THE EVOLUTION OF SEX

The need for tactile closeness always deluded me.

I observe these two now, on the tube home. No doubt an afternoon of drinking and longing and gentle brush strokes to the back of their respective hands, creating a chemical furore within the coiled depths of equal sexes.

Longing. Pulsating chronometers of potential release.

Cheeks flushed, chest also. The girl is swoon. Rushing blood and the abundance of alcohol a chemical awakening for the loins. Legs opening, a need to offer the male's brain a cursory flicker of a menu beyond sustenenance . . . of what may be waiting him beyond fragmented layers.

My stop is next. The arousal spurs me, a thorn in erogenous zones of the mind. They kiss as the doors release and I step into fabricated warmth. They are unaware of my exodus, that their flirtations and longings will have an impact on my evening. This invisible tide.

I start to paint a picture within my walk home, of what the night could bring. Comfort, naturally. A harsh whiskey to wipe the slate clean. Love play with my wife, and then perhaps supper, a film. Maybe I should play with the kid first, that's a good idea. Show willing. I check my watch, but it's late. Bastian is probably asleep already. That last call from Tokyo lasted longer than I thought.

Police sirens bay for clear roads as I make the ascent to my apartment, lights shimmering frantically across the palatial lobby of clinical chique and ionized odour. Even my own scent mixes with the corporate finery, one of photocopier and harsh antibacterial content. Disease has taught humanity to look beyond illness and wellbeing. We are our own unity. Our own homes, our own selves. Just our selves.

I spot the freshly printed flyer in the lobby. BE OUR SELVES. The pandemics of old moulded humanity forward into a vacuous place. Of self righteous cleanliness and quasi purity. Not all though, there are those - like the two love birds on the tube - that relish in the comfort of secreting bodily fluids and playing in oceanic scent. Some of us - myself included - have moved beyond such animalistic degradations. And yet, seeing those two on the tube stirs longings within, that perhaps the primal aspect of fornication is a part of our heritage and shouldn't be purged. But I am a child of the age, of remote sexuality and techtrasexual plug-ins. I am Geno and proud.

I'm too young to remember but over the last 100 years humanity faced cataclysmic heights of death. Viruses were more prevalent than they had been over a thousand years. It was if nature and technology were trying to tell the human race something and they didn't listen until billions were dead. Out of the residual fire of near extinction and isolation a group of people, a Think Tank, Cult, call it what you will surmised that humanity needed to stop smothering each other. If the unified pandemics of the 21st century had taught us anything was that population control had to be implemented. That the collective isolation of the human race had caused murder, rape, abuse and molestation hitherto unprecedented. I was born from the fire of Geno.

Geno. Like homosexuality and gender fracas before it, Techtrasexuality was another of God's sins on humanity. For a man or woman, or Them/They to enjoy coitus with a machine was alien. A transgression between flesh and the limitless dimensions of the artificial paradigm. Like all explorers before us a few fell to the allure and gaze of this fathomless place.

Could an individual love a machine? A concept built pixilation of light and electrical impulses. Could there be rapport, sensuality, mutual and consensual appetites.

Geno.

Genophobia.

It was always there. A time bomb waiting for the right time to decimate at the time of zeitgeist, when it could sink its claws into flesh and brain. It snuck into the backdoor of a frail 21st century. There among diseases and chronic ailments. The continued use of Government lockdowns and isolation gave it credence to spread. Like the epidemic of mental health it took stock in the ordinary, a camouflaged beast in which to wait and succour and when fat on its rationale exploded outwardly into the populace.

Continued years of isolation gave it a chance to feed and infect. Out of desperation and torment, Genophobia became more than a phobia, it became a culture, an evolutionary path. Geno.

I took my mobile from my trouser pocket and the connection between tech and static unlocked my apartment door. Steam billowed from the clinical kitchen. Vegetables steaming, pasta bubbling.

'Desiree?' I call out. 'I'm home.'

She's prompt, of course. I would be worried if she wasn't.

She walks from the lounge, vibrant, bright. The day hasn't blemished her like it would any other mother.

'Are you hungry?' She asks, elegantly gliding up to me and kissing my cheek. That sensation, not one of flesh and musk, but of a tactile fluctuation of static electricity. It raises the faint stubble on my face, a precursor to the night ahead.

'Bastian is in the lounge, enjoying the News, of all things.'

'What have you done to my son? God forbid.'

She giggled, her bob of jet black hair fluctuating like a drop of ink in water, coalescing, rhythmic, a programme within itself.

'Supper will be shorty, go on, go lay with him. He misses you, I can tell.'

I drape my jacket over the armchair and join my son in the lounge, laying on his back, gurgling at the television, a mound of wriggling loveliness at the centre of a circle of light, a zone in which the ambient light elucidates the pure innocence of the boy, every gorgeous line and gummy smile.

'What are you watching mister?' I ask joyfully, stepping into the arena of light with him. Observing the recent military action in Russia. It doesn't bare thinking about. I turn my gaze from the television and cradle the boy, his eyes pure blue intelligence that burn with curious virtue. I feel that same static in my fingertips, hewn from his mother. One of a connectedness beyond flesh.

'And how was your day, dear boy? Running rings around your mother I hope?'

Desiree laughs from the kitchen. 'Oh, he has indeed. But a pleasure as always.'

Blue eyes look beyond me. Toward his mother's voice. A buoy, an anchor for him to latch, his mainframe. Motherboard.

I pick him up and walk into the kitchen where his mother blows him a kiss.

'How was your day?' She asks. 'Working late again? Everything okay?'

I breathe through my teeth. 'They're worried about the Yanaka deal. I spent two hours smoothing it over before I left.'

'It'll be okay though?'

Her concern is fetching, almost beautiful. Sympathetic. 'Yes, nothing to worry about. In the bag.'

She turned off the hob, steam subsided and she flickered in the moisture. 'Listen, why don't I try and get your son down and you tuck in.'

'You're sure?'

'Positive,' she declared. 'I want some time with my husband.' Her top lip raised itself over her teeth, a summons, a declaration of loveplay. She beckoned over and I passed Bastian, kissing the gorgeous boy on the forehead.

'Sleep tight, tiger.'

I showered first. I didn't have to. There would be no passing of fluids and scent. But sex, in whatever premise it presented itself always spoke of ritual. I lavished my balls in warm water and mint. Clipped the hair beneath so the static could explore my fundament more casually. I reached for the white plastic box on the shelf and produced the diodes that attached themselves to the underside of my scrotum, groin and perineum. I stretched my penis out and rubbed Vaseline onto the skin. It helped ease the paddle into position.

I returned to the living room and muted the television, turning my gaze to the black box on the sideboard. I took the paddle from the box attached it to my groin, making sure diodes and static were ready to work in unison. I wrapped the belt tight around my waist. The fit had to be snug, or sensation would be lost. I tested it, activating the demo switch. It never tires. That initial feeling of a vacuum around your genitals. And yet for there to be stimulation, a range of temperatures that mimicked the depths of a vagina - or anus, depending on whim - and translated it through static and a stimulation of nerve endings. I relished in my techtrasexuality for a moment, licking my lips and breathing slow.

'Don't start without me mister.'

Trouble with holograms you can't hear them coming.

'Just testing.'

At the front of the paddle I remove a cap. Not to dissimilar to the old cameras of old. A lens illuminates outward and Desiree vanished from view only to appear on my lap, sans clothes, hard light registering with the paddle, the sensation that I am within her is reciprocated by silky warmth along my penis. He smile bolsters me, her hair, a moving mass of liquid night, breath akin to heated iron. She rocks back and forth on the paddle and we are at one, humanity in its varied guises and AI conjoined in flesh and tech - a union of separate entities and yet whole - loved, adored. We rut on the cold leather even more. Even fake sweat adorns her chest as the motion of the paddle and the static explores my shaved genitals. Blood still rushes in this sexual furore, and the paddle accumulates the mathematics of my reckoning. Ready to deliver the apex of my union. But nothing will pass here except the continuous echo of a pumping heart, faux sex, and yet a reality to me and my techtrasexual brethren. Geno.

Orgasm is energy, electrical, chemical, such things can be manufactured, such delights can be recorded and downloaded into paddles. The ecstasy still resides, and yet the touch and smell of sex is erroneous in this clinical of-shoot. No lingering odour, no damp sheets. And only blissful calm and sleep. Sweet, sanctifying sleep.

I put the paddle away. My doorway. My portal to evolution. For an hour we lay on the sofa, talking, tickling, tangible flurries of static, Desiree's hard light composite body carrying a scent of ionized dust. So far removed from organic flush and discharge. Only the sweat of genius permeates the ether within this apartment.

My mobile rings within my jacket pocket, still strewn cross the armchair. It's late, I share a glance with Desiree and I see her eyes glaze over as she sits on the edge of the sofa, back straight. The underside of her bosom falls away into a slick screen of pixelated static and the face of my boss fills it.

'Malcolm, is everything alright?'

His face is apologetic, strained and yet desperate. 'I'm sorry to call you so late, Harry.'

I lean over, concerned. 'Not at all. I'm always available you know that.'

'I need you on the first flight to Tokyo in the morning, crack of dawn.'

My eyes drift upward toward Desiree. 'I was on the phone to Tokyo only a few hours ago.'

'They're panicking. This whole Russia thing. It's a domino effect, I'm sure you can see the picture, dear boy.'

I could feel my brow tighten. 'Yes of course. Say no more, Malcolm. I have this, don't fret.'

The worry drained from his face, optimistic, relieved.

'My feet are already on the plane.'

'Goodnight Harry.'

Good night, sir.'

I lean back into the leather, cold to the skin, yet soothing. The screen at Desiree's chest falls away into faux flesh once again. Smooth caramel light.

'I better pack a bag.'

'No, you need to sleep, I'll have everything sorted for your trip.'

I smiled at her lovingly. 'Our.'

She corrected herself, in itself a part of mimicry, a piece of technology doesn't forget things. 'Our,' she repeats, smiling. 'I'll tend to Bastian.'

'No, let me, I want to.'

I lean over and kiss her on the lips. It tickles my tongue. I walk the breadth of the living room and enter Bastian's room. Spartan, clean. No light, but then the sensor illuminates the crib, and there my sleeping boy dreams of things I can only fathom. My boy, sewn from original seed and copied digitally, alive in a sense I can only guess at. My own DNA built around the concept of integrated artificial intelligence. A merging like no other. An evolution of mind and soul. Deathless. Normally I would let the programme run. Night feeds, digital poo and milk sick. But the pressure was on. Unlike my family I still had humanity in my veins and the limitations of the species. I needed sleep to function.

I watch him for only mere moments as my time is fleeting, but I cherish every second.

'I'll see you in Tokyo my boy. Don't play Mum up.'

I take the phone from my back pocket and scroll down. BASTIAN - Exit App. I do so and the light of the room fades into darkness, taking my son with it, literally.

Time to sleep.