I died a silly death.
We had just closed the Heinzgrouter account and were exiting the ornthochopper when my partner shouted at me, "Don't stand up!"
I stood up and shouted, "What?" My severed head flew 50 feet across the landing zone. A quick thinking caterer grabbed it and dunked it into a mini freezer with the shrimp and erotic ice cubes. That part i remember.
After that the details get a little fuzzy.
- - - - -
"In the event of accidental decapitation of an employee, the Blemish Corporation retains exclusive rights to any and all intellectual properties contained within the said employee's brain."
Note to self - always read the fine print.
- - - - -
I opened my eyes - they were able to save those - to the sight of a half dozen geeks in white coats hurrahing and high-fiving each other. A portly man shambled into my field of view and said "Mr. Goste? Can you hear me?" I opened what i thought was my mouth and a wail of feedback shrieked from me. I tried to close my mouth but the screeching continued. "Turn it off! Turn it off!" Portly shouted at the others. White coats spun drunkenly around, flailing at buttons and switches.
This went on for three hours.
A red-haired tech finally inserted a benign looking monkey wrench in my mouth. The noise abruptly shut off, whirred back up and subsided.
"Ok," Portmaster sighed, "we're going to have to work on that."
- - - - -
"Try to move your toes."
I think about it.
"Ok, good. Can you lift your left hand?"
Maybe. Do i have a left hand? I don't feel a...
"Good. Now the right."
Right? Wait...
"Fine, do you think you can sit up for me?"
Suddenly my view of the tiled white ceiling rotated to a vision of the gaggle of wide-eyed geeks staring at... staring at my...
Beyond the team was a large mirror. Reflected in the mirror was a flawless nude asian woman staring at me with my eyes.
- - - - -
Irony.
You may allow yourself one deep chuckle, then keep it to yourself.
I don't want to hear it.
The Heinzgrouter account? Guess what they manufactured. Just guess.
Give up?
Fully autonomous robotic love dolls.
Want to know who the AD was on the account? Give up?
Want to know what the killer ad campaign was for the new Asian line?
"Let us put you in our new body."
Guess who wrote that. Just guess.
- - - - -
"A Brief Moment of the Young Woman Discovering Her Sexuality"
(cue the violins and the soft-focus montage of waterfalls and irises)
In my deepest night I've ached for a woman like this.
I pivot and turn drinking in every curve and arch.
My lips are a ruby wonderland - warm. wet and inviting.
My breasts are calculated perfection, haughty nipples daring kisses.
My eyes trace the sinuous line to my meticulously-sculpted maidenhead
Even my toes are spawning spasms of desire.
"I'm a goddamn fuck-bot" I say in a breathy, come-hither tone
- - - - -
Behind the mirror stood a hook of a man mindfull of every minute action on the other side. Beside him was a foul flounder clutching a clipboard like a life raft.
"The eyes really add to the illusion, don't you think Mr. Blemish?"
The hook didn't reply.
"The prosthetic department is always trying to outdo themselves with the occular implants but, i think that nothing is quite like the real thing, is it?"
Finally, Blemish croaked, "It's the mind, fool."
Flounder floundered for a reply that would be graciously ingratiating, finding none he coughed and studied the clipboard blindly.
"Nothing like the real thing to sell the false one, eh Flounder?" Blemish said with a yellow smile.
"Yes sir, absolutely sir."
- - - - -
[nothing - real thing - false - flounder]
[sir - sir]
[guy - but - man - bonk - robot bitch]
[processors in - cervix - buffer memory]
[sensor feedback]
[arena - explotation - professional]
[carbon alloy - nipples]
[lunch - starving]
[immortal - prostitute - compensation]
[cooling - nominal]
[asian poontang - brain]
[scout around - willing - hosts - junkies]
[man - devil]
[up - amps - pads]
[nicely]
no one said a word.
- - - - -
"What do you think it'd be like?" Red said to Head.
"What would what be like?" Head replied.
"You know..."
"What?"
"Doing it...with it."
"It?"
"With it, you know - with it."
"You know that's a guy's brain in there, don't you?"
"So?"
"So?!?"
"What does that matter?"
Head sighed.
"I mean, the body is there right? What difference would it make?"
"You really don't have a clue, do you?"
"What?"
"That's a GUY'S brain in that body! You would be having sex with a MAN!"
"It's not like he has a penis or anything. It wouldn't make me gay or anything."
"No, it would make you a rapist."
"No..."
"I highly doubt he wants you on top of him, grunting and sweating - "
"He's not a HE. HE'S a SHE!"
"Right now he's nothing more than a pair of eyeballs and a brain in a really sexy tin can. Besides, what you really want is in that." Head said motioning towards a small black box leaning on a tangle of wires. "That's where the really fun stuff is. All the responsive programming is in that hard drive. Every moan and shudder and squeal is in that little box. Without that, that sexy little thing over there is about as responsive as a wristwatch."
"Besides," Head continued, "we had to remove all the naughty bits to make room for more memory buffers. He's got nothing down there but terrabytes of ram. Sexy, huh?"
"Terrabytes, huh? That is sexy."
"Dork."
- - - - -
"Can I get some clothes, please?"
- - - - -
3 years later...
Escape was easy. Head shipped me out with the latest order and when the transport landed in the Southern Conglomerate I just walked away. Escaping from the Southern Conglomerate was not so easy. Not so easy when you're a petite asian bot in the heart of paranoiaville. Some of the things that happened...I still don't like to think about. Some things I just don't remember.
When Head found me I was under a pile of garbage in a ditch in several burnt and beaten pieces. Some parts were never found. He patched me up, reformatted the hard drives and replaced the batteries which were eating holes in my chassis. Good as new. Some parts don't exactly match and we've done a refit on the tits. Seemed a shame to waste the space on what was purely decorative.
- - - - -
Enter The Whore
"Redemption is for the weak" V would have thought if she placed any value in sentiment. She knew exactly what got her here and exactly the price she paid. She expected full settlement of all accounts outstanding. She expected nothing.
- - - - -
Across from V sat Blemish who slid a document across the flat black desk. A standard document of slavery.
- - - - -
"When you dance with the Devil you always pay."
V looked up at the hook of a man seated across from her.
"When I was just starting out I had a client - a fat tub of shit who stank like rancid butter. In the middle of his business his eyes rolled to the back of his head and he died inside me. The very last thing he did was shoot his seed. Last grasp at life I suppose. Pointless gesture in retrospect considering the particular door he was knocking at. Being the frail young thing I was I called my 'manager' to take care of things. After he had created a few easily hidden bruises, he stood in the corner as I dragged the fat man to the trunk of the car. No micro-manager he. We drove the client and his ride to a hidden location and burned the evidence. I could see that my manager was about to induldge in a bit of creative discipline so I smashed his skull. I remember his eyes framed with blood as he worked his mouth to say something. I ended him."
"What happened next in your delightful little tale Mz V?" Blemish asked.
"I pissed on the fire. Waste not."
Fortunatly, she was dealing with an equal.
- - - - -
"Are we agreed Mz V?"
She lifted the thin paper in her quivering hands. Read the fine print again. A standard immortality contract - the usual riders of corruption and degradation attached.
"Just one stipulation." She said. "I need to be the first one."
"Of course, Madam. I wouldn't have it any other way."
A simple pen stroke followed.
- - - - -
"Daddy!"
I didn't tell you about my daughter, did I?
She was only two when her mother and I divorced. Joint custody, a very amiacble split. She was staying with her mom when my head went sailing across that tarmac. For three years I couldn't see her while they programmed, tested. probed and generally assaulted my saucy new shell. I'm as much of a stranger to this tiny girl in front of me as I am now to a human being.
She still jumps into my metal arms and plants a sloppy kiss on my ceramic cheek.
If only I could feel her warmth - her small heartbeat through these layers of acrylic mesh.
"You're a robot now? She asks with wonder.
"Yes honey, Daddy's a robot now."
"Why are you a girl robot?"
"Well...they were all out of boy robots."
"That's stupid. Do they have any boy robots now?"
"No hon, I don't think they do."
"How about doggy robots? Could you be a doggy?"
"That would be fun, wouldn't it?"
"Daddy Doggy Robot! Daddy Doggy Robot!" She squealed as she jumped about.
The Ex would not stop staring holes through me.
- - - - -
Fast forward to the Hollywood Finale
I won't bore you with the details of my discovery of the standard "take-over-the-world-with-prostitute's-brains-inside-robot-bodies-to-kill-off-world-leaders-installing-blemish-as-dictator-supreme" subplot. I mean we've seen that before, right? Let's just cut to the scene where I'm upside down and in a mid-air catwheel with fiery automatics blasting to bits the robotic bodies of the aforementioned night ladies. We'll gloss over the dubious ethics of slaughtering people who really never had a chance and are now just grist for this oil-splattered mill. They are, after all, trying to kill me - the protagonist. Let's also skip over the fact that I am not - in fact - a bad ass. I'm a freaking copywriter! If we will allow our collective disbelief be suspended for a little longer we will see The Indominatible Mz V plunge to her assumed demise through a stained-glass window wherein I will say something clever like...um... "Have a nice fall."
Now, just as we think it's all over and can breathe easy Blemish crashes through the ceiling with his human head grafted into the center of a REALLY BIG SPIDER ROBOT!!! He throws me around, I crash through a few walls. All looks hopeless until the very last second...
...he cuts my head off, again.
Damn.
- - - - -
The Presumed Demise of Mz V.
She fell.
Sharp shards of stained glass twinkled and spun around her.
She did not scream.
She did not know if her new body would withstand the impact.
As the wind whipped by she found she didn't care.
"It is what it is." She mused.
A smoke ring puffed from a nearby novelty billboard, altering her trajectory by a hair.
One petite ankle was caught in a long banner advertising the "Evolution or Extinction?" exhibit at the Museum of Antiquities.
Her body slung into the banner, the sheet wrapping around her like a lost love. It spun her upright.
She landed barefeet first.
She exhaled, looked up and allowed herself the luxury of a smile.
- - - - -
You have no idea how much it sucks to be me.
The climax to the hollywood finale didn't happen. In cases like this the post-industrial edifice is supposed to be destroyed in an inexplicable explosion. The bad guy didn't die, hence, no explosion. That bastard. He stood over my severed head with one rusty claw hovering inches from my eyes. Then he did something terrible. He smiled and simply clunked away.
(three and a half weeks later)
I have gone mad. I know this only because I continue to exist. The human mind was never meant to exist in this static state. In Head's infinite wisdom he installed failsafe measures in the brain casing for this very contingency. I could survive for another hundred years.
My body is ten feet away. A fine film of dust has coated my head. I have managed to rock back and forth using my jaws but that is it. My mind remains in a perpetual twilight of dreaming - not awake, not asleep but somewhere between.
- - - - -
Meet Avery
From a pinhole of light lumbers in a giant. A slow bulk dressed in torn hazmat coveralls. He picks through the dusty wreckage. With one hand he picks up my body by an ankle and gives it a brief shake. Something essential falls from the neck and pings against the floor. He sniffs the crotch. Turning like a tank he sees me, my head. Picking me up by the hair he blows off the dust with a rank gust. I blink. I sneeze. His eyes narrow to greedy little shards.
Dragging my body behind and my head in a bag he traverses the psychotic honeycomb of the city's hidden heart.
In a cramped cell among clusters of bomb-shocked buildings he drops the body on a dirty dented mattress and my head on a desk that doubles as kitchen table and welding arena. He stretches and the crusty coveralls fall to the floor. He stalks to the bed, his slowly engorging cock swinging like a pendulum. With a grunt he flops on the bed and pulls the body to him. With a dull curiosity he tries to poke a fat finger in. Finding nothing but a black computer casing he flips the doll over and tries to jam a thumb into that perfect ass. More flat, black ram. He swivels ponderously and stares at me.
"Oh no no no no no no no"
The giant plods forward, his cock now a pulsing metronome.
"OH NO NO NO NO NMPH GLMPH GLARF..."
This goes on for days.
(to be continued...)
