by SA Payne
special clients like you," a half beat too long pause. "Kenichi Vitorui, from a standard doll to a real Living Companion."
She smiled wider. "We're certain you'll have a grand time with your new Living Companion.
You'll find included a full instruction manual on care and training of your new pet as well as a
complimentary six month supply of nutritionally complete kibble. The shipment crate converts
easily into a housing crate for your newest pet and makes a convenient bed. If you have any
questions, our technical support line is open to injuries at any time and we'd be happy to assist
you. Again, congratulations and we hope you enjoy your free upgrade." She smiled for a second
longer before the projected message clicked off and disappeared.
The room broke out in excited conversation again and Ichi just turned to go. Will caught his arm
and kept him from going more than a few steps. "Want me to just kill you now?" Will teased.
"Don't tempt me." He drew a breath and turned back to the waiting group.
"Open it Ichi!" Someone called out.
"No, no one is opening it! Captain, please, there's been a mistake."
He glanced to his files. "You didn't order a customized doll companion from PETS?"
"I, well, yes, I did, but that was a mistake too. I don't want this." He pointed to the boxes sitting, still sealed, near by. "Send it back."
"Can't do that."
"Of course you can, I'll pay the transport, just take it away."
"Ichi..." Amanda spoke softly from where she knelt near one of the boxes.
"No," he snapped back to her. "It's going back."
"We have to open it."
"No, we don't." He meet her eye and stopped, it wasn't idle curiosity there or even cruel teasing but real concern. "Why?"
"The date, this pet's been in storage for forty three days."
The conversations and whispering stopped and even Ichi paused. His rats had a longer shelf life,
six months or more in gel storage but they had no complex neural tissue and they were rats. For
larger life forms, say, something as complex and large as a human, even an altered human, the
longest they could safely stay in gel storage without a break was supposed to be twenty nine
days.
"You didn't take it out?" Will snapped at Harvick. Someone along the lines of shipping the pet should have taken it out of storage at least for a few hours before putting it back in.
Harvick shook his head. "I just transport that should have been done at one of the way stations."
All eyes turned to Ichi and he shook his head. "Open it."
Part Three:
The box was a little more complicated than the little cylinders his rats came in. Ichi knew to step aside and let Will and Amanda, both medical doctors, figure out the complex series of latches
and locks. After a moment where they all stood tense, near to Ichi but not close to him, the box
began to cycle open. The gel that had supported and stilled the life inside began to evaporate as
it came in contact with the air outside of the sealed container and the sheer volume of it created
a very dramatic swirl of mist and filled the cargo hold with the smell of sharp chemicals covered
with the added scent of fresh pine.
Will had to put his shoulder to the side of the door that had slid open but not free and he shoved.
It unsealed all the way and swung off the crate, falling in a loud tumble to the floor. An extra
billowing cloud of mist swirled out and someone behind Ichi sneezed.
"Is it alive?" Amanda asked from the side of the crate but Will just stared into the rapidly drying interior. "Will?"
Movement inside caught every eye. A hand smacked out and caught the edge of the crate and a
bare foot shuffled forward. The pet stumbled forward, squinting under the cargo hold's lights but
alive and moving and as it moved out of the shadows of the crate, very obviously male, and
nude.
Ichi stood, stunned, as a creature from his dirtiest, deepest, most hidden of fantasy realms
stepped into the ordinary and very every day world of his stations cargo hold. Taller than he was
but not overly tall, maybe five ten at most and entirely long, lean muscle from head to foot. Even
dazed, in obvious shock, the pet moved with a jaw dropping grace. His skin was pale, milk pale,
ivory pale, treasured fine china pale. The face was heart shaped, with cheekbones high enough
to offset the strong chin and lips expressive without being soft. A straight, obvious nose was
centered between sharp eyes. Eyes the color of storm clouds, such a metal grey shade that they
pulled all attention right to them. His hair was drying from the gel and clung in long tendrils to his body, it reached almost to his waist in the back but it was deep, black cherry red. Not the orange
pumpkin red of Amanda or even a reddish auburn brown but a dark, blood, brick red.
The pet took one unsteady step forward, and than another. His eyes locked onto Ichi's and he
froze. The look, it sent a thousand shivers across Ichi's body and made his face flush a red
nearly as dark as the pet's hair. The pet shivered too, convulsed and fell dead forward like fallen tree.
He hit the deck hard with nothing to break his impact and the crowd gasped. Ichi stood silent and
startled and the pet so close to his feet started to have seizures. If the pet had six legs instead of two, he would have instantly had some idea what to do. Since he was human, he stayed out of
the way and tried to pretend he was invisible.
"Mark! Help!" Amanda called out as both she and Will fell on the twitching creature on the ground.
One of the other researchers pushed past Ichi and joined the pair. "Over forty days, what's he doing alive?"
"Pets aren't people." Will reminded them. "Help me get him to the med lab."
The group of people easily lifted the pet and they gossiped and chatted and nudged each other
along as the entire crowd followed behind Amanda, Will and Mark to the med lab. Ichi didn't
move, found he couldn't move and it took a long time for the silence to sink and tell him he'd
been left behind, alone and forgotten in the cargo hold.
His hands were shaking. "Oh my God." He whispered into the silence and sat down, hard, onto the cold deck floor.
Ichi wasn't sure how long he sat there but eventually curiosity got the better of him. He picked
himself up and dusted his pants off before leaving the cargo hold. He took the turns of the
hallways without thought and the door opened before him.
His hands stopped shaking. "Tuk tuk tuk, tuk tuk tuk." He clucked but his swarm was too busy weaving their nest to notice. Safe inside his lab again, back in the world he could make sense of,
he felt his shoulder's unknotting. He eased himself back into his chair and just sat and watched
his beetles.
Hours passed and the nest slowly grew. Soon his beetles were scuttling over their handiwork,
inspecting it, tugging on looses fibers, giving it a very careful final inspection like he'd never
witnessed before. Once they were satisfied with their work, they formed a fire brigade and
passed one egg from beetle to beetle. The first one in line quickly scurried to the front and so the chain moved the egg toward it's place in the nest. He smiled at seeing how each beetle turned
the egg carefully, how their antennae caressed the smooth grey surface with almost tenderness.
"That's it, careful now." He whispered to them, encouraging the awe inspiring sight he was the first human to see. Well, the first human that had lived to report seeing anyway.
Beside him his notebook beeped at him and Will's face ap
peared. "Ichi?"
"Hmmm?"
"We need you to come down here to the med lab."
"Now?"
"Yes, now!"
"Alright." He sighed and pushed the off button on his notebook. Four of the six eggs had been safely transported, it wouldn't do any harm to wait and watch the last two get moved.
The med lab was the size of his own research lab, it could, in theory, handle nearly any medical
emergency that got tossed their way but Ichi hoped he'd never have to test that theory. There
were only two beds and in a mass illness or injury most of the station members were to be
housed in their own apartments. Normally, both beds were empty and short of a run of colds and
the occasional flu, the station had little use for the medical facilities. A few bumped heads at
parties, a turned ankle on occasion from a clumsy step but never really anything of note. In fact,
he hadn't set foot in the lab since last year's physicals and he counted himself lucky for that.
"Where have you been?" Will scolded and stopped pacing the room as soon as the door opened.
"You just called, I came as soon as I could." Amanda sat reading files, pointedly not looking at him or her husband. The lab's only other occupant was the pet, curled up loosely on his side on
one of the med beds, apparently asleep.
"That was over a half hour ago, Ichi."
It hadn't felt that long. "I came as soon as I could."
Amanda held up a hand. "That doesn't matter. Ichi, sit, there's a lot you need to know." She caught her husband's wrist as he paced by. "And you as well, if you don't sit and settle down I will sedate you."
Will stopped his nervous pacing and drew a long slow breath. "I'm sorry, it's just, everyone is so ugh." He made a face and tried to shuck off the nervous excited tension that their new arrival had brought with him. "I'm trying." He muttered and dropped himself into a chair.
Ichi's eyes had scanned the room and stopped on the sleeping pet. His face was slack now in
unconscious sleep and there was still strength in it. Someone had twisted the thick tail of dark
red back and tied it in place and it curled in a solid rope across pale skin. There was something
magnetic about the pet and it wasn't an entirely comfortable something.
"Ichi, sit." Amanda spoke and broke into the entomologist's thoughts.
He nodded and pulled a chair over to where his friends sat, waiting. "Yes? I'm sorry, it's just, my swarm they've built a nest. There's no indication that they nest in the slightest and yet it's
amazingly complex and when they'd finished,"
"I'm sure it's fascinating." She cut in with a small smile, knowing if allowed Ishi would ramble for hours about his bugs. "There's a lot you need to know before you take your pet home."
"Before I, what?" He tilted his head a little, certain he'd misheard what she said.
"Before you take him home."
He glanced to the sleeping form and back to Amanda's wide eyes. "I'm not taking that thing
anywhere. I don't want it." It, it was so much better to think of the pet as an it and not a he.
"He's yours, you own him."
"I don't want it. You two keep wavering on having a child, start out with a pet. I've heard every couple should raise a dog or something before they have a child." He waved in the general
direction of the medical beds. "Feel free."
Amanda's face grew serious. "Ichi, he belongs to you. He's your responsibility."
"One I didn't ask for. I'm not good with pets, I'm sure Will's told you, I had a cat as a child that hated me."
"He's made to be the companion to another man, Ichi, he's never going to be happy being owned
by a heterosexual man or a woman and since you're the only gay man on this station, you can't
pawn that poor creature off to someone else." She looked to Will for support but her husband
was still twitchy and she knew the look on his face, he was slowly pulling himself together. That
meant until he was more stable, she was on her own.
"What does that mean, it's ridicules, a dog wouldn't care the gender or preferences of it's owner."
"PETS Living Companions aren't dogs and they aren't cats. Yes, the base of their genetic code is human but they're not human. They're brains are built from the ground up differently. They aren't
self aware, they aren't conscious, they don't have human emotions, they are not capable of
human speech. They're just barely smart enough to be trainable, like a dog, a rather stupid one
at that. What's more, they make them for specific functions, they're built from their DNA up for
this function." She punched buttons on her panel and brought up files.
"I'm not sure I like where this is going."
"You don't need to like it. This pet was built to be the sexual companion to another man, end of story, bottom line. Someone put a lot of time and effort, not to mention money, to customize this
pet for that function. His nerve endings are double terminated."
Ichi frowned. "Meaning?"
"Meaning he's made to respond twice as strongly to touch. His libido? In theory is doubled or
tripled from a base line human standard. He's been built to have a docile, pleasing personality.
This pet wasn't created to be someone's doll or toy or as a platonic companion, he was created
from the ground up to be someone's sexual companion." She half pitied Ichi, the man was
blushing and obviously flustered at the very idea.
"None of that means he was meant just for another man." But he thought about the curve of the pet's shoulder, the lean muscle, the way the deltoid tapered to a point on his arm and he couldn't
chase the thought away.
"Ichi, he's a rejected pet because the person that paid to commission certain specifications didn't get what he wanted. One of the modifications that wasn't successful was a self lubricating anus,
now you tell me if I'm assuming the wrong thing."
He dropped his face into his hands and rubbed his eyes, hoping, maybe, this was some odd
dream he was about to wake up from. "That's not a funny joke."
"I'm not laughing. It's all right here, a list of requested specific modifications and some are marked as failed and some unknown. Hair color, eye color, neither took exactly the right color,
the self lube seems a touch odd but it's not a difficult concept, simple implantation of specialized goblet cells but his body rejected them. The double terminated nerve endings is a difficult
modification and that one took. Even his hair length was specified, and for most of it he passed
fine but when your client is willing to spend more than this station does in a year to buy a new
toy, he expects perfection. One failure rejects the whole pet." It was beautiful in the sheer
scientific perfection of the creation of these companions and if she was slightly less ethical she'd admire them. As it was, it smelled too much like slavery to her, even if she knew that was sat in
the handsome pet's skull bore no resemblance to a human brain.
"So, how is this my fault? Why can't we pack it back up and send it back?"
"For one, he can't go back into the gel for a while. I know pets are supposed to be hardier than a human but frankly I've no idea how he survived so long in storage. For another, if one of their
free upgrade pets gets returned they don't shuffle them to another free upgrade winner.
Apparently these upgrades are fairly rare, if the winner rejects the pet, the pet is assumed to be
unforgivably flawed and is liquidated."
"Killed?" Ichi couldn't help it, he glanced to the sleeping form and the idea of something so handsome, so graceful and lean being liquidated pained him. He really was a work of art and
some gene designer had gone above and
beyond the call of duty to make him.
"Killed. Self aware or not, that's a living creature. You may not have asked for this but neither did he ask to be dissolved for spare genetic material."
Ichi slouched back into his chair. "Okay, okay, I'm not that inhuman. Just, explain to me why it has to stay with me. Why can't we get it, I don't know, it's own room or something."
"You never had a dog." She sighed. "What were you? Raised in a lab?"
"Well, yes." He answered.
Amanda glanced to Will and he shrugged, not sure himself if Ichi was kidding or being honest.
The dark haired man had a very dry sense of humor and he'd never spoken of his childhood or
home life before. "That's a joke right?"
Ichi just shook his head, a little surprised at the reaction. "No."
The look that passed between the married couple was softer this time and again Will just
shrugged before Amanda took them back to the topic at hand. "It doesn't matter, just, he's a lot like a dog. He's a social creature. Even if we put him in a room and you gave him food and water
and he was physically taken care of, he'd be miserable. We'd be better off sending him back to
be liquidated."
"Fine but why does it have to be me?"
She sighed and looked to Will and he shook his head before answering. "Look, Ichi, he's a super charged horny sex machine in a human shape attuned to men. Every other man here is straight.
You're cute and our friend and none of us have wanted to get it on with you, how awkward do
you think it would be for one of us to have that pet trying to fulfill his function with us?"
Ichi blushed again, wondered ideally if a person could die from blushing too much and couldn't
meet either of his friend's eyes. "What makes you think it would be any less awkward for me?"
"Goddess sake, Ichi, this is a gift! Right here is a creature made specifically to be a sexual partner to those that can't afford the time of a relationship. He's attractive, I know you think he is, he's made to be your lover and you're having second thoughts?" Will shook his head. "You've been hanging out with bugs too long, my friend."
"But, I'd be taking advantage."
"He's not human!" Will retorted but Amanda put her hand on her husband's arm and leaned
toward their friend.
"No one is saying you have to do anything with him. Just feed him, be social toward him, make
