The usual disclaimers apply. Don't read this if you are offended by material of a homosexual nature.

This work depicts adult males in sexual situations with underage males. If this offends you do not read this story. All events depicted in this story is purely of a fictional nature and any resemblance to people living or dead is coincidence. If you have enjoyed my story you can contact me at lonewandererlust@hotmail.co.uk I appreciate all feedback and am happy to talk my stories over.

Lone Wanderer, Adam's World

Part Sixteen

Fluttering flames of torchlight cast dancing shadows across the cold stone walls. Tapestries and artwork, illuminated in the orange glow, the eyes of the long dead subjects staring resolutely across the great hall as they had done all through the many centuries since the Collapse.

The night was still and warm, without a breath of wind to stir the ghosts of the long-since departed. Outside the thick walls of the keep, the forest buzzed and chirruped and growled with nocturnal life. A low growl preceded a desperate yelp and all was silent for a moment before the humming collective began again.

The lone figure paced back and forth atop the tower, pausing here and there, looking out among the battlements before returning to his nightly vigil. He held the device close to his face and depressed the button.

'The helicopter had landed in a once empty field, now overgrown with maturing saplings and tangled brambles. After a brief discussion, we decided to go meet our saviours, if saviours they were. Dan was eager but after my experience with the Cult, I was less inclined to be dealing with more potential hostiles. Still though, we took off at a brisk pace towards them'

He released the button, sighed and put the recorder down on a heavy wooden table. Next to it lay a dozen or so thin stone disks, the recording medium for the analogue dictation machine. He poured himself a glass of dark red wine and sipped at it gingerly as he surveyed the darkened land spread before him.

To the south, the Thames gurgled lazily and across the bank, the forest continued for as far as the eye could see. Several dozen hectares of forest had been cleared to the east to make room for the vineyard and small brewery, along with a selection of smaller fields for various fruits and vegetables. The north and west was forest, punctuated here and there by the occasional little mountain of collapsed ancient structure, now fully grown over.

The fields were lit by flowing forms of light, lanterns carried by the Adams, going ceaselessly about the work of toil, tending to the crops, removing pests, maintaining the brewery machinery. The man watched them, still fascinated, even after all the centuries, at the wonder of the machine people.

He picked up the recorder and continued.

'When we approached the chopper, two men jumped out and approached us. They wore military green fatigues and carried an automatic weapon each. I clutched a pistol in my good hand and Dan unslung his rifle. Both parties approached one another warily and we faced off against each other until one of the military types broke the silence.

“Kneel before the One True God infidel” he demanded, yet did not raise his weapon.

“Go fuck yourself....hard” I added. It was so foolish of me to say, I know, but at the time, after all I had endured, I wasn't about to play nicely with those pricks. He walked up to me, Dan aimed at him and still the two of them did not react. He stuck out his hand and his icy resolve broke into a big, dopey grin.

“Good for you buddy. I'd have said the same damn thing. Private Michael Jenson, US army”

I knew, just by looking at him that he was trustworthy, we shook hands and with the ice broken, Dan and I were filled in on the state of the world.

It was as we had feared. Humanity was more or less extinct. All the nations of Earth had fallen to what the news agencies had referred to as the Hyperflu but which now was known as the Blending. After the machines had escaped from a Chinese research facility, they had spread via humans to the Indian subcontinent and from there, all across the face of the planet. The vast majority of people were killed by the machines, not on purpose but because of design flaws. Only around one in a hundred thousand had the good fortune to have a swarm of the machines assemble properly inside them. With the rest of the human race exterminated and the global communications networks severed, most were unaware of any other survivors.

The machines had left only men alive. I had pondered the chances of encountering only Daniel and not a woman or girl instead but now the reasoning was revealed. The American survivors had managed to band together much faster than anywhere else and had uncovered secret cables between Washington and a spy in Beijing. The Chinese government was working on highly advanced nanotech, integrating it directly into human biology. The initial rounds of the advanced beta experiments had all been conducted on male subjects, tuned to activate properly only on those with specific markers on the Y chromosome. I and everyone else left alive had the amazing fortune of genetic similarity with the experimental subjects, not through actual familial ties but because of the nature of genetic randomness, similar patterns were bound to assemble again and again given enough time and diversity.

Something had happened, some division within the highest echelons of the Chinese government. There were those that wanted to destroy the nanotech before it became a danger and those who wanted to exploit it as a nano-technological weapon. The news stopped coming out of Beijing for a time but the spy managed to send one final message. The machines were out and they were spreading. All emergency procedures were to be taken.

“So the bunker under London?” I asked, fearing and needing the answer at the same time.

“Yeah, in Washington too. Most of the big players were informed by the Beijing spy. Diplomatic papers in the Pentagon said there was seventy two of the machine-proof bunkers built in the years preceding the Collapse, each holding anything between a few hundred to a few thousand personnel”

“So there are thousands and thousands of people, without immunity, still below ground?”

“Looks that way. Are you two coming with us?” he asked.

“After all you've told me. I don't know, it needs discussion” I looked at Dan.

“Yeah I think we need to talk about this together” he said.

“That's cool guys. But listen up” he said, leaning in closer “those cult guys you were dealing with, they're growing in strength. We were gonna hit that place today until one of our scouts saw the kid pick the fuckers off last night. Thing is, that was just a forward base. They're penetrating from Europe and looking for more recruits in Britain. Reports put their numbers at close to thirty thousand, the continent is alive with them. We number less than a third of that. I won't lie, we'll soon be at war. A last world war. And we need all the help we can get” he pulled out a pad of paper and scribbled down a note with directions. “We have a ship docked off the south coast. If you decide to join us, we'll be here for three more weeks before heading home with the supplies we need” he passed me the note and said “if you come towards us, someone will pick you up. Tell them 'the eagle is soaring' and you'll be good to come aboard”

“We'll think about it” I said'

He put the recorder down again and sipped the wine, savouring the sweet, whole flavour of twenty matured years. He gazed up at the sky, enhanced vision peeling away layers of atmospheric distortion and bringing a crystal clarity to the starscape. A large blue star winked down at him. The terraformed Mars.

A noise made him turn around. An Adam had opened the roof trap-door and was climbing through the hole.

'Sorry to disturb you sir but you have a call waiting' it said, face perfectly calm and emotionless, the complexion fine and soft even by the light of scattered torches.

'I didn't receive a notification. My implants would have told me' he replied, tutting at the pretty machine.

'No sir, this call is routed by secure channel to your laboratory. It is coming in on the special equipment'

'Oh' he half-gasped 'excellent' putting down his glass and walking as fast as he dared down the winding spiral stone staircase. The Adam followed close behind, attentive at all times.

*

'I'm on my way home my love. As you know I can't use the shuttle over the jungle or the others might see me. A crawler is taking me out to the coast and I'll fly from there back to the tower and into your arms' Daniel smiled and the screen blacked out.

Kristian sat in the high-backed leather chair, staring at the ancient-looking flat screen on the desk and felt a wave of immense relief wash over him. The Adam at his side stood straight, staring ahead, awaiting orders. He dismissed the machine and returned to the roof to sit under the stars and drink with the glittering moon.

Daniel had become ultra-secretive over the last century. For months, even a year or two at a time, he would leave Kristian and take a roundabout route into the heart of the African continent to do something that Dan obviously felt was forbidden or so bad that it needed to be hidden from the rest of the Fifty Six for fear of censure. In all those years, after arguments, threats, pleading and crying, Kristian had not been able to get a word out of his eternal partner on what he was doing. He didn't like the secrets but he did everything in his power to help Dan keep them from the others.

Comsats, environmental monitors, data storage dirigibles, all had to have their visual feeds, regarding the specific region of the African continent, doctored to cover up Daniels clandestine activities. It was sheer luck that no one had discovered Kristians subterfuge. Only his sense of total loyalty to his man had kept him from peering into the unaltered data himself to discover that which Dan wanted to remain secret.

But now, after another seven month stretch, Daniel was coming home again. Kristian could not wait. He played back the last reunion in his head, sight, sound, smell, touch and taste recorded perfectly by the machines, placing him in total immersion as Dan caressed him, fingertips laden with invisible machinery plucking Kristians nerve endings, sending him into near catatonic-inducing levels of pleasure. If it had not been for the machine reinforcement that both possessed, they both would have suffered massive brain haemorrhaging.

He stopped the playback, coming down from the extreme heights of absolute pleasure and a love story spun out over six hundred years and stared up at the jewel studded surface of the moon.

Across the lunar surface were scattered hundreds of domes, each more than ten kilometres across. They had been filled with flora and fauna, genetically adapted for low gravity and left to run themselves. The domes regulated the day/night cycle, darkening up to shut out the light during the long lunar day and self-illuminating during the equally long night. No one lived up there, only attendant Adams and a vast network of nano machines. The moon had just been a test site. It had all been created in just ten years, most of that time going into the planning. Once the machines had been released into the lunar regolith, they had constructed the domes and brought forth the life in only a matter of months. The real work was to be done on Mars.

Kristian was there, in orbit around the red planet when the initial Adam and human scouting teams had landed. They spent the best part of fifty years combing the cold rock for any signs of life, living or dead. They had found nothing. Mars had seemingly never hosted life and so the Great Work could go ahead without the worry of killing natives.

With the teams withdrawn, warheads packed with nanotech were launched onto the surface of Mars. Within days they had begun to digest the surface minerals and replicate at an enhanced rate. Programmed specialization allowed huge swathes of the grey goo to concentrate on upping the oxygen content of the atmosphere, while other parts got to grips with thawing the polar caps and bringing the frozen underground oceans back to life.

Almost sixty years later, additional machines were launched into the mix, packed with genetic templates. They constructed hardy plant varieties and insects to establish the initial biosphere. Forty years after that, the oceans were full with terrestrial life and vast equatorial jungles of green were alive with the sounds of mammals and birds and scaly lake dwellers. The red planet was no longer red.

Even Venus had not escaped the attention of the Fifty Six. Asteroids from the main belt had been diverted, skimming the world and, a little at a time, finally brought the sluggish planetary spin up to near-Earth standard. The extreme atmosphere of the second rock from the sun had been leached away by orbital structures, seeding the sky with hardy varieties of the nanotech designed to filter the sulphuric acid and bring down the carbon dioxide by trapping it in great liquid reservoirs beneath the planets surface. This world had been tougher to crack than Mars, but, with the help of the nanotech, the Fifty Six had persevered and even now, the first few glints of a reflecting ocean of liquid water were visible from space.

The machines that had virtually wiped out humanity were now helping to spread life across the dead solar system. If that wasn't irony...

*

Kristian awoke to the sound of a low rumbling vibration. His head was clear of any hangover thanks to his ever-present machine friends. He got up out of the king size four-poster bed and ran through the narrow wood panelled corridor to the main staircase. External camera views were redirected to his head and he saw the light shuttle descending to land atop the tower. With no time to wash or dress himself, he ordered up a utility fog of machines that stripped him, picked his skin, hair and teeth free of dirt and grime and assembled an outfit around him, all while he hurried up the stairs.

The shuttle touched down softly as Kristian threw the roof hatch open and emerged into the bright cloudless morning of mid-June. The craft was a sleek, arrow-like affair. Aerodynamic fins folded back during transatmospheric flight but were now extended, making the shuttle look more alike a miniature version of the ancient Concorde vehicle of centuries ago.

A door irised open and a small ramp extended from the shuttles underbelly. Dan stepped through the doorway and strolled onto the tower roof before noticing Kristian and throwing himself into his arms. They stayed like that for many minutes, holding each other, making sure that it was all really happening and not just another moment of machine-assisted perfect recall.

Finally, they kissed. For six centuries, they had been together and for six centuries, they had never tired of their intimacy. Kristian was as unchanged as the day he was infected. Though he had worn many hairstyles and even different faces in the intervening time, he had settled back into his standard appearance, a biological age of twenty-six. Dan, however, had continued to age but only until an approximate age of eighteen or nineteen. He had never altered his appearance or adjusted his body. Everything about him was natural. His body was defined and slightly muscular, while his penis was thick and long, finishing its growing at eight and a half inches. In some ways, Kristian could still see the almost-thirteen year old boy in Dan's face. He still possessed an almost naïve curiosity about the world, when all the rest of the Fifty Six were interested in furthering the cause throughout the solar system.

They stood there, under the glaring sun, lips together, hands roaming. It felt like hours and yet seconds of time. Connected, there was an almost psychic link, their thoughts and feelings passing through one another, the need, the wanting. At last, they parted and stared into each others eyes, sensing the great depth of time that they shared and knowing there could be doubt that this was a love written for the aeons.

'I've missed you' Kristian said, holding Dan's neck and caressing his body.

'And I've missed you' Dan replied, placing his head on Kristian's chest 'but you know I have to do what I do. It's important' Kristian blinked, had he just heard that? Dan volunteering something about his secretive work.

'But you'd never tell me, would you? I respect your wishes and I help you cover up whatever it is you've been doing and for all that you keep me in the dark' Kristian said.

'Look, it's not like that' Dan said, pulling away 'I want to tell you, it's just that...I wouldn't want, couldn't take it if you were to get into trouble for what I'm doing. If I act alone, only I can be punished'

'Dan, please tell me you aren't conducting cloning research. That was outlawed for a reason' Kristian held him by the shoulders, looking into his eyes, searching for a subconscious betrayal of intent.

'No. It's not that'

'Then why won't you...oh never mind. I don't want to fight. I love you. And that is all that matters' they embraced again and Kristian led Dan downstairs to the bedroom.

*

Sex with machine assistance was something akin to a state of nirvana. A pure blissful existence. Any feelings of doubt or worry or hate were extinguished, leaving room for love, pleasure and freedom of thought to flourish. Kristian felt his thought processes speed up as the world around him slowed to a sluggish crawl. It was only him and Daniel, moving together as one. Dan ran a finger all the way down Kristian's chest, making him cry and whimper as their implants met, exchanged data and ramped up the pleasure signal. His lower lip quivered as Dan's finger slid over his abs, through his pubic hair and touched the base of his cock. With unhurried teasing, Dan stroked Kristian's cock head, making him writhe and flail in throes of pleasure unknown to humans before the Collapse. Kristian's implants momentarily overloaded, knocking him unconscious for the briefest of moments. When he became aware again, Daniel was halfway impaled on his cock which was now screaming instructions, attempting to describe the almost torturous levels of pleasure being received by the overwhelmed nerve endings. Kristian ordered the implants and machines to take over the job of sending sensory information and to increase machine reinforcement in his head. The effect took him overboard.

To an outside observer, Kristian and Daniel were moving almost too fast to make out, thrusting and pulling like a complicated machine. But to them, time had stopped. Dan engaged his implants to their full extent and placed his hands on Kristian's head. Their minds connected on a level deeper than anyone else had ever experienced and they timed it exactly right.

Their screams of pleasure broke the warm quiet of the day. Orgasm combined with the powers of pleasure available in the twenty-seventh century was the closest thing to lethal one could practice. They cried out for many minutes, extending the spasming in their cocks for as long as medically possible.

Dan collapsed onto Kristian, the both of them absolutely covered in thick, hot cum. They laid together, breathing heavily, trying to get air back into their depleted lungs. Kristian pulled Dan close, tight and kissed him gently.

*

When we got back to the house, it was tempting to fall back into the routine we knew. To just shut out the world that had come barging back into our perfect little existence and hide under the covers for evermore. It was wonderful while it lasted but with the threat of war looming on the horizon, we couldn't just sit there, waiting to be attacked by the cultists.

I held Dan after we finished making love. He cried in my arms and I joined him.

'I promise you. We will come back here when the war is over. If not here, then somewhere else, somewhere better. It doesn't matter. So long as we're together, we'll have a home Daniel' he turned his tear-streaked face up to me.

'I just don't want to be away from you again. In war, people die. What would I do without you?'

'Hey, who said I was going to go out with a gun? There are better places to be in a war, places well away from the front lines. I promise we'll be together'

'Forever?' he asked.

'Forever'

*

Kristian awoke from his remembering dream. His internal chronometer told him it was twelve minutes past midday. He looked over at Daniel, still asleep, drained by their frantic, near-lethal love making. He slid out of bed and crept out of the room and descended the staircase to the kitchen.

A small taskforce of Adams were at work, seemingly roused into life by Kristian's awakening. They were preparing a lunch made from the fresh produce grown outside the castle walls. Male and female appearing machines were dicing, peeling, boiling, their appearance, their movements, totally indistinguishable from that of a flesh and blood human. Kristian liked it that way. Some of the Fifty Six kept their Adams blank, more machine-like but the faces, even the scripted irrelevant conversations between the machines made the world feel full again.

'Sir, lunch will be served in fifteen minutes. Shall I rouse master Daniel?' asked Kristian's personal assistant Adam.

'No thank you. Let him dream a little longer. We have a big night tonight'

Just then, an insistent whine in his head made Kristian snap to attention, opening the communications link within his implants. Overlaid on his view of the kitchen was a burly, older. appearing black man, sitting on a bench in a tree-bordered clearing.

'Kristian! You will be coming the the gathering tonight?' he asked enthusiastically, speaking with a slight South African accent.

'Of course John. Dan and I wouldn't miss it for the world. We'll be leaving early to beat the others. Are you all done with the preparations?'

'Almost. The Adams are still directing the UF in a few sections and I need to write a small speech but otherwise, all systems go'

'Excellent. Oh, do you want me to bring anything? I have an entire castle cellar full of the most wonderful wine or perhaps some of my home-grown veg?'

'Well, I wouldn't mind a case of your '52 red, if you could spare some' he chuckled 'but we'll have all we need in regards to food. Why do you bother with growing it when the UF will whip you up something better in a second?'

'That's not the point' Kristian said, sitting down on a bench along one wall 'the food I grow is...imperfect. And it's those imperfections that make it more interesting to eat. Utility fog makes the most wonderful things but too much of a good thing...it just gets boring'

'I guess so. Still, it will be good to see everyone tonight. Give my regards to Daniel'

'I will. See you tonight John' the overlay vanished and Kristian was left alone with the gossiping machines.

*

The two of them washed, the old fashioned way. Dan leaned back on Kristian in the tub as the water steamed up the little stonewalled room. Kristian ran a bar of scented soap across Dan's chest, feeling his hard pectoral muscles, sliding his hand down his abs.

'Hey, we don't have time for that' Dan chided, sloshing around to swap positions so he could soap Kristian's back.

'Oh you're no fun'

'Do you want to be beaten by Carey and Michael again?

'No. It's so stupid. Used to be that the more fashionably late you were, the cooler you were. Now it has to be all about getting to the gathering first. It's so juvenile. Fifty Six hexacentenarians all rushing to be the first in line' Kristian leaned back now on Dan, basking in the hot warmth of the water and the body of his eternal lover.

'What do you think John has planned this time?' Dan asked, working Kristian's hair into a thick lather.

'Probably more of the same crap. “We dedicate this night to the Lost Billions and to the Fallen Ten Thousand blah blah blah”. We really need to do something new. Oh, did I tell you about Jordan?'

'What about him?' Dan asked as he massaged Kristian's scalp.

'Well you know he's been refining the craft designs for years? He even took a trip out past the Oort Cloud a few years back, remember? Now he's been looking into some way of going FTL!'

'Yeah right. You can't go faster than light. Besides, why would we need to? We're immortal anyway, what's a few decades of travel time to us?'

'Still, it's an interesting idea. I'd love to at least experience it. Wouldn't you?'

'What I'd like to experience would be getting to the gathering on time. Speaking of which, shouldn't we be on our way?'

*

The shuttle expanded its internal compartment to fit the two of them comfortably, with two attendant Adams tucked away in the back. The inside was spartan. Two acceleration couches, a manual control console and a forward facing window. Daniel ordered the craft to take them to the Wheel and within thirty seconds, they were little more than a fast moving dot to the Adams working the fields.

Below, in the shady forest, a wolf stalked its prey.