The Avatar Experiment (The Future of Sex Book 3) Page 2

  “I have an idea,” she said. “I think it could work to put Chloe in a film … but let me tell you how I’d like to try.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHLOE FOUND HERSELF IN A sun-lit loft in District Zero’s trendy warehouse section, with something amiss.

  As usual, she knew little about her client. Chloe wasn’t sure how common that was, but suspected not at all. She’d talked to a few of the other escorts, and while most were tight-lipped about what (and whom) they did during the course of their days as demanded by O’s privacy policy, Chloe got enough from them to know for sure that she was being handled differently. The other girls — all of whom were gorgeous and most of whom Chloe was sure had implanted vaginal stimulators and corresponding neural controls — would give wheres and whens, but she did know most of the girls 1) stayed at O spas, where their encounters could be tightly controlled and 2) were always given access to research or archives on their clients.

  Chloe had been given research a time or two, but ever more often she was simply thrown into a room and told to figure things out. She’d done it the first time with the tester, Logan, who Chloe wasn’t supposed to even know was a tester. She’d done it with the Rocker, O’s next-gen sex chair that all of the other girls reported being baffled by. She’d done it with Falls Hartford, her first real client. And she’d done it over and over since, with men, with women, and entire groups. She was sent in blind to play with toys, to use quasi-clinical devices like the Orion, and even to figure out The Beam beta using the console supplied by O. It was OK: Chloe had grown up learning to trust her gut. Even when O gave her research she usually ignored it. But it was a difference, and still she wondered. If Chloe wasn’t just another O spa girl — treated like an O spa girl — then what was she, and why did she feel so evaluated?

  She’d also been given her share of special assignments, and the one with the boyish-looking man with the casual, messy hair in the loft was no exception. She’d been sent to O satellite locations before, but the moment she entered the loft Chloe knew this wasn’t one. The man didn’t live there either, although that’s what he claimed.

  He said his name was Tony, but it wasn’t. When he introduced himself at the door, he said the name like someone else’s — like his mouth wasn’t yet used to the Y sounding like a long E rather than a long I. He led her into the bedroom, which was too open to make any sense. The bed was lengthwise against the wall, with a wide space in front. The open space was conspicuous rather than welcoming; the room was arranged as if waiting for a missing piece of furniture — maybe a desk or something artistic, perhaps an easel — to be delivered. The skylight was above, and “Tony” had three hover lamps wandering the room at full intensity despite the sun.

  Tony led her by the hand, and as he did kept making unnecessary adjustments to his path. He kicked the table’s edge as if he hadn’t known it was there, and told her the wrong way to the bathroom. When Chloe tested him by asking for a glass of water from “his” refrigerator, he went to get it for her, not knowing it would be delivered by the home’s Crossbrace connection on a hover platter.

  If the loft was an O satellite spot, it was a secret one. Chloe knew all of O’s local spots. She learned them with her Beam avatar, Brad, quite by accident. This wasn’t Tony’s home. So, what was it, and what did his many quirks mean?

  Chloe wore a white, flower-print sundress that zipped up the back. It looked like something her grandmother would have worn, back when her grandmother was her age, but that had come back into style lately. She’d chosen it because the dress managed to convey both nostalgia and innocence, and without much information on the client, Chloe’s best bet was to demure, let him think he was taking her.

  “Can I get you anything?” he asked. Tony looked like he wanted to take her hand again. It was sweet and totally unnecessary. Chloe was a girl for hire and knew from seeing his order that she wasn’t an unexpected gift. Yet he was treating her like she didn’t know what she was here for, as if she needed smoothed nerves. It also meant her innocent dress was working, and that was good.

  “You already got me a glass of water.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry. I meant, can you … like … can I get you something?”

  Now she saw it. Tony wasn’t normally nervous. Whatever was bothering him was something he usually had no problem with. Was he a rich playboy used to bedding girls, hiring his first escort? He had emphasized “get” as in “get-down-to-business.” It was also cheesy. She could almost hear the few words that could have completed his sentence: … like an injection of hot beef?

  “I don’t know,” Chloe said. Her dark-brown hair was tied into a pony tail to go with her sundress’s playful look, but she’d left a clutch of hair loose at each side to frame her slim face with its wide lips and sharp-blue eyes. She flipped the pony tail with one hand. If Tony wanted to be cheesy, she could cheese him right back. “Do I need something?”

  “Maybe,” he said, visibly relaxing as she emphasized “need” in just the right way. “Did that glass of water cool you off? How’s your … temperature?”

  “This was a good idea, Benson,” Parker said, looking at the screen at the front of the O boardroom. Chloe Shaw and Benson’s actor, Vic, stood at three-quarter angles as if posing for a press photo. “His dialogue is superb. And I love how natural this all looks. How long before he starts waving at the camera?”

  “He’s used to working with cameras he can see,” said Benson, pressing at the table, pinching its surface with his fingers. Onscreen, the camera zoomed in and out, pulling Chloe and Vic closer. The shot stabilized, and Benson took his fingers from the tablet. “Give him a minute to adjust. This isn’t exactly something any of us are used to, you know.”

  Parker shook his head. “Creeps have been hiding cameras to watch girls since cameras were invented. It’s not that hard. You have him standing on a mark like a stage actor.”

  “Watch a lot of amateur porn, Parker?”

  “I’ve never been big on artificial sex, Benson,” Parker retorted. “I’d rather do it than watch.”

  “We aren’t doing amateur hour here. But if you want a static shot and for me to cue Vic to go ahead and fuck her any which way, we can do that, too.”

  Parker shook his head. Beside him, Olivia said, “He’s going to tip her off.”

  “Vic is a pro,” Benson assured. “But he’s doing a cinema performance without cameras, without me walking around yelling at him, without stopping in the middle … do you know how much stopping and starting we usually do on set?”

  “You can tell him what to do,” said Alexa. She turned to Parker and Olivia. “Just hang in there. Vic needs to take directions from the implant in his ear instead of someone in front of him, and has to stop acting like he’s on set. But like Benson said, he’s a pro. He’ll get it.”

  Charisma, sitting beside Benson, shook her head. “He’d better, or this will be the worst incognito porn scene ever.”

  Chloe ran a finger down her front. She wore nothing under her white sundress, and the fabric was thin. In the light of the frosted glass above, she felt almost naked even as she stood in front of Tony. She could feel her fingernail through the fabric as if on her skin. Chloe’s finger ran between her tits, pressing the fabric on either side against hard nipples on her B-cup breasts. She let the finger trail to her belly button before pulling it away and plucking at the dress’s straps.

  “This dress is really hot,” she said.

  In front of her, Tony’s cock still hadn’t risen to attention. This made no sense. Maybe he was too anxious, but she still hadn’t made sense of his nerves. She had to be his type; the order had indicated that he’d picked her from O’s escort roster and hence had known what he was getting. He’d have been able to watch her recorded holos. If this was really his loft, which it definitely wasn’t, he could’ve projected her demo onto the bed. He could have sat at the end of the bed and watched Chloe fuck herself with her fingers or any of Houston’s sex toys. He could have lain
on the bed, naked with his cock pointing at the ceiling and watched her hologram straddle him. All the fun of sex with double the transparency and none of the sensation. It was possible he was one of the nonsexual clients who wanted to watch her debase herself so he could stare in disapproval, but if that was the case, why the suggestive dialogue? Was she reading Tony wrong?

  Chloe never read anyone wrong.

  He said, “Maybe you should take it off and come sit on my lap.”

  Jesus.

  Maybe he had a daddy fantasy thing. Because if Tony wasn’t planning to lay her over his knee and give her a spanking, she didn’t know what it was. Saying a line like that took confidence, but why would a guy with confidence say something so stupid? Confidence had to come from somewhere, so he must have stuck his cock in a fair number of holes. He was hot — windswept features, a strong chest, and an already impressive bulge that, when it finally got hard, was surely imposing — and Chloe could tell that he’d always been hot. But he was bad at this. There was no other way to put it, and she couldn’t square it with how he looked, carried his body, or confidently picked an expensive escort to come over and fuck him.

  Chloe put her finger to her chin and widened her big, blue eyes. She turned her head slightly downward. The look would appear slightly shocked — just the right touch of naughty schoolgirl to play with … well, with whatever stupid fucking character he was trying to pull off.

  “If I take off my dress … ” Chloe set the back of her hand to the side of her mouth and whispered around it, “ … then I’d be naked!”

  “You aren’t wearing any underwear?”

  The hand moved to cover Chloe’s bow-shaped lips. “I forgot.”

  “That’s very naughty of you,” said Tony.

  “Maybe I need to be punished,” Chloe said, then reached down and pulled the sundress over her head.

  “What’s she doing?” said Houston.

  Parker barked a laugh. “I know what she’s doing.”

  Houston ignored Parker, because Parker killing wonder with answers that only he could conjure was one of his classic power moves. It stroked his ego and made him feel important. He repeated, speaking directly to Alexa, the stunt’s architect: “What’s she doing?”

  “I don’t know. Getting undressed, apparently.” Alexa turned to Benson and Charisma, who supposedly knew the actor. “Does Vic have a spanking fetish? Anything like that?”

  “You mean in the scenes he’s done for us?” Charisma asked.

  “No. Maybe. I don’t know.”

  “I know what she’s doing!” Parker sang.

  “I’d need to check, but I think he’s just done straight scenes. One of the reasons he’s there is because you wanted someone Chloe wouldn’t recognize. He’s done a lot of escort work, which you know, but we’ve only shot a handful of scenes so far, and he’s never … you know … gotten slappy.”

  “Anything in his personality profile? He’s into spanking, hair-pulling, schoolgirl fantasy, shit like that? I thought he was vanilla. I wanted someone vanilla.”

  “I don’t think he’s actually into telling girls they’ve been bad little maidens or anything. He must be acting.”

  “Oh,” Alexa said. “Then I see why Eros is the premier vidstream and holo company today, with talent like that.”

  “There’s not a lot of talking in our films,” said Charisma, annoyed. “You’re asking him to perform. Maybe that’s what he’s doing, playing to the cameras.”

  “Tell him to fucking knock it off.”

  Benson spoke into the tablet. He said: “Vic, stop saying stupid shit.”

  Onscreen, Vic said, “I’m not.” Chloe said, “You’re not what?”

  Olivia sat back in her chair. Behind her, in one of the clear cells around the boardroom, a bald black man slid his dick into a blonde woman’s ass. “Motherfucker. How much preamble do we need for your new-wave video, Alexa? Can we just tell him to lay her down and do things to her?”

  Alexa said, “Hey, this is an experiment.”

  “It’s going so great, too,” said Olivia.

  “I totally know what she’s doing,” said Parker.

  “Tell him to stop talking and follow her lead,” Alexa said, watching the screen.

  “Vic,” said Benson into the tablet. “Stop talking and following her lead.”

  “Tell him to fuck her up the butt,” said Houston.

  Alexa held out a waiting hand. “Don’t tell him that.” Then, to Olivia. “Look, we don’t need the preamble. And we don’t need his shit-ass dialogue. This is supposed to be about Chloe. Let her do her thing, make the best video ever. Make it exclusive content and use it for avatar development. She stays under our control. But it’s pushing a line, so roll with the punches.”

  “It’s okay,” said Benson. “The magic is in post-production.”

  Despite the project’s complexity — shooting an Eros-quality vidstream with the right lighting and angles without one of the participants being aware she was being recorded — Benson was unflaggingly optimistic. Charisma was so-so on Alexa’s compromise plan, but Benson wouldn’t shut up. He was an artist at heart, driven by the desire to capture quality erotic content first and money (of which he had plenty) a distant second. The voyeur aspect of the whole thing, to Benson, was an extra layer of icing on an already delicious cake. He’d get everything he wanted, plus an artistic challenge. He’d get Chloe Shaw on video. It would be filled with all of the right cues, and it wouldn’t even matter if the vidstream (and holo, if it came out well enough) might not see widespread distribution. The genuine nature of the encounter was bound to make for a hell of a scene, and in Benson’s mind would change the landscape of 2060s erotica. They could circulate it with Chloe’s identity obscured and replace her with one of the intuitive Beam avatars. No one would know it was Chloe, or that the AI had come from The Beam because they wouldn’t know it wasn’t a real actress. Girls would want to dress like Chloe. They’d want to be like Chloe. Eros and O already did a ton of product placement, but if the videos saw wider (or well-paid exclusive) release, they’d be able to charge a premium. Benson even had a new term in mind for the hybrid vidstreams, questionably moral though they were: synthporn.

  Parker, leaning forward, said, “Hey, guys … I know what she’s doing!”

  Olivia snapped her head toward him. “What, Parker? You know so goddamned much, what exactly is she doing in there, saying all those stupid lines?”

  Parker smiled. “She’s acting.”

  On screen, Chloe, nude, said, “Now I’m cold. Do you have anything I could rub against to warm up?”

  Tony finally popped a rod. Chloe could feel it with her hands as she knelt in front of him after pushing him down to sit on the bed. His stiffness meant she was on track. Now she knew why it had taken him so long to warm up: His fetish was performance. It also explained why she’d had such a hard time getting a bead on him, and why his nervousness and confidence felt so layered. He was performing for her, and although he felt confident being with her, he apparently didn’t feel confident playing to the invisible cameras. Or maybe that was part of the fetish; she didn’t know. What Chloe did know was that Tony was warming up fine. If he wanted to be a hammy actor on a set, she could, too.

  Her fingers cupped his cock through his pants and began to knead it. Her bare skin was genuinely cold despite warmth from the skylight. Her nipples stiffened. A side effect of her ability to fall into her roles — it was nice to feel turned on when she pretended to be, but sometimes being genuinely frightened or embarrassed was less enjoyable. She raised, then touched, her hard nipples with her finger, sending a thrill of pleasure between her legs. Her eyes rolled up to meet Tony’s.

  “See how cold I am?”

  “There’s something in my pants that will warm you up,” he said. Tony flinched, then touched his ear.

  “Can I rub it all over me?”

  Tony said nothing.

  “Can I rub it all over my girl parts?”

 
His eyes flicked around as if she’d yelled at him. She still hadn’t figured this out, but knew her playacting was turning Tony on, so she unzipped his pants and rubbed his bare shaft up and down with her hand. A drop of clear pre-cum pooled at its tip.

  “Even my mouth is cold,” Chloe said, batting her lashes.

  Still, Tony looked nervously down. His hard dick didn’t seem nervous at all, so she slipped it into her wet and waiting mouth. Her mouth felt cool for some reason. His hot shaft felt warm and throbbing as she took it into the back of her throat, tasting the salty liquid at its tip.

  “It’s so hot and hard,” Chloe said, taking a break from sucking him off. She held his cock in front of her mouth and rubbed it against her lips, like a lipstick.

  She batted her eyelashes again, wondering if it was getting over the top. His dick was still rock-hard, and despite how his eyes kept flitting to something unseen across the too-empty room, she could feel a telltale twitch under his balls that told her to keep going.

  “Can I keep using your thing to warm up my mouth?” she said, then used both her mouth and hand without permission. She felt his balls tighten. Yes, this was going fine. She rolled her eyes up at Tony.

  “Don’t you want to tell me how to warm up?”

  “Like how?”

  She pumped harder, twisting her fist around Tony’s shaft. Slick sucking sounds filled the air.

  “Like, is there any other way you can warm me up?” His cock was starting to throb. If she kept going, he’d cum all over the place. Which was the point, to start.

  “I could spurt hot goo all over your face.”

  Chloe was falling into her role. As bad as the line was, it made her pussy feel empty. She reached down with her other hand and slipped two fingers deep into her wet hole. Chloe’s palm pressed against her clit. She wanted more pressure inside, so she pulled two fingers out and added a third.