Cliff was settling in with his newly replaced limbs.  It wasn’t the first time he’d had this experience, but it was always odd.  The artificial limbs would quickly feel as natural to him as any he’d had since the accident that cost him his original body.

Rita came in, a tentative smile on your face.  “How do they feel?” she asked.

Cliff shrugged.  “Good as anything does,” he said.  “So, you ready to talk about this … proposition?”

“Yeah,” Rita said, looking at the floor.  She gestured to a winged-back chair in the corner.  “Sit down, Cliff.”

He did so.

Rita still wasn’t looking him in the eye.  “Um, Cliff, when I said I had a proposition, I meant just that.”  Now she was looking him in the face.  “I’m propositioning you.”

It took a full second for Cliff to realize what Rita was saying.  Then he was incredulous for a few seconds more.  Finally he said, “What?”

“I’m propositioning you,” Rita said.  “I want to have sex with you.”

“Rita are you nuts?” Cliff said.  “You know I don’t have those parts anymore.  I haven’t since I’ve known you.”

Rita took a deep breath and sat down on a rattan chair.  “Hear me out,” she said, “please.”

Cliff smiled.  “All right,” he said.  “I never could resist those eyes of yours.”

Rita’s smile was sad.  “’Those eyes’ are related to the proposition,” she said.  “Cliff, you know I’m … not real.”

“Yes, you are,” he protested.  “You’re the real Rita Farr, as real as when you had your first body.”

“No, I’m not,” Rita said.  “I look like Rita Farr when I’m awake or in a special suit, but I’m not real.  I have Rita’s mind, her thought patterns, but I don’t have brain patterns because I don’t have a brain.  Cliff, I look more human than you, but you’re more human than me.  You’ve at least got a human brain.  I’ve got nothing human left -- except my feelings, my needs, my dreams.”

Cliff put a metal hand on Rita’s protoplasmic one.  “I know,” he said.

“Cliff, I understand better first-hand some of what you went through when you first wound up in that body,” Rita said.  “I still have all the … urges of a young, or youngish, woman.  I want to have sex with a man I love, and to bear his children, but … I can’t.  I can’t have kids.  “I don’t have egg cells, or fallopian tubes, or a uterus.  I can simulate human sex, but I lack the actual organs, and all I feel from it is physical pressure, a basic sense of touch -- no sexual arousal, no pleasure, no … nothing.

“I mean, all my senses are like that.  These eyes aren’t real.  I ‘see’ with my whole body.  I ‘hear’ with my whole body, too, not just these fake ears.  My sense of smell isn’t centered in my nose, it’s through every bit of my protoplasm.  Touch is just pressure and temperature -- no pain, and no pleasure.  The Chief didn’t want pain, and that meant sacrificing pleasure.  To him, that was no big deal.  To me … it’s becoming everything.”

Cliff’s expression betrayed his concern.  “I didn’t know any of this stuff about your senses,” he said.  “You poor kid!  What about taste?”

Rita hung her head for a moment, then looked up at him.  “What taste?” she said.  “The chief didn’t think that was important, either.”

“But, all those times you seemed to be reveling in how something tasted or felt in recent years. --”

“I used to be an actress, remember?” Rita said.  “I had to keep up the act, keep it light -- especially with Larry around.  He gets so depressed and has such a hard time hanging onto himself these days.”

“Rita,” Cliff said.  After that, his heart ached so much, he couldn’t find the words.

Rita smiled, appearing to be crying.  “Thanks, Cliff,” she said.  She wiped her cheek with her ungloved hand.  “Look at this.  This isn’t even a real tear.  I’m not really crying.  I can simulate tears, or bleeding, when my human mind thinks that’s what I should be doing.  But this tear is just more protoplasm.”

As Cliff watched, the tear reabsorbed into Rita’s fingertip.

“After all, how could I cry?” Rita said.  “No tear ducts.”

After a few seconds of tangled emotions -- pain for his best friend, fury at the Chief for what he’d done to both of them, and confusion over this situation -- Cliff finally composed himself.  “So, if all this is true, how in the world do you propose to have sex with me?”

“I’ve been doing some research, into both my condition and your schematics,” Rita said.  “I can shrink into your system and access the connections to your brain that will stimulate the parts of your brain normally activated by sexual activity,” Rita said.  “If I were human, I couldn’t survive the electrical flow involved in your body, but, as protoplasm, I can survive it -- and the sheer volume of electrical “juice” should actually manage to give me a pleasurable sensation in the process.  It’ll be mutually beneficial.”

“Rita --”

“Cliff, there’s something else you should know,” Rita said.  “I love you.”

“What?”

Rita stood up, flailing an arm for a moment.  “I’ve loved you from soon after we met you -- or the original Rita did,” she said.  “ But I was human then, and never felt it could amount to anything other than frustration.  Then I thought I fell in love with Steve Dayton and married him, and then I died, and … well, you know the rest.”

Rita kneeled down in front of Cliff.  “But I love you, Cliff.  I mean, you are my best friend for a reason.  My heart is so with you, and now there’s a way I can do something about it.  So… I’m asking:  How do you feel about me?”

“Wow, said Cliff.  “You’re taking a chance here, kid.  I mean a confession like this can wreck a friendship.”

Rita looked slightly fearful.  “I know,” she said.  “But I need to ask.”

Cliff smiled.  “Lucky for you I feel the same way then, huh?”

Rita beamed.  “You do?”

“Practically from the first time I laid my artificial eyes on you,” he said.  “And it’s definitely not just the body or the face, although both are amazing.  You’ve got a heart as big as all outdoors.  It’s been pretty badly broken for awhile, but it’s still in there.  And I love you -- all of you.”

“So, um, do you want to try this?” she asked.

“I’m game if you are,” he said.  “When do we start?”

“Since I’ll be, quite literally, in your head, the question is, where would you like to be?” Rita asked.

“Do you need to get ready?’ Cliiff asked.

“I already am,” said Rita.  “Do you?”

“Are you kiddin’?” Cliff said.  “I’ve been waiting for this for years.  Let’s do it.”

Rita smiled as she shrank down, launching herself into a nearly microscopic gap in Cliff’s cranium.