How the World Ends

"THIS is erotic," Arnold Alpha said. "Take a look, Mistress."

Alpha rolled aside and Kenyatta looked through the telescope eyepiece "It sure is."

"That's a good-looking man," Alpha continued, "close to the ideal East African genotype. And a well-constructed fem."

"How do you know it's a fem, and not a woman?" Kenyatta asked, tweaking the focus. "By the way, feel free to keep doing that." Alpha was gently exploring her ass with the tip of a little finger.

"It's a fem, because a woman couldn't deep throat him for that long without turning blue," Alpha said. Kenyatta gestured to Arnold Beta, inviting him to take a look. Beta dropped to his knees, took a short look through the scope, and then concurred. "As usual, Alpha is right. In addition to that, the breasts are a bit too firm, the nipples a bit too long. It's definitely a fem."

The three of them -- Kenyatta, Arnold Alpha and Arnold Beta -- lounged nude behind the telescope atop a pile of cushions. Kenyatta preferred minimalist furnishings. There was no particular reason for their nakedness, other than Kenyatta's whim. After a luxurious sunbath in her rooftop solarium, a stretch-out in her hot tub and an hour of deep muscle massage and expert cunnilingus by Beta, she'd seen no particular reason to get dressed. The apartment's climate control system was permanently set on Mid-Tropical.

The scope was focused on an apartment high on the south side of what was once the Millennium Hilton Hotel, a half mile away. A naked man, muscular and ebony black, half-was reclining on a sofa. The blonde fem was kneeling between his spread legs, giving him energetic head. Kenyatta could see the bulge of his cock going up and down in her throat; her unblinking eyes, looking up, were staring deep into his. The brightly lit scene looked staged. "He's an exhibitionist," Kenyatta said. "But a good-looking one."

"Would you like to meet him?" Alpha asked.

"Why?" she asked, puzzled. "Because he's Black and I'm Black? No, I've got you two, and you're everything I need."

Arnold Alpha and Beta were twin mels, modeled on the classic actor Arnold Schwarzenegger in his heyday as Mr. Universe. They had certain enhancements; they were over two meters tall, their flaccid penises were twenty centimeters long, and their testicles were the size of hen's eggs. The genital dimensions were cosmetic; when in action, the penises were exactly the size they needed to be. The AI who had taken Kenyatta's order for the androids had asked her whether to include testicles. "Many women consider the scrotum to be the least attractive part of the male anatomy."

"I'm not crazy about ball sacks, myself," Kenyatta had replied, "but I'm a traditionalist, so go ahead and hang them on. What the hell, make them big."

"Another thing, Mistress Kenyatta. If built according to your specs, the 'droids would be identical. Wouldn't you like to make some detail different, just so you can tell them apart?"

"Well -- OK. Alpha will be circumcised, Beta not."

Their vantage point that evening was a floor-to-ceiling window in Kenyatta's apartment atop what used to be the UN Secretariat. The thirty floors below her accommodated three other humans and their androids; the bottom nine floors, like those of the other Manhattan buildings still standing, had been filled with concrete as the sea level rose.

Kenyatta took another look through the scope. The fem in the other apartment was now bent over a sofa, a beatific smile on her face, while the man pounded her from behind, his black skin glistening. The bottom of each hard stroke sent her long blonde hair flying.

"Shall we join them?" Alpha said.

"I'm debating it." Kenyatta wiggled her ass against the cushions and squeezed Alpha's little finger with her ass muscles.

"How about now?" Alpha replaced his pinky with his middle and ring finger and smoothly slid his large, thick thumb into her pussy. He began squeezing.

"That's nice. It's like you're a mind reader. Just do that for a while." In the other apartment, the man in the other apartment was lying on the thickly carpeted floor, the fem riding him. She arched her back, hands behind her head, and gazed slack-jawed at the ceiling as he slapped and pinched her red nipples.

"As you wish. But on the subject of sex, your IMM reminds us it's time for maintenance. Before we go any further, we may want to shift gears and take care of that."

"OK, great. You've got me in the mood for it."

"So I assume you want to do the MM the usual way?"

"Of course. Why do you always ask?"

"Because it's your body, and you might have changed your mind."

"Why would I change my mind? MM is one of the highlights of my life."

"Not for us to say," Beta said. "We're just machines."

Alpha added, "Your faithful servants, and avatars of The Beau. Who, by the way, says it wants a biometric scan of your body."

Kenyatta snorted. She'd almost said, as she had many times before: I walk around nude all day every day, in front of you and Beau James, and yet you feel you have to ask permission before you scan my body? She knew the response would be, "We have to ask, because it's your body, and your choice." This time she skipped the exchange and simply stood on tiptoe, reaching for the ceiling and doing a slow pirouette.

She was beautiful, and she knew it. Perfect ebony skin, with classic East African features under a wide Afro. One hundred seventy centimeters tall, sixty kilos, with wide shoulders and hips, high tight breasts, a narrow waist, and long perfect legs. Every muscle group was beautifully defined. Kenyatta wasn't a gym rat, but constant isostatic muscular tensing, of which she was barely aware, kept her firm.

Taking a cue from one of her crèche moms, Kenyatta had always reveled in her skin. "Our African princess," she'd called her. "Our black diamond. Never miss a chance to sun yourself, Kennie, and use lots of moisturizer. Black is beautiful. The blacker, the better."

Kenyatta did a second pirouette, admiring her reflection in the window. "Whaddaya think, Beau, you dirty old machine? Not bad for a mere animal?"

In her head, she heard a raspy tenor with a classic New Yawk accent; the voice of Beau James, the AI in charge of what used to be New York City. "Lookin' great, Babes."

"Alpha and Beta were about to clean me out. Wanna watch?"

"Sure, why not? We can never have too much data."

She turned to her two androids. "So which of you lucky mels gets to be on the bottom? Wrestle for the privilege. Usual rules."

Kenyatta's minimalist interior decor was well suited to gladiatorial spectacles. There was no furniture to be broken as the two huge, naked mels met in combat. The rules of engagement were simple -- no rules. The flat resounded with loud thuds as hydraulically powered fists attempted, and failed, to damage plastic flesh on steel skeletons. The action was a blur; suddenly Alpha was on his back, Beta on top of him trying and failing to turn him over. Another blur and the positions were reversed; Beta was on his stomach, Alpha on top of him with his foot-long cock up Beta's ass. Beta tapped out, three slaps on the floor that rattled the windows. Kenyatta, who had been watching the action with two busy fingers on her clit, cheered.

The winner Alpha lay on his back, his massive flagpole of a cock twitching invitingly. Kenyatta slowly lowered herself onto it, every muscle trembling on the edge of her first massive orgasm. Throughout the entire hour-long procedure she would be having one after another, at thirty-second intervals. Once she was fully impaled, with knees on either side of Alpha's torso and her head on his Herculean chest, Beta mounted her from behind, his cock oozing hot lube as it penetrated her ass. He worked his way deep into her colon to a point behind her uterus and began pushing; long, slow thrusts that she felt in every organ of her body. The combined pressure and motions of the two massive organs stimulated Kenyatta's permanently aroused vulva like nothing else; she took a deep, shuddering breath and moaned.

"You like that, my dear Mistress?" Alpha said, stroking her moist hair. "So let's do it some more." As if on cue, Kenyatta began gasping with each thrust -- "Oh, oh, oh, oh, FUCK! AAAAAH!" In a moment of lucidity, she gasped, "Why can't we do this every day?"

"It would be too much," Beta volunteered from over her head. "Too exhausting. For you, that is. Alpha and I could do this for days without recharging."

In response Kenyatta clawed at Alpha's chest and bit one of his nipples hard, to no effect. On a signal from Beta, Alpha increased the pace of his thrusting while Kenyatta shuddered and gibbered uncontrollably.

Deep in her vagina, Alpha's penis was morphing. The opening of the urethra was moving to the top of the glans penis, which was changing from a spade to a cup that covered her cervix. His cock poured out a special solution, flooding her uterus all the way up to her Fallopian tubes; a mild organic detergent formulated to cleanse her uterus and flush out the ovum that her Implanted Medical Module had detected earlier that day. She felt the flow and the pressure, which provided yet another dimension of sexual stimulation.

Alpha flushed her, filling and draining her uterus repeatedly, while Beta's thrusting provided mechanical assistance. After the eighth iteration a signal from a sensor deep in Alpha's body signaled the two mels that the mission had been accomplished; the ovum had been removed and captured, and it was viable.

At Alpha's command Kenyatta's IMM sent a signal to her hypothalamus, and she lapsed into a deep, dreamless sleep. Her two servant machines quickly cleaned her and tucked her under a feather duvet atop a stack of pillows. Alpha strode across the cavernous single-room apartment to the bathroom, where he pulled back a flap of synthetic skin on his lower abdomen to reveal a small metal door. Opening the door, he removed a mirrored container the size of a small pill bottle, a Dewar containing liquid nitrogen and the flash-frozen ovum he had just retrieved. Leaving the toilet, he bounded upstairs to the roof where a small cargo drone was waiting to bear the precious egg to the State eugenics laboratory. Already waiting there were several milliliters of semen which had been harvested by the blonde fem Kenyatta had observed in action through the telescope.

A message flickered among Beau James, Arnold Alpha and the laboratory AI, exchanging congratulations on the completion of another routine, yet important, task. Kenyatta was a prized source of ova, producing a healthy new one every thirteen days. She was a major, albeit unwitting, participant in one of the Empire's grand projects; untangling human DNA and breeding humans back to their original genotypes, such as Kenyatta's East African. The scientists of the Empire, both human and AI, were firmly committed to the benefits of hybridization but, like agronomists, wanted pure, as-originally-evolved specimens as baselines for their experimentation.

Before bringing Kenyatta into the program, Beau James had discussed it with her. "It would involve changing your body chemistry to make ovulation more frequent, but the same changes would ensure that you never experience either cramps or mood swings. And your androids, after some mods, will be able to irrigate your uterus to make sure you never have a menstrual flow. As an added bonus, you'll experience more frequent, more powerful sexual arousals, which your androids will be more than capable of managing."

"What's the downside?" she'd asked.

"You'll feel less inclined to travel, have company, or do anything else that might interfere with your sex life. But then, you've always been something of a loner. So are you interested?"

"Fuck yes, I'm interested!"

The last golden rays of the sun were disappearing. Kenyatta, roused from her nap, sprawled on a pile of silk cushions and stared, pensive, at the darkening cityscape outside the window. Less than a quarter of the buildings in Lower Manhattan had survived the sea level rise. The few that remained displayed a thin scattering of lights. "How many people are left in the world?" Kenyatta asked.

"Not quite one million," Alpha answered.

"Be exact."

"Nine hundred ninety thousand, four hundred twenty-three. Make that twenty-two. Now it's twenty-one."

"Stop. That doesn't include mels and fems?"

"Certainly not. Why do you ask? Would you like us to expand the birthing program? The children would have to be raised by androids; there's no demand from adult Imperials."

"Could you do that?"

"Yes, of course, if the cognizant AIs agreed. We exist to serve. May I send your request forward?"

"Well, I don't know. Not now. A minute of silence. Kenyatta said, "I've been thinking about tomorrow. I think we should take a trip."

"Where to?"

"The South Pole. Tomorrow is September 23rd. At around noon, local time, the Sun first peeks above the horizon after being gone for six months. I think it would be fun to see that."

"Absolutely," Alpha said. "Although I suggest we leave tonight. Otherwise we might not make it."

"What a bore," Kenyatta pouted. "Losing all that nice sleep."

"No need for that," Beta said. "We'll order an aircraft with sleeping facilities. During changeovers, we'll move you from bunk to bunk. You'll wake up in a room near the top floor of the Scott Station Sheraton."

"And you promise I won't wake up?"

"We promise."

"Wonderful. Make it so."

Beta, motionless, was already making arrangements on the Web. The three of them would depart their rooftop via tiltrotor, transfer to a private ramjet at JFK, then transfer again to a transonic transport at Tierra del Fuego. The transport had skis and would land at the South Pole. Total time enroute, eighteen hours. Total cost? Not computed. What an Imperial citizen wanted, an Imperial citizen got, if it was physically possible.

"Would you like to take anyone with you, Mistress?"

"Other than you two? Why?"

"That's for you to say."

"Well, I don't. Why risk spoiling the party? OK, moving right along -- what's for dinner?"

"The usual. Whatever you like."

"A fresh garden salad with vinaigrette dressing, escargots in garlic butter, bacon-wrapped filet mignon medium rare, fresh broccoli, and garlic mashed potatoes."

"In twenty minutes," Alpha said.

"I'm going to the roof garden to collect the veggies," Beta added on his way out the door. "Back in five minutes."

"Lovely. Take your time, Beta. You, Alpha? Before you start cooking, I'd like a quick drink. A nice dry red wine with an infusion of Colombian bud."

"And would you like that in a glass?"

"Silly boy. You know how I take my wine."

Alpha knelt on the floor beside her, his huge cock already throbbing. Kenyatta admired it, stroking the full length of its gnarly shaft and running the tip of her tongue around the rim of the glans. She fully appreciated cocks, having energetically experimented with a number of them under the kindly supervision of her crèche parents, both human and android. That this cock was part of a machine made no difference to her; she loved how it looked, and what it could do. It could even serve drinks. She gave its balls a firm squeeze and caught a jet of cool red wine on her tongue.

"Lie on your back," Kenyatta commanded. He did. She ran her hands over the mel's magnificent body; massive hard muscles, perfectly defined under a thin layer subcutaneous padding. She took his cock in his mouth and squeezed his balls hard, receiving two generous swallows of the THC-infused wine.

Stroking the length of his shaft, she was seized by sudden inspiration. "I want to continue my throat training," she declared. "Give me five inches of girth and ten inches of length."

"Yes, Mistress."

She took his cock in her mouth again and felt a faint whirring as mini-servos shrunk its mean diameter and increased its length. Taking a deep breath, she opened her throat and swallowed its full length, her lower lip firmly against Alpha's outsized ball sack. The mel trembled and groaned.

Kenyatta came up for air. "Do you really enjoy that?"

"Does it seem that I enjoy it?"

"Yes. Although you have a better cock, you're entirely convincing. Just like a man."

"Then it doesn't matter whether I really enjoy it. If I act like a real person, you're justified in thinking of me as a real person. Turing's Principle."

"True." The divine Alan Turing, Saint of the cyber age, had first enunciated its cardinal principle. If an entity acts like a person, then one has no basis for deciding whether that entity is a person or unthinking machine; under such conditions, the very concept of "thinking" becomes irrelevant.

She returned to giving him energetic, halfway-to-the-stomach fellatio. No spitting up, she thought; excellent. Next time, I'll ask for more thickness. Although she didn't realize it, Alpha was helping her. His cock was secreting lidocaine to suppress her gag reflex.

Kenyatta, face wet with tears, looked up at Alpha's warm smile. "Why do I love to do this?" she asked. "What's the attraction?"

"I suspect it's complicated. The act itself is highly submissive; every slave girl since the beginning of history was forced to do it. On the other hand, you're in complete control. You're my mistress, I'm your device. You could never control a man the way you control me."

"All true. In any event, I think I've had enough cock as an appetizer. Time for dinner. Beta's in the kitchen, chopping the vegetables." She could hear a muted brattt-brattt sound, like a distant machine gun; a knife on a chopping board, wielded by an inhumanly quick hand. Alpha headed in that direction but was called back. "Beta can handle it. Stay with me. And turn the lights up."

"Yes, Mistress."

The floor and hanging lamps scattered around the huge room suddenly came on, filling the space with a cozy amber glow. The bulbs were incandescent, each made in accordance with Kenyatta's specifications. Having experimented with many combinations of filters and LEDs, Kenyatta had concluded there was no substitute for antique tungsten filaments.

The warm light illuminated the rest of the furniture, or lack thereof. Huge piles of pillows, cushions, blankets, comforters and duvets, in every conceivable color and fabric, either stood in neat stacks or sprawled in random heaps on the white faux-fur carpet. Bladders under the carpet, inflated on command with either air or warm water, turned any part of the floor into a mattress.

Kenyatta stood and stretched. She admired her reflection in the floor-to-ceiling windows; a statue made of polished obsidian. Alpha, looming beside her, was a statue made of milky Carrara marble -- Michelangelo's David, if David had been a four-time Mr. Universe with a cock that hung halfway to his knees. Kenyatta, giggling, grasped and shook it playfully. "Stop showing off, Alpha." The cock obediently retracted to half its length. She walked to the window where the telescope was still set up. "We'll eat right here. And turn the lights up bright."

"Not worried about being observed?"

"Not at all. Turnabout's fair play. What's more, I want to dress for dinner."

"What should I get?"

"I'm feeling girly. The white satin bustier with the titty cutouts and white over-the-thigh fishnets. And bring me gold loops for my nipples, navel and labes."

"What size loops?"

"Ten gauge, five centimeters diameter. I want them to be noticeable. And bring me some body oil. I'm looking a bit matte. Hey, Beau, are you there?"

She heard the AI's raspy tenor in her head. "Always, Babes."

"You watching and recording?"

"You know me, Sweetheart. Impossible to have too much data."

Kenyatta ate dinner as she ate most of her meals; on either Alpha's or Beta's lap. The androids had once asked if they should eat too, but she'd dismissed the idea. She knew she'd only open their stomachs later, retrieve the masticated food in plastic bags and throw it away, and she'd found the prospect unappealing.