The Origin of the Re-Peter

And so, she thought, his legend will spread.

***

Oliver didn't know Claudio and Glen too well. This was true of Oliver with most people. He wasn't gregarious, and because he was uncomfortable with people approaching him, he decided that others would rather not see him approach them. So, on a day when it seemed to him that Glen and Claudio were grumpy, Oliver saw that as none of his business, and left them to work it out.

Oliver couldn't ignore the probable cause. Claudio's 2834 ranked near the top, sometimes overtaken by Oliver's 4609. Glen's 8177 ranked near the bottom, including among self-identified males.

As Glen and Claudio assembled induction coils and jacketed them in rubber, Oliver tried to focus on answering FAQs. This became impossible when Glen declared, loudly enough to fill the workspace, "If you want to chase pussies, nobody's stopping you!"

In the space-wide silence, Oliver shot to his feet and stormed over to get between them.

He hissed, "It's just a dildo. You know that, right? Just. A. Dildo."

Glen snarled at him, "Have you said that to Doris? Or Mrs. Freaking Slocum?"

Oliver burned with shame. His problem-solving self said, "I will!"

Which he did, as soon as all of his recent entourage arrived, one by one, at the collective.

This had no more of an effect on them than Oliver had on Glen and Claudio. The only effect was on Oliver, whose reaction to flirting reverted from flattered to uncomfortable.

***

On a Sunday morning, Amy rolled to Oliver's side of the bed and said, "Sex?"

As he blinked, Oliver said, "Um...yeah."

Each made a bathroom trip. Then, looking playful, Amy started unbuttoning Oliver's pajamas.

He smiled, eyebrows up. They usually undressed separately. "Same?"

She nodded. He was very happy to get his hands past flannel to her skin.

She was frisky, and very soon he was too. Then they were breathing heavily.

After prelims of fingers and mouths, she lay on her back, legs spread. "Can you hold back?" she asked. "I want to try something."

"I'll do what I can," he huffed, fingering her labia apart.

Once he was inserted and pistoning, she pulled him down and kissed him deep and fingered through his thinning hair. Ohhh, you thick sides! she thought, squirming against them. Ohhh, you up-curve! She wriggled to get it to her A spot.

He was pretty urgent when she started cumming, but he tightened his sphincter to stay steady, so she could 'try something.' Like during the scan, he thought. Except now I'm where I want to be!

She moaned, teeth snagging on beard hairs. Her back arched, shoving him up, the press of her breasts lofting him near the edge.

"Mouth!" she yelped, rising on propped elbows.

Stunned, he shifted to get his knees under him, and complied. She almost never finished him that way.

With her left hand, she put his dick in her mouth. With her right, she picked up a green Re-Peter and reached it past him. He heard it squish into her vulva.

He gunked her mouth almost at once. She swallowed, and kept sucking, with grunts deep in her throat.

He set his hands on the wall behind the bed, wheezing. She continued to jitter rapidly beneath him. She relaxed her mouth and her head flopped back, releasing his cock.

A minute or two later, her grunting crescendoed. A minute or two after that, her body relaxed.

With a look of triumph, she picked up his dick from where it dribbled on her neck, and brought the dildo around next to it. Oliver could dimly see, in black on the green, the number 4609.

"Only I can have both," she said with a semen-laden tongue. "Right?"

"Huh?" he said. Then his eyes popped. "Yes! Absolutely, yes! Only you!"

***

A few nights later, in the same bed, the glowing digits on the clock showed 2:18 a.m. when Amy said, "Getting bored."

"Worse for you," Oliver murmured. "Every day I get the novelty of new FAQs. Not about dildos."

"Ready for an exit?"

"If all the terms are right."

***

For entirely different reasons, Bart was working in the same direction. He reached out to PrimaFlora, an up-and-comer in the same space as the movie star's high-profile, notorious, women-self-actualizing enterprise. He proposed to divest Re-Peter to PrimaFlora.

All of his reasoning was correct. Susannah agreed that, despite a fair amount of user enthusiasm, Re-Peter could not survive as a spinoff from Floodplain. It would, however, fill a niche at PrimaFlora. Soon, PrimaFlora agreed, and made an offer.

The misery that had festered in Bart for weeks began to dispel.

Bart told Heather to bring in Amy and Oliver, for what he thought of as laying down the law.

When he told them what he had planned, he was surprised that his neighbors calmly agreed.

"We're ready to move on," said Oliver. "We've already drafted terms that we'll want in the divestiture."

Hearing Oliver's voice, and seeing his mild expression, almost made Bart's blood boil.

"Thanks for finding a taker," said Amy, "although we hadn't asked for that, yet."

Heather quickly said, "Bart didn't mean to get out of line. Did you, Honey?"

"No," he snapped at Heather. "Just doing my job."

Amy frowned. This wasn't what she'd seen before between Heather and Bart. As obtuse as Amy was, she now picked up a sort of roughness within the couple. She hadn't spent time with the two together for quite a while. Heather had lately seemed ragged, even while gardening, but Amy assumed it was from fatigue.

Amy thought about Heather's responses to 7315 and 4609, and also Amy's own.

"I'm sorry, I have to say something," Amy blurted at her neighbors. "I hope we don't have to go into this too deep. Are you two not happy right now? And is it because of...all this?"

Bart went stonefaced. Heather drooped.

"I never wanted that!" Amy said, voice high and shrill. "A couple should stay together! Have you at least not, you know..."

"Nothing like that," said Heather, meeting Amy's eyes. "It's...um. All right, I won't say it's trivial. We've gone without sex before. But now, it's..." She looked at Bart, lower eyelids moistening. "We've never been angry with each other. Behaved like there was something wrong. Until now."

Amy stood. "Oliver, go home!"

Oliver stood slowly, perplexed. His wife's expression was one he knew better than to question.

With a nod, he let himself out.

Amy got in Bart's face, and said, "Love your wife! She wants you. Your whole body, your whole mind. This isn't about the dimensions of your dork. It's about you two together, giving and taking, and sharing. You two click. She needs you to love, and make love, to her, doing whatever you do. You think you're not man enough for her now? You always were before. Now you've got her thinking that she's not woman enough for you. Obviously ridiculous! Love your wife, idiot!"

"Yes please!" said Heather weakly.

"Why?" Bart growled at her. "Has Mister 4609 gotten tired of you, over at the commune?"

"WHAT??" Amy shrieked. "All she ever did with him there is say hello, and sometimes he didn't even answer! Bart, think! When Heather came home after she and I argued about making videos, did she look satisfied?"

Bart lost steam rapidly. "No."

"When you sling me over your shoulder," said Heather to Bart, voice trembling, "I feel what I've never felt from any other man!"

"Too much information!" Amy declared. "We might not agree on what 'love' means. But I think we agree on the meaning of togetherness, and the importance of being there for the person who matters most. Do you honestly think your wife has even the remotest interest in my husband? Would she want to deal with his quirks? No! When she has any time at all, she wants to spend it with you!"

Heather stood. "I'm going to get my other Re-Peter. Amy, can you sell it as an open-box?"

"No," said Bart, "leave it there." He took a breath, then stood, and looked at Heather. "You know I don't have patience with navel-gazers. I'll just say this. Once I learned...what I learned, I had to take action. So I did everything I could for Re-Peter, all the way to contacting PrimaFlora. When all of that is finished, I'll be me again." He took another breath, then said. "I'm sorry if I hurt you, Babe. I guess, maybe, I hated it that you, uh, liked--"

"A piece of rubber," Amy said.

"My body likes many things," said Heather to Bart. "Most of them involve you. None of the others will ever take me away from you. Can you be happy with that?"

"Yes," he said, reaching for her hand.

She reached to hold his.

To Amy, Bart said, "I love my wife."

Relieved and exhausted, Amy said, "My work here is done."

She let herself out.

***

At home, Amy decided that despite her exertion, she had to finish the rest of the drama. She faced Oliver and started what she thought was a simple question, asked out of curiosity.

"You want to fuck them, don't you?"

She was surprised that, by the time she'd finished saying it, it was something entirely different. The 'don't you?' came out like an accusation. The 'them' seemed to mean more women than the ones who raved about 4609.

Oliver opened his mouth. He resolved not to lie to his wife.

But he then decided that he also shouldn't lie to himself.

"That's irrelevant," he said. "They don't want me to fuck them, regardless of how much they enjoy my Re-Peter. I'm an oddball, insensitive, passionless, going bald. Not a person they want to be involved with." He bit his lower lip. "And I don't want to be in a situation where they realize that.

"You already know the answer. Yes, I want to. As a physical activity. And I liked the attention. Too much."

He trembled, but kept his eyes on Amy's, and spoke clearly. "I've always been afraid that you'll get tired of me, and find someone better. Now I'm even more afraid that something about this mess could hurt you. I think you're absolutely right about hall passes, but in our case, for a different reason. I can only feel right with you, and I hope you can feel right with me."

Amy hugged herself, head lowered.

Oliver had no idea what that meant.

At first, neither did Amy.

Finally she said, "I can feel right with you." Her head lifted partway. "I do. I think...only you."

Then her shoulders shook with laughter. "So I guess it's a good thing that we're married. To each other."

There was a lot of hugging, which is what felt right for them, right then.

Then they decided that they needed to have their senses overwhelmed by something else. So they went to an IMAX movie.

***

PrimaFlora agreed to all of the conditions demanded by Amy, Oliver, and the collective. This company was already aware of the need to be a good corporate citizen. The Re-Peter did well enough for PrimaFlora, as a small profit center.

The proceeds allowed Floodplain Makers' Collective to add another space, and acquire a second, newer, 3-D printer, capable of powder metallurgy. Amy used it for even more innovative creations. With their licensing revenue, Amy and Oliver quit their day jobs, and devoted as much time and thought as they liked, to making.

Heather was given a share of that revenue, for things like coining the term Re-Peter and arm-twisting Amy to be the face of the product. That, combined with a promotion for Bart, made it possible for them to move to a house in the suburbs. When they closed on both the sale of the townhouse and the purchase of the new place, Heather was pregnant. She was frustrated that Amy, Oliver, and Bart all seemed content with the separation of the two couples, socially as well as physically. But soon her mindshare was claimed by things like mommy-tracking her job.

Claudio and Glen split up, but continued to be makers at Floodplain. Sometimes they worked together, without apparent rancor.

Every calendar quarter, Amy and Oliver ferociously opposed all attempts to make one of them First-Among-Equals at the collective.

Floodplain also gained the means to connect with vocational programs in the local school district. Oliver actually flourished as a mentor, to socially inept nerds. Amy became a mentrix to other young nerds, training them on the older 3-D printer. She didn't exactly flourish, but she found ways to reach them. She recalled Heather saying that gardening didn't satisfy her maternal instinct. Amy thought that she had found the way to satisfy hers.

***

It was after an especially energetic night of sex that, as sleep neared them, Oliver said, "There's a way to deal with the vagina emulator problem."

Amy mumbled, "Send me specs tomorrow."