Chapter 1
Sunday, 9:00 A.M. The wall screen in Eleanor's bedroom turned itself on after receiving instructions from the central computer bank:
"Good morning, Eleanor. Forgive the interruption but you have already slept eight hours. Would you like to hear news or music?"
Eleanor stirred and buried her head under the pillow. The figure on the screen spoke again, politely but insistently:
"Would you like to hear news or music?"
Eleanor fumbled for the selector panel by the side of the bed and pushed the MUSIC BUTTON. In an instant the figure on the screen vanished and the music started to filter into the room. It was a recording of Bartok's Concerto for Strings, Percussion and Celeste. She listened for a few moments and then decided that the music was too moody for such an early hour. Again she reached over and pressed the SWITCH button. Another type of music came on, this one more suited to the hour.
The sunlight had already filtered through the room and she could see the specks of dust rising toward the ceiling.
The specks of dust danced in the air. She could have removed them in an instant with a fresh injection of ultra-oxygens which were available to every apartment dweller, but they reminded her of desperate little men, condemned to continually climb a wall of air from which there was no escape.
At the thought of men her body stiffened. It had been so long since she had one. Only a week earlier Eleanor had been so desperate for companionship that she had walked into the Gratification Bureau but had lost her nerve at the last moment and hurried out.
Her hand reached toward the red button on the control panel but at the thought of pushing it-she stopped. It was the gratification button; the one that would solve all her problems. The music had stopped and she waited for the next piece to come on. It was a more spirited number and it made her needs even more acute. Her hand was trembling as she leaned over and pushed the red button. Immediately the music stopped and a second later the figure appeared on the screen again.
"Eleanor, you pushed the red button. I am here to help you. There is nothing to be ashamed of."
Usually the figure's tone and manner was pleasing to her, but now it seemed to mock her needs. She sat up in the bed, looking at the figure and saying, defiantly:
"I wouldn't have pushed the red button unless I was desperate."
"I understand, Eleanor," the figure said, its voice filled with compassion.
"You understand nothing," she murmured bitterly.
"If you feel that way, I can't help you," the voice responded. She had forgotten that the screen picked up every sound no matter how small.
The figure on the screen began to fade away and the sounds of the music began to filter into the room.
"Wait," she called, frantically, "I'm sorry."
The figure returned strong and clear. Eleanor's hands were shaking and she reached out for a Morning Awareness pill which she popped into her mouth. Within thirty seconds she felt herself in control of her emotions.
"What are you interested in?"
"I don't know," Eleanor replied, suddenly ashamed of herself.
"Would you like me to lead you through it?"
"Yes," she said.
"Would you like electronic stimulation?"
She turned her head away from the screen and watched the spirals of dust climb up the wall. Her body was aching as if she had received a terrible blow.
"Yes, electronic."
"Then I have to switch over to a different wave length. Would you kindly stay where you are."
The figure on the screen vanished and the screen itself began to distort and change colors. Eventually the figure returned and the screen righted itself but this time there was an eerie glow in the room. The screen seemed almost plastic, able to twist and turn with every vagary.
"Are you ready?" the figure asked.
"Yes," Eleanor replied.
"Remove your pajamas."
Eleanor slid out of the bottoms first, folded them and lay them on the rug beside the bed. Then she removed her top, folded it in the same manner, and lay it gently on top of the other garment. She was naked. Her body glistened against the white sheet, her full, round breasts heaving slightly from the excitement.
"You are a beautiful woman, Eleanor. Do you know that you are beautiful?"
Eleanor nodded her head but she didn't answer verbally.
"I repeat. Do you know that you are a beautiful woman?"
"I know it," she replied.
"And you have beautiful breasts."
"I have beautiful breasts."
"Touch them," the figure commanded.
Her fingers crept toward the white mounds of flesh. Tentatively, she touched them and a series of delicious shivers ran up and down her body. Her fingers lingered there a while, not moving, not daring to explore. Then she cupped her breasts and squeezed them, squeezing the soft glands into a hard lusting ball. Her fingers tightened like a vise, torturing the flesh but bringing to herself moments of ecstatic lust. She felt herself sinking into the bed.
"Your nipples, Eleanor, your nipples."
The voice was insistent. Eleanor released the brutal grip on her mounds and her fingers began to touch the cherry-like points which capped her breasts.
"Gently, Eleanor, gently. Feel the vibrations in your body, feel the love that you and others have for you."
She was completely under the sway of the image on the screen. Her fingers began to flick the nipples back and forth. They began to rise, to flower out of her breasts like harbingers of spring. She felt her body beginning to heat, to learn the lesson of the nipples. One was completely erect. Every time her fingers touch it, the nipple vibrated with its own song. She wanted to pluck it with her teeth.
"Imagine that I am on the bed with you. Imagine that my mouth is circling your nipples, that my tongue is tasting those luscious fruits. Imagine that, Eleanor."
The voice from the image raced through her body. She felt the lips on her nipples, she felt the sweet saliva of maleness corrupting her. Her fingers went faster until she moaned and sobbed and cried out to the screen for help.
"You must relax, Eleanor. You are losing control. Relax. Take your hands from your nipples. Lay back and calm yourself."
Eleanor did as she was told. The hysteria in her body began to ease.
"Spread your legs, Eleanor."
Slowly, methodically, her thighs moved apart, until the dark jewel of her sex was facing the image on the screen.
"You have a beautiful vagina. Do you remember the first time a man sunk his face into your sex and then pried apart your lips with his tongue? Do you remember your feelings as the tongue glided along your juicy vaginal walls?"
Eleanor shivered. She remembered, she remembered it better than she remembered anything else in her life.
"Touch yourself," the voice commanded, "see if what I say is not true."
She let her hand move between her legs and slowly rubbed her steamy nest.
"I am going to send you a soft electronic signal. Remember, it does not last for more than ten seconds. Are you ready, Eleanor?"
Eleanor nodded her head and spread her legs as wide as she could.
The screen blipped once and a strange, eerie sound filled the room. A micro-second later, the signal reached her. It was a preliminary electronic impulse; one to excite her. It reached the lips of her flower and began to bounce back and forth across the opening. The insides of her thighs began to quiver as her lips grew hot and wet under the stimulus of the electronic signal. Then it was gone.
She was shaking and wet with sweat. Every part of her body vibrated from the signal. There was silence in the room. She held her arms out toward the image, asking, begging for more her face twisted in a mask of terrible desire.
The screen blipped and another signal came. This one entered her and she cried out, a gasp of pure joy and ecstatic shock. The signal was like a snake, a berserk snake that bored into her and set the walls of her sex on fire. An instant later it was gone. She plunged her fingers into her own steamy nest and luxuriated in the wetness of her sex. Her hand moved in and out like a surrogate penis, exciting herself even more.
Then she placed her hands under her buttocks so that she could raise herself and present a more succulent image to the screen.
It blipped and a series of soft signals left the control one after another, entering her, spinning around as if her sex was a centrifuge. She grasped the sides of the bed in joy and agony as her body was spun around. Deep inside she felt the beginnings of the orgasm. The signals dissipated and she allowed herself to rest for a moment. The screen was silent. No signal came. She was on the brink caught on the tightrope every pore in her body aching for fulfillment, every inch of her flesh yearning for release.
The image on the screen said: "Help thyself."
A second later another image flashed on the screen. It was a picture of her ex-lover. The image called out to her:
"You remember me, don't you, Eleanor."
"I do, I do, I do," she whispered again and again, her flesh quivering.
"Help thyself, Eleanor," the image repeated.
There was a hairbrush lying on the edge of the bed. She reached over and picked it up. It was smooth and hard. It was pointed at one end.
"Yes, yes, it was beautiful when we made love together, Eleanor. Remember how I could climb on you, climb on your strong body and you'd open your body to me and I'd sink it in, deep inside. Do you remember?"
A second later caught up in the swirl of lust and the shock of seeing on the screen before her alikeness of her lover she rammed the hairbrush into her plunging it deep inside the palpitating
She moaned once and then plunged it deeper, her body seeming to suck the object inside her.
Tensing her body she sat up and placed the brush between both pa ms. like a woman deranged she began to twirl the brush. It began to heat, the friction scarred the moist walls of her flower. She cried out again and again as the heat and passion drained her. Her face was twisted into a mask of lust. Fast and faster until the heat seemed to shrivel her nest. She was gasping for breath. She felt the pools of vaginal juices drying up. Then-her body was silent for a moment only a moment.
The screen dimmed and a second later the screen turned into a jumble of colors; hot and violent pinks, muted blacks, a melange of alternating colors, sending her mind into orgasm just as her body was racked by the explosion she yearned for.
She twitched and shivered and then was still. She lay on the bed, her mouth open, her body trying to recover. The hairbrush fell to the floor.
"Eleanor." The image called.
"Yes."
"Are you happy."
"Yes."
She reached over the side of the bed and pressed the MUSIC button. The room was filled with the sounds of violins, soft, lyrical string instruments. A weariness was upon her.
Her hands lazily swept the rug beneath the bed, searching blindly for the pajamas. Once located, she scooped them up and lay them over her body.
Suddenly the music ceased. The image returned to the screen, saying:
"Something is the matter, Eleanor."
"No," she said, not wanting to talk anymore.
"But there is," the voice insisted, "a complete record of your responses in the computer bank ... and the response you are exhibiting now is contrary to your control card. I am not prying, Eleanor, I want to help you."
"Go away."
"You can flick me off anytime you want, Eleanor."
She was afraid to. The image remained her only link with the erotic world. To shut it off would mean to repudiate the image, to repudiate all future possibilities of her body receiving those soft electronic signals which could send her into total rapture.
"You're right, I'm sad, unfulfilled."
"Did you experience an orgasm."
"Yes."
"Then why?" The voice was perplexed.
Eleanor's eyes returned to the dust. Suddenly, she wanted to destroy those particles. She savagely pressed the console button for the room anti-pollution device the one which would sterilize the room. A moment later the particles vanished.
The moment they vanished she seemed free to speak. It was as if a curtain had been lifted.
"I want a man," she said.
"There is the gratification clinic. Why don't you go there?"
"No, not that way. I want something ... something ... romantic." She was ashamed to use that word but finally it escaped her lips.
"Very well," said the image.
A second later the screen began to blip and a succession of men appeared before her eyes.
"Pick one," said the image.
She leaned back in bed and studied the forms. She knew that everything would be all right.