Time-travel with me to the sights and sounds of the Pemberley Ball during the Regency period. Along with our beloved Mr. Darcy, you may encounter classic and not-so-classic Pride and Prejudice characters. However, you will be in for a smashing time!
Seated on the lawn of Oxford University, Jane tried one last time to change her sister’s mind. “You’re sure you don’t want to come?”
“Your history professor trashed us. Why would I want to go and listen to his antiquated lecture? I have better thing to do here,” Elizabeth said firmly as she worked to fix the lips of the robofly.
“But Mr. Darcy is so handsome! Six foot three, broad shoulders, darkest eyes, long eyelashes, and all that lush, dark, wavy hair... If Charles wasn’t my soul mate, and Darcy wasn’t his best friend, I would be acting like all of the other girls in class, wearing their see-through tops, push-up bras and mini-skirts.” Jane sighed.
“And he was not belittling scientists. He simply said that they should learn about the past in order to create a better future. In fact, I think he has the hots for you.”
“Ha ha. Are you trying to be funny? And I don’t think that learning about how we had war after war will help us to prevent another war. Damn! Caroline’s mouth is deformed.” Elizabeth threw down the electric drill in frustration.
“Oh Lizzy, you shouldn’t call your robofly Caroline! What if she heard you?”
“So what if she did? Your soul mate’s sister is an annoying specimen. She fawns over rich men like a pesky fly. See? I even made the eyes with small circles in different shades of orange, exactly the way that Caroline looks when she wears her designer sunglasses. I think I’ll win the Inventor Competition and the ₤50,000. It will help Mary to pay her grad school fee.”
“All right then, I’ll leave you with your invention. I’m meeting Charles first, before I go to the lecture. You can still join me, if you change your mind. It starts in about an hour’s time. See you!” Jane gave Elizabeth a kiss on the cheek and left.
Elizabeth was happy to see her sister go. She was determined to make Caroline the Robofly’s lips perfect, and Jane had been distracting her with her talk of old-fashioned Mr. Darcy.
The robofly was about the size of the palm of her hand, and Elizabeth had packed a lot of functionality into her small invention. Caroline could fly, grab things with her six legs, and hum as she zipped through the air. But the hairy mouth just didn’t seem right.
Half an hour later, Caroline the Robofly was ready for her next test flight. Elizabeth turned the remote control to ‘On’ and launched the fly.
“Yes!” Elizabeth exclaimed, and put up one hand in triumph. Caroline’s wings were quite steady, and the humming sound was perfect. After a few minutes of circling, however, Caroline the Robofly suddenly lost altitude and crash-landed on a man passing by.
“Oh, sorry!” Elizabeth rushed to the man’s side…and her eyes widened as she saw that Caroline’s crooked lips had latched onto the fly of the man’s trousers. “Oh, I am sorry!” she reiterated, and raised her eyes to meet those of the stranger.
But he was no stranger. He was Mr. Darcy, the history professor, and he was scowling at her.
“What is…that?” he demanded, and pointed at the palm-sized fly on his fly.
“That’s Caroline,” Elizabeth blurted.
“Caroline…as in Charles’s sister?” His countenance darkened.
“No, it’s just my invention. A robotic fly that I named Caroline. Her mouth is deformed. I mean…it has a design problem.”
Caroline B40 smiled smugly. Today would be her day, and it would end with her getting Sexobot Darcy into her bed.
Well, not exactly her own bed at Netherfield Base, but in the sumptuous bed here in Hunsford Deck.
She had forked out a fortune for the whole thing: the pills, the dinner and the suite. In the Austen galaxy, Collins W007 was the leading inventor of the male-ensnaring pill.
Collins’s hypothesis was simple. It was a scientific fact that Martians were attracted to the opposite sex by their sense of smell. Therefore, if you wanted a male Martian to desire you, you needed to find out what scent excited him, then match it.
And she had. With the help of her hapless brother, Charles B44, she had managed to plant a miniscule temperature-tracking device on Darcy’s neck. When Collins studied the data she had collected last November, he observed that Darcy’s body temperature had shot up an average of 1.28 degrees every time he was near that trashy Eliza X88 from Meryton Planet.
Since the departure of the entire Martian party from that backwater planet, his body temperature had consistently registered below normal, a chill.
The next step had been as obvious as it was distasteful. She had paid a galaxy robber to steal some panties from Eliza, and asked Collins to examine the scent.
After five long months of waiting, Collins finally produced a unique set of pills which he called DPP – Darcy Possession Pills.
When Caroline took the pink one, it would to make her smell like Eliza. When she slipped the blue one into Darcy’s drink, it would disturb his normal chemical balance. It would make him behave less like a Martian – calm and reserved – and more like an Earthling, passionate and expressive. And as Darcy was a Sexobot, once his chemical balance was disturbed, he would be like an addict, requiring several matings each day just to maintain his composure.
Laughing out loud, Caroline imagined having that power over him. She would withhold sex, in exchange for all the expensive gifts in the world, for Darcy was one of the richest men in the galaxy.
Once upon a time, vampires roamed the streets and sucked the blood out of men and women. The two greatest clans of vampires came from Derbyshire and Kent.
Their thirst for blood turned into an unofficial contest. As a result, the human race was nearly wiped out by their rivalry until, one day, a temporary truce was reached. After that, the human population began to increase again, through mixed marriages with vampires and through cloning.
The bloodthirsty creatures were also castrated and cloned to become suckones. They no longer drank blood; instead, they nursed for pleasure, in the Annual Sucking Competition, when the electronic halo which suppressed their urges was released. Or, if they were lucky and found a partner upon whom they could feed their urges, they could wear the halo less frequently, thereby increasing their life expectancy.
Suckones sponsored less wealthy planets to provide partners for their competitors. Men and women participated in the week-long festival, and team members were tagged with bio-devices to monitor their pleasure levels. The couple who scored top marks would win and split the prize money.
“Commander Matlock, Spaceship Derbyshire will arrive on schedule at Planet Hertfordshire at 1800 hours,” Colonel Richard Fitzwilliam reported.
“Good! And the position of SK?” Commander Andrew Matlock inquired.
“Spaceship Kent is at 69x 88y 33z, Sir! About 0.05 light years away.”
“Wonderful! We’ll arrive ahead of SK and have the highly advantageous opportunity of choosing first.”
“Should I send the protocol signal to Hertfordshire now, Sir?”
“Yes.”
However, after meeting teams from Goulding House, Purvis Lodge and Lucas Lodge, Matlock shook his head. He was in despair of finding the right partners for his team.
“The next one of decent size is Longbourn, Sir!” Richard announced, reading the data on his s-pad.
“Put the Commander of Longbourn on.”
After a few seconds, a middle-aged woman with handsome features appeared on the s-screen.
“You’re the Commander, madam?” Matlock was a bit unsure. She wore a rather silly uniform in red and pink, not at all like a commander with entrants for a serious competition.
“Indeed, Sir! I am Mrs. Bennet. My husband passed away, last year, and this will be the first time that Longbourn is participating in the Annual Sucking Competition. With generous funding from the suckones, I have been training my girls rigorously.”
Matlock’s eyes brightened. He had not anticipated finding such a gem in a backwater like Planet Hertfordshire. First-time team partners always incited his suckone clan to perform. “I have three competitors, this time. Colonel Fitzwilliam, my son, has fifteen years of experience. He specialises in toe indulgence. William Darcy, my nephew, is a first-time participant, and prefers to keep his specialty confidential. Charles Bingley has three years experience, and he specialises in lip worship.”
