Chapter 1: 0x00: Lilith

It’s just another ordinary day in Southern Sun, your room in your parents’ expensive, high-end condo lit by the glow of your monitors as the rain pours down outside. As lightning flashes and thunder crashes through the skies, you’ve got the usual array of terminals up – you’re training some new AI models, revising a few of your maintenance scripts, and otherwise doing the lazy, low-intensity work expected of your valuable weekend. The clouds and rain are thick, obscuring what’s usually a view across the entire city, what little light remains blocked out by your blinds.

Outside your well-locked door, Mom and Dad are complaining about the weather, as usual. As if they need to keep reminding themselves they live near the equator and the climate is hot and/or wet. Mom’s talking about not getting to wear a new swimsuit at the rooftop pool, dad’s…you dunno, something about rain ruining worker productivity or something else equally boring and tedious…

You, though? You like the rain. No one’s bothering you to go out for a sunny day and risking sunburn or sports or…people. It’s a lot more suitable to pursue your real passions. So while the background work is being done, you’re enjoying another weekend in your usual group chats, including the roleplays you help run.

And in those RPs, it’s a really good day, because your usual friend and sometimes enemy Windam has come out with a new story everyone in the chat is talking about…

SpecializationIsForInsects: I gotta admit, you've really outdone yourself this time, Windam.
TR-6inle: really! seriously, this is brilliant! :D
clearest_blue: It's such an inspired idea, I wish I was the one who thought of it...
Wind_God_Windam: Aw, shucks, you're gonna make me blush.
SpecializationIsForInsects: No, really. A genetically engineered succubus, a fantastic vision born through science...
TR-6inle: with lots of cybernetics!
SpecializationIsForInsects: That's not what that word - ugh, never mind, close enough.
SpecializationIsForInsects: Whatever the word is, it translates to 'hot'.
clearest_blue: Irisviel as a succubus...it's a good spin off of our RP's backstory!
SpecializationIsForInsects: Yet again, I'm amazed how much mileage we get out of this for stuff we knocked up off some obscure Tsukihime spinoff we haven't read.
TR-6inle: it's super lewd, though! magic, pheromones, lewd tails, absolutely everything is totally lewd!
clearest_blue: But as expected from Windam, it's her hypnosis that really pops off the page. No one can write brainwashing better...
SpecializationIsForInsects: Oh, all that is great. I mean, I don't know about this hypnosis stuff, really, that's our aspiring psychologist's department. But it's still great.
Wind_God_Windam: Just don't tell the university about this. :p
SpecializationIsForInsects: Iri's a brilliant person whose talents are properly suited to the modern world. Meshing magic and miracles with the pinnacle of technology, a truly superior form of life...I *really* wish I'd thought of it first.
Wind_God_Windam: Of course you'd like her, mister STEMlord.
SpecializationIsForInsects: Don't make me regret complimenting your writing, you know.
Wind_God_Windam: Don't make *me* regret making her so similar to you. Just with a better personality.
TR-6inle: what, a nerd?
Wind_God_Windam: You said it, not me.
SpecializationIsForInsects: Pft, as if I could be that sexy nerd girl in real life.
clearest_blue: Hm. A self-made succubus...now *there's* a thought. If anyone could do it, it'd be SIFI. Our 'golden boy'! (I still can't believe people say that seriously at your school.)
Wind_God_Windam: SIFI? You mean Spiffy, right?
SpecializationIsForInsects: Shut it.
Wind_God_Windam: I guess it's true that golden boy here is the kind of perverted genius who *could*.
SpecializationIsForInsects: Yeah, sure, if I had a zaibatsu-level budget and no ethics. And a test subject.
SpecializationIsForInsects: Maybe you'd like to volunteer? :smirk:
Wind_God_Windam: In your dreams, Tharja.
SpecializationIsForInsects: <Tharja> :kissing_heart:
Wind_God_Windam: <Robin> :face_exhaling:
TR-6inle: ssh, don't tell anyone, but I think my literature teacher used her private account to comment on your story windam!!!!!
Wind_God_Windam: Damn, no wonder you're hot for teacher.
SpecializationIsForInsects: I still think the name is a coincidence.
TR-6inle: i could totally buy her being a succubus though
TR-6inle: she's too hot to be a teacher!!!!!
clearest_blue: Are you sure that's appropriate, Inle?
SpecializationIsForInsects: You're one to talk, Blue, mister 'My Martial Arts Teacher Is Too Cute'.
clearest_blue: Well, it's *true!*
SpecializationIsForInsects: At least you're not a siscon like Windam.
Wind_God_Windam: Now who needs to shut it?
Wind_God_Windam: Anyway, I gotta go, my sister is calling. Dessert time, you know?
SpecializationIsForInsects: Good luck, siscon. ;)
Wind_God_Windam: ...if you met my sister, you'd be a siscon too.
Wind_God_Windam: BBL.

Yep. Just another day of the four of you being depraved, as usual. (Ostensibly the RPs are worksafe outside of side channels and DMs, but you’re basically like this all the time anyway…)

God, but Windam’s such a dick sometimes though. At least he can write some hot shit. Better than you can manage; you do well in RP, but you can never translate that to a standalone story like he can.

Your eyes swap over to the monitor you’ve got his story in. It’s inspired by one of your RPs, featuring one of the backstory characters, Irisviel von Einzbern. But in this world, she’s no mere homunculus, but rather a succubus, a demon in a world not unlike Southern Sun – just way more interesting. (They used to call it ‘cyberpunk’ in the Heisei era, right?) Iri is the legacy of hundreds and hundreds of years of magical and technological research, genetic alterations and augmentations, and magic and miracles carved into her very DNA.

Putting it simply: being sexy is just what Iri is. It’s as natural to her as breathing.

It’s an ultimate expression of cybernetics – not simply the pop culture field of bionics and augmentation, but the circular and cyclical interaction of systems. Irisviel is the product of engineering of prosthetics, genetics, and societies, the new heiress of the story’s most powerful corporation, poised to spread into new worlds and universes with her influence and gain untold knowledge and power.

And what a goddamned product she is.

Windam is way too good at this shit. And it’s the complete opposite of the pushover he is in real life, too – how can he expect to be a psychologist if he’s such a doormat? Iri is able to play the innocent heiress and ingenue to a T, only to strike in a moment of weakness and melt the minds of any ordinary, inferior human being.

Her body is perfect – mathematically, axiomatically perfect, no matter how impossible that might be – and any girl who lays eye on her will feel that pull into her gravity. She’s surrounded by pheromones, the very air around her able to help bend humans to her will. If that’s not enough, her voice is inherently hypnotic, her whispers able to drag a girl into her grip to be manipulated and fucked with her tail, full of chemicals and toxins…

and of course, all the technology to match, just in case all that isn’t enough to ensnare anyone. No human could ever withstand it, as if she were truly a demon scorned by God.

Her intellect, of course, marks her as inherently superior to humanity. She even cultivates it in girls she brainwashes and pulls in, having no sense of guilt, fear, or shame – but of course seeking worthy slaves who can keep up with her, no matter if they melt at the merest touch of their Mistress.

Perfection.

How have you never thought of this? A machine succubus? You’re kind of upset; an idea like this should be yours, not Windam’s. You should’ve come up with it ages ago, especially with how this Iri lines up so well with your own personality and tastes.

Oh, of course, it’s unrealistic. It’s so patently unscientific, everything based on some popular and misguided idea of the technologies involved – about what you’d expect of Windam there. ‘Nanomachines’, really? Not to mention, things like magic and miracles don’t exist, either…

But who cares when it’s this fucking sexy?

Honestly, you should probably fap before you do your homework later, there’s no way –

oh goddamnit, it’s G.

SufferLikeGDid: Hey, Rick, I need you to proofread my essay for Ludonarrative Studies.
SpecializationIsForInsects: Now's not really a good time.
SufferLikeGDid: I'll buy you lunch tomorrow.
SpecializationIsForInsects: I'm busy.
SufferLikeGDid: No you're not. :P You telling me a genius like you hasn't done all his homework before the teacher even gave it to you?
SpecializationIsForInsects: I'm *busy*.
SufferLikeGDid: It's only a couple of pages. Swear to God, you'll be done before dinner.
SpecializationIsForInsects: Ugh. Fine - but you're paying for Celina's, too.
SufferLikeGDid: If you say so. I don't think that's worked since the Showa era, Rick.
SpecializationIsForInsects: You underestimate how much Celina likes American food. :P Fine, you've got five minutes of my time.
SufferLikeGDid: What, did I interrupt you while you were jerking off or something?
SpecializationIsForInsects: Shut up.

Sigh. The things you do for French fries and cute girls.

You pull up G’s essay on another monitor; he’s always getting you to check his homework one way or another. At least he pays you back for the time, but damn, he somehow always manages to have the worst timing.

Looks like a pretty standard comparative mythology setup, examining ludonarrative depictions of the mythological Lilith. It’s not really your specialty, but you can at least check grammar and spelling for G while you’re here. Least you can do for your best friend.

G’s got the basics down – Lilith is said to be the first woman created by God, alongside Adam, but refused to submit to them both. Girl after your own heart – maybe she should’ve become a mad scientist? Defy such an antiquated concept as ‘God’?

As you’d expect, God was pissed, so Lilith was cast out of the Garden of Eden, and became the mother of all demons, patron of abortions, consort of all kinds of nasty stuff. Sadly, as G mentions in the essay, she’s become kind of a stock name for succubi at this point. A shame, really – the mythological Lilith is way more interesting.

You are reading story Echidna: The Remodeling of Humanity at novel35.com

But G’s gone in a weird direction, as usual. Swear to God he believes demons and goddesses are real, which is ridiculous. Usually it doesn’t matter to the teachers, but you’ve learned you have to double-check his sources just to be sure he doesn’t go too far off the rails.

Sighing, you tap the side of your glasses and open up the Earth Light archive for the referenced pre-Collapse sources, scrolling each of them over your eyes as you continue to read the essay, taking in all the information at once. Looks like she’s pulling from a bunch of occult shit; you’ll say this, these guys really knew how to party. All kinds of weird ‘magick’ and incantations and runes and shit interspersed into stories of what sound like loose excuses for massive, drug-fueled orgies. Lesbian orgies, probably, and isn’t that the best kind? Witches getting off by pretending to do magic and talking about goddesses and Lilith and such.

Is this what they spent the Heisei era doing before everything went to shit? Damn, occultists really knew how to party forty years ago. They wrap it up in mysticism, but so much of it seems like an excuse for lesbian sex. Lot of effort to set up an orgy, piles and bodies of flesh naked performing ‘rituals’ –

great, now you’re getting turned on again. Thanks, G. Thanks. There’ll be no time to get off before dinner at this rate!

Oh well. Better let him know it’s all okay.

SpecializationIsForInsects: Looks good to me, G. Put down a few corrections, but the essay is pretty sound.
SufferLikeGDid: By your standards, that's a glowing compliment. Thanks, Rick.
SpecializationIsForInsects: Yeah, yeah, thank me when I get my fries. :P

It is what it is with that guy. But now that he’s ruined your enjoyment of Windam’s story, of a superior technological succubus that dreams are made of, you may as well just check out the latest on the archive. Maybe there’s something good on the Best of the Net this week? Good anime, maybe?

…ooh, even better.

Looks like there’s a big release of technical information this week. Some of it’s from foreign companies like Tokugawa Heavy Industries or your beloved Alphonse Industrial; prosthetics, bionics, surgical techniques, manufacturing, etcetera. But the big haul is a bunch of resolved Access to Information requests to the Sunset Corporation for stuff they were working on in secret twenty years ago. Usually this isn’t super valuable, it’s reams of information that is often largely speculative or simply RFPs that you don’t get the actual results of, but it’s always an interesting read for someone like you.

You pull up a bunch of documents on each monitor, Windam’s story still stuck on one, and another on your glasses to boot. Some of this Sunset stuff sounds pretty nuts. More occult bullshit? Genetically engineered parasites? Brain-enhancing neurotoxins? Who comes up with this stuff? It’s as fucking implausible as the Iri story!

And even if it weren’t, if it worked, there’s no way Sunset would’ve released it at all, even under government pressure. But even so, it’s fun to see what they thought the future would be like, and try and squeeze the actual useful scientific information from it all.

What is it Blue liked to talk about? The ‘info high’? Because right now, you’re feeling that. There’s so much juicy shit here…you’re going to have a fun few weeks looking at it all.

(Visions of science dancing through your head, a deep-seated part of you wanting to grasp at all of this for yourself, as though it could be real.)

(Humanity, after all, is so limiting. So ill-suited to life on this warming planet, but so much worse suited to the grandeur of outer space you dream of reaching one day. Who wouldn’t want to surpass the limitations of nature and inferior flesh? Even Windam can understand that.)

(That if you had the choice, it’d be better to be a succubus than a human.)

(And so you dream, of that future you’ve always wanted to grasp…)

---

and that night, after you go to bed, you dream further.

You could never be satisfied with humanity, if you had the chance to surpass it. If, under the light of the moon, you could etch your very desire, your love, into your genes. If you could bring the best of machine and flesh together into a single, harmonic whole. If magic and miracles existed, you would grasp them firmly and use them to make yourself something more beautiful than a person could ever achieve.

No one would understand. You couldn’t expect them to understand. These feelings are yours and yours alone.

With such power, your science and visions would be enough to gain anything you ever wanted. In this dying world drowned in carbon, your body would adapt and transcend…and others would submit to your will, your beauty. It would be so very easy, for them to fall, to love falling.

There could be no other outcome. They’re only human, after all. How could they stand before you and expect to do anything but kneel?

In your dreams, it’s so very simple: Reject your cowardice. Swallow down your hesitation. Become what you desire most. Escape the system. Break the world’s shell.

For that, for your deepest desire, for the things you long for in the dark recesses and creases in your brain, you’d even be willing to become a demon…

For now, I hope you enjoy. ????

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