He spiraled upward into the machine-Lissajous pattern oscilloscope sine and cosine waves from the x and y axes actually came together, pulsated in three dimensions and he teased himself the machine he the man with vernier knob stimulation-it came out green and the machine trembled, began to secrete testosterone, estrogen, progesterone…
She, the machine, he, the machine, she, the man, he, the machine…the man, he becoming she becoming machine…
His heart was pudding.
The Lissajous pulsations became hallucinations in the sex organs of the computer…galvanic skin response on the galvanometer…aching in his spine…
Sinking slowly into a sea of oil. Great skyscraper bulk of metalflesh slowly warmly moistly sinking into a sea of blue-black oil. Pumping. Pumping. Wet closing over his head, running in waves over his naked body. Invisible mat of hair covering every plate and surface, a fine golden down, soaking up oil, engorging, coming to climax.
Her breasts were warm, the rivets sensitive to each feather caress of electric stim. Her vagina filled with soft, melting things that went up and up and roughened the oil-slick inner surfaces, sliding to touch and knead the vulva. So good. Ood.
His memory, he could see everything in his memory, stored in the banks, every moment of his life from the first dripping emergence from the vats, the running, the extruding, the rolling, the flattening, the cutting, the shaping, the forming, the welding. Every moment of his life: the instant he was first engaged, the circuits closing, the surge of power, the first inputs, the primary runs, every boring clearing procedure, every exercise, every erroneous output.
His mother, his father, great cats and the wet scent of their breath, like coolant on overheated coils, the soft taste of Joice in his mouth, her body moving beneath him, sinking into her, tiniest folding of her labia around his penis, the rising to orgasm, the overloading, the heat, the peace of darkness.
Then he altered his stroke and felt the change to precognitive anticipatory feedback, telling himself how it would feel, fulfilling his own prophecies, the smell of flesh on metal, metal on flesh, the colors of whirling information, increments of semen and fused capacitors.
He was the teleport, additional human faculties, soft sponge pineal gland, polluted adrenalin, strange eyes, this was the best for me the very best I've ever hungry metal lover. They began to converge…everything began to converge. He, the machine called Neil Leipzig, was the x axis; he, the machine called love-partner, was the y axis; they began to converge; identical sine waves, out of phase.
His pattern was a growing. The machine's was a throbbing. He passed the machine at a higher level every pulse. The machine grew frantic and drank more power. He tried to catch up, chasing the nymphomaniacal peaks as the machine beckoned him, teased him, taunted him, drew him on, then flashed away. He extended on metal limbs, the machine's soft flesh grew sunburned and dark and leather tough.
Then he peaked out, it, she, peaked out, unable to draw more power from her source. They exchanged modes, as the point of destructive interference denied quantum mechanics and was reached: a millisecond of total sound and utter silence. Orgasm: metal became flesh, human became machine.
The interference pattern was a grating whine that became more and more pure as they came into phase. The machine, in its human throat, began to vibrate in sympathy. She, who had been Neil Leipzig at the start, captured the exponential pattern that had been his, the machine, captured it as it fell away.
They circled, and the image on the Lissajous screen became a circle as she captured the machine and held her in phase again. Prolate and oblate: two dimensional images slowing, softening, dimming, the message of release and surcease .986, 1.0014,.9999986, 1.00000000014…
The first thing he heard was the sound of the two cheetahs attacking something, agony and fury. The first thing he saw was the dying point of green light on the oscilloscope screen. The first thing he felt was the rough metal of his chest against the sweat-soaked north Bank of his love-partner.
He was dry. As though he had given the machine a transfusion, as if it had sucked all the juices from him. He understood why Joice and all the others, as free as they had been, had been unable to arouse him in times past, how the first Mekcoucher with its promises of this, had led him further and further into the inevitability of what he had just experienced.
Now, for the first time in his life, he knew what passion could lead through, what it led to inexorably. And he knew he could never go back. He would stay here, in this terrible place, with these others who shared his lover, and this was all he wanted.
He fell away from the machine and lay on the rock Boor of the cavern. His breath had to be drawn in stages. His head reeled. His hand lay on his metal chest.
He wanted to sleep, but the sounds of conflict were louder now, insistent, crowding through the pain and satiation his body felt at one and the same time. He rolled over on his stomach, his chest clanking against the rock Boor. It was the best for you, too, he thought. The best you ever had, love-partner. You will never forget me. If I die today, you'll remember always, in every last memory cell.
At the base of the nearest ledge, the Catman's cheetahs were struggling with one of the love-partner's people. He was down and they were savaging him, but clearly trying to avoid killing him. The thief had seen the technique before. It was called putting, as in stay put. The rest of the colony had no part in the melee, and were, in fact, watching with some pleasure-if pleasure could be discerned on faces that were partially metal masks.
A tall, limping, old woman with copper legs came across from the crowd. She hobbled to Neil as the Catman commanded, “Heel!” and the cheetahs left their chewed and semi-conscious prey. The Catman joined the copper-legged old woman.
The falcon looked sleepy. It was an illusion.
“Will you can stay be here with love-partner?” the old woman said. There was a tone of pleading in her voice. “Tewsday,” she said, indicating the pile of worked-over flesh and metal the cheetahs had put, “he was for crazy of you with the love-partner. But I'm the saying one for your give machine love never before that fire hot. If you'll be stay this place us can make you what my is being, first lover.”
The Catman moved a step closer. “Neil!”
There was raw horror on his face. He had seen his son's body vanish into the machine, had seen the machine turn soft and swallow the thief, had seen the machine sweat and go mad with lust, had seen his son emerge with his parts altered. Neil Leipzig looked at his father, and at the old woman. “I'll stay. Now go and take Tewsday for repair.”
The old woman hobbled away, and the crowd went back into their rock-wall dwellings. Neil Leipzig stood facing the Catman.
“You can't. My God, Neil, look at you, and this is only the first time. That thing eats what it loves. Do you want to end up like”
He waved a hand at the retreating mob of half-humans.
“This is where I belong. I haven't belonged up there for a long time.”
“Neil, please, I'll do anything you want; resign my commission, we can go away to another city…”
“Dad,” he said, “I have always loved you. More than I've ever been able to tell you. I always wanted you to fight back. That's all I ever wanted.”
“You don't understand your mother. She's had bad times, too.”
“It's all in aid of nothing. Look at you. You haven't got a dream left in the world. We're killing you a little at a time. It's time I stopped contributing to it and did something final.”