Access Babylon (mind control, male-female sex, sci-fi) by Jukebox
Carbine’s systech has noticed some anomalies in his behavior, but he’s sure he’s acting perfectly normal. If his cyborg brain was infected by mind-controlling malware, he’d be the first to know, right?
Release Date: Nov. 10, 2018
I’ve always loved stories from this author. It never seemed to matter even if it was something that I did not normally like. The writing was always just that good. The very concept forwarded here was amazing! If someone is messing with our head, can it be impossible to know? What fueled this story was how the suggestion that mental augmentation to overcome weaknesses in instinct and understanding might just exacerbate those weaknesses in some circumstances. In StarCraft, Star Trek, Star Wars, among others, it is rare to see a human mind enhanced technologically, suggesting or showing inherent problems. In Star Trek: Deep Space 9, there is a whole episode devoted to using artificial brain matter to replace the dying parts, but that led to witnessing a disturbing loss of self, prior to the character’s ultimate death. The Borg, seen in multiple Trek series, also show directly how easy it might be to loose oneself to direct mental integration. Ultimately, much of science fiction likes to suggest that the human brain is remarkable in and of itself, and while we may “augment” with fully external devices, the brain itself normally needs no technological upgrades. In other words, it might be pretty easy to loose who we are when when start literally plugging things into our head. Anyway, the only arguable issue with Access Babylon was that it goes from ironically not erotic at all to the almost random appearance of eroticism. Made this feel a bit uneven, making me wonder if this would have been a better story without the eroticism. In the end, though, this was certainly a good cerebral sci-fi quickie
The Realms of Mr. Potestas 