Sex Culture in the 23
rd
Century
By Gary L.M. Martin
Chapter 7: The Glories of SleepTalk
The next morning, when Laura went into the Manipulator, it stripped her nude and gave her a soothing dry shower. But before it put clothes on her, it asked her a new question. "What size breasts would you like today, Laura?"
"What?" said Laura.
"What size breasts would you like to have today?" Ted asked again.
"What are yew saying? Can yew change the size of my breasts?" Laura asked.
"Of course," said Ted. "It merely involves the stimulation of your mammary gland, to contract or expand-"
"Is it permanent?"
"No," said Ted.
"I can have a different breast size every day, if I wanted?"
"Yes," said Ted.
"Let me think about this," said Laura.
********
"So what are the sizes?" Rowenka asked, as she stood nude in the Manipulator. Her breasts were of a good size, but it never hurt to know her options.
"The widths run from U to Z. The lengths go from one to seven."
Rowenka held up her own ample breasts, looked at them critically. "What do I have now?"
"You have a pair of X-4's," said Ted.
Rowenka looked confused.
Ted translated. That meant that her breasts were rated as being fairly wide, but not very prominent.
She thought for a moment. There was something missing in her sex life with Manu. Maybe this was it. "Make me into a Y-6," she said.
A pair of lights shined on her breasts, and Rowenka heard a humming as she felt a tingling sensation in her nipples....
She didn't say a word at breakfast. Manu kissed her and talked casually about the work he expected to do today. Then he looked at her, and looked at her again.
"What?" she said.
"Is there something different about you?" Manu asked.
"What?" said Rowenka innocently.
"Different hair?"
"No."
"Different lipstick?"
"Not wearing lipstick."
Manu frowned. "Don't know."
"Then I guess it's your imagination," said Rowenka, a little disappointed. Hopefully he would notice tonight, when he was plowing into her. If he didn't, he would get a real slap in the face.
When she went to work, she started tabulating data. There had been a terrible hurricane off the coast of Florida, and she was checking the data to see if it was caused by Temperature Change. Temperature Change was usually the main culprit for hurricanes, as well as rain storms, drought, snow storms, and nearly all other weather conditions. Such things used to occur naturally, Rowenka was told, but now was all caused by the deleterious presence of womanandmankind.
As she was working, Dale Mastercard stopped by to say hello. He had been doing that for several days now, chatting casually for a few minutes at a time, just being friendly. Rowenka appreciated that because she hadn't really made any friends at work. Her boss Liam was friendly enough, but Rowenka was afraid if she got too casual with him, that he might ask her to Connect again.
"Hey, what's different today?" Dale asked.
"What do you mean? said Rowenka, smiling. She self consciously patted down her hair.
"There's something more...substantial to you," said Dale, grinning.
Rowenka smiled shyly, as she felt a warmth in her Global Tampon. "I don't know what you mean."
"I think you do," said Dale. He whispered, "Don't worry, I won't tell anyone. They don't have an eye for these things like I do."
"Oh, you have an eye for them," said Rowenka flirtatiously.
Why am I being flirtatious with another man?
, part of her wondered.
"I have an eye for things that stand out," said Dale.
Rowenka tittered. Her Global Tampon was positively vibrating inside her now.
"Your partner must be pleased," said Dale.
"I haven't, ah, shown them to him yet," Rowenka lied.
"Then he has a wonderful gift to unwrap, doesn't he?" said Dale.
Rowenka smiled at him. She loved the way he flirted. Manu was loving, but he never flirted like that. She smiled and tittered again.
********
"So, you decided to come to work after all," said Diana Class Struggle Enema. It was right after Fredrik had spent several hours at the Wellness Center seeking treatment for the blood coming out of his ass. He was wearing a Manpon now that kept it all plugged up.
"I have an important assignment for you, if you're not feeling too under the weather," Diana snickered. Diana was wearing tight pants which made her Chikdik especially prominent today. Fredrik had seen other women wearing Chikdiks, but somehow on Diana it made Fredrik feel emasculated.
She knew about my period! Did they all know?
Suddenly, Fredrik felt very conspicuous about bleeding from his ass. Was this how all women felt during their time of the month?
"I can work now, I'm fine," said Fredrik.
"Good," Diana said, without a smile. "I want you to write a story examining why ice cream tastes so good."
"I'm sorry?" Fredrik must have misheard.
Diana spoke more slowly, as if speaking to a retarded child. "Find out why ice cream tastes so good."
"Because it's made of sugar, and milk," said Fredrik.
"Are you talking back to me?" said Diana. Her Chikdik grew more prominent. Was that even possible?
"No," said Fredrik. "I'm just not sure-"
"Must I connect all the dots for you? Go out and interview people, and find out why they like ice cream."
"Of course," said Fredrik. "I'll get on it at once."
He left her office, feeling more than a little disappointed. His first story had been about the plans to rebuild the city of Houston. It had been a very important story that would affect a lot of people. That's the kind of stories he wanted to report on.
But a story about how ice cream tasted good? That was pure fluff. That was even more inconsequential than some of the stuff he used to write for the
West Coast News
.
Nevertheless, he dutifully went out and interviewed people, asking them why they liked ice cream. The answers were totally predictable, and boiled down to the same thing: "Because it tastes good!"
There really wasn't much to write, simply the reactions of a half dozen people. When he was done, he turned the article in to Diana. She called him to her office some time later.
"What is this?" she said, holding up a datapad. Presumably, it was his article.
"Did you do a genetic analysis of the people quoted in your story?" she asked.
"Noah," said Fredrik. "Should I have?"
"Collectively, 83% of the people you interviewed were white! What do you have to say for that?"
"Everyone is of such mixed ethnicity here, I didn't know-"
"All you had to do was run their names through the racial analyzer," said Diana.
"What's wrong with interviewing people who happened to be white?" Fredrik asked.
"All articles must have the proper racial, sexual, and gender representation," said Diana. "This isn't the old days when you could write an article and quote two bland white people and ignore the enormous societal damage you cause by disempowering historically underserved virtue identity groups. Do you know what would happen if we ran this article? There would be tremendous racial disharmony. There could even be riots in the street. And you could be the cause of it. Would you want that?"
"Noah," said Fredrik. "I'll go out and interview some others-"
"Don't bother," said Diana, with a wave of her hand. "I'll have Ted come up with some more diverse citizens, and we'll attribute the quotes to them."
"Won't they mind?" Fredrik asked. The quotes were all of a harmless nature, about ice cream, but fabricating quotes was unethical.
"Why would they object? It's all for the good of the Community," said Diana. "Don't worry, I'll fix your mess. But next time, try to do better."
Fredrik assured her that he would.
Over the next few days, Diana gave him more assignments that didn't seem to be very substantive.
His next job was to write a story entitled, "The top twenty things we all like about Ted."
After that, his next assignment was to write a story about whether people tended to get out of bed with their left foot or right foot first. (The answer: it depended on whether they swiveled left or right out of bed.)
And then he was told to survey the couches in the Unrest Rooms.
"Unrest Rooms?" said Fredrik. He had seen signs for them but didn't know what they were. "You mean the bathrooms?"
"You men, you're all the same," Diana sighed. "Your brains are all in your panties. Unrest Rooms, Fredrik, are where we go to make Connections."
"Connections?" said Fredrik.
"Sure. Let's say two coworkers want to take a Connection break. Where else would they go?"