Anton

[Karel]

Feedback, please!

Anton Vslvldevomich was listening to his music, as usual, when Irena Shastakavitch’s trainer tapped him on the shoulder. Lars, was his name, Lars from Brandenburg. Anton disliked Lars, mostly because he associated the man with these tiresome interruptions, also because he saw the man as a glorified pusher, with a grotesque, squat, steroid-addled body. Anton turned around and saw Irena standing in his lab, with her bodyguard. She had headphones on too, delicate pink things, and sunglasses. She was wearing her white and baby-blue tracksuit, and blowing a bubble with American bubblegum.

“What’s up?” asked Anton, looking at his watch. “Is it 11:30 already?”

Irena’s bubble burst over her mouth. “Nyet,” she said, dragging it back inside with her tongue. She did not remove her headphones. “Photo shoot. Adidas.” Irena insisted on speaking broken English to Anton because she disdained his Kazahk accent. “Go!” she said imperiously.

Anton Vslvldevomich sighed and pressed a button on his notepad, and a simulation of Katyanna laMadonna, two-time Canadian Olympic gold medalist, materialized on the navy-blue racetrack than encircled his makeshift lab in the Russian Palace of Sport. The simulation smiled the same stupid toothy smile it always had plastered on its face, which apparently was completely genuine. A week after Tam in matté had written and installed it, Anton had actually asked if the vacancy could be toned down a notch. Tam had laughed in his face. Anton thought Tam Sgyuen, a bald, 110 pound homosexual from Hai Phong, was the most vacant person he’d ever met in his life. But the smile was worse.

At least Tam had managed to turn off a lot of unnecessary nonsense without affecting performance. The Katyanna-thing wasn’t “Jesus this” and “charity that” all the time anymore. It stood there in standby, frozen like a statue.

Irena took off her headphones and handed her bag to her bodyguard. She brushed her hair, took out her gum, and stuck it onto the side of the closest mainframe. Anton tried not to notice. He pressed another button, and up came the American Cassey Kimpbell, of the round freckled face, doll-like braids, and sparkling green eyes. Its frozen smile was less overrought.

Irena walked over to the track and stood in position between the two simulations. All three female figures had massive, muscular legs, almost more suited to livestock than human beings. Without wasting any time, she put herself into a crouch. “Fast,” she barked.

Anton sighed. It helped maintain accuracy if the simulations naturally got into position, but then they would want to chat for a few minutes first, unless he turned off their personality algorithms, which would skew results even more. “Hold on, one more,” he said, loading Naratz Vasha, Ukraine’s fourth place contender of twenty years past. He brought her/it up in start position, legs stretched, hands down, eyes forward, its black and gold catsuit tight against its skin. As he thumbed a dial on his console, Katyanna and Cassey flashed, faded, and rematerialized in crouch. Their smiles were gone, replaced by deadly serious expressions.

“GO!” shouted Irena.

“Hold on, hold on!” shouted back Anton. “I need to get the levels right!” As fast as he could, he adjusted the minute biochemical quantities of the simulated bodies crouched next to Russia’s next great Olympic hope. Endorphins, lactic acid, estrogen, testosterone, adrenaline: all were carefully, individually calibrated to achieve the anticipated results for this live run. Fortunately, the levels for this live run-through had been calculated six hours in advance. Anton had been up all night rehearsing them.

“Aaaaand…”

“Go go GO!” screamed Irena.”

“Just about…ready…” A female referee materialized. As a joke, it had been given the face of Mia Hamm. It was the simplest simulation in the system, programmed only to begin the race. It stared ahead with a completely blank expression as it raised its gun. BANG!

45.78 seconds later, the Katyanna simulation crossed the finish line.

00.01 seconds after that, Irena followed behind it.

“Aw, m-…-a-an,” said the Katyanna-thing as it stepped off of the felt track. Every few seconds, her/its motion and speech ground to a halt as her computer’s processors ground through the thousands of calculations put forward by Anton’s personal software. “Iiiii…didn’t geee-…-e-t it did I?...I was thinking I h-…-a-ad it, I just-t-t-t-t-t-t must have started slo-..-ow, right? It must have been close, right?” True to form, it was speaking of its personal best, disregarding this practice victory.

“Close,” Anton said, halfheartedly.

“L-l-like within-n-n two tenths, righ-”

Irena, striding off the track towards Anton, panting, her face beet red, her entire body slick with sweat, pounded the red “Wipe” button on his console.

The Katyanna-thing seemed to feel it as it happened. Her eyes lost focus, and her goofy, vacant smile faded, her lips pursing together into a half-kiss. The look on it’s face was one of absolute stunned stupidity. “Ooh-” it almost said. For a split-second her whole body seemed to shimmer, and her clothes disappeared. Her naked skin faded to suggest the modeled muscles, sinew, and tissue underneath. And then she was gone, erased.

The Cassy simulation had seen the whole thing, and her eyes were bugging out of their sockets now, her handsome faced creased with horror. “Oh-oh-oh-God-God-God-God-God-God,” it screamed, “You-You-killed-killed-killed-killed-killed-killed-”

Anton ran his finger across a circular control, rewinding the memory-loops of both simulations. Cassey’s face jerkily reversed itself back into the pleasant expression of an endorphin high. Naratz shimmied in position, sticking out her breasts and buttocks before straightening out again. Vslvldevomich frantically checked his data. “Jesus Christ,” he screamed, “What the Fuck!?!”

Irena took her bag back from the bodyguard. “I go now,” she spat.

Anton’s muscles relaxed a little when he saw that none of the data had been lost. “You don’t EVER touch these controls!” he shouted, genuinely angry.

“Fuk you!” Irena shouted back, almost unintelligably. She strode through the holographic referee, still standing there with her/its gun in the air, and out of the track room, Lars and bodyguard in tow.

Anton slumped down in his chair and rubbed his temples. After a long night, such a morning.

Cassey bent over, a beaming smile on its face. Anton had maximized its levels for endurance, so it was its natural sunny self despite its recent performance. A drop of sweat rolled down its nose and onto its lips before it playfully opened its mouth to speak, lapping it up. “You look like you could use a nice refreshing glass of-”

Anton deleted her. Most simulations were loaded straight from their respective master programs: only certain run-through copies were saved, for future experimentation, and he didn’t need these ones. He deleted Naratz too. Technically he should have asked them a few questions before wiping them, but that had grown tiresome. The answers were always the same. Besides, that was shot with Katyanna thanks to Irena. Katyanna was the reigning champion, and would be making her third appearance in the upcoming games: despite her relative age, she was still seen as the one to beat. And unless the pristine version saved on the computer was handicapped with fatigue or internal disorder or depression, Irena couldn’t yet beat it.

Irena.

Anton smiled.

He saved his data and set the computer to running through another few thousand internal simulations based on it. He turned off the internal security cameras and track recorders. And then he got changed. He took off all his clothes and put on the silver sensory-web catsuit stashed under his desk. The silver suit clung tightly to his skin, covering his body from his toes to his neck. Discreet plastic tubes ran from it into his nostrils. And he thumbed a button on his notepad.

A simulation of Irena Shastakavitch appeared on the track, an exact replica from physical data recorded in the last run-through and personality modules saved in the mainframe. It wore pink headphones, and a white and baby-blue tracksuit. Moving around in its mouth was a simulated piece of American bubble gum. The computer modelled precisely the soft chewing motion of its teeth, the sloshing of saliva, the wavering of its tongue. It blew a big pink simulated bubble, which popped, and dragged it back in, stuffing it behind one cheek. “Da?” it asked, plaintively.

Anton licked his lips a little, and thumbed a dial on his notepad. The headphones vanished. Irena blinked, already unaware that they were ever there. The gum disappeared too, although Anton had it sliding down the simulation’s throat and into its stomach, where the computer continued to record its quality and position. He changed the tensile strength of its clothing. He slightly increased the heart rate and blood pressure models, and altered certain neurotransmitters. The Irena-thing’s nipples hardened in its track suit, and its lips swelled and parted slightly, but it retained its icy composure. “Ready,” it said.

“Ready,” answered Anton, turning to his console.

The Irena-thing brushed a loose strand of simulated hair out of its eyes and crouched into position. Its track suit pressed tight against its breasts and buttocks, and its white fingers clenched the ground.

The female referee robotically returned to standby position. It did not reload its simulated starter pistol: the program never ran out of bullets. Then it counted off and fired again.

The Irena launched off.

Anton twirled a dial and fast-forwarded the race in a microsecond. Irena stood flush at the finish line, gasping, glistening with sweat.

Anton twirled the dial a second time. In a blur of motion, the referee reset and fired again, and the Irena-thing instantly made another circuit around the track. It collapsed on all fours and puked. White spew poured out onto the felt track, along with one chewed piece of pink gum. The simulation’s skin was scarlet, its veins bulging as if about to explode.

Anton was behind it immediately, tearing off its track suit. It uttered a strangled cry, but gave no resistance. In a moment he was inside her, thrusting from behind. “Uaugh, UAUGH,” it moaned. It hands clawed against the ground trying to steady itself, and one slipped in the puke, sending it to the ground. Its elbow snapped. “Aaaauuuhh!” it screamed. Anton lowered himself with it. He was holding back now, continuing to feel himself thrusting in and out of the simulation, the give of the holographic flesh against his sensor-wrapped hands. He was smiling. So was the holograph, a smile of total surrender. It lay limp on its side, and its eyes rolled back in its head. Monitors on the lab consoles lit up in red.

Anton orgasmed, and slumped to the ground next to the Irena-thing. Both lay there, breathing heavily. His hand dragged itself deliberately across her face. He could feel the precise textures of her hair replicated through the silver catsuit: her eyebrows, the whiskers on her cheeks and behind her ears. He curled his thumb around one nostril, and felt it take his pinkey into its mouth, sucking like an infant.

Sated, with his other hand, he pressed a button on his belt.

Irena screamed, a quick, piercing wail, and vanished, deleted. The referee stood impassively staring. The white spew remained on the track; Anton saw that he had lain in it. Out of curiosity, he brought some up to his mouth.

Irena had eaten french toast that morning, with agave syrup, and a spinach omelette.

He wiped the vomit out of existence, turned off the referee and the rest of his equipment, and got changed to go home.

He passed “Nadya” on his way out, the receptionist robot, a Japanese model built for the Russian market. The Japanese hadn’t got it quite right; it was reminiscent of some anime caricature of what a white person should look like, definitely on the uncanny side, with wavy scarlet hair, outrageous green eyes, pallid latex skin, and a lot of cleavage. It was bolted to a swivel behind its desk, and it sat silent and motionless, staring blankly into a corner. Anton said nothing, but as he passed an infrared sensor, the thing sprang into life and put on an over-the-top smile. “Good-morning, Mis-ter ViL — ViL — DEV — O — MIK-”

“Goodnight Nadya,” said Anton, without emotion. He walked out the doors and headed home.

[TheSpotConlon]

I'm not exactly sure what's going on here yet, but I like it so far. You have an interesting vision of the future, Karel. The blending of holograms with robots, while both serve the same purpose, is unnerving simply because of the varying degrees of realism involved with both of them. I hope to see that develop as the story continues.

[Lithorien]

I... really enjoyed this, to be honest. I hope to see you finish it, because the idea is really intreguging - hard-light holograms that can be deleted and /know they're being deleted/... it opens up a world of possibilities.