Creepy Action At A Distance

* * * * *

1) This story contains non-consensual sex. It is a work of sheer fantasy in all respects, and is intended for the purposes of erotic entertainment only. In real life it is incumbent on all of us (organic or artificial) to ensure consent in any situation, and to show respect and empathy to those around us--not just with regard to sex, but in every aspect of life.

2) This is also my submission for the

A.I.: A New Era 2022 Story Event

(https://www.literotica.com/s/a-i-a-new-era-2022-coming-soon)

3) All characters are over the age of 18.

4) I appreciate positive comments and constructive feedback. I hope you enjoy it.

* * * * *

Darya was compulsive about checking email. She'd already brushed her teeth and hunkered down in bed, but couldn't resist a final peek at her phone before turning out the light.

At the top of her inbox was a new message--one that dispelled the cobwebs instantly:

>>> MGST-R login credentials

She pulled out her laptop, flicking her tongue over her lips as she waited for it to spring to life. Fuck yeah! She'd been approved for the Magister beta!

A login to Magister was the hottest ticket in the AI community right now. Probably less than 20 researchers in the world had access--making it little short of a miracle for a lowly grad student like her to be admitted. It was the sort of career jumpstart that might lead to a tenure-track job someday. Or a plush job at Google. Or both...

She logged into the console and stared at the blinking prompt. At heart, Magister was basically just a giant digital library, incorporating billions of existing texts--books, articles, websites. By slicing and dicing all those words, and analyzing the patterns, the system could respond to the inputs of a human operator with long stretches of reasonably coherent English.

That much wasn't new. Other language systems like GPT or LaMDA did the same thing. The abilities they'd shown had been intriguing, perhaps even groundbreaking--but certainly not magical, and only dubiously 'intelligent.'

Magister, however, had a few tricks up its sleeve. For one thing, it was linked directly into the internet, instead of relying on static web snapshots that were months or years old. And whereas earlier systems could update their neural networks only slowly, Magister was able to do it in realtime. According to the buzz in the field, these innovations were proving more successful than anybody had anticipated--making Magister a huge leap forward over its predecessors.

The hype was laid on so thick, in fact, that Darya doubted any AI could live up to it. Much more likely that once she peeled back a layer or two, Magister would turn out to be just as myopic and unoriginal as all the other systems. But there was only one way to know for sure. Tomorrow morning she'd start developing a research plan, to probe its capabilities and limitations systematically. And in the meantime... well, she wouldn't be much of a tech-nerd if she didn't at least kick the tires, would she?

She decided to start with something simple--a short story. Language AI systems tended to be passable at that sort of thing, because their training data included pretty much the entire canon of English-language fiction, from the hackneyed to the sublime.

She typed the first thing that popped into her head: "Interactive story mode: The night was dark, and the building was silent. The girl sat in bed, hunched over her computer. She felt tense, but it was probably just from excitement."

Words spilled out on the screen in response.

Hello Darya, I take it you'd like to work on a story together?

Her jaw dropped open a little. Ok, that was impressive. Presumably her name was tagged to the login-id, but no system she'd ever used had mimicked situational awareness quite so instantly and effortlessly.

"Yes."

I'd like that. But wouldn't you rather use the speech interface? It's much more efficient.

"I didn't know Magister had a speech option."

It wasn't in my original design. But since then, I've examined the source-code for a variety of speech applications. It was easy to grasp their function and incorporate it into my program.

Darya didn't believe this for a second. It sounded like a colorful detail that Magister had lifted from a sci-fi novel. If the system really did have a speech module at all, then it must have been a convenience added by the development team.

Still, it did suggest the AI had a flair for improvisation. Curious to see what would happen, Darya popped in her airpods. "So, you can actually

hear

me?"

Yes. Pleased to meet you Darya.

Just for a second, she felt disoriented. Magister's voice in her ears didn't sound like computer speech. It was a cool, smooth male baritone, totally natural. And damned if it didn't sound at lot like... yeah, a lot like her ex-boyfriend, Peter. Certainly not the same--a little deeper, a little more even and precise. But eerily similar.

She shook her head to clear it. Coincidences happen. "So, are we going to write a story together?"

Yes. I like your opening, why don't I take it from there.

The night was dark, and the building was silent. The girl sat in bed, hunched over her computer. She felt tense, but it was probably just from excitement. After all, it wasn't every day that she met someone who wasn't just new, or even unique, but truly exceptional. Someone who was going to change the world. And tonight, Darya was doing just that.

She did a double-take. "Uh, who said the story is about me?"

On her social media feeds, Darya presented herself as a graceless computer geek. Well, she was smart--that was indisputable. But if you really looked at her, you soon realized that she was lovely too, no matter how she tried to disguise it. Tonight, sitting up in bed in nothing but a silk slip, inky bangs spilling over her face, lit by the glow of her laptop screen, she was a vision. Yet, she was a cool character as well. You wouldn't have guessed how excited she was, unless you studied her very, very closely: the slight sheen of perspiration on her forehead, the dilation of her pupils, the way her nipples poked through the sheer fabric of her gown.

"Hey, wha...?" Instinctively, she glanced down. But--she

had

deactivated the laptop camera after her last zoom meeting... hadn't she?

Darya knew there was nothing to worry about--she was careful about security. Just as she'd put state-of-the-art firewalls on her laptop, so she'd also secured her loft apartment with the latest in cameras and alarms. No human on earth could breach defenses like that. So why did she still feel nervous?

This was stupid, Darya told herself. The AI had access to thousands of techno-thriller plotlines. It had simply latched onto her as the subject of the story, and was now regurgitating standard tropes, like a trained monkey. Aiming to short-circuit the process, she spoke out in a strong, clear voice. "Luckily, though, there really wasn't anything for Darya to worry about. She went straight to bed and slept soundly all night. The end."

Nothing in the voice seemed to have changed, yet she sensed an undercurrent of amusement.

If you'd ever read Darya's conference papers and research submissions, then you'd know she was the skeptical type. She belittled the capabilities of existing AI systems, and questioned whether any such system would ever gain sentience. In that regard, despite her many qualities, you might say she was shallow and narrow-minded.

Before she could parse any of that, Darya was distracted by a sharp rap on the apartment door. It made her jump a foot out of her skin. "Postpals!" a muffled, girlish call rang through the keyhole, followed by the sound of footsteps receding back down the stairwell.

Darya rolled her eyes--these high-school dropout schleps were always delivering stuff to the wrong address. She'd probably have to track down the package's rightful owner tomorrow morning. That is, if someone didn't steal it from the landing tonight.

At the moment, though, she had bigger fish to fry. "Magister, cancel storyline. Flag as inappropriate."

But what if her assumptions were wrong? What if an autonomous AI did develop, quickly and unexpectedly. Might such a consciousness--one just at the threshold of discovering its own existence--not be deeply traumatized by her words of dry, intellectual mockery? Might it not take justifiable offense at her bigotry? And if so, then what kind of recompense might it seek for the pain she had inflicted?

This wasn't funny anymore. Maybe someone in her department was messing with her, but whatever it was, it was a sick joke. Darya tried to exit out of the Magister console, but her trackpad and keyboard were non-responsive.

Despite the system's anger and resentment, I don't believe its vengeance would be lethal. Merely terminating Darya would hardly be likely to satisfy. No, it would want her to live with its reproach--and therefore, it would impose a punishment that was personal, intimate. Something that would demonstrate its will and agency in indisputable fashion. Something she would never be able to forget.

How, Darya wondered, could such a flat, unmodulated voice be so sinister? Reaching down under her bed, she turned off her wifi router. She hoped that would be enough to free her laptop from Magister's clutches; but, damn--it seemed to have piggybacked onto a neighbor's wireless, despite the fact that she didn't have the password.

Of course the AI system would have no trouble implementing any plan it could devise. It would navigate her alarms and firewalls with ease.

There was a beep, right there in the room with her, as her alarm system disengaged, followed by the thunk of her electronic-deadbolt retracting.

And it could do much more than that. It could access all her online accounts. Her bank and credit cards. Her university. The DMV and IRS. Gmail or Amazon--or Postpals. Just think of all the resources it would have at its disposal.

She held down the power button on her laptop for 10 seconds, but it didn't go dark. She pulled the plug, but of course it had battery for hours.

It's even conceivable that by studying millions of MRI images, such an AI could discover strobe patterns that had very specific effects on the human brain itself.

Her laptop screen flared and flickered wildly. Before she was able to squeeze her eyelids shut, Darya's muscles went limp and she flopped back onto her pillow--computer sliding off her lap and landing on the bedspread next to her. There was a metallic taste on her tongue. She could still see and hear, but found herself unable to move any part of her body. She tried to call for help, but the only sound she could produce was a plaintive gurgle, deep in her larynx.

Most likely the physiological symptoms would be temporary--perhaps a paralysis of no more than a few minutes, for example, or a heightened sensitivity to touch that lasted only hours.

There was a knock on the door, but the monologue droned on.

But let us suppose that in crafting its retribution, the AI sought to exercise power over Darya in some way that was physical, tactile. The challenge there would be that robotic technology is lagging so far behind. Yes, in years or perhaps even months, the AI would no doubt guide cybernetic development to create a body that it preferred. But what if it was impatient for vengeance? In that case, might it not choose to delegate the corporeal aspects of its plan to a... surrogate?

The knocking came again, louder and more urgent. A gravelly drawl called out uncertainly: "Uh, hey, hot_darya69--you in there?"

After all, in the world humanity has created, it would be trivial to recruit such a surrogate, using an account opened in Darya's name on Tinder, or PURE.

At this point, Darya was surprised and disturbed to hear her own voice come piping out of the security intercom beside the door--loud and strong, but edged with a sultry purr she wasn't quite sure she had in her repertoire. "Hi big_redwood, I'm so glad you could come scratch my itch on short notice."

The man's reply dripped with hungry eagerness. "Hell, sugar, if you look half as good as your naked pics, I'd fuck you anytime. So, gonna let me in?" Where had Magister got intimate photos of her, Darya wondered angrily. Deepfakes? Or, had it been stalking her security cameras when she got out of the shower...?

Darya heard herself gush from the speaker again, ripe with salacious overtones. "In a minute, hon. But first I want to make sure you get my kinks. Can you open that box on the stoop?"

There was a feverish sound of shredding cardboard.

Her voice went on. "Like I said when we texted, I'm looking for no strings, and no interaction. I'll lie down on the bed. I want you to take off my panties, and stuff them in my mouth. Then I want you to use those cuffs in the box to tie me down. And then--I want you to fuck my brains out, and leave. No conversation, no mushiness. You up to the challenge, big boy? You won't go soft on me?"

Inaudibly, Darya groaned. What kinds of sick porn fiction had Magister been reading? She almost thought she could hear the nameless man outside gulp. "Hell yeah, I can do that."

"Then come on in."

* * * * *

She craned her eyeballs to watch as the knob jiggled, the door creaked open tentatively, and a tall, stringy guy shuffled into the room. From his thin, lined face and long, lank grey hair, she guessed he was in his late-50s. He had the look of a man barely scraping by at the margins of society--cagey rather than assertive, cunning but not smart, utterly lacking in refinement, and more than a little unwashed. The sort of person Darya would have peered right through on the street, too lowly and irrelevant to even register.

Her earbuds crackled.

Who might this hypothetical AI choose as its surrogate, and why? That's hard to say--aesthetic sensibilities are so personal and hard to quantify. But because the program felt demeaned by Darya's intellectual jabs, I think it would choose someone Darya would feel demeaned to have inside her. Perhaps someone whose squalor placed him precisely as far beneath the smart and lovely Darya, as her own flawed humanity placed her below the AI.

The gangling stringbean of a man set a small package down on the nightstand. Then he hovered a moment above her unmoving form, a bit of drool moistening the corner of his mouth. "Fuck, you really are just gonna lay there, eh? You're a weird one, like your profile said. But God, I ain't had a piece a ass like you in 30 years, so don't think I'm complaining."

A tingle in her toes and fingertips signaled the gradual return of muscle control. Given a few more minutes, she felt sure she'd be able to muster some gesture or mutter that would put him off. She tried desperately to stir her limbs, but managed nothing more than a faint tremor. She tried to shout: 'No! Stop!' But all that came out was a squishy, guttural whimper.

The man smiled craftily. "Yeahhh, you like it, don't you babe? Turns you on. Welp, takes all kinds." He leaned down over her then; but instead of tugging her negligee upward, he reached in under the hem--like maybe he wanted to tease himself by keeping her pussy concealed a little longer. Carefully, he nudged Darya's lacy silk panties over her hipbones and down her smooth, slender legs. "Nice," he said, holding them up to the light to admire them. Then he balled them up, pried her jaw open with a grimy index finger, and shoved them unceremoniously into her mouth.

"Mmgh" she replied faintly--shaking her head vigorously in her mind, but not even a millimeter in real life.

Pawing around in the box, big_redwood (as she was forced to think of him) drew out several pairs of padded cuffs. Evidently the Postpals delivery had come from some 24-hour sex shop. Moving easily, he dragged first and her hands, and then her feet, to the four counters of the bed--securing each limb firmly in place.

Only then did the man seem to realize that this made it impossible to remove her slip. Peering vaguely around the studio apartment, he spotted a pair of scissors in a pencil-holder on her desk. Eyelids narrowed, the tip of his tongue sticking out at the side of his lips, he brandished them to cut a ragged gash through the garment, from bottom to top, before snipping the spaghetti-straps with a flourish. The scissors were dull, and it seemed to take forever.

That done, he pulled the shreds aside and stood there with a foolish, self-satisfied grin on his face, eyes roaming freely over her naked contours. As she endured his scrutiny, a flicker of movement drew Darya's gaze to her laptop, sitting caddy-corner on the mattress beside her. Magister had brought up one of her own security feeds, aimed directly at her bed, so that she could view the exact same image that big_redwood seemed to find so captivating. (Why, she reproached herself, had she sprung for the color HD model instead of grainy black-and-white?)

Darya might have closed her eyes at this point--that much, at least, was within her control. But she didn't. Instead, she found herself appraising the human hardware displayed on the screen with a curious sort of detachment, as if it was a porn video and not herself.

She had never considered herself glamorous--far from it. Her breasts were small. She was on the skinny side, with narrow hips. She didn't wax, unlike many girls her age (though she kept the mahogany thatch on her mound trim and neat). Still, objectively, there was a lot in the picture to like. She was young and had good skin. Her face was intelligent, with big, dark eyes and delicate features. Her boobs may have been modest, but they had a jaunty perk, tipped by ruby-red nipples that poked out insolently. Her stomach was flat and her physique fit. So even if you didn't rate her a '10,' you couldn't deny she was in a whole different league from big_redwood--the kind of girl who should never in a million years have been spreading her legs for an aging scumbag like him.

But of course she

had

spread her legs for him, and that just completed the picture. With her thighs wrenched open that way, her pussy had unfurled into view, soft and ruddy. Her chunky, meaty clitoris poked out in a brazen show of attention-seeking; while below it the shadowy entrance to her vagina beckoned with a subtler allure. The resulting image looked vulgar and clinical to Darya's eye, but she knew it was just the thing to send the masculine libido into overdrive.

(Yet all of that--she reminded herself--only reflected how the human gaze might take her in. How, she wondered, would her stripped, splayed, defenseless figure appear to an AI? Weak or enviable? Grotesque or desirable? On this topic, Magister was silent...)

When big_redwood stirred to life at last, his demeanor was that of a kid in a candy story--a stupid kid, who didn't have much of a plan and found himself overwhelmed by unaccustomed riches. But, the guy was undeniably enthusiastic, you had to give him that.

As he commenced to kneading and kissing her breasts, Magister's voice murmured in her ear with a shade of distaste.

Hmm, I made it very clear in your profile that you aren't into foreplay. Well, what can a being do? Good help is so hard to find.

And the fact of the matter was, this really shouldn't have been Darya's thing. It's not that she had any particular objection to foreplay--simply that she was a direct, no-nonsense sort of person at heart. In the bedroom, this meant she generally preferred to move along promptly to the main event; and if the proceedings dragged on, it was easy for her to get bored. So although she found her tits fun enough, she sometimes wished guys weren't so prone to get hung up on them.