diaper dimension Your Move - Chapter 18 Posted [8/21/2022]

[DiaperedPrince]

On 9/19/2021 at 9:35 PM, AdultInnocence said:

Maybe we can hope that you'll have time during holiday breaks so there isn't as long of a wait! Good luck with your classes!

Haha maybe. But the chances of me finishing the entire part over winter break is very remote. For your sake I'm not going to release half the part and go "sorry haven't written any more yet." ?

[DiaperedPrince]

So... it's been exactly a year, to the day, since I first started posting this. I'm not nearly done writing Part 2, but I'm going to start posting it anyway. First chapter to come on Friday! (Since Sofia is out of town and won't be able to post). Future chapters will be posted on Wednesdays, like last year. Meantime, check out the revised and edited version of Part 1 that I just posted over in Completed Stories, to refresh your memory! Note that the plot of the version I posted in serial format last year may not match up exactly with Part 2, but the edited version should.

[Guilend]

9 hours ago, DiaperedPrince said:

So... it's been exactly a year, to the day, since I first started posting this. I'm not nearly done writing Part 2, but I'm going to start posting it anyway. First chapter to come on Friday! (Since Sofia is out of town and won't be able to post). Future chapters will be posted on Wednesdays, like last year. Meantime, check out the revised and edited version of Part 1 that I just posted over in Completed Stories, to refresh your memory! Note that the plot of the version I posted in serial format last year may not match up exactly with Part 2, but the edited version should.

Yay i can’t wait 

[DiaperedPrince]

16 minutes ago, Guilend said:

Yay i can’t wait 

Glad someone's interested in Part 2 ?

[Guilend]

I’m sure other’s can’t wait either. I just finished reading it the second time around. I can’t wait. 

[Jayme]

I'm most definitely interested in part two as well.

[DiaperedPrince]

Part 2: Middlegame

“The way one plays chess always reflects the player’s personality. If something defines his character, then it will also define his way of playing.”

— Vladimir Kramnik

 

Chapter 12 — Times Are Changing

Growing up, the way I woke up in the morning changed over the years. Up until I was 8 or 9, I would open my eyes every morning to the smiling face of either my mom or my dad. If I was lucky on a weekend, they’d both be there. I almost always woke up sad and angry at myself anyway, because my Pull-Ups and later Goodnites were soaked more often than not.

Waking up in a cold clammy diaper was one of the first uncomfortable feelings I’d ever known. Knowing that the cause was my failure in controlling my own bladder was just fuel to the fire. My parents understood how I felt and did their best to comfort me, which included greeting me with their cheeriest smiles and hugs and kisses. Every single morning, without failure.

If I was unusually sad or frustrated, like the days after my birthday when I’d be a year older and still a bedwetter, my parents would tickle me, tell me jokes, pull faces, and do everything they could until I smiled. It was their mission to never let me start the day grumpy, and that contributed massively to my childhood self-esteem, confidence, and joyous attitude.

By the time I finally managed to stay dry consistently, I was already 9. Weeks later, my parents received simultaneous promotions. Their new positions meant they could get home earlier and spend more time with me, which I relished. However, they also had to leave before dawn. Since I didn’t want to get up three hours before school started, they let me sleep in and wake up to an alarm on my phone.

In high school, my schoolwork started picking up, and my sleep schedule started getting shifted later and later. I’d start to sleep at 1 am, then 2, then 2:30, and wake up fifteen minutes before my first class. I’d skip breakfast, throw together a sandwich for lunch, and dash out the door half-dressed, hair all messy and generally looking like a street urchin. That probably contributed to my not having many friends, and I found myself spending more and more time with computers instead.

I was sleeping at 3 am by my first year at MIT, where I majored in computer science. There, I discovered many others just like me, and my friend-count shot up. Like my new friends and most other programmers, I found that I coded a lot better in the small hours of the morning, so I regularly woke up at noon. I’d managed to schedule my classes to be in the afternoons and early evenings, so I would wake up, freshen up, have brunch, and head to class.

Thanks to summer internships at Google, Amazon and Meta, which back then were the biggest tech companies, I was offered a six-figure salary plus lucrative benefits at a small Silicon Valley start-up the day I received my Bachelor’s degree. My compensation included perks like flexible work hours and a sizable stake in the company once it IPOed, the former of which I took advantage of to go to chess tournaments, and to never fix my sleep schedule. In fact, from when I was 17 until I was teleported to this new dimension, I was almost consistently a night owl!

That first morning at Mike’s place — my new home, I awoke in a massive Amazon-sized bed with all four limbs wrapped around my new dolphin. My dress was gone, and in its place was one of the footed sleepers I’d picked out the day before. I was also wearing one of the extra-thick MapleLove night diapers. From how swollen it was, a thinner diaper like the one I was last wearing when I fell asleep would probably have leaked. I stretched my arms and yawned as my stomach growled. Having fallen asleep in the car, I’d missed out on dinner, and I was positively starving.

The room was dark, but rays of natural light seeped in from under the door, so I knew it must have been morning. I carefully hopped off the bed and walked — well, waddled — over to the door. It was the first time in ages that I’d woken up outside a crib or a car, and the freedom to walk about felt great.

Strangely, there was no visible handle on the door. I was just contemplating what to do when it slid into the wall by itself and Mike waltzed in.

“Morning princess! Did you sleep well?”

“Mawnin Mike, I swep pwee wew.” I quickly pulled my pacifier out, having forgotten it was there. I’m getting wayy too used to it.

“Glad to hear that.” He looked at the floor-to-ceiling window that made up one wall of the room, held his hand out palm-up, raising his arm as if lifting up an invisible object. As he performed the gesture, the electrochromic glass gradually became transparent and the room was soon bathed in light.

“Whoa, you have electrochromic glass for windows?! What else have you got in terms of mind-blowing tech?”

“It’s actually a transparent EXOLED display, not electrochromic glass. Serves the same function, and more. How ‘bout we grab some breakfast, then I can show you around the place, eh?”

“Sure. I’m starving!”

“Not surprising, what with you sleeping through dinner.” Mike turned and started walking, and I followed him out the room. When he got to the landing, he stopped and looked at me.

“You want help getting down the stairs?”

Even though I definitely probably maybe could have managed them, I capitalized on the excuse to get picked up by his big gentle arms.

“Give me a lift?”

“Sure.”

I held my arms out in the universally-understood ‘pick me up’ signal and Mike obliged me, before adjusting his t-shirt and heading down the stairs. When we reached the living room, I could smell deliciousness wafting from the kitchen. Mike sat me down at the dining table in the booster seat we bought yesterday. It had a nice and simple purple grid design on it, which reminded me of the ads for that high tech purple mattress company back home. Maybe they got the designs from this dimension?

I also found the contrast between the lavish-looking set of dining furniture and my purple plastic padded booster seat funny. It definitely made sitting at the Big-sized table more comfortable for me though, so I was a happy camper. My thoughts were interrupted by a plate of food sliding in front of me. I looked up to a smiling Mike who handed me a correctly-sized knife and fork that we’d bought the day before.

“You mind if I say grace?”

“Sure. I actually didn’t think you had Christianity here — religion never came up in any of my conversations here.”

“The U.S. is pretty staunchly atheist, but up here I’d say about half of us go to church? You’re Christian as well?”

I nodded. “Grew up in a pretty pious family. I was no evangelist, but I did believe. No reason to stop now seeing as I’m looking at the miracle God gave me,” I grinned and Mike chuckled.

After he said grace, I picked up half a pancake with my fork. I was about to stuff it into my mouth before he stopped me. I gave Mike a quizzical look as my pancake flopped back onto the plate and my stomach grumbled at the roadblock.

“You’re in Canada. We don’t eat pancakes here without this,” he plunked a milk-jug-sized bottle of maple syrup on the table. It was so heavy I made a mess pouring it onto my pancakes, but thankfully the big plate caught everything. The gooey tree syrup looked like a pain to scrub off clothes and furniture.

It was my first time trying maple syrup, but I was instantly hooked. I’m never going back to regular syrup. This stuff is wayyy too good.

I grabbed a steak-sized rasher of bacon and some eggs to go with my second pancake, and cleaned my plate with a third. Mike looked at me with serious concern when I finished the massive amount of food, but my stomach was finally happy with the compensation for my skipped dinner, and he was relieved when it didn’t look like I was going to throw up.

“You iked bekfash?” Mike asked with his mouth full.

I giggled at his silly mispronunciation. “Yup. The AmeniTea food I had on the limo was good, but the unshrunken ingredients tasted a bit off, and it was missing something.”

He swallowed. “Love, maybe? I always put lots of that into my cooking.”

I stroked my chin as I thought about it. “Maybe, yeah. Robot cooking lacks a bit of human touch.”

Just then, I felt a sudden urge to poop, and Mike’s next sentence was drowned out by a rude brraaaaaaapppp from my rear exit. My face turned crimson as mush flowed out into the padding.

Mike either didn’t seem to notice, or thought that it was the most natural thing ever.

“How’s your diaper?” He finally prodded when he finished his own breakfast a good five minutes later.

I cringed at the question and put up the most exasperated face I could muster. “Really? About to leak. And I don’t even wanna think about the sludge back there. I will admit though, this Canadian padding is pretty good at its job.”

“Told ya. Shall we start the house tour from your room? You can get changed there too?”

“Sure, just get me out of this. There wasn’t much to my room when I woke up in it though?”

Mike laughed and scooped me up, taking care to not smush the mound in my rear-end. “That wasn’t your room, Izzy. That was a guest bedroom. I was assembling your furniture in your room last night, and I didn’t wanna wake you.”

“Oh.”

He went up the stairs and went the opposite way from where we came from. At the end of the hallway, there was a closed, handleless door with what appeared to be a large full-color e-ink display on it, showing the words “Baby Izzy’s Nursery” in baby block letters! I completely freaked out and looked at Mike with my eyes wide open!

“Relax, it’s a joke,” Mike reassured me.

The door slid open automatically when we reached it, and I was half-expecting some sort of weird pink giant nursery. Instead, it was a normal looking room with three blank white walls, the last side being a floor-to-ceiling window identical to the one in the guest bedroom.

The me-sized normal bed we’d picked out, along with the desk and chair, were all nicely arranged around the room. The last piece of furniture was a tall white dresser that exceeded my height, where Mike had apparently stashed all my diapers. He grabbed a thinner one with a Tinkerbell design on it and some wipes, before hoisting me up and laying me down on the dresser.

“Really? A changing table?” I whined.

Mike shrugged and undid the snaps on the crotch of my sleeper, exposing my soiled diaper. “Easier for me this way. We don’t have to use it if you want to change yourself?”

I hurriedly changed the topic at the threat of my diaper-changer bailing on me. “Where did you even get it? I don’t remember you buying it yesterday?”

“Hand-me-down from my parents.”

“Did a Little living with them leave or something?”

“No, no. This was from years ago.”

I put two and two together, just as something dinged. “You mean this was your changing table?” I giggled at the image of Mike waddling around as a toddler.

“Yeah. And my little sister’s too.”

“Oh? What does she do now?”

“She’s a diplomat.” He untaped the diaper, got some baby wipes from a Pampers container, and lifted my legs up. I could feel the warmth of the wipes as he started wiping my butt. He was right… I love this wipe warmer thing! I’m surprised they have Pampers here. Wonder if those will feel better than the MapleLoves?

“Wow, that must be a really cool job.”

“Yeah, but the nature of it means I only see her in person once or twice a year. We do text each other quite often, though, and we chat over hololink when we have the time.” Mike taped a new diaper on me and redid the crotch snaps on my sleeper.

“You want something else to wear?”

“This sleeper’s fine, it’s nice and comfy.” I rubbed the fleece on a sleeve on my cheek. “Unless we’re going out?”

“Nah, we can chill at home today.” He set me down on my feet.

“Kay. What did you mean by hololink?”

“Sorry, think 3D video call, with holograms. Speaking of which, there’s someone you should meet.”

I tilted my head up at him in expectation.

“Max, give Izzy Level two access and come join us.” Mike spoke into thin air.

I stared at him like he was crazy for a split second, until a solid hologram the same size as me materialized in front of me.

“Level two access granted,” the apparition told Mike.

“Hey Izzy, I’m Max. So nice to finally meet you.” I shook his hand.

“Ooh, hi! You’re an AI like Luxuria! Do you know her?”

“Yeah, we grew up on the same street in a digital town called roboville.”

I rolled my eyes and Mike and Max both laughed.

“No Izzy, I know about everything there is to her thanks to the ’net, but I’ve never interacted with her before. That would make for an interesting experiment, wouldn’t it, Mike?”

“Yeah, it sure would. By the way, the sign on the door there was Max’s joke, not mine,” he smirked.

I glared at Max, but my expression softened when I saw a clearly remorseful look on his face. “Hey, it’s okay, it was kinda funny, I guess. It’s just… I’ve been through a lot, and it kinda scared me.” I patted his shoulder.

“I’m very sorry, I should have considered more factors before doing that.”

“Oh Max, stop guilt-tripping her.”

I turned to Mike. “He has feelings?”

“Hello, He is right here. And yes, I have feelings. Mike programmed the basic ones into me: happiness, sadness, fear, guilt…” Max responded and Mike nodded his assent.

“Still got a lot of work to do on more complex ones like fatigue, freedom and love,” Mike added.

“What does Level 2 access let me do?”

“Access any room in the house and basically everything on the intranet. It’ll take you some time to get used to the systems’ interfaces though,” Mike answered, making a move toward the door. “Shall I finish showing you around?”

“Yeah, sure.”

I followed them throughout the five-bedroom mansion as Mike pointed out all the tech to me. Almost every surface was a low-energy 10-bit color e-ink display. Ceiling-mounted hologram projectors enabled Max’s continuous presence, and different projectors seamlessly handed off his projection to one another as we moved through the rooms.

There was an AmeniTea in the kitchen, automated showers that worked like a car wash with multiple showerheads mounted on tracks on all four walls, a mini-swimming-pool-sized jacuzzi, and even a VR room with an omnidirectional treadmill.

Every door slid open automatically when we reached it and shut again afterwards (to allow individual rooms to be independently climate-controlled, Mike explained). The backyard had an olympic-size swimming pool (relative to me anyway) and a furnished treehouse that was firmly built around and supported by the biggest tree I’d ever seen.

Mike then showed me the spacious basement, which had a floor-to-ceiling mirror on one side of the stairs, and a gym, laundry room, and recreation room on the other.

I figured that was it for the tour, but Mike apparently had one last ace up his sleeve. He made a complicated hand gesture at the mirror and it turned transparent, revealing the coolest thing I’d ever seen.

===========================================================

Thanks for waiting a year to read this, and I hope you'll like Part 2 as much as Part 1! In the future I'll post a chapter every week, starting with this one! Please leave a like and comment your thoughts, I write for free and don't take donations so it's the best payment you can give me! ? Happy Canada Day! ?

[Guilend]

Was definitely excited to see the tech. You didn’t let me down. 
 

I’m looking forward to more. 

[DiaperedPrince]

2 hours ago, Guilend said:

Was definitely excited to see the tech. You didn’t let me down. 
 

I’m looking forward to more. 

Part 2 gets a lot more techy for sure. Glad you liked it and thanks for commenting!

[herezulo]

Glad to see this back.

[DiaperedPrince]

5 hours ago, herezulo said:

Glad to see this back.

Thanks for the comment!

[BobbyDrago]

Gonna have to reread the book again 

[DiaperedPrince]

43 minutes ago, BobbyDrago said:

Gonna have to reread the book again 

Feel free to read the complete version  

 

[diaperboymi]

AWESOME story!!!!!  So glad to see it return.  Can't wait to see what she saw????????

[DiaperedPrince]

45 minutes ago, diaperboymi said:

AWESOME story!!!!!  So glad to see it return.

Thanks for the compliments!

46 minutes ago, diaperboymi said:

Can't wait to see what she saw????????

Oh it was cool alright ?

[dmavn]

My moneys on the server and hardware that runs everything..

[Baby Billy]

I am so happy that you finally came back to this story, I know you said you planed to so I have neen looking forward to it.  I like the having an a big in the story that is not about just treating all littles like babies.   

[DiaperedPrince]

19 hours ago, Baby Billy said:

I am so happy that you finally came back to this story, I know you said you planed to so I have neen looking forward to it.  I like the having an a big in the story that is not about just treating all littles like babies.   

Thanks Billy!

[DiaperedPrince]

Chapter 13 — Future Shock

My mouth fell open as I drooled at the three towering racks, each about six feet wide, standing that same distance apart from each other. Each rack was slotted with five levels of sleek server blades that blinked silently. Mike pushed open a door built flush into the magic mirror, and I followed him into what appeared to be his personal server room.

I did a double-take when I noticed the sound in the room, or rather the lack of it. Given that there was no visible soundproofing between the servers and me, the volume of the cooling systems should have been loud enough to drown out speech at a normal volume. Instead, the room was quiet enough that I could hear Mike’s footsteps!

“How in the world is it so silent?! This is like the quietest server room I’ve ever seen… heard. Is it using fully passive cooling or something?”

“Nope, it’s definitely active, but it uses a new liquid-helium chip-level cooling method. The superfluidity means it takes almost no energy and thus no noise to wick away the heat, to the compressor and condenser outside. That’s a jet engine by the way; I just have good soundproofing in the wall. It’s not magic after all… The laws of thermodynamics still have to be obeyed.”

“4 degrees kelvin in your frickin’ basement?? Your tech here is insane!”

Mike laughed, “Decades of engineering, Izzy. Decades.”

“Well, what are the specs?”

“Of this baby?” He pointed to the racks and I nodded.

***

Flexing the specs of the server I’d hand-built from parts to someone that truly appreciated them was a rare opportunity, and I revelled in it. “Ten hundred-twenty-eight-core processors overclocked to one terahertz, making for a full zettaflop of computing power, per rack.”

Her jaw dropped open in an air of adorable awe. “Did you say TERAhertz and... and ZETTAflop??”

“Yup, there was a big breakthrough in clock speed when chip-level cooling came out, since heat was the biggest limiting factor. Anyway, for storage I’ve got twenty-five forty-exabyte BLC SSDs in a RAID-X array. That comes to basically a zettabyte of storage. There’s also two hundred fifty-six pets of RAM and a couple off-the-shelf graphics cards I hooked up to it.”

“Jeez, those numbers are mind-boggling. What’s BLC and RAID-X? Where I’m from, RAID is just zero to six?”

“It allows for three drives to fail before suffering data loss. BLC is byte-level cell provisioning, meaning each cell in the SSD stores eight bits of data.”

She didn’t look too impressed by that. “What’s the performance penalty for RAID-X?”

“There isn’t any with the latest versions of RFS, that’s why I use it. Filesystem is optimized for it,” I added by way of explanation.

“Wow. You realize you’ve got more oomph here than all but the latest supercomputer in my dimension?”

“Yeah, I’ve heard that. You guys basically live in the stone age,” I chuckled at my own joke and Izzy giggled adorably.

“What OS are you running on it?”

“A custom-compiled Arctic-based Tux distro.” A lot of people from her dimension used weird proprietary operating systems.

“Tux?” She snorted. “You have a penguin as your OS?”

“A penguin? No, Tux is the open-source operating system that just about everyone uses, unless you need an RTOS for some weird reason. We don’t use proprietary operating systems anymore.”

“Tux is the cute penguin mascot for Linux back home.”

“Oh, well I guess one dimension’s mascot, another dimension’s OS. Tux’s mascot is just a tuxedo here.”

“What’s that weird keyboard thingy there?” I pointed to a strange device sitting in front of the only monitor in the house, on a table beside the racks.

“It’s called a touchboard, I got a smaller one for you from Motherboards yesterday.”

“Touchboard?”

“Yeah, like a keyboard, but much more customizable. You define the keys and map them to whatever you want the computer to do.”

“Wow.”

“Anyhow, there’s not much else to the place. You wanna set up your room now?”

“Sure. Setup as in?”

“You don’t have a roomd config hidden away somewhere, do you?”

“What’s a room dee?”

“You know what systemd is, right?” I checked, trying to find a good place from which to start my explanation.

“Wait, is this like systemd-homed but for real-world physical rooms? Systemd-roomd?”

“You got it.” Man she’s a bright one, really. Can’t believe someone would let her brains waste away in some dirt shack in Jacinto. The audacity.

“Wow. Kay let’s go!” Izzy practically squealed, before turning and scrambling to the stairs.

***

I could hardly contain my excitement at getting my hands on the cool software, so I ran up the two flights of big stairs in a bigger scramble. It’s like living in a fantasy, what with all the tech here.

The door to my room, which no longer displayed the weird baby design, slid open as I approached it.

“Max just brought these up: I got these two from Motherboards yesterday, and this one I printed last night.” Mike pointed out two boxes and a bubble-wrapped bundle on my desk to me.

He showed me the smaller box, which was labeled LittleProtect??. “This is a personal protection band. Anti-kidnapping device. Strap it onto your ankle and set a password. The band can’t be removed without the correct password and can’t be cut off without your foot getting chopped off. If you get into trouble, curl your toes four times quickly and it’ll detect the tendons flexing and broadcast a distress signal to law enforcement and an emergency contact, which I’ve taken the liberty to set to moi. Hopefully one of us can get to you then, before you get smuggled somewhere we can’t find you.”

He pointed to the bigger box. “This is less scary and more fun. You asked about the touchboard downstairs — this is a smaller, state-of-the-art version. Here, open it, you’ll need it to set up your roomd config.”

I sat down and started unboxing the device, which came in the shape of a cube and unfolded into a weird-looking wireless peripheral.

“This last device isn’t available in stores. It’s a cyrano identical to mine, just smaller. I got the neural interface from a good friend at CSIS — they’ve been trialing some new tech that the AIC sent them and they had a couple spares.”

“AIC?”

“Acimeran Intelligence Command. It’s the US foreign intelligence service.”

“And CSIS is the Canadian counterpart I presume?”

“Yep. Here, you can try it on after you configure your room,” he gestured to the setup window. “If you need me I’m just downstairs. Have fun!”

“Thanks.”

Mike nodded and left, leaving me alone in the room. I started by unfolding the touchboard. When I opened up the wings and snapped them flat, they clicked magnetically and the touchboard lit up by itself, showing rows of keys configured in a bizzare keyboard layout. At the same time, a holographic terminal window appeared in front of me.

I paused to examine both the floating apparition and the touchboard. According to the short quick-start guide included in its box, the touchboard was configured to an ergonomic layout the company that made the touchboard had developed. Each 1u key was formed out of 64 individual pixels, and the modifier keys and spacebars (there were two separate ones!) used proportionally more.

It was definitely wireless, but didn’t seem to have any connection buttons. Since the pamphlet claimed it would automatically interface with the nearest compatible computer and could be directly used out of the box, I pressed the ‘i’ key to see if it was connected to the hologram. Sure enough, a lowercase ‘i’ appeared in the USERNAME input field of the account creation TUI. I continued with ‘z’, then ‘y’, hunting and pecking for each key.

The enter key in the default configuration was on the left, and almost none of the modifier keys were in their usual locations, so it took me a second to reorient myself. Pressing down on the keys also felt strange, since each pixel had a miniature actuator instead of one per key. Thankfully, the pixels forming a key all moved as one, and didn’t come apart when I pressed on them.

After creating my user account and initializing my home directory, I proceeded to configure the keyboard to the DVORAK layout that I was more accustomed to. I then ran through all the various configuration files for my account and room, configuring everything to my satisfaction. I set the walls to a nice light lavender, had some fun drawing some abstract art on them using touch-interactive holograms, and reconfigured the door’s e-ink display. I also strapped the protection band onto my left foot and set a 30-character passphrase.

***

Two hours after I left her to initialize her room, Izzy summoned me upstairs in an adorable lisp, apparently having forgotten about her paci again.

“Done?”

“Yup, configsh shaved and ankle monidor on,” she joked before letting her pacifier drop to her chest where it was clipped to her sleeper. “Oh, but I need a superuser to activate the room.”

“Right. I’ll admit I haven’t touched roomd configs in a looong time. It’s roomctl activate right?”

“I think so.”

“Alright,” I moved over to her desk and pulled the touchboard over to me.

“All set!”

“Thanks! Like the design?” Izzy asked brightly.

I looked around the room. “Yeah, it’s charming! You’ve got a nice artistic touch. You clearly know your way around a terminal too. And you play chess. What can’t you do?” I asked in mock exasperation.

She giggled at that. I’d tell her that she’s adorable too, but I don’t want her to take it the wrong way. I don’t want her running away because she thinks I like her romantically or I’m going to regress her or something. Because I don’t. I’d never. She’s like the daughter that I never had. I’m never gonna give her anything less than love and respect. She’ll never ever be a human mannequin to sate my fatherhood desires. I’ll never be like those baby-crazed Acimerans. Those bastards.

“Mike?” Izzy’s concerned voice snapped me out of my thoughts.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. I’m fine.”

“I was asking if you wanted to play a game with that new chess set?”

“D’you need a change first?”

She groped the padding and nodded. “Looks like it.”

***

Mike and I sat at the dining table. He’d gone back down to set up the board by himself, leaving me to descend the large steps of the stairs in small jumps. He had the wooden chess set unpacked and the board set with White on my side by the time I climbed onto the booster seat.

“Ready?”

“Yup!” Let’s see what you’ve got.

As soon as he started the clock, I pushed my pawn to e4. I reached over to the clock out of habit, but it was just numbers on the e-ink surface of the table. Upon closer inspection, his time was ticking, not mine. There wasn’t anything wrong with the clock setup for the blitz game — the clock program had simply detected when I’d moved (using a touch-move basis and cameras in the room, I later discovered), and automatically clocked for me.

Mike pushed e5 and my time started ticking again. With no other motive than to gauge his skill, I played Qh5. The wayward queen attack wasn’t the best opening in professional play by a long shot, but it was tricky for beginners, and I reckoned I had enough of a skill advantage to beat him either way. That was cemented in his shocking choice of g6 for his second move.

I played Qxe4, putting Mike’s king in check and forking his rook.

“Check!” I pointed out cheekily.

“Ahh crap. I have to block, don’t I?”

“Yup.”

“I lose my rook, don’t I?”

“Yup.”

“Rats. Is there even any point in playing on?”

I smiled and grandly removed my queenside rook and knight in a sweeping motion. “I’ll make it more fair. Here’s rook and knight odds.”

Mike nodded and blocked the check with his bishop, immediately refunding my odds. His face on my next move told me it wasn’t intentional, either. A few moves later, I told him that he’d made yet another mistake.

“I’m just trading things off aren’t I? When in doubt, trade?”

“Mmm, you aren’t exactly trading here though.”

He captured my bishop on d5 with his rook, losing control of the 8th rank. “What do you mean? You’re only up a pawn, right?”

“Yeah, but you’ve just blundered. See, now I have mate in two.” I checked him with a rook lift to e8, back-ranking him a move later.

“Good game!” The clock stopped automatically and I held my hand out.

He shook it. “Well played, Izzy. I’m no match for you.”

“Of course you’re not,” I told him cheekily, “I’m an International Master! I was actually going for my last GM norm the day I… came here. Do you think I can get whatever FIDE is in this Dimension to recognize my rating and title?”

“I don’t know. Why don’t we find out? Where’s your cyrano?”

“Here.” I fished out of my sleeper’s pocket and handed it to him.

He pushed it away. “Turn it on.”

I turned it over in my hand, but I couldn’t find a button. I gave up and looked at Mike in confusion.

“There’s no power button,” he explained, “just put it on over your ear, it’ll turn on automatically when it’s in position.”

I clipped it over my right ear with a light twist, and a holographic boot animation ran for about a second. The device then somehow scanned my retinae and popped up a message confirming my identity, accompanied by a quick vibration. After that, the interface morphed to show a dashboard of the current date and time, some setup notifications, and a minimap of my location, as if I was playing GTA but in real life. A wealth of data appeared in a label floating in front of Mike’s chest:

• Name: Michaelangelo “Mike” Beneventi

• Height: 11'6" (Big)

• Sex: Male

• Age: 35 years

• Username: mike@m1k3

• Job Title: Dimensional Rescue Lead

• Organization: UNIC-DRG

The next line faded out vertically, inviting me to scroll for more information. This device was far more advanced than the latest releases of the HoloLens, iGlass, and MRL Pro.

As I turned to look away from Mike, the label faded a bit, but still remained visible, even in my peripheral vision. I couldn’t even tell what the cyrano’s field of view was, since I could see the label all the way to the edge of my vision! AR back home really needs to take a page from this thing.

“How do I control it?”

“Three ways. There’s neural input, hand gestures, and a signet if you want something physical. Personally, I prefer the hand gestures, but the neural will probably give you more privacy. Just be extra careful about malware, you don’t want an attack to fry your brain or encrypt all your memories…”

“I’ll give neural a shot then. How do I enable that?”

“Bring it up by double-tapping the cyrano. Double-tap again to turn it off. When it’s on, just think about what you want and it’ll do it.”

I nodded and double-tapped. A shrill warning tone rang out, seemingly coming from inside my head. A bright flash blinded my vision. When it faded, I couldn’t see a thing!

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Bonus content — Izzy vs Mike chess game:https://lichess.org/study/B9ma5SdN/u0XOAfdr

Please like and comment, I need your attention! ? *pouts*

[Baby Billy]

Oh come on don't pout now, I was thrilled that you finally came back to the story.  We talked on the other story about your limo and I really don't remember how luxeria treated her that much but would have though she was buckled in safe anyway.  I thought that was a good chapter, a little to tech for me but I like how the relationship is coming along.  Mike wants to treat Izzy one way but I have a feeling Izzy is going to form a daddy crush on him.  I think she is in some ways already.  I was surprised when Mike called Max and had him form to her size to make it easier for her.  Looking forward to how this goes from here out.

[DiaperedPrince]

3 hours ago, Baby Billy said:

Oh come on don't pout now, I was thrilled that you finally came back to the story.  We talked on the other story about your limo and I really don't remember how luxeria treated her that much but would have though she was buckled in safe anyway.  I thought that was a good chapter, a little to tech for me but I like how the relationship is coming along.  Mike wants to treat Izzy one way but I have a feeling Izzy is going to form a daddy crush on him.  I think she is in some ways already.  I was surprised when Mike called Max and had him form to her size to make it easier for her.  Looking forward to how this goes from here out.

Thanks Billy, I really do mean it.

[Jayme]

I love this story and I will wait however long it takes to get to read the next chapter.

Poor Izzy, hopefully she will be alright.

[kerry]

This is such a wonderfully different take on the DD that it is constantly interesting. I'm not a techie but I like the additional realism provided by your forays into technical language and screen depictions; it's just the way good SF does it.

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[diaperboymi]

AWESOME story and what a cliffhanger ???

[DiaperedPrince]

9 hours ago, Jayme said:

I love this story and I will wait however long it takes to get to read the next chapter.

Poor Izzy, hopefully she will be alright.

Thanks! Only a few days ?

What is it with Izzy and bright flashes blinding her? I believe this is the third- no, fourth time that's happened? ?

6 hours ago, kerry said:

This is such a wonderfully different take on the DD that it is constantly interesting. I'm not a techie but I like the additional realism provided by your forays into technical language and screen depictions; it's just the way good SF does it.

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I was hoping that I'd achieve such a result! I wrote it so that anyone with detailed technical knowledge will be able to match up everything and go "yup, that's a realistic depiction", and anyone without can still skip over the suuper techyy stuff and not be affected plot-wise. More detailed code coming up soon!

5 hours ago, diaperboymi said:

AWESOME story and what a cliffhanger ???

Glad you liked it  ?

Thanks for the comments everyone! I've got a big grin plastered on my face, keep the comments coming on future chapters!

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