The doctor fixed up my arm and found us an old, leaky rowboat when it was clear we were determined to go back. Tris has had to do most of the work; her arms are starting to look like they belong to someone who doesn’t spend all her time reading. I think about the harvest and hope the bombs didn’t reap the grain before we could. If anyone could manage those fields without me, Bill can. We won’t starve this winter, assuming reapers didn’t destroy everything. Libby ships the oars and lets us float, staring at the deep gray sky and its reflection on the water that seems to stretch endlessly before us.
“Bill will have brought the harvest in just fine,” I say.
“You love him, don’t you?”
I think about his short, patchy hair. That giant green monster he brought back like a dowry. “He’s good with the old engines. Better than me.”
“I think he loves you. Maybe one of you could get around to doing something about it?”
“Maybe so.”
Tris and I sit like that for a long time. The boat drifts toward shore, and neither of us stop it. A fish jumps in the water to my left; a heron circles overhead.
“Dad’s probably out fishing,” she says, maneuvering us around. “We might catch him on the way in.”
“That’ll be a surprise! Though he won’t be happy about his boat.”
“He might let it slide. Libby?”
“Yes?”
“I’m sorry—”
“You aren’t sorry if you’d do it again,” I say. “And I’m not sorry if I’d let you.”
She holds my gaze. “Do you know how much I love you?”
We have the same smile, my sister and I. It’s a nice smile, even when it’s scared and a little sad.
BITS
Naomi Kritzer
Naomi Kritzer has been writing science fiction and fantasy for twenty years. Her short story “Cat Pictures Please” won the 2016 Hugo and Locus awards and was nominated for the Nebula Award. A collection of her short stories was released in 2017, and her YA novel, tentatively called Welcome to Catnet, is forthcoming from Tor Books. She lives in St. Paul, Minnesota, with her spouse, two kids, and four cats. The number of cats is subject to change without notice.
So here is something a lot of people don’t realize: most companies that make sex toys are really small. Even a successful sex-toy manufacturer like Squishies (tm) is still run out of a single office attached to a warehouse, and the staff consists of Julia (the owner), Juan (the guy who does all the warehouse stuff), and me (the person who does everything else).
(You are probably wondering right now if that includes product testing. I make it a habit not to talk about my sex life with strangers but Julia requires that everyone she hires take home a Squishie or a Firmie or one of the other IntelliFlesh products and try it out, either solo or with a partner. I pointed out that if she ever hired an alien—sorry, “extraterrestrial immigrant”—the neurology doesn’t match up, and does she want to admit she discriminates in hiring? But I didn’t argue that hard, because hey, free sex toy, why not? Frankly, I found it a kind of freaky experience, having this piece of sensate flesh that didn’t really belong there, and after a little bit of experimentation I stuck it in a drawer and haven’t touched it since.)
Anyway, we outsource the manufacturing and the boxes of Squishies and Firmies get shipped to us on shrink-wrapped pallets and Juan breaks them down to re-ship in more manageable quantities to the companies that resell our products.
The original product were the Squishies, and Julia is not at ALL shy about people knowing about her sex life (we have an instructional video, and she’s IN it), so I don’t mind telling you that she came up with it because her boyfriend at the time had a fetish for really large breasts, we’re not talking “naturally gifted” or even “enhanced with silicone” but “truly impractical for all real-world purposes like breathing and using your arms,” and conveniently at the time she was working at a company making top-of-the-line prosthetics with neural integration. She made herself a really enormous set of breasts and after a lot of futzing with the neural integration she got them to be sensate. Then the boyfriend dumped her and she didn’t really need them anymore, but her friend who’d had a double mastectomy said, “why don’t you make me a smaller set?” and that, supposedly, was when it occurred to her that maybe she could make this product to SELL. She found a manufacturing facility and office space, hired me and Juan, and went into the Fully Sensate Attachable Flesh business.
Depending on your predilections you may already be wondering why she started with boobs. IntelliFlesh is re-shapable, at least up to a point, and since I was the Customer Service department I started getting calls from people who wanted to reshape it into something longer, stiffer, and pointier.
“Julia,” I said one day, taking off my headset, “you need to start making strap-on dicks.”
“I can’t call those Squishies,” she said dismissively.
“So? Roll out a new line. Hardies. Dickies. Cockies. If you go with Cockies you can say ‘like cookies, only better’ in the ads.” Maybe I should note that one of the few things Julia doesn’t let me do is write the ad copy.
The Firmies were an even bigger seller than the Squishies. Between boobs and dicks, we had most users covered, but every now and then I got a call from someone who wanted something a little more customized.
“You’ve reached Afton Enterprises, home of Squishies and Firmies,” I said. “How may I help you?” (In addition to not getting to write the ad copy, I don’t get to decide how to answer the phone, judging from the fact that Julia shot down the greeting, “How may I improve your sex life today?”)
“I’m thinking about buying either a Squishie or a Firmie, and I… had some questions,” the woman said, her voice hesitant. “They’re sort of expensive and I’m not sure which will meet my needs.”
“Well, the Squishie is squishier,” I said. “It’s more malleable, but it also doesn’t tend to hold alternate shapes for very long unless you refrigerate it for a while before you get started. The Firmie arrives long and narrow, but if you want it to have a different shape—say, a curve or even a hook—you can gently heat it up and mold it.”
“What I want is a prosthetic vagina,” the woman blurted out. “In a different spot.”
You’re not really supposed to say, “you want what?” to customers when you’re doing customer support for a sex toy shop. We are pro-sex, pro-kink, and anti-shame: there is officially no wrong way to have sex. So: “Which spot?” I asked.
“Well, we’re not exactly sure. Part of the advantage of your products is that we can move them around. What if I bought two Firmies? Could I reshape those into two halves of a vagina, like maybe one could be the top of the, um, tube, and the other could be the bottom… are your products compatible with lubricant?”
“There’s a special lube that we sell,” I said. “Other lubricants might void the warranty.”
“That adds to the cost even more,” the woman said, clearly frustrated. “Is there any way to find out before I put down all that money whether it’s going to work for me? If they sold these at REI I would just buy it and figure I’d return it if I needed to, but nobody takes returns on sex toys.”
“We do, under some circumstances,” I said. “Can you give me a little more information about what your goal is with our product?”
“I want to have sex with my husband,” she said, impatiently, “real sex, or as real as it can get. And he’s a K’srillan male. Our God-given parts just don’t match up.”