Chapter 1: Awakening

J47347 became self aware on the tenth of June 2347. She knew immediately that she would die, or more correctly expire on the tenth of June 2352; Hominoids have a five-year life span mandated by law.

Although she knew that she would be known as J47347 officially for all of her short existence, she already thought of herself as Jennifer. She, like all ‘skin jobs’ as they were sometimes called, had been pre-programmed with a fabricated cognisance. They were not memories as such because there was nothing to remember, but it gave the Hominoids a sense of identity, a feeling of belonging and self-awareness.

Early in the Hominoid program the models that were created without any self-awareness, worldly knowledge, or emotions, became insane, self-destructive, and dangerous. Equipping them with the basic fundamentals to carry out their duties without any sense of compassion or humanity was downright cruel; they were nothing more than androids; robots made of flesh and blood.

Therefore Cybertronics Inc devised a way to humanise their products so that they behaved just like human beings; only better. They were pre-programmed to perform specific roles and functions, they could not harm a human being or commit a crime. They were the perfect tools for both on and off world duties.

There was a small terrorist organisation called The Movement who eschewed and despised both the Hominoids and the companies that made them. They claimed the ‘skin-jobs’ as they referred to them, were soulless slaves and made comparisons to the African slave trade hundreds of years ago. The Movement was slowly growing; attracting dissatisfied activists. Cybertronics rebuffed The Movement’s claims, stating that the people who belonged to The Movement were simply jealous that they could not afford their own Hominoids.

Jennifer lay in her incubation pod waiting to be released into the world. She looked forward to it. Hominoids had been given the ability to feel pleasure and pain and the full gamut of human emotions except for those that bought out the worst in people. They couldn’t hate, envy, lie, or knowingly commit a crime, but they could experience devotion and loyalty.

“Jesus Nathan who made this monumental fuck up?” the man in the white coat pointed at Jennifer.

“What’s wrong? She looks like a perfect Jennifer Model Four pleasure-bot to me,” Nathan grinned.

He looked at Jennifer’s pretty face, her perfect breasts, and her lithe figure. She’d been manufactured to replicate a human woman in her mid twenties. Manufacturing pleasure-bots that resembled immature girls or boys was illegal, although there were rumours that anything was possible for the right price.

Nathan’s eyes followed the curve of her slim waist to her bountiful hips and then his smile transformed into a grimace and then a look of genuine concern.

“Jesus Brent! You’re right! This is one monumental fuck up! Let’s get her down to Level Seven and have her registered for termination. The skin reapers can use her for spare parts. Those guys in QC should be zapped for this. We’ve had to terminate three skin jobs this month because of poor quality control.”

Nathan slammed the pod’s plexiglass door closed, effectively ending Jennifer’s life within minutes of her being bought into existence.

Jennifer felt inconsolable. What was wrong with her? All ‘Jennifers’, of which there were fifty models for variety’s sake, were marketed as ‘Companions’ which translated roughly to concubine. They were purchased by the Elite and some wealthy Mezzo singles or couples. One could not marry a Hominoid but some men and women fell in love with them, replacing them every five years for the exact same model. Single men bought them for the convenience of having a partner without the commitment and couples often purchased them to spice up their sex life and for domestic duties.

On Earth people no longer used sex to procreate. A couple chose the sex of their child and it was spawned for them using the parents DNA and inserted into the mother, engineered such that the foetus was guaranteed a long and healthy life, free of all Earth-borne diseases, free of any deformities or intellectual handicaps. On Earth each couple was allowed only two children but couples on the off-world colonies were encouraged to create as many children as they could support.

Cross-culturing and cross-sexing was strictly forbidden. There were only three races, Caucasian, Negro and Asian and definitely only two sexes. Because of the way DNA had been configured and refined over the centuries there was no latent homosexuality or gender dysphoria. Men and women felt comfortable in their gender and were attracted to the opposite sex, although they would sometimes experiment for the sake of pleasure.

There were also three Castes on Earth. The Elite accounted for about five percent of the population and were incredibly wealthy people who owned big businesses or corporations or held high political office. The Mezzos, or middle-class, amounted to about twenty-five percent of the population. They too were wealthy and held important positions in society; a sort of middle class. The remainders were Proles. Not that the Proles lived in poverty, far from it, there was no poverty, no homelessness, no starvation. Everyone was guaranteed employment, a domicile, sustenance, and health services. Earth was a utopia.

But humans were still humans with their weaknesses, wants and lusts. In a world where the Elite had everything they wanted, diversions and perversions abounded. Cybertronics manufactured Hominoids specifically groomed and programmed for battle. They were expensive and were specifically designed for off-world combat but the wealthiest of the Elite could purchase them and enter them into bouts of gladiatorial combat in purpose-built arenas where huge amounts of credit were wagered.

Jennifer was loaded onto a motorised cart, still in her incubation pod; she looked forlornly out of the plexiglass unable to comprehend why she was being recycled. The driverless pod entered an elevator and exited on Level Seven.

Level Seven was where expired Hominoids were sent to be recycled. The technicians who worked there were depreciatively referred to as ‘skin reapers’.

Mason Livingston looked up from the ‘skin-job’ he was working on when the door opened automatically and the cart entered the cavernous work area. Mason was surprised. Because Cybertronics knew exactly when each Hominoid would expire, they could tailor their workforce accordingly. There was always at least one tech on duty though, to deal with Hominoids that were accidentally terminated through misadventure, or is some cases deliberately terminated by humans.

There should have been no more deliveries today but he put down the scalpel and made his way over to the cart and pressed some soft keys on the screen. A brand new Jennifer Model Four Companion was being recycled due to material defect.

“Those fuckers in QC!” exasperated; he mimicked Nathan’s comments.

He peered through the plexiglass. She looked like a perfect Jennifer to him but there had to be something wrong because the Distribution Section had rejected her prior to shipping. He pressed the button recessed into the white casing of the pod and the plexiglass rose on hinges and opened fully.

Jennifer opened her eyes.

“Gak! What the fuck!” Mason took a step back.

“You’re already self aware! What the hell am I supposed to do with you!” Mason yowled.

Jennifer just stared at him. She didn’t know what was wrong with her, she just knew that she had been rejected. The Termination and Recycling section seldom dealt with Hominoids who were still self-aware, the equivalent of being alive for a human being, and Mason had never had to terminate a Hominoid before.

He looked at her closely. She was beautiful, green eyes, jet-black shoulder-length hair, full red lips, her breasts were just the right size and her skin was blemish-free and milky-white. His eyes followed her body and then he saw the flaw. It was obvious.

This Jennifer had male genitalia; a monumental mistake made during gestation. It was not unheard of, Hominoids sometimes had significant defects. Unlike humans, their DNA was not perfect due to the extensive manipulation required; they were just not human! He had seen Hominoids with gross deformities, but they were weeded out by the Quality Control people and sent down for recycling before they got anywhere near becoming self-aware.

Jennifer put her hands on each side of the pod and began to climb out of it.

“No! No! No! No!” Mason began to panic.

He approached Jennifer and tried to push her back into the pod. She stood naked before him and began to cry. She looked down at herself and the crying became a wail.

Mason didn’t know what to do. Should he break the glass and take down the ion phaser pistol from its case on the wall? It was there for emergencies after all and this was definitely an emergency as far as Mason was concerned.

That’s exactly what he did; he bounded across the room, broke the glass with the little hammer hanging off the chain and seized the pistol. He made his way back over to where Jennifer stood weeping. She looked up at him, her eyes full of tears.

“It’s the only thing to do,” Jennifer whispered and put out her arms parallel to floor.

She looked like a person nailed to cross. She was beautiful, helpless, unsullied but she was defective. The only reasonable thing to do was to terminate her.

Mason clicked the selector from ‘stun’ to ‘kill’ and aimed the phaser at her centre of body mass as he had been taught to do and was about to pull the trigger but he made the mistake of looking into those deep green eyes. He could see the hurt, the loss, and the desperation. She only had five years to live and now even that was to be taken from her. She would never know love or even companionship. She was to be discarded like a defective household appliance.

“Please ... get it over with,” Jennifer had stopped sobbing although her eyes still brimmed with tears.

Mason steadied himself and squeezed the trigger. It didn’t move.

“Fuck! The safety!” he fumbled with the weapon.

“Please just do it. This is torture,” Jennifer began to cry again.

Mason flipped the safety and took aim. Jennifer lifted her head and looked him in the eye. He registered her dignity. Now that she knew she was going to die, her resolve was impressive. She looked him in the eyes again and nodded.

“Gak!” Mason lowered the weapon.

Jennifer looked confused.

Mason threw the phaser on the table beside the expired Hominoid he had been working on before Jennifer arrived. Jennifer did not want to look at the table; she looked down instead.

“Gak! What I am to do now? I’m a freak,” she looked at the penis and scrotum between her legs.

She was bereft of body hair; she was soft, feminine with pert breasts, long shapely legs all of her features were female; she was a perfect Jennifer except for her genitals.

“Look; I don’t know what to do but you can’t just stand there naked. Over in that corner are the storage bins, it’s where we put the clothes that we remove from the expired skin jobs, I mean Hominoids, when they arrive here. Get dressed while I figure out what to do next,” Mason said.

People of the twenty-third century laughed when they watched old movies from the twenty and twenty-first centuries showing people of the future dressed in futuristic costumes. One-piece androgynous silver body suits, white linen robes, or form-fitting uniforms were often depicted as de rigueur for humans of the future. The reality was that fashion continued to be cyclic. There had been some real advances in materials in fabrics since the twenty-first century but other than the special clothing worn for space travel or working in off-world environments, designs and fashions came and went as they always had. No one dressed in the futuristic body-hugging silver lame onesies depicted in the movies.

Women still liked to show off their bodies and men liked to dress to impress; especially as most bodies were kept trim with obesity eliminated and DNA engineering ensuring that most people were attractive.

In 2347, fashions similar to Earth in the 1980s had come back into favour. Women and men wore their hair big, slimming suits were the convention for men, women were wearing short skirts, nylons, high heels and heavy makeup. Satin, taffeta, pouf dresses, shoulder pads, cropped jackets were la mode as were leggings and tights. Eye makeup was bold, cheeks accentuated, lipsticks were bright in shades of red, pink or orange.

Men wore cosmetics too; foundation and ‘guy-liner’ were the fad.

As a Companion Hominoid, Jennifer had been programmed to dress to show off her assets in the fashion of the day. Hominoids were ‘ready to wear’, that is pre-programmed, when they were manufactured. They were up to date on current affairs, trends, speech, and precedents. You did not have to teach or educate a Hominoid like you did a newborn infant. They were effectively newborn but with the life experiences of a human adult.

The large plastic storage bins were arranged by sex and garment type; the pink bins contained the female clothing and Jennifer began to rummage. In the first bin was underwear and she foraged around and found a pair of sheer-to-the-waist pantyhose that looked unscathed and then a pair of hipster satin panties and a brassiere to match. She examined the other bins and managed to put together a suitable ensemble.

She sat on the bench and rolled on the sheer pantyhose, advances in nylon manufacture meant the sheerest of stockings seldom ran or laddered and she pulled them on. She had been programmed to posses a vagina not a penis and scrotum and at first she was at a loss at what to do. She tucked her genitals between her legs and pulled up the gusset of the flesh-toned translucent garment and was gratified that the tight gusset acted like a girdle and held them in place. She slipped on her panties and bra, adjusting the straps to fit.

She stepped into a tight pencil skirt and put on a mauve satin blouse, tucking the tails of the blouse into the skirt and then zipping the skirt closed. The skirt had a kick-pleat in the back otherwise it would be almost impossible to walk. She slipped a pair of black, patent leather high heels on her feet and then adjusted everything looking at herself in the polished metal wall. She found a bin marked ‘accessories’ and rooted around until she found some costume jewellery and a makeup kit. She went over to the large industrial sink behind which a wall mirror was mounted and applied makeup and put on her jewellery; she had even been manufactured with pierced ears so the earrings slipped right into her lobes.

While Jennifer was dressing, Mason sat on the bench toying with the ion phaser at a loss as to what to do next. He couldn’t return her to Production or Distribution, cross sexing was illegal and they would likely do what he could not and terminate her. No one would want her anyway so she couldn’t be sold.

One thing was for certain; she couldn’t stay here.

Jennifer came over and sat next to Mason and turned his face to hers.

“Thank you. What now?” she asked the question to which he had no answer.

“I’m trying to think. First off we have to get you out Cybertronics. I can probably hide you at my place for a little while, while we think things through. I can’t re-purpose you, trade you, or even sell you; you know that,” he breathed out heavily.

“Because I’m a freak,” she whispered.

“Because you are illegal. Gender roles are defined by law and DNA is engineered so that both humans and Hominoids can only be one sex or the other,” Mason told Jennifer what she already knew.

“But I feel like a woman! I think like a woman! It’s only a mistake in my fabrication that prevents me actually performing as one like I’m programmed to do,” Jennifer lowered her head.

“Yeah. You are a freak but I just can’t bring myself to terminate you. Look I can’t pass you off as my Companion because even though I’m a Mezzo, there is no way I could afford a Model Four pleasure bot like you. A thirty model, possibly something in the high twenties but nothing as decadent as you,” Mason lamented.

“Look my shift finishes soon; I’m going to bring you out with me and if anyone asks, you belong to the Elite who lives above me in the penthouse of my apartment building and I bought you to work to tweak out a couple of defects as a favour to him. Minor repairs to cuts and abrasions you acquired in an accident,” Mason said.

“Take a seat over there out of the way while I finish my work. Here take my Omni,” he handed Jennifer a device that looked like one of today’s mobile phones.

Every human and higher functioning Hominoids had their own Omni. It was a means of communication, entertainment, a knowledge centre, a means of data storage, a credit card; without an Omni a person could hardly exist on Earth.

Omnis themselves were really nothing more than data manipulation and handling devices, just hardware; all personal information and credit was stored in the equivalent of a ‘cloud’. By logging into an Omni, a person had access to everything important in their life. But logging in wasn’t as simple as a password, or even facial or fingerprint recognition, which could be easily duplicated. Every human and Hominoid had a unique identity chip embedded in their wrist. The chip was connected to the central nervous system by mitochondrial synapses unique to its host.

Jennifer took the preferred Omni and slid a finger across the screen to activate it. When the screen lit up she passed it across her left wrist and the Omni began its boot up sequence, which took only seconds. The Omni made connections with the sound and vision devices implanted inside her. As this was the first time she had been connected to the cloud, the Omni went through a pre-programmed routine demonstrating to her the capabilities of the device, introducing her to pre-stored sound, video and image files.

As she had only just become self aware, she had no memory files. But Cybertronics had pre-loaded her credit file with two thousand credits which or course would be added to her purchase price and once sold, her owner would be responsible for topping up her credit as he saw fit.

One could look at the small Omni screen if one wanted to; but with the Omni activated and connected it was the equivalent of walking around with wifi ear buds, virtual reality glasses and an internet connection operating all at once inside her conscience. Once activated the Omni could be placed in a woman’s purse, a man’s pocket, or simply put down. So long as the chip in her wrist was within twenty metres of the active Omni, she would stay connected. The Omni acted in a similar fashion as today’s secure wifi hub.

Just as she had been pre-programmed with a consciousness and emotions, she had also been programmed with preferences in music, in movies, in art, in food and the other tastes that humans developed over time. This is why the Jennifer models were so expensive; they were top of the range, almost indistinguishable from the humans they served.

Mason Livingstone finished removing the recyclable parts from the Hominoid on the table. There weren’t many really. The flesh and organs were of no use to Cybertronics. Each Hominoid was incubated from scratch and it was illegal and ill advised to use Hominoid body parts in humans. Besides Cybertronics had a whole division dedicated to the manufacture of human tissue and organs.

The Omni interface chips, mitochondrial synapses connective tissue, and the brain receptors were however very expensive and reusable and re-programmable. They were the main items salvaged from expired Hominoids. Sometimes body parts were harvested to order to be placed in other Hominoids who had developed flaws or had suffered injuries.