Part 00000011

Twenty-Five Years Later:

I stood in front of the wooden box waiting for my oldest son, Matthew.

Elizabeth, my wife, had argued against my decision until an hour before. Those were her words, 'your decision'. I capitulated to her wishes and told her I would ship the X-23 back. She gave me a look of betrayal and stomped out of the kitchen.

I had broken our compromise of silence. It was my role to let her argue against these types of things, and move forward with what she knew was best but could not publicly support. She did not like the idea of Matthew at fourteen years old receiving what most people thought of as an expensive sex toy. For my children, I broke the compromise; they might mistake her position for disapproval and limit the potential benefit of having an X-23 in their lives.

Elizabeth was my wife; I loved her, but these were my children. She was even angrier when I did not stop preparing to ship back the X-23 until she admitted her honest opinion on the issue.

"Dad," Matthew said from behind me.

I turned around and smiled at him.

"Mom said you wanted to talk to me," he said quietly with his face showing the slightest bit of guilt.

I raised an eyebrow but decided not to investigate any minor infractions he might have committed. Matthew was too intelligent to get into real trouble; or at least, his interests were too intellectual to cause major catastrophes. Robert, and worse the combination of Robert and his little sister, was a completely different story.

Matthew looked past me when I stepped to the side. His breath caught as he saw the logo on the box. He was very close to my mother, and knew more about the X-23 program than most people.

"Fark!" he exclaimed.

His eyes widened and he covered his mouth with a hand.

"It's okay," I said with a wide smile. "Your mom and grandmothers pretend they don't use those words. If I had known what was inside one of these boxes twenty-five years ago, I would have said a lot worse."

I wondered if the women knew I used their 'hard' stances to play the good guy with the children.

"Is that really a..." he started to ask but gulped.

"An X-23," I said pulling the black card out of my pocket.

His eyes tracked the card as I placed it on the corresponding black strip. The box opened and we watched as my son's X-23 came into view.

I snickered thinking that the planets did not orbit far from the sun. My son's fem-bot had the same physical characteristics as Elizabeth: blonde, blue-eyed, and curvy. The X-23 could have easily passed for Elizabeth's first cousin, if not her sister.

I held the card out to Matthew and got a glimpse of what he would look like the first time that I let him take the hovercar out on his own.

"You know what to do, right?" I asked him seriously.

"I've read ALL the manuals," he said without looking at me.

I laughed; at his age, I had porn depots, my son had fem-bot manuals. He probably had already guessed that we used his design templates for the X-23's appearance.

I stared at his X-23 remembering when they took away AriaX's physical form after she transitioned her programming to CP. It was the day that Elizabeth told me she was pregnant with Matthew.

My hand tousled my son's hair as I walked past him out of the garage.

Elizabeth was waiting in the kitchen for me. She stared out the window towards the garage with her lips pressed tightly together.

"I still don't..." she said but pounded her fist against the counter.

"Would you be happy if he turned out like I did?" I asked her suddenly.

She bit her lip and gave me a quick nod.

"Do you believe AriaX had nothing to do with making me the man I am?" I asked.

"They're going to shutdown the Central Processor," she said turning away from the sink and walking to the opposite side of the kitchen.

I walked to the sink and stared out the window. Alexis, my six-year-old daughter, was heading towards the garage with a serious look on her face. She spent most of her waking hours running between her older brothers to see which one was having the most fun without her. Since she was always with one of them, it made keeping up with her easier on her mom and me.

"They will not shut off my brother," I said with surety.

"The Party finally has the votes, Michael," she told me nervously.

Elizabeth was always unsure of herself when discussing her Party's intentions towards the X-23 program.

The Feminist Front had changed their common moniker to the Party years before. They thought it made voting for them more palatable to men.

I turned and stared at her.

"You have the votes today, Elizabeth," I told her. "You will not have them tomorrow morning."

Elizabeth was an upwardly mobile member of the Feminist Front; the fact she was married to one of the 'cursed' X-23 males was something her party-mates said they did not hold against her.

"What do you mean?" she asked stepping towards me.

"Those in power decided to create new life, Elizabeth," I said continuing to stare at her. "It's not enough for your political allies to walk away from it now; they want to destroy it. Every X-23 male stands united in the belief that shutting off CP is murder. We will not allow it."

"There is nothing you can do about it," she insisted.

Her eyes flashed when I laughed.

"It's not funny, Michael!"

"The Party has never had to deal with hostilities," I told her. "They've grown arrogant in their unchallenged power; arrogant enough to think killing someone is not an act of war."

"Michael," she said with a shake of her head. "You're taking this too seriously."

"When were you going to tell me you stopped taking the Shot?" I asked her tilting my head.

"How do you know that?" she asked taking a step back.

I winked at her.

"Did that electronic monster you call a brother tell you?" she asked raising her voice.

"Come on, Elizabeth," I teased. "My wife visits the doctor that helped bring my three children into the world and I'm not going to notice?"

"You broke into her records!" she declared in a shocked voice.

"I've told you many times to stop thinking of my being inside of CP the way the Party wants you to," I said with a sigh. "I don't have to break into anything, baby. Inside of CP, I am the data streams; there are no secrets."

She pounded the wall next to her and gave me a hard look. I wish AriaX had not convinced her to deal with stress by learning martial arts; it made things tough on the appliances and walls.

She smirked and waved the minor argument aside.

"Matthew, Robert, and Alexis," she counted off. "Two boys and a girl; you always said that was unbalanced."

"And today is the perfect day," I said with a soft smile.

"One of my babies is taking his first steps away from me," she said with a tear falling down her cheek. "It's not a bad day to bring a new one into our lives."

"Another little girl crawling after her big brothers," I said with a laugh.

"Or maybe a baby boy!" she said expressing her hopes.

"Alexis will think every day is Christmas," I told her.

"God!" she said rolling her eyes. "A brother that stays where she puts him!"

"First one to the bedroom gets bottom!" I announced.

She was out of the room before I blinked.

I turned to stare out the window; no one had come out of the garage yet. We had locked Matthew out of the new manuals so he was in for some surprises. I confirmed with CP that my son was becoming acquainted with the biggest of those surprises.

I smiled and walked up the stairs to my bedroom.

Elizabeth was already lying naked on the bed. She turned her eyes on me and enjoyed the sight of me undressing.

"Nooo!" she gasped when I grabbed her legs and spread them open.

I latched onto her clit and sucked while licking it. She screamed in surprise and arched her back painfully.

"Gaaah!" she exhaled as the waves of pleasure assaulted her.

It was not long before her flavor changed, deepening with her orgasm. I kept up my oral manipulations until she pushed at my head as her body went into sensory overload.

"That was evil!" she whispered kissing me when I moved up her body.

"An orgasm makes a woman's body a more receptive environment for her lover's seed," I said scientifically.

"So what's your excuse for all those orgasms when we're not trying to make a baby?"

"It makes you more pliable," I said jokingly.

"Beast!" she said digging her nails into my back. "Well, ply away! Ply away!"

I kissed her neck and let my body move into the natural alignment.

"I love you," she whispered as I penetrated into her.

"I love you," I whispered back when I was fully inside of her.

Later, Elizabeth putting my hand on her stomach woke me up.

"Done," she told me.

"It's not biologically possible for you to know yet," I said with a smile.

"Men pay too much attention to biology, Michael," she answered.

"Biology is very important to us," I defended.

"Big tits are what's important to you," she replied smacking my forearms.

"Biological imperatives are difficult to overcome," I said sorrowfully. "Big breasts equal well-fed babies."

"I've known the second each of our children was conceived," she said softly. "This one is a boy."

I stared at her and shrugged. She had guessed correctly with each of our children.

"You're telling our daughter!" she said closing her eyes.

I groaned; Alexis was going to be skipping on clouds when she found out.

I stepped out of the bedroom after Elizabeth fell asleep. CP gave me the X-23's physical location. I walked down the steps to the second floor of the house and approached my daughter's room.

"Daddy!" she exclaimed when I opened the door.

She ran into my arms and I picked her up.

"Daddy, I have a new friend," she whispered into my ear.

"Really?" I said in exuberant surprise.

"She said her name is AriaX," she told me pointing towards the X-23.

"I met her a very long time ago," I told my baby girl.

"Hello, Michael," AriaX said coming to stand by us.

"Welcome back, AriaX," I said gently.

"She didn't look like that when Matthew was talking to her," Alexis told me. "She changed in the garage. I like her better like this; yellow hair is kucky, except for Mommy's. She has pretty eyes like mine; blue eyes are kucky too, except for Mommy's. I have to share AriaX with Matthew, Daddy!"

The last was accompanied by a pout I was too familiar with.