The Decommission Agent

by Nash, Lisa

  Cora was missing it all. She slept without a care in the world with her head on Thomas’ lap. He alternated his gaze from the blurred misery outside the window of the train car to her elegant face.

  Duncan sat silently at the front of the care and watched Thomas. The kid just didn’t get it. He couldn’t understand it. The hormones running through his body were doing a number on him like Duncan had never seen before. Most of the Grant Bio-Syn clients were deviant hard-ons who were just eager to get off as much as they could in 72 hours. They felt the phony sense of love that Thomas was feeling, but not as deeply. They saw it for what it was, a mechanism to keep the juices flowing while they recovered from one orgasm to the next. Thomas, the dumb shit, was actually in love with his bio-synthetic.

  The conductor moved down the car and took the seat across from them. “Sorry to cut into your time, kid. Couldn’t be helped.”

  Thomas furrowed his brow. “You didn’t cut into my time.”

  “What are you talking about? Your dick’s in your pants and she ain’t boots up, so I’d say I’m cutting into your time…”

  Thomas shook his head. “My time with Cora isn’t about that… not just that.” He breathed in through his nose. “You smell that?”

  “This is an ass-old train car, kid. I smell piss and shit and a whole lot of regret…”

  “No, Cora. Do you smell her? She smells… bright… I don’t know how to put it. She just has this radiant smell…”

  “Jesus Christ, kid,” Duncan said crinkling his nose. “You’re going to make me sick with that sappy shit… Get over it, already.”

  “I know you don’t think what Cora and I have is real, but you’re wrong.”

  “Look, I know you want to believe it, but…”

  “She told me she loved me,” Thomas said.

  Duncan waived him off. “I’m sure you think she did…”

  “I don’t think she did! I know she did! The words came out of her mouth!”

  Duncan shook his head and whistled. “Hey, girly!”

  Cora stirred.

  “What are you doing?” Thomas asked Duncan.

  “Proving to you that you’re full of shit. Wake up!”

  Cora rubbed her eyes and sat up. “Are we there?”

  “No,” Duncan said, “I was just having a conversation with your guy here and he seems to think that things are getting pretty serious between you two.”

  Cora smiled sweetly and laid her head on Thomas’ shoulder. “I guess they are.”

  “They are?’ Duncan leaned forward resting his forearms on his thighs. “Tell me, how do you feel about our boy here?”

  Cora thought about the question. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean tell me how you feel about him? Do you like him? Do you want to spend the rest of your life with him? How do you feel about him?”

  Cora took on a sour expression. “I don’t see how this is any of your business.”

  “That’s enough, Duncan…”

  The conductor leaned back. “It ain’t real, kiddo.”

  Cora sat up. “Look here, I’m not sure how this is any of your business. I don’t really like your tone. I don’t like you, if you must know. That fact that I love Thomas shouldn’t be any of your concern.”

  A look of amazement crept across Duncan’s face. “What did you say?”

  “I said I don’t like you.”

  Thomas couldn’t help but smile.

  “After that.”

  “I said I love Thomas.” She grabbed Thomas’ hand and squeezed.

  Duncan’s amazed expression turned into a smile and eventually an uproarious laugh. “Holy fucking shit!”

  -45-

  Ms. Pope was about to get fucked.

  The Jake bio-syn model stood before her nude and fully aroused. He was a new prototype that she’d handpicked out of the quality control center to help her relieve some of the stress that was wreaking havoc on her nervous system. She found it exhausting to suppress the constant state of rage that was lingering in her system. She needed to get fucked, and Jake was the perfect bio-syn for the job.

  He wasn’t matched to her, but she didn’t need him to be. His testosterone was cranked up so high it made him animal-like. His muscles rippled as he stalked her around her room at the Conway Towers. Another perk of being a director at Grant Bio-Synthetic was a free room any time you were getting fucked by a bio-syn on the quality control test list.

  The Jake model had been in development for six months. He was based on an assortment of different protagonists described in hundreds of erotic romance novels. Dark hair, blue eyes, and brooding full lips. Perfectly chiseled chest, six pack abs, powerful arms and legs, and a thick cock that looked as though it could drive a nail through a two-by-four.

  Ms. Pope wanted to be ravaged by him, pushed to the brink of utter destruction, but not without dishing out a little punishment herself. She was a fighter by nature and by nurture. Her father had forced her to forego piano lessons for lessons in all forms of martial arts. If it involved kicking and/or punching, she knew the style, and she knew it well.

  As soon as she activated the unit, she threw a fist into his flawless face. The unit responded by racing towards her like a charging bear. She backed away throwing kicks and punches as she did. The unit lunged into the hotel wall and cracked the plaster coating.

  “C’mon, Jake. You can do better than that,” Ms. Pope said deftly moving behind the unit and smashing the back of his head with the heel of her hand.

  The Jake unit wheeled around grabbing Ms. Pope’s blouse and tearing it from her body. The severe looking woman felt a surge of welcomed terror race through her body. She rushed to the other side of the room in her conservative bra and gray skirt. “Better,” she said defiantly.

  The bio-syn growled and pursued her. The unit could not put two words together. It knew nothing but complete and total wanting for the woman in the room. He had to have her.

  She delivered a kick to the unit’s chest that sent him reeling backwards. She followed that kick with another kick to the back of his knee. The unit tumbled to the floor, and she leapt on top of him, momentarily pinning his arms to the floor.

  With little effort, the bio-syn freed himself and tore the skirt from Ms. Pope’s waist. She screamed and then slapped him. The Jake unit responded to the slap by ripping her panties off and swiftly lifting her up just enough to stuff his giant erection into her tight, wet pussy. Ms. Pope let out a different kind of scream as she felt herself slide down his erection. She quickly lifted herself up and then slid back down again. “Oh, my… Fuck!”

  The Jake unit thrust his hips into her and she thrust back. They weren’t in perfect sync, but it didn’t matter. “Do it! Do it! Do it!” Ms. Pope yelled through gritted teeth.

  The bio-syn moaned as he pounded into her.

  “What are you, weak?” Ms. Pope asked. “Fuck me harder, goddamn it!”

  The Jake unit stopped thrusting long enough to shift his body to the left and then roll Ms. Pope to the floor on her back. His cock still inside her, he made a quick adjustment and then moved his hips like a jack hammer.

  Ms. Pope laughed and groaned at the same time. She was in the most glorious pain, and she hungered for him. “Faster! Faster!”

  The Jake unit looped his right arm under her left leg and spread her pussy open wider. His thick cock, wet with her juices, slid in and out of her with relative ease. He moved his hips at almost impossible speeds. This is what she needed, to get fucked so hard she couldn’t think of anything else. She came again and again, attempting to push away as she did, but unable to escape his hold on her.

  “Don’t stop,” she said as she came.

  The bio-syn, drenched in sweat, gave one last thrust as he jerked back his head and roared. His hips convulsed and he collapsed on top of Ms. Pope. He continued to spasm resting his full weight on Ms. Pope, and she felt a jolt of electricity every time his body moved.

  Just as she felt herself about to relax the do
or to the room crashed open. She was about to get fucked again.

  -46-

  “His name is Duncan Price,” Anders said, “And not surprisingly, his job application on file at the hospital is filled with one lie after another. I’m not even sure Duncan Price is his real name.”

  Dr. Grant was getting tired of examining photos of employees, bio-syns, and criminals. She pushed the tablet across the desk with hardly a glance at Duncan’s employee ID photo. “Given that it is highly unlikely that I would hear the name Duncan twice in such a short period of time, I’m going to assume that our Mr. Price is not just a former orderly at Seaver, but he’s also our organ salesman.”

  “Well, I haven’t compared notes with Harvey, but based on what you told me, I think that is likely, yes.”

  “So, this Duncan broke Dr. Green out of Seaver? For what end?”

  “I can’t say for sure. The only thing I know with any certainty is that he was diametrically opposed to your father’s use of the bio-syn technology. Wherever he is, I’m assuming he’s working to undo what your father did.”

  “A scientist with morals,” Dr. Grant said. “How quaint.”

  Anders shook his head. “I didn’t mean to imply he had moral objections to your father’s direction. I believe he simply had different ambitions.”

  “Different ambitions?”

  “Other applications, scientific applications”

  “Such as?”

  “Medical testing, deep space exploration, military…”

  “In other words, he’s still an asshole. He’s just a different kind of asshole than my father. Dr. Grant stood and walked to the window in her office overlooking a large courtyard. “This company has always been on thin ice with the American people, Craig. Our product appears human in almost every conceivable way. Yet, we’ve always managed to shut down any real bio-synthetic rights groups because we’ve successfully convinced the idiots that vote that a bio-synthetic’s only real value is its therapeutic properties. We’ve even managed to convince religious groups that our product proves the existence of God because we create nothing but soulless human shells that only come to life when we pump them full of phony personality traits. They’d never admit it, but our units prop up their theological bullshit more than the priests and preachers standing at all their pulpits in every house of worship in every corner of the world.” She didn’t turn to face Anders. She just stared at the window feeling nothing but contempt for the world.

  “Two things can break that ice beneath our feet, Craig. If a unit gives birth to a child that develops its own persona or if it’s revealed that bio-synthetic units have perfectly healthy immune systems and their parts are interchangeable with humans. Suddenly, we aren’t making highly sophisticated sex toys anymore. Suddenly, we’re creating human beings, and we will be condemned for it. Not just condemned, but prosecuted.”

  “But,” Anders said, “If we go down, so do half the people in Washington.”

  “That’s the problem, Craig. Washington won’t come after us with lawyers and court ordered injunctions. Too much will be uncovered. They will come after us with guns and bombs.”

  “What are you saying?” Anders asked.

  “I’m saying you may want to invest in a bullet proof vest and hire someone to start your car in the mornings. They aren’t going to shut us down. They’re going to tear us down piece by piece.”

  -47-

  The train pulled to a stop at a cargo checkpoint three hours outside of the city. Duncan had disembarked the train and was talking with the cargo inspector. The driver of the train, a heavyset man with more chins than years left on his current life expectancy, lumbered back and forth across the adjacent track smoking a cheap cigar and periodically snorting back the mucus building up in his throat.

  Thomas and Cora remained in the train. An uncomfortable silence had developed between them ever since Duncan had questioned Cora about her feelings for Thomas. When she couldn’t take the whirling stillness anymore, she spoke her mind.

  “There’s something you’re not telling me.”

  Thomas paused before replying. “Yes, there is.”

  “What is it?”

  He cleared his throat and summoned the courage to say, “We are not what we appear, Cora.”

  “And just what is that supposed to mean?”

  “It means that we didn’t meet by chance…” he held up his watch and looked at the time “Twenty-seven hours ago.”

  She contemplated his statement. “Are you trying to say you’ve been following me?”

  He took her hand. “It’s so complicated. I don’t know how to tell you exactly.”

  “Just tell me,” she said pulling her hand away.

  “We come from two different worlds…”

  “Is this because of your past? You think because my father’s rich and pays my living expenses that I couldn’t understand? That I’m some spoiled little rich girl who judges poor people…?”

  He uttered, “You don’t have a rich father!”

  “What are you talking about? Of course I do.”

  “What his name?”

  Her eyes shifted back and forth as she searched her brain for the answer. “Theodore Daniels…”

  “Why did you have to think about it?” Thomas asked.

  “I didn’t have to think about it…”

  “You did. You paused before you answered.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “Theodore Daniels is not your father, Cora. There probably isn’t even really someone named Theodore Daniels…”

  She laughed. “Are you saying I’m lying? That I made the whole thing up? How could I possibly afford to live in the Conway Towers if my father didn’t pay for it? I’m a teacher for Christ’s sake.”

  “Cora,” Thomas barked, “listen to me, none of it is real. Your father’s not rich. You don’t live in the Conway Towers. You’re not a teacher at the university…”

  She stared at him vacantly.

  After several seconds without her replying or moving Thomas said, “Say something?”

  She did not move.

  Thomas realized that she was catatonic.

  “You don’t want to go there, kid.”

  Thomas turned to see Duncan standing in the open doorway of the train. He was holding a clicker.

  “She’s not ready to hear that.”

  “She has to know. I don’t want to lie to her anymore.”

  “It’s the best thing for her, kid. Trust me.”

  “Trust you? You want to sell her for parts…”

  Duncan stepped onto the train. “Okay, tell her that she’s not who she thinks she is. Tell her that every memory she has in her head is bullshit. Tell her that she doesn’t have a mother and a father, that she was created in some plastic bag, that two weeks ago she didn’t even exist. Tell her everything you know about Grant Bio-Synthetic Industries. If you’re lucky, she’ll think you’re crazy and want to get as far away from you as possible. Doesn’t matter how tuned in to you she is, she won’t want to have anything to do with the kookoo that is you. But if you’re unlucky, she’ll believe every word of what you tell her. In the dark recesses of her lab created brain, her instincts will come to life, and she’ll realize what she is, a goddamn flesh and blood sex toy that was made for one reason. You want to ruin her life? Tell her that she’s not a natural. Convince her that she’s a fucking product that horny shits pick out of a catalog to have their way with and, while you’re at it, be sure to remind her that you’re one of those horny shits.”

  “I’m not one of them!” Thomas screamed at the top of his lungs. “I just went in for a job interview. I didn’t know this was going to happen. I didn’t ask for this. They told me she was mine. They wanted me to test her out. I swear to God I didn’t know what I was getting into or how I would feel about her…”

  “Wait, you’re not even a Grant Bio-Synthetic client?”

  “No.”

  Duncan rubbed his chin. “That doesn’
t make sense.”

  “What doesn’t make sense?” Thomas asked.

  “I’ve run into a couple other job applicant test drive situations. The fuckers were frustrated as hell because their units were low-leveled. The company won’t let someone who hasn’t been fully vetted loose on the street with a unit that’s dripping wet and cock-ready. They get PG-13 units that do more teasing than coming.”

  “So?”

  “So, by the way you two look at each I’m guessing your unit jumps on your cock every chance she gets. Not to mention that she’s professing her love for you, something I have never seen or heard of before.”

  “What are trying to say?”

  Duncan shrugged. “I guess I’m trying to say you may have been right. There’s something special about her, or there’s something special about you two together. I’m not the sentimental ‘love conquers all’ type, but it’s possible I’m witnessing something much bigger going on here.”

  “Which is what?” Thomas asked.

  “It’s not just that this bio-synthetic unit loves you, kid,” He said sitting next to Cora. “It’s that she fucking chose to love you.”

  “So?”

  “So, shit-for-brains, bio-syns made at Grant Bio-Syn do a lot of things, but the one thing they absolutely can’t do is make choices outside of their conditioning, and saying ‘I love you’ is never part of their conditioning.”

  -48-

  “I never figured you for the rape fantasy type, Melissa,” Dr. Grant said to Ms. Pope.

  The Director of Female Conditioning and Decommission had been manhandled by Denise Harvey’s security team. When she put up minor resistance to their demands that she come with them for questioning, they felt a beating was in order. Nothing too severe. Just something to get her attention. Ms. Pope would never tell them, but she actually enjoyed it. She got a twisted high out of the whole experience.