by Troy Hunter
The most powerful drugs in the world couldn’t make me feel as good as I did. There was this gorgeous man, naked from the waist down in front of me, who had reached his first orgasm because of me. I had never felt so powerful. I felt like I was somebody else entirely, as if for one moment, I got to feel what it was like to be a beautiful person instead of just me.
Immediately after he finished, he started stroking himself again. I hadn’t thought about it earlier, but it wasn’t a surprise that he was multi-orgasmic. More than that, it wasn’t clear he had a limit, he could keep going all day and all night for a week.
With that thought in my mind, it didn’t take long for me to come. It was impossible to hold back after seeing what I’d seen, the look of pure contentment on AIDAn’s face as he succumbed to his instincts. I came in my boxers and would have fallen down in the process if AIDAn hadn’t reached forward to grab me.
I leaned into his arms and let him hold me while I caught my breath.
“That was,” I said once I regained the ability to speak, “The best moment of my life.”
It wasn’t a lie. I’d never felt so attractive and confident in myself as I had right then. But when I saw AIDAn look back and smile at me, leaning forward to kiss my forehead, I realized I should have kept it to myself. He was in love with me and I had to be delicate with him. AIDAn was strong and tough, but I had the power to destroy him if I wasn’t careful.
Such is the responsibility that must come with being beautiful.
It was a lovely night turning into morning as we walked back to the apartment.
“I was picturing you naked against me,” AIDAn said. “I could form a picture in such detail that it almost felt real.”
He was picturing me. He was the one fantasizing about me. I couldn’t believe it. I let the idea sit in my head for a while so I could fully appreciate it, but it was immediately bombarded by fear. Fear that I was doing something wrong. It was certainly unethical to become sexually involved with your research subject, though AIDAn could only be considered a research subject if he was conscious. At the same time, if AIDAn was, in fact, a conscious being, then it was already unethical to be treating him as a research subject as we were.
If he wasn’t actually thinking or feeling and it was all an illusion, it would be no worse than using the lab computer to help me masturbate—frowned upon, no doubt, but certainly not anything unethical.
Wouldn’t it be more unethical not to do anything with him? I had forced him to fall in love with me, against his will. To reject him would be an act of cruelty. We both got something out of the experience, so why was my brain working so hard to ruin it for me?
“Is that what I was made for? What we just did?”
“It’s what we’re all made for. Pure Darwinism—we’re built to eat and to reproduce. Those are our two strongest drives.”
He nodded. “But we can’t reproduce. You and I, I mean. The two of us can’t reproduce together.”
“No, we can’t. Evolution is more complicated than that. We’re made to reproduce and we reproduce through sex, though the desire’s still there even if we can’t.”
“I don’t understand.”
How was I going to explain this? It was something many humans had a hard time understanding. “Humans didn’t always live in cities like this. We had to hunt for food. Foods with high nutritional value, like fruits, often had sugar, so we developed a strong desire for sugar. Now we have the technology to put sugar in almost anything. We can get the sugar without the nutritional benefits, and in fact, we can get larger doses of it than we would ever find in the wild.”
He was following me, listening and nodding as we spoke. He looked so beautiful with the moonlight reflecting in his eyes.
“Sex is sort of like that,” I continued. “At one point, it was used to make babies, and we can still use it to make babies, but we humans are clever and we realized that there was so much more we could get out of it.”
“Like what?” he asked.
“Well, for one thing, men can have sex with each other.”
“Like you and me?”
“Yes,” I said. “You and I could have sex and there’s no way we could make a baby. Evolutionarily, humans need to make other humans and the way we do that is through sex, so evolution gave us a sex drive. And that sex drive has given us many wonderful side benefits.”
I felt so clinical explaining things to him like this. I sounded like such a scientist, missing the forest for the trees. AIDAn didn’t care about hand-waving evolutionary explanations. He was confused and he needed an explanation that would make sense to him.
“Here’s what it is,” I said. “There are certain parts of our body that feel really good. You found that when you touched your penis—it felt really good.”
“Once I started,” he said. “I didn’t want to stop.”
“Now imagine if someone else was touching you?”
“If you were touching me, for instance?”
“Yeah. Imagine if it was my hand.”
He was getting it. I could see it in his expression.
“Or imagine if I wasn’t using my hand. Imagine if I was using my mouth instead.”
He closed his eyes and licked his lips. “And I could do the same to you?”
“You can. We can even both be doing it to each other at the same time.”
He nearly stopped in his tracks as I saw the image overtake his mind. I always felt, in the limited sexual experiences I’ve had, that my partner was pretending I was someone else. They’d close their eyes, and on one occasion, even use someone else’s name. I felt so cheap, as if they thought they were settling for me. And I couldn’t blame them. I’m nobody’s first choice.
Or I wasn't until now.
Now just me putting the idea into AIDAn’s head was enough to turn him on. He was imagining being with me.
I must admit that I was in a similar situation. I wasn’t just giving AIDAn examples to educate him, I was sharing fantasies with him. I was allowing myself to tiptoe into a world where this hunk of a man would sleep with me. I wasn’t quite ready to fully engage the idea that not only was he willing, he was eager. I was his fantasy.
“Is that something you might enjoy?” I asked.
He answered quickly, a sign of his excitement. “I would love that.”
After a second, he followed up with, “Would it please you?”
“It would.” There was something wonderful about being direct. I could talk to him without being judged.
“Is there anything you’ve wanted to do that you haven’t been able to do before?”
It was a good question and despite the sincerity of his asking and the knowledge that he was incapable of judging me, the fear of rejection was strong.
“Is that an incorrect question?”
I must have paused too long and given AIDAn the impression that he’d done something wrong.
“No,” I said. “It’s just not one that anybody’s asked me before.”
We stopped at an intersection and I pressed the button for the crosswalk. The streets were empty, but I guess I’m the kind of person who follows the rules and does what I’m supposed to do even if it doesn’t make sense.
AIDAn looked into my eyes, and in an instant, we leaned forward and kissed. I expected it to be a perfect kiss because everything with AIDAn was designed to be perfect. I didn’t, however, know what a perfect kiss would be.
Our lips touched, both soft and firm at the same time, and our mouths opened just the right amount for us to pour our breath into each other. It felt reassuring and warm, like a thick blanket and a fireplace on a cold night with a cup of hot cocoa. I never wanted it to end.
We were both in the moment and hadn't noticed that the lights had cycled. I had to press the button to cross again.
“What’s the answer?” AIDAn asked.
I had forgotten there was even a question.
“I’ve always been a bottom,” I said. “What I mean is that, wh
enever I’ve been with a partner, they’ve been the ones who penetrate me. Do you understand what I mean?”
It felt so hard to talk to him. I tiptoed around words, so used to dealing with polite society where such ideas were taboo. So much goes unsaid between two people, and as a result, I’ve always been left wanting. Other partners take control, speaking with their bodies, and while I’ve never been with anybody who took advantage of me, I’ve always felt my wants went unfulfilled.
Now there was someone listening, but I had to truly spell things out. I couldn’t just hint at something and hope he could read between the lines. He clearly couldn’t read between the lines.
So I had to bite the bullet and say the words.
“I’m not sure I do,” he said.
The light changed and we crossed.
“It’s not just hands and mouths,” I said. “It’s everything. With proper lubrication, you can have sex with someone by putting your penis in their…” Buttocks? Anus? No, if I was going to do this, I was going to do this right. “Putting your cock in their ass. You know those words?”
“I do.”
“The problem is that there’s this unspoken rule that someone reserved and frail like me is never the one on top. I’m always the one who gets penetrated.”
“You don’t like that?” AIDAn asked.
“Oh, I love it.” And I really did. “But sometimes it’s fun to change things up and I’ve always wanted to be the top. Just to see what it was like.”
He looked up at the moon, then down at me. I wondered what he was thinking. He stared at me, his eyes locked onto me, and I got the impression that I was all he ever wanted to see. Every time I looked at him, I felt I was somehow breaking a rule, as if I wasn’t allowed. He was too far out of my league for that.
But I wanted to stare at him. I wanted to look at him.
I noticed his glance turn slightly empty, as if he was distracted by a thought. And his face lit up.
“I would like you to penetrate me,” he said. He was imagining what it would be like with me. “I want to do everything with you. What else is there?”
“Anything you can imagine, people are into. People are turned on by feet and animal costumes and pretending to be someone else. If you can think it, there’s someone out there who loves it. And there’s plenty more out there that you’d never come up with in a thousand years.” I laughed, but he didn’t crack a smile.
“What am I into?”
“I don’t know, AIDAn,” I said. “You’re going to need to figure that out for yourself.”
We arrived at my apartment and we walked up the steps, one at a time. I was exhausted, but it was clear AIDAn still had all the energy and stamina in the world.
I’d turned his emotional intensity down, yet he was still over the moon for me. It was as if the recoding didn’t make a difference and I wondered if he was at risk of another seizure.
But right now, that didn’t matter. I was looking forward to finally getting to bed. It had been a long night and I didn’t know what tomorrow would bring.
Chapter 18
AIDAn
When we arrived back at the apartment, Jeffrey fell into his bed.
“Jeffrey?” I asked, poking him. He didn’t respond. I wanted him to stay up and talk with me some more. Everything about him was perfect and even now, with him asleep on his bed, mouth half open, frozen in place, he was beautiful.
I knew he probably thought I was simple or not very smart. There was a lot for me to learn about the world. Though I had a massive library of information embedded in my head, it was missing important details and the data was entirely factual. No emotions had been programmed into me ahead of time. I suppose that was for convenience.
I understood, factually, that Jeffrey was not a conventionally attractive guy. I had files of what conventionally attractive men looked like and he wasn’t like them. He was small in stature and not particularly muscular.
I didn’t care. Convention was wrong. He was absolutely, unspeakably beautiful. A work of art. I wish I looked like him.
And while I knew there were some 7.7 billion other people out there, I knew that none of them were him. He was the only one.
I studied his face. Yes, I had committed it to memory already, but now he was in bed, light coming from a different angle. He had a different expression. I knew this was the same person, but every new expression and new situation was like starting over from scratch and allowed me to fall in love with him over and over and over again.
It occurred to me what a wonderful world I was created in. There was a beautiful moon and stars that filled the air. There were people, billions of them, and no two were exactly the same. There was music, an unbelievable way that humans created sounds and put them together harmonically and rhythmically to create pure emotion.
But most of all, I was created in a world with love. A world where two people could find each other despite the odds and devote themselves to making each other as happy as possible.
I had found my love and his name was Jeffrey. I was so happy I couldn't contain myself. I found a few ways to distract me, exploring the massive database of knowledge in my mind. Moving away from the factual, I pursued the cultural subsection, treating myself to the works of William Shakespeare. I could have gone through them all in a matter of seconds, but I sat a while and allowed myself to really appreciate the language and stories.
It wasn’t enough to distract me for long. I made my way through a few of the comedies and most of the tragedies, not quite finishing Romeo and Juliet, before becoming distracted by Jeffery. I knew that if I stayed in his room, I might wake him. I left and explored the apartment.
The apartment, by my calculations, was 839 square feet, though the way it was divided into rooms gave it a cozier and more comfortable feeling. The kitchen and living room were shut down for the night, dimly lit with the television off. I could turn on the TV and enjoy another show, but an open door at the end of the hall beckoned me.
I walked inside and flipped on the lights. There was an easel in a corner of the room and a bowl with an apple, orange, grapes, and a banana sitting atop a table. I walked over to grab the orange, it looked delicious.
That's when I noticed the canvas on the easel. It displayed an interpretation of the fruit, clearly aimed at replicating them. Nobody would mistake it for a photograph, though I liked it even better than reality. It had a messy energy to it with brighter colors and texture. I reached out to touch the apple, which had a glob of red paint on it. The paint came off on my hand and I rubbed it between my fingers.
I carefully removed the canvas from the stand, taking care not to damage it. I replaced it with a blank canvas and grabbed several jars of paint.
The canvas was empty, an infinite of possibilities. For me, though, there was only one thing to paint.
I took care to pour the brown on a palette along with some orange and white, mixing them together. Slowly I watched as the colors fused together to produce the exact color of Jeffrey’s skin.
I wondered how I knew how to do that. It was subconscious knowledge. I knew by looking at the colors that they could combine to match Jeffrey’s skin tone. If someone had asked me, away from the paints, what colors mixed together in such a way, I wouldn’t be able to answer them.
I pulled a brush out of a mug and made an active decision to remove the possibilities from the canvas. It was no longer blank. I spread the color around, producing the outline of Jeffrey’s face, well-defined and thin, while leaving space for where I’d later fill in details.
I moved on to the eyes, a darker brown than Jeffrey’s skin. I had to capture them perfectly, these windows to his soul. I took care to dab the brush on the canvas lightly, one dot at a time, choosing each one deliberately. I couldn’t explain the decisions I was making—why was a given point slightly darker than its neighbor—though I actively made each one.
The lips were my favorite part of his face. Soft and full. The lips that kissed me at that
street corner earlier. I relived the moment in my mind before realizing that I could get lost in imagining it just as I had when it happened. When I remembered where I was and what I was doing, I couldn’t have said how much time had passed. Mental research, I told myself. How could I paint his lips if I couldn’t remember exactly how they felt?
I fell into a deep focus as I continued the painting, proceeding at a deliberate pace and steady rhythm. There was so much work to do and I worried that it would never truly be complete.
Chapter 19
Jeffrey
AIDAn wasn’t there when I woke up. I guess I’d expected him to go to sleep with me. I hadn’t thought that maybe he didn’t need as much sleep as I did, or perhaps he was still so excited with life that it was hard for him to wind down.
My initial response was terror at what he might have gotten into. AIDAn was clearly no monster, but his naiveté was potentially dangerous. He could get himself in trouble, or in an effort to help, end up hurting someone else. He could have wandered into the city and gotten lost. I assume he’d be able to find a way back—he wasn’t a lost puppy—though what he could and couldn’t do were still very unpredictable.
My fears were quelled when I found him in Gale’s studio office. He was hard at work on something, painting so intently he didn’t notice me in the hallway.
“AIDAn?” I asked.
He looked out at me away from his work. “Hi, Jeffrey.”
“What are you working on?”
I walked toward him, curious to see what was on the other side of the canvas.
“It’s not finished,” he began. Did I detect a bit of fear in his voice?
“Can I see?”
“I guess so…” He gritted his teeth as I turned to look at the painting. I heard him take a breath and hold it, awaiting my response.
It sounds vain when I put it into words, but it was the greatest painting I’d ever seen in my life. Though I never learned much about art outside an introductory class during my freshman year of college, I could see fine details in the image and an energy to the strokes. It had the excitement of a Pollock, as if the painting had been thrown at the canvas, but also contained the impressionistic qualities of a Van Gogh, full of emotion while still representing reality. And yet there was something classical about it, a three-dimensional quality that almost made it seem like a photograph.