Companion 3000

“Until you gain about two hundred pounds of muscle and grow some considerably larger equipment…” Leita started, then saw the hurt look in her friend’s wide golden eyes. “Aw, c’mon, Schneider, you know I didn’t mean it that way. It’s just that sometimes, well, I have needs.”

“Needs to bankrupt the company,” Schneider muttered huffily, beginning to groom his whiskers as he always did when he was upset. “You ought to be using that credit on hiring a new mechanic to fix the droids instead of dropping a wad on some overpriced blow-up doll.”

Leita gritted her teeth. “We’ve been over this, Schneider. The last two times I tried to hire someone, they took the credit and ran, remember?” It was really hard to find a man who wanted to stay out here at the ass end of the solar system and fix broken droid ships. The first man she’d tried to hire, after her parents’ death in a scouting accident, had simply taken his pay of a month’s credit and run off in the night. The second one, Eddie, well, he had been a real prize.

The sleazy, smooth-talking con artist had managed to make Leita believe that he loved her. She’d told him everything—even her most private fantasies, the ones that made her hot and cold, the ones that made her wake up drenched in sweat and filled with longing night after night. The ones she was most ashamed of. Eddie had pretended to play along for a good long time—almost six months. Then he’d gained access to her private quarters and stolen her mother’s jewelry and her father’s platinum-plated chronometer along with six months’ profit on his way out the door. The only thing he’d left her, besides a broken heart, was a note telling her exactly what he thought of her fantasies and desires.

It had taken Leita a year to recoup financially and she still hadn’t recovered emotionally from the betrayal. Unfortunately, just because her heart wasn’t up to a romantic relationship didn’t mean her body had stopped craving sex. If anything, Leita craved it more. All alone, except for Schneider, in the spacious but empty life pod from which she controlled the mining operation, she sometimes physically ached for the touch of another human being.

She wanted a pair of strong arms to hold her tight, a deep, soothing masculine voice to murmur sweet nothings into her ear, a warm, hard body to curl around hers in the dead of night when she felt cold and frightened and alone. Most of all, she wanted someone who wouldn’t think she was crazy or strange when she admitted her darkest needs and desires. She wanted a man, but there was no way to get one to stay. No way except to buy one—or the next best thing.

“Anyway, the Companion 2000 is more than a ‘blow-up doll’,” she told Schneider, manipulating the cube so that the three size choices rotated in turn. “The skeleton is tempered titanium and the brain is the best and most advanced cybernetic synthi- organic cognitive structure on the market today. All covered in genuine vat-grown flesh that comes in a variety of skin tones and textures—vanilla, caramel, or dark chocolate.” Did this site cater to women or what? she thought, smiling to herself. “Also you can pick from smooth, medium hairy, or gorilla.”

“Listen to you,” Schneider sniffed disdainfully. “You’ve been surfing this site so often you have all the specs memorized. It’s disgusting.”

Leita sighed. “Like I’d expect you to understand. Tarbians only have to mate once every fifty years. You spend one week—one single week, mind you—producing and hatching your offspring, then you go off and never see each other again.”

“And that’s the way we like it,” Schneider stressed. “Most of us, anyway. The last time I hooked up with a female, she actually wanted me to hang around an extra couple of hours—ugh! I just can’t stand it when they get clingy.” He shivered, a move that displaced his sleek coat of tan fur so that he had to spend a moment grooming it back into place with his long pink tongue and small, six-fingered hands.

“The point is,” Leita said, rotating the dark chocolate-colored medium-sized man figure, “just because you don’t need someone to hold you at night doesn’t mean I’m happy sleeping alone.”

“You’re not sleeping alone,” Schneider protested. “I sleep on the pillow right next to you. Just because we have incompatible body parts and you humans are so freakishly huge I can’t service you sexually—”

“Schneider, please. You know what I mean.” She went back to studying the Companion 2000 series, deciding which one to get. What really drew her eye was the extra-large size in caramel-colored medium-hairy. Her interest flagged the site’s auto- sale personality and specs began appearing on the cube.

“The Extra Large Companion 2000 is between six-foot-two and six-foot-six” read the purple words, marching like obedient insects beneath the 3-D figures. “Two hundred and twenty to two hundred and forty pounds of Old Earth Standard solid muscle will be at your sexual beck and call. Penis size is, of course, proportionate to the size of the Companion. We guarantee satisfaction both physically and emotionally. All Companions in the 2000 series have been programmed with correct and sensitive emotional responses for every occasion. Be the envy of all your friends—you’ll swear you have the perfect man!”