Restarted Pt. 01

1. The Thin Man

The thin man with the close-cropped hair was already on the park's running track when Delia arrived for her Sunday morning exercise. She'd seen him once or twice before, arriving or leaving as she departed or arrived, but this was the first time that they'd been on the track at the same time, and only now did she realize quite how fast he was. She thought of herself as one of the better runners in that strictly casual setting, but he lapped her twice as she ran her customary two kilometers.

Not that she resented this, she decided, as it meant that she twice had a good view of him from behind. He was wearing one of those new microtech running suits -- one of the skin-tight things, doubtless loaded with sophisticated medical monitoring gadgets -- and she decided that his ass, while as free of excess fat as the rest of him, was perfectly proportioned and well worth watching.

Then, her distance done, she flopped onto one of the benches in the middle of the loop of the track, and paused to breathe and take in the sun and the birdsong. The thin man finished soon afterward, and chose to sit on the other end of the same bench. At least he had the grace to look winded, she noticed.

"You're fast," she said sociably along the length of the bench. "You compete somewhere or something?"

He glanced round, seeming surprised to be addressed. "No," he said, "just doctor's orders."

"Oh, hey. You've been ill?"

"You could say that. Now, they're telling me I need to build up my stamina again."

"But you're better now, I hope?"

"Yes -- fine, thanks. Well, the hospital still gets to run a few tests, but those are all saying that there's no problem. I'm back where I should be -- but the exercise helps."

"Glad to hear it. You do look good on it. I'm Delia, by the way."

"Thanks. I'm Edgar." Delia reflected that she didn't know any Edgars. Perhaps it was a traditional name in his family.

They chatted for a while about running times and schedules, and then, during a pause in the conversation, Delia squinted along the length of the bench at her new acquaintance, suddenly remembering, first, how she'd had a thing about skinny athletic men in her teenage years, and second, how many weeks it had been since she'd found the time and opportunity to get laid. She decided that today, she was feeling adventurous and not like delaying anything.

"Hey," she said, "are you doing much this morning?"

Edgar looked startled for a moment, and then thoughtful. "No," he said, "I'm not due for the next checkup until five. Why?"

Delia smiled. "I just wondered if you'd like to come back to my place," she said.

For a moment, Edgar looked startled, even shocked. But then he smiled broadly. "Sure," he said, "why not?"

***

Delia definitely felt curious about the undefined illness which had put Edgar in hospital and which now required continuing tests even though he was clearly well, but asking outright, when he kept skirting round the subject, seemed impolite. In fact, Edgar said little on the short walk back to Delia's apartment, and his few attempts at smalltalk all involved new exercise technologies and running schedules. Delia might have begun to find him boring, except that she noticed that he kept darting glances at her legs or her chest, and she realized that he was gabbling. He was actually nervous! Once she understood that, she began to feel smug; it seemed that her rather blatant offer of sex had produced a dramatic effect on this man.

As soon as they entered her apartment, Delia threw her arms around Edgar and pushed her tongue into his mouth. He responded with more excitement, and she felt an instant, promising bulge at his crotch. It suddenly seemed like things might even be going too fast for her to fully enjoy the experience, so she stepped back a pace, smiled, and drew him by one hand into her bedroom, kicking off her running shoes as she went through the door. Edgar did likewise, and then she guided him to the bed, where they knelt facing each other.

Delia unfastened her shirt and cast it aside, revealing her running bra (not very erotic, damn it, but she didn't plan for it to be a problem for very long), and then helped Edgar remove the top section of his running suit. (He was actually shaking now.) He was wearing a lightweight under-vest, and she was pleased to notice the low rectangular bulge of a medical implant system on his shoulder, the display showing through the usual patch of transparent synthetic skin. On routine habit, she reached up and gave it the standard three quick taps with a fingernail, causing it to display his general public status message. She was expecting the standard No-Transmissible-Diseases text, but instead something unfamiliar scrolled across the display. She frowned, and leaned forward to read it.

Then she gasped, and pulled back. Edgar looked puzzled, but then he realized what she had been doing and seemed almost to fold in on himself, looking crestfallen.

"You're... You're Restarted!" Delia blurted out.

Edgar nodded. "I thought -- I hoped that you might have guessed," he muttered. "I look it."

"How was I supposed to know how Restarted look! It's hardly common!"

"Oh yes." Edgar seemed genuinely taken aback by that thought. "With all the privacy laws these days, you don't see people who are fresh out of the process on the news, do you? Well, this is it."

Delia stared at him. "How old are you?" she demanded.

"Ninety-three." Edgar admitted. "I had my birthday while I was unconscious -- while they were rebuilding my body. But that's just... I'm told that this body is about how I was when I was twenty-five or so. But there's a lot of variation in specific aspects."

"Sod specific aspects! Ninety-bloody-three?" Delia continued to stare. "I'm twenty-six! I'm young enough to be your granddaughter!"

"Actually, so far as I remember, all my grand-kids are older than that."

"So far as you remember? What does that mean?"

"It means that my memory is a bit patchy. Don't you know anything about the Restart treatment?"

"Not much... It all seems a bit weird to me, and I haven't paid much attention."

"Well, it's like this. You can't rebuild the body without rebuilding the brain. Whatever we like to think, they're all tied together. But if you rebuild the brain, you tend to wipe a lot of memories. Memories are much the same as damage, so far as the treatment is concerned. That's one reason why they only take people who can't be helped any other way, who are on the way out -- younger people have too much to lose. Most of us are more or less Alzheimer's cases, truth be told. I was getting pretty hazy before they treated me. I'm still piecing my life back together."

"Jesus, this is too weird." Delia realized that she had her arms folded tight across her breasts. Edgar turned away from her and sat on the edge of the bed, looking away from her face.

"I'm sorry if I shocked you," he said.

"Too weird!" Delia repeated, faintly.

"Sorry," Edgar said again. "Look, if... Could you put your shirt back on?" He picked the garment up off the floor and handed it to Delia without looking at her. She grabbed it, bemused, holding it in front of her breasts but not attempting to put it back on.

"Don't tell me I've shocked you!" she challenged him.

"Not shocked, no. It's just... Look, I said there's a lot of variation, right? That's why I don't have much hair, for example. It's all to do with hormones, and getting the follicles working like they used to is low priority. Even when I do get some more back, it'll still be gray. But the important part is, when they make my body re-grow itself so much, they have to fool it into thinking that I'm, well, still growing. So they re-set the hormones back to adolescence."

"So?"

"So I get a lot of very adolescent feelings. Looking at you -- like that -- well, it's very distracting."

"You're saying that you're feeling like a horny teenager?"

"Frankly, yes."

"Well, that explains some things, I suppose..."

Silence fell between them. Edgar picked up his own discarded garment, but seemed too deflated to work out how to put it on. Delia stared at his back, once again noticing the whipcord muscles. Eventually, she spoke.

"Ninety-three, huh? Christ, you must remember the sixties, right? The Beatles, the Rolling Stones the first time round, the moon landings?"

"I remember bits of all that. But I'm afraid that I was rather boring. I was never a hippie or anything. I saw the Beatles and Apollo Eleven on TV, I remember that much, but most of what I remember from that time is how I got on in the import-export business. Memory is funny like that, you know?"

"Oh." Delia paused, trying to push her thoughts and understanding into shape. "So help me get this clear. You have the body of a twenty-five-year-old athlete, and the hormones of a randy sixteen-year-old. Plus, distinguished silver hair, and, I should say, rather courteous old-fashioned manners, which mean that you aren't actually acting like a randy teenager."

"Basically, yes. You've got it. I can see that you would find all that weird."

"Weird, yes. But..." Delia took a deep breath, "not shocking, no. I mean, I brought you back here for a reason, and the more I look at you, the more I remember that reason. Now, tell me -- have you had sex since they Restarted you?"

"No -- no, I haven't." Edgar looked round, smiling sheepishly. "And not for ten or fifteen years before, I think."

"But before that?"

"Oh, enough, yes."

"So you have a lifetime of experience, and yet this would be pretty much your first time?"

"I'm afraid so." Edgar leaned forward, elbows on his knees, with an air of defeat, not picking up any hints of Delia's changed mood. Delia put her shirt aside and leaned against his back.

"Sounds rather interesting to me" she whispered in his ear, and began to pull his under-vest up and off.

Edgar twisted round and grabbed her, and she remembered what horny sixteen-year-old boys could be like. He was fumbling ineffectively at her running bra, and she suddenly realized that his knowledge of female underwear had to be decades out of date; she reached round to release it and threw it aside, and his face plunged into her breasts. His lips and tongue were on her nipples, leaving trails of cool saliva while his breath was hot. After a moment, Delia lifted his head away -- needing to push somewhat to do so -- and smiled at him. Then, she reached down and wriggled out of her running shorts and her panties together.

Edgar reacted predictably but pleasingly to that, pushing his own trousers down his legs to expose a rampant erection, its tip glistening moistly. Delia wondered absently how much the doctors had reconstructed that, whether she was seeing exactly what other women had seen seventy years ago, but then, with his trousers still around his ankles, Edgar was on top of her. She was just barely able to reach down, parting her cunt lips and guiding him in, before he pushed furiously. She gasped, and he began pounding like, well, a teenage boy who's suddenly got lucky; she felt his balls against her ass, and could have sworn that she felt them shift and tighten the moment before he exploded into a volcanic orgasm, accompanied by groans of pleasure.

Almost at once afterward, he deflated and rolled off her. She grabbed for a box of tissues on the bedside table, realizing that her cunt was overflowing with his outpourings.

"God," he said, and she realized that he was almost crying, "god, I'm sorry. That was terrible."

Delia paused for a moment to recover her breath before replying. Then, "No," she said, "no, from what you said, it was utterly predictable. From what I remember about teenage boys, you actually lasted rather well."

Edgar rolled over to look at her. "Thanks," he said, "but still, I was hardly fair to you."

"Don't worry," Delia insisted. "After all, I remember something else about teenage boys."

"What's that?"

"You'll see, I'm sure," Delia replied, and then rose from the bed to fetch glasses of water for them both. As she crossed the room, still naked, she took care to roll her hips a little. By the time she was lying next to Edgar again, he was staring in startled admiration at his own cock, which was already growing tumescent again.

"There, you see," said Delia, absently caressing his smooth chest, "totally predictable."

Edgar put his water glass down hard and reached for her. Again, he buried his face in her breasts, but this time, he set to work more methodically, kissing and tonguing. Delia felt her nipples swell in response, and smiled, then carefully lifted his face away and began kissing it in return. From there, she worked her way down his throat and chest, pausing to work on his nipples -- men usually responded well to that, in her experience -- before continuing down his belly toward his resurgent cock as he slumped back on the bed. Teasingly, she worked her way round that, kissing his hips and the inside of his thighs before pausing and then gently brushing his balls with her lips.

Only as Edgar groaned and clawed at the sheets with frustration did she give him what he wanted, running her lips and the tip of her tongue along the length of his cock, catching the musky smell of his semen and her cunt juices from minutes before. She kissed the glistening tip before looking up to throw him a theatrical wink. Then, she worked her mouth up his torso again, pausing to brush his erection with her breasts, until she was face to face with him.

"Now," she said, pushing him down with both hands on his chest as she reared up above him, "where were we?"

She grabbed his once-again-rigid cock to guide it, moved her cunt lips over it, and sat down hard. Edgar howled in pleasure, his eyes screwed up, and his hips bucked beneath her.

But this was the second time, and he evidently wanted to pleasure her. He paused, and began to move carefully, steadily, as he traced his hands up her flanks to caress her breasts. No, she had to be honest with herself -- he was groping her breasts. His resurgent adolescent urges were still working fine. But hell, she decided that she liked this sometimes; it was nice to know that her chest could induce grabby lust in a good-looking man. She raised her own arms, locking her hands together behind her head to pull her chest up for maximum effect, and then let go, pounding furiously atop Edgar as he rammed himself into her again and again. She let out several yelps -- Yes! Yes! Yes! - and Edgar responded with guttural grunts, lost deep in the fucking.

But he was trying hard to control himself, so he didn't spend himself too soon. Eventually, Delia leaned forward over him, pushing down hard with her cunt, until she came with a last Yes!

Then she looked down at him with a smile, to see him staring back at her with an intensity that verged on the frightening. Abruptly, he threw her over onto her back, rolling over on top of her and thrusting furiously for a few seconds, until she felt his cock pulse within her, and she felt the warm gush of his orgasm.

Delia slumped back on the bed as Edgar rolled away. She realized that her pussy was throbbing, and she was breathing deeply as she looked at Edgar. "Not bad," she said, "I guess all that experience really does count."

"Actually," Edgar said, "you're only the third woman I've ever slept with."

Delia frowned, then laughed. "Oh, you are so out of date. 'Slept with' indeed. I don't notice either of us sleeping."

"So people don't say that any more?"

"Sometimes -- but it means that they're, well, sleeping together. It implies some kind of long-term commitment."

"Sorry, I didn't mean to presume. So what should I say?"

"Fucked will do nicely, you poor old-fashioned boy. Very nicely, actually." She giggled at Edgar's look of worry at the bluntness. "Anyway, what do you mean, only the third? I didn't think that you were that old."

"And you've got the usual funny idea about the sixties, I'm guessing." Edgar propped himself up on an elbow. "The sexual revolution and all that. Well, believe me, the sexual revolution took years to reach my part of the world. Doctors wouldn't give the pill to unmarried women. It was all very un-revolutionary there, believe me."

"Wow."

Edgar took a deep breath and galloped on. "So I had one brief, rather screwed-up affair with a married woman who wanted young meat, and then I got married myself. And that was that."

"You remember all that, I notice."

"Some things stay with you."

Delia smiled at him across the pillow. "Well, third time lucky, I hope."

Edgar smiled wanly, and Delia wondered what he was thinking. Perhaps there were things about the Restarted that she still had to learn.

[Part 2 will follow shortly!]