Never forget that our memories, whether natural or artificial, hold us together

I never knew Steve was so ‘substantial.’ But then again, how could I have when all our flirting had been circling-the-airport banter and sideways glances through the half-decade we had known one another. Maybe now that he and his self-titled “Meeky-Geeky Quad” had finished the grand experiment, we’d get time to explore our attraction.

That is if I could rise from my swishy stupor sitting across from him, my eyes and libido locked on my phone’s face.

“Well?”

“You were a lot skinnier then, huh?” I asked, trying to diffuse the sexual tension as I watched the downloaded scene unfold. 

I was being treated to Steve’s memory movie from his POV (which I assumed would be the case when viewing anything from anybody’s Dump) looking down at his naked body, then up to the door where he was (or ‘had been’) watching and waiting for a woman named Janine to enter his bedroom. That all this had occurred ten years ago, that I hadn’t ever met Janine, (or the fact that Steve’s bedroom décor had not changed in a decade) nor would I recognize her when she came through that door—and she’d be as naked as Steve, he assured me—that Steve’s tummy was indeed bigger now and that I had actually accessed this sexual snippet from out of his head, stored as it now was in The Dump’s cloud storage didn’t forgive the fact that I was basically playing voyeur and might just, in a few seconds, get so overwrought I might just squiggle myself off the front of my chair.

Scientific breakthrough of the century be damned; this was hot!

I have a friend, Anita, who has suffered from degenerative peripheral vision loss over the past two years. Anita uses a cane and ‘tracks’ any space she’s in by moving her head with painful slowness from left to right. It’s the only way she can digest surrounding details so as not to trip over something beyond her limited vision. On one recent particular August Saturday, the curly-haired redhead and I happened to get out and about and during our city romp we happened upon some chalk sidewalk art in a bohemian neighborhood on our way to our favorite Thai eatery. Later, while looking at a few of the pictures I took of that art while sitting at the restaurant Anita and I were pleasantly shocked, that from the snaps on my iPhone screen, she could see all that my picture captured, more of that street sketch than she would have ever seen unaided. It had been a poignant reminder of what our handheld world was allowing beyond human restrictions.

I thought of that moment then as the heat between my legs increased and I peeked further into Steve’s past dalliance. 

That Steve and his three buds had found a way to tap into memories, then download them for view, was an unprecedented strike, to be sure. But as he had reminded me again and again, electronic impulses, no matter their source or content, could, theoretically, always be digitized and, if digitized, downloaded. And although Steve’s bros might very well inherit the Earth, by tapping into our lusts first and foremost with their Earth-shattering invention, they were sure to score funding for The Dump all that much faster.

Adult content and technology; the best of bedfellows.

I lifted my eyes finally from my phone’s face just about when Steve’s bedroom door opened and a stunning (and very nude) Janine walked into the room. I wasn’t above wanting to stare long and hard at her metered approach or Steve and their long-ago lovemaking, but I thought it better to disengage (difficult as that was). It was one thing to be allowed access to my buddy’s mind spank-bank storage, but I felt it might be an intrusion on the privacy of someone who had no idea I was peeking in on her pink parts, even though Janine was long gone from Steve’s acquaintance. 

 Steve had reminded me, very much like the extinction of the bald eagle or the encroachment of AI singularity, The Dump could only have been invented because humans had evolved to this point, a point we very much wanted to be. And not to be even more distracted as I was already with all that was flying into my brain (don’t ever let it be said that I can’t multitask) I instantly thought of that speech Spencer Tracy gives in Inherit the Wind, playing lawyer Henry Drummond. “Madam, you may vote, but at a price,” he begins about what we get and gain with progress. “You lose the right to retreat behind the powder puff or your petticoat. Mr., you may conquer the air, but the birds will lose their wonder and the clouds will smell of gasoline.”

Could I smell that gasoline now? Or more precisely…lube? 

“We definitely got to get you hooked up; the look on your face is priceless…and so hot,” Steve said.

I hadn’t even thought what it would be like downloading the good, the bad, and the fugly of my sexual encounters. But if Steve wanted my particular dump to continue his work to watch my sexual play from years ago (or watch me watch it?), who was I to deny him? 

What’s good for the goose is good for the gander when the goose is digital. 

Then again…

“You know, I think I’d rather the real thing, at least for right now,” I said, pushing my iPhone across my dining room table in front of me. 

Standing I turned to my buddy who, catching the gist of what I was onto, pushed his glasses up his long nose, a move I knew him to execute whenever he was suddenly surprised, and sat back even harder into his chair.

I dropped to my knees.

Staving off the smell of gasoline (lube), at least for now, I knew Anita would be proud.

Image Sources: Depositphotos

#

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Now and again, finding yourself means losing who you were before

On a kaleidoscopically quilted, mountainous bed, painted dour red and soaring yellow from two of Asphodel’s three suns, the air redolent with simmering perrofish and fuming honeywine from the street below, Mia said, “You’re not Bojan.”

Head between their muscular thighs, their face glossed with moisture, lips tingling with their flavors, ears distantly aching from the strength of their spasmodic, clenching ecstasy, Bojan grinned up at them.

Meeting Mia’s puzzled, slightly alarmed expression with calm gentility laced with benign mischievousness, they answered, “What makes you think so?”

“Bojan, the real Bojan, was pleasant. Pleasant enough to be invited back into my bed after all these cycles, but they lived too much in their skull, barely peeking out at the rest of the world… least of all to me.”

The last few words were punctuated by a squeeze from their sculpted thighs. “You’re not Bojan.”

In response, they patiently forced their head between them, planting a tender kiss where they joined.

Mia sighed. “What did you do with them?” she half-said, half-whispered.

Tender became ardent, ardent became zealous, zealous became fervent—then the perrofish and honeywine sellers’ raucous ballyhoos vanished, overwhelmed by Mia’s keening moan of release.

Breath returning, Mia sweetly murmured, “Whatever it was… whoever you are… I don’t care.”

#

Like clockwork, the Falltown Station to Wasteaway Point late-afternoon Maglev express came between Hamistagan’s massive star and Daeva’s lifebox, its strobing light making the InfoArchivist think yet again of ancient, nearly forgotten cellulose nitrate Saturday matinees, title card expositions, and house organ accompaniments.

Rolling their head away from the flashing window and pushing it into a sofa cushion, Daeva mumbled, “I don’t miss them… I really don’t miss them.”

“Oh, and what makes you say that?”

Also muffled by fluff and stitching, Daeva said, “I shouldn’t say.”

“I don’t mind.” Hands tracing the lengths, cords, and periodic knots of Daeva’s muscles, teasing out the tightest of the latter with their palms and fingers, Bojan leaned down and kindly, sweetly kissed the hard rises of the InfoArchivist’s spine.

Twisting their head so they could look back as well as speak clearly, Daeva said, “I don’t want to hurt your feelings.”

“But you said I’m not them, so how could saying something hurt my feelings?” Same kisses to the same spine, each received with a subtle twitch of contented pleasure.

Straightening up, Bojan used their own muscles to pull Daeva up onto their knees, pressing against them with every tug.

Daeva hissed; silent movie memories supplanted by images of billowing steam locomotives entering tunnels. Their dark hands, fingers—sporting cosmically blue-sheened fingernails highlighted with neodiamond glitter—clawed between and into the couch’s sturdy fabric.

Hard, steady thrusts climbed up and over into vigorously pounding jolts, breaking Daeva’s words into jagged-edged fragments: “They… gave… they took… and never gave… back!”

Shudder ebbing, spasm fading, and—with a sweet, lip-curled grin on their face—Daeva drooled.

Retrieving the Van Gogh Starry Night holographically patterned blanket from where it had slid to the floor, Bojan tucked its bursting colors around Daeva’s deflated body, concluding with one more (but not last) kiss to the back of their neck.

#

A distant—very distant—descendant of what had been a Terran gecko skittered soundlessly up, across, and down the far wall before vanishing behind Roehel’s bioprinter.

“Are you trying to trick me?” they said, soft words edged with old wounds.

Stretched out next to them, close but not touching, Bojan shook their head. “May I touch your shoulder?”

“Please,” Roehel said, tilting their head, exposing more of it to them.

A finger to begin, a second to accompany it, concluding with four and a thumb: each delicately, sensually, appreciatively traced Roehel’s curves.

Dropping tenderly to a whimper, they cooed, “It felt like they didn’t… I mean, respect is so hard to come by; I shouldn’t have been disappointed they didn’t show me any.”

“Can I kiss the back of your neck?” Bojan asked reverently.

Roehel nodded, turning their body to reveal more of themselves. The kiss was hot, though not aggressive; sweet, yet not saccharine; affectionate, not cloying.

As Roehel’s voice descended to a throaty sigh, they said, “I almost blocked you, deleted you from my system entirely.”

“Would you like me to cup your left breast?” they said, feather-light words in Roehel’s ear.

A clearly confirming nod, preceded by a directly approving, “I’d like that.”

The same fingers, the same thumb went from appreciating the architecture of their shoulder to respectfully relishing the curve, weight, and heat of their breast—never grazing the faint scars running beneath them.

“I never knew if they were rude on purpose or didn’t care.” Roehel lifted a hand, fingers for fingers, thumb with thumb.

“Sorry,” Bojan purred into Roehel’s auburn curls. “I’m so sorry,” Bojan repeated, drawing them closer, melding their bodies together.

With a shake of their head, Roehel asked, “Whatever happened to him?”

#

Before reaching out to Mia, messaging Daeva, pinging Roehel, and the others (so many others), there had been that Jahannam winter: avenues slick with caustic ice, Servomats geysering plumes of brittle white while trying, and mostly failing, to keep the methane-laced crystals at bay.

Business over and done with sooner than expected, Bojan sat alone in an O’Malley’s—with all the fuzziness, indistinctness, and unremarkableness stemming from replicating the same Irish pub a billion times on a billion different worlds—before suddenly realizing they weren’t.

A cloud of dark hair overshadowing the plains and peaks of their face, wide glasses concealing the color of their eyes, Bojan had smiled that smile, employed their usual, crudely forged flirt, and purchased another of whatever they were drinking. After finishing it and two others, Bojan, while stroking the back of their hand, suggested they find somewhere more private.

Signaled by the closing door, it was they, not Bojan, who pounced. Eyes shut, ears deaf to everything they didn’t want to hear, they took, they used, and when they were finished with them, they threw Bojan away, leaving them as rough and cold as the bitter wind howling outside the hotel room’s window.

Lost, alone, abandoned, disposed of, Bojan had stood, staring at their mirrored self. Looking at first, but not seeing, then, as time unwound around and inside them, they saw what they had tried so long not to accept.

Collapsing into a jumbled pile of regret and shame, Bojan fell so low that the only place left was up.

#

After revisiting Mia, Raimond, Roehel, and the others (so many others), Bojan finally found what they had lost—themself.

Image Sources: M.Christian

The post “Found Among the Lost”—An Erotic Speculative Fiction Story appeared first on Future of Sex.

Life is the flower for which love is the honey

Dellingr’s pale, indigo eyes weren’t blurring from the painfully glaring wide-spectrum Simu-Sun aerostat that Noboru Taiyō Group’s Shōmei Division had meticulously positioned, rigorously anchored above Aogashima Island’s Maruyama crater the year previous. Nor were they blurring from the gently fuming Biotic-Fabricates, Organo-Congregates, or Meso-Formulates drip lines Dellingr was perhaps less meticulously, maybe not as rigorously attempting to maintain.

Pressing their right-hand heel into their right eye socket, streaking their dusty cheeks with stinging tears, repeating, with a grating inhalation, a raspy exhalation with the left hand, left eye, Dellingr checked the Biotic-Fabricates, Organo-Congregates, Meso-Formulates….

Gefjun had said, more times than Dellingr could remember, the key to Gefjun’s Bio-Artistry was “a little bit of this, a little bit of that—and lots and lots of dashes”

Wreathing-Willows delicately genuflecting, leaves, stems, branches, languidly coiling, uncoiling, conjuring an octopus’s orchard.

Kaleido-Chrysanthemums pulsing with spectrums real or imaginary, hypnotically spinning petals flaring, ebbing, invoking a cosmic mandala.

Metamo-Roses twirling in and out of themselves, a maddeningly variegated botanical Möbius loop, summoning a glistening-skinned djinn.

Eye-Irises looking everywhere, seeing everything with their voltage-sparking clusters of photoreceptive anthers, mischievously deceiving their watchers.

And-Orchids hut-one, hut-two, hut-three-ing in strict order, weaving breathtaking geometry, seeding, sprouting, growing, and as quickly dying like a watchmaker’s dream.

Eclect-Lotuses, Trans-Pines, Muli-Maples, Evo-Azaleas, Recast-Camellias … Dellingr heavily trudged the length of their rows, soullessly walking beside their beds, mindlessly checking holographic displays without thought or care adjusting when absolutely necessary their Fabricates, Congregates, or Formulates.

“Words,” Gefjun had said, “aren’t easy.  I guess it’s because I think I have a lot to give.  More than enough for you, always enough for you.”

Dellingr’s washed-out azure eyes flooded as the memory bit down, drew blood. Gefjun pleading, begging; Dellingr howling, demanding, “I should be enough for you!”  Over and over again, driving Gefjun away, forcing them out into that dying day, that furiously approaching night jammed with pounding rain, flaring lightning, and roaring winds.

The Recast-Camellias drooped, stems buckling under their semi-translucent bulbs; the Evo-Azaleas popped and sizzled, high-voltage stigma angrily shorting out, and the Muli-Maples thunderously groaned, seeds clumsy when they should have spun, descending like miniature ballerinas.

Dellingr tapped icon after icon, strolling then sprinting from planter to planter until the Recast-Camellias flawlessly played their black and white movies again, the Evo-Azaleas happily hummed their harmonic frequencies, and the Muli-Maples filled the air with pliés, relevés, and Chassés.

A hushed curtain pulled over Gefjun’s Kibō, their tsubo-niwa garden, a liminal space lying not between the public and the private but the made and the grown—and with the arrival of that suddenly ponderous quiet, Dellingr’s legs failed them, sending them crashing into the artificially ariated loam, the chemically enriched soil, the synthetically augmented ground.

Throat aching, lungs burning, Dellingr wailed as their hands dug deep, unearthing deep, dark, foul memories: the URGENT URGENT message, the shrieking alert sprayed in crimson laser light across the inside of the Kibō’s polyplastic tented primary workspace, the sound, the light, brutally slapping Dellingr awake, Shuyō dōro de no jūshō jiko—

“Main access road. Serious injury accident,” their mind instinctively translated, words looping, broken only by a name, the person who’d been driving the shuyō akusesu dōro, who was involved in the jūshō jiko, who died before Dellingr could get to Aogashima’s understaffed, undersized emergency clinic.

Dellinger’s pallid, aqua eyes neither blurred nor flooded but erupted with bitter tears, a cascade of steaming, brackish rain poking the artificial, chemical, augmented dirt beneath their scream-racked face.

A ghostly touch?  A faint caress?  A vague embrace? An indistinct stroke? An indefinite fondle?  

Dellingr’s sallow, cobalt eyes closed and opened, each blink bringing increasing clarity.  Yes, the Wreathing-Willows were tenderly touching their back. Yes, the Kaleido-Chrysanthemums were softly caressing their cheeks. Yes, the Metamo-Roses were daintily embracing them. Yes, the Eye-Irises were subtly stroking their hair. Yes, the And-Orchids were amiably fondling their chest.

No doubt, no uncertainty: the Eclect-Lotuses were kissing them, the Trans-Pines were snuggling them, the Muli-Maples were firmly holding them, the Evo-Azaleas were plucking away their clothes, and the Recast-Camellias were loving them.

“I’ve put so much into you and my garden; my passion, my life, my joy,” Gefjun had also said. “You and it, it and you; sharing one with the other. More than enough to go around.”

Below Noboru Taiyō Group’s Shōmei Division’s brilliantly shimmering Simu-Sun, Dellingr and Gefjun’s Kibō phytological magnum opus frolicked, cavorted, reveled, laughed, moaned, together—as Dellingr wept sparkling, gleeful, ecstatic, and overwhelmingly wide-eyed, blissful tears.

#

Barely one hundred before nearly two hundred. Almost a thousand a month later, then slightly short of two thousand at the start of the next. Aogashima’s prefecture paid Dellingr an exceedingly formal, undoubtedly official visit to express the residents’ concerns over the rise in foreign tourists—whose yachts and massive cruise ships choking the island’s picturesque harbor.

Concerns Dellingr greeted with a seriously beaming grin, pledging to donate all the proceeds—sans necessities for Gefjun’s Kibō upkeep—to staffing Aogashima’s new, state-of-the-art-hospital.

And Dellingr was there as they came up from the docks, pointing out the Wreathing-Willows’ gracefully bowing shoots and leaves, showing off the Kaleido-Chrysanthemums’ mesmerizing bioluminescent firework displays, giggling at the Metamo-Roses’ endlessly captivating gyrations, applauding the Eye-Irises’ phantasmagoric soul-searching perceptions, and highlighting how expertly the And-Orchids’ resolutely marched to and fro.

Dellingr was there, among the Eclect-Lotuses, the Trans-Pines, the Muli-Maples, the Evo-Azaleas, and the Recast-Camellias—happier than Dellingr had been before the storm—for in every twinkling eye, euphoric expression, or admiring gasp was more than wonder, awe, or amazement, sharing Gefjun’s inexhaustible love.

Image Sources: M.Christian

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