To the Last Man I Slept with and All the Jerks Just Like Him
Page 14
Worst of all, People for the Ethical Treatment of Humanoids has gotten wind of the company’s methods of profit. In a flurry of tersely worded secret memos, Dr. Xotcd and his subject, along with the failed Special Blend Project abductees, are sent away to another lab, hidden under one of the company’s caterpillar-milking facilities.
Emotionally taxed and uncertain of his future, Dr. Xotcd decides to lay low for a while. He sets a basic background program—food, water, shelter—for his subject. He leaves the subject to her own devices while he updates his resume and puts out feelers for new opportunities, just in case.
Burned out on her old way of life, Stephanie decides to live off her savings for a month or so while figuring out what to do next. She spends her time in her apartment poring over the want ads. Stares at the ceiling. Eats. She’s gaining weight again. She doesn’t really care. She has more important things to worry about.
“Wanted: coffee shop waitress,” an ad says one day when she’s almost out of money.
Customer service isn’t unlike many things she’s done before. It’s full of degradation, humiliation, and kissing ass. Stephanie becomes good at her new job.
The lack of contact from Xotcd’s bosses makes him nervous, at first. Then, he reads about the success of the company’s latest project. Rich clients pay handsomely for the most vicious, violent imported human males to compete in their sports arenas. His former teammates have been back from Earth for a while now and are preparing to go back and import more subjects from the planet’s military forces. The company’s other scientists have been able to successfully alter the subjects’ testosterone, increasing their lust for blood. Humanfighting has become the latest craze. The company’s resources and watchful eye are completely focused on it.
The waning human lubricant trade is temporarily forgotten. The pressure’s off Xotcd and the paychecks still come. He decides to dedicate himself fully to his current research. He imagines that he might publish or even win a prize, even while he accepts the more likely fact that no one will really care.
“Hey, baby. How about a little sugar with that cream?”
Stephanie ignores the customer’s request for affection. She hasn’t felt like dating lately.
“Oh, Brad—at first our biting banter and violent passion thrilled me, but lately I’ve been hungry for something else. Please, darling—just hold me!”
Stephanie turns off the TV. All the shows have become so boring and crass.
She goes to the used bookstore and trades in her romances for the books that were considered racy decades ago. She goes to the flea market and acquires a free kitten to keep her company in her apartment late at night.
Right before she goes to sleep, she doesn’t think about movie stars or her boss’ muscular arms. She thinks about mundane things, like dishes and bills. It’s boring. The boringness puts her safely to sleep, where she dreams of bills and dishes. It’s almost like she’s dreamed too much in the last few years, and now she has to fill her dreamtime with other things.
Again, this is like the tiny humanoid farm—something to care about. Xotcd goes into the program module and leaves surprises for his subject to find—attractive mates, opportunities to excel at her chosen livelihood, little bits of cake. Some treats she takes, and some she ignores as she industriously scurries through her life.
It’s like an imported holographic drama, but with Xotcd himself as the director. And he can accelerate it. Make the story, with its potential happy ending, tell itself faster.
“I’m crazy . . . Crazy for feeling so lonely . . .”
Stephanie sometimes goes out with her friends to the karaoke bar after work and, when she’s had enough to drink, takes the stage and makes them cheer with her sexy or swaggering imitations of divas and rock stars.
Naturally, the coffee shop’s open mic night was her own idea, enthusiastically embraced by the owner and the clientele. But, so far, she’s too nervous to perform there herself without any artificial background music as a safety net.
Months pass in a blur. Finally, one night, encouraged by her new friends, Stephanie stands at the microphone and falteringly sings a song she learned as a child, fingers stumbling across grade-school chords on the borrowed guitar. This isn’t the kind of performing she’s done before, where everything out of her lips is a stale cliché spoken for somebody else’s pleasure. Here she expresses her real feelings, and the audience actually listens. Without riding crops in their hands. Without ropes holding anybody down.
The nervousness twisting her stomach is quickly replaced by a surge of excitement. Her voice rises, then whispers, then just flows. The song’s over and everyone applauds. She feels a brand new feeling—something she’ll have to examine tonight, when she’s alone.
The Company’s periodic self-review survey reaches Xotcd’s hidden lab.
1. List your recent contributions to the success of the Company.
2. Describe your value as a member of your team.
3. Detail your ideas for bringing profit to the Company in the near future.
The survey remains unanswered on his console. Any of his peers, in Xotcd’s place, would take advantage of the opportunity to pander their way back into the colony’s good graces. Back into the rank and file. Back into the common mind.
Instead, Xotcd rushes to fit together the pieces of a profitless puzzle. He’s used to being alone.
“Xena, guess what?”
“Meow?”
Stephanie tells her cat the good news. After a year of hard work, she’s been promoted to day-shift manager at the coffee shop. This means more money and maybe a nicer apartment for them both.
She’s too excited to spend the evening reading or revising her song lyrics. Impulsively, she decides to see if her luck will hold by going to the talent contest at a local club tonight. Normally, she wouldn’t be brave enough to compete against others, but what does she have to lose?
Not only does she win, but she’s engaged for a monthly gig. The audience really likes her song. A couple of people ask if she has CD for sale. She hasn’t ever recorded one. Maybe she should look into it.
The next day Stephanie takes her prize money and, for the first time ever, completely splurges on things she wants but doesn’t need. It’s okay. She can afford it. She deserves it.
That night, she celebrates the results of her hard work by taking a long, luxurious bath and then massaging herself with expensive new lotion. Feeling languorous and warm, she slips into bed and drowsily fantasizes about the future. She caresses herself softly until, for the first time in a long time, her hand slips down under the waistband of her pajamas . . .
Xotcd is surprised, then pleased, then immediately apprehensive. He wonders if he’s required to report this unexpected development to his new supervisor.
There’s no need. His supervisor has set her electroantenna to automatically vibrate when the sensors record the subject producing valuable fluids. Before Xotcd can formulate a plan, she and her ensigns swarm into his lab.
“Rslv, take a swab and run the test. Quickly.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Good work, Dr. Xotcd. We’ll take it from here.” The supervisor folds four of her arms across her thorax and waits for the results.
The latest lubricant, while certainly normal, is no Special Blend. The team sets up residence in the compound surrounding the lab. Two whole weeks pass before the subject produces again on her own.
“This is ridiculous. Dr. Xotcd, introduce stronger stimuli,” says the supervisor, who is like his former captain, but younger and even colder.
Xotcd does as he’s told. He codes burly men, gorgeous women, sexy scenes. The subject rejects them all—eludes them as if they’re hallucinations or dreams. She has become completely resistant to passive acceptance of her circumstances.
“So, Stephanie . . . recording your first demo! Congratulations!”
“Thanks.”
“And how’s everything going at the coffee shop?”
<
br /> “Great—busy. I’ve been hiring new waiters. We’ve gotten so many more customers since we started the open mic nights and art exhibits. It’s crazy. But good crazy.”
“And . . . ?”
“And what?”
“Don’t mess with me, Stephanie! What about this new guy? What’s his name—Tad? Rad?”
“Robert. And we’re just friends.”
“Aw, come on.”
“No, seriously, Elena. I’m taking this extra slow. I don’t need anything to mess up my good luck.”
“You mean your hard work. God, Stephanie, I’m so happy for you. You’ve come so far since . . . Well, since. . .”
“Since I got out of my old life.”
“Yeah. I’m really excited for you . . . Can’t wait to see what you do next.”
“What do we do next, Ma’am?”
“Nothing, Ensign Rslv. All of our efforts have failed. The CEQ says it’s time to jettison the project.”
“So . . . terminate the subject?”
Xotcd is horrified.
“No, Ensign, NOT terminate the subject,” says the supervisor. “Haven’t you been reading the news? People for the Ethical Treatment of Humanoids has been tunneling deep into Company business. We can’t so much as test shellshine on humans without it showing up on the nine o’clock holos.”
“So . . . ?”
“So we return all the Project Special Blend humans to their natural habitat.” The supervisor’s voice crackles with annoyance. She turns her antennae in Xotcd’s direction. “Doctor, you will, of course, remove all the evidence.”
Xotcd suddenly, vividly experiences the memory of his mother dumping the humanoid farm and all its contents onto the sand pile behind their home. A few of the tiny creatures had escaped their confinement and gotten into the pantry. They’d made her angry. Xotcd cried.
“But, Mommy, I take care of them! They’re my friends!”
“Nonsense, Xotcd. It’s time you started playing outside, with the other children in our colony.”
But he never did.
The weekend before the human females are to be removed, the doctor works overtime. First, he erases the inferior subjects’ memories back to the point of abduction, as he’s been instructed to do.
Next, he worries about what to do with his subject. What are his options? He could erase her memory back to the point of abduction, but that would erase all the advancements made during their project.
He could erase only the unconstructive scenarios, leaving the subject with the memories of her own progress. But that progress would be incongruous with her situation once she was found by Earth authorities.
Finally, in a desperate frenzy, he realizes what he has to do.
“Stephanie . . .”
“Xora! Oh, my God. What are you doing here? I haven’t seen you since . . . That’s right—you escaped, right? God, that was such a long time ago . . . I can barely remember. . .”
“Stephanie, listen. I have something to tell you. This is going to sound strange, but I don’t have a lot of time, so please listen . . .”
Xotcd restores all the subject’s memories, from beginning to end, erased scenarios and all. Even the routinely repressed instances of the subject waking up in the lab and discovering the electrodes and sensors attached to her body. He tries to code the unfolding of the truth in the most optimal way possible, so as not to shock her into mental instability.
“Oh, my God. Oh, my God.”
“I know. I know. I’m so sorry, Stephanie. I’m so sorry you had to find out about everything—that none of it’s been real.”
“Then . . . If none of it’s real, then what about you? What are you? Are you real, or part of the program?”
“I’m . . . I’m a friend.”
Xotcd works throughout the two nights—eighty-six hours straight—and then is forced to let the export team take over. He remembers the bag of sugar he emptied onto the sand pile so long ago, when no one was watching. Now, just as then, he’ll never know if it was enough.
“Miss Luna? Can you hear me, Miss Luna?”
“Yes, I can hear you.” Stephanie is groggy and sore. She sits up and focuses on the paramedic who’s reading her name from the ID in her wallet. All around, other women are being roused from their sleep in the middle of a scorched cornfield.
“Where am I?” she hears them mutter. “What happened?”
Good questions. Where are they? What did happen?
Stephanie thinks back. Her mind stretches back, past the last long hours of dreamless sleep, past the lifetimes of the last few months.
“Miss Luna, are you okay?”
Stephanie lies back on the grass and sees the stars.
“Yeah,” she says.
She is okay, isn’t she? In fact, she’s feeling pretty good. And everything’s going to be great.
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