Pilar couldn't resist the temptation from calling in the middle of the week.

Despite that they had already agreed to meet in their immersive fantasy
when she had the weekend off. Her curiosity piqued by Moira's ingenuity
and her uncompromising attitude as a dominant. 

She felt she needed to ask several questions. Moira have always accepted
her suggestion when to meet, while she never learned what local time or
even calendar they might use where Moira lived.

 So the time to ask questions would be during the week, since there would be
no opportunity to ask any questions in the weekend,  as Pilar then would  be
nothing more that Moira's beaten and gagged whip meat.

  Pilar was far from being a newbie, she had been playing SM games in the
virtual sims provided by the Darkside community for years. No previous player
had gone to such lengths to provide a convincing scenario or used such
creative scripts to enhance the experience.

Moira's unusual protocols for extending the time they could spend for the
experience added to the sense of urgency. Those were unusual not just from
how they had been programmed,  but also in what they lacked.
A human programmer would frequently include a small signature in any code,
whereas an AI would have added the date for completion or revision.
But here there were nothing!

 Pilar couldn't hold back any longer, she needed to talk and ask her important
questions. The small latency in their contacts have been an early clue. As Pilar
lived practically below the planets portal hub, which in turn was located at the
top of the space elevator. She knew that the delay in the signal were in
Moira's end, and that she were located off planet.

Her main reason for calling was however to learn to know Moira better, since
she knew  nothing whatsoever about her actual identity. 

 While quantum computers once had been used as the most powerful code
breakers, the quantum entanglement technology provided equally safe
communication. If it was tampered with in any way, it would immediately be
known. So while the early age of computers had been a wild frontier with
theft of both data, finances and even identity. Pilar lived in an age where 
the defenses had caught up and until now been on the advantage.

 The means that provided the security could also be used to hide all personal
information in an equally efficient way, and most who used Darkside preferred
to remain anonymous.
But in the kind of virtual games and encounters that Moira and Pilar immersed
themselves in, some safeguards had been modified and used to obfuscate
their personal information. 

She used her implant to send a subtle command to establish a voice link and
waited for Moira to respond. An acknowledgement to the call came shortly
and Pilar asked: “Hello, you are not too busy I hope?”

  “I am having a slow day.” Moira replied and added. “In fact most of my
workdays are slow.” 

“I'm happy to hear your voice and that you're able to take my call, I will not
beat around the bush and go straight to what I got in mind.” 
Pilar had decided to be frank from the start and continued: 
“You have never shared any information about yourself. Though your
knowledge of ancient human history appear to be good. Judging from the
settings that you have created, things felt very realistic and believable.
So I am quite certain that you are human.” Pilar laughed nervously.

“But please I need to know, would you mind telling me who you are,
in reality I mean?”'

 "I'm flattered, but that was a lot of questions at once."
Moira's voice sounded slightly hesitant but also amused.

 "Please don't avoid answering my question. We've spent so much time
together; are you a man?"

  “Oh don't worry about that, I was actually born female. And I am still
female in at least some meaning of the word.”

  “Ah, good. So why not tell me or even better show me. I am certain a
single frame could be sent despite the stellar storm we still got here.”

  “To tell you the truth, I am very old and I sometime identify more with
my work-persona which is radically different compared to the human
woman I used to be.” Moira replied.

 Pilar thought for a moment what she had been hinting of: 
“I see, you work trough a waldo?''

  “Yes.” replied Moira: “A biological one.”

  “That’s cool, we're mostly biotech here also, but I feel certain when I
state that we're not in the same system.”

  “Correct, I know for a fact that we're not. In my end we’re informed
when we use bandwidth to other systems.” Pilar took note of that fact,
but said nothing and let Moira continue talking.

  “I do not need to pay attention at every moment to matters here,  so
I spend quite some part of  my day reading and watching information
from history and what happens in other systems."

“So that's how I come up with scenarios for our scenarios. I took notes
and make designs, if my attention is elsewhere I get an alarm if anything
bad happens locally and can respond in seconds if the need arise."

Pilar hummed in reply to show that she listened, and let Moira continue.

 “I know I must seem hesitant in telling, I could have prepared better if
you had sent a text message with your questions. But lets cut the chase;
 I am a very old person, my chronological age is 240 years.”

 Pilar was taken aback by this unusually high age.  While there had been
some geneering in her society, most was baseline human, only slightly
improved with a boosted immune system and removal of genetic diseases.

 Knowledge gathered on the ICN network had provided a warning example
of stale societies with severe overpopulation on worlds that got nearly
infinite lifespans. This had paved the way for a unanimous decision on
Pilar's homeworld to make immortality illegal.

 This did not prevent the population from still be able to live long and
active lives: “I will also get very old also, micro machines in my body will
keep me healthy for hundreds of years, so age is no issue for me.” said Pilar.

 A blackout cut off the connection briefly, caused by another short flare
from the star. Pilar heard whistling sounds before the connection was
restored, and she could hear Moira describe how the new home system
they had arrived at had turned out to be a nightmare.

 “...So after we spent some decade without being able to settle on the
planet we came for. Our leaders determined that we would not be able to
maintain a technological society on the terrestrial planet. The meteors
that bombard the planet would set us back repeatedly, and with a young
planet we had no chance to hide underground. On top of that.
It had a poisonous alien biochemistry. So we came looking for a young
world to settle, to build and progress on a fresh new world.
But we got the worst deal imaginable. After considering all options, such
as a millennium long flight to another system, we decided to settle the
gas giant planet.”

  “Gas giant industries is not unheard of, but actually settling, how was
that done?”  Replied Pilar in astonishment.

 “You have not guessed how radically different my life is then,” said Moira.
Moira sent an image of what appeared to be a jellyfish swimming over a
coral reef in one ocean.

 Pilar's perspective changed when she realized what she thought were
corals actually were clouds. "This is me." Said Moira.

  “But how do you chat and interact?” 

 "My mind is housed in a biocomputer encased in its own bubble of warm
hydrogen gas." 
"The satellite network is maintained by robots we mine the moons for
minerals; most work done by Van Neumann machines, who can generate
new copies when needed. They are also programmed to keep the
wormhole generator running. So we can communicate with the rest of
humanity and even pretend to be human for a while. I suppose this was
created so that we can stay sane and remember who we once were."

  Pilar were awed. “So that place is safe then?”

 "As safe as anyone can be here, there's a small skeleton crew of baseline
humans needed for hands-on tasks, they get a lot of benefits for their
high risk jobs," explained Moira.

 "The rest of us are as safe as we can get. No meteors make it this deep.
Except for the largest.”
"We experience a shockwave now and then, but nothing major have
happened so far. At most I might get a bit of a headache.” 
Moira giggled softly. “Not that I have any actual head.”

 “So what do you do there then?”

  “I got one rather common job, dealing with He3 gas extraction and trying
to create a more advanced ecology. I do not need to eat much, most of my
energy comes from the dark radiosynthesis spots you can see on my body.”

  “Radio....? You mean photosynthesis?”

  “No radio it is, but it does the same for the body, providing energy.”
 “We who live here use the longer radio wavelengths since this young
planet sends out an extreme amount of radio emission. It is many times
stronger than the weak sunlight that reach down to this depth.”

 Pilar was still amazed. “I am happy to have met you, even though it was
a surprise to learn what and who you turned out to be.” Pilar noted that it
might have come out as a possible insult and quickly added.
“I mean physically!”

  “Well now you understand why I was careful not to reveal any personal
details during the time we got to know each other before we spent time
together in the virtual reality world. I honestly was worried you would get
shocked.”

 "I admit you did surprise and shock me, but only for a brief moment.
Anyway we’re based on biotech here so what you have told is not entirely
alien to me.  We also work intimately together with other critters - some 
have been uplifted to human level intelligence such as parrots and dolphins.”

   Now it was Moira's turn to be surprised: 
“You did bring those species with you?”

 “Er, no.” Replied Pilar. “They’re recreated from genetic code templates, so
there was no ethical barrier to make those changes either. The current
debate on ethics is about AI's.”

“But, can we return to my questions please? How come you have such a
strong interest in BDSM when you're in that body?”

  Even when using her synthetic voice, Moira sounded amused as she replied. 
“Oh I have plenty of time to think and chat in this slow existence here.
I guess they screwed up my mind a bit, making my latent SM interest go
totally twisted when I got downloaded into this body.”

“So believe me when I say that my mind is very human and kinky to match.” 
“And isn't it a natural human trait to wish for things we can't have?”

 “I suppose so,” Pilar replied. While thinking that this did not apply to her
own her situation.

 While there were SM societies as well as people who advertised for play
partners. Pilar desired to experience even more intense situation than
what was reasonable to do in the real world.
As a result, she had settled on the virtual reality roleplay, where her body
would not be mercilessly battered. but still be able to experience the abuse
in every manners except for the real.

 “I have always looked for something more. A search for the ultimate kick,
where there’s no safety, no running away, only danger and having no
control whatsoever.” 
“You provided plenty of that!”

 “But you always kept a bit of distance, I would have been very happy if I
had been forced to give you pleasure!” 

  “I really need to prevent myself from cumming to often, even though
there are safeguards in place to prevent me from affecting the creature
I live in too much."
Sexual activities and arousal are very strong feelings, that could bleed
over and inadvertently trigger the mating behaviour of this gasbag jellyfish.”

 “And that could turn out to be a very messy and strange affair."
Moira laughed with an embarrassed tone. 
“Besides, getting the jellyfish pregnant would interfere with its ability to
extract He3, which would have ruined my quota.”
 Moira phrased this reply carefully as she had a hunch that Pilar would
abandon her after learning that her Mistress was not quite human, so she
pushed on with a description about her work  and what had compelled
her to accept this unusual role in life: 
“Even though I am a rider on what resemble a giant jellyfish, they naturally
collect hydrogen gas into their body to stay afloat.” 

 “We added a few implants that pick up He3 and regularly send a ramjet to
collect the more valuable helium gas. Our energy economy is dependent on this.”

  “Isn’t it cruel to the animal to add implants and force it to behave in a way
that is not natural?” Asked Pilar.

 “Not really, they live their lives much the same way as they naturally would do.
Except that we have information from our weather satellites so we can nudge
them to fly to areas where they actually face less risks than they would in
ordinary life - keeping them away from dangerous storms and lightning.”

 “Compare this to the livestock on old Earth.” Said Moira, and Pilar accessed
information she’d never seen before.  The images and film sequences did show
animals held in cages or fettered indoors for life, never even allowed to see
the Sun. It was not often that Pilar was shocked, but when she found how 
animal food production had been done on Earth and a practice still in use on
some planets she nearly puked in revolution.

 “Ouch!” Said Pilar. “That's very barbaric, even though most livestock isn’t fully
intelligent, why did they never consider the fact that they have feelings?” Pilar
had a very firm view on such matters and added: “Luckily we got no such
concentration camps, we grow meat directly made from the basic chemical
ingredients.”

 “So your world have a lot of chemical industry?” asked Moira. 

 “Not at all, as said we’re biotech, vegetables get grown the way they always been,
while some tweaks have been done on how they pick up nutrients including
nitrogen and phosphorus. While meat, milk and eggs is made directly from tissue in
food production units, wait a second, you do not have biovats?”

  “No we had a rather long flight to get out here, we intended to create hydroponic
farms. But it took time before we did build one later on for those of us who remain
in human form.”

 “We've gotten all information on how to change from mechanical to biotech which
most other worlds adopted during the time we spent in transit.” Moira continued
her abbreviated chronicles.
"But we lack the manpower, economy or industrial base to transit, and with such a
wild system with boulders coming in with a bang on a regular basis, it's not desirable
either. So we’re mainly mech-tech with a fusion economy.” 

“Don't you have copy machinery, to make spare parts?” Asked Pilar.

 Moira used one very forward, almost insulting tone when she replying.
“But get this, the copiators themselves will be copied from the originals and
eventually we get one copy error too much, we’re short on all kinds of
manufacturing machinery so every day is a struggle against entropy.”

 Pilar felt mollified from hearing the problems, and she got the hint from how
Moira phrased the reply that she was frustrated so she tried to bring the discussion
back to basics: “I'm beginning to get the picture, your colony is very new.”

  “Yes this is, and one that’s in a dire situation in several ways.” Moira replied. 

 “How come?”

  “Our founders had a sight on the future, so we did fly to -LkHα 264- a new star
that eventually will become quite like old Sol.”

 But the worlds here turned out to be in the early planetary formation stage.”
And we might have been a bit too optimistic on how to handle the situation.
“Our colony ship took quite a beating on arrival, and we lost some equipment
which was stored on the outside as extra shielding.”

 “The Earth like planet we had our sights on to colonize was less than we hoped
for, we did landfall but decided to leave for space again.”

  “I have wondered about that.” said Pilar with a slow pondering tone.

 “At times your response time was very short, so I suspected that you might have
been a spacer!”

  “That must have been on a time when the portal passed overhead. As for your
question about food, we have mostly have relied on CHON food synthesis.”

 “Oh that’s soooo old time, yet you do have a portal!” replied Pilar.

 “Yes our founders created a causally connected quantum bridge before departure,
and left one connection at Earths node of the network.”

 “We’re a mix of different levels of technology, we salvaged any abandoned
equipment we could find before we departed . I was actually born on the colony ship!”

  Pilar's mouth opened in surprise: “It was a multi generation ship?”

  “Not quite, it was never intended to be, but it became one.” Replied Moria: 
“The colonists was  supposed to spend the trip in slow life, but everyone need to get
out of that now and then to counteract radiation damage.”

  “Your shielding did fail?”

  “Oh not that! If that had happened we all would have fried, it was a fully armoured
ship though, but every material got a bit of low level radioactivity, we do carry a bit
of isotopes inside our bodies as well. So the body need to get some time to repair,
and we did encounter denser interstellar media than expected, so the flight profile
had to be changed and we never did reach the planned top speed. ”

  “Anyway, my parents got sloppy during one of the times when they were awake,
and I was gestated while my mother was in slow life.”

  “That is unusual, several things is....” Pilar's voice trailed off while she checked herself.
But found that she had managed not to say anything un-diplomatic. While she in fact
never heard anything like this before.

 The fact that their ship had been made from materials not entirely free of radioactive
trace products sounded very odd. Any hit by galactic radiation that got trough the
protective layers, would cause a shower of secondaries, but she accepted the notion
and as she had a growing suspicion on where such a haphazard colonisation might
have been started from she asked: “What was your port of origin?”

  Moira replied: “Earth.”

  “Whoa.” Pilar said. “This is the first time I ever been in contact with a person who
been even close to the original world. But it start to dawn to me that your colonization
attempt was somewhat ram-shackled also from the start?”

  “Yes, the deteriorating ecology and climate conditions of the Anthropocene eventually
crashed Earth's economy, just imagine the madness.....”

  “Yes, the ecological disaster on Earth served as a stark reminder of what happens when
a planet let itself be ruled by delusional economists who thought growth can be infinite.” 
Said Pilar.

 “That's as good a summary as anything, anyway.” Moira's simulated voice was so realistic
it even  did draw a breath before continuing.  "Even though much had been accomplished
in space. Earth could no longer support a space program within the solar system. So the
Muskian colony on Mars died with several million colonists, the only ones who managed
to hang on without support from Earth were Callisto and Titan.”
“But they made no contribution either, they had nothing to offer.”

 “The anti-matter and fusion fuel production had been cancelled long ago. Our colony ship
Aotearoa was very slow, powered by a boron reactor, invented by one Aussie physicist
named Hora.”

 “Perhaps we were the last colonists to leave. And with the best stellar systems already
picked by others, we took our chances with one of the few stars that had not been claimed.”
“But we did not wish to go to any settled system, or we would have ended up in a refugee
situation.”

 “I can understand that your people wished to stand on your own feet.”

 Moira did show signs of being depressed from describing their problems and near fatal arrival,
and tried to change the subject by asking how things was done on Pilar's homeworld.

 Pilar replied enthusiastically: “After thousands of years, our world is nearly fully terraformed,
we have been able to walk outdoors for several generations. Recently we got a ZPE reactor,
using a combination of quantum and symmetry breaking grids, but we've not gotten it to
work properly yet, so we still rely on biopower and use anything from algae power and up.”

 Algae are used to keep greenhouse gases down meanwhile we jackstrap the other stuf, else
we would soon have another Earth situation.”

 As she had been given the lead for talking, Pilar decided to ask the most burning question she
had in the back of her mind thorough the conversation:
 “Anyway I see time is passing: My main reason for calling, is an interest for the exploits you
did on the protocols of our shared virtual experience.”

 Pilar's voice had a tone of caution as she continued “I had a look into the details, and your
changes are amazing, but also dangerous. A person could get so caught in the action that they
forget to safe out.”

  Pilar knew that this was a secondary concern, and that Moira would see that also, but decided
to use this as one argument anyway, so she put a positive spin on the matter as she continued: 
“But I also did see some possibilities!”

 “You've told me your people got the ability to transfer a personality to that species that live in 
the atmosphere of your planet. This open one possibility that perhaps have not been considered,
or even thought possible, to completely download a consciousness into another body or machine.
It has never been done. Then again, we never had the need to do anything such either.”
Pilar knew she was babbling, but could not stop herself, when she spotted the amazing part of 
Moira's story.

  As there were no reply, Pilar sensed that Moira still was sullen from thinking on all the maladies
and her life situation, so she pushed for a positive angle to her inquiry.

 “But you got that worked out! Could you send all documentation on this? I don’t know if we
could help out somehow, but knowing a problem is always the first step of finding a solution.”
 “And I do have some odd ideas, but first I need to study this.”

Moira's response came after a brief pause, as if she had been lost in thought. “Oh, those aren't
state secrets; I guess we were a little too busy here to upload that to ICN.”

 “The fact is that we don’t have any counterpart to a university, means that no one had been
interested in publishing either. But I promise I will look into it and send over everything I can get
access to.”

 'Aha!' said Pilar to herself. 'So there's several who been involved with those scripts after all.
Well  that's no big surprise, those were in fact very skillfully done, she seem to have a team that
do very good hacking despite their other problems.' 

 Pilar kept those thoughts to herself and only said enthusiastically: “Great! I have an idea I want
to check on, the way you accessed the dreams and long term memory might have applications.”

  “What, are you going to switch and get dominant yourself? Or intend to mess with someone's
mind?”

  “No certainly not.” Pilar replied hastily. “I do not wish to spill the beans on this yet.”

 “But accessing the dreams is the same or close to the subconscious area.”

 Moria replied firmly: “No it is not, it's located in completely different areas of the brain.”

 Pilar was intent on bringing Moira over to her perspective on this matter: “Yes you're right as
long as we talk about this physically, but from the viewpoint of a distributed program, the
modules are close. And the mind, which indeed is a distributed program with many nodes,
it can be considered to be close, and that's how I am thinking on addressing this question.”

  “I will include all the protocols of this hack, I think I also will be able to send the software used
here that it is based on. It got many repeat iterations so I think it can be compressed to fit in a
neat information package.”

 Pilar thanked Moira for the offer and added: “By the way, I added something of my own to the
scripts during our last synesthesia simplay session.”

 “I see, you've gotten creative with this scripts I sent over?”

 “One could call it that, I did some tampering with my own mind. Blocking memories, so that I
would not remember about the week I spent in the real world.”

 “So that you got a true feeling for slavery and bondage. And regretted that you had come
under my spell, and wished to escape for real?”

 “Head on, you understand me perfectly. Thank you Mistress Moira for the chat, I need to go
now. ”

 “Thank you!” Said Moira. “This has been enjoyable for me also.”

 Pilar called off, and Moira pondered what had been said during their long conversation.
 'But I did get too much into details, that I perhaps should have told over time.' Moira thought.
 'Well she did show an interest in being told of not so pleasant matters, and did not appear to 
be completely scared off. Perhaps she’ll be back after all, and this wasn’t a final farewell.'