Anton (by Karel)

[DollSpace]

Part II

Thursday’s race featured compu-Katyanna again, as always, as well as simulations of Yaha Weiss, wide-bottomed Israeli champion of three games past, and, for flavour, Marion Jones, who was a generation too early to compete with the other racers even without the asterisk next to her name. Anton was programming Jones to be both aware of this fact and scared to death of losing. He was also factoring traces of a brand new fifth-generation synthetic steroid into her/its blood chemistry. The adjustments were delicate, and made extremely difficult by his shaking hands.

He tried to steady them, cursing under his breath. This was what came of spending too much time in the sensor-web suit, he thought. Of artificially stimulating nerves and forcing muscles to brake and give way to the feel of illusory flesh. He hoped the damage wasn’t permanent, but he suspected the worst.

The Katyanna and Yaha simulations were chatting like old friends, while the Jones-thing stood silently, mouth agape, shimmering slightly as the new internal calculations were processed and adjusted. Katyanna’s computer-generated physiology had been optimized even further for today’s run: she/it looked five years younger, and positively beamed enthusiasm, its curved eyes smiling, its thick, wide lips and high, refined cheek bones moving excitedly. Occasionately it reached up to pat and smooth its golden-blonde perm. The Yaha-thing, with its dark, curly, hair, reached over to touch it too, making a crude joke, and both holograms laughed heartily.

Meanwhile, Irena, impatient as ever, was already bent over between them in ready position. Her bodyguard stood silently in the far corner of the room, holding her ice skates. “Come on,” she said petulantly, looking over at Anton, her hands white against the felt track.

“Hold your horses,” he hollered back, finally thumbing his notepad to release Jones. The artificial American seemed to wobble a bit, then wordlessly crouched down beside Irena. It wore an intense stare; its dark skin was pale, and there were bags under its eyes.

The redheaded referee materialized, and Katyanna and Yaha broke off their conversation and moved to their starting blocks.

“Okay,” said Anton, performing a final check. “And, ready for live-record number two hundred and-”

“Da, da, GO!” shouted Irena.

Anton frowned, shrugged, and pressed a button. The referee counted off, stiffly raised its gun, and fired.

Irena’s start was an indistinguishable blur of motion in real-time, but the ultra-slow-motion footage, reviewed afterwards, revealed it as picture perfect, her best yet. Her arms and legs moved in perfect concert, and her normally disdainful expression morphed smoothly into a wobbly scowl buffeted by intense g-force. The Katyanna simulation immediately took the lead, but this was to be expected: Irena always closed in during the last twenty metres. Thirty seconds into the race, everything was going according to plan.

Then Marion Jones dropped like a rock.

The hologram sprawled over Irena and Yaha’s laneways. The latter hologram’s legs made apparent contact, and Yaha tumbled over, plowing face-first the ground. She/it slid on her face for a few inches, her entire body lifted in the air, arms straight, fingers splayed, white thighs jiggling. Irena’s legs passed right through the disaster, but her face instantly contorted into a look of sheer terror. Out of instinct, she put on the the brakes, stumbling to a stop with the soles of her shoes skidding across the felt track.

The compu-Katyanna breezily crossed the finish line, in First and only place.

“Holy shit!” exclaimed Anton, laughing.

“WHAT THE FUK!” screamed Irena. She was already sitting down, and frantically rubbing her legs.

The Marion Jones simulation lay motionless on its back. Its muscular legs were spread across the felt track, its tan sweatshorts pushed up to reveal its enormous black thighs. The rest of its body was off the track, palms and face turned up to the sky. Its chest was still, its mouth open in a circle of shock, its eyes beginning to glaze over.

Anton checked its readings. All were red and fixed. He looked at the printout. “Holy shit,” he said again, “Its heart exploded.” Tears ran down his cheeks as he laughed uncontrollably.

The Yaha-thing was moaning, trying to lift itself up. Its Semitic nose had been crushed against the track. The computer had performed thousands of ghoulish calculations to determine the motion of the bones in its face on impact, and achieved something bloody and baroque. The front of her/its track suit was torn, and one pale nipple poked out. Its own computer printout was starting to look wonky.

“Oh m….ieeyy Goodne…sssssss, wha…” said a panting compu-Katyanna, moving herky-jerky through its normal post-race processing cycle back towards the scene of the accident. Its charitable Christian impulses had kicked in again. Anton paused it, catching it with its tongue out slightly. A bead of sweat hung frozen in transit on its lip. Anton’s mind was drawn perversely to that bead of sweat. Katyanna’s electronically-generated body had now been tweaked to retain so many simulated electrolytes that its simulated sweat would probably read like perfumed vodka in its algorithmic brain when it rolled onto its holographic tongue.

Irena was swearing profusely in Russian and English, most of it directionless and unintelligable, and frantically massaging her legs and feet. She had torn off her shoes and thrown them at Anton, but they had landed two metres short, so he hadn’t noticed. Going from 32 km/hr to zero was potentially disastrous for the human body, especially a body as exquisitely developed as Irena’s. She screamed for her bodyguard and her eucalyptus cream.

The readings for the Jones simulation had all flattened out. Anton deleted it; the holographic corpse vanished in a flash. The Yaha-thing was crying, blood and tears running down its face. Anton deleted it too. Its eyes widened and it bucked and writhed in protest as it felt it happening, its flesh jostling before winking out of existence. He saved the printouts, slumped down into his chair, and sighed.

Irena’s bodyguard handed her her cream, then lifted her up and carried her out of the track room. She screamed profanity at the top of her lungs all the way out, and Anton could even hear her some distance down the hall outside.

* * *

An Irena-thing sat with her legs spread on the felt track near the starting blocks, rubbing tears from her eyes. Anton sat watching it in his silver suit. He had suppressed the simulation’s seratonin and norepinephrine readings to almost negligable amounts, rendering it clinically depressed. It sat there sobbing quietly to itself in Russian. Softly, Anton pulled its arms away and lowered it onto its back. He met with no resistance as he spread its legs apart and pulled its pants off: it was weeping unconsolably, and seemed to be almost unaware of his presence.

Compu-Katyanna was there too; Anton had kept her running from the afternoon for some reason, perhaps out of concern that he may have deleted the Marion and Yaha programs too hastily. The Katyanna-thing had asked where they went when he had unfrozen it. “To the hospital,” he had said. Since then, he had instructed the computer to keep her/its endorphins at maximal levels and scramble most higher cognition. It stood there in a daze, blissed-out, a dreamy smile on its lips.

“Aannton?” it asked, swaying back and forth, as Anton, ready again after his first orgasm, flipped Irena over onto her stomach.

“What?” he asked back.

“Do you believe in Je-sus?”

Anton looked at the thing. Her/its eyes were squinted shut in pleasure, its luscious smile curled up to a new height of vacancy. He saw that it had been put forward as a stoner question, not serious. Strange, for someone that supposedly took such matters seriously.

Just for kicks, he decided to restore Katyanna’s full personality module, pressing a button on his notepad. Then he proceeded to do Irena doggy-style. Moans intermingled with sobs, and cries for Mamma and Pappei.

By the time he finished, he was quite tired. He lay flat on his back, staring up at the ceiling. The Irena-thing was slumped over on its face, its sobs grown quiet. He turned his head to look at Katyanna and saw her/it holding an unpleasant expression on its face. Its eyes were still closed, but it looked sick, like someone having a bad acid trip, or going around on a roller coaster one too many times. Inexplicably, he felt sorry for it. He retrieved his notepad and dialed its endorphin levels and brain chemistry back to normal, keeping a finger on a manual control for its cognitive algorithms.

“Katyanna?” he asked. “You ok?”

“Huh?” it said, its face clearing. “Uh, oh, yes. Hi Anton.” All the personality modules included a basic familiarity with Anton, who had never met any of these atheletes except for Irena. “Yes, thanks for asking.” It turned to the quivering Irena simulation. “Oh-” it started.

Anton pressed his finger down to scramble that thought. With a few command prompts, he revitalized Irena, restoring some balance to its neurotransmitter and adrenaline readings. It sat up suddenly, turning to face him with restored dignity. “Da?” it asked cooly, in a slightly shaky voice, as it wiped a tear from its eye.

Anton pressed a button on his belt, activating a sequence he’d programmed in advance. . A special virus program initiated in the mainframe. “Yes what, Irena?” he asked sardonically.

The look on the simulation’s face became lost, confused. “Da, yes… yes what?” it asked back, earnestly.

Anton laughed and kissed her, his tongue sliding unopposed into her mouth. “Mmmm… Irena,” he asked as he nudged her chin with his nose, “How many medals did you win in Italy?”

The Irena-thing stared past him, thinking. “Ooh…Italy?”

“Yes…” he said, his teeth on her earlobe. He kept the Katyanna program blocked while increased its adrenaline level and rubbing his hand across its breast, and heard a gasp from behind him.

“Italy…” Irena said again, its eyes glazing over. “Italy…”

“Oh, yes,” he laughed. “You want me to take you.”

“Yes…Who are you?” she asked. Her voice was dreamy, without a hint of concern. She wasn’t even looking at him.

“I’m Anton, Irena.”

“Anton…” she said.

“Who are you Irena?”

The Irena-thing sat with its mouth agape. “Anton…” it repeated.

“Who are you, Irena?”

Irena stared straight forward, its mouth half open, its eyes like marbles. A strand of drool slowly trickled off her lower lip and onto her lap. Anton eyed her as she sat like that, slightly hunched over. She looked like a discarded rag doll. “Irena,” he ordered, stand up, and the wordless automaton complied, getting to it’s feet.

“Irena,” he said again, “Bend over.” The Irena-thing just stood there, swaying back and forth, her head tilted at an angle. She was drooling profusely now. The virus had deleted the last of her neurological algorithms, down to the cerebellum. A generic medulla oblongata software program now interfaced with the physiological algorithms to keep the simulation running. The statuesque body just stood there and continued to breathe, and drool, and now, with the last of its brain hollowed out, to empty its bladder; a trickle of perfectly clear urine ran down one exquisite leg.

He bent her over himself and had his way with her for a third time, then deleted her. 157 simulated pounds of perfectly toned flesh, equestrian legs and firm buttocks and small breasts and pancake face and blonde hair and all, winked out of existence in an instant.

Exhausted, Anton unfroze Katyanna. “Oh,” she said, picking up from where she left off, “Where did Irena go?”

“Italy,” said Anton, smiling.

“Oh.” Katyanna smiled, and suddenly, Anton didn’t find it so vapid any more. Against all expectation, he stayed up talking with the thing for the next two hours, discussing career, family, sport, and, of course, religion. At the end, he saved her. Then he shut off the system and went home.

To be continued...