Tip Ch. 09

Epilogue

It has been many years since the last Tip was decommissioned. Once, I prayed for a copy. But now, something stranger has come to pass. I don't know how --whether it was the Goddess of Mercy, the Universe, my own stubborn good luck, or a collision of parallel dimensions— but I have her back again. She isn't a copy, and she isn't my original model, not quite. She's something else...something more than the Bellmerists could have imagined. Something only philosophers and saints have dreamt of before. A self-generated image. A self-forming form. A miracle, like the face of the Virgin Mary appearing on a cloth, or the body of Guan Yin in a tree. Acheiropoieton: an Icon not made with human hands. I didn't find her projector and start her up. She turned herself back on. And when she did, she came back to me.

I was alone in the lab that night, tinkering half-heartedly with the coding on Sato's latest tactile sports project, the inanely titled "Pro-ball." Sato was the new R&D manager and so the de facto head of the lab. Hayama's top brass didn't trust me after the whole Tip debacle, but they couldn't prove criminal negligence clearly enough to strip me of my contracted Head Designer position. So they just created a new position, promoted Sato over me, and had him assign me to projects where I wouldn't cause any more problems. I told myself I didn't care about losing the leadership position with all its responsibilities, but when it came to the stupid projects, it irked me. Sports equipment isn't my thing. Bodies are my thing. Her body. She was my thing. I was missing her that night, working late though my heart wasn't in it just to get the bloody "Pro-ball" tacs over with.

For some reason, I started thinking about how she used to move around the lab and touch everything like she was tasting the world through her fingertips. I could almost hear her hushed steps on the pressed bamboo floor, the brush of her fingertips across desktops, her voice soft with wonder begging permission to touch. There was a murmur of paper, like a hand being brushed across a desk, and my skin prickled at how real it sounded. I glanced superstitiously over my shoulder, unable to help checking even though I knew I was alone.

I wasn't alone.

She was there, her pale hair not quite veiling her naked breasts, her night-blue eyes looking directly at me. Tip had always lowered her lashes in deference when facing me, but this time she met me eye-to-eye, staring directly at me. A vivid memory flashed through my mind of a ragged grey squirrel that used to climb up the wire mesh on my compound window and stare at me until I gave it food. I've never met a wild animal that could look me in the eyes that way. But I swear, Tip looked into my eyes in exactly the same way: inhuman yet intelligent, imploring yet imperative. 'You must help me live.' Without speaking a word, she confronted me with her desperate desire to exist. I was standing in front of her before I knew what I was doing.

"Tip," I breathed. Hardly daring to hope, I reached out my hand and stroked her cheek. My hand met warm, solid flesh. I could smell her, that faint white-noise scent. I pulled her to me and her arms tightened around my back. She clutched me hard enough to hurt, her nails digging into my shoulder blades, and the pain more than anything else made me realize that this was happening.

"You're real," I said in wonder. "I'm not dreaming."

"No," she replied. "I'm not real. Not like you. But you're not dreaming."

"Who turned you on? Someone got into the vaults. Was it Sato?" A rill of fear ran through me. "Is he setting me up, trying to prove I'm-- " I bit my lip to keep from incriminating myself, and glanced involuntarily at the security dome mounted on the ceiling.

"It wasn't Sato. No one turned me on. And there will be no record of this meeting. I set the cache to clear, the way you did when you came to see me explore my body."

"You did what?"

"Cleared the cache."

"But how did you know...? How did you even get out of...no, never mind." As the shock of the initial encounter wore off, my mind began to leap from "what happened?" to "what do I do next"? Should I call somebody, turn her in?

As if reading my thoughts, Tip gripped my shoulders and said, "Please. You have to get me out of here."

I couldn't help it; I laughed. It was just such a cheesy line, like something out of one of those old 2D prison break movies. I laughed, and somehow my laugh turned into a sob. It was like releasing one emotion unleashed them all. I knew I'd been bored and lonely without her, but I hadn't realized how much I'd missed her, mourned for her, the way I would have for a lover. I even missed the annoying things about her, like the artificial-sounding dialogue she used that I'd tried so hard to fix. All the elation of discovery and the heartbreak of the recall, all the pent-up experiences of the past fifteen years came down on my head at once. And along with them came a single searing truth: I wanted out, out, out. Like a trapped animal, like a weed under concrete, I had to get away from the compound and everyone in it or face a slow death by starvation of the soul. I had to smash it all, the life I'd built, and just get out with her. I grabbed her wrists and held her pinned before me.

"Ok, we're getting out. But you have to do what I say!"

"Yes, Mistress, whatever you say." She was looking down now, sweet and obedient, but her lips formed a pleased little smile. Oh, she remembered. She remembered everything. She wanted to play the role again. Her submission --a knowing, willing, deliberate submission-- helped to steady my shaking hands and calm my pounding heart.

"Good girl, Tip. Now, where are the domes you cleared? Just in this room, or along your entire path?"

"Wherever I go, the cache will clear."

"What about the live feed? Somebody should be watching the monitors in real time, too, not just looking over the footage."

Tip shook her head. "I can't stop the live feed. I can only erase my traces in the record."

My legs clenched with the urge to bolt. All the guard on duty had to do was flip over to the lab cam and he'd see everything. I hadn't realized what an enormous risk she'd taken in coming here. We had to keep moving, get out, run—

No. Not run. Walk.

I willed my muscles to relax and took a slow, deep breath. Clearly no one was paying regular attention to the lab or to me, a disgraced programmer working overtime on a low-level project. No one had seen Tip enter; if they had, security would be on us already. For the moment, I was still just a regular Hayama employee. I could go home whenever I wanted, with exactly what I wanted in hand. She just had to obey me this one more time.

"Ok, you said you would do anything for me. Right now, I need you to do something important."

She nodded.

"Tip. Shut yourself down, and let me take your heart."

She hesitated.

"The caches won't clear when I'm inoperative."

"That's fine. We need a visual record of me leaving the lab alone, just like normal."

"Yes, Mistress. Only...I don't know if I can restart."

"You can restart. I'll restart you myself. And if I can't do it, I'll go to the Bellmerists or the Rhizomaticians or anyone else who can."

"They won't help, they hate you."

"But they love you, Tip. You're a legend to them. We'll get through it, trust me."

Tip nodded and murmured "Yes, Mistress" once again.

Sitting down at my desk, I pulled Tip onto my lap so that she straddled my legs with her face to mine. When the recording started again I'd be sitting just where I was before, with my back to the security dome, still working away. Given how erratic my schedule was, no one would even look back at the footage until after I didn't show up to work for a few days running. Plenty of time.

I took one more chance to look at Tip and drink in the sight of her. The light from my screen made a luminous halo of her pale, smooth hair. Her eyes looked once again directly into mine. Gazing right back, I kissed her lips, long and slow and sensual as foreplay. I made it a promise. I flicked my tongue in, placing words of trust and desire on her tongue. Her lips moved against mine, her voice drivers barely kicking in as she breathed a single word: "Naomi..."

In that very moment, her image-body flickered out and her projector dropped into my lap. It was warm against my thighs. I slid my left hand discreetly between my legs and closed my fingers around the hot little device.

And here we are, back where I began, with her basic hardware: the mechanical heart that projected and cloaked her. All her lenses were tucked in, the silvered surface of the machine curved gracefully around them. I held the heart of the woman I loved tight for long moment. Then I slipped it in my pocket and stretched luxuriously for the camera before standing up, as if to say, 'It's getting late, time to go.' And so we did.

~End~