The dream was always the same. He awakened, looked at her and smiled before forcing her onto the floor for a round of rough but satisfying sex. And the ending was the same. She awoke alone. Dr. Bryttani Hudson stretched and swung her long legs over the edge of the cot, pulling her sweat-plastered A-shirt away from her body.
There had been no phone call and that wasn't good. She had hoped and prayed that the new serum she'd given him would work, but it hadn't. Of course, Dr. Allen was overjoyed at her failure. He had snickered when she'd relayed the news at this morning's department meeting and had to work to keep his laughter silent when the department head, Dr. Shillings, informed her that her program had been selected for termination if she wasn't able to produce results in the next week. While she masked her true feelings, her insides crumbled. She was so close. She knew it. She could feel it as sure as his skin was warm.
She jerked the phone off of its cradle before the first ring ended. "Hudson."
"Dr. Brit! You'd better get down here, pronto!"
Bryttani didn't even bother to ask her assistant, Jerry, what the emergency was. She slipped into her loafers, grabbed her white lab coat and shrugged it on as she ran to the laboratory. Her lab was just down the hall from the office in which she took her nap so it took her no time to burst through the double doors and descend the steel stairs. Jerry was standing next to the ECG monitor and his only communication was to show her the readings, highlighting the spikes in activity.
Bryttani could barely breathe. "Is that what I think it is?"
"Yes."
"Have you looked in on him?"
"No. I wanted to wait for you."
She turned toward the huge one-way glass window and quickly strode over to it, looking in. His eyes were open. "Jesus!"
Bryttani pushed through the second set of double doors and quietly moved to the side of the gurney. Lying on the bed was the object of her dreams, hopes and desires. A man. One she'd fashioned out of her secret fantasies and had worked nearly seven long years to bring to life. His project name was Proteus. She secretly called him Steven.
Jerry touched her arm softly. "Talk to him."
She cleared her throat, feeling awkward and bent close to the handsome features she'd created with her own hands. The eyes did not blink nor follow her movement. "Steven." She lifted her head a few inches. No response. No fluttering of nostrils of blinking of eyes. "Steven, it's Dr. Brit."
Still, no response. Jerry shook his head sadly. "Try touching him."
Bryttani nervously nodded and laid a hand on the forearm of the naked body, just above the modesty sheet. Proteus came alive so violently that Bryttani jumped back next to Jerry. For a long minute, his arms pinwheeled in the arms, his legs kicked and the attached monitor cords and saline and serum drip lines grew taut, then relaxed. After what seemed like an eternity, Proteus settled down, his arms and legs falling into pre-seizure place, his finely-sculptured body exposed.
Jerry was the first to move. He gently detached the doctor from his arm and replaced the sheet, covering the muscled legs, flaccid penis and tight abdomen. Standing next to her, he touched her arm.
"Try it again."
"No, Jer. It might make him go into cardiac arrest."
"Dr. Brit,
you're
the doctor. You know that you might overload his sensory nerves with your entire hand. Try using just a finger."
"Okay." She leaned over Proteus again, once again noticing that his eyes remained stationary and carefully laid a finger on his shoulder. Sandy brown lashes blinked over turquoise eyes. She each of her fingers until she could safely place her whole palm on his skin. His beautiful eyes rotated to look at her, the pupils enlarging slightly. "Hello, Steven. I'm Dr. Brit."
She glanced over at Jerry, who was manning the control panel and the various hospital instruments. He gave her a nod of encouragement and a 'thumbs-up' sign. "He's fine. It seems to be waking his systems up."
"Good." Bryttani was too nervous to breathe. It took nearly three hours but she systematically touched every inch of Proteus' body, except his groin area.
"Well?"
"Well, what?"
Jerry laughed. "Come on! Touch his penis!"
"I don't want
that
to wake up."
"Then why did you give him one?"
That was a good question and one that Dr. Bryttani Hudson didn't have a quick answer for. Why give a machine a penis? She had wanted him to be a man so that when he went out into the general population, he would be equal to anyone else. But a darker thought seeped into her brain. She made him a penis because she wanted him to use it. On her.
She pretended not to hear Jerry's question and gingerly pulled the sheet back. Planted in a bed of golden-brown curls was a soft tube of flesh. She touched the skin around it, waiting for Jerry's approval after each. Finally, screwing up her nerves, she touched Proteus' sleeping penis. With each touch, the cock grew under her fingertips, blood flowing into the cinnamon skin and bringing colors that an artist's palette couldn't imitate. The bright crimson of the thick stalk and the mottled purple of the head and crown melded with the effervescence of a gathering drop of serum at the tip and the silvery sheen of sweat that spread across the entire skin surface. Bryttani's heart lurched in her chest.
