Diagnostic Test Ch. 02 - AI Era

"Well, I mean... I don't have one." Crick made a sarcastic tsk tsk noise, and I rolled my eyes. "But I am doing reconnaissance work that'll actually help us, Mr. Sexbot Parade." No tsk tsk after that one.

"I'm at the door to the bot inventory, but it won't accept my keycard." The company kept the bots maddeningly secure, even from the workers. The bots were expensive, and there'd been issues with theft and employee misconduct in the past. The door was set nearly seamlessly into the wall, the only imperfection a small keycard reader off to the side. Only a handful of employees had clearance to access the inventory, and I was not one of them.

"Maybe I could hack into the system," Crick said, a little hopeful. "Do you see any kind of identification on the reader, maybe a serial number or a brand name or something?" I checked the casing around the reader. Completely devoid of any inscriptions, logos, anything. The only irregularity on its smooth surface was the small light that had flashed red for my keycard a few minutes earlier.

"Nothing," I murmured, frustrated. "Maybe I can pop the cover off, let me see." I ran my nail around the seam where the reader met the wall, trying to find some give.

"Just be careful, Kel. If anyone catches you screwing with the card reader, you're gonna be in deep shit." I straightened up a little, trying to make my stance as inconspicuous as possible. I couldn't see any security cameras, but I had a hard time believing they weren't there.              

"Yeah, you're right," I said, lowering my voice to barely a whisper. "It's been pretty quiet around here, though. I think most people are busy with the big machine update. They need pretty much every hand on deck to get the new system up right now." I was also relentlessly busy helping set everything up, but every break, every lunch, every spare minute I could get away, I was working on our rescue plan. After a moment of crackling silence from my phonepod, I realized that Crick hadn't responded.

"Crick? You still there?"

"Did you say they're doing a machine update? A big one?"

"Uh, yeah. Some new software, I guess, all the machines are getting hooked up to a central system. Why-" His disbelieving laugh cut me off.

"They wouldn't," he murmured, seemingly more to himself than to me. A rapid clacking sound had started up, probably typing. "Kel, I'll call you back, I gotta look into some stuff."

"Crick? Wait, what are you talking about? Crick-" I whispered, confused, but he had already hung up on me. With a groan of exasperation, I ripped the small phonepod out of my ear and stuffed it in my pocket. Guess I'd find out what that was about later.

I stood back and stared at the imposing door, trying to will it to be less solid and impenetrable. Maybe I could get some sort of tool that could pry-

"Kel?" A sweet voice said behind me, and I nearly jumped out of my skin in surprise. I whirled around to find a kind-looking woman in an attendant's uniform standing at the entrance to the hallway. She was holding a tablet in her umber-colored hands, and her warm, brown eyes were staring at me curiously. It took me a second to recognize her, but then it clicked. She worked as an attendant on the retail side of the company, finding bots that matched a customer's preferences and bringing them to the client. She also facilitated repairs and helped organize new bots from the warehouse into the inventory, so I had seen her in our break room or out for drinks with the warehouse workers a few times. I've chatted with her on occasion, but I didn't really know her that well.

"Zoya!" I shouted, a little too loud, but she smiled kindly. I cleared my throat and tried to make my voice sound less guilty. "Hey, how've you been? What're you doing around here?" Her eyebrows shot up slightly, and I resisted the urge to bang my idiotic head against the wall again.

"I've been doing pretty good, thanks, just busy like everybody else. And considering I work around here, I think it'd be more fitting to ask what you're doing here," she teased, a hint of amusement in her eyes. I turned involuntarily to look at the door behind us.

"Oh! I was just..." I turned back, and my eyes slipped to the keycard hanging around her neck, and I suddenly realized that she was my best shot at getting past that door. I mentally kicked myself for not thinking of her sooner, but at this point I just had to focus on not blowing my chance, if I hadn't already.

"To be honest, I was, uh, just curious about the bots and how they're stored. I know nobody's allowed in inventory, but I wanted to see if maybe I could peek in." Zoya nodded, but her eyebrows stayed high on her forehead.

"Yeah, I get it. The way they keep everything so locked down just makes it all the more interesting, no? I think they go a bit overboard, if you ask me." I nodded, and she cocked her head to one side.

"It just seems like you would be the last person to want to know more about the bots, though. Didn't you say that they freak you out?" I shrugged, grasping around in a panic for a plausible excuse.

"Oh, you know... I just- well... I've been trying to, uh, expand my horizons a little bit, you know? I feel like I work so closely to the, um, the bots, that I should try to... understand them a little better, I guess." I tried not to cringe at how lame that sounded, but Zoya smiled brightly.

"That's so great!" she enthused, nodding her head. "I think you're really gonna enjoy the job a lot more if you get comfortable with the bots. And you'll see that they're really not so bad once you spend some time with them." I made an involuntary noise that I quickly turned into a cough, but Zoya had started typing something on her tablet, so she didn't seem to notice. She looked around and then leaned toward me, lowering her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. I leaned in too, hoping she couldn't hear the rapid thumping of my heartbeat.

"Ok, I know I'm not supposed to do this, but I don't think a little peek would hurt. Do you want a quick tour of the inventory?" My heart started racing even faster. I couldn't believe my luck. This was my shot. I nodded, a little too enthusiastic, but she smiled and typed a few more things on her tablet. She walked over to the door and I followed, trying to discreetly wipe my sweaty palms on the legs of my jumpsuit. A few more taps on her tablet, then she held the keycard that was hanging around her neck to the card reader. The light flashed green, and the massive door began to slide smoothly into the wall.

Once the door was fully opened, Zoya stepped through and motioned for me to follow.

"Welcome to the heart of this company," she said with a grand sweep of her hand. I followed her in and was momentarily rendered speechless. The sheer size of the room was enough to blow me away, several stories high and miles long. On each side, suspended walkways jutted from the walls all the way up to the soaring ceilings, each one stretching off into the distance farther than I could see. A narrow glass catwalk spanned the distance between each side every hundred meters or so. Thousands of frosted glass doors lined the walkways, the unfocused image of a person visible behind each one. After a moment of panic, I realized that those were the bots, of course, but their presence still made me a little uneasy. It felt like a million eyes were staring at me from just out of sight. Although, maybe that feeling was coming from the hundreds of security cameras watching over the room, installed on every available surface and oscillating slowly.

"Pretty cool, huh? I know, it's a lot to take in, isn't it?" Zoya said, eyeing me with a sympathetic smile. I realized it had been several minutes since I'd last said anything.

"Wow," I breathed, the only coherent word my brain could muster. Zoya walked over to the elevator for the walkways on the right side. She stopped at a small podium with an inset screen that I hadn't noticed when we came in and held her tablet against the connection point. A small beep came from the screen, and she tapped a few things on it.

"This is how we get bots for clients. We input the preferences they indicated on their entry forms into one of these, and the fancy algorithm spits out the location of a bot that'll fit their needs." Another beep, and a jumble of numbers showed up on her tablet, which she held up for me to see. "Easy peasy!"

"Those numbers tell you where the bot is?" I said, incredulous. The long string of digits looked completely unintelligible to me.

"Yeah, looks crazy, doesn't it?" Zoya said with a laugh. She turned the tablet back around and glanced over the numbers. "They aren't organized by the database IDs, it's some other super complex sorting system. Partly because there's so many different bots, partly for security reasons." My hopes of finding out where they were keeping Renee were dwindling fast.

"So, customers don't choose the bots themselves? They can't just... shop around?" I asked, trying to process all the information that was being thrown at me. It never occured to me that everything was done with an algorithm, but I guess nothing else would make sense. Zoya chuckled.

"Oh, definitely not. We've got thousands of bots in the system at any given time, and they tend to rotate a lot as new models come in and old ones wear out, so it's pretty hard to 'shop around,' as you put it. We used to have a catalog that clients could pick from, but it was a nightmare to keep it updated." Zoya's gaze drifted up the rows upon rows of walkways. "Plus, most of the time the algorithm can figure out what a person really wants a lot better than they can. It's much better this way."

"Does it ever choose wrong?" I asked, and Zoya turned back to me. "The algorithm, I mean?" She shrugged.             

"Well, clients that pay for a premium package are allowed a few rejections, but most of the time people are happy with what they get. I do keep an eye out for interesting bots, just in case we get someone really picky, though. Sometimes a little human input helps, but the algorithm's got it handled most of the time."

A flash of movement up on the third walkway caught our attention. We both looked up to see another attendant inputting some numbers into a keypad next to one of the glass doors. The door clicked open, and he reached inside. A moment later, he moved to the side, and a tall bot with long, brightly-colored hair and a flashy party dress stepped out. The attendant turned and walked back down the walkway, the bot following close behind. Zoya turned back to me.

"Alright Kel, I'm really sorry to kick you out like this, but I gotta go get a bot for someone, and I know I'm definitely not allowed to bring you up the elevators," she said, pointing at the tablet in her hands. I nodded, feeling dazed.

"Thanks for the tour, Zoya," I managed weakly, still gazing at the rows and rows of doors. After a moment, she laid her hand on my shoulder and gently guided me to the door.

"No problem, I hope it demystified this side of the company a little bit for you! It's really a fascinating system we've got here," she said. I made an incoherent noise in response. Once I was on the other side of the door, she stepped back into the inventory room.

"It was really nice to see you again, Kel. Let me know if you ever want to grab lunch or something!" she called back, leaning over to press a button on the wall. The door began to slide shut. I raised my hand in a feeble wave.

"Yeah, for sure," I said, and the door closed on her smiling face. I let my hand fall limply at my side

How in the hell was I supposed to find Renee in there? And even if by some miracle I did find her, the place was littered with cameras. The whole building would be on lockdown before I even got to the elevator.

Whatever Crick was looking into, it'd better be good.

+++

I was so ready for this day to be over. When I came back to work after my tour with Zoya, I was greeted by one of the sleek new joint-greasing machines spewing oil all over the warehouse floor and the other new machinery. By the time I finally got it hooked up correctly and cleaned everything up, it was an hour past the end of my shift.

Most people had gone home by this point, so the locker room was blissfully empty. I found my locker and started changing out of my jumpsuit. Immediately, I was interrupted by my phonepod buzzing in my pocket. I should've known this moment of peace wouldn't last long. I fished the pod out of my pants and checked the tiny readout: Call from: Carrot Top. Crick. I quickly slipped the pod into my ear and accepted the call.

"Hey Kel-bells, sorry to cut you off like that earlier, you know how I get," he rambled quickly. "How did your fancy pantsy reconnaissance go?" It took me a second to remember what he was talking about. Dealing with the never-ending grease-fountain had completely wiped the events of earlier from my mind.

"Oh, uh, it's ok, I know. It didn't go too well, if I'm being honest. I have some bad news."

"What a funny coincidence, I have excellent news," he said, his tone just as bright as before. "Why don't you go first." I lowered my voice and explained how I had gotten into the inventory and everything I'd seen: The thousands of unmarked doors, the incomprehensible sorting system, the airtight security. Saying it all out loud made me realize just how futile the whole idea was. Any last shred of hope that had been wavering in my head was now completely decimated. Crick was silent for a moment, and I resumed pulling off my jumpsuit.

"Well that certainly puts a bit of a damper on my news," he said, his tone only slightly less bright. "Guess I should've gone first. Anyway, my research went very well. It might take a little bit of time to set everything up, but once I do, I think I've got a way to get her out of the building." I perked up slightly.

"Really?" I asked, disbelieving.

"Well, everything would have to go perfectly, but it's a much better shot than any of the other ideas we've had. The only problem is that we would need to find her first." I slumped again, crumpling my jumpsuit into a ball with a sigh. I yanked open the locker, ready to chuck it in, when my attention snagged on a small piece of paper that fluttered to the ground. I bent down to pick it up. Someone had presumably slipped it through the slats in the door, because I knew I hadn't put it in there. The paper was bright blue and printed with holographic snowflakes. The Ple(Ai)sure inc. logo sat above a cartoonish drawing of a bot holding out a present, the word "COUPON" written underneath. I flipped it over, finding a block of shimmering white text.

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!!

Thanks for working so hard this year. Ple(Ai)sure inc. would like to offer you a very special holiday bonus! Come enjoy any one (1) basic package at our retail facility for free! Let one of our world-famous Pleasure-Bots™ keep you warm during this chilly season, our treat! You deserve it!

Offer expires Sol 1, 93 F.E. Offer only valid for Ple(Ai)sure employees, Limit 1 per person. Offer not valid with other promotions or package upgrades.

"I just don't see how we can get her out of the inventory," Crick sighed, but I barely heard him. I read the words again, then again. The pieces were starting to fit together in my head.

"Kel? You there? Did I lose you?"

"Maybe we don't need to get her out," I murmured, still staring at the coupon in my hand.

"What?" he asked, confused. "What are you talking about?" I stuffed my jumpsuit into the locker and pulled out my clothes, then slammed it shut.

"I'll be at The Body Shop in half an hour," I said, more determined than I'd felt in ages. "I've got an idea."

+++

The sleek waiting room was bright and inviting, but it looked more like a prison to my anxious eyes. Tranquil music gently filtered into the room through invisible speakers, which did nothing to calm my frazzled nerves. I glanced around at the empty seats surrounding me. I used a vacation day and made my appointment at 14:30 in the middle of the week, hoping that the place would be deserted. I was pleased that my guess had been correct, but now that I was here, the only person in this eerily still waiting room, it felt like there was a big, red, glowing arrow pointing down at me.

The clock on the wall read 14:26. An attendant should be here any minute. I took a deep breath and closed my eyes, trying to go over the plan Crick and I had been working on for the past few days in my head.

"Kel?" a voice said. I opened my eyes, and Zoya was standing at the door to the waiting room, one hand on her hip and the other holding a tablet. Deja vu.

"Oh, hey Zoya," I said, trying to keep my expression neutral. She smiled.

"So you're my 14:30 appointment under 'Guest,' right?" I nodded. My mind was going a mile a minute, trying to decide if this was a good development or a very bad one.

"I see you took my words of wisdom to heart! I'm glad you're taking the time to get more comfortable with the bots, it's very commendable." She eyed me mischievously. "But I'm not so sure if I can say the same about you playing hooky."

"Oh! I, uh- well, no, I took a vacation day, and-" I stuttered quickly, but she stopped me with a laugh.

"Ah, I'm just messing with you. Don't worry about it, I totally get it. Everyone could use a break with all the craziness that's happening right now. I promise I won't tell." She winked. I laughed nervously. I didn't think she'd keep that promise once she figured out what was going on.

"So, if you'll just come with me, we can start working out the payment..." she said, turning towards the door. I quickly rummaged through my pocket and pulled out the coupon, now slightly crumpled.

"Actually, I've got the employee holiday coupon," I said, holding it out to her. She turned back around and came over to take it from me.

"Oh, perfect," she chirped, glancing over the coupon. She tapped a few things on the tablet and handed it to me. "Then I can already get you started on your entry forms while I go back and scan this. Here's where you can input your preferences," she explained, scrolling through the form for me and showing me the different options. "You don't have too many options with the basic package, but you've still got some input. Be as specific or as vague as you'd like, whatever you're most comfortable with!"

"Thanks, Zoya," I said with a thumbs up. She smiled and walked back to the door.

"I'll be back soon if you've got any questions," she called over her shoulder, and then she disappeared into the hallway. I let out the breath I'd been holding and turned my attention to the tablet.

This was the easy part. Crick had told me exactly what to put down for the important questions. I marked the 'Cozy Cottage' for the room type, since that section was the closest to the warehouse, and was luckily one of the few options included in the basic package. Under the kink list, I chose BDSM, spanking, domination, basically anything that would tell the algorithm to pull from pool 6. There were a few questions that we hadn't gone over— like the list of sex toys so long and detailed that my cheeks started to heat up as I read through it; I marked "surprise me" and moved on— so I just chose the options that seemed to be the most relevant.

I finally got to the bot preferences section. I hesitated for a moment. If I described Renee as specifically as I could, it wouldn't take the company long to figure out that something was up, given my history with her. However, if I was too vague, I ran the risk of the algorithm not pulling Renee. When I had voiced these concerns to Crick last night, he'd shrugged and started fiddling with a bundle of wires sitting on his desk.

"I mean, that's the thing," he'd said, avoiding my eyes. "We only have this chance because you won't go into the system immediately. If you were a paying customer, your preferences would immediately be filed under your ID, but since you're using the coupon, it'll take a little bit before they're connected to you. At that point, they're definitely gonna know something's up. Hopefully they haven't traced the database views back to you yet, but they've probably got an alert on your name anyway if they're paranoid. Even if they don't, I'm sure any time Renee is pulled, the session is marked for review. You've only got one shot at this, Kel."