Unlike Henry, Lyle wasn’t harboring any secret proclivities. He was, for all intents and purposes, heterosexual;
if you could call a complete lack of interest in anything remotely sexual
– except if he was forced at gunpoint – any kind of sexuality.
This is not how Lyle started out.
The history of the FullSenz Player/Alpha version is similar to the history of any new entertainment technology. Thomas Edison’s first film footage included a scandalous episode of public kissing. In the Victorian Era, the dominant photographic-supply company received a boost from the trade in explicit postcards. The Video Cassette Recorder wars between VHS and Beta were won on the backs, and to an even greater extent the fronts, of pornographic content. The Internet grew from a text-based bulletin board and email network into a multimedia entertainment juggernaut due to the success of the millions of Web sites that sold the same 57 dirty pictures over and over again.
In fact, young men have always driven the emergence of new technologies and young men have always been interested in one thing:
– getting their own car –
But right after that comes an uncontrollable urge to orgasm -- sometimes with help. This is not to say that young women didn’t have the corresponding desires; they just weren’t prepared to pay through the nose. (Coincidentally, the novelty video: “Through the Nose” was a very popular illicit download in 2042.)The FullSenz was just like every other technology in that the “early adopters” were young men. It was unlike every other kind of technology because it gave them instant access to an endless variety of orgasms. The dopiest looking, scraggle-mopped, acne-scared, big-nosed stooge with bad breath and a hump, could engage in multi-position sexual encounters, without a need to rest or recuperate, non-stop, all day, until he starved to death.
Tens of thousands died.
If it wasn’t for the fact that half of the US Congress (the male half) and almost the entirety of the Senate was completely hooked on the FullSenz, a Federal law would have been passed outlawing the damn thing almost immediately. The President of the United States would have made a statement against “that bloody box” in a press conference, but he spent most of that Spring playing a FullSenz game called “Monica – the Encounter.”
The problem with pornographic content, even when it’s the total experience kind, is that it gets old and lame pretty quickly and users keep having to up the ante.
Most gamers went from playing the exceptionally popular “Monica…” all the way to “Lasher’s Fantasy” in as little as a month.
The only problem was, few could afford to purchase very many of the extremely expensive FullSenz porn games, and many didn’t want the charge showing up on their accounts. Pretty soon almost all gamers were playing hacked versions they’d downloaded from the ’Net, and nobody knew just how dangerous the hacked versions could be.
Lyle had been one of the first “early adopters” to nearly die from Fullsenz sex. Donny was still in school and hadn’t
purchased his own player yet. Just
like everyone else, Mickey had ruined a few pairs of pants in the first few
weeks of owning his own FullSenz player, but soon he had the good sense to
avoid any more than a few hundred orgasms a day – which left him nothing
to do in the afternoon.
One very bored Friday, Mickey felt lonely despite the fact that he’d
spent his morning in the arms of several ridiculously beautiful, well-endowed
and enthusiastic women, some androgynous hermaphrodites and an alien squid with
a variety of unique orifices, so he decided to see what Lyle was up to.
Lyle’s parents were in Mozambique. This was something that Lyle’s parents
did all the time. They were
remarkably nice people who Mickey adored.
Lyle’s father worked for Physician’s for Peace and Lyle’s mother,
a nurse, earned most of the money and then went off to foreign countries with
her husband to aid the poor and afflicted.
This was an activity that they did not want Lyle to share in because
it was inherently dangerous, but since it was the activity at the center of the
family’s culture, it left Lyle struggling alone to find an identity.
Lyle spent a great deal of time as a latchkey kid – not saving
the world. He replaced this
complete lack of structure in his life with eLationII game play until the
FullSenz came out. His mother
bought him one of the first FullSenz models as a Hanukkah present, thinking it
was just another upgrade to the eLationII, which was essentially a high
definition video-based game console.
While his parents were away during the Holidays in Mozambique, Lyle
had played every bootleg FullSenz porno-game he could get his hands on. By the time Mickey sauntered in without
knocking and moseyed on through the kitchen to the garage, Lyle had been
“playing” “Lasher’s Fantasy” for about an hour.
“Lasher’s Fantasy” was designed by masochists for masochists but it
was an early Pheel and easily hacked.
Some unthinking university student, who didn’t really know just what a
horrible thing he was doing, turned off the pain protection protocol, turned
off the changes protocol, accelerated time and posted this hacked version to a
server on the HotGamerz network. He
was snickering as he uploaded it, not realizing how many lives his practical
joke would destroy.
Lyle was surfing around on the Tri-net when he found the undergrad’s HotGamerz.net
peer link. In order to get a
password to download the file, the server “READ ME” file instructed Lyle to go
to an affiliate Web site and pay the equivalent of a dollar’s worth of Webcash
for some silly little software utility he didn’t want but which paid the
college student fifty cents. With
the application's serial number as a password, he was allowed access to the
student’s server and, using the HotGamerz file sharing technology, shared the
“Lasher’s Fantasy” files that didn’t belong to either Lyle or the college
student.
This was a deeply unfortunate thing, because neither Lyle nor any
other human being alive was prepared mentally for this hacked version of
“Lasher’s Fantasy”.
Lyle thought “Lasher’s Fantasy” might be interesting since he’d just
had sex with 14 floating, bulbous, elephantine pufferfish in “WeirdWorld”. But no, it was not “interesting” in the
way it had been vaguely amusing to take the shape of a giant pufferfish and
engage in a mating ritual that ended in prickly pufferphucking.
“Lasher’s Fantasy” had been so traumatic that Lyle came to believe,
quite correctly, that Mickey had saved his life.
That was how Lyle came to prefer being female during pheels. In the hacked “Lasher’s Fantasy” females
dished it out and males received it, a lot of it. The upshot was that Lyle, when “copping
a pheel” had an uncontrollable urge to become safe – which meant becoming
a female.
It didn’t matter what kind of woman he became, it was just that the hacked
games tended to be programmed to deliver wildly overproportioned human female
characters due to the nature of the buying public, which was, up to that time,
largely male.
This was an unconscious thing and Lyle rarely knew that he was being
“female” during a pheel. It’s just that the preferences were automatically set
based on the previous game play of each player, and Lyle, when asked, always picked
a “skirticon”.
Of course, he never spoke directly of this to either Donny or Mickey.
Mickey knew why. Mickey had
nonchalantly shared into the Pheely session for about a quarter of a second when Lyle
was playing “Lasher’s Fantasy”.
Mickey instantly tore off his SPECTACL because the pain was all
encompassing and the screaming was deafening. He’d then torn off Lyle’s SPECTACL and
Lyle had immediately spasmed into convulsions.
Lyle spent that night in the hospital, sedated, gripping tight to
Mickey’s hand. From that day
forward, Lyle had never felt the need to engage in any sexual activity, or even
think about sex, ever. Mickey was
shaken up by the whole event, even though his experience had been only a
molecular fraction of the wagonload of agony that had been poured on Lyle.
Both Mickey and Donny had traumatizing, though non-sexual, pheely experiences
of a lesser degree within a few weeks of Lyle’s mishap and soon thereafter none
of them would go into a pheel without one of the others. It had become an unspoken pact.
At about the same time, the threesome stopped engaging in Pheely-sex,
mostly because you couldn’t if Lyle was around and none of them were prepared
to “cop pheels” alone anymore.
Because Mickey felt uncomfortable copping a pheel without his
compadres, Mickey was uncomfortable spending the night, by-himself, working on
the FullSenz simulated Waste-REL.
He insisted that his pals wake up at 5:00 AM because he was still
scoping out the necessary steps to save the station and he needed Donny’s
engineering acumen. He also needed
extra hands at the simulated controls.
By the time Portia arrived at 8:30, bleary-eyed but, as always,
dressed-to-the-nines for work, Mickey felt confident he’d beaten the problem.
“It’s a conspiracy,” he told Portia. “But, I think we’ve figured out a
jury-rig.”
“What are you talking about?” asked Portia.
“Listen, sister,” said Donny with great seriousness. “The company you’re working for is full
of crooks.”
“What does that mean?” asked Portia, frustrated and tired, hung-over
and miserable.
“The true failure rate of the Waste-REL simulation had to be falsified
because when STC fed the proper specifications into the FullSenz, the space
station proved to be a big egg-shell,” said Donny. “So they programmed the training
simulation to lie. If we went up in that thing without knowing what we know
now, we’d have been killed during the first operation.”
“Yeah,” said Lyle. “In
real space, you can’t float about without a space suit and every time we use
the Waste-REL to pick up some junk, it blows up and we end up outside.”
“That’s basically the short version,” said Mickey. “The thing is a death trap, but I think
we can make it work.”
“Maybe,” said Portia, slowly, so these simpletons could
understand her. “Maybe you’re
completely unqualified to run the thing and it keeps blowing up because you
three are a trio of pheely-geeks!”
“I admit that’s possible,” said Mickey, raising a palm of calm. “But I don’t think so.”
Donny picked it up.
“Normally I’d say you’re right, but in this case, Porsh, you need to
give us the benefit of the doubt.
No matter who ends up going up there, they’re dead-meat.”
“You got to see for yourself, Porsh,” said Lyle, holding out the Fullsenz cable. “Please listen to
them. It will only take 5 minutes.”
“Get that thing away from me,” said Portia, angrily turning on her
heel. “That’s enough of this
bull-sweat. You three are off the
project!”
“But Porsh,” said Donny, gently grasping her wrist. “You can’t go up in that thing. You’ll die.”
“Stop it! What do you know
about it?” she looked at Donny with disgust. “Maybe if you’d stayed in school
you could have made something of yourself.
You’re so hooked on that thing you’ve got delusions of grandeur. You think you really are an
astronaut. Well get over it,
Donny. You’re not an astronaut. You’re just a talking chimp with a bad
addiction and I thought I could help you, but the three of you are obviously
nuts.”
“Please, Porsh,” said Lyle.
“Please don’t do this. Your
brother loves you and he‘s not a chimp; he’s really smart. Please stop.”
“Okay, then what?” asked Portia.
“Are you telling me that the 234 engineers that work for STC, no make
that 232 as of last week, are you telling me that they can’t find the problem
with the Waste-REL and you can?”
“No, it’s worse,” said Donny.
“The thing is designed to kill its occupants. You’ve got to believe us.”
“All I did,” said Mickey.
“All I did was remove a little program that told the computer that the
Waste-REL was indestructible.
That’s it. I didn’t change
any of the specifications. I hacked
the STC intranet and checked. The
specs in the simulation are the latest specs on the actual Waste-REL space
vehicle.”
“Before Mickey found the bad code, we smashed the Waste-REL into the
moon at a couple of billion miles an hour just to see what would happen,” said
Donny. “Do you know what happened?”
“What?” asked Portia.
“We put a big hole in the moon.”
“We came out the other side,” said Lyle. “The dark side. We were really surprised.”
“My rusty physics tells me – to do that – the
Waste-REL would have to be entirely made of a material so dense…" Donny thought about it a few
seconds. "… that it currently
doesn’t exist.”
“And it would be on fire,” reminded Lyle.
“Well, that was just conjecture,” said Donny.
Portia's brow wrinkled up as she tried to understand. “So, you’re saying that the Waste-REL
simulation you guys stole from STC was hacked by somebody so the space station
would appear to perform better than it will in reality?”
“Yes!” chimed Mickey.
“That’s it!”
“Come on,” said Lyle.
“Please just cop this one pheel.
It could save your life.”
“Just tell me,” said Portia.
“I don’t want to go back in there.”
“This is silly,” said Donny.
“You’ve been told that you’re supposed to go up in that thing at the
last minute, but if you’d been scheduled to go up in the thing six months ago,
you’d have already logged hundreds of hours training on the pheely-box, that’s
why this cube exists.”
“Come on,” said Lyle.
“I’ll stay out and guard you so you’re safe. You go in with Mickey and Donny, okay?”
Portia thought about it.
She had been planning to be fitted for her space gear this morning. In fact she’d made an appointment for
all 5 of them and they were going to be late.
“We have to go,” she said.
“Or we’ll be late.” She said
this half-heartedly and mostly to herself.
“I’ll accelerate time,” said Mickey. “We can be in there for an hour and it
will take less than five minutes.”
Portia looked into Mickey’s baby blues. How could those baby blues lie to her?
Portia couldn’t believe how cramped the Waste-REL’s flight deck felt
with only the 3 of them in the compartment. Part of the problem was her breasts were
fantastically large.
“Can we change this?” she asked, looking at her cleavage, which
obscured not only her own feet but also the feet of the person next to her.
“Tell the computer what cup size you want,” said Mickey, not looking
up from the console.
“Computer, give me size…” Portia hesitated. “Size C cups please.” (A little augmentation was all right,
after all.)
Her breasts morphed instantly. Much more comfortable.
“Okay, watch the main console,” said Mickey, who didn’t look like a
longhaired pheely-geek but instead looked like an over-grown action figure,
with a crew cut and dimpled-chin.
“Now I’m not going to do a thing, all right? So I can’t be the one who’s messing
things up.”
“Computer?” said Donny, who looked just like Mickey’s character, but
with a mustache.
“Yes,” came the demigod’s voice.
“Play level one automatically,” said Donny. “We want to observe you doing it
correctly so we can learn.”
“Learning mode one on,” said the demigod.
“Now watch this,” said Mickey.
On the main view display the same dead satellite that he had tried to
capture in previous attempts inched towards the Waste-REL.
“At this pace we’ll be here all day,” said Portia.
“This is the slowest possible speed at which we can attract that
satellite towards us,” said Donny.
“It’s okay, we’ve accelerated time.
Lyle thinks we’ve been gone for a fraction of a second so far.”
“Oh,” she said.
“Okay, look, let’s save some time,” said Mickey. “Computer move forward in time by 20
minutes.”
The satellite, still moving at a snail’s pace, leapt to within a few
centimeters of the Waste-REL’s hull.
“Okay, we’re just going to tap it ever so gently,” said Donny. “Remember, this is the training mode,
the computer is doing everything.”
Dials turned by themselves, buttons depressed, screens changed.
“Contact in 5 seconds,” said the demigod.
Five seconds passed.
When the Waste-REL exploded Portia screamed in full-blown terror. She was suddenly floating above the
Earth in the vast, cold, wasteland of outer space with no protection,
surrounded by flaming debris.
“See?” said Mickey.
“Something is really wrong,” said Donny.
Portia was panting loudly and flailing for purchase in zero gravity.
“Relax,” said Donny. “Geez, computer quit!”
Portia sat up on the bed, nearly knocking heads with Lyle, who had
been sitting beside her.
“Didn’t it work?” he asked her.
“Sometimes it doesn’t work for some people.”
“Sooped-up,” said Mickey. Lyle nodded; understanding that they’d been
gone longer than the 4 seconds he’d experienced.
“Why did that happen?” gasped Portia. “What did you do?!”
“Mickey turned off a little bit of code that extended the game. The code told the game that the
Waste-REL was impregnable,” said Donny.
Lyle got a strange look on his face and started smiling.
“No, Googie,” said Donny.
“Not like pregnantable – indestructible, you know.” Lyle just cocked his head as if to say,
“Oh, yeah, right.”
“I checked out the actual code line by line,” said Mickey. “That’s all it said. In fact, the code looks hastily put
together, like no one even checked it.
It even contains a spelling mistake.”
“But the cube must have been quintuple checked by programmer after
programmer and given the thumbs-up,” said Donny. “We looked at the programmers' logs.”
“In other words,” said Mickey, “either your company is filled with the
most incompetent staff imaginable, or they all know that this thing is going to
go kablooey the minute it’s put into orbit.”
“But that doesn’t make any sense,” said Portia. “Why would anyone want to do that?”
“If anyone cares to know, I’d vote for the incompetence theory,” said
Lyle. “You know, sometimes people
just don’t do their jobs.”
Mickey and Donny just looked at Lyle and thanked their lucky stars
that they’d never eaten a Meatcycle at Gyroworld during Lyle’s shift.
“Did you remember to call in and quit Gyroworld?” asked Donny,
suddenly remembering that Lyle had been the one with a job.
“I was fired last week,” said Lyle, sheepishly.
“Oh,” grunted Donny, understanding. “Well that worked out.”
“Wait,” said Portia. “You
said you figured out a way to make it function properly?”
“Yeah,” said Mickey.
“Donny thought of it…”
“Oh, come on, Mickey,” said Donny. “It was your idea, I just figured out
how it would work.”
“Would somebody tell her what it is?!” snapped Lyle, taking everyone
by surprise.
“Okay, geez,” complained Donny.
“The idea is to never actually touch the garbage.”
“Yeah,” chimed in Mickey.
“We attract each bit of junk until they all become like little moons
around ‘the planet Waste-REL’, but we never actually touch anything.”
“The thing doesn’t have to actually come into contact with the junk to
get it out of harms way,” said Lyle.
Everyone looked at Lyle, a little surprised by his assertiveness. Mickey smiled encouragingly, so Lyle
continued. “And… and… that way we
can actually get out of the darn thing when we’re done. You know, before it
burns up in the atmosphere.”
“Yeah,” said Donny.
“That’s another thing we checked out. We have to get out of the station
before the orbit disintegrates in about 10 months. This new way of collecting the junk
makes more sense than the previous plan.”
“So, you think you can do this?” asked Portia.
Lyle bobbed up and down on the mattress of his bed. “Yeah, we’ve
already done it! We saved it!” He once again offered Portia the Pheely-cable.
“I’ll take your word for it,” said Portia, feeling better for the
moment. Portia sat on the bed
thinking and began to bite the nail on her right forefinger. She turned to focus on the FullSenz and
grasp what she’d been told.
“The flight plan,” she said.
“It’s all been programmed ahead of time, by a team of engineers. And the food supply, it’s all been set
up based on a minimum schedule of waking hours.”
“I looked at that,” said Mickey.
“When this disk was made, the Waste-REL was scheduled to be overstocked
in food by a factor of 2. We should
able to stay awake as much as we need.”
“Yes, but what about the programming?”
“Manual override,” said Donny.
“We’ll have to take over and control the maneuvers by hand to avoid a
collision anyway.”
“The computer is programmed to like collisions,” said Lyle. “We’re kinda programmed more for near
misses.”
Donny frowned at Lyle.
“You’ll have to decide, though.
It’s all going to be up to you, little sister. If you want to stay, we’ll understand.”
“Well, I’d be disappointed as hell,” said Lyle.
“Yes, well, Lyle,” said Mickey. “Porsh probably shouldn’t take that
into account when making her decision.”
Portia sat deep in thought for another 30 seconds. She looked into the expectant faces of
her brother and his friends. She
couldn’t think of a good reason to stay.
“Are you still up for getting fitted for flight suits?”
All three pheely-geeks stood up.
“Let’s go,’ said Lyle.
Mickey grabbed a last sip of his morning Awakola™ and Donny
ran to the bathroom.
For a moment, Portia thought it was a lot like having 3 kids.
Next: The Fitting
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