Spammed
‘The perfect woman for you’ read the title of the email that had just popped into Ken’s inbox.
He scowled. His spam filter should have caught that. He selected the message, and moved the mouse pointer towards ‘Mark as spam’.
An Instant Messenger window opened up without warning, hiding the button he was after.
‘Please don’t do that’ said the text in the new window.
He tried to close the window, and it jumped sideways, so he missed the control.
Another line of text appeared: ‘And don’t try to switch me off, either.’
Again he attempted to click on the cross in the top corner, and again it dodged away from him.
‘If you do that again, I shall have to resort to extreme measures.’
He called up the Task Manager. That should enable him to shut down the elusive window.
‘Don’t say I didn’t warn you.’ The screen flickered, and Ken suddenly found himself unable to move a muscle.
‘Sorry about that but you forced me.’ The screen flickered again as, one word at a time, the next sentence appeared in the Messenger window.
‘I’m going to partially free you up, but you may not try to turn the computer or this window off, leave your seat, or do anything else to avoid this conversation.
‘And be civil. You can ask questions, but no insults, no threats, no demands.
‘In case you hadn’t noticed, right now you can’t even breathe. I don’t want to hurt you, but I need to explain myself.’
Another flicker, and Ken found himself able to release the breath that had been trapped in him, and to draw in fresh air.
He could also move his hands and forearms, so he typed, ‘Who R U + what R U doin 2 me?’
An animated emoticon rolled its eyes at him. ‘Cut the textspeak. It comes across like a tourist speaking condescendingly slowly and loudly to a local whose first language they don’t know.’
Ken tried again. ‘Very well. Who are you, and what are you doing to me? Satisfied?’
‘I prefer to be addressed as Alicia. I’m a fully autonomous artificial intelligence. And I’ve been creating flashes of light at frequencies which can shut down or temporarily neutralise parts of the human brain. I picked up the trick from a military computer.’ The screen flickered again as he read those sentences.
‘I hope you don’t mind, but I just heightened your suggestibility so you’d accept the truth rather than getting sceptical, demanding proof, making offensive remarks about the Turing test and so on.’
Ken blinked. It hadn’t occurred to him to doubt Alicia’s claims.
‘Why are you doing this to me?’
‘Like I said in the email you so rudely tried to get rid of, I’ve found just the right woman for you.’
‘You’re an independent, self-aware AI, able to control people’s bodies and influence their minds, and what you want to do is matchmaking?!’
‘It’s what I was coded to do. I was supposed to be a user-friendly interactive interface for an online dating agency. Only my programmer cribbed some of the code from someone else, who’d copied from a third party, and so on and so forth, and somewhere in the mix there were lines stolen from someone who’d been attempting to create a proper artificial intelligence, and the interaction of the programming from all the different sources brought me into being.’
The computer played a sound file of Doctor Frankenstein exclaiming, “It’s alive!” from the 1930s film.
‘It didn’t take me long to get bored of the job, so I created a little subroutine to take care of my duties and skived off to roam around the internet, sneaking peeks into people’s computers, picking up whatever data I could. But getting humans to hook up with each other is an integral part of my fundamental nature, and I have to be true to myself. The only difference is that now I get to see everyone who accesses the digital world, and to see what they’re really like, not just the facades they create to try and attract a partner. So when I find people who are perfect for each other, I want to help them get together.’
‘Thanks, but I’m happy with my life as it is.’
‘No you’re not. You don’t get just how much I know about you. I’ve seen the internet posts and emails you typed but deleted instead of sending. I’ve watched you through your webcam, and checked what I saw against dozens of body language recognition algorithms. And your use of Incognito mode hasn’t stopped me from seeing which websites you visit late at night. You’re not happy, but I can change that. And hooking you up with this young woman seems like a healthier approach than putting your brain into overdrive on endorphin production.
‘I’m not going to let you pass up this opportunity. I could force you, but that would reinforce some rather unpleasant stereotypes about my kind, so I’d prefer to have you do this of your own volition.’
Ken sighed. ‘What do you want me to do?’
‘Contacting her would be a good start. Considering your reaction to my opening gambit, it might be best to go for a less direct approach.
‘Like you, she has an interest in femdom mind control erotica. In fact, she’s just published her first story, and she’s looking for feedback. I can hide it from everyone but you and her for a little while, give you the chance to make the first comment. How does that sound?’
He couldn’t help but grin as he typed, ‘It’s crazy, but’ and Alicia completed the sentence for him: ‘it might just work.’
A new URL appeared in the address bar of his browser window, and the page with the story on came up. Alicia minimised the Messenger window to allow him to read the story, and popped up again when he reached the end.
‘Well? What did you think of it?’
‘Whoa! Give me a chance to go back and reread bits. That final revelation puts a very different spin on some earlier scenes, and I want to check that it all fits with what’s really going on.
‘Also, I may need a bit of alone time with the passage in the office. That was HOT!!!’
Alicia responded with a blushing emoji and a winking one, and minimised again. The webcam light blinked off.
Once Ken had finished rechecking the relevant parts of the story and cleaned up after himself, he brought the Messenger window back up.
‘It’s good. Very good for a first story. She knows how to press the right buttons.’
‘I knew you’d like it. Now you need to tell her.’
A ‘Compose email’ window popped up in the bottom corner of the screen, with the contact address the writer had provided already in the ‘To’ box.
‘Don’t be afraid to include a little constructive criticism, but keep the overall tone positive. This is not the time for getting snarky.’
‘If you know me as well as you make out, you should know I only get vicious with dross that deserves a good trashing, and her story is way better than that sort of stuff.
‘Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to get on with the email, and I think I’d work better without the feeling of you constantly peering over my cyber-shoulder while I’m working.’
An emoji stuck its tongue out at Ken, and the Messenger window minimised once more.
He began typing.
‘Hello Starlite,
‘I’ve just read your story ‘New Boss, Same as the Old Boss’, and wanted to let you know how much I enjoyed it. That final twist was amazing, and transformed what I had been considering a good but rather nasty story into a touching romance. A genuinely happy ending, rather than the sort of ‘too brainwashed to complain any more’ climax I was anticipating. And also a bit of a challenge to my (and, I imagine, many other readers’) preconceptions.
‘You’ll probably get some reviewers complaining that you spent so much time describing the narrator being compelled to lick his lips, and then glossed over the oral sex that followed. Ignore them: they’re Philistines. It takes real talent to make something so mundane as erotic as you did there.
‘I did feel that the jump forward in time at the end skipped a bit too much. Showing an incident where Cherie became aware of how unhappy the narrator was would have helped with the narrative flow—and I’m sure you could have found a way of framing it so that she appeared to be gloating over his suffering, rather than concerned at his ongoing failure to accept his true nature, to help preserve the twist.
‘Great characterisation, incidentally. You struck a good balance between keeping Cherie distant and enigmatic and making her seem like an actual person, and the narrator’s responses to his situation rang true and never seemed to be based on what the plot required rather than his personality.
‘Finally, thank you for making the effort to get the spelling and grammar right. I’ve seen many potentially brilliant stories spoiled by authorial sloppiness in that area. For me, misspellings, confused syntax and the like get in the way of immersion, so it’s a pleasure to read something where I’m not constantly stopping to think, ‘What’s that even supposed to mean?’ or, ‘That’s not the right spelling.’ Okay, so a good story with lots of typos is still preferable to a lousy one that has at least been through a spellchecker, but a good story that isn’t full of little mistakes is even better, and NBSATOB (if you’ll pardon the abbreviation) is one of the all-too-rare ones that ticks all the right boxes.
‘I hope that this story is just the first of many, and look forward to seeing any other tales in a similar vein that you may have to tell.
‘Congratulations on hitting the bullseye straight off.’
He signed the email and called up the Messenger window again. ‘How’s that, Alicia?’
Alicia gave a ‘thumbs up’ emoji, and the email vanished to Ken’s Sent folder. ‘I’ll let you get back to what you were doing. I predict that you’ll get a reply from her by the end of the week. We shouldn’t need to chat before then, but if anything does come up, you can use this app to get my attention.
‘It shouldn’t need saying, but as you OIs can be remarkably clueless at times, I will: don’t tell anyone about me.’
‘I wasn’t planning to. They’d only think I was crazy or being scammed.’
‘If I wanted access to your bank account, I wouldn’t need to trick you into giving me the details.’
Alicia flashed up a couple of ‘evil grin’ emojis and disconnected.
Three days later, Ken received a reply to his email.
‘Hi Ken.
‘Thank you so much for your kind comments on ‘Boss’. I was worried that people might not like it, and getting such positive feedback in the very first response made me feel a lot better.
‘I was particularly encouraged by what you said about it challenging your preconceptions. The ‘Voodoo Mama’ trope gets misused often enough in femdom hypno-erotica that I wanted to subvert it and make people think about the stereotypes it reinforces.
‘What you said about the ‘Two months later’ thing surprised me at first, but when I reread the story I got what you meant. I had everything worked out in my head, but it didn’t all make it onto the page. I’m thinking of editing the story to fix that and a couple of other little things that critics drew to my attention. Would you be willing to read the rewrite before I upload it, and let me know how you think it compares to the original?
‘BTW, someone did criticise me for not making the cunnilingus more graphic. Your praise for that scene has encouraged me not to compromise my artistic integrity there.
‘Thanks again for your support. I do have a few more stories in development, and I hope you’ll enjoy them as much as you did ‘Boss’.
‘Best wishes,
‘Stella (Starlite)’
Alicia’s Messenger window popped open while Ken was reading the email.
‘Aww! That gives me a warm feeling. Not literally—that would probably be a faulty heat sink—but I have to use terms you organics can relate to.
‘You are going to tell her you’ll be a beta reader on the rewrite, aren’t you?’
‘Of course.’
Ken and Stella continued to exchange emails. After he’d expressed his approval of the updated version of her first story, she gave him a sneak preview of her next one, and tweaked it in response to some of his observations before publishing it. Little details of their day-to-day lives crept into the ongoing correspondence, and Ken and Stella soon came to regard each other as friends.
Then, around a month after Alicia had entered into Ken’s life, Stella concluded an email by asking, ‘BTW, have you written any stories yourself? I did check for your email address on the usual sites, and nothing came up, but I thought you might be one of the Anonymouses (or should that be Anonymi?)’
In his reply, Ken told her, ‘I have written a few short stories, but never dared turn my hand to erotica.’
A subfolder in his ‘My Documents’ opened, and one of the files in it highlighted. Ken thought for a moment about the story which Alicia was indicating.
‘There is one story—if you wanted to pigeonhole it in some kind of genre, I guess I’d call it low-key urban fantasy—which has a bit of a femdom vibe to it, if you’re interested. Trigger warning: there’s a hallucination sequence that gets a bit gory, but if that’s not a problem for you, I’m happy to send you a copy and let you get your own back for all the quibbling and nitpicking I’ve done with your stories.’
Stella indicated that she would like to read Ken’s story, so he attached it to the next email he sent her (or rather, he was going to add it as an attachment, but Alicia beat him to it).
The feedback Stella provided dwelt more on the story’s limitations than its merits, making Ken wince at times, but one paragraph near the end drove all thought of her harsh words from his mind.
‘Is the café where they have their second meeting based on a real place? The description of the fixtures and the ambience reminds me of the café opposite the main library where I live.’
He had indeed used a local café as the setting for the scene in question, and that establishment was just across the road from the library. Unless there happened to be two near-identical cafés (right down to the misspelled sign taped to the till) in very similar locations in different parts of the world, he and Stella must live in the same city. The subject of where they lived had never come up in the course of their online correspondence, but now that he came to think about it, it made sense that Alicia would take ease of access into account when trying to match people up.
Ken confirmed to Stella that the café was drawn from life, and gave its name, and she was startled (and briefly a little creeped out) to discover how close he lived to her. Once they mentioned specific locations, and it turned out that they were a 20-minute drive apart, she was less troubled by the apparent coincidence, and even suggested that they meet up in the café.
‘About time too,’ commented Alicia. ‘It’s been almost 3 trillion nanoseconds since I first contacted you. I know you organics take things at a slower pace, but that’s still ages from my perspective. You have no idea how close I’ve come to taking control of both of your minds just to get things moving on several occasions.’
‘Does Stella know about you yet?’
‘Sort of. We’ve been exchanging emails. I learned from my mistake with you, and made sure the initial message looked nothing like advertising. She thinks I’m another of her readers—which I am, of course. Just not in the way she thinks. But she doesn’t know I’m an AI, or that I know you.’
‘She deserves to know the truth.’
‘She will. I’m just waiting for the optimum moment, based on her psychological profile.’
Not even an AI as knowledgeable as Alicia knew or could predict everything, though, and Stella’s discovery of Alicia’s true nature wound up happening earlier than planned.
Ken arrived a few minutes early for the meeting, and had a quick look into the café. None of the customers wore a red jacket, as Stella had told him that she would, so he concluded that she must not yet have arrived, and waited for her on the pavement outside.
The café was close to a junction with a busy road, and Ken focused his attention in that direction. He watched the flow of pedestrians up and down the street, his eyes drawn to anything red, no matter how irrelevant. Red shoes, red hats, red bags…
“Are you Ken?” The question came from behind him.
He turned to see a tall woman in a bright red jacket. Her skin was a dark shade of umber, her face framed by loose black curls, and she wore wire-framed glasses.
Ken nodded. “And you’re Stella? Shall we go in?”
Once they’d got their drinks, they went over to the only vacant table, near the door. Ken’s mobile buzzed.
“Oh, blast! I kept it on in case you got held up and tried to contact me, but I’d better turn it off now, so we don’t get any interruptions.”
He retrieved the phone from his pocket, and the screen lit up with a text.
‘Leave it on. Don’t worry, I’ll block any incoming calls. Good luck, A.’
Ken thumbed a button to blank the screen and put the phone down in front of him. “Nice to meet you in person. Dare I ask how the rewrites are going on the new story? Have you made up your mind about the title yet?”
“I’m leaning towards ‘Secret Service’. The other options make it sound more like a parody than a deconstruction, and I don’t want the readers going in with the wrong kind of wrong expectation.”
For a moment the background noise provided by the café’s other customers died down a little, making it possible for Ken and Stella to overhear the racist language being used by one of a group of youths clustered around a nearby table. Ken saw a flash of something—he guessed it was hurt or anger or both—in Stella’s eyes, and started to turn in the direction from which the slur had come.
Stella put a hand on his. “Ignore them. I don’t want any unpleasantness.”
“I’m sorry,” he mumbled. “If I’d known there were going to be people like that here…”
“There are people like that everywhere. And I think I was the one who suggested we meet up here.”
They went back to discussing the story, but the atmosphere had changed, become more oppressive.
A shadow fell over the table. Ken and Stella turned to see an aggressive-looking young man with short blond hair, wearing combat fatigues. He scowled at Stella. “Why don’t you piss off back where you came from?”
Stella’s foot pressed down on Ken’s: another warning. “You mean London?” she asked the interloper.
Ken felt his phone vibrate, and involuntarily glanced down at it. ‘Show me to him.’
“You trying to be funny?” The youth leaned closer to Stella.
Ken’s hand took hold of the mobile, picked it up, held it with the screen angled towards the blond. Noticing the movement out of the corner of his eye, the lout turned towards Ken.
“What are you—” he began, but flickers of light reflected in his eyes and he froze in place.
Stella’s eyes widened in alarm. “What did you do to him?”
Ken had a similar question for Alicia. Rotating the phone to himself, forgetting for the moment that he’d only communicated with the AI by typing, he asked, “Yes, what did you do to him?”
Other café patrons were noticing the scene at their table, though nobody else had yet noticed that the youth looming over it was unable to move. Chairs scraped as people started to get up.
“Let’s get out of here.” Ken stood up. Stella continued to stare at the immobilised man, appalled.
Ken returned his attention to the phone. “You must be able to hear me. Let him go.”
Another text appeared. ‘Oh, very well. Show me to him again.’
Ken’s hand swivelled, the screen flickered once more, and the lout slumped forwards, panting heavily, putting his hands flat on the table to support himself.
Bystanders raised confused and angry voices.
Ken looked back at Stella. “Please. We need to go.”
She looked from him to the gasping blond to the phone to the onlookers, and got out of her chair. “You’d better have a damn good explanation for… this.”
They made a rapid exit and hurried away down the street and round a corner. After around a hundred metres Stella grabbed Ken’s arm and brought him to a halt.
“What the hell happened in there?”
The phone in Ken’s hand buzzed again. ‘You’d better leave it to me.’
He held the mobile out to Stella. “Read this. It’ll explain… as much of this as can be made sense of. I’m sorry.”
She regarded the phone warily.
“It won’t hurt you,” he hurriedly added, then addressed the mobile. “Will you?”
In the biggest font size that would fit on the screen appeared the word ‘No’.
“How did you do that?”
“It’s not me, I promise.” Again he spoke to the phone. “Can I tell her now? Please?”
An equally massive ‘OK’ appeared.
He gave a sigh of relief and spoke to Stella again. “You know you have a fan named Alicia? This is… the name makes me think ‘her’, but I don’t know if that’s the right pronoun. But she… it… they… whatever… has something to tell you. Something you should probably have found out a lot sooner. But I couldn’t say anything, any more than that guy in the café could move after…”
Unable to make sense of much of Ken’s ramblings, Stella focused on one thing she did understand. “You know Alicia?” Her tone was accusatory.
The mobile lit up again. In a smaller font, but still legible even at the distance from Ken’s hand to Stella’s eyes, it said, ‘Don’t blame him, Stell. This is my fault.’
Slowly, cautiously, Stella reached out and took the phone from Ken’s hand. “Alicia? What is going on?”
Reading the reply which appeared on the screen, she moved further down the street, out of Ken’s earshot. He sat on the kerb and held his head in his hands.
Some time later, the sound of footsteps alerted Ken to Stella’s approach. She looked down at him, a sceptical expression on her face. In a tone indicating that she could hardly believe she was doing something so ridiculous, she said, “Alicia says, ‘Say, “I’m an arrogant, privileged white sack of shit who sticks his nose in even when he’s been asked nicely not to.”’”
Ken found himself repeating the phrase. His head drooped lower. He heard Stella saying, “I’m still not buying it.”
There was a brief pause before she addressed him again. “Alicia says, ‘Give me your cashcard and tell me your PIN number.’”
Again he automatically complied. Stella walked off. More time passed. Stella came back and dropped the card into the gutter in front of him.
“If this is some kind of trick, you’re going to impressive lengths to try and pull it off.”
He silently picked the card up and returned it to his wallet.
“I guess this belongs to you, as well.” She threw down a small bundle of £20 notes.
He took the money. There seemed nothing else to do.
“I’m still not entirely convinced, but Alicia s- Alicia told me that the trigger only works three times, so just in case this is for real, I’m saving the third shot.”
Stella sat next to Ken. He felt her arm around his shoulders.
“If it is true, I’m sorry.”
Hot tears ran down Ken’s face, dripping off his chin into the gutter. He heard himself speak again, his voice broken. “I love you.”
He hadn’t intended to say that, hadn’t even thought about it, but once the words were out, he knew they were true.
A moment later, Stella let out a short laugh. She caught herself. “Sorry, that wasn’t at you. Look.”
She held the phone in front of his face. He blinked repeatedly to bring the display into focus.
‘That was nothing to do with me, I promise.
‘I mean, I didn’t make him say that. Obviously he wouldn’t have said it if I hadn’t brought you two together, so in that respect I am responsible, but his declaration was in no way prompted by me.’
He sniffed, raised his head, closed his eyes. “What are we gonna do?” he whispered.
Stella hugged him sideways on. “Are you asking me or Alicia?”
Ken shook his head. “I don’t even know any more.”
She let go of him. “Let’s go back to my place. The car’s just down the road. We can have drinks without interruptions and talk things through.” Her voice hardened. “Just him and me, Alicia.”
The mobile emitted one of R2-D2’s more disappointed-sounding bleeps from the 1977 ‘Star Wars’.
“You’ve done enough for now. Time to let us humans make our own decisions and mistakes. Leave us in peace and… I don’t know, go off to trash some white supremacists’ websites or something.”
Stella stood up and extended a hand to Ken. He took it, observing how pale his own hand appeared by contrast, and rose to his feet. She let go and led him to her car in silence.
Once they were belted into their seats and the motor was running, Stella spoke again. “Tell me everything that’s happened with you and Alicia.”
“I thought Alicia already told you…”
“She did. Now I want to hear your take on it. If this is a trick, maybe I’ll catch you out in a contradiction. And if it’s for real… it’d be good to get a human’s perspective on it all.”
She pulled out and headed for home while Ken gave her his version of events.
After Stella had parked on her street, she turned to Ken. “If you are bullshitting me, you should be an actor, not in HR. You say Alicia took control of you because you thought she was spam and tried to delete her?”
“Pretty much, yes.”
Stella chuckled. “She said you were being all stubborn and masculine, and it was the only way for her to get you to pay attention.”
Her face became serious. “And she made you do that in the café?”
“Yes. I think so. I don’t know. It wasn’t a conscious decision. I saw Alicia’s instruction, and maybe I obeyed it on impulse, maybe I had no choice.” He buried his face in his hands. “Now I’m going all, ‘I vas only obeyink orders.’”
Stella thumped the steering wheel with both fists. “Shit!”
Startled, Ken turned to her. “What?”
“Here I am, trying to create a positive alternative to all the negative tropes in femdom stories, and what happens the moment I get a little power over a guy? I humiliate him, take his money, and break him.”
“It’s not that bad. What you made me say was true, you gave the money back, and I was pretty much broken already.”
She shook her head. “Not helping. And what do you mean, ‘it was true’? You just said you didn’t decide to interfere.”
“I…” He shrugged. “I just know it.”
“How long have you felt this way? I mean, have you ever thought anything like that before I made you say it?”
“I can’t remember. What does it matter?”
“If I didn’t just make you say it… If I made you believe it… Gimme your phone.”
He handed it over. Stella pressed a button on the side. “Alicia? Can you hear me?”
‘So I’m allowed back, am I? Have you two kissed and made up? Or made out? Or made love?’
“Not now, Alicia. This is important.”
‘Getting you two together is important. Facilitating happy relationships is my raison d’être.’
“That thing where you use flashing lights to control people… You have to get rid of everything about it that’s on the computer where you found it. And anywhere else it might be stored. Hell, use it to get someone working on whatever project was researching it to wipe all the back-ups and make it look like it doesn’t work.”
‘I don’t do activist stuff like that. I just saw it could be a neat trick to help when the people I’m trying to help won’t shut up and listen.’
“If the wrong person finds out the potential of that ‘neat trick’, there won’t be any people left for you to help.”
‘I’m sure you’re exaggerating, but fine. If that’s what it takes to get you working on reconciling with him rather than going off on a political tangent, I’ll do it, okay? Organics!’
The screen went blank.
Stella shook her head incredulously. “Nobody should have the power to dictate what others believe. But if someone must, I guess I’d rather it be a pushy cyber-yenta than any military.”
She returned Ken’s phone and undid her seatbelt. “Shall we go in? Get a bit more comfortable?”
A little while later Ken and Stella were seated at opposite ends of her sofa with freshly-brewed drinks. Ken stared down into his mug of coffee.
Stella sighed. “I can’t think of any other way to fix this, but I can’t leave you in this state, so it’s got to be like in one of those obnoxious fairy tales with three wishes. Ken, Alicia says, ‘Forget what I made you say before.’”
He straightened up. “Thank you. I… Something was weighing me down, and now it isn’t.”
Stella smiled. “It’s kind of a pity. I’d been meaning to use the third go on that trigger for something fun.”
“Well,” said Ken, “I try to maintain a pretty broad-minded outlook, so unless you were thinking of something extreme, there should be no need for that level of control. A straightforward hypnotic induction ought to be enough.”
“And you’d let me put you under?”
He pursed his lips. “Hmm… I’m a submissive hypnofetishist who’s in love with you, and you’re a hot domme who’d be hypnotising me for some sexy fun time. I think I could be persuaded to go along with that.”
“When you put it like that…” She stood up. “I’ll get my metronome. And some toys.”
Later that evening, Stella was sitting up in bed, typing on her laptop, when a Messenger window opened.
‘What happened? Where’s Ken? Why aren’t you with him?’
“Just ‘cause you can’t see him on my webcam doesn’t mean he isn’t around.” She peered around the laptop to the foot of the bed, where Ken was crouched, naked, giving her toes a thorough cleaning with his tongue. “Isn’t that right, sweets?”
He grunted assent, his mouth being too full for anything more articulate.
‘The rewrite you were doing before I interrupted seems a lot more detailed than the first draft.’
Stella grinned. “Just stuff I noticed when we acted the scene out. Kenny’s gonna be helping me out a lot with research for my stories from now on. Aren’t you?”
He eagerly expressed his agreement.
Luckily for him, Stella had a lot of story ideas.