The Ghost in the Doll (Fox Meridian Book 6) (28 page)

Fox shivered slightly and giggled. ‘Yeah, well, quit that.’ Fox signalled for release and the padded clamps lifted away from her. She reached behind her head to unplug the data cable. ‘I kind of got the impression you were avoiding me.’

‘No, I… Okay, yes, I was. I just couldn’t work out how to…’

When she trailed off, Fox turned toward the door. ‘I need to get into some clothes.’

‘Okay, I’ll come with. I need to talk to you.’

‘So talk.’

‘It’s not that easy.’

Fox felt her chest tighten, which was ridiculous, but kept on walking from the converted office to the bedroom. ‘Why? Never had any trouble before.’

‘That was before you were tortured by that nutjob. I listened to your explanation of what happened and just about felt it myself and all I could think about was that he was going to do it to me and I felt so–’

‘Take a breath, Marie.’

Marie took a breath. ‘I felt so selfish. And then I felt like a crappy friend because I wasn’t supporting you because I couldn’t look at you without thinking “that could’ve been me.” And that made me feel even more selfish… I’m sorry.’

In the bedroom, Fox began stripping out of her old bodysuit. ‘So… You’re feeling guilty for empathising too much?’

‘Uh… In a selfish way, but yeah, I guess.’

‘It’s not the whole “ghost in a cybernetic doll” thing?’

‘What? No! God, you’re still alive. I don’t care how, but you’re still alive. Considering what that… Don’t have a good enough swear word, but after what he did to you, alive is a luxury.’

‘Huh. “Alive is a luxury.” I like that.’

‘It’s yours, use it as you wish.’

Fox grinned and began pulling on a new suit. ‘Thank you. I’m going to need things like that. MarTech is putting out a press release about me tomorrow. Have to go finalise it with the memetics department this afternoon.’

‘Chat shows?’

Fox sighed. ‘Oh… There will be chat shows. I’m going to see if they can get me on
Straight Talk
. I think Iberson and Resnik will give me a fair hearing.’

‘Probably. Charlie and Nishi Sakura are getting married.’

‘Really? Didn’t see that coming. I thought they were happy being an unmarried couple.’

‘Charlie announced it, on stream, right after they got back from Japan. Maybe near-death experiences make you sentimental.’

‘Charlie Iberson? Sentimental?’

‘You may have a point. Hey,
M. J.
marathon tonight? I bet you haven’t seen half the new episodes.’

‘Well, no, I–’

‘So I got the studio to do me special copies so you don’t have to wait for the reruns. We can watch them back-to-back and criticise my acting.’

Fox grinned at her. ‘I am not going to criticise your acting. You’ll do it enough for both of us.’

‘Oh, too right. I’m terrible at that…’

Fox listened as Marie set off on a tirade about her flaws. It was all good. Maybe a lot had changed, but her friends, all of them now, seemed to be okay with it. It was all good.

26
^th
April.

Fox sat on the sofa in her virtual lounge, watching the feeds from the external security cameras. She had got up at eight, discovered that the media release had gone out on time and that there were already people camped outside the front door of the house, and returned to a viron.

‘Are we still getting enquiries about interviews?’ Fox asked.

‘Belle is returning them with instructions to contact MarTech,’ Kit replied. ‘You know, I get this nice, new cyberframe to talk to you with, and you hide in your viron.’

‘It’s your viron too. I suppose it’s too much to ask. I mean, the release said to run all contacts through MarTech PR, but they were bound to try to go direct.’

‘Yes, and the ones camping outside the door were not unexpected.’

‘Funny though. I always thought it would be Marie who’d have to worry about that.’

Belle appeared, just as she did in the real world. ‘Fox, I have a message through from Sister Superior Naomi Lind. She will be arriving by ground transport in the next few minutes and hopes that you will see her.’

‘Naomi? Oh… Uh, reply in the positive and let her in as soon as she gets to the door. Tell her to come straight up and, uh, warn her about the guys with the cameras. I’ll transfer to my body.’

‘Of course, Fox.’ And Belle vanished again.

‘I’ll get my gynoid ready,’ Kit said. ‘I can meet her in the hall while you prepare.’

‘I need to prepare?’ Fox asked, holding her transition for a second.

‘Some clothes would be good.’

~~~

The tall, blonde form of Naomi Lind, head of the Church of Saint Nicholas, strode into the lounge on white, high-heeled pumps and smiled. ‘Fox, you’re looking well for a woman who is, according to some of the more worthless news channels, a member of the walking dead.’

Fox cringed. ‘I’ve been avoiding pretty much
all
the news channels.’

‘Knowledge is power. Know your enemy. Also, I can understand you feeling differently, but I found their alarmist attitude rather funny.’

‘I’ll go through it all before Friday.’ Fox indicated the sofa and moved to sit down herself. ‘I’m doing
Straight Talk
this week. Apparently they were “eager” to have me do my first interview with them.’

Sitting down beside Fox, Naomi raised her hands to her cheeks in mock surprise. ‘No! Really? Well, colour me shocked.’ Then she grinned and took Fox’s hands in hers. ‘I did not come here to discuss your new situation, though it is fascinating and I’d love to know more.’

‘Not planning to kick me out of the Church then?’

‘No. Why should I? We have other infomorph members. Primarily on the Moon, but we have them. No, I wanted to talk about bioroids.’

Fox frowned. ‘You know I can’t discuss specific BioTek projects, Naomi.’

‘We can talk generalities. Your experience with the Yurei no Ningyo leads into our concerns as well.’

‘They are not bioroids.’

‘Agreed, but they continue to be pertinent. You know that we concern ourselves with all aspects of the sex industry, so when the Yurei no Ningyo were announced, we started monitoring the memetic patterns around this new area. Obviously there were a number of negative memes, but there was also significant popular support. Pertinent to the Sisters, some of the memes popping up came from the anti-prostitution sector. The basic thought construct was that if these artificial people are here, human women don’t need to sell sex.’

‘Sexist
and
racist in one package.’

‘Quite. It’s not actually new. The same meme has existed for gynoids for some time, but there has always been a counter-meme pointing out that gynoids aren’t quite the same as humans.’ Naomi frowned, stroking fingers over the back of Fox’s hand. ‘Though if this is an example of MarTech’s latest product, we’ll be needing to rethink that.’

Kit walked in at that point with a coffee tray. ‘Fox’s skin is superior to mine, Naomi, but I believe you will find the latest texture on these Sylph models hard to distinguish from human skin.’ She bent to put the tray down, brushing her hair out of her face with a hand when she straightened up. ‘How do humans put up with this? My avatar’s hair never gets in the way.’

‘Talking to two people ill-equipped to comment,’ Fox said; Naomi’s hair was short-cropped and Fox’s never strayed near her eyes.

‘Oh, good point.’

Naomi was smirking. ‘We give lessons on utilising hair in coy looks, Kit. It can be quite useful and you have just the face for it.’

‘Perhaps I will enrol.’ Kit set about pouring coffee.

‘I’m going to assume that these memeplexes haven’t fallen apart now it’s been revealed that the Ghost Dolls aren’t bioroids,’ Fox said.

Naomi shook her head. ‘A minor conspiracy meme has emerged suggesting that MarTech invented the scandal to eliminate the competition and that the Yurei no Ningyo
are
bioroids, but we can ignore that. Or I can. I’d imagine your memetics department will need to counter it.’

‘Probably.’

‘There is still a complex of memes around themes of bioroids being made as slaves, bioroids being suitable to replace humans in “distasteful” occupations, etc. When BioTek Microtechnologies announce their first one, there will be a push to have them legalised in a similar manner to AIs. They will need an owner. They will, essentially, be slaves. We expect to see efforts to once more criminalise prostitution for humans, though we should be able to counter those. It
will
unfortunately put our work on deregulation back.’

‘You want the profession deregulated?’

Naomi nodded. ‘We want our profession to be no different to… office work. The regulated nature of legalisation criminalises those unable to meet the demands of the law and places a “morality tax” on the rest of us. However, what I wanted to ask you is… how long do we have to prepare? For the first real bioroid, I mean.’

Fox narrowed her eyes. ‘Keeping in mind that I can’t discuss matters of a commercially sensitive nature…’

‘Of course.’

‘Not long. Very little time at all.’

Naomi nodded. ‘So they have one but aren’t ready to announce it yet.’ Fox remained silent. ‘I would imagine that the media storm around Aphrodite Cybernetics has delayed things.’ More silence, slightly narrower eyes. ‘We’re probably talking weeks.’

‘Honestly? Couldn’t say. Knowing BioTek, we’ll get a couple of days’ notice at most before they go public with anything. I have been up to L-four to look at their progress and discuss some aspects of public reaction. I’d also point out that the Sylph series’ – Fox indicated Kit – ‘and its male equivalent are the only cyberframes MarTech produces specifically for the erotic market. BioTek aren’t going to turn out bioroids for that specific use.’

‘Unless they make them sexless, that will be a use they see.’

Fox nodded. ‘Uh-huh, I know.’ She sighed. ‘Okay, the first of them will be basically human, to look at anyway. They’ll be aimed at smoothing over reception of the new life form. Once the idea has met with some acceptance, there are a load of more task-oriented forms in the design stages. Zero-G or even vacuum-tolerant forms. Something which can function on Mars with little more than a breather mask. I’m sure there are some far less ethical possibilities for other companies to make, but we won’t see them for a while. BioTek has a
huge
advantage over its competitors.’

‘The Yliaster fabrication system?’

‘Uh-huh. I’m not saying there aren’t other ways to achieve the same end, but Yliaster gives them a big boost as far as rapid prototyping is concerned.’

‘Thank you. Now…’ Naomi reached out to pick up her coffee, taking a sip and sighing before continuing. ‘It seems like ages since we last caught up. Tell me all that’s new with Fox and Kit.’

‘Ha!’ Fox barked. ‘Where do I start…’

29
^th
April.

Fox walked out onto the stage to the sound of applause, which was a good start but not expected. Resnik and Iberson were waiting for her, behind their desk on the set of
Straight Talk
. Somehow, the ice queen that was Charlie Iberson did not look quite as icy as usual. Resnik was smiling as their guest, who they had shunted a couple of other interviews to get on the show, walked on.

Fox paused for a second to look out at the crowd, as she had been instructed, and then settled into her seat. ‘Thanks for having me on, Elaine. Evening, Charlie.’

‘Nice dress,’ Iberson said.

Fox had selected a short, purple, backless dress with a keyhole front. It had a high neck and long sleeves, and there were matching sandals, and she thought it looked elegant, if also sexy. ‘Thanks. I’ll let you know where to get the pattern. I hear you and Nishi are getting hitched.’

Iberson’s cheeks coloured a little and Resnik broke back into the conversation after her introduction of Fox, which had been very circumspect. ‘We don’t talk about Charlie’s wedding.’ Resnik cupped a hand around her mouth as though to keep a secret and stage-whispered, ‘Panic attacks.’ There were growling noises from Iberson. ‘Moving right along… What’s new with Tara Meridian?’

‘Oh, you know… Kidnapped, beaten, broken spine, internal injuries, brain damage, coma, became an infomorph. The usual stuff. I’m sure all your guests have stories like that.’ There were some rumblings from the audience.

‘But that’s rather the point, isn’t it?
No one
has a story like that. Let’s get a few simple questions out of the way first. You’re
not
an AI?’

‘No. My brain was analysed to produce a map of every connection in it. There’s a virtual engine program which then uses that data to emulate my brain. An AI is a program, each unique to the individual model. I’m an infomorph, but not an AI.’

‘A lot of people think those are synonymous.’

‘And that’s always been wrong. “Infomorph” encompasses a range of digital life forms, some of them theoretical. Computer viruses are a type of infomorph. Some people consider some forms of meme to be infomorphs.’

‘And there’s no going back?’

Fox shook her head. ‘The process is destructive. The original brain has to be dismantled to map everything out. In the future, it may be possible to take the data and use it to create a new artificial brain, but for now, it’s software or nothing. And I’ve no organic brain to go back to.’

‘Did it hurt?’ Iberson asked.

‘I was in a coma. Didn’t know anything about it until I woke up in a viron. I… didn’t exactly adjust well, initially, but I didn’t know it was going to happen. The only way they could save me was the Akh process, and MarTech had permission to try it on one terminally ill subject.’

‘And part of that permission was a legal exemption regarding your, well, death,’ Resnik said.

‘Uh-huh. Legally, I’m the same person I was before. For the process to be used on anyone else, the law needs to be brought up to speed on what constitutes death. Otherwise, when they’re converted, they have legally died and the infomorph created would be in a limbo state. Uh, that’s in America and much of the rest of the Earth nations. On the Moon, there’s already a legal structure granting full rights to infomorphs and I suspect the death part could be sorted out fast enough.’