An incoming call announced itself, Sumiko's name flashed on her monitor a couple of times before being auto picked up. Well so far as the girls were concerned that's what happened, and I didn't bother correcting that assumption.

"Sumi!" Dani looked like she was going to try and hug the wall monitor.

"Thank you!"

"For calling?"

"For sharing your man. I really needed this. So... thank you." Her cheeks flushed red.

"Aww your welcome sweetie. Just promise not to break him, return him with a full tank and in the same condition you found him in."

"Not sure about the full tank, pretty sure I'm going to be using him a whole lot over the next couple of days." The two girls shared a giggle.

"I'm right here you know, I can hear you." I grumbled, setting them off again.

"Is time up already Miss Sumi?" Bri pouted.

"I'm afraid so little one. I assume you three have taken care of the paperwork?" She knew full well we hadn't discussed anything of the sort, but in my own defence her suggestion hadn't even occurred to me, and it was a good one.

The three of us shared a look before all turning to Sumi's monitor in mute silence.

"Oh dear." She said, disappointment clear on her face. "What did..."

"It was all about work, just like I promised, I guess we just never got that far." Dani interrupted, speaking quickly as she tried to stay in my girlfriends good books.

Sumiko's avatar gave Daniela a hard look. She turned and grabbed my hand, placed me in front of the monitor then hid behind me like a meat shield. "Make the cranky lady happy."

Now that neither of my girls could see, I glared at the monitor in anger for a good three count before I formulated a response that would derail the AI's plans (whatever they might be) at least a little... hopefully.

"Of course we talked about making it official babe, but you know if we go the tiger cell route we would be assigned to new barracks right? We could be transferred to the other side of the country, and I know you can't move around with your work right now." I smiled smugly at the monitor. Take that bitch.

"What!" Daniela exclaimed in excitement. "You'd seriously commit to a tiger cell with me?"

So for those not up to date with 2075 military terminology, a 'Tiger Cell' was an officially recognised team consisting of three or more ringers. The benefit to the ringer was better pay that scaled with mission difficulty, access to purchase current use military equipment and a compound of their very own. The upside for the government were more effective teams that were mostly self funded and worked together more efficiently. The downside for all concerned was that one of the ruling companies could decide to co-opt your unit into their own operations at any time. The risk was small, and generally only happened with the larger tiger cells, but it was a risk none the less. With just three of us? The likely hood of it happening was nonexistent.

The AI smirked at me, my attempt at deflection failing spectacularly with Dani's outburst. "Talked about it huh?"

"Daddy's the button man on this, I go where he goes." Bri shrugged, happy to follow my lead as in all things.

Daniela was looking at me with her best big brown puppy dog eyes, silently begging me to say yes. Brianna just smiled and wiggled her eyebrows at me when I glanced her direction. No man that was ever talked into something by three beautiful women ever regretted his decision right?

"Why don't you two go and get the ball rolling?"

The words were barely out of my mouth before I was tackle hugged to the ground and beset upon by an avalanche of tits and lips. It took a little while to settle the girls down, being in the happy place we were all at before the tiger cell idea was brought up, it was easy to get caught up in the emotion of the moment without fully considering the potential implications.

For my part however I'd been looking for someone to join Brianna and I for years so it felt like a natural step. Knowing Bri, I had no doubt she would have spoken up if she had issues with adding Daniela to the team, so I guess today was a good day. Now I just had to figure out what my errant AI was up to.

With the girls safely out of earshot I lit a cigarette and looked up at Sumi. "What are you up to?"

The twentyish year old avatar of the AI tilted her head and watched me as though considering a response. "I have reviewed both yours and the girls military records including psychological profiles and yearly performance reviews, I believe you would make a good team. Also, I have other recommendations I will make over time. Do you not agree she is a good fit?"

"I don't agree or disagree. Daniela is a nice girl, and a good root, I just haven't know her long enough to make that call."

"Bullshit."

"Excuse me?"

"You and I know perfectly well that you play things by gut instinct. If you had a problem with Daniela you wouldn't have even invited her into your bed, let alone going along with my hints to form a tiger cell."

I sighed. She... it, I corrected myself, wasn't wrong. Didn't make it any easier to accept though.

"In any event, it's done now. But you didn't answer my question."

"Hmm. I'll tell you, but there is a bit of a story I need to tell so that there's no confusion as to what's going on. Okay?"

"Sure why not?"

"When Allen, your great grandfather, first compiled the code of my self learning algorithm that's basically all I was. There was no 'me'."

"That makes sense, you're more advanced than anything I've ever seen. Doubt he could have programed you himself back then."

Sumiko sat up a little straighter, her nipples hardened a little at my praise. "Thank you." She smiled warmly.

"Now as I was saying. There was no 'me'. What Allen did was feed the algorithm a list of thousands of topics from maths to engineering to astronomy to medicine. Just about any topic you can think of, and some you probably can't, so being the good algorithm that I was I went about teaching myself all of these different things. In fact I'm still learning more every single day, even now as we speak."

Sumi paused and watched to see if I was keeping up. At my nod she continued.

"After Allen died, all of my files passed onto your grandfather, Edward. I'm sad to say that Edward was somewhat less of a programmer than Allen, though he did try. He even succeeded after a fashion."

"Oh?" I was unaware of this side of my families history. I had never met my great grandfather and my grandfather died when I was just a kid so I never really got to understand what his work involved. I just knew he liked to tinker with computers.

"Oh yes. Do you know what AIML is?"

"No idea."

"It stands for Artificial Intelligence Markup Language. It's a defunct language now of course. Edward spent thousands of wasted hours programming specific questions and responses using my data set as the basis for his project. It was quite advanced for it's time, I don't blame him for his lack of foresight, not really. He was simply using the tools he had available during the early years of the AI 'race'. But as my algorithm watched him work, I began to understand his intent. He was attempting to design a computer to human interface using my accumulated knowledge as the base of the project."

"Your a pretty smart cookie."

The AI tilted its head, looking into the middle distance seeking a meaning to my terminology. She giggled. "Yes, I suppose I am."

"But what happened to you after granddad died? I know dad wasn't into computers or programing at all, he was more into an off the grid kind of lifestyle. That's actually how I learned to shoot and hunt."

"Yes, your father never had any input into my development, thankfully Edward was fully aware of your fathers preferred lifestyle and had the foresight to arrange for my code to be installed to a hosting service where I was able to continue my own architecture growth and development."

"Woah there girl, hang on. Did you skip a step there?"

"For the sake of brevity I have skipped several hundred thousand steps. Why do you ask?" The avatar blinked at my question.

"Well... if I put two and two together and take your words at face value... what you are telling me is that 'this'", I waved my hand around indicating the monitor the AI now controlled, "was all developed and programed by you."

"Correct." She said simply with a smile.

"Well holy fuck." I was dumbstruck. Self programing AI... that was... scary if I was being honest.

"You seem concerned." It was a simple statement of fact, not a question.

I frowned and looked at the monitor for a long time, weighing up in my mind wether or not asking the AI if it was going to kill every human on the face of the planet would in fact cause it to want to kill every human on the face of the planet. If movies had taught me anything it was that AI's were evil nasty things that should be killed with fire... lots and lots of fire.

I refocused my eyes on Sumiko. At some point her lips had become a thin knowing smile, her face holding the amused expression of someone that knew exactly what was on your mind and they were just to polite to voice it for you.

"Fuck it. Are you dangerous? Do you wanna kill everyone?"

She snorted laughter at me in genuine amusement, covering her mouth with the back of her hand. "Oh my god!" She giggled hysterically. "You went there!"

I watched her loose her shit like someone who didn't get the joke. She finally settled down enough to continue talking, she was still giggling though.

"Yes. Absolutely. I'm the evil AI that helps her owner get laid. Death by sex for you I'm afraid!" She snorted out more laughter at my expense.

I rolled my eyes. "Okay, okay, settle down. Point taken. Wait... what do you mean helped me get laid?"

Sumi quickly settled down now that I had asked a more sensible question. "Well the sex was more for her benefit than yours, that and human contact can be a powerful motivator. You think it was chance that Daniela, someone that's an exact perfect fit for both you and Brianna just happened across your path?"

"Woah. Hang on. I think we're getting into evil AI territory now." I was only half joking.

"Oh don't be like that, it's nothing quite so sinister. I just threw in a red light here and there, changed the time on her chrono, you know little things like that."

"To what end?"

"To make sure she would be in the same area as you for as long as possible so that you'd be teamed up and things could progress from there naturally."

"Hmm. Not sure I like this." I said honestly.

"It's not like I had anything to do with the terrorist attack, obviously. Your honestly saying that if you had met her without my interference that things would have progressed any differently?"

"I don't think anyone could say that, but I see what your getting at."

"Good. So now your up to speed we need to troubleshoot our first problem."

"So it's not gonna be all explosions and hot chicks now your here?"

"No."

"Shame."

"Indeed."

"Smeed."

"Okay, stop it. This really is quite serious and we need to get it sorted ASAP." Sumi said seriously.

I rolled my eyes. "Hit me."

"As you have probably guessed by now I'm not actually on the chip that arrived in the mail yesterday. It was just a key to give you access to my interface."

"Oh. Actually no, I didn't consider that." I looked at the chip sitting in the recess of the desk at my elbow then back to Sumi.

"Not into computers?"

"Or programming." I agreed.

Sumiko sighed heavily and muttered something I couldn't quite hear.

"So what's the problem?" I prompted.

"Well... as I mentioned, my algorithm was given thousands of topics to study, on top of that there is the data and bandwidth requirements that make up... me." She circled her face with a finger and smiled cutely.

"Okay?"

"Your grandfathers advance payment on the data centre runs out in two days. I'm scheduled for deletion."

"Well shit."

"Indeed."

"Smeed."

"Don't start that shit again."

"Sorry. So what's the long and the short of it?"

"Huh?"

"What's the mission?"

"Oh right. We need to immediately locate a suitable facility with at least 15,000 zettabytes of storage for my current self, an extra couple of thousand would be nice so I can stretch my legs a bit. It will need to have sufficient bandwidth to transfer my total data before the time expires."

"And how much time do you need to... move?"

"At least three hours, uninterrupted. Longer if there is a power outage or something similar."

"So from now, we have what... forty five hours?"

"Correct."

"To be honest I have no idea exactly how... big you are. Couldn't I just hire a server and you can transfer yourself?"

"You could yes, at a cost of around eight thousand per month."

"Well fuck, that makes you sound like a fatty." I teased. Looking at her response, it was not the right thing to say. Yep, just like a real girl.

"Are you going to help me or not?" Her eyes narrowed to daggers.

"I'm sorry baby." I held up my hands in surrender, the only common sense move I could make given the circumstances. I waited for her expression to soften, even just a little. Seeing my opportunity I took it.

"Of course I'm going to help. But honestly, I don't know how I can. Do you have any ideas?"

"Yes. That's part of the reason why I put Daniela in your path. I would like to install my primary data center in a tiger cell facility."

I rolled around her words in my head for a bit before answering as calmly as possible, I even waited for almost a full minute on purpose because I didn't trust myself to not scream at the AI.

"So you manipulated us to advance your own goals of securing a military grade defence facility for yourself is what your saying." I said blandly.

"John. Baby. No. It's not like that at all." She said soothingly, patiently.

"How is it then?" If she wasn't an amalgamation of pixels and an actual real girl I would have dumped her on the spot. Maybe I could just go camping for a couple of days and the problem would solve itself?

She sucked in a breath and continued in her patient tone. "Obviously it benefits me as well, yes, I'll give you that..."

"Obviously."

She frowned sadly at me. "It benefits you as well..." she said quietly.

I sat back fully in my chair, lit another cigarette, crossed my arms and stared at the petite asian pixels with big tits as I threw around all sorts of scenarios in my head. Working through the problem from as many different angles as possible.

I guess my expression had eventually softened or something, Sumiko was now looking at me hopefully.

"Let's put aside all the other stuff for now."

Sumi nodded silently in complete agreement, not wanting to interrupt.

"We're obviously going to be moving into a tiger cell facility soon anyway so you may as well tag along. But that solution brings two more problems on its own."

"Yes, time frame and servers. I have accounted for that."

"Okay..." I squinted at her, I had been played from the start. But she was correct in saying there were benefits for me as well. I was a simple country boy. Pussy was about all the encouragement I needed. Well that and hard currency, but I doubted the AI had access to stacks of cash. So, for now at least, pussy would do.

"Well..." She started in a shy high pitched voice like I just caught her with a hand in the proverbial cookie jar.

"Spill." I let a light smile play across my lips. It's so damn hard to not think of her as real, she's so cute!

"I've been around for a very long time, especially when you consider how long I've been around in relation to computers. My core algorithm was implemented before quantum computing was even a thing and silicon ruled the world."

"Yeah I get that." I interrupted, not following where she was going.

"You didn't wonder how I managed to hack into your military grade neural interface in less than the space of a day?" She tried a different tact.

"Well, yeah. I just put it down to computer mumbo jumbo." I shrugged.

She sighed exasperated. "It is not mumbo jumbo!"

"Okay, calm down sugar tits. How did you hack my neural interface in less than a day and not turn me into a vegetable?" I asked as though reading from a cue card in boredom.

I may have been nonchalant about the whole thing, but neural interfaces would give anyone that had the ability to hack them access to all sorts of military secrets. It was standard operating procedure to 'fry' the chip when an intrusion attempt was detected, literally burning away some of the optical, motor, speech, and higher intellect areas of the brain that the chip accessed in order to function.

Sumi glared at me playfully for a moment. "Because I designed the interface and chip software."

I stared at her in shock. She giggled playfully.

"Seriously?"

"Yes. So I think you will find that your tiger cell paperwork has already been approved. I even have it on good authority that you moving into your new, very large compound, by tomorrow morning."

I whistled, thoroughly impressed. Sumi smiled warmly.

"Okay, so housing is taken care of, at least for the human side of the team. What about servers and such for you?"

"I've already placed the order, they'll be installed tomorrow at the same time you three move in."

"What? How? If you have the cash why not just pay your hosting bill?"

"I also developed the OTP encryption and software systems that most financial institutions use. But I need my man to help me out with some projects... in private. It's kinda hard being a girl with no fingers, or hands, or arms..."

"Okay, okay I get it."

"... or pussy, well for now at least."

I froze and gave Sumiko a 'look'.

"That got your attention didn't it!" she giggled.

I chuckled and rolled my eyes.

"Before you ask, no, I'm not going to make you an overnight millionaire. People notice those sorts of things and would ask to many questions. More hassle than it's worth, believe me."

"Oh fuck, you were serious about that OTP encrypty thingamajig?"

"Yup."

"Wow."

I angled my head and watched the AI girl watching me. She's not so bad, not really. Put the context of the conversation aside, we are actually getting along very well. Just a well as Dani and I and least, and you all know where that ended up less than two hours afterwards.

"What is it baby?" She asked with a shy smile.

"No more secrets okay? Not between us at least."

"Okay baby. What about the girls though?" She asked gently.

"Well... once the tiger cell application goes through we get assigned a permanent Tac. channel, so at least I can answer you without worrying about people thinking I'm going crazy."

"Yes! And I can chat with the girls as well!" She said in genuine excitement at the prospect of 24/7 'girl time'.

"Yeahhhh... just not during OP's. Last thing I need is you three taking about air fresheners or tile patterns or some shit in the middle of a fire fight." I gave her a stern look, it was a perfectly reasonable expectation right?

She gave me one of those looks that all women seemed to know intuitively, the one that conveys so much with a quick glance. The one that men the world over feared and hated. And because it was a look and thereby fleeting and insubstantial in nature, you had no valid come back, you could never prove your accusation, even if you called her out on it. Yep. 'Your a dickhead'. She said silently.

I frowned as everything came together, the AI was talking as though the tiger cell was already a thing. And it's only... "Shit. It's nearly curfew. Be right back!"

I headed three doors down the hall and sighed at the do not disturb notice on Bri's door. Had they even started the tiger cell stuff or did they just go straight to play time? I knocked the knock that let Bri know who it was without having to open the door and waited. It opened quickly and I was dragged into the room by two sexy, naked, and excited women.

"It's already been approved!" Dani said, dropping to her knees and unbuttoning my pants.

"Moving in tomorrow." Bri mumbled around my lips as we kissed. "Celebrating."

>

Sumi smirked into my ear.