The Future of Sex Read online

  Alexa turned to the psychologist. She felt unduly riled. “Everything,” she repeated, pointing at Benson. “Including EM.”

  Parker rolled his eyes. “You realize that’s like checking his aura.”

  “Scan his motherfucking chakras if you have to!” Alexa blurted. “You saw the video. She was right. You can see it all over his face. So how did she know?” She tapped her pen on the table, waiting.

  “We’ve got nothing,” Benson said.

  “So a fucking machine couldn’t figure it out. A machine brain.”

  Parker shrugged. Alexa ignored him.

  “You don’t trust the AI?” Olivia asked Parker.

  He said, “There’s more to the mind than circuits.”

  “Okay, smartass,” Alexa said. “Did you know about his old girlfriend, with all your scary psychoanalytic talent?”

  “I’ve never sat with him,” Parker said.

  “Take a guess, your excellency.”

  “Well, it makes sense that he’d have something like that in his past. A big ego like that is often a defensive reaction to being crushed early in life. Data fed to us from the Xenia database shows he had a needle dick before his enhancements.” Parker laughed. No one joined him. “But his personality is consistent with an early inferiority complex, and it makes sense that it would’ve come from peers. Given his sexual proclivities for being dominant and abusive to the girls, I guess it also makes perfect sense that he’d have been soundly rejected, maybe by one key female.”

  “Now who’s spouting pseudoscience?” Olivia said.

  “Now who’s being a cunty pain in the ass?” Parker retorted.

  Alexa waved a hand to break it up. Officially, she wasn’t on either side. Unofficially, she agreed with Olivia despite her earlier agitation. Parker could be a pompous pain in the ass.

  “Well, there’s nothing in his file about it,” Benson repeated.

  “It was a lucky guess.”

  “I don’t think so.” Alexa shook her head. “You heard all that stuff she said, about his history and age and whatnot. Roll it back. Watch his reactions. I thought she was trying to dig at him, but most if not all of it was right on target. He stayed because he was shell-shocked. Because Chloe was right.”

  “Maybe she’s a cleric,” said Charisma in a tiny voice.

  This time, Parker actually laughed.

  “Jesus Christ, Parker,” Benson said. “Are you going to weigh in, or just mock everyone else? Because speaking for myself, you can leave if that’s how you’re going to be.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry.” Parker turned to Charisma. She ducked back like a turtle retreating into its shell. “You’re right, Charisma. Maybe she’s a cleric. I thought she was Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy, but you’re right, this little girl who wants to fuck for us is totally a body animated by sentient nanobots and—”

  “Shut the fuck up, Parker,” Houston said. “Have you even used The Beam beta? It’s not your grandfather’s Internet. I fed it some of our archives for testing, and queried the system as to how O could best please a man featured in a few of the videos. I was expecting a list of positions we could add to his Cliffs for the next girl, but instead the beta suggested we call the man’s assistant and see about sending funeral flowers. Turns out his mother had just died. The AI could read it in his speech patterns. It’s spooky. I’ve heard the same rumors you all have, and I don’t see any reason Beam clerics couldn’t exist.”

  Parker rolled his eyes again. “Holy. Fucking. Shit.”

  Alexa stood and started to pace. Everyone else was still sitting.

  Officially, all Six were equal partners at O, but Alexa was unofficially in charge. Even dismissing her rocky history with Eros, it was Alexa who, after breaking all the rules of writing, had dominated the brave new world of erotica during Renewal by mining blackmarket Crossbrace and Internet data about buying and consumption habits, then finding new ways to give her readers exactly what they wanted.

  Alexa had found a way to individualize her products in such granular detail as to develop an army of devoted fans in every corner of the NAU.

  Without Alexa’s cache, the Six never would have come together and formed the premier (and, honestly, only) sex industry cooperative in the Renewal period. Without Alexa’s connections, O never would have been founded, given how skittish venture capitalists were at the time.

  Now they all watched her, waiting for the decision of their leader who wasn’t — technically speaking — in charge. Even Parker lowered his eyes in respect, keeping opinions to himself.

  “Okay,” Alexa said. “I’m not ready to give this girl a crown and the keys to our kingdom, but I’ve never seen anything like that and don’t mind admitting I’m dying to see more. Chloe knew how to use the Rocker, and used it more expertly than all but our top adepts. She converted a man who, at the outset, she insulted enough that I thought we might have to call Undercover Respero to haul her away. She did it by reading him as if he were wearing a placard. And as to the sex, I’ve studied enough to see that she didn’t make a single misstep, touching all the right places at all the right times. No one has ever stuck a finger in Hartford’s asshole. I just pulled it up. It’s like it’s something he didn’t even know he wanted. Put your petty egos aside, and tell me honestly: have any of you ever seen anything like that?”

  The table mumbled.

  Alexa tapped her pen. “It’s pretty easy to make the mistake of thinking we’re hiring staff here, given that we’ve spent the last two decades focused on building new arms of business, articulating Houston and Parkers’ endless toy ideas, improving service in the spas, the other island projects, and so on. But you know how all of this started.”

  “You’re projecting, Alexa.”

  “Really? Is that your professional opinion, Parker? As a therapist?”

  Parker blanched but didn’t back down. “Honestly? Yes, it’s my professional opinion that you’re projecting. None of us knew what The Beam would be able to do 20 years ago. We barely knew about Crossbrace. It’s just serendipitous, is all. Before Quark let us see The Beam last month, none of us had dreams of delivering such a vivid virtual experience.”

  “The future of sex,” said Alexa, quoting the company’s tagline and mission statement while glaring at Parker. “You were the one who passed her through to begin with. You were the advocate. I wanted to cut her.”

  “I like her. I think she should get a spa job and, if you want, a full upload — depending on Quark’s price. But let’s not pretend we had this all figured out when we met and have been waiting ever since. That never ends well.”

  Alexa watched Parker, trying to decide if an argument was worth it. She held more of the reins, and could essentially cockblock everything he wanted for months as punishment. But in the end, despite the mockery, they agreed. Acrimony aside, they could ink a deal now, send Chloe up the chain, and start O’s next phase with a year’s head start if not more.

  Their contact at Quark — who’d promised to burn their connection and deny all culpability if O ever spoke of The Beam or what it could do — said the network wouldn’t be unveiled for a year at the earliest. What could O do in terms of simulation and emulation and immersion programs with a year’s lead on their already barely significant competition?

  They need only bury their squabbles to know.

  “So …” Olivia looked at Parker.

  Parker shuttled attention toward Alexa. He sat, demurring. Olivia looked to Alexa. The rest followed. Majority would claim the coming vote, but ties always went to Alexa’s side.

  Alexa inhaled, exhaled, then drew her carriage fully upright, again in control. The earlier incident with Olivia had not, as far as anyone in the room was concerned, happened. “Show of hands: who votes that we move Chloe into Orion testing?”

  They all looked from one to another. Another piece of controversial equipment. The Orion’s uses for immersive pleasure were impressive, but there had been many discussions among the Six about how easily
Xenia’s prototype machine could be turned into an instrument of unspeakable pain.

  Still, the mood of the room was charged. Right now, they’d do whatever Alexa wanted.

  The other five waited.

  Alexa raised her hand.

  Slowly — so as not to appear overly sycophantic, which they currently were — five members rose around the table.

  “Excellent.” Alexa allowed herself a small, satisfied smile. “Let’s find out exactly what our future looks like.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The device in front of Chloe was, Parker Barnes had said, called a “canvas.” A strange name, considering it looked exactly like a portable Crossbrace terminal. It looked, in fact, not unlike the ancient “laptop computer” from before the fall that her grandfather had kept in the storage area below his basement steps, deluded that he might someday need the ancient data inside.

  But it wasn’t just another terminal, Chloe felt sure. Barnes had stressed the importance that she keep it guarded and never let anyone see. He’d not only extended her hotel reservation in District Zero, but had moved her to a different hotel and then called to verify her room’s security. Barnes had told Chloe about the canvas’s tracker, and that it could be destroyed from a distance if required — not just erased, but actually destroyed.

  So yes … whatever this “canvas” was, it was certainly more than a terminal.

  Barnes had told Chloe she was only receiving the canvas because she’d done so well in her interview and two auditions. O was considering her for a very special position — something that included the spa job she’d originally wanted, but came with more as well — and they needed her to understand.

  I understand, Chloe had said.

  No, you don’t, he’d replied with a straight face. You can’t. Nobody can.

  That had been one of the stranger conversations of Chloe’s life, right up there with her break-up discussion with Brad, but for decidedly different reasons.

  Brad had asked if the sex was good for her. She had lied and said it was. Then she’d moved into the breakup, yet hadn’t been able to tell him why. She couldn’t; it was all too personal to share with the person to whom she’d so recently lost her virginity.

  An odd conversation for sure, and yet Chloe’s exchange with Barnes might have trumped it.

  She looked at the simple black device, wondering if her life was in danger. Barnes had said it was newer than new, that even O hadn’t yet converted its private conference room to the fresh technology in front of her.

  It speaks to The Beam, he’d said.

  When Chloe had asked what that meant, Barnes offered his inscrutable smile and said he was sure she’d figure it out.

  Chloe sat on the floor in the middle of her now-lavish hotel room, legs crossed Indian-style, ankles pressing into the surprisingly soft carpeting. She looked up, taking in her much-improved view of the District Zero spires. The room’s entire south wall was nothing but windows. They could be blacked out if you wanted dark, or made one-way if you preferred privacy and a view.

  She opened the featureless canvas: no keys, no apparent screen, no touchpad, no power switch. Nothing. Chloe wondered what it did. Barnes had implied it was a kind of terminal even if it wasn’t strictly a terminal, so Chloe assumed she’d use it to access the Crossbrace network.

  But then what? Surf vidstreams? Go shopping? Watch holos? He hadn’t given her a visor or a headset or gloves. O was, of course, the dominant sex channel on Crossbrace, and this thing would probably let her immerse in the most elite of O’s online simulations. But how could she do it without some sort of rig? And, in the end, why would she want to? She was drained after today’s fuckfest. She wasn’t looking for satisfaction, and O couldn’t be looking for Chloe to prove herself from a distance after doing it so thoroughly in person … right?

  Chloe touched the thing where the keyboard would normally be. Nothing.

  She touched the screen area. Nothing.

  She picked it up and turned it over in her hands. She didn’t even know if it was on. There wasn’t an indicator light or switch. Barnes hadn’t given her a power cord. But that didn’t matter, seeing as there was no place to plug anything in.

  Chloe closed the canvas. Opened then shook it.

  She could fire up the hotel room’s terminal and search for the device on Crossbrace, but if it was the secret Barnes had suggested, she’d surely come up dry. He’d said the Quark corporation provided access to O under the strictest of confidentiality — that Noah West himself had signed off on the nondisclosure agreement. Apparently The Beam (whatever that was) hadn’t even really been used yet at O, at least not beyond experimentation.

  Maybe the canvas was meant to be spoken to, like many Crossbrace users preferred.

  “Power on,” she said.

  Nothing.

  “Search Crossbrace,” she said. “Show me that holo of the monkeys throwing their shit at the president.”

  Nothing.

  Chloe picked it up again. “Canvas,” she said, rolling her eyes at the block of inert material.

  The thing chirped. Chloe almost dropped it.

  “Canvas,” she repeated.

  It chirped again.

  Chloe set it on the ground, then stood, wanting suddenly to be several feet back. She looked down. It was still featureless, and entirely uninteresting.

  “Search Crossbrace,” she repeated.

  Nothing.

  “Canvas, search Crossbrace.”

  This time, a soft and vaguely familiar male voice answered. “Of course, Miss Shaw. Would you prefer a terminal interface or a gesture web?”

  Chloe stared at the canvas. Apparently it had to be woken before you could issue commands — again, like many Crossbrace installations. But it wasn’t like figuring that out had solved anything for Chloe. Questions abounded. The machine’s voice didn’t sound like a machine, or even normal AI. It sounded like a person. And what the hell was a gesture web?

  “Gesture web,” she said.

  “Where would you like to begin?”

  Chloe didn’t know what that could mean, but then remembered she’d asked it to search Crossbrace. She assumed it wanted to know what she wanted to search for. But now that she’d managed to wake the canvas, Chloe no longer wanted to search Crossbrace. Barnes had said the canvas spoke to The Beam, whatever that meant. So now that it was talking …

  “The Beam.”

  “Access to Beam beta is restricted.”

  “Oh.”

  “I will require a thumbprint.”

  Chloe looked down at the canvas. Apparently she looked too long, so the featureless box repeated its request.

  “Where?”

  It only chirped, so Chloe pressed her thumb onto the space where the keyboard would be on a normal terminal, wondering if she was even authorized. It knew who she was, so maybe.

  “Thank you, Miss Shaw.”

  “Call me Chloe.” The second she said it, Chloe remembered she was talking to a block of metal and felt stupid.

  “Of course, Chloe.”

  She stared at the box, waiting for more. Where was her gesture web of The Beam? And what the hell was a gesture web, or The Beam?

  “Canvas, um… where should I start?”

  It was the exact question the box had asked her — why she was asking back?

  She didn’t know what else to say. Either she’d need to repeat her search query now that she was (apparently?) on The Beam (whatever that was) or—

  “O has had a tutorial compiled for you,” said the voice. “Would you like to start there?”

  “Um … sure.”

  “Would you like the holo immersive version?”

  “Okay.”

  Something around the edges lit and everything within 10 feet or so of the canvas was suddenly covered in shimmering holograms.

  Their clarity was shockingly good, well beyond any resolutions Chloe had ever seen. The holos were laid over the hotel room like a double-exposure, as if one
reality had fallen into place atop another.

  Chloe was still in the middle of her hotel room floor, but somehow she was also now in a 10-foot section of a room that, like the voice coming from the box, seemed somehow familiar.

  A new hologram shimmered into existence, more solid than the rest, and sat in a holographic chair before her. A man, about her age. He didn’t just seem familiar. He was so familiar that Chloe nearly fell over as he looked up at her.

  Brad. Her old boyfriend, whom she hadn’t seen in months.

  “Welcome to The Beam, Chloe,” said the hologram. “We’ve been waiting for you.”

  WANT TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?

  The Future of Sex continues in The Art of Adaptation.