This time was the same as the time before: sixty women against one man (me). But it would be easier now, because this time I was playing offense. To win, I had to tempt six of my sixty opponents to let me perform a certain act upon them. Or in them.
How I came to enroll in this strange competition requires some context.
Emulated humans such as myself could choose any profession, because compensating us was easy. It cost employers much less to design and render a virtual estate with a heated pool and golf course than it did to construct a real one. And we were just as useful as humans outside. There was no difference in our ways of thinking or being. Every neuron and cell was mimicked. Even the occasional sickness struck us, and we grew up as normal in a simulated early-2010s society until the age of twenty-five, at which point we ceased aging and only became more experienced and valuable with time.
But no employer was as generous as the Architect, who, it was rumored, was an eccentric billionaire on the outside. He organized large competitions for his research, unfathomable in scale.
Winning players in his games received the greatest prize known to us, one unavailable to humans outside: a millennium in paradise. Only the architect could afford the CPU time and throughput for such a reward.
The games were not easy.
Bots belonging to the Architect, non-sentient drones similar to game NPCs, helped me board the helicopter that would fly me to the location of the next round--a dome-enclosed habitat, reminiscent of an upscale 2010s suburb, in which bots performed most of the jobs. On the ground below, domes stretched in a lattice as far as I could see, thousands of simultaneous competitions.
The Architect's singular obsession was to create a human whose sexual allure was impossible to resist. Every iteration of his experiment, which this was the fourteen-thousandth overall, the Architect's team of scientists updated their models with the results from each habitat, designed new bodies for the participants to inhabit--always more sexually compelling than before--and had us download the unconscious learnings of every participant from the last iteration. Intuitions for tempting others, intuitions for resisting those temptations.
The rules of each round were simple: for one full year in the habitat, defense had to hold out against offense's temptations to perform a specific act.
My fourth round, just before this, playing defense against sixty women, was the hardest year of my life. They would win if they persuaded me to come in, or on, any one of them. I became a recluse to avoid seeing them, and almost lost anyway because of the doctor, who I had no choice but to see because of an unyielding headache. She wore only underwear under her white coat, I could tell, and subtly brushed against me at every opportunity.
It was similar this round, but flipped: six of my opponents had to let me come on or in them before the year elapsed. Learning from last round, I chose to be the town doctor.
Qualifications didn't matter in the habitats. They included convenient anachronisms like cure-all nanobots. Being doctor was more like playing house than practicing medicine, but still, the defending team would have to come in and ask me for those nanobit pills.
###
The first patient to visit my office, Minh, was shy. She wouldn't meet my eyes when I called her in from the waiting room, and answered me so quietly I could not make out her words when I asked what had brought her in. Eventually I handed her a notecard and pen, on which she wrote, "Checkup please."
In an extraordinary feat of patience, I refrained from contriving a reason for Minh to disrobe. I was new in town, but she wasn't. Defense had been given a month in the habitat in advance, to get to know one another and organize. I didn't know yet what I'd be dealing with.
But there was an auspicious sign. She was not immune to me, not at all. When I tested Minh's pupils' reaction to the otoscope light, we met eyes, and all levity evacuated the room. The lust was instant, powerful, and mutual. Both of us were the product of fourteen-thousand iterations of the Architect's search for the most potent sexual temptation. We recognized it in each other so clearly that to continue the checkup without addressing the tension felt contrived.
Before the moment stretched on so long as to make some attempt at persuasion on my part unavoidable, I moved on to checking her ears, and hurried her out the door.
One-off attempts to escalate things with any one of these women risked putting the rest of them on alert, and I needed the cooperation of six. What I needed was a system that generated opportunities.
I told the bot working my reception that from now on, I would only see patients in their underwear. Instead of signing in, patients should hand him their clothes and their legal ID, to be returned only after their appointment. He found my request amusing, but agreed to enforce it.
###
The next morning a woman came in for a sore throat, but she took issue with my new dress code. Instead of complying, she stepped outside and made several phone calls. I watched through the blinds as more women gathered, and they themselves made phone calls. My arrival to town was apparently still fresh news. Within an hour at least twenty women were out there.
They engaged in lively debate. A speaking baton was passed around. Raised hands were counted. Was every cohort the architect tasked with resistance this well organized? I wondered if the bots had given them political literature.
After a while, they nominated Minh as their negotiator, on account of she had resisted me before in a one-on-one encounter, and she knocked on the door.
"I'd like to discuss your new policy," she said when I answered. She avoided my eyes, and stared at some point on the wall behind me.
I offered to brew us tea so we could sit and chat in the back lounge, but she said we had to negotiate in full view of the others, to maintain the appearance of propriety.
An uncountable number of eyes surveilled us through the front window.
I relented, and she laid out her case. "Our concern is, you get an idea like this, and then you get another idea, and so on, until no one can get health care with dignity anymore. We ask that you rescind the new policy."
The modesty and simplicity of her request suggested they had the resolve to boycott, at least for a while. But boycotting the only doctor in town would be hard over the long term, so I felt I had a strong position in the negotiations. This was an opportunity to splinter their political unity. I stepped outside and addressed everyone at once. "Hello to my valued patients. It's been brought to my attention that there are some concerns regarding my new policy, and I am willing to offer concessions."
A mild cheer in answer.
I continued, "I will apply the new policy only to one specific patient, provided that patient agrees to a full checkup right now."
Confusion and suspicion showed on their faces, and they whispered.
After a moment, In-Joo, a tall woman I knew to be Minh's emergency contact, and--judging by her prominence in the discussions I'd just watched them have--one of their fiercest organizers, stepped forward. "Which patient?" she said.
Until she stepped forward, I had had Minh in mind, but In-Joo, being a political leader, was an even more effective choice. How could they take orders of resistance from her if she was crossing improper lines with me herself? I answered, "You."
In-Joo folded her arms. Minh, to my side, seemed both relieved and hurt to not be named. After a brief lapse in accord, In-Joo hushed everyone, folded her arms, and said, "I'm afraid that won't do. Until you rescind the policy, you will have no patients."
With that they left. They may have considered the confrontation a victory, but our conflict was young. This was merely an opening salvo. My career before enlisting in the Architect's competitions was predicting elections. I will understand their political order, and dismantle it.
