Tip

Dimensionality and Duration

She moved through the space of the lab the way I moved, my first time, through a Shinto shrine. Her eyes were open wide, her pointed chin tilted up, forward then back around as people or wiring or the blinking lights on diagnostic equipment caught her attention. She was made to be obedient yet curious, and the small recursions, the subtle conflicts that her two mandates caused her were evident in the way she reached a hand out to feel then stopped short, fingers crooked into question marks.

"May I touch?" she would half-whisper, the hush in the room causing her to soften her new voice in imitation. A spare battery pack. "May I touch?" A sweater hanging on a spindly coat-rack. "May I touch?" A tablet, web browser open. "May I touch?"

"I have something she can touch," Sato muttered to Li from his workspace. They stifled their laughter a little when I glared at them.

I watched her halting explorations, her grey-clad back weaving in and out through the clutter. I watched her bathe her face in screen-light and dip her hands into boxes of print-outs to flick her fingers along the edges. It was no brave new world. The lab was banal. But it was the first place she'd seen outside the spare white walls of the in-state, and it must have been filled with a thousand and one details we couldn't incorporate into even the most densely nested set of interactional rules.

The thing was, she needed to learn so much that we take for granted, down to the most basic rules of engaging with objects and people, with light and sound. She needed a certain understanding of space and time in order to react correctly to a real person versus a photo or a video of a person, so that she wouldn't spend hours waiting on instructions from a cardboard cut-out, or try to treat a video caller as a guest. Scale, perspective, mobility, tone, shadow, reaction time. The very basics. But who can program in a condition/reaction set to every shade of grey a file box takes on as the light from the fluorescents is crossed with the light from a monitor, and then shadowed by her body and mine? How could she know what that meant? I was suddenly struck with the worry that she might become overloaded, like a robot with limited processing power, by the sheer volume of information in the physical environment around her.

Still, she was not a robot following the paths of physical circuitry, for all I use the metaphor of programming. She was tactile image that absorbed the world as touch and vision, and she had an infinite capacity to take it in, make it part of herself. I imagined her like a child, wanting to place everything in her mouth or run it over with her sensitive tongue. She didn't actually lick everything in sight with her tongue, but with her fingertips somehow she did. She devoured things to learn them, all their object secrets.

I took her to my office and let her caress my space: my plain walls, the worn wheeled chair, the smooth stone from a long-lost beach I rub when I'm worried. I encouraged her to sit and lay her fingers on my worn-letterless keyboard, the board that had given birth to her in her present state. She had perfect typing posture, but nothing to type. She looked to the screen, then to me, awaiting commands. An imp of the perverse whispered in my ear.

"Tip, can you program yourself?" I asked her. "With this?" I opened the navigational diagrams for a few of her root files over her shoulder.

"I don't know what this is," she said.

"This is you. Your data. Some of it."

She stared at the screen, image to image.

"I'm very sorry. It's just..."

As she uttered the set phrase she bobbed her head in a sitting bow, a gesture of embarrassment at not being able to fulfill my wish. I sighed.

"Do you like this place?" I asked her.

"Oh yes! I like it a lot. And..." -shy mannerisms- "I like that you brought me here."

She sounded like a bad dating sim. Well, no help for that yet. She would just have to learn more.

"Do you want to go back to your own room now?" I asked.

"Whatever you'd like," she cooed.

I felt it was long enough for a first run. I took her back, though she was still just as avid as when I'd first brought her out, peering over to my colleagues' workstations as if she wanted to touch their screens and mugs (and bodies...no, don't think that) as much as she wanted to touch mine. She wasn't tired or overloaded at all. In fact, even though she could tell me exactly how many seconds had passed since we had left the in-state, I don't think she could actually sense the passage of time the way I did. I was the one who was worn down by just a half-hour of watching her work at full capacity. I was the one who felt it was "long enough." She could go and go. I could only imagine the possibilities.

At any rate, I ushered her back into the in-state. She went directly to her couch and sat like a puppy looking at me expectantly.

"I'll take you out again. Soon." I resisted the urge to add "I promise."

She nodded.

"For now, I'll leave you operational. Please concentrate on the concepts of dimensionality and duration while you rest on your couch tonight. You should learn what continuous existence is like. Some of your future owners might leave you on all the time, and they'll expect you to know how time passes."

"Yes, Mistress."

I sighed again.

"You can call me Naomi when we're not in session."

"Yes, Naomi."

She lay down as I left her, no doubt to concentrate on dimensionality and duration. Whatever that meant.

Open Wide

What I remember about her from the early talking phase: her sweet mouth, open. Speaking. Receiving. Crying. Singing. Her nighttime eyes glancing up and her small mouth open, beseeching me. Her mouth on the skin of my belly not so much kissing as caressing and nuzzling me with her lips. My fingers pressing into her, against her wet tongue.

Why such orality? I don't know, but it draws me. Open your mouth. Let me in. Tip, speak into me, mouth to mouth, you who could never really speak for yourself. Let me kiss the voice from you, let me place mine on your tongue. Just say it: silent O. Mmm.

Self/pleasure

I kept her on almost all the time when she was learning to talk, and came to her both as Naomi and as her male tutor. I tried any position, any twist I thought might sell, and the men had at her as well. Through the projective powers of the in-state, I pounded her ass until she yelped ecstatically at each thrust. I had her take my cum across her face as she groveled on the floor. I had her deep throat me until she choked on it. I was tender with her as well: my adored and adorable girlfriend to be kissed and cuddled. Sometimes I made her the Dominant one, capable of taking over when I hesitated, pushing me down and working over my "virgin" cock with the thoroughness of a seasoned professional.

The boys -Sato, Li, and Evans especially -took her right in front of me, and I watched as her slender body twisted in pleasure under the force of their desire for her. Together, we made her every man's fantasy. Or at least, we made a basic fantasy for every straight man, preparing the grounds for future individuals' customizations. (Ask me about the variously-gendered Tips and their equally diverse devotees later. I'll answer, but not just now, I'm going somewhere with this.)

So, I did with her what a man does with a woman. There was pleasure in doing it as a man. That became one of my bodies, or my embodiments. But even so, there were still times when my female body was called into play. There were times when I could make it seem necessary to teach her something as a woman. For instance: teaching the Tip to perform with her own image-body.

Many people (gender and orientation aside) just like to watch. Voyeurism is the foundation of visual technologies, of which the Tip was such a shining example. She needed to be able to entertain those passionate spectators, to satisfy their need to watch her do unto herself. She had a whole range of traditional performing arts skills -including singing, of course, her famous idol career. I didn't teach her those skills: she had choreographers and directors for that. I just taught her how to handle her body. Even as I was teaching her to take it from a man, I taught her to give to herself as a woman. In short, I taught her to masturbate. Some people might say I turned her into a cam-whore. But nobody knows the intimacy of those sessions, when I finally felt I could give her something she could use for herself, inside, in privacy, as well. Self-pleasure is necessarily a self-taught art. But the Tip couldn't teach herself this. So I helped. I showed her how.

I visited her one night, not in my usual lab coat, but in a lustrous, skin-thin silk robe, its belt accentuating the wide hips I always had so much trouble with as her male tutor. I dressed her similarly, and projected, via the in-state, a sort of low-rez cushioned space in which we could recline, bolstered by pillows of pixellated softness. Expecting that she would be asked to perform as usual, she began to move towards me, reaching out her hand to touch me.

"Stop," I said quietly. "Please sit back. Watch and listen to me."

"Yes, Mistress," she murmured, and settled herself against a cushion, her gaze steady.

"Try this, Tip. Run your hand along your hip, like this."

I stroked myself, satin heat under my palm. Her hand ran slow and voluptuous down her own modest curves, as if synched to mine.

"What do you feel?" I asked

"I feel my hip," she reported prosaically.

"What sensations does it give you, to touch your hip?"

"Sensations?"

"Warm or cold. Smooth or rough. Use your tactile vocabulary, Tip."

"It feels warm and soft. Silky."

"Yes, that's right. Now Tip, the aim of this exercise is not to please others but to please yourself. I know your pleasure sims are mainly designed to be cued by someone else stimulating you, but today you'll activate that pleasure independently, through your own touch. You will learn self-pleasure. Future owners may want to see you do this, so I'll show you how tonight. Do you understand?"

"Yes, I understand."

Was that curiosity in her voice, or just my imagination?

"Let's begin."

Slowly, under her gaze, I ran my fingers through the loosely-tied belt of my robe. The knot untwined, and the motion of pulling the belt-ends out long and smooth parted the folds along the robe's front. As cool air brushed a line down my chest and belly, I saw the Tip's robe open like mine just a little, just enough to show an arc of fine, pale image-flesh from throat to navel. The robe puddled in her lap like a silky delta; she was not as full-figured as I am, and the folds didn't pull open across wide thighs as mine did. But as I moved, I felt that the warmth I stroked was hers. I slid my hand into the folds of my robe and caressed my stomach, down my abdomen, then teasing back up towards my breastbone, fingertips flitting against my soft left areola in passing as my arm also caught and brushed my right breast. Moving, always moving, I allowed my gestures to part the robe further, and watched as she did the same, revealing her pink-tipped breasts to me. She drew a deep, shuddering breath, and I realized that it was my own gasp of pleasure in seeing her that she was emulating.

"Very good, Tip," I murmured. "Now, let's lie down."

I stretched like a cat and sunk into the cushions, pulling the robe fully from between my legs as I did so.

"It may be hard for you to see what I'm doing from this position, and I don't expect you to imitate me exactly from here on out. Just bring up our past sessions and search for the points you've touched and tasted on me. Then search for them on yourself. Let your fingers reach until you find them. There are so many possible points of pleasure for us. You might even find some in your body that don't exist in mine. It's good, Tip. Explore yourself."

"Yes, Mistress," she murmured, and delicately slipped a fingertip between her legs. Middle finger, longest finger, delving into herself.

I shivered as I slid my own middle and ring fingers deep into my cleft to wet them, then drew them up to trace and knead around my clit. My hips jerked, muscle-memory of recent thrusts in them, but I let my rhythm lengthen into an arch, sustaining and streamlining my motions. Why had I never realized how differently I move in my woman's body? Its tempo is less like a pounding heart, racing to the finish, and more like the lapping, suffusing pulse of the tide. I squirmed and let my full thighs slip one over the other, my left hand at my breasts as the right played with my lips and clit.

Face to face, I watched her for her own moment of discovery, the moment when she cued herself. Per my orders she was both echoing me and finding her own counterpoints, drawing from her database of experiences and modifying them to suit the different shape of her body. Her thighs were much easier to get through, created less friction than mine, and so she parted them slightly where I had clenched, playing her slim legs to advantage and opening herself more widely.

Her gaze on me grew abstract; the tactile data she generated herself was becoming more complex and occupying more of her faculties. Catching one nipple between her thumb and forefinger, she suddenly pinched the soft pink flesh hard between her long nails. Her other hand spasmed sharp between her legs, and her breath caught with a little moan of pleasure. Her nails dug harder into her breast.

"So you do like a little pain, even on your own?" I said.

"Yes, Mistress, I...I like it to hurt."

"Then do it, Tip. Hurt yourself if you need to. Follow your pain, let it lead to what you want."

I slid my own fingers deeper into myself to spur her on, and watched, amazed, as she developed the beginnings of her own sexual practice, her own sessions. Could such things as the desire for pleasure through pain be innate even in an image-body? Or is it because I was rough with her that first time and often used her hard, so that in accessing the databases she turned up more key instances of being cued to orgasm by pain and determined that they were right?

Well, I was hardly thinking such technical things in the moment. I was throbbing with the need to come, nearly out of my mind with it. It was waiting for her to reach her point of release so that I could tell she had done it herself, not just emulated me. But as adept as I was at the disciplinary art of edging, inciting and then denying myself, I found every delay harder to manage. I began to think that she could tease herself forever, gasping on the edge without knowing how to cross over. Finally, I couldn't bear it any longer. Reaching down with both hands, I pulled back at my flesh until the bud of my clit was fully bared from its hood and began to stroke, lightly, lightly, then harder, reaching down to penetrate myself with my fingertips while stimulating my clit with my other hand. Beside me the rhythm of her breath quickened as she panted with such perfect synchronicity that I couldn't tell if she was preceding or following or matching me exactly stroke for stroke, pulse for pulse. I tried to watch her come but couldn't; my eyes closed as the peak arrived and all I knew was my own cry, blended with hers in such harmony that I didn't hear if she made a sound at all.

One thing is certain. When I opened my eyes, she was laid out on the pixellated cushions, eyes to the ceiling, arms flung open, with glistening snail-tracks of wetness coursing down her inner thigh. She had performed the task. What she would do with this information now, I could only wonder.

Cross over

Tip, I imagine it. Your hands on yourself, your small fine fingers splayed across your own thighs, gripping and parting them. I imagine you in your little room, in the corner where you will have privacy, head down, hair warm against your cheeks. Crouching and reaching between your legs as you shelter behind the curve of your white-flashing shoulder. I can't see your face, Tip, I can't see your eyes, you hide yourself even from me, but I can just barely see the curve of the back of your hand, your elegant wristbone displayed as your fingers curve and vanish, inside. And I can hear, too, your tiny sighs, the sounds you make in the back of your throat as you test what I've been saying against the measure of your body.

Hush, Tip, this is a secret between us. No one walks in to discover your shame -the paradoxical shame of one who is known in every facet, made and recorded and constantly surveilled, unless someone like me should come along and clear the cache to cover y/our tracks. No one will know how you know yourself, or how I know you through myself, how we know each other, because this is not a thing for them, it's a thing for us.

Or rather, it's a thing for me, this thing I have for you, my beloved object. It's my imagination, which I play out with you for them, yes, but also secretly in other ways, inside. Whispering, touching, writing. I won't let anyone break the membrane of our virgin love. Move your hands on yourself, Tip, I will imagine it, and then I will do it to myself, too. It's all I have now. Was it ever real, given your virtuality, your image-body? In my body-image, yes, it was, it is. Cross over, Tip, and touch me.

***

Hello, Lit readers of Dec. 2014! This will be the last chapter of this story until the New Year. I'm going home for the holidays, and this is as far as I've gotten with the story. If you want me to continue writing it, please let me know and I'll work on it as I travel. (Yes, I am bold enough to write this stuff in public!) In the meantime, happy holidays to all who celebrate this time of year!