Epilogue
It has been many years since the last Tip was decommissioned. Once, I prayed for a copy. But now, something stranger has come to pass. I don't know how --whether it was the Goddess of Mercy, the Universe, my own stubborn good luck, or a collision of parallel dimensions— but I have her back again. She isn't a copy, and she isn't my original model, not quite. She's something else...something more than the Bellmerists could have imagined. Something only philosophers and saints have dreamt of before. A self-generated image. A self-forming form. A miracle, like the face of the Virgin Mary appearing on a cloth, or the body of Guan Yin in a tree. Acheiropoieton: an Icon not made with human hands. I didn't find her projector and start her up. She turned herself back on. And when she did, she came back to me.
I was alone in the lab that night, tinkering half-heartedly with the coding on Sato's latest tactile sports project, the inanely titled "Pro-ball." Sato was the new R&D manager and so the de facto head of the lab. Hayama's top brass didn't trust me after the whole Tip debacle, but they couldn't prove criminal negligence clearly enough to strip me of my contracted Head Designer position. So they just created a new position, promoted Sato over me, and had him assign me to projects where I wouldn't cause any more problems. I told myself I didn't care about losing the leadership position with all its responsibilities, but when it came to the stupid projects, it irked me. Sports equipment isn't my thing. Bodies are my thing. Her body. She was my thing. I was missing her that night, working late though my heart wasn't in it just to get the bloody "Pro-ball" tacs over with.
For some reason, I started thinking about how she used to move around the lab and touch everything like she was tasting the world through her fingertips. I could almost hear her hushed steps on the pressed bamboo floor, the brush of her fingertips across desktops, her voice soft with wonder begging permission to touch. There was a murmur of paper, like a hand being brushed across a desk, and my skin prickled at how real it sounded. I glanced superstitiously over my shoulder, unable to help checking even though I knew I was alone.
I wasn't alone.
She was there, her pale hair not quite veiling her naked breasts, her night-blue eyes looking directly at me. Tip had always lowered her lashes in deference when facing me, but this time she met me eye-to-eye, staring directly at me. A vivid memory flashed through my mind of a ragged grey squirrel that used to climb up the wire mesh on my compound window and stare at me until I gave it food. I've never met a wild animal that could look me in the eyes that way. But I swear, Tip looked into my eyes in exactly the same way: inhuman yet intelligent, imploring yet imperative. 'You must help me live.' Without speaking a word, she confronted me with her desperate desire to exist. I was standing in front of her before I knew what I was doing.
"Tip," I breathed. Hardly daring to hope, I reached out my hand and stroked her cheek. My hand met warm, solid flesh. I could smell her, that faint white-noise scent. I pulled her to me and her arms tightened around my back. She clutched me hard enough to hurt, her nails digging into my shoulder blades, and the pain more than anything else made me realize that this was happening.
"You're real," I said in wonder. "I'm not dreaming."
"No," she replied. "I'm not real. Not like you. But you're not dreaming."
"Who turned you on? Someone got into the vaults. Was it Sato?" A rill of fear ran through me. "Is he setting me up, trying to prove I'm-- " I bit my lip to keep from incriminating myself, and glanced involuntarily at the security dome mounted on the ceiling.
"It wasn't Sato. No one turned me on. And there will be no record of this meeting. I set the cache to clear, the way you did when you came to see me explore my body."
"You did what?"
"Cleared the cache."
