The Girlfriend Experience Page 3

  “It’s too much, Houston.”

  “Too much?” He said it like Alexa had spoken a foreign language.

  Parker turned to Houston, nodding, eyeing Alexa in a way that soothed her. She had one ally in this admittedly outlandish argument, at least — even if that ally was the most obnoxious and self-important man in the room.

  “This is actually something I’ve been thinking about,” Parker said. “O does hold some responsibility here. We gave people free rein to let their pants down and demand the pleasure they wanted, and then we sold them the means to achieve it. But there’s no off switch. We’ll never see a satisfied humanity. Houston’s barely kidding about the stimulators. I’ve seen bios that suggest the possibility of fifty or more distinct peaks in a minute using nano-enhancers. Not for the occasional user, but on average. But it’s not like the girls collapse in a heap when it’s over, or the guys get disturbed when sperm stops coming out because they’ve unloaded all they have. Instead, they come back wanting more. ‘I came a dozen times … how about another two dozen?’ It’s disturbing.”

  Olivia shrugged. “So what? That’s good. More demand means more sales.”

  “There’s no ceiling, Olivia. That doesn’t bother you?”

  She shook her head. “Not even a little.”

  Parker sighed. He looked at Alexa, seemingly trying to decide if what he was saying was what she had in mind or not. “Look,” he said, “I don’t want to be the moral police here, but the truth is we’ve trained a culture of people to turn off their sense of enough. We’ve done it on a social level with Alexa’s books and lobbies, and on a physical level with neural repression sprays. Sure, we can short-circuit the refractory period in men and accelerate plateaus in multi-orgasmic women … but should we?”

  Olivia looked at Houston. “Who would’ve thought we had such a moralistic job? This company is saving the world, I’ll tell you.”

  “There was an experiment once, Olivia. They stuck probes in rat brains, then gave the rats a lever so they could stimulate their reward center. Like giving themselves an instant orgasm. Do you know what happened?”

  “The cage cleaners got mad about all the rat jizz?”

  “The rats stopped eating. They kept pressing levers instead. Fucked themselves dead, basically.”

  “You’re being dramatic, Parker,” said Houston. “As usual.”

  “The point is,” said Alexa, “we act like we as a company can keep pushing and pushing and we’ll always continue to circle the center — the center being the way sex is supposed to work. Biologically speaking, one of sex’s jobs is to bond couples. Couples are needed — at least in some species, and at least for a while — to raise healthy offspring. But even without the bonding, sex has always driven human history.” She chuckled. “It’s funny. I had these conversations with Anthony Ross.”

  Olivia groaned. “Not Ross again.” She’d never believed in self-help, and Anthony’s brand of seminars, programs, and coaching had always struck her as particularly obnoxious — even and especially in the early days of her dealings with Alexa.

  “One of his big things was sexual empowerment. He’d get up on stage at his live events and talk about how sex holds us all in bondage.”

  “Only if your partner is adventurous,” said Houston, chuckling.

  Alexa ignored him. “Before our divergence of opinion, Anthony and I were on the same page about much of this. He was this huge icon. Handsome and charismatic as hell. He had his pick of groupies, but he developed a system to screen dates for just one night. He treated them all with respect. The idea was to free everyone from guilt and inhibitions. Only by acknowledging what a person truly desired could she ever truly be free.”

  “Except that, if I remember right,” Parker said, “Ross stopped playing the field and ran off with one woman. So much for walking the talk.”

  “I’d say he’s walking it fine,” Alexa said.

  “If he’s still alive,” said Charisma.

  “I’ve heard he’s living off-grid somewhere, still with the same woman. Still looks forty.”

  Benson laughed. “That’s impossible, off the grid.”

  “Ross isn’t the point,” Alexa said. “The point is, sex is central to us as a people, same as Anthony always said and I always believed. Difference was, Ross wanted to free the world, and I wanted to own it.”

  “I see,” Olivia said. “But now that you own the world, you’re having a change of heart.”

  “I’m just suggesting we not forget our roots,” Alexa said, annoyed. “Sex is what keeps new babies born — because people get horny and fuck, or they get sad and fuck, or something great happens, and to celebrate, they fuck. But if we keep giving people a lever in their cages—”

  “I think those levers were developed on this board’s authority,” said Houston, sounding both defensive and annoyed.

  “Calm down, Houston. I’m talking about all of us, not just you.”

  Houston bristled but said nothing.

  “My point is, we’re no longer circling the center. O isn’t helping people to fuck each other better, and that means we’re no longer enhancing what nature gave humans from the start. Now we’re creating something new. Something less on-point. People once called videos and toys ‘sex aids.’ Now, they’re just sex. Who has time these days to work on a relationship and wait for real-person, one-on-one sex? You can get a bullet in any drug store, take it home, strap it on or shove it in, turn on a realistic holo that puts you right in the action, and get off as much as you want. There’s no other person required. No need for all that emotional bullshit. No need to actually obey nature’s biological imperative if you want to get off hard. These days it’s a bit weird to seek out a relationship and have sex. It’s a wonder humans still have children — although with nanos that let me look like this” — she gestured down at her body, which looked forties at most — “who needs new children crowding the planet?”

  “So what?” said Olivia.

  Alexa pointed to the paused video. “Ladies and gentlemen,” she said, “when’s the last time you did that?”

  “I did it yesterday,” said Olivia.

  “This morning,” said Parker.

  Charisma and Benson looked at each other. Benson reached for Charisma’s crotch, and Charisma swatted it playfully away.

  Benson said, “I guess I’ll have to wait until this meeting is over.”

  “With whom, Olivia?”

  “Charles.”

  “And you, Parker?”

  “Sandy. No, wait.” He reached for his mobile. “Hang on; I can look it up.”

  “Our staff,” said Alexa. “You fucked our staff.”

  “Not on the clock,” said Parker. “She wanted it. I wanted it. There we went.”

  Alexa looked toward Charisma. “How does Benson do? Does he kiss you? Lick your neck?”

  “We usually use a sensor chair, then fuck for a while.”

  Alexa shook her head. “You know, when I first started writing, so much work went into the tease — the setup, say. Did you know romance and erotica used to be separate categories? They overlapped, sure, and people had a lot of sex in romance, but there was also romance in the romance. Readers wanted to hear how the people got to the part where they stripped down and got nasty. Now there’s none of that. Only artists write romance, because romance doesn’t sell. Just like how even married couples” — she held her palm out toward Charisma and Benson — “just fuck and get it over with. Why bother with more, right? Gotta press that lever. Get in, get off, get out. Shit, even the kids do it these days. Why not? It’s safe. Fabrilactyc lets you get that skin-on-skin feel without actual contact. Girls aren’t getting knocked up, and no one’s getting diseases. They don’t even have to settle for handjobs under a blanket. Why not just fuck and get it over with? Hell, parents have no reason to object.”

  “Where is this coming from, Alexa?” said Benson.

  “I’ve been thinking a lot about things since we found Chloe. She
seems like our next step, right? But she has no enhancements, nor does she want any. She can work all of our best toys, but uses them as flavoring, never the main course. She uses them only when instructed, required by clients, or as a bonus for the hell of it. Her default is two people.”

  “Good luck selling that,” said Charisma.

  “This was your idea, Charisma. And yours, Benson.” Alexa extended a hand toward the video. “Well, there you go; there it is: pretty, usable footage with Chloe doing her thing. We tried with an actor and got shit. We sent in a guy to pretend to love her and now we have this. No one is objecting based on the quality. Your objections are based on the action not being extreme enough.”

  “It’s not what people want to buy, Alexa,” said Olivia.

  “We will tell them what they want to buy!” Alexa blurted.

  Parker took a step closer to Alexa, his eyes shocked.

  Alexa ran a hand over her long, dark-blond hair. “Look,” she said, composing herself, “you want to push the envelope? You want to tap into need and desire? That’s it, right here in front of us. We should stop thinking about more technology and more extremes, about better ways to short-circuit biological limits on physical pleasure. Instead, ask yourself what’s missing in our world today. What is no one else offering? What is nobody else able to offer?”

  “I still don’t follow,” said Houston.

  “I’m starting to think,” Alexa said, “that the next step is what looks like a step backward. We have all the customization in the world, all the depth of physical experience, all the technology. But what we’ve lost — and by we, I mean our entire culture — is the intimate dance between two people who don’t have any kind of help and don’t need it because they’re just two people. It’s what I learned when first writing erotica: the buildup matters far more than how many times you come. Or, sometimes, even if you come.” Again Alexa nodded toward the still of Chloe and Andrew. “Parker, how long did it take them, from the cafe to what’s on the video here?”

  Parker looked at the video index, then picked up a few loose papers. “Eight weeks. This was their ninth date.”

  “Eight weeks?” Houston reached for Parker’s papers. “That can’t be right.”

  Alexa was nodding.

  Olivia, watching her, seemed annoyed. “What, Alexa?” Olivia said. “You want us to sell blue balls? Nobody wants to work that hard.”

  “Change the positioning. Think about it in another way: Who gets the chance to anticipate anything anymore? Now we just fuck. I consider myself forward-thinking, but five years ago I’d never have believed we’d have been able to sell the DZ park district a dozen Encounter Booths. But hey, why not hook up with someone attractive when you first meet them? Now I’m thinking of something different. This is about kisses that linger, and you wonder when the next step will come. This is about groping and fondling that has to stop before it goes too far, then waiting and building and yearning. When you finally reach the main event, it’s sweet and slow. It’s about eye contact, and whispers in the ear. It’s about the art of anticipation.”

  Houston said, “I don’t see how that would work.”

  “It’s a change we could offer with our escorts now, then incorporate into our avatar project. Call it ‘The Girlfriend Experience.’ We could offer it at astronomical prices because there’s nothing like it, not in the world.”

  Benson shrugged.

  Alexa elaborated. “Imagine a girl like Chloe — one as gifted as she is in the art of sexual pleasure, but truly emotionally vulnerable. Truly a girlfriend, not just a girl you hire to fuck. Someone who you’ll eventually get in bed, but who you have to fight for first, to make things sweeter. Someone you get to anticipate, and who we’ll train to anticipate her clients in the same way.” She scrubbed the video back to the beginning, watching the two fully clothed people enter the apartment, kissing. “This is our blueprint. This is the first step. We may someday want to release this as a video for sale, but for now we need to study it, extract whatever we can. Find the triggers here, not with footage of Benson and Charisma’s actors. Not just triggers to sexual desire as we discussed, but triggers to emotional desire, too.”

  “So, what next?” said Parker.

  “We keep Andrew on the job. He has to keep dating her. We see where they go from here. Observe every nuance of whatever they do next.”

  “I’ll bet they keep fucking,” said Houston, chuckling. “Au naturel.”

  “And making our entire line of products irrelevant,” said Olivia, clearly annoyed. “What if you find out they just keep meeting up in a bed, using nothing special, having sex as nature intended? Even if it’s real, it’s terrible business.”

  “They’re not going to keep going in without help,” said Benson. “Imagine how boring that would be. They’ll want spice after a while.”

  “What if their emotional growth as a couple could spice things up instead?” suggested Charisma.

  “Yeah, right!” Benson laughed, chucking his wife on the arm.

  Charisma ignored him.

  “We just have to wait and see,” said Alexa. “Chloe is the ultimate adaptor. At this stage, she’ll become everything he wants, the same as she’s everything he’s wanted until now. But she’s not really adapting. You can see it. Chloe’s herself. Somehow, she’s able to be in this experience in a way that genuinely pleases her at the same time it’s pleasing him. So far, it’s been dates where they’re clothed, but this next part is what matters most to O: What does a truly engaged, truly connected, old-fashioned couple do after they’ve popped the seal on their sexual relationship? We need as much data as possible. Parker, we need the full array of bio-recorders on them — the ones we used when Chloe had her episode in the dark room. We need to see and record every nuance. Charisma and Benson, you’ll get as much footage as you can handle. Maybe we’ll release vidstreams, and maybe we won’t. We need that video, but under no circumstances can we release it if the main point here is to create a clear and unpolluted dataset. Chloe is a spa escort and R&D, not video talent. Are we clear?”

  Alexa looked around the room. Everyone nodded, though none seemed truly pleased.

  It had happened reluctantly, but after a few seconds it seemed everyone was apparently on board.

  Except, strangely, for Parker, who’d been on Alexa’s side already. “It all makes sense,” he said. “But you’re forgetting something.”

  “What?” said Alexa.

  “Chloe doesn’t know she’s on the job. You’ve given her a reason to love. A reason to be vulnerable.” He pointed to the frame, where Chloe and Andrew, both fully clothed, were gazing into each other’s eyes. “This isn’t an escort with a client. This is Chloe. With her guard down. This is all so sweet because it’s genuine. She isn’t acting — or even doing whatever it is she normally does where it’s more like adaptation. But if we keep pushing this, we risk hurting her.”

  “So what?” said Olivia.

  “Olivia, when’s the last time you had a boyfriend?”

  “I told you. Yesterday.”

  “I didn’t say ‘when did you have sex?’ I asked when you last had a boyfriend.”

  “What’s the difference?”

  “So, the answer is never,” said Parker. “Or at least so far back that you can’t really recall. Well, let me tell you a little bit about psychology.” He pointed a finger at the two people gazing longingly at each other. “That right there is the look of a girl in love. If this goes wrong — if Chloe senses something amiss, and let me remind you all that she’s proven excellent at sensing things — she’s going to be in a world of hurt. And if Chloe is in a world of hurt, we will be, too. We’ll lose her. She’s the single best asset this company has ever had or even seen. Are you really willing to risk it?”

  Alexa nodded. “I’m thinking we can’t afford not to.”

  Parker’s eyes darted, agitated. “Let me remind you that Andrew doesn’t live in the quaint early 21st century any more than the rest of us.
He may be a decent actor, but sweet as this seems, he won’t want to keep having vanilla sex, without the enhancements we’re all used to. He’ll get bored. He’s a man, for Christ’s sake.”

  “Wait. Are you saying this has to be exclusive?” Benson asked.

  “Oh, yes,” Parker said.

  “You’re kidding.” Benson looked at Alexa. “This idea of yours requires the couples to be exclusive?”

  “We can figure that out later,” Alexa said.

  “I can tell you one thing,” said Parker. “This must be exclusive. At least from Andrew’s end. She’s an escort and he’s not prejudiced, so maybe she’ll get a pass because fucking is her job. It’s apples and oranges. But he’s not a sex worker, so we can’t let her get wind of Andrew with anyone else. So you tell me, Alexa: Do you really think we can get Andrew in a monogamous relationship for the duration of your experiment? She’ll know if he cheats.” He shook his head. “There’s no way this won’t blow up in our faces, and we will lose her when it does.”

  “It’s a risk,” said Alexa. “But we can’t ignore the potential. Imagine incorporating this into her Beam program. An artificial girlfriend with all of Chloe’s abilities? The idea is staggering.”

  “We’ll never get that far. She’ll have her heart broken first.”

  “We can do it,” Alexa insisted. “We just need to keep Chloe engaged long enough to let her write our perfect script. Pay Andrew as much as it takes to keep his dick holstered. Give him access to all the porn and toys he could possibly want. Tell him he’s under surveillance, and we’ll know if he strays. We’ll use that time to plan our strategy. Figure out what we need to capture, how to analyze what we already have, and how best to steer them forward from here. We have plenty of AI. We just need the data.”

  Parker said, “And what about Chloe?”

  Alexa shrugged. “We’ll have to keep her busy while we figure out what’s next.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  When Chloe was a young girl, her mother had read her stories about a magical garden called Eden. The place seemed to have roots Chloe didn’t understand — something she picked up from the conflicted way her mother talked about it. Very quickly, the idea of Eden as whatever it once was had melded with something else in Nicole Shaw’s stories: the picture of a hedonistic paradise where not only did angelic, white-dressed men and women stroll in flowing robes, but they were also nude underneath for easy and unabashed access.