"You got it," said the BC. The metal glowed white, whiter, whitest, and began to evaporate. I turned before the process was complete and strode from the room. I felt eyetracks all over me, but nobody said anything, not even Hildy.
I held on all the way back across town and right up until my apartment door slammed behind me. Then I fell down on the floor. I don't know what happened then. Whatever it was, it got my face wet and left me exhausted. Sherman carried me m bed and stroked me gently for a while, then left me alone. That fucking machine is the best friend I ever had.
I was not telling anybody about the kid. If the universe had to be destroyed because of that, so be it.
Sherman coaxed me out of it.
He's the only machine I've ever had any use for. At one time I scorned robots like Sherman. I thought they were only good for jaded femmedrones looking for a thrill. I used the pronoun "it" when referring to them, called them walking vibrators or humanoid dildos.
I stopped doing that after I got Sherman. He is definitely a male robot. One glance between his legs could leave no possible doubt of that.
He let me ... weep. That's the word I was looking for. I have cried before, but it usually comes from fury and I remain rigidly in control as the tears drip down my cheeks. I had never been helpless like this. Not even on the day she died.
If Sherman was surprised, he never let on. He stroked me, let me curl up in his arms. He could never make up for the mothering I missed and we both knew that, but goddam it, he was the next best thing. I could no longer handle the idea of a real human man., I hadn't been with one for years.
Sherman's attentions grew more meaningful. I didn't think I wanted to fuck, but he would know that better than I. His fingertips are lie detectors. He can read my feelings as though they were punched on my skin in Braille. Presently he pushed me onto my back and entered me.
I fell into a dream state. He fucked me for three hours, from late morning to early afternoon. (Made love? Don't make me laugh. I know when the merely ludicrous turns into the psychotic. I am well aware that, technically, what I did that afternoon was masturbate with the world's smartest solid-state life-size inflatable rubber novelty.) I had very little to do with it. That's my custom with Sherman, the Lord of Latex; I just lie there and he ravishes me.
What the hell else should I do? He can't feel a thing. He's an extremely complex series of programmed responses. He feeds off my responses and always does the right thing at the right time. He's a machine. I might as well worry about satisfying a pop-up toaster.
Sherman has no face.
He's a competent therapist, and he told me directly what that means in psychological terms. It is a very common female fantasy to be roundly and thoroughly fucked by a faceless stranger. At first glance, it looks like a rape fantasy. It most emphatically is not. Rape is not sex for a woman, and it has very little to do with sex for a man.
Sherman does not ask me what I want. He doesn't ask me when I want to screw; he knows. He simply takes me.
And I am so totally in control of the experience that I don't even have to tell him what to do. Each step he takes is perfectly in tune with what my body is telling him I want.
He is a reasonable facsimile of the perfect lover.
When I first got him he had a face. I couldn't stand it. I choose when and where to tell myself lies, and the lie his face told -- I am a real man, with real emotions -- was not one I wanted to hear. So I had him rebuilt with a head round and smooth as an egg. Like all the rest of his skin, it feels just like the real thing. As does my own "skin."
Sometimes he pastes pictures of faces over the front of his head and we pretend he's performing as some famous figure from the past would have. I've fucked my way through several history books.
Bizarre? All right. But it depends on what neighborhood you live in. I won't say it was as good as making love with a real man. I won't say it was worse, either. There was no emotional component. Sometimes I missed that; then I would think of Lawrence, and take Sherman to bed and practically wear him out. Sherman was a lot safer.
My reasons for this preference were complex and incompletely understood. Part of it was simple. There were plenty of opportunities to get hurt without going out searching for love.
Another part of it was deep down, and Sherman-the-therapist had to dig it out in many sessions. I was terrified of a real penis. It could make me pregnant and if I was pregnant I'd have another kid and be hurt again.
Part of it was lies. The ones I told myself, and the ones others told me.
It is impossible in my neck of the woods to tell if the fellow you're bedding down with has real equipment or a clever imitation. Harsh, but true. The chances were excellent that his cock was no more real than Sherman's. Then again, he might still have the genitals he was born with.
The whole idea of skinsuits is that you can't tell. And you certainly can't ask.
And I had to know.
Don't misunderstand. I didn't want the real thing. I wanted a prosthesis. Safer. So if I'm looking for a man who actually remains male only on the genetic level why not settle for Sherman?
Cold, cold.
I know it's cold. But I never promised this would be pretty. Nobody ever told me my life would be anything but nasty, brutish, and very short, and I never expected anything else.
You take what you get, and you run with it.
Like this: When Sherman had brought me to the place he calculated it was best for me to be that afternoon, he stopped fucking me. He prepared a light lunch and brought it to me in bed. I got out of my skinsuit and he massaged me while I ate.
We talked of this and that. As he massaged, he was examining me for new medical developments. About every second week he finds one. That day he didn't.
Maybe I've given the impression that the real me looks like something dredged out of a sewage canal after a three-month swim.
It's not that bad. Really. I don't have any unpleasant smells. My skin is deathly white but it's intact. My genitals are my own. I suppose the kindest adjective for my face would be emaciated, but I couldn't use it to crack mirrors. The false leg is not the result of disease; it was an accident. I don't miss it. The prosthetic works better, and feels the same.
The hands are my worst feature. Those, and my remaining foot. It's called para-leprosy.
It's not contagious. It's passed down mother-to-child, locked in the genes. One day soon those hands will have to go.
I had lost all my hair when I was nine. I hardly remembered it.
The critical problems were all inside. Various organs were in advanced states of disrepair.
Many were gone, replaced by artificial ones. It was a toss-up which would be the next to go.
Some we can replace with self-contained, lice-sized imitations. Some require a roomful of machinery if they go rotten.
And what's it to you, bug-fucker? For a twenty-seven-year-old woman in my place and time, I was the picture of robust health.
You don't think we were running these snatches because we liked the exercise, do you? You must have grasped by now that they were the desperate solution to a terminal problem. If you saw me without my skinsuit, you'd understand the problem instantly.
But no one but Sherman ever will.
When he was through massaging me I redressed my grievances. I should insert a grateful little plug here for those wonderful folks who brought us the skinsuit. Cut it: it bleeds. Stroke it: it responds just like the skin you used to have or takes the place of the skin it's covering.