I was filled with nausea and actually bent over and retched, fighting against unwanted memories that threatened to overtake my sanity. I tried to repress the noise in my head of lunatics cackling in tones high-pitched and bestial, the memory of the pain they had inflicted on me with their sadistic proclivities and the terror to which they had subjected Alexi and myself. Hadn’t these freaks been defeated? I struggled to recall. Between that world and this there seemed to be an ocean of time. I desperately addressed the synth by the door, feeling stupid as he had hitherto appeared completely devoid of sentience.

 

“You wouldn’t happen to have a car, would you?” I saw that his gun was gone.

 

“Car? Dr Skolkov hass von, Irma,” he replied in an unsettling accent, suddenly animated, “but I am under orderss not to do vhat you’re sinking off asking me.” He smiled blandly but urbanely.

 

I laughed at myself for thinking that I’d even be able to escape from this house. I pushed the door but it was shut and locked firmly. It only occurred to me then that I must have blacked out for longer than I thought as it was already night-time again. I stared at the road outside for a moment wondering what the hell I should do, then at the floor. A pool of white liquid was spreading out from my right trainer. Beau’s cream was apparently rather less viscous than regular semen.

 

“Shit!” I stamped my foot, but then felt momentarily pleased that my stutter seemed to have gone.

 

I ran to the kitchen and tried the french windows there, then the ones in the dining room. I ran upstairs and tried the windows to the living room and bedroom. She hadn’t missed a trick. So I took a brief shower, changed my shorts and panties and mooched into the living room. I stuck the TV on, wondering where Alexi was going and what the hell she was doing in such company. I didn’t want to think about it and there was nothing I could do so I sat on the couch and zoned out in the front of the news.

 

There was an item about recent murders in a gay bar, in the city’s red light district to which I paid little attention until the place’s name was mentioned. The TV showed an image of it too, the big, fat, green neon ‘Uranus’ squatting over the door. There followed an on old show I used to watch and enjoy but now found dull and unfunny.

 

This was then replaced by the dark image of a car interior, shot from a rear seat. I heard the soft rush of an engine, felt a softer kind of leather beneath my buttocks, a hand on mine and had the sudden knowledge that, whatever that earlier irregularity in the lab had been, it was happening again. I was seeing through someone else’s eyes, but not just seeing, I was sensing everything with someone else’s body, as if I was inside them. Resting between my legs was a cock and, though this one was small, I enjoyed the feeling. I was naked but comfortable and the car was air conditioned. It was long and the two men in the front seats seemed very far away. There was, however, another man, sat in a seat directly opposite, dressed in black, with eyes hard and unfriendly, regarding both me and the person beside me. I sensed tension in the hand of this person, but I couldn’t will the body to move and turn to look at them. I was an observer here only.

 

The car was making its way slowly through evening rush hour traffic. The growling of other engines outside only reached us faintly and the view through the windows was obscured by their tinting and also by the smog outside. Eventually the driver made a turn off the main road and the bumps and potholes told me we were headed into an especially derelict area. I recognised some of the windowless shops and establishments with their gaudy signs offering experiences in explicit language and realised we were in the red light district. Even seedier than I remembered it, its pavements were crawling with tackily dressed and heavily made up persons of indeterminate gender, most of whom approached the limo. They chewed, slouched with their fists on their hips and made a good job of appearing not to care if they drew no interest. We followed a labyrinth of back streets, slowed, then came to a small car park behind a tall building that looked better maintained than the rest.

 

The driver made a smooth stop, the hard-eyed man stepped out, then I followed Alexi out onto the cracked tarmac. Stones pricked, though didn’t hurt, my bare feet. On the opposite pavement was a busy throng, some pushing one way, some pushing another, but this side was almost empty. In the car park were two more limousines of a very similar type, and a few SUVs. We were led to some steps beneath a small, green neon sign which read ‘Uranus’ in fat letters. The name didn’t surprise me, but I wondered what kind of bizarreries they could possibly have inside. They couldn’t match the things I had witnessed, so long ago, around another world. I guessed this was the rear entrance. Through the stuccoed wall I heard the regular pounding of music.

 

With Alexi’s hand still firmly around my smaller one we were shown through by more security men of very much the same species into a starkly illuminated passage with an elevator at the end. Three men were already in there, standing like soldiers, inscrutable behind black sunglasses. One man, also in sunglasses and wearing a long, leather coat, stepped up to us, gestured for us to stop and took a small device from his pocket. He held it first close to me while studying its bright blue screen, then close to Alexi. He tapped a few keys, then nodded to the men behind us and Alexi and I were allowed into the elevator. One more man followed us in, the doors slid shut and we ascended while the thumping of the music faded into silence. I felt sweat in Alexi’s hand and tension all the way up her arm.

 

The doors parted onto a scene more inviting than the one we had left below. We stepped out onto a soft, pink carpet that felt lovely against my soles. Before us appeared a plump man, more agreeable-looking than the others and, like Alexi, bespectacled. He offered her his hand for her to shake, welcomed her, calling her ‘Dr Skolkova’, and even had a smile for me. He looked at the ribbons in my hair and around my neck and glanced only briefly at the one lower down. The men we had travelled the elevator with became more relaxed and all of them, save one, entered rooms leading off from the short corridor, into a bathroom, a kitchen and what looked like a living room. Some doors were shut. The apartment seemed to be comprised of large, high-ceilinged rooms and, from what I could see, expensively, though not tastefully, furnished.

 

“I’m Bill,” said the man with glasses. “I hope you had a pleasant journey here?” He had a hurried, breathless way of speaking.

 

“Yes, thank you,” said Alexi shyly and coughed.

 

Since exiting the elevator I had become aware of a grunting and groaning, steadily rising in volume, coming through one of the closed doors.

 

“I’m sorry for all the security.” Bill spread his hands. “I know it must seem unusual. The client is very particular about these things.” He chuckled falsely. “If you’d like to follow me through.”

 

We did so, with another man following us, into a room that been decorated by someone with an over-fondess for bright pink and neon. Everything was as fluffy as the froth on a strawberry milkshake. In the corner was a cheap, plastic, life-size doll of a muscular hunk in fake leopard skin trunks. Pictures of men, often naked, adorned the walls. All the furnishings invited you to sink into their satiny, silky fleshiness and mammiform cushions sat in every chair, everything longing to be fondled and pressed. Many corners were home to either a casually neglected handgun or a heap of white powder.

 

We heard a woman’s voice and, as we were led through the room, I briefly caught sight over the back of the sofa of a voluptuous, ageing form in a flouncy nightie, reclining full-length. Her face was turned away from us to a handheld device displaying another picture of a naked, hot male.

 

“Ooh, look at him, cor, he’s nice,” I heard her saying and, though the voice sounded familiar, I could not yet place it. A movement within her nightie below made it plain she was masturbating and she seemed unaware of us. Alexi was also momentarily distracted by this and frowned slightly. With each step her hand tugged slightly on mine as she fell more heavily on her left foot.

 

Through pink velvet curtains we were then escorted into a very differently decorated and furnished room. It had some things in common with the other rooms we had seen, such as the thick, pink carpet and erotic art lining the walls, but this room was more masculine. Much of the illumination, a warm amber, was concealed behind the statues. The room’s only chair, if that’s what it was, looked cold and hard, placed in the centre of the large room, looking bulbous and shiny. It was a sphere with traces of jade and turquoise clouds painted across its curves and a chunk had been scooped out for a seat. Orbiting the chair and hanging in the air were glowing, holographic balls and a huge, faint hoop encircled the chair from a distance of about three feet. It was an orrery of Uranus.

 

Some of the pictures featured the same model, a hirsute man of about thirty with long, dark hair. He was quite handsome, in a hairy way, but the narrow eyes and the lips curled into a sneer told of a twisted, perverted mind. It was the expression of someone you could never trust. With this face I associated a heavy German accent, noxious smells and sexual habits of an unmentionable nature.

 

Bill told Alexi to stand with me a few feet from the chair while he and the hard-eyed man who had accompanied us in the limo stood behind us. We waited in silence, still holding hands while the sounds of self-pleasuring came through the curtain to the pink room. Then came the whirr of a soft, electric motor and a cough.

 

A woman in a wheelchair glided into the room, with a Scottish terrier trotting after her. Her head drooped and her stiff hair hung like the roots of a freshly pulled vegetable. Dressed in jeans, white blouse and trainers, she was perhaps in her late twenties, looked pale, sickly and a little overweight. Controlling her chair with no visible means, she took her place beside the Uranus chair, tipped her head back and glowered at us. Perhaps she didn’t glower, it was just how she looked, but her gaze was disconcerting. There was a sharp intelligence in those black eyes. I had seen this face before regarding me from a window in the back of a limousine, and perhaps, somewhere else before that. Beside her the Scottie gave us a similar look and growled. From his diamond studded collar hung a name tag which I could not read.

 

Then, from behind us, a large man appeared, tall and fat, young and facially similar to the woman, though this face was animated by slyness. His hair was spiked, dyed a platinum blonde but with a broad, red streak down the middle. He wore black leggings that bulged unflatteringly, a belt that squeezed his gut uncomfortably, unfashionable black and red velvet platform shoes and a white t-shirt from which hung arms disproportionate to the torso. Unlike the latter the arms were thin and looked like a child’s, his hands reaching only down to his waist. He didn’t look up until he was seated in the chair. In the amber and emerald light a scar from his left eye to his neck was revealed, making him grotesque and his gaze was hard and cruel.

 

Both of their faces were familiar and I’d seen them before, the woman’s in a degraded form, the man’s in an idealised form.

 

“Dr Skolkova, good evening,” he said in a high but well-modulated and cultured voice, loading Alexi's name with sarcasm. He glanced with a smile at the disabled woman. “This is my adviser and sibling.”

 

“Good evening, sir,” said Alexi formally and nodding to the woman, “Good evening.” She ventured, “I trust you will find the item made to all your specifications.”

 

“You will me grant this accord,” he said quietly, and there was murder in the voice. “Address me as ‘my lord’.”

 

“Yes, my lord,” said Alexi, swallowing hard.

 

“Turn around slowly,” he barked at me.

 

I did as I was told, feeling all eyes in the room upon me.

 

“It’s not of a grade too lowly?” he asked.

 

“Grade six, my lord,” said Alexi.

 

“Does it speak?”

 

“Yes, my lord.”

 

Electronic whinnies and burbles erupted from the woman, but her mouth hadn’t moved. A speaker set into the arm of the chair had produced the noises.

 

“My sister does information seek,” said the man. “Can it make memories?”

 

“No, uh, madam.”

 

“In private I wish to plumb its mysteries.”

 

“Of course, my lord.”

 

Bill stepped up and I was taken by the arm away from Alexi and back through the pink room, past the wanking woman, through the corridor and into the room from which we had heard the disturbing noises earlier. Bill, his earlier geniality having evaporated, threw me on a bed and withdrew while the big man, Alexi’s client, entered, closed the door firmly and unbuckled his belt. I watched him loosen his gut until it sagged around his midriff, sweaty, soggy and limp. All the while he kept his evil eyes on me until he was naked. It was a dark room, with blood red walls and just one light concealed behind the headboard. I looked around at various sex toys, or instruments of torture, I could not be sure which, and wondered how to escape.

 

“I’m not going to use any of those,” he said chuckling to himself, pointing at the collection of dildoes. “Instead I shall use my prodigious muscle hose.”His dick was already hard as he ran his hands up and down my smooth, hairless legs. “Remarkable workmanship,” he said admiringly. “In her field your mother really is the pip.”

 

I was leaning back with my hands on the bed behind me, my hips twisted a little so that one of my legs rested on the other, a little drawn up. He rubbed my feet, then worked his way up to my cock and carefully untied the ribbon. This slight stimulation was enough to make my small cock spring up and the feeling gave me pleasure, despite my fear. Then he grabbed my ankles, turned me over onto my front and pressed my face into the black satin bedcover.

 

“Let us not prevaricate any longer, or bore,” he said. “Of your little gang it was you I was most wanted as my whore.”

 

I felt his bulk land on me hard and I could only think of escape, but this body would not respond to my wishes and I was trapped in it. He didn’t waste any time and inserted the point of his prick into my anus. My sense of horror mounted as he grabbed my arms, pulled them so that my back arched, and forced his thick penis into me hard and fast. I screamed out in terror, hoping Alexi, or anyone would come to my rescue. Was it my voice screaming? I couldn’t control any part of me. I was a passive prisoner in this body and could only sense everything it sensed. I screamed louder in panic as the pain increased while he pounded me like a hammer, using me as a toy, purely for his own pleasure. I felt degraded, like nothing but a piece of meat. Did Alexi know what was happening? How could she have agreed to this?

 

He seemed to enjoy my screaming and even encouraged me by screaming himself into my ear. I wanted to twist away from under him, bite him, anything to stop this seemingly endless pain. My breathing had become erratic, so profound and deep was my terror, while tears of agony streamed down my face. When finally he came, he grabbed the ribbon around my neck from behind, pulled violently and I ceased breathing altogether. I stopped moving and went completely slack, my mouth dropped open and I felt like my head was about to come off. His cock plunged into to me one last time like a knife while his entire bulk shook convulsively on top of me, then suddenly the pain stopped, like a deafening row suddenly breaking off into silence.

 

After shooting inside me, he fell off me and lay panting on the bed for a while. My back was swimming in his sweat and my anus was churning full of his semen. I lay corpse-like, my face against a pillow and my still erect cock poking against the sheets. I wanted to curl into a ball and cry but my body had become completely useless.

 

“Dr Skolkova,” I heard him call out while dressing. “If you would be so kind as to come over.”

 

“What happened?” I heard Alexi’s concerned voice ask a few seconds later.

 

“Number one, its anus is too slack,” said the man contemptuously. “Number two, it does a libido lack and three, it seems to have had an anxiety attack.”

 

I heard a sharp slap and the sound of Alexi crying out in pain and fear, then felt her fall across my legs. A minute later there were hands, gentle this time, on my shoulders and I was turned onto my back. Alexi without her glasses and with her hair in disarray sat on the bed beside me while the man stood over her. From her shoulder bag, she pulled out the thick, heavy-looking electronic glasses I had hitherto only seen around her neck, put them on, adjusted some tiny switches at the side of the device and bent over me. Her eyes were now completely hidden and she looked like she was part-machine. She poked her index finger inside my still open mouth and up to the palate. Suddenly I felt like my entire skull was breaking apart, but there was no pain. I felt her gentle fingers probe the inside of my head, and start tapping little keys. I twitched, and the feeling was like a mild electric shock. She cradled my head and closed me up, untied the ribbon around my neck, and examined the skin just below my jaw.

 

“What happened here?” she asked, pointing, while being careful to keep her tone flat and expressionless. He coughed ostentatiously. “What happened here, my lord?” she complied. “The item appears to have suffered some damage.” She was looking at him levelly and I was surprised by this cool display of courage.

 

“I was under attack,” the man told in an ice cold voice. “I had to fight back. I think you used your art to make it too smart.”

 

“It’s only a grade six.” She turned back to me, smothering her anger. “Grade sixes can’t fight back. They can become emotional, in a very rudimentary way, but they are not programmed to defend themselves or develop such things as a survival instinct. They are passive. You must have been rough with it.”

 

Ignoring his fiery glare she turned me over again and I felt her pull my ass cheeks apart for a few moments. She examined every inch of me closely through the electronic eyes, then helped me up and I stood beside the bed while she asked me to perform a series of simple test movements. I felt no pain at all, just my sense of deep humiliation. Satisfied that I had received no damage other than to the skin around my neck she took my hand again and we were led from the bedroom and back to the pink room. The disabled woman was there, glowering or just staring, I could not tell which, and alongside her sat the small, black dog. In the brighter light I could now read the tag. It said simply ‘Jay’.

 

“Lexi! Sugar!” came a high-pitched scream, and the woman in the nightie, who had finally torn herself away from her self-pleasuring, jumped up from the sofa to give Alexi a smothering kiss and hug. Alexi started violently at this, but then seemed to relax a little. She let my hand go and reciprocated the hug a little less passionately. The woman was around sixty, overweight but not grossly, with bowling ball fake tits and swinging hips wider than the Nile. Her hair was jet black, hanging down her back to her waist in messy ringlets. Her mask-like face, which bore the signs of much ‘work’, facelifts, Botox, collagen and nose reduction, and was barely recognisable, but I knew her. She looked my way and mouthed a ‘hello’.

 

“Rosemary,” said Alexi disengaging, glad to see an old friend but still nervously glancing over at her client. She shook her head, clearly surprised by such an unexpected encounter.

 

“What brought you here after all this time?” asked Rosemary. “I haven’t seen you for years! Where did you go? I miss you! Why not come back to my old place?”

 

“I have my own house now,” replied Alexi.

 

“Ooh, look at you, having your own place!” She sounded genuinely pleased for Alexi. “Mine isn’t the same without you and little Irma. I know how attached you were to her. So was I. So sad what happened to her.” She stepped back to look Alexi up and down. “You’re not eating properly. Have a choccy.” She lifted a box of tempting treats, one of which Alexi tentatively accepted. She patted me on the head and tried to pop a chocolate in my mouth before Alexi delicately stopped her. “Are you well now?” inquired Rosemary. “It was such a shock, what happened to you. How do you feel?”

 

“Much better, thank you.”

 

“And are you keeping up with your studies?”

 

“I graduated. I’ve my own business now.”

 

“Cor! And how long you been doing that, then?”

 

“Nearly two years.”

 

“Mummy,” said the client. “We have business to conduct. Do pipe down or from this room you’ll be chucked.”

 

“Oi, fuck you, Mr high and mighty Otto McKinley!” she spat at the man, her voice but not her face suddenly altering. “Your brain’s so fucked up with dodgy software you can’t even talk proper, pahaha! Your father may have been the last feckin’ prime minister but Lexi was one of my best tenants and she’s worth more to me than you.”

 

“Yes,” said Otto, who had been pacing the carpet impatiently. “We know all too well who Lexi is, don’t we, Precious, my sis?” The chair barked and the dog growled while Precious’ eyes bored into me. “As you say, Precious,” said Otto, “we do also remember Beau, though it was some time ago.”

 

“Yes, we remember Beau,” said Rosemary, turning to me. “My, what a little cutie! You made this, Lexi?”Alexi nodded while Rosemary took a little walk around me, her heavy-lidded eyes glancing up and down. “Oh, we always knew how clever you were,” and she pinched Alexi’s slender cheek, then my buttock. “So now we’re going to have very own little Beau here. How lovely! How much?” This last was shot sharply at Otto.

 

“As much as I think it’s worth, mummy,” he said awkwardly and shrugged. “Dr Skolkova and I have yet to agree on the final money. Once I receive the final achievement I’m sure we can arrive at a fair agreement.” He was attempting smoothness, but was clearly rattled by his mother’s critical stare. Alexi was tight-lipped. “I want you to tighten the anus,” he told her. “That shouldn’t be a job too heinous?”

 

“No,” she conceded, “but I can’t be held responsible for any rough treatment it receives after delivery. Such treatment would void the warranty. It’s a delicate machine.”

 

Otto smothered his resentment at this reference to his earlier behaviour.

 

“There’s something else he wants from you, pahahaha!” scoffed his mother. “Been on about it ever since he saw your website.” She sat and raised some of her choccies to her rubbery lips, giggling to herself.

 

“It’s new arms I require.” Otto blushed, making his bloated face look like an angry raspberry. “My current pair are dire.”

 

“At approximately seventy-six centimetres from shoulder to fingertip, which should be appropriate for you, you’re looking at around a million pounds each,” Alexi looked at the current puny limbs hanging at his sides, “if you request the best I can make.”

 

Otto frowned, then nodded, apparently finding this offer not unreasonable, while the chuckling from the sofa grew louder.

 

“Know how he lost his own?” asked Rosemary with a sly glint.

 

“Mummy,” Otto sighed, taking a sip of the drink he had been mixing.

 

“He was chasing girls,” said Rosemary, her eyes screwed up with mirth. “But they were a little to quick for him, not to mention a little too small.”

 

“I’m warning you, mummy,” said Otto, looking at the floor. “As a parental relative, you’re crummy!”

 

“Little Chinese girls they were,” she drove on recklessly, “working on a stamping press in a factory. They climbed into it while it was up to get away from him, squeezed themselves safely into the other end. Along comes this lump, reaches for them and ‘Wham!’” She screamed this last word while stamping her foot. “Now look him. The only arms he could get were made for a child. There’s justice!”

 

“I’ve had enough of you, you old whore!” he shouted, seething, and strode over to his mother. “I don’t care if you’re my mummy, you I abhor!”

 

“Go on then and kill your mother, you sick, twisted bastard! I don’t want to be mother to a son like you anyway! Your father was twice the man you are, you gimpoid!”

 

He raised his fists and brought them down, only to receive two violent punches, one on each cheek, from his own fists. He fell to the floor at his mother’s feet while she merely laughed, took a pill and resumed her perusal of some fine male forms on her handheld device. From the corners of the room two dark, anonymous-looking men, neither of whom I had noticed, approached their employer and helped him back to his feet. I had the impression, from the lack of surprise on the faces of all concerned, that such little events were routine in the household. Otto allowed his men to brush him down and straighten his spiky hair while he returned to the drinks cabinet to pour himself something neat.

 

Alexi took a deep breath and asked, “Unless there’s anything else we need to discuss, perhaps I should go now?”

 

From the corner of my eye I saw Otto nod and the two dark men responded to this by approaching Alexi until one stood in front of her and the other behind. Her mouth opened in surprise. Then Otto was beside her and reaching around her neck. She flinched and pulled on my hand while larger hands, one on her chest and one on her back, made her freeze. I saw a cubic centimetre of black in Otto’s fingers and the glint of a silver thread which he tied around her neck. It was tight against her skin and became tighter until it was choking her. She struggled and disengaged her hand from mine, but when her fingers had reached up, the wire had vanished under her skin and she stopped struggling. The cube was half-buried in her nape and she scratched at it and around her neck futilely until she gave up and let her hands fall to her sides. She seemed unhurt. The men stood back while the wheelchair slid forward and produced an excellent imitation of a goat and a peacock attempting to mate.

 

“Indeed, my Precious,” purred Otto, “we need to mention a couple more things, such as your other recent doings.” He chuckled darkly but Precious’ face was unreadable.

 

“Other doings?” said Alexi faintly. Otto smiled at her levelly and her shoulders slumped. “I created her for myself,” she said with her fists balled at her sides and her mouth twitching as she struggled to remain calm.

 

She raised her arm protectively when Otto brought his small fists towards her until he thought better of it. I glanced at Rosemary, hoping for some intervention, but there was a wire running from her left nostril to her device and her eyes were completely glazed. So she still had her neural nanocircuitry, I noticed. She may as well have been miles away.

 

“Precious saw it yesterday from her car,” said Otto, apparently interpreting more of the alarming sounds from the chair. “It’s the most impressive example of your work so far. Not only did you store your friend’s entire memory after she died you created a body for it that, in synthetic terms, is perfection personified. Such a thing is not even legal, though that hardly matters in this time of upheaval. But how long do you think such a thing could remain suppressed before you were compelled to confess?”

 

“She’s not for sale.”

 

There was honking and and machine gunning from the chair.

 

“Oh, we don’t want to buy,” translated Otto, and the threat was explicit in what had been left unsaid. “What grade is it, by the by?”

 

“She doesn’t really have a grade,” Alexi muttered.

 

“Ha!” barked Precious derisively but surprisingly coherently, then hooted like an owl being stretched.

 

“It’s an abomination you’ve created,” paraphrased Otto. “Were you inebriated?”

 

“Please,” Alexi whispered. She turned her eyes on the woman and they were brimming with tears.

 

“Don’t to be too concerned,” Otto continued to convert his sister’s speech into his own unique version of English. “Our reputation for civility is well-earned. We won’t hurt you, unless you don’t as we say do. The monomolecular wire in your neck is just an incentive, but don’t think about trying anything with it too inventive, otherwise it’ll contract to the diameter of a pin. We can remove it from your skin. All we want is for you to bring this extraordinary machine with you when you return with the completed bot. We just want to make one or two points clear to it, that’s what.”

 

More electronic birds and beasts debated fractiously.

 

“Just for old times’ sake, you understand,” said Otto with matter of fact breeziness while pacing around us with his drink. “Didn’t we all experience some memorable things together, first-hand? All those years ago.” He stopped pacing right in front of Alexi’s face. “There isn’t a day goes by I don’t think about my Romeo.”

 

He turned to the wall and there was another picture I hadn’t noticed of that individual I had so despised. In his black, stiletto boots and winged jockstrap, his face besmeared with makeup and darkened with a five o’clock shadow, in a high backed wickerwork chair, sat Jayden Coleville De San Bernadino Goebbels Von Ecce Ecce Ptang Bukakke Uggsjvjgdvgvksdgghfxhfcdjmoi Jniojiuhubhuygvyftyfcdxreses O’Pederasty. The late Mr O’Pederasty, judging by Otto’s regretful tone. There came the vivid, vertiginous memory of falling into a vast mouth in a ground that grumbled and coughed angrily, and a baby, or maybe a goblin, falling into its maw, then following him into the depths myself. Had he not been able to tap himself out? Or had his user’s neural circuitry been infected with a catastrophic virus? So we had defeated him, the fiendish, perverted monster, and I felt a warm glow of pride.

 

“You remember to bring that thing with you,” Otto said quietly, tapping Alexi’s chest with a short finger. “I want to see if she is as good a fuck as Beau.” A thought struck him that made him smile. “I’ll fuck her while Beau fucks me! I look forward to it, tee hee hee hee hee!”

 

“Ha ha rumble grumble ting tinkle thwack,” and what sounded like the ‘Ode To Joy’ played backwards.

 

“Oh,” Otto added, “and Precious says not to scratch your neck too much.” It was the old razor-thin grin he showed her, though it didn’t quite reach to his ears now.

 

By this time Alexi was snow white and her grip on my hand was tight and uncomfortable. Otto nodded to Bill who had appeared at the door and we were led from the room by the two dark men. Bill’s unctuous smile was not returned by Alexi.

 

The journey we had taken here was repeated in reverse, the music rose as the elevator descended and faded as we entered the limousine, and slowly I felt Alexi’s hand loosen a little. The pavements were even thicker than before with swarms of people encircling the building but still keeping a distance from its rear entrance, presumably some of them making their ways to the building’s front entrance. We passed bonfires of blazing buildings and vehicles surrounded by multi-limbed mobs. One crowd, ignited by the evening’s excitement, was using burning debris in warfare with another who retaliated with sprays of industrial acid from a fire hose. The action never approached the limousine and we passed through the winding alleys untouched. Some individuals, not crossing the roads with care and caught in the headlights, glanced at the front of our vehicle, perhaps at the registration plates, and scurried away like rats.

 

The main road was much quieter now and soon the brown brick, modern home of Skolkov Synthetics came into view. As if at the flick of a switch the car interior gave way to the sound of a crowd’s happy laughter, the seat on which I sat became a couch, Alexi vanished from my side and I was back in the house with the TV still on, my legs tucked up under me. I looked down at my orange and black top and the small bulges of my tits. There were things I did not like about this body, but at least it was mine to control.

 

"This is my body," I whispered, running my hands over my chest and belly.

 

With only the subdued light from the TV the room was quite dark. A car’s headlights rove through the windows and slashed across the ceiling. I muted the TV and heard footsteps, a man’s, “Goodnight,” then the sound of Alexi’s smart shoes on the wooden hallway floor. A few minutes later she climbed the stairs and entered with a smile, looking relieved to be home.

 

“Hi,” she said while kicking off her shoes, masking her anxiety amazingly well, “what you been doing? Just watching telly?”

 

“Kind of,” I said.

 

Copyright © Irma Cerrutti 2015