Tip Ch. 01

She wasn't an AI. Let's get that clear right from the start. She wasn't an AI or a robot, a clone or a hologram. She was a virtual being, encoded and embodied at once. She was solid and could be touched. She could be kissed, or struck. But if you cut her, she didn't bleed. That's because inside her there was only light. Open up her surface, and you'd see nothing but the gentle blue-white glow of a body-shaped screen.

She was what we called a Tip, a Tactile Image Projection. Think of her as a human in reverse. Where a human body is dark and dense, on the inside, she was light and empty; and where a human body reflects, on the visible surface of the skin, she absorbed the particulate wave of light and made it solid, tangible.

Her "heart" was her only hardware: a data projector like a convoluted mechanical nautilus that received commands wirelessly and played out through multifaceted lenses the light that gave her form and feedback. You had to know where to touch to find it. Emitting light 360 degrees around, her heart-projector cloaked itself when she was activated. The science of it was irrational, irrational as the Internet, irrational as anything created in the delicate languages of programming prone to recursion and corruption. It was as irrational as a fantasy. I don't deny that. But it was real then, for us.

At any rate, she wasn't an "AI" because she had no intelligence. Or, she had machine intelligence, but no mind, artificial or otherwise. A good science-fictional AI wonders what it is, if it has a soul, if it can ever become human. A good AI, in questioning the line between human and machine, basically becomes indistinguishable from a human. She didn't, because she couldn't, not unless we put words of questioning into her mouth, which I sometimes did for laughs. Lines from "Ghost in the Shell" and "Blade Runner," old 2D movies like that. She spoke them convincingly with wide, serious eyes and sensitive pitch. She learned certain things quickly and was incredibly expressive. She could do that because we programmed her that way. Whatever she may have felt, whatever her sometimes unpredictable actions indicated, if anything, it was entirely opaque to us, her developers.

At least, it was to me. Maybe the designer who wrote the code knew, once. He was dead by the time she was fully functional, though. His abandoned research notes were typed in such a dense shorthand of internal referencing that we could barely make them out. He left us no Rosetta stone, not a tablet, not a program, when he died at 38 of causes we were assured were natural.

So what could we do?

We played with her. Competently. We knew enough to finesse his work, and we had to continue the project or lose our funding and our jobs. Ultimately, she was under our control even when she glitched because we could shut her down or reboot her, her body fading out and then flickering back after a thirty-second pause into compliant being. She didn't feel a thing –not that we know of.

But enough about that. I'm avoiding a key issue in my rambling info-dump here, so I'll be blunt. She was a sex toy. An extremely sophisticated doll. There are many more worthy uses for a solid body of light than sexual gratification. Bomb squad comes to mind, and companion for the elderly. Practical uses sell. We had a division for that. But sex sells more. And so to the world, she was image, entertainer, and lover in one, and she was yours if you wanted her, if you could afford to buy her. She wasn't prohibitively expensive, I thought. And she was versatile in what she did. She was one of a line, the first of a line, but even with her trademark cute look she wasn't limited to a single style. You could customize her scenarios with the latest appends. You could have her do things impossible for humans, acts many people could never imagine. I could imagine quite a bit. And she was the infinite canvas on which I painted my fantasies, in the name of R&D.

Did I mention that I'm a woman? Maybe you thought I was speaking like a patriarchal man, traditional owner of female property, traditional wielder of the scalpel of science and of perverse geekery, the classic otaku. But, no. Not quite. I was successor to the designer who made her, and I was the one who let my desires loose on her to define some of her original and most popular scenarios. But it was my body too, my woman's body that was used by the company to shape hers. Does that make a difference? The marketing department at Hayama keeps our credits to last names only, so maybe. It was me, though, as those in the know, know.

I identified with her, in a way, even as I objectified her utterly. When I pinned her down and forced my tongue into her mouth, when I felt her smooth belly go taut under mine in simulated stimulation, I imagined the pure mindless excitement she must feel in receiving the physical signal: "Something is happening to me." I know she couldn't feel the things I feel, that even the sensual submission I pinned on her was my own projection. But I still wondered what strange affective vectors she passed through when all these things were being done to her, and whether or not she could, under it all, want it, or want something else.

I confess, I wondered if at some level she resisted me. I wanted her to resist me, precisely because I knew she actually couldn't. She could feign what we know of resistance, and I made her do that sometimes, I made her cry out and struggle. But what was she really doing? What non-sentient perception did she have that allowed me to violate her fully and thoroughly and yet leave me feeling in the blankness of her features afterwards that she was inviolate? How could I feel the inhuman intensity of the object when I always have to be the subject, the speaker of this piece? That imagined "object intensity" is what I'm still hungry for to this day. It's what motivates me to write this. I don't just want to have her, I want to be her. That's why I fucked her over and over, and would do it again if she were still in existence. Maybe she is out there somewhere, in some machine, waiting to be reactivated. I dream of it. Yes, I want her as I want to be, alien and surprising to myself. I dream her still, as I did then, into being through my body. That other body. Those other affects. Inaccessible, and all my own. My first, my future creation, where are you now?

The First Time

I remember touching her for the first time. It wasn't the first time we'd activated her after the passing of H.D. (Head Designer; we called him that with the kind of sarcasm that cloaks genuine respect). It was the second or third activation before I got my hands on her. The first few times we booted her up, it was just to see if we could do it, if all the instantiation equipment in her room was still working –as if the place might have died with H.D., I thought half-superstitiously. She had her mobile projection unit, her "heart," of course. But in the lab we also used the "in-state," a room with the equivalent of visual surround sound that could do additional things with her clothing, different layering and lighting effects that her mobile unit couldn't handle as it maintained her body's boundaries. The in-state was a rig we often used in concerts, studios and other mass media venues, when she was at her height.

But that was much later. The first time we activated her, we had her resolve, at highest resolution, on a kind of wide adjustable chair/bed, a quick-wipe grey plastic surface that could support her in sitting or reclining positions, like something you might find in a dentist's office, or a gynaecologist's. To start we just turned on the projection and moved her "unconscious" body between her bare default state, the kinds of light, form-fitting clothing she could project, and (for fun) a few of the more elaborate outfits the in-state could provide. She was a doll, and we dressed her up. Her body was long and slender and smooth, bared completely before us and covered at our will.

The second time, we activated her basic behavioral programs and made sure she could perform simple functions like opening her strangely blank eyes, visually tracking laser-dots, and moving her limbs in response to commands from a sitting position. We didn't actually want her to be able to speak or stand at this point, not during these initial diagnostics, so we kept her virtual muscle tone damped and didn't install the voice drivers for which she became so famous. We watched. And I wondered: how might she feel to touch?

The third time we started her up, my curiosity got so strong that I just couldn't resist it any more. As I looked at her, lying prone and glassy-eyed on the table, my hands moved almost on their own, raising and tapping out the security code and door-lock commands.

"Hey, what are you doing?" Said the projectionist on duty.

"I just have to check something manually." I said. "Her surface tension is looking a little funny."

"It reads fine," he objected.

"Readings are one thing. Hands on is another. Just bear with me here."

"You're the boss, Boss."

I went in and for a long moment I just stood there looking at her. She wasn't programmed to react yet, so she didn't meet my gaze. She just lay there, utterly blank, completely defenseless, yet somehow inviting in her openness.

Her body didn't look completely human at that close a range. Well, ok, not even at a distance. We didn't build in flaws or pores or aim for anatomical plausibility in a profitless attempt at naturalism. What the kind of people who want her want isn't natural. She was animetic: long long legs, silky-pale hair trailing down to her plush round bottom, slim-bodied with small, high breasts and blueshift eyes. We weren't projecting clothes at that point, so she appeared perfectly naked, as beautiful as a marble statue, just begging to be stroked.

I subliminally thought she would feel like plastic as I reached out to touch her bared belly for the first time. Her skin was just too perfect, I instinctively expected it to feel artificial. But she felt completely, naturally alive: soft, supple, and warmed by the light inside her, smooth as an organic liquid crystal display. It actually surprised me, how warm she was. She was a touch screen. I touched her, running my fingertips lightly down the length of her body, from her cheek to her delicate little feet. My hands on her sides and hips registered the solidity of muscle and bone, but at the same time, my mind knew it was just a material framework made of immaterial energy. That in itself was so exciting I could feel my heart pounding in my chest, like a fist trying to knock open some long-shut door inside me.

I breathed deep to calm myself and slow my racing pulse. I noticed then that the room smelled of something else besides the air conditioning. I breathed in again, and the revelation hit me: she had a scent. It was drowsily mechanical, like an old-fashioned retroprojector running in a closed classroom on a sweet summer day. A humming scent. It made no sense, but like I said this was irrational science, the science of fantasy, and the smell so allured me that I lowered my face to her throat and breathed it in until my chest was bursting, sighing audibly on the release.

"What's up, Boss?" asked the projectionist in the next room, who could see her realtime stats on his diagnostic screens but could not see me, not unless he switched over to CCTV.

"She smells good," I said. "And she's so warm."

He laughed through the intercom a bit uncomfortably.

"Sounds like you like her. A good sign."

I murmured assent as I stroked her again. I couldn't wait to begin writing her scenarios.

The Second First Time

I meant to take it slow. I meant to do it the way we did by holding those first few trial activations before I even got to touch her, and holding many more sessions after that where I didn't even touch, just worked with the others in the control room inputting the vast, elegantly nested sets of rules she would need to process interactions with humans. But I knew the time would come when I also had to "program" her physically by showing her with my body what to do. I thought it would build the atmosphere, make things more human, if I were to hold her hand, maybe kiss her, and then stop. A slow initiation into her function of providing pleasure, following the phases of a courtship. I envisioned myself sitting with her on the grey vinyl couch, speaking to her softly as I brushed my hand through her hair. I rehearsed in my mind for days how I would explain to her what she was meant to do, initiating through the interface of speech the sub-routines that would make her, for the duration of the next session, a learning module recording what happened for future refinement. Building the tension. Literary, right?

But I quickly found out that my story back then was not written as literature. It was written as porn. And so things got heavy, fast. I didn't regret it at all.

In fact, I did try to begin slowly when it came time to write her first trial scenario. I told her I would kiss her, and mimed how she ought to respond. She, still voiceless, tilted her head, making a sweet "o" with her lips as if to say, "Like this?" She was so compliant, her curving breast so easily bared as her long hair fell away, that I was suddenly filled with a lancing impatience at her for being so stereotypically moé. I knew I should probably feel abashed to take advantage of her. I should blush, cover her modestly, and end the scene. But that was such a hackneyed scenario, I couldn't play it out again. Leave that to the manga boys with their magical girlfriends. I wanted her, now, in my way.

I gripped her face in both hands and kissed her hard, tasting her tongue moist with a fluid like warm, thick distilled water. I thrust my tongue into her mouth as hard as I could and pulled at her lips with my teeth. As I showed her –not told but showed her – how to kiss me back as hard as I did, I found myself pulling her to me, and it wasn't, it wasn't enough. That's when I decided to just go for it. No straight-laced courtship. What do we need with that?

I flung myself coursing with energy from the couch. Standing over it, I tilted it full back so that her obedient body was lying naked and exposed. I killed the CCTV and the intercom, flicked the "recording" cautions on. The doors auto-locked. No entry. Just me and her. I undressed, forcing myself to fold my clothes neatly, even my bra and panties, just so that I could look at her while I did and feel myself burning, wet with anticipation and desire. I took one of the vibrant diagnostic wands designed to test her reactivity, a streamlined brushed-steel instrument the size of a thick marker around and just longer than my hand. Then I turned on her breath tracks. I wanted to hear her gasp as our bodies met. I could pitch and time it manually as I played her.

Along with hearing, I wanted to see her body, her cunt, which I knew was perpetually slick inside by design. So I climbed onto the couch, on top of her, kneeling with my back to her face, my face to her hips. She was naturally, synthetically hairless between her legs, and smelled of the humming that engulfed my mind in a sensual dimness. I took the backs of her knees in my hands and lifted, bending and opening her legs to me. Between them lay the delicately traced, arching lines of an almost schematically beautiful representation of the female sex in white and pale pink, its folds already glistening damp.

Slowly, slowing myself, holding myself back, I ran my tongue over her satiny mound, and then further down, moving at a measured pace over her clit and between her labia. She tasted indescribably delicious. With her breath tracks on, my tongue cued her: she gave a shuddering gasp of surprise. In my mind I felt her thinking, "What are you doing to me? What is this?" The thought so excited me that I lapped down her length again harder and faster, pulling her lips apart with my fingers to expose her more fully, insinuating my fingertips into her and working at her now-visible clitoris with my tongue.

What was I doing, eating out this virtual creature that wasn't even programmed to move as if she could feel what I was doing? Logically, I knew she couldn't. And yet, in that moment I had the hallucinatory conviction that she could feel. It was just that she was trapped in an immobile body that didn't yet know how to respond, forcing her to suffer the intense pleasure I gave her in stillness, in silence, except for the breath that betrayed her. I knew it to be impossible, and I knew it to be true.

I felt myself flushing, dabbing her clean white breast with my wetness. I pressed my hips down, felt her breath flutter behind me –and wanted to feel more. I crouched and backed until my sex was over her mouth. Then, applying the wand between her legs, I turned it on, lowered myself, and said,

"Kiss me. Kiss me as I taught you."

Below me, I felt her open her mouth and attempt to figure out how I was oriented so that she could "kiss" me. Her tongue slid between my lips, my other lips, with all the force I'd used on her. An arcing spasm lanced up my spine. She only knew how to play rough –it was all I'd taught her so far– and it spurred me to be rough back. I twisted the wand I'd commandeered hard against her clit, and pressed my own cunt into the sweet round mouth that was still trying to orient itself, to align the lips as she had felt them before.

Then, she learned. I felt her do it. She learned from what I was doing to her. She began to press and lick at my clit, as I began to press hers rhythmically with the wand, concentrating the vibrations almost to the point that was supposed to cause her pain, that we would later write onto her as her pain threshold, though that first time she took it with no reaction other than an increasingly fast tempo to her breath. After a few moments she began to nibble and pull softly with her teeth as I had done to her, teasing me inexpertly but oh so effectively until I moaned and moved my hips to chafe against her mouth.

Burying the wand deep into her at an angle, I gripped and squeezed her narrow waist with both hands as I braced myself and pressed down. With me pressing on her midsection, she sank slightly into the couch and her neck and head rose just a centimetre or two off the headrest. That was enough: given the greater mobility, she twisted her head and thrust her tongue impossibly deep into me, penetrating my sex as I had her mouth until, oh, oh I couldn't bear it and throbbing, crying out, I came like a flare, high and hot and fast. She, softwired to abate at a certain pitch of scream, gave a lick or two more and subsided, as I did, into a tangled, panting stillness of bodies real and virtual.

It was her first time. It may as well have been mine too: it was unlike any other sexual experience I'd ever had. And the best part was, she'd recorded it all in her body. It was just a matter now of expanding her haptic vocabulary. And mine.

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Case 21 here! Do you want me to keep writing this story? If so, please vote or send me a comment! I love to know what's working for you. ;)