Cynosure

Little Woman
- by Quinn (a.k.a. Cynosure)

- - -

A young girl, seemingly no older than eleven or twelve years, wandered the streets of an abandoned metropolis. Despite the debris and spoilage all around her, the girl appeared healthy and unharmed, even if a little malnourished and long overdue for a bath. Her flaxen hair, allowed to grow long and wild, was bound in a ponytail. Her only clothing was a dove-gray shirt, several sizes too big for her. The girl wore the shirt as a simple dress, for she no longer concerned herself with any dress code. Her shoes — the rugged type, designed for hiking — were the right size, though. She did take care in selecting her footgear.

Slung from the girl's back was a booksack. The girl sometimes came across such booksacks with the skeletal remains of their owners; some of who, when they were alive, must have stood no taller than her. However, she had found her booksack among the disused stocks at a department store. While she often used her sack to carry books, magazines, and discs back to her place of residence, she primarily used it to carry things such as food, water, tools, and supplies.

Holstered on the girl's hip was a compact pistol. A burst from this weapon could drop even the largest, most aggressive man in his tracks. The girl hadn't encountered a human for years, now, but a few of the girl's kind who had turned aberrant and malevolent still walked the streets. More common were the wild dogs and the vermin that had begun to take over this spoiling metropolis.

The girl paused before a sheet-glass window of a boutique. She peered through the cracked, grimy window and into the unlit showcase beyond it, then refocused on her reflection in the glass. Indeed, she possessed the face of a beautiful, twelve-year-old human child. But this girl was not quite a human being. And she definitely was not a child - she was much older than twelve.

In fact, yesterday she celebrated her thirtieth birthday.

The girl approached the showroom of an aerocar dealership, where a few ceiling lights still flickered after all these years. The girl heard a low, strange noise — an electronic squeak — coming from inside. Her pistol was in her hands an instant later. She crouched behind the showroom windowsill as she drew closer, broken glass crunching against the pavement beneath her hiking shoes. With her pistol held out before her, she sprang up before the window...

From out of nowhere, a smiling man materialized inside the showroom and began speaking in an excited voice.

The girl fired before she realized the man was merely a ghost. Neither the man's image nor his voice wavered as a burst of tiny, explosive flechettes zipped through his holographic torso and blasted into the wall behind him.

Re-holstering her pistol, the girl crossed the showroom floor and passed her hand through the salesman's image.

"Oh, shut up," she said to him. Surprisingly, her words activated a response where her gunfire had not, and the man stopped his sales pitch. He gave her an almost apologetic nod and a parting smile, before fading away.

The day turned to dusk as the girl walked back to one of her many shelters. She reflected on her reaction to the appearance of the holographic man that afternoon. Had he been a live man, he'd be a dead one now. The girl thought that would have been a shame, a great loss. She had become so lonely nowadays.

She found herself recalling the man's friendly smile, which really wasn't as intimidating as she first thought; and his handsome features, which left her with feelings like she never experienced before in her thirty years of childhood.

- - -

After the humans disappeared, the girl and her fellows from the playmate caste drew together and rather foolishly came to depend only upon themselves. Incredibly, the other castes made the same mistake, despite their higher forms of thinking. The psyche programmers at Mannequin Bioengineering, had any of them survived, would have had a field day observing the phenomenon.

In the vast metropolis devoid of human life, the various mannequin castes carried according to their programming. Construction and maintenance mannequins finished out their building projects and continued in their upkeep of the metropolis, though new projects were no longer forthcoming, and supplies and materials were running out. General labor mannequins continued in their duties, though after a time their work grew more and more superfluous. Mannequin clerks continued about their business, though no clients remained to account to. Mannequin vendors and servants mostly stood around with nothing to do, since there were no more customers. Entertainer mannequins performed in abandoned galleries, in empty theaters, and before mannequin-operated cameras that transmitted images to thousands of lifeless homes. All this ultimately resulted in malfunctions and breakdowns, for most of the mannequins.

It was particularly hard on the "children".

None of the other castes — not even the caretakers, who were programmed for the needs of human children — felt any maternal need to care for the relatively weak and guileless playmates. Thus in that first year alone the playmates lost nearly half their numbers to accidents and mishaps. More than a dozen were lost in a fire that gutted one of their many clubhouses; this one, a family restaurant built around an indoor picnic area and playground. Others, particularly the boys, perished because they were careless or rambunctious in the wrong place, at the wrong time. A few who became missing simply wandered off or were thoughtlessly left behind by the rest of their group.

A year after the humans died off, there were as many as forty playmates left wandering and carefree in the metropolis. Three years later the number of playmates had dwindled down to less than half a dozen.

A year after that, only one of them remained to still wander the streets.

- - -

It took the girl all morning and most of the afternoon to find the meteorite crash site. Although the metropolis was overwhelmingly huge and complex, the girl had assembled a collection of maps over the years, and she managed to memorize certain sectors, particularly those she explored and inhabited most. The blazing meteorite she spotted early that morning appeared to have fallen into one such sector, not too far away. Yet the meteorite had landed high above the streets instead of in them, and it was in the street that the girl concentrated her search. She was about to give up and return home, when she noticed thin trails of smoke wafting from the roof of a building, a dozen stories or more. She entered the building and began climbing its long flight of emergency stairs.

Minutes later, the girl reached the building top. There she discovered not a crash site but a landing pad. And the thing she found docked upon it was no meteorite but a space shuttle-craft.

The girl drew her pistol as she cautiously approached the shuttlecraft; polarized windows glinting; taxi and landing lights glaring; navigation beacons flashing. A hatch had opened from the port-side of the craft. As the girl approached, crouching, she peered past the frontal landing gear... through the hatch and into the dimly lit cockpit... and spied the pilot, still strapped in his seat. The girl aimed her pistol. This man, she knew, would not turn out to be a mere hologram.

However, at the moment this man appeared as incapable of harming her as the hologram. His head was bowed and his torso was slack and hunched, held up in his seat only by his flight harness. Clotting blood trickled from beneath his visored helmet and collected as a spreading stain upon the collar and yoke of his jumpsuit.

Within the cramped cockpit, the girl examined the man. A muffled groan emitted from beneath his helmet. He blindly reached out, grasping the girl's shoulder and startling her. But the man was delirious and feeble. He was merely reaching out from a haze of semi-consciousness.

The girl finished her examination. Detecting no broken bones or signs of internal bleeding, she decided to assist the man from the cockpit. She assisted him, serving as a crutch, to the control tower. There inside, she was nearly pulled down with the man as he collapsed onto a couch. With a muffled groan from inside his helmet, the man slipped unconscious again.

The girl backed into a nearby desk. Behind the desk, the skeletal remains of a dispatcher sat hunched over. Whether the skeleton was a human's — one of many corpses that the sanitation crews never got around to disposing — or whether it was a mannequin's, the girl could not tell. Whatever, it was fortunate for the man on the couch that the mutant virus, the one that had killed all his kind on this world, had itself died out several years ago.

Placing her pistol within quick reach on the floor beside the couch, the girl took out the medical kit she carried with her at all times and spread it out atop the desk. Returning to the man, she removed his helmet and unzipped his jumpsuit to get to his wounds; which, though bloody, turn out to be less serious than she first thought, requiring little more than a few skillfully applied sutures. Even the ugly gash on the man's forehead was superficial and was not the mark of anything more than a mild concussion. Mostly, he was suffering from dehydration and exhaustion.

The next day, after a long sleep and a light breakfast, the man told the girl, "My name is Byron." Placing a hand on his bandaged forehead, he gave her an innocuous smile and asked, "What's yours?"

Having just brought a load of food, water, medicine, and toiletries, the girl stopped as she was about to exit. "Whatever you want to call me, sir," she said, reacting on an old, long-unused impulse.

Hearing her response, seeing it in the sudden change on her face and in her stance, the man assumed a knowing, cynical look. "Oh, I should have guessed," he said. "You're a mannequin. What caste, though? Surely not a playmate... "

"Why, yes, sir! I am a playmate," she said, releasing a giggle before she could help it. She was acting on her old programming, and it was surprising to find herself reverting to that childlike and subservient demeanor.

"But if you're a playmate-caste, how did you manage to doctor me? You did more than first aid here, so I can only assume you've somehow evolved beyond your programming."

"Yes, sir, Mr. Byron," said the girl. Then she met his gaze and her features turned firm and sober. Then, with the childishness now entirely gone from her voice, she said, "I've been on my own for some time, now."

"I see," said the man named Byron. Breaking eye contact with the girl, he glanced at the grisly remains slumped behind the desk, then out of the weather-beaten windows of the derelict control tower. Shuddering, he returned his gaze to the girl again and asked, "How old are you?"

"Twelve," she blurted out, the child within her seeking to resurface.

"No, I mean, what's your actual age?"

"Thirty."

The man frowned. "How long ago did you turn thirty? How many months do you have before... before you, ah, give up the ghost?"

Trying to sound as matter-of-factly as possible, the girl answered, "I turned thirty only two months ago, so I should have another ten months left."

A heavy silence hung between them for several moments before the man said, "Well, I believe you've yet to tell me your name. I must call you something, but I've no favorite name in mind."

"I have gone by many names and nicknames, of course... " the girl began, hesitated, then finished, "...but I prefer to be called Heather."

- - -

The girl remembered how several of her fellow playmates "gave up the ghost."

For those few who survived the hazards and hardships of an abandoned and unsupervised "childhood," each lived to see his or her thirtieth birthday, and each knew — if only in a subconsciously — they would never see their thirty-first. For sometime during the twelfth month after their thirtieth birthdays, each of them fell asleep and the allotted times on their biological timeclocks expired. And thus they died. The ghost in the machine left its host, so it was said, though the lifeless body remaining behind was no machine, per se, as it decomposed like any other corpse. Even so, the deaths of those mannequins were peaceful, oblivious ones.

But not all of the girl's fellow mannequins gave up the ghost in such a manner.

There was one, a boy, who lived to see his thirty-first birthday. Shortly thereafter, he grew debilitated with sickness, even though mannequins were not normally subject to sicknesses of any kind. But evidently this mannequin's timeclock malfunctioned, causing him to give up his ghost in a wretched way. The other playmates, what few that were left, were shocked and horrified by the boy's condition. They abandoned the boy, for none of them were willing to witness his slow, miserable death.

None, that is, except for a girl who liked to be called Heather. Resisting peer pressure and allaying her childish fears, she stayed with the boy to help relieve his suffering and to provide him companionship until the awful end.

- - -

For some strange reason, the man named Byron rigged his shuttlecraft with a high-explosive and detonated it from the safe distance of a neighboring high-rise building top. Watching the bright explosion and the subsequent flames, Heather reminded Byron that nowadays there was no way to halt the spreading if the building caught fire. "So, what?" said Byron. "So what if this whole goddamned metropolis burns down? Just like Sodom and Gomorra!" Fortunately, the flames spread no further and eventually die out.

In the following months, Heather continued her survival in the metropolis with her newfound companion, Byron, who she learned was quite abnormal for a human. "A malcontent and a cynic," as he put it. "A pariah of morality in a galaxy of lotus-eaters." Heather perceived that Byron, rather than being directly outcasted or exiled, had himself rejected society and was running away from his past.

Fifty-eight-years-old, though appearing half that age due to deceleration treatments, this man named Byron had seen and experienced much in his lifetime. With Heather’s persistent inquiries, he related to her some of his stories, though reluctantly and bitterly.

As an adult, Byron had lived on several worlds, in many metropoles and cities; all of them (according to him) the same: decadent and hedonistic cesspools. With mannequins doing all the menial labor, Byron concluded, humans were afforded far more leisure time than was good for them. Byron made it clear to Heather that one of his more stranger "abnormalities" was that he detested being served by mannequins.

Yet in those following in months, Heather's help seemed to bother him only a little, for "help" it was and not "service." What's more, within the first few weeks Byron learned that this mannequin was quite an abnormality herself. She was his equal — his superior, even! — in many skills and areas of knowledge, particularly in the skills of survival and in the lay of this metropolis. Likewise abnormal was her ability to act as a mature companion for him, despite the fact she was designed to have the mind and body of a twelve-year-old child. Although Heather was not as experienced and worldly as Byron (and thankfully so, as he saw it), she was well-read, and they engage in hours of discussing the works of great writers.

In time, Byron learned something else about this playmate-caste mannequin. Something even more abnormal... and quite disturbing.

They took their weekly shower at the dwindling water reservoirs; this, a luxury in addition to the sonic baths they took every other day or so. Although Byron wanted to shower in private, Heather found her way into joining him, more and more often.

With cold water splashing down his face, washing away the soapy lather, Byron opened his eyes to see Heather standing close by his side, naked as him; his shower water drizzling upon her and beading down her pre-pubescent body. Self-consciously taking a side-step away from her, he told her once again she should have waited her turn. Her only reply was to take advantage of the opened space and step beneath the unheated shower water. Before Byron could object further, she began bouncing with delight as the cold, tingling water fell upon her. Byron's frown turned into a smile. Her delight was infectious and, surely, innocent. Yet afterward, as he toweled himself off and dressed, the unabashed stared she gave him were not so innocent. Her eyes roamed over his body with something more than childlike curiosity.

Some mornings, Byron awoke to find her snuggled up, next to him. This, he tried to reason, was no more than a child's need for affection and security — but he now knew Heather better than that. And, with each successive day of such awakenings, arm-in-arm, he found her embraces less like a child's and more like a lover's. Unlike most humans of his time, Byron found himself uncomfortable in such a situation.

To make matters worse, his dreams turned vividly erotic; so much so that one morning he awoke with a cool, sticky wetness in his undershorts... and Heather clutched in his arms. Aghast, Byron broke away and slinked off to another part of the building, where he spent the entire day avoiding the child-mannequin.

One night, several weeks later, Byron was only half-asleep when Heather crawled from her sleeping pallet, onto his own. He stirred from his sleep as she lay her body against his, placing an arm around his waist and pressing her face into his chest. Byron's face burned and his stomach fluttered, but he did not say or do anything in protest... not until he felt her hand leave his hip and come to rest against his abdomen, where her fingers began to run along the hairs below his navel, all the way down to the waistband of his undershorts...

"No! Stop!" snapped Byron, breaking away from the child-mannequin and bolting upright. "What are you doing?" His shrill voice and abrupt movements startled the still and silent darkness.

"Byron, I... I... " stammered Heather.

"I thought you said you were a playmate-caste," he said, his voice still marked with anxiety.

"I am, but — "

"No! Playmates don't behave that way. It's not in their programming."

"Initially, yes," said Heather, struggling to keep her voice from quavering and her eyes from tearing. She paused for a moment, her head bowed in silence, there in the darkness. "But evidently I'm capable of self-reprogramming," she concluded.

After another pause, Heather said: "Back when I was among my fellow mannequins, after the disappearances of our human masters, there was a girl among us who wasn't really one of us. Her programming made her different from us. She had served not as a playmate for children, but for adults — adults with certain, um, sexual preferences."

"Yes, I know all about that caste," Byron said with disgust. "So, then, are you saying you're actually one of those? Because, if you are, don't expect me to do anything like that with you — "

"No, I'm not! Or, I wasn't... but maybe now I am," said Heather. She threw up her arms, gripped her forehead and cried, "I just don't know anymore! I'm so confused! But what can I do? I'm trapped in this damned child-body; trapped until the day I die — which is surely just around the corner!" The mannequin's self-control slipped entirely from her as she burst into tears, releasing her frustration and despair.

Byron's heart rose into his throat, choking him and bringing tears to his own eyes. Returning to Heather, he enfolded her in his arms like the child he believed, he wished, her to be.

"Hold me, Byron! I'm so scared!" she sobbed. "I'm so scared. Please, hold me."

"Yes, I will. I am," he said to her, softly, tenderly.

In the following months, they discussed that evening no further, though it remained ponderous and unresolved in Byron's mind. Yet he realized that Heather did not have much longer to live — four months, at most — so he was determined to make the mannequin's remaining time as pleasant as possible.

Yet all his best intentions were in vain...

One day Heather played a practical joke on Byron. The joke was one of many playful acts, all in an attempt to seem more childlike to him, to alleviate his anxiety. Having played her joke, Heather fell into a fit of puckish laughter. Byron, disarmed by her laughter, lost his guard for a moment. He grabbed her in his arms, wrestled her to the ground, and began tickling her. Squeeling, she resisted and playfully faught him off. With his face caught in the crook of her neck, his lips whisked up to her cheek and then past, and then began kissing her upon the lips; lightly, at first; then with increasing passion as she joined in with him. Their tongues flickered, and their mouths opened wider...

"No-oo!" Byron groaned, catching himself in the act. He broke away from her and bolted upright — all over again. "No! I cannot do this... !" Filled with his familiar self-loathing, Byron turned from the child-mannequin and buried his face in his hands.

Behind him, Heather burst into tears once again.

- - -

For days, Byron searched relentlessly for Heather on the streets and in the buildings of those sectors they had frequented most. He called out her name until he became so hoarse, he could call out no more. Yet Byron continued to search, for hours upon hours; driven, and hating himself for what he had done to Heather, and for what he could not do for her.

Finally, by the end of the third day, Byron realized he would not find the mannequin if she didn't want to be found.

Two months later, a bald-headed mannequin in threadbare work overalls showed up at the building Byron and Heather had once shared. Byron had assumed there were no other mannequins in the metropolis besides Heather. Now he realized there were still a few scattered about; albeit, those few were soon to become fewer still by one, according to the worker-mannequin.

"The playmate-mannequin calling herself Heather is giving up the ghost in an abnormal way, Master Byron," said the worker, his face bearing little emotion. "She has been requesting your presence for several days now, but I hesitated coming for you since such a request seems inappropriate on her part. You have every right to decline, Master Byron, if you so desire."

"Take me to her — immediately," demanded Byron.

When he arrived at her side, he found Heather looked quite different since he had seen her last. She now looked frail and deathly pale. She was burning up with fever, and her clothes were damp and stained.

"She's coherent today, but yesterday she was overcome with cramps and the chills," remarked the worker-mannequin, who had been watching over her (if only in a detached manner). The odor of vomit, diarrhea, and urine lingered in the air, though the worker managed to keep the area relatively clean.

Byron was instantly moved by desire and compassion for the child-mannequin regardless of her repugnant sight and smell. Sitting beside her, he held her limp hand and brushed the damp strands of hair from her hot forehead. She opened her red-rimmed eyes and beheld him through a teary haze.

"Byron," she whispered, straining through her weakness. "Oh, I've missed you so."

Byron's heart rose in his throat again. "I've missed you, too, my little Heather."

"Am I little to you, still?"

"No, Heather. You have more maturity, more strength and courage, than most adults I've known. Despite your outward appearances, you are truly a woman inside. And... and I love you."

A bright smile alighted on Heather's chapped lips, a smile especially warm in contrast with her pallor. Then her smile faded and her eyes fluttered close. Just before she slipped back into unconsciousness, her lips seemed to form the words: I love you, too.

Later, that night, Heather's fever broke. The next day, she started to recover.

- - -

After Heather regained her strength, Byron and Heather packed up and moved away from the dead metropolis, out into the lush, expanding wilderness that was once a well-tended patchwork of gardens, villas, and parks. The couple settled in a large, two-story cabin, situated near a sparkling lake, surrounded by living verdure. At first, they returned periodically to the metropolis for supplies, but with each passing week they learn more and more to live off the land.

Although Byron and Heather often hugged and held hands, and sometimes even kissed, albeit lightly, he still could not bring himself to go any further than that with her. He even went out of his way to avoid seeing her undressed, though he never found her pre-adolescent body particularly arousing in the first place. Yet when he looked at her nowadays, there was such love, such passion between them — he knew it was only a matter of time before they reached that point in their relationship again where the desire in both of them grew overpowering. Byron was not sure how he would deal with it when that time came again.

But will it come again? he wondered. How much longer before Heather ultimately succumbed to her timeclock and was forced to give up the ghost? Would she even live another full year to see her thirty-second birthday?

Physically, she had been changed by her ordeal. Through her starving-sickness she had lost the last vestiges of a child's baby-fat. She was all thin and gangly now, which made her appear slightly taller than before (unless she really had grown an inch or two, which Byron knew was impossible). Even her hair was no longer fine as it used to be; now it was coarser, and dark as honey. Her skin had darkened as well, out here beneath the basking sun.

And now Heather complained of having cramps again, though these were far less severe than the ones before. Byron wondered if her sickness was merely in remission. Yet Heather seemed as energetic as ever, and her complexion had a healthy glow. She was joyful and alive, even if she was a little moody, lately.

One morning, Heather had just left for a dip in a nearby lake when Byron heard her running back to the cabin and excitedly calling out his name. From beyond the trees, she came running up to the porch, where Byron was sitting on a swing. Heather was wearing one of her over-sized shirts... and evidently nothing else, for her shorts were in her hand. She scampered up the stairs and onto the porch. Overjoyed, she held out her shorts for Byron to see, to share in her wonder...

There, bright against the material of the crotch, was a stain of menstrual blood.

- - -

THE END