The Immaculate Conception

by Aubrey Parker

  “Since before you were born.”

  “Do you think you got more attention than the other girls?”

  “How do you mean? More attention in what way?”

  There were too many inquiries down that particular tunnel, and Nicole was already checking out. Chloe could ask her other questions later: if she was or ever had been subjected to extra tests, left to her own intuition with clients like Chloe was, or sent into encounters where what she didn’t have a clue what to do until she was there.

  Chloe didn’t remember O paying her mom any more attention than the others — the way they paid extra attention to Chloe — but she’d only spent so much time at the spas as a kid and hadn’t seen her mom perform until she herself was legal.

  “Did they used to ask about me?” Chloe asked instead. “Management, I mean? Did they ever show any interest or suggest I be groomed? Anything like that?”

  “Baby,” Nicole chuckled, “you were only a kid!”

  “No, I mean, did—”

  “Okay, Chloe!” Nicole interrupted, reaching for her terminal. On-screen, her hand came toward the projection like a vidstream effect. “I’ll talk to you soon. Love you, miss you, bye!”

  Chloe’s wall went blank and she was suddenly alone.

  But her curiosity could still be remedied … whether her mother would approve or not.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “Close your eyes.”

  Andrew startled. He’d been listening to music when Chloe entered, and hadn’t heard her approach. His door was unlatched, without a digital lock. He hadn’t been kidding about being poor. His connection was isolated to the terminal playing the music. He lived like a bohemian, and his apartment was little more than masonry and glass.

  She felt guilty about using her Beam connection to ferret out Andrew’s address, but once her hands were on his hips, her chest pressing into his back, Chloe no longer cared.

  “You surprised me,” he said.

  She reached toward the terminal — a simple, no-frills model — and touched his screen to change the music, choosing something soft and lyrical to replace it. Something sappy and lovelorn, something her mother would mock.

  “Close your eyes,” she repeated.

  He hesitated. She couldn’t see his eyes because she was behind him, but Andrew’s body language betrayed a man at attention. His moment of reluctance gave her pause, until she realized his doubt was about himself rather than her.

  “Chloe—”

  “Just do it.”

  She sensed his eyes closing. Then she rested her hands on his chest, palms flat. The movement was sensual, but not sexual. Her default would have been to go below the belt, so she kept her hands high.

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “Feeling.”

  “I wish I worked out more.”

  “Not feeling you. I meant I’m attempting to feel. To emote.”

  “How is it going?”

  “I don’t know.”

  And she didn’t. Chloe was feeling just fine, but it was like an ingrained response to Andrew’s presence. If he were feeling doubtful or down, her chameleon nature would want her to adapt, to touch him in just the right ways and say just the right things. She wasn’t sure if her genuine reaction — if she’d ever felt such a thing as a genuine reaction — was the same.

  “You don’t know?”

  “What do you want me to say, Andrew?”

  “I’m not sure what you mean.”

  “What do you want from me? How would you have me feel?”

  Andrew hesitated. “Is this a test?”

  He sounded concerned, or even more doubtful than before — the opposite of his usual carefree, playful self. Something had been wrong at the park, and it had occupied Chloe’s mind, heavy like an anchor, ever since. That same thing was still wrong, but had matured into something else.

  “No,” she said. “It’s not a test.”

  “I don’t want you to feel anything. You feel what you feel.”

  It was such a simple thing to say, yet Chloe didn’t know if her body and mind understood.

  “How do you feel?” he asked.

  “Nervous.” It was the truth, but she wasn’t sure if it was her base or something more meta. Was she nervous for her own reasons, or because she wasn’t sure how she truly felt?

  “Me too,” he said.

  With her flat palms, Chloe could feel his heart. “I can tell.”

  “I don’t know what to make of you, Chloe.” His words were rushed as if he’d been dying to say them.

  “Nobody seems to.”

  “I don’t know if I like you for you, or if I like the person you’re becoming so that I will like you.”

  Chloe turned Andrew around. She didn’t have to tell him to open his eyes. He did so automatically, those usually-playful orbs suddenly so serious.

  “So,” she said, “you can tell.”

  “I don’t know what I can tell.”

  “You’re conflicted. There’s something wrong.”

  “Conflicted,” he echoed. “But nothing’s wrong.” Then: “At least, I hope not.”

  “But you don’t know.”

  “Honestly? I don’t.”

  “My whole life is about feeling, but it’s always as a response.” Chloe swallowed, hesitant to voice what was coming. “But I know how I feel about that — about your hesitation.”

  “I think I love you, Chloe.”

  “But you don’t know.”

  He shook his head.

  A tear tickled the corner of her eye. “And I know how I feel about that, too.”

  He moved to kiss her.

  “Don’t.”

  “I want to.”

  “Because I want you to?” Chloe asked. “And I want you to because you want to?”

  Andrew tipped his head a little; he didn’t have to say Chloe’s double-talk was confusing them both. He pressed his lips to hers, felt her lack of response, then pulled back. “Does it matter?”

  Chloe shook her head. “All my life, I knew who I was. I never used to wonder about things like that. But so much has come up lately. The tests. It’s like O is experimenting on me, and—”

  “You shouldn’t tell me about that.”

  Chloe ignored his protest, pressing on. “At first, I thought they were just trying to decide if I was right for O, then later to find my place in the company. But I’m good at reading people, and at figuring out what they want and what their intentions are. I keep thinking the only reason O would keep testing me like they have is because they want to know something deeper about me: not what I can do, but who I am.”

  “Shh.” Andrew tried to kiss Chloe again, but this time she pulled back.

  “So I started to ask the same question I asked you the other day. What I told you—”

  “Chloe.” This time, he kissed her neck.

  “I made a call. Talked to my mom. Do you know I don’t even know who my father is?”

  “I don’t care. And I don’t care what O has to say about any of it.”

  She pressed her lips together. Tears were about to spill and she didn’t know why. “I’ve never questioned any of it.” A drop ran down the side of her nose, unheeded. “It’s like I’ve been living in a vacuum, and I’m only realizing it now. I’ve always done well with everything I’ve ever tried, but it was never because I had some innate ability. I just learned what I needed to know — specifically what I needed to know — at the perfect moment. I could pick up anything, and always knew what tests were coming and what would be on them. Did you know I can play the guitar? Do you know why? It was just before I started work on Voyos. I was up for two positions, one much better than the other. The woman in charge of the decision was a bitch named Laura. While this was going on, I suddenly and inexplicably decided to learn the guitar. I got very good, so fast it was spooky. One day I was playing in the park and Laura passed by. She’d loved guitar all her life, and played every day. I didn’t know that … but somehow, I t
hink I did. And of course, because I somehow figured out what to do to impress the boss and did it, I got the better job.”

  “Chloe, it’s okay.”

  Andrew was only mouthing words; she hadn’t said anything was wrong. But Andrew was a man, and men seldom understood that tears meant something had broken.

  “I don’t know how I feel about you,” Chloe said, her voice growing thick, “because I don’t know if I’m merely responding to you, not truly feeling.”

  “A response is a feeling.”

  “But what if my feeling leaves once you stop wanting me to have it?”

  “I won’t stop wanting you to love me.”

  “Or if you stop returning it?”

  His hand found her breast and began to rub it. He didn’t answer, but something in his expression tried to. “What do I want now, Chloe?”

  She met his eyes. “You want me to feel better.” It just came out, but it was the truth.

  “Right. And do you feel better?”

  “No.”

  “Then what does that tell you?” His smile returned to counterpoint his slowly moving hand.

  “Maybe you want me to keep feeling bad so you can rescue me.”

  His hand slipped under her shirt, and she felt the touch of flesh on flesh, her breasts sensitive under his palms. He whispered in her ear. “I don’t want that.”

  “You might not even know you want it. That’s how it works.”

  He paused for a long moment, then said, “You know, you’re not the only one who’s unsure about things right now.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’re not the only one who doesn’t know who you are sometimes, Chloe Shaw.”

  “You’re just saying that,” Chloe said.

  His hand turned fingers-down, then slid under her waistband. The tips played at the gentle swell of flesh just beneath. Chloe wanted those fingers lower, and felt herself tipping upward, trying to force it. Love and lust were mixing, no matter how she tried to force them apart.

  “I have a secret too,” Andrew said, “and you haven’t guessed it.”

  “What secret?”

  He shook his head, then kissed her neck. His hand slipped lower, wrist now under her waistband, fingers blessedly finding her wetness. “My point is, you can’t read me as well as you think you can. Not everything is a response to me. There’s plenty of you in there as well.”

  “You’re wrong.”

  “The only reason you’re feeling what you’re feeling, Chloe,” he said, his fingers moving, “is because you’re feeling it.”

  Chloe closed her eyes.

  Something was indeed different with Andrew. When adapting in the past, she’d been able to see the process as it unfolded. Now it unspooled almost against her will.

  Andrew’s fingers were lightly rolling across her clit, and part of her didn’t want him there. She couldn’t be sure this was real. And still, she very much didn’t want him to stop.

  “I need to think,” she said.

  “Then think.”

  “I can’t think with you doing that.”

  “Do you want me to stop?”

  Instead of answering, Chloe realized quite suddenly that her hand was pawing the front of Andrew’s pants. Her movements were inexpert and unpracticed — juvenile, something that might be done by a girl who’d only been touched a handful of times. She wasn’t sure where her hand should go or what it was supposed to do.

  Andrew’s attention was making her lightheaded. Something had been uncorked within her.

  Still standing, Chloe spread her legs to give Andrew’s hand better access. Her pants were too tight for his attention, so she took her hand from his crotch and brought it to her own, unbuttoning and slipping everything down.

  She felt cold and foolish in the middle of his apartment, naked from waist to calves with her clothes bunched at her ankles. There were other odd feelings as well: Embarrassed. Uncertain. Blushed like a virgin.

  And still she didn’t want him to stop.

  Her hands returned to him and pushed his clothes down so at least they’d be even, both standing without pants in the open room, their hands pawing like they were teenagers with itches, urgency making up for their inelegance.

  “Let’s go to the bed,” she said.

  Andrew’s fingers slipped inside her, to the knuckle. It was barely anything but the sensations hit her full-on, making her feel like she might collapse.

  She looked around, emerging from her swoon. Andrew’s apartment was on the second floor, windows looking out across the tops of pedestrians’ heads. She’d made her living, prior to District Zero, having sex with men atop glass tables for the entertainment of posh diners … but right now it felt as if the whole world might see, and this time that wasn’t okay.

  “People will see us.”

  Andrew’s hand slipped behind her. She thought he might cup her bare ass, but the hand stopped in the small of her back. She followed its guidance and then they were on the floor: clean enough but worn, ancient tiles of some rubber composite, its top layer flaking. The floor was cold under her, her back still warmed by her shirt. She reached up to pull it off, but Andrew was already moving on top of her, both of their legs still shackled by fabric.

  She wanted to kick off more clothes, move to the bed and make herself comfortable, but then she felt pressure between her legs as Andrew’s cock slipped inside.

  She gasped.

  This was all so new — so old as to be new. It was like an old-fashioned grope session in the back of a parked car, like in those movies they watched together. Secret and hurried. Spontaneously passionate, not bothering to pause for niceties. Ugly and raw and beautiful.

  He pressed into her and she sighed to allow it, passive and unyielding.

  The surrender was exciting, yet she felt vulnerable at his mercy.

  The thought made her wetter. Pressure swelled within her, seeming to come from everywhere at once.

  Andrew had leaned away so he could reach between them to touch her clit, his hand augmenting everything, fingers guiding her orgasm. But she wanted that hand elsewhere.

  Her preference, not just his.

  Chloe gently moved Andrew’s hand, bringing it to her breasts, now feeling his thrusts as he put his whole weight atop her, the way his cock found the perfect spot inside.

  “Tell me, Chloe,” Andrew panted as his kisses covered her neck. “Tell me how I feel inside you.”

  “I’m going to come,” Chloe sighed. “Oh, God, keep going!”

  Andrew was moving faster, breathing heavy, clearly at the edge. His mouth was everywhere: her face, her neck, her lips. He throbbed inside her.

  She could tell he was close. She wanted to shove him over the edge, feel his warmth as they came together. She gripped his cock with her pussy and closed her eyes, awaiting the inevitable.

  Andrew gave a final few thrusts then collapsed atop her, his moans close in her ear.

  His pleasure sounds were the final straw; Chloe tipped past her own precipice.

  The room was gone. So was Andrew. The only thing left in the world was the sensation between her legs, spread like a butterfly’s wings.

  When her orgasm had passed, she returned to the world and saw Andrew spent above her. He rolled to the side, and his seed trickled out from inside her. They were mostly clothed, pants binding their ankles, shirts on, nude and pink in the middle. His cock, still pulsing with his heartbeat, lay on his belly.

  Chloe felt open and bare, but happy. She rolled onto her side, her hand flopping across his chest. “What have you done to me, Andrew Braverman?”

  But his eyes were closed, and didn’t open.

  A small, contented smile sat on his lips.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Alexa was alone.

  Alone as she’d been in the beginning, as she would be in the end, and as things should be.

  She was in the middle of Central Park, sitting on an old-style park bench a few dozen meters from the edge of a pla
yground. It was new, and Alexa wondered what it said about the world that the bench was wood but the chips beneath the playground equipment were actually a softened Warp composite.

  A dozen years ago, someone had created a lot of trouble for the park district when their kid had fallen off a jungle gym and gotten hurt. Warp analogue chips were the answer. You could practically dive into them headfirst, and they’d mold to you as you hit them in real time, bringing you to a quiet rest with virtually no chance of injury.

  Playing it safe.

  When Alexa had been young before the turn of the millennium, kids could break their necks on all sorts of things. She’d grown up riding in wheeled cars without collision avoidance, bouncing around in the back seat without wearing safety restraints.

  How had humanity survived without all this coddling?

  The storms came and took billions of lives, then everything changed for the surviving societies. The fall — not just the disasters, but the chaos after — had polarized the population. Some people grew harder, determined to seize the day. Some grew softer, insistent that nothing bad must ever happen to them again.

  Not surprisingly (in Alexa’s opinion, anyway), the latter group tended to be low-end Directorate. People like that would always choose safety, even it meant staying inside to prevent injury from walking down the street.

  To Alexa, it was a stupid way to live. You’d never hurt yourself on the playground and you’d never hurt for food, but insisting on complete safety meant you’d be wearing a straitjacket wherever you went. Risk made life worth living. She’d been Enterprise since before “Enterprise” had been a party. She’d always lived on the edge, making her own rules. You couldn’t drag sex out into the open like she had without a risk-taking attitude. Without risk, you’d never change the world.

  But there was a flip-side, too: when your risky experiments started paying off big, you couldn’t sit on your laurels. You couldn’t become complacent like those families so terrified of playground accidents. You had to stay hungry — something Olivia, Houston, Charisma, and Benson had forgotten. Even Parker, who’d always been her closest partner, seemed to be forgetting.

  Of the Six on O’s board, Alexa alone had stayed hungry. These days, the others merely paid lip service to innovation. They’d gotten what they wanted with O, and seemed to feel there was no need to keep clawing ahead.