Sexual Angst(rom)

*Note to readers: If you prefer easy, breezy love stories, may I recommend Creative Writing (a true story about an affair with my high school English teacher) or 911, What is Your Emergency? (a fictional May-December romance) or Bagging Lauren (another real-life adventure involving a yours truly and a married Mormon woman.)

This one has a fair amount of scientific information in it and a lot of folks would rather stick a sharp object in their eye than read anything technical. But if you enjoy science and technology and don't mind reading details, you may just possibly enjoy this one. If not, there are plenty of other options!

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"Mr. Grantham? I'd like you to listen to something. Would you mind?"

Blake Grantham was the Albert Einstein of his generation. Born in 2225, he graduated from MIT at the age of 15. He completed his PhD in pico-technology two years later and with the help of Eric Carson's start-up money, became the CEO of Angstrom-Dynamics headquartered in Seattle, Washington. Just ten years later, his company was on the verge of breaking the Angstrom barrier as he was about to turn 25.

Melissa Stewart was perhaps about the nicest woman Blake had ever met. And for what it was worth, she was still a very attractive woman—even at 35. She was also incredibly intelligent and very good at what she did. That's why he'd hired her a year ago to be his primary executive assistant. Unfortunately, she was also a true believer and although she didn't push her outdated views of human-to-human love on others, she wanted no part in the work she helping become reality beyond a paycheck and the opportunity to be around real men, one of whom might one day take an interest in her. Being a hopeless romantic, she couldn't help but hope she might possibly meet a real, live human being who would fall in love with her and if she were really lucky, even propose marriage. Her biological clock wasn't just ticking, it was hammering at her. At 35, she had precious little time to make her deepest dream come true. She wanted nothing more than to have a baby the way women had done in the distant past. It was a dream to be sure, but true believers were dreamers and for them, hope sprang eternal.

"You're not going to try and persuade me that android love is evil again, are you, Melissa?" Blake teased.

Melissa gave him that raised eyebrow look. Blake Grantham was her boss and without doubt the most brilliant man she'd ever known, but she still held out hope she might be able to persuade him to at least be a little more open to the possibility of dating a real live girl. She knew he'd been on a few actual dates in the past so, maybe—just maybe....

Melissa smiled. "I can't say that I don't have an agenda, Mr. Grantham. But I just thought this was a very interesting take on a topic that was once part of parcel of life in America. What I find most fascinating is how right he was only for the wrong reasons. And I think today's woman needs to understand the truth. So may I play it for you?" she asked.

"Truth. You know I don't like that word, Melissa. It implies a kind of divinity. Truth is relative and not absolute," he told her. He had to admit, were he ever to date another human female, he would look for someone like her with all of her beauty, grace, and charm. He also had to admit, she practiced what she preached and she was as desirable as any human female could be. But he was too busy developing the most advanced androids ever known and if he got it right, human love and marriage would go from rare to virtually non-existent. It would become the buggy whip of the 23rd century and Grantham would spend his life with a loving female android of his own personal design.

"Is that a 'yes', Mr. Grantham?" she said pushing his patience to the limit.

"Okay, sure. Go ahead. But I need to keep working over here while I listen, if that's okay with my executive assistant."

Melissa smiled warmly at him again as she up cued the holographic audio-visual display and mentally hit play. "There you go. Enjoy!"

A loud male voice boomed out, "The feminazis would have you believe that men are irrelevant. That they are nothing but sperm donors which implies that no woman needs a man these days. In fact, if she's dependent on a man, then she's not even a real woman! This is the kind of plastic banana, good-time rock-and-roll nonsense that's taught to young skulls full of mush in our universities today. Folks, it's the 21st century and everyone but these kooks, okay—these kookettes—are wrong! Both men and women are essential parts of the equation and neither will ever become obsolete!"

"What was his name?" Blake asked.

"Rush Limbaugh. He was this mega-rightwing talk show host back in the days of radio. He was a hero to conservatives and loudmouth fool to liberals in the days before we were able to move beyond politics and religion. Love him or hate him, he was quite a phenomenon in his time."

"Yeah, okay. I get it. I have no idea why you played that, but I have to admit that was an interesting take. Women had been treated like second-class citizens for thousands of years. With the advent of the birth control pill and a real opportunity to earn their own money, women could finally be independent from men for the first time in human history. But the flip side of that coin was that what it meant to be a woman fundamentally changed, as well. They no longer needed to be the adoring, stay-at-home wives they'd been for decades baking bread and preparing dinner waiting for their husbands to come home from work. So along with their independence came a new attitude many men had trouble dealing with. Feminists—or feminazis—as your radio guy called them—viciously attacked and mocked men who didn't like the changes they were championing for being wimps or even misogynists. Yet many men still craved the attention of a woman who would be loving, nurturing, and supportive AND hot in bed. Finding one was becoming increasingly difficult from the 1970s until just a couple of decades ago. Well, if you consider a female android a woman they way I do, that is. Of course, the feminists would say a guy like that just wanted a second mommy to hold him and burp him, but they couldn't have been more wrong. What's most fascinating is that this Limbo guy was bitching about feminists claiming there was no longer any real need for men when it's actually women who have largely become irrelevant. It's women who are now little more than egg donors. It's rather ironic in light of what some folks thought a couple hundred years ago, don't you think? So I guess that was at least worth listening to in light of the way society and love have evolved over the last 250-300 years."

Melissa sighed. He just didn't get it. While he was brilliant, he could be so...clueless...and that frustrated her to no end. The point she was trying to make was that as much as she didn't care one way or the other about some long-dead talk show blabbermouth, SHE understood Limbaugh was right. Women blew it. They got so full of themselves when they got their independence that they turned most men off. Men didn't want a mommy, but they did want a loving, caring, sexually active woman to be with. Feminists, because of their in-your-face rhetoric, threw the baby out with the bathwater and set up the future exactly as it had unfolded. For true believers like Melissa, it meant that ever finding a human male to fall in love with was a virtual impossibility. And her boss was the one doing the most damage, and that hurt her deeply because she would do anything to get him to understand she could be and wanted to be the kind of woman traditional men used to date and marry before the days of sexy female androids who were all those things 24/7.

She worked up the nerve to say (without the exasperation she was feeling), "Mr. Grantham? My only point was that some of us women have learned from the mistakes of the past. We're ready, willing, and able to be everything a caring, loving man would want. We won't be treated like doormats of course, but we'd trade this so-called independence of ours for real love with a real man any day."

"Okay, Melissa. Point taken. But here's the counterpoint. Now that a man—any man—no matter how unattractive he may be—can choose a sexy, gorgeous, android woman who never has a bad day, who never has a headache, who never argues, who always wears exactly what a man likes all day, every day, and who lives only to please him, why would any sane man choose a real woman anymore?"

Melissa's heart sank. Deep down, she knew he was right, but even deeper down, she couldn't let go of her romantic dreams...her...fantasy...that one day a real man, not an assemblage of pico-circuitry, would love her. He would want her. He would...choose her.

Ken Carson was listening to the brief exchange between Melissa and Blake. He too, knew Grantham was right. The popularity of android women who could be programmed to be anything and everything a man wanted had made it virtually impossible for any woman who touted her independence to find a man. Of course, she could always purchase a male android, but as with prostitution and pornography, most women didn't care for robotic companions. Although a well-programmed android could carry on an intelligent conversation, the fact that their emotions weren't real was very troubling for most females. Men, on the other hand, had no such issues. And most were willing to do whatever it took to include working two or even three jobs to save up to buy a female android rather than bother dating and marrying an a real, live female.

And why wouldn't he? History had shown over and over again that all but a tiny minority of women who got married had children, cut their hair, and soon stopped being very interested in sex. That either caused the marriage to end in divorce or for the man to go looking for sex outside of marriage. Plus, staying together meant putting up with all of the bullshit demands and the other baggage real women brought to a relationship. Once androids that looked like real women and that could function like them were readily available, the need for women dropped off dramatically. Bitchy women were relegated to celibacy or lesbianism but no man on earth would touch them. Dating and marriage were largely a thing of the past and women were the real losers. But hey, they had the freedom to be loud and proud, right? Yeah, right. Just try holding loud and proud at night and see how that works for you.

Carson was so confident in Grantham's views and his abilities, he'd invested over five billion dollars in Angstrom-Dynamics. Grantham's Pico-technology patent had already returned every dollar he'd invested and a whole lot more and money was flowing in faster than he could keep up with. Carson wasn't a scientist and if...no, when...Angstrom Technology or AT came on line, he might well end up the richest man on earth. He was an investor and already one of the top ten wealthiest men, but if Angstrom-Dynamics hit pay dirt.... He didn't need to understand the technical details of the development of Technology-Based Sexual Satisfaction or TBSF, as this rapidly-growing area of science was called. He just needed to see its full potential and Carson had a gift for doing just that.

He thought back to Blake's initial pitch for investment capital in Angstrom. He'd already made billions as a result of his patent on Pico-Technology while AT was the wave of the future. They didn't need a lot of convincing, but Grantham took the time to briefly walk them through the history of sex leading up to the bottom line of how and why a female Angstrom-Android or AA would be a quantum leap over the immensely popular Pico models and even more preferable to men than human women.

He began his presentation by stating the obvious; that sexually speaking, things had essentially remained the same from the rise of mankind until the invention of the printing press which allowed those willing to risk the wrath of Holy Mother Church to put pornographic thoughts on paper for the first time. The later invention of the camera made it possible to take photographs of nude men and women and show them or even sell them to others. For decades, the combination of nude photographs and the written word were extremely popular with men around the world. Neither were invented with sexual satisfaction in mind, but as with all new developments in technology, there were always people (and there always would be people) ready to exploit new technologies to that end.

Grantham then showed a slide depicting every human sexual interest and activity on a Bell Curve beginning with the most basic: fantasy and masturbation. Both were age-old practices enjoyed by billions of people over the past millennia and occupied the spot on the far left tail of the Curve. Just to their right were dating and traditional marriage (whether it be straight or gay although female androids obviously held no interest for gay men. Homosexuality had always been a part of life, but it was kept very secretive until around the end of the 20th century when religious prohibitions gave way to the realities of science.) The real issue at stake here wasn't gay vs straight. It was the male-female relationship and the often frustrating dynamic involved with it.

Beyond that, there was prostitution which was portrayed in a separate box sort of below the Curve itself. It was a practice as old as masturbation. It still existed in some tiny pockets around the world, but it was becoming a thing of the past. Men with even a modest income could afford at least a basic android model thus eliminating the need for an actual female and still be able to have high-quality sex. The one thing prostitution offered that technically made it a step "above" masturbation was human contact. It might not be warm and loving contact, but it could be better than an evening spent with Rosy Palm. For thousands of years, the downside was being infected with some form of sexually transmitted disease, another ill of the past which no longer existed.

As an aside, Grantham pointed out that unlike plain old sex, reproduction was, of course, an entirely different matter. Androids would likely never be able to actually replace women from that standpoint. Pro-creation still required a human egg and human sperm, but women were no longer needed even for childbirth as the human embryo could be nurtured in a synthetic womb thus allowing for the safe delivery of a child nine months later with no risk to anyone. Additionally, most child rearing was now done communally so the role of traditional mothers was in very low demand. It was this combination of factors that had truly made women nearly irrelevant in the 23rd century.

Moving along the sexual developmental curve was the first really big technological breakthrough. Film and video gave rise to pornography on video tapes, then on DVDs, and later, to internet pornography. Men could sit at home, turn on a computer and talk directly with a live human being about sexual topics or just watch sexual acts which someone else had been filmed at either little or no cost.

Just as internet porn was a huge advancement over printed material and photographs, the development of the first brainwave sensors was a quantum leap above live video. It made it possible for a human being to project his or her own thoughts onto a kind of 3D-visor worn with a specially-fitted helmet which attached to several ultra-thin probes which could be safely inserted directly into the thought-generating areas of the brain.

It was a tremendous leap in technology which led to many new innovations in space travel, communications, and of course, someone found a way to use it to create a new type of pornography. Well, if one wanted to use that term. Like politics and religion, the word 'pornography' had been relegated to the dustbin of failed ideas over 100 years ago. Everyone now understood that human beings have sexual needs and that traditional (or gay) marriage wasn't the only option available to people or desired by them. Society now readily accepted any and all forms of sexual gratification involving consenting adults. There were no more sexual taboos of any kind.

Even so, there was still a small number of purists who, like Melissa, refused to embrace the new technology. They were the true romantics who believed in the old ways. They still held to the notion that two loving people could be happier together than any one person could be with an android. They were a rapidly-shrinking minority throughout the world, but their rights were respected and protected by the majority. Pf course, that didn't mean they weren't the butt of a lot of jokes and ridicule from the majority who believed in the superiority of android companionship.

In 2240, when Grantham was finishing his PhD in pico-technology at the age of 15, his research had led to breaking what was know as 'the pico barrier.' It was this huge leap in technology that led to one of the most significant developments in SF as well as nearly every other area of life. This new and exciting field now made it possible to think about breaking the angstrom barrier which was the new holy grail of science.

To provide some perspective, Grantham explained how nanotechnology had been the impossible dream for much of the second half of the 21st century. The development of nano carbon tubes and other similar technological breakthroughs had been enormous. Working at such a small scale had seemed impossible just a few years before the nano barrier was broken, but once it had been broken, research was fruitful and kept providing new applications for all kinds of new things at this extremely small level.

With a warning to the men in the room that he was going to delve into the mathematics of measurements for a minute or two, Grantham posed the question of, "Just how small are we talking when we talk about nano and pico and angstrom?" He explained as follows:

"Let's start with a millimeter. The tip of a pencil is about 1mm wide and that's pretty small, right? Well, a micron is 1,000 times small than a millimeter! In other words, you could fit 1,000 microns inside just one millimeter. Here's a good example. A human hair is maybe 50-100 microns thick so as you can imagine that one micron is really, really small! If that's not small enough to make your head hurt, a nanometer is a 1,000 times smaller than a micron! You guessed it! You can fit 1,000 nanometers into just one micron and that one little micron is very, very tiny! If you're still with me, a picometer is 1,000 times smaller than a nanometer! To again provide some perspective, a cell membrane is about 5-10 nanometers thick and a carbon nanotube is just one nanometer. So, you guessed it. A thousand picometers could fit inside just ONE nanometer!"

He looked at them to see if anyone had fallen asleep yet then continued. "It is truly difficult for the human mind to imagine working at a scale of nanometers and impossible to imagine something 1,000 smaller than that, but that's what we did when we broke the pico barrier. It was seen as the greatest barrier in science before we developed the process which is now used to assemble and use particles 1 picometer in size."

He took a deep breath and said, "We're almost done guys. Hold on, okay? Without going into any more detail, an angstrom is much smaller than a even a picometer and breaking the angstrom barrier will be the sole purpose of Angstrom-Dynamics."

After watching to make sure none of the men's eyes were rolling back in their heads as he explained the relative size differences from a millimeter to an angstrom, Grantham reminded them this was all part of understanding the history of sexual satisfaction and why Angstrom Technology was so critically important as the next step. He wanted his investors to have basic, minimal background information so that all of this could eventually be tied together allowing them to make an informed decision as to whether or not they wanted to invest billions more in his new company.