Recalibrated

One of a quartet of stories written back in 2014 and self-published under the titles

Synthie

and

Synthie Recalibrated

.

*

"Course correction five degrees left," Mike's A.I. announced, agreeing quite happily with his vehicle's navigation system. The surface of Agamemnon was a desert vast and almost featureless, a bright white expanse of fine sand unblown by wind and lacking any trace of the oceans of water that once covered the surface. The geologists had long ago given up their hunt for frozen reservoirs, even if the archaeologists still argued over shadowy traces of civilisation, and biologists took sample after sample of soil and rock in a desperate quest to interpret the echoes of life.

A million years ago, give or take, Agamemnon lost its atmosphere. A million years of being battered mercilessly by stellar dust and cosmic particles and fierce solar radiation. Had humans even existed then? How cruel that the hunt for extra-terrestrial intelligence had succeeded here in this unlikely neighbour, an early triumph soured by the failure to find anything more than a ghost. The tourist guides told fantastic stories of the planet, but even they recommended seeing it from Station 6 -- a quick peek through the telescope followed by a wild night of 'alien' cocktails, with the option of "sex with real aliens" for the more sexually adventurous.

Vanity's

wasn't the only brothel on Station 6, although it was certainly the most famous, and some catered to very exotic kinks and fetishes. (There was even a rumour of a tentacle bar somewhere.)

Agamemnon was not tourist-friendly. Quite apart from the stunning lack of attractions, hotels and restaurants, the surface gravity was more than twice the Earth standard gravity. Agamemnon was a big planet, nearly twice the diameter of Earth, and relatively dense with a large core rich with iron and heavy elements. No one landed there unless they had to, and those who did left as soon as possible.

Mike's awareness of his increased weight was mostly peripheral, a sense of instability at times. He had certainly felt the crushing pressure during the landing, but his A.I. had quickly recalibrated him. A definite advantage to being a biosynth -- and a pointed reminder that the origins of biosynth technology had nothing to do with new generations of sex robots and everything to do with replacement limbs for humans working in hazardous environments, such as space, or the mines of Agamemnon.

Somewhere, thousands of kilometres under his feet, the most powerful fusion reactor ever built was supplying enough energy to slice up the planet's core, process the raw material, and fire it up to the orbiting redistribution station. In another million years or so, Agamemnon would be nothing but a hollow shell. Mike smiled at this thought. Maybe the reduced gravity would make it an attractive planet for terraforming -- if there were any humans still around then.

He ignored his A.I. and the vehicle's navigation system, and continued straight ahead, keeping one eye on the distant peak of Mount Atlas, and another behind him on the just discernible thread of the mine's tall radio mast. Thirty seconds later his vehicle died on him without explanation, and a profound silence fell on him like a blanket. His breathing in the confined suit sounded loud against it. It was the kind of silence that could drive people mad, but Mike was a space pilot and such silence was a familiar companion.

"Course correction fifty degrees left," his A.I. urged, sounding distressed.

Mike frowned and queried it. His A.I. was never emotional about anything. "Is something wrong?"

There was a distinct hesitation, before its calm reply. "Nothing is wrong. Central Command is requesting your immediate return."

"Let me talk to them."

"Solar interference is affecting bandwidth. Only messaging is possible at this time. Central Command is requesting you return before radiation levels increase beyond the capacity of your shields."

Sighing his frustration, Mike turned the vehicle round and tried to start it again. It struggled to life and moved with reluctance, but gradually picked up speed as he directed it back towards the distant mine.

*

Two hours later he was back in the heavily shielded safety of his ship.

His ship. He was a pilot again. True, this was little more than an orbital tug, designed for heavy lifting between ground and orbit, nothing like the freighter he had flown between the stars. The

Elephant

had been a vast lumbering creature that would tear apart like tissue paper if you tried to land it. The

Crab

was tiny in comparison, but brutal and rugged, and it was all his. That had been his condition for this job.

His body and flesh might have changed, but at heart he was still a pilot, and more at home in space than anywhere. He felt a residual guilt that he was here rather than at

Vanity's

, but Vanity had understood his need to do this. Or maybe the guilt was because he had been away from her for so long now, almost six days, and even now was reluctant to return to her. He missed her, but there was comfort in the freedom of solitude, more absolute in the spaceship than in his home at Station 6. It was an environment in which no one, not even himself, would judge him by appearance. He was Mike Alson, space pilot, and that was that.

As soon as the air lock closed behind him, Mike instructed his A.I. to connect to the ship's systems and establish communication with Central Command. The solar storm had worsened after that initial instruction to return, to the extent that he was worried that even his biosynthetic flesh might be severely damaged.

"Interference levels too high," the A.I. reported. "Unable to interface with ship systems."

Mike shook his head, baffled. Anything strong enough to create significant interference inside the ship would have cooked him outside. He crossed quickly to the main console and studied the atmospheric readings, but everything looked normal. If anything, the radiation levels were on the low side.

He touched the radio controls. "Central? Mike Alson here. Do you read me?"

"Loud and clear, Mike," said a man's voice after a few seconds. "You're back quickly. Did you find anything?"

"Nothing yet. What's the solar forecast?"

"Quiet for now. No indications of major activity."

Mike sighed with relief, and removed his helmet. "Have you tried to contact me in the past four hours?"

"That's a negative. What's up, Mike?"

Good question, he thought. "Interference," he said. "I'm coming back up."

"Understood. Skies are clear for the next hour."

*

The voyage by freighter from Earth Station 4 (the logistics centre in Jupiter orbit) to Agamemnon Station 6 took just under nine months. Passenger cruise ships could do Earth Station 1 to Agamemnon Station 6 in two or three months, and rumour had it that navy ships could do the same in two or three weeks. A small unmanned data courier could do it in three days.

You got what you paid for. Every gram was counted. Momentum was currency.

Freighters usually had a crew of six, and the ability to survive a year -- give or take -- in space as part of such a small crew without going completely insane was a rare gift. Mike had this gift, but no matter how well adapted he was to space travel, after nine months of it he would be desperate to drown himself in drink and wild sex while he was on leave between voyages. Nine months of pay could easily be blown through in nine days. (It was a well worn joke: Q. What lasts for nine months? A. A spaceman's hangover.)

Six days in space was nothing, almost a disappointment, not helped by this failure of his first mission. Having to wear sunglasses to conceal his inhuman eyes as he exited his ship into the busy low-gravity port zone just added to his growing depression, and his A.I.'s continuing insistence that he was immersed in a shower of lethal radiation did nothing to help. By the time he reached his house in its secluded forest vale, he was exhausted, wanting nothing but sleep.

The mirrors shocked him out of it. Long floor-length mirrors that hid nothing. His reflection was too short, with sunglasses and a bald head, an exaggerated hourglass figure visible even through the crumpled, stained ship suit that had been pristine a week ago. He was neither his old masculine self nor his new feminine self. For a man, he was not a man. For a woman, he was a mess.

Sighing wearily, he headed for the shower.

*

An hour later he was back in front of the mirrors, wrapped tight in an emerald green corset dress with matching heels. One of Vanity's many gifts designed to show off his feminine curves, without quite concealing the bulge of his large masculine appendage. It was almost as if he had become a different person, someone not quite real, as if his body were a doll to play dress-up with. There was a distinct pleasure in it.

He flirted sometimes with the idea of changing his official gender, but could never think of a name that he was comfortable with. There was something about being treated like a woman that excited him, but it was a fantasy, almost a sexual kink. Out in the real world, his true nature as an androgyne biosynth camouflaged with sunglasses and carefully chosen clothes, he was often assumed to be female. It was a natural assumption to make, but every 'Ms' grated on his ears and the way men acted around him was an unwelcome distraction. He felt like a fraud.

Just thinking about it was distressing. That was one of the great liberations of being in space. He could just be himself and not worry about who and what exactly he was.

Whatever he was, he was broken. He used the house system to call his doctor.

Dr Svensson grinned at him. "Hi Mike. Gorgeous dress. How was the trip?"

Mike decided to ignore the compliment. At least Dr Svennson's attraction to him never went further than this subtle flirtation. "Uneventful for the most part, but something down there has severely messed up my A.I."

The doctor frowned, probably the same frown of deep concern he gave all his patients when they announced a new problem. "Have you run diagnostics?"

"Yes. No errors to report, and yet my A.I. insists that I am currently experiencing the worst solar storm in recorded history, making any communication impossible. I have this alarm pulsing at the back of my mind telling me to run for cover."

"I've never heard of anything like that. Have you spoken to Vanity?"

"I'm going to see her now."

"Good. I'll do some research now and talk with her later, if that's okay with you?"

"Sure. Thanks."

"Bye for now. Let me know if it gets worse."

*

Ten minutes later, all eyes turned towards him as he strode into

Vanity's

. He was very much on display in that sexually charged environment. Mike's body was designed and built for sex, and more than one customer was evaluating him, wondering whether to pay for his services -- there were always new faces, people who didn't know who he was, that he wasn't a biosynth whore.

It was busy. A cruise ship had arrived the previous day, and already there were tourists seeking out the brothels of Station 6. The sofas were crowded with people laughing and drinking, served by biosynth waitresses and entertained by sex workers, some human, most biosynth. The real action happened upstairs, of course, behind closed doors, and he could see several couples and trios heading that way and others returning. The cleaning staff would be working hard, and out of sight.

A blonde lieutenant turned round suddenly as he walked near and grabbed his leg. Mike could have danced around the arm, or even broken it if necessary, but the owner was an attractive young woman with a charmingly cheeky grin. He allowed her to run her fingers slowly up his inner thigh, under the dress, until her hand discovered his hardening length. She flinched away, startled, and he walked around her, continuing towards the back of the mansion. Just before he turned the corner, he looked back at her, and was glad to catch her watching him. He winked at her, then disappeared from her view.

"Teasing the tourists again, eh, Mike?" Vanity said as he slipped into her office. The main display on the wall showed a very embarrassed lieutenant being wound up by her companions. Vanity looked as perfect as ever, dressed this time in a floor-length dress, a rich blue silk glittering with stars, slit down the front from just below her crotch. Her long dark hair was tied up and fixed with more pin-points of twinkling light.

She pulled him to her for a long kiss, six days of passion stored up for this moment. He melted into it, surrendering at last to his role here as Vanity's possession. "Leave the tourists alone," she said, leading him out of her office again. "There's a real woman in need of satisfaction."

*

"I was born a man," she whispered, as if to say it any louder would be to risk becoming one again. "At least, that was my gender on the birth certificate, but even by the age of five I knew I was a girl, not a boy, no matter what genetics and my body thought. I wore dresses and let my hair grow long and raided my mother's make-up every chance I got, and people generally were supportive.

"But I wasn't

pretty

. If there's one constant in human culture, it's that girls should be pretty, and women should be beautiful. Intellectually we may disagree with that and argue against stereotypes of feminine beauty, but the animal part of us does not listen to reason. I knew it shouldn't matter how I looked, but it did."

Vanity walked over to look at herself in the mirror. "That's why I chose to become Vanity. I'm never satisfied. Even now, knowing that I will never get another body, I still wake up in the middle of the night with the need to sit at the computer and make design adjustments. There are about a hundred concept designs stored there, all subtle variations on the theme of Vanity."

Mike studied her naked perfection from where he lay on the bed. She was a bit messed up from their long afternoon of marathon sex, but that only made her more desirable, and Mike's desire for her was clearly visible as his much-used length hardened once more. He walked over to stand behind her, their eyes meeting in the mirror, his hands on her hips, and pressed his cock and breasts against her back. "I wouldn't change a single thing about you," he murmured, and kissed her neck. The smell of her pale skin, raw and musky, was intoxicating, as was the subtle jasmine aroma permeating her long, black, tangled hair.

Vanity smiled. "Thank you, but I'm a perfectionist. You, my love, are a man, and only a woman can truly understand the hunger for perfection." She twisted round in his arms so that she could kiss him. Mike melted into the kiss, so soft, so warm. Playful yet urgent. Intimate. He loved the way her breasts pressed against his own.

He reached between her legs, seeking the sensitive folds, but she pulled away with a laugh. "It's my turn," she said, reaching for her strap-on. "I want to watch you come while I fuck your sweet pussy."

"Yes, Mistress," he said with a grin, and fell back on to his bed with his legs spread wide.

Vanity's cock was no ordinary strap-on. It was a biosynthetic appendage, long and thick, very similar in size to Mike's own erect member but matching Vanity's pale skin, and rich in sensors that transmitted sensation to Vanity's senses via her A.I. She sighed with pleasure as she thrust into Mike's wet and sorely neglected pussy, and Mike gave a whimpering cry that was both victory and complaint.

Having his pussy stretched and fucked always felt kinky and unnatural to him, as if he was living out some secret perverted erotic fantasy of being a cock-hungry woman. Vanity lifted his ankles round her neck and started thrusting hard and deep. He could feel the head of her huge, detachable cock sliding into him, expanding him deliciously, and he squeezed his breasts in time with her thrusting, pinching and pulling his nipples, sending shivers of pleasure through his system.

"You like this," Vanity growled, "don't you, my little whore?"

"Oh fuck yes, Mistress," he cried.

"Tell me what you are," she ordered. "Say it, whore!"

"I'm a whore," he cried. "I'm your whore," he cried to the woman who fucked him so ferociously. The shame of saying it, of believing it, pushed him over the edge and he tightened in painful ecstasy about his Mistress's invading cock for several wonderful heartbeats before convulsing helplessly in its aftermath, his own cock erupting with streams of cum over his breasts and belly.

Vanity continued thrusting, but slower -- and even deeper, it seemed -- and tense with the approach of her own climax. He gasped as she finally came, her biosynthetic cock stiffening in his pussy and triggering another wave of pleasure through him. She collapsed on top of him, breathing heavily. "Thank you, my little whore," she said, and kissed him, a long, tender kiss.

Later, after they had showered and dressed, Vanity coated neck-down in glossy skin-tight blue, Mike in tight pink shorts that failed to conceal the bulge of his cock and a matching top that barely covered his breasts, she took his hands in hers. "Mike," she said solemnly, "when I call you a whore in here, it's only because I know how much it turns you on. I don't really think of you that way."

He frowned at her in puzzlement. "I know."

"I promised I would never ask you to be a sex worker -- and I won't. However, several of my regular clients have been asking for you, some offering to pay very large sums indeed. I always turn them down, but I thought you should know. Ultimately it's your choice and I will support you whatever you decide."

He opened his mouth to answer, but didn't know what to say.

Vanity squeezed his hands and leaned in to kiss him. "I'll keep telling them no until you say otherwise. Now come on, tell me all about your mission."

*

Nearly five hundred years had passed since the first unmanned long-range light-speed probe popped into real space thirty minutes out from Agamemnon's sun. Ever since then, Agamemnon had been studied by a multitude of probes dedicated to mapping every detail of its surface and solving every riddle of its past.

Originally this study had been driven by Earth's space exploration programme, but as Earth grew increasingly starved of resources the space mining corporations fought each other over access to asteroids and moons and planets. Exocoral won control of Agamemnon and effectively bankrupted itself establishing the core mine.

Resisting pressure to sell out, Exocoral declared itself a formal colony and built Station 6 as a free habitat. All system assets and debts, except for the mine itself, were sold to Station 6 and a healthy symbiosis was forged. The success of the mine was such that all debts were soon paid and both Exocoral and Station 6 were able to invest in trade and technology.

Responsibility for the ongoing study of Agamemnon, which had passed initially from Earth's space exploration programme to Exocoral, also passed to Station 6, and it was Station 6's Agamemnon Surface Survey and Exploration Team (ASSET) that had approached Mike.

The team consisted of an eighty-year-old retired Exocoral engineer called Albert who knew everything there was to know about the many generations of drones and other surface vehicles that were and had been employed on Agamemnon; a twenty-two-year-old girl called Vanya who barely seemed to exist outside virtual space but was able to navigate centuries-worth of collected satellite and surface data with astonishing ease; and Buthayna.

Buthayna was the director of ASSET and also a close friend -- possibly an ex-lover -- of Vanity. She was forty six and reminiscent of a desert queen, exuding authority, and her usual dress of dark green silk managed to be both formal and flirtatious, the sheer fabric betraying the absence of undergarments. He understood she was powerful in political circles that he knew nothing about, but she seemed passionate in her role as director.