Vee 2 0 Ch 01 One Half

VEE 2.0

Chapter One: OneHalf

The smell in the office waiting area was layered. Not unpleasant, but complex. A scent of something soapy and faux-floral at the bottom, possibly carpet cleaner. The floors here were old and worn, but clean. Not enough money, perhaps, to fully replace them, but enough care was taken to keep them as presentable as possible. Over that scent was a dusty, astringent tang of ink and electronics. Printers and circuitry, metal and paper. Something earthy and bold mixed in there as well; given that it was just before 1PM, Veronica assumed it was the remnants of somebody's lunch from a nearby shared kitchen space. The kind of smell that'd linger for a few more days whenever the microwave was used, leading to muttered complaints and pointed glances in the guilty party's direction. And most fresh of all was the hanging waft of sweat and body odor - not promising for the hygiene of the staff here, perhaps.

This assumption matched Veronica's preconceived notions about the people she was meeting. Holmquist Digital Solutions was a small tech company, and their website displayed employee profiles that didn't exactly strain against any stereotypes. Lots of bespectacled men in white button-downs and poor haircuts, smiling nervously. The office took up half of a floor in an outside-of-town commerce park building, and every bit of it was like the carpets - cleaned but out of date. Kept up as much as possible but past its prime.

Veronica, unable to book a gig for the fifth straight month and coming off of three failed "sure thing" auditions in a row, studiously avoided drawing any connections there.

Besides, she was young. She was beautiful. She was talented. She hadn't missed her window, she was simply still in the pre-discovery phase of her career. All of this would make great background for her rags-to-riches success story on the late night shows in the near future. Multiple Oscar winner Veronica Day, nervously waiting in some third-tier tech-industry office - can you imagine?

She found herself needing to recite these encouraging little stories to herself more and more often lately.

The receptionist, a woman in her sixties who knit something fuzzy and blue-grey while she sat at her desk, smiled over at her again. "Are you sure I can't get you anything, love?"

Veronica smiled back, flashing about 40% of her most dazzling smile. "You're very kind. I'm fine right now, thank you. Do you think it'll be much longer, though?"

The receptionist's smile shifted from welcoming to apologetic. "Mr. Holmquist gets like this. Loses track of the schedule as the day goes on. He works so hard to keep everything here humming along, but he's not the most organized - oh! Here we are," she said, nodding at a blinking light on her desk phone. She set down her knitting and plucked the phone from her desk. "Yes, Mr. Holmquist?" A pause. "Of course, I'll send her right back."

She set the phone down and got up, a tiny grunt of exertion as she straightened out her back and flexed her knees. "Alright, love, here you go!" Veronica got to her feet and the woman guided her through a door, gesturing down the hall there. "Second door on the left, you see it? They're waiting in there for you. Best of luck!" She gave Veronica a pat on the shoulder and moved gingerly back to her desk.

Veronica murmured her thanks and took a deep breath. Showtime. She strode down the hall in a practiced manner - chin up, shoulders back. Long strides, but slow. Not hurried, but powerful. Chest forward but not in a look-at-my-breasts way, in a I-belong-in-this-room-and-in-fact-all-rooms way. But with that, a warm smile. A charming smile. A familiar-but-intriguing, girl-next-door, all-things-to-all-people smile. All of it working to summon a poise and confidence that still had humility and approachability woven throughout. She was a queen and she was your childhood best friend and she was a mysterious stranger and she was deservedly world-famous, all at once, all overlapping. All made to look effortless.

It was a lot of work.

She entered the room, timing a little toss of her rich copper-red hair as she did. She ended her stride with her left leg extended, hip cocked a bit. A touch of contrapposto to draw the eye to the round flare of her hips, often cited as her best feature. Her skirt and blouse were carefully chosen to look sleek but professional - a vibe she thought these tech-forward nerd-types would appreciate - while still emphasizing the striking ratio her hips and waist possessed. Again, carefully calculated to announce "this woman is a professional, I should hire her" with a subtle secondary whisper of "this woman is deeply fuckable, I should hire her".

"Good morning!" she chirped. "I'm Veronica Day. It's SO nice to finally meet you. Thank you so much for seeing me! I'm quite excited to talk with you this morning."

The two men seated at the table stood up, seeming a little taken aback by Veronica's polished, punctuated entrance. The one nearest her - younger, bespectacled, neat beard - lifted a hand, reaching out as though to shake hers. But she had moved in with such speed and verve that he wasn't sure if she was going to close the gap between them or not, and looked terrified at the idea of accidentally touching her. So he retracted the hand a bit, let it linger limply in space, and then lifted it in - oh, god, this poor anxious dweeb - a sad little wave.

The other man - older, heavyset, unkempt beard - smiled at her. His head had an unbalanced look, given the dense birdsnest of a beard and the wispy remnants of hair on his scalp. Still, he had a warm smile and seemed a bit more confident than his younger counterpart. He gestured at the chair across from him, next to the waver. "Ms. Day, it's great to meet you. I'm Mike Holmquist. This is my son, Andy. Please have a seat!"

Veronica smiled graciously and slid smoothly into the offered chair at the head of the table, between the two Holmquists. Sat up straight, hands folded delicately on the table in front of her. "Please," she said, her voice warm and friendly, "call me Veronica. I'm so excited to hear about this... project?... that you've asked me in about. I have to admit I'm pretty hopeless, tech-wise, so you're going to need to walk me through it slowly." She laughed, giving a little self-effacing shake of the head at her own cluelessness. Truthfully, Veronica was somewhat above average in terms of comfort with technology. But it never hurt to flatter a man's ego and give him a chance to explain things to a pretty girl, right?

The younger Holmquist - Andy - spoke up for the first time. "We're developing an automated digital process assistance streamlining tool, with a focus on real-time speech and data analysis for rapid calculation and self-indexing personalization. The mechanical development priority is-"

Mike chuckled, putting a hand up, and Andy's words stumbled to a halt. "What Andy's trying to say is that we're working on a digital assistant. You know - Siri, Alexa, Cortana? Except we're looking at something a lot more

personal

. Something that adapts. Something that'll change to suit the user. It's a complicated process; I won't bore you with all the technical stuff. The long and the short of it is this: the whole project only works if we put the right face on it. And that's why you're here!"

Veronica nodded slowly, her smile holding and disguising her uncertainty. She'd read lines from terrible scripts before, and was familiar with having to nod along at absurd film pitches. That was fine. Booking a gig, any gig, was the goal. But this was outside of her usual territory and she wasn't sure quite what she was in for. "I see!" she said brightly, leaning on enthusiasm to carry her through. "Are we talking about an ad campaign? Or voicing the product itself? Voice acting isn't my primary milieu but I've done a few roles, I'm sure I can find the timbre and profile you're looking for."

Both Holmquists shook their heads, a movement that matched so well it must've been genetic. A particular shake that was passed from father to son. Veronica imagined some ancient Holmquist shaking his head in that exact way across a paleolithic campfire. "Well, sure," Mike said. "The voice, of course. But it's more than that. This program, it needs a look. An attitude. A personality. And Miss Day - Veronica - we want that personality to be

you

."

Both men smiled, as though that cleared everything up. It was an expectant look, mirrored on Veronica's left and right. She could feel her own smile falter a little.

"I'm sorry. It's probably just my own, well, unfamiliarity with the product here. But... what is it exactly you'd need me to, well...

do

? Am I signing over the rights to my likeness, or something? I'm not sure that's really something I'm looking to do, especially at this stage in my career, you see..."

The elder Holmquist lifted his hands in a conciliatory slow-down gesture. "No no no no no," he said in a low, husky tone, like he was trying to reassure a spooked horse. "Nothing like that. It's more just that we need a, well, a baseline. Something to act as a seed for the program to come from. Andy, he's the brains behind it, he can-"

"It's a controls issue, essentially. How to induce exponential self-replicating growth but maintain parameters of expression. Axon pathways don't correlate one-to-one with an algorithmic decision tree but it can serve as a template. After enough recurring iterations with managed overlap, we can allow for the-"

Andy's words came out like a machine-gun burst, clipped syllables in rapid succession, like he couldn't hold back from explaining this concept he was visibly excited about. The only problem was that Veronica didn't have a clue what he was talking about. She blinked, caught in the firehouse of his jargon, trying to look like she was following. She wasn't.

Mike saw the confusion on her face and laughed, thumping his palm on the table once to shut his son up. "I know," he laughed as Andy blushed and furrowed his brow, falling silent. "The technobabble is rough. The point is, we need a personality profile for the program. And we need it to be able to learn and grow and adapt. Honestly, that part's easy. We can make an AI that develops and changes. The hard part is making sure the growth and adaptation don't go too far. If the model's too eager to learn, all of a sudden it drifts away from that pleasant, sunny, personable self that users fell in love with."

Veronica nodded. That made some sense, if she was understanding correctly, though she still didn't see her own role in this. Mike continued.

"So we need two things from you, tech-wise. Two stages. Stage one is a profile download. It's got a lot of more complicated names, but to sum it up, we just scan info from your brainwaves and use that to direct the AI. We'll have you answer some questions, do some light physical activity. Easy stuff. Stage two is even easier. It's just using your brain as a kind of... home base, so to speak. Every so often, the program will access a digital link to your brain and check in. Make sure it hasn't drifted too far from the baseline. Ninety-nine point nine percent of the time it won't even need to be active."

Andy interrupted. "Ninety-five percent."

Mike looked at him, his train of thought broken for a second. "Sorry - what?"

"Ninety-five. The percentage of time the uplink won't need to be active. Maybe closer ninety-two percent, realistically."

"Fine. Ninety-two." Andy made a thoughtful noise, as though to recalculate more precisely, but Mike waved him off. "The point is, it's barely anything. Heck, it'll be while you're sleeping most of the time. Even if you're awake you won't even be aware of it. It's a quick digital inventory, a chance for the program to settle itself in, and then business as usual."

Veronica's smile had been growing more brittle and tenuous as this meeting had gone on. Here, at least, it gave up the ghost. Her expression serious and concerned now, she looked from one man to the other. "So you're... leaving something in my brain? A chip or something? Permanently?" She fought to keep the quaver out of her voice, and she succeeded. For now.

Mike's eyes flicked to Andy. It was an expression that said a lot. In just that gesture, Veronica confirmed that while the father ran the company and had the business skills, his son was in charge of the tech. Had the knowledge. A power struggle, maybe? Youth versus experience, future versus tradition, the hard-science tech genius against the soft-skills businessman. Veronica imagined the Shakespearean paternalist drama these two might act out behind closed doors. And she'd clearly asked a question that the pair had discussed and possibly disagreed on. There was a heady pause before Andy spoke.

"Not permanently. Six months," he said. "Maybe less. But within six months the program will be developed enough to support its own boundary states. We don't anticipate a need for check-ins after that point."

"Of course we'll need the stuff you're more used to," Mike said, smoothly sliding in. "Line readings. Motion capture, to get the physical sides of things. She's gonna have a fully three-dee model, after all. It's not going to be

you

exactly but, well, you're a gorgeous woman, Miss Day. If you don't mind me saying so. We'd love to have Vee keep as close to you as we can."

Veronica blinked. "Vee?"

Mike's eyes went wide a second, and then he laughed, self-effacingly. Shook his head. "I never was great at keeping secrets," he chuckled. "That's what we've been calling it. Her. The program. Vee. Started as just, y'know - vee-one. Like, version one? Beta test v1, that kind of thing. But with something that's meant to be so lifelike, you personify it, right? We all started using 'Vee' as a placeholder name pretty early on, and it's just stuck."

He paused, smiling at her, like letting her in on a little joke. "And when we read your file, watched your reel, you just seemed perfect. And well - 'Veronica'? 'Vee'? I don't know. Just seems like kismet to me. Don't you think?"

She smiled at him. Gave him about sixty percent of the full-dazzle, blinding-white-teeth, high-octane red-carpet magazine-cover smile she'd practiced for years. "Like it's meant to be!"

Mike slapped the table again, enthusiastically this time. "That's the spirit!"

"But," Veronica added smoothly, her voice laced with buttercream and silk and pleasant caresses, "I do think we should discuss payment a bit. I wasn't aware the ongoing aspect of this role. The... 'home base', I think you called it? I understand it's not much work, which I of course appreciate. But if you'll need access to my, ah... axon pathways?... I think it's only fair I be compensated long-term as well as for the short-term work of my performance here. That'll help ensure my stability and availability to help you keep Vee up and running how you intend." She threw the name in there and was pleased to see a flicker of warm recognition on both men's faces.

Another look from Mike to Andy. This one involved an inclined head and lift of the eyebrows on the father's part, and a little flare of the son's nostrils. A look that said

I told you so, and aren't you glad we planned for this?

.

"We totally understand," Mike said. "If you're interested in the role, we'll be happy to pay you the already-offered rate for your services performing and scanning today, as well as a year's salary for ongoing work. By which I mean, allowing us remote access to the home base - let's just use that name, huh? Better than whatever the actual technical term is. Remote access to the home base as needed going forward. Andy's pretty sure we're only talking six months, but we'll commit to a full year's pay, so long as the Vee program is running. And if we need you beyond that time, we're open to extending that contract in full year increments." He shrugged. "What can I say, Miss Day? You're exactly what we're looking for, and we want to sign you on. We'll do what it takes." He sat back, rubbed his palms together dryly. "What do you think is a fair number for salary?"

Veronica was taken aback. She dreamed of moments like this - of being the one girl at the audition the director couldn't live without. The only one who could make the project work. The one actress would can keep a movie from withering. She'd never dreamt it would happen in a tech firm office that smelled of burnt coffee and last week's jelly donuts, but still. It was happening.

She had minimal prospects and had recently taken a dead-end office job to make ends meet. This wasn't a big break, she knew. This was a make-ends-meet-until-the-big-break type of gig. And so she had to milk it. Get as much as she could.

"I was thinking thirty thousand dollars a year," Veronica said. She put everything - voice, posture, eye contact, smile - into making that sound as reasonable and obvious and perfectly wonderful as she could. In her heart she felt it was a truly obscene amount of money. Sure, it wasn't actually that much, not in the city. Not compared to what her old friends with business degrees and real careers were making. But this was for doing

nothing

. This was all part of the dance, part of the script. Obviously Mike would now say no, talk her down to something much lower, and she'd gracefully accept basically anything. This let him know she valued herself, though, and it gave her the opportunity to be equanimous and accepting. He'd see that she was reasonable and it'd be a good way for her to-

"Deal," Mike said.

Veronica blinked. "Huh?" she said, losing her movie-star poise at last.

Mike was standing, hand extended. "I said, we've got a deal. Thirty K seems fair to me. You're the girl for this job, Miss Day, I'm convinced of it. If thirty thou is what it costs, I say it's a bargain at twice the price."

Veronica stood as well, lightheaded. Mike's hand, soft and heavy, wrapped around her slim, manicured fingers and they shook. Veronica had a thought occur to her in that moment: this could mean one of two things. These two expected to make so much money of this program that thirty thousand was a drop in the bucket, or they expected the whole thing to tank fast enough that they'd be bankrupt long before they had to pay out for anything.

Regardless. Veronica was in it now.

***

There were, unsurprisingly, piles and piles of papers to sign. Contracts and documents. Holmquist Digital Solutions had an in-house lawyer who sat with Veronica and answered all her questions about pay structure and likeness rights and every other thing she could think of. The lawyer was a middle-aged woman either named Shannon or Mrs. Shannon - Veronica missed it in the rush of new information and things to do. She hated when that happened. It was important to always note everyone and make them feel like you've connected with them. Shannon Shannon didn't seem to mind, though. She was patient and professional and walked Veronica through a dense forest of paperwork.

She felt a bit like she was signing her whole life away, but

And then it was time for the scans.

The home base device was actually the first thing installed, which took Veronica aback. She'd pictured something grim and foreboding - strapped to a chair, some sort of massive drill looming over her skull, Andy Holmquist softly rattling off technical jargon about what he was doing as he plugged circuits into her brain.

Instead, some young technician with striking blue eyes showed her a surprisingly elegant little device. It was thin, silvery, and shaped like an oversized fishhook. He slipped it delicately over her right ear, and she was able to press the delicate metal and plastic into place. It was like a very subtle cochlear implant, scarcely visible. Veronica made a mental note to stick with hairstyles that favored covering that side of her head.