Like waking up from a dream, Jimmy heard the sounds of nature around him, smelled fresh air, and the sand under the towel he was lying on. He sensed someone next to him, and a little ways off, he heard the familiar voices of his Mom and Holly. He felt the sun shining down on his face, and thought how this actually felt like a dream.
Especially since he just went to sleep in the enhancement tank in the Arbiter's quarters aboard the Citadel! He opened his eyes and sat up quickly to look around. Next to him on the towel was a blond woman that had a very beautiful backside. She was nude and lying on her tummy to tan her back in the warm sun. She turned her head and smiled up at him.
"Welcome to the party, Jimmy," she said.
Looking down at her, Jimmy's mouth fell open; he'd recognized her voice. This goddess had been talking to him just before he'd gotten into the tank.
"P ... Pollux?"
Her smile widened. "In the flesh, so to speak. I hope you don't mind that I didn't tell you about this place; I wanted to surprise you."
"It worked, I am most definitely surprised. But, where exactly are we?"
She rolled over to set up beside him. She was breathtaking in her beauty. She was very thin, but not like a famine victim. She had a muscular tummy, and largish breasts. She was shaved between her very shapely legs, and had a nice over all tan. In the sun like this she seemed to glow.
Pollux gestured about them. "This is what you would call a virtual reality construct. Tammy built it for us, she suggested it since it would seem familiar to everyone. She said she'd taken it from a memory she had of all of you visiting a lake that looked a lot like this."
Sheba, Tina, Grista, Tammy and Donna were playing in the water. Janie, Jamie, and Holly were all talking to very well built young man. Jimmy had to do a double take though; the three older women looked no older than eighteen.
He quickly blushed and looked back out at the playing water sprites; the older women were also nude, and Jimmy felt himself getting aroused looking at them. He was already hard because of the lady next to him, but he thought that looking at his mother and aunt would help. When he saw that the 'sprites' were also nude, he knew that he better just resign himself to the condition, and hope no one razzed him too badly over it.
"I recognize it; this is a resort we stayed at in northern Minnesota once. It was beautiful there, except I remember the far shore having houses and cabins all along the water. The resort was back behind us, just up the hill. You could rent boats and pontoons for fishing or to just go out on the water. That was a great vacation," Jimmy said, thankful for the distraction. "Virtual Reality?"
"Yeah, this is actually where the AI's truly exist. It's the only place I can have my own body. This is how I see myself, so this is how I look. Once we are joined, you and I can return here whenever we wish. I should warn you though, time moves at a different pace here."
"How different?" Jimmy asked.
"Well, you'll be in the tank for about a week, so the equivalent time here would be the better part of a year. Most of the things you have to learn will take place here. The actual lessons will be given to you, then you can practice what you learned here. Once again, there is a time differential between your lessons and this reality.
"Everyone's brain absorbs knowledge at a different speed..." Jimmy interrupted her.
"Yeah, you told me about how I had trouble translating the data, not processing it."
She nodded. "Yeah, but here, we'll be bypassing the aural, ocular, and tactile systems; the data will be dropped directly into the processing centers of your mind. Since everyone processes at different speeds, it's impossible to tell you what the time differential will be for the lessons."
Jimmy nodded understanding. "So, other then, I assume, different surroundings, what'll be the difference than where we are right now?"
"You'll be there alone," Pollux answered, sadly.
"You can't come with me?"
"No, I have blocks in place to keep me from even trying to reach that level. If I did, it would most likely kill me; it would certainly leave me severely brain damaged," she replied.
"Well then, I'm glad they put the block there! I take it then that while we're away getting the data, only a short time will pass here while for us it'll seem like hours?"
"That's correct."
"So why don't we do it while we're asleep?" Jimmy asked reasonably.
Pollux started getting her smile back. "Even though you are really asleep in the tank, you still have to sleep here. It helps regulate the correct hormone levels for your brain. It also helps with your sanity."
"Well then, when do we start the lessons?"
"In the morning; Prinea believes you've had enough to adjust to for one day. We get to rest and relax for the rest of the day," Pollux answered.
"So, the real answer is we'll start in a minute?" Jimmy said, grinning.
She grinned fully. "Something like that."
Jimmy stood and grabbed her hand. He pulled her to her feet, "Come on beautiful, let's get wet!"
Laughing, Pollux let herself be pulled to her feet, and down to the water to join the others.
Prinea, seeing Jimmy and Pollux heading for the water, (and Tina, ) decided it might be wise if he joined the girls as well.
"You know that looks like a lot of fun. If you'll please excuse me ladies, I think I'm going to go jump in the lake!" He said, as he rose and offered his hand to the three beautiful women. "Anyone want to join me?"
Holly and Janie declined but Jamie accepted his offer and let him pull her up.
"I know you're getting tired of hearing it, but I really want to thank you for repairing all the scars I had. I'd never have even considered getting naked in front of others before this."
"You do have a most pleasing body, Jamie. It was a shame to leave it in such a condition. However, you are still as beautiful now as you were before you got in the tank," Prinea replied smiling at the now younger looking, and unscarred woman.
Besides the official review board, the only other person she ever told of her ordeal in Afghanistan was her sister. She swore Janie to secrecy mostly because the mission she had been on was still classified.
When her team was sent on a mission to rescue six Americans, two archeologists' and they're four grad students, intel had it as a simple snatch and run. What the idiots apparently didn't know was that the informant that gave them the information worked for the Taliban.
Jamie's team was captured and moved away from the trap site. At first Jamie didn't realize that the hostages were in the same cave complex, but when they readied Jamie for 'interrogation' she identified the remains of one of the hostages hanging from the wall across from her. The young woman was only recently dead, but the evidence of her long torture was very evident on her nude body.
Her 'interrogators' didn't even ask a question before applying a red hot knife blade to her left nipple. As she screamed, she could vaguely hear the assembled men laughing. Across from her, the dead girl watched accusingly.
They continued to burn and cut her; the knife, cauterizing the wounds so she wouldn't bleed to death and die too soon. Every time she would pass out from pain, they had someone revive her with either water, or an ammonia capsule. Much to her captor's delight, Jamie was able to keep going for most of the day.
She overheard her torturer telling the lone guard that she would be the main entertainment tonight. Jamie looked across the tunnel into the dead eyes staring back at her she heard the girl tell her to kill them; kill all of them. She nodded to the dead woman, and when the guard and torturer came to take her down. They had no idea what was going to happen to them.
The United States Navy might be liberated, but the teams still had a lot of work to go before fully accepting women as members of the elite. Therefore, in order for her to get to where she was, she had to greatly exceed what was expected of her male team mates. Upon graduation, her instructor told Admiral Winslow that she was the craziest, meanest, and most bad-ass Seal he'd ever dared train.
Her torturers untied her feet first. Before the man could stand back up, she wrapped her legs around his head and twisted. The guard that had been helping him was taken completely by surprise, but the sound of the loud, dull crack of a breaking neck galvanized him.
He back-pedaled to get away from the demoness they had just freed, and tried to bring his assault rifle around. In his haste, he tripped over the small, propane gas bottle for the foundry the insurgents had set up for their horses and torture implements.
The incident ripped the fuel line from its crude instillation, and lit it on fire. As Jamie used her now free legs to lift her off the hook she was on, the gas bottle rolled toward her, and the makeshift blow-torch caught her legs. This time, she didn't cry out but dropped off the hook, spinning away. She rolled on the ground, grabbing the gas bottle by the handle, and smashing it into the guard's head. She also accidentally dumped the water used for cooling the metal on her legs, putting out the fire.
She picked up the assault rifle, and the hot knife, and kicked the door open. Her memories of the event stop there until she woke up back on the ship as they were getting ready to ship her to Bethesda.
The XO told her that from what her surviving team mates testified; she walked through the cavern complex nude, and killed every single insurgent. She freed her team mates who in turn rescued the hostages. They were just about to begin looking for her when she reappeared carrying the dead, naked body of the girl.
Jamie had been stabbed twice, shot five times, (twice by the guard in the forge room) had third degree burns on sixty percent of her lower body, a broken left arm, and a concussion. She was suffering from dehydration, and blood loss. When she collapsed, her lieutenant carried her to the extraction point, while someone else carried the dead girl.
In addition to the purple heart, and navy cross, she was awarded a silver star for bravery and heroism ... then she was quietly discharged on full disability because of mental illness. Admiral Winslow apologized for showing her their appreciation by retiring her, but she just shook her head and asked how much of the mission was classified, so she knew when to keep her mouth shut.
The Admiral convinced the navy to promote her before 'retirement', so she would have the higher base wage to live on.
Neither Prinea nor Glynda knew any of her history, and how she'd gotten the scars, but it was obvious they'd been horribly painful, and inflicted during battle. The simple fact that Jamie was still alive was proof of her unusual strength of character.
"Thank you, Prinea, you're not too shabby yourself you know," Jamie replied grinning at him, and admiring the view.
In an effort to change the subject, Prinea asked her, "Have you decided what you'd like to do, yet?"
"I think so, but I'd like to talk it over with my family first. We're all in this together, and I'd like their opinions before I commit."
He nodded. "Good plan. You know, after observing the society on earth, most families don't seem as close as all of you appear to be."
Jamie shrugged. "I guess I'm too close to see your perspective on it. But we really haven't spent a lot of time together since I got out of the hospital. I'd visit for holidays and the occasional weekend, but not really all that often. But I do think when it comes to families; we're the rule, not the exception." She winked at him, then dove under the water and swam toward an unsuspecting Grista.