FULL IMMERSION
By Tommyhawk1@AOL.COM
WWW.TOMMYHAWKSFANTASYWORLD.COM
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Thanur stopped, smiled, when the signal from Patro came in. It wasn't telepathy, though any but a contemporary would have been hard-put to define the difference. A computer chip imbedded in his brain received a signal that Patro wished to speak with him and made the connection. More like an internal telephone where a friend could call you anytime and let you communicate without making sounds.
"What are you doing now?" Patro asked him.
"Wondering where you are." Thanur admitted. He had finished his work shift and was at loose ends for the rest of the day. No dawn-to-dusk wage slave was he, for the hour was only early afternoon. He now had plenty of time and energy to spend with his friends. "Had you not contacted me, I would have contacted you in a moment or so more."
"Then come to me. I could use your help here."
"Where are you?"
"Outside, of course."
"But of course." Thanur smiled. Nobody around him in the city of New Atlantis gave an odd look at his idiotic grin about nothing. Several of them were doing the same, their own soundless communications going on.
"Would you come join me? I am gathering some sea anemones." And the chip inserted in Thanur's brain the location of Patro in lieu of complicated directions given by Patro himself.
"Do you need help doing that?" Thanur asked.
"Not really. But it's a beautiful day out in the ocean. Come share it with me."
"I shall." Thanur agreed. And his own chip gave Patro an approximate arrival time and arranged for a locker for Thanur's belongings at the nearby airlock. After all, it was much more than a souped-up cell phone he had.
So without delay or hesitations, Thanur stowed all his possessions and, as nude as the day he was born, went into the airlock and waded into the shallow pool at its center. A signal from the chip when he was ready and the pool swarmed up to fill the entire room.
There was a brief moment where Thanur felt he was drowning, and then his altered lungs shifted, the alveoli flattened themselves and became gills, his body drew in the ocean salt water, filtered out the oxygen, and added carbon dioxide to it, and then blew it all out. His body worked harder, but the rest of Thanur had been designed for this, with the chest expansion any land-bound bodybuilder would have envied. Also witness his feet and hands, which now stretched and unreeled themselves until they made fin-like attachments with wrists and ankles that pivoted freely, and the much wider flap that extended out from his elbow up to his armpit and down to mid-chest, that became wide wing-like things. With these aids, Thanur cleft the water as agile as any dolphin, at home as any sea lion, more so, because those long-time water-dwelling mammals required air to breathe, and Thanur had not breached the surface of the ocean for nearly two years other than, naturally, inside New Atlantis itself. After all, air is a very useful medium for many things.
He swam toward Patro's location. Despite the dense population of humans of the city, there was curiously little activity. Streams of submersible vehicles, most of them robot-driven, traveled in distinct corridors, linking the city with the other underwater habitats and the vast population-laden land masses. Thanur saw not another living human, altered or unaltered, as he swam toward where Patro was.
There, on the edge of a vast coral reef, Patro gathered his harvest of sea anemones. Not the poisonous creatures of earlier times, these had been altered to please the eyes of humans, to think of them instead as a form of colorful fat-petaled flower would be closer to the truth.
"And is this work so difficult that you need me?" he said to Patro as he got closer. The mental connection given them by the chips, a mere convenience in the city, became their sole source of true communication beyond gestures and pantomime.
"No, but isn't the day a delightful one?" Patro asked him.
Thanur considered it. He came out quite frequently thanks to his fraternization with Patro, and was thus something of a connoisseur of such things now. "It seems a warm enough day." he decided.
"Yes, the winter this year has been extremely mild." Patro said. "My anemones as a result are already full grown, and so I came to collect them. I may make a third harvest this year at this rate."
"That would be of benefit." Thanur said.
"Perhaps. Sometimes when I harvest, I wonder if these anemones appreciate or hate us for changing them for our pleasure." Patro said and then he turned silent in a way Thanur recognized.
"Are you thinking of that again?" he asked, and no chip "under-commentary" elaborated for him, or needed to. "Full Immersion?" It was the title of a radical group of the sea-dwellling humans, those who argued for a true life beneath the oceans instead of in the air-filled cities. Patro was a member, Thanur knew, after all, it wasn't illegal to belong.
"And why not?" Patro wanted to know. "What have we done, we who live in the oceans? How do we differ from those on the land, if we don't truly live anywhere but inside the cities?"
"Most people have their lives." Thanur said. "They have their jobs, and their families and their friends and their activities. All of those are in the city. There is no reason to come outside, for most of them." And the ocean held a slight amount of danger, for the sharks and other predators of the ocean were still thriving and would as long as fish were about for them to eat.
"But there's no reason for us to go into the bubbles to live." Patro protested. His comment about "bubbles" meant the cities which were all air-bearing.
"But you need air for a lot of things." Thanur said. "To cook food and to write on paper and to work with electronics. You can't do any of that out here in the water. Imagine trying to mix chemicals in this!" he gestured. "Full immersion just doesn't hold up when you examine it carefully." He had made these arguments before, it had always cooled down Patro's rebellious attitudes before.
"I didn't say to give up the bubbles entirely." Patro conceded. "But why not at least try to live a good portion with the bodies we have given ourselves, to swim and live and hunt and fish and be a true part of the ocean. We're mermen, damn it, why are we all bundling ourselves up like so many air-dwellers?"
"So what do you want to do?" Thanur asked him. "We are a product of our civilizations. What else can we do but fit in?"
"I'll tell you what we can do." Patro gestured. "There's a lot of ocean left open, unused, untraveled. Places without people around for, oh, hundreds of miles. We could go there and try to live like the mermen that we are. Build a true Atlantis, an underwater civilization that does live underwater, not inside so many transported bubbles like they have in New Atlantis! Living there all the time, you might as well be an air-dweller!"
"Do you mean live in the open ocean, like so many wild creatures?" Thanur asked in some horror. "Eating raw fish and sleeping in sea caves and...." His imagination expired at that point. "Are you serious?" This was more than he had heard of Full Immersion from Patro before!
"Why not?" Patro asked him. "We wouldn't be the only ones. There is an entire group of us that are tired of the cities and would like to try to make it on our own. Go out to the unused parts of the ocean, find a place, build our own village there, one that is truly open to the water, and build a life there."
"I don't know." Thanur's head was reeling. He truly hadn't considered such a thing. The cities just...were, that's all. "We wouldn't have any air-dwelling things at all? No clothes and no fires and no...no electronics or electricity or...or anything?"
"We'd take some things with us." Patro assured him. "The essentials, such as tools and medicines and things. But mostly, yes, we'd be out on our own, living on what we got or made for ourselves. Yes, that involves eating fish and kelp and such raw, but plenty of seafood is just fine that way. And we would still cook what we had to. Nothing crazy that way, I promise."
"Why do you want me, then?" Thanur asked. "I mean, if you have a group and they all want to go there, why do you want me?"
Patro smiled. "The reason I always want you." he said.
Thanur felt his face flush. "Would we do that in water, as well? I mean, all of it?" He became suddenly aware of how much his lungs had to labor to keep him supplied in oxygen even at rest here in the ocean waters. Add in the rigors of sexual intercourse with the hard desperate breaths of orgasm and...could his body even take it?
"I assure you it would." Patro said. "When they designed our bodies to live underwater, the founders of New Atlantis and the other cities assumed we'd want to spend a good deal of time in the water. One of our members has read up on the project's old files. Anything a human being can do in air, we can do in water. Some of it even better, in fact. They wouldn't have approved the genetic alterations to our ancestors otherwise."
"That's good to know." Thanur mused. He and Patro had made love once in water, but that had been a swimming pool inside the city. The liquid of the pool had helped buoy and ease his body's motions, but they had kept their heads above water for most of it.
"Would you like to, perhaps, see how it would work, sex in free water, that is?" Patro offered. "Just to reassure you that it's one pleasure you wouldn't have to give up to live like a wild merman. Haven't you wondered what it would be like, on one of our trips out here, for you and me to have sex in free water, rather than on a bed?"
"Well, I've wondered, some, of course." Thanur admitted. "I always assumed we couldn't manage it without being able to breathe air. Sex in full immersion, though, just like wild mermen?"
"Just like wild mermen." Patro assured him. "That's what we'd be. Never to wear clothes again. In tropical waters, we wouldn't need clothes, anyhow. Just a belt to hold your knife and a spear in your hand, that's all you'd ever wear."
"It does sound interesting." Thanur agreed. "It's not like we couldn't stop if it did turn out to be too much, is it?"
"Who says I'd let you stop?" Patro said as he took Thanur in his arms, kissed his neck.
The small oval of warmth was doubly arousing. Thanur's body was self-insulating against the water, but it quickly welcomed the heat from Patro's lips and Patro slid his lips over Thanur's collarbone, and a trail of warmth moved along Thanur's body, like the bare hint of moisture left behind by a finger-wipe along a smoothly shining surface, that shows so briefly and then is gone.
As he usually did in such times, Thanur wrapped his arms and legs around Patro's body.
And Patro pushed them off, his broad feet kicking them up and away from the coral reef's bone-like surface. Some twenty feet higher, the surface of the water only a hundred or so feet above them, and Patro stopped, and they slowly slid back down towards the ocean floor. And Patro's lips ran rivers of warmth over his neck, his shoulders, his chest, it pooled around one nipple, ah, ah, ah! The water was buoyant but not anti-gravitic, he felt it as they swirled around, as he ended up head-down, as they pivoted and swung around each other.
And the ocean floor found them all too soon.
"Umph!" Patro said as they landed on the rock, for they were just beyond the coral's edge now. A good thing, for coral can slice and sharks would appear as rapidly as flies would on land.
"Perhaps full floating isn't the way." Thanur said kindly. "We have a gentle stretch of rock here, why not remain while we...gurph!" He tried to make that noise, and a lot of bubbles exuded from his mouth in lieu of the sound. But when your lover has suddenly sucked your cock into his mouth, one can be forgiven for forgetting to not try to talk underwater. Thanur spent a moment blowing the bubbles free from his nostrils and sinuses, and then relaxed to enjoy Patro's oral lavishments.
Patro's cock was bobbing, erect and waving like a pink anemone with its tentacles detracted. Thanur decided to repay the favor and Patro sent him a warm moaning noise (via the chip, of course, he was much more adept at underwater life than Thanur) to thank him, and the two lovers settled down to suckle each other in earnest.
Thanur realized as he did for the first time how much the ocean sounded around him. All of the sounds were naturalistic, not the humming that came from New Atlantis. Perhaps that was there, as well, buried deep in the subsonics, but he heard/felt things such as clams clacking shut, dolphins breaching the surface, whales singing, and a hundred other, much less identifiable sounds. He was floating in, he was surrounded by, life and all of it surrounded him and Patro, and they were life as well, a part of all existence, a tiny bit of the Great Creation, and their passion was smiled upon as much as any other part.
And the water did help, here, now that they didn't ask it to carry all their weight. A merman's body was more water-filled than an air-breather who kept their lungs fully inflated, but his body cavity had its own air that was helping to keep him from being the heavy lump that was a man in bed, he could devote so much more of his muscles to the act of making love and less fighting gravity. The water had to be overcome, but after a time, it also fell into his motions and the waves he generated cooperated with him to keep him moving.
The delights of his body were like a storm building overhead, the ocean felt such as a sort of general oppressive feeling, a darkening, a presence. That was his, but it didn't forebode a churning of the waters (though this deep, that was minimal to non-existent), but instead, a building of his pleasure that rose and permeated his being.
He couldn't bear it any longer. "Take me." He sent to Patro, to his lover, to the man who lived out here in the open water so much, who dreamed of Full Immersion. "Take me, my love."
His body was turned in water as easily as a balloon can be batted upwards by a playful child. He locked his legs around Patro's body and his feet-fins showed a new advantage to their agility, the water triggered their deployment so he hadn't felt this in the city at all, but here, his feet could almost interlock with each other, like a threading together of the fingers, and he clutched at Patro's hips and his powerful legs pulled his lover close.
Patro's hands guided his prong to Thanur's anus, and Thanur wondered what the ocean would do to them here. Would his ass become flooded with salt water, an uncomfortable thought.
But no, Patro pressed his glans to Thanur's ass and used a gentle push to send it deeper, there was but the slightest bit of water that accompanied it inside, and that only served to moisten and lubricate his body. The salt stung, some, inside his body, but it wasn't enough to stop him from loving the feel of Patro's dong, so fat and warm and desirous inside him! Thanur gripped Patro and drew him tightly, and his lust-filled lips reached for Patro's own.
"This," Patro sent to him and the chip let him do this without ending or stinting the kiss. "This is what I would give you if you join us, come live with me and we will make love whenever and wherever we choose, you and I. None of the others will care, for here in the endless waters, all life is one and it moves to the single beat that is creation and life and happiness.
Patro's tongue moved into Thanur's mouth like a questioning fish seeking a home, and Thanur didn't mind the small amount of sea water that entered his mouth along with it, his altered body drank salt water as easily as fresh, it was only a matter of desire and taste to choose otherwise. More water entered as he sent his own into Patro's mouth, as Patro's body moved upon him with the grace of an eel swimming, and the gentle gyrations were pushing surge upon surge of hot dong in and out of his body, Thanur gripped Patro the tighter, and his body spasmed and Thanur's nails clawed at Patro's back as his joy struck him. He felt his jizz squirt out and it was like so many tadpoles squirming out of his body, to float and drift out into the waters, holding together and discrete. Thanur's lungs pumped water in and out of his body, he was buffeted by the rushing of water, but his lungs endured, his body was aerated, his passion was exalted and washed over him and through him and let him go once more, and he lay back, gasping still but the world returning to him with all his senses.
On top of him, Patro was equally drained, and Thanur realized only now the warmth in his anus, the softness of Patro's features. "You joined me, then?" He asked as he cupped Patro's passion-slackened face with his hand.
Patro nestled him even as his ample chest still heaved and the water, warmed by their bodies, was as comfortable as a blanket, though the water ate at the warmth, swallowed it and left them bare once again.
"Do you see?" Patro said after a time. There was a breathlessness even to the thought translated to Thanur by the chip. "We can make love here without air to breathe. Full immersion is no barrier to enjoying any of the joys of life."
"Save perhaps a hot meal." Thanur said, but his rebuttal was in teasing rather than in contest.
"We would have air-filled places." Patro promised. "You and I will need air for some things. All we of the Full Immersion seek is to live as much as we can in the waters of the ocean."
"I suppose it's possible." Thanur mused. "Still, trying to make a living in Full Immersion wouldn't be easy. And what if something went wrong, and there you are, hundreds of miles from help."
"That's the ultimate goal." Patro said. "Still, we realize that we don't know everything that Full Immersion implies until we live that way for a while."
"So what do you all plan to do?" Thanur wanted to know.
"What we're doing already." Patro said. "We've set up our village nearby. Should something from the city be required, we can fetch it to our village. Should we need help, it will be nearby."
"You've already started your village?" Thanur sat upright. This was news! "Are you living there now?"
"I will be, as of tonight. And so can you...if you want to give Full Immersion a chance." Patro's hands closed upon Thanur and there was a tightness to them. "You can keep your apartment in the city, too, until you see what you think of it. What do you say?"
"Say about what?" Thanur said, but again, he was teasing.
"Will you come and live with me in our village in the ocean?" Patro asked him. "Will you help me start our new life."
"I'm not sure." Thanur said. "Just where exactly is this village of Full Immersion?"
"This way." Patro said. And with a kick, he swam out into the water as would any creature that belonged there.
And without a hesitation, equally at home in the ocean, Thanur swam after him. He would see what he would see.
THE END
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