CHAPTER 228: BEAD CURTAIN

Jack had been thinking about trying to strengthen his soul bonds with Madison and Miranda so he could talk to them mind-to-mind, like he could with Samantha, Katie, and Naoko, and given that he was currently inside Madison, he decided to try strengthening his soul bond with her.

He focused on his sense of their soul bond and reached out for her soul and grabbed it.

His "soul senses," for lack of a better term, were not as vivid as they were when a new soul bond was forming, but he could still feel her soul well enough to make changes to their soul bond.

He pulled her soul closer and mentally hugged her soul, like he had done with Katie, and focused on trying to form a mental connection to Madison.

Of all the people he’d soul bonded, Madison was the only one whose soul took an active role in the soul bond formation process. The first time, her soul had tried to merge with him, and this time was no different.

As soon as he started pulling her soul closer to him, her soul responded and tried again to merge with him.

But unlike when their soul bond was initially formed, Genesis Heart didn’t need to step in and block her. Her soul’s efforts, while tangible, were manageable for him to restrain.

So he was able to "hug" her soul like he had with Katie and also prevent her from trying to merge with him.

The only complication came when he tried to forge a mental connection with her. As soon as he started, she opened up to him like she wanted to do a full mind merge.

He could tell that he was able to forge a mental connection, but wasn’t sure he’d managed to add a gate to her mind, like he had with Katie and the others.

Realizing he wasn’t going to get better results, no matter how hard he tried, he mentally locked their soul bond in its new configuration.

When he approached her mind, he found that instead of a gate, something that was like a solid vault door, Madison’s mind had something closer to a screen door, or beaded curtain.

He could hear her surface thought as soon as he got close, and he could open it and enter her mind without any resistance from her.

As he pushed through her mental doorway and entered her mind, he could feel some trepidation from her.

He searched her thoughts and memories and found that besides the seven girls she had lied to, there were a few more that had taken the hint as soon as Madison scowled at them.

She was worried he would get angry with her about those few girls as well. But she hadn’t lied to them about him, or even spoken to them. And, more importantly, they were girls that hadn’t interested him.

What was more concerning was his discovery of her reason for leaving her aunt and uncle’s house and asking to stay with him.

The lock to the bathroom door had mysteriously broken, and her cousins kept "accidentally" barging in while she was in the shower.

At first, they would leave as soon as she screamed, but each time they would stay longer and longer, and even though her aunt and uncle were witnesses to this, they did nothing.

The last time it had happened, the brothers had refused to leave and had even taken her clothes, refusing to give them to her. She was forced to run past them naked to get to her room.

Her aunt and uncle had seen and heard what had happened and even laughed at her as she ran past.

This incident convinced her that something worse would happen the next time she tried to take a shower while her cousins were home.

Even though she knew intellectually that it was her aunt, uncle, and cousins that were to blame, part of her still felt like she had somehow invited her cousins’ advances. That, if only she’d done something different, they would have left her alone.

And though she was with him now, she was still worried that her cousins would find her.

He hugged her tightly to him and sad into her mind, "Do you want revenge?"

A swirl of thought and images flashed through her mind. Many of them violent. But the prevailing desire in her mind was to just forget they existed. To never have to worry about them again.

Part of her wanted to hurt them, but she couldn’t bring herself to justify killing them, or even framing them for a crime they hadn’t committed.

Seeing the direction of her thoughts, he said, "Then focus on martial arts training, and make sure to train against training dummies that are the same size as your cousins."

"You’re right. I was doing that but got caught up in all the AI work I was doing."

"I think it will help if you establish a routine. Maybe training first thing every morning, before you get caught up in your projects?"

"Yeah, that’s a good idea."

She knew he trained every morning, and as she thought about this, she thought about pulling him aside to practice their "ground game."

Seeing her thoughts, he said, "I think I can be enticed into the occasional ’personal training session’."

She wiggled her hips, and he saw images in her mind of him pinning her to the ground in the middle of the training room and fucking her while all the other girls watched.

He’d already fucked Analise while Samantha watched, and again while Miranda watched. So he didn’t mind doing the same to Madison.

As they lay there spooning, her thoughts turned to the AI projects she was working on. He’d always wondered what she thought about when she wasn’t sitting at a keyboard, and now he knew.

He had trouble following most of her thoughts, but the gist of it was that she was trying to figure out how to create a true AGI model.

"Each part of the brain is specialized. One for facial recognition, one for understanding speech, another for turning thoughts into words. Why not do the same?"

His suggestion triggered an explosion of ideas in her mind, and he realized she had previously only been languidly contemplating things but was now seriously working on the problem.

He watched as her initial explosion of ideas began to crystalize into something closer to a cohesive plan. She still didn’t know how to solve AGI, but she now had a plan. One that just might work.