The Virtual Man [The Virtual Reality 1] (Siren Publishing Classic) (6 page)

“One would think that humans, having had these sentient abilities for thousands of years, would pay them more heed,” Tiana conjectured.

“Well, while I agree that history should mold the present and redeem the future, don’t forget that humans are not perfect. To err is human, right?”

“To err might be human, but it takes a real jerk to not only throw away seven years of marriage, but to use the very sentient qualities you are talking about to return love with spite.”

Tears welled up in her eyes.

Reaching across the table, Derek wiped away a tear before it could scurry down her cheek and cupped her face in his hands.

“Do you want to talk about it? I’m a good listener.”

Okay, that proves it. A woman definitely programmed him.

“No. Well, yes. I don’t know,” she replied, frustrated with herself and her mixed-up feelings.

“If he hurt you, if he let you go, he’s definitely the galaxy’s biggest loser, that much is clear,” Derek said. “I’d love to hear your story and share your memories, that is, if you’re comfortable.”

It couldn’t hurt could it? It was standard procedure to erase the user portion of computer memory storage after each trip, so it would be safer than telling a therapist, much cheaper and a heck of a lot easier the morning after than Rita’s primitive alcohol-laden solution. Maybe it would make her feel better to verbalize her pain.

“Okay. I just went through a divorce after being put through seven years of mostly hell.”

Derek reached out and straightened a red curl off her forehead. Tiana felt the pads of his fingertips lightly brush her skin. As his fingers continued moving the renegade curl back into place, time seemed to stand still. By the time she felt Derek’s fingers reach her scalp and lay the curl in place, she had classified the action as a caress, a singeing erotic caress. It felt like sexual energy shot out of his fingers and traveled through her sensitive skin all the way down to the all-of-a-sudden rather moist and hot center of her body.

How does he keep doing that?

“Tiana, you can’t summarize seven years of any relationship in a single sentence,” Derek said, holding one of her soft hands. “Please let me help you carry your burden. Talk to me.”

Tiana stared into the man’s, err, hologram’s blue eyes and saw compassion and a very real desire to help. Saying she was very confused would have been an understatement.

With his thumb, Derek gently stroked the back of her hand ,bringing down her walls of Jericho. Kindness shattered her last attempt at resistance.

“Very well, I’ll start at the beginning,” she said, accepting his offer but refusing eye contact.

“After college I married my handsome and popular college sweetheart, Tom Houser. When we were first married, we were very happy. We had both graduated with degrees in nanotechnology from the Mars campus of the Institute of Nanoscience, and had subsequently found jobs back on Earth, in Atlanta, Georgia, the very metropolis I had grown up in. During the day, I worked hard and quickly climbed the corporate ladder at my employer, Interstellar Engineering. I made partner in record time.”

“Okay, I’m impressed. Just working there is a coup for any career, much less making partner. They’re easily the best and most successful nano-construction company in the galaxy.”

Tiana glanced up, meeting his gaze. “How do you know so much about nano-construction companies?”

“I have an unfair advantage.” He grinned slyly.

“I keep forgetting you’re a computer program with access to every database in the galactic net.”

“I take that as a personal compliment. I interrupted, please continue.”

“Tom and my relationship was fine until I received my first promotion a year after joining Interstellar. I had achieved in a year what typically took others five or so to accomplish. Shortly after my promotion, Tom was laid off. He became bitter and resentful of my success.

“He suggested having a baby and I delightedly agreed. After numerous unsuccessful attempts to have children, he accused me of sabotaging our efforts so that my career wouldn’t suffer. The genetic and fertility experts we consulted all agreed that there was no medical reason why we were unable to conceive. Not having a target for his frustration, Tom blamed me.”

“Tiana, please tell me you didn’t believe that crap. It was NOT your fault.”

“Well, I must admit Tom was very convincing. To make matters worse, two years ago, in December, my father, Dr. Anthony Weiss, died in a freak accident while traveling home from a conference in his private space yacht. My mother died when I was young so when he died I was left alone in a miserable marriage. I still miss him so very much.” Her eyes grew damp and her voice cracked with visceral emotion.

Derek reached out for her other hand. She could feel his masculine strength through that simple touch. It was as if, through his touch, he was giving her an injection of raw courage.

Was that anguish she was seeing in his face?

“That spring Tom and I started getting along better. It was then that I finally became pregnant.”

Tears rolled down Tiana’s cheeks.

“I just knew that now, with the baby and all, things would work out between us. The empty hole in our family that I thought only a child could fill would disappear. Tom became very attentive to me during the pregnancy. He even hired a maid. Not an AI, mind you, but a person.” Tiana paused as Derek brushed away more of her tears, the warmth of his hand touching her heart.

“The pregnancy was going well and our relationship appeared to be returning to solid ground. Until, that is, one day when I came home early and caught him screwing the maid.

“That very day I lost the baby.” Tiana paused for a few seconds, unable to get the words out, “It was a little girl. I had failed.”

Her tears spent, Tiana sat there in sad, poignant retrospection. She wondered what Derek would say. Life had dealt her a tough hand to play out and no one could do anything to change that.

After a few seconds of silence, Derek simply reached out and cupped her face tenderly. “Tiana, I am so, so sorry. Please know that you are not responsible for Tom’s cruelty, jealousy or infidelity. That is all on him. You are a beautiful and intelligent woman. You are loyal, committed and caring. I feel compelled to say that you are exactly the kind of woman a man would be blessed with the fortune of Midas to be with.”

“Then why, at twenty-nine years of age, don’t I feel like a blessing waiting to happen? Why don’t I feel beautiful or relationally capable?” Tiana sobbed, baring her frustration and self doubt.
Why am I so comfortable sharing my wounded heart with this AI?

His strong and masculine hand was comforting. Tiana marveled at the soothing power of his touch.
Why couldn’t Tom have been more like Derek? Why couldn’t she have married Derek instead? Whoa! I’m doing it again.
Of course he’s perfect; he’s a figment of someone’s imagination. He, it, is a program, not flesh and blood. This isn’t real. I’m not in Paris. I’m in a damn holographic suite, in a starship that is in the middle of nowhere, running a program.

Forcing herself to calm, she pulled away from his comforting hands. “You’re not real. Don’t confuse me!”

“I am with you, right here, right now,” he stated quietly, almost in a whisper. “I am as real as you want me to be and I will take care of you. On my honor, I give you my word.”

His words crumbled her weakened defenses, causing Tiana to discard all logic and consigning her remaining cares to the wind. Emotions that she would rather have forgotten surged, taking control of her mind. Why couldn’t real men be this caring? Why did she feel so safe at this very moment?

Caressing her face with one hand, his other lifted her hand to his mouth. Kissing her palm, the searing heat shot through her blood, igniting long dormant emotions, branding her heart, awakening her mind and firing up sensual passion.

He steadied her as he brought her close. As she leaned into his chest, her hands were driven to touch, to caress and to express desire. Through his shirt she could feel his hard, tight muscles. Her hands wandered down his taut torso, reaching the bottom of his shirt, sneaking underneath to retrace their steps up, past his stomach and on their way to his nipples. The reality of the warmth of his skin fought with the knowledge that he was an AI. Tiana gently traced the nibs with the tips of her nails, bringing them to life.

Lost in a haze, she looked up at his eyes. They were alive and seemed like they could look right through her and into her soul. It was as if she had always had a special bond with the soul behind the eyes. Tiana helplessly watched as his mouth, moved down aiming for hers. She was entranced and there was nothing she could do. She couldn’t take looking into his gaze anymore, it was hypnotic and intoxicating.

Closing her eyes, she waited expectantly for the feel of his kiss. Seconds ticked by until her patience was rewarded. She felt the soft caress of his lips as they gently brushed past hers, teasing. He came back for another pass, this time, still light as a feather, searing all along its path. It was like an out-of-body experience. She wasn’t herself; clearly she was sensing what someone else was doing. The tip of his tongue gently teased her upper lip. She felt herself responding, pursuing his tongue right back into the warmth of his mouth, the same mouth that had voiced his concern, his support and his comfort. How could he feel so real? Gentleness turned to passion as his tongue ravished her mouth, taking what she gave and returning it fourfold.

Her eyes remained closed as Derek smoothly undid the belt of her robe, allowing it to open, exposing the naked front of her body to his gaze.

Tiana couldn’t remember ever feeling more beautiful or cherished.

His hands entered her robe at the waist, touching and feeling their way up the soft flesh of her sides. As he reached the curves of her breasts, he gloried in them, taking his thumbs and gently massaging her now fully aroused peaks. He took his time, kneading her breasts as, eyes closed, she drowned her sadness in a sea of sensation. As his thumbs continued torturing her engorged breasts and nipples, with a swift move of his other fingers he pushed the robe over her shoulders. She felt it fall past her arms, dropping at her feet, leaving her exposed in all her glory, as bare as the day she was born. She could feel the gentle breeze of the Paris program washing across her nakedness.

“Computer, run ‘Victorian Bedroom’,” she heard him say.

Curiosity getting the best of her, she opened her eyes. She was standing in a bedroom unlike anything she had ever seen before, except, to a lesser degree, in movies, an old style of entertainment she had discovered during her college days. Curtains of deep red velvet highlighted a large room with floors that appeared to be made of wood. She ran her bare toes across it to get an idea of what it felt like. It was smooth, but textured at the same time. With trees being an endangered resource, wood was no longer used for construction and decoration purposes, but for the first time in her life, she understood what the attraction to its use had been centuries before.

Against the center of one wall stood an old mattress-style bed with lots of lacy, fluffy pillows and a bright, airy comforter depicting a selection of spring flowers that she recognized from her botanical history books as having been extinct for years. Aside from the visual differences, this wasn’t your run-of-the-mill anti-gravity bed like she had grown up with. Gently, Derek led her to the old-fashioned bed and laid her down on it. This bed didn’t fight gravity, but rather used it to full advantage. She felt herself sink into the comfort and softness of a mattress and closed her eyes to feel these new and delicious sensations.

Hey, mattresses aren’t bad. Guess that’s the end of my breakfast … or is it the beginning
?

“Close your eyes,” she heard him whisper in a deep, guttural tone that sent shivers across her exposed flesh.

She was his for the taking, yet she knew not why. She waited, wondering what would happen next. She felt the mattress give as he lay down beside her and took her into his arms. She placed her head on his chest and listened to the beating of his heart, not questioning its presence in a hologram, as he gently stroked her hair. Tiana felt all her worries, all her problems, melt away. There was comfort and protection in the strong arms that held her. She kept her eyes shut, as if fearing that opening them would take her away from the moment.

She had been ready for him and, in fact, wanted him to have his way with her more than she had ever wanted anything else. Much to her surprise, however, he just held her, caressed her and lulled her to sleep with his warmth and compassion.

It was late afternoon Earth time before Tiana woke from her nap, still cradled in Derek’s arms. She was confused and not a little upset with herself. She had been willing to give herself physically to a computer program, an artificial intelligence unit not unlike her Legal-Bot. Thankfully, Derek had, well, respected her? She was losing her mind. She had allowed herself to be seduced by a program that opted to respect her instead of pleasuring her. Maybe he, it, wasn’t programmed for sex. But be it a he or an it, Derek sure had aroused her senses to full attention.

Damn good program!

Without saying a word, Tiana got off the bed, dressed and left her suite. She didn’t have to explain herself to a computer program or waste politeness on it.

* * * *

Derek stayed in the bed, wondering how much longer he could keep up the deception before she figured out he was not the product of a programmer’s imagination, but a stowaway, technically, a criminal stowaway, and alerted the ship’s authorities. To his astonishment, his biggest fear wasn’t getting caught and spending the next twenty years in prison. It was getting caught and spending the next twenty years apart from Tiana. Putting the thought away, he closed the Victorian Bedroom program, hoping he would get another opportunity to use it with her.

He couldn’t help himself. He wanted her more than he had ever wanted anything else.