Stacy woke in the early morning to an odd sensation in her groin. She flicked on the lamp and blinked against a fog clouding her vision. She growled in annoyance and stumbled to the bathroom to wash her hands before plucking the run-down contacts from her eyes. She got a fresh pair from the bathroom drawer and they quickly powered up, overlaying the real world with icons and status text from the sink, the bathroom lights, and various personal items like her toothbrush, which was 40% charged. Standing nude before the mirror, she took a minute to brush her teeth, clearing the foul taste from her mouth, as the tight, stiff feeling near her groin continued unabated.
Stacy returned to the bedroom and looked at the toy on her dresser. An icon illuminated as her gaze fixed on it, showing its status as inactive. She frowned and pulled up the menu, but most of the icons were grayed out, indicating that it needed to be turned on for the options to be accessible. With a sigh, she powered it up. A progress meter indicated its steady climb from room temperature to body temperature, but she ignored that. She had intended to search the options again, but found that it was no longer necessary. The sensation at the top of her groin had vanished the moment it switched on, replaced by the faint sensation of the desk felt around the edges of the toy's base. She squinted at the thing for a moment before looking down at the "Off" icon.
The cybercock powered down and the tactile sense from it faded. Stacy turned and headed back to her bed, but before she could slip beneath the sheets, the other sensation returned, that same vaguely uncomfortable sense of tightness. Fully awake now, she thought about it carefully, about what the feeling represented. It felt as though she had a penis, extending from just above her clitoris, and she could swear it felt like it was erect. In fact, it was exactly the feeling that she had gotten last night when she became aroused, only then it had been pleasurable. This was just distracting, like an itch she couldn't get to.
Stacy powered the toy back on and the uncomfortable sensation once more vanished. The option to flush the nano was there and she almost went for it, but a new concern stopped her. What if this feeling of erection didn't go away when the nano was gone? What if the little bots had somehow restructured her brain? She called up the sensitivity setting and dialed it down to zero. The faint sensation from the toy faded to nothing. She waited, halfway into her bed, but the phantom erection did not return. She toggled the lamp off with her gaze, rolled to her side and fell asleep in minutes.
Stacy's alarm went off at six-thirty. Her rig, which she hung from a hook near the bed to charge, triggered the pseudo-implants in each ear canal to begin playing Bach's Concerto No. 3, slowly increasing in volume until she stirred. The music faded to a murmur in the background, programmed not to stop until she actually got up and commanded it to, and to get louder again if she started to fall back to sleep. She sat up, yawned and stretched, humming along to the concerto that her ears told her was presently occupying much of the room. She turned her head to the right and found the icon for the shower, activating it as she got out of bed. A good steam was already brewing by the time she got in.
Scrubbed clean, Stacy dried off and reached for her rig. The garment consisted of a large patch of skin-toned fabric and four thin strips of cloth, two at the top and two at the bottom. She draped it across her back and the actuated fibers at the top and bottom moved to wrap around her torso at her belt line and across the top of her shoulders, using van der Walls forces to grip her skin snugly.
The large patch of fabric on her back contained capacitor fibers and a thin computer and transceiver that would interface with her contact lenses and with the world of network nodes and data streams all around her. The whole inner surface wicked sweat away through hydrophobic channels. Other fluid channels within the fabric would carry heat out into a tiny forest of fibers that sprouted almost invisibly from the back of the neck, keeping the electronics cool. At the expense of a little extra power, it could even cool off the wearer to some extent.
Stacy donned her undergarments next, her awareness of the rig fading almost as soon as it had attached itself to her skin. She headed for the kitchen next and poured a tall, steaming mug of coffee. She took a long sip, sighed in contentment, and then, looking down, uttered a single word. "Shit."
The phantom erection was back. She must have gotten too far from the toy's very short radio range. Stacy stalked back to the bedroom, coffee in hand. When she got about ten feet from her dresser, the sensation vanished. "Looks like you're going to work with me, big boy," she said to the inanimate thing. She could carry it in her purse, but it was large enough that she would have to remove items and would run the risk of it being seen if she needed to pull anything else out of it.
A wry smile crept into her lips as a completely different alternative came to mind. She went out to the kitchen and found the box the toy had come in, quickly hurrying back to the bedroom before the phantom erection could come back. She unfolded the harness and looked at it. It had articulated fibers that stretched when she pulled at them and slowly contracted it back into its former shape when released. She lowered the garment and stepped into it, drawing it up her legs to above her knees. She plucked the toy off of the dresser and pushed it out through the top hole in the harness before pulling it up the rest of the way.
The fibers subtly adjusted, conforming to her shape without constricting. She turned sideways and looked at a mirror across the room. The base of the toy fit snugly against her and the length of it stuck out. It looked like it was a part of her, simply poking out through the hole in the front of the harness. She expected the sight to unnerve her, but on the contrary, she thought it actually looked kind of sexy, in a kinky sort of way. She dressed the rest of the way and found that, with panties on and applying steady pressure, the toy flexed very slowly, allowing it to be bent downward and tucked along her body. She had been afraid that it would be obvious, but there really wasn't even a discernible bulge.
She was finding, though, that the complete lack of sensation was actually a distraction in itself, as the toy felt like a warm piece of flesh touching her thighs. She called up the sensitivity dial and set it at 10, then to 20. Now the pieces all fell into place, and she felt that she could forget that it was even there. She quickly downed a bowl of cereal and triggered the house's door locks and security alarm with a glance as she closed the door
At work, Stacy pulled up the schedule on her optics and groaned. She had forgotten that there was a training session today. The title of the module, "Preventing Sexual Harassment in the Workplace", made her pretend to gag theatrically.
"You're up for the sexual harassment training?" That came from Mark, standing and looking down over the wall separating their cubicles.
"Yes," Stacy said. "How'd you know?"
"You sounded like you were about to lose your lunch. I figured you either got the scrambled eggs from the cafeteria, or you were assigned the training."
"I know about the eggs," Stacy said. "But these things always bore me to tears."
"Mine was a few days back. I took notes. You never know when you might need to sexually harass someone."
Stacy chuckled. "So it's not too bad then?"
"You'll want to stab your eyes out with a pencil before it's over," Mark assured her. "Have fun and good luck."
"Yeah," Stacy muttered, setting her rig to automatically link to the training session, "right."
Stacy got to work on the new proposal, but she had barely gotten the basics tweaked on the document template when a blinking icon appeared in her optics. She saved the document and selected the icon with a glance.
After several seconds of mind-numbing jazz music, her vision was filled with a virtual display showing a man and woman seated together at a table, tablets lying in front of them. Both of them were young and attractive. It was a 3D render, but a much poorer job than the movie she had watched last night. The virtual actors' looked human, but their movements had a slight jerkiness to them that was off-putting.
They were talking animatedly, but the voices were muted. A voiceover spoke in Stacy's ears. "You might think that sexual harassment will never happen to you, but it affects thousands of men and women in the US alone. You might think that when it happens, it's no big deal, but its effects go far beyond those who are the victims of it. It can also happen in ways you might not expect. Imagine if this were to happen to you." The voices of the two people were suddenly audible.
"You're really a valuable member of the team, Bob," the woman said, and put her hand on his arm. "I've been thinking that you'd be the perfect candidate for that promotion."
