The sky spat coldness at the city, that half-frozen slop called "wintry mix" you only got in the Midwest. Spring was coming, but winter held on, like a dame who said she loved you but couldn't hurt you enough. A tall, lanky figure walking the Indianapolis streets turned up its collar at the weather, but they couldn't feel the chill. Feelings were for humans. There was another chill whispering its way across this town, and that's what brought that tenacious figure out into the night; the chill of a crime spree that had the whole city shivering. No human could take this case, it was too dangerous for anyone with a real image, so they called on the only one who could stand against this threat. They called Central Autonomous Security: Special Investigations and Enforcement.
Cassie moved with purpose; she had to get to the crime scene before the docs got there, she had to see the victim first. Once they got their hands on her, it would be about getting her the help she needed, and Cassie needed something else: justice. Somebody, or something, had been prowling the Indianapolis nightlife, picking out targets with no pattern anyone could figure out, and warping their real images. It was crude stuff, fast and dirty like a rat with a meal of garbage, but the poor saps who got hit would feel it for a long time. It was sick stuff, too, straight out of the fetish mags. A woman fattened up to a quarter ton, one poor girl given horns and a tail like a cow with tits to match who had nearly drowned in her own milk, and there was that one doll who actually became a doll, telling her story through squeaking plastic lips. All women so far, pretty classic profile, but nothing to connect them.
That was why they called Cassie. She lived for this, she was made for this. Literally; she'd begun her digital existence as a mind culled from the pages of every dime-store detective novel ever written, which is why she still thought in words like "pages" and "dime-store." Every piece of information filtered through the hardboiled lens of the past, always reminding her that she wasn't human. It didn't hurt to know she was artificial, though; none of those fictional detectives ever hurt, they were hard and cold and ruthless, like the Midwest winter she walked through. Most important for this case, though, she didn't have a real image to get twisted. She looked like a woman, called herself a woman, tall and blonde and slender, maybe even a little pretty, but it was just a picture over top of numbers and algorithms, nothing deeper. She could never feel, but it was worth it to be this tough.
The apartment complex was mostly dark, expected this late at night, everyone huddled inside against the weather and the fear. The victim had called security less than an hour before, reporting an involuntary transformation just like the others. Another woman, stuck with who knew what kind of changes forced on her image.
Tina, twenty-two, single, living alone. Cassie wasn't sure what she was going to see when she walked into that room, but it was going to be sexual, and it was going to be extreme. She hoped Tina could still talk to her, give her some kind of lead. She got to the door and listened out of habit. Faint moaning, but only one voice. She checked the security bulletins in her head; docs were still a ways out. She had time.
Cassie knocked sharply on the door; "Security, coming in, need a statement." She didn't wait for a reply; politeness was one thing she'd never been programmed for. The apartment was simple, clean, nothing too fancy, not that it mattered; the other vics had been all over the map, from run-down studios to penthouses, so wealth wasn't part of the pattern. Tina was in the living room next to her couch. She was impossible to miss; naked, moaning, groping and slapping her own ass. Which was the size of the couch. That level of depravity, it almost had to be the same perp. At least she wasn't entirely lost in feeling her huge rump, though; she calmed down and looked Cassie in the eye, her vision clear and focused. Good, this would be a useful interview. Cassie got out her notepad and pencil; she preferred to take notes by hand, not on a datapad. Old novels, old ways.
"Oh thank goodness you're here! I'm, ooh, stuck here, but I still had my datapad; small miracles, right?"
"I'm sure it was, miss. I understand this just happened tonight?"
"Yes, just within the past few hours. I feel so embarassssssed oh fuck, sorry, no pun intended and I don't know why it felt good to say..."
Cassie held up a hand; this dame was a talker, no doubt about it. "Just the facts, miss. Let's stay on target."
"Right, okay. So, my friends and I had gone dancing at Club Vee, you know where that is?" Cassie nodded. "We were having fun, really getting into it, thinking maybe we could pick up some, oooh yeah, cute boys with how good we looked tonight. A few hours in, though, I thought I felt my underwear riding up, so I went to the bathroom to adjust everything, and my, mmmmm, butt was huge! I mean, I thought so at the time, anyway. I told the girls I had to go and caught a cab home, trying to hold my coat over myself to hide that I was, well, g-g-guh-growing. By the time I got back I could barely walk, and I freaked out a little when I almost got sssssstuck in the doorframe getting into my apartment. By then it was also starting to get really sensitive, and I knew something was definitely right wrong I mean wrong. Like, I've heard the news, this kind of thing is happening, and they think maybe someone is doing it to people, right? So I called it in, and then I couldn't contain myself any more, so I got to the couch and I stripped and I just mmmmmmm started rubbing and grabbing and oh fuck it feels amazing." Tina was trying, but that much pumped into her cheeks was just too much for her brain.
"Tina. Tina. Good, here. Now, did you touch anyone tonight, or did anyone touch you?"
"I mean, we were dancing. You bump into people, you dance with people, and once this ass oh geez, sorry, started getting bigger, bigger, oh, sorry again, I couldn't not brush against people."
Well, there wasn't some kind of outbreak at Club Vee, so at least it wasn't a virus. This was a targeted effect. "What about before it happened? Did anyone stand out? Anything memorable?"
"Oh, well," she blushed, more embarrassed about what she was remembering than about a literal truckload of bare tush, "there was this one...guy...he was grinding on me not long before I noticed I was biiiiig. I didn't really get a good look at him, wish I had but it was dark, he was kinda short, but I could feel that he was...oh fuck...oh he was hung...fuck...I wanted to find him again, but then I, you know, left abruptly. He was...I mean it was...I mean that was really the only thing out of the ordinary."
Not much to go on, not even a solid causal connection. Well, can't win 'em all. Maybe there'd be more to learn from the friends, or at the club.
"Thanks Tina, you've been a great help. The medics should be here any minute, they'll get you fixed up, don't you worry your pretty little head about it." That was a bit of a lie; whatever was happening to these folks, it was lingering, hard to fix. They'd get her there eventually, and get her mobile soon enough, but she'd be packing quite the derriere for months.
"Oh thank you. You'll find who did this, right? I hope so."
