First, credit to the Editor of this one: Finchly.
This is a story that is a few years old, I thought I'd get it out the way before I begin publishing my newer ones. The ending leaves the door open to a sequel which will, in all probability, never get written.
*****
Android.
A change of circumstances
I know why I was recruited, and it wasn't only my academic record they looked at. The fact that I was single with distant family attachments played a part. They were looking for someone in my discipline, a Nanogenetisist, to run a small outworld breeding program.
I had presumed that it was in the field of fast growing food animals, like an egg to a fully formed chicken in a matter of weeks. My particular research for my PhD had been in bovine studies, from calf to cow in a matter of months.
We grew them in artificial uteruses, then in stalls. Yes I know it sounds like the old factory farming of the twentieth century but it was a lot more humane. On our new world outpost we also grew their natural foodstuffs, and made sure that they were exercised.
My job was at the sharp end, meat was a luxury product, naturally grown meat that is. You could grow muscle tissue in vats, even stimulate it to mimic exercise, but you couldn't beat the flavour of real beef. My job was to ensure the genetics produced the optimum flavour, a kind of quality control.
My first big surprise was when we transferred to the orbital station, the planet was classed as earth normal, with some 102% gravity and a 10 to 30 centigrade temperature gradient. The surprise was that it had primitive humanoid inhabitants.
Legally speaking, according to the interplanetary charter, this planet should have been quarantined. Any potential intelligence was supposed to be isolated and studied, that was only the first rule that was being broken, alongside the meat production was a breeding project for androids.
Androids, the sex slaves and harems of the super rich, had been outlawed since it became possible to create them in the twenty first century. Yet here was a covert program that I was expected to join and even improve. Genetic constructs made to order.
My options were severely limited, once I'd popped out of the wormhole this was all company controlled space. I'd been here a week before my introduction to the secret side of the operation, my skills tested in the normal side with the food animals first.
I'm sorry now that I tried so hard to impress that first week, otherwise I might never have known and my life could have retained some semblance of normality. As it was I was tumbled helter skelter into the most bizarre world I could imagine.
-oo00oo-
"Frank, let me be the first to welcome you," my new boss, Maery, said.
"Thanks. It's not what I expected when I signed up, but now that I'm here you'll have no complaints," I replied, I was between Scylla & Charybdis, I'd give them my best effort for the sake of my own skin.
"I'm sure we'll get along fine, Dani thinks you have some originality to your thoughts and approach, something you'll find rewarding over here."
Dani, the guy who recruited me all those weeks ago, I'd like to get back to Araphis, my home world and meet him again. He'd have a different opinion of me after he got out of hospital.
"Now," she continued, "you can have the day to move your stuff over here, and I'd like to see you in my office in the morning."
With that she looked down at the papers on her desk, effectively dismissing me. I turned and waited for the door to dilate before exiting to return to my former living quarters.
Here I gathered up the belongings I'd just a week ago unpacked and loaded them up on a grav trolley for the long journey back. At least my new quarters were larger with more luxurious fittings.
My evening meal in the executive dining room brought me a number of introductions, there were a mixture of scientists like me and a smattering of senior managers. It was the scientists who welcomed me into their midst.
One in particular who was to be my lab mate and mentor, who came and ate her meal with me. She was a redhead, probably in her thirties some ten years older than me. Though she didn't state it out loud she seemed to sympathise with me.
"So, you're the new recruit to our exclusive little club, I'm the one you're working with, Shelia. I've got to show you the ropes over the next few days," was how she introduced herself.
"You'll get to know the layout of the place in no time," she went on.
"So," I asked. "What's this place like to live in?"
"It isn't so bad. Yes we are rather isolated but it has its advantages as well, we have real food, no synthetics, all the latest entertainment, and you'll be very rich in twenty years time," she explained.
With a day to contemplate my situation I was resigned to being here all my working life, trapped until I'd outlived my usefulness, I'd signed on for two extendable to five. I would be the prodigal son if my parents were still alive. If I was to be freed in twenty years then that was at least something to look forwards to.
"You'll get a little estate on Raynard's world, a country house and an acre or so of the most sought after real estate in the galaxy," she went on. "And you'll get to design your own android to take with you."
That brought the subject of sex to my mind, I wondered if she was sleeping with anyone. Over in the other place we had access to a, well I suppose it was a brothel, it was a bar with a lot of hostesses, I would like to have a more permanent relationship, something one to one.
"So," I asked her. "What exactly goes on over here, I mean I know the basics, but are we expected to design for facial features and body morphology?"
"Oh, that part is already standardised, as well as skin tone, height and hair and eye colour. We're researching subtle variations such as nipple size and labias. You'll see when I show you the notes."
"Ah, so I will get a chance of original research then."
"Yes, we do a lot of research here. You see that one with the blond hair over there." She turned and nodded towards a guy in his late twenties. "He's just formulated a better distillation of Co-Prodmial. The drug extract from Zeang Fu that modifies the action of PKMzeta."
The drug that all students wanted to get their hands on, it switched off your normal memory and allowed you to write information directly into the brain. Great for learning, you could program an entire encyclopaedia into your mind, but if you got the input or dose wrong you could lose your own identity.
"His friend next to him, Dr Bremner. He's made a breakthrough in reprogramming behavioural responses; you can use it to teach an old dog new tricks."
It would also be very useful in teaching the androids.
"Professor Graham over there, he's from behavioural sciences, his electro-encephalographic lab can make a personality into a pure submissive or an animalistic lover. It's amazing how he can fine tune a person's characteristics into Doms or subs."
They seemed to have the complete setup here, you wanted it you could have it, from zygote to finished product in two years. In the wrong hands this technology could make you a super soldier as well. I'd bet that was also happening somewhere, producing the ultimate bodyguard.
My routine was established the next day. I was taken by Shelia from the lab and into the production unit, I got the grand tour. The natives did all the labouring, they were cheaper than automations, there were humans in the low level jobs where understanding as well as rule following was needed.
The tour ended at the last stage, it was a revealing look at the security of the place as well, they coped well with the privacy laws. Your company tag, melded to your wrist was all that was normally monitored.
At the borders of each domain was a physical check, a simple scan of the capillaries in the eyeball, and a body scan. This last stage, the one when they were first brought to awareness, was the most secure of all.
It was here we took the raw data for our research. The DNA, and the physiological examination, via 3D holographic and contour plotting.
This could have been automated again, but what the hell, it got me out and about. I wondered also when the next 'recruit' would replace me. With only two or three 'bodies' to scan per batch it wasn't very onerous, just a time waster.
My ostensible job was to research the data correlated by a mainframe, comparing the genetics flagged with the physical characteristics of the labia minor, I was destined to become an expert on the female genitals.
My colleague Shelia was working on nipples, as a female she was probable immune to them, I was going to become immune to pussies, except the aesthetically pleasing ones I hoped.
My first days were the establishing of a routine that framed my life, from work to some sort of entertainment. I even took a stroll outside, the day length was an amazing sixteen hours, where we were sited was in the lee of a valley between chalk like hills.
One shear edge of cliff backed the complex with the bulk of it buried into the chalk face, around us were scattered blocks quarried out. I found that it carved quite easily. I had sculpted with gypsum, this wasn't as silky soft but it was a fair substitute.
I now had something else to do besides inhabit the bar, or play in the games room. Twenty years from now someone would inherit a whole load of carved rock.
My routine became routine, my first hours were exercise, then the occasional boring hour of data collection, then studying pussies and piecing together DNA sequences that average the different types, across a range of sites.
It was educated guessing but the inferences grew sharper, adding more refinement to the model held in the mainframe. It was research with a small 'R'.
My white coat singled me out, the humans wore yellow and the natives orange. At the sight of my coat men found work elsewhere leaving only the supervised 'Thals, to whom I was as a ghost.
I went to the bar quite frequently, it was the pick-up place, here you found the company girls and guys paid to entertain us.
I sampled one or two but it was too much the mechanical side and the sexual thrill. I wanted more; I was greedy for the emotional satisfaction that comes with sexual bonding. So far it'd been vanilla.
I was on my way to take one of those occasional tests, way up into the heart of the cavern, walking through the corridors, almost up into birthing, when I was shocked to see a supervisor beating a native 'Thal, standing next to him was the creature's overseer. Both had canes in their hands but only the supervisor was beating the poor sod.
I moved to intervene, catching the man's arm as I came up behind him.
"What the fuck..."
He turned and saw me, and saw the white coat.
