By Rob Maynard
Take a look at our pictures, videos, stories and more...
Chapter 1
As the thin, watery spring
sunshine filtered through the pale lilac raw silk curtains his mom had recently
bought for his bedroom, young Oliver Murray Jr. felt a complex mixture of
emotions.
On the one hand he knew he had a great deal in his young life to be pleased about.
Very pleased about.
Looking down at Roland, still snuggled up in an apparently deep sleep even though Oliver had switched on the room light to dress, Olly, as his friends knew him, felt that he ought to be well satisfied with his life.
After all, not every 18 year old had such a handsome boy sharing his bedroom.
And Roland was just the sort of boy to break hearts wherever and whenever he chose to do so.
At 5'10" Roland was just an inch or two taller than Oliver. His thick, dark hair curled up slightly and gave his face a sort of young-devilish air - and his face itself was just on the cusp of changing from the cute pretty-boy look of adolescence to something altogether firmer and more masculine. The same could also be said for a body that had, in the course of the past year, become more defined and muscular while still retaining the silky smoothness that the slightly younger Oliver had found so endearingly attractive when they'd first met.
Roland, in fact, might well have been designed especially to fulfil all of Oliver's desires.
Yet, while all those thoughts passed through his mind, Oliver still had a slight feeling of dissatisfaction with his life.
Yet he wasn't exactly sure why.
Today, his 18th birthday, should have been a day to look forward to - his official "coming out", to use a phrase that, oddly enough, was still in widespread use more than two hundred years after it had first been coined.
It was a special day - a day of transition, as his mother insisted on calling it - and, as Oliver quietly slipped on a bathrobe and crossed to the bedroom door, the boy felt both apprehensive and a little excited about what today and all the following days would bring.
True, he had been well prepared. He had Roland to thank for that. And, as Oliver opened the door and passed into the hall, he couldn't help think he was, to some extent, leaving the past behind him today as he embarked on a new adventure.
As he closed the bedroom door quietly behind him, he reached back into the room and switched off the bedroom light.
And, at the same time, he switched off Roland.
Roland's mind went blank.
Which is just what you'd expect, after all, when a robot's power source is cut off.
Yet even if Roland's mind went blank, his internal sensors were still continually processing information - as, indeed, his advanced design was supposed to do in the event of an unexpected power cut.
And, as far as robots could feel anything, Roland too felt a complicated mixture of emotions.
Which was inevitable - because Roland had spent the past two years preparing Oliver for this very day.
Of course, the story had actually started far earlier than that.
These days the ongoing Board of Youth Sexuality (BOYS) testing programme was identifying gay people at an increasingly early age, allowing the authorities to modify and personalise their educational programmes from as early as 11 years old.
That had been the age when Oliver had entered Bette Midler High School, though in these 23rd century days very few of its students had any idea who exactly Miss Midler had actually been.
(Indeed, Oliver - with little interest in history classes except those taught by dreamy Mr Petersen, about whom most students regularly and very-wetly dreamed - had always assumed from the name Midler that she must be some famous historical transsexual.)
Apart from the fact that all its students had been officially identified as gay, Bette Midler High's curriculum had remained the standard one. The school's distinguishing characteristic was that it was an entirely non-judgemental and prejudice-free zone where boys (gay girls naturally attended Navratilova Academy across town) were free to develop as they wished.
It wasn't, in fact, until each boy's 16th birthday that the first of his significant gay rites of passage occurred. Because on that day each of them was allocated a personal gay mentor - a guide who would prepare him, over the next two years, for his entry into the adult gay world.
And that personal mentor was, in each case, a specially prepared and programmed robot.
Not that you'd ever have guessed
it. By the 23rd century robots looked exactly like human beings and, to anyone
not aware of the fact, Roland appeared to simply be Oliver's best friend (or, if
you were looking just a little more closely, maybe something just a little
more than a best friend).
But, in reality, Roland was teaching
Oliver the stuff he had to learn by the age of 18 if he were to graduate as a
fully-fledged gay boy - as laid down in fine detail, of course, by
BOYS.
What that had meant in practice was that Roland taught the 16 year old Oliver all about the gay sensibility and gay lifestyle. It was a year of visits to cookery schools, enrolments on interior design courses, season tickets to art house cinemas and evening classes in disco dancing (still going strong in the 23rd century, with the recent 58th re-release of YMCA once again storming to the top of the music charts).
When Oliver had turned 17, the focus turned a little more physical.
Not that there was any real sex that year as such. But - and this explained why the robot had been precisely designed to meet Oliver's personal preferences and so ended up looking a little like a younger version of Mr Petersen - Roland's role was to meet some of Oliver's physical needs and generally help refine such basic and relatively innocuous techniques as kissing.
But anything further, BOYS strictly laid down, was reserved until a boy's 18th birthday when he was to be exposed for the first time to real men (or perhaps, given those 18 years of pent-up hormones, it would be more exact to say that the men were about to be exposed to him.)
So Roland's emotions - insofar as a robot can have them - were just as mixed this day as Oliver's.
On the one hand, he was conscious of a job well done. He had prepared Olly more than adequately for the exciting times that no doubt ahead.
But on the other he felt a sense of apprehension.
Was this to be the end of his life with the cute young boy of his dreams (insofar as a robot can have them)?
Would Olly abandon him now for a new boyfriend?
In his heart of hearts (insofar as a robot can have one) Roland hoped that Oliver would keep him as a companion - or maybe even more - for some time yet.
But he wasn't quite able to rid himself of the niggling fear that he might soon be sent back to the robot reprogramming centre from where he might have the misfortune to re-emerge as, at best, a space shuttle's guidance system or, at worst, a kitchen toaster…
As Olly emerged from the front door of his family's apartment on his way to school, there was a new purposefulness to his step.
In part it was because his mom - who was, at present, out of town (indeed, quite literally off the planet that day) - had left him an amazing birthday hologram to mark his final entry to adulthood and had written inside a more traditional card that she was looking forward to going cruising with him next week (mom's views on sexual liberation, somewhat advanced even for the 23rd century, were the main reason why Oliver Murray Sr. was no longer even in the solar system).
But in part too it was because the first school class of the very day of Oliver's 18th birthday was history - but, more importantly, Mr Petersen's history class.
Olly had been well taught by Roland.
He knew what he had to do.
He had already decided that if he was going to lose his cherry, now that he could, he wanted Mr Petersen to be the one to take it from him.
And it was probably because he was so completely wrapped up in thoughts of exactly what he wanted Mr Petersen to do - to him, for him, with him, above him, below him, on him and even inside him - that Oliver failed to notice the small dark-haired boy sitting way at the back of the school bus.
A small dark-haired boy who looked equally wrapped up in some important matter.
But, more importantly, a small dark-haired boy who was completely unable to tear his eyes away from the back of Oliver Murray Jr.'s well-formed and exceptionally attractive head.
© Rob Maynard / HMBoys.com 2003 - 2007