When Life Hands You Uranus : 8 / 9

By Iolanthe Portmanteaux

After a brief first experience swapping bodies, Linnea was so excited that she tossed Darlene’s cautious protocol out the window. The very next day the two switched places with the understanding that they wouldn’t switch back until just before the next teleport cycle.

Linnea-in-Darlene made her way to the East Wing for the evening, and found one of the miners waiting for her. It was Davis, who felt that he’d somehow missed Darlene during the weekend festivities. Davis was young, handsome, and well endowed. Linnea was lucky that her first time was with a man who was a thoughtful and attentive lover. She joyfully exploded with three orgasms, much to her and Davis’ delight. There was a moment in the midst of their third mutual throes when they saw each other, eye to eye, in an electric, soul-to-soul communion. While they panted, recovering, Linnea felt his cock stirring between her thighs, and was readying herself for a fourth welcome assault, when Davis stopped to glance at his watch. He stood up, cleaned himself, dressed, and left without a word.

His abrupt goodbye disturbed her, but not enough to erase her enjoyment.

In the morning she was awakened by a penis poking at her face. She couldn’t see who the man was, but as soon as she tried to speak, he pushed his cock into her mouth, and she found herself obediently giving him service. Now that she was in Darlene's body, she had no more choice than any other synth. Her programming made her compliant and compelled her to focuse on his pleasure. He placed his hand firmly on the back of her head. As he worked her mouth, pumping his rod in and out, another set of hands took her by the hips and maneuvered her up on all fours. She had no intention of resisting, but she could see her body complying, even before her mind was engaged. The second man entered her from behind, without so much as a by-your-leave. As the two men grunted and puffed, they talked to each other, as if they weren’t otherwise engaged. They discussed a change in the helium-tank design. Their conversation was peppered with groans and gasps. Once they settled the topic of the tank design between them, they both started pumping faster, and came at roughly the same time. One man simply left. The other ruffled her hair, as one might do to a dog. He said, “Good girl,” and gave her two affectionate pats on her rump.

Linnea sat there for five minutes asking herself, Was I just raped? She tried to turn it over in her mind, to look at it from a different angle, but it wouldn’t turn. She could only see it one way, and she couldn’t decide what to make of it. So, she left it. This was what she signed up for, after all. She had made the choice with her eyes wide open, hadn’t she? Linnea-in-Darlene showered and dressed and went looking for Darlene-in-Linnea.

“How are you doing?” she asked.

“Having an organic body is a mess of weird sensations,” Darlene said. “It takes a LOT of getting used to. Everything is different. Even different is different. It’s nice and all, but I feel so soft and so fragile. Isn’t it frightening to live this way? When anything could hurt you or mar your body permanently?”

“Not really,” Linnea replied. “If you’re born that way, it’s the only life you know. You’ve got nothing to compare it to. And yeah, you get hurt, but that’s part of the deal. There are people who are frightened all the time, but it’s generally regarded as an illness.”

“Cervantes wrote a short story about a man who believed he was made of glass,” Darlene mused. “He would walk in the middle of the street because he was afraid something would fall off a roof and break him. I used to think it was funny, but now I understand how he could feel that way.”

Linnea shrugged. She wasn’t going to ask who Cervantes was. She didn’t want to give Darlene the satisfaction.

“Okay... so, in the end, you just get used to it,” Darlene conceded with a shrug. “I’ll have to work on it. How are *you* doing?”

“I’ve had sex several times since I saw you. Which was… nice, I guess. It *is* what I wanted, but when it’s over, the men just walk away. They don’t even bother to say ‘thank you’ or ‘goodbye’ or anything.”

“It’s like you’re a discarded food wrapper.”

“I like all of it except for that part.” She didn’t mention the way she’d seen her programming take over and how she experienced her automatic compliance.

Darlene shrugged. “You do get the occasional guy who talks, who chats you up, and that’s nice. There’s more of that on weekends. Not a whole lot, but some. Be careful what you wish for, though: there are a couple of guys who ONLY want to talk. Honestly, that can be worse than NOT talking.”

The two remained swapped for the rest of the week. Linnea had an average of three sexual experiences each day, all of them beginning and/or ending abruptly, without any conversation or pleasantries. One time, she experimented with trying to not move at all, and watched her body go through the motions, all by itself. “They treat me like a hole,” she told Darlene.

“Yeah, I know. Welcome to my world. But I have to correct you: they treat you like three holes, with breasts and hair,” Darlene replied. “Three holes, no waiting.”

The night before the teleport cycle, they switched back. Linnea found it a bit disorienting, being back in her own body again. She saw what Darlene meant by a mess of weird sensations. She caught herself wondering whether living in a synth body was the better deal. Alarmed, she shook off the question and tried to forget it.

The next day, when she arrived at the teleport bay, she was surprised to see Andrew waiting for her, with two suitcases at his feet.

“Going somewhere?” she asked.

“Oh, yeah!” he replied. “I’m retiring! Can you believe it? I’ve been here right from the start. Me and Carlus are the ones who opened this place. It was pretty rough at first -- we were real pioneers.”

“Wow. That’s impressive.”

“I’ve never left, so now I feel like I’ve done my time. You know what I mean? I want to get back to normal life for a change.”

“Any place in particular?”

“Not at first,” Andrew replied. “I’m going to travel for a while, see a bit of the universe. My wanderjahre. I’ve got a list of destinations, but I’m not married to it. I’m basically going to follow my nose.”

“Nice!” she commented. Linnea didn’t know Andrew well, but given the miners’ obsession with retirement, she wasn’t at all surprised. So she smiled and told him, “Good luck! Can you go stand over there, so I can scan you?”

The cycle went off without a hitch, and Andrew disappeared, along with the helium, the batteries, and the rest of the cargo.

Two days later, when the weekend was over, Carlus came looking for Linnea. “Have you seen Andrew?” he asked, with a concerned expression. “The system can’t find him on the base. Did he leave with the Fifth Wing?”

“No,” Linnea replied. “Didn’t you know? He’s gone. He retired. He left with the last teleport cycle.”

“WHAT!?” Carlus nearly fell over in surprise. “He what!?”

Linnea repeated what she’d said. She told Carlus that Andrew seemed happy, normal, and glad to get away. He didn’t voice any complaints or leave any messages -- at least, he didn’t leave any with her. Carlus stood thunderstruck for several minutes. He checked the HR files and found that all Andrew’s paperwork was in order. He really and truly had retired.

“I’m floored,” Carlus confessed. “This is just so… I don’t know... it’s right out of the blue. I can’t understand why he didn’t tell me. You know, he and I were literally the first miners here. The two of us opened this place!”

Not only was Andrew one of the first miners to arrive, he was also the first miner to ever retire from Uranus. No one had ever quit before; everyone talked about retiring, but this was the first time anyone had actually gone through with it.

Andrew’s defection was the miners’ sole topic of conversation for the next week. It was all they could talk about. Everyone was taken completely by surprise, and the little community was visibly shaken. Everyone, that is, except Linnea. Not that she didn’t care: her interest was completely consumed by another event. Linnea’s mind had one single focus: anticipation. She couldn’t wait for the weekend -- she wanted to fast-forward to the moment when she and Darlene would switch places, and she’d finally experience her first miners’ orgy. She could hardly sit still; she was itching to begin.

She spent an hour each day throughout the week drilling Darlene on the teleport cycle -- although, honestly, it isn’t that complicated. It doesn’t require skill or talent; it basically amounts to a bit of bookkeeping. You need to make sure that the cargo pods are lined up in the same order as the data files. Everything needs to match. If any people are involved, you need to scan them to create a data file, and that’s about it. There are two bays: one for arrivals and one for departures. As long as everything is lined up in the right order, you’re set.

Once the incoming phase completes, you check the manifest for items continuing straight through to Baxter. You add those items to the outgoing list, and hit the GO button.

Of course, when the time came, Darlene-as-Linnea executed the cycle perfectly.

While the teleport cycle was in motion, Linnea was sitting in the East Wing with the other girls. She was understandably and visibly nervous. A few of the girls noticed, and gave her brief smiles of encouragement. Oddly, though, unlike the other days, none of the girls talked. There wasn’t any chatter. They sat in the same sort of strange silence you see in a doctor’s waiting room.

It all changed when the miners began drifting in. Hanna put on some music. A few of the girls stood up and greeted the men with kisses and hugs. Two girls mixed and poured drinks for the men and for each other. It turned into a party, which was the last thing Linnea expected. She had assumed that the sex began right away; she’d been picturing a room full of oil-covered naked bodies, groping each other, sliding over each other, kissing and sucking and penetrating each other. Instead, it was a party, like any ordinary office party: everyone dressed, drinking, talking loudly to be heard over the music.

Yes, two of the men simply chose a girl and led her away, but most of them wanted to socialize and unwind: to have a drink and chat up the girls… When two of the miners came to her with a drink, one put his arm around her waist and the two filled her with compliments and smiles. It was nice, actually; quite nice. As it turned out, each evening of the weekend began in exactly this way. Then, as the men warmed up, they started making choices, and at some point it changed from a social event to a sexual one. Once that happened, the men ceased to think about individual women; they seemed to aim for a sexy blur, a seamless series of girls in a flurry of sexual pairings, a one-after-another without end.

Throughout the weekend, Linnea was taken, more or less without ceremony, by individuals, pairs, and groups of three. Surprisingly, the same men kept returning for more. At first she was astonished by the staying power of the miners as a group, and wondered whether Uranus itself exerted some potentiating influence over the men. But then her admiration faded; one miner’s unguarded remarks revealed that the men swallowed a pill that allowed them to carry on for hours.

Sexually, it was an interesting experience for her, if you took sex in its most abstract and technical sense, as positions and movements. She did experience orgasms; most of the men regarded bringing the girls to orgasm as a point of pride. A few of them didn’t care. And there were two who seemed to be working off a checklist -- or more accurately a matrix of experiences and girls.

All in all, it was an experience, but -- even including her many orgasms -- she couldn’t call it satisfying. It’s true that Linnea, like the men, was checking an item off a list. But that wasn’t the problem. This is better than being alone, she told herself, although (for the most part) it was impersonal and at times inhuman. Ironically, the most overwhelmingly personal, intimate contact ended up being somewhat alienating.

When it was over, it was completely over. When the time came, it was like opening the drain in a tub full of water: the men all disappeared. The weekend was an interlude; the men regarded it as totally separate and apart from the ordinary flow of life and work. The curtain closed, and all the actors went home.

The silence that followed was anticlimactic.

As soon as the weekend was over, Linnea skipped the “spa day” and went to meet up with Darlene. She didn’t bother giving Darlene a debrief. She knew that Darlene already knew… the synth had lived it countless times before. But Darlene, on the other hand, had big news for Linnea!

“Did you know that five more miners retired?” Darlene asked her. “They were leaving, while you were getting off in the East Wing. I’m guessing this is another big surprise.”

“Five?” Linnea asked, astonished. She scratched her head. “I had no idea they were going. But then again, no one really tells me anything. I mean, I’m not in the, uh… I don’t hear the gossip.” She asked Darlene for all the details, in case Carlus came to interrogate her, as he had the previous time.

Again -- as Darlene suspected -- the departures once again came out of the blue. Just as with Andrew, all the miners seemed perfectly happy. None made any complaints as they left, and all had their paperwork in perfect order.

In this departure, however, there seemed to be a clue that helped explain things -- at least a little. If you ranked the miners in order of seniority -- and left Carlus off the list -- all the men who left were those who had been on Uranus the longest.

“What the hell,” Carlus grumbled to Linnea. “I’m still here, though. Does that mean there’s something wrong with me? Or is there something wrong with them? Were they all talking behind my back? That’s the thing that bugs me the most -- that I’m losing touch with my team.”

“Maybe you should think about retiring,” Linnea quipped.

“That’s NOT funny,” Carlus retorted, but he couldn’t help but smile a little. After a moment he shrugged and admitted, “You know, I have been here a long time… Maybe you’re right. I probably should think about it.” A moment later, he straightened up and shouted, “DAMN IT!” He struck the wall with his fist. “Now look: you’ve got me thinking about it, too! You put the worm in my ear.”

“No… I never! Carlus, it was only a joke!”

“Did you give those other guys the idea?” he demanded, pointing his finger in her face. “Did you tell them to consider retiring?”

“Fuck you!” she shouted in response, angry and offended. She batted his finger away. “FUCK YOU! Nobody talks to me here! Nobody! When would I ever have a chance to give them an idea?”

Carlus called an all-hands meeting. “Listen,” he told the remaining miners. “If anybody wants to leave, it’s not a problem. You don’t need to sneak off; nobody’s going to try and stop you. I’d just appreciate a little heads-up. So, I’m asking you now: Is anybody thinking about going?”

The miners looked around, glancing at each other with questioning looks, answering Carlus’ question with shrugs, head shakes, and No’s.

During the week that followed, Carlus took the time to speak with each remaining miner. He tried to make sure he understood everyone’s mood, and got a feel for their expectations. He wanted to know whether there were unstated grievances or problems. He needed to gauge the mindset of each man, and in the end, he felt he had succeeded. He told each and every one of them that they were always free to go off on vacation -- after all, everyone had months of vacation due. At the end of his efforts, Carlus felt reassured that the defections were complete.

“What I’m worried about,” he confided to each man, “is that when the Project sees these bailouts, they’ll think there’s some kind of problem here. They’re more than likely to send some kind of inspector or HR person, and we don’t want that.”

When it came time for the next teleport cycle, Darlene was in the East Wing, and Linnea in the teleport bay. Carlus stopped by during the preparations. “Any outgoing passengers?” he asked.

“No, looks like we’re good this week,” Linnea reassured him.

“Thank God!” he exclaimed with obvious relief. “That’s a huge weight off my shoulders!” Then, a little embarrassed by his outburst, he slunk off to join the bacchanal.

A few moments after he was gone, four of the miners came sauntering up, each of them wheeling their baggage.

“Hey, guys,” Linnea greeted them. “Don’t tell me that you’re retiring as well?”

“Yep,” Luke replied, speaking for all four. “We’re off to the wild blue yonder.”

While the men took turns getting scanned for their data files, Linnea called up the list of miners at her terminal, and sorted it by seniority. These four were next on the list after those who’d already gone... except for one:

“Hey,” she called. “Benmedeo’s not leaving with you?”

“Naw,” came the answer. “He’s still happy here.”

“And you guys aren’t?”

Luke waggled his head and shifted from one foot to the other. He screwed up his face. “It isn’t like that, Linnea. None of us are un-happy. It’s just like… I dunno. It’s like time’s up, you know? How can you tell when it’s time to go? You just know.

“When Andy left, you know… it makes you think. Like, what I am doing here? What am I doing with my life?”

“Well, good for all of you,” she said, “But, did you guys talk to Carlus? Does Carlus know you’re leaving? Or will this be another surprise?”

“Oh yeah,” Luke replied. “We passed him on the way here. He was surprised and sorry. I can’t say he’s okay with it right now, but he will be okay. He understands. Honestly, he’s been here so long, he should be coming with us, but you know.”

Linnea shrugged. It wasn’t a choice she’d ever have to face. She was stuck on Uranus forever.

Two minutes after the miners were set and ready to go, the incoming teleport began. She picked up its manifest, and checked for any material continuing on to Baxter. Not finding anything to add to her outgoing load, she hit the GO button, and her cargo disappeared, along with the four retiring miners.

After a completely unnecessary look around to be sure she was alone, Linnea knelt down and pulled a pack of cigarettes and a lighter out of a hiding place she’d discovered beneath the console. Smoking in any part of the base -- except in the smoking lounges -- was forbidden, but smoking in the teleport bay was even more strictly forbidden. “Come to me, my forbidden love,” Linnea said aloud, and chuckled to herself as she lit up. She could check the incoming load after her cigarette. It wasn’t going anywhere.

Unless, of course, there was an arriving passenger. But there were never incoming passengers. Still, just to err on the side of caution, she took a second look at the incoming manifest, and -- guess what: there was a passenger, no name given.

Startled, she stubbed out her cigarette against the console’s underside, and ran down to the transmission room. She could see through the glass: there was no one there. Doubting her own eyes, she opened the room (which was locked, as protocol demanded), and absurdly looked in every corner. It was official: the room was empty. What on earth was going on?

She ran back upstairs to the control room, and checked the transmission logs. Yes, it was there in the record: someone DID arrive. She could see the three parts: the data file, the energy ball, and the JNSQ. So where did the person go?