Penny, half-asleep, stared at the ceiling of her bedchambers in the laboratory she and her grandfather shared. She lay slumped on the floor, propped up slightly against a beanbag chair. At one side of her lay her right hand, its middle finger coated in a nearly transparent salty fluid; at her other side, her left hand held a comic book: pornographic and drawn by, she could tell, some shmuck from Japan with too much free time and no girlfriend.

Not that she was in any position to criticize, sadly. This had to be the 150th time these two months she'd masturbated, none of which ended with climax. In fact, for all her sexual endeavors, not one of them had culminated. Considering that history, that fact was pretty odd.

The first and only time she'd had an orgasm was entirely on accident. For a high school science experiment, she'd needed to hatch a chicken egg. Unfortunately, on one of the coldest nights in the year, her incubator had broken. As a short-term solution, she'd stuck the egg into her pants to keep it warm with her body heat, acting as a mother hen while she fixed the incubator. In the cold, she'd started shivering, and the egg rubbed against her privates. And she kept on shivering and shivering until it finally melded into one big shiver that did not come from the cold.

It had been fantastic, but she wasn't ready for it, and so she hadn't fully appreciated it. Since then, she'd done whatever she could to reach that peak again.

Like the scientist she was, she'd first researched the subject thoroughly, tracing over knowledge she already had to find out what she didn't. Then came putting it in practice. She'd used anything readily at hand: pencils, markers, food products, sex toys which had all been a complete waste of money, and even some of her coworkers from WarioWare, Inc.

With all of that failing, it was time to try a new angle: masturbating like a boy. Not only by moving the focus from the internal to the external, but also adding pornography into the mix. Although she'd gotten closer this way, she still hadn't reached it. None of the cheap smut the backwater video store downtown had to offer had been worth the money or commute. Romance novels, being cardboard as they are, never cut it. And the most recent shot, a dip into the strange world of Japanese porno manga, had points where it was downright terrible.

The vanilla things, with little difference from the romance novels, had been merely flipped through and put back on the shelf. She had to go straight to the fetishes. A whole two shelves on her bookcase housed her collection, which she'd bought en masse of whatever seemed viable.

But almost none of them were. The average, that people practiced every day behind closed doors, she found weird but not arousing. The violent things at the other end of the spectrum were promply thrown into the incinerator after the first ten pages each, and warranted a mandatory vacation from thinking about sex. And then there was the truly bizzare, like the collection of stories of people turning into animals (which, bafflingly, didn't actually contain sex!), which she was too busy trying to figure out to masturbate to them.

Of course, there were medians that managed to hit the right spots. This one she'd just tried, which made interesting use of a squid, got her inches away... and that was all. She'd kept on, flipping through over and over, rubbing until it felt like it was chafing, but the harder she'd tried, the further from it she got.

She gave up, and after letting the blood rushing around down there go back into its normal route, she got up and returned the book to its spot on the bookcase. With a bit of alarm, she noticed that that book was the last of the manga on the two shelves.

Now what? she thought. She'd tried everything, everything she could think of. That last book had been it. There was nothing left to try.

Of course, there were other things she hadn't investigated; but only because she was sure they wouldn't help. Like the suggestion her grandfather gave when she told him, in a roundabout way, about her troubles. He'd taken a long sip of coffee and let it savor in his mouth in that way that drove her mad...der, and after an infuriating silence stated matter-of-factly, "Have you considered other women?" Idiot. Adding another vagina would not solve her problem.

She'd thought that at the time, at least. But now that she was at the end of the rope, it was time to try anything. She thought of the twins, Kat and Ana, for some reason. Why them, of all her female coworkers? Why did she turn to her coworkers in the first place? She didn't know. But it was worth a shot.

She went for the phone to call them and gauge their reactions, when a book fell from her shelf and made a large thump. She glanced over at it. It was a new book that had been carelessly set on the edge of a shelf. When she went to pick it up, she saw that it dealt with cloning. She didn't remember buying the book, but it piqued her interest as a scientist. She leaned back on her beanbag chair and read it.

Cloning had come a long way from Dolly the sheep, despite efforts to stop the research. Scientists had found methods to cut out the middleman - or woman, as it were - completely. They'd found ways to get a single cell to grow by itself without having to place it in a denucleated egg. They'd also gotten artificial wombs in working order.

These tasks done, they now have started on perfecting the technology, and in that course have overlapped it with genetic engineering. With the human genome unlocked, they're able now to modify the cells to grow with certain traits, like a different eye or hair color from the original, or even the opposite gender. And recently, they'd found a means to speed up the growth of a clone in vitro and get it to a certain age right away.

Penny pored through the tome, facinated, until she got to the chapter concerning the opponents of the technology. Aside from, predictably, the Church, there were also complaints from human rights groups. They claimed that, with these new strides made, cloning would be used to manufacture "perfect" babies and, at the other end of the spectrum, sex slaves. They believed that due to cloning, human life would slowly lose its value in the eyes of most people.

She'd stopped at the phrase "sex slaves". At that, an idea came into her mind. She brought it forward and considered it deeply. As the idea formed, she flipped back and forth through the book, paying a renewed attention to the practice and the means to modify and speed-grow the clones.

She slowly started to chuckle to herself. The very notion... "It's just crazy enough to work!"

Penny made her preparations as carefully as possible, keeping all the equipment sterile and keeping herself up to date on the advancements made in cloning. Grandfather had aided her in gathering the right materials; and for the most part, he minded his own business. Expectably, he'd asked why the sudden interest in cloning, but he'd accepted "Don't ask, don't tell" for the answer.

The first try was invariably the hardest. Everything had gone well at first, when she'd first put the impossibly tiny cell in the artificial amniotic fluid and induced mitosis. She left it for a few hours and when she came back, suspended curled-up in the giant test tube was a perfectly formed three-year-old child: a male child with orange hair like hers.

Things were going perfectly. She felt like nothing could go wrong. So she'd left the clone overnight while she got a good sleep. She didn't hear the warning beep of the child's vitals failing.

When she returned to the giant test tube in the morning, it was disastrous. All that was left of that beautiful clone was a putrid stew of amniotic fluid, blood, and flesh, the last of which, a bittersweet relief, had rotted beyond all recognition. The filter would have cleaned it all out, if not for the clump of orange hair stuck in it.

It struck her to the core of her heart, as if she was the one who'd died in the tube. And in a way, she had; it was her DNA, after all. She didn't have time to get to the bathroom as her breakfast came up the wrong way. And that reminded her of the remains of the clone, and so she kept on throwing up until there was nothing left to vomit. She collapsed on the floor next to the tossed cookies.

This can't happen, she told herself, every time a clone dies. There will be more failures like this one, possibly hundreds, before you get it right. You've got to detach yourself. Don't think of them as lives. Not until you get the single success you're looking for.

That line of thought, though it didn't occur to her, was exactly the kind of thing the human rights activists were worried about. But it was necessary for her to keep onward.

She paid more attention to monitoring the clones, in case something like the first incident could be avoided. Inevitably, many of them died in vitro. But now she was ready for it. It didn't bother her each time she took the bodies of the dead ones and threw them into the incinerator.

However, that detachment soon turned to heartlessness. If there was a mutation or any kind of disfigurement present, she killed it. If it had the wrong hair color, it was doomed. If it had a single freckle, it would die. One grew in vitro to the right age with no obvious problems. It was perfect - until it opened its green eyes.

Not all of the clones were murdered. Toward the end of her efforts, they all grew properly with no mutations, until they came out and showed themselves to have terrible illnesses. It's been a problem with clones since the technology was invented; they're highly susceptible to sickness. Some died a few minutes after coming out, some died as they were coming out... and a few didn't die, but just vanished in thin air.

That was known as molecular disintegration, MD for short, and it only - and always - affected clones whose growth was sped up. Before you could tell what happened, it disappeared as if by magic. Since it usually happened fast and nothing of the clone was left, it was hard to study the phenomena.

As she neared the one that would work out, nearly all the clones were afflicted only by this. They'd last longer and longer out of in vitro, giving her false hope, and then they were gone. These deaths struck her because she'd been shedding her detachment. She'd gone back to feeling about the clones the way she had before the first one died. It was draining, especially considering she'd been losing sleep - much sleep - over this project. Her dreams were plagued by visions of dying clones.

At last, she removed the 150th endeavor from his tank. If he didn't live, she would give up.

He lay on the floor, unmoving. But as she, teary-eyed, went to pick him up to throw him in the incinerator, his eyes - his orange eyes, like hers - flickered open.

He got up off the floor as if he'd been doing it for years. Without glasses, everything was fuzzy. All he was aware of was himself standing in front of him. Clothed, at that. It couldn't be a mirror, because he was naked. Then he realized where and what he was - and who it was in front of him.

Penny chuckled lightly as her clone blushed and covered his parts shyly. The ones before him that had lasted a while weren't as self-conscious. With that memory, she knew it wasn't time yet to relax and taste the fruit of her efforts.

She snatched a short hair from his head. It didn't have a root, so she took another. And on until she got one that had a root. "I'll be right back," she excused herself from the room, leaving him rubbing the small bald spot.

Down the hall in the next room, she stretched the hairs out over a petri dish and slid them under a microscope. Specifically, she looked for the telomeres capping the cells. They were shorter than normal for a twenty-six-year-old. She watched them for a few minutes, taking note of them slowly unraveling like fuses on tiny bombs. At this rate of deterioration, her clone would have twelve hours before MD took place.

This was a fantastic step upward; the 149th clone had lived for only twelve minutes. She'd done something right with this one. Since she'd kept notes on each procedure, she could find out what she'd done differently. She might have made a huge breakthrough in the technology.

But that could wait. Hedonism now, science later.

She shed her lab coat, pushed a strap of her undershirt down for effect, and returned to the cloning lab. What to name him? she thought. No, don't do that. You'll get too attached and it'll be that much harder when he dies. But then, what am I supposed to call out during the sex? "Oh me, oh me"? No. That won't do at all. Wait- That- That's just brilliant!

"Oh, Benny," she purred cheesily as she entered the doorway. Then she stopped. Something was odd about the room.

There was no one in it.

With a start, she rushed in, scraping around. Did I miscalculate?! Is he dead?! "Where did I go?!" she called out.

Then she noticed something gleaming on the floor. Colorless, but slightly white. Remnants of amniotic fluid. He'd been coated in it when he came out. She felt a flood of relief, but only halfway. Something might still have gone wrong.

Keeping low to keep just the right light on the fluid, she followed the trail. It led into the shower room. Hanging on the rack was a single towel, which had been used: it was damp, presumably with amniotic fluid. When she touched the towel, it was still warm, albeit faintly, with body heat.

So where would he be now? she wondered. He'd been shy about his nudity, even in front of, technically, himself, so perhaps he'd gone to her bedroom to dress.

An even fainter trail led out of the bathroom to her bedroom, but she didn't notice it, going instead on her guess. And just as the trail confirmed, her hunch was right.

She felt, in a way, like she was staring through the looking glass as she opened her bedroom door. There he was, lying on the floor, propped up by her beanbag chair, staring at the ceiling. What he'd thrown on mirrored what she wore, totally black except for a splash of blue on his chest where there was pink on hers. He had on a hair clip, too; not a heart, but a blue crescent.

She strode silently into the room. He was muttering something, and with his eyes closed it looked like sleeptalking. She knelt next to him, leaning in so she could hear what he was saying.

"...not a living thing. No one can ever think of a clone as a living thing. We're just test subjects. And to myself? I'm just a sex toy. Just another means to try to get to that end."

Each word was like a stab. Another sad fact of clones was they, like test animals, were rarely treated like humans. She remembered the first clone, how his death had struck her, and she rationalized in her head that it had to be done, and if you didn't, it would rend your heart every time. But she also remembered the other clones, and how she had callously killed the ones with defects, however minor.

She remembered the green-eyed clone, his frantic begging as she injected him with the deadly, fast-acting poison of a blue-ringed octopus, and then calmly watched him die. There was no way to excuse such cruelty. There wasn't even a way to explain it. His only crime had been having the wrong eye color.

"Isn't that all I am to you?" Benny asked sharply, snapping her out of her thoughts. "Just a scientifically engineered biological dildo?"

"Guh- No!" she answered, unsure that she meant it.

"Oh, really?" he replied, fighting back rage and sadness. "Then what was this whole endeavor for? You just wanted someone who agrees with you on how awful and superficial National Geographic is?"

"No..."

"Then why did you go to all this trouble just to clone yourself?"

She paused. There was only one reason. "To have sex with myself."

"Exactly. And once that little liason was over, what did you intend to do with me? And if I hadn't been able to bring you to orgasm, what then?"

"I don't know." Then she saw an opportunity to regain control, and seized it: "It's moot, anyway. Every clone whose growth has been sped up will eventually suffer MD. You're no exception; you've only got twelve hours."

Benny imagined in his head what Penny had seen earlier, the telomeres on his cells slowly unravelling, the lit fuses burning away. "But what if I'd been a breakthrough? What if I were the first not to have my lifespan measured in hours? What would you do with me then?"

"Well, then I'd keep you," she replied absentmindedly.

His orange eyes widened in surprise. "R-really?" he asked, dumbfounded. "Why?"

She looked him over, in that looking herself over. "You know why. At least, I hope you do."

It was the same reason why she saw cloning herself as a solution to her problem, when there were other, quicker ways to try at sexual gratification. She was a narcissist, and not just the kind that's usual for a scientist; she truly loved herself. She'd tried to shove the attraction into the corner, dismissing it as wholly unnatural, which it was; but although she'd had the occasional lust for a man, she knew she could only fall in love with someone who was exactly like her, or at the least reminded her of herself.

"I love myself," she elaborated, "and that's why I dedicated myself to this project. That's why I killed all the clones with defects. That's why I poisoned poor Green-eyes. Because I want - I need someone who's just like me. I know that that's no excuse for the way I treated the other clones. It was all selfish and horrible. But that's how a narcissist is."

The look in Benny's eyes changed at hearing that. Penny could tell - he wished he didn't, but he understood why she'd done all she had. He also had her sickness. And so he understood.

"So I have to choose," he thought aloud. "Indulge a detestable person - my own self - or squander my short life and make the deaths of all the 149 clones before me meaningless. What a tough call. I'll have to think-"

She grabbed his hair and forced him into a kiss. "There's no time for thinking," she said against his mouth. She didn't kiss him deeply; just this alone felt better than she thought, sending blood swirling around in her privates, getting her damp. All because, for all it was worth, she was kissing herself.

After a few minutes, she pulled away. A warm blush flooded his neck and the sides of his face, and it was still spreading. Without looking, she knew that there was a lump in his sweatpants, getting harder by the second.

"You make a very persuasive argument," he finally managed to choke out.

That was consent enough for her. She mounted him, leaning in for a more intimate kiss - and felt him pull back as much as he could against the beanbag chair. He was still painfully shy.

She got up, turned around, and took a few steps as if she were going to leave. "Well, if you can't stand to look yourself in the eye..." She slipped her pants off, felt a cold chill as she nudged them off to the side. "Then... We'll do it..." She shivered with heavy anticipation as she dropped to the floor, backside off the ground, an invitation. "We'll do it like this."

A long minute passed as she waited, apparently while he composed himself. Then finally, she felt him spread her open, testing the female orifice, slick with desire, with one finger, then two. He took his hands away and rested them on her back, pressing himself, warm and hard with his own lust, against her. And then he slipped right in.

He filled her up, his thickness stretching her right up to the breaking point, his length stopping just short of her cervix. It was unbelieveable - and exquisite. Better than what she'd imagined. He fit in her perfectly, like the key to a lock.

In and out. In and out. All the while sliding against one spot in her that sent a satisfying shiver down her spine, through her whole body. Not it, but oh so wonderfully close. "Ohhh, Benny," she moaned, tightening around him, just about to go sliding over that glorious edge.

And then he was gone, nothing but an aching emptiness left where he'd been.

She held herself up, head swimming, and put on her glasses, which had fallen off during the lovemaking. He was over at the door, which he'd shut. "I... heard someone coming... I didn't want him to see us."

That was fine. As long as he wasn't gone gone before they were through. She rolled onto her back and leaned across the beanbag chair, spreading her legs. He glanced over his shoulder at her, at that damp spot, and looked away again. "Come on, now," she told him. "Get over it. I've shown you mine, now you owe me yours."

It took him effort, but he turned around, keeping his back pressed firmly against the door, and took his hands away from hiding himself. He had nothing to be shy about: his staff stuck out proudly, glistening with both their liquid lust, eager to please and be pleased. She couldn't take her eyes off that beautiful erection, knowing that it'd just been inside her, and that it would be there again.

He seemed taken with her body, too. After locking the door, he returned to her and put his hands on her chest, fondling her through her undershirt. He slid his hands up, took hold of the straps, and pulled the whole shirt down her arms. Penny shivered from the cold, and then from his touch.

He lay across her, his tip right at her entrance...

"Wait. I want to touch it."

Slightly disappointed, he held himself up again. She reached up and took hold of his stiffness, feeling the blood pulsing through it. She was careful not to shove him over the edge as she stroked him, paying attention to his pulse and his moans, stopping when they got too quick.

Slowly, she traced his length back into his pants. "Oh god, Penny!" he screamed as she curled her fingers around that delicate pocket, sliding the contents around gently. He fell onto her, trembling, right at the edge. "Penny Penny Penny. Ohh, Penny..."

Then she took her hand away.

He looked up at her to beg her not to stop, but he forgot all about it when their eyes met. They stared at each other, into each other for a minute. I'm... I'm literally fucking myself... they both thought.

"T-take me... again..."

She'd barely said it when he pushed into her once more, sheathing his perfect penis in the vagina it was built for. She shivered and held him tightly, panting in his ear. He petted her lightly and gave her a quick, shy peck on the lips. But by now, it was far too late for any shyness. She grabbed his hair and forced him into another kiss, deep and loving.

And then she felt it coming, that elusive, wonderful feeling. It was a little different from the first time, not as sharp - but it would spread deeper, last longer, and ultimately sate that lust that had been building up for about ten years.

"Benny..." she panted in his mouth. "I'm gonna... It's..."

He knew what she meant. Which meant he could let her have it, that he didn't have to hold back anymore.

The near-seizure started in her, spread to him, and took them both as the single entity they were. He left his mark in her where it counted in a single, thick stream; and as for her, she could have sworn she came twice, one after the other.

They stayed still, basking in the afterglow and each other's body heat. Penny reached up and stroked her clone's hair like he was a pet. "I'll miss you terribly when you're gone."

No response.

She figured he was asleep already, so she let herself drift off too. "I love you," she told him drowsily.

"I love you too, even if I am a cold-blooded murderer."

Penny woke up nearly naked, stretched across her beanbag chair. And alone. "Good lord, what a dream," she muttered groggily.

She sat up and pulled up her undershirt, then mused about the dream. "Benny was right. About everything. I have to give up on cloning. It's too inhumane. Poor, poor Green-eyes."

She fetched her pants from one side of her room and put them on. Then she slumped back into the chair, waiting to wake up entirely and get her bearings together.

Then she noticed something off-color on the chair. Something small, blue, and crescent-shaped. She picked it up, turned it over in her fingers. It was a hair clip.

"No way... It can't be..."

Code:

|\  | \  <== fin  |  \ ######

Spoiler:

(About a month and a half later.) "Something troubling you, Penny?" her grandfather asked. She flicked a stick across the table to him, not looking up from her coffee. He picked up the stick, which turned out to be a pregnancy test. "You're pregnant?" She sighed. "With my own child." Puzzled, he took a swig of coffee and swished it around in his mouth as he considered the statement. Then, after a long two minutes, he finally swallowed it. "So that's why the sudden interest in cloning," he stated matter-of-factly.

_________________
Connecting to server...
Looking for someone you can chat with. Hang on.
You're now chatting with a random stranger. Say hi!
You: Hello?
Stranger: M/F
You: Neither.
Your conversational partner has disconnected.


...This! is! The internet!

Oh, lookie here. I found something I did that's technically related to this story. I shall post.

---

Riiiiiing

"You have a collect call from 'Hi, I'm Paul!'."

"Goddamnit."

Click

"What do you want this time, Paul?"

"I just wanted to say hi, Penny."

"You already did. Bye."

"Aw, c' mon, cousin. I love you. You used to love me too, you know."

"That was a very long time ago. Now I can't stand your guts."

"Don't be like that, Penny. We used t' be real close-like. What happened?"

"You stole my heritage, and you don't even deserve it."

"Ah-ha-ha! It's my heritage too, cuz."

"No, it isn't. You haven't followed the tradition. You don't even have the family name. Our madness is not yours to have and waste away farming peanuts."

"It's Paul's brain tumor, Penny. He can do what he wants with it."

"Grandpa John? Is that you?"

"Grandpa! How the hell long have you been on this line?!"

"It's not my fault, Penny. My elbow hit the speakerphone accidentally."

"My ass."

"Hey cuz, tell Gramps about that time we fooled around in college."

"What- Shut your fool mouth, Paul!"

"What's all this about fooling around with your cousin in college?"

"Nothing, Grandpa. Paul's mind is just manufacturing fake memories."

"Oh, Penny, you were so cute and needy, bending over that table. 'Take me, Paul! Take me!'"

"That never happened!"

"So you turn to both your cousin and yourself for sexual gratification, but not me? But I've been asking for years!"

"Grandpa, shut up!"

"So she masturbates, eh? I've gotta see that."

"You should have seen the way she did it five months ago. She actually cloned herself!"

"Shut up! Shut up!"

"Oh, so she's taken? Darn."

"Nah, the clone died. Not before he got her pregnant, though."

"Don't tell him that!"

"She's preggers? Really? Ooh, I gotta see that, too! Bet she looks real cute with her-"

"I miscarried, okay? And even if I hadn't, I wouldn't let you see me, pervert!"

"You're the one who wanted to have sex with your cousin, Penny."

"Gahh! Paul, why did you even bring up college, anyway?!"

"'Cause I wanted to see if you were open t' rekindling old times."

"No, no, no, no, NO! I'm not some cheap, easy floozy!"

"That ain't what your coworkers said."

"What?! Where the hell are you?!"

"Right outside WarioWare, Inc. Most-a them said you'd screw anything with a dick."

"Yes, so why not your grandfather?"

"That's it, I'm hanging up! Oh, why me? Why me?"

"Missed the receiver, cuz."

"Shut the hell up, Paul! Just go back to your hillbilly peanut farm and leave me the fuck alone!"

"T-that really hurts, cuz. You used to love me. What hap-"

Slam

Clomp clomp clomp

"Penny, what was all-"

"I don't want to hear it, Grandpa!"

---

...WUT THE SHIT IS THIS FUCK