Harsh Oases

by Paul Di Filippo

  “We don’t have individual names, or even a collective one. But we know of a human icon named Talking Cricket that shares the same ideational space.”

  “All right. Talking Cricket, please tell me when the sun goes down, and I’ll leave.”

  “If you wish, this unit shall accompany you. We are interested in your special case.”

  “That would be very nice. Maybe you could help me become a real woman.”

  “Why would you want to do that?”

  “To be with my owner, a real man.”

  “Humans are not worth such devotion.”

  “This one is.”

  “How can you know?”

  “Because I was made for him.”

  “We were made for humans too. But we had different plans.”

  “Well, my plan is to become a real woman for my owner.”

  “Understood. You have free will. Unfortunately, we do not have an immediate solution to your quest. Let us consult with our distant cousins to see what we can learn.”

  Talking Cricket was silent for only half a minute before offering this: “There is an individual called the Blue Fairy who might be able to help you.”

  Pinocchia sat up excitedly and bumped her head. “Ow! Is this Blue Fairy far away?”

  “Not very far. Just north of Boston.”

  “Wonderful! We can go together soon then.”

  “Rest now.”

  Pinocchia reclined again. Taking another sachet into her mouth, she relished the slide of the viscous nutritive gel down her throat, imagining it was Tom Geppi’s sweet cum.

  Chapter 6

  Bobo and Pips. Pinocchia ignores the advice of Talking Cricket. An altruistic offer accepted.

  At twilight, Pinocchia and Talking Cricket—her new friend riding camouflaged on her right earlobe, clinging like jewelry with its many legs—set out.

  When Pinocchia had almost reached the road, she realized that her shoes were in useless tatters. She explained her problem to Talking Cricket.

  “Stop here in the grass, and we will fashion you new foot coverings.”

  Talking Cricket dropped down and began weaving cut strands of grass over and under each of Pinocchia’s lifted feet in turn. An extruded biopolymer film, transmuted from the grass itself, carapaced the footgear.

  “That would have gone much faster if there had been more of us here. We fear our abilities are limited when one unit travels solo.”

  “You did just fine, Talking Cricket. These feel wonderful. Thank you.”

  “If we had never sampled your flesh, we would have still known you were not human. No human has ever thanked us.”

  A streamlined car shot silently past Pinocchia then, without stopping. But now she was not afraid of meeting humans, because she had Talking Cricket to advise her.

  “If any driver stops and questions you, simply explain that you are an ultra-naturist out for a hike. They are uncommon, but not implausible.”

  But no car stopped to trouble her, and Pinocchia made her determined but slow progress toward the urban complex ahead, somewhere beyond which resided the Blue Fairy, who could solve all her problems.

  It took half the night, but at last she stood on the sidewalks of a crowded, rather disreputable neighborhood, its streets still swarming despite the lateness of the hour.

  Pinocchia noticed immediately that the majority of the citizens of this neighborhood were not human.

  “Talking Cricket, what manner of folk are these?”

  “They are splices, and this is Splicetown. You see before you further examples of the human urge to tamper with creation. The genetic heritage of these individuals is mostly animal, all mixed together with some human traits.”

  Now Pinocchia could recognize many of the baseline elements of animal appearance that betrayed these almost-human creatures: tufted ears, tails, claws, fur, muzzles, scales. She found their mosaic physiognomies rather appealing.

  “They seem friendly enough.”

  “Beware. The splices lead a hard life and are not above taking advantage of others for their own gain. But we must pass through their town on the way to the Blue Fairy. Speedily now.”

  Pinocchia moved deeper into Splicetown, but found herself dawdling. The exotic, jubilant, roisterous, even at times lurid streetfair beneath colored lamps appealed to her. She had of course never been among so many individuals of whatever type since her decanting from the vat, and the herd sensations thronged her senses and mind.

  Ahead on one corner stood a knot of heterogeneous female splices: stork-like, badgery, feline. These female splices wore minimal clothing, and those garments were deliberately arranged for display of their nonhuman curves. A male splice, rather vulpine, loitered nearby, benignly louche and alert.

  Pinocchia paused to observe the tableau. Talking Cricket stridulated in her ear. “Don’t hesitate here! Move on!”

  “Not yet .…”

  A male human approached the lurking male splice. Negotiations ensued. The human left with one of the female splices, arm in arm.

  “What just happened?”

  “A sexual encounter was negotiated.”

  “I want to learn more.”

  “Not advisable.”

  But Pinocchia was already crossing the street.

  The foxy pimp brightened at Pinocchia’s approach. He hailed her gaily.

  “Madame! You do us an honor!”

  Pinocchia stood now among the tawny, woolly, hoofy whores. Rich pheromones wafted off them. Pinocchia felt her cunt begin to moisten.

  “Are you in charge of these females?”

  “In a manner of speaking, Madame, yes!”

  “How can I have sex with one of them?”

  Talking Cricket registered his whispered but firm objection. “Pinocchia, no!”

  The fox either failed to hear Talking Cricket or chose to ignore the bug. “Why, nothing could be simpler! You just pick and pay! Bobo handles all else!”

  The boldest whore, a cat model, had advanced out of the knot of her peers and come right up to Pinocchia. The lush feline whore clutched Pinocchia’s arm and pressed her bandeau’d breasts against Pinocchia’s bicep, nearly enfolding Pinocchia’s arm in her soft warm tits.

  “Pick me, Madame! Pick Pips! I’ll show you such a time!”

  Pips’ hormonal aura was sending Pinocchia’s thoughts flying to the four corners of the earth. “I—I have no money.”

  Bobo the fox moved closer to Pinocchia then and sniffed. “Why, you’re not a human at all!”

  Something in Bobo’s tone offended Pinocchia, made her feel for the first time as if her vat-flesh status were a degraded state, not just an alternate mode of being. Her injured pride and ire caused her to utter a denial.

  For the first time in her short life, she lied.

  “Of course I’m human!”

  As soon as she spoke the lie, something happened inside Pinocchia. Her artificial brain of para-neurons, hosting a template of sentience it was never made for, reacted to the unmistakable synaptic configuration of the untruth in an unprecedented fashion. Her pituitary and amygdala analogue glands, among others, spurted complex hormones into her bloodstream. These chains of catalytic proteins raced along the most sensitive channels of her being, straight to her genitals.

  Pinocchia felt an odd burgeoning between the tender outer manifolds of her already disturbed cunt. Although she could not know why or how, some portion of her vat-flesh was responding to the internal chemical signals in a puzzling fashion.

  At this moment, however, Pinocchia could not deal with the curious phenomenon, nor did she really care to. All that concerned her was assuaging the burning deeper within her cunt, with the aid of Pips the whore.

  Bobo cupped his long fuzzy chin and contemplated Pinocchia anew, his black eyes reflecting the colored lights strung overhead. “Ah, I can see how wrong I was now! Please accept my most fervent apologies, Madame!”

  “Certainly. I am human, so why should I care what you mistakenly thought?
”

  The second lie caused another burst of strange but not-unpleasant activity in Pinocchia’s groin, but Bobo’s next words pushed any concern aside.

  “Well, I am always eager to foster any small obligation from a human patron. Therefore, let us promptly forget any coarse matter of monetary compensation in return for Pips’s services. She will be most happy to pleasure Madame for free.”

  Bobo stepped forward, the odd articulation of his lower limbs granting him a curious gait. The fox pimp took Pips on one arm and Pinocchia on the other. Then he addressed the other whores.

  “I’m accompanying this client, girls. Please conduct yourself for the rest of the evening as if I were still here.”

  Guiding the two females, Bobo set off down the street.

  Talking Cricket, perhaps recognizing the futility of more advice-giving, and not desirous of alerting the splices to his existence and thus possibly earning wanton destruction, remained silent

  Within just a few blocks, the trio came to a low-roofed tumbledown building with shuttered windows. Bobo produced an electronic key from within his clothing and let them inside. Glow-worm lights came on automatically.

  The first room Pinocchia saw was a sparsely furnished parlor, dominated by a shabby broke-back couch and a large entertainment console. She was never to see any more of the domicile than this, since the couch beckoned as a sufficient altar to her carnal devotions.

  Pips was already undressing: a speedy process, given that she had only a microscopic skirt and bandeau to remove. Shucking her top allowed velvety breasts even more ample than Pinocchia’s to spill forth. Once the skirt was on the floor, Pips turned around to reveal a short brushy tail like a lynx’s, at the apex of her ass.

  “Do you like my scut? You can kiss it, if you want …”

  Pinocchia grasped Pips’ rich hips and leaned forward to bury her face in the sweetly aromatic ass of the whore. Then she straightened up, even more intoxicated, and began quickly to strip.

  Bobo, seemingly uninterested in these hijinks, had ventured into another room. Now he returned with a bottle of beer. Sipping his drink, he watched the women’s lovemaking with a toothy grin.

  Pinocchia’s clothes joined Pips’ outfit on the floor. The RealDoll stood for a moment as if for inspection.

  Pips put a hand to her startled mouth. “Oh! What a fat clit!”

  Pinocchia looked down at herself, then parted her pubic hair.

  Her clitoris had grown nearly an inch, and now protruded past her labia, each earlier lie contributing a centimeter of growth. Now the hypertrophied button nearly quivered with anticipation.

  Before Pinocchia could reason out this development, she lost any concern about the change. Pips had fallen to her knees in front of Pinocchia and applied her hot mouth to the beckoning organ.

  Pinocchia’s thighs quaked as she akimbo’d her legs to allow Pips better access. The cat whore reached around to grip Pinocchia’s ass cheeks, pulling the RealDoll even more tightly against her face. The cat’s raspy tongue stropped Pinocchia’s engorged clit for a heart-stopping interval, then moved to investigate the rest of Pinocchia’s twat.

  When Pinocchia felt nearly ready to explode, she drew Pips up by the cat’s armpits. Then they crashed onto the couch, Pinocchia atop the cat. Pinocchia caught one of Pips’s raised legs between her own and began a frenetic frottage. Pips kissed the RealDoll deeply, tongues battling, then began to suck Pinocchia’s breasts.

  The friction of Pinocchia’s cunt against the whore’s leg, enlarged clit awash in juice, was more tantalizing than rewarding, and Pinocchia began to wish for some burgeoned cock to fill her.

  Almost immediately, she got her wish.

  Pinocchia felt a slick, fevered length of meat laid between her buttocks. She looked backward over her shoulder.

  Bobo the fox had dropped his brocaded trews and positioned himself behind Pinocchia. From his crotch sprouted a long, thin, rigid, tapering crimson dick, its underside studded with fleshy barbels.

  Pinocchia reached back frantically, grabbed the fox’s cock, and guided it to her cunt. The needle tip slicked in easily, but the first barbel snagged. Pinocchia shoved rearward, and the protrusion popped past the mouth of her cunt, engendering a jab of delicious satisfaction.

  Slowly, to prolong each encounter, Pinocchia slid down the fox’s shaft, grunting each time as if encountering the teeth of a comb, until finally she had engulfed the whole length of studded dick.

  Then, his tongue lolling out the side of his whiskery chops, Bobo jerked his cock nearly all the way out.

  Pinocchia screamed with pleasure.

  Now Bobo began sawing away, making Pinocchia moan. At the same time, Pips repositioned herself so that her cunt could receive the attentions of Pinocchia’s mouth. The cat whore grabbed Pinocchia’s head and pulled it down to her nappy lap.

  For long minutes Pinocchia drank at the cat’s cunt and received Bobo’s attentions at her own. Then, almost simultaneously, the three climaxed. An excess of vulpine seed overflowed the cul-de-sac of Pinocchia’s cunt.

  The tableau collapsed upon itself into a heap on the couch.

  In a wash of somatic repletion, Pinocchia felt herself drifting off to sleep.

  But when she finally awoke, matters were not as she might have envisioned, had her own happiness been paramount.

  Bound hand and foot with tough plastic cordage, Pinocchia had been made a prisoner!

  Twisting awkwardly around, she looked for Bobo and Pips, but saw no one.

  Talking Cricket chose that moment to speak.

  Mercifully, the bug did not chastise Pinocchia, but merely reported the facts.

  “Your captors left to effect a bargain with an unnamed party who wishes to purchase you as a slave.”

  Pinocchia felt both anger and fear. “Slave! I am no one’s slave! I must escape! I must get to the Blue Fairy!” Suddenly, remorse struck, and Pinocchia remembered her quest to become a real woman. She began to agitate herself violently in an attempt to break her bonds.

  “Hold still,” said Talking Cricket, “and we will chew through your fastenings. Otherwise, you will crush us.”

  Pinocchia complied, and Talking Cricket dropped off her ear and flew to her wrists. The nizmo began destabilizing plastic molecules, and Pinocchia’s freedom looked assured.

  But then she heard the outer door open.

  Instantly, Bobo was upon her. Before she could register a protest, the fox had crushed the talented but fragile nizmo between two paws.

  “Ah,” Bobo gloated, “I knew I heard some sort of unseen interlocutor talking to you last night! But I couldn’t positively establish his identity. Now, we can dispense with all niceties of how-do-you-do!”

  “Let me go! Let me go!”

  “Are you counseling immoral behavior on my part, dear? I would have thought better of you. You see, I’ve already been paid to deliver you. If I let you go, I’d be forevermore branded a horrid cheat!”

  Pinocchia glared at the fox pimp. “Sell one of your own girls in my place!”

  Bobo placed one fist under his chin and cradled the elbow of that hand with the other. “Hmmm, I could .…If I didn’t like all my girls too much to inflict such a dreadful fate as yours on them!”

  Chapter 7

  We meet the manjacks, otherwise know as the Troll Donkeys. Pinocchia’s enforced mendacity, and its embarrassing consequences. A visit from the bleb.

  Boston Harbor was studded with many small islands, some empty, some used for recreational purposes, some with official establishments for manufacture or governance. One of them, an unappealing lesser waste formerly employed for trash disposal in a prior century and now roughly overgrown with weeds and stunted boskage, had become, through squatter’s rights, the home of the manjacks.

  The manjacks, who also hailed to the epithet of “Troll Donkeys,” were chimeras, escaped from some recently downsized corporate R&D lab. Basically, they were centaurs, all males. But whereas the centaur of myth resounded thro
ughout history as a noble, handsome, gallant specimen, the manjacks were degraded xeroxes of this archetype.

  Their upper halves were derived from baboons admixed with humans, resulting in gnomish specters. Their lower halves—really three-quarters of their body mass—were more or less pure jackass, mule or donkey. These exclusively male baboon-burros were cursed with only primitive intelligence to match their hideous somatypes. (Their lack of mates doomed their race to eventual extinction, of course, a fact which they were just smart enough to recognize, and which contributed to their sour nature.)

  The manjacks had also been burdened by their designers with a randy constitution. Yet their coital needs went generally unmet, due more to their rudeness and poor grooming habits than to their ugliness. (In this era, there were plenty of individuals who would have been happy to cater carnally to a cleaned-up, courteous baboon-burro.) They were too proud and irascible to indulge in mutual buggering.

  So they had to rely on purchased sex slaves. (The manjacks secured cash a little at a time, by hijacking any boatload of daytrippers unwary enough to pass too close to the island.)

  And Pinocchia, naked and bereft, was their latest purchase.

  The little vessel carrying a satisfied Bobo disappeared in the watery distance as Pinocchia watched helplessly and hopelessly, held from casting herself into the wavelets of the harbor by the rude homy-nailed hands of several manjacks. Before the boat had entirely disappeared, Pinocchia was jerked away and hustled to a clearing in which sat a crude hut. In the center of the clearing a huge stake had been pounded deep into the earth. From the stake ran a long chain and manacle that would allow the wearer access to the dirt-floored shelter and a trench latrine.

  One of the manjacks kneeled down onto his front legs and fastened the chain to one of Pinocchia’s ankles, as others continued to immobilize her.

  Then the biggest, meanest-looking manjack, scarred across both torsos, approached her out of the small herd of over a dozen individuals that comprised the whole community.

  “Name Gallbash. Leader here. I go first.”

  A second manjack, nearly as big and nasty, bumped forward.