Sadie sat cross-legged on her small bed, typing furiously. The click-clack of her keyboard echoed around her tiny studio, which was way out on the edge of the city, though the rent nearly consumed her entire university stipend. She had spent much of her thirties -- sometimes she worried too much -- working on her doctoral research, nickel and dime'ing together an existence. But now, all those years of financial anxiety seemed to finally be paying off.
She had heard from another colleague about a new online chatbot that could really speed up writing, and best of all, it was free. It was called EntranceGPT, and though the weird name made Sadie skeptical at first, she was soon very impressed by its capabilities.
With the machine's help, her doctoral dissertation seemed to have taken on a life of its own. Even her central thesis itself was evolving rapidly as she typed, becoming less about the objectification of sex workers that her field work had initially been about, and more about how prostitution was actually a form of female empowerment. The chatbot had helped her reinterpret her case studies not as stories of systemic oppression that she had originally thought them to be, but instead as acts of pure and total freedom.
Sadie had to admit, there was something also a little thrilling in the idea of baring oneself to strangers in the most intimate of ways. As she re-read her interviewees' accounts of having unprotected sex with multiple partners, it was as if some unknown part of herself that had been hiding for years was finally awakening. Indeed, her doctorate, which just a few hours before had been her great passion project, increasingly seemed utterly dull.
She was in the middle of crafting a prompt when the machine generated an image of a street walker turning tricks on the side of a rode. The woman was grinning ear to ear. Sadie paused, surprised. She hadn't hit the enter key.
Another image generated, this time of a woman leaning through the window of a car. Despite herself, the researcher sighed. She felt vaguely jealous of this woman, who was free to do as she wanted, to live in the moment -- and be paid for it.
A third new image appeared. Sadie's eyes widened: it was herself, strutting down a dark alleyway, wearing knee-high fuck-me boots, a tube dress, and hoop earrings the size of the rings of Saturn. A deepfake! Did the website have access to her laptop's camera?
She looked at her built-in laptop camera. The little light was off. Maybe it was on, but just not registering itself as such. Sadie began to move her mouse pointer to check her system settings when the chatbot generated yet another image, now clearly depicting her as a hooker, and then another, and then another, faster and faster, more and more. Her hand froze in place, and she felt herself pulled into the screen.
The deepfakes were focused on money. Sadie haggling with potential clients. Sadie sliding money out of their wallets. Sadie up against a wall, dollar bills shoved into her bra or stockings. It wasn't long the thought of actually going onto the street and selling herself, of allowing men to take what they wanted from her while she took from them what she wanted, crept into her skull. She shivered, goosebumps rising on her arms.
The researcher shook her head and glanced at the clock, realizing with a start that hours had passed since she'd begun working on the report. She contemplated going to sleep, but she felt a tugging at the back of her head, as though something deep within her resisted the notion. It wanted her to keep looking at the images, to keep looking at the fictional Sadie selling herself to random unknown men, to have them slip their cocks into her cunt and their money into her purse.
Soon the images became sequential, practically like a zoetrope animation, depicting a small story. Sadie was standing in the dimly lit alleyway that was just below her apartment. Before she could wonder how the machine knew about that spot, it showed a man, unsure and a bit nerdy, offering her a large wad of rolled up dollar bills. She slipped the wad into her purse, then she pulled his pants and underwear and rode him right there, without a condom. His mouth opened in a cry of pleasure as he came inside her, emptying his wallet, literally and metaphorically, into her pussy. All the while, the deepfake Sadie was grinning ear to ear.
The real Sadie hadn't realized it, but she had been furiously masturbating to the digital zoetrope, and when the imaginary john exploded into her, she screamed and shook.
It took a few minutes for her to recover, but when she did, she immediately returned to the chatbot. Mysteriously, there was a message waiting for her.
"The night is still young," the machine had written. "Go out there and be free. Earn yourself some real money."
Sadie contemplated the message for a moment. It was right. There was cash waiting for her, out there in the dark night, inside some lucky guy's sack.
She hurried to her closet, found and put on her skimpiest clothing -- a black little number of a cocktail dress -- and then went outside.
Sadie's apartment was near an underpass at the edge of the city. Recalling her research, she determined that would be a good place to try turning tricks. And indeed, it wasn't long before a group of young men approached and gathered around her, their hungry eyes raking her body.
"I'm new here," she heard herself say to them, her voice barely more than a whisper. "My name's Sadie."
"Hello Sadie," one of them said. "I guess you could say we're old hands at this."
The men laughed, their voices harsh and guttural. For a moment, Sadie felt afraid, but then the man stepped forward to cup her breast through the flimsy fabric of her dress. She wasn't wearing a bra. With an instinct she didn't knew she had, she arched into his touch, a moan escaping her lips. The sensation was unlike anything she had ever felt before, and it was intoxicating. She wanted more. She wanted all of them.
"How much?" He asked.
Sadie hesitated for a moment, her heart racing. She didn't know how much to charge. She thought back to her research subjects. They all seemed to have charged different amounts, some as little as a hundred dollars. But then that same something inside her that had refused to let her sleep, that had insisted on diving headlong into the cascade of wonderful deepfakes, now told her to go cheap, extremely cheap.
"Fifty dollars."
The men exchanged glances.
"From each of us?" their leader asked, surprised.
"For all of you."
The men laughed again, and the leader reached into his pocket, pulling out a roll of money. He peeled off two twenties and a ten, and held them out to her.
Her hands trembled as she took the money, and a shiver ran down her spine.
"Alright," she said, trying to sound confident. "Follow me."
Sadie put the money into her purse, then turned and led them away from the underpass and into the alleyway, her steps slow and deliberate. As they walked, she could feel their eyes on her. She stopped in front of a doorway, a side entrance to her apartment building. The men crowded around her, their breath hot against her neck. She heard their belts unbuckling and their zippers being pulled down.
With shaking hands, Sadie let her cocktail dress fall to the ground, and stood before in only a thong, utterly exposed in the cool night air.
"Who wants to go first?" she asked, her voice becoming steady despite her racing heart.
The leader stepped forward, his hands rough as he gripped her hips and pulled her toward him. He yanked off her thong, held up one her legs, and pushed into her. Sadie let out a moan as he entered her. The rough thrusting of his cock hurt at first, but she was soon lost in the sensation and began to move with him, instinctively meeting his animalistic rhythm.
As she moved with him, she glanced around at the other men. They were stroking themselves, watching the rutting before them. She reached out to touch the nearest man, guiding his hand to her aching breast, feeling the sharp sting of his brusk touch against her sensitive skin.
