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The Sales Pitch

by H.A. Kirsch

Copyright 2013

---

"David, read me a story."

When Leo spoke those words, a soft chime sounded and a green light in the room's overhead light fixture came on. "What would you like me to read?"

Leo wasn't looking for a children's book, because he wasn't a child. David was the name of his computer assistant. "What's on my list that I haven't read?"

"Your number one item is 'Brave New World', by Aldous Huxley. There is an audiobook version available, which has received high ratings from customers at various online download stores." David sounded like an inert British man, with the slight slur of a hybrid's muzzle. The default voice had been a woman who sounded irritable, and too much like Leo's late mother to be comfortable.

"That sounds depressing," Leo said. David had no response, because he was incapable of emotional understanding. The fox sighed and rolled over, then slid off his bedroom sofa to do some exercises on the floor. "But, it also sounds like classic science fiction. Go for it. Read me the story, David. The audiobook version."

After a moment of processing, the recording started to play. Leo was immediately entranced by the narrator, who had a very real and studied British accent. Even better, he was capable of rendering different characters and different genders. Even more better, the novel was horrifically interesting. The descriptions of futuristic gestation and birth into a caste system somehow tickled a deep part of Leo's mind.

While he listened, the red fox finished his warm-up exercises. He did several sets of half-pushups, done only half as far as normal because he did not have the forearms to push up any further. Unable to do squats as he lacked lower legs, he had worked out a cantilever position that let him work his quadriceps using the part of his knee joint as a hinge close to the floor.

After the warmup, panting and hot-eared, Leo took to practicing something he had learned in his modified bodyflow physical therapy class. He crawled over to a workout stretching ball and slowly inched his way up onto it until he was perched and balanced atop it, body arching backwards. The entire point of the exercise was to remain perfectly balanced as long as possible. It was both meditative, and if he began to waver from breathing incorrectly, a terrific core workout. It would have been far less rewarding had he not been a partial quad amputee.

Footsteps thudded from down the hallway, the hollow clunk of cowboy boots, and then someone knocked on the door. "Boy, there's someone downstairs for you!" The voice was brash and Southern American.

"Okay, Dad, I'll be right down. Let me get my shoes on," Leo said, rolling his eyes. His father couldn't see the expression, and Leo didn't mean it anyway. He prickled inside. He knew who the visitor was.

"Don't you be a smart-ass, Leo. What're you listenin' to up here? You fillin' your head with space operas again?" Leo's father stood with his hands on his hips in classic drill sergeant posture. He wasn't a drill sergeant.

Leo rolled off the ball and sat up. "Classic science fiction. Brave New World."

"Oh hell, that's a downer. You want spoilers, save yourself the kleenex?" Leo's dad had a wicked grin on his face.

"The regular human kills himself at the end because he can't stand it. That's not a surprise. Besides, we talked about it a bit in school but I was in the hospital when we actually were reading it. Wasn't someone here to see me?"

"Oh, he's some kind of sales guy, he can hang out downstairs an' cool his heels off." Leo's father waved his hand dismissively. He wore neat black dress jeans, brown cowboy boots, a checkered shirt, and a bolo tie. He also looked almost fat, with a slight gut stretching his shirt out forward over a western belt buckle. He also looked practically inappropriate for New York state.

"Sales guy? Dad, stop being a dick, he's here to see _me_. As in, this is an appointment, he's not one of those vacuum cleaner pyramid scheme guys."

Leo's father rolled his eyes, turned, and stomped off, almost but not quite catching his tail in the door on the way out.

"Would you like me to continue?" the computer said.

"No, no, I have a visitor." Leo always spoke to David as if he were actually another person - while not capable of a conversation, David did well enough with deciphering English that he could be treated like an attentive servant. Which was the entire point; he did everything Leo needed that was not purely physical.

Leo hunched himself up onto the sofa and just had enough time to get comfortable before his father returned with the houseguest. He was a slender wolf in a neat gray business suit, who looked about as old as his father but almost a whole head taller. Leo kept an eye on him - when the wolf strode in, he gave Leo a nod, but none of the double-take stare that tended to come his way when a visitor realized Leo was disfigured.

"You must be Leo Cutler," the wolf said, and came forward for a slight bow. "I'm Dan Jackson with Davidson Biotech."

"They make vacuum cleaners now?" Leo's father said, crossing his arms suspiciously. He did a good enough job looking defensively aggressive for a fox.

"That's my dad, Brian," Leo sighed. "He's impatient. So uh, nice to meet you."

"I should explain what I'm doing here," Mr. Jackson said, and set his suitcase down on the coffee table. "I've been in touch with Leo about prosthetics."

Brian went from suspicious to alarmed, ears back, eyes wide, jaw slightly slack. He sputtered.

Mr. Jackson continued. "Davidson Biotechnology is one of the leaders in cybernetic prosthetics. Well, I'm supposed to say we are the leader, but honestly I'm not that kind of salesman. I'm here with information. I see you aren't entirely comfortable with artificial limbs, Leo?"

Leo looked down at himself. "Not really. They're kind of hard to put on, they make me walk like I'm constipated, and it's too hard to pick up anything heavier than a teacup." As he spoke, he looked sideways, away from both other males. He spotted his existing prosthetics in their rack by the wall, and then looked away as if embarrassed. He shrugged his stumps.

"But, they are better than nothing?"

"Only sometimes. I can do all kinds of stuff by myself, just not a lot of important stuff. Like this," the young fox said, and slid off the sofa, then crawled over onto his exercise ball. Within just a few seconds, he was sprawled backwards atop it and perfectly balanced again. "My PT told me that it's a lot harder to do this if you have all your limbs. I guess that makes me proud of something." He looked upside down at his father and Mr. Jackson.

The wolf took a thin tablet computer out of his suitcase and set it on the coffee table. "This is yours to keep. Don't worry, it has voice command. Here's a mouthstick, too," he said, and produced a small wand with a spade end. "It's even got our logo on it. I think that's kind of tacky."

"You're tellin' me you're givin' my boy some fancy-pants tablet just as a keepsake?"

"Well, he did pay a consultation fee," the wolf said.

"A consultation fee! Boy, are you signin' papers without James here to read them upside down and sideways first?!" Brian was incredulous. James was the family lawyer.

"I didn't sign anything! How can I even sign stuff? It was just a hundred dollars."

"We charge a consultation fee to keep people from wasting our time with idle curiosity. Davidson makes cybernetics, not toys. On that tablet, you'll find a full catalog, including all of our previous-model military equipment. That's where we got started. The current field stuff is classified, of course. You'll find testimonials, both positive and negative - that's very important, as we believe you need real information. Not everyone is happy with replacing parts of their body, and we can't guarantee that we'll help you. We can guarantee that we'll do our best, and over ninety percent of our clients have no major complaints and regain significant or total daily functionality. I don't mean they can lift teacups, either."

"That thing have prices in it?" Brian groused.

"Dad, quit it," Leo groused back.

"Leo, that full set of parts over there was twenty grand!"

"How old are those, by the way?" Mr. Jackson said, stood up, and went over to inspect them with a 'do you mind?' look towards Leo. The fox nodded back, and the wolf began to carefully turn them over.

"Well, I got them about ten years ago, but I've had them altered a few times because, you know, growing." Leo waggled his right stump and then shrugged.

"Ten years ago, these kind of transdermal electronic prosthetics were just about the best anyone could get. A lot's happened in ten years."

Leo's father looked more alarmed with every second of the conversation. "I don't want to be rude, but don't you think that's rude?"

"It's a fact," Mr. Jackson said, and stood back up. "I'm not here to sell your son something. I'm here as the next step of a discussion, as part of a process, as a piece of information, as a person instead of just information floating around on a website."

"Well, whatever you're not sellin', it's gonna be expensive," Leo's father said, allowing his accent to creep back in. "I'm not gonna toot my own horn but I know somethin' about money and you don't just throw it around. Money's a tool, and you respect it like you respect all your other tools."

The wolf looked mostly unfazed, but he did gather up his suitcase, leaving the tablet on the coffee table. "That tablet is yours to keep. There's a lot of information on it. Plus, it conforms to the EDUCATE protocols so your assistive computer will be able to hook up with it. If you have any questions, let me know. I hope I haven't been any inconvenience," Mr. Jackson said, and reached out for a right handshake with Leo's father. Brian accepted.

"Thank you for coming by, I guess, Mr. Jackson," the older fox said, exhaling a big puff with his words.

"One more thing. I'm glad you shook my hand. Not because that's polite, although I'm glad you're polite. I don't want to alarm you but I'm going to take off my shirt," the wolf said, and slipped out of his blazer, loosened his tie, and then started to unbutton his shirt. "Just give me the benefit of the doubt."

Both vulpines stared at Mr. Jackson.

The wolf removed his shirt, and nothing was immediately amiss. He looked like a typical gray wolf. He reached up to his right shoulder with his left hand, and petted at his fur. It parted easily down to the skin, and instead of the gray flesh of a typical canine, there was a seam. "All of the initial sales team are clients of Davidson Biotech, as well as employees."

Leo stared; his father crossed his arms over his chest.

"This isn't snake oil," the wolf said, and picked up his suitcase again. He opened it and removed a small black satchel the size of a compact camera bag, with a red cross on it. He opened it up and removed a black spandex glove which he slipped onto his left hand. Then, he reached up to his right shoulder and felt around, pressed his thumb in, and turned. His right arm froze with the fingers neutrally extended, and then he pulled it off his body. "You probably didn't notice anything when you shook my hand. You just shook. So did I. I also drove my car over here. I rang your doorbell. I drank the glass of iced tea you gave me, and opened the packet of sugar with my right hand. I can brush my teeth, take a shower, and play the piano. My arm was blown off by an RPG. If I hadn't shown you this, you wouldn't have known." He reattached his arm and just as it had frozen, it suddenly animated again. He put his shirt back on and buttoned it up, easily fitting the buttons through their silk holes. He finished dressing, then headed towards the door.

Without speaking, Leo's father showed the wolf out of the house. Leo waited in his room. After a long silent pause, David spoke up. "Would you like me to continue the story?"

Leo expected his father to come back upstairs, but he didn't. After a much longer wait, he called out. "David, is my father downstairs?"

"Yes. He is currently in the living room."

The fox sighed and crawled over to his prosthetic rack, then started putting his legs on. The rack was designed to allow him to get in and out of his legs without using any other assistance, as his arms weren't capable enough to help. Unlike Mr. Jackson's prosthetic arm, Leo's legs were black plastic to match what color his fur would have been, with a metal shank down to the rubberized foot arch. He was able to walk around, although he almost always knock-kneed unless he tried to jog.

He went downstairs and found his father sitting on the sofa, elbows on his thighs, hands clasped, chin balanced. Brian Cutler was almost never still unless something was very serious. "Dad?"

"I don't even know what to say, boy, I jus' don't."

"I know you hate people coming over so I didn't want to tell you-"

"Shit, Leo, why didn't you say you were, you were lookin' into this?"

Leo winced. "I... I don't know."

"Oh bull shit you don't know," Leo's father growled, then stood up and started to pace. He took ten steps, turned, took two, turned, and repeated exactly that number of steps as he made a rounded rectangle on the oriental carpet. He turned on a boot heel every time with a slight scrape. "You don't want me to get all pissed off when you go get some kind of crazy-ass cyborg shit an' then it doesn't work right like those damn claws you got! Look at you, you wobbled your ass comin' down the stairs!"

Leo heated up. He had rehearsed what he would say when his father didn't agree with him on his intentions, but now that it was time to actually make good on it, he couldn't quite organize his thoughts. "You're just mad that you won't be able to dote on me anymore."

"That's bull shit too! You think I want you bein' crippled? You want to lose my respect, boy? 'Cuz I can take care of that, an' you'll discover all kinds of fun things when you lose it. I don't have to pay Carlos to come over an' help with you anymore."

"Oh fuck that, you wouldn't-"

"I bet you wouldn't last two days takin' a shower by yourself. How the hell would you do that? Would you roll 'round on the soap or some shit?"

"Dad!"

"I don't want you takin' some pie in the sky idea an' blowin' tons of money on it an' endin' up with something that ruins your life! God forbid anything else happen, you already got lit on fire, you already had that infection, you already lost your mother, I lost Mel, I.." Brian's eyes twinkled as tears started, but then cut back.

"I want to have my own life! I can't do anything useful on my own! Everyone else gets to turn into an adult and go to college and get an apartment and get a car and get married and get a family and get old and die and I'm gonna have to do all that with some guy giving me fucking sponge baths because I don't have any fucking limbs!" Leo howled. "I want to have my own life and I'm gonna do it and I have the money and you know that and it isn't even your money so what the fuck do you care?"

Leo's father winced and twisted his ears back. "I care a damn lot."

"I'm not making some stupid rushed decision!"

"So you've made up your mind?"

Leo sat on the sofa because standing was too difficult in his emotional state. He even disengaged from the artificial legs. "I don't know! I haven't had any time to look over any of that stuff. But, you saw his arm. You saw it, that's what I'll be like. I'll just be me! I've spent so much time going over everything I can find about, about getting repla-"

"David," Leo's father called out. An orange light appeared on the ceiling. "How much time has my boy here, how much time has Leo spent lookin' up cybernetic stuff?"

"Leo, do you authorize this personal query?" The computerized British voice said.

"Yeah, sure," Leo groaned.

There was a long pause. "Shit, that thing never works right for me," Leo's father huffed. "I'm gonna go make myself a drink. Maybe it'll be done when I get back." He turned and clomped off, but only got a few feet before David piped up.

"Leo has spent an average of two hours each day, for the past six months, researching various topics which are semantically connected to cybernetics. These topics include, but are not limited to, military veterans affairs, medical prosthetics, transhumanism, neuropsychology, assisted independent living. He has downloaded over five thousand images for repeated access. He has-"

"That's enough, David. Thanks." Leo wobbled his upper arms forward, a gesture that would have put his forearms in his lap if he had any. "At least he didn't mention the porn."

"Oh for-"

"I'm kidding, Dad. Look. Let me just look at that thing Mr. Jackson left. Okay? We'll go from there."

Leo's father only nodded, and then left the room.

---

Leo did not enlist David's help with navigating the tablet. He used the mouth wand to prod at it while he had it propped up against the side cushion on his bedroom couch. He had gotten the tablet onto the couch by pushing the coffee table closer, and then nudging the tablet off. He imagined what it would be like to simply pick it up and flick through images with his finger, and the sensation stung him in the gut and his spine hard enough that he wanted to spin around or start crying or giggle or any other incongruous outburst. Instead, he just started to read.

A history of Davidson Biotech. The company had been founded by Arthur Davidson at the turn of the 21st century, and had managed to weather The Fall thanks to some government contracting. They had branched out into developing prosthetics and restorative implants for veterans, and that had led to their current place at the forefront of the burgeoning consumer cybernetics industry. Leo was surprised to find that there was a consumer cybernetics industry.

A biographical snippet of Daniel Jackson, the sales-wolf who had prompted Leo's father to consume a third of a bottle of bourbon and start listening to music in his den. He had been in the United States Marine Corps and deployed to the middle east in one of the innumerable and ever present conflicts that always threatened to spiral out of control. He had been hit with a rocket-propelled grenade, which had blown his entire right arm off and nearly killed him. As a demonstration of his new arm, a small video clip demonstrated him playing a modernist piece on piano. Leo recognized it as an excerpt of "Phrygian Gates" by John Adams.

A marketing multi-media slideshow demonstrating the extent of Davidson's current cybernetics line. The implants ranged from military-grade equipment for special operations soldiers, to the personable equipment that Mr. Jackson used, indistinguishable from a regular hybrid or human limb. In addition to limbs, there were also ocular and aural implants. Leo spent almost a solid hour watching a small video about the latest release, which was a complete functioning replacement for the eye.

An overview of Davidson's medical facilities, which were considerably extensive and rivaled CNYU's medical campus in downtown Lainsville. Leo thought they looked like they belonged in a science fiction movie, but there were seemingly real videos of actual procedures mixed in with the marketing gloss.

A section devoted to testimonials. As Mr. Jackson had indicated, while most of the testimonials were dedicated to positive experiences, a quarter of them were neutral or negative. The most common problems were complications from the structural surgery needed for the implants, followed by rare issues with tissue rejection or lack of brain plasticity for retraining. One testimonial stuck out, because Leo was already aware of it. A woman from Albany had attempted to kill several people a few years earlier, claiming that her prosthetic arm was possessed by the devil. She had no previous history of mental health issues, but after being fitted with a somewhat older and more obvious built-in arm, she began to have nightmares and then waking visions of all manner of things. It progressed to outright psychosis. She had the arm removed after being committed to a psychiatric ward, but did not recover from the psychotic episode. The testimonial differed from the news reports in that the media had indicated only that she had a prosthetic arm due to a workplace accident, not that it had been an implanted cybernetic device.

An extensive section describing the entire process of receiving a hypothetical Natural Image CMP (Cybernetic Mobility Prosthesis, the politically correct marketing term Davidson had coined.) While Leo found the graphic description of the process fascinating, he was unable to finish reading it as he became nauseated and almost fainted while reading through the surgical details.

Leo put the tablet to sleep and wriggled his way into a blanket on the sofa to warm up after the shock of nearly fainting. He was no stranger to invasive surgery, but the thought of willingly undergoing alterations to implant metal support structure into his shoulder and hip bones, wireless charging harnesses into his back, bio-power catalytic reactors into his abdomen, was considerably different from emergency surgery to save his life.

As soon as he warmed up, he squirmed back out from the blankets as he had begun to overheat and pant. His father's house was all but a mansion, but posh Southern-styled luxury didn't stop the upstairs from being warm on a summer night.

He couldn't stop thinking about what he had just pored over in the digital brochure. Specifically, one section which did not have a lot of content. Davidson had an entire genital reconstruction department, which was not graphically detailed in the brochure.

Leo had only lost his arms, legs, and tail in the Carson Street Bridge train accident. Several months later, while recovering in an assisted living facility, he was attempting to do something on his own after a particularly fruitful physical therapy session. He decided to sneak outside of the group home and watch the moon rise on a grassy knoll in the back yard. He made it approximately five feet, as he had forgotten about a ledge in the garden terrace and fell while crawling. He landed just so on a tomato spike, which gave him a half inch puncture wound at the inside of his thigh next to his scrotum. It didn't bleed very much.

Within three days, he was unable to move and feverish. The doctor at the home misdiagnosed him with a simple virus without a full exam, and Leo had lied about the transgression. When he lost consciousness while trying to have a meal, he was taken to the hospital, where he was diagnosed with Fournier's Gangrene, a life-threatening necrotizing fascitis of the genital area.

The doctors at CNYU Medical saved his life, but it came at the expense of his entire penis and scrotum.

The Davidson brochure hinted at a reversal of that shameful, emasculinating fact. Leo was horrified at the thought, and horrified at the memory he had of being a scared child learning he was now destined to live as a eunuch, but the simple thought of having a sexual experience started the roiling internal tingle that often gripped him in the still-functioning prostate. Once it was started, there was no quieting it down, no matter how much he tried to think of disgusting, frightening, sad, or simply boring things.

Leo had long since learned that dropping a prosthetic limb would almost certainly alert his father, who would come to investigate. The fox thought again about trying to be independent as he crawled around and carefully plucked a prostate massager out of a private drawer by his sofa. He carried it by his mouth back to the couch and wedged it business-end up. Then he fetched a bottle of lube, head tilted sideways like a dog wrestling a stick as he carried the bottle over, then set it down, bit to open the cap, then picked it back up and bit down on the plastic to squirt lube all over the black, curved anal stimulator.

Actually penetrating himself on the toy was the easiest part. Leo simply had to rock and squat until the slippery plastic found the right angle and sank in. As it did, the fox groaned and he twisted around until the toy pulled free of the sofa cushions and sank perfectly to the right spot. Buying it had been a bit tricky, and had involved a secret pact between Marco (Leo's medical attendant, who visited every other day) and the fox. Leo's father had been terrified of someone abusing his son, and so helicopter-parented any time Marco was over. Nonetheless, Leo successfully navigated puberty into a world of burning fantasy and masturbation even though he had no arms to masturbate with, and no genitals to masturbate.

With the toy inside, Leo squirmed and rolled around. On his back? That always gave him a thrill, and he could imagine being penetrated and fucked, but it was too hard to turn away the panic-inducing thoughts that someone else would be fucking him and that he'd be naturally helpless without arms. Being helpless sounded exciting, and he could dredge up kinky fantasies with ease, but actually being helpless was always there to spoil the milk. Leo's father had done too good of a job filling his head with the idea that caregivers would take advantage of him.

On his side? That was better. Less helpless. He started imagining what he might look like if he had his limbs back. He could finally wear what he wanted to wear, and the first thought was dressage gear. Tight, cock and ball hugging stretch breeches, just like he'd worn as a child during his riding lessons. Gleaming black leather boots and English spurs; none of that rattling cowboy swagger. A shirt - some shirt - any shirt - under a black frock riding jacket. Black riding gloves, as snug and hugging as the breeches, as leather as the boots. The velveted black helmet that always felt uncomfortable but looked cool in the mirror.

On all fours? Leo hung his head down as soon as he got up onto all four stumps and rocked forward, muscles and body shifts helping cram the hard, curved toy right into his prostate. His phantom cock burned and tingled and throbbed, his phantom tail twitched, and his limbs were suddenly not useless. Leo wasn't a fox any more, maimed or natural. He bucked and rocked forwards and back, muscles yanking up inwards to keep the toy from sliding out, timing the movements so he was being penetrated by a seemingly present stranger. Leo had become a horse in his mind, mopped headfur transformed into the carefree forelocks of a wild stallion, limbs rendered with ground-stamping hooves, tail free to lash back and forth at the person who plundered his asshole.

As a horse, Leo was still helpless. He could move around, but he couldn't do anything unless he felt like kicking it or mouthing at it or perhaps wholly throwing his body against it. But he was a horse, an animal, free to do what he wanted, free to run through the woods and mud and grass.

He buried his real fox muzzle into the sofa, wedged it deep into the cushions, to quiet any orgasmic groan as the panicky desperate sexual need ripened and burst. Lacking a penis to direct bolts of semen in beautiful, pornographic arcs, Leo's load of sterile semen flooded out of his groin and left a wet, slippery puddle on the towel he laid upon.

And then, he was no longer a horse, but a mere damaged, tired fox. He groaned and recovered, pushed the toy free, then carefully nuzzled his towel around to fold it over the used plaything. He carried it all over and dumped it into the Marco Box, where anything he needed Marco to take care of went until the next visit. Leo's father was not very keen on trying to take care of errant medical problems, such as an accidental pee stain on Leo's blanket, but of course it had long ago stopped being pee.

Back on the sofa, Leo curled up and nuzzled into a clean blanket, then buzzed off into sleep. His dreams were deep and alarming, jumbled up bits and pieces from the Davidson catalog mixed with bits and pieces of real fox, and then bits and pieces of horses. Literal bits and pieces. Horse parts. He woke up with that last thing on his mind, and thought it was almost funny. Horse parts.