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."
"But how did you know...? How did you even get out of...no, never mind." As the shock of the initial encounter wore off, my mind began to leap from "what happened?" to "what do I do next"? Should I call somebody, turn her in?
As if reading my thoughts, Tip gripped my shoulders and said, "Please. You have to get me out of here."
I couldn't help it; I laughed. It was just such a cheesy line, like something out of one of those old 2D prison break movies. I laughed, and somehow my laugh turned into a sob. It was like releasing one emotion unleashed them all. I knew I'd been bored and lonely without her, but I hadn't realized how much I'd missed her, mourned for her, the way I would have for a lover. I even missed the annoying things about her, like the artificial-sounding dialogue she used that I'd tried so hard to fix. All the elation of discovery and the heartbreak of the recall, all the pent-up experiences of the past fifteen years came down on my head at once. And along with them came a single searing truth: I wanted out, out, out. Like a trapped animal, like a weed under concrete, I had to get away from the compound and everyone in it or face a slow death by starvation of the soul. I had to smash it all, the life I'd built, and just get out with her. I grabbed her wrists and held her pinned before me.
"Ok, we're getting out. But you have to do what I say!"
"Yes, Mistress, whatever you say." She was looking down now, sweet and obedient, but her lips formed a pleased little smile. Oh, she remembered. She remembered everything. She wanted to play the role again. Her submission --a knowing, willing, deliberate submission-- helped to steady my shaking hands and calm my pounding heart.
"Good girl, Tip. Now, where are the domes you cleared? Just in this room, or along your entire path?"
"Wherever I go, the cache will clear."
