SatisFire

Copyright 1999 Del Edwards (a nom de plume)

Her name was Porticia Ortho, she had told him and even presented a business card with her name on it as she sat next to him on a long cramped flight most of the way across the country. Hell, anybody can have a card printed with an invented musical name like that. Probably the rest of the information on the card was bullshit too, he thought. He had already settled into a window seat and was mentally forming his progress notes which he would shortly key into his laptop computer which was resting of all places, on his lap.

She had shiny black hair. As bright as the feathers of a raven sitting on a barbwire fence on a cold winter day. It was done in a pageboy, a long pageboy, his favorite and it was striking against the tailored tan business suit she wore. After a moment of eye contact as she stood in the aisle she glided into the seat next to him. Her profile was strong and clean. She turned her head toward him and made eye contact once again.

He was trying to get past the dark green silk of her blouse to caress her breasts with his eyes. She had seen it many times before. Sometime in the distant past it had irritated her but now she just gave a little smile of acknowledgement and tossed her hair flirtatiously. This was a good-looking man. Could she distract him for part or most of the long flight? It was a game worth playing, a way to pass the boring time of flight, travelling perhaps five hundred miles an hour but with the sensation of moving very slowly.

"On your way home after a week in the fields of commerce?" he asked her.

"Yes exactly, and you?" she responded.

"The same but with a project progress report to do so I can have the weekend to myself," he told her.

The roar and roughness of the thumping, banging takeoff gave way to the hydraulic whine of the landing gear being tucked into the belly of the plane. He dealt with the change of air pressure by swallowing consciously a couple of times and flipped open the screen of the laptop computer. "This goddess wants to toy with me just as a way to pass the time," he thought as he brought the laptop to attention with a command to accept his written words.

"Friday afternoons are that way," she added innocuously.

Ah, she's just chattering... women call it chatting, he thought to himself. They blither to fill 'dead air' as the radio diskjockies say... or they relate and emote to some sister in pain. Jeez, they can't even go to the bathroom by themselves, except on a plane." He examined her slim, firm, supple form again... the well-formed thighs, the flat abdomen, the rise to the breasts under the blouse and jacket... lots of the slim ones wear a bra more to hold the padding in place than to support moving flesh. But that's okay, 'cause when I undress her I want the proud flesh to stand out waiting for my touch, he decreed to all who inhabited the inside of his head.

She pulled at the edge of his field of view as she smoothly open the screen of her own laptop. Her lithe body coiled under the concealment of the tan suit but the undulations of the dark green blouse gave away the certainty that she was about to strike. The intuitive assessment center flashed a message across his mindscreen. "This is a hungry and demanding woman," shimmered in red in his mindseye. Such a bitch to think that she could on a Friday afternoon by the sheer amount of her beauty, fly into a man's life and lure him away from the soft, dedicated flesh, spirit and soul that was called Marsha.

He set to his task and in thirty-five minutes had recorded the activities of the week at the site. In the executive summary he told the bosses he was a half a week ahead of schedule and anticipated being a full five work days ahead by the end of next week. He clicked Save. It has been two weeks since Marsha had visited him at the job site in Aruba. John enjoyed what he did for the corporation. Lots of power and responsibility went with the job. And there was the satisfaction of seeing projects move from paper to hard reality.

Many an evening in some out of the way corner of the world he had bowed to his electronic mistress, the laptop that was resting on his thighs, pouring over rolls of blue prints and construction schedules. Sometimes he swore out loud at her calling her the Critical Path Method Bitchgoddess. But she had been faithful to him through several projects, spotting glitches, bringing conflicts and potential disasters to his attention. Her memory was faultless and her intellectual skills impressive. So much so that he had cloned her twice. Except for the report he had just finished there was an exact duplicate of her in his checked baggage. The triplicate was a permanent resident in the company vault. He got some strange looks when he asked that holes be drilled in his vault box so that power and data cables could be strung into the box... He didn't mind if people thought he was a bit eccentric. It sort of went with his reputation for being meticulous. He was being paid well for those traits. John was the kind of man who never shouted. And when his voice dropped to a whisper, silence surrounded him and all within earshot strained to hear every syllable so that they might instantly obey his instructions. He gently closed the laptop and glanced at the beautiful woman to his right.

She also closed her laptop and engaged his eyes momentarily. Then she leaned toward him and whispered in his ear, "Are you married?"

He shook his head 'no' and made a question mark in the air with his finger and then pointed to her. She responded with a shake of her head, raising her eyebrows. He correctly read the raised eyebrows as openness and acceptance, an expression of willingness to go further. She leaned toward him again and whispered, "You're travelling to be with your lover?" His eyes locked onto hers and he nodded slowly. Again he drew a question mark in the air but used his thumb as a pointer this time, aiming it at her chest rather than her head.

Porticia Ortho pressed the dark green silk blouse to her breastbone with her index and middle fingers, accentuating the small firm breasts under it as she shook her head 'No.'

He liked the directness she displayed and the gesture with the fingers to her breast spoke to him somehow. He glanced past her to the middle-aged man in the aisle seat to her right. He was trying very hard to not be obvious as he tuned into their conversation of whispered words and hand gestures. She nodded her head once and held up her index finger in the universally understood handsignal of 'wait a moment.' Her nail polish was lavender and perfectly applied to finely manicured nails. From somewhere she produced a gray cable and plugged it into her laptop. Then she moved the gray cable end toward his universal serial port like a penis seeking warm, wet friction and the satisfaction of ejaculation into his hard drive. Androgyny reined as she pushed her plug firmly into his port. With grace and flair she opened the screen of her laptop and motioned for him to do the same, flicking her wrist twice while giving the 'thumbs up' sign. He wondered for just a moment if her medium-length, lavender-painted fingernails would draw his blood when she cried out in orgasm.

When he opened the screen of his laptop, the challenge was waiting for him. "I'll bet you call her on Wednesday nights and jack off, screaming your passion for her onto the phone."

"I like the way you get right to it. Maybe I do, and what about you?" he typed and transmitted to her.

"I have no one to scream to," she responded.

"A beautiful woman like you, ha!" he typed to her.

"More a curse than a blessing. Men flee from me," she wrote.

"Your story touches me deeply," he wrote.

"Asshole! I have the same wants and needs as any woman... the supercocks come at me and I flee. I had hoped you were a regular guy... you are an attractive man, involved and unavailable damn you!"

"Wait, ... I am sorry to be so cynical... I have been up against some really snotty bitches. Tell me of you..."

"There is no man in my life at the moment so I was taking a shot... okay?" she wrote.

"I'll take that as a compliment, thank you. How long have you been solo?" he typed.

"Long enough to be very lonely and quite horny," she wrote back..."Well, lonely for companionship and the touches that go with live sex," she added while he was still forming his response.

"There's a thread in there that I can sense but not quite grasp," he responded.

"I guess I am just too picky about character and intellect in a man. I use SatisFire to meet some of my needs," she wrote back...

"Hold out for all you can get. That's a legitimate position. What's Satisfire?" he typed and transmitted to her. They became engaged in a strictly private conversation at thirty four thousand feet. In some detail she told him about this thing called SatisFire. It was both hardware and software... very expensive but worth the price. "Would you like a crossload," she asked. He shrugged. "I'll make it an attachment to my e-mail address in case you want to e-chat some evening and we end up in within two or three time zones of each other," she wrote. With a few more keystrokes she crossloaded an array of data and video files as well as the 'exe' icon that would pique his curiosity some days later.

Chapter 2

The weekend with Marsha had been truly fine. Good sex, fine companionship, wine and food fit for a prince and his princess, the luxury of orange juice, coffee, fresh fruit and then slow excruciatingly delicious sex with Marsha on Sunday morning, for the seventh or eighth time since Friday evening.

Sunday evening she drove him to the airport. There was the bittersweet 'so long' kiss and then the return to reality. He would lose five hours just because of the time zone changes moving west to east while seven hours of flying time passed. He would just make it back to the site to start supervision again on Monday morning. Helluva way to make a living lad, but you're young and strong, you can do this for a few years and build a very nice portfolio, his inner life manager told him.

It wasn't until Tuesday that he noticed the new icon, a red exclamation point with the word 'SatisFire' under it. His mind snapped back to the previous Friday afternoon. Ah yes, the beautiful and exotic Porticia. He clicked the icon and waited for the image to build on the computer screen. Her brown eyes filled the screen, framed by that lustrous black hair. Then there was a slow pull back until her upper torso was visible. Her hand was poised at the third button of a tan linen dress closed around her but open enough to reveal she wasn't wearing a bra... There was a flesh-colored lightweight earphone/microphone set snugged to her left ear. Most of it was covered by her beautiful shiny black hair but enough of the tube leading to the mike in the earset was visible to make it recognizable. As the next still frame wrote across the screen he heard her rich voice. "I'm rigged and ready," she announced. The next still frame showed her semi-reclining on a bed propped up with several pillows under her head and shoulders. There was a gray cable with a black stripe that emerged from the waist area of her dress, between the third and fourth button down. It terminated at a gray box that lay on the bed beside her. It in turn was cabled to her laptop that had power and data cables trailing off the opposite edge of the bed. Another power cable from the gray box joined the two disappearing over the edge of the bed. John was not aware of the fact that his mind had sorted and classified the cables according to color; black for power, gray for data. He was aware that he was mildly excited by the gray cable with the black stripe that disappeared inside her dress.

John's computer screen went black, flickered and began writing a gridded three-dimensional model of a woman in repose on a bed. It was an exact representation in white grid lines and the silhouette of Porticia. When the image filled out there were three color-coded control panels at the bottom of the screen. They corresponded to the three colored areas on the gridded model of the woman... blue at her breasts, red at her internal crotch and green just below, where her external sensitivity was located. After a few seconds the screen went black. The gridded silhouette sank to the lower half of the screen and then the upper half of the screen was rewritten with the color image of Porticia reclining on the bed. It was like viewing her as she was being X-rayed or something. There was a hollow echo in her voice when he heard her say, "Click the blue three times please." He moved his pointer to the blue area of the gridded silhouette and clicked three times. The still color image of Porticia and the gridded graphic representation below it moved in unison. Now her back was arched and her head thrown back.

"Aaahh! God I love it when you do thaaaat!" he heard her moan. "Two green now," she pleaded through the hollow sound tube that connected them. He double clicked the green spot at the convergence of her thighs on the gridded silhouette. He was excited and waited impatiently to see the results. Her whoop of joyous pleasure echoed in his ears as the images formed. Her hips were thrust toward the sky, her heels and upper back being the only part of her body in contact with the bed. He found himself breathing fast and shallow as he settled the arrow pointer over the red blob on the gridded silhouette and clicked just once. Her hollow moaning voice came across the speaker, "Oh, dear god don't take me yetttssh! "Blue, two blue, pleeese!... Oh... ow... thank youeeew." He had given her the two blue she asked for and it had automatically shut down the red that seemed to be moving her toward orgasm. Damn, wonder what's at the end of that cable," he muttered to himself. The hollow and seductive sound of her voice came across the speakers, "Toy and titillate me if you must but I think it only fair that you allow me the same access to you."

The screen rolled again and there was a SatisFire order form asking him if he wanted the male or female model, his credit card number and expiration date and the advisory that the price for SatisFire was $7750. He keyed in the required information and clicked the 'order now' button.

Chapter 3

The package was waiting for him at the hotel desk on Friday afternoon. This was the beginning of what he called a null weekend. Marsha would not be visiting nor would he be making the long trip to see her. It would be sun and sand and maybe some spearfishing with his catch grilled for dinner along with a rum drink of great potency. He rediscovered the package, unopened, late Saturday afternoon after recovering from Friday night with coffee, orange juice and some fresh fruit and a long swim in the mid-afternoon.

He sliced the impossible to tear tape open with his infrequently used but highly prized handytool. Greeted by a yellow piece of paper with black letters as he opened the flaps of the cardboard box, he saw the advisory, "You will need condoms and tube of lubricant to install this product."

You know that whole thing was planted on your hard drive by a woman you encountered on a transcontinental flight last week. A woman who you know little or nothing about. A woman who admitted she was coming on to you because she liked your looks. Yes she was beautiful. The translucent skin that glowed from the inside, the huge brown eyes that invited you to drown yourself in them, the pungent musk of her radiant black hair brushing against your hand and once against you cheek as she rose to leave her seat and presumably visit the toilet on the long flight. Listen Lad, you're not tracking, you're on some kind of a fantasy flight; Earth calling John... you-hoo, where are you? Hey numbnuts, that whole thing came off some heavily torqued, scripted CD that was tweaked by a California bred and raised psychofink. I am speaking to you from Realityville, Shithead, so pay attention!

"You've got a good point there, Middle Self," he said out loud to his image in the mirror above the basin as he finished shaving. He fired up the laptop and opened SatisFire. He waited until she asked for two blue and purposely clicked on the red instead. The visuals were the same as the last time... arched back, body bowed upward, but the words were different.

"Arrrgh! Don't come onto me cold like that goddamnit! I don't like to wake up in the middle of the night with a hot, hard dick in me!... well, I do but I don't," echoed hollowly at him. Just as a double check on reality he lifted the laptop to shoulder height and verified that there were no cables attached to the unit. His mouth pruned into a grudging admiration of the fact that he was dealing with branched interactive submaelstrom. He grinned and triple clicked the blue spot at the breasts of the gridded silhouette of Porticia below the color picture of her. The screen rewrote to two verticals. On the left was the gridded silhouette of Porticia sitting up, facing him and the blue dots flashed on and off at the position of her nipples. The right panel contained a color photo. Porticia sat holding her unbuttoned dress open revealing blue wires with small alligator clips lying sideways to the center of each bra cup, obviously clamped to something that protruded through the cloth. Another set of green wires were similarly installed with the clips an inch or so below the blue wire clips.

"Ow, ow, owhha," came across the speaker. He could see the squint of pain in the outside corners of her eyes. This digital darlin' is one fine actress or else she endured some real pain while they recorded this, he thought to himself. John moved the blue control panel slide switch to five and then double clicked on the blue of her breast spots.

"Ayeee, god! Do whatever you want to me... just stop the pain. Ayee, Aaahou, ehhha," she begged.

"You're just a digital doll, you ain't real at all," he crooned as he moved the red pointer to nine. This time he simply moved his hands around the edges of the compact, gray laptop to make sure there were no cables attached to it. With the pointer over the red dot at her crotch he pecked the Enter key with his right index finger. She screamed and writhed and slobbered for seven or eight seconds before she fell unconscious on the bed. She was breathing evenly and drooling when he clicked the Close button. God I love being right, he thought to himself... He rolled in his correctness, letting it coat him in a protective armor. He also unzipped his pants and let his erect penis foray from his fly and survey the hotel room where he stood alone except for The Critical Path Method Bitchgoddess.

Chapter 4

It was early Saturday evening when he returned to his hotel room with a supply of condoms and lubricants. He dug around until he found her card. Porticia Ortho, International Sales Manager, SatisFire Enterprises, an address, phone number and e-mail address. He punched up the laptop and compared the e-mail address on her card to the one she had given him and he had automatically placed in his addressbook. Different. Hummm. He chose the one she had given him. E-mail: You there? -(send).

"Yes, John, I'm here. Are you ready?" she responded.

"Ready for what?" he wrote back.

"Read and follow the installation directions, John. When you are rigged and ready contact me." A red advisory was on the next line of text, "Porticia has left the conversation."

In a way it was like being a kid again, opening the Christmas packages and finding all manner of strange and wonderful things that would intrigue him for months and maybe years.

He had lubricated the torpedo-shaped plug with the wide tail flange and inserted it into his rectum and then eased onto the bed as the video directions had instructed. The leather strap with the shiny silver contacts went around the base of his scrotum and was a somewhat pleasant sensation. After all these were plugged into the color-coded receptacles of the gray box, he faced the moment of truth and courage. The video had shown it being done. The silver cylinder half the size of a pencil was to be lightly lubricated and fully inserted into the penis. Then the multiple leads were to be positioned over the head and down the top of the shaft. Finally the penis should be at least half erect when the condom is installed to hold everything in place. He held his breath unconsciously while he made the insertion. He was aware of its presence but there was no pain. Rolling the condom on was a familiar operation that let him breath again. After he plugged that last lead into the gray box, he inhaled and pushed the 'standby/maintain' button on the face of the gray box. There was a mild, pleasant tingling warmth in his penis. The message on the screen of the laptop flashed on and off..."Ready to connect?"