The Origin of the Re-Peter

Heather took a breath. "The second print...it kind of surprised my body! It was so wild! As if I was taken someplace I'd never been before. I never knew that could happen to me!" She hoped she wouldn't have to describe in detail the two separate orgasms from the single session.

Amy realized that Heather was looking at her as intently as Amy was looking at Heather. Amy quickly put on a smile and said, "So, you'd describe yourself as a satisfied customer?"

Heather cut loose a grin. "Oh yeah!"

Amy nodded. Several times. Too many? she thought.

"Do I have to give it back?" asked Heather. "Can I buy it?"

"It's yours," said Amy. "I can always print more. And, um, that's the whole idea."

***

Late that night, in bed, after they had exhausted a few topics, Amy told Oliver, "Heather likes your dick better than Bart's."

There ensued a silence neither could break.

***

Monday night, after some overthinking, Heather made a point of coming on to Bart.

In her liquid-tones voice she asked, "Did you bring work home?"

He looked her way, his fork halfway to his mouth. "Quite a lot."

"Can it wait?" She slid her hand onto his. "A little while?"

He leered. "Yes."

'A little while' meant without scarves and edging. This time, in fact, she wanted their default vanilla.

As they made love, she analyzed.

He's a hot guy. That gets me going.

I feel good about landing him. Maybe as good as he feels about landing me.

His hands, yeah, nice. Strong but deft.

His licking, not so great, but that's never thrilled me from anybody.

He feels fine inside. Nothing wrong with it. But not enough, by itself.

She began rubbing her clit. That started her towards her Next Level.

She couldn't escape this thought:

Don't need to rub, with...Oliver's?

Soon they orgasmed, then returned to work.

***

Over the next two weeks, Oliver and Amy took on shorter shifts at their day jobs. Paperwork had moved from them, to Jason, then to Bart and Heather. While that was pending, the collective approved incubation funding for the next month, from its own resources. From several volunteers, Amy and Oliver selected four members of the collective to serve as compensated assistants during that time. Two of the four were gay men in a relationship. Releases were drawn up and signed, and they joined Amy and Oliver in a bathroom to show how they assisted each other to erection, and what the erections looked like.

Amy and Oliver then left the bathroom, and planned that these assistants' modeling sessions would wait until the next day.

For the rest of this day, Amy printed more from the scans she had. She assigned to Oliver's dildo the random-seeming number 4609, and to Bart's, 7315. Meanwhile, Oliver devoted some of the funding to better-quality equipment, and upgraded the scanner. When he was done, it could complete a circuit in sixteen seconds, with the same accuracy as before. He also enlarged the rails, and added more lasers, raising the maximum scanable length from ten inches to fourteen.

When the auditioned assistants emerged from the bathroom, they joined the other assistants in the design and assembly of the privacy tent for the scanner.

Heather texted Amy and Oliver. She said that she had done something on her own, without bringing in (or committing money to) 'creatives' in marketing or advertising.

She proposed a name for the project's product:

The Re-Peter.

"Too slick," said Amy to her husband. "Just like something that would come from their world."

Oliver challenged her. "Do you have a name?"

"The name isn't as important as the--"

"Do you?"

She looked at him, ticked off. "No."

"I think that name goes partway to describing the product. I like it."

She let him outvote her, so she could get back to work.

***

Oliver was almost asleep. But then he said, "Skin color."

"Hrgmm," came from Amy. Her body shifted, rustling the sheets. "Should all be the same. No suggestion one color's better than another." The print medium so far had been tan.

"Green?"

"Now that we'll have more than two."

***

Although the project had brought new excitement to the collective, not everyone was comfortable with it. The Consequences Committee convened a meeting for open discussion. Oliver and Amy tried to stifle their displeasure at taking time away from their work. When they fielded questions and requests for elaboration, they tended to be snappish.

It was quickly agreed by all that the project did not run afoul of the committee's official concerns (adverse environmental impact, economic injustice). Amy said they would be mindful of these matters if the project were to advance to mass production, resource acquisition, and waste stream mitigation. Consensus was more elusive on the nature of the project itself, with three attendees opining that the making of dildos aligned the collective with 'sexual monoculture.' To this, Oliver retorted, "If penis-havers face competition from other penetrators, doesn't that undermine the monoculture?" This mainly got laughs, and while the issue was never actually resolved, the meeting closed with no restrictions placed on the project.

The project heads tried to run a tight ship, once there were eight different Re-Peters printed, and tested by other makers. Vanessa, a designer of electronic imagery, called out on the open workspace floor to one of the gay project assistants, "Hey Claudio, you felt great inside me." Oliver interrupted the repercussions of fun immediately, demanding that respect for privacy be absolute, even among acquaintances.

"Okay, sorry," Vanessa responded. "In the promos, I'll just say that I orgasmed on 2834. I won't say that it entered a place that the model never would."

***

Bart's boss was a partner in the venture capital firm. Bart spent more than a week assembling the proposal for the Re-Peter, while also putting in his usual too-many hours on the researching, focus group consultations, and other scutwork delegated to him by the partner. They were on projects that were not openly sexual.

This was the first proposal Bart had ever initiated. A week after he submitted it, he was told to report to the partner's office that afternoon.

As the minutes ticked away, Bart tried to fight down panic. He didn't know if he'd return from the meeting to find that his desk was cleared out and assigned to someone else.

He had a box of samples. He had left them in his car.

Bart entered the partner's outer office three minutes early. The partner's receptionist told Bart to take a seat.

To Bart, his boss had always presented as a free thinker, unusual in the world of venture capital. Now nearing fifty, empty-nesting with her husband, Susannah Hracovsky had joined the firm as it was forming in the early 2000s, and thus prevented the glass ceiling from ever existing. Her thick brown hair was graying, and she made no effort to hide her weight, which was more than the ideal for her age. Bart had never said or done anything that offended her. He had no idea yet whether this was the first time.

Nine minutes after the scheduled start time, Bart was told to stand. The receptionist opened the door to the inner office, leaned in, and announced, "Mr. Diefenbach."

Bart moved past the receptionist. The partner remained seated behind her desk. She smiled and said, "Come in, Bart."

Bart smiled, heard the door close behind him, and sat in the chair that faced the desk. These mundane events swarmed with meta-data about power moves, but Bart thought it best not to dwell on them.

Susannah leaned back in her chair. "Fortune should favor the bold, Bart. I'm sure you know that this isn't always true."

If she had tried to crack his armor, he believed she'd failed. "I saw an opportunity for the firm. I stand by the case I've made."

Susannah chuckled. "Aren't you the cheeky one. It so happens that I'm willing to back this within my discretionary resources. Which is to say, two or three drops from the firm's bucket. I doubt that anyone else will notice this until the fiscal-year audit."

Feeling a little more secure in his job, Bart declared, "I expect it to be much more noticeable, for the right reasons."

"It's true that a certain movie star's line of, ahem, 'feminine well-being products,' seems to have a strong following. But let's not believe our own press releases. Maybe this can be a going concern, but maybe it will fail on its merits. If nothing else, we'll gain some familiarity with this 'maker collective.' It might be a place where we can do pro bono work. Meanwhile, I must carry out due diligence. Bart, do you have samples?"

"Um...yes. In my car."

"I'm relieved to see that there's a limit to your boldness. Bravo, for not marching in here with an armload of dildos. Now, however, if they're in a plain, unmarked container, you may move them to the trunk of my car." Susannah picked up her phone. "I'm sending you the entry code."

"Yes. Um. All of them?"

"Certainly. A little entertainment, for me and my husband."

***

Amy and Heather no longer needed the subterfuge of gardening to have talks. It had become routine for one or the other to visit, once they determined by text that both were at home. Usually Heather, as the more outer-directed one, initiated the contact. Amy's reticence was heightened by her awareness that Heather rarely had 'free' time at home, and thus Heather should choose the moment.

"Have you thought about market outreach?" Heather asked while Amy made coffee.

"We've been in touch with home party providers," said Amy. "People who bring adult products and novelties to groups of women who are reluctant to leave trails online. A few have agreed to offer our products in free trials, in exchange for feedback." Amy still did not like calling the 'products' Re-Peters.

"That's a start, I suppose," said Heather, remembering her attendance at two such parties. "But I'm thinking about giving women the assurance that the people behind the product can be trusted, and are worthy of support."

Amy gave her a puzzled look. "You mean, showing them that we're not using a sweatshop?"

"That could be part of it, but I'm thinking more of putting you forward as the face of the product. A sex-positive woman who is also hoping to keep couples from straying, and a high-tech artisan who uses a machine that most people know nothing about. Someone who makes accurate copies of the, um, penises of real people, both for a woman's pleasure and to let her satisfy her curiosity harmlessly. Amy Tindall is someone women can relate to."

"I only run the printer. Oliver takes the data."

"Oliver would be mentioned, of course, your loving husband and partner. But this was your idea, wasn't it?"

Amy resented having to give ground. "Yes."

"I know you're a private person. But I've seen that you can also be nice, and relatable. If you can be that way in a few videos, it will help overcome the product's negatives, in the view of the market."

Amy became more testy that relatable. "Anyone who thinks dildos are sinful--"

"It's not just that!" Heather shot back. "If you're really serious about green, you have to win over women who don't think they're sinful. Bart hates green. Even when I told him why you're doing that, he said you should just offer different human skin colors as options. As he put it, 'make a white dong black.'"

Amy looked at the mugs into which she poured coffee, and her response was a mutter. "Don't want to encourage toxic fantasies."

Heather's tone softened, but she pressed. "Are you the one to decide, for all women, what's toxic?"

Amy found her position weakening. Also, her mind had begun working through coding, for the printer to combine different silicone feedstocks, to produce different skin colors.

She returned to the original subject as she handed Heather a mug. "If I do this, it'll be as me." She thumbed up a shoulder strap of her overalls. "The 'market,' as you call it, will have to relate to this."

Heather chuckled. "This sort of thing only works when the spokesperson is authentic." She didn't say that Amy's unblemished complexion might allow makeup to be avoided.

***

The email requested Bart's presence in Susannah's office at 9:30 am. Usually the partner didn't summon underlings before ten.

When Bart entered the outer office, the receptionist smiled, stood, opened the inner door, and announced, "Mr. Diefenbach is here."

Bart's ever-climbing mood continued to rise as he heard, "Send him in," the voice tone jovial.

Susannah stood as he entered. Smiling, she indicated the chair. Only the addition of a handshake could have made him feel better, but Bart was still sailing.

"You may inform the makers at the collective," said Susannah, again seated, "that their emulation of the male extremity is the most authentic ever encountered by a woman who has sampled many other realistic dildos." She held up a hand to bar Bart from chiming in. "That's not to say that it's the most satisfying object I've ever inserted, when in search of pleasure. I'm quite fond of certain things that look and feel nothing like a real male extremity. And I remain extremely happy with what's attached to my husband, who knows what to do for me. But many of the items you delivered gave me a very good time."

"That's good to hear," said Bart, trying not to get aroused. He was mildly interested in Susannah, as he was in almost every woman, but he knew enough to curb his dog-like tendencies where they would do him no good. Still, the thought that his boss got hot from his prick, maybe orgasmed on it--

"I also thank whoever modeled 4609," said Susannah with a crooked smile, "for sharing his anatomy. That one took me on a great ride. I had fun with some of the others, too, but my response to that one made my husband envious. It's fine, that made him work a little harder."

Bart nodded, still smiling, but mainly because his face had frozen.

"I'd like you to take the lead on this project," said Susannah. "I'll move your other work elsewhere. I'll email you and the others with all the details. Thanks again."

Bart was functional enough to notice that he was being dismissed, and he stood and gave suitable parting words to his superior. Only while he was on the way back to his desk did he allow himself to realize what this meant.

Before he had taken the samples to work, Bart had examined them closely.

He had also compared them to two others, which he had found in the toy stash in Heather's nightstand drawer.

This gave him the knowledge that his sample, within the group of twelve, was stamped 7315, and the dildo that matched Heather's other one was stamped 4609.

Bad enough that the latter was a little bigger than the former, and curved, and varied in thickness. 4609 was not, in fact, the largest of the twelve samples. But something about it had made Bart's boss swoon.

Now, back from Susannah's office, Bart slumped in his chair. He was not yet able to banish this thought:

My dick isn't as good as the one on Amy's husband.

***

While Bart's real work was now on the Re-Peter, Heather's wasn't. She still did what her workplace told her to do, and tried to find 'free' time to follow up on what she'd suggested to Amy. Heather's sleep shortened, housework dwindled, sex vanished.

Heather now traveled alone to the collective to make video, and go over with Amy the text and other material for the Floodplain website. Heather had asked Bart if he'd like to come along. They both knew that his presence there wouldn't advance his work, but instead of using this dodge, he snarked, "I'll skip the freak show, thanks anyway."

It didn't help Heather's mood that she and Amy locked horns most of the time. Now that the subject was more significant than gardening, their worldviews clashed. Heather gave ground when she could, and did this so noticeably that Amy did the same, eventually.

Amy posed in front of the 3-D printer. She delivered, to the ring-lighted camera, speeches such as the following:

"Certain words for this kind of thing," she said, holding up a Re-Peter, "might offend or trigger people. In this video, I will refer to it as a self-pleasuring device. This is important, because while it can be used during activity with partners, it can also be used in complete privacy. Self-pleasuring while alone is an exercise of control. The user performs all actions, knowing in advance what they will be. With a partner, control can be exchanged, or shared. For some, surprise and spontaneity produce excitement. For some, control during isolation provides comfort."

Amy glanced at the dildo, having been informed that this would direct viewer attention there. "No effort is being made to emulate what the most intricate arousal devices already provide. All the user has is a copy of an erect penis, and the only enhancement is a control to heat it, so it feels like a human phallus when inserted by the user.

"Perhaps the most important feature, supporting the solitary user's control of pleasure, is that this remains erect indefinitely."

Heather hadn't expected Amy to be cheerful or provocative, and she wasn't. There were enough takes, and hectoring by Heather, to get Amy to point where her affect and delivery were agreeable to the average viewer.

Amy's credo, about using masturbation to prevent infidelity, was relegated by Heather to a text block on the web page. Amy, however, considered it a victory that on video she never spoke the name Re-Peter.

While Heather was worn raw by fatigue, abstinence, and her increasingly irascible husband, Amy too was not at her best during video sessions. Lately Amy had seen a different attitude among other makers. Notably the female-identifying ones. They chatted up Oliver, rarely using work as an excuse. Vanessa, Shelby, Kay, Doris, and others in the thirtyish age group seemed to be...flirting?...with Amy's husband. Even Mrs. Slocum, the sixty-year-old glass blower, had happened along a couple times.

Amy thought that Oliver was noticing this also. And not minding. Smiling more than he usually did at the collective.

Trips to the break area were taken whenever work permitted, and thus Amy and Oliver were seldom there at the same time. Amy took no data, but thought that Oliver's trips had lengthened. Not much. A few minutes, maybe. Enough to allow more...chatting and flirting? Or am I just paying more attention? she wondered.

There was now a wealth of data on Re-Peter use, from feedback by collective members. The 4609 was ranked near the top. Amy was sure that models' identities had not leaked through the Floodplain website, which was already receiving orders through the e-commerce system. But lips had not been sealed within the collective, despite Oliver's chastising of Vanessa.

Soon there were many purchases through the website, followed by product reviews from customers. By this time, human skin colors had replaced green. The reviews tended to agree with feedback within the collective. The reviews also influenced new customers.

Amy recruited makers to drape canvas around the printer, so she could print dildos without anyone seeing her, or identifying the dildos.

On the first day when Amy had this privacy, there were five new orders. All of them for 4609s.

As she built up the first shlong, the sight of it quickened her pulse.

I'm obviously not alone, she thought.

She was doing exactly what she'd hoped to do with this project.

In theory.

The knowledge that women, and maybe even men, wanted this part of Oliver, now filled her with anxiety.

Oliver had not sabotaged the scan of Bart. Her jaw set, Amy reminded herself about that. She ensured that every 4609 was as vagina-pleasing as the flesh rod of her husband.