It was raining. Again. Fuck global warming, Dean thought as he splashed through the puddles. Pretty soon, this neighborhood would be abandoned like all the others he had known. He dodged a sprite when it flew out of an alleyway, cursing at it. Why didn’t people keep a leash on their damned pets? Goddamn genetic engineering, he thought. Goddamn everything. The Earth was drowning, and all people thought about was taking a vacation on Mars or buying themselves stupid little mythical pets. Nobody had any sense anymore.
He saw the box before he went into GFP Pharmacy but ignored it. It was still there when he emerged with his medication. The rain had lightened, and so had his mood. The pills helped a lot with that. He wandered over to the box and nudged it with his foot. Something stirred inside. At first, he recoiled. A rat, maybe? He’d heard on the news something about mutated rats, and that was the last thing he needed to encounter today. The thing in the box made a soft “meep” sound. Not a rat, then. Maybe. He nudged the box again. He bent carefully and flipped the lid off.
The thing had a thick mane of luxurious red hair. It was pale like milk. Large, scarlet-colored eyes looked up at him. It was female. At least, Dean thought it probably was. It had breasts, at least. At a glance, he’d guess it was a tiny woman. Not human, though. A foot high, maybe, eyes large like an anime creation, too much hair on its head, breasts far too large to be practical. A toy.
“You’re a Playmate,” he said, recalling the ads. “You’re a kid’s toy. Where’s your kid? Why are you here in this box?”
The tiny girl said, “Meep,” again. Of course it couldn’t talk. Typical. Dean squatted to get a better look. The Playmate stood up, just tall enough to peek over the top of the box. It smiled. Damn. It was cute, he thought. If she was human-sized, she’d be a babe. An ultra-babe. Still inhuman, though. Those eyes! What was it about large eyes that made things like her look so adorable?
Dean reached carefully into the box. There was a tiny collar around her neck but no tag. She wore what looked like some kind of BDSM outfit. A leather leotard open in the front all the way down to her crotch but, somehow, still able to contain her breasts. She wore pink fishnets on her tiny legs and a pair of ankle-high boots on her little feet. Cute as fuck, that’s what she was.
He was getting hard. This wasn’t right. She wasn’t real, she was a mixed bag of sloppy genetic engineering, meant to be a child’s plaything, not meant to last. Lifespan of, what? Five years? How old was it already? They arrived fully grown already. There was nothing else in the box to give him a clue about why it was here.
It touched him. Tiny, soft, pale hands grabbed his hand. She hugged it, petted it affectionately, and looked up at him silently imploring. Dean sighed. He glanced around. No podcams here. The city had given up on this section already. No police presence, nobody watching. Not that it would matter. The toy was obviously abandoned. “You want to come home with me, little Meep?” he asked.
“Meep!” it replied, holding up its tiny arms. Dean lifted it easily with one hand. The creature immediately clutched against his chest, snugging to him beneath his coat. It was warm. It was soft and…it smelled. Vanilla? Lemon? Genetics could do almost anything.
Ten minutes of walking brought them to his home. The water was hip-deep here, so he had to make his way over floating debris lashed together to form a makeshift causeway. His apartment was on the fourth floor, well above the flooding waters. The door to apartment sixteen was wide open. Mr. Boothe had finally moved out. That left Dean all alone in the old building. He climbed the stairs and opened his door, stepping into welcome warmth. Global warming didn’t mean constant heatwaves, it meant disruption of worldwide atmospheric conditions and weather patterns. Just then, the Jetstream was delivering arctic air to the city. The flood would be ice in a day or so.
Meep squirmed to be let down. He placed her on the floor and watched her scamper around, exploring. He hung up his coat, dropped his pharmacy bag on the table, and flopped into his chair. “Vivia, TV on,” he said aloud. The air shimmered in front of the wall across from him and became a crystal-clear window onto a golden meadow. “Vivia, sports news,” he said.
The apartment AI understood he wanted news on the TV and not delivered through the home’s speaker system. The image on the TV flickered and became four men sitting around a table arguing about the draft picks. Dean kicked off his shoes and slumped, tired. The euphoria of the Plastexiphon pills was wearing off. Meep climbed up over the arm of his chair and turned to sit there, her tiny feet on his lap. “Meep!” she said.
He laughed. “I don’t even know what you eat,” he said. “Can you eat regular food? I’ll print us up some dinner soon. How does Solyanka sound? It’s Russian. Got kielbasa, bacon,mushrooms…”
“Meep!” the girl said excitedly.
Dean lifted an eyebrow. “You understand me. Can’t speak, but you understand, that’s cool. So, you like people-food?”
“Meep,” she said, nodding.
“God, you’re cute,” he said, grinning. “You have no idea how lonely I’ve been, do you? I guess it was my lucky day I found you.”
“Meep,” she said more demurely, nodding. She stood up and threw herself against his chest. He covered her with one hand, hugging her. There was that smell again. Her large breasts were like two tiny soft pillows against him. He moved his pinky finger and caressed her legs. Fishnets? Why fishnets? Who dressed her like this? He would have expected pink taffeta or frills of lace, not a bondage fantasy. Maybe he needed to look up Playmates and read the specs.
Her legs were smooth. Even with the nylons, it was nice to pet her. She squirmed against him, clutching him tightly, mewling softly. Tiny hands tugged at his shirt until she’d formed a gap large enough for her to slip a hand through. He felt her caressing his chest the way he was touching her little legs. It was nice.
Slowly, he drifted into sleep. Another side-effect of the medication. A depression so deep that he’d rather carve out his own heart than deal with other people, anxiety that choked him, constant pain in his joints, a list of other ailments so long that there was no way there could be one cause. Twenty-six medications made life comfortable, but just barely. Thank god for the Medical Suffrage Act. At least he didn’t have to pay for medicine or the doctors.
It was growing colder outside. He dreamed of ice. He saw the world smothered by it, the ice age so long fought off by greenhouse gases finally forcing its way into existence. He saw the city locked and frozen. He did not see people. It was a world infested by toys. Fairies and sprites, miniature African animals, genetic monstrosities made by amateurs and unleased on the world, but no people. The world would belong to them one day. Maybe soon.
The dream changed. There was warm sunlight now. He felt it touching his skin, drifting into his bones. He felt soft and safe. Loneliness was at the edge of awareness, but he was not afraid. He wasn’t quite alone anymore, right?
He woke suddenly. Meep was straddling him. The leather leotard was gone. Her pendulous breasts were firm and enticing, and between her legs was a smooth slit. The only hair she had was on her head. She had unzipped him in his sleep and somehow gotten him erect. Now, she was pressing herself down on him, on the tip of his cock, as if she was trying to penetrate herself.
“Hey, hey,” he said, reaching for her. “Is that the kind of Playmate you are? Explains a lot. Stop before you hurt yourself…oh, shit!”
His cock sank into her. She stretched like rubber. Her body sank down over his cock, taking him inside slowly but steadily. The head of his cock alone should have been enough to split her apart, but it didn’t. Whatever internal organs she had must have shifted aside to allow him passage, as she sank further and further onto his cock. She came to rest against his pubic hair. The tip of his cock was pressing against her diaphragm, it had to be. She demonstrated no sign of distress, though. She squealed happily. She began to rise up and down like a slow piston. The sensation was incredible. She was ribbed inside, built for this, designed down to the last gene to be a perfect little masturbatory sex toy. She mewled and gasped and jumped up and down on his cock faster. Dean watched like a spectator instead of a participant as the pleasure grew and grew.
“Meep, I’m going to cum,” he told her, as if he had to warn her like a woman he might accidently impregnate. He could, too, so long as she wasn’t on birth control either. He’d tried the implant, but he never had a sexual partner so what was the use? Meep squealed as she felt him swelling, about to blow. He growled and cried out as he came. His cock pulsated inside her as he emptied his balls. It squelched back out of her as she continued to bounce. There was no room inside her for his sperm. She squealed again, like a scream of pleasure, and vibrated. She shook hard for a few seconds and went still.
She’d cum. He’d made his sex toy orgasm. “Wow,” he laughed. She laughed, too, making little chirping sounds. Slowly, she disengaged from him. Cum came out in gobs, but she didn’t leave him mess. She began to eat his cum. She ate it like she was starving. It made sense, he thought. She was an engineered sex toy. Of course she lived on a diet of sperm.
When he was clean, she crawled up to his chest and collapsed. In moments, she was clearly sleeping contentedly. Dean held her with one hand gently, flushed with a mixture of emotions. He still hated the little genetic monstrosities, but maybe there were exceptions. “I think you and I are going to get along just fine, little Meep,” he told her. The toy twisted slightly in her sleep, a happy glow to her face.
Outside, sleet began to fall. The tide forced the water a little higher. The sky was a sheet of miserable gray and people hurried from one place to another as though allergic to the absence of their electronic entertainments. Inside the warmth of his apartment, Dean drifted off to sleep with his tiny lover clutched lovingly to his chest.