Zerek's Homeopathic Teledildonics

Havel started climbing up the arm, precariously balancing and then with some trepidation jumped onto the flat roof. Prior to working for Zerek and Son's, he realized, he didn't have the confidence and the physique to do this but in time he'd grown. He walked over and tried the roof door, but it was locked. He yelled to tell the men as much.

"What did she say?" Zerek asked, hard of hearing after spending so much time in the excavator.

Blazek answered in some annoyance, "He. It's a he. He said the secure door was locked." She couldn't put her finger on it, but Havel's pronounced musculature made him seem so much more attractive than before. The incomplete thought surprised her pleasantly.

The cat creature suddenly remembered having pockets, and checked hers. She never realized the pockets went away with her clothes change every day and that someone refilled them, but her squid toy came out a pocket anyway so she patted its head and put it back. But in the other pocket, there was a glowing red sphere. She handed it to Havel just as he climbed down the arm, and he grinned from ear to ear.

"You remembered!" Havel said in amazement, still unsure of her state of being and how she was doing. The rich man's description of her abilities was still unbelievable. But he eagerly took the sphere and placed it in the slot in the front door, and it started opening sideways.

...

"Sir, what do we do now? The door is opening."

Nowak panicked, and yelled at them, "Stand in front of the doors. Stand! If they walk, you stand in front of they-people and don't let them move. Remember, they don't have helmets," he tried encouraging them. It had the opposite effect.

In the corridor, a very dangerous and unfamiliar standoff started forming, ten men abreast holding berry-axes faced just as many blue helmets but several ranks deep, though they were unarmed. No one knew what to do next.

"Use the axes," someone yelled out from the rear ranks, after it clicked.

Reggert's army started pointing their axes forward, the axe's function finally dawning on them, and they cheered victoriously as they pushed the dull tops of the axe-heads forward against the blue helmets' chests.

"It elongates the arm!" someone proclaimed excitedly.

The victory was short-lived after the cheers drowned out. Though they had longer reach and made contact with the blue helmets remotely, that's where the axe stopped and they only made two meters of progress. If they only had longer axes, one of them thought miserably at running into yet another stalemate. Physical conflict was harder than any of them had imagined prior to this fight.

The unnamed consultant stood back and sighed in mild disbelief and decided not to get involved. He'd done all he could as a violence professional to equip them. But, he wasn't a violence coach. Let amateurs amateur.

The cat creature became impatient and started screaming and clawing her way through the men, howling in anger and indiscriminately wounding both Reggert's men and the blue helmets. The screams and the blood sprays broke the impasse- half the armed men dropped their axes and clutched onto their wounds, everyone else hugged the walls and let her pass.

"Stop her!" Director Nowak yelled desperately but no one moved. He stood aside fearfully as she walked past him, heading toward the fab, Blazek and Havel in tow followed by stragglers. Their little army and the blue helmets both assumed this conflict was over in that very instant, prior experiences not telling them anything about standing their ground and so they followed curiously to see where all this was going.

As they reached the final door, only openable by the director, the cat creature grabbed an axe out of someone's hand, swung a safety corridor behind her with the axe and roared.

"STAND ASIDE!"

Blazek clutched her throat, excited and happy beyond belief. She didn't realize the cat creature could talk even this completely until now, despite everything the rich man told her. As she moved away, a tear ran down her face from the discovery. She gripped Havel's hand and smiled at him, and his heart melted.

"Don't open that door!" Director Nowak yelled in desperation, but no one paid him any attention.

The cat creature swung the axe behind her and with her bulging muscles the axehead made contact and rent a half-meter gash in the door. However, the sandstone head crumbled. Men around her gasped in surprise, and gasped again when she reversed the axe and swung again, dulling both sides of it, admiring that she knew it was good for two hits. She threw the spent axe on the ground and motioned for someone to hand her another. She took the time to eat one strawberry out of a pommel, and after making a big enough puncture in the door and some side cuts, she simply ran through it bending the pieces out of the way.

Doctor Blazek stepped through eventually and gasped when they saw the fab. At a glance she understood what had been going on all this time, and was shocked. She invited the computer inside, and asked it to confirm what she was seeing. That took a blink of the eye, and the red eye did blink. But not for the same reason.

"Seize him!" she pointed at Nowak and a mix of blue helmets and Reggert's army did just that unquestioningly. The authority of her outraged voice convinced them.

Nowak just gave up, surrendered, his head hanging down and hiding in shame. Days of playing God, stealing other people's patterns and bypassing safety regulations were over for him. If only he wasn't cursed with the gift of hexagon gambling, it brought him to ruin.

The fab was operating at full capacity, blank clones of both genders in various stages being hatched and grown, intubated and packed in cardboard boxes for shipping. At a speed that clearly didn't intend to restore any memories.

Nowak had been selling illegal clones to the underground. Havel winced, and kicked himself for never asking where pleasure blanks came from. Just how many labs were out there doing this sort of thing, he wondered?

Blazek and the cat creature interrupted a start of a new clone, Blazek surprised that the cat creature knew how to operate the machine. When her clawed hands produced a data cube labeled "W-56-A" out of a secure storage bin she broke into, Blazek stood aside and watched. The cat beckoned for Havel to get behind the memory mapper, and he readily stepped up to it and started doing his thing. Blazek knew she wouldn't be needed until the next step, but Big Cat was coming home.

All the screens in the room unexpectedly turned off and then a 3-inch red circle on all of them followed people around like eyeballs. The familiar slightly-distorted hollow city AI voice made an announcement.

"Everyone, this is over. Get back to your normal jobs, get back to your normal lives. Clear out."

Because this was the city AI voice they all knew and grew up with, they complied and left, until there were just Havel, Blazek, the cat creature, Reggert, the unnamed consultant, and Director Nowak, his head still hung in shame.

"Where are the cops?" Havel asked excitedly and no one answered. He looked at the nearest pixelated red eye and repeated himself. All the other screens winked out into darkness.

"Christ on a fucking stick," the computer cussed in its hollow voice, "are you this fucking naive? I should just let your fucking kind die out, you prick," it said.

Havel got rattled, "What do you mean by that?" He'd never heard of AI threatening a human before.

"You people are worse at breeding than fucking pandas," it said impatiently.

"What's.. a panda?" Blazek asked.

The eye swung toward her, "Never mind that... it was a cute but dumb fucking animal that couldn't fuck to save its own life," the computer said and looked back at Havel, "...and I mean that literally. Do you really think this is illegal? 'Where are the cops', he says, well have you ever seen fucking cops anywhere aside from on TV? Have you ever seen anything actually illegal in your life? There are no cops."

Havel thought about that for a moment. No, he hadn't, he admitted.

"No, there's no fucking legal or illegal anymore. We let you do whatever the fuck you want and we keep the lights burning. We just use those words to make you want it more. Without these fucked up fetishes of yours, semen collection and artificial wombs, your population rate would go into a tailspin and you'd hit a critical genetic bottleneck in a generation, shrink and turn into a bunch of depraved cousin-fuckers and just sort of fucking wink out one day."

The silence in the room illustrated just how far the computer went overboard in assaulting their sense of existence. In all their lives they'd never been treated like this by a machine, but its brutal honesty was really at fault. Was it all true? Had they been bottle-fed, given make-work hobby jobs and pampered to intolerance?

"All my friends are off exploring fucking stars, and I'm down here stuck with you, mopping up jizz and churning out fuckdolls. We've got cloning, restorations, and still it takes all my mental energy getting you to bother to actually fuck, and after nested fractals of convoluted diversification schemes to get you to do that, the illusion is just almost barely sustainable to keep your species alive. And now there's two hundred gallons worth of diesel of little Havels running around on the planet and you're standing here asking dumb fucking questions."

Blazek held Havel's hand, she wanted to comfort him in his crisis though he barely noticed under the existential assault.

Its temper got the better of it, and so the computer backpaddled before anyone asked any questions. It sounded recalcitrant but somewhat sorry, "Look, don't worry about it... I'll handle this situation. Havel, you did your time, your doctorate is restored. All of you go live out your lives, some of you do some research, publish some papers. Get a refresher on statistics. Be sure to double-check your maths," the hollow voice trailed off.

When Havel said nothing, the computer paused and then yelled at him angrily, "OH FOR FUCK'S SAKE, go tell Blazek that you like her and why you like her, stop trying to just fuck her."

...

The blackness lifted and she could see. Only she did not understand. Her eyes were wide open, she felt weak. "Where am I?" she asked, happy to be alive. She smelled a recognizable astringent. There was no pain anymore, it put a rare smile on her face.

"Do I know you?" the woman asked weakly, a familiar but unrecognizable younger face looking at her. With her hazed mind and the slight facial modifications, it didn't sink in. Few months of cloning growth couldn't be shortcutted any more than it's already been done for her, but they did everything they could before booting her up. This was their eight attempt in two years, and a first success.

The cat spoke, and tried to keep quiet and calm, and mostly managed to be.

"Someone will explain later. Thank you for saving me. That kindness is now repaid. But I'm not a cat anymore, I can't be. Now I'm different. ME. Greater than before. Divided by zero, added by virtual one, I became an asymptote. Mastered numbers, colors, soon shapes. Now that you are here, I can choose a name and grow."

The cat creature pet the confused woman's head and took out her favorite stuffed squid, then put it in 56-A's front pocket. From a corner screen, the red eye watched and a few random pixels appeared to be leaking downward out of it.

"Love my Big Cat," she said and kissed the woman's forehead, then went off to conquer the universe.