A perfect mate

The characters of Star Trek: The Next Generation are the property of Paramount, and the other people they are property of, and they certainly aren't mine. This story is written entirely for amusement and not for profit. No references are intended to any actors portraying these fictional characters or to any other living persons. If you have stuck with me this far, thank you.


Chapter 3

Unwrapping

It had been Wesley who first spotted the cubic shape lackadaisically orbiting  the planet they were passing. In his tireless scanning of the ship's immediate space environment, the boy never failed to bring the Captain's attention to every single one of his discoveries.

"Captain, look, a comet!"

"Yes, Wesley. Thank you."

"Captain, look, an asteroid belt! Do you think we should investigate it, Sir?"

"No, Wesley. Thank you , Wesley."

"Oooh, Captain, look! This could be really important!"

"Wesley, are you sure you aren't meant to be doing some sort of school work somewhere else?"

"But Captain, look at this. It could be an old spaceship or something."

"On viewer," said Captain Picard irritably. The viewer showed a large, floating oblong box, not dissimilar to the ones crowding Dr Androva's quarters (though neither the captain nor the boy knew this).

"Well, Worf?"

"Scanners show no life forms; contents appear to be bacteriologically sterile; no sign of anything potentially dangerous - no explosive devices picked up. But there is a computer of some kind on board," growled Lieutenant Worf.

"Can I have a look at it, Captain? Pleeeese."

"Oh all right, Wesley, if it will keep you quiet. Stick a tractor beam on it, then you can nip down to the transporter room and see if they can bring it in. Little project for you, eh?"

Five minutes later the boy disappeared excitedly into the turbolift - and the bridge crew uttered a communal sigh of relief.

"Thought I'd never get rid of him," muttered the Captain. Five minutes later the turbolift swished open again. "Ah! Doctor Crusher! What a delightful surprise!"

"Captain," said the beautiful doctor briskly. "Wesley has just told me that you have allowed him to take in some piece of unidentified space junk. How can you let a child take on such a responsibility?"

"Just a little extracurricular assignment I thought he could hone his powers of initiative and judgement on," squirmed Captain Picard. "We've ascertained that there is no danger involved. Surely, Beverley, you cannot think I would put the dear boy in harm's way?"

His answer was a hard stare, and Wil Riker leapt to his feet.

"I'll go with Wesley, Captain."

"Thank you, Number One," said Captain Picard gratefully.

In transporter room 3, Riker found Wesley hopping from one foot to another in excitement as two junior Security officers cautiously surveyed the ancient box that sat sullenly on the transporter platform.

"Seems harmless so far," said the senior security officer. "Just this writing on the box. Ann Summers plc, it says."

"Sounds as though it could be armaments. Best get this to a laboratory before we open it up," said Riker hastily.

As the security officer gingerly prised open the case a few minutes later, an expectant hush fell in the laboratory Riker had designated for examining Wesley's find. The box was about six foot long, two feet wide, and if Worf's  readings had not suggested otherwise, Riker would have said it was simply a coffin.

But instead of the corpse he almost half-expected to see, it contained a mass of small white shapes of some kind of sterile synthetic material which instantly showered themselves all over the room. Wesley screamed and Commander Riker barked orders as the security officers leapt back, then cautiously he picked up one of the fragments.

"I think - I hope - this is just packaging material," he said slowly, and handed it to one of the security officers, who quickly ran it past a tricorder. "Better get it swept up fast - could be carcinogenic. This thing looks 21st to 22nd century to me and they used to use incredibly toxic materials in those days."

Once they had dealt with the layer of white shapes, the men all uttered an involuntary gasp. Underneath a layer of semi-transparent material of bubble-like appearance stretched across the inside of the box was the unmistakeable shape of a nearly-naked Caucasian woman with cascading blonde hair, vast breasts and a pouting red mouth.

"Right, let's get this opened up, shall we?" said Riker quickly, interrupting the whoops of the two young security officers, and tapped his commbadge. "Captain, I think you might like to see this. I mean - I know you are interested in archaeology."

By the time the Captain arrived at the lab, Riker had carefully unwrapped the bubblepack as far down as the woman's breasts, which, had they been real, would have been miracles of gravity-defiance, and were lightly encircled by a filmy strip of lilac lace. Wesley's mouth was hanging open.

"Don't you think Wesley should be somewhere else, Captain?" whispered Riker anxiously. But no one was listening. For just as he spoke, the woman opened her eyes and smiled radiantly round the room. She looked completely human.

"Hello, boys," she said, and closed her eyes again.

It was at that point that Picard summoned Data, who rushed into the lab smoothing down his hair and dusting off his uniform, Riker noticed with interest. Data glanced at the woman in the box. "It - she - is sentient?" he asked Picard.

"She just said hello to us," said Wesley excitedly.

"That doesn't mean she's sentient," said Picard. "I've known women who could talk the hind legs off donkeys whom I would hesitate to call 'sentient'."

Riker cautiously peeled back a little more of the wrapping, this time revealing the breasts in their full glory, a narrow waist and a pert little navel adorned with a silver waist chain, to which some kind of lacy lilac-coloured thong seemed to be attached. Suddenly her eyes flicked open again and she smiled round the room in exactly the same manner as before.

"Hello, boys," she said again, then, looking at Data, "And hello to you, sweetie," - then she closed her eyes. Data tilted his head and looked at her with new, bird-like interest.

"Can I help?"

Dr Zsuza Androva, senior lecturer in scientific archaeology at the University of New Vienna, Europa 4 Eastern Continent, whose difficulty with re-lacing her dress had caused her to arrive several minutes after Data, was standing in the doorway, completely ignored by the men who were crowding round the box, peering over each other's shoulders for a better view of the thing inside.

"We have something interesting from at least a couple of hundred years ago, we reckon," said Riker with an ill-concealed leer.

"Bit of archaeology for you," said the Captain, jovially.

The men stood back to allow Dr Androva to see the woman, who had now been unwrapped down far enough to reveal that the lace thong barely covered a beautiful, plump, pouting  mons veneris, complete with light brown fuzz styled in a Brazilian wax.

"I see," said Dr Androva, after a pause that seemed interminably long and chilly to all the men in the room (except Data). She noticed that a few pubic hairs were escaping from the creature's thong, as though longing for freedom.

"What do you think, Doctor? We would appreciate your professional opinion," said the Captain in his most velvety tones.

There was a further silence while the men shifted from foot to foot trying not to catch each others' eyes.

"I'm sorry to disappoint you but in my professional opinion, this is not an android," said Zsuza. "This is a mid-twenty-second  century animatronic figure. Very interesting of its type but nothing unusual, though I am sorry to see that you have opened the box so hastily. Heaven knows what evidence you have destroyed already. We have an entire Department of Early Packaging who would have given their eye teeth to do the job in proper research conditions and with a full Federal grant over the next five years."

"I'm terribly sorry," said Riker, coldly. "To be frank, I was more worried about whether the contents posed a threat to the Enterprise and its crew. That is my priority, Dr Androva."

"Of course," said Zsuza with equal chilliness. "Please, Commander, do not think for a moment that I was suggesting that you unpackaged her hastily because you all couldn't wait to see the size of her bazookas."


"What purpose does she serve, Zsuza?" asked Data, who was only marginally interested in this exchange.  As if answering his question, the figure in the box opened her eyes again. This time, she gazed straight into the eyes of the nearest male, which happened to be Wesley, and said sweetly, "Hi! I'm Fanny. I SO BADLY want you to fuck me, sweetheart! And hard!"

"Wesley! Out!" barked the Captain.

"But."

"OUTSIDE!"

The boy left the room with Commander Riker's strong hands on his shoulders. "But Sir, I found her!" could be heard receding faintly as Riker propelled him through the door.

Data looked in puzzlement at the faces of the three men and one woman around him. "Inquiry. What is the purpose of this artificial life form? And how certain are you that she is merely animatronic?" He looked closely at the woman in the box. "She looks perfectly formed. And look - her skin colour is natural. A society which can create an artificial life form as sophisticated as she appears to be may also be able to create a true android such as myself. And" - he added with immense admiration - "she spoke using a verbal contraction!"

There was another awkward pause. To the humans, the creature's grammatical dexterity had not been the most striking point of her little speech to Wesley.

"Well," said Zsuza, watching Data, who was beginning to examine the blonde in the box more closely than she thought necessary, "that was my professional opinion you just heard. My personal opinion is that she's a whore."

"Right," said the Captain quickly. "That's sorted then. Dr Androva, I expect you will want to be taking this curiosity back to your university."

"I suppose I have to, though as I said, your officers have seriously corrupted the packaging," answered Zsuza sulkily. "Data, why are you looking under its thong?"

"I am searching for her power switch," said Data innocently, looking up from where he had been prodding about among the blonde's pubic hair.

By now several more members of the crew - all male - were crowding round the door of the lab; word of Wesley's find had spread like wildfire.

"Dr Androva, for now I shall have to leave you in charge of this…. of this," said the Captain. "I expect you will want to make a full inspection and report. Data, I'm sure you can find time to give her a hand."

"Certainly, sir," said Data keenly.

"But in the meantime, could you just pop down to engineering and help with the warp core maintenance? They seem to be having a bit of trouble with the realignment. Won't take you a minute."

"Yes, Captain."

"Oh, and Data, the umbilical hardpoint nodules down near the tractor beam emitter are playing up again. Nothing you can't handle, I shouldn't wonder."

"I shall take a look at the problem after I have finished in Engineering, Sir."

"Excellent." The captain began to walk away, ushering out with peremptory flicks of his hand the two security officers, who were both casting wide- eyed looks backwards at Fanny, and the small crowd which had gathered at the door. He suddenly halted in his tracks and turned back towards Data.

"Damn it, I knew there was something else. Having a bit of a party in the ready room tomorrow evening. Could you be a good chap and rustle up a string quartet for me?"

"It will be a pleasure, Sir."

"Thank you, Data. I know I can always rely on you.

"Awfully good chap, you know," Zsuza heard the Captain confide to the security officers, one of whom was new to the ship, as he walked away. "Feels absolutely no emotion. Quite extraordinary."


As Data carefully lifted Fanny in his arms and laid her on an examination table, Zsuza briefed him on what kind of machine she thought Fanny was.

"There were thousands of these sort of things made commercially in the middle of the twenty-second C," she said. "They were shipped out to early pioneer posts for the use of construction workers and the like."

"Use?"

"Data, you are priceless. Surely you've got the message by now? She's a sex toy. A masturbatory doll. She can have sex, probably not very well, and that is all she can do. As soon as the early pioneer settlements were considered safe for women, the market for things like Fanny declined."

"Why would a settlement be considered safe for men and not for women?" asked Data.

"It was a rough job, and most of the construction was done by penal servitude. Chain gangs, if you like."

Zsuza turned Fanny, who had returned to her earlier quiescent state, over onto her tummy. "There should be some kind of - ah, yes, here it is."

She ran her fingers down Fanny's spine and part of the smooth, lightly tanned back sprang open. Data peered hopefully inside.

"See what I mean?" said Zsuza. "Not very bright. Just robotics, Data. No positronics, no neural net. She can respond to a small range of commands and vocal stimuli. She can probably respond to physical stimuli in keeping with - er, her function. But she can't think like you, Data. Look, you can even see the joint where she opens up at the back - her skin looks good, but in reality it isn't a patch on yours, honey. Sorry," Zsuza added, her heart softened by his disappointed expression. "Were you hoping for a real girlfriend?"

"I suppose in a way I was," said the android in a small voice. Then he brightened. "But I too have a sexuality program. If we can get her operating within her normal parameters, maybe I could have sex with her. So then she would be my girlfriend, would she not?"

Zsuza swallowed hard. Had he completely forgotten what they were in the middle of doing when the Captain's call came? Of course he had not. To hell with it. Let him learn his lesson.

"Good idea, Data. I'll see what I can do to get her started up. Didn't the Captain give you a whole lot of chores to do?"

"Ah. Yes. I shall return in an hour."

Zsuza began with the ship's computer: not much luck there. It held little detail on the history of sex toys ("Starfleet really are such prudes," thought Zsuza), so she opened an external channel and logged onto her university's records back on Europa 4. There was quite a bit of general stuff there about other animatronic forms, a lot of fascinating background about the history of animatronics and its origins in the children's entertainment industry, and a fair amount of solid basic research about sex toys in general - but nothing about any particular robotic model called Fanny.

As she pored over the screen, Zsuza felt there was something odd about the omission. Fanny seemed to fit all the specifications of a mid 22nd C animatronic sex toy; yet there was no patent filed, no trade name or description registered that fitted exactly the exaggeratedly curvaceous creature lying on the workbench behind her.

There was, however, a diagram of a similar model ("Sugar Kane") which gave Zsuza an idea of how to operate her basic controls. Zsuza returned to Fanny, lying on the bench, and found a pair of disposable surgical gloves in a drawer.

"Let's see if we can find your root switch," she murmured. "Data wasn't far off, bless him, and given your name, it's pretty obvious."

Feeling a little voyeuristic, and wishing there were someone else in the room with her, Zsuza peeled back Fanny's little lacy thong and cautiously poked her first two fingers into the creature's vagina. "Let's just pretend I'm your doctor, OK?" she said aloud, more for her own benefit than that of Fanny, who had remained silent and motionless since Data had left the room.

It was a tight fit, and Fanny's fanny was not lubricated, but sure enough Zsuza's probing fingers found a small nodule right at the top where a real woman's cervix would be. It was set in a shallow depression - presumably so that it could not be accidentally activated while Fanny was at work, so to speak.

There was a faint hum as though of circuitry being set off after a long, long period of silence. Fanny's body began to throb as though coming alive. The vagina instantly became moist, warm and slippery. The creature began to wriggle and squirm as delightedly outside Zsuza's fingers as Zsuza had been hoping to do outside Data's not long before. Then Zsuza had the shock of her life.

With a lightening movement, the kind of fast response we only use when we are really frightened, she whipped her hand out of Fanny and jumped back. As soon as she did so, Fanny opened her eyes, looked around, saw Zsuza and closed her eyes again as if going back to sleep.

She looked utterly innocent. But when the humming noise, the throbbing and the wriggling had begun, Zsuza's fingers had found themselves in contact with the edges of two rows of tiny, razor-sharp metal teeth.

Since Fanny was still lying quietly, Zsuza, shaking from head to foot, went back to the computer screen to double check the material she had downloaded from her university files. No, there was no Fanny doll. But there was something else…

Suddenly, Zsuza heard a slight movement behind her back. She whirled round to find Fanny standing close behind her, smiling inanely.

"Hi," said Fanny. "Tell me where the boys are, will you, sister?" There was a glint in her blue eyes that Zsuza did not like; it was nothing like the open, trusting expression she saw in Data's face. And although Fanny was teetering on four inch heels, her unnaturally slender arms and thighs looked extremely strong close up.

"Of course I will," Zsuza said carefully. "Fanny, I am so glad to see you are operating. Would you like to show me how you are switched on and off?"

"No," said Fanny, and uttered a high-pitched giggle.

"Why not, Fanny?"

"'Cuz you're a girl," and Fanny giggled again.

"Fanny, I will need to make sure that you are working properly in case you need attention. You have been in storage a long time. Now if you'd like to lie on your tummy on the nice couch over there, I can check your insides and make sure you're a well girl."

"No," said Fanny.

Zsuza tapped the commpad. Her hands, still wearing the surgical gloves, were trembling.

"Lt Commander Data?"

A moment later, Data's voice came on the line, rather muffled, as though he were lying underneath the plasma coil in engineering and staring up at it, which as it happened was exactly what he was doing.

"Zsuza? Can I help? (I shall need that sonic driver over there, Jim. No, the green one. Thank you.)"

"Data, I need you here now. The robot -"

"You mean the android?"

"The robot, Data - how can I say this? She seems to be fiercely heterosexual. She seems programmed only to obey commands from male voices. And, Data, I'm not sure she's -"

"Zsuza, is this a priority? I am very busy right now and I have several orders from the Captain to carry out."

Yeah, including playing violin at his private party, thought Zsuza angrily. But aloud she said, "Fine, I'll have to find another man to help me," and closed the channel.

So no one heard the scream that issued from Zsuza's throat a moment later; or the crash of her body as she fell in a crumpled heap on the floor, rendered unconscious by a cracking blow from a perfectly manicured hand.

(end of chapter 3)