Alexa shook her head. “Clearly she wasn’t. Voyos has medics, midwives, and medical AI, not a fertility clinic. Or was it different back then?”
Parker pulled his satchel from below the table and withdrew a fistful of hand-written notes. The only thing more secure and untraceable than the isolated spindle drive under the boardroom was paper. Glancing through them he said, “No. If anything, it would’ve been less advanced. The AI was barely ‘I.’ Pretty much only medics and Crossbrace medical database.” He coughed. “I’m sorry, not even Crossbrace in ’40. It would have been late Internet. Which means no real AI at all.”
“And no fertility clinic.”
“Why would there be a fertility clinic on a sex island? Pregnancy is our industry’s cancer. Soon we may even have a cure.”
“Just asking, Parker.”
“No. I’ll admit, yet again, to a certain amount of vaginal vertigo — but I’m fairly certain you can’t just reach into one woman, drag out some eggs, then shove them into another woman to be splooged on. It’s not like with frogs.”
“Stupid question,” Alexa said, “but you’re sure she got pregnant? Maybe Chloe was adopted and the records are confused.”
Parker tapped his handheld, establishing a connection with the boardroom table’s projector. A vidstream appeared showing a woman with a somewhat out-of-date hairstyle and a huge belly, riding a man with glasses. “Very,” he said.
“And you’re sure this is Nicole Shaw.”
“It’s not my mother,” said Parker. Alexa stared, noting how fully he’d recovered from insulted to his normal obnoxious state. “Yes, I’m sure. I could take you on a porn tour, but maybe you can trust my thoroughness. She’s quite a looker, isn’t she? It seems she was fully natural until 2041, when Voyos records show a breast enhancement and skin revitalization. Not nanos, of course. Polyplex. And I assume she did that to get her body back. Here’s pre and post.”
Parker tapped his handheld, and two images appeared side by side, rotated so Alexa could see them. Other than incidental details, the two naked images of Nicole Shaw looked more or less identical.
“This is fascinating,” said Alexa.
“Actually, it is. She should have been sterile. But the plot thickens. She has one non-cosmetic surgery on record, in 2034.”
“What surgery?”
“A hysterectomy.”
“Are you kidding?”
“I know, right?” Parker said. “But it was all they could do, owing to a certain lack of resources at the time. Apparently, it was traumatic. You can imagine the conditions. I couldn’t find the actual records, but one of the AI searches found a lot of social network activity and an archive — sorry, a blog. It was short for Web log, but it’s basically the same as an archive. Public documentation. Nicole was seventeen and wanted to leave a record of support for other girls who had to go through something similar.”
“Why did she need a hysterectomy at seventeen?”
“Don’t get me started. Point is, I’m as sure about Nicole being absent one baby maker starting in 2034 as I am that she was pregnant in 2039 and 2040, and gave birth to one Chloe Anne Shaw.”
Alexa drew a deep breath. “Okay. Let’s set aside the fact that it seems impossible and pretend there was a miracle. Somehow she got pregnant. Last time I checked, there still has to be a man.”
“A magic man!” said Parker.
“So, who was around? Who was she fucking? Who was around her? Who was jerking off around her? Who had a premature ejaculation problem and might have once worn her pants? I need a list of all the sperm flying around Nicole.”
Parker nodded. “Okay. Well, few people keep detailed Crossbrace — or Internet, whatever — records of who they fuck. Fortunately, the spa kept decent files. As was common at the time, she had one performance partner. I show zero deviation dates; it was in her contract that she performed with only the one guy. And yeah, he was nutting all over her. Samuel Paul Nicholson, born March 14, 2020. But as with most porn guys, he didn’t want to leave evidence that he’d been there for longer than maybe 20 minutes after an encounter, so he had a vasectomy.”
“Maybe it reversed itself.”
“Um,” said Parker, “I think that stopped happening before the lunar base. Like when my grandfather was in diapers, back when they did it with knives. I’d have to check the archives, but I don’t think any man with a vasectomy has impregnated a woman in over 40 years. I don’t see how it would even be possible.”
“About as possible as a woman with no eggs and no uterus getting pregnant,” said Alexa.
“Right.”
“What about other men? Regular customers? To watch her, that she might have freelanced with?”
Parker laughed. “You’ll think this is funny.”
“What?”
“Do you remember Clive Spooner?”
“Of course.”
“Well,” Parker said, “Beam AI assembled confidential records and spa restaurant bills suggesting Spooner was at Nicole’s table often. And Nicole posted a handful of pictures of them together. At the spa. Clothed. At her table. There’s no proof they ever did any freelance business, just that they knew each other. But really, even if they were knocking shit all over the place in the back room, does it really matter? Aren’t we forgetting something, before we go hitting Spooner up with a paternity suit?”
“That Chloe’s mother never should have been able to get pregnant, yes. But clearly she did. Who knows how, but she did. So, why not look at all possible donors?”
“Donors?” said Parker.
“Figuratively. Guys she fucked, you know.”
“Well, I guess. But it seems like we’re missing a piece. Maybe she got some sort of miracle replacement uterus. And if she did that, couldn’t it have come pre-loaded?”
“Someone else’s baby?” Alexa squinted at the two naked photos of Nicole Shaw still projected above the boardroom table, both seemingly taken when she’d been near Chloe’s current age, assuming no nano treatments, which seemed unlikely for a table girl in the ’40s.
The idea of a swapped fetus — however that would work — rang untrue. Chloe was a dead ringer for Nicole Shaw, down to her mother’s blue-green eyes.
“I don’t think so,” said Parker, also looking at the photos. “But, hell, I don’t know. A rush implantation job. I know the island doesn’t have a fertility clinic, but I’d believe that more than I’d believe this woman managed to get pregnant naturally.”
Alexa looked at the photos. It was Chloe Shaw with a ’40s hairstyle and ’40s clothes piled on the floor behind her. Somehow, their prodigy had been given an impossible birth by this impossible woman under the most impossible of circumstances.
“So, what’s next?” asked Parker, sitting back in his chair.
Alexa shrugged. “I guess we keep looking.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
“Chloe came back from Elysium this morning,” Olivia addressed the boardroom, pacing as the others sat. “She left her client very happy, but something in the way he talked about her made me think he somehow doubted his chance to enjoy her the next time. Did any of you speak to Steven Jameson? Is there a reason he might think Chloe could be … you know … going off the menu?”
Alexa watched Olivia, suddenly and inexplicably annoyed. The woman couldn’t commit to anything. First she was against Chloe; now she was trying to lead the conversation, grandstanding in front of the board as if Chloe had been her idea all along. Alexa and Parker had been right to meet in secret. These other four could be downright worthless.
Olivia continued. “She returned to her apartment and activated her canvas, though we’re still getting sketchy tracking from her end of the network. The canvas recorded her time logged in at—”
“What did she eat for breakfast, Olivia?” interrupted Alexa.
Olivia looked over. “What?”
“You know, since you’re such an expert on our prime asset.”
Olivia sharpened her glare.
Parker shot her a look: What the hell are you doing?
After a long, uncomfortable pause, Olivia resumed with a sidelong glance at Alexa. “Anyway, she came to work this morning. She had one client. Got 10-star ratings, as usual. Didn’t read his background or look up his known triggers and intuited her way to things the guy didn’t even know he wanted, without using any toys or any of the fun devices we’ve trained them to clamor for. After her client — and I thought this was interesting — Chloe got together with Slava, Benson’s girl, who coincidentally came all the way down from the other end of the building for no particular reason.”
Olivia looked at Benson.
“They seem to be buddying up,” Benson said. “I had nothing to do with it.”
“Just lucky that they’ve become pals, huh?” Olivia asked.
“She’s allowed to have friends,” Charisma said. “Slava is nice.
“You’re telling me you didn’t ask her to swap pointers that might bolster response to your vidstreams?”
Benson shook his head. “No.”
“How did they even meet? I thought we agreed she wouldn’t be involved with Nectar? Her entanglement with Andrew was strictly R&D, at least for now.”
“We didn’t agree to that,” said Benson, clearly offended. “Besides, what’s the problem? Chloe is isolated. She has no friends. Doesn’t that strike you as odd?”
“What do Chloe’s friends — or lack of friends — have to do with anything?” Houston asked.
“There’s no reason to be cross-pollinating, Benson,” Olivia said. “We’re using Aroused to make vids of Chloe, and—”
“We’re not making vids of Chloe,” Charisma said. “That, unfortunately, has been made abundantly clear after her first time with Andrew. You know: after we got that amazing and beautiful vid from her?”
“My point is, the worlds are too close. You’ve heard the thing about not shitting where you eat? Well, don’t do it, Benson.”
“Which one is the ‘shit’ in this scenario, Olivia?” Benson replied. “Are you saying Chloe is what’s going to feed this company, and my company’s shit is getting all over it?”
“Don’t get offended. And don’t be stupid. Slava knows how to act for a camera, and loves it. She’ll talk about it. And Chloe might be interested in trying it when she does. Chloe still gets to fuck, while being adored by millions when she does? Why wouldn’t Chloe be interested? Again, we have the same problem: What are you going to tell her if she asks to make a film, Benson?”
“We’ll say no,” Parker said.
“I didn’t send Slava to see her, Olivia! And who the fuck made you boss?”
“So Slava just decided to head all the way over to the spa, where vid girls aren’t even supposed to go, just for the hell of it?”
“Hell if we know!” Charisma said, moving closer to her husband’s side.
“Well then why would she decide to—”
Alexa said, “I sent her.”
The whole room seemed to blink with confusion.
“Why?” Charisma asked.
“Because Chloe feels too much like an empty vessel,” Alexa said. “She barely has an identity of her own without someone to play off. She always adapts to the client. When Chloe’s given a piece of equipment, she intuits how to use it without effort. We put her on the Orion and the girl comes like crazy, but she does it staring into nothingness and going nearly flat on the meters. Same for the canvas. Parker didn’t tell her a thing about it, but the activity we can see — and by the way, the goddamn adaptive AI has already blocked most of what she’s doing from us — suggests Chloe’s untangled The Beam like an impossible knot, again without effort. So yes. I sent her a friend. I wanted to see if, in the way we saw something new with Andrew, we’d see something with Slava. I want to get to know the girl below the escort. The girl who came to us so eager to be part of O … yet so reluctant to tell Parker, in her first interview, who she really was underneath it all.”
“Call me crazy,” Olivia said, “but isn’t a willingness to adapt and do what clients and employers want a desirable quality in an escort?”
Alexa sighed, her irritation at Olivia mostly deflated now that she was sitting. “The difference is, Chloe isn’t acting. She’s not faking it. She doesn’t see what a client wants, then pretend to be that thing. No, Chloe is actually adapting. She becomes what we want her to be. That bothers me, because I wonder if there’s anything there, or if she’s only a mirror. An echo.”
“Why is that bad?”
There was a knock on the boardroom door.
Parker answered, trading words with someone unseen.
“Why is it bad, Alexa?” Olivia repeated. Then she squinted. “Wait. You know something.” She glanced at the door, still ajar with Parker talking to someone beyond it. “What is it? What did you find out?”
Parker stepped back and opened the door for the visitor to enter. The newcomer was a tall man with a mop of black hair, a slim build, and imposing eyebrows.
Andrew, the actor they’d hired to investigate Chloe.
He looked uncertain — the same way Alexa felt with Olivia, beside her, continuing to stare with suspicious eyes.
Andrew approached the table and stood in front of Alexa, ignoring the other five.
“We have to talk,” he said, “about Chloe Shaw.”
WANT TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?
The Future of Sex continues in The Immaculate Conception.
The Girlfriend Experience Page 6