything else that you desire, Dave Meyer?” Abby asked after she’d logged the nutrient levels for Raz.

I wasn’t sure that the digital helper could even intuit healthy levels for a non-carbon based lifeform, but she hadn’t given me any extra warnings, so I decided not to ask.

“Yeah,” I said and turned back to the dead drill bot. “Can you tell me if I can get this thing working again?”

“I will scan it now,” the feminine computer voice said, and I watched as lasers emitted from the corners of the glasses.

The bright green and blue lights scanned over the dome shaped bot before a display popped up on my right lens. The lasers took their time, and the image on my glasses became more 3D until an exact replica of the machine slowly twirled around in my line of sight.

“Wow, that’s amazing,” I whispered, and watched the hologram tilt and shift so that I could see the entire thing.

“I am unable to confirm the viability of the machine,” Abby said after her scan was complete. “I will need to connect to a satellite before I can find the drill’s design plans.”

“Right,” I muttered.

I tilted my head back to look up at the barrier that covered our pocket dimension. It was made from the beautiful Raz, and I wasn’t sure if she’d be able to let the communication from a satellite through if there were even any up there. I would probably have to risk another attack from the killer robots if I wanted to find out if there were any working satellites left.

The decision was easy since the sun had started to fall towards the horizon, and soon I’d grabbed some of the rope that I’d salvaged from the cabin, stuffed it into a canvas backpack, and grabbed a jar of water.

“Where are you going, Dave Meyer?” Fela asked from where she lounged next to Floppy.

“Abby said she needs to connect to a satellite,” I said. “I’m hoping this dimension has one.”

“You’re going to leave the bubble?” Emma looked up from her inventory list with wide eyes. “But there could be more of those things out there.”

“I know,” I said with a reassuring smile. “But if we want to figure out how to make that drill work for us, then Abby needs to get the specs. And she can’t do that if she’s not connected to the satellite.”

“I will go with you,” Acrasis said after she finished eating a jar of jerky. “I will be able to protect you if there is another attack.”

“Fela and I will stay here with Floppy,” Emma said. “But make sure you two are back before dark.”

“We will,” I said before I leaned over to give her a kiss on the cheek. “I’m not even sure if there are any satellites up there for Abby to connect to. It seems like this world was abandoned a long time ago.”

“And left to the machines, like my world,” Emma frowned. “Please be careful. And watch out for those drill bots. They adapted to everything else we threw at them, there’s no telling if they can overcome the slime that Raz used.”

“I will ensure that Dave Meyer is safe,” the unblinking alien slime-girl said with what was probably meant to be an imitation of my smile.

“I know,” the Victorian era woman replied. “Now hurry up. The sun won’t be out for much longer, and there’s no telling what’ll come up when it goes down. And there could be another earthquake at any minute.”

“We’ll keep an eye out,” I said. “Alright, Raz. Let’s go.”

I shifted the bag on my shoulder, glanced at Fela and Emma, and then led Acrasis out of her protective shield. The slime stuck to my skin for a second like I was breaking through plastic wrap, but then I broke through and started to pick my way down the steep incline to the valley below. I found a small trickle of water flowing over the bots, and was glad that we hadn’t completely blocked it when we threw the machines out of our pocket dimension.

“The water in this stream is potable,” Abby informed me when I stared at the clear liquid. “There are elevated levels of iron and other minerals, but it is not enough to harm a human body.”

“Great,” I responded. “Though we’ll probably have to move the bots before we actually use it again.”

“Where would you like to go to connect to the satellite, Dave Meyer?” Raz asked.

Her emerald green eyes scanned the junkyard around us, and I smiled when she blinked every few seconds. The movement was a mirror image of the slow motion that Fela did when the cat-woman wanted to tell me she loved me, and it was cute to see the alien woman try to adapt. She even took a breath in and out a few times, though I was pretty sure she hadn’t given herself lungs.

“I think we need to go to the tallest mound,” I said and scanned the junk piles. The one that grabbed my attention was only a few feet taller than the ones next to it, but it had what looked like a path on it.

“That one is the tallest,” the slime woman confirmed and pointed to the hill that I’d just spotted.

“Yep, and it’s practically got a road for us,” I said.

I had to watch my step as I made my way towards the mound, but Raz was able to easily climb over the computers, cabinets, and broken chairs. One of the damned recliners almost tripped when I started to pay more attention to the sway of her hips than to my own footing, but I caught myself and forced myself to focus. I made pretty good time across the debris after that, it was a trait that I’d picked up from junkyard visits with my Sol when I was younger, and soon we’d reached the top of the highest mound.

The canyon stretched out as far as I could see, though there were flat surfaces near us and skyscrapers on the horizon, and I was pretty sure the buildings in the distance were actually Detroit. I noted a few of the drill bots off in the distance, but none of them seemed to notice our presence, and I let out a sigh of relief as they continued to move further away.

“Magpie Search and Find,” Abby said when a green light began to blink in the upper corner of the left lens.

“Nice,” I said. “See if you can find any satellites to connect to. And if there’s any information that you can get on this world.”

“Multiple satellites discovered,” the female robotic voice said. “Updates discovered.”

“How many?” I asked.

“One thousand and thirty three,” the automated tone replied. “Update has begun. Approximate time until completion is one hour.”

“Of course it is,” I grumbled. “Abby, will you be able to keep updating if we go back to the base?”

“I will continue to update as long as I have a connection to the satellite,” the NAMSHUBS responded. “All data within a five hundred mile radius is being retrieved.”

“Five hundred miles?” I gasped. “Damn, Rigs really set us up. Abby, is there a lot?”

“There is a database in what was the QL building of Detroit, Michigan,” Abby said. “The largest amount of information about this world will come from that location.”

I stared out across the canyon at the buildings in the distance and was pretty sure I saw the one that had been the Quicken Loans building in the last world. There had been a store of computers in the basement of that one, but I’d have to look into that the next day since the sun would set in about two hours.

“Alright,” I said as I turned to look at Acrasis. “Abby’s going to keep updating. I’ll have to leave the glasses outside of the circle until she’s done, but we can at least head back to safety.”

“The drill bots that are still active do not seem to be paying attention to us, Dave Meyer,” Raz said as she watched the distant machines. “But I believe that the others will want us to hurry our return.”

“Definitely,” I agreed. “Let’s go back to the base. We’ve got another two hours of daylight to fix the tent and resupply. I might even be able to find that shipping container I want to use for our house.”

The trip down the mound was a little more treacherous than the climb, but soon I’d managed to reach the bottom, and our pocket dimension wasn’t much further. I could see the slow progress of Abby’s update on my glasses and had to hold back a groan at the way it crawled forward.

“Abby, how many servers are there in that building?” I asked when I stopped by the stream to catch my breath.

“There are one hundred and ten servers,” the dutiful robot responded.

“Holy shit,” I gasped. “That’s like the whole fucking building. What the hell could they possibly have in there?”

“I will not be able to answer that question until my update is complete, Dave Meyer,” Abby responded in her flat tone.

“I know,” I said with a roll of my eyes. “How much longer is it?”

“One hour and three minutes,” the automated voice replied.

“Wasn’t it an hour when we were on the mound?” I grumbled. “That was rhetorical. You don’t have to answer that.”

“My update time will be unpredictable due to the unstable connection to the satellite,” the NAMSHUBS said.

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” I grumbled.

“Dave Meyer,” Raz said as we began to climb up to our base. “I can release the dome until the update is complete. If we are attacked, then I will put it back up.”

“That’s a good idea, Raz,” I said. “Especially if we’re going to use the junkyard to replace the stuff that got broken. Maybe you can put the dome back up when we go to bed so that way we don’t have to worry about any unexpected killer robots.”

“That is an easy request,” the alien woman said with a less awkward smile than before.

The thin dome of slime receded as the beautiful woman called it back to herself, and I watched in awe as the green and purple swirls moved around her body. I still wasn’t used to her nippleless breast, but the oil slick color of her skin was mesmerizing, and I looked forward to the next time I would be able to run my hands over her.

“How was your trip?” Emma asked in her soft accent that landed somewhere between southern and British.

“It was good,” I said with a smile while I tucked the NAMSHUBS into my jeans pocket. “Abby is updating so Raz decided to take the shield down. There were a few bots roaming around, but they didn’t pay us any attention and were all moving further away.”

“I wonder what had the other ones in such a tiffy,” the ebony haired woman said with a roll of her eyes.

“No idea,” I said as I shrugged. “But hopefully they’ll leave us alone now. Raz, will you keep an eye out for us? Just in case.”

“Yes, Dave Meyer,” the alien woman responded.

“Thanks,” I said. “How were things here? How’s Floppy?”

“Oh he’s just fine,” Emma said with a roll of her eyes. “He woke up just long enough to eat and drink before he passed right back out. He ate the last of my honeyed apples, too. But I couldn’t tell him no when he set those big brown eyes on me.”

“Worse than a puppy,” I chuckled. “But he did have a tough day so he deserved them. Hopefully we can make some more soon.”

“That would be nice,” the Victorian era woman said. “But we do still have plenty of spiced peaches from the Magpies. And I have seeds so we can start growing our very own strawberries. Now that will be something amazing.”

“It will,” I said with a bright smile. “Do you know where Fela is?”

I hadn’t seen the saber-tooth woman since I’d come back. She wasn’t likely to be taking a nap with Floppy injured and in the open, but I still poked my head into the tent to make sure. I frowned when I didn’t see her and shoved my hands in my pockets with a wince as I looked around the pocket dimension for the missing woman.

“I believe I have found something, Dave Meyer,” Fela said as she appeared over the south edge of our base.

“Something good?” I asked as I walked over to help her up the ledge.

She leapt over the edge of the base with little help from me, and then fell into me so that our bodies were pressed together. I grinned and wrapped my arms around her as she gave me a saucy smirk and then leaned up to lick the tip of my nose.

“I am not sure,” the auburn haired woman said.

Her black tufted tail swished in the air behind and her cat ears twisted around as they picked up every sound in the area like she expected something to jump out at us.

“Is it dangerous?” I asked with a lifted eyebrow.

“I do not think it is dangerous,” she motioned for me to follow her and she led me over to the north side of the base. The mounds of junk that she pointed to were the same ones that I’d just climbed over with Acrasis, and I wondered if we’d barely missed some unseen threat.

“Okay, so what is it?” I asked.

I leaned over to see the dead drill bots were still piled up at the bottom of the canyon. There were no jolts in the earth, so I didn’t think it was another earthquake, and I couldn’t think of anything else that would grab Fela’s attention except for maybe food. I looked closer but there weren’t any trees or animals that any of us could eat.

“On this side of the base, I can smell the usual scents of garbage,” the cat-eyed woman started. “There is decay and fungus, and the sharp tang of metal that has gone bad.”

“Rust,” I provided. “That reddish-orange stuff that forms on old machines is rust. It happens when metal comes into contact with water and oxygen.”

“Yes,” the beautiful saber-tooth woman said with a nod. “I remember from Emma’s world that machines with rust are unable to work.”

“That’s usually true,” I said. “The bots that attacked us did have rust on their outside, but their drills and their undersides were still clean.”

“Yes, I smelled that,” Fela agreed. “And I would expect the smell of fungus and decay around things that have been abandoned.”

I lifted an eyebrow and waited for my girlfriend to tell me what it was that she’d discovered. She knew what garbage and rust smelled like, so she must’ve found something that my nose couldn’t pick up.

“The problem, Dave Meyer,” the auburn haired woman said as she led me back over to the south side of the base. “Is that this area has none of those scents. Everything smells like it did in the stores that we took things from.”

“Like it’s new,” I mused and squinted in the sunset light.

“Yes,” Fela said with a nod. “Why would there be new things if the monkey people have abandoned this world?”

“That is a very good question,” I muttered.

I hadn’t had a chance to look at the south side of the junkyard before the earthquakes had hit the night before, and the attack of the killer robots had taken up all of the time we had planned to use to restock. The smaller mounds that spread out in front of me looked like they might be in some sort of order compared to the chaos on the other side. I saw one pile for electronics, one for couches, and one that looked like it was desks and tables.

“It does look a bit organized,” Emma said as she joined us. “Do you think that there’s still someone here?”

“Maybe,” I said. “One thing’s for sure, this is less like a junkyard and more like a salvage yard. Which means we should be able to find replacements a lot easier than I expected.”

“That would be nice,” the ebony haired woman said. “It would save us a lot of time.”

“But who is adding to the stacks?” Fela asked and put her hands on her shapely hips. “Those things from earlier were like bugs, but this takes a mind. And that could mean that there are still monkey people.”

“I wonder if Abby has finished updating,” I said. “She might be able to tell us what this place actually is, and if there’s anybody left in the world or if we’re just standing in the middle of a junkyard.”

“It has not been an hour, Dave Meyer,” Acrasis said as she came to stand beside Emma.

“No,” I agreed. “But with the shield down, she might’ve found a better connection to the satellite. It’s at least worth a look so I can find out how much longer I have before I can get some answers.”

I tugged the glasses out of my pocket and slipped them onto my face. The update bar was almost finished, but the progress had become as slow as an AOL dial-up. I started to take the NAMSHUBS back off but an urgent message flashed across both lenses before I could.

“This is a Public Service Announcement,” a pre-recorded voice said.

I stared at the words, ‘August 2000’ that appeared next to the PSA. The message blinked a few times and grew bigger on the lenses as if it wanted to grab my attention. I looked at it for a few more seconds as I debated whether I should trust a message from twenty years ago, but the miniature Rigs didn’t walk across the screen to warn me, so I shrugged and stuffed my hands in my pockets.

“Alright,” I said. “Let’s hear this Public Service Announcement.”