Ship of Theseus

Here. Have some philosophy.

Lit’s annual Geek Event has always been fun for me. Thanks to ChloeTzang for taking it on once again this year. This story comes, distantly, out of Pixy Pfeiffer’s universe, but don’t worry. It’s very much a stand-alone.

I get that others have come up with the idea of women giving birth to clones, but with apologies to the Tleilaxu, mine are hotter.

* * *

“So? I’m good?”

The tech put his scantool away, his smile taking on that detached look Dwayne had seen before over the past few decades. The vacant, airy expression, the one that said, Hell, nothing at all to be concerned about, lying all the while. “Well, you know the deal, Dwayne. You’re definitely downsloping, but the scan says the rate’s not accelerating outside acceptable margins.” He hesitated, blowing out a long breath. “Still around a .03% decrease in cerebellar mass across the major nodes. About the same as last quarter.”

Dwayne stayed quiet until the man, nervous, made eye contact. “‘Around’ .03% decrease?” They stared a moment, and the tech was the one who looked away first. “I know the numbers, doc. What they mean. It’s something I’ve read about just a little. Be precise, please.”

The man set his jaw, then chopped out a nod. “Yeah. Okay, Dwayne. So Nodes 5-8 are at .0288%, and 1-4 have a mean percentage of .031.” He let the figures sink in, watching Dwayne’s eyes to see whether there was any visible filming yet. Always, always evaluating, the techs.

Dwayne relaxed himself, forcing it, his brain doing the math reliably enough once it got going. He had a lot of memories to sort through, but he produced the right answer quickly enough. In about 2.3 seconds, the tech noted. “Doc, that makes over a quarter of a percent mean decrease. Year-to-date over the past, what, five years?” The tech did his own math, shrugging out half a nod. Dwayne fought to keep from laughing at him. “And that’s nothing to worry about?”

“Dwayne.” The vacant expression was gone now, replaced by the stern one the techs used when they were dealing with smarter patients. “Buddy. You’re at way under a third of the total acceptable margin. Way under. Don’t freak out.” He tossed his comslate onto his desk. “I’m telling you. All good. I don’t need to see you again until three months from now.” He sniffed. “You know, pending the Neuro results. Assuming no rapid deceleration in the tau proteins or something. But I don’t expect anything abnormal. We’ll send a message if we need to see you sooner.”

“Sooner. Yeah, fuck that,” Dwayne nodded; still quarterly, at least. You weren’t supposed to let it bother you until you had to go monthly. But then Jeff H was monthly now, the Alpha Jeff, and he didn’t really seem to give much of a shit. He still just sat around the bonfire with that little honey Jessly all curled up next to him as the stars came out into the fern-scented darkness. Nights were the best times here, always had been, sitting in a cloud of laughter and coalsmoke while the night crew watched the pens over the head of the ridge, where the limbless swarms of clones slept uneasily. Dwayne sprang off the raised medic table, scratching at his balls. The tech tried not to look down. “Jesus H Buddha, Wayne. Put some clothes on.”

“What’s the matter, Doc?” Dwayne’s arm swung low, clamping hard against the man’s crotch as he yelped back a step. Dwayne chuckled. The tech was older, balding, looking about twice Dwayne’s age, but Dwayne remembered when he’d been born. He’d looked just like his grandfather; Dwayne remembered that birth, too. “I’ll catch you later. Thanks.”

“Uh, sure.” The tech glared after him, straightening his trousers as Dwayne headed down the hall to the Assignments Office. The numbers, he told himself, were fine; he really did have nothing to worry about, and the thought made him feel strong and powerful enough to produce his usual morning erection.

Yup. Assignments Section was definitely the place to go.

Kethys was on this morning, her fingers fluttering over the key field, her warm orange eyes scrunching in a smile when she caught sight of him. “Why, hello there! If it isn’t Dwayne Prime, darkening my door.” She leaned sideways, peering around the monitor at the front of his trousers. “Well. Ready already, huh? It’s not even breakfast time yet!”

“Oh, come on Keth,” he smirked, adjusting himself as he leaned over her counter. “You remember how I am.” They shared a quiet, grown-up chuckle, remembering. She’d borne almost a dozen of his children over the years. A most reliable Carrier, was Kethys. He drummed his hands on the surface, gazing frankly down into her cleavage, remembering. His cock gave a lurch. Keth had almost sixty-one Standard Years now, and she was still a fine-looking woman. Jeff P was a lucky man, as he well knew, to have her warming his bed. “Who’ve you got?”

The old lady frowned at her screen field, nodding. “Dwayney-P, slated this morning for… Juliessa.” She nodded, glancing up. “You had her a few months ago, just the once. When she showed up for her orientation.”

Dwayne shrugged. He didn’t remember her. There’d been a big crop of potential new Carriers coming in then, all of them just past their twentieth birthdays and in the bloom of bright, shining youth, and as he remembered they’d all been fun. He’d probably remember her once he smelled her, Dwayne reflected; he often did, his mind jarred these days by the women in his past. So very many… “Juliessa. Nice name.” He held out his hand for the capsule, just like all the other countless capsules over the years: some new soldier’s DNA was in there, packed up neatly along with all the developmental accelerators that would let the clone age faster, all of it ready to ride Dwayne’s sperm into the happy little haven behind Junessa’s belly button… or, wait. Was the name actually Junessa?

Whatever.

“Here you go, Sugar-dick.” They laughed again, the memories of so many nights, so many sticky-thighed mornings. “Have fun.”

“Yup.” He whistled a slow, complex tune as his sunshades dropped into place, the yellow sun already broad and hot overhead. This part of the planet was always nice, with warm lazy days and cool blue nights, which was why they’d stuck the Clone Farm here. The tune was an old one, very old now, and it was likely only three or four other people on the Farm would still remember it… but it had been her favorite song. He sighed, listening without emotion to a sudden scream from the Bloodhouse as he passed, headed for the Boudoir. Her favorite. She’d sung it in the mornings with the rising sun on her hair the color of old copper, so long ago.

There were often screams from the Bloodhouse these days. Dwayne didn’t even need to read the bulletins to know that Fleet had started a new offensive. The Clone Farm was always the first to know, the limb orders flooding in. He thought about that, working his lips experimentally; they were still a bit tingly, but the graft seemed to be going well.

One of the anonymous guards was on the Boudoir gate, a failed clone, someone swept from the Farm and brought here to be given a job because his Prime had been killed out there somewhere on the other side of the galaxy. Like, really killed, irreparably, probably vaporized in a ship explosion, and now this oblivious guard was the only remaining scrap of that soldier’s stray genes. “Dwayne Prime, number 6280-G,” he called out as he reached the gate, just as he had every morning since… well, almost before he could remember. When he couldn’t remember his first trip to the Boudoir, well, it would be time for the Doc to send him off to be Eliminated.

“6280-G. Got it, sir.” The guard licked his lips, watching Dwayne saunter past. The clones were always curious about life outside the Farm, even the ones who’d been to the Bloodhouse. Not that any of them would ever get much farther, anyway, though their parts and pieces sure might.

Still whistling, Dwayne checked the reference number on the capsule he’d gotten from Keth, his feet turning automatically along the mazy corridors; he could have walked to every part of this building with his eyes gouged out, and he could remember a few times when he’d done exactly that. He giggled to himself, remembering, that one eye transplant an absolute bloody mess. The tech had malfunctioned when he’d tried to install it, and the eyeball had fallen out into the Carrier’s face in mid-fuck. She’d freaked out, both her and the medical tech had vanished, and Dwayne still enjoyed telling the story around the coalfire.

He bleeped the capsule at the appointed door, the partition sliding open to reveal the same bed, the same sheets, the same fake windows and cynical lighting, a room exactly like the ones he’d spent hundreds of minutes in, gallons of sperm. A room Dwayne felt like he could wear, the way he wore his clothes.

What an odd thought, he pondered, his forehead wrinkling, but Dwayne Prime was not a man who went in much for philosophical musings as a rule. He sat on the edge of the bed, still whistling, and got to work on his shoes as the toilet stirred from the ensuite. “Hey!” The voice from in there was high, singsong, a young voice still unpregnant. She’d been here just a few months; in a few more, if it turned out she wasn’t as fertile as she should be, she’d vanish too. Eliminated? Warming some tech’s bed? Helping out in the Creche? Who knew? “Is that 6280-G? You’re early.”

“I’m ready.” He was, too, his cock already nearly there. He was feeling loose, energetic, ready to go; this was one of the days when he was actually going to enjoy the job. Well, until his shift at the Bloodhouse started anyway. “Come on out. Is it Junessa?”

“Juliessa.” The ensuite door slid open. “A lot of people fuck that up.” She emerged naked, her hair shiny from the shower, a tall lithe young thing with a perfect body. Dwayne felt his mouth start to water, his balls tingling. “Pleased to meet you. What’s your name?” She stared blatantly at his lap as his pants removed themselves, big almond-shaped eyes lighting up as his dick came out. “Wow.”

“I know. I’m Dwayne.” He lay back on the hard bed, opening his legs while his trousers fell. His penis lay fat across his upper thigh, still surging slowly toward full erection. “Juliessa. Nice name,” he went on vaguely, his throat going thick all of a sudden. Jesus, she was a fine little bitch! “You’ve got great tits, Juliessa.” He popped the capsule greedily.

She laughed, the sound a tinkling bell. He felt his balls lurch again. He’d not last long with this one. Her smell wafted toward him now as she knelt on the bed beside him. “Thanks. They are. But my pussy’s even better.”

“I’ll bet,” he guffawed, grinning up at her as she swung one lithe leg up over his smooth, scarred chest just beneath his neck, his hands rising to her ass in that automatic motion he’d done every day for so long now: so many asscheeks. So many pussies. Each and every one of them perfect, in their way, his grin rising to meet the glimmer hiding behind the taut, perfect folds of her young vagina.

Ah. Now he smelled her. He did remember. “Juliessa,” he rasped, enjoying the little shudder in her tight thighs on his chest when his mouth reached her, tongue extended in lazy expectation of the long, wet swoop along her lips. She gasped, and when he felt his face brush against her smooth, muscled belly, her juices on his tongue and her head already tossing back, he knew this Juliessa would be a frequent topic of coalfire conversation.

The younger bedwarmers never liked hearing their men talk about inseminating the Carriers, but they could fuck off. If they could get their wombs in order, they’d be Carriers too. Juliessa swung her hips smoothly forward up his face, dragging her slit along his nose, giggling breathlessly. “Fuck yes, Dwayne baby,” she sighed, and he’d heard so many women sigh in so many ways; this one sounded genuine, thank Buddha.

A hot filly who loved sex. She’d go far here.

Dwayne thought about her, thirty or forty years hence, dimpling up at him as she handed him an Assignment from Keth’s chair, her face and body older but still eye-catching; maybe, he pondered as he licked her out, just maybe, she’d be his bedwarmer by then, cuddled by the fire through short years of stars and smiles. And he’d still, even then, be wedging his tongue between these same pussy lips, still looking up at these same tits shuddering above as she ground herself against his chin.

He reached blindly up, the ache in his new thumb forgotten when it met his forefinger with one fat, shuddering nipple in between, her gasp rewarding him. She tasted sharp, tangy, exciting, and he could feel how hard he was without even having to give himself an experimental twitch. He twisted hard at her tit, those bewitching eyes of hers impossibly huge in a long, pointy face, and gave her distended clit one last hard suck before he spat her out. “Ride me. Now,” he snarled, brooking no argument, which was fine; this bitch was wet enough not to want to give him one, her ass inching down his chest until she felt the blunt hot stab of his dick against her butt.

“You’re going to love cumming in me,” she grated, all business, all confidence, her body rising to hover above him. He lifted his head, always mesmerized at the sight of his dick as it worked its way into a new Carrier. He clung hard to both cheeks of that amazing ass of hers while she reached down behind herself, groping blindly under her wet slit as her eyes followed his down to where their bodies waited to join, and then she was lifting his purpled cock straight up to reach inside her. “Yes,” she hissed, falling slowly, inevitably onto his hard-on. “Fuck, Dwayne!” she whined.

“Yeah,” he cheered her quietly on, feeling every gelid twitch of her snatch as it sank inch by inch to take him in. Sometimes, with less confident Carriers, this was the time he’d have arched up into her, but Juliessa’s eyes and body told him she knew just what she was doing. “Take that dick.”

“You don’t have to beg.” It was a breathless, gusting titter, her breath catching as, at last, her hairless body settled onto his. She reached one long-fingered hand to her nipple, rolling it, the other sinking easily to push her clit against the pulsing pressure of his cock behind it. “You’re going to cum. And I’m going to cum.” She smiled, her dimples carved deep. “Business with pleasure.”

“Fuck,” he groaned, his balls already shivering as she rose and fell, every muscle lined tautly under her smooth young skin. Their bodies made that eternal, lewd, wet slap when they met. She was flawless, moving with the surety of a woman doing what she was made to do: take the cum of a willing man, and her mouth fell open, her eyes boring into him, as she sped up.

She ground down on him intensely now, her hands on his chest bracing her as she rose and fell with her tits in his face, and when she heard his breath catch she leaned low to his ear. “Do it, dammit,” she grunted, the need sharpening her voice. “Cum for me,” she commanded. Her voice rose toward a whine, her fingers busy at her clit, and just as her pussy squeezed hard around his sliding dick he arched up high, reaching as deeply as he could before he let go.

Their eyes met, locked in, both of them panting as he fired into her needy womb, rope after healthy rope, his load filling her completely as, exhausted, she flopped onto him, her sweat-slicked body smearing across his as she exploded in delirious laughter. Dwayne sprawled, sighing happily with his hand full of her smooth, muscled ass, his nose full of her. “Thanks. That was amazing, Junessa.”

“Mmm. Juliessa.” She licked behind his ear, giggling.

“Juliessa.” He smiled. “Nice name.”

* * *

Dwayne checked his time implant; perfect. Time for a tea before his shift started, even with time factored in for sharpening his knives. The motor pool was deserted, all four trucks gone already over the ridge; it would be a busy day in the Bloodhouse, he knew. Space must have been a nasty place recently. “Dwayne Prime,” he sang to the guard at the Bloodhouse. “6280-E.”

“What’s that?” The guard blinked, his implant stirring, and Dwayne shook his head. “6280-G, was it?”

“Oh. Yes.” He smiled, clapping the kid on the shoulder. “How many orders today?”

The guard’s eyes lost focus for a moment, his implant squawking in his brain. “477, sir.”

“Shit.” The usual number never went higher than 200. He scratched at his empty balls, where the new testicle had been installed last spring, and shrugged. “Well. I guess it’ll be a long day. Have a good one, kid.”

The smell hit him as soon as he walked in, knife cases swinging from his shoulder. It was, indeed, a long day.

* * *

“What are you thinking about, Sugar-dick?” Bonnie’s voice was a drowsy whisper in his ear, deeply resonant like the sound of the waves on the beach down past the grove. Her splayed fingers rested easily atop his abs, her hand warm and dry and soothing as it had always been. All around them floated the fragrant coal-smoke, wavering among the conversations, all of it punctuated by the high, sad throb of Jeff P’s cello.

He kissed her short hair. “Me? Thinking?” He’d cut himself at the Bloodhouse that day, a moment’s inattention with the cutter as he and Paminda raced to fill the orders, endless orders. That one had been an arm, the clone arriving pale and shaky like they all did, a thick black cutline inked above the bicep. Dwayne had held the clone down, both their tendons corded under sweaty skin while Paminda, her hair clamped in her teeth, blew through skin and bone with the cutter, the smell of the cautery making its faint way even through their olfactory blockers. The cutter had nicked Dwayne’s finger in all the confusion, the digit spinning across the room, and he’d grabbed a replacement from the bin and flashed it on as a stopgap until he could order a new one from his own clone. Bonnie kissed the scar. “I’m not thinking about anything, Bon.”

“Fucking Minda,” she tutted, examining the repair. “She’s fast, but so careless.”

“Now now.” Paminda had been in their group for years, warming old Kenny Prime’s bed, her underachieving womb condemning her to a life of work instead of sex. But the work wasn’t hard, and at least she hadn’t been sent back to whatever grim factory planet she hailed from. Or worse. “It was a busy day, Bon. Wasn’t her fault. The clone just wouldn’t be still.” He waggled the finger. “Still works; I just can’t feel anything.” He was trying not to think much about that. This never used to happen. He wasn’t sure when he’d stopped feeling the temporaries properly, but he suspected it was due to the medical tech’s decreases in his sensory cortex.

Downsloping.

“You should be pissed at her.” Bonnie was a good woman, her body built for the Farm; twenty clones she’d spawned, and all of them healthy. “Fucking barren bitch.” She could be difficult, though. He sighed and propped himself up on the sand, looking out at the starlit whitecaps. Palm trees stirred all around him, the beach as idyllic as it had been for all these years. Bonnie… She was the latest in a long, long, long line of bedwarmers, some good and some bad, and he wondered if she realized how low she was on that particular totem pole. She couldn’t, though; her life was short, compact, singular, and it was always hard for the women to think of themselves as parts of a long, continuous line, like Yule lights on a trellis.

He’d gone without, sometimes, long peaceful years in a solo bed, and then he’d tried men sometimes too. But he’d always gone back to his sweet spot, the retired Carriers, so warm and safe and different from the younger, fertile ones to whom he owed his sperm. That was the tradeoff: day after day of eternal sex, in trade for all the cloned parts he’d ever need until his cerebellum winked out. That, and an endless lifetime in the Bloodhouse. Charnel and carnal, old Julian Prime had called it in his laughing way: he’d had a fine sense of humor until his mind had gone at long last. It had started, if Dwayne remembered correctly, in his angular gyrus? Or maybe his suprachiasmatic nucleus.
In the end, Old Julian had gone out on his own terms, vanishing one day after a Boudoir shift. They’d discussed him, with studious nonchalance, for several days before the word came back that he’d checked himself in at the Elimination Section, where they took the clones whose Primes had died, far out there in the cosmos, if the Ranchers determined they weren’t worth keeping.

Old Julian, apparently, had decided he wanted to be a Rancher.

It bothered him that he couldn’t remember where it had started with Julian. He’d had hundreds of coworkers over the years to go with the thousands, the tens of thousands, of fertile wombs; he couldn’t possibly recall them all. It would come to him, he knew, perhaps by night as he lay pillowed by Bonnie’s tits. But it always came to him, eventually.

“New batch coming in next week.” Hoover Prime, hailing him from across the fire as Lyona Beta crouched above him with his cock in her mouth. He’d been out of action since last week, the brand-new penile tissue still mending; frequent erections were suggested, which made Lyona indispensable. She’d only arrived on-planet a couple years ago, her womb quickly and obviously classed as defective despite the frequent and enthusiastic attempts by all the men here; she had a sublime body, and patrician features to match. And yet, here she was. Warming beds and sawing limbs.

“No shit?” Dwayne was surprised he hadn’t heard. “Good. The current crop should all be knocked up soon.”

“Right?” Hoover mussed Lyona’s hair fondly as she worked her tongue slow and wet along his new dick. “Good-looking Carriers.” Bonnie stirred against Dwayne, and he could almost feel her frown in the darkness.

The bedwarmers never liked hearing their men talk about inseminating the Carriers, but they could fuck off.

* * *

“Well! Look who’s here today!”

Dwayne had snickered to himself as soon as Keth had passed him the Assignment today. He always loved fucking Rachel. She was a short, healthy Carrier he’d known for over five years? Six? However long, she still had the same figure she’d had three clones ago. This was his first time with her since she’d delivered her most recent, the one Dwayne had thought might have been his.

Well, his by proxy for whoever’s DNA had been in the capsule, of course.

You never did find out, sometimes. Often the Carriers weren’t sure themselves, but the DNA match on the clone could always tell the tale, if anyone cared enough to check. Sometimes the Carriers knew, but didn’t tell; Bonnie had told him, years ago, that she’d always had an instinct for whose dick had knocked her up, and she claimed she’d never been wrong.

No, wait. Not Bonnie. That had been Tahlia, three bedwarmers ago. But it’s the kind of thing Bonnie would say too, Dwayne reminded himself as he grinned in Rachel’s doorway. “Looking great, love!” he told her cheerily as she drew herself up onto her knees for a kiss. It was a bad idea to kiss the Carriers, said the psych techs, but everyone did anyway once you got to know them.

“So nice to see you!” she gushed, offering him a smoldering tongue-filled greeting. “I was hoping I’d get you soon, but yesterday they sent me that new guy.”

“Yeah, Karl.” He’d just gotten out of training and was still probationary. “Young kid. Still got almost all his original parts. How was he, babe?”

“He wasn’t you,” Rachel cooed, her hand going straight down his pants, and they laughed. Dwayne loved his work, especially with girls like Rachel who loved it too. “He was fine. Good stamina. Nice load.”

“That’s why they pick us,” Dwayne agreed, parting his legs where he stood; she had her greedy little hand down underneath his ballsack, juggling it expertly while her other hand worked at his beltcode. “I missed you. How was the birth?”

‘Oh, you know.” She shrugged, busy with his clothes, finally getting the code in and then sending that other hand down to join the first, in that humid zone behind his scrotum. She had a thing for sweaty balls, he remembered. “A birth’s a birth. Gonna get me pregnant today, Sugar-dick?” she grinned up at him, her tongue flickering over his nipples, his shaft already hard along her forearms as his clothes finished removing themselves.

“Gonna try,” he nodded, popping the capsule, and to be fair the chances were pretty good: his motility had been well above average recently, with excellent seminal viscosity, and Rachel was clearly in heat again. Their lips mashed together, the saliva already running, and Dwayne thought for the millionth time how amazing the response was, how mere beauty or sex appeal could take a backseat to genuine enthusiasm. Rachel had him hard now, her fingers lovingly tracing the lines and veins of his dick, and when she pulled away with a saliva-sheeted chin she looked straight down.

“Godsdamn,” she husked, taking a deep breath, “I do love you hairless ones.” Her hands stayed obsessively low, feeling his flesh, watching his excitement. “You really want to stick that cock inside me, don’t you?” she mocked, giggling when he twitched in reply. “You do!”

Dwayne growled as he stepped to her, a feral sound low in his throat, feeling like a king. He’d seldom had trouble getting into his work, literally or figuratively, but there were times when even daily sex with gorgeous Carriers got a little… well, routine. Rachel was one of the special ones, though, one who made it fun. And who always would, too, her lashes drooping low as she fell back onto the mattress beneath him.

He was in her at once, his hips dipping low in an insistent smooth swoop as Rachel’s legs spread wide, a gasp ripping out of her throat when he entered. “Fuck yeah,” she gloated, low and throaty, giving herself to him with a brief powerful ripple coursing up and down the walls of her vagina: superb control, he marveled, slipping his dick smoothly out before he drove in once more. They set up the rhythm at once, their bodies in synch at that fundamental level that put both of them into a gasp-mouthed flush of passion.

Her legs waved high over their rutting bodies while he plunged into her, churning deep, his veiny penis sawing past her clit like the bow over Jeff P’s cello, drawing ragged shattered breaths from her lungs as her body kept up with his. The bedframe was creaking already, the coupling fast and vicious. He felt her nails raking his back, knowing he’d need a quick trip to the clinic before heading to the Bloodhouse, not even caring because this felt so, so very good.

The excellence of Rachel’s pussy, it seemed, hadn’t been affected by that last clone they’d pulled out of her, and he laughed deliriously in her face as he kissed her again, his bare head sweaty. “I’m going to shoot,” he announced, all gaspy, and that’s when her legs clung tightly to him, her feet riding his surging ass while his dick plowed her deep and wet.

“Do it,” she snapped, her voice breaking as her body let go. “Gods, so fucking good!” Dwayne’s reply then was a strangled, choked groan, his body rigid, the cum surging from his balls, boiling along his shaft, and spattering hard past her cervix as he hilted himself, scrotum pulsing madly. “Fuck!” she screamed, her body taking it all, made for it, craving it. He fired five strong, virile spurts into her, that unknown recruit’s DNA riding the muck of Dwayne’s semen, finding a home deep within Rachel’s needy womb.

While their bodies surged on.

* * *

He had time to kill afterward, and she was always game for a snuggle, so as the fake sun rose higher in the fake window they talked quietly, touching, her fingers playing with the sheen of cum he’d left at the base of his penis. “So weird,” she marveled, massaging his ball sack, “the idea of living forever.”

“It’s not forever,” he chuckled. “It’s all about cerebellar age, babe.” He suckled lazily at her nipple, drawing a shiver.

“Well, whatever,” she sighed, stretching catlike. “Close enough, anyway, compared to the rest of us.”

“Relax,” he smiled. “Conservation of matter, Rachel. You’ll always be here. The bits and pieces and and molecules and shit? They’re not going anywhere.” He ran a finger, teasing, along her pussy lips, plucking at her hood. “This clit? The organic matter it’s made from? The atoms? They’ll be here forever.” He sat up, leaning over to give her cum-smelling mound a fond kiss. “The eternal clitoris.”

She laughed at that, pulling him back up into the crook of her armpit. The little room reeked of sweat and sex. “But they won’t be in the same shape,” she pouted. “It’ll be somebody else’s clit. Or maybe just some piece of a cow.”

“Maybe, maybe not.” He’d read up on all this, all those years ago after his orientation, and he was vaguely relieved that the knowledge was still there. “The Markusian Genetic Recurrence Theorem. Ever heard of it?”

She smacked his balls playfully. “I barely learned to read, asshole. They knew I was coming to the Clone Farm from when I was eight years old.” She stretched once more. “Why waste money teaching me about the Markusian Whatever-The-Fuck Theorem?”

He smiled, summoning the math, doing a rough conversion. “The odds approach 100%,” he explained, “that the exact same genetic sequence recurs twice within every six or seven thousand generations.”

“What the fuck does that mean?” She was grinning, her hand now tickling lightly underneath, around his asshole.

“It means,” he drawled, “that there’ve been many women in human history, going back to Old Sol IV, that look precisely like you.” She gasped, her nipple pinched hard between his fingers. “This tit has appeared before, scores of times. Hundreds, even. And with planetary colonization, the odds increase exponentially.”

She nodded. “So you’re saying there might be another one of me out there right now? Somewhere? Same girl?”

“Near enough.” He kissed her. “And? Long after you’re gone? There’ll be more.” He watched her eyes narrow as she considered the possibilities. “That’s almost immortality, Rachel. In a way.”

“Huh. But not like you.” She prodded again between his asscheeks. “How old are you, Dwayne?”

He could see she was serious, but the question always bothered him. “Old,” he said shortly. “Some parts older than others.”

“Yeah?” she wheedled, her finger finding its way inside his anus. He squirmed. “How about your asshole, hmm? How old is that?”

“Don’t.” She giggled. “There’s this old concept, from way back when. Early Sol IV. Some culture back then. I forget who came up with it, but the idea was of a ship.” She trailed kisses along his chest, gently, redeeming herself for making fun of him. “Not a starship. A sea-ship, wooden, nuke-powered? Maybe even steam.” He frowned, trying to remember. “Wind? Anyway. The ship was old, but it needed repair every now and then. Because the wood would rot, fall apart. Like, new hull parts here, new struts there, maybe a new sail some other year, in another year a new cold-fusion core. Whatever. But the older the ship got, the more parts got replaced.” He paused. “After awhile, even though it was the same ship, it wasn’t really the same ship, the same parts. That’s me, angel. All of us.”

She nodded thoughtfully. “What’s the oldest part of you?”

“Cerebellum,” he replied at once. “Frontal and parietal cortices, especially. That’s the part they can clone, but not replicate. I’ve got four or five clones going at any given time in the Farm, waiting around to swap parts.” He glanced at the clock on the wall, remembering he had an appointment today, Paminda’s errant cutter. “Hell, one of them is probably on his way over right now. He’s going to give up a finger today and he doesn’t even know it yet.” Dwayne wondered who’d get stuck harvesting the parts.

It wouldn’t be him, of course. Assignments Section discouraged he and his coworkers from meeting their own clones. Rachel’s hand stroked his skin. “Any other parts? Are you wearing anything else you were born with, Sugar-dick?”

He frowned, thinking hard. “Actually?” His forehead wrinkled; it could be so hard to think of these things sometimes. Like his mind didn’t want to go there. “Maybe, maybe not. I’m not awake during the surgeries, love.” He fell silent, thinking of the screams from the Bloodhouse. Some people didn’t rate anaesthetic, not when the battles raged hotter than ever among the stars. Supply and demand. Limbs for the Primes were what mattered, worth infinitely more than the pain of a clone. “Sometimes they tell me what they’ve done, sometimes not. Sometimes I ask, sometimes not. But I always feel great afterward,” he finished, his finger slipping once more into her slit. Not the new, temp finger: it was his old one.

Well, older.

Rachel moaned. “You sure do. Feel great.” She propped herself up, body pressed tight and lips parting, those luscious eyelashes drooping once more as his penis thickened again in her hand.

Twice? Why not.

* * *

“New one today.” Keth frowned into the screen field, the device compensating for the morning sun glaring through the windows. She dug for the capsule. “How’s the finger healing?”

“Better than new.” Hands could be tough, but he’d had been two weeks with the new finger and already he had full feeling back. Just yesterday he’d tested it, putting two fingers into that wily little Carrier Lexy, and her pussy had felt just as warm and wet on the new finger as the old. “Nerves seem to be nicely plastic.”

“I’m happy to hear it.” She seemed to remember something then, her eyes flickering back to the field, then drawing more slowly back to his face. “Oh. And Medical sent a message. They’re moving up your Neuro.”

“I’m quarterly,” he told her flatly.

“Of course.” She smiled, and he could see it was forced. “I’m just the messenger, Dwayney-P. Stop on by. They say there’s no rush, but.” She shrugged. “Have fun with the new girl, hon.”

“Thanks.” Dwayne called up a grin, close to his usual wolfish one. “I always do.”

He was smiling again by the time he passed the motor pool, that old whistled song always putting him into a better mood, the memories. It had been her favorite song, and it still calmed him down even as the screams came thin from beyond the Bloodhouse gate. “6280-G,” he called as he neared the Boudoir, and the guard at the gate there smiled at him.

“Dwayne.” It was an older guy, one of the ones who’d been on the gate for years, his hair greying now. Dwayne remembered him, vaguely; they’d had lunch once. His Prime had been blown to smithereens, he’d been told, at someplace called Cessvus IVb, freeing him at last from the pens. “He fucked me, though, before he bought it,” he’d chuckled, pulling up his trouser leg. “Took my leg to replace his, a few years before. I guess he never learned.”

“”What’s up?” None of the clones had names, really. “Nice day, today.”

“A classic.” The sky was a blue of almost supernatural brilliance above. Hard to imagine there were such great fleets up there, struggling so hard in so many sectors.

Hopeless, really.

“Who’s your bitch today?” the old guard leered, and Dwayne’s whistle trailed off.

“What’s that?”

“Who are you here to knock up?” Dwayne held the capsule loose in his hand, frowning. Had Keth even told him the girl’s name? She always did…

He forced a smirk as he passed through the gate, the day bright and perfect behind him. “They’re all the same, y’know?” The two of them guffawed. “Catch you later.”

“Sure thing, Dwayne.” The foot-trail worn through the carpet guided him needlessly along through the silent hallways, the occasional sound of his vigorous coworkers drifting from some of the rooms; a lot of them preferred to get their fucking done in the morning, before the Bloodhouse tired them out.

He nearly ran right into little Thendra as he took a corner at high speed, the two of them stopping short. “Whoo! Slow down there, Sugar-dick,” she laughed, smacking his ass as he kept going.

“Take it easy, Thendy,” he called over his shoulder, arriving at last. The rooms back here were where the newer girls tended to hang out, before they felt comfortable coming for the common areas up front. Dwayne juggled the capsule in his hand a moment, then knocked loudly. “Hello? It’s Dwayne Prime! 6280-G.”

“Yes?” The voice from inside stirred him, its timbre bypassing his brain and worming into his heart, casting a long-ago shadow there. “Come on in!” Dwayne took a deep breath, shaken for no reason he could put his finger on, but then he shrugged it off and put on his pleasant smile, the one he often used for new girls.

“Hi!” He passed in, the room fake-sunny, then stopped short with his head cocked and his smile frozen. The girl sat naked and regal on her stool, her back to him, combing out long straight hair the color of old copper, and it took his breath away.

Narrow shoulders, but well-formed; a slim back, tapering down to the wide, succulent swell of her hips, the crack of her ass rising from the seat to lead the eye back up along her straight, graceful spine. The skin there was smooth, perfect, and he felt certain he knew exactly how it tasted. Her arms eased the comb one last time through those dazzling sweep of her hair before she set it gently on the desk, and then she rose smoothly.

When she turned, the light soft on her nude body, he knew his mouth was dropping open, his eyes out of control, for it was her. Standing there before her in all her youthful, sensual perfection, it was her. Her legs slim and muscular, the wisp of dark coiled hair over her slit, the taper of her hips toward her waist, the pert handfuls of her breasts, topped with rosy nipples, identical, beneath that same face. That same nose. Those wide lips. Those eyes, with that same spark.

That same exact face.

But it couldn’t be. Could it? Once in six or seven thousand generations…

His throat bobbed as he tried to contain himself, his brain fizzling at once, heart pounding. She smiled that same smile. “Make yourself comfortable, Dwayne Prime, 6280-G.” The smile gained a whimsical twist, and his balls stirred; even her smirk was the same. Incredible. “Meaning, take your clothes off. I want to see you naked.”

He forced his throat to work. “Do you!” He smiled then as she turned once more, confident for a new girl, but with a body like hers? Why not. He knew, too, the memories prodding, insisting to be heard, what she’d enjoy. What would get her off. How she’d feel around him. How she’d gasp when they both came. She was making notes on her tabslate, bent slightly, that full ass of hers on display, and Dwayne felt at once that sudden, hot lust he’d always felt.

With her.

His finger ripped at the quick-release to override the belt code, his clothes not slipping softly into a folded pile on the desk, but instead bursting off his body as though he’d activated a magnetic field, flying against the wall behind him. Dwayne was already most of the way erect as he marched across the room, his mind a kaleidoscope of memories and images; was she her, the new Carrier, or her, the woman of long ago? That copper hair: immortality? Or chance? Or did it matter?

It didn’t, of course, his hand laying Kethys’ capsule with great care on the girl’s desk, and then his cock was leading the way toward her sweetly rounded body, her curves so, so familiar as the light played across them. “Just a moment,” she mused, her hair falling forward to shroud her face; she felt him coming, but she did not know that he knew exactly what she needed. What her body wanted him to do.

He fell to his knees behind her, the years falling away: she’d always loved him eating her from behind, and just as the Carrier began to turn, her soft eyes wide in surprise and curiosity, he laid trembling hands upon the long, smooth curves of her thighs, sliding up, his hands remembering her while he leaned in, with pursed lips, and there she was far sooner than she had a right to expect: the long, shadowed crack between the cheeks of her ass, and then beneath that the magical cleft where her vagina ran up between those graceful legs.
And even her labia looked the same.

He leaned forward, blowing out, the wash of his warm breath stirring between the tops of her thighs along that glorious pussy he knew she’d give him, soon, and he caught a sharply inhaled gasp of air from her mouth above when she realized he was still leaning forward, his face not stopping even as it brushed the bottoms of her ass and kept going, his breath tickling her once again, closer, and her hands instinctively clutched the edges of the desk as she blew out a long, ragged breath.

“Oh!” He was expecting the squeal, knowing it was what she’d do, his brain picking and sorting through the memories now. He kissed gently, his lips barely skating along her flesh, out along the bottom curve of her left cheek, then back across her shivering anus, then out the other way before kissing more insistently along the top of her right thigh, scouting that heady frontier where leg became ass, swooping low and bringing his tongue out now; the harsh room lighting picked out the trail of saliva he left on her skin, a clear road pointing straight down to her slit.

Her breath rippled in a soft curse, some language he’d never heard, but her body was doing its own communicating now: she bent over, abruptly, her tits squashed on the desktop and her ankles sliding apart, butt high, showing him she wanted it.

But he already knew, the memories overlying reality, his tongue leading the way past the firm lips of her pussy, and she gasped abruptly when his own lips touched her. He pressed, staying still until she pressed back, her thigh muscles tightening beneath his fingers, and then he attacked, the dam breaking, his tongue darting long and eager into her body, angled down to find the spot behind her clit he knew she’d explode.

Where she’d always exploded.

He persevered, pushing into her, and then her knees sagged and his arms were holding her up, grappling her tighter against himself until she was perching on his face, impaled on tongue and nose with her breath already gusting in great heaving gasps. They stayed like that a few moments, Dwayne on his knees with his face in his woman’s ass, feasting, her shivering as she regained control and spread her legs wide for him. “Lick me,” she commanded, low and harsh, but he didn’t need to hear it; his fingers had already left ugly pink weals along the front of her thighs, marking her where he’d pinioned her legs against his body, and a speckled red flush was spreading down her chest and over the remembered freckles of her breasts.

“More,” she wheezed, his right hand slipping up and curling inward, grazing her pubic hair, driving his new finger past her clit to swirl in her pussy alongside his tongue. She leaked at once, copiously, her body juicing to receive the cock it knew was coming, her whole mind overwhelmed with lust, goosebumps pricking up and down her legs and up to her hips. She gulped hard, her body an undulating wave, riding the man behind her, beneath her, sampling what he was so eager to give her.

He stroked quickly, furiously, the newer hand and fingers working from the old brain, pulling her orgasm efficiently out of her body like he’d always done, her limbs alternately taut and rubbery as she staggered to escape his grasp and fall to her own bed; it was the only thought, now, in her mind as the orgasm overtook her, that she had to lie down, had to open herself to this man who knew her body so well, and the two of them scuttled across the tiny room still linked by tongue and mound.

“That’s it,” he grated, letting her fall to the mattress like a clipped puppet, her flushed body coiled up with her glimmering vagina opening, spasmodically; she had her legs flopped over the side of the bed and her lidded eyes rolling until they found her man, rising from the floor with his penis hard and ready. She licked her lips, frantic, watching closely as he kicked her legs even further apart. “You’re more than ready, Arielle, my lover,” he spat with a strange sort of light in his eyes, and her lips fell open on a caught breath as he stepped between her shining thighs, his hips dipping low to take her.

The hot, slick tension as his thick head invaded the swelling lips of her reddened pussy left them both gasping hard, their eyes riveted to each other, his hips steadily feeding her more of himself. And, as he’d known she would, she took him in greedily, his pace perfect for her as she adjusted, in and out an inch at a time. Her nipples quivered with the force of her panting breaths. “Please,” she whispered, her body still on fire. He could feel the orgasm fluttering along her labia, just as he’d known it would, while her desperate body sucked him in. “Please fuck me.”

He replied with a single smooth thrust, not stopping now until his scrotum swung crushed up against the salivated flesh that bridged her crotch. “Mmm,” she moaned, her face blissful now that she knew he was fully inside, and she curled her body back to watch his hands grip her tits, squeezing hard, holding her down against the sudden quick power of his thrusts.

She felt her mind drift off again, still pink and hazy and far away. This man fitted her perfectly and knew exactly how to use her, his penis firm and sturdy, angling left, then right, then up where her clit popped now from under its hood, eager for his touch. She bucked back up as best she could, but he really didn’t need it; he was doing just fine on his own, guiding her toward another tearing climax, their flesh slapping loudly together with each forceful jab into her.

She was screaming, though she didn’t know it, her cracked cries telling the world of the pleasure he was giving so willingly, his own face a mask of exultant wonder as he watched his length disappear into his woman, again and again, a sight he never again thought he’d see. The harsh pressure rose behind his balls, nudging forward, familiar and wondrous as it was every time, but now lofted to new heights by her overjoyed face and the broad fan of her hair spread across the rumpled sheets.

Faster he drove into her, holding himself there longer each time as he grunted, the tension rising once more as his cock threatened to give way; twice more, then again after that, until with a last thrust that drove her legs frog-kicking into the air behind him he ground his pelvis against hers and let go at last.

The semen shot from his quivering head, pumping far, far inside her, their gasps lost in the sudden exhausted silence left behind by his wildly hosing dick still releasing into her, his head back and his hands hooked beneath her knees, until with a panting lurch he fell across her slack body, their arms falling naturally around each other, lost now in the quivering aftermath of their shared lust.

* * *

He rose at last from her embrace, the perfect morning passing slowly outside, looking down at her one last time where she preened on the bed. She smiled. “Who’s Arielle?”

“What’s that?” He could not stop beaming, looking wistfully at where his cum was seeping delicately from her swollen pussy. His cum. She stretched luxuriantly.

“Arielle.” When she smiled, it was the same exact smile, the breath leaving him once more. “You called me that, earlier, before you took me. ‘Arielle, my lover.’ Who is she?”

He paused, his eyes far away now, and when he smiled a song was whistling through his head. Her song. “What’s your name, babe?”

She yawned. “I’m Anatta.”

“Anatta.” He nodded, reaching to the desk , scooping the unused capsule carefully into his hand. He’d need to return it to Kethys, he knew. She’d understand at once. An unused capsule was a serious matter, but Dwayne no longer cared.

The girl twisted on the soiled sheets, showing off that slim, glorious body she’d always had. “Tell you what,” she laughed hoarsely, “if every man here fucks me like that, I’m going to have no complaints. Y’all can call me whatever you want. It’s as if you love me.”

He didn’t have to force this smile, not now. “I’m glad you enjoyed it.” He took a deep breath then, his eyes drinking her for the last time. “My wife died 376 years ago this week,” he told her quietly. “You… you look a little like her.” Wouldn’t do to make her skittish. “You take care, Anatta.”

“It was wonderful, Dwayne. Thank you.” She watched him dress swiftly, then leave without looking back. And then she sank into the mattress, grinning, enjoying the thick feel of his semen oozing down along her inner thigh.

* * *

Keth did frown as he laid the capsule back on the counter. “Fuck,” she sighed, licking her lips, unable to meet his eyes. “I mean, I don’t even know what kind of report I need to fill out on this. But I’m sure it’s a hell of a lot of paperwork.”

“You can do it.” His smile had gone melancholy.

She looked at him at last, her eyes hard. “Did you get her pregnant?”

Dwayne pondered, thinking back, evaluating. He’d done this so often; sometimes, you could tell. “High likelihood,” he allowed, and she looked away. “I think I need a change of pace.”

“No shit?” she blurted, a heavy silence falling between them like a shroud.

“Yes, shit.” He smiled, a wide and satisfied smile. “Think I’ll go become a Rancher.” She blinked, lost, but it didn’t matter. She’d find out soon enough. The Elimination Section was down the street, by the near side of the ridge, and it was always hungry. “Take care, Keth.”

When she spoke, he was already far away. “You too, Sugar-dick. I’ll miss you.”

“It’ll never get any better, ever again,” he told her, smiling slightly, and that’s all the explanation anyone ever got.

* * *

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