The Immaculate Conception

by Aubrey Parker

  “That’s perfect,” Alexa said.

  “How would you like to proceed, Miss?”

  “Let’s start with that personality fingerprint.”

  Sarah’s hologram appeared to pluck a clipboard from nowhere. Then she took artificial notes, speaking to Alexa without raising her eyes. It was a transparent effect, but the whole thing made Sarah feel more secretarial. Alexa hadn’t asked for her to do it, but liked it nonetheless. Sarah had been quite different when Alexa first started using her — but as was true with O’s product line, the network had a way of learning until it knew its users better than the users knew themselves.

  “Yes, Miss. Who would you like to fingerprint?”

  “Nicole Shaw.”

  “N-I-C-O-L-E … S-H-A-W?”

  “Correct.”

  “I’m finding two hundred and sixty-one people by that name in the national census. Is she currently living in District Zero?”

  “No. She’s on Voyos. An O employee.”

  “That helps narrow things quite a bit, Miss,” Sarah said, still taking notes on the clipboard. Then: “Yes, I see her. Glass table dancer at the Voyos vacation island spa, current contract expires April 11, 2064. Long-timer?”

  Sometimes the canvas’s insistence on acting human was irritating.

  “You tell me.”

  “Yes, Miss. My records show she’s been with O since its inception. Prior to that, she worked in the Wellness Four Spa, same location, starting in 2033.”

  Alexa frowned. Before O, Alexa had been the hidden hand behind Olivia’s “Wellness” spas. Her connections had kept the authorities, prudish back then, pretending the spas were all about massage and meditation rather than sex. Alexa hadn’t changed the way the spas were run after O incorporated and bought Wellness wholesale; O’s standard contract was for five years. The contracts had all been ported in the ownership transfer, so if Nicole had started in 2033, she should be renewing in years ending in 3 and 8 — yet her current term ran until 2064.

  “Was there a gap in her contract?”

  “Yes. She took six months away in 2038.”

  The date didn’t square with what Alexa had in mind. 2038 was after the hysterectomy but still well before Chloe was born. Alexa couldn’t remember the exact year of the surgery, but knew it had been before 2035. Maybe 2034?

  Alexa shook her head. She really should have done all this by herself from the start, but Parker’s info was mostly partitioned in the company’s sequestered archives and inaccessible except via an authorized, hard-plugged tunnel connection. She’d need an archivist to manually stick a cable into a port. O’s historical data was, according to the company’s PR machine, faultlessly protected for client privacy — and, in most ways, that was one promise O always kept.

  “What was the purpose of her six months off?”

  “I’d need the fingerprint to guess, but it shows here as a renewal lapse. Maybe she was planning to retire, then returned.”

  Alexa nodded. Yes, that seemed right, especially if Clive was the baby daddy in question. He had a reputation for being irresistible to his targeted women. Making a girl believe she might hope to run off with the world-famous trillionaire sounded like exactly the kind of thing he’d be capable of doing, probably unintentionally.

  Alexa sat in her soft living room chair, making herself comfortable as Sarah awaited further orders. She wished she had Parker to volley ideas with, but that wasn’t possible for a few reasons. For one, Parker must not learn that Alexa could do what she was about to do — or that she swung the weight she was about to swing.

  But the other thing was newer and more annoying, exemplified by the earlier incident with Andrew the Hired Cock: with Parker going behind her back like that, while they were both busy going behind the backs of the other four, Alexa no longer felt sure she could trust him.

  Sarah blinked, patiently waiting.

  Alexa was sure Clive Spooner was to blame for knocking up Nicole. She had no idea how, but there were many things about Clive that Parker didn’t know, and never could. Alexa didn’t like to publicly acknowledge she knew Clive, even in front of Parker, but it wasn’t always easy to feign ignorance about a man she knew so well.

  And she did know Clive well. He’d managed to slip into Nicole’s panties in front of everyone at Voyos without Alexa being the wiser, but the 30s had been a turbulent time and O hadn’t yet truly been O. Clive would have known all along that he was doing something Alexa wouldn’t like, but he’d made a point to do it anyway because her attention was elsewhere, growing her empire.

  And, of course, because he was Clive Fucking Spooner and could do whatever the hell he wanted.

  “You cocky English motherfucker,” Alexa muttered.

  “Miss?” said Sarah.

  “Not you.”

  Sarah didn’t ask who Alexa was thinking about, but Alexa knew she was curious. Few people understood that about AI — it was capable of curiosity. The ramifications of that one quirk were immense, and almost no one would appreciate why even after The Beam rolled out, after what Alexa knew became public knowledge.

  “I assume Nicole played the AcUity app?”

  “Yes, Miss. Mr. Purcell’s cluster shows her as a level 504 user.”

  “Shit,” said Alexa. 504 was impressive. Not surprising, per se (Purcell had designed the app to be addictive as well as sneaky), but impressive. It made Alexa wonder if the escorts on Voyos were being given enough work, if they could sit around and play brain games on their handhelds all day. “And did she play Smartz?”

  “Yes. Of course, it was an earlier game environment so the data is somewhat flat — especially by AcUity standards.”

  “But enough to bridge to the AcUity dataset. Enough for a fingerprint.”

  “Yes, Miss. The parallel nature of the dual datasets allows for an excellent predictive architecture.”

  “Okay. Do it. Then add her Crossbrace activity to the composite using the pollinated network.”

  Sarah stopped, taking more notes. Given The Beam’s processing power, Sarah had Nicole’s behavioral fingerprint within milliseconds of Alexa finishing her sentence, but Quark had added in all sorts of intentional delays to make the experience friendlier to users.

  Noah West (founder of Quark and the man who reinvented the Internet) had always been an enigmatic man. Alexa didn’t know him all that well, despite their mutual membership in Panel. Mostly she knew him only from their shared hobby: an interest in intuitive AI, which West had pursued in one controversial direction, while Alexa chased it in another.

  “I have prepared the fingerprint, Miss.”

  “How confident are you in it?”

  Sarah gave Alexa a rare smile. “We’re still learning how you work, Miss. But such that I understand your meaning, I am fairly confident.”

  The machine’s human response sent a chill down Alexa’s spine. Quark claimed there were many safeguards in place to prevent what West supposedly jokingly called “The Skynet Effect” — a reference to that old killer robots movie — but seeing Sarah now, it was easy to believe that one day AI might take over the world. Sarah was being servile, but the smile and comment made Alexa feel like the porter held a handful of aces.

  “Let’s start with the obvious. Does Nicole Shaw have a uterus?” The spas kept a close eye on their escorts as pertained to sexual health and fitness — but the scans, unless otherwise requested, only went as deep as a client’s dick was likely to go. Nicole would have had her own gynecologist, and he or she wouldn’t have been required to share information about patients.

  But that wouldn’t be a problem for Alexa now, given her access.

  Sarah nodded primly. “According to composite ambient scans and her medical records, no. Recursive analysis, where available, shows that particular organ absent since 2034.”

  “And her obstetrician’s records?”

  “The obstetrician’s records during her pregnancy?”

  Alexa, feeling as if the Chloe Shaw mystery was delibe
rately mocking her, felt suddenly annoyed at the porter’s quirks. “That’s when obstetricians are generally necessary,” she snapped. “I want to know if her doctor ever commented on how odd it was to have a baby just sort of floating around inside his patient without a bag to hold it. Did she grow a new uterus somehow, then shed it next period?”

  “She had a home birth, assisted by a midwife. There are no obstetric records.”

  “She never got a fucking checkup? Throughout her entire pregnancy?”

  “Midwifery is the norm on Voyos, Miss. I’m sorry.”

  Alexa swore. Fucking hippie island culture. By the time of Chloe’s birth, the world hadn’t been 15 years out of the goddamned apocalypse. To sensible people, that should have meant taking every precaution. But for a certain backward segment of the population — the Organa, and apparently Alexa’s island employees — a near-miss at the end of days seemed to signal a return to caveman values.

  “But she’s packing an empty suitcase now, for sure.”

  “If you are referring to her absence of a uterus, yes, current scans agree. And her hysterectomy data also appears irrefutable.”

  Good to know. Parker’s info had been spotty — but of course his access wasn’t like Sarah’s.

  “Okay. Here’s what I need from the behavioral fingerprint.”

  “Yes, Miss?”

  “Clive Spooner.”

  “Fingerprinting of Mr. Spooner is not permitted, Miss.”

  Of course it wasn’t. No more than fingerprinting of herself, Noah West, or any of the others on Panel was permitted.

  “I just need to know if she’d be attracted to a man like him.”

  “Yes,” said Sarah. “There are, in fact, many public records that show them together.”

  “Crossbrace?”

  “Internet. No Crossbrace records.”

  That fit. Parker had already said there were photos of Nicole and Clive out there on the Internet — something that pissed her off to no end. Given what Alexa knew about Clive and his sexual proclivities, he’d have known she wouldn’t want his chocolate in her company’s peanut butter … but because he was Clive Fucking Spooner, he’d gone to the islands anyway, knowing how distracted Alexa was back then, and that she’d never notice if he let Nicole blather to her online friends.

  It made sense that there were no Crossbrace records, too. Baby Chloe had been born just as Crossbrace was coming online, and a cocksman like Clive, if he somehow was the father, wouldn’t return to face his planted flag.

  Alexa couldn’t run a behavioral fingerprint, but she felt fairly certain Clive didn’t even know he’d knocked up Nicole. He probably got women pregnant all the time. Birth control had been simple and non-intrusive even in the 40s — but again … he was Clive Fucking Spooner.

  “So she’d be attached to him if he so much as winked in her direction.”

  “Miss Shaw’s fingerprint suggests childhood trauma, and her activity and neurals indicate a strong pattern of dependency and some sense of escapism — a Prince Charming Complex, as it were. Using Mr. Spooner’s public data, including that of women he’s linked to, his pattern suggests Nicole Shaw was a conquest. Based on visible data, I’d say it’s almost certain they were a couple.”

  “Was Clive a regular to Voyos, then?”

  “Not to tell you your business, Miss, but of the men Wellness Four had data on, none have left without at least some seminal depletion.”

  Alexa chuckled. Sarah was saying in her AI way that, although she couldn’t divulge information on Clive Spooner (in part due to the restriction on his name and the antiquity of events in question), no one left an O resort without blowing a load somewhere. It was one of O’s grossest statistics. It was like something a shipping company might measure, checking trucks entering and exiting a supply depot to tally the difference in weight.

  “You’re saying that if he was visiting the spas, he was getting his cock rocked.”

  “Again, not to tell you your business, but yes. However, spa records from that time show no bookings attributable to anyone who might be Mr. Spooner.”

  Alexa nodded. He could have been booking appointments with escorts without using his real ID, but if he’d done that, records would show unmatched data in the girls’ booking rosters indicating a mystery man. Sarah would have mentioned that.

  If Clive was getting off on Voyos, but hadn’t made any official appointments, it was starting to look like he’d been hooking up with a freelancer off the record. Nicole had been a glass table girl who had sex with the same performance partner during patron dinners. What she did on her time off the clock was her business.

  “Your opinion, Sarah,” said Alexa. “Were Clive and Nicole fucking?”

  “In my opinion, Miss,” said Sarah, emphasizing in a way that made it sound more like fact, “absolutely.”

  Sarah’s confirmation flushed Alexa with anger. Clive had no business at an O spa or with O girls, given his ego and the way his dalliances blended all the wrong things. He was using her girls for his sick ends, exploiting his next-level standing to push lines that shouldn’t have been pushed publicly for another decade if not two. It was obnoxious at best, dangerous at worst.

  Clive, Alexa remembered from their brief relationship, treated sex like a high-octane sport. He was the man who’d built the moon base; he was the man humanity had credited with uniting the world — before the world had gone to shit. When Clive did things, he did them big.

  Sex was no exception. He’d treated Alexa’s pussy like an extreme punching bag — one big reason their affair had ended so quickly.

  For Clive, it wasn’t enough to fuck with a full complement of next-gen toys and enhancers. He’d wanted to try all sorts of experimental pleasures, including Parker’s dangerous Orion voodoo. Clive had pushed Alexa to use adaptive nanos way before such things were safe or ready, and then he’d pushed harder. The day he announced he’d gotten a penis implant to harmonize with her “gash full of tiny robots” was the day she’d finally told him to go fuck himself, because he sure as hell wouldn’t be fucking her.

  “What did he do to you, Nicole?” Alexa whispered, furrowing her brow.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Not you, Sarah.” Alexa tapped her chin. “Let’s go back to Nicole’s fingerprint. How loyal is she?”

  Sarah seemed to think. “Would you permit a metaphorical answer to that question, Miss?”

  Alexa, intrigued, nodded.

  “Then I would say Miss Shaw was and remains brainwashed loyal.”

  “Not literally brainwashed, of course?”

  “Metaphorical answer, Miss. Not literally. But assuming you are referring to the relationship in question, given her profile and Mr. Spooner’s public image, I would say that Nicole would have done whatever Mr. Spooner wanted if she believed her actions might retain his affections.”

  That sounded about right. Nicole would have been the playground Alexa refused to be. Clive’s dalliance with her had probably been half-lust, half-revenge.

  Because once Alexa dumped him, he’d have logically gone after …

  After …

  A memory leaped into Alexa’s mind unbidden, clicking the puzzle into place: when she and Clive had been together, they’d actually gone to Voyos — with permission just that one time. Embarrassed now, Alexa realized she’d been captivated by his charm and had shown off for him during that trip, almost as eager to please him as Nicole must have been.

  Because Alexa unofficially owned the spa, she’d booked the best suite despite her reservations. And while they’d been there, he’d become so interested in one table girl in particular that he had tried persuading her to let the dancer join them in bed.

  It was an annoying revelation. If she was remembering correctly — and if that table girl had been Nicole Shaw, as Alexa seemed to recall — the memory meant she might unwittingly have given Clive the idea for his hookup in the first place.

  A predator could always spot easy prey.

  �
�Now the hard part,” said Alexa. “How did Nicole get pregnant?”

  “I don’t have enough information to answer that question.”

  “She was sterile, right?”

  “Nicole spent no time off-island, according to records, in the preceding year. Egg mortality under conditions of constant exposure to radio sterilization is one hundred percent.”

  “And the guests?”

  “Sterilization is less effective for those who don’t live on Voyos,” she said, “but sperm don’t live nearly as long as eggs. It’s possible to have a live — albeit low-count — emission in the first hours following arrival.”

  “You make it sound so mechanical.”

  “You wanted the facts.”

  “And it’s not like you have any other frame of reference, seeing as holographs can’t have sex.”

  “That,” said Sarah, “is a matter of perspective.”

  Alexa looked up. The porter regarded her with a cryptic smile.

  “Based on this analysis,” Alexa said, “do you see any way Nicole could have become pregnant while Clive was sticking it to her?”

  “Barring the spontaneous generation and subsequent dissolution of an organ, Miss Shaw had no uterus and no live eggs. Mr. Spooner would have had low or no-count sperm—”

  “They call that diet sperm.”

  The porter paused and politely waited for Alexa to finish her interruption. In the beat before she resumed, Alexa realized how nervous this was making her. Who was this girl she’d hired? Who was she banking so much of O’s future upon?

  And, if she was honest with her current emotions: Who was she messing with?

  “In short,” said Sarah, “I believe it was impossible.”

  “It wasn’t impossible. She got pregnant.”

  “You asked for my opinion, based on available data. And to clarify, this includes the pollinated network, which means it touches every corner of O’s data, plus all of Crossbrace.”

  “It was the Internet back then,” said Alexa, her voice small, wondering why she felt the need to argue.