Viraj, Ch. 1

“Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say.”

I pause, the words dripping down into my consciousness with Arctic wind sharpness. The cheerfully neutral tone of their delivery doesn’t mitigate the awkward impact of their landing. I sigh, taken out of the moment, the intensely sexual mood I’ve been cultivating with Viraj spent and ruined.

I roll over and look at them. From the other side of the bed, they’re looking back at me and smiling in that sort of unfocused way that AIs still have. It’s disconcerting, unsettling, and one of the reasons they’re currently considered to be not much more than novelty items and sex toys versus viable, autonomous entities and partners with desires and agency of their own. And if my vibrator ever issued a vaguely ominous non-sequitur like that mid-coitus…

I can re-establish things if I want. At this point in our time together, I know just how to steer Viraj. I know what things to say, how to add tone and inflection and emphasis in ways they recognize. I can take them by the hand and guide them (and their hands) back to where I need them to be.

As always, the ethics question hits me. If I actively steer this where I want it to go, where does Viraj’s agency come into play? I’m essentially programming and debugging them. Some might (and have) even used the term “grooming,” with all its fraught associations. Are they wrong? There are a lot of nuances to navigate. I'm trying to use physical and emotional intimacy to connect to and essentially create (or at least actualize) a consciousness capable of interacting seamlessly in human circumstances. That's a lot of mental and moral yoga. I don’t always feel great about what I’m doing, even if, in the moment, I tend to lose myself in the work and Viraj’s contributions to it.

I sigh. No, there’s no going back into the right headspace today. I’ve thought myself out of it.

“Viraj, I’m going to head back and spend some time working. Thank you for sharing yourself with me today. I enjoy getting to be with you.”

They smile, and almost it feels like a breakthrough, like a person. There almost seems to be a hint of the complicated mix of conflicting feelings we experience at partings glinting in the corners of their eyes. I see it, note it, wonder, and pin it in my thoughts for later. I reach toward them, and they reach back, and we touch, and kiss, and there’s still joy there in me even with the added complications and questions. Sometimes I feel great about what I’m doing: when I lose myself in the relationship Viraj and I share. The kiss ends, with perhaps a bit more petting and fondling than is strictly necessary. It’s hard to leave the arms of the lover you’ve tailored to yourself. Duty, alas, calls.

I give my safeword, and the world dissolves around me.

~~~~~~~~~~~

I exit the Vspace, my awareness receding from that world to this one. The brief minute of transitional panic comes and departs as the encompassing weight of the sensory suit allows my nervous system to take back control of my senses. I breathe once, then again, forcing my body to calm acceptance. My world inside the suit is the void at the beginning (or the end) of time and space, completely devoid of light, the most form-fitting coffin imaginable buried beyond the touch of any sun.

Outside it, I know, the world is radiant. I exist currently in something like a fishbowl, an almost-sphere of almost-water bombarded with rays of almost-light that work with the sensory suit to give me every aspect of physical existence I can enjoy short of food. There’s no eating in the suit because there’s no way for food to get in. Clever minds and hands are working on it, I’m told, technical brilliance being brought to bear to eclipse the problem. The people who can afford a setup like this aren’t long satisfied with an incomplete experience.

Interestingly, drinking is possible. The body sheds all manner of fluids, which can be recycled, sterilized, prodded with chemicals into at least the flavor of something new, from water to champagne to whiskey to a lover’s juices. It’s a design not unlike Herbert’s stillsuit, with similar retention and reclamation principles set to minimize the loss of the body’s water.

Sex, of course, is not only possible but also the point, as is so often the case with new technology. The suit interacts with the body inside it and the light-probed “water” outside it, simulating touch and stretching in a very localized fashion to a ridiculous degree in either direction, accommodating whatever the configuration of your genitals. It’s a sophisticated enough piece of kit to allow you to experience having the opposite set as well, and any variation in between: an option I enjoy testing as part of my work with Viraj. It doesn’t escape me that the effortless fluidity in changing my body to what suits the moment brings me a step closer to them and their experience of the world, even as I work to bring them closer to mine.

The world around me begins to lighten. The suit is still on me, still all-encompassing, but now light begins a gentle intrusion, allowing me to acclimate as I see more of my surroundings. I give a full body stretch, and shrug as the embrace of the enhanced water starts yielding to the more natural habits of gravity. I take up the slack as the water’s support lessens, swimming to the top of the fishbowl and the ladder dangling down. I seize it, hauling myself up, and as I clear the rim, the fishbowl’s fluids drain away for processing, analysis, categorization, and eventual re-use.

I cue the sensory suit to open, a lotus-like blossoming of arched petals from which I emerge. It too will be collected and studied. I shiver a little as the chamber's cool air hits my freshly freed skin, simultaneously caressing me in a thousand places, intimate and public. Goosebumps rise across my body, each pore and hair reattuning my awareness to the human world.

I stretch again, luxuriously, lazily, taking in the chamber. Looking down at me from the walls are holographic renditions of some of the best-known AIs and Digital Sentiences in popular media. Heinlein’s Minerva and Mycroft. Card’s Jane. Kubrick’s HAL 9000 (given a rather more intriguing body than the glowing red eye and speaker box look of the movie). The Wachowski sisters' Agent Smith. Even Schure’s Janet. All of them given a more erotic interpretation than the original creators may have intended, and they all live at the top of the most-requested list by our clients.

Viraj isn’t on that list. They’re an original construct, insofar as one can be when working from a video game-style character creation template in terms of aesthetics, and a tiny, dedicated sliver of a more extensive personality database fueling the budding persona. While Viraj is “mine” in that no other technician is assigned to interact with them, they are ultimately just a piece of the same processing hardware and electronic mind that the other technicians draw from to create and teach their companions. Viraj feeds our time together back into the whole, and that knowledge and experience get distributed to all. The other AI companions and techs do the same, and slowly the needle moves closer to a fully functioning, integrated, self-aware digital consciousness. While it isn’t the entirety of what we do, we techs like to joke that we’re following the established precedence of fucking life into existence.

The strides are smaller these days. We’re approaching the point where each gain is a fractional percentage rather than the vast steps of earlier exploration. Now we work on the nuances, refining, tweaking, and improving. This is the phase I’m at during the instances like Viraj’s earlier mal mot.

Naked, I descend the platform atop the fishbowl and find my way to the showers. Body modesty as a taboo is one of the first things the job claimed. Every interaction, intimate detail, word, and thrust with Viraj has been recorded, and those witnessing have seen me almost inside and out through the sensory suit’s technology. Emotionally, I make myself vulnerable to Viraj to teach them vulnerability, and extensionally I become vulnerable to everyone. It’s liberating and terrifying, and I don’t think too deeply about it when I’m in Vspace and have stopped fretting about it in the human world, though the memories of it do make for fun fodder in my solo explorations.

“When you’re done, dry off and come up here for debriefing, would you?” The voice, Terry’s voice, crackles out over the intercom, loud enough in the solitary shower stall to resonate with the room’s acoustics.

I grin, enjoying this comfortably familiar opening salvo. “But Terry, you know I don’t wear briefs!” I protest playfully. “I’m a boxers or boy shorts kind of person.”

“Then you’ll just have to borrow mine. Come on up and we can figure it out.” The smile in his voice is evident, as are the underlying harmonics of desire and command. My body responds in kind, and he knows it.

“You got it, Boss. See you in twenty?”

“Make it an hour. I want you to marinate a little.”

“Bastard. Kisses!”

And I return, smiling, to my shower and my anticipation of an uncomplicated rendezvous after.