'Tons of Sex
sequential short stories
by J. Crispin-Ripley © 2003
Rider of the Purple Paige
Someone I didn't remember was snuggled against my back. I had no idea where I'd met her or, for that matter, where we were. The previous night was a blank. As was the previous day, and all of the days preceding, right back to my birth. Assuming I'd been born.
A vibration and hum in the wall I identified as motors. I opened my eyes. The room was painted that peculiar pink the pretentious call salmon. The two windows, high on the wall I was facing, were round. So we were in a ship, most likely an ocean liner. Where was it going? For that matter, where had it been? Essential questions, both of them.
Nothing came to mind, at least not an answer to either of those questions. They could wait. The body pressed against me felt wonderful. I might not know where I was in the grander scheme of things, but I knew where I wanted to be within the next couple of minutes.
Before I turned to the woman I searched every corner of my mind, as hard as I could, and still found nothing. Not her, and not me. For all I knew I could be a butterfly dreaming I was a man. I didn't seriously think that likely but it made as much sense as anything else. I rolled to face my bedmate.
She smiled. "Morning, Frank."
Her face was pale blue and her hair, silky vermilion. Her body was hard and soft in exactly the right places. It should be, considering her price tag. She was a 'ton, a Macbeth Industries Earthquake to be more exact. That I did know. I also knew that whoever I was, I was travelling first class and that there was no point asking my companion for answers. She was expensive, but all the money had been put into her chassis. Her control centre was oriented to physical, not computing, functions.
"What's your pleasure?" she asked.
"You know what I like," I answered, by way of experiment. I didn't, of course.
She had no doubts as to my preferences, however, and what she did was nothing any automaton would do unbidden. They were programmed, primarily, to simulate basic procreative sex. Kinks needed verbal orders. Even eighty years after the Holy Wars most people had pseudo moralistic hang-ups gumming their brains. From the evidence, I didn't. After a while she squeezed me into the tightest slot of all, then shook and quivered until I reached a heart-stopping release. She matched her final shudder to mine.
"Thank you," I said when I could talk without gasping.
"At your service, Frank."
Frank... I searched my memories for a last name. Still nothing. I was the stateroom of an ocean liner with an Earthquake by my side, one I'd obviously been with before. Still, this was where my life began... with a bang and a whimper. If this was amnesia, it was an odd sort; I knew everything about the world, except my place in it. I knew I wasn't an automaton myself. Did I? How? If I were, couldn't I be programmed to be unaware of what I was?
That wasn't out of the question but, as far as I knew, I was self-aware and automatons weren't.
Except how far did I know?
"Do I have a handheld?" I asked the Earthquake.
"You do," she answered in that literal way a 'ton replies to questions.
"Could you please get it for me?"
"Certainly." She leaned forward and, without disconnecting--damn, she was supple--got my handheld from a table beside the bed. I could have done that myself, if I'd known where it was. "Would you like anything else, Frank?" she asked.
"Not right now. You might as well go clean up."
"Certainly." She eased off me, slipped off the bed and padded away.
I turned on the handheld. No password protection? Just as well, I wouldn't have remembered the code. I accessed the ownership page and discovered my last name was Deadman and I lived in Toronto.
Frank Deadman? Things started to make sense... in a way. I'd been refitted, replumbed and improved in a full makeover. That might explain why I couldn't remember anything about myself; my brain might have undergone a wipe when other changes were made. If I was right, I'd be returning from somewhere in Scandinavia. I checked my itinerary. Bingo! Two days out of Oslo.
The procedure probably hadn't been done in Oslo, but my former identity would be locked in a vault in that great city, should I ever want to know who I'd been. But curiosity could kill the kitty and there had to be a reason for what had been done.
So who was I? I kept reading. Frank Deadman, recent recipient of a full makeover that must have set someone back a lot of bucks. I was two metres tall and a trim hundred kilos. I had black belts in a bunch of martial arts. Not to mention a Master's degree in political science with a minor in psychology. Professionally, I was an undersider, on a generous retainer from GAIA, the Global Automaton Industry Association. My licence was from the United Industries itself and therefore international in scope, revocable only by edict of the Inner Security Council.
In other words, I was hot stuff. It was good to know. But that was strictly the present me. Who I'd been in my past life was entirely another matter.
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