on heat? be discreet!

  Cassique grinned and looked down at his erect member, standing to full attention in the middle of his crotchless trousers. Discretion! This society didn’t know the meaning of the word. He’d like to bring a few nineteenth-century British or Northern American groups here on a tour one day, just to see their faces drop when they saw everyone walking around with their sexual organs hanging loose. The few nudists of that time would surely appreciate the freedom, but as for the rest…

  Smiling at the thought of the past’s shocked prudes, Cassique entered, allowed a floating retina scanner to check his credit, and let himself be led to a plushly decorated cubicle where, after answering a few questions to ascertain the nature of his desired pleasures, the fun and games commenced.

  Cassique spent three days crammed full of induced orgasms in The Holey Ground. Despite its drab exterior, his source had been spot-on — it was the wildest sex spa he’d ever experienced. If this was the face of the future, he couldn’t wait to meet the body. If it wasn’t for the regular injections of nourishing stimulants, he’d have been a physical, mental wreck. The past didn’t know what it was missing!

  He staggered out of the spa, part of him wondering why he was calling it quits so soon. He could have stayed longer – he had enough credits to remain there for the entire two months of his break if he’d wished – and, a few Personal Years earlier, probably would have, but Cassique’s brushes with past cultures and people were beginning to rub off on him. He couldn’t explain it, but he felt strangely shiftless now that he was back in his own time. So much was happening in the past, and there was so much yet to do as a Fixer, that he felt almost guilty hooked up to Father’s sexual circuits, as though he should be focusing his time and efforts elsewhere.

  A hologram of Father’s head appeared outside the door as Cassique exited. It kept gradually changing shape, gender, and colour as it spoke, the way it always did whenever Father manifested himself this way — he was all faces, all peoples.

  “Come again,” Father said, only it wasn’t his usual voice. It had been altered to sound like a sexy female, in line with the majority of Cassique’s preferences over the last three days. Father had many voices, designed to fit any given situation. He could be female, male, or non-binary, silly or serious, doltish or scientific. The past had a couple of words, no longer in common usage, which Cassique thought of these days whenever he considered the world-dominant computer responsible for running modern civilisation. One was chameleon, the other schizophrenic. Not that he ever voiced those descriptions of Father aloud — some words were best left unsaid, even though this was in pretence a society of free speech for all.

  “Remember,” Father said, in sensuous female mode, “if in heat, be discreet, and never spill your seed in the street.” This was his standard, cheesy farewell to every departing sex spa client. Normally Cassique would have walked on without even an acknowledgement, thinking no more of it than a motorist of the twenty-first century would have thought of an amber traffic light. This time, however, he paused and considered the phrase.

  “Father?” Cassique said.

  “Yes?” the computer replied.

  “What would happen if I did?”

  “What do you mean, Cassique?”

  “If I orgasmed on the street, or at home. What would happen if I… now what’s that word they used in the past when most people at one point or another relieved themselves in such a fashion… if I meshtrebated?”

  “You mean masturbated,” Father corrected him. “An old human custom whereby orgasm was manually induced by hand. A dirty process, highly unhygienic. Not recommended.”

  “But what if I did?” Cassique pressed, his curiosity winning out over his caution not to draw attention to himself by asking awkward questions. “Is it illegal?”

  “There are no illegalities in the world today,” Father reminded him. The sexy voice had faded away and he was now speaking as he normally would to Cassique, in a dry, male voice. “Laws and legal systems are products of the past. There has been no governing law in operation for over three hundred years. We live in an age where laws are meaningless. Laws inhibit, so there are no legal constraints placed upon citizens today. As a result, there are no – what the past would have termed – illegal actions.”

  “But there are frowned-upon acts, right?” Cassique asked.

  “There are unhealthy acts,” Father agreed. “Filthy habits. Unsociable ways of behaving. I eradicate such discrepancies for the sake of the race, just as a doctor of old would have excised a growth that might prove harmful to his patients.”

  “So, what would happen to me if I masturbated?” Cassique persisted.

  “You would be cured,” Father told him. “Improved. Conditioned. You would not do it again.”

  “In the past,” Cassique noted, “many regimes punished people who tried to break with the accepted norms.”

  “Punishment is futile,” Father said. “Correction is much more fitting.”

  “And if I didn’t want to be corrected?” Cassique asked, aware that it might be a dangerous question but finding himself unable to contain it.

  “Many patients in the past didn’t want their doctors to operate on them.” Father was cool and collected, giving no sign that he found this conversation in any way disturbing. “They preferred to live with their illness. In their desire to avoid pain and inconvenience of any kind, they tried to persuade themselves that it would go away or wasn’t as bad as the experts were predicting. A good physician paid no attention to their patients’ wishes. They saved their lives, regardless of their fears or beliefs. I do no less for my flock. If you thought masturbation was acceptable, you would be wrong. You’d be exhibiting a form of illness and I would make it my business to cure you. Sick people need help, Cassique, whether they know it or not, and I provide that help.”

  “Yes, I’m sure you do.” Cassique smiled gratefully. “Thank you for explaining. I was merely curious, having seen how those in the past live.”

  “That’s completely understandable,” Father said, and there was a parental warmth in his voice now. “Many Fixers come to me with these types of questions. They note the differences between the past and the present, and sometimes get confused between the two. I’m always happy to discuss matters with them and put things straight. I exist only to serve the people of this planet, to do what is best for them.”

  Cassique smiled again and said, “Yes, Father, I know you do. Thanks. I might have more questions later.”

  “I’m always available. Have a good holiday.”

  “I will. Good day, Father.”

  “Good day, Cassique.”

  He left.

  Newtonville.

  It had been four Personal years since Cassique had spent time with Nijin. For her it had been a little under six months, and she still looked stunning, as beautiful as any woman he’d seen in the past. But so did all the women in 2853. Engineered beauty was standard among Father’s children. The physical imperfections of the past were all eradicated in the artificial womb these days, and any surviving or developing blemishes were dealt with in surgery afterwards. People in the present didn’t even consider not altering what nature had seen fit to bestow them with. That very word, nature, was almost a forgotten term — ideas about natural beauty had been dispensed with long, long before.

  Nijin was living in new quarters on the continent once known as Australia, in a built-up, domed area in what had been the old Outback. Cassique got her address from Father and crossed the world by monorail in ninety minutes. A short trip by the past’s standards, but in today’s world any journey over half an hour was a trek of epic proportions.

  He’d shaken his head irritably as he thought about the differences in travelling expectations. He was stuck in Past Time still, his senses all a jumble. He reached back into the car he’d picked up from the terminal and asked Father for a pep-me-up. The pill delivered from the car’s stock was tiny and green and tasted sugary. Cassique could feel it working seconds after it had dissolved on his tongue. He stood by the side of the road a while longer, letting the artificial breeze cool his face, before crossing to the building to ring the bell.

  Nijin was surprised but pleased to see him and welcomed him in. He looked around curiously, and noticed the apartment was virtually the same as the one they’d shared all those months together. A few different statues and paintings – all reproductions of works of the past, when humanity was far more creative than its current representatives – and fresh, moving wall images, of beaches, forests, and waterfalls. That was all.

  “I suppose you’re one of the Fixers on an extended holiday?” Nijin asked. “I heard about them from Father. Nearly all the Fixers will be on leave at some point this year, apparently.”

  “Yes,” he replied politely. “We’re collapsing the Time Hole early in ’54, all going well, so we’re being prepared for the final push, given a chance to breathe and recuperate.”

  “You must be excited,” she said.

  “Mmm.”

  “You don’t sound too sure.”

  “I’m not,” he sighed. “After being a Fixer for so long, having adjusted to the different temporal patterns, having devoted my entire adult life to going back and correcting the past… It’s going to be a big change, living forever afterwards in the present. I think I’ll struggle to adapt.”

  “I can imagine,” Nijin said with a half-hearted sympathetic coo. “That’s why so many of you have been given an extended holiday. I assume it has more to do with preparing you for life after the closure than with gearing you up to close the Time Hole.”

  “Maybe,” Cassique conceded.

  They sat and smiled at one another. Nijin was holding a tiny laser in her right hand. She pointed it at her exposed groin. “I was just giving Percy a trim,” she said. “Would you mind finishing off behind the ears? You were always better at it than me.”

  “I’d be happy to assist,” he told her. “Gloves?” She handed him a pair and, once he’d peeled them on, the laser. He knelt and casually ran a couple of fingers over the dragon’s head which was carved into her pubic bush. Most women decorated themselves with one shape or another down there these days, much the same way as those in the past had sported rings in their ears and chains of precious metal round their necks. Nijin had been carrying Percy around with her since the days before their time together, and he’d shaved its head back into shape almost more times than he could remember.

  He touched the laser delicately behind the ears of the pubic dragon, flicking the switch of the tiny inbuilt vacuum cleaner to ON as he did so, in order to suck up the removed hairs. She’d done most of the work already and he was down there less than a minute applying the finishing touches. When he stood, he held her mirror in close so she could inspect his work.

  “I’m so beautiful,” she declared with typical forthrightness — modesty was not common among the people of the present.

  “You are,” he agreed.

  “But I need new breast implants,” she frowned. “They’re beginning to sag ever so slightly.”

  “Nothing that can’t be swiftly corrected,” he assured her. “A few minutes of surgery and you’ll be perfectly shaped again, ripe for a good fucking.”

  “A good what?” she asked.

  “Fucking,” Cassique said slowly. “It’s an old expression, very popular back in the centuries before the sex spas were invented.”

  “What does it mean?”

  “Well, you know how people used to have sex, the male inserting himself into the female?” Cassique asked.

  “Yes,” she said, shivering involuntarily. “How beastly. I can’t believe ancestors of ours went through with that repulsive process. The thought of having another human’s flesh pressed up close to mine, never mind within me… Ghastly!”

  “Yes,” he agreed, though he wasn’t entirely convinced, having seen so many people in the past involved in their primitive mating rituals, that it was quite as negative a business as Father made out. “Well, that’s what the word ‘fucking’ refers to — the sexual act. It was actually a very versatile word. People used it in all kinds of ways, not just in a sexual context. It was a bit like dos today. They’d say, ‘Fuck you!’ to a foe when they were angry, or ‘I’m fucking exhausted!’ when they were tired, just as we’d say, ‘Dos you!’ or ‘I’m so dossed I could drop!’”

  “Then it was a vulgar word?”

  “For a long time, yes,” Cassique nodded. “It became more acceptable over the decades and carried no real improper impact by the late twenty-first century, when they even started using it in picture books for babies.”

  “How strange people were back then,” she remarked.

  “You get used to their oddities the more you mix with them,” he said. “They’re not all that bad.”

  “Oh, I think they’re horrific,” she disagreed. “Ugly, corrupt creatures. Faulty disc drives for brains.”

  “Yes. Well.” He coughed uncomfortably. There was nothing radical in what she had said, and he’d said much the same during his youth. But, having spent so much time in the past, having studied their ways and lives and hopes and fears and dreams, he’d warmed to their rather anarchic way of living, their fanciful belief in their own potential. Everybody in the modern world depended on Father for their everyday existence and would be lost without his guiding hand. Back then people had made their own way through life and struggled by on the strength of their own cunning. He somewhat admired them, not that he’d ever dare openly admit it.

  “So,” he said, “have you a partner these days?”

  “No,” she said, her nose wrinkling at the thought. “It’s much too soon after our relationship ended. I feel like I should have a break for at least a few years before I hook up with a partner again, and Father agrees.”

  If Father agreed, that meant Father had decided. Nearly all modern relationships were organised by Father. He matched suitable couples based on careers, IQ levels, and personalities, but never for sexual purposes. Sex was no longer a part of human coupling. When you wanted sex, you went to a sex spa. The days of craving a partner’s body were long over. There had been no fucking among humans these past few hundred years, not since the race had been nearly wiped out by RUSH, a deadly sexually transmitted disease, and not since medical developments had made mechanical propagation possible, putting an end to millions of years of naturally born babies, and not since Father’s technical wizardry and mental stimulants had made computer sex far more exciting and fulfilling than normal physical contact.

  “How are your games going?” he asked. “Any new realities?”

  “Loads,” she enthused, her face lighting up as he’d known it would. “I verify, Father gets better and better every month. The newest games are digital plus, and the plots get more and more intricate. You and I could play one of my favourites if you wish, and I could walk you through the first few levels.” Although there were still communal centres where you could go if you wanted to experience a reality as part of a crowd, most people gamed from home. Cassique knew of plenty of people who didn’t step outside their front door more than once every few years.

  “No, thanks,” he said. “I’ve just come from a three-day sex spa session, and that’s enough virtual pleasuring for the time being. I might take you up on your kind offer later in the holiday, perhaps.”

  “Three days?” Nijin laughed. “That’s nothing. I spent a whole year in a sex spa once. You need to get up to date. You’re slipping out of touch with things, losing yourself to the physical world. I warned you about it before, how you should be spending more time in the virtual realities and the sex spas, and less fixating on the dull old real world. You’re too fleshy by far. You need to get a grip on things, and quickly.”

  “You’re probably right,” he sniffed. She wasn’t the first to criticise his absurd aversion to the realities. He knew how vital Father’s games were to the modern civilisation, the chaos which would ensue if people had nothing in their lives apart from physical concerns. He’d seen the violence which had resulted in the past, people rioting and killing, raping and destroying, all because they had nothing better to do with their time. The present had none of those problems. Almost everyone today spent most of their lives in the computer-generated realities or losing themselves in the sexual escapes in the spas. There was no discontent in the present because everyone’s needs were met, and nobody had to worry about free time, or how to live a satisfying, rewarding life. Father was there every step of the way from the incubator to the incinerator, advising, guiding, directing.

  “So,” Cassique said, “have you seen Zune recently?”

  “Zune?” She frowned as she tried to place the name. He almost reacted tetchily to her confusion but reminded himself that it had been six months for her, and one tended to forget events from the real world quite swiftly when caught up playing in the realities, where time could stretch out far more slowly. “Oh,” she said as a memory clicked into place, “you mean our foster child. Father, no. What would I want to see him for?”

  “Well, you liked having him over to visit us when we were living together,” he said.

  “He was a mildly fascinating distraction,” she admitted. “For a while I enjoyed the novelty of playing in the realities with him. But children are Father’s concern. It’s fine having one come to stay for a day once or twice a month, for a limited spell. I recommend it to all my friends. I say you can’t be a true human if you haven’t spent a fortnight of your life acting like a parent. I know that’s a controversial stance, and some will say I’m talking crash, but I stand by it. But no more than a couple of weeks. Any more would be unhealthy. Dos that echo. Fuck that… What word would your friends in the past use for ‘echo’?”

  He had to think for a few seconds. “‘Shit,’” he informed her.

  “Fuck that shit,” she swore, smiling afterwards, pleased with her clever way of adapting the old language. “I like that. Fuck that shit. It has a nice ring to it. Maybe I’ll ask Father to resurrect the term and introduce it to more people. It would be digital, wouldn’t it, to have a popular swear phrase credited to me?”