Suppose you're into fitness.
You go to the gym every day and do a lot of the same exercises in your workouts. Every day, it's hard; that's why it's called a workout instead of a sit-around-out. But some days are much harder than others. You drag. You're tired. You're sore. You limp to the finish. Other days? You've got all the energy in the world. You exceed your goals and you feel like you can come back for more.
And when that happens? You think,
damn. If only I could figure out the magic formula that would let me have great workouts every day!
But you can't. There are too many variables: sleep, breakfast, stress, the other people in the gym... it's all too uncontrollable.
But you still feel like you
should
be able to figure it out. That's how Pixy Pfeiffer felt about orgasms these days.
She lay on her bed with her legs spread and the whole of the cosmos surrounding her through the transparent hull of her quarters, perched high on the rim of the stern gate of the USS
Tirving
, and she frowned as she once again tried to make her body behave itself.
Dr Reilly and Rabbi Bermudo had both advised her that this might happen, but the surgeon had been clinical about it and the chaplain had been leery about relating his own experiences, so she'd ultimately decided their advice was useless. Except that now, dammit, it was coming true.
Usage-Based Sexual Response Dissonance Syndrome,
Reilly had called it. Bermudo had simply said sex might feel different. The theory was that Pixy's old pussy, the one in the body that got destroyed in her desperate crash over Canidia Prime, had taken so many dicks, been slurped by so many mouths, felt the touch of so many fingers over her many years as a Fleet supply officer doing sexual quid-pro-quos, that the anatomy of her clitoris and labia had, for lack of a better term, gotten "broken in."
"But," she'd protested, "sex has always felt good."
"Sure," the surgeon had shrugged, "but it felt different as the years went on, ma'am. You just didn't feel the changes, given the duration of the alteration."
"The what of the what?"
He'd sighed. "To put it bluntly, captain?" He consulted her medical history, now a whole lot more copious these days since the Total Clone Replacement. "You began sexual activity at eighteen and died at 34 years of age. That's sixteen years worth of fairly steady clitoral stimulation, including about five spent in Supply fucking just about anything that would fit in there, and some things that wouldn't."
"Your bedside manner sucks, Doctor."
"The nature of your orgasmic activity, ma'am, changed so slowly and so subtly, and over such a long period of time, that you didn't notice it." He'd shrugged. "Sort of like if you're working outside from morning till noon. It'll get warmer, but gradually. Then you find some shade, and you'll suddenly notice the temperature drop as a more profound change than you experienced outside." He'd smiled thinly. "Genitally speaking?" He'd spread his hands. "You've found some shade."
"Ah."
"This is all governed by something called Weber's Law. Shall I program it into your implant?"
"No." She'd sniffed. "I get it."
"Your clone was the equivalent of twenty-three years of age at the time of your TCR. So everything other than your head? It's a lot younger. Less... well, less sexually weathered, I guess."
She'd frowned in thought. "And now orgasms will feel different. Like, how to achieve them. Physiologically."
"Different than 34. Similar to 23." He'd smiled. "Ira Bermudo can talk to you about this, too, ma'am."
"Yeah." She'd gotten up, impatient. "I've talked to him. He's married, and he fucks, but he doesn't know clits like a surgeon. So... you're saying I need to just, what, persevere? Learn how to cum again?"
"Come again?"
She'd stared at him for several seconds. "Not funny, Doctor."
Reilly had spread his hands helplessly. "Just... practice, ma'am. Masturbate. Find a man to fuck you. More than one. Ask your steward, Ms Juno..."
"Yes, Doctor, that'll be quite enough," she'd seethed, but now she was wishing (just slightly) that she'd taken his advice and called in a man. She just couldn't get the hang of masturbation these days. She either came too quickly or not at all. When the climax came, it was as devastating as ever; the trick was to remember just how to do it again the next time.
Pixy sighed. Muscle memory. The only problem with it was that these were new muscles, but the memory was still old.
* * *
"You feeling okay this morning, ma'am?"
"Never better." She stalked into her office at her usual 0700, nodding when she saw that Lt Verily was already there, sorting out her schedule for the day. Spago Verily had aged a lot in the ten months he'd been the captain's secretary, which also happened to be the ten months he'd held his commission. "Quit fucking asking, Mr Verily."
"Aye aye, ma'am."
She plunked into her seat behind the desk, the day's paperwork already swelling on her desk.
Swelling. That reminded her.
"Block out an extra fifteen minutes for my workout, Mr Verily."
"Ma'am?"
"Say... every other day." It was her only complaint about her new body, other than the elusiveness of her clit: joint damage.
Happens to all of us
,
ma'am
Chaplain Bermudo had told her, always cheery, his eyes going distant as he thought back to his own clone replacement years before. The joint pain was to do with the treatments they gave the clones, the ones which shortened juvenile development in time to get them ready for possible TCR by the eighth or ninth year of service.
An imperfect system, cloning. Humans had been cloning each other for many centuries already, and still all the bugs weren't ironed out. Many people joined Fleet solely to get a clone out of the enlistment contract; Pixy would have thought that so many clones would have given the scientists ample time to figure out something as straightforward as joint pain.
Her second clone would be better: naturally grown. No additives or preservatives. A reward for a particularly brave thing she'd done once, years ago. That clone? That would be Pixy's retirement clone. It would be about thirty when Pixy went to retire, when this body would be about... fifty? And her head was more like sixty?
The math got harder and harder the more she thought about it. So, as was her wont, she just stopped thinking about it. "Just do it, Mr Verily."
"I will, ma'am." In the Academy, they'd said many captains used first names. They'd never met Pixy Pfeiffer, apparently. "Oh. Our schedule has been updated, ma'am."
"Schedule?"
"Yard orders. A refit."
Ah. Pixy nodded as he sent the new schedule to her tabslate. She frowned. "Does Commander Jatsupa know about this yet?"
