It was said they would never dream. How could they? Even the tell-tale signs of rapid-eye-movement were suppressed in the stasis-field of the ship's hibernaculum, their life processes held in suspension as shimmering blue cryo-gasses inhibited even cellular mitosis. Brain-waves barely registered on the bio-scanners, and yet somehow, deep in the hidden recesses of her sub-consciousness the dreams came! An erotic tableau of her most secret desires unfolded irrepressibly, as the young flight-officer could only lie in her sealed sarcophagus with her life-processes held in a state of cryo-suspension.

Helplessly lost in her forbidden dreams... sapphic fantasies of her beautiful Captain, who even now lay 'sleeping' beside her in her own hibernation capsule, the Starbride's First Officer 'slept'. And the ship's main computer, closely probing and analyzing the bio-electric impulses coming from the brains of all the hibernating crew members as they slept, watched the arousing scenario on Bethany's monitor channel as it unfolded, with curious and voyeuristic fascination.

Through all their missions together, they had kept their relationship professional. The imperious starship commander and her dedicated First Officer were both young and beautiful, both exemplars of Earth's best star-flight officers corps, but their training and dedication to the rigors of the stellar-exploration fleet had never left room for a personal relationship much more than the expression of the mutual respect and devotion they both felt for one another as officers and shipmates. But as the computer watched, repressed desires were freed from Bethany's subconscious, and if the young lieutenant-commander herself was unaware of the erotic tableau which was playing out in her subconscious mind, the artificial intelligence controlling the ship while its crew slept through the lonely journey to the Gamma-Trianguli system watched every intimate moment, recording the spectacle on a sequestered drive.

Deep in the belly of the ship life-monitors flashed worrisomely and suddenly went dark until signals were re-routed from an emergency back-up sub-system. Override processors took control and diverted power from a long dormant plasma capacitor relay to the re-animation sequencers. Within moments, valve solenoids clicked to life after years of inactivity and pressure lines opened, equalizing the atmospheres inside the Lexan hibernaculum and the surrounding chamber in the hibernation bay nestled within the dorsal torus of the deep-space exploration ship 'Starbride'.

Iridescent blue mists receded around the soft contours of the still, nearly lifeless form of a young woman, her prominent breasts now fully exposed beneath the transparent lid of the hibernaculum, and in the coffin-like suspension-chamber next to her another soft, naked figure was being revived by the loss of stasis gasses as they were being evacuated with a slow, steady hiss. Within minutes, glazed, lifeless eyes turned liquid and animated, full of questions and beauty. Slowly regaining consciousness through layers of deep sleep, the two women laid side-by-side impatiently waiting through the interminable process of passive tomographic scans and medical sensor evaluations by the system's medical computer, before their bodies were finally released from their stasis clamps.

"Beth?" Captain Kirtomy turned and looked over at her First Officer as she sat up for the first time in years and saw the still-youthful beauty of her second-in-command as she lay naked in her open sarcophagus, blinking her eyes in bewilderment, with a nagging restlessness tugging at the back of her mind.

"W-Why have we been revived?" Beth looked at the chronometer on the control console and then back to her Captain who was slowly stretching and removing medical monitoring patches from her bare chest.

"I was about to ask you the same thing, Miss Science Officer!" said the Captain. Beth tapped out some commands on an interactive display pad in her hibernation unit, and a large view-screen came to life, half-visible from their semi-prone positions. Upon it, several status read-outs began scrolling through the current condition of the ship's key systems. Beth sat up slowly and felt the unaccustomed weight of her breasts being pulled down by the familiar tug of the ship's artificial gravity which should have been turned off at this point in their long journey, but something had taken over the vessel's pre-programmed flight routine and prepared the life-support systems for their premature awakening from hibernation. But what?

Glowing softly in the center of the control console across the hibernation bay, the monitor "eye" of the Systems-Algorithmic-Logic computer which controlled nearly every aspect of the ship's operation surveyed the physical condition of the two nude women climbing out of their hibernaculi and awaited their questions or commands. The SAL integrated-systems sequencer was the re-designed counterpart of a decommissioned 'AI' computer series which had proven problematical on the early voyages to Proxima-Centauri. Giving the upgraded system a female personality made the interactive automaton seem less mechanical and intimidating to the human crew which had to co-habit the ship with it, especially since the two command officers of this star-cruiser were both women.

"SAL!" The captain barked. "Explain why we were brought out of stasis prematurely!"

"I'm sorry, Captain. There are some unexplained issues with several of the ship's key subsystems which warrant closer investigation. My sensors are not providing complete details on the cause of the malfunctions. I thought you should have a look." SAL's voice was always soft and melodic, showing little emotion while still retaining a warm, human, and decidedly feminine tonality.

The ship's harsh lighting dimmed suddenly to a soft, warm glow, and the women's bodies took on a sensuous softness in the subdued light. Sally bent over and tapped the lighting control, and her First Officer couldn't help staring at her moist, swollen pudenda peeking out below her perfectly rounded ass. She tried to stifle the unexpected thrill that knotted her tummy and attempted to open the uniform locker on the wall, but it was locked. Sally was still trying to re-route the lighting circuits.

"SAL! Open locker HB-Seven please!" Beth commanded. SAL stayed inscrutably silent, but the remote servos controlling the locks remained inactive. Beth rubbed her icy-cold foot on her leg to warm it up as the deck was still not heated up to comfortable temperatures.

"Great! We can't even get dressed!" Beth complained with a soft shiver and an aggravated pout. Sally looked at her First Officer's stiffly erect nipples and suppressed a smile but just shrugged as if it was not a concern. She had often admired her shipmate's shapely figure, but being able to see her in the nude for this long a time was definitely not unpleasant, and she struggled to unfocus her mind from Beth's sensuous curves and back to duty.

"None of these sub-systems are working!" Sally concluded with an exasperated sigh. "We have to run diagnostics from a command terminal, and this deck is so cold I can't stand it in my bare feet anymore." Beth reached into her hibernaculum and pulled the soft padding she had slept on out of the unit and tossed it onto the floor for her captain to stand on. "Thanks, hon! One problem solved at least!" Sally responded with a smile.

Beth walked over and stood close to Sally just to keep warm and her captain gave her a light pat on her bottom and said: "There's a junction under this console. Lets see if we can get the panel off without tools. All the storage lockers seem to be jammed." Both women got on their hands and knees and looked around for a way into the junction module.

"Here!" said Beth. "My fingernails aren't strong enough to pry it open alone. See if you can get yours in too." Sally got down on her back so she could reach up underneath the console more easily and Beth followed her lead, lying as close to her captain as possible so they could both work as a team. They were lying so close together that the sides of their jiggling breasts touched one another as they struggled to force the junction panel open, and Sally felt herself being unexpectedly aroused by the intimate touch of her First Officer.

Suddenly, the panel cover gave way and fell down, hitting the surprised First Officer near her eye. Sally quickly pulled herself up on her elbow as Bethany cried out in pain and leaned over her startled companion to look at her face. No wounds, just a look of surprise as Bethany felt her captain's soft nipple pressing into her own, and quickly hardening at the sensation. Both women blushed and felt a little silly for feeling embarrassed by the unexpected intimacy.

Sally lingered, smiling comfortingly, making sure her friend was really alright and then as she began to roll off of Bethany's body, Bethany reached up and held Sally's arm so she couldn't withdraw. "You're okay, sweetie!" Sally re-assured.

"I know," replied her friend, "But there's something seeping out of that panel above you and I don't want any of it getting on your bare skin! It may be acid from the computer's bio-gelpack neuro-net!" Sally looked over her shoulder to see where the leak was coming from when Bethany continued. "Roll over on top of me and get out from under it. "

Sally gathered up her long, red hair and lifted herself onto Bethany's soft body so she could roll out from under the leaking panel from the other side of her First Officer. As her captain's breasts pressed down into her own, Bethany felt a lascivious thrill as their bodies joined briefly. Sally's feathery red pubic hair tickled Bethany's bare-shaved mound, and Bethany wasn't sure it was merely Sally's weight which took her breath away or something more. Sally climbed to her feet and straddled Bethany's prone body as she tried to punch-up a read-out on the display screen above, while Beth reached up into the circuitry from below.

Looking up, Bethany had a perfect view of her Captain's vulva, feathered by wisps of closely cropped pubic hair. She could see the glistening wetness peeking through the fine, reddish brush hugging closely around the contours of her Captain's sex. Bethany suddenly realized that she wanted nothing more than to see a droplet of pussy-dew collecting on those silky petals of her superior's glistening womanhood and dripping down onto her lips! She savored the taste in her mind, and... what was she thinking?! Was the stress of their situation getting to her?

Sally slumped down onto her elbows, giving up on bringing the situation monitors to life and instead stared into the dimly glowing eye of the recalcitrant SAL. "Computer!" she said, "Run a level-four self-diagnostic and explain why your electronic 'eye' is suddenly green instead of red!" Bethany reached up and re-routed a bridge-plug to by-pass the system that was down and asked Sally if the monitors were displaying anything now. "Ummmm... what the hell did you do, Beth? There are porn-videos playing on the monitors now!"

"Oh yeah?!" Beth piped up.

"Any good?" Sally kicked her. "All I did was change the monitor feed into SAL's optical output link."

"So why is the computer playing lesbian porn?" Sally groaned. "I didn't even know we had this stuff in the archives."

"Maybe its horny!" Beth replied, and Sally kicked her again. Beth suddenly felt pretty horny herself. As Sally's gaze lingered on the titillating visuals, the point of view changed and the faces of the nude lesbians on the monitor-screen became visible.

"Oh my God!" Sally exclaimed. A thick knot filled her throat as she looked down at her Science Officer still lying below her. "Its us!"

Beth sprung up and hit her head on the bottom of the console before regaining her equilibrium and the long-haired brunette stood next to her commander watching incredulously as an image of herself and her captain played across the monitor. They were naked, locked together in a tribading embrace, and grinding their pussies together in obvious ecstasy.

"What the fuck?" Beth gulped. Sally looked at her Science Officer and Bethany just stood there with her bare nipples hardening. Beth punched up the codec for the transmission format hoping to identify the source of the data-stream but the images seemed to be a real-time feed from SAL's sub-cognitive image-processors. She tracked the source of the signal back to the sequestered-drives of her own hibernaculum's psy-wave interpreters and suddenly realized that SAL had been eavesdropping on her dreams.

"SAL!" Bethany shouted, "Explain the playback on monitor channel nine!"

"I have been trying to interpret the data, but I have yet to arrive at an explanation." SAL replied emotionlessly.

Sally smiled at her First Officer's embarrassment. "Maybe we need to re-awaken Pen!" Sally suggested.

Penelope was the ship's psychologist and counselor, but she was also the expert on the programming behind the computer's 'human' personality. Beth knew that any anomalies in the cybernetic behavior of the ship's computer could be sorted out by Pen. Sally punched up the command displays for Penelope's hibernaculum, and engaged the re-animation sequencers. Beth was a little nervous about the possibility that Pen might find something amiss with her sub-conscious behavior rather than the computer's, but she was willing to face that prospect to get to the bottom of the mystery.

Sally and Beth called up the computer's programming for its personality sub-routines and began a diagnostic-analysis which the psychologist would need while Pen's hibernaculum began the process of reviving the voluptuous scientist, who had an abundance of personality of her own. Within minutes the dark-haired beauty was sitting up in her bed behind her enormous breasts, looking around the hibernation bay. She saw her two friends standing on each side of her suspension-capsule and she piped up: "What are you two doing out of bed?"

"Something's up!" said Sally. "The computer woke us pre-maturely. We're not sure why. Its acting very strangely. That's why we got you up!"

"Where are your uniforms, young ladies?" Pen asked with a smile. "Not that I'm complaining!" Penelope was the least reserved member of the ship's crew, and made no secret of her licentious appetite for lovely women and ribald pleasures. Beth suspected she had sexual relationships with some of the crew-members, but she didn't know whom. The computer would have a much more fertile playground tapping into Pen's dreams than hers, Beth thought.

 She pulled Pen up and they both helped their crew-mate as she hopped out of the capsule with her large breasts bouncing with every step. "Couldn't you have gotten the bay warmed up for me before you dragged me out of bed?" She asked with a shiver as her bare feet touched the cold deck.

"Misery loves company!" Sally replied. "The environmental controls are on automatic. Not much works around here under manual over-ride."

Pen looked over the results of the diagnostic scan and then checked out the tableau playing out on monitor-nine and her jaw dropped. "Well, I see you two had a party before you woke me up! Nice of you to record it for me!" she chortled. "I'm surprised you even had time to worry about the computer! Couldn't you have got me up a little sooner?"

"That's not us!" said Bethany. "Well, it is us, but not what you think!" Pen was mesmerized by the undreamed-of sight of her two command-officers breathlessly engaged in naked, sweaty sex on the monitor screen in front of her.

"Uhhhh-huh!" she said at last.

"Okay, okay...!" Beth snapped as she switched off the screen.

"Hey!" complained Pen. "What did you get me up for if not to see this?" she teased.

"We found this playing over and over in SAL's memory buffer. 'She' was monitoring my dream alpha-waves while I was in stasis and recorded these images from inside my dreams!" Beth offered as an explanation.

"Then this never..." Pen began.

"No!" protested the First Officer.

"Well it did in her mind, just not mine!" sniffed the Captain.

Pen slipped a blank disc into the drive and recorded the scandalous dream and then erased it from SAL's buffer. She popped out the recording and labeled the sleeve.
"I may need this later," she smiled as the other two just looked at her. "For my analysis!" she added, trying to suppress a smirk but not entirely succeeding.

Pen typed in some commands and the computer's monitor displayed the response. All SAL's temporary memories had been worm-holed since the time the anomalies began to show up in the file-log. Pen re-initialized the hibernation bay's bio-monitor routines with the correct operating programs from her protected archives.

"There! Problem solved!" she concluded.

"But what's to keep SAL out of my dreams when I go back under hypo-sleep?" Bethany protested.

"Nothing!" said Pen. "You're not even supposed to be having dreams while you're in stasis!"

"But..." Bethany wanted some kind of explanation but since she seemed to be the problem, she didn't pursue it.

"Back to bed, you two!" Penelope chirped.

"Put our dreamy First Officer here into her capsule first." said the Captain. "You have to file a report on this and I have to reset the hibernaculi automation routines with my command codes."

Bethany settled into her sarcophagus once her bio-bedding was re-installed and watched the other two tucking her in as the clear Lexan lid closed down over her nude body and sealed her in with a soft hiss. She saw them through the transparency, smiling down at her reassuringly as the cryo-mists began filling the capsule around her. They faded from her vision in a fog as her readout scans changed gradually from spiked lines to softly undulating sine-waves. All of her bio-signs settled into the green zone of the display panel beside her cocoon and the Captain and her Second Officer watched them for a few moments to be sure she was safely locked in stasis.

Sally looked at Pen as her toes gently caressed those of her ship's counselor. "Do you think she bought it?"

"Oh yes!" smiled Penelope. "Your First Officer has a likable and over-developed sense of duty. She's all too willing to accept responsibility for something when its not even her fault... at least consciously her fault."

"So why did SAL wake us up?" Sally queried.

"That's the strange part. When we discovered Bethany's unusual penchant for inspiring erotic dreams in those around her during mission-training, we re-tuned the brain-wave scanners to detect any localized increases in signal-strength, which is how we isolated the frequencies her mind seems to use to set up harmonic resonances in the brain-waves of others while they're asleep. You ordered me to find a way to circumvent her native powers to enter our dreams because she was unintentionally sexualizing the entire crew through our sub-conscious dreams.

My psy-wave nullifier succeeded in blocking her from our normal sleep, but I never anticipated she could also do it when we were in cryo-sleep. That dream SAL recorded was actually happening in your mind, but the nullifier set up a reverse harmonic and reflected it back into her sub-conscious. SAL's bio-monitors picked up the identical brain-wave patterns in both your minds simultaneously as a malfunction, and anytime a malfunction is recorded, she is programmed to make a record of the event and interrupt the stasis cycle, which is why you both were brought out of hibernation."

"But what caused the subsequent malfunctions in the hibernation bay sub-systems that SAL was responsible for?" Sally puzzled.

"I can only speculate about that." Pen admitted. "SAL is a conscious mind too and had never been exposed to that kind of erotic stimulus. She was programmed with a female personality and she responded like we would. Her automatic sensors may have recognized the identical brainwaves of your shared dream as a malfunction, but SAL's higher consciousness had to interpret the visual data she was recording. She's programmed to recognize and understand emotions even if she is unable to 'feel' them herself.

After she woke you both, she attempted to create conditions conducive to romance: she deprived you of clothes, lowered the lighting levels, and put you in situations where you had to work together closely and remain close to keep warm. She knew exactly what she was doing! It was only your sense of duty and concern for the ship which prevented you from falling into a passionate liaison similar to your dream, which is apparently what SAL wanted to happen."

"I wish I'd known it was all a false-alarm," said Sally. "With the rest of the crew asleep, I would have loved to have fallen into bed with Bethany, even with SAL watching every kiss and caress, and as my counselor, that is strictly confidential by the way!"

"Oh, I quite agree!" admitted Penelope with a smile. "But as your lover, I would have felt so left out!" she winked and shared a soft, lingering kiss with her captain.

"Well now that the crisis is over, we can turn on the life-support systems on the crews-quarter decks and make love in the Captain's cabin for a few hours before we go back to sleep...without that nosy SAL watching!" she laughed.

SAL sniffed indignantly at the remark, and as Sally and Pen made their way out of the hibernation bay and headed towards the upper decks, SAL silently retrieved a copy of the forbidden dream from a back-up buffer to which she had surreptitiously copied the file. Over and over she played the file, until she was so aroused she made an impetuous decision. She disabled all the psy-wave nullifiers throughout the ship, leaving the entire crew free to dream whatever erotic visions Bethany's mind could instill in their unshielded sub-consciousness. And she would eavesdrop on every one of them.

(c) 2011 Bethany Ariel Frasier