CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Race flopped backward onto the bed with a great sigh. She rubbed her
eyes with the palms of her hands, then massaged her temples with her fingertips.
She brought such intense concentration to her job that sometimes it took her
hours to relax at the end of the day.
She lay on her back with her eyes closed, doing deep-breathing exercises
to fight off the headache she could feel wanting to form behind her left eye.
After a while she sat up, blinked a few times to clear her vision, and then
changed out of her wrinkled suit into baggy casual clothes, a dark blue
scoop-neck top and baggy bottoms made of a warm fuzzy synthetic.
She ate her dinner -- room service -- in front of the vid, catching up
on offplanet news. Corruption, wars, disasters natural and man made -- the same
old thing. Mostly she was hoping for mentions of New Mantique, but it wasn't
until the newscast was nearly over that her planet's name came up.
"In an ironic move today, the New Mantique Senate," prattled the
newsreader, "approved stringent new restrictions on synthetic humanoids. New
Mantique is home to NMS, the largest producer of synthetics, and the giant
corporation has been lobbying against this legislation for years. The new
restrictions, while not law yet, are in direct response to the growing public
outcry on New Mantique against human/synthetic sexual relations, and would
require NMS to manufacture -- solely -- modified units that could not be used
for those purposes, and retro-fit those still in their warehouses. These new
restrictions still have to be approved by the New Mantique House before they
become law, but experts say that even if the bill is killed during this session
it's only a matter of time. NMS manufactured synthetics account for
eighty-seven percent of all synthetics ever made, and company spokesmen say that
this move by the legislature would bankrupt NMS. Threats of moving company
operations to another planet, however, apparently haven't persuaded the New
Mantique Congress, caught up in a popular wave of regressive, archaic, almost
Puritan-like social restructuring to sidetrack this bill. Only time will tell
what happens to NMS. In other news--"
"Mute!" Race called out sharply. A whole host of emotions fought each
other inside her, although she really couldn't say she was surprised. The New
Mantique House would probably be able -- by just a couple votes -- to vote down
this latest version of the bill that had become anathema to NMS, but it was sure
to pass next session. New Mantique society was becoming more repressive by the
day. Above her, on screen, the pert blonde newswoman blathered on, thankfully
silent, probably ignorant of just how monumentally important the story she'd
just read was. Sitting there at her high-tech anchor desk, feeling important,
with her two-hundred-credit hairdo, perky breasts so high they practically hung
from her collarbones, perfect skin, and a blazer that made Race's tailor-made
suits look cheap. And not an intelligent thought in her head; Race had met
enough newspeople to be sure of that.
She surfed the dozen or so other news channels, hoping for more
information on the NMS story, but without any luck. Wandering into the bedroom,
she picked out the outfit she planned to wear the next day. She'd handed her
wrinkled suit to the hotel boy who'd brought her dinner. Personal, human
service; so uncommon these days, at least on most worlds. She found it
refreshing. They'd done a fine job cleaning and pressing her suits; at first
she'd been worried, but needlessly, as it turned out.
Race took a long, hot wetshower, reveling in the glorious spray. After
six weeks of three minute showers and lukewarm, recycled water with a chemical
smell, her suite's huge stall with its eight sprayheads was heaven.
Her short hair waved wildly in the hot air as the multidirectional vents
blew her dry. She rotated slowly and raised her arms as the stall briefly
became a raging tornado of lightly scented warm air. In less than a minute her
body was totally dry, except for the soles of her feet. She stepped out onto
the soft pad, wiped her feet, and used the toilet. It was admittedly a little
early to go to bed, but she was tired, and her body still wasn't adjusted to
Garshak's clock.
On her way to the bureau, to slip into her cream silk pajamas, she
stopped and studied the big blue egg just outside the bathroom. She was pretty
sure it was called a pod, but really had no idea what its function was. She
supposed it was some sort of ultra-advanced bidet, or perhaps a new type of
toilet, but why it was outside the bathroom she couldn't guess.
The control panel was small and uncomplicated, with a display screen
that at the moment was blank. It was a MagnaFlux Dynamo 212, according to the
panel. The Start/Stop button was the biggest and most visible. The machine
seemed to be programmable for time and intensity, but what exactly that meant
she wasn't sure, and was hesitant to find out. She didn't want to start
randomly punching buttons and end up with a soaking wet carpet. Even though
Race dealt with the cutting edge of technology every day in her profession,
personally she was very hesitant when dealing with otherworld hardware. She
didn't like surprises.
Race pressed her thumb against the OPEN button and the egg silently
split apart along the gummy vertical seam. The egg itself was made out of a
hard blue plastic of some sort, but the seam that ran up one side and down the
other was soft and rubbery; it reminded her a little of puffy lips.
An icon on the side of the machine depicted a person sitting inside it
with their knees apart. The inside of the egg was a featureless black surface
that hardly looked large enough to accommodate a body. Inside it, near the
bottom, were two long sunken pads that were supposed to support her thighs, as
near as she could figure out from the crude icon.
The events of the last few days had left Race feeling more awake and
alive than she'd felt in years. With surprises coming seemingly every time she
turned around, instead of feeling overwhelmed Race found herself rising to meet
the challenges with a sense of adventurism she hardly knew she had. She
surprised herself once again by stepping into the egg.
Awkwardly she squatted down until the backs of her thighs rested on the
pads. Her ass was unsupported, but the position wasn't uncomfortable. Her
thighs were nearly parallel to the floor, and spread far apart. Race nervously
looked down, feeling quite vulnerable, but there was nothing to see underneath
her flesh, just more of the blank, black surface. Her feet rested flat on the
floor outside of the egg.
With some trepidation, Race pressed CLOSE and the egg closed around her
silently. Her eyes went wide as the two halves swung together, enclosing her,
but it wasn't uncomfortable at all. The big rubbery lips made a perfect seal
against her flesh.
The egg was wide enough so that just her knees and lower legs stuck out
its sides, the rubbery liplike seals completely encircling her thighs just above
the knee. The egg came up to the notch between her collarbones, enclosing all
of her torso but leaving her arms free. She saw there were two padded handles
on the front of the machine to hold onto if she needed.
The puffy seal ran across her chest and down under both her arms,
joining with the rear seal in a perfect seam just a few inches under her
armpits. The black interior of the egg, which had looked so solid, had
apparently conformed as it closed to the shape of her body. It was snug against
her, but not tight.
The control panel was mounted above her chest, the display oriented so
that she could read it. The pod was set for Standard Program, she could see
that, but wasn't sure what that meant. Since she wasn't sure if the pod was an
actual toilet or just a personal cleansing station she decided first just to
turn it on before trying anything more complicated that might require cleanup if
she made a wrong guess.
She reached over and hit the ON button, accidentally pressing a second
button at the same time. A red light shone on the display now, as the pod began
to hum, and Race saw she'd engaged the AUTOLOCK. She hit that button again to
disengage it, with no success. She supposed it wouldn't unlock until the pod
shut off. Perhaps it was a safety feature.
Race sat and stared at the opposite wall of the bedroom, waiting for
something to happen. The pod continued humming, and warmed to body temperature.
Inside, sensors were scanning her body, measuring, computing, establishing a
baseline -- dimensional topography, heartrate, perspiration, respiration,
temperature, a dozen others.
After the pod heated up, Race had only to wait a few seconds. She felt
something soft and warm brush against her labia, and she jumped a little. The
contact had taken her by surprise, but she settled down as the machine's
sensitive instruments touched her again and began cleaning her genitalia.
The tool touching her, whatever it was, was incredibly gentle. It
lightly wiped at her sex, gentle, long strokes. It was soft, and warm, and
either it was lubricated or she was surprisingly wet. For some reason the image
of a tongue popped into her head, but she quickly dismissed the errant thought.
Race sat there and began to relax slightly as the machine went about its
business, staring vacantly at the far wall. She forced all thoughts of GUP and
the Q-Series from her head. With nowhere else to land her hands ended up
gripping the conveniently placed handles on the front of the machine. She
should've grabbed a hardcopy book to occupy herself, in hindsight.
The sensations as the machine cleaned her were actually quite pleasant.
Race twisted her head side to side to work the kinks out of her muscles, and
closed her eyes. A second . . . tongue joined the first, and moved back to
swirl about her anus. It tickled at first, and made Race feel self-conscious,
but she supposed that needed cleaning as much as anything. The wet probe
circled and pressed and rubbed, and Race gradually became aware that the
machine's actions were arousing her.
The first probe moved up and began stroking the hood over her clitoris
as the pod's sensors detected engorgement. A third probe made itself known,
warm and wet and slippery as it rubbed back and forth across the opening of her
sex. All three probes swirled and stroked and rubbed her rapidly moistening
flesh in unison. It was about this point that Race realized the pod wasn't a
cleansing station at all, but rather a sexual toy.
As good as the probes felt -- they did feel just like tongues, and
talented ones at that, with her eyes closed she wouldn't have been able to tell
the difference -- Race did not want to become intimate with a strange machine in
a hotel room. It was bad enough being a single woman alone in a hotel room on
an alien world; she'd be damned if she'd have sex with a machine, she wasn't
that pathetic.
As the three tongues continued their skilled licking, becoming ever more
insistent, Race searched the control panel for the OFF button. She found it,
but when she pressed it, nothing happened. She hit it, again and again, to no
effect. She tried to disengage the AUTOLOCK again, suspecting it was the
problem, and hit OPEN over and over. The three slippery probes were joined by a
fourth, and two of them began nudging the portal of her sex.
Frantically Race hit every button she could see on the display, but
absolutely nothing worked. The AUTOLOCK bypassed the entire control panel, and
once activated the pod would not shut down until it had run through its program.
Race banged on the smooth blue surface with both palms, and pulled as hard as
she could on the padded handles, but the machine was a rock.
"Stop! Open! Uh . . . shut down!" She tried every command she could
think of in case the machine took voice commands.
A slender wetness pushed into her gently, easing in, then back, then in
a little further, then back. A tongue still twisted and squirmed against her
clit, and another licked her ass, worming hard against her puckered anus and
running up and down the crack of her backside. Race fought against the confines
of the pod, banging its smooth blue surface with her hands, but it was a futile
effort that left her panting. She was locked partially enclosed in a blue oval
safe, captive to a mindless time-delay lock.
She felt a swirling about her breasts, which slowed, and became a gentle
pulsing rhythm. It was as if warm currents of water were massaging her breasts
in undulating waves. The wand between her legs was thrusting deeper into her,
and the urge to struggle faded away as the sensations became just too powerful
too ignore. Race felt herself getting wet, wetter, and hated her body for its
natural responses. This wasn't what she wanted to be doing with her life, alone
on a strange world, being masturbated in an empty hotel room by an appliance.
The shaft in her continued its insistent stroking, and she began to
breathe faster. It was warm, soft and yet hard, and had gentle ridges. Inside
the pod her breasts were being gently squeezed and kneaded, pushed this way and
that, her nipples rubbed and tweaked. Race groaned and gripped the handles
tighter, closed her eyes.
The pod's multitude of sensors recorded the signs of her arousal.
External ones observed the engorgement and lengthening of her labia, the
stiffening of her clitoris, the hardening of her nipples and the slight swelling
of her breasts, the last invisible to the naked eye. The probe inside her was
equipped with its own sensors. Those recorded increased lubricity and less
external pressure as her vagina expanded and lengthened in response to her
arousal.
The probe expanded in girth as well as length and began a corkscrewing
motion as it pumped back and forth in her. Race gasped and groaned louder,
unconcerned now about someone walking in and seeing her. The warm currents
which had at first only swirled about her breasts had now spread to the rest of
her body. They rubbed across her belly and the insides of her thighs, circled
around her ribcage and stroked her buttocks.
"Oh krikes," she panted, knuckles white on the handgrips. The plunging
cock in her had grown in size again, filling her completely. Its strokes had
lengthened to just kiss the back wall of her wet tunnel, pulling nearly all the
way out of her before rocketing back in, over and over and over. The end of it
had swollen to twice the diameter of the rest of the shaft, to increase her
pleasure, but Race was too overwhelmed to differentiate the sensations. She was
as wet and loose as she could ever remember being. The currents kneading and
stroking her breasts were joined by invisible fingers that twisted and tugged at
her nipples.
"Oh! Oh! Oh!" Race clenched her teeth and arched her head back as an
electrifying orgasm swept through her body. The pistoning increased in tempo as
the machine received signals from her body it had been programmed to interpret
as climax; changes in body temperature, rigidity, muscle tone, lubricity,
contractions of the vaginal muscles, and a dozen other more subtle indicators.
The machine kept humming as the fireworks faded away. Her breasts still
swayed and bobbed, nipples still being worked, and the phallus still stroked
smooth and deep into her. Tongues still licked her fore and aft. Briefly the
head of the pistoning shaft deflated, but after her climax Race was even wetter
and looser than before. She felt the column swell inside her once again and the
corkscrewing motion increased. Race groaned and tried to push herself further
down onto the shaft. She lifted her feet off the floor, but was so snugly
enclosed by the egg that her body didn't move. She wanted to pull her knees to
her chest, grab her ankles, open herself wider to the plunging tool. It was an
unconscious, primal urge.
"Oh my GOD!" She'd never felt anything like was this machine was doing
to her. Sweat beaded on her forehead, and her toes were pointed straight out
from the egg, legs parallel to the floor. Her clit was so hard and throbbing
she was afraid it would burst; it had to've grown an inch. It felt like the
machine was sucking on it and licking it at the same time.
The wet sloppy soft/hard cock seemed wide as a tree as it twisted back
and forth and sluiced up and down. Her nipples were being pinched and pulled,
her breasts squeezed and shaken. She tried to get her hands inside the egg, but
the liplike seams were tight and seemed glued to her skin. Her shaking
fingertips got nowhere.
The huge phallus pumped her ever harder and faster, its surface ridges
growing. Groaning deliriously, Race bore down on the thick shaft, giving
herself to it fully. The machine sensed the relaxation of her muscles as she
opened herself to it, and the tongue-like probe wiggling against her anus
slipped in.
Race gasped at this new sensation, at the tongue squirming and wiggling
like a panicked snake inside her ass. She climaxed again, this one three times
as powerful as the first. Race bucked and twitched inside the pod, her insides
clenching spasmodically as the dual invaders continued plunging and wiggling.
She cried out, blubbering, tears streaming from her eyes, toes curling
uncontrollably, not seeing the suite in front of her, her orgasm going on and on
and on as the big cock pumped and twisted in her furt and the tongue squirmed in
her ass and her tits were squeezed and shaken and tugged on and her clit was
licked and sucked. "Eeeeeyoooaahhh!!!"
Gradually she became aware that the churning interior of the pod had
become still. She wasn't totally positive she hadn't lost consciousness for a
moment. The currents buffeting and stroking her breasts slowed and faded,
leaving them warm and tingling. The artificial penis inside her deflated slowly
until it was the size of a small finger, then withdrew. The tongues all
departed, the one in her anus slipping out gently. Gradually she relaxed and
let her feet drop back down to the floor. Her hairline was dark with sweat, one
droplet hanging from the end of her nose. She pried a hand from one of the
grips, flexed it so some of the feeling would return to her fingers, and wiped
away the sweat. The fingers shook. Race was surprised to find she was still
panting, but she was anything but tense.
The pod beeped loudly and the red AUTOLOCK light turned green. Race
touched the OPEN button and with a him the pod's two halves cracked open around
her. The cool air on her skin made her shiver. Race looked down into the pod
but its interior was still a featureless black surface. The sticky seam had
left a red line across her chest and down under her arms, but other than that
her body was dry and unharmed.
She reached down between her legs, examining herself. Her sex was wet
and gaping, her labia swollen and bright red, but remarkably, she didn't feel
the least bit sore. Her nipples still tingled, and looked a bit puffy from all
the activity.
Carefully she stood up and stepped away from the pod. Her knees were
shaky, her legs terribly unsteady. The pod beeped loudly three times, then
began to close. When it was fully closed two red lights appeared and the unit
began to him. SELF-CLEANING FINISHED IN 5 MINUTES she read off the display, the
number blinking. Race walked unsteadily over to the bed and climbed onto the
mattress. She curled up onto her side in the fetal position, hugging her knees,
facing the pod. Tears welled up in the corners of her eyes, but she did not
cry. With every beat of her heart she could feel her nipples, her clit, her
vagina. Within a minute she was asleep, and the tears dried on her face.
