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.
"What should I do now?"
Jerry just stared for a moment. He couldn't believe that the machine's penis was working. He had watched her work on that piece for three months alone, constructing the intricate serum-semen delivery system and the tiny nerve endings. Her work was so amazing that he just couldn't believe that it was working. "Do what you'd do with a real one." It was several moments of watching her uncomfortably stare at it before he realized that she didn't know what to do. "Dr. Brit ... "
"I'm not a virgin, Jer. I just don't know what the hell to do with it."
Jerry left his post and moved next to her, taking her hand into his and wrapping it around the rigid pole. Slowly, very slowly, he tugged her hand upward, squeezing at the top and then moving downwards. A very stiff Proteus released a sound like a groan, his eyes training onto them. The doctor didn't notice; she was too engrossed in learning how to stroke a man's cock, eagerly watching the body's changes and noting the amount of serum that was escaping from the wide slit in the mushroom-sized head.
The body rumbled with utterances from Proteus and the eyes closed, the mouth opening into a wide 'O' as the machine's penis erupted, a viscous freshet of serum-sperm jetting into the air and landing on Proteus' chest. Jerry had rapidly removed his hand and gazed in fascination as her creation worked and the body reacted as a normal man's would: toes curling, hands balling into fists, breath coming in pants. Dr. Hudson's scientist mind was working in overdrive, cautiously observing while the female part of her teemed with awe and appreciation. The penis retracted to its normal size and the beautiful eyes remained closed, as if ... she bent over Proteus' body. As if he'd fallen asleep.
Dr. Hudson wiped her hand on her lab coat and avoided Jerry's grin. "Well, he's alive. Now let's get his stats settled."
*****
As the sunset arose over the complex, Bryttani let Jerry go home and wandered around the lab in a daze. The machines buzzed, beeped and dripped, keeping a constant watch over Project Proteus and giving his biologically farmed skin and organs sustenance. Since the awakening, he had remained asleep, those jewel-like orbs hidden from her sight and from her puzzled mind. She had reviewed the project objectives from the proposal that she'd written so long ago. Make a complete humanoid machine. She had succeeded.
Now she was stuck with non-scientific emotions. She had labored over Proteus and she knew that because of her success, he would soon be leaving the lab and her control. She would be forgotten as Proteus became the university's new marketing tool for science department fundraisers. Sure, she'd get funding for new projects and she might get a promotion from it, but ultimately, she would lose Proteus forever.
She made notations on the daily charts and glanced through the window at his sweet, sleeping face. What she saw made her gasp, her mouth quickly going dry. Proteus was awake, one hand wrapped around his hard cock, giving quick, caressing strokes and arching against the table with each touch. She stood at the window, raptly gazing at his actions, frozen in place. "Oh, God." Her soft whisper went unheard. Proteus continued to jack himself off, the pitch of his groans rising with the aggression of his movements.
"Proteus,
no!
"
The odd-colored eyes trained on her, penetrating her defenses and pricking her curiosity. He sat up, releasing his cock and stepped down onto the floor, maintaining eye contact as he ripped each electronic lead and needle from his skin. His perfect lips formed one word. "
Bryttni
."
She wasn't aware that the clipboard had dropped from her hand. He wasn't aware of her fear as he pushed the doors opened and cornered her against an empty gurney. And neither of them was aware of what would happen when he touched her.
