Humanity 2.0, Year 088, Day 105

"Paradise." I shielded my eyes with one hand, looking out over the tremendous expanse of granite and ice, then shrugged with one shoulder as I turned back to Claudia. "You know. Give or take maybe one or two thousand years. Call it two."

A light, freezing wind blew around us both, bone-dry; for all the ice, the place was technically a desert. No snowstorms to blind us or hail to pelt us up here. The interior of Greenland wasn't exactly a welcoming environment, but it did have a sort of beauty all its own - and it was fun to let my imagination fill in the details, wondering what sort of place this would be if the massive climate shift Claudia predicted came to pass... well, don't tell her I said 'if'.

Claudia only gave a half-hearted smile as she continued to operate ultrasonic machine, taking readings of who knew what below us. She didn't even respond, instead giving more of a quiet mumble - to herself more than anyone. "Lots of pitchblende... probably an old peat bog up above it. They'd kill for this if they knew."

Even now, I still found myself easily entranced by her Oxford-accented, soft-yet-throaty voice. I sometimes wondered if it was the only real reason I'd recruited her; at the time it seemed utterly criminal to let a normal human lifespan rob me of ever hearing it again after a few scant decades. Had the fact that she was actually a brilliant, original thinker who could keep anyone guessing really been the first and foremost in my mind when I first pushed my cock into this beautiful, dark woman - knowing it would change her forever?

There was no visual display on any of her equipment; she'd long since surpassed the need for it. Claudia wasn't Rain, but she knew her way around technology - and no hominus was as inept as I when it came to electrophoric interface. She had taken off her gloves for a few minutes to run her long and slender fingers over first the ultrasound rig, then on the thin wafer-shaped thing that apparently served as her personal computer and assistant. Taking more readings, recording everything, adding to the body of data.

Claudia was as beautiful as any of the girls, but she had a unique allure all her own. The decades hadn't robbed her of that, nor of the garish - yet gorgeous - colors and beadwork she favored in her clothes. Mixed Okinawan and Australian Aborigine descent yielded a smooth, very dark, and supple body - athletic and incredibly limber, and her trademark haircut was now only visible as two shimmering black tresses with a variety of colorful beadwork dangling on the ends. Both currently framed her her handful-sized, perfectly shaped breasts.

Sadly, the breasts in question were were well-hidden by her parka. Even the thick and bulky pink, orange, and turquoise outfit she wore couldn't hide her beauty, though it did make a worthy effort. She turned back to me, apparently finished as she had the ultrasound rig folding itself up again, and stood. I tried not to get lost in her deep blue eyes again.

"On to the next site." She nodded to the east... at least I think it was east. The sun was the other way and it was late afternoon, but this far north, nothing worked the way you thought it would. On the one horizon was a few spots of green, but mostly ice and stone, with a distant hint of an ocean; on the other horizon, only an endless mass of icepack. We were meandering along on the edge of the thick plate of ice concealing much of Greenland; Claudia thought it the best way to scan for her quarry.

I gave a half-hearted shrug. "Guessing the stuff wasn't here either."

She glanced at me over her shoulder as we set out again, giving me a brief frown before hoisting her gear and attaching the folded ultrasound rig to the side of her bag. I hadn't put my gear down the whole time, and as the designated pack mule of our duo, I was carrying three times what she was. After walking around with it so long, it made me a little dizzy to take it off for a while.

I had changed my look, much like how Claudia changed hers - though I did so less often. Now, I wore all deep red, with white stripes, and a pair of ski goggles with a yellow reflection to repel the sun's glare. Underneath the hood covering my head was my new pride and joy; Emily had rolled her eyes when I asked if it would look good, but I'd proven her wrong to hell and back - though only if you asked me

My dreadlocks were tied up and covered with a wool cap for the moment, but later tonight I'd let them down and let them flail about as I fucked Claudia raw. Of the first nine, she was the most energetic in bed, and I couldn't get enough of it.

"Not 'the' stuff, no." She pursed her lips. "This was always going to be a low-yield site, though. The real treasure will be further north. Besides, there's another big uranium deposit under us right now, that'll actually be pretty easy to get to once the ice is gone. That alone makes the trip worth it, let alone all the other stuff we found. Just the knowledge by itself is worth a small chunk of a decent national GDP."

I didn't ask which country she meant... hopefully not one of those in Micronesia with a population of fourteen or something. Just this month on our little arctic adventure, we'd found two new species of dinosaurs, three major uranium deposits, a possible diamond mine, and more oil than we'd ever really need - yeah, Greenland was a nice place, I guess, if you could get past the whole 'frozen wasteland' thing.

According to Claudia's climate model, which even Wren and Sasha deferred to, the ice sheet covering it all would melt in about three to five hundred years - leaving a set of three large islands with an absolutely enormous supply of natural resources just waiting for some enterprising variant of the human race to gorge themselves on. Only problem was, we weren't sure if there would still be a human race around by then.

The resources we'd found so far weren't the real prize. We could have mapped all that with an aerial drone fleet launched from our Iceland facility without sparing more than a few days' time. What had convinced Claudia to trek her actual person out here, to one of the few remaining untouched-wilderness areas of the Earth - and also one of its least hospitable locations - was the possibility that, buried under and within the ice, were heavy concentrations of helium-three.

How exactly they decided a lot of it may be buried here - or according to Claudia, inevitably had to be - was complicated. I actually thought I had a decent understanding of the theory at the time, but I won't drag the whole thing past you. Solar wind, the Borealis, unique mineral and magnetic patterns under Greenland, blah blah. She thought the place had more of the ideal fusion fuel than what might be found on the entire rest of the Earth altogether.

I shifted the massive weight of the pack I wore, letting out a long breath of air - then watching its grey-white mist vanish in front of me near-instantly. I set out again, two steps behind her; our spiked boots crunched through the snow and ice, occasionally finding purchase on stone as we zigzagged down the side of a crevasse, then up the other. The sun kept doing its sideways thing that it likes to do way up north, confusing the hell out of my instincts.

It was easy, I found, to stop thinking too much when I was out in places like this. Not those filled with wildlife - the jungle, the beach, the ocean, places like those triggered too many primal instincts. Fight or flight, the hunt for food, keeping an eye out for the predators of the savannah that might take my food - or hunt me as food - it lit up all kinds of little red lights in my brain that I'd taken decades to become accustomed to.

Out here, in a near-lifeless expanse of stone, thoughts could become... something else. Ethereal, intangible, undefined and airy. It was the state of mind I needed. That was why I'd decided to come along on Claudia's little trek, though she was fully capable of doing everything she needed herself. Well, that and I didn't want to think about her spending three months in the snow with no cock for her to ride within a hundred miles; when we finally got her back to civilization she'd be loopy.

I needed the solitude and raw, inhospitable nature of this place to find something in myself. My recovery after the first encounter with Naglfar had taken the better part of two years; the damage done to my nervous system had been extensive. The ghilmen didn't seem to care how much they fucked up the rest of me, as long as they got what they wanted - the specialized neuro-bundle that 15226 had bestowed on me, that gave me a limited form of mind control.

That ability was gone now. I could still remember using it, though how I did it was... hazy, like remembering how to use a third arm I'd never had. It had become so natural and easy to do over the decades that I often used it on my girls without even thinking; it was only once it was torn out of me that I began to understand how losing it would hurt me.

Reaching out and touching another person's desires, poking and jostling them in a particular direction... it had been so damn much fun to just turn on two random, completely straight women to one another and watch the hijinks ensue. There were plenty of other uses, of course, but that particular one I had especially fond memories of.

Who knew what Naglfar was using it for; it certainly wasn't for sex. The monster didn't care about that in the least. We had managed to evade Naglfar and its ghilmen for more than thirty years now, though with its attention fully occupied on playing mercenary in the many ongoing wars of the world that wasn't especially difficult. It didn't really care about us, I think. It had gotten what it wanted, and maybe it just left us alive in case it wanted more from us down the line.

Some of our DNA was integral to how it worked, we knew that much - but how, exactly, was a complete mystery. The few experimental facilities and data we'd managed to recover from the research that brought it about were too damaged or degraded to figure out how exactly our nature had been twisted and abused enough to produce the abomination that Naglfar was.

Without my sexual power, which had replaced our kind's normal affinity for our electrophoridae and interfacing with both machines and one another, I was - theoretically - now capable of the same use of our specialized electrical organs as any other hominus. Bethany assured me that absolutely nothing stood in the way, biology- or neurology-wise. I had all the same potential as the rest of our kind.

The problem was mental. The problem was me. Bethany, at least, had been kind enough not to dance around telling me the results of her tests. More than a decade had gone by since her last complete neuro-scan and clean diagnosis, and I had virtually no progress to show. I couldn't even control a lightswitch with my mind. I was being left behind by my own wives and children. They assured me a thousand times over that that wasn't the case, but I damn sure felt like it.

Miles and miles went by as we trekked in silence. Claudia knew me well enough to know I wasn't ignoring her. I hadn't hid the reason I'd come here from her; she'd figure it out quickly enough anyway. Keeping secrets from my girls was typically an exercise in futility. I was just... taking it all in. Minimizing my own mind and thoughts and just moving across the empty world, trying to find whatever it was in me that kept me from being what I was supposed to be... or was I?

Despite my attempts to concentrate, I often found my attention wandering from the grey stone, lichen, snow, and ice - to a whole another kind of scenery. Claudia's ass didn't quite sway the way I found the most sexy... she wasn't wearing a snug-fitting long dress and flats, walking just in front of me and knowing all the while what I wanted to do to her... but then, she was carrying fifty pounds of pack and bundled up in extreme-cold-weather gear. It didn't make for a very erotic sight, even if her body was sexy enough to be appealing even practically waddling across the frozen wastes wrapped in a sleeping bag.

My imagination could easily fill in the details; underneath those garish neon-orange pants she wore, was her smooth, bubble ass - taut and begging to be grabbed. I think I saw her put on a yellow bra and panties in the morning, but I could be wrong. I wanted to tear them off and fuck that tight, dark pussy - maybe after I gave her a good tongue treatment to that Neapolitan flavor of pink-strawberry and chocolate she kept hidden between her legs.

At some point, my eyes still fixed on her ass, we stopped. I almost bumped into her, turn glanced up to see her striking blue eyes meeting mine - and a look of concern on her face.

"You've been staring at my ass for the past two hours, Ben." There was another gust of wind, obscuring her last few words, but I could hear well enough with my bat-derived ears; another of 15226's countless gifts. "If you want to fuck, just say. You know I don't-"

"I... hey, umm, sure... wait... I don't even know." I shook my head, blinking. "Listen, sorry... I..."

"Sorry about what? Staring at my ass?" She raised an eyebrow. "It's been thirty years since you last apologized for that. Don't start now. I'm here for the taking, Ben. You don't need to give me a reason." She took a step closer, and I felt an automatic and natural response in my cock - to a woman, giving herself to me - but my heart and mind weren't quite there yet. It would be fucking just for the sake of clearing my head, mechanical and boring... something I'd learned not to indulge. It made things... tasteless. Claudia looked concerned. "What's wrong?"

"It isn't that." I looked down at her, feeling - yes, even feeling myself salivating, like I was staring at some choice meal. Perhaps I was mistaken... maybe I really wanted her, right here and now. The hunger for taking and fucking was there, growling underneath it all, demanding I claim Claudia again. The fact that she'd just flatly told me that I could do it any time I want wasn't helping me tame the beast. I put my hands on her shoulders. "I... well, didn't come here just to say I fucked a girl in the tundra."

"This isn't a tundra." Claudia said it flatly, and met my glare with an even stare. "This is a full-on desert. Only lichen out here. You and I are the only real animal life for two hundred klicks, except for a few kinds of insects." She suddenly was wrapping herself around me, her face nuzzling into my neck and chin. Even at six feet tall, she was still dwarfed by my raw dimensions. I found an arm wrapping around her back in return. "Set up the tent."

"We don't have to. There's another two hours until time."

"I'm the expedition leader." Claudia looked up at me. "I'm calling a break. You're in another of your moods. Set up the tent and get ready to fuck and suck." She winked. "I have just the idea to get you out of it."

I raised an eyebrow at the last, but let it be. If she'd wanted to clarify, she would have; likely she thought whatever it was, would work better if I didn't know. I dropped my back, bearing with the dizziness even as my cock stiffened further and stole more blood from my brain that it really needed at the moment. This wouldn't be simple, mechanical fucking. She was feeling the passion rise inside, I could tell - and I was too.

Soon that - and the tightness I felt from my growing erection - was downright uncomfortable, and pushing the bounds of my heavy snow pants. I could feel each and every micron of the elastic fiber of my boxer briefs as they fought, with limited success, to hold back my stiffening pole. It occurred to me as I set down my gear and extracted our folding tent that I was pitching a tent in two ways at the same time.

Preparing the tent was easy; it was mostly a self-completing task. Place it flat on the ground, with the big-ass yellow 'THIS SIDE UP' text on the side that's facing up. Clear the space, then slap the bright red button. Wait about twenty seconds while the thing unfolded itself neatly, then fasten down the pitons at the six corners of its hexagon shape... soon we had a car-sized dome tent - complete with an insulated floor.

I reached inside long enough to attach the lamp to the central mount hanging above the middle of the thing, both light source and heat source for the whole contraption. It had all become rote over the past few weeks, as we spent every night in the barren wilderness of Greenland - and my body had figured out that this particular series of actions seemed to inevitably result in wild, animal sex afterward. My cock's Pavlovian response to setting up the tent was excruciating; it wanted so much to fuck and come inside a tight, dark pussy, but Claudia wasn't climbing in with me.

I glanced over, frowning as she took another measurement with her ultrasound rig, its four dome-shaped feet spread out evenly on the ice. One ungloved hand was resting atop the chrome exterior of its central chamber, and suddenly she bolted upright. I waited a few moments, and her face was still turned away; slowly she crouched again, touched the machine, then she must have commanded it to fold up again. She stowed it next to her pack.

I tried not to let an ounce of impatience into my voice. "Getting in this thing and stripping, then letting you open the door again to get inside, is kind of-"

"I know." She walked up to me, then took me by the hand and led me inside as we both ducked. We sealed up the entrance, then followed the fun little ritual that had evolved over our weeks here - stripping each other bare of the multiple and complex elements of our cold-weather gear.

The heat lamp illuminating the space was a powerful little thing, and had already heated the place up considerably; within a minute or two, it would surely be downright balmy inside. We'd picked up the deluxe version of the thing specifically so our tent would be comfortable to sleep naked within - after the inevitable good and hard fuck that left us both sweaty. Nothing else would do for our kind.

Rolled beds that I'd thrown in before we entered were hastily unfurled, and moments later I was treated to the sight of her bare breasts as I quickly stripped off the yellow - my memory was right! - athletic bra that she'd had on. Instantly I suckled on one almost-black nipple, then the other, feasting on her chocolate orbs and letting their warmth leak into my lips and cheeks that had only kissed freezing air since this morning.

She paused for a time, simply breathing heavily as I laved her large nipples - making a few fleeting attempts to get her pants and panties off in the meantime. She managed neither, and I had to help her pluck her boots off before we both gleefully pulled away her pants, then her panties, leaving her utterly nude and beautiful. I could make out the barest hint of pink inside her folds, along with the glistening hint of readiness.

At some point my undershirt had come off, but she had to undo my pants then belt to get at the cock that had been fighting so hard to be free. I immediately gasped - first as it hit the cool air, then again as it was enveloped by a far more warm, welcoming environment. Claudia's mouth and tongue accepted my stiff length, almost instantly taking me deep and warming me down to the base. Her incredible ability to hold her breath also translated to an equally incredible ability to deep-throat even an enormous cock like my own, which was especially welcome in the cold.

I became naked at some point along the way, and laid out flat on the joined sleeping bags that we shared. My cock vanished again and again inside her dark lips, knowing blue eyes staring at me the whole time. Warm fingers found my balls, kneading and massaging the things to prepare them with the biggest and heaviest load possible. I wasn't sure if it was our activity or the lamp, but the tent was definitely heating up and it was no longer the least bit uncomfortable to be naked.