The Protagonist System

The pillow talk with Panam after she rode Atlas hard was pretty interesting. It filled in a few gaps in his knowledge of what happened to Maine and his crew without David's presence or influence, which ended up becoming nothing but business as usual.

The fact they were involved with gathering intel on Biotechnica on behalf of Panam's estranged Nomad Clan, seemed to be a direct consequence of them not getting access to the Sandevistan from Gloria's scrounging on her EMT job. Without it as a motivation, things didn't devolve into the shitshow that their mercenary gang became involved in afterwards.

That reminded Atlas he should stop by the El Coyote bar soon to quietly heal up a few of them and stop them from developing cyberpsychosis. This also gave him the opportunity to go there with Panam on a proper date, which seemed to make her blush for some reason. He thought it was cute and didn't comment on it, though.

The most interesting part of the entire conversation was finding out about the info that Maine had handed off to the Aldecaldos representative to complete the mission. Biotechnica was going to screw them over so badly that they would become indentured servants that were lower on the social ladder than the company's usual hired goons.

Apparently, losing their Nomad independence was what pissed Panam off about the whole thing. She knew they would lose an essential part of themselves if they had to give up everything that they were, just to have the ability to grow their own food.

Atlas did not point out that if they did gain that, then they would still lose their roaming ways, because they had to stay still for years in order to benefit from growing crops on arid land that needed to be tended to constantly to not have those crops fail. How they would water them the entire time was also a huge problem that they all either ignored or hadn't thought of yet.

He climbed out of the truck when it was time to get ready for work and he stepped to the office and cleaned up, then fixed his dirty corpo suit. He went out into the display area out front and unlocked the place. The pretty woman he had hired from the transport was there and she gave him a happy smile, because she was clean, well dressed, and had a high paying job and an apartment near the downtown area.

Atlas brought her inside and sat her down at the desk, gave her the info she needed to do his previous job, and he thanked her for accepting so quickly. After warning her about how boring it was going to be with almost no one coming in for parts or updates, which she could call him about with a priority message if someone did come in, he went into the back room where the surgery area was and then stepped back to the closed off area of the underground garage.

He was not surprised to find a naked Panam using the datapad as she had car part after car part be spit out of the part dispenser to load into the back of her truck. He hadn't been gone that long and she already had the back of the thing over half full.

“How exactly are you going to pay for that?” Atlas asked as he walked over to her.

Panam barely turned his way as she took a chip out from the port on her neck and tossed it to him. “That's all of the savings I was going to hire Maine and his crew with to hit Biotechnica.” She said and went right back to choosing what parts to grab and load into her truck. “I figure I can load up the back and have enough left for a crate of those memory chips you sell for eddies on the dollar.”

Atlas pretended to plug it into his neck and instead used his technomancy to check the total. It was a huge amount and he felt a little bad that if he refused her offer, she'd get very angry at him. Just like a few people he had met, she didn't like accepting what she thought was charity. Her independent streak was too strong for her to not pay her own way when she could.

“Can I give you the bed buddy discount?” Atlas asked, as if testing the waters of how strong her reaction was going to be. “Because after what we did in your truck, I'd be a fool to not want that to happen again.”

Panam froze for a moment and turned to look at him with narrowed eyes. “Are you implying I'll be your joytoy?”

Atlas laughed and shook his head. “It's incentive, not payment. I want you around more and not just for the sex.”

Panam gave him an intense look for another few seconds, then lost the narrowed eyes and gave him a look full of doubt. She hated corpos and was trying to fit his actions into what a normal corpo did to manipulate people.

“Hey, this suit is just what I wear when I have to.” Atlas said. “I had to open up the storefront to let the clerk I hired in and came right back here to you.”

That seemed to relax her and Panam nodded and turned back to choose more parts.

“I'll be right back after I grab a few things for you.” Atlas said and Panam nodded without looking. He left her there and she looked a little conflicted, so he checked her thoughts. She was taking a bit more than what she said she was, including some of the essential tools she wanted, because she thought she would lose access to this special area where her truck was parked when she left.

Atlas didn't say anything about that and left the area and crossed the large garage to give Panam the time she needed to sneak away with the things she was trying to hide from him. He reached the elevator to the facility and went down one floor to the hospital to find an empty storage closet and pretended to grab two crates of memory chips, a crate of eyes, some neural software updates, and a few other things.

As a last moment addition, he put a copy of the small backpack food printer on top and looked at the huge pile. He let out a laugh at how much was there and he knew there was no way Panam was going to accept that it wasn't a bribe or a payoff. So, he created a little paperwork to show how much he hadn't sold over the last week of the information blockade and put it on top.

A created rolling cart later, Atlas used a bit of telekinesis to put everything on it and held it together as he rolled it back to the elevator and went up one floor to the vehicle garage bay. He hummed under his breath as he walked and some of the other people working there either waved or greeted him. He greeted them back by name, which always impressed them, and he knocked on the partition door.

“I can't open the door and push the cart in.” Atlas said and ignored the couple of thumps and the cursing that came from inside. He had to, or he would burst out laughing at her stealing what he would have given to her if she asked. That was why he had wasted so much time coming back, so she could stuff the truck's cargo area as much as possible.

The door opened a little and Panam peeked out, only to see Atlas standing there and no one else. She let out a relieved sound and opened the door all the way and stepped back out of sight, just in case. Atlas rolled the cart inside and Panam saw the pile of things. She opened her mouth to shout at him, so he grabbed the paperwork on top and handed it to her.

Panam's mouth closed at the red ledger and his massive overstock that he had prepared to sell, only for most of it to just sit in storage and no one was buying anything from him. Mind you, she wasn't sure who would buy basic materials by the ton, no matter how cheap it was. What would they do with it all?

Atlas didn't remind her that businesses used materials like that constantly, especially when building things. Materials didn't come cheap, which was probably one of the reasons the smear campaign against Atlas Incorporated was working so well. It was too unbelievable to be true.

“Is this real?” Panam asked and waved the papers at him.

“I spent the last few days sitting where my new clerk is right now and doing nothing, which was why I don't feel guilty about paying someone else to do that and I can go do something else instead of wasting my time.” Atlas answered.

Panam looked at the cart and then at her truck that had been packed as much as possible. “I'm not sure if all of that is going to fit.”

“We can pile it behind the seats for now.” Atlas said and rolled the cart over to the truck, then opened the passenger door. “Why don't you get dressed and I'll handle packing this stuff inside?”

Panam glanced down at her naked body and back at him, then she kind of posed with a hand on her hip. “Why? Is this distracting you?”

Atlas paused grabbing the backpack and turned to look at her. He let her see the lust in his eyes, then he walked over to her as he unbuttoned his pants and his erect member popped right out.

Panam opened her mouth to tell him she was only trying to tease him, then he picked her up and she automatically spread her legs for him as his perfect penis easily slid inside of her. She moaned and hugged his neck as she kissed him passionately and they had sex right there, standing up, and she thoroughly enjoyed it.

*

I woke up as Veder in my penthouse apartment and stretched, enjoying my good night's sleep after erasing the Tanaka family from existence. It was quite the blow to their ego when I had told them that, too. Their utter defeat was quite satisfying and I was sure they would be enjoying their stay in Azkaban for as long as they lived.

A mental check on the island ensured it was still covered by the notice-me-not spells and it was well away from the normal shipping lanes, which meant only smugglers or illegal shipments would ever come near the place. I thought about casting a redirect spell and discarded that idea. The Dementors could handle anyone stupid enough to actually reach Azkaban Island.

I gave Denise a kiss on the lips, making her stir slightly. Her eyes fluttered open and she gave me a warm and lazy smile. I whispered good morning and told her what time it was, so she had an hour before she needed to either go home or to get ready here to go into work.

That made her sit up and wake her three friends, who all grumbled about it being too early. I chuckled and gave each of them a kiss on the cheek and said breakfast would be ready soon. I hopped out of bed and four sets of appreciative eyes watched my butt as I walked over to the bathroom.

There was a bit of a scramble as they tried to get out of bed at the same time to follow me. I held in my laugh as they cursed at Denise for tossing a blanket over them and she ran into the bathroom behind me. She didn't lock the door, though.

We entered the shower and started lathering each other up, then the shower door opened and the others came in and grumbled about Denise having an unfair advantage. That let me let loose the laugh I was holding in and I agreed, then I helped them all lather up and gave each of them a thorough cleaning, inside and out.

I left them to finish cleaning up and I went to the kitchen and made breakfast for us all. They came out looking satisfied and were well dressed. They had apparently gone home at some point yesterday and brought over a few changes of clothes. Since the penthouse apartment was huge, I was sure they each had a couple of drawers and a whole closet each for their things, since pretty much everything I owned had fit inside only one of the master bedroom's closets.

We chatted a little about what we would be doing today and they were sorry they wouldn't see me again until after the academy let out. I responded that absence made the heart grow fonder and that I was looking forward to seeing them all again this afternoon and working under them again. That gave them a few naughty thoughts and Denise smiled at me.

They had to leave well before I had to be at school, so I walked them down to the lobby and kissed them all goodbye as I wished them all a great day at work. Delamain was as punctual as usual and showed up right on time to drive them to work for me. I thanked him and said I'd see him in an hour, then went back upstairs to get ready.

There wasn't anything I needed to do, since I had finished my school work before the weekend, so I sat down and turned on the television. On it was an ad disguised as a news broadcast about the latest BrainDance trend, which they were promoting and starting for themselves. It was kind of funny, because it was a science fiction one about exploring space and meeting interesting aliens.

They got everything wrong, of course. The science needed to get to those other planets, the odds of meeting weirdly shaped alien life forms and not humanoid shaped ones, and what life was actually like for a fully space-faring species.

Mind you, conveying that life was going to be normal no matter where you lived, whether it was in space or on a planet's surface, would have made things a little boring. People wanted BDs to be interesting and exciting, so there were a lot of embellishments and exaggerations, ridiculous encounters, and more than a fair share of barely dressed sexy aliens that you could have sex with.

In other words, it was like their normal BDs, only in space. Well, their version of space, anyway. None of them had come up with using artificial gravity that wasn't using the spinning wheel design, so all their ships included it and was widely accepted as the way things were. It was limited in scope and was much more dangerous than a sleeker design with armor plating.

I thought about making one myself to show off a few memories about me being Thomas Riker and being ostracized by Starfleet Command and having to join the Maquis resistance. It was an interesting story, I just had to edit a few things to make it more enjoyable and less like a documentary. Oh, and to speed things up a little to have events happen much quicker than they actually did.

No one wanted to spend endless hours doing nothing as the ship travelled between planets, so that had to be cut as well. The only normal life parts would be to establish characters and to develop them, so it kept the plot moving.

It was a great idea, so I spent the next 45 minutes making my first BD and then adding the XBD version as a bonus. I didn't need the money or the notoriety, so I didn't register it under the Atlas Incorporated logo. I left it as an independent production and then wondered how exactly I was supposed to release it, since I had no experience with those kinds of things.

I mentally shrugged and set it aside on my cyberdeck in the master bedroom's closet, promised myself I would look into it later, and went downstairs to meet Delamain. I had a normal day at the academy to look forward to and I was sure it was going to be an interesting time.

*

Panam drove out of the quite long secret tunnel of the Atlas Incorporated underground facility and she glanced at her side mirrors to see a blank wall in the dead end alleyway behind her. She shook her head at how that was possible and drove along the mostly empty streets to reach the outskirts of the city. The drive seemed shorter than usual and it made her wonder where else he had tunnels.

She shook her head again and pushed that thought aside and drove out into the badlands. She checked her upgraded communications device and she marvelled at it somehow marking where the Aldecaldos Clan was. How did it know that? Atlas had programmed it and he hadn't known where they were.

Or did he? Maybe she had let it slip while they talked after... her thoughts derailed as she blushed and tried to not react at remembering how good he had made her feel. It was consistent, too. She thought, quite wrongly in fact, that the initial rush was as good as it was going to get. Then he had taken her again and it was just as good, if not better, than the first time.

Her hand reached out and caressed the crate of computer components she could use to repair and upgrade a lot of the other vehicles to make them stop going on the fritz at random times. That and the parts she had piled in the back would make them one of the better and well-equipped Nomad clans in the badlands.

She felt a little guilty about stealing all the tools and equipment that the parts dispenser allowed her to take without authorization. Why would they have such a huge breach in their internal security? Didn't they care that any corpo spy could come right in and rob them blind?

That thought made her pause and Panam took several breaths as she drove down what used to be a cracked paved road and was now a packed dirt track. Maybe she should send Atlas a discreet message about upping his security level and it might stop someone else from taking things from him so easily. Her thought that she would also reveal that she had done so as well, made her cringe inside.

Panam pulled over to the side of the road and parked as she thought about that whole encounter and how, at the very end when she was about to leave, he handed her a company brochure. She was confused about that, which led to her leaving with a barely stated goodbye.

She moved the crate aside slightly and picked up the brochure that had fallen there and she didn't see anything special about it. When she opened it, her breath caught. Instead of the normal inside, the section with the food production was circled in red and had an arrow pointing to the materials section and a specific phrase there that had confused her before.

“Available by the ton.” Panam said as she read it and her eyes followed the arrow back to the food production section. “By... the... ton.”

It took her several moments of contemplation before she realized what that meant, both for her and for her clan. She gripped it tightly and held it, then she shoved it into her pocket and jammed her foot down on the gas pedal.

The truck nearly spun out; but, Panam was an old hand at handling her baby and she turned the spin into a slide as the tires spun in the dirt. It gained traction and then shot off with more power than it had before and she loved it. She also wanted to get back to her clan as soon as possible to tell them the good news.

Atlas had given her the solution to all of their problems and she promised herself to apologize to him later for taking advantage of him and robbing him.