Distress

Ve said, “What is it you want?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Come on. I'm not blind.” Ve searched my face, frowning slightly, puzzled but unaccusing. “Have I done something? To lead you on? To give you the wrong idea?”

“No.” I wanted the ground to swallow me. And I wanted to touch ver more than I wanted to live.

“Neural asex can make people lose track of the messages they’re sending. I thought I’d made everything clear, but if I’ve confused you—”

I cut ver off. “You did. Make everything.” I heard my voice disintegrating; I waited a few seconds, forcing myself to breathe calmly, willing my throat to unknot, then said evenly, “It’s not your fault. I'm sorry I’ve offended you. I’ll go.” I began to stand.

“No.” Akili placed a hand my shoulder, gently restraining me. “You’re my friend, and you’re in pain, and we’re going to work this out.”

Ve rose to vis feet—but then squatted down and began to unlace vis shoes.

“What are you doing?”

“Sometimes you think you know something, you think you’ve taken it in. But it’s not real, until you’ve seen it with your own eyes.” Ve pulled vis loose T-shirt over vis head; vis torso was slender, lightly muscled, vis chest perfectly smooth—no breasts, no nipples, nothing. I looked away, and then climbed to my feet, determined to walk out—at that moment, prepared to abandon ver for no better reason than to preserve a desire which I’d always known led nowhere—but then I stood there paralyzed, light-headed, vertiginous.

I said numbly, “You don’t have to do this.”

Akili walked up to me, stood beside me. I kept my eyes fixed straight ahead. Ve took my right hand and placed it against vis stomach, which was flat and soft and hairless, then forced my sweating fingers down between vis legs. There was nothing but smooth skin, cool and dry all the way—and then a tiny urethral opening.

I pulled free, burning with humiliation—swallowing a venomous barb about African traditions just in time. I retreated as far as the tent allowed, still refusing to face ver, and a wave of grief and anger swept over me.

“Why? How could you hate your body so much?”

“I never hated it. But I never worshipped it, either.” Ve spoke softly, striving for patience—but weary of the need to justify verself. “I didn’t pick you for an Edenite. The Ignorance Cults all worship the smallest cages they can find: the accidents of birth, of biology, of history and culture… and then rail against anyone who dares to show them the bars of a cage ten billion times larger. But my body is not a temple—or a dung-heap. Those are the choices of idiot mythology, not the choices of technoliberation. The deepest truth about the body is that all that restrains it, in the end, is physics. We can reshape it into anything the TOE allows.”

This cool logic only made me recoil even more. I agreed with every word of it—but I clung to my instinctive horror like a lifeline. “The deepest truth would still have been true if you hadn’t sacrificed—”

“I’ve sacrificed nothing. Except some ancient hardwired behavioral patterns buried in my limbic system, triggered by certain visual cues and pheromones… and the need to have small explosions of endogenous opiates go off in my brain.”

I turned and let myself look at ver. Ve stared back at me defiantly. The surgery had been well executed; ve did not look unbalanced, deformed. I had no right to grieve for a loss which existed only in my head. Nobody had mutilated ver by force; ve had made vis own decision with vis eyes wide open. I had no right to wish ver healed.

I was still shaken and angry, though. I still wanted to punish ver for what ve’d taken from me.

I asked sardonically, “And where does that get you? Does hacking out your base animal instincts grant you some… great, rarefied insight? Don’t tell me: you can tune in to the lost wisdom of the celibate medieval saints?”

Akili grimaced, amused. “Hardly. But sex grants no insight, either— any more than shooting up heroin does —however much the cultists rant about Tantric mysteries and the communion of souls. Give an MR a magic mushroom or two, and they’ll tell you, sincerely, that they’ve just fucked God. Because sex, drugs, and religion all hinge on the same kind of simple neurochemical events: addictive, euphoric, exhilarating—and all, equally, meaningless.”

It was a familiar truth—but at that moment it cut deep. Because I still wanted ver. And the drug I was hooked on did not exist.

Akili half raised vis hands, as if to offer a truce: ve’d had no wish to hurt me, only to defend vis own philosophy. “If most people choose to remain addicted to orgasm, then that’s their right. Not even the most radical asex would dream of forcing anyone to follow us. But I don’t happen to want my own life to revolve around a few cheap biochemical tricks.”

“Not even to be made in the image of your beloved Keystone?”

“You still don’t get it, do you?” Ve laughed wearily. “The Keystone is not some… teleological endpoint, some cosmic ideal. In a thousand years’ time, the Keystone’s body will be the same obsolete joke as yours and mine.”

I’d run out of anger. I said simply, “I don’t care. Sex can still be much more than the release of endogenous opiates—”

“Of course it can. It can be a form of communication. But it can also be the very opposite—with all the same biology in play. And all I’ve given up is that which the best and the worst sex have in common. Don’t you see that? All I’ve done is subtracted out the noise.”

These words made no sense to me. I looked away, defeated. And I knew that the pain I’d thought of as an ache of longing had never been more than the bruising I’d received from the crowd as they fled the robot, and the throbbing of the wound in my stomach, and the weight of failure.

I said, without hope, “But don’t you ever want some kind of… physical solace? Some kind of contact? Don’t you ever, still, just want to be touched?'

Akili walked toward me and said gently, “Yes. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.”

I was speechless. Ve placed one hand on my shoulder, and cupped the other against my face, raising my eyes to meet vis. “If it’s what you want, too—if it won’t just be frustrating for you. And if you understand: this can’t turn into any kind of sex, I don’t—”

I said, “I understand.”

I undressed quickly, before I could change my mind, trembling like a nervous adolescent—willing my erection to vanish, without success. Akili turned up the heating panel, and we lay on our sides on the sleeping bag, eyes locked, not quite touching. I reached over and tentatively stroked vis shoulder, the side of vis neck, vis back.

“Do you like that?”

“Yes.”

I hesitated. “Can I kiss you?”

“Not a good idea, I think. Just relax.” Ve brushed my cheek with vis cool fingers, then ran the back of vis hand down the center of my chest, toward my bandaged abdomen.

I was shivering. “Does your leg still hurt?”

“Sometimes. Relax.” Ve kneaded my shoulders.

“Have you ever done this… with a non-asex before?”

“Yes.”

“Male or female?”

“Female.” Akili laughed softly. “You should see your face. Look—if you come, it’s not the end of the world. She did. So I'm not going to throw you out in disgust.” Ve slid a hand over my hip. “It might be better if you did; you might loosen up.”

I shuddered at vis touch, but my erection was slowly subsiding. I stroked the smooth unmarked skin where a nipple might have been, searching for scar tissue with my fingertips, finding nothing. Akili stretched lazily. I began massaging the side of vis neck, again.

I said, “I'm lost. I don’t know what we’re doing. I don’t know where we’re heading.”

“Nowhere. We can stop if you want to. We can always just talk. Or we can talk without stopping. It’s called