Chapter 1: Derek

When the letter arrived, it was addressed to him and referred to Morgan by name. It made no sense:

Derek Simon,

This notice is to inform you that after pleading guilty to the charge of embezzlement on February 23rd 2046 Ms. Morgan Heller has named you as her Significant Other. Please make an appointment with the Law Enforcement Complement Liaison Office at your earliest convenience.

There was an address and a phone number listed at the bottom of the page, but nothing to explain what the letter meant. Significant other? Derek had gone to dinner with Morgan once, three months ago.

Before he could meet Morgan for dinner a second time, she was arrested, which had come as quite a shock to him. Derek arrived at the restaurant just in time to see her being hustled into a police cruiser in handcuffs. He overheard one of the police officers outside Le Petit Cheval speaking into his mobile, saying “ ... money wasn’t on her, just ... yeah, okay,” and that was it. There hadn’t been anything else he could do, so he left.

Since that incident he had not heard anything from Morgan or from the police that arrested her. No letter, no phone call, no email. Her online profiles hadn’t been updated since then either. He had grudgingly accepted that he was never going to hear from Morgan again. Now, a quarter of a year later, he held this strange letter.

Derek considered ignoring the letter, but only briefly. There was nothing indicating that he was legally obligated take action, but there was nothing indicating that this was optional. A large part of him wanted to move on, but he was also curious.

If he ignored this, it would bother him. Not knowing what was going on always made him feel angry and out of control. The whole situation with Morgan continued to bother him precisely because he didn’t understand what had happened.

He dialed the number.

The phone number led to an automated system for making an appointment. Unfortunately, there seemed to be no options in the system for explaining the purpose of such an appointment. He hung up.

What was going on here? He had to know. He dialed the number again, found that he could schedule an appointment for that same day and did so.

Half an hour later he arrived at a nondescript office in a strip mall next to an attorney and a dentist. It sure as hell didn’t look like any sort of official police station. When he walked in, the office was empty except for a young black woman sitting behind a counter.

A faint but pleasant citrus aroma filled the air. This place used a quality air freshener, but everything else seemed cheap and shoddy. What smells were they trying to mask?

The woman at the counter would have been quite attractive except for the way she radiated hostility without moving a muscle. She wore a vaguely indifferent, off-putting expression that conveyed a deep anger at the world. A small, plastic name-tag indicated that her name was Adelaide. She was fixated on her terminal monitor, not even looking up as Derek entered.

She spoke before he could ask a question. “Men’s bathroom’s on your right, plastic cups are in there along with some magazines. Spit in the blue cup. Fill it to the marked line. Ejaculate in the red cup. Use only the cups in the bathroom. Bring both cups out here when you’re done.” She had clearly given these instructions hundreds, maybe thousands of times. Her eyes never left her monitor.

“What? Did you just say ‘ejaculate?’ My name is Derek Simon, I made an appointment this morning.”

“Schedule says Derek Simon, here for Morgan Heller. You’re the only one comin’ in before three. Bathroom’s on your right.” Still no eye contact.

“Alright, really, what the—” he stopped himself just before he cursed out loud. “Would you mind explaining what I’m doing here?” Derek didn’t intend to raise his voice, but that’s how it came out.

The woman finally turned to face him, with a pained, exasperated look. “They need your sample to key your girl’s Complement. Bathroom’s on your right.”

Derek paused for a moment, trying to keep his frustration and temper in check, deciding how best to respond to this. He hated being made to feel foolish, and her condescending tone grated against his nerves.

In a strained but carefully controlled voice, he articulated his confusion. “There are three words you just said that I didn’t understand.” He ticked each off on his fingers. “Define ‘sample’, ‘key’ and ‘Complement.’ And, if by ‘girl’ you mean Morgan, I only saw her once.”

That seemed to catch Adelaide’s attention. “Once! Damn boy, you must have a magic dick.”

“One dinner, one kiss, no sex. You want to give me another hint?”

“She didn’t talk to you about this? Maybe wrote you a letter you didn’t open? You forget to pay your mobile bill and miss somethin’ important?”

“No.”

“I’ve been here a month now and you’re the first one not knowing what’s what. They don’t pay me to tell you dumb-ass boys that your loser, fuckup girlfriends is getting locked up. Earth to dumb-ass, your girl’s goin’ away!”

“So I gathered. My name is Derek Simon, not ‘dumb-ass.’ Let’s go from there.” He glared at her.

She glared back for a moment before relaxing a bit. “Seriously? I mean seriously, you never did it with her?”

“One dinner. One kiss.”

“Is she, maybe, really fat or crippled or somethin’ like that? Can’t really tell from the picture here, just shows her face but she don’t look deformed.”

Adelaide seemed to pick up on the look Derek was giving her before he actually said anything. “Hey, I’m not dissing your girl, just askin’ why she picked you when she’s never even seen your dick. She gotta be desperate. Then she don’t even phone you? That bitch be crazy.”

“You would have to ask her about that. Right now I’m asking you: Picked me for what, exactly?”

“Not my job, but I tell it like it is. Boys up at the State House got all worked up at the idea some ladies might diddle themselves behind bars, so last year they went and did something ‘bout it. Called a Complement, as if it’s something nice. Looks just like a clit piercing, but a Comped girl needs a little help getting over the edge. Gets keyed so only one living soul can set her off. That’d be you. Without your juice, she’s stranded high but not so dry, if you get my meaning.”

“So, you’re saying when she’s in prison she can’t...” He hesitated and the exasperated woman finished for him.

“Come! She ain’t gonna come, climax, orgasm, get off, or reach the promised land. Without you, she gonna be a race car with no wheels, with the engine all ramped up and nowhere to go. Get it?”

That was rather horrifying. Derek’s solitary nature and sporadic dating habits meant he had a good working relationship with his right hand. The idea of blocking such a basic human need made him cringe. “And these Complements— Are they doing this to men too?”

“I tell you you they’re gonna Comp your girl and the first thing you wanna know is if you should be worried about them Compin’ your dick? Boys and their dicks! I’m not even surprised. Well, you and your dick can rest easy, them Comps is only for the ladies. You think them, woman hatin’ sons-of-bitches would do that to their own? Hell, no!”

Derek did feel a little bit guilty, but that was accompanied by a powerful wave of relief.

Meanwhile, Adelaide was still going. She seemed to like hearing herself talk: “Dicks is different, they say. Too expensive, they say. Not economical, not worth the effort. Officially, ‘course it’s about the tampons, but that’s horseshit.”

“Excuse me?”

Adelaide was getting really worked up. “Ladies bleed, that news to you? But Comp a girl and you can turn her periods on and off like a light. You wanna get her pregnant? Flip it on. Turn it off and you get no cramps, no blood, no need to buy the icky girly things those boys downtown hate seeing in their budget.”

“That an’ they say the Comps prevent the infections,” she continued. “You know the ones they wouldn’t have if their prisons — excuse me, correctional facilities — weren’t such shitholes to begin with. The suits crunched some numbers and one Comp per jailbird comes to less than buyin’ pads and tampons and medicine every month. But what about them girls inside for just a little while, like, say, fourteen months? The math don’t work there do it? Course not, unless you’re the Governor and you can’t do math, so you just wave your hands!”

Adelaide waved her hands to punctuate what she was saying. “Just wave your hands and say them’s criminal bitches, them girls gonna come right back in sooner or later. Never mind running the numbers on that, cuz jailbirds is jailbirds and if the governor says it, it gotta be true! Don’t even have to worry the broke-ass bitches might scrape together some cash and pay a doctor to get it out, ‘cause it can’t be done by modern medicine! Bonds to deep nerves or some shit!”

He stared at her. “But couldn’t they keep her healthy and even limit her, uh, cycle, withou—”

She cut him off, “You’d think, yeah? But the boys downtown didn’t make ‘em. ‘Off the shelf solution,’ that’s their horseshit line, that and ‘package deal.’ Comps were designed as marital aides, for couples with sex problems. Guaran-fuckin’-tees you come like a freight train every time your man does his thing. Jacks your sex drive all to hell, too, did I mention? You’re always in the mood, you always come with your man, and any reason you ever had to cheat is long gone, along with all that monthly blood and cramping! What a sales pitch!”

Derek could only stand there as Adelaide’s tirade rolled on. Once she was going, there was no stopping her.

“But guess what? Say goodbye to your me-time, you’ll need to ask for help with that. When you’re horny, which is always, and he ain’t in the mood, which is way more fuckin’ often than you’d believe, you’re just shit out of luck. We ladies ain’t stupid, not too many takers on that deal. Now the company making these things is running in the red and they’re tryin’ to make some of their money back selling ‘em to the prisons. It’s working too, just not for girls getting locked up. Politicians love it, they can get their filthy hands right up our snatches, and justify it in their budget!”

It was warm in the room, but Adelaide’s nipples were hard, clearly defined nubs pressing against the fabric of her blouse. She saw the direction of his gaze and guessed the conclusion he had reached.

“Got paroled about a month ago. Bathroom’s on your right.” She turned back to her terminal.

He glanced towards the bathroom she indicated, then back at Adelaide, trying to process everything she’d just said. She noticed his hesitation, turning back to him. “Listen, dumbass. I don—”

“Derek.” It was his turn to interrupt her. Her attitude had really gotten under his skin. No wonder she ended up in prison. “If you call me that one more—”

“Alright, honey, lemme set you straight. I just point to the bathroom, take your samples and put ‘em in the spec machine over here. That’s it. I’m not gonna help you out, or give you a hand. I don’t do hand-jobs, blow-jobs or rim-jobs. I just do my job and that means I sit right here while you’re in there.”

That was not at all what he had been thinking. Okay, she was somewhat attractive, but she really wasn’t his type, not to mention her obnoxious attitude or that she just got out of prison. Besides, he wasn’t in the habit of demanding sexual favors from every pretty girl he met. Well, come to think of it Morgan was actually the last really pretty girl he’d met, and he had, in fact, asked her out, but—

Adelaide snapped her fingers twice in front of Derek’s face. “Hello! Earth to Mister Simon! You hear me? I know what you’re thinking. You and your dick, just thinking about how the girl with the big tits is sitting right here, horny as fuck. You’re thinking maybe I’d like to feel something nice and hard, like it’d be doing me a favor. But if you were actually listenin’ you’d get that it wouldn’t help, ‘cuz your dick ain’t my Ty’s dick, is it?”

“Um, no.”

“Uh huh, that’s right, and you be happy about that. If it were, it’d be limp as a noodle, as usual. There’d be no point in you bein’ here, and I’d still be sitting here stewin’, now wouldn’t I?”

He stared at her a moment gathering his thoughts quickly this time, before she exploded at him again. “Like I said, I saw Morgan just once. What am I signing up for here? What if I meet someone else?”

“You don’t want her, you don’t gotta keep her. Comps don’t come out but they can re-key ‘em to someone else. If you agree, that is. Can’t just go re-keyin’ whenever. She’ll need a consent form from you, or a marriage cert, or a death cert or it’s not happening.’”

There was another strained silence.

“So, in the bathroom, remind me what goes in each cup?”

She reverted to the bored, practiced tone she used when he first walked in. “Spit in the blue cup. Fill it to the marked line. Ejaculate in the red cup. Use only the cups in the bathroom. Bring both cups out here when you’re done. Bathroom’s on your right.”