"Good morning," Gina Hansen said. She was seated in a row of her co-workers, wearing her headset, and she was rather tired. She'd spent the evening in a sex club, and thanks to the chip inside her, she had orgasmed more times than she could count. Everytime someone near her came, she would climax as well.
She hadn't realized how sore one could get, just from cumming. Well, at least the office was nice and toasty, that late December day.
"It is not a good morning," said the woman on the other end. "At least not for me. I'm Pamela Young, and I have one of your chips installed. What's your name?"
"Gina Hansen. Which of our chips would that be?" Gina asked. "The Masogasm? The On Command?" Gina didn't think much of the names Jo came up with, but as the resident mad scientist at Orgasma, Inc., Jo usually got her way.
"No. The Togetherness Chip."
"Ah," Gina said. "I'm wearing one of those myself."
"Really?"
"Really."
"I suppose," Pamela Young said, "That my problem is rather particular. You see, I'm a devoted wife. Very devoted, you might say. And my husband is a very unselfish man, but I've never - oh, it feels strange to say this to a complete stranger."
"Sometimes," Gina encouraged, "things are easier with a complete stranger. I can't help you if I don't know the background."
"Well, I've never orgasmed easily. And as I said, my husband is a very unselfish man, so he would always try to make me orgasm first. Sometimes that would go well, but other times, I'd just get worried I couldn't, and so it would take, well, what seemed like forever, and I would feel guiltier and guiltier, and less and less sexy - all in my head, I suppose. I should have seen a shrink."
"I'm not competent to judge, Mrs. Young."
"Please. Call me Pam. Anyway, instead I bought your product, and had it installed as a kind of Christmas surprise. Reading the literature, it certainly seemed like we wouldn't have to make it so complicated anymore. My husband could just seek his own pleasure, and I'd cum right along with him."
"And it's not working that way?"
"I wouldn't know."
"You wouldn't know?"
"No, because my husband hasn't had an orgasm since, and neither have I."
"Oh. Oh dear. I don't know that we can fix your husband, Pam. Perhaps try porn? A sexy nightie to get him in the mood? Viagra? It's all outside the province of Orgasma Incorporated. I can only help you with the chip."
"No, no," Pam said. "You don't understand. You see, he also decided to surprise me for Christmas. He figured that if he couldn't cum until I did, he could just fuck me, which is really the thing that feels best to me anyway and he knows that, without having to worry about having an orgasm before I did."
"Oh."
"Yes."
"So he got the Togetherness Chip, too. To surprise you."
"Yes, exactly. And now we can't get an appointment to get it out for at least three weeks. All the trained doctors are quite busy, it seems. You have no idea how hard it was to get an appointment before Christmas, and now it's just ridiculous. And anyway, we can't agree on who should give up their chip. We both so desperately want to make the other happy, you see."
"So," Gina said. "He can't achieve orgasm unless you do, and you can't unless he does. It's a catch-22."
"Yes, exactly. Isn't there anything we can do? Someway one of us can get going, so the other one can?"
Gina frowned. "You know, I have an appointment later today with our head of product development." It sounded more reassuring, she thought, than mad scientist. "I'll talk it over with her. But thinking outside the box, here, and I hope you won't be offended, but -"
"Yes?"
"Have a threesome?"
"Are you offering, Gina?"
"Well, it wouldn't do any good for me to offer," Gina pointed out. "Because I'm chipped too."
Pam sighed. "I had thought of it," she said. "But it would be so much better with someone who was there professionally."
"There are such people, you know."
"Oh. I see what you mean. Yes, but I wouldn't know where to find them. It's a shame that sort of thing isn't legal."
"You could go to a sex club, and just get off by being voyeurs?"
"That would defeat the whole point, which is about our connection with each other. No, your company's product caused this problem, and I expect you to send someone out to help."
"Hang in there, Pam. Let me take your number, and I'll call you back as soon as I can find out more."
#
Jo Scheer, Ph. D., C.M.S, listened to Gina's story and burst out laughing. "Young, you say! Her last name is Young?"
"Sure. That's what she said." Gina thought that Jo was missing the point, but the woman's mind always worked in strange ways.
"And they both bought them, trying to please the other?"
"Yes," Gina said. "It's tragic, really."
Jo doubled over. "Bwahahahaha!"
"Dr. Scheer!"
"I've told you it's Jo."
"Not if you act like this it's not. You're making me wish I didn't know you at all. If you don't figure out how to help these poor people, I'm going to quit. No more experimenting on me!"
Jo sobered for a moment. "But you're my favorite lab rat!"
"Um, thank you."
Jo frowned. "You've solved the problem for yourself. It's really no more difficult. They could go to a swinger club. Or hire a prostitute. Or come on to one of their best friends."
"They want us to solve it. And I think that's reasonable. I looked over the warning information, and it doesn't talk about what happens when two people both have the Togetherness chip."
"Of course it doesn't?"
"You didn't think of it?"
Jo giggled. "Of course I thought of it! But that it would happen to two people named Young? That's just too rich."
"I don't see what's so rich about that," Gina said.
"I don't suppose she sold her long, beautiful hair just to make enough money to buy the chip?"
"I don't have any reason to think so," Gina said coldly.
Jo tittered again. "Okay, don't worry, we'll solve it. Or rather, you'll solve it. Sounds like she's up to a visit from you?"
Gina nodded.
Jo cackled. "Okay. Get in the chair. It was time to try a new product on you, anyway, and I have just the thing. Oh, Henry!"
Arjun Patel appeared a moment later. "My name is Arjun. You mean the reason you keep calling me by my last name is because you can't remember my first one?"
Jo rolled her eyes. "I'm working with a bunch of illiterates," she said. "Fine. Patel, prep Gina for a new chip, while I put the last touches on it."
#