An Original Sin, continues, part two...

Big L: "I've read this page and I want to share the horror."

Man-maker conventions were hell...
Four-Two-N wakes up in a strange room, in a unrecognised place.
First, Four-Two-N woke to find that her sleeping pad had drifted to the floor during the night. Scientists could build a floating city on Mars, but they couldn't make a sleeping pad that would stay suspended three feet in the air. Of course, scientists had screwed things up for centuries, so she shouldn't be surprised...
Luca: "My poor subject."

Strange. Had she gone to sleep in a museum? An antiquated picture of the galaxy hung above a bureau. A wooden bureau. With the scarcity of trees, no one had used wood for at least a hundred years. A fake? Maybe.
The Anthropologist: "Stupid backward logic!"

Finally, there was the small matter of something sharing her sleeping pad. Something large. She could feel it move against her back, hear it breathe. Which was why she'd stayed frozen for five minutes, staring at the stupid wall.
The last sentence Nina Bangs wrote for us. There is no need to snark.

spotted the silver chain, with her Celtic cross still safely attached, lying on the floor...

Pillywiggin: "Silly SciFi jargon. Will you go to the sleeping pad with me? is really quite unromantic."

She had a vivid imagination. She needed imagination in her line of work, but not for facing unidentified sleeping partners.
The Chronicler: "Why does she need imagination? Sex toys really aren't that complicated."
Big L: "She's never seen an actual man. So maybe..."

Pillywiggin: "I could have a small kitten's head... here..."
The Balance: "With a tiny lapping tongue..."
Pillywiggin: "And it spews milk!"

Maybe a large carnitak had followed her in and curled up beside her.
What?!
With her luck, a Saralian poison pig had escaped and chosen her out of all humankind to cozy up to.
What?!

Her thoughts scuttled in every direction.
Pillywiggin: "Scuttling thoughts! That's got to be a medical complication."
Lady Miriam: "There're spiders in my brain!"

A human male. A man. Just like her Dark and Dangerous Dick model, only better....
Pillywiggin: "Now I'm drinking to stop the pain..."
The Anthropologist: "Isn't that what Birthdays are for?"

Of course, he had to be a fake. Men had gone the way of the Dexovil rock burrower, extinct for fifty years or more. Another scientific screwup.
Luca (whispering): "The pain..."

Studying the man, she couldn't squelch a small stab of professional jealousy.
The Anthropologist: "The squeliching is back!"
Pillywiggin: "I thought we saw the last of the squelching after Night Play ended."

One of her friends, probably Three-Six-H...
Anthropologist: "Do they have any nicknames? Like Haychie or something?"
The Chronicler: "She eventually gets called Fortune."
Sordan: "F2N."
The Balance: "It's just super133tspeak, really."

The discussion turns to 13yr old boys and their love of 133tspeak. Hypothesis abound as to why the future has taken such a turn in naming traditions. Maybe it's because they miss their 13yr old boys...

Pillywiggin: "Or they had a culture of men bestowing names. And they were too lazy to think of anything so their national security numbers had to do."

Hmm, the hair looked like the real thing. Reaching out, she stroked it. Raw silk. She allowed herself a sensual shiver.
Pillywiggin: "How raw? Does it still have little caterpillars inside?"
The Chronicler also wonders why it isn't possible for manbots to have decent hair. After all, we have high quality wigs.

His face was molded perfection— knife-edge cheekbones, straight nose, full lips, long lashes.
The Anthropologist: "Medical complications! If your cheekbones are that sharp that there has to be something wrong!"
Pillywiggin: "Not only is he a sexdoll he's also a kitchen multi-purpose appliance!"

She almost hated the woman responsible for him...
The Chronicler could but wonder why these heroines are always so full of hate for their own gender (cf. Night Play's heroine who was going to run other women over for being pretty.)
Sordan: "Because the women who read these things hate other women?"

But was he anatomically correct? A lot of cheap models weren't very detailed. She'd check.
Pillywiggin: "Why would you slack off on the cock? Since that's what you buy it for."
The Balance: "Surely it'd be the toes or elbows where cheap models fail."
Pillywiggin: "Cheap models have wheels?"

Warmth and essence of male surrounded her. She frowned.
Pillywiggin: "How would she know what essence of male smelt like?"
The Anthropologist: "Well, one week after the great die-off of all the men, the survivors started extracting it from all the corpses."

How did his maker get that scent of desire and dark erotic nights?
Sordan: "How the hell would she know? She's never met one before?!"

She finally reached her destination.
Sordan: "Destination Cock"

This was what separated true artistry from assembly-line cheapies.
Luca: "They could build a floating city, but not make a good manbot."
Pillywiggin: "We're still coming back to the point that the assembly-line cheapies are probably skimping on the toes."

Utter brilliance. She couldn't suppress a small coo of admiration. Large, round, firm. Long, thick, hard...
The Anthropologist: "She's checking if she could see the injection mould lines."
The Chronicler: "I'm sure they make RealDolls that good now. So several centuries into the future..."
Pillywiggin: "All the sex doll making technology died with the men."
The Anthropologist: "If only they've taught women the art of making them, but no! Now it is all lost!"
The Balance: "So they must find all those secret lost manuals!"

Hard? She didn't remember anything hard down here when she'd first ducked under the cover. Hmm. Must be a clever use of sensors.
The Anthropologist: "I didn't press that button."

Liquid heat flooded her, then settled heavily into a bubbling pool of want in an area that had never experienced any kind of bubbling.
The Anthropologist: "Medical complications!"
Sordan: "Also, she's Not a Slut!"
The Balance: "Bubbling where there was no bubbling before..."
Pillywiggin: "What? Her left knee?!"
Sordan: "She has the bends!"
Pillywiggin: "She has a little swamp between her legs."
The Anthropologist: "No, it's a tapeworm! Tapeworm of love."

She'd created customized men for years and never once had a sexual reaction to any of them.
Sordan: "Not a Slut!"

They were fakes— a mass of Toglor fibers and electrical impulses. She prided herself on never forgetting that.
Sordan: "Trogdor! Burninating women's loins!"
The Anthropologist: "Stop ruining everything good about the world!"
The Balance: "It's making you angry. Wrath's job is done."

She teased her friends when they panted after her great-looking Hot and Horny Hal or Stud Muffin Stuart models...
The Anthropologist: "How would you have a conversation about that? I'm thinking of modifications on the Hot and Horny Hal model... Oh yes, I was testing it last night and I though..."
The Chronicler launches into an unnecessary rant about how current sex toys have stupid names because of the prudishness of our current times. The names and the colours are there to make them seem less threatening and less inherently sensual, therefore making them more harmless, more of a bawdy joke. In a future without men and where the reclaiming of feminine sexual identity and owning one's own desires is progressing, surely such mechanisms are no longer necessary...

The Anthropologist: "Maybe the rest of society is well adjusted. It's just the two percent who make and use these things are considered freaks."
Big L: "But there's enough of them that there are production lines to make these things."

Had she seen any sign of a scanglow? No.
The Anthropologist: "Both hidden camera technology and realdoll technology vanished? Is there a connection, perhaps?"
The Balance: "The men died."

She had to admit it. Her sex drive was on automatic pilot and begging for permission to land.
There is much pain over the metaphor.

Sex. She'd seen the disks, knew the basics of the ancient ritual. All she'd have to do was...
The Loinfire Club bursts into giggles about Unlicenced Geomancy!

Lady Miriam: "How can she make the best one if she doesn't know what it's supposed to do?"
Big L: "Well, she does the faces. Someone else does the animatronics."

Appropriate muscles spasmed at the thought of him filling her, touching every dark, wet, yearning space.
The Anthropologist: "Every one of them?"
Sordan: "Do women in the future have multiple vaginas?"
The Balance: "There are other spaces."
The Anthropologist: "But are they yearning spaces? That's very important in the sexual harrassment trial afterwards."

Reflexively, she kneaded him like a cat with eyes half-closed in feline bliss,
Big L: "μ!"
Sordan: "I really don't want to think about cats in that way!"

...while she imagined a joining she'd never know.
The Anthropologist: "Never known and never shall know because she's not a slut."
The Chronicler: "Or a lesbian."

Warm flesh sheathed in satin-smooth skin that slid slickly into—
Lady Miriam: "Poor, abused ampersand."
Pillywiggin: "You mean ellipsis."
The Balance: "Or in this case, the hyphen."
Sordan giggles about Harry Potter's hyphen.
Lady Miriam: "Maybe there should be a book for ellipses who aren't sluts."

With a discipline forged from her society's expectations, she ruthlessly clamped down on her useless fantasy...
The Loinfire Club are variously outraged, amused, frustrated and confused about these expectations of her society which the author never makes clear.

Men were gone, so she'd never experience that particular pleasure. And she'd never get so desperate that she'd lose herself in a fake. A make-believe man.
Sordan: "That makes no sense."

There is much bafflement about the lack of lesiabans. And Butch women. With multiple strap-ons.
The Balance: "And sex change."
The Anthropologist: "Ah, yes, we see a niche in our rich and diverse culuture which is unfulfilled. We must start lounging around in wifebeaters, watching foodball, eat steak and demand those who identify as female bring us beer..."
The Balance: "Maybe they have male reenactors the way we have historical reenactors."

Suddenly the body jerked. Oops. Had she broken him?
Pillywiggin: "What? They don't move? All they do is lie there and take it... no wonder they're shit."

"God's teeth, woman, I dinna know how much more I can stand. Cease cooing like a mating dove and show yerself."
She froze. Dinna? Cease? What a strange dialect...
Pillywiggin: "Don't tell me the Scotish have died out! What kind of a world is that?"

This didn't sound like any programmed response tone she'd ever heard...
The Anthropologit: "They're not only crappy but they have a small set of phrases they say. Like those action figures."
Big L: "That's so creepy."

Possibility sprouted and grew with the speed of a Pelmar choke-weed. It curled inside her stomach, making her feel the way she did each time she started a new creation. Putting out feelers, it touched her heart.
Pillywiggin: "Possibility is a small parasite."
Sordan: "Medical compication!"
Lady Miriam: "It's Lupus!"

Real? Could this be a real man?
He had eyes the color of jade, spectacular with their frame of thick, sooty lashes.

Big L: "That's a woman's eyes!"

There is much discussion about whether or not it is possible to have eyes the colour of jade. Sordan defends the author on this one, but others differ in opinion.
The Anthropologist: "So he has cloudy-white eyes... sort of seeping..."
The Balance: "Cataract!"
The Chronicler: "Other jade has blotchy red areas colouring the green."
The Anthropologist: "Denatured blood cells."

His slashing white smile disappeared, but she'd already noticed one slightly crooked tooth. Customers never asked for flawed men. OK, they did want men with oversize—
Sordan: "Hyphens."
Pillywiggin: "There's nothing like a giant hyphen."

"Not when I wake to find ye rooting beneath the cover like a wee pig."
The Anthropologist: "Really stupid animal metaphors should be a new category we drink for."
The Chronicler: "Maybe she's doing this on purpose."
The Anthropologist: "But if we go down that road it'll drive us insane."
Big L: "I'm not sure knowing she did it on purpose makes it better. It still exists to torment us."

She never programmed anything but polite chitchat and a few orgasmic groans into her creations.
The Anthropologist: "You look like a rooting pig."
Pillywiggin: "Nice weather we're having. Do you want a shag?"
The Anthropologist: "I'm here to fix the plumbing."

Fakes were never aggressive.
The Anthropologist: "You see, that's the sort of thing you expect to be programmed into these things."
Pillywiggin: "She's a rubbish designer and has no imagination."

Pulling the cover and her anger around her, she tried to ignore her body's embarrassing demands.
Sordan: "Have we had any description of her body? Is she a confirmed woman?"
Pillywiggin: "Maybe they didn't lose the men. They just forgot what they were."

OK, she'd admit they were a tad too big— big enough to double as rocket nose cones. But that was what her customers paid for.
The Chronicler: "How does she know?"
The Anthropologist: "She's read the reports from the product testing department. And they only gave four stars in that department."
Jokes are made about her being unwittingly part of a secret nuclear missile design program, disguising rocket parts as sex toys.

She frowned, trying to ignore the sexual implication in his words. Forget it. Everything about him shouted sex.
Sordan: "Clearly it's some sort of new pheromone."

"Customized models. Very expensive."
Sordan: "Everyone has a price."

As he nodded, a strand of hair fell forward, and he raised his hand to push it aside. Fascinated, she followed the motion. Male bodies were her business, but this one interested her more than usual.
Big L: "He's taken the Animal Magnetism ability."
The Anthropologist: "You smell like chocolate. And now I want to gnaw your elbow?"

There is a brief, inconclusive discussion about where in time they are.

Strong hands used to hard work, yet hands that would be gentle on a woman's body.
Pillywiggin: "How can you tell?"
The Anthropologist: "There's a little trademark on the side."
Lady Miriam: "And they've got velvet tips."

(The Chronicler at this point is irritated about the idea that sex toys are supposed to replace and mimic actual sex as opposed to provide different sensations. Why be limited by what a real man is like?)

Mentally, she shook herself. He couldn't be real. Men were extinct, victims of a gene-directed virus gone amok.
The Balance: "FIZIYCKS!!"

"What manner of demon's lair is this?"
The Anthropologist: "A demon's lair with wooden bureau. What kind of crappy demons are you used to?!"

Tis gone! I canna find my dirk...
Sordan: "Dirk! Dodgy comment!"

He sounded upset. She never programmed her models for extreme emotional responses. Well, maybe once. Six-Nine-R...
The Balance: "69-er!"
The Anthropologist: "There's still a lack of H's. We're still good."

...wanted her man to sing the commercial for Healthy Hot and Spicy Sausages— no fat or caloric content— while she climaxed.
Loinfire Club: "WHAT?!"

Big L read it again.
The Anthropologist: "How does that even work? Fat contains calories."
Pillywiggin: "Maybe future fat doesn't."
(The Chronicler suppresses a minor rant about the choice of random fetish to be showcased. And how can a woman who works for the sex toy industry be so... uptight?)

His gaze returned to her— accusing, threatening. "Ye shouldna have done this deed. D'ye think to keep me here, witch?"
Sordan: "We're back to interaction via gazes."

"Virgin witch?" She slid her gaze across his muscled arms and shoulders. So wonderful. So flawed. Maybe if she bashed him over the head with her broomstick it would correct his obviously faulty circuits.
The Chronicler: "What broomstick? She's not a witch, doesn't she remember?"The Anthropologist: "Maybe the author got confused whose point of view it was halfway through the sentence."

Shifting her gaze, she met the fixed amber stare of a large black cat, a cat that hadn't been there a few minutes ago.
Sordan: "The cat was watching!"
Pillywiggin: "The cat is Satan!"

He made some strange signs as he slid to the edge of the pad. His eyes blazed with fierce anger and behind the anger... fear.
Pillywiggin: "It's an add-on."

She'd kill Three-Six-H if her friend had put this maniac beside her. Kill? She never had violent thoughts. Breathe deeply. Stay calm.
Sordan: "She never had violent thoughts! But now she's a romance novel heroine."

Fascinated, she watched him swallow hard, lingered on the strong column of his neck. She blinked. Weapons? Plural?
Sordan is temporarily broken, with laughter the Chronicler presumes.

There are then here said things that really shouldn't be recorded. There is much pain.

Big L: "The book is officially not as bad as our conversation. Now, onwards..."