She swiped the Web, storing it for later explanation, then removed the gloves and put them away. Before she closed the canvas’ top, she looked over at Brad to find him staring at her, slowly shaking his head.
“You can’t understand, Chloe. You’re a person out here in the physical world, and can’t understand how offensive this would be to the digital memories of those you’re snooping on.”
Chloe shrugged. “I guess I’ll have to keep their digital memories in the dark, and deal with them as real people.”
She snapped the canvas shut, then stood for dinner.
CHAPTER FIVE
CHLOE DRESSED DOWN THE NEXT day. It was easiest on Sunday to take a break from being sexy. She loved her job and found sex empowering, but sometimes didn’t want the option. Sometimes it was nicer to sit at a table outside one of District Zero’s cafes by herself and sip mimosas.
Of course, “unsexy” for Chloe had the understated allure of a sexy nurse (in professional dress, ready to save lives with her panties on) or a sexy librarian (the kind who shelved books rather than bent over to reveal a bare ass in fantasies for men like Tony). Chloe didn’t have to play characters who were sexy-but-not-sexy to fail at being sexy. She wore simple tan shorts, baggy and not at all hip-hugging, a plain blue tee, and sandals. She had her dark-brown hair back in a pony tail, utilitarian and not artificially demure, loose hairs sticking out from the sides in what was, to Chloe, a disheveled mess. She wore no makeup; had all the correct undergarments (and not even fancy ones). But still, eyes followed her as she walked down the street, and a man who’d turned to watch her pass walked face-first into an antique lamppost.
Chloe had grown used to it and barely noticed, but caught her reflection in the cafe’s window as she sat almost annoyed. Chloe at her worst was actually Chloe at her best. She had a slim form and perfect, subtle curves that couldn’t be concealed except by a winter coat — and even in the wintertime had the look of a sexy Russian femme fatale with pale skin, naturally red lips, and mysterious blue eyes that scanned the crowd from inside a fur hood.
She kept a low profile, sat in a corner, away from foot traffic on the street, and spent most of the time perusing Crossbrace magazines on her tablet. When she looked up, Chloe saw another man looking at her, and for some reason didn’t feel compelled to look away.
Until she realized that staring was rude.
She looked up a moment later. The man who’d been watching her had ordered coffee. He looked about 25, and something in his body language said that was a natural 25, not an older man stuffed with age-defying nanobots. He had a black shirt and long pants. His arms were thin — but in a way that Chloe, who’d grown up geeky and liked guys with less classical beauty — found adorable. His face was lean and friendly, with dark eyes and darker eyebrows. He had puffy, unkempt brown hair. Everything in his manner said he didn’t give a shit, that he’d ride a skateboard one day and work in an office the next. Not that he looked like an office guy. Most office workers were Directorate, and this guy definitely looked Enterprise.
Chloe’s job with O technically placed her in the Directorate party — she got her fixed salary and wasn’t required to scrape for her living — but was Enterprise at heart. Her mother had been a free agent before joining O, and she’d always valued freedom over security despite being willing to accept the latter to work for O. Chloe felt the same. And this guy? He was clearly a free spirit. Just look at those tan forearms. Just look at that fearless white smile. Just look at that carefree hair.
She was staring. Chloe looked down, feeling herself blush.
When she looked back up, it was to see the chair opposite her being pulled out. The guy from across the cafe was sitting.
“Excuse me?” she said. He was cute, but uninvited. Chloe was used to guys approaching her when she went out, and her knee-jerk reaction was defense. When she went out with friends, at least a few of the girls wanted to be approached, but an overly forward guy was usually a warning sign. There was a fine line between confidence and arrogance.
“Hi,” he said. “I’m Andrew.”
Chloe stared. The man’s dark eyes turned out to be brown, and she didn’t see a speck of arrogance inside them. And barely confidence. The fact that he’d come over to her table was confusing, given his eyes. It was almost as if he’d made a mistake and was in the wrong place.
He said, “This is the part where you tell me your name.”
“Chloe.”
“Nice to meet you, Chloe.”
“Can I help you, Andrew?”
“Actually,” he said, “you can. I was curious about that.” He pointed at her bag, not quite a purse or backpack. One more instance of Chloe trying not to be sexy on her day off and failing. The bag was worn and almost green, not ladylike at all. But given her outfit and casual hairstyle, it came off a little granola, as if she were a hip surfer type. And guys loved cute surfer chicks.
Andrew pointed at a tattered paper book sticking out from the top of Chloe’s bag. She had tried to find some of Georgia Bernard’s books to further her investigation, over Brad’s objections. She’d been able to find most of the volumes still online as e-books, but this one, a more obscure title, was unavailable. She’d found battered copies still circulating in print, though (Georgia Bernard was strangely popular in print like late Alexa Mathis), and had picked it up at the DZ archive on her walk.
“I’m reading it for … ” Chloe started, unsure how to finish.
“Do you mind?” he reached toward the book, then paused with his hand extended and looked up at her.
“Go ahead.”
Andrew pulled the book from Chloe’s bag. She felt a strange thrill as her causal possessions — not her accoutrements as Chloe the O Girl — shifted under his hand. He looked briefly at the cover, then rifled pages.
“So few people read,” he said, still flipping.
“A lot of people read,” said Chloe. Alexa was more popular than ever. But, she realized, Alexa hadn’t written a book in over a decade.
“I read this thing on some page about how one day they’re going to figure out brain-computer stuff enough that they’ll just kind of be able to beam books into our brains. It’d be like reading the book, except that you’d never actually read it. So, I guess it’d be more like having read the book. But I don’t know that I’d like that. It’d kind of be like having a vacation memory beamed into your head so that you will have been on vacation in your memories. But where’s the actual being on vacation?”
Andrew was still looking at the book. Chloe was amused by his attention to the page. His eyebrows were slightly furrowed, as if working a puzzle. He’d been looking at her earlier so he must be attracted, but didn’t gawk like most guys. His attention was on the book — a relic from an earlier age, presented in a medium that few used instead of digital ink. Chloe decided she was probably supposed to respond. “Well, when you’re done with the vacation, isn’t it all the same?”
He looked at Chloe, then set the book on the table, face up. Behind him, the table he’d been sitting at was empty except for a handheld. While Chloe watched, a waiter arrived with a plate, looked at the handheld, seemed to determine the table’s occupant was still around, and set the food down.
“I guess, in a way. But don’t you feel like the vacation memories after a real vacation would have a different feel than fake ones? Like, you’d have actually done those things, so when you looked back at the implanted memories you’d see the real ones differently, remembering when you were actually doing them?”
Chloe shrugged. “I guess it depends on how they do it. I imagine any good fake vacation would include the feeling of actually having done things, so memories would be the same.”
Andrew flipped the book closed and set it on the table. He saw Chloe glance behind him, turned, and saw his food. Without a word, he stood, went to his plate, and brought both the food and his handheld back to Chloe’s table. Apparently, they were having brunch together.
He pi
cked up a piece of bacon, shrugged back at Chloe, and took a bite. Chloe sipped her mimosa. When the bacon was gone, Andrew said, “I still don’t like it.”
“Well, luckily nobody is talking about implanting vacations in people’s brains.”
He used the torn bacon to point. “Yes, but they are talking about zapping books into your head.”
“So says whatever you read. But that sounds awfully sci-fi to me.”
Andrew pointed at the street as a hover cab passed. “We’ve been promised flying cars forever. Now we have ‘em, I figure the rest can’t be far behind. Like killer robots. And big space ships that fly to Alpha Centauri. What do you do for a living, Chloe?”
Chloe blinked. There had been absolutely no transition. Andrew had asked without preamble, and she realized that they were having breakfast together, suddenly on a date. Chloe decided that was OK with her.
“I work for O.”
“Like, how?”
“I’m an escort.”
He dodged the predictable response: making a joke. Someone as young as Andrew wouldn’t react with judgment, but sometimes she saw surprise. Or maybe awe.
“Hey, that’s cool. You get to meet a lot of interesting people?”
“I’m not allowed to discuss my clients.”
“I get it. Me either. I’m a writer. Like, I write books. On my own. Books nobody reads. It’s why I asked about your book. And no, I don’t get to meet many interesting people and yes, I’m allowed to talk about every little detail because nobody cares.”
Chloe realized that she cared plenty. Not only had she pegged Andrew’s spirit exactly — he’d be Enterprise, and probably in a rather tentative position given that Enterprise offered no safety net — but she didn’t know any writers besides Alexa. If she had managed to get “making things up for a living” to work, why couldn’t others?
“That’s fascinating.”
“Thank you.” Then, confidentially, he added, “You know, I have sold upwards of six copies.”
“So you’re Enterprise?”
“Yes. Starving artist and all. I’m not stupid, though. I tell people I’m a writer and it’s true, and when they ask what I write, I tell them the titles of my books, and that’s true. Only when they keep prodding —or when they just keep letting me sit at a pretty girl’s table as you’re doing — will I admit that I also write a lot of articles for boring publications. A lot of Crossbrace page copy, too. Anything I can find, really.”
“Is there a lot of work out there for writers?” It was a personal question, but Chloe had just told him that she fucked for a living and he hadn’t flinched.
“There is for someone who’s willing to sell out if it’ll give them a bit more freedom to write books nobody reads anymore. Bacon?”
“I’m sorry?”
“You want some of this bacon?” he said. “They gave me like 10 strips. I don’t know why. I mean, I like bacon, but this is fucking ridiculous.” He put his hand over his mouth. “I just said ‘fucking.’ I’m sorry.”
Andrew was serious, and she couldn’t believe it. Nobody, other than the dullest of yokels, didn’t know exactly what it meant to be an O escort. Yet Andrew had thought it might be inappropriate to swear around her — even a word that, in Chloe’s life, simply described a day at the office. The unadorned sweetness melted her heart.
Chloe was about to reply, but before she could, he said, “Chloe.”
“Andrew.”
“I’d like to go on a date with you. Something boring and traditional. Dinner and a movie. You like movies?”
Chloe nodded. It was a big part of her job to be confident, but Andrew had been delightfully in charge of this conversation from the start. She felt somewhere between swept away and elated, warm in a way she’d almost forgotten.
“Not a holo movie, though. Just a 2-D, on a screen. A girl who reads paper books — where did you even find a paper book, hell! — would want to watch a movie the way they were intended. I even know a place that uses a projector. In Harlem.”
“I can’t afford to eat in Harlem!” Chloe said, aghast. She’d been there several times with high-end clients, but it was entirely different, going there as an ordinary girl.
“Ha! Neither can I. Not even on my income of at least a handful of credits each and every year. Yeah, you heard that right. No, the theater is in Harlem. A leftover old place, not at all fancy. We could eat here. How much do two slices cost?” He waved a hand in the air. “Oh, never mind. You seem worth it.”
Chloe felt a chuckle bubble up from inside, surprised. “Okay,” she said. She took a napkin from the table and used the cafe’s pen to scrawl her Crossbrace ID. She handed it to Andrew, feeling ridiculous for the tingle she felt as his skin grazed against hers.
“Excellent,” he said. “Friday?”
“Can’t do Friday. Or Saturday. I work.”
“How about Tuesday?”
She nodded. “Tuesday is great.”
“Even better. I don’t have to wait until Friday.”
“Right.”
“You know I’m not really going to take you to a pizza place, right?”
She giggled.
“That was a joke.”
“I figured.”
“I’ll see you, Chloe,” Andrew said, standing.
Chloe didn’t return his goodbye. Instead, she looked up at Andrew, then down at the table, where his plate of food was still mostly uneaten.
He sat and picked up another piece of bacon. “Writers,” he mumbled. “They’re all nuts.”
CHAPTER SIX
CHLOE GOT HOME, THEN PUT on a slinky pink dress with spaghetti straps and matching panties just so she could take them off herself.
She was too old — and, let’s face it, too experienced — to delight in girlish pleasures as if she were still 16 and blushing, but Chloe couldn’t help it. She was in a business of seduction, adaptation, and feigned affection. She’d almost forgotten what the real thing felt like. She hadn’t felt this particular species of blush since Brad (the real flesh-and-blood Brad, not the avatar that had been modeled after him), and even then it was clumsy and unremarkable. When Chloe and Brad had started dating, she’d been too young to know what she was feeling. By the time they finally had sex and broke up, she was over it. The sex was almost like an experiment, and the experiment had failed. She’d sort of had love once, but it’d been an immature kind of love, maybe closer to infatuation. She’d had plenty of sex, but as good and breathtaking as some of it (fine, almost all of it) was, none had the early-spring day feeling of classic romance. Chloe’s mother was a sucker for romantic old movies; she had inherited a contact buzz. Yet until today, Chloe realized she’d never truly experienced it.
She stood in front of the full-length mirror in her apartment’s large bedroom. She ran her hands over her shiny dark hair with its red highlights, freshly combed. She moved her hands around the back, to her neck, to where a necklace would clasp. Elbows up, she saw that her reflection had struck a rather sexy pose, breasts up and firm, nipples outdenting the fabric. Her hands came down, retracing their route, following her shoulders and neck, then detouring down her front. Chloe’s reflection opened its mouth and sighed. Her eyelids fluttered closed then open. She felt her tits swell, aching for caress.
She met her eyes — a peculiar shade, usually blue but sometimes closer to aquamarine. Out loud Chloe said, “Oh, this old thing? I just had it laying around.”
Her reflection didn’t reply. Chloe, on her side of the mirror, realized she didn’t feel stupid playacting, pretending that Andrew was here in her bedroom, complimenting her pink dress. She’d never been on a real date, so fuck the world if it judged her for pretending (and anticipating) now. Not a real date. She’d been “out” plenty of times with Brad, but they’d started as stilted teenage affairs where neither knew what to do, and she hadn’t been able to enjoy them because she’d been too nervous about things that couldn’t have possibly mattered to Brad. Those early dates had evolved in
to rote, and they’d repeated the same basic stations: dinner at one of four dull but affordable restaurants, hanging out with his friends at the breakfast place until 2 a.m., watching vidstreams at his house when his parents were away, while rounding a few of the bases. Those were fun, nostalgic times, and they’d been plenty hot in their way. But they weren’t romance, and never had the chance once she and Brad grew out of the magic.
“Oh, that feels good, Andrew,” Chloe said, relishing the guilt of saying his name. She didn’t know Andrew. She knew nothing about him other than what he’d said before asking her out — and then, of course, afterward as he finished eating and they paid their bills. But again, she was alone. Chloe’s fantasies were her business.
As she imagined his touch, Chloe closed her eyes, cocking her head to expose her long, pale neck. She opened them back and blinked to her reflection. Chloe’s neck, thanks to the dress’ thin straps, spilled down to her cleavage. She leaned forward, pretending to reach for her imaginary man, and saw how he’d be able to easily see down the loose front of her dress. She watched her own nipples, then felt herself compelled to touch them. Chloe’s hand slid down from her neck, then cupped the firm weight of one breast. Her thumb rolled across the nipple, feeling it through the fabric. She felt her panties moisten and her legs go rubbery, knowing that soon she’d want the bed.
“Take it off,” she whispered. “Take it off and make love to me.”
Both hands moved down. One found the inside of her thighs. She could feel her own heat, yet forced herself to wait. Chloe pulled the dress over her head and laid it aside, then looked at herself in the mirror, dressed only in panties. She looked good — trim body, long legs, gravity-defying tits with pert, pink nipples. One finger stroked a breast while the other hand surrendered, finding its way between her legs, lying palm-flat over the crotch of her panties, feeling how moist they’d become. She spread her legs. A finger on the searching hand tickled the side hem of her pink panties, where her leg turned to the outer lips of her reddening pussy.
The Avatar Experiment (The Future of Sex Book 3) Page 5