“The Florida Incident”
In its final determination, the report expressed regret, but claimed the event was unavoidable. The woman had accidentally place herself in the path of the beam. All protocols had been followed. The circumstances were unfortunate, but the company, Magic Adventure Parks, offered no claims of responsibility. The report indicated that the family was to be compensated, but that no other explanation would be provided. The woman named Lisa Peters should be considered by all who had known her to be unquestionably deceased. She met her tragic end while on vacation as a result of misadventure. According to the report, the woman was found to have accidentally electrocuted herself.
The potential for the use of primate cerebella in advanced automaton technology was not a complete secret, but, apart from the military, there had yet to be any confirmation that a successful prototype existed beyond the planning stage. Monkey brains were easy enough to come by, and integrating brain tissue within a rudimentary cyborg frame had been demonstrated as feasible as early as the late 1990’s with the work of Vickers and Jessup and the so-called “Lulu experiment.” But after the violent protests at the A.I.T. labs near Vienna and the subsequent global public outcry, it was believed that no company was willing to devote more than cursory attention to such projects.
That is why Dr. Morris’s announcement came as such a surprise. The closed-door meeting was itself of a highly unusual nature. The fact that Magic Adventure Parks proved to be the not-so-secret sponsor of Dr. Morris’s research clearly raised some eyebrows. Still, none who listened attentively, with growing wonder, to the scientist’s words (not to mention those select few who were privileged enough to witness a private demonstration of the technology) left Guangzhou without the impression that Dr. Morris’s collaboration with the Chinese wing of M.A.P.’s research and development program must be on the verge of achieving an amazing advancement in robotic dexterity.
However, once whispers of the accident in Florida began to pass between members of the small community of researchers willing to experiment with cyborg technology, most agreed that Dr. Morris had been reckless.
Dr. Timothy Morris watched the young woman pace back and forth across the well-lit stage. The hall was nearly empty. In addition to himself, four other men, all in business suits, were seated together in the front row.
The woman was nude. She was of medium height, a little flat chested, and with a bit too much padded on her bum. She had blonde hair and was not unattractive, although no one would label her a beauty. She did have a nice smile. Seeing how the woman’s bare bottom shook as she walked, Dr. Morris made a mental note to work on firming up her rear end.
There was only something odd about her eyes that might trouble an observer if he got close enough to look into them. It might be fear or confusion or some vague hint of extreme discomfiture that rendered her eyes uncanny. It was as if the eyes didn’t see you. They gaze was were far away. If you paid attention to them long enough, you came away with the impression that they were haunted by a pained sense of awareness and loss. Dr. Morris was worried about the eyes.
“As you can see,” the doctor explained, “the model is fully automated and can be programmed to perform a complete range of life-like movements.”
From his laptop, Dr. Morris gave the automated women a series of commands.
Onstage, the young woman marched and danced and jogged. She clapped and waved and snapped her fingers. She stood on her head, did a somersault, and crawled on her hands and knees. She blew the audience a kiss, gave her butt a hard slap with her hand, and touched her breasts with her fingers.
“As you can see, the erotic potential for a model like this is obvious.”
The young woman on stage was made to turn her back to the hall. She stuck out her backside and bent over. She spread her buttocks open with her hands. Turning again to face the hall, the woman used her fingers to open her shaved pussy. Her gestures indicated she was pleasuring herself. She inserted a finger, removed it, and brought it up to her mouth.
The men in business suits seemed to be entertained. Dr. Morris was relieved. He gave the woman commands to enact a few other provocative gestures and positions.
The more one watched the woman, the more one had the opportunity to notice that her movements, while seemingly natural at first glance, tended to be mechanical and stylized. She repeatedly held her arm in a certain way. She would turn her head and raised her chin in a similar pattern. Her antics were often accompanied by unexpected pauses, and rer steps at times were not fluid. It was clear that the smile on her face, while in no way a rigid mask, was being controlled from outside.
The woman was a life-size puppet, a human doll.
With a few quick taps on his laptop, Dr. Morris made the women stop moving. She stood frozen onstage, eerily life-like for an object so still.
“The model has unfortunately no capability for speech, although a recorded voice could easily be provided. While the program has been able to recreate many actions, the model itself has lost certain bodily functions. She can be programed to mimic the act of eating, but apart from liquids and baby food she has difficulty feeding herself without chocking. She can be given a command to relieve herself but has a tendency be incontinent. Because of the constraints of computing power and memory, I would recommend the use of a feeding tube and diapers when not in active performance mode.”
The woman onstage was no longer moving. She was breathing, but it was hardly noticeable.
“She can also be modified completely to suit your needs. Plastic surgery, for instance, can easily give her a more pronounced chest. Whether for purposes of display, factory work or sweatshop labor, or exclusively for entertainment, the potential uses for an automated woman are limited only by the client’s imagination.”
Dr. Morris finished his presentation.
“The model will, of course, be available tonight for anyone who wishes a more personal demonstration of her capabilities.”
The woman onstage continued to stare, immobilized, her eyes uncannily touched with infinite distress.
The next morning, as Dr. Morris made his way to Mr. Nakamura’s hotel room to retrieve the exhibition model, he pondered the turns his career had taken. He found his present situation distasteful, playing the part of a showman and a panderer. Still, he understood that he should be thankful. After the Florida incident it seemed more than likely that his work would have to be suspended. The Chinese had pulled the plug. He was lucky. He had managed to find a way to continue his research, although with the stipulation that he assist in the effort to rehabilitate the victim of the Florida accident.
Dr. Morris knew there still were many problems with the new model. He longed to go back to his monkey brain experiments. He had about reached the limit of what he could do with the poor young woman. He expected she would soon be sold.
He still didn’t understood how the beam had affected her the way it did. It had been directed at an automaton in the Magic Adventure Park’s Wild West saloon. The girl in the bikini had no business being there onstage among the dancing robot showgirls.
Monkey brain cerebellum could only be activated in concert with the most advanced cyborg technology. The girl in the bikini obviously had no implant in her skull, so how did the beam interact with her mind? The best theory he had was that the beam had interacted with a program on the iPhone she was using, some application code that its controlling computer recognized, perhaps involving the music she was listening to through her headphones.
The effects on the girl were immediate and irreversible. It took months of reprograming to stop her from executing the same repeated can-can moves. At first the doctor felt sorry for her. One moment she had been a happy and oblivious coed on spring break, and the next she was reduced to being a living human doll, helpless and manipulable. After it had become clear that the woman’s original personality and consciousness remained unrecoverable, erased apparently by the effects of the beam, Dr. Morris found himself less able to think of her in terms any different than he did his other automatons and cyborg experiments. He stopped putting clothes on her. He stored her at times in the closet. When an assistant had made her perform that unpleasant act in a threesome with the old autonomatronic Ben Franklin from the Hall of History and with Jamboree Bear from the Campfire Sing Along, he hardly bothered to reprimand him.
Although he wasn’t entirely comfortable with the degree to which his demonstrations increasingly emphasized the model’s sexual services, he realized clients appreciated using her that way. It had come to be the main draw of his presentations. In the end, Dr. Morris resigned himself to the fact that the model’s sexual favors meant more funding for his research. He consoled himself with the thought that the poor girl had no clue what her body was doing. There was a chance, he thought to himself, that her life as a living sex doll might ultimately aid in the rehabilitation of stroke victims, ALS sufferers, and even the paralyzed. Pausing before the hotel room door, Dr. Morris hoped that this time she wouldn’t require too much cleaning up.
Lisa Peters wished she could close her eyes. Such an action, however, was beyond her control. Mentally, she braced herself as another customer entered her from behind, while the man in front of her finished ejaculating down her throat. She thought that she had counted 12 men in the room, but others may have arrived after the first two had manipulated her into position and started using her body.
She could feel her swelling breasts bounce and sway beneath her. She had known that the doctor had intended to augment them, but she was shocked after the surgery to find they been so enlarged. With enhancements to her lips and a few modifications to her eyes and nose, they had succeeded in transforming her into a perfect coed bimbo. She wanted to cry, but that was impossible. She had wanted to cry for a long time.
When she first awoke after the accident she assumed that she had been paralyzed. She realized, however, that although she couldn’t speak or move, she could still feel sensations throughout her entire body. She suffered from a headache that lasted for days. She wondered where she was and why her family never came to see her.
One day the doctor entered the room with a laptop. When he typed in a command, Lisa found that she was suddenly moving. At first, she was overjoyed. But she quickly found that she had no control over her movements. Instead, her body acted on its own. All her body could do was kick her legs high in the air and flip up the back of her hospital gown. She felt ridiculous, but she couldn’t stop.
In time, Lisa came to understand that she was never going to be able to control her own body again. The doctor continued to experiment with some program on his laptop. He was able to manipulate her body. He made her move, made her accomplish various simple tasks, forced her body to do things. Some actions were normal, everyday activities. Others were embarrassing.
Once the doctor moved her to a secure laboratory environment, Lisa found that all her human dignity had been taken away. The doctor’s tests were humiliating. When she wasn’t put in diapers, she was generally nude. Sometimes she was dressed up and made to perform for groups of people. The doctor would talk about her as if she couldn’t hear, as if she were a piece of machinery. She was left immobilized, often embarrassingly exposed.
The first time the doctor allowed a visitor to use her sexually Lisa was terrified. The experience was degrading. Part of the humiliation involved the fact that Lisa’s body could still respond with pleasure, despite her mind’s horror and shame.
Lisa had time, with her mind trapped in her doll-like body, to replay the circumstances of her transformation. It was probably her fault, stumbling onto the stage at the Wild West saloon. She had been drinking, hanging out in the sun at the Magic Adventure Water Park. She thought she was than taken a short cut back to her hotel. She was listening to music. She knew the building wasn’t right, but she was disoriented, lost, she opened a door and walked through. Something struck her mind. She saw bright lights. Then all was dark.
And now, look at her. Naked, dressed in furry cat ears with a fake feline tail sticking out of her butt, while a group of sex tourists used her body as an attraction in an Asian sex club. She had been sold to the resort about a month ago. She was becoming familiar with the routine of her new existence. She had been programmed to perform various acts in cute or exotic costumes for a revolving mix of clientele. Some acts were erotic. Others were humiliating. When not being used she remained on display, frozen in an explicit pose. Of late she had been posed as a sexy kitten, her bum in the air, a collar on her neck.
She no longer thought about the number of times her nakedness was bared to the eyes of strangers. She had stopped counting the number of men who had used her body for their own pleasure. Degradation had become routine. Her body was animated by forces beyond her control. Silent commands would cause her to move. Sometimes she would dance, and slowly strip out of her costume, and at every action her mind rebelled, but her hands continued to unfasten buttons or slip her tiny spanties down past her hips.
Once, she wanted to cry (but, of course, she could not) when the resort positioned her into an advertisement at a large international airport. She became a living billboard, dressed in sheer, skimpy lingerie, blowing kisses and waving to men, grinding her hips, giving her bottom a playful spank.
The people that passed by weren’t like the men who used her body at the resort. She could see people of all ages, families with children. She could hear the comments they made. How it was scandalous. How she looked like a prostitute. Of course, though, the men reminded their wives, it was okay, because she wasn’t real. She was just an animated display, like a mannequin in a store window. Those nipples must be made out of plastic. Those buttocks, however realistic, filled with silicone. She was just a big doll.
Lisa wanted to cry, but that was impossible. All she could do was wink and rub her hand against her crotch and spread her legs invitingly.
And then, after a short pause, her body began the same series of motions all over again.