It was beep twelve of the elevator’s ascent that jolted Ian Alistair Cockwight back to attention.
Polished brass doors faced him, and his field of view just caught the crisp maroon blazer dressing the attendant’s shoulder to his right. In the reflection directly ahead sat his own face, drawn and cow-like in gaze.
“I think your sister said they were just waiting on you,” the attendant, Tony, said without looking back.
Alistair (his preferred designation) ignored Tony’s familiarity, one brought on by decades of service to the Cockwights and the Park Avenue luxury apartment building that had contained them for generations. He quietly suspected that Tony wouldn’t have spoken that way to anyone else in the Cockwight clan.
The clan – they were already there. All of them.
Knobby knees quivered under pressed black slacks as he wondered if anyone would be on the other side of the door when it opened. He straightened his tie, black silk over a black shirt.
The doors opened on an empty white marble foyer big enough to fit Tony’s apartment twice over. Freshly reassured, and grateful for the emptiness, Alistair stepped back into his childhood home, a home where he’d been mostly raised by an obese, racist Trinidadian woman. Though his patois was excellent, he had missed his father. The irony was that now he couldn’t wait for him to die.
“Very sorry for your loss, Mr. Cockwight.”
Alistair also suspected that Tony placed an emphasis on the “Cock” portion of “Cockwight” for him that neither his brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins, mother nor father ever received.
Solemn nod.
The elevator doors closed behind him as he walked across the marble floor, subconsciously hating the sound of his own footsteps.
You walk in like a woman, son.
That particular observation from his father had been made in front of Alistair’s prom date, a girl who would later that night keep on her glove for his brief, negotiated hand job.
Up the stairs that spiraled along the far wall of the empty foyer, he climbed to and found the second floor of the apartment, the one containing the first kitchen and dining hall, also devoid of family.
He double-timed it up the next flight of steps, huffing his way into the living rooms (plus second kitchen). The inevitable wake would be held here - also empty. Drawing in another deep breath, he turned and ran half of the next flight, walked the rest. Like the spaces on the previous three floors, the halls in front of the bedrooms on the fourth floor were empty, and the cold light spilling in through the tall windows only added to the foreboding glum.
He took a moment with fists on hips, looking down at his feet and catching his breath before taking his time up the last flight of steps. Each floor had high ceilings.
Wheezing now – he was 32 – Alistair reached the final hallway leading to his parents’ room.
A concerned domestic approached out of one of the old children’s quarters.
“Mr. Cockwight, they are all in the Señor’s room.”
Alistair raised a hand to silence her. “Not now, Consuela!”
She withdrew, and he took several moments to straighten his appearance, from tie to cufflinks, jacket, hair and watch. On the other side of that far door stood and sat his entire extended family, and nearly as many lawyers, gathered together to share in the most profound loss.
The life of Zachariah Cockwight, Alistair’s father, would be immortalized in many hefty biographical tomes in the decades following his curious “death” that Tuesday afternoon. But even at their most reserved, the consistencies across the texts paint a singular portrait of towering American entrepreneurship, merciless business acumen, and a peerless instinct for innovation and industry disruption.
Indeed, the idea to combine smart phones and sex dolls into one product was one few could have predicted to so totally transform the social fabric of the United States and the world at large in so short a time. It had been during unassuming late-night congress with his wife that Zachariah was first inspired to replace both the front and back of a sex doll’s head with touch screens, and less than five years later it was estimated that between 1 in 4 and 1 in 5 Americans owned a Cockwight Industries Doll-Face.
Previously, the Cockwights made their public name through the construction and maintenance of free elementary schools in underserved rural communities throughout the Pacific Northwest, but the pivot to social sex-tech was swift and unapologetic once Zachariah’s young mind was decided.
The young, decided mind. For the next forty years, to the shame and financial reward of the multitudinous other Cockwights in the clan, Zachariah built an empire. The competition folded. The critics, silenced.
Boardrooms quieted when Chief Executive Officer Zachariah Cockwight entered them. The air shifted. Chills ran down the spines of women as his cold gaze passed over them in mysterious calculation. Men felt their genitals diminish in his presence. And nothing had stopped him, nothing now but old age and the collaborative effort of several large, malignant brain tumors.
This was the world Alistair had been born into. The empire was already built, and it wasn’t until he was already several weeks into a sexual relationship with a friend’s borrowed Doll-Face at the age of thirteen that he first realized he was fucking his father’s invention. A bug buried in a routine software update had made the Doll-Face’s tutorial video, hosted by its inventor, play automatically at unsolicited points during the user experience, and it was in the middle of one of Alistair’s climactic thrusts that his father’s smiling visage suddenly appeared less than six inches away from his face. The touch screen then chose that particular moment to become unresponsive, and his accumulated therapy bills over the ensuing twenty years spoke to the scope of that evening’s impact on his life.
Maybe that wouldn’t matter anymore. In the worst case, Alistair’s inheritance money could pay for more therapy over the next twenty years.
But, for now, he took a breath and marched forward, turned the handle on the door to his parents’ bedroom and entered.
Rooms did not quiet when Ian Alistair Cockwight entered them, but their tone altered. They became … uncomfortable. Women frowned but couldn’t explain why. Men stood taller from confidence that hadn’t existed until they laid eyes on the man whose elementary school teachers had called “Guppy” while his back was turned.
Such was the case here. The room contained twenty black-clad Cockwights, younger brothers, younger sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins and some individuals whose legitimacy as a Cockwight was still under legal review, plus the lawyers, gathered in loose clumps around the California King-sized bed and its lone, dying occupant. The few that weren’t looking at their phones registered Alistair’s arrival with a typical mix of both suspicion and contempt. But then the larger significance of his arrival hit these few, and, as their gaze protracted, the others one by one looked up from their phones until at last the whole room recognized the presence of Zachariah Cockwight’s oldest son.
Some did return their attention to their phones, but the general consensus was that it was now time to carry on with the proceedings, namely Zachariah’s death.
Alistair bowed his head and glided forward. The bed was to his right, and Cockwights parted left so that he could have a front row position at the foot of it. He took his place. Douchebag, whispered someone behind him. He shot a quick and greasy glance over his shoulder before turning back to look upon his father gravely.
Down to 95 pounds and wrapped in the black silk of both his pajamas and the bed sheets, Zachariah lay on his back, unconscious and drawing thin, rasping breaths. The respirator purred by the night stand and was attended to by a tall, somber nurse named Ricky.
Cockwights settled into their final positions as the light falling through the windows behind them painted the scene in pale contrasts. It was time.
Alistair nodded to Ricky. He nodded back and turned to the respirator. Alistair shut his eyes and lowered his head one more time, only now to hide the grin forming on his face.
“His eyes are open!”
Alistair’s own eyes shot open and he saw it for himself.
His father’s eyes were indeed open, and, judging by their slight shifts from left to right across the sea of familial faces around him, there was still a spark of consciousness in them. But there was no other movement, and nothing inspired him to speak. Zachariah only watched, registered, regarded.
When his gaze then fell on his oldest son, the stunned silence that hung over the room shattered.
“No!” Alistair shouted, startling everyone except Zachariah. “You do not get to take this!”
He darted around the corner of the bed, pushing aside several cousins and their lawyers until he was next to the respirator and leaning over the black silk to bring his face as close as possible to his father’s. His taut fists punched down into the mattress to steady him and the stunned silence resettled over the rest of the room.
“Thirty-two years. That’s thirty-two fucking years being son of the world’s biggest pimp - you know what that does to a kid? Seeing your dad get worshipped for getting people off? Jesus Christ, how many of your own family members have you helped fuck those things?”
Some of the younger family members – plus a few overconfident uncles – started to raise their hands before realizing they were misreading the moment.
“And it’s not even like I didn’t try to join your club, your little VIP global elite pimp den, but did you ever take my ideas seriously? Did you ever let me help out? I’ve been Junior VP for almost ten years and what do I have to show for it? Okay, so I messed up the semen incinerator and a few dicks got melted, I’ll take that, but I’m your goddamned son and you owed me the chance to prove myself again! I’ve got a lot to give!”
Throughout all of this Zachariah kept his steady gaze towards the tall windows behind his family. It was a cloudy day in Manhattan. Tears formed in Alistair’s eyes.
“You can hear me, I know you can hear me asshole. Come on. You pretended I didn’t exist for three decades but you’re gonna hear me now – your time is over. You hear that? It’s my time and you’re not going to take that away from me. Oh yeah, your days of being worshipped are over too. You think you’re clever for figuring out people hate people? You don’t know a thing about hate but I’ll teach you. Can you feel it now? Can you? You, you … mother fucker!”
The shock that spread through the family was undercut by confusion as some turned over his last invective in their heads. Zachariah remained motionless next to his son, who continued to vibrate red with rage.
“So, if you don’t have anything else to add, Dad, just. Fucking. DIE.”
It was at that moment a giant flying saucer silently lowered itself through the cloudbank outside the window. Only Zachariah saw it.
Waiting for a response as one tear finally fell, Alistair gave up. He wiped the tear and spoke loud enough for the room to hear. “Well! I think he’s brain-dead. Let’s get this over with.”
He pushed himself off the mattress and moved with new alacrity to the respirator while family members gasped and clamored.
It was then that two 8-foot-tall tentacled aliens blinked into the room, in front of the windows behind the family. Their presence might’ve gone unnoticed if the sudden air displacement caused by their inter-dimensional teleportation hadn’t announced their arrival with a sound resembling that of a wet fart.
“HUMANS!”
The voice boomed into all of their minds at once as they turned. Their eyes bulged and their screams halted in their throats at the sight – the veins, the pale bulbous heads, the unholy mass of tentacles that carried the heads, and the jet black eyes dotted asymmetrically over their entire form.
Alistair was frozen too, still bent over with his hand wrapped tightly around the respirator’s power cable.
“WE COME IN PEACE blagga blagga.”
No one could muster a response beyond the heavy mix of terror and awe that threatened to drown the room in insanity.
“WE ARE HERE FOR THE ONE NAMED ZACHARIAH COCKWIGHT.”
The mention of his father’s name snapped Alistair out of his shock. He blinked his way to greater awareness and was even able to manage a confused “Whaa?”
One alien glided forward several feet, and the closest Cockwights withdrew that same distance.
“WE HAVE STUDIED YOUR SPECIES FOR MILLENIA blagga AND WE HAVE CONCLUDED THAT ZACHARIAH COCKWIGHT IS TRULY THE GREATEST AMONG YOU TO HAVE EVER LIVED.”
Zachariah received this information with the same stoicism that made him so formidable in the boardroom, but there was no doubt by the look in his eyes that he was listening.
“THUS, A NEW STUDY IS REQUIRED.”
The second alien scuttled forward and took its turn with the audience.
“WE WISH TO COMPREHEND HIS GREATNESS SO THAT WE OURSELVES MAY EVOLVE – BUT THE EXPERIMENTATION PROCESS WILL BE … blagga DRAMATIC.”
Now the first “spoke” again, “FIRST, WE WILL GRANT HIM ETERNAL VIRILE YOUTH SO AS TO PERMIT ENOUGH TIME FOR DATA COLLECTION –“
“– AND LIMITLESS WEALTH WILL ASLO BE NECESSARY IN ORDER TO UNDERSTAND HIS DECISION-MAKING PROCESS SANS INHIBITING FACTORS: A CONTROL SAMPLE IF YOU WILL,” continued the second.
“THE BIOLOGICAL IMPULSE TO REPRODUCE IS STRONG WITH YOUR SPECIES, AND NONE UNDERSTOOD THIS BETTER THAN ZACHARIAH COCKWIGHT. FOR THIS REASON, WE WILL SUPPLY HIM WITH UNLIMITED SEXUAL PARTNERS THROUGHOUT HIS IMMORTAL EXISTENCE IN ORDER TO TEST THE LIMITS OF HUMAN PHYSICAL ECSTASY blagga blagga.”
The presentation is closed by the first. “ALL WE NEED NOW IS HIS CONSENT – ZACHARIAH COCKWIGHT, WILL YOU LEAVE YOUR FAMILY AND START A NEW IMMORTAL LIFE OF ENDLESS WEALTH AND CASUAL SEX FOR THE GREATER GOOD?”
For the first time since this first contact began, the Cockwight family plus lawyers pulled away their collective attention and directed it back to their dying patriarch.
Slowly, with shaking effort, he lifted his right hand a few inches above the bed in the unmistakable form of a thumbs-up.
“No!” Alistair screamed from his bedside position. He took three large, angry strides towards the visitors and jabbed an even angrier pointer finger at them. “You don’t get to have a say in this! I’m the one in charge now, so you better start talking to the actual boss around here!”
The aliens had prepared for resistance by closely studying the entirety of human communication across all social media platforms.
“SHUT THE FUCK UP WHEN I’M TALKING!”
A tentacle whipped out from the closest alien and slapped Alistair across the face with a loud crack. He stumbled back into the crowd and no one tried to catch him.
A shaft of blue light then emanated from the bottom tip of the flying saucer, shattered the window and shone like a spotlight on Zachariah. His body lifted out of the black silk and slowly he began to float towards the vessel.
Panic set in, but the visitors had planned for this as well. Just before blinking back to their ship, both beings concentrated their massive intellects on one last gesture of peace and gratitude.
Collectively, simultaneously, everyone left in the room was struck with massive orgasms.
They tried to contain them at first. But, like trying to hide a yawn, the orgasms could not be contained and one by one each lawyer and family member grabbed their crotches and dropped to their knees in euphoric sexual convulsion mixed with desperately avoided eye contact. Then the second wave of orgasms hit.
The bedroom door opened and Consuela walked in carrying a tray with teapot and cups. She caught one glimpse of the flying saucer, the vanishing aliens, the levitating Zachariah and the remaining Cockwights – writhing on the floor, dripping on the floor, pounding their fists on the floor, groaning and whinnying on the floor – and immediately turned to leave the way she came, never to return.
Forced to crawl around climaxing relatives but at least no longer distracted by his bleeding nose, Alistair powered through his shudders to look up one last time at his father, who was floating high over Park Avenue. Weightlessness, combined with weight loss, had peeled his pajamas off until he was now nothing more than a flying, naked old man.
As if knowing that his son was watching, Zachariah raised up two middle fingers in proud salute to him and the rest of his family before disappearing into the light.
THE END