Sex Secrets of the Robot Replicants (short story)
Sex Secrets of the Robot Replicants was a 2004 short story written by Philip Purser-Hallard and released in the Bernice Summerfield series anthology A Life Worth Living. It was subsequently rereleased alongside The Two Jasons novel in 2007, due to the stories sharing similar themes, which also received an audiobook version in 2021 narrated by Lisa Bowerman.
Summary
Bernice Summerfield uncovers her husband Jason Kane's secret deception that has taken the xenopornography community by storm.
Plot
Bernice Summerfield is approached by the Braxiatel Collection's Assistant Librarian who informs her that Jason Kane has several overdue library books and that senior librarian Dr Armbruister has been recruiting several large volunteers to "visit" Jason to remind him of his obligations. Bernice agrees to have a word with Jason and leaves the library, bumping into a man as she does so.
When Jason is evasive over the late library books, Bernice searches through his belongings and finds the books in question. One book in particular, which apparently does not come from the library, is written by Dr Jonas Neak. The book is a literary critique of Jason's xenopornographic novels. Upon viewing the picture of Neak on the back cover, Bernice realises that he is the same man who bumped into her at the library and she is then stunned to find Neak standing in Jason's doorway. However, he runs away before she is able to confront him. Benny confronts Jason with her discovery and learns that Jonas Neak, as well as several other of Jason's critics, are actually his pseudonyms. Jason explains that he created the fictitious Dr Neak to positively critique his own work after he suffered disparaging remarks from a literature professor. Jason's publishers Velvet Mandible informed Jason that Neak's article had boosted his sales and therefore Jason continued to write more articles under the alias of Neak and several others.
A dilemma arose when Jason and several of his alter-egos were invited to a seminar at the Collector. Working around the problem Jason commissioned two android duplicates of himself from ProxyMation Corporation, one masquerading as Neak and the other as Arsenio W Cockshaft. At the seminar, moderated by Dr R J Plempth, things initially go well, much to Benny's surprise as she thinks that the androids are too obviously similar to Jason to go unnoticed. Although, Jason is left flabbergasted when a third duplicate arrived portraying another of his aliases Ken J Aason. Aason accuses Neak and Cockshaft of being android imposters and they freely admit to it. The seminar ends and Jason's publishers distance themselves from him denying all knowledge of the fraud.
A few days later, Benny meets with the three androids. The trio reveal that the initial two duplicates immediately betrayed Jason, seeking to avoid decommissioning, by reaching out to Jason's rival publishers Palp Fiction and offering their assistance in disrupting Jason's sales in exchange for being downloaded into permanent organic bodies. The publishers agreed and a third duplicate was commissioned allowing the androids to successfully expose Jason publicly. The trio reveal that there was also an element of revenge against Jason, for creating creating self-aware androids that wouldn't be permanent. However, Benny points out to them that they have all of Jason's memories up to the point where he created the androids, so they are responsible for the decision as much as he is.
Characters
- Bernice Summerfield
- Jason Kane
- Assistant Librarian
- Dr Jonas Neak
- Professor Arsenio W Cockshaft
- Dr R J Plempth
- Dr Ken J Aason
Worldbuilding
- Benny meets Jason for lunch at Café Vosta.
- Jason Kane has several professional aliases including: Dr Jonas Neak, Dr Jan Keason, Prof Anne Sojak, Dr Ken J Aason and Prof. Arsenio W Cockshaft.
- Jason wrote several articles under his various aliases, including the Neak article The Rhetoric Loss and Longing in Jason Kane's Nights of the Perfumed Tentacle which was published in the journal Prevarications, and he ultimately released a book entitled Towards a Pornographics of First Contact: Probing and Delving the Fiction of Jason Kane also by Neak. As Aason he wrote Raising Kane: The Primal Scene Re-Memberered.
- Jason's bibliography includes: Tongues of the Mollusc-Women, Nights of the Perfumed Tentacle, Slave-sluts of the Slime People, In Different Flesh, Sins of the Pseudopod and World of the Vixenoids.
- Velvet Mandible is Jason's publishing firm. Palp Fiction is their chief rival.
- Jason got his androids from ProxyMation Corporation.
- Jess Carter wrote about ProxyMation.
- Jason received a message from Miss Myrgle Xloom of Betelgeuse V.
Notes
- The short story was included as part of The Two Jasons novel released in May 2007. Lisa Bowerman narrated this story as an extra on the audiobook version of The Two Jasons released on 7 October 2021.
Continuity
- Irving Braxiatel thinks the ProxyMation android technology was back-engineered by technology from the Fifth Axis' alien masters. (AUDIO: Death and the Daleks)
- The Jonas Neak and Ken J Aason androids would later receive their permanent bodies, but Arsenio W Cockshaft would die while attempting to access memories that Jason had not granted to them. (PROSE: The Two Jasons)
