Frankissstein Read online

  And they seem to like worms.

  So, Ryan, back to my Economy model. In motor-vehicle parlance, she’s the cloth-seats and plastic-steering-wheel version. But she gets you from A to B.

  This model only comes in white.

  My sister-in-law’s a lovely black woman from Jamaica and she said to me, she said, Ron! Don’t you dare do an Economy black woman. And I love women, I do, and I thought, yeah, show respect. Also, Bridget would knock the shit out of me.

  Shall we have a look at Cruiser? Over by the window. Right little motor boat, this one. Like the girl next door but dirty. Cruiser’s got the fuller figure. Nicely pneumatic. She’s padded to give a softer feel. Those breasts are like pillows. It was Mum’s idea. She said to me, Ron, some men want to curl up and fall asleep, like they did when they were little boys.

  Feel these! Top-grade silicon nipples. No plastic – like fuckin’ thimbles, plastic nipples. Gotta have some give. That’s the key if you like breasts, and I’m a breast man myself.

  Walk round the back. Go on! I’ll lift the dress. Yes! Thongs. Very popular. Lovely ass with a bit of movement – soft silicon. Bigger battery so we can warm up certain parts of her skin.

  My girls can seem lower-temperature than born and bred girls. All right, they are colder than born and bred. Flesh is flesh. But my girls are not clammy underneath you, like the bloody blow-up things – it was like lying on seaweed. God, I hated blow-up dolls, did you? Might as well wrap your dick in cling film.

  So, Ryan, moving swiftly on. This one here in the tennis outfit bending over to pick up a couple of balls. She’s our Racy model.

  Very tight figure – little waist, double-G-cup – and I tell you what, her tits and her pussy are always warm. It’s the battery plus the thermal layer. Battery life is up to three hours. I mean, men come in about four minutes, so this is generous. You can have a party, pass her around, play a hand of cards in between without worrying about her going flat. In the beginning when they went flat they slurred their words, and you could hear them whirring as well. It didn’t put anyone off, but it didn’t feel professional to me.

  Do you like her slingback tennis shoes? Economy doesn’t wear shoes. It’s cute, like that French musical, Les Misérables.

  Speaking French, I don’t know if you’ve ever had sex with a bot – be my guest later – but I tell you there’s none of that Bonjour Tristesse afterwards, and none of that doubt about whether she’s had an orgasm or not. All my girls orgasm when you do.

  Yeah, well spotted, Ryan. She certainly is. Racy is taller than the others. She’s about 5 foot 4 inches – the others are about 5 foot 2 inches. We make them smaller for the Chinese and Asian markets. These are the US and UK models.

  I have thought about doing a supermodel size, but it’s not practical. The only point of a supermodel in real life is to show her off to your mates – I mean, she’s too anorexic for anything else. Won’t eat, won’t drink, won’t, well, you know – they are so picky. My girls are practical – they are built to work – so we keep ’em handy-sized.

  Yeah, it’s true, there are some really small girls on the market – they look like children. I don’t get involved. I got standards.

  You can buy some bots with Family Mode; they can talk about animals, and tell fairy stories, all that stuff, like Emmanuelle Does Disney. I’m strictly Adult. No blurred lines. So, as yet, we’ve got no plans for a travel doll.

  Are you still recording? Good.

  Just behind the screen here is a bed – for display purposes only, so don’t take your shoes off, Ryan. Imagine coming home to this beauty. In fact, I do come home to this beauty. I have a Deluxe for personal use.

  She’s got everything you get with Racy, minus the muscles – I mean, they’re all firm, but smooth and curvy, no weightlifters. Anyway, Deluxe, like the name suggests, has better quality materials all round. And Real Hair.

  Where? On her head, where d’you think? You have slept with women, haven’t you?

  Jesus, no, I wouldn’t put real hair down there! Or any hair, as it happens. You’d have it sopping wet and rotten in no time.

  We ask for double the deposit on this model because of the hair and you have to sign a waiver declaring that you won’t spill booze or smear food, piss, shit or cum in her hair.

  Do they do that kind of thing? Sad but true. I wouldn’t, but some do.

  With nylon hair it doesn’t matter much what you do – and it’s cheap to replace. We rip it right off and we start again. But the good stuff, the real stuff – I mean, I am on the side of the women, I am. Who wants some twat to cum in their real hair?

  Yeah … Horrible.

  Personally, as a woman, even though I’m not, I’d hate it if some random bloke wanted to cum anywhere except the usual place, but I’m a fussy eater. Don’t like yoghurt or custard, or that French one, crème brûlée, or tapioca or white sauce or suet. I don’t really like banana smoothies and I hate almond milk. God, almond milk. Why??? For fuck’s sake! My doctor tried to get me on it. Cholesterol. I said, mate, I’d rather have the heart attack.

  Deluxe has a big vocabulary. About 200 words. Deluxe will listen to what you want to talk about – football, politics or whatever. She waits till you’re finished, of course, no interrupting, even if you waffle a bit, and then she’ll say something interesting.

  What like? Oh, well, something like: Ryan, you’re so clever. Ryan, I hadn’t thought about it like that. Do you know anything about Real Madrid?

  Yeah – that’s what I mean about education. Climate change. Brexit. Football. This model is a companion – and that’s how we’ll forward her career as the technology develops.

  Some men want more than sex. I get that.

  And over to Vintage. I love the two-piece suit and pillbox hat. I got this idea from the retro-porn sites. She’s late to the game but she brings plenty to the party.

  We had a lot of older men asking us for something sexy and young – most old blokes aren’t rich enough to get a real-life version – you need a lotta money for young girl/old man in real life. And let’s face it; men prefer a box of strawberries to a plate of prunes and custard.

  What we offer is fantasy life, not real life.

  Vintage can be ready for you like she’s straight out of the 1950s. Like BBC Calling the World – you wouldn’t believe how well the voice works – we got a newsreader from BBC Radio 4 to do it. Anonymous. Paid her a fortune.

  Or you can have Vintage in a 60s miniskirt and love-beads, singing I Got You Babe. Her mouth doesn’t move, but if you’re fuckin’ her face off you wouldn’t want it to, would you?

  There’s even a 70s feminist version with no bra, messy hair and a dildo for anal play. Yeah! Clever! She gets to fuck you! No, I haven’t tried it. I do try them all but I didn’t fancy that one. In the office we called her the Germaine. She’s the only one with a name. Have you read that book? My mum told me about it. I started it but it wasn’t what I thought.

  Who rents her? Some masochists. And a few university professors.

  All of these girls come in different skin tones: black, brown or white. Plus, you can have a muff on the Vintage model if that’s what you want. The old porn stars had beavers like candyfloss, and some men liked it. So we can supply with or without, but only for the Vintage model. If you’re not sure if you want fluff in your face, we can include a muff in the package with the correct glue. We do ask customers not to use their own glue. Glue on the wrong side means you get a stick-on beard.

  Do I get mostly old men? Not at all. All ages and stages, Ryan; sex is a democracy. With the old blokes, I see it as a public service. You should write about that. We always offer ten per cent off to the over-sixty-fives, and there’s an extra ten per cent off on Mondays. Not many people want a shag on a Monday.

  Tell you what, though – and this is a bit philosophical, but I am a thinking man – there’s no such thing as underage sex when it’s a bot. I mean, there’s no can’t do it till you’re sixteen or whatever, so we get s
ome schoolkids wanting a try – yeah, boys, ’course it’s boys – and I reckon it’s better than sticking it up some girl who’s dry as sandpaper and doesn’t fancy you.

  Yeah, you can be old, you can be ugly, you can be fat, smelly, you can have an STD, you can be broke. Whether you can’t get it up, or you can’t get it down, there’s an XX-BOT for you.

  Public service. I tell you, it is. Do you think I might get an MBE? Mum would love that.

  Women? What about women? Are you a feminist, Ryan? I’m not, but my mum is, so don’t think we haven’t heard about this back in Wales.

  There are male bots but I don’t bother with them. Why not?

  Anatomy, Ryan. Basic anatomy. You must have done that when you were training to be a doctor.

  Basically a boy-bot is a vibrator with a body attached. He’s like a shop-window mannequin with a dick that doesn’t work. No thrust. He can’t shunt her from behind. She has to sit on him and bounce up and down, very tiring, or joggle him on top of her like she’s blending a milkshake. Also tiring. No fun when you’ve had the bath, the candles, all your favourite love songs on PLAY AGAIN. The things women like to get them in the mood.

  Women prefer a hand-held vibrator. Better control, better delivery, and they can watch TV at the same time. I’ve done the market research. Well, not me personally, my mum does that side of the business. My mum? Oh, very much so. Like I said. Day one.

  And with the boy-bots it’s a question of scale as much as anything. Female bots are petite – even the Swedes like ’em petite – but if you build a boy-bot small it’s a turn-off, like fucking your son, and women don’t get off on that, not many of ’em anyway. Women want a hunk, but if you make your bot hunky, women can’t lug him around. And in a small apartment, when he’s not in use, so to speak, he’s in the way – y’know? I mean, he can’t go out for a beer when you want some personal space.

  Plus women tend to drive smaller cars, and she doesn’t want to draw attention to herself trying to squash some Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson into her Renault Twingo.

  If we get into nightclubs – and we might, because I don’t know what to do with the money I’m making – then I might try hen-night specials where we supply some boy-bots to see how it goes – just for a laugh – like ride-my-pony sorta thing? Women might enjoy sitting on top if I can get the action right. I’ve got some ideas from when I used to repair pop-up toasters.

  This market is global. This market is the future.

  Let me tell you something about China, Ryan. That one-child policy? Thank God they’ve stopped it. All those strangled girl babies chucked in a paddy field somewhere. There’s millions and millions of Chinese men who’ll never have a female partner because there aren’t enough girls to go round. That’s right – what goes around comes around – like a sushi belt – you’d think they’d know that, wouldn’t you? The Chinese market will be mega. That’s why they’ve got the factories – and they love technology, and a lot of Chinese men will prefer a bot because they like the submissive type. Modern Chinese women are too independent. I went to the factory – I’ve seen it all.

  Anyway, I’m opening my own factory in Wales. China can’t have it all their own way. Show some competition, I say, and if they’re in a trade war with bloody America who knows what will happen? Price of bots could go sky-high.

  Mum said we should do a Karl Marx and control the means of production.

  Also, I want to put something back into the community. There’s no jobs in Wales, Ryan, not since Brexit. They voted Wales for the Welsh, like everyone in the world was just killing themselves to get over the border and open a new coalmine.

  All the money in Wales came from some euro-fund anyway, but there’s a lot of inbreeding in Wales. I think it would be good to have a bit of immigration – all that inbreeding affects the brain. Brexit! Jesus! Might as well have built a wall made out of leeks right round the place.

  So I have to do my bit. I’m opening a big factory that will make the whole bot. Top to bottom. And I’m having a smaller workshop – got enterprise money for it – that just makes heads. Bit more artisan. They are quite good at handicrafts in Wales. Tea towels … pottery …

  And there are a lot of out-of-work hairdressers as nobody can afford to get their hair done, not now it’s just Wales for the Welsh.

  Why do I need extra heads?

  A lot of the XX-BOTs get their faces bashed in. Get thrown at the wall or something. I seriously thought about a detachable nose at one time. You can change the face yourself on some of them, but it’s fiddly, and I think buying a spare head to start with is a better idea. Sex can get a bit rough, can’t it? I don’t judge.

  Also, I’m thinking of manufacturing an Outdoor type. Tougher. Rugged. Sorta Lara Croft. We’ll need our own production line for that. It might be for the fetish market. Dominatrix. Spanking. That sorta thing. The Chinese won’t touch it. Brits will like it, I think. I’m in talks with Caterpillar and JCB.

  This is the future, Ryan.

  Are you coming to my live show? See the girls in action? Look, here’s a taster on the iPad. What do you think of the music?

  Walking in Memphis. I love that song. My favourite line – There’s a pretty little thing waiting for the King …

  They’re all pretty. We’re all kings.

  What did you say? Does it make real life more difficult?

  What is real life these days?

  There never was a wilder story imagined, yet, like most of the fictions of this age, it has an air of reality attached to it.

  The Edinburgh Magazine, 1818

  Humankind cannot bear very much reality.

  That is why we invent stories, I said.

  And what if we are the story we invent? said Shelley.

  Still shut in by rain, I write and write.

  Claire sits sewing in a corner. Polidori nurses his lame ankle. Yesterday he jumped out of a window to prove his love for me. The idea was Byron’s. When he is bored he is dangerous.

  All we do is drink and fuck, said Byron. Is that a story?

  That’s a bestseller! said Polidori.

  We sleep. We eat. We work, said Shelley.

  Do you? said Byron, who is on a diet for his corpulence, and besides, he is insomniac, and idle. He cannot find the lines, he says, for his supernatural story, even though our enterprise is the challenge he set. That is irksome. We are irksome.

  Polidori is busy with his own tale. He calls it The Vampyre. Blood transfusions interest him.

  For want of excursion or diversion, the gentlemen fell to discussing the series of lectures we had recently attended in London. Lectures delivered by Shelley’s doctor, William Lawrence, on the origin of life. Life, Doctor Lawrence argued, is based in Nature. There is no ‘super-added’ force such as the soul. Human beings are bone, muscle, tissue, blood, etc., and nothing more.

  There was an outcry, of course: No difference between a man and an oyster? Man is nothing more than an orang-utan or an ape, with ‘ample cerebral hemispheres’?

  The Times newspaper had this to say: Doctor Lawrence strives with all his powers to prove that men have no souls!

  Yet, I said to Shelley, you of all men believe in the soul.

  I do, he said; I believe it is each man’s task to awaken his own soul. His soul is that part of him not subject to death and decay; that part of him made alive to truth and beauty. If he has no soul he is a brute.

  And where does this soul go, at death? said Byron.

  That is unknown, answered Shelley; the becoming of the soul, not its going, should be our concern. The mystery of life is on earth, not elsewhere.

  The rain is on earth also, said Byron, staring out of the window like a helpless god. He wanted to ride his mare and was turning restive.

  We shall all be dead soon enough, said Polidori, thus we cannot live as others would wish us to live, but only for our own desires. He looked at me, his hand on his crotch.

  Is there not more to life than what we desire? I said.
Might we not sacrifice our own desires for some worthier cause?

  You may do so if you wish, said Polidori, if that gives you satisfaction. I would rather be a vampyre than a corpse.

  To die well is to live well, said Byron.

  None finds satisfaction in death, replied Polidori. You imagine it so, but what will you know of it? What will you gain from it?

  Reputation, said Byron.

  Reputation is gossip, said Polidori. Say well of me, say ill of me – what is that but tittle-tattle?

  You are out of sorts today, said Byron.

  It is you who is out of sorts, said Polidori.

  Shelley put his arms round me and held me to him. I love you. You, dear Mary, you, who is most alive.

  I could hear Claire’s needle stabbing into her tapestry.

  All alive o! All alive alive o! sang Polidori, beating time on the arm of the divan. Byron scowled and limped to the window, opening it to let in the rain directly onto Claire.

  Will you stop it? She jumped up as though she had been stung, shouting at his laughing at her, taking her place on another chair and savagely snipping her yarn.

  Death is a counterfeit, said Shelley. Almost, I do not believe in it at all.

  You will gladly believe in it when you inherit your father’s estate, said Byron.

  I watched him, sardonic, cynical. A great poet, truly, yet unkind. The gifts of our nature seem not to modify the manner of our behaviour.

  Shelley has little money and is the most generous of men. Byron is rich, netting £10,000 a year from his estates, yet spends only for his own pleasure. He may live as he pleases. We must take care. That is, I must take care of our accounts. Shelley scarcely seems to know what he can spend and what he cannot. We are forever in debt. Still, if I can sell the story I am writing we shall be more at ease. My mother made a living from her writing. It is my intention to follow her example.