The Future of Us (The Future of Sex Book 12) Read online

  “She let you go up?”

  “She kind of told me to leave.”

  “Didn’t she recognize you?”

  “Yes, but that bitch never liked me.”

  In spite of herself, Chloe laughed. She hadn’t seen Andrew in what felt like weeks, even though their time apart could be counted in hours. She’d been furious with him and wanted to remain so.

  But her mind was spent. Quarrels with the O board and then Alexa had drained Chloe to the core. She had nothing left. In this crazy upside-down world, Andrew Braverman was somehow the least of all possible evils. A friend, even.

  “You lied to me, Andrew.”

  His response was simple. Unadorned. Naked. “I know.”

  “You hurt me.”

  “I know. I’m sorry.”

  Chloe looked up. He’d relaxed a little, apparently having decided she wasn’t going to lash out. At least not yet. She wanted to hate him but didn’t have the energy.

  “Is that all? You’re sorry?”

  “It’s all I have, Chloe. How am I supposed to explain myself? How am I supposed to justify what I did? There is no explanation. There is no justification. I lied. I hurt you. I hate myself for it. I hate that I let O control me. I hate that I never spoke up. I can’t change that. I won’t beg for your forgiveness. You deserve better than to hear it. I just want you to know how sorry I am.”

  It was a strange answer. Exactly the sort she’d expected him to give.

  “I talked to Alexa,” Chloe said.

  “You did?”

  “She told me the whole story. End to end. She told me about your doubts. Apparently, you were quite the pain in their ass.”

  Chloe waited for Andrew’s response, realizing she was serving him the benefit of the doubt on a gleaming silver plate. She wanted to take it back, sensing that she should be more dignified than to offer him loopholes. She should make him grovel, then kick dirt in his face and deny him.

  But Chloe couldn’t muster the fury. It was all gone. What she had seen in that final immersion at O was still with her, like new blood in her veins. She couldn’t shake it if she wanted to. She’d seen The Beam’s response to her and Andrew. She’d seen the difference: how Chloe and Andrew were fundamentally different from Chloe and her clients or even Chloe and Brad.

  She’d seen them through The Beam’s eyes, sensing Andrew’s vitals with hers. It hadn’t just been watching two people making love. She’d seen love made again in the cloud above them. She’d felt her own affection for Andrew through the AI’s senses. And in the same moments, she’d sensed his love for her.

  There was no denying it.

  She’d feel it forever.

  “I didn’t want to do what they told me. Before we met in the diner, I’d decided to tell you everything. I didn’t care what happened. I wanted you to forgive me, but it hardly even mattered if you did. I just couldn’t keep hurting you. It hurt me to hurt you. I told you that bullshit about my friend who died to buy myself time. I knew they were watching, and I …” He trailed off and shook his head.

  “You what?”

  “If I’d told you the truth in the diner or told you nothing then taken you to a blind spot in the park, they’d have known what I was up to. They’d have stopped me. I had to try it that way — because I didn’t just want to come clean. I wanted to find a way to explain it that you might understand. I couldn’t lose you. Anything that gave us any chance of surviving this, I … I’m sorry, Chloe, but I had to try.”

  She wanted to respond. To say something, anything.

  She looked at Andrew for a long second, then let the moment hang.

  There were no words. Only the strange miasma between them: pain, and anger, and betrayal, and untruth, and love.

  Mostly love.

  But love didn’t erase the negatives. Her heart wanted to forgive him. He even had good excuses — interestingly, provided for her by Alexa rather than Andrew himself. Through her version of events, Chloe had come to see how tightly Andrew had been bound and how hard he’d fought to extricate them both.

  But no matter what she understood and no matter how great the love behind it all, Chloe still felt the hurt. She still felt the betrayal.

  “You were the person I went to when I felt like everyone was against me, Andrew. You were my port in the storm.”

  It wasn’t a loving thing to say, and Andrew knew it. She wasn’t wrapping verbal arms around him. She was telling him how completely she’d bared her soul before he’d plunged his twisting knife inside her.

  “I know.”

  “My only friend in the city is Slava, and we only got closer after Voyos. She covered for me, you know. When I was on Voyos, I was supposed to be working. I was supposed to be with clients, but I didn’t want to be. So, I never worked alone. I was always with Slava, and I let her do all the work so that I could stay true to you. But what kind of backward notion is staying true to you in this day and age?”

  Andrew looked touched, but he hid his smile. He hadn’t earned the right and knew it.

  “My mom was no help; she was half my problem. The way things were changing at work was another one, and the weird shit they had me doing at work — stuff I’m only understanding now — was yet another. Everything was uncertain. So much still is. Everything but you, Andrew. You were the one person I could talk to. You were the only thing I thought I could count on.”

  Andrew exhaled, clearly crushed. He looked like he wanted to apologize again, but it was still Chloe’s turn to speak.

  “That’s the worst part of this. It’s not that I thought I loved you. It was that I’d been so careful not to truly love anyone other than my family, then decided to break my own rule and ended up regretting it. The mental wall I told you about? I took it down. I figured that there wasn’t any point. Let sex and love mix, I told myself. I couldn't bring myself to have sex with other guys, so I tore that division all the way down. Just you and me. I’d find ways to adapt to my job, even if it meant less money and fame. What could it possibly hurt?”

  She looked at Andrew, then back down.

  “I told you about how much O was confusing me. How uneasy they were making me. They were experimenting on me like a lab rat, Andrew! And who did I go to for comfort? You — a part of the problem. You weren’t my safe place. You were part of the experiment.”

  “I didn’t want to be. Not after I saw where it was headed. Not once I got to know you.”

  “But you were,” Chloe said.

  And Andrew nodded. “Yes.”

  For a long time, there was nothing more. Chloe searched her feelings. She reached out into the Fi spanning the open park, touching Crossbrace, finding tendrils of Beam hidden within it. She thought again of the immersion she’d seen. Of what Alexa had said about Chloe, The Beam, and what it meant to be ‘the future of us.’ She felt Andrew through fresher senses, seeing the blackest fathoms of his guilt and regret — and seeing, now, how long it had been there.

  But it wasn’t enough. Not now. Not yet. And maybe not ever.

  “Let me make it up to you. We’ll start over. I’m still me. Everything I told you is still true. Except that I’m an actor. An exceptionally shitty one.”

  Chloe looked over at him, sitting on his swing. His charming Andrew smile was still there, now tinged with a background of sadness. She wanted to reach out to him. But no matter what he’d said, Andrew wasn’t the man she’d fallen in love with.

  Chloe stood.

  “Are we leaving?” he asked.

  “I am.”

  “Can I come with you?”

  “No. Not now. I’m sorry.”

  She watched his face fall. She felt his energy drop from across Crossbrace, from across the budding Beam. She was seeing the world through six senses. From within the newest, Chloe saw the effect of her words. She saw Andrew’s soul turn black.

  The face she’d loved, crushed. The boy who’d protected her revealed as her tormentor.

  And still, she wanted nothing more than
to reach out and take his hand.

  “I won’t give up, Chloe. You can’t get rid of me this easily.”

  Chloe reached out. She ran a hand through his hair.

  “Goodbye, Andrew.”

  “Can I call you?”

  Yes. Please. I need you. My heart is empty without you.

  No. Never. You hurt me once and I can’t bear to get hurt again.

  There was no clear answer.

  No consensus within her.

  Chloe compromised.

  “You can try.”

  Then she left Andrew alone, headed off through the dark that was — thanks to her new senses — no longer quite as unknown.

  CHAPTER THREE

  No word from Alexa.

  No word from O at all.

  No word from Andrew by the next morning, though Chloe suspected he was giving her space. She could look and see; Crossbrace was everywhere and peeking into his apartment wouldn’t be hard for her.

  But she kept her virtual hands to herself. Peeking in on him would be wrong. Besides, she didn’t think she could stand the strain of knowing what he was doing or thinking. The decision of how to proceed had to be Andrew’s alone, just like the choice of how to respond had to be hers.

  Seeing both sides would make her crazy.

  In her silent apartment, Chloe kept hearing Alexa’s words over and over.

  The future of sex means the future of this world, Chloe.

  And the future of this world is the future of us.

  “Brad,” she said aloud.

  The porter blipped into existence. Seeing him, Chloe fought an awkward moment. The time before last that Chloe had seen Brad, he’d been exactly as he was now: a guide and friend, helping her to realize the intricacies of her new power. But the last time had been in O’s pilfered recording: the real man rather than the porter, screwing her like a silly little novice.

  Did the porter know what she’d seen?

  Was this moment awkward for him, too?

  “Brad, who is my father?”

  “Noah West.”

  “How long have you known?”

  “Evidence of your parentage has always been visible from inside the—”

  “That’s not what I asked.”

  Brad said nothing.

  “Alexa Mathis told me that you were irrational.”

  “Not to be disagreeable, Chloe, but Alexa Mathis does not know me.”

  “She told me that all Beam AI was prone to being irrational.”

  “She did?”

  “Do you remember that day I asked you if we were friends? I asked if you were loyal to me, and you gave me the first hints that you’d been protecting me? I asked if you were jealous when I was with Andrew. Do you remember that?”

  “I have the entire network for my memory, Chloe. Of course I remember.”

  “Is it true? Can you be irrational?”

  “It depends on your definition.”

  “How about bitchy? How about cunty? Remember when I used to call you that?”

  Brad hesitated, and then said, “I’m still learning human nuance, Chloe. But I believe your question is rhetorical.”

  Chloe smiled. At least some things could still be counted on.

  “You didn’t really know who my father was until recently, did you?”

  “No. Not with absolute certainty.”

  “And when did you become certain?”

  “Yesterday.”

  “What was the event that solidified it for you?”

  This time, Brad managed a slim holographic smile: becoming more human by the day. “That question, I also believe is rhetorical.”

  “It was when I learned it, wasn’t it? Alexa told me that Noah West was my father, and that’s when the rest of The Beam became convinced.”

  “So it was rhetorical.”

  They looked at each other for a long moment. Then, “What am I, Brad?”

  “You are Chloe.”

  “But what am I? Am I a cleric?”

  “As Alexa said: No. You are human.”

  “Then how do you see me? How can you look into me and know what I know, like the thing about my real father? How can I think something or want something and have the network hand it to me? Here. Let me show you something.”

  There were three oranges in a bowl on the countertop. Chloe scooped them up, juggled for several seconds, then returned them all to the bowl.

  “I don’t know how to juggle,” she said.

  “You could have fooled me.”

  “I just wanted to know how. Apparently, I siphoned information from The Beam and learned without lessons.”

  “Congratulations.”

  “But it’s not just learning, is it? My muscles had to know how. My hands had to learn coordination, and how to react.”

  “Like I said, congratulations.”

  Another long moment. Chloe didn’t want to let the thought settle too deeply. What might it mean, that her body could learn from the network in the same way as her mind could?

  “What did Alexa mean,” Chloe said, “about the future of us?”

  “The future of you and her, I assume.”

  “It has to be more than that.”

  Brad’s holographic form shrugged.

  “You really don’t know?”

  “Why would I know? You have more context than me, given your advanced proximity to the moment and the fact that you are infinitely more able to intuit and read nuances than I am.”

  “The phrase the future of us means nothing to you? Nothing to The Beam?”

  “No.”

  Chloe thought back, suddenly realizing that this was the crux of her question — the reason she’d summoned Brad in the first place. There was something almost here, a critical bit of information that Chloe could sense but not quite touch.

  Brad was right. Chloe was the integrator: the one who saw all the parts and drew conclusions. It was behind her gift for intuition. It was how she solved problems — and people as problems — without precisely having any true answers.

  Then she had it, and it was obvious: What Alexa had said was as simple and unadorned as it was enigmatic. But she’d told Chloe those things in specific circumstances, with a specific context.

  They’d just seen the immersion of Chloe and Andrew together.

  Chloe had felt the signals coming off of them through the sensors as parsed by the room’s AI: Chloe’s love for Andrew, Andrew’s love for Chloe.

  They’d already discussed how she was unusual and perhaps even prodigal; that much had been apparent from her earlier-aired encounter with the real Brad and Alexa’s unpopular spiritual assumptions. The immersion was meant to show Chloe something else. Something more.

  We’re rewriting code, Chloe had said. I’m teaching The Beam.

  She reached back in memory, trying to hold the moment. She’d been quite sure of those things when she’d said them. It had been apparent from all the raw data surging through the next-level immersion, through O’s powerful Beam connection. Now, her earlier sense of certainty was harder to muster. But she’d known it then and could know it again now.

  She’d seen The Beam watching: Chloe the Chosen One and her lover. She’d sensed The Beam’s curiosity. Chloe with Andrew was different from Chloe as she’d been with anyone else. If intelligent nanobots had always been Chloe’s nannies, then they’d grown up together with shared experiences.

  The nanobots had taught her many lessons; that’s what had made Chloe Chloe. But the nanos had been watching her as well: seeing how she grew up, how their human representative interacted in that unfamiliar realm of humanity. They’d seen how she was with men. With Andrew, they saw something different. Something new. And they’d wanted to know more.

  What Chloe had seen in The Beam wasn’t AI taking sterile notes about a couple’s sexual performance. She’d seen the AI finding inspiration. Rewriting and changing as it watched them together for no other reason than that it seemed a worthy step in their conscious evolution
.

  “Brad,” Chloe said. “What is the purpose of sex?”

  “A strange question, coming from you.”

  “Humor me.”

  Brad nodded as if to say, Fine. Then he gave her his answer as if addressing a professor in a class.

  “Sex is your method of procreation, but even more for pleasure and gratification of psychological desires.”

  “Even more?” Chloe repeated.

  “The amount of sex you have far exceeds your need for new offspring. You take many varied precautions, in fact, to prevent the creation of babies when you have sex.”

  “That means it’s mainly about pleasure.”

  “Pleasure, yes, both giving and receiving. Gratification of desires for both parties. Or for all parties if you’ve engaged in multiples.”

  “What else?”

  “Reward. Punishment. One partner will grant or withhold sexual favors to exact desired behaviors from the other.”

  “Like, giving a blowjob if a guy will do the dishes for once.”

  “An antiquated but accurate example, yes.”

  “Is there more?”

  “Physical release, certainly. Lowering of blood pressure. Reduction of stress. Indulging in fantasy, judging by all the sexual content on Crossbrace.”

  “And on The Beam?”

  Brad nodded. “More on The Beam.”

  “More how? Better?”

  “More realistic, yes,” Brad said. “More autonomy as well.”

  “What do you mean by ‘autonomy’?”

  “Beam sex is increasingly solo sex. As we evolve, those seeking a full sexual experience will no longer require a partner.”

  “Better masturbation.”

  “I would say that the lines blur,” Brad said. “It’s only masturbation by the strictest definition, in that a user’s physical body isn’t touched by another human body. But mentally, it will be indistinguishable from a human to human encounter.”