Steampunk Desires: An Erotic Romance (The Complete Collection) (12 page)

When the household had assembled, Eloise began, her voice once again choked with emotion.

“Everyone, I–I have come home to apologize to you all. In my travels,” she said, turning to her parents, “I have realized that I have been a terrible daughter.” She turned to the servants, “and I have been a worse master. I am deeply sorry for the harm I have caused you all.” She turned again to her parents. “I am thankful for the life you have provided me, and I am sorry that I complained about it so much, that I took advantage of you, that I manipulated you. You are wonderful parents, and you have provided me with such a rich life that, until only a week ago, I never appreciated.” Hearing her words, her mother wept with joy as she turned again to the servants. “Every one of you is a first-class citizen in my book. You have endured my fits, my rants, my self-absorbed behavior with poise and grace and never once raised your voices to me. I have treated you all terribly unfairly, used you for my amusement, callously disregarded you as people, and I am very sorry.” She swallowed, turning to address everyone present. “I hope that you can all forgive me. I understand if you cannot.”

She recomposed herself, and then proceeded. “I have found my place on the
HMS Rapturion
, a place that has changed me as a person, a place where I have made true friends for the first time in my life, a place where I appreciate everything that is given to me, and most importantly, a place where I earn my own way.” She turned again to her parents. “I am giving my pay to you, to begin to repay the costs of my extravagance. Use it for your own benefit: enjoy yourselves as I have done. My gift to you, a small gesture in return for the many things you’ve given me.”

When she finished, she lowered her head solemnly, and even those who had at first thought that she was up to something knew that she was being sincere. She’d asked for nothing but forgiveness, and the household gave it to her freely. As she left, the servants and her parents heartily and tearfully bade her farewell and thanked her. At long last, her task was complete, and she returned to the ship.

She ascended the gangplank, marveling at its beauty and the hours it must have taken the craftsman to carve the hard wood. She found herself on the top deck of the ten-story vessel. With a humble spirit, she made her way to the deck manager’s office. She knocked as she entered, and the deck manager scowled at her, not knowing that she’d already left the ship and returned.

“Well, the upstart returns,” he said coldly.

“Sir, I–” Eloise began, but the manager cut her off.

“I don’t care what excuse you have, lass. Your behavior was reprehensible, and I will be glad when you’re gone!”

Eloise waited patiently, but the deck manager cut her off at every turn. Finally, she produced £60 from her pocket, which she had taken from her wallet at home before handing the rest over to her parents, and placed it on the manager’s desk.

The manager stopped talking abruptly. “What’s this?”

“Payment for services rendered,” Eloise replied, “and a tip for your trouble.”

The manager stared at her. This was not going at all the way he’d anticipated.

Eloise began again, earnestly. “Sir, I know my behavior was appalling, and I make no excuses for it. I am sorry for the trouble I caused.” She took an additional £5 note from her pocket and handed it to the manager. “Please give this to the masseur next time you see him, along with my sincere apologies.”

The manager sat silently for a moment, then nodded. “This does not excuse the behavior,” he said at length, “but I forgive you for it.”

Eloise nodded. “Understood, Sir.”

“If you swear not to make any more moves on the masseur, I will take you to him so that you may give your apology in person, if you like,” the manager said, his demeanor softening.

“Thank you, sir. Yes, I would appreciate that.”

The deck manager rose, gave Eloise back the £5 note, and escorted her to the spa, making a motion to the receptionist to be nice. Eloise waited in the reception area while the manager personally fetched the masseur. Seeing Eloise, the masseur abruptly turned to leave.

“Wait, sir,” Eloise said urgently. “I came to apologize.”

The masseur turned slowly, took a deep breath, and replied, “I’m listening.”

Eloise began her third apology of the day. “Sir, I was wrong to expect you to provide sexual favors. I know now that you are a renowned masseur, and my behavior was utterly disgraceful, especially to a man of your stature. I realize it is not much, Sir, but I offer you the tip you should have gotten that day.”

The masseur’s eyes widened. He charged 60 cents for thirty minutes, a price half again as much as anyone else could command, and £5 was over fifteen times that much, far more than the typical 1/2 tips he was accustomed to.

“Ma’am, I…” the masseur trailed off.

“For your trouble, sir,” Eloise said humbly. “I realize I have made a terrible impression on both of you, and I am sorry.” She turned to leave.

“Thank you, ma’am,” the masseur said. Eloise nodded, then left.

She paused against the brass-topped balcony, still polished to a mirror shine. Looking down over the ten decks beneath her, she shook her head. She could not imagine herself on top of the world, not up here. It wasn’t until she descended those eight flights of stairs and again found herself in the company of the propulsion crew that she felt like the world was hers.

*****

~Volume Four
~

“
Why did people have to be so stupid?”

These words echoed through Harriet’s mind as she tried for the third time today to carefully craft the post-coital phosphorescence accumulator, PCPA for short, on the metal lathe in her workshop. She had instructed Giles, her servant and assistant, not to let anybody bother her, but twice today already, as she’d been putting the finishing touches on it, someone had entered, breaking her concentration, and her hand, ordinarily as steadfast as the trilithons in Stonehenge, had jerked, pushing her tool too far into her work piece, detaching the work piece from the rest of the stock, and sending it flying across the room.

And so, as she now neared completion of the third attempt, her paranoia began to grow. She knew that no sooner would she finish than there would come a knock, a tap, a footfall on the metal floor, something to startle her, and her precious work would once again be destroyed. Still, she had to press on. She was immensely excited about what she planned to do with the PCPA once she finished it.

A little background knowledge is necessary to understand Harriet’s excitement. She was the foremost authority in the world on coital power, having discovered it accidentally while in college at Cambridge. As the name suggests — she took pride in giving it a name that was both succinct and descriptive — it involved derivation of energy from sexual intercourse. She had presented numerous lectures on her work over the years and when Air Cruise Co. heard about her work, they knew they had to have her. As a company that prided itself on having the latest technologies built into its luxury airships, that kind of modern technology was simply irresistible. She had been in the middle of a lecture when the Air Cruise Co. executives came to visit her.

“Everything we can sense comes from energy,” she’d said, gesturing to a diagram depicting as much. “When we hear something, it is converted to electrical signals in our brains. The same is true of our other senses. This includes things that come from outside, as well as from within. For instance, when you are nervous, that feeling of collywobbles is converted to electricity in a very similar manner.” She’d paused, surveying the room, and noticed the executives standing at the back of the lecture hall.

“Different sensations produce different amounts of energy,” she’d continued, ignoring them. “Something painful produces a lot of energy; that is why the sensation of pain, be it from a bright light, a loud noise, or a tack through your foot, is inevitably impossible to ignore. You could say that pain is the result of being over-stimulated, that is, the amount of energy being transferred into your brain exceeds what it is comfortable processing. On the flip side, something barely noticeable produces very little energy. Something like a hint of perfume, the sound of the rustle of leaves, or the light of a candle far away produces very little energy inside your mind. As I’m sure most of you have experienced…” she began, looking out across her audience of graduate students, old faculty, and visiting fellow scientists. She paused, smiled ironically, and corrected herself, “All right, as a few of you may have experienced, sex is a very powerful sensation. Although pleasurable, it can often border on painful.” The audience’s reaction was mixed. In this day and age, sex of any sort was taboo, and someone speaking openly about it, let alone making jokes about it must be either radically liberal or a sociopath. Harriet was certainly not liberal.

“It is the fine line between pleasure and pain inherent in good sex that gives it so much power,” she continued. “Understand that even the most painful of experiences generates only microwatts of power in the body, and if the sensation lasts only ten seconds, that is still only tens of microwatts of energy. Sex, on the other hand, generates several hundreds of milliwatts, and the sensation can last as long as half a minute.” She waited for the audience to process the information. “Yes,” she said emphatically, “We produce more than a joule of energy from sex.” The audience began to murmur.

“But of course, even ten joules is still orders of magnitude away from being useful,” she said. “An ordinary light bulb, for those of you familiar with the term, consumes almost a quarter of a megajoule per hour. How, then, can sex possibly be used as a viable means of energy collection?” She paused and took a sip of water from the glass on her podium while waiting for the audience to mull it over.

“The answer is resonance,” she announced. “Just as a pipe organ’s pipes cause a small amount of air to fill an entire building with deafening sound, properly gauging the frequency of the oscillations the body produces during sex has allowed the field of coital power collection to develop a resonant chamber for those oscillations. It turns out that there is a very high Q factor associated with sexual oscillations. That is, the resonant range is very small, and the frequency must be matched precisely, within less than one Hertz,” she paused as the audience murmured amazement. Such precision was very difficult to achieve with modern technology. “But the reward,” she continued, “is that if that frequency is matched precisely, the strength of the oscillation theoretically increases by up to eight orders of magnitude.” The air pressure in the room dropped noticeably as more than a hundred spectators simultaneously gasped in shock. Such a Q factor had never been realized in any branch of science: optics, electromagnetics, hydraulics, acoustics, or any other field. This was unheard-of, and many in the audience murmured that perhaps the measurements were off.

“I must emphasize that the eight-order gain is theoretical. Real-world issues such as fluctuations in material content, inaccuracies in manufacture of the resonator, and temperature variation all reduce the actual gain. Current technology allows about six and a half orders of magnitude. Achieving that eight-order gain is the ideal goal of the field of coital power collection,” she said. “Yes, you, sir,” she said, answering a raised hand from the audience.”

“Are you saying a person could single-handedly run a large motor?” the gentleman asked incredulously.

Harriet smiled and answered unabashedly, “More accurately, a single couple could run a large motor, yes. However, orgasms do not last long.” She made a conspiratorial gesture with her hand and said, “and for some, they really don’t last long!” Again, the audience’s reaction was mixed. There were a few snickers from the younger audience members, but the older audience members threatened to leave in indignation. Let them go, Harriet thought to herself. Stuffy hypocrites, the lot of them.

“But don’t take my word for it,” she proceeded. “We will have a demonstration shortly to prove the point. For those with weak constitutions and those who are easily offended, I recommend that you leave now.” No one budged. Hypocrites, she thought again.

She stepped down from her podium to introduce her demonstrators, and more importantly, her technology. A man and a woman, both fully clothed, came out to stand next to her, towering over her. At a diminutive thirty-three inches tall, it was a shock to many who had heard her name but never met her in person that she was so capable in a day when anybody who did not fit the mold of an average human being was considered inept at best and mentally retarded at worst. Retarded, her foot! She had more competence and dexterity in one of her tiny hands than most of the morons in the audience possessed in their entire bodies.

“James and Vivian here have volunteered to demonstrate the technology,” Harriet continued clinically, retaking her podium. “You may get undressed,” she said, addressing the demonstrators. As they began to disrobe, a double bed was rolled onto the floor, and a large gauge, big enough that even the people in the back could see, was placed next to it. Beside the gauge was a large cart carrying a motor that took up half the stage in the lecture hall. It had to be pulled in using horses, and the stage groaned as it shouldered the weight.

“This motor was lent to us by the good people at Air Cruise Co.,” Harriet said, hating that she had to make the advertisement. “They are one of few companies with a motor so large, and we are grateful to them for its use. What you will see as this demonstration takes place is the power output displayed on the gauge. It has two scales. The upper scale is the percentage of power required to drive this motor. That is, when the needle reaches one hundred percent, the motor will turn on. The lower scale is the actual power in megawatts.”

“It’ll never work!” someone called from the audience, and the audience murmured agreement.

“Oh ye of little faith,” Harriet retorted hotly. Her temper was the only thing that rivaled her stature for shortness. “If it’s doomed to fail, then there’s no reason to stay around and watch. Be gone!” No one moved. “No? Then how about leaving the speaking to me and keeping your conjecture to yourself? Go get your own lecture hall!” She instantly recomposed herself and readopted her clinical demeanor.

“I will admit that the claims I’m making are of substantial consequence,” she said, “but I assure you that I would not stand before you today without months’ worth of extensive research. The device Vivian is holding is a power collection apparatus, colloquially known as a ‘brass sock.’ As you can see, it is cylindrical and hollow, except for the distal end, which is rounded for comfort during insertion. There are two reasons for the design: one, it prevents pregnancy when the man ejaculates, and two, the resonator and pickup coils are housed inside the tip. Careful attention has been paid to transmitting the sensations generated on the outside, either through sex or masturbation, to the inside to stimulate James. Likewise, his movement inside the device is transferred to the outside to stimulate Vivian. The result is that other than insertion and ejection of the device, neither of them feels as though the device is present. The cord on the proximal end enables power to be collected. Vivian, please connect the cord.” As prompted, Vivian took the cord and plugged it into a jack on the stand that held the gauge, which registered zero.

“Note that there is currently no energy being transmitted,” Harriet continued. “Vivian, go ahead and insert the device.” The two demonstrators nodded and climbed onto the bed. Vivian sat in front of the audience, brass sock in hand, and began to insert it. The audience watched with a mixture of lecherous and academic intent as the brass sock slipped inside of her until the cord was the only thing remaining.

“Proceed,” Harriet said when the device was in, and as the couple began to make out, she readdressed the audience. “Unlike the norms of today where sex is intended to be fast, as devoid of pleasure as possible, and never spoken of, I have instructed these two to savor it, to milk it out. Research indicates that while the duration of the climax may not significantly increase, the energy developed during foreplay can exceed the energy of the climax.” She glanced over. James was rubbing Vivian’s nipples, and she was writhing against him, although he had not yet penetrated her. The needle registered fifty percent.

“As you can see, they are already producing a sizable amount of energy,” Harriet pointed out. “They could continue like this most of the day, and by storing the energy, a single couple could produce enough power to run this motor for a fair bit of time. We did not bother to bring in the storage capacitor, as it is not needed for the demonstration.” The motor remained motionless, but the needle slowly ticked its way further to the right, approaching sixty percent.

“I am currently working on research to see if the energy created by same-sex couples can be used and stored, as well,” Harriet continued. The audience wasn’t listening, though. It is hard to pay attention to something academic when you have live-action sex occurring mere feet in front of you. Vivian leaned down to kiss James, and his cock hardened, throbbing. The cord dangled limply from Vivian’s vagina as she knelt over him and lowered herself onto him. The gauge sprung to eighty percent.

“Note that as long as the two are making contact,” Harriet pointed out, “the device is able to collect energy from both of them. Their oscillations synchronize, which is why sex with someone else frequently feels better than sex by yourself.” Here she spoke based on what she’d heard from her colleagues and observed in her test subjects; she herself had never had sex with anyone else.

James and Vivian meanwhile had begun fucking in earnest, and she rode up and down on his thick, hard shaft, her vagina leaking lubricant around the brass sock as James thrust hard into her. The needle on the gauge hovered just below one hundred percent, and James’s toes curled. With a roar, the motor started as the needle shot off to the right, exceeding one hundred percent and fourteen megawatts of power. It did not last long, though; Vivian fell on top of James, and the two relished the afterglow as the motor abruptly stopped, not twenty seconds after it had started. Still, it was enough to prove Harriet’s point, and the audience burst into applause.

“I hate to say, ‘I told you so,’” Harriet said after the applause had died down. “Oh, wait, I love saying that!” The audience burst into laughter. “Unfortunately, the climax only lasts a short time, as you saw, and so for any kind of useful work to be done, numerous couples like this would be necessary. We in the field are continually striving to collect more energy, to improve the resonators, and to store the energy more effectively. We thank you for your continued financial support that lets us keep doing what we do.” The audience applauded again as Harriet concluded her lecture, showing James and Vivian out.