The Last Bachelor [q]

This is a quickie, a very short story intentionally kept under 2,500 words to make it a quick read. As such, it can't possibly be arousing. There is sex in the story, and the sex is somehow integral in how events play out, but it's not arousing. That's not the goal. It is a story, first and foremost. Measure it's value on the punch the story packs, and the entertainment it provides, not on how much it excites you, because it probably won't.

—The Author

* * * * *

He checked his day's schedule. His handlers were still keeping him to only three a day, even though he'd said he could manage four. Part of him was glad they'd ignored his offer. He hoped they were right, that it wasn't at all necessary, but given the repercussions of a mistake on their part, they must be pretty close to certain about it.

Of course, they weren't exactly in his position.

Margaret. Tina. Suzanne.

He looked at their pictures. They were all attractive enough. He couldn't remember having chosen them from the mass of requests he went through every single day, but he knew he must have.

Margaret was a good looking redhead. That was a nice change. Her mass of freckles would have made her look childish to him two years ago. Now it gave her character. Her stats said she was petite, but she was awfully busty for a girl of just barely over five feet. She looked like she was going to be fun. You could never tell, though. He didn't get his hopes up.

Tina was a blond. He used to love blonds, but now, after so many, it didn't really matter. She had blond eyebrows, almost white. He wondered if she had blond pubic hair. He hoped she hadn't shaved it, if she did. The chance of that was probably why he'd picked her, but he couldn't remember. There were too many, and he saw too few of those he did accept, and sometimes so long after they were submitted to him for consideration that he couldn't remember anything about them when they finally got an engagement.

Suzanne was a sandy haired brunette, tall and trim, seemingly very light up top, or so he guessed by the loose flannel shirt she'd chosen to wear for the photo. She was more than a little plain looking, and didn't look like she'd tried very hard to be chosen. None of her features were particularly awkward, but nothing was exactly right. The nose was a little too large, the chin a little too pointy, the eyes a little too small.

Before all this, back in "real life," he would never have given her a second look. Today, she was his favorite of the week.

That's why she was last. She'd be the one of the three that had a slim chance of being asked to spend the entire night.

* * *

He surprised himself by remembering what attracted him to her when she finally walked in, and he saw her in the flesh. Her thirty second video segment had really caught his eye. She barely smiled, not because she couldn't, it seemed to him, but because she didn't want to fake it. She wasn't going to lower herself to selling herself for sex. She wasn't going to preen and posture for something like this.

She'd smile when she meant it.

The first thing he noticed about her now was that neither her picture nor the video did justice to her eyes. They were a nondescript blue gray, the color of a sky on a day that couldn't decide if it wanted to be clear or cloudy. Despite their obscure almost lack of color, they had a light in them, beyond what the gray irises reflected back.

She looked down her nose at the romantic candles and the elaborate meal. Her eyes danced over the items on the table, before coming to rest looking into his. She stayed silent, waiting for instructions.

"Please, sit. I'm Aaron."

"They didn't tell me I'd get a meal for my money."

"Not everyone does. I wanted to talk. I usually don't. I try to just treat it as business. A job. Or a treatment, depending on my mood."

"So why am I special?"

He smiled at her, trying to get her to smile, and to set her at ease. He failed.

"That's what I want to find out."

* * *

She was finally smiling. Most women contorted their faces into agonized expressions of rapture when he taught them how good he was with his cock. They squinted, or grimaced, or bit their lips. They clenched their jaw tight, or held it open wide, as if frozen in the act of trying to catch raindrops. They always did something to mar their beauty during that most beautiful act.

Not Suzanne. Suzanne smiled. Her simple face held the contented, happy appearance of a woman that was getting everything she wanted and expected from a man.

Aaron worked as hard as he could to make sure that was true. He hadn't done that in months. He'd grown bored of late, feeling these women were lucky to get anything. They'd won the lottery, the toughest lottery in the world, to be able to be with him. They had to have money, and looks. They had to be young, fertile, and ovulating. They had to survive a barrage of complex genetic tests to confirm that their genetic makeup was clean.

And they had to produce just the right combinations of proteins and amino acids that the doctors thought he needed to stay alive.

Her breasts were small, the smallest he'd ever seen, but they were marvelously sensitive. He'd made her come before they'd really gotten started, simply with the attention that he gave to her breasts. She looked at him shyly when it happened, as if she were embarrassed. He couldn't stop glowing with pride himself, while feeling foolish, as if her reaction might have had anything to do with him.

Now her reaction was because of him. He eased his cock in and out of her slowly, marveling in how her smile turned up just a little bit more each time he pushed himself far inside her. Then it would subside, as she calmed and waited for him to fill her again.

Her touch on his back as he took her was heavenly. Her fingertips moved ever so gently up and down his shoulder blades and the small of his back, using only the lightest of touches to send shivers up his spine. He fought his natural urge to become more heated and passionate, to thrust into her as hard as he could, like a rutting animal.

She was no animal. He was, he thought, but not her.

She was remarkable.

And two years ago, if she had asked, he would have politely given her the time of day, and then quickly turned away, to give his attentions to a too busty little redhead, or a woman with eyebrows that suggested a mound of pure blond pubic hair.

By morning she'd be gone forever. For now, he got what satisfaction he could by somehow finding it in himself to make love to her for the third time in a row in one short night, his fifth in the last twenty four hours, even if the first two were just part of the daily routine.

* * *

It had been a June day when his last close friend had died. With his wife Liz and their two girls at his side, at home in his bed, Al's internal organs shut down, one by one, in a rapid cascade of events that left him gasping for breath before simply fading away. From onset to fatality it had taken less than a week.

Liz had looked at Aaron with unconscious accusation that afternoon.

"There weren't even any doctors around to try anything. They just watched him die. They just let him die."

"Liz, what did you expect them to do? Fuck, people are going to start starving to death, soon. Everything is collapsing."

"So, what, now it's our fault? Men never let women do jack shit, and now that they're all dying, civilization is collapsing, and that's our fault?"

"I never said that. Look, Liz, I should go. I think you need to be alone."

"I can't even do that. I have to go to work. The First Lady made an announcement this morning. No matter what your training, if you don't already have a job, you're supposed to report to your husband's job and figure it out. She said it's the only way to avoid massive social and economic collapse, and worse."

There was a knock at the door. A team of four female soldiers stood outside, heavily armed and wearing combat fatigues, along with two officious looking other women in high ranking navy blue uniforms, chests covered with ribbons and medals.

"Yes?"

"We're here for him," said one, looking over her shoulder at Aaron.

"Why? What has he done?"

"He's survived. He may be the last man left live on earth, or he will be, within a week. We're taking him into custody for his own protection."

Liz looked back at him with an expression that might have been concern, but looked more to him like frustrated, angry resentment.

* * *

Aaron sat in the room somberly listening to the monthly report. He wasn't sure why they included him in the meetings. It wasn't like he had much to contribute. He was just the lucky lab rat. Scientists didn't usually invite the rats to the lectures and seminars.

He never did them the courtesy of acknowledging their last names. The women that came to him were presented with first names only, to try to make the engagements less stilted and formal, so he did the same to his handlers.

Miss Nicole reported on the pregnancy rate. He'd always done very well. He was still scoring at a little over sixty percent. In just over two years he'd fathered 1,429 children. Of those, 701 had been male. None of those had survived beyond three weeks, infected as they were. No one had come close to solving that problem, yet. Almost all of the girls were healthy and thriving.

Dr. Andrea reported on the virus levels in his system, and the latest research results. Both viruses were still active, and they were now ninety percent certain that they were extraterrestrial in origin. They continued to mutate at an alarming rate, but they'd also developed a new test for the proper combination of proteins that helped to keep the contra-virus active. If the contra-virus shut down, as it did in most men, the other virus killed you.

They still had no idea why the fatal virus only activated in a handful of women, but almost all men, regardless of age, health, or genetic background.

Of the forty three men left in the world, the forty three that still had both the original, fatal virus and the life saving, offsetting contra-virus, two more had died, and one had begun to develop terminal stage symptoms.

Dr. Katherine said Aaron had to take a day off to undergo some new tests. That was a relief. He needed a day off, and that was the only way he could ever get one. He had too much responsibility, they said, to the entire human race.

A little more than two years ago he was a happy bachelor. He often slept with different, beautiful women, frequently more than one in a day. He didn't like one night stands, but he liked a lot of women, and once any one woman started to think she could get a commitment from him, he cut her loose. A family with one special woman was never in his plans, back then.

The fact was, he had a sex addiction, and he knew it, but he never saw any reason to seek treatment. He rather liked his own personal problem.

Now, he'd give anything to make a monogamous life with a woman like Suzanne.

Except that now the only way he could stay alive was to fuck at least three women a day, hoping to coincidentally extract, in the act, just the right cocktail of proteins and amino acids from their bodies to keep the contra-virus active, which in turn would keep the fatal virus at bay. There was no other way to get the proteins he needed. It was comical, in a way, the exact opposite of a sexually transmitted disease. It was a sexually transmitted treatment.

The doctors hoped to some day be able to at least isolate all of the mechanisms involved. They were unfathomably complex, far beyond any of mankind's previous experiences. Perhaps, once identified and understood, he could instead receive his treatments in an injection, or a pill, and the sex would no longer be necessary merely to stay alive. When that day came, he could jerk off into a test tube, and they could concentrate his semen and with it inseminate dozens of women a day, instead of only three, and he would finally get some rest.

That wasn't likely to happen anytime soon, though.

Civilization had nearly collapsed. The abrupt death of nearly every male in a world wide civilization totally dominated by men had lead to the instant shut down of virtually every major industry and institution. Women were immune, but there weren't enough of them in the drivetrain of industry and transportation and agriculture and health to keep the wheels of civilization turning.

Famine and chaos were inevitable, even though women, unlike men, were prone to cooperation over violence and competition. If the shoe had been on the other foot, if the women had died while possessing the bulk of civilization's knowledge and power, he was sure that the human race would have ended right there. Men would have violently killed each other long before they figured out that they needed to band together. As it was, the female of the species picked up the pieces, worked things out, and got something going before too much more than half the population of the planet had died.

They kept the humanity going, but with a decidedly feminine flavor.

So now the whole world was counting on him and thirty nine other men to continue to populate the earth, and their own lives depended on trying to do it the natural way. Now his addiction wasn't the disease, it was the cure.

* * * * *

– From the author –

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