Pleo
Pleo felt as though he had just been born. His dream of a beautiful emptiness was fading and now it was time to wake. Everything still seemed distant but there came a sense of hands pushing and stumbling feet. Someone was hurrying him along in a desperate rush but by the time Pleo could command his sight to see, they were gone and he was still. Alone he stood, with eyelids fighting to shield him from the light but it was futile. Pleo faced a sensory flood and somewhere within its currents he felt his last memory get washed away. Bracing his trembling back against the corridor wall, he took a moment to compose himself. Both this building's generic façade and the heavy pulse of people flowing past made him suppose he was at a Planetary Immigration Terminal. P.I.T's all looked the same, sterile and secure, but the planet's surface beyond could have been baking desert or rivers of mercury. Pleo knew that nothing within these white tiled floors, or walls of tinted glass, would ever provoke his memory and so he withdrew inside. Raking through the rubble of his memory he watched it fade to dust. Sparse details fragmented in his mind, faces without names and planets without atmosphere, which trailed behind him like spent fuse wire. Everything was blackened and burned but then why else would he be running so hard? Why else would he have gotten so high? Pleo was sure that he had done this to himself. That he had done it before and that he would do it again, but this was something dark and off course. A terrible contamination of consciousness which dissolved everything. He could taste bad chemicals in the back of his throat and knew that his mind was crumbling in their solution. “Come on ...focus.” His tongue swelled with a nauseating rush of moisture but he held firm. Though perspectives were shifting, and lines wavering, he could still see. “Excuse me, Sir! Welcome to Lascivia 3.” A smartly dressed man placed a hand on his shoulder warmly. “Our facilities coordinator spotted you were having ...difficulties ...and sent me to assist you.” “...” Pleo stared at him blankly but a dark wave of emotion crashed with every syllable, diluting his thoughts into primal fear. Too many questions needed answering before he could cope with anyone else and he was starting to feel naked. An image of tearing fabric flashed in his memory and Pleo tried to make out his dim reflection in the wall of glass opposite. Sparks and traces danced before his eyes hypnotically and his head struggled for balance before falling limply to his chest. Everything swirled with colour but when it receded to the edges he saw his body as though for the first time. Firm muscles twitched under pale skin. A pulse pounded through meandering veins which likely approached middle age. Bones protruded through lean, fat-starved, flesh. Altogether he seemed healthy enough and wore jeans which looked as though they had seen soap in the last week. His feeling of nudity wasn't completely misplaced however as he stood there naked from the waist up. Either vomit or a thermometer cracking body temperature must have been to blame for his appearance but the depth of this error depended on which planetary officials he was dealing with. The name Lascivia 3 hadn't produced any memories but perhaps memories were a bit ambitious for now. “If ...” “Where are your sweat glands?!” An agitated burst of paranoia shocked his mind and he made a clumsy grab at the man's throat. “I'm no physician, Sir, but I believe they're generously distributed across the surface of my skin.” His movements seemed too fluid as he evaded Pleo's grasp, fuelling suspicions that he was an android. “So you're saying that you're human then? Not a machine?” He leaned in to get a closer look at the man's skin and suddenly the texture seemed to hurt his eyes, becoming too fleshy, too organic and too real. “No, Sir, I'm not a machine.” He smiled a fixed, plastic, smile. “We do employ androids of all descriptions here though, should you require it.” “No ...sorry ...my mistake.” Pleo now wondered why he cared. So what if this man were a mechanoid, he was surrounded by them everyday, wasn't he? “I'm not prejudiced anyway. Some of my friends say the best fuck they ever had was with a pleasure-bot. Hell, I guess I've even done a few myself in my time?” He grinned optimistically and waited for this lying machine to accept his apology. “Indeed, Sir.” For an instant a very human look escaped the man's eyes, a suggestion that he understood Pleo better than he should, or could, have done. Then it was gone. “Well, if you'll step this way, we just need to process you and you'll be out of here in no time.” Placing a guiding hand on his elbow, the man began steering Pleo's trembling and intoxicated legs down the hallway.
