I stole my brother Simon’s Tangerine. His security
wasn’t exactly bomb-proof; he’d been using the same
password since he was thirteen. Father was away at the
wars; Mother was out doing her Good Work, Simon was
courting; and the servants had all been sent home for
the night. If ever the coast was going to be clear, it
was now.

I punched it into the alpha-numeric tumblers he’d
installed on his closet door about the same time he’d
started sprouting body hair and his voice had cracked.
T-r-i-X-X-X-i-e was the name of the main character in
his favorite pornographic serial. He’d had a manic
crush on her for the first year or so of his
adolescence, and I had followed her erotic adventures
with a mixture of horror, fascinated disgust, and
titillated lust.

I’d been breaking into Theo’s closet to snoop around
his pornographic picture-novels for about as long as
I’d know what pornography is, and what to do with it.
Trixxxie, with her impossible breasts and cartoonish,
generic features, wasn’t something I masturbated to,
but she had taught me all I’d ever wanted to know
and then some about the mechanical aspects of sex.
And there were plenty more picture-novels for me to
peruse.

I had whiled away many hot and sticky hours locked in
Simon’s closet with a dirty picture-novel in one hand
and one finger busy between my legs. Eventually I’d
discovered that I preferred to get off to the written
word, and I had acquired some erotic novellas of my
own. I still came back to visit Simon’s closet now and
then. But I’d never actually removed anything. I told
myself I was just ‘borrowing’ it, even though I had
already downloaded an entire new (and pirated) ROM.

The Tangerine was a hand-held tubular little Turing
machine, designed with one purpose only: to serve as a
pleasure envelope for a lonely penis. I didn’t have a
penis myself, but my own parts were just as lonely as
could be. The ROM I’d illicitly downloaded was
supposed to modify the thing’s operating system to
suit my ‘more feminine needs’.

It sort of reminded me of an exotic weapon out of one
of Simon’s futurist graphic novels: it was black and
plastic, fit nicely in the palm of your hand, and the
backside had a small array of buttons above a keyhole
for winding and a USB slot. If it weren’t for the
anatomically-correct pussy in front, it would have
been the exact sort of thing a space-zeppelin officer
might wield, shooting energy beams at the enemy or
projecting a laser whip. The front part was a
different, softer material, sculpted to form a
realistic pink plastic vulva. It looked like something
straight out of an anatomy textbook, the kind of thing
that budding gynecologists might practice exams on. It
came with a large brass key.

Josephine had gotten a Schlong from one of her ‘secret
admirers’, and it was (in her words) “incredibly fan-
fucking-tastic!!” I wasn’t about to buy one of my own.
I didn’t have a well-heeled Admiration Society of my
own; neither did I have that kind of sterling in the
bank. Anyway, the Schlong was pretty intimidating: a
big black polymer cock, realistically molded, and
studded with knobs and sensors, packing nearly eight
pounds of gears and clockwork. I wasn’t ready for
that. I wasn’t sure I’d ever be ready for that.

He’d never miss it, I told myself. My heart rate shot
through the roof as I slinked back to my own room, the
stolen Tangerine clasped in my greedy, sweaty hands.
Simon had a real girlfriend now, prissy Miss Violet
Verne, and he wouldn’t be needing wind-up toys
anymore. He’d never even notice it was gone. Anyway,
he would be graduating soon, and beginning his
compulsory service, and I doubted they’d let him bring
that particular item along with him to the wars.

Back in the privacy of my own room, my jitters swiftly
transformed from ‘nervous’ into ‘horny’. I was dying
to try out my brand-new ill-gotten contraption. I’d
never masturbated with anything but my fingers before,
and if my friend Jo was telling anything like the
truth, this was going to be intense.

I plugged in the data stick with the pirated ROM into
the slot in the back of the Tangerine. A couple
million microswitches rearranged their configuration,
but nothing appeared to happen. The thing just sat
there on my dresser, a sullen pink-and-black lump. I
pulled out the key, and wound it up until the master
spring clicked. It took a surprising number of turns
to wind up. I counted 128 turns before it finally
clicked.

I stripped out of my petticoats, garters, and
knickers, and sprawled across my bed. The pink polymer
vulva seemed to stare at me in my nakedness. It looked
disturbing from this angle, almost alien. Did my
private parts really look like that, when viewed head-
on and in the abstract?

I reached over and grabbed my novella, flipping to a
dog-eared corner that marked a particularly steamy
bit. I read the words, but I was having trouble
concentrating on them. Even so, the pornographic text
did the trick; I felt my pussy getting wet and swollen
with excitement. I put the book down, and pressed the
central button on the back of Simon’s Tangerine.

The clockwork clicked and hummed almost inaudibly as
the gears inside came to life. When I held it in my
hand, it seemed to tremble, as if it were alive. The
thing generated its own heat. The artificial pussy
pouted open, like a blooming flower, and clear
lubricant started to seep out. I jammed it between my
legs, mashing the polymer pussy against my own flesh-
and-blood, and the thing vibrated with a fierce
intensity.

Jo was right. It was absolutely fan-fucking-tastic. I
almost couldn’t stand it, but I rode the wave,
squeezing the humming Tangerine between my thighs. I
came almost immediately, hard, curling up into a fetal
ball and hiccupping with pleasure. I had to take a
break then, my parts were suddenly way too sensitive.
I paused the machinery and read some more of my smutty
book, until I was ready to go again. And go again I
did, until I was spent and limp. Each orgasm seemed to
me the best one I’d ever had, and it seemed like
they’d never stop. Already, I was asking myself how
I’d ever gotten by without a Tangerine of my own.

The only distraction was that it kept calling out his
name. “Oh Simon, fuck me!” “Oh Simon you’re so big and
hard!” “Oh Simon yes, do it now!” Whatever programming
my sketchy ROM had overwritten, apparently my
brother’s name was hard-written into its BIOS. I
didn’t mind so much. It was easy enough to ignore.

When I was really and truly done, I wiped the pink
polymer clean and wound it up again before I went to
sleep, leaving the thing safe in my top dresser drawer
buried under my dainties, the big brass key lying
beside it. I slept restlessly, and had murky, sexy,
confusing dreams.

I didn’t get to play with the Tangerine again for a
few days. We all had to go to the capitol to watch
Father march in another victory parade. With all the
victory parades, I wondered, when were we going to win
the war? Then I was swept along to Aunt Veronica’s
under-heated and under-lit mansion to knit socks with
Mother and all the ladies for the men at the front for
two interminable chilly and joyless days. Anyone under
the age of about sixty (which included Mother and me,
but not Aunt Veronica) was expected to be seen and not
heard. Before we got home, I felt like I was going to
die of claustrophobia, annoyance, and pent-up sexual
frustration.

First chance I got, I locked myself in my bedroom. The
Tangerine had grown in my absence, and it had changed.
Now it barely fit inside my unmentionables drawer. It
was more pink than black now, and resembled a giant,
malignant tadpole. It had a suggestion of arms, and
stubby vestigial legs to either side of the vulva. It
had grown a head; a small almond-shaped head fused
with no neck to the body, devoid of features except
for a mouth with delicate, pouting pink lips. The
thing kind of gave me the creeps.

It did give me the creeps, but that didn’t stop me. I
wound it up � the master spring had come unwound while
I was gone � and let it rip. The vulva parted and
drooled, and a long pink tongue lolled out of the
mouth-opening and probed lasciviously out and around.

I squatted over the thing’s head, straddling it. The
Tangerine’s tongue stretched up toward my vagina like
a charmed snake. Gingerly, I lowered myself down onto
it. It was pure heaven.

The tongue was soft and warm and wet and squirmy, and
constantly in motion. It seemed to be driven by an
onboard intelligence, some kind of cunnilingus
algorithm cooked up by a roomful of horny
mathematicians. Unlike my first experience with the
wind-up toy, it didn’t drive me straight over the
cliff. I discovered that by manipulating the buttons
in its black panel, I could control the speed and
intensity of the artificial licking it was giving me.
I found a setting that made the thing’s tongue zig-zag
all over my slit like an automatronic coal-fired
sewing machine.

I dialed both speed and intensity down to their lowest
level, picked up my filthy novella, and read almost an
entire chapter while the Tangerine chug-chugged up and
down my pussy. It was exquisite. I ignored the muffled
cries of, “Oh Simon you’re so big and hard!” “Yes
Simon, yes you big stud!” and so forth.

By the time I was ready to get off, I was sopping wet,
absolutely soaked and dripping. I could stand no more
torment. I set down the book, reached down, and turned
up the controls as high as I could stand them. I bore
down against the suddenly racing, humming tongue, and
came, hard and fast. It was probably the biggest,
longest, most intense orgasm I had ever experienced,
and when I rolled off the Tangerine, I was shaking. My
thighs were absolutely coated in wetness, both mine
and the machine’s. The hair between my legs was wet
and matted. My clitoris was throbbing like a collapsed
star, a pulsar. I realized that I had probably been
screaming.

I wound the Tangerine up again, and stashed it in the
back of my closet, behind all the off-season
pinafores. I figured it would be safe from the
snooping eyes of the chambermaid back there.

There was a massive explosion downtown. We were let
out of Academy early. The authorities couldn’t seem to
make up their minds whether it was a cowardly act of
terrorism, or an innocent industrial accident. My
clothes reeked of coal smoke. Dirigibles prowled back
and forth through the filthy grey skies like hunting
sharks. I got home, disrobed, and showered. The water
was only luke-warm, and smelled like sulfur.

The Tangerine had grown again, and changed even more.
It was now almost my size, a recognizably human female
figure, with the bland, inoffensive features of a
dress mannequin. The black control panel was still
there, now located on the back of the thing’s neck,
but the rest of it was eerie flesh-soft pink polymer.
Its pussy, though still prominent between its meaty
thighs, was no longer its sole defining feature. The
thing had buttocks, breasts, ears, lips, and a nose.
Two glassy dead eyes, like camera lenses, had appeared
in its face.

It definitely gave me the creeps, but I wound it up
anyway. At this point, I could accurately be described
as an addict. Winding the master spring took longer
than ever. I counted 256 turns before it clicked.

Despite its bulk, the thing was still relatively
light. I manhandled the Tangerine up onto my red
velvet fainting couch, and straddled it, still pink
and damp from my unsatisfying shower. My intention had
been to read another chapter of my smutty novella
while it percolated away on its lowest settings.

The Tangerine had ideas of its own, however. An
impossibly strong, iron grip pried my legs wide apart
and gripped my buttocks. It lowered its head into my
crotch, and that inhumanely long tongue went to work:
licking, lapping, dancing up and down, in and out,
vibrating the whole time. I was powerless to get away,
even if I had tried, and frankly I didn’t try very
hard. After a brief moment of panic, I surrendered to
it, arching my back and drowning in the sensations.

It kept calling out Simon’s name, lavishing praise on
his manly body and his big hard cock, all the while
bringing me to orgasm after orgasm. I lost track of
how many times I came. Dexterous, artificial fingers
caressed my clitoris, stroked and toyed with my
vagina, and even probed my anus, making me squirm. I
pinched and pulled at my own nipples, crooning
wordlessly as I came over and over, again and again.

Just as I was starting to think that I couldn’t take
any more, that I was physically spent, it disengaged.
Clockwork humming inside, it lifted its head from my
quivering pussy and slid up my body until its polymer
lips were pressed against mine in a parody of a kiss.
I could tasty my own salty, tangy juice on the thing’s
squishy artificial flesh. Its breasts were squashed up
against mine.

“Oh Simon, you big stud,” it whispered, and slid one
mechanical hand between my thighs. Long fingers pried
their way inexorably inside my pussy, plucking my
virginity dispassionately away. I yelped as my flesh
was torn asunder. The clockwork inside the Tangerine
clicked and hummed and ran down, and the thing went
limp on top of me, leaving me almost catatonic; still
atremble from the multiple orgasms, wounded and
bleeding, sweaty and sticky and leaking and still
oddly turned on. I needed another shower, in a bad
way.

I was sore for days, and not just from being summarily
deflowered. It may or may not have been my
imagination, but I thought the servants were giving me
strange sidelong looks. The government changed again.
A new Prime Minister was appointed; as usual no-one
said what had become of the last one.

My friend Jo disbanded her Admiration Society. She
told me she wanted to join the Air Forces, and asked
if Father would give her a recommendation. When I
asked her why she would do that, she turned her head
so I couldn’t see her eyes and said “Cute airmen and
sex on a blimp.” I told her I’d see what I could do.

Something was deeply fishy about that ROM I’d
downloaded; this was not the way a Tangerine was
supposed to behave. A Tangerine is not supposed to
grow and change and mutate and start acting out on its
own; it’s supposed to be a passive toy, a warm wet
vibrating place for a horny guy to stick his penis. I
wondered if Josephine had had any such issues with her
Schlong.

Despite my misgivings, and my still tender pussy, I
came back for more, like a dog worrying at an old soup
bone.

The thing in the back of my closet was me. Or my
identical twin. It had gotten all the details right;
every freckle, every hair, the crooked toe; the only
the wrong was the eyes, which were dark and glassy and
dead.

I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t go there. Horny or not, I
couldn’t bring myself to wind up that spring. I left
it where it lay, folded into a Z in the back of my
closet; and I walked away, feeling edgy and
unfulfilled. I went downstairs to the library and
tried to lose myself in a long, dusty book.

I stayed down there a long time. The house got quiet
and dark around me. I thought about masturbating,
doing it the good old fashioned way, right there
amongst the books, but then I thought better of it.
Mother would be back from doing her Good Works soon,
and Simon could get home at any moment. I closed the
big dry book of history I had been struggling though,
and traipsed my long way upstairs toward my bedroom.

I heard them from the bottom of the stairwell. It was
my voice, but her words: “Simon, you big stud, fuck
me, fuck me all night with your long hard cock!” I
hurried up the stairs, thankful that the servants had
all gone home for the night.

My bedroom door, of course, was locked against me. I
could hear the bed squeaking all the way out in the
hall. I knelt down and peered through the keyhole,
like a skulking scullery maid.

Simon was facing away from me, standing in front of
the bed, with his back to the door. He was still
wearing his grey Academy tunic, but he was naked from
the waist down. He had, and it bothered me obscurely
to admit it, a pretty cute little white butt.

The Tangerine was on all fours on the bed. Even as I
watched, Simon turned, removing his penis from her
mouth. It was hard and wet, and it jutted erectly up,
waggling as he moved. It was the first penis I had
seen, outside of pornography, and academically
speaking anyway, I liked the look of it. It seemed a
nice size; neither too big nor yet too small, crowned
with a bulbous scarlet cap, and two ripe, full-looking
balls down at the base. If it hadn’t belonged to my
brother, I could have wasted a lot of time thinking of
interesting things to do with that cock.

“Fuck me with the big hard dick!” the thing that
looked just like me cooed, “Fuck my cunt and then fuck
my asshole. Fuck me deep and hard!”

Simon readily complied, picking the Tangerine and
depositing her on my fainting couch, flat on her back
with her legs splayed wide, and driving his erect
penis straight up her pussy, penetrating her with an
audible squelch. I watched, eye pressed to the
keyhole, as his tight little butt humped urgently in
time with her clich�d moans and coos, her legs � my
legs! � wrapped around his back and kicking wildly in
the air.

He pulled out of her, his dick shiny and slick with
wetness, and flipped her over once again, so that she
was bent over the arm of the couch, pale pink flesh
against the red velvet. He carefully parted her ass-
cheeks, sliding his dick up and down between them
before carefully taking aim and penetrating her with a
throaty sigh. I couldn’t see much in the way of
details, but I knew where he must be slipping that wet
penis of his. I wondered if I would take that
particular intrusion so placidly. My own hand found
its way inside my knickers where I discovered that my
own pussy was not just moist, but completely soaking
wet.

I masturbated shamelessly, kneeling on the hall
carpet, watching my brother sodomize my mirror image.
And when he started humping wildly, grunting and
groaning and calling my name out loud, I found myself
coming too, a long deep orgasm that left me shaking
and spent.

I left them then, and went up to the widow’s walk,
where I paced back and forth for a long time under a
dark sky that in another age might have been sparkling
with bright shining stars.

At breakfast, Mother was, as always, absorbed in her
newspaper. More mixed messages from the front lines:
another victory to celebrate, a plea for used clothing
and blood donations. Simon nodded and smiled absently
in my direction from across the table, giving nothing
away. The maid may have leered as she brought my
breakfast plate, but it may have been my imagination.

That afternoon we got the news that father had been
wounded. The telegram was terse, there were no
details. Later, Mother was summoned to attend to him
in the capital. She blanched at the news, delivered by
a rigid, expressionless officer, and warned us that
she might not be home until late, or not at all. The
house was oddly tense and quiet, as if it were holding
its breath.

I don’t know what woke me up, but I startled instantly
awake. It was the middle of the night, and the noise
of the city had reached its low ebb. My closet door
gaped wide open, and door out into the hall was ajar.

Wearing only my nightdress, I got up and padded out
into the hall.

Father’s study, where he keeps all his confidential
papers, was just down the hall from my room. I had
never been inside it, and the door was always locked.
Now the door was standing open, and a light was on
inside.

There was an explosion, like a clap of thunder
directly overhead, and I think I screamed. My scream
dragged on and on, and then I realized it wasn’t me
screaming. The scream changed pitch, metal grinding on
metal, high-tensile steel coming unhinged and unwound
with a noise that I thought would shatter the glass in
the windowpanes. Suddenly, it was cut off, and there
was a silence that echoed in my ears.

Simon stepped out of the study, carrying a smoking
blunderbuss in one hand, dragging the wreckage of the
Tangerine in the other. He was wearing his Academy
grey uniform.

He deposited the still-twitching remains of the
Tangerine into the incinerator chute. Then I followed
him dumbly downstairs into the kitchen.

He poured us each a tall glass of brandy.

“That wasn’t me in my bedroom the other night.” I told
him. The liquor burned the back of my throat.

“I know,” he said, “The eyes were all wrong.”

“What about Violet?” I asked.

He shrugged. “She jilted me.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s alright.” He shrugged again, “She’s a cow.
Believes everything the government tells her is true.
Bit of a prude, too.”

He took a big swallow of brandy.

“You downloaded a corrupt ROM for that thing, didn’t
you?” He stated it as a fact, not a question.

“Yeah.” I said.

“It was a virus,” he said, “An enemy espionage tool.
If the government found out about this, we’d probably
all be arrested.”

“Good gracious.” I blew out a long breath. “What a
mess I’ve made of things. I’m sorry I stole your
Tangerine. I’ll give you money to help buy a new one.
I don’t have much sterling saved up though”

Simon laughed harshly. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll
make do somehow.”

If I’d been another girl, maybe Josephine, I would
have gotten down on my knees and crawled under the
table and fished his cock out of his crisply ironed
uniform pants, and given my brother a blowjob right
then and there. But I didn’t, and we finished out
drinks in a moody, morose, silence that was loaded
with words unsaid.

The boys in Simon’s Academy class were mobilized six
weeks ahead of schedule. We all lined up by the front
door to see Simon off in his dress greys. Father,
rigidly erect and wearing his full military regalia,
but still swathed in bandages, shook his hand. I
couldn’t see the expression on his face: the flesh
that wasn’t covered in cotton gauze was a livid salmon
pink and slimy with salve. A different Air Forces
officer might have landed his son a purely symbolic
post, or made sure he was given a clerkship, and would
spend his two-year mandatory service safely shuffling
paperwork. Not Simon. He would be piloting a Zeppelin
over the trenches of the Eastern Front. We all wept as
he walked down the hall, looking crisp and manly and
invulnerable in his full dress uniform. Mother, me,
the maids, were weeping shamelessly. Even stoic Cook
had tears streaming down her fat pink cheeks. He
kissed each one of us in turn.

I was the last before the door. “Don’t worry Sis,” he
whispered in my ear, “I’ll be back.”

I hoped, hoped so hard that it hurt, that he was
right.