The Jacobs Project: In Search of Pinocchio (SYMBIOSIS) (4 page)

"
Have you considered remote links, hosting other sentients?"

"
Don't need it," the customer replied, shaking his head.

"
Network connection speed could be a problem with the smaller system."

The customer smirked.
"Not interested in the network. Know what I mean?"

"
Yes, sir, I do," the salesman said. "In your case, I think the smaller system will do just fine." He obviously knew exactly what the customer wanted but smiled gamely in spite of his disappointment.

The system demonstrator flinched. She also knew what the customer wanted
,
a sex toy—nothing more, nothing less.
And given his continual glances in her direction, she had a pretty good idea what was coming next. She trembled ever so slightly.

Coming closer, the customer ran his hand along her bare arm and looked at the salesman in amazement.
"You know, I can even feel the little hairs on her arm?"

"
Remarkable, isn't it? Force field technology has come a long, long way since the introduction of the EMU. The resolution is simply unbelievable."

The customer
's face clouded. "I've heard various things about the, uh… resolution of other parts of the anatomy, not all positive."

"
Ten years ago, maybe. But now… the resolution is the same over the
entire
body. We guarantee it."

The customer studied the demonstrator, giving every sign he remained unconvinced. She braced herself.
Here it comes.

"
We do have a private display area," the salesman said, confidentially.

"
Really?"

The salesman nodded.
"I think it will answer any questions you might have."

A broad smile crept across the customer
's face. "Hmmm… Maybe I should it check out."

"
My pleasure. Let me send Helen over, and we'll get started right away."

The d
emonstrator continued to smile as the salesman made entries into the holo system's control panel. When he finished, he said to her, "Alright, Helen, we'll be right there."

"
Certainly" she said with an impish grin. "I'll be waiting."

The salesman
's hand came down on a large red button, and she found herself in the "private display area", in fact, only a small room containing nothing but holo projectors in the corners and an input receiver suspended from the ceiling. She waited for it to change, wondering what motif the salesman would choose. She received her answer within seconds.

The study.
The empty room was empty no longer, suddenly filled with a variety of souvenirs and bric-a-brac. A large desk occupied one end of the room; a large globe sat in the center. Bookshelves lined three of the four walls; a mural of the solar system adorned the fourth.
The study
—undoubtedly a wise choice for the customer in question.

She allowed herself a brief, quiet sob in anticipation of the coming humiliation. Her thoughts turned to her counterpart at the Northside outlet. They saw each other only occasionally, during demonstrations of the remote link facility, but she thought of him often—her only respite from the tedium and abuse.

She put an end to her brief reverie, returning the smile to her face. To do otherwise was to invite punishment, usually an angry slap. The evening salesman had other more terrifying weapons in his arsenal, however, including a "time-out", his term for severing the link between her neural array and the system's input. He'd yet to make good on that threat, but the possibility kept her forever afraid.

When the door to the
"private display area" opened, she greeted the salesman and customer with open arms. "Welcome."

The customer seemed beside himself with excitement.
"Well, hello again."

Obviously annoyed at losing the mid range system sale, the salesman was all business.
"Mr. Banks would like to see a little more, Helen. Why don't you show him."

"
Why, certainly, Jim." Adopting a provocative pose, she licked her lips, before running a finger down the middle of her torso, to a point just below the waist. Her dress fell open. She removed it slowly, making eye contact with the customer all the while.

He responded to her lack of under garments with a gasp, his eyes opened wide.
"She's perfect!" he exclaimed, reaching for her. "Can I—"

"
Be my guest," the salesman said.

The customer began to fondle and grope her with a quiet intensity, occasionally checking her reaction. She did
n't disappoint. A minute passed, then two, before he stopped. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath and said, "Amazing."

The salesman slapped him on the shoulder.
"Like I said, we guarantee satisfaction."

The customer look
ed around the room as if searching for something. His eyes came to rest on the desk before returning to the demonstrator. "I don't suppose I could—"

"
I'm afraid not," the salesman replied, laughing. "It's against corporate policy, not to mention the law."

The demonstrator stiffened and briefly closed her eyes.
If only that was true.

"
Oh… Yeah, of course. Well, can I get one just like her… a copy?"

"
Her configuration specs are proprietary, but there's no shortage of profile designers, and I know that several of them do an excellent job of replicating Helen, here."

They continued to banter for several minute
s as the demonstrator looked on—naked, smiling, humiliated. She'd done her job well. Even while talking to the salesman, the customer couldn't stop looking at
her
. He'd buy. She was sure of it.

As they left the room, the salesman called over his shoulder,
"You can get dressed, now, Helen." But, being near closing time he didn't mean it.
Against corporate policy and the law.
She snorted, and as if to punctuate her point the room changed, the study giving way to a bedroom.

Sighing, she ambled over to the bed and sat on its edge. She wouldn
't have long to wait. Her thoughts returned to the handsome demonstrator from Northside, giving rise to a fantasy. She imagined
him
walking through the door instead of the salesman.

But as soon as the thought arose
she put it out of mind, lest it betray her feelings at a most inappropriate time. That would surely earn her a "time-out".
Not even my thoughts are my own.

She began to work on her smile, crafting and moldin
g it. When she had it just right, she froze it in place and waited. At any moment the salesman would return to the room. He'd have his fun then she'd be returned to the main demo area and shut down for the night like any other piece of equipment. She sighed, knowing the next day and the day after that she'd be doing it all over again.
Incept plus 712 days
—
almost two years.

VI.
FULL CIRCLE

19 April 2145

Office of Gary Toshima, President

General Holographic
Corp. Headquarters

Turning
away from the computer monitor with its tedious sales projections, Toshima studied his secretary of many years. No longer young, she was lovely all the same, but her worried look concerned him. "What is it, Eileen?"

"
You've got to see this," she replied tersely. "Video
on
."

The picturesque view on the wall facing him dissolved, revealing the head and shoulders of a stern-faced, middle aged woman. She spoke in strident tones.

"This recording was released to all the major news networks an hour ago," Eileen said. "It's all over the place."

He listened for several seconds before throwing his hands up.
"So? Another emancipation group. There must be a hundred of them across the country. They meet in each other's kitchens, fancying themselves as modern day abolitionists. What's new?"

"
This is
not
just another emancipation group, Gary. This is different. These people are serious. Lady's name is Joanne Mason, and she's from a prominent Boston Family."

"
Oh."

"
Uh-huh. And this new group of hers, The New England Emancipation Society, promises to be a major thorn in our sides."

He laughed nervously.
"Come on, Eileen. Don't you think you're overdoing it a bit? It's one regional group, after all."

"
Don't be so quick to laugh this off, Gary. She says her group is the first of many, and they won't stop until the creation of sentients for commercial use stops." She paused and looked into his eyes. "You know, public opinion could start to turn against us. I've heard terrible stories about the things that are happening to some of the sentients."

Toshima sat up straight, staring at the vid. He too had heard
the troubling stories.

"
For the first time we'll have serious people with serious connections making the point that we're nothing more than modern day slavers," Eileen continued."Twenty-second century slavers, twenty-second century abolitionists. We've come full circle." She sighed. "I wish they had listened to you back in '33."

"
Uh-uh. My objections at the time weren't moral; they were about liability and public relations. Once they made the decision to proceed, I was on board one hundred percent."

When she placed a comforting hand on his shoulder, he looked up at her, wishing he had made her his wife long ago.
"You know, the only guy to object on moral grounds was Phil Dempsey," he said. "And he resigned in protest. Talk about a major 'I told you so'."

"
Don't give it a second thought. He's probably not even with us anymore."

"
Hah! I'm pretty sure he's still alive, alive and cursing the lot of us at this very moment. I suppose we should have seen this coming."

Giving his shoulder a gentle squeeze, Eileen said,
"It was just a product, Gary, just like any other. Hindsight is always twenty-twenty. You might as well blame Jacobs. Maybe he should have seen it coming a hundred years ago."

He tried to take comfort in her words but failed. Jacobs didn
't design the system that had found its way into nearly a million homes. Neither had Jacobs placed sentient beings at the mercy of anyone with the means to pay. No, he and his engineers had done that. Dempsey's moral objection, scorned at the time, suddenly seemed visionary.

As he listened, Joanne promised to inform the entire nation about the horror wrought by unchecked, personal sentient ownership. She insisted that those responsible for
the trade were evil and greedy and would be publicly exposed for the cruel people they were. "Evil? Do you think she really believes that?" he asked. When Eileen didn't answer, he lowered his head and groaned.

As he came to grips with the frightening possibilities, he raised his head once more and stared at the vid. Should he have foreseen the emancipation movement fourteen years earlier? Had Dempsey? It no longer mattered.

The lady on the vid was eloquent and determined. She, and apparently others like her, saw his magnificent achievement not as an engineering marvel but as an affront to decency, and nothing frightened him more than the possibility she might have been right.

+ + + END + + +

THE SYMBIOSIS SERIES

The Jacobs Project: In search of Pinocchio

Tales of the Symbiont Safety Patrol (each title also available separately)

.
The First Angry 'Man' (published by Damnation Books)
*

.
Helen

.
Confidence Man

.
The Pleasure Palace

.
Growing Pains

Naught Point Naught

Love with the Proper Hologram (coming in June 2013)

Ea
st of the Sun and West of the Moon (coming in 2014)

*Customer Note:
Although
The First Angry 'Man'
is the first story in the sequence, it must be purchased separately on Amazon. We apologize for any inconvenience.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Samuel J.M. King
was born in Boston, Massachusetts, grew up on the “South Shore” and attended high school in historic Plymouth. Tired of school at the tender age of seventeen, he joined the Marine Corps and after basic training, spent the next eighteen months—you guessed it!—going to school. A stint at the Naval Communications Training Center in Pensacola, Florida was followed by nine months at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California studying Russian. He spent the remainder of his four-year enlistment in Japan.