Chapter 21
Shelley and I spent the rest of the afternoon with Lily. I don't think I have ever said the words "Tell me about" so many times in my life as I did then. Wizzit had a few things he wanted us to investigate, but for the most part, he let Shelley and me fumble around on our own.
Listening to Shelley make her inquiries, I got the impression that she had a specific objective in mind, a certain command she was looking for that she wasn't finding. Whatever it was, though, I sure couldn't figure it out. Of course, I was busy with my own agenda, which was to find out how to bring Li Lin-fa to the surface. At first I had thought the secret might lie within Lily's "companion mode", but that turned out to be something else entirely, as I'll explain in a bit.
We checked out operator mode for a while. Shelley asked for another self-report, and Lily merely said that she was tired. The self-diagnose and self-prescribe commands seemed to be geared strictly toward medical problems, and when we tried self-recommend, Lily simply told us that she had no recommendations.
We did manage to clear up one minor mystery when we asked about switching from one mode to another. Lily wore earrings, tiny golden studs that you could barely see from far off, and that you probably wouldn't pay any attention to even up close. I know I didn't. I mean, most girls wear earrings, don't they?
Regardless, Lily's stud earrings contained infrared sensors that would translate the signals from JB Swift's remote control into physical sensations -- heat or vibrations across her earlobes or something like that. Those physical sensations would in turn cause Lily to change from, say, commander mode to attacker mode. And Wizzit had never detected the infrared sensors because they were strictly Earth technology, nothing from Enclave. He seemed especially interested to hear this and had us ask her several questions about the sensors.
Lily wouldn't say much about either attacker mode or commander mode. From what little we were able to find out, it appeared that attacker mode was what I called her Crazy Kung Fu Zombie Chick persona. And commander mode seemed to correspond to the other side of Lily that we knew all too well, the pain-in-the-butt minder.
Turned out that neither Shelley nor I was authorized to get Lily to switch to attacker or commander mode, nor were we allowed to find out what commands were available in either mode. Big surprise, eh? Stymied, Shelley and I shrugged at each other, and Shelley said, "Lily, tell us about companion mode."
I held my breath, because as I mentioned earlier, I had a suspicion that this was where I might find out something about Li Lin-fa.
Lily said, "Companion mode is intended to be a mechanism for providing social and sexual companionship for those operating the attack doll. In companion mode, I have limited to moderate autonomy and will follow nearly any command given me by anyone regardless of authorization status. From companion mode I can switch to any one of the following modes: operator mode. To find out what commands are available in companion mode, say 'Tell me about commands in companion mode.'"
Shelley and I looked at each other in surprise. I know that this was not what I had expected. A mechanism for providing social and sexual companionship? Did I really want to know about this? I mean, sure, part of me was pretty darned interested, but . . . was it the right thing to do? "Um . . ." I said decisively.
"We, uh . . ." Shelley began, "we need to pursue this, Trevor. For the sake of completeness, if nothing else."
"Okay," I agreed. "But, um . . ."
"Yeah, I know," Shelley said. "Wizzit, this companion mode of Lily's is likely to be a sensitive topic. Please notify me and Prime Commander if anyone asks to see this bit of footage, okay? And if anyone orders Lily to switch to companion mode, let both of us know immediately."
Wizzit snickered. "Anything you say, Red."
"Okay, here goes." Shelley took a deep breath. "Lily," she said, "tell me about commands in companion mode."
Let me tell you, there were a lot of commands in companion mode. An awful lot. It appeared to me as though JB Swift, or whoever had programmed her, had wanted to do a pretty thorough job of catering to everyone's tastes.
Surprisingly, a fair number of them were G-rated, or at least they sounded as if they would be G-rated. Want to have a date with a bubbly teenage babysitter? Check. A schoolteacher? Check. A young mother? Check. The list of personalties that Lily could assume seemed nearly endless. I could take her out to dinner every night for a solid month and never be with the same person twice.
Of course, I realize that to someone with a dirty mind, any one of those could degenerate into . . . well, whatever. But see, the particular commands I'm thinking of were specifically labeled as Platonic, which means no physical intimacy would be involved. This was obviously the "social companionship" part. Other commands were labeled Romantic; and still others, Erotic. Like I said, catering to everyone's tastes. There were even some which seemed designed to appeal to other women.
In addition to the personalities, there was a whole range of specific acts one could command her to perform. A lot of them I knew about, or had at least heard of, but some of them . . . .
Look, I was a bit of a jock in high school, okay? I've hung around my share of locker rooms, and I've had any number of bull sessions with my high school buddies, and even a few with Mike, Toby, and Nicolai. I'm not exactly naive about girls. But some of the things Lily described -- man, I had no idea what they were.
Even Shelley seemed flabbergasted by the sheer number of, er, services that Lily offered. She asked Lily to explain a couple of them, presumably because she didn't know anything about them either, and Lily described each one in graphic, anatomical detail, using that same monotone that seemed to be the hallmark of operator mode, with absolutely no hesitation or sign of embarrassment whatsoever.
I have no idea what Shelley was thinking by the time Lily was done, but I know that I was sort of a confused whirl of emotions. On the one hand, Lily's companion mode appeared to be the answer to nearly every teenage boy's secret prayer for the perfect girlfriend. She would do anything you wanted her to do, be anyone you wanted her to be, and she would never make any kind of demands of you. What healthy young male wouldn't want to play around with someone like that?
On the other hand, it wasn't like she was a real person. In companion mode, she wasn't much more than a living, breathing blow-up sex doll. Sure, she might be fun for a while, but ultimately she would turn out to be a huge disappointment. Even I -- shallow, insensitive guy that I am -- knew that much.
I think the thought that sickened me most of all was this: What if Li Lin-fa turned out to be just another one of Lily's companion-mode personalities? There were a couple of ones that fit -- "shy farm girl", for instance, or "naive immigrant who doesn't speak much English".
I mean, I had met Li Lin-fa. I had talked with her, held her hand, even kissed her once. (And if you believe Shelley, I had fallen pretty hard for her in the process.) She seemed like a real person to me -- much more real than Lily Lee or Crazy Kung Fu Zombie Chick. But was she real or was she just another of Lily's myriad personalities?
Like I said, I don't know what was going on in Shelley's head, but I felt like I was drowning. "Red," I started to say in a strangled voice, but she held up a finger, stopping me.
"Lily," she said after a moment's thought, "tell me about available languages in companion mode."
Lily replied promptly, "English is the only language available in companion mode."
Shelley nodded in satisfaction, as if she had expected that. It took me a moment to realize the significance of Lily's answer. Then the penny dropped: Li Lin-fa didn't speak English. She was from a small fishing village in eastern China, and in all our conversations, we had spoken only Cantonese!
I let out my breath in a relieved sigh. Li Lin-fa wasn't one of JB Swift's personality constructs, after all. She was real. Shelley must have understood what I had been going through, because
she took hold of my hand and squeezed it reassuringly. "Lily," she said, "tell me about available languages in operator mode."
"English is the only language available in operator mode."
"Lily, tell me about available languages in commander mode."
"English is the only language available in commander mode."
"Lily, tell me about available languages in attacker mode."
"English is the only language available in attacker mode."
"Interesting," she commented, Prime-to-Prime. "It appears, Trevor, that your Cantonese-speaking friend isn't part of this whole attack-doll setup."
"Yeah. I'm not sure whether to be happy that she's not or disappointed that we don't know how to find her. I was kind of hoping to meet Li Lin-fa again."
"I understand how you feel. Anything else you want to ask her?"
"Just . . . one more thing." I hesitated, trying to decide just how I wanted to formulate my question. To tell the truth, I wasn't sure I really wanted to know the answer, but on some level I guess I needed to find out. "Lily, tell me how many times companion mode has been activated."
"Companion mode has never been activated."
Another sensation of relief swept through me. No one had used Lily -- had used Li Lin-fa -- as a "companion". No one had ever forced her to do any of the things she had described. I suddenly realized that if anyone had, then I . . . well, I'm not sure what I would have done, but it would not have been pleasant. I let out a long, grateful breath and squeezed Shelley's hand. "I think I'm done, Red."
Attack Doll 2: Junior Prime Page 21