Mira, Queen of the World

What motivates someone to take over the world? It's such a ridiculous question, when you say it out loud. "Of course people want to take over the world," somebody might say. But why? What do you actually get out of it?

Sex? Maybe in past eras, but nowadays, we expect leaders to be reasonably chaste, and in any case you hardly need to take over the world to have more sex than any of your ancestors would have had.

Power? Power is a way to get what you want, not a thing in itself. Status, maybe? Adoration? You'd have to be very stupid to become world-ruler for the sake of a sense of security. "Dictator" is one of the least secure positions in the history of the world. Roman Emperors had shorter life expectancies than the average wage laborer, who was hardly in a good position to begin with.

It was a question that was still bouncing around inside my head, as I stood in the entry room of the Presidential palace of "Director" Mira Stone. It was a relatively sedate affair, hardly anything ostentatious, more of an austere thing, without even having much in the way of paintings or wallpaper. It was self-consciously Spartan, despite the building's large size - and it looked more like a military base, than anything else. There were a dozen men in suits, ten of them black, the other two South Asian. A pair of tall, muscular black men guarded a door further inside; the rest wandered around, making rounds and looking here and there.

As I stood there awkwardly, one of the men stared right at me with intense focus for several increasingly long seconds. "Is there a problem?" I asked him. He didn't look away or say anything. "Seriously?" I looked behind me, in case I wasn't the cause of the issue. There was only a wall behind me.

"No problem," he said, at last, in thickly accented English. "Com, Director Stone," he said. There was a bing noise of affirmation. "He has no telepathic capacity whatsoever. I can verify other details, if you wish." He suddenly staggered as if struck, letting out a quiet noise of pain. "Yes, no effect, other than that hurting like hell."

"Let him in, then," Mira said, through the communicator. The man gestured for me to follow him - a few minutes later, several extremely thick security doors, a couple obvious supers dressed up in military regalia, and I was finally led down into an underground office behind a metal door as thick as my forearm. It locked heavily behind us.

Director Stone was physically identical to my own Mira, except for the fact that she was wearing some type of - presumably hyperadvanced - armor. She looked me over, leaning back in her chair as she did so. Her expression was more confused than anything else. One gauntleted hand went to her chin. "Com. Privacy mode. Noise cancellation, conversation, myself and Roger Cooper."

"Command confirmed," her robotic doppelganger said. "Only you and Roger Cooper will be able to hear your conversation."

"Uh, really?" I asked, glancing around. "That's something you can do?"

"Sure. Sound is a wave. A computer can detect it much faster, and send a counter-wave in every direction but the line between us," Mira said. She sighed as she stared at me. "I am curious about a lot, but, I really do have to ask - you're sleeping with my other self?" I nodded. "Why?"

"Uh. She's hot, is a superheroine, is a supergenius, sucks dick like a pro."

She snorted at that. "Who would pay to get their cock sucked?" She asked, with a tilt of her head. "No, just kidding, sorry," she said, waving her hand. "It's been a while since I had a real conversation with someone who wasn't working for me. So it's a purely physical thing?"

"I did mention that she was a superheroine and a supergenius," I said, frowning at the question. To my sensibilities, it sounded like she was suggesting I was shallow.

"I meant more on her end. Did you... impress her in some way?"

"I can make her come like crazy," I told her, earning a laugh from her, one more born of sincere surprise than anything else. "I can."

"I imagine," she agreed. "Your superspeed power, yes? It interacts in a very strange way with friction. I guess it means you compact ten seconds of stimulation into one second of time?"

"Yes," I agreed.

"Other than your powers, and your body, you seem like a... painfully mediocre individual," she said. "I don't mean offense or anything."

"None taken," I said, sarcism dripping from my voice.

She let out another small laugh. "Right. Right. Sorry. It's just - she is me. It strikes me as... so shallow, you know? She's not that far off. She also dedicated her life to making the world a better place, even if she failed to take advantage of conveyor technology, or achieve a political monopoly on force. I never found somebody worth spending my life with. I could see Yomi - Tsuru," she corrected, a moment later. "Even if I'm not into women, she is intelligent, competent, capable, prosocial. You, on the other hand... well, you just seem like an ordinary guy."

"We just sleep together, we're hardly getting married," I said.

"Oh?" Mira hummed at that. "Maybe I've misunderstood something, then." She tapped her finger against her desk, the gauntlet around her hand giving it a heavy clattering noise. She slid open a drawer, then tossed something my way, underhand. I let it fall to the floor ineffectually, making her snort. "It's an artifact used by the gods of Hyperborea," she explained. "It reveals whether you carry ill intent. Just pick it up. It'll glow red if you intend to hurt anyone." I thought for a second, then picked it up. It didn't glow. "Toss it back." I did that, and as she caught it in the air, it glowed red for a moment before she put it away again. "Not you," she told me. "Kim Jong-un. The death toll so far is over a hundred thousand. I wouldn't even have removed him from formal power, if he hadn't..." she let her hand fall into an open palm. "I'm stressed."

"I guess?" I had no idea what was going on. What had Kim Jong-un done? "What did you want from me?"

"I don't know, at this point," she said, with another long sigh. She rose to her feet, hands falling, palms flat, against the desk. "No, I think I do know, honestly. The situation with the DPRK has left me feeling anxious, uncertain, tired, exhausted. I haven't slept since I ordered the invasion-" she glanced to one side, picking up information from somewhere I couldn't see, "-twenty-seven hours and thirty-two minutes ago. I was hoping that the man who apparently turned my alternate universe self into a willing hypno-slave would help me relax."

"Wait. You invaded North Korea?" I asked, wanting to make sure I had it all correct.

She sighed. "Yes. And, of course," she added, slumping down into her chair, "it would be absurd to assume that you would sleep with me, just because you sleep with someone else. There's concern over the DPRK's missile capacity - technically, they may be able to threaten this bunker - so I can hardly properly wine and dine you, I'm afraid. I would like to get to know you better, honestly. It is... intriguing. Tsuru interests me too, but there is a Tsuru here, a woman I can research. You, I don't know. I'm babbling," she said. She rubbed the bridge of her nose. "Would you like a good conversation with me? Does that sound interesting?"

This was... her flailing as she tried to ask me out, right? It was very different from the hyperconfident, hypercompetent Mira that I was used to. Was it just the exhaustion she mentioned? Or... maybe she really didn't have the same kind of experience? She had suggested that running the world deprived her of much of a personal life, given her earlier comment about not talking to anyone who wasn't working for her. It was definitely strange. The divergence was eighteen years ago, though. That was a long time for someone's path to diverge between "cocky, brash, seductress" and "lonely world-ruler." Which brought me back to my earlier question, which was still bouncing around inside my head. "Why did you do it?" I asked her.

"Do what?"

"Take over the world."

She chuckled at that. "I suppose I did. It's an interesting way to put it... I can't disagree, though. Why did I do it?" She tilted her head contemplatively. "At first, it was an interesting thought experiment. Could you take over the world? How would you do it? Just something that ran in the back of my head for a bit, an idle consideration, like so many other ideas. Some of them pan out, some don't, that's just the way the world works," she said, with a small shrug. "But once it... clicked, once I had the idea of it, I had to actually make the decision. I think..." She paused. "I was tired of politics. It was unified on the things that were terrible, broken on the things that mattered. Or that's the way it felt, anyway. So, I started to think, could I run the world better than the people who run the world today? And ultimately, the answer was yes."

"Really?" That sounded a tad unlikely to me, even if she was a genius.

"Yes. It wasn't-" she paused. "It's not about making individually better decisions, or anything. Even I can't manage that. In the Federation, there's a lot of devolution of power. It's about allowing that flexibility, for local decision makers, but putting it in service of a greater cause, and, once I did that... everything fit. I made the Congo a better place, but that wasn't hard. Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda, Kenya, South Sudan, then Mozambique, Angola, Namibia, Zimbabwe... as the countries I was adding to the African Federation got richer - Botswana and South Africa and Ethiopia - it felt like a test. One I passed. I did administer them better. Crime fell. Life expectancy rose. Education rose. They became wealthy. I just kept going. Countries would approach me for membership, and in the end... well, I won. Only the DPRK holds out. And not for long."

She sighed, continuing on. "Probably I could have done better. No, probably I'm lying to myself, and..." She ran one hand through her hair. "When you're in charge, people die. There's - all you have to do is get up on the wrong side of the bed. One subtle decision difference, and thousands of people's lives are ruined. The wrong wording in a single law. One unintended consequence. One misstep. I could have gotten the DPRK into the fold, I'm sure, even if I don't know what wrong decision I made. Alas. Now it's a war. Probably an insurgency after the fact."

"You're unloading a lot on me, right now," I said.

"You didn't argue with the claim that you're just a fairly ordinary man with no powers. That's not a misapprehension of mine, is it?" I had to shake my head - it wasn't like I was some secret supervillain or whatever. "That makes you the first person I've been able to talk to who has... no horse in the race. And an attractive man, at that," she added, with a smile. "The sort of person I know I can get along with, given the experience of my other self. So. What brought you here, if I can ask a question?"

"Five million dollar bonus," I told her, earning a laugh from her, then a long, exhausted sigh. "I'm just supposed to get an... eyes on the current situation."

"Did she give you anything to wear? The other Mira?" I shook my head. "Good. Though, I suppose a fair warning is maybe the right idea, if she put something on you to make it so she can listen in. I don't know. I'm so..." she waved a hand airily. "Exhausted."

It was strange to me. The expression of her hidden doubts was intimate, sure, and I knew my own Mira, but this one - she didn't say a single word to the effect of, 'want to bang to help me get over it?' It felt bizarre, before I realized the difference in sexual behavior between her world and mine. She was a benevolent dictator speaking of her problems to a man, so it ultimately fell on the man to make it clear he wanted anything more. Anything else would be intrusive, threatening, forceful. It would come off like she was trying to make me do it, particularly given the fact that this room had her personal bodyguards in it. I let time slow down as I contemplated that.

Did I want anything more? She was beautiful, sure, but I'd also screwed Mira. She was exactly as beautiful as Mira. She was probably not as good at sex as Mira, given she seemed somewhat lacking in the flirtation skill department. But on the other hand, I'd spent a decent amount of time when I'd first started having sex with Mira just... intentionally making her come her brains out instead of leaning back to enjoy sucking my cock, so it wasn't as if I could claim to be purely motivated by how good the woman was at sex. (Though, she was definitely very good at sex.)

There was a temptation just for the... power that she held. If I went for it, I would be fucking a woman who was basically - almost literally - the queen of the world. That was definitely something that carried some carnal appeal to me. And I was curious about what she was like. I definitely didn't plan to be 'mean' to her, this time. If her tastes were like my Mira's, I was perfectly content to get sucked off by the queen of the world. If they weren't... well, as long as she wasn't a hard dominant like Fals, I'd probably be fine with whatever she wanted to do.

I let time speed up. "Want to fuck?" I asked.

She let out a bark of laughter at that. "I noticed you had used your power - was that your conclusion after thinking it all over at superspeed?" I nodded. "Well... I certainly wouldn't mind a chance to let loose," she breathed out. She rose from the desk again, clicking something on her gauntlet. "I'm going into my private quarters. Only come in if my vitals suggest injury, not exertion," she said, and the men nodded. Some of them looked at me. I could catch in a couple men's gaze a hint of concern - they hadn't been able to listen into our conversation. For all they knew, she had forced me into this. I gave one of them a thumbs up, which just made him frown, but whatever. She hadn't turned off the mute button.

Her actual quarters were just as spartan as the presidential palace in general. It felt more like entering a college guy's apartment than entering the personal quarters of the most powerful woman on the planet. It was cleaner than the college guy's apartment, but that was all it had. It was wafer thin, the cheapest room you could get at the hotel, kind of place. She paused, one hand on her gauntlet, her expression momentarily distant. She looked at me, a slow gaze that carried some meaning I didn't get. Then she reached up and clicked something near her neck, and there was a hiss as her armor began to disassemble.

* * *

Mira was exhausted. She felt guilty. Her emotional state was at the lowest it had been since she had become Director of the Federation. That was the reason that she did this. She was exposing her neck. This man could be a suicide bomb sent by the other Mira, getting rid of her. The artifact should work, but there were ways around it, and she was exposing herself to potential death. Her fingers quivered as she twisted her way out of her costume. Part of her just said, If that's the case, then okay. Do you deserve life more than the hundred thousand people you've gotten killed in Korea? If it hadn't, she probably would have called it off.

It was lonely at the top. She felt that more today than she had any other in her life. She did notice, though, that as she emerged from her armor, Roger's gaze was locked on her. There was obvious interest in her body, the kind of raw, carnal desire that you'd associate more with teenage girls than men in their early thirties. Even though he had, presumably, already seen her naked - or at least, her alternate self naked. Perhaps he was just interested in the differences from his normal lover. Fuckbuddy? Whatever relationship the other her had with him. In any case, she did feel delight at the way his eyes roamed her body, sliding along her stomach to her breasts, his own breath briefly hitching, almost imperceptibly. She could see his turgid length in his pants, as well, seeming larger than it really was owing to the way it had to bulge against the fabric of his clothes.

"I... enjoy fellatio a lot," she told him, standing before him in the nude. He shook his head as if she had smacked him on the head for not paying attention, then quickly began to strip himself bare.

"The other Mira does too," he told her, as he pulled his shirt over his head. She wished she had his superspeed as well, so that she could admire the way his toned body emerged into the open air like that in slow motion. It had a truly delicious note to it, that slim, fit physique, the raw muscles. It was what she liked in a man. She was curious how big he was, and while he hardly made a show of it - sliding his pants down quickly - she did get to see his length bob up into the air.

She could have salivated. Maybe it was the exhaustion, maybe it was her long dry spell, maybe it was just looking forward to blowing him, but it looked so delicious now. She wanted to lick it. To suckle it. To taste it in her mouth, to feel it in her throat. She wanted to just suck his life out through his cock, to make him squirm. She wanted to do the impossible and somehow blow him better than her alternate universe self, who seemed to be a playgirl by the news she had read about her. What she did instead was lick her lips and speak. "Please, lie down on my bed, Roger," she said. Her voice came out so clipped and polite she wanted to kick herself, but he did exactly as she directed, smiling as he did so. "Do you, normally..." she sighed. She was being truly ridiculous. Comparing herself to an alternate version of her with far more experience would be literally the least fruitful thing she could possibly do. "After she blows you, what do you do?"

"Depends," he replied. "Sometimes we have sex. Sometimes we don't, if that's what you're wondering. Sometimes the sex is 'normal', sometimes it's..." he did something with his hand, whipping it back and forth through the air at superhuman speed, and she understood what he meant. "What do you want, Mira?" He asked her, giving her this soft, generous smile. It made her want to devour him whole right then and there. He asked the question sincerely, openly. Givingly. That was, sadly, quite rare with guys. Of course, she didn't normally mind too much, given how much she loved giving fellatio, but...

"I want you to just lie back and enjoy yourself," she told him, and he gave her this cute little grin at that, half cocky, half relishing what was about to happen. She moved in between his legs, and licked the tip of his cock, savoring that familiar salty flavor. How long had it been since she'd last tasted it? Months, at least. She licked her lips hungrily, wrapping her lips around his tip, and simply smoothly slid down his length. She could have shuddered in relief, that familiar sense of a cock in her throat making her mind briefly white out.

It was just so pleasant, doing this again. Countless happy memories of bringing a man pleasure came to mind, that quiet pride of it all, and she hummed both in pleasure and to intensify his pleasure, as she held herself in his groin for a long few seconds. She wetly smacked her tongue against the underside of his cock, staring up at him all the while, wanting to find out exactly what he liked best, then began to slowly slide her lips up, maintaining suction as she moved. He groaned in pleasure, the sort of natural, intense reaction to her work that she did love. Seeing a man respond that way always aroused her, always delighted her.

She popped off his spit-slick length for a moment, one hand reaching out, testing how wet his cock was. She rubbed in her saliva on his length, serving to better stimulate him, making him groan faintly as she worked him over like that. Her attention at the moment, though, was more on making sure his cock was nice and slick - and she found it wasn't as wet as she would have liked, so she leaned over it, just drooling out what saliva she could manage. His cock throbbed as the first droplet hit the tip of his dick, obvious lust in his gaze. So he liked it when girls drooled?

She made her best show of it, twisting her head, letting her mouth hang open, tongue lolling out, before closing her mouth briefly to salivate and repeating the process. Her saliva cascaded out, and she could feel as his length throbbed in response to the show she was giving him, and couldn't help but feel that same quiet pride that always came with getting her partner off. It was what she loved the most about fellatio: these sorts of responses, quivering, desperate twitches of the man's cock, the eager urge to come, the obvious arousal at every movement she made. She sighed as she considered his cock once more, her gaze going down to his shiny length, her hand by now quite wet with her own saliva, from rubbing it in.

Yes. He was suitably lubricated. "Now for the main show," she told him, giving him her most seductive voice. It probably wasn't that great, given her exhaustion, but she hoped the genuine neediness compensated for it. She wrapped her lips around the tip of his cock and just slid down his length. He let out a sensual groan as she made her way to the base. She shivered as she felt his cock throbbing inside her, quietly wondering if he was about to come already. That would be quite hot, to know that she'd gotten him off that fast - she knew he wasn't a quickshot, from the transcripts with Kate.

He didn't come, though she was pretty sure he had used his power to make sure he didn't. The small, autonomic movements of his body - his breathing, blinking, swallowing, everything - grew swift for several long seconds, then slowed back down to a more normal pace. Ah, well. She didn't mind too much - that just meant it was time for the main show. She smiled up at him with her eyes, placed her hands firmly on those muscular, fit thighs of his, and started to fuck her face on his cock. Her head pounded away, relentless force slamming up and down his cock, making him groan, his hips bucking up into her. His hands clawed at the bed sheets on either side of him, fingers digging in like he didn't want to grab the back of her head. The other Mira's training? Fear of her power? Something else?

Either way... she reached over for his hands, grasping his wrists and directing them to the back of her head. He could set the pace, if he so wanted. She wouldn't mind at all. His cock throbbed inside her mouth as she bobbed away, beginning to really slow her movements to encourage him to take control. Her head gingerly twisted from side to side, tongue sashaying along his length as she made one long stroke upwards, then another equally long stroke downwards. His breathing became heavy, and his fingers gripped her head all the tighter - and he just slammed her down into his groin, choking her on his cock for a few seconds with desperately aroused energy.

She'd really gotten him going, it seemed, and she certainly was liking the response he showed her. Soon enough, he was pumping her head up and down, grunting, letting out lewd little words like "Fuck," "God," "so good," and on and on like that. She couldn't help but smile, waiting patiently for him to finally reach completion, her own tongue slithering and slapping at the underside of his cock. She hummed and sighed around his length, enjoying the obvious relish which he responded to each brush and tingle running along his cock. "Here, it, comes," he got out, before just slamming her facefirst into his groin. She patiently closed her eyes, waiting for his cum to be deposited in her throat, her tongue sliding around on the underside of his length.

It didn't come, or at least, not quickly. She opened her eyes, seeing the way that Roger was grinding and bucking his hips, trying to get himself that last inch over the edge. She threw in her own work, licking and slapping at the underside of his cock, and he gasped, and then she felt the shift in his body occur once more. His breath quickened, running supernaturally fast, his hips subtly bucking against her face at an intense pace, and she could feel the way his length throbbed as he ejaculated, at superspeed, directly down her throat. She did her best to swallow and coax him, and his already erotic face twisted up in sheer animal bliss over the handful of seconds it took him to finish down her throat.

Then he peeled her off his cock panting and collapsing onto the bed with a shuddering sigh. His skin was lightly slick with the sweat of exertion, and she wanted so very much to just cuddle him, to touch him, to feel him up. To wring all the lewd compliments towards her skills as a fellatrix that she could get out of him... she sighed, shook her head, and rose to her feet.

At least she knew he wasn't a mind controller or assassin, she mused, as she acquired her clothes and pulled them back on. The exertion had all been on his end, so she could get dressed once more. She spared a glance at the clock as she fastened her gauntlet back into place. Twenty two minutes and seventeen seconds, from the moment she walked in the room, to now. "I have to return to work, Roger. If you, ah, want to leave, I'll understand," she told him. "But if you stay... I can spare some time in an hour or so?" She suggested, giving him a wry smile. "I'll make it worth your while."

His cock was hard again, just hearing those words. There was definitely something very appealing about that sort of response. Very carnal. Base. 'Slutty,' though she didn't really like that word. She liked the thing though, the way he responded to her offer with undisguised lust. So eager. It reminded her of a boyfriend from a long time ago, back when she was college aged, back before men started to really put on their guard.

"I guess I can stay a while longer," he said, at last. "I can play video games in here, right?"

"Oh, yes. Anywhere the comm system extends," she explained. "Just request the system's assistance, you know how, right?" He didn't know she'd been listening in, so - "Surely on that long plane ride, you caught some from Katherine?"

"Yeah. Just making sure it extends in here."

"It does," she winked at him. She leaned over him, kissing the top of his head. "Now it's back to work for me, handsome," she said, one gauntleted finger briefly trailing across his cheek before she headed back out to her office.

Her men didn't make any comment, as she settled back into her desk. She felt very refreshed, and reviewed the reports from the front lines with fresh eyes.

* * *

Mira had heard everything. She'd implanted some recording "microbots" - they weren't nanobots, that was three orders of magnitude smaller - into Roger, when she'd gripped his hand and dug her fingertips into his palm. They'd naturally degrade within a few days, safely and painlessly dissolving in his body, but for now, they were sending signals all the way back to her.

She did feel a strange competitive urge with her other self. He'd clearly liked her blowjob - but Mira's were better, obviously. Obviously. She'd make sure he understood that when he got back home. Maybe get him a few nice gifts - some new clothes? No, that was a normal guy gift. Video games and consoles, those were more likely to be his speed... of course, the other Mira was from a world at a higher technological and economic level, so their video games would presumably be even better.

More importantly, the fact that Mira had apparently gone to war with the DPRK meant it was the best time possible to make her move, so she had taken a few folders of key documents and arranged a meeting with the United Nations Security Council, which she was now on her way to.

The folders, of course, contained guidelines on how to create and use conveyor technology. It also included notes about the major security concerns, and how to best handle them - good hygeine in keeping track of worlds visited, closing contact immediately if a world had another intelligent species on it and sharing the information with the others. She would also be handing over copies to Japan, Germany, India, Brazil, and South Africa. She let out a small laugh at the thought that this would be a sort of... philosophical test. Was freedom really better than authoritarianism? Was it better to leave the world in the world's hands, or take it in one's own? This was about as close to a natural experiment on the subject as anyone would ever get.

She doubted that the other Mira would see it quite the same way. That was why it was best to do it now, while she and hers were distracted. She stepped out of her car in front of the UN headquarters.

Here went nothing.

The next chapter is available on my Subscribestar. It features Roger spending some more time with Mira. You can access it at this link for only $3. Chapters will be posted on Subscribestar a week in advance.