Override
by Meredith SchwartzThey're not cruel men. They just got a budget to make. Even these days it costs to hoist a man up out the blue. Multiply that by a hundred twenty eight guys and you can see how much ore we got to haul just to break even. They aren't about to spring for a hundred twenty eight loyal and dutifuls to get their conjugal on.
Enter the Apple Tree. It took some talking, in the beginning, to get your girl to sit for the chip and hand it over. Thought it was cheating or some damned thing, even though the whole point was you'd be with them and not some stranger. Much as you could.
When the Army signed on that helped some, like it was their patriotic duty to send some secondhand snatch. Maybe them docudramedies about Prison Love helped too. Ain't many girls would rather her lover came home with the gangster burning up inside his veins than a few safe sessions with something that was practically a daydream of her own sweet self.
Men's chips never did catch on, though. Lotta guys walked tough about the Real Thing or Nothing. Lotta guys lay up nights after their date with Cammie wondering if the wife had a Jody, or just didn't miss him at all.
Sorry. Jody's slang for a lover. Cammie? You might say she's all things to all men. She's the part they don't talk about back home, where the Tree takes root. Just slide the chip in at the nape of her neck, where the hair covers it -- at least my girl's does. Them nanomawhatchits get going, and there's your girl in your arms, large as life and just like you remember, long as you don't ask too many questions.
Said they couldn't afford to send a bunch of women. Didn't say they couldn't send one.
What she is when the Tree ain't growing up her spine - or what she used to be - ain't nobody knows that I ever heard of. Some say she's just a vat grown thing never walked real dirt barefoot, never had nothing in her head till we filled it up with software and her cunt with hard. But some say Cammie's doing her time, too.
Guys mostly don't ask about that, neither, and anyway she never answers.
Place they got her used to be the mail room, when we still got dirtmail. Lectric's cheaper and you can't hide nothing in the cake. Cammie keeps our chips in the old gray pigeonholes. Waste not, want not. They're already labeled, after all.
My slot is Thursdays, an hour past second shift. I'd dressed up pretty as a convict can, put sweet stuff in my hair. Some guys say what the hell, Cammie don't care. Fuck with their boots on. I say my girl would know.
Cammie was lying on the mattress when I come, in the half-dark. Easier not to see her face before it changed, said the psych Johnnies. I didn't mind, in the beginning. More romantic, close as we can get to candlelight. But the Thursdays go by and I got curious. It's a flaw in a man.
I stripped out of my coveralls. The springs squeaked when I laid down on top of her, or maybe it was the steel gratings underneath. I kissed her ear, and her hair tickled my nostrils.
"Insert the program chip," Cammie said.
I like a girl who doesn't play coy. But I wasn't ready yet. "In a minute, sweetheart," I said. "No rush in the world."
Kind of a pun, see? We weren't in the world. Yeah, she didn't laugh neither. I set up the flashlight I'd worked through two extra rec days to "borrow" from the trusties in Outside Repair, and for the first time I saw my lover's face.
I dunno what I expected - liquid silver, cogs and gears, maybe a smooth, blank nothing. She was just a girl. Pretty enough, eyes set wide apart, teeth a little crooked. Curly brown hair. Soft, low tits, the kind that pour into your hand. She didn't resist when I spread her legs apart to feel the rough hair between 'em. I'd never done that before - my girl keeps herself neat.
"Insert the program chip," Cammie repeated.
"Ain't you never heard of foreplay?" I demanded, playing roughlike. "I'll insert when I'm good and ready." Truth was, I was ready now, hard and aching with it. I just had this fancy to fuck the girl I was fucking. Crazy, no?
"What's your name, sweetheart?" I asked her. Cammie's just what we call her, from chameleon maybe, or camouflage. I knew she'd lie, like women do, but I wanted to know what lie she'd choose.
"Insert the program chip," she said, and maybe it was the harsh sodium light made me think her eyes had widened. But no glare I ever heard of can make a body's voice catch. There was somebody in there. That was all I wanted to know.
"You know, darlin'," I said, "I think I won't. Don't tell, now."
Which was by way of being a joke again, her being such a conversationalist. I inserted something else instead, good and deep. She was looser than I remembered, and hotter. She groped for my hand, like she wanted to hold it, and it took me a minute to realize she was grabbing for the chip I held, to put it in herself. I didn't know she could do that. She damn near had it, too, but I closed my fist around it first.
I bang asteroids together for a living. I don't care what kind of crazy shape-shifting germ shit she got, ain't no whore gonna break my grip.
She was strong, though, for a woman. Found that out when her legs locked around my waist. "Insert the - insert - insert," she said, and with the chip locked safe in my hand I didn't mind 'inserting' again, just as often as she told me to.
It weren't long before she give a tiny gasp and her eyes met mine.
"Override," she said, and damned if that wasn't just what she did: flip me off the bed, such as it was, straddle me, and ride like she weren't never planning to stop. Them steel grates were cutting into my back like a woman's nails. I kicked out by pure reflex and knocked the cubbyholes.
All them Apple Trees, a hundred twenty seven wives and girlfriends and babymamas, fell down around us like rain.
I musta yelled something when I came, 'cause when I came to the echo was still bouncing around that steel box. The air was still with the smell of hot metal, and Cammie lay like dead weight on top of me, the dust of my crushed memory like stars in her hair.
©Meredith Schwartz
Meredith Schwartz's first published story, Double Time, appeared in Reflection's Edge's July issue. Her essay Chains of Words, on writing BDSM, appeared in the February 2005 issue.