The Avatar Experiment Page 4

  Taken one by one, the lobby pieces were innocuous. But once Chloe had her highlighted pages all in one pile, she clearly saw some common themes: a particular industry would benefit from a relaxation of a certain law restricting sexual trade; another industry stood to profit if a sexually linked business saw an increase in revenue. The earliest of these links tied messaging and voice communication giants to the boon through widespread phone sex, but at each stage the ever-expanding technology sector was clearly shown to greatly benefit from relaxed legal restrictions on Internet porn.

  The moves were a subtle work of genius — nudging the world slowly to accept more and more sexuality as normal.

  For most of her early career, Alexa adopted a second, longer-lived pen name — again invisible to the public but transparent to Beam archivists, who as digital beings had access to publication databases and could easily see where royalty checks were sent. The pen name was Georgia Bernard.

  Georgia, unlike Alexa herself, wrote socially conscious novels that were widely considered staggering works of brilliance. Georgia’s works were sexually charged, but only in the capacity of making a point about bondage — for instance, the suggestion that women were objectified by the sex industry as it had existed at the time because well-meaning pundits made pornography, and hence sex, taboo.

  The sexual politics of Georgia Bernard’s arguments were complex, but difficult to argue against publicly without coming off as sexist or misogynistic. Georgia was given plenty of credit for moving the ball forward in terms of mainstreaming eroticism — and, no longer coincidentally, Marcy Deloitte credited Georgia with giving her the confidence to do her landmark intercourse scene in Switchblade. “She’s a pioneer making the way for all of us,” Deloitte had said in her Emmy acceptance speech.

  And an unmentioned, uncredited thanks would have been given right back to Charisma and Benson Young for making the scene possible … opening the way for increased membership of their own “softer, kinder, more beautiful, more for loving couples” erotic site … as suggested, supported, and advised by Alexa Mathis … as discussed with Olivia Gregory and Parker Barnes.

  “Georgia Bernard” had also done a few subtle things in her books that Chloe had taken for granted when she’d read them but that she now clearly realized were part of something bigger. Georgia didn’t use words for sex workers like “hooker,” “prostitute,” porn star,” “hustler,” “streetwalker,” or “whore.”

  Georgia Bernard used none of those words. Instead, she subtly shifted the lexicon of sexuality … and mindsets with her change of language. Instead of using old crass terms, Georgia spoke of sex in terms of “therapeutic wellness,” “nontraditional dating,” and “massage” — the last usually without any specific modifiers. Escorts and prostitutes became “companions.”

  Plenty of others had tried the same verbal ninjutsu, but Georgia succeeded thanks to her unique position: highly respected by the old-boy network (maybe because of Alexa’s old-boy entanglements in the teens?), the radical feminist contingent during and after the fall, and everyone in between. Where other literature (both erotic and non-erotic) had tried similar wordplay, it had always felt artificial and contrived. Georgia, however, pulled it off.

  Because Alexa, despite writing early-on about nothing but cumshots and fucking in janitor’s closets, was an excellent writer. Chloe had noticed that much when she’d read her first Mathis: amazing truths and beautiful language — lost, and often dismissed, because she wrote about sex.

  But the stigma around sexual fiction and sex careers soon faded, thanks to pioneers like Georgia. And by the ’40s, when O officially formed, Alexa was lauded for her brilliant writing. Men and women stopped hiding their Alexa Mathis books. Sexuality became an even more mainstream movement than it had in the 1960s — made possible by groundbreakers like Marcy Deloitte (guided by the Youngs) and Georgia Bernard (who was actually Alexa).

  Brick by brick and board by board, things got easier for each of O’s famous Six. They showed up at the right time in history with their various enterprises — a time when the world had learned to accept sex as beautiful and worth celebrating, no matter its form. Chloe, with holographic evidence scattered around her, could easily see that it wasn’t luck. O had made its own way easier by readying the landscape as if they were their own icebreaker vessels cutting through frozen seas.

  When Crossbrace came online, a games manufacturer named Robicon made a significant departure from its core market and released an app called Snoop. A decade earlier, Robicon probably would have pretended that using Snoop was about security and that it cared about every NAU citizen’s God-given right to online privacy, but by the ’40s the world’s Bernards and Mathises had softened peoples’ perception of the sex industry so much, it didn’t even bother.

  Robicon was best known at the time for its gardening app Greenery, which helped people farm under the lattice once microfibers in the net had diminished the sun’s intensity inside by 15 percent and the weather patterns became a matter of scheduling rather than chance. A side jaunt into an app that made commercial transactions of a sexual nature virtually untraceable should’ve been a risk to Robicon’s brand, but it boldly marketed the app as a strike for sexual freedom.

  And who pulled Robicon’s strings, obvious now with the Internet laid bare before Chloe in all its red-highlighter glory? Parker Barnes, who was already gaining fame for his innovate approaches to sexual therapy.

  Parker was closely tied to Houston, who even now appeared to Chloe as having no family or history whatsoever. Houston’s wares would have landed in the back of windowless sex shops in the past, but by the time his anatomically adaptive dildos and vibrators hit the market, they went to well-lit shelves in specialty shops and showed up right beside palm massagers in major retailers. They were advertised on Crossbrace splash pages as part of the infamous “Wellness” campaign.

  Chloe pulled the pages apart, found more wrinkled holographic pages bleeding red highlights. And she saw that the Wellness campaign, publicly credited to the Los Angeles (now District 1) advertising firm Synaptz, bore the same hallmark writing voice as the early works of Ambrose Suage and Georgia Bernard. And who was on Synaptz’s board of directors? Parker Barnes and Olivia Gregory.

  The Wellness campaign was the final straw, breaking the last of the restrictions in the way of erotic mainstreaming. Prostitution had been legalized a few years earlier (along with a handful of the less-offensive drugs, all handled in one “if we can’t beat ’em, join ’em” bundle in an attempt to raise NAU revenue during Renewal), but it was still in the corners of society and considered shameful. The Wellness campaign changed that, masterfully equating sexual liberation with health in a move that Chloe, looking back now, could hardly believe had been possible now that she could see all the strings.

  The ads showed escorts of all shapes, sizes, races, and ages (all ages over 18, anyway) smiling at the camera with the primary caption, I am the face of Wellness. “Wellness” was always capitalized as if it were a movement, which it quickly became once already-prepped consumers fresh on the high of NAU revitalization began seeing sex workers as human beings like themselves.

  Sex and Money, a popular dramatic series, featured an intelligent, well-raised female character who decides to pass over law school to become an escort. The character’s parents applauded her decision. As far as Chloe could see, none of the Six had had anything to do with that one, proving that the Wellness campaign had seeped into the nation’s psyche.

  By the time Chloe reached that point in the timeline, most of O’s bigger initiatives had emerged from the Internet/Crossbrace shadows to public praise.

  Parker Barnes experimented with neural augmentation and stimulation and was criticized, but it was okay because by then he was the Parker Barnes.

  Alexa harvested questionable data from her customers’ devices, but it was okay because by then she was Alexa Fucking Mathis, and doing it to better please everyone.

  Olivia’s spas offer
ed custom “dates” for major events.

  Houston’s toys used fledgling AI and failed miserably when the supposedly intelligent nanos began escaping their plastic and latex prisons to die inside customer’s vaginas. But it didn’t matter because Houston was O, and O was making everyone feel better.

  And Charisma and Benson Young, who’d never abandoned their visuals business, launched the erotic sitcom Happy Endings. It was well-loved and well-followed and everyone wanted to see what the characters would do next. It also featured hardcore sex scenes in every episode and aired at 8 p.m. on the same stations running popular crime and techpunk serials.

  Chloe already knew most of the rest. O became bigger than the government — and arguably more powerful. O opened virtual dating, then augmented what would once have been considered casual cybersex encounters with add-on offerings like anniversary gifts and personalized love letters. Clients found love with escorts, and the escorts found love with many clients at once. Nobody cared. Polyamory became average in the realm of sexual commerce, and O realized that selling personal relationships could be far more lucrative than selling unadorned sex. Inch by inch, the culture changed.

  Chloe had grown up feeling perfectly comfortable telling her friends her mother was a glass table girl, and had felt no compunctions whatsoever about becoming one herself. She performed for the first time on her 18th birthday, lying flat on her stomach on a Plexiglas surface as a man slid his cock into her from behind, and a well-dressed couple ate bloody steak beneath them. Afterward, she’d gone bowling with friends, who’d documented the entire night and posted it on Hyperdex for their parents to see and celebrate.

  Using the intuitive Web, holding her hands up for so long, had given Chloe a workout. She lowered her Beam gloves, shoulders aching, and turned her head to look through the apartment window at the stunning, now-twilit view of the District Zero spires. She realized she was hungry, and asked the canvas for a clock.

  She’d been searching, sorting, and ignoring Brad’s disapproving noises for three hours. Time flew when you were sorting dirty laundry. She swiped the Web, storing it for later exploration, then removed the gloves and put them away. Before she closed the canvas, she looked over at Brad to find him staring at her, slowly shaking his head.

  “You can’t understand, Chloe. You’re a person out here in the physical world, and can’t understand how offensive this would be to the digital memories of those you’re snooping on.”

  Chloe shrugged. “I guess I’ll have to keep their digital memories in the dark, and deal with them as real people.”

  She snapped the canvas shut, then stood for dinner.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Chloe dressed down the next day, doing her best to appear average and unappealing. It was easiest on Sunday to take a break from being sexy. She loved her job and found sex empowering, but sometimes didn’t want the option. Every once in a while it felt nicer to sit at a table outside one of District Zero’s cafes, alone, sipping mimosas.

  And so she went out on her Sunday errand wearing simple tan shorts, baggy and not at all hip-hugging, a plain blue tee, and sandals. She had her dark-brown hair back in a ponytail, utilitarian and not artificially demure, loose hairs sticking out from the sides in what felt like a disheveled mess. She wore no makeup and plain, not-especially-sexy undergarments.

  But there was no fooling pheromones, it seemed. Eyes still followed Chloe as she walked down the street, and a man who’d turned to watch her pass actually walked face-first into an antique lamppost.

  She finally made herself comfortable in a corner of a cafe’s patio, away from foot traffic. She ordered her mimosa and sat back to peruse Crossbrace magazines on her tablet.

  When she looked up, she saw a man eyeing her from a nearby table.

  For some reason, she didn’t feel compelled to look away — until she realized staring was rude.

  She lowered her head, then looked up again a moment later. The man who’d been watching her had ordered coffee. He looked about 25, and something in his body language said that was a natural 25, not an older man stuffed with age-defying nanos.

  He wore a black shirt and long pants. His arms were thin in a way that Chloe, who’d grown up geeky and liked guys with less classical beauty, found adorable. His face was lean and friendly, with dark eyes and darker eyebrows. He had puffy, unkempt brown hair.

  Everything in his manner said he didn’t give a shit, that he’d ride a skateboard one day and work in an office the next —not that he looked like an office guy. Most office workers were Directorate, and this guy definitely looked Enterprise.

  Chloe found herself appreciating his somehow rogue look. Her job with O technically placed her in the Directorate party (she got her fixed salary and wasn’t required to scrape for a living) but had always been Enterprise at heart. Her mom had been a free agent before joining O, and had always valued freedom over security, despite being willing to accept the latter to work for O. Chloe felt the same.

  And this guy? He was clearly a free spirit. Just look at those tan forearms. That fearless white smile. The carefree hair.

  She was staring again. She looked down, feeling herself blush.

  When she looked back up, it was to see the chair opposite her being pulled out. The guy from across the cafe was sitting at her table.

  “Excuse me?” she said.

  The guy was cute, but he hadn’t been invited. Her knee-jerk reaction, as a woman who was approached often by men, was defense. There was a fine line between confidence and arrogance.

  “Hi,” he said. “I’m Andrew.”

  Chloe stared. The guy’s dark eyes turned out to be brown, and she didn’t see a speck of arrogance in them.

  “This is the part where you tell me your name.”

  “Chloe.”

  “Nice to meet you, Chloe.” He leaned back in his co-opted chair.

  “Can I help you, Andrew?”

  “Actually, you can. I was curious about that.” He pointed into her day bag, at a tattered paper volume peeking out from the top.

  “It’s a book.” The words sounded stupid the minute she’d said them, and she found herself wanting to cringe.

  Andrew nodded as if this were a great revelation. “As I suspected,” he said, faux-serious.

  Chloe regarded the book, wondering where this conversation was headed. Over Brad’s objections, she’d tried to find some of Georgia Bernard’s works to further her investigation of the Six and their buried history. She’d managed to find most of the volumes still online as ebooks — but this one, a more obscure title, had been unavailable. She had, however, found battered copies still circulating in print (Georgia Bernard was strangely popular in print, like late Alexa Mathis titles) and had picked it up at the DZ archive on her walk to the cafe.

  “I’m reading it for …” Chloe started, unsure how to finish.

  He reached toward the book, then paused with his hand extended and looked up at her. “Do you mind?”

  “Go ahead.”

  Andrew pulled the book from her bag. She felt a strange thrill as her casual possessions — not her accoutrements as “Chloe the O Girl” — shifted under his hand. He looked briefly at the cover, then rifled pages.

  “So few people read,” he said, still flipping.

  “A lot of people read.”

  “I read an article on Crossbrace about how one day they’re going to figure out brain-computer stuff enough that they’ll just kind of be able to zap books into our brains. It’d be like reading the book, except you’d never actually read it. So, I guess it’d be more like having read the book. But I don’t know that I’d like that. It’d kind of be like having a vacation memory zapped into your head so you will have been on vacation in your memories. But where’s the actual being on vacation?”

  Andrew was still looking at the book. Chloe found herself amused by his attention to the pages — this relic from an earlier age, presented in a medium few used. His eyebrows were slightly furrowed, as if he were w
orking a puzzle.

  Chloe decided she was probably supposed to respond. “Well, when you’re done with the vacation, isn’t it all the same?”

  He looked at Chloe, then set the book on the table, face up. Behind him, his table was empty except for a handheld. A waiter arrived with a plate, looked at the handheld, seemed to determine the table’s occupant was still around, and set the food down.

  “I guess, in a way. But don’t you feel like the vacation memories after a real vacation would have a different feel from fake ones? Like, you’d have actually done those things, so when you looked back at the implanted memories you’d see the real ones differently, remembering when you were doing them?”

  Chloe shrugged. “I guess it depends on how they do it. I imagine any good fake vacation would include the feeling of actually having done things, so memories would be the same.”

  Andrew flipped the book closed and set it on the table. He saw Chloe glance behind him, turned, and saw his food. Without a word, he stood, went to his plate, and brought both the food and his handheld back to Chloe’s table.

  Apparently they were having brunch together.

  He picked up a piece of bacon, shrugged, and took a bite.

  Chloe sipped her mimosa.

  When the bacon was gone, Andrew said, “I still don’t like it.”

  “Well, luckily nobody is talking about implanting vacations in people’s brains.”

  He used the torn bacon to point. “Yes, but they are talking about zapping books into our heads.”