22 July, 2091 - Cragsmoor Supermax, New York - Prisoner 2080NY00064941 - Dr. Thomas Smith

If it wasn’t for hubris inspiring me to include my name and email address on the back of every nanobot I made, I’d still be a free man. They’re so tiny a dozen can fit inside a cell without damaging it, but I had to go and put my damn name on them! At first, I really did mean well. I truly did. My serious but small-scale crime, and later my terribly catastrophic one, both started with me trying to help a woman with her sexual problems. Many would see my goals and actions as honorable and worthy of praise, until I became selfish and started misusing my invention’s abilities.

All my legal appeals are exhausted and the President refuses to pardon me, so I’m headed for erasure and recycling next Tuesday. Next week, I won’t know anything I’ve done to deserve my punishment, or even my current name. Lying would offend my love of science and facts, and my future self won’t know the difference anyway, so every word of this is true.

I’m not writing this in search of fame or recognition. Instead, I hope it will serve as a warning to future scientists and engineers. They should avoid anything similar to my work. They should avoid it at all costs!

I’ll start my story in the middle, then jump to the end. The beginning isn’t that interesting, and it’ll be easier to understand that way, trust me. Or don’t. It won’t matter after next Tuesday.

I had dated Lucinda about fifteen years ago. We were both physically attractive and in the second year of our promising careers. I was a medical roboticist and she was a biochemist. On each date she would hug me as a greeting, hold my hand when we walked anywhere, and sat near me when she had the opportunity. I liked her a great deal and was very affectionate towards her too.

Her problem presented itself whenever we began to get intimate. The second I touched her breast, she put her hand on the crotch of my trousers, or our lips touched, she had a panic attack. She also admitted a milder problem to me. She had tried vapesticks with some friends and was addicted to them. As you probably know, vapes only have mild levels of drugs and nothing seriously toxic. They’re only about five percent as bad for people as tobacco, which is rightly banned.

She was doubly embarrassed about her addiction, considering her biochemistry specialty. Fortunately, most vapes smell like mint, fruit, or other pleasant things, instead of putrid smoke. Mostly, it was a big inconvenience for her to run outside every hour or two to puff any time she was away from home. To her, the health risks were minor in comparison.

She told me she strongly wanted to kiss me, make love to me, and maybe even start a family with me. She had an irrational fear because of abuse in her early childhood. I trusted her and shared my secret. I had developed an effective nanobot which could solve both her problems at once. I discovered how to target them to remove specific neurons, including brain cells. They could modify her nervous system to stop the addiction and calm her fear. If she were willing, I would program a batch of nanobots, have her take them in a small pill, and she would be cured by dinner time.

She had a few questions about safety. I assured her the nanomachines would do exactly what I programmed them to do, and she had nothing to worry about. She looked at my plan and was confident it would work. I double-checked the program before I loaded it into the sub-microscopic robots through their short-range radio links. In this context, ‘short range’ is only a few centimeters.

They would remove her fear of sex and eliminate her addiction to the vapestick drugs, nothing more. When they were done, they would migrate to her kidneys and leave her body when she urinated. Their power sources would run out in a few days, and they would be nothing more than tiny bits of metal and plastic drifting in a sewer somewhere.

She swallowed the pill with a glass of water and things went exactly as programmed. An hour after taking it, she calmly kissed me for several seconds, then a minute or two. She reached in my pocket and played with my ... equipment, with a happy smile on her face. We slowly took off our clothing and cuddled in bed, kissing and talking for hours. She was happy instead of afraid and didn’t feel the need to puff at all.

After eating dinner nude with her in my lap, we made love for the first time, and the second. We stopped for a few drinks and a snack, performed oral on each other, and made love for the third time. She hadn’t wanted to go outside and puff for over six hours and had no fear of sex! She was cured!

Except she wasn’t. She still had the strong oral fixation the addiction had caused her. She had either candy, a straw, or a finger in her mouth almost constantly. Any time I was naked and near her, I got a blowjob without even asking. With no fear holding her back, over a decade of repressed sexuality spilled out. She wanted me either licking, fingering, or screwing her at least every two hours, the whole time we were awake. We thought we were in Heaven.

I didn’t sense anything wrong with the situation until I needed to get some work done. It’s hard to manipulate tiny parts under a microscope while there’s a mouth on your ear, or more distracting yet, your nipple. It’s equally difficult to type with a naked beauty in your lap.

When I had to leave on business for half a day, she masturbated until a few of her lady parts were rubbed raw and started bleeding. I first thought of simply reducing the number of nerves leading from her clitoral area to the spine, but that would have made her problem worse. She would still want the same amount of sex, but it would be harder for her to satisfy the need.

I could have the nanobots remove some of the neurons involved in sexual desire, but the brain can slowly re-route damaged pathways over time. Unless I had the bots remove all the related cells at once, effectively spaying her, the bots would need to destroy small groups of nerve cells every day. Over the course of a decade, half her brain would be gone.

I had done thousands of internet searches and run out of ideas. My desperation to cure her inspired me to go to the State Paper Library. I bought her several sex toys and a large bottle of lubricant, so she could survive another day without me.

Very few people go to a physical Library anymore, so each state only has one now. Most people think it’s silly to travel just to read actual books printed on paper, since nearly everything has been available online for half a century. I knew there were still several thousand works that hadn’t been published to the net, and one of them might hold my last hope of a cure or treatment.

Several discredited medical texts from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries recommended the use of sex toys and frequent masturbation as cures for mental illness in females, but my lovely Lucinda already had that well in hand, pardon the pun. Cocaine, alcohol, and strong sedatives were also highly recommended. With ‘Science’ like that, I’m surprised humanity ever figured out how to use fire.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but I found a bit of truth in the last place I expected, a fiery religious text. “A man who marries a prostitute is a fool, as a man who reaches in a lion’s mouth is a fool. They cannot help what they are. Once a harlot, always a harlot.” It was some vitriolic stuff, but later I found it to be at least partly true.

I also read some results from failed experiments that tried to regrow brain tissue. Perhaps I could have the nanobots restore a small part of her fear, to tamp down her overwhelming libido? I didn’t find a solution, but I had a few ideas.

My ideas vanished like cotton candy in a typhoon when I opened the apartment door. Loud music was playing and Lucinda was leaned over the arm of the sofa. She was sucking a penis, stroking another with her hand, and taking a third in her vagina. Several more men were sitting in the kitchen and living room waiting for their turns.

I nearly let out my sudden jealousy and rage. Instead, I froze for a moment. I realized she was untrustworthy and her issue was hopeless. I had to be free of her, but I needed to do it in an intelligent way. I played with one of her nipples, smiled at her, and told her I was glad she finally got what she needed.

In freeing myself, I invented the punishment that’s going to be used on me soon. Sometimes Karma truly is a bitch. But most people would agree, in my case it’s fair. I went to my lab and programmed another dose of nanobots. These would erase my name, face, and anything else involving me from Lucinda’s memory, in the same way a prison physician is going to erase my science and engineering knowledge next week.

I planned to just put the nanobots in a glass of water and have her drink it but realized all the men had seen me too. I mixed up a pitcher of punch, and everybody had a glass but me. Doing the math, each of them drank at least a few thousand nanobots, which would be enough to do the job over several hours.

I suggested they could have a better time at a hotel across town, where there was a pool and a hot tub. Luckily, they followed my suggestion. I knew they would never be able to find their way back, or remember most of what they did that day. After cleaning up two dozen used condoms and several pieces of stray clothing, my problem was solved.

I didn’t foresee the terrible consequences. Deleting our discussions about medicine destroyed the majority of Lucinda’s scientific knowledge, preventing her from doing her job as a biochemist. She would barely be qualified to perform the duties of a nurse’s aide or a cook.