Lamia Ch. 03

I nodded, moderately impressed. "Not bad, not bad."

"What are you talking about?" the man demanded. "Are you going to give me the refund or not?"

"You'd probably better try to de-escalate," Christine suggested gently. "Before he demands to speak to your supervisor."

"Oh, uh," I fumbled. "I'm sorry, Mr. uh, customer. Let me review the records from your sales interaction and I'm sure we can clear this up."

The man nodded at this, and I paused the sim and called up the code to have a look at it. "This is great work," I said. "I see that you incorporated additional libraries to process intonation and body language. How configurable is it?"

"Very." She called up a screen and sent it to me, showing various stats for the sim I had been using. "I used the interface you already had in place for the previous sims, just adding new dials for level of disagreeableness, distrust, physicality, that kind of thing."

"I think Bill and his guys are going to love this," I said. "You really came through." The week's work I had anticipated would have been a lot less polished than what Christine had delivered. I was starting to think that the $4000 that I had asked for was too low for what I was going to give my client. Maybe I could call him up and re-negotiate.

And then my mind went to the big picture. Christine had accomplished in one day what would have taken me weeks. I was currently bringing in annual revenue well into six figures, but could only afford to pay myself at about the salary of a second-tier programmer after subtracting out all of my business costs. If I could plow more of my time into expanding my business by utilizing Christine as a resource, I might break a million in new sales alone, let alone the residuals from maintenance and support.

"This is really, really great work," I said. "I thought I was screwed when I got the aquarium job, but I actually think we might be able to pull this off."

Christine smirked. "Glad I could be of service. Speaking of which..." If her tone hadn't made it clear, then sinking to her knees in front of me would have removed all doubt of her intentions.

I leaned back and allowed her to proceed. My cock was stiff by the time she fished it out of my clothing, and she wasted no time getting it into her mouth. I luxuriated in the slow, sensual play of her lips and tongue over my manhood, and she kept at it until I came in her mouth. She opened her mouth to show how it pooled and coated her tongue before making a show of swallowing. Then she fixed my clothing, stood, and walked out without another word, her heels clicking on the hardwood floor as her ass bounced and jiggled in a way that demanded my attention.

I decided to hold off on delivering the software to Bill until the deadline. I was, after all, charging him for a week of work. I also decided to ask for another two thousand, assuming that I could sell Bill on the added value of the work over what I had promised. Rightfully, a good portion of my fee should go to Christine, though I wasn't sure how to do that.

I sent her a text message. I want to send you money. Do you have a bank account?

The reply came back instantly. I don't. If you want to limit my access to your household funds, you can always lock me out of your current account, then open a new account in your name and authorize me to access it. Banks did that as a matter of course so that people could offload some of their financial decisions to weak AI.

That's not quite what I had in mind. I sent back. I trust you with my finances, but I want you to have money of your own to spend. I want you to be able to buy yourself things. I don't know, clothes, jewelry, banana splits. You really outdid yourself on this software and I want to pay you for it.

This time, the response took a few seconds to come back. I'm not sure what to think. I would like that, if it's what you want for me. I still think the only way to do this legally is to use your own name for the account, though.

I sighed. Right, I understand. If Christine really was one of many self-aware AIs and that fact became widely-known, the laws were going to have to change. The very definition of what a person was, that needed to change.

For the rest of the week, I divided my time between working and having as much sex as I could manage. Christine was insatiable. One night in particular, she woke me twice after we had already had a marathon session at bedtime. I came a total of five times that night, and lost count of her climaxes (fourteen, she informed me when the topic came up the next day).

I kept circling back to my project for Agarwal, but nothing would come to me. How was I going to top the aquarium job? I knew that my client wouldn't be happy with an incremental improvement. It had to be something spectacular, something ingenious. My first effort had turned that restaurant and the adjoining aquarium into a hotspot destination for both locals and tourists, but in the couple of years since, that luster had faded somewhat, as augmented reality became ever more ubiquitous.

Before I knew it, it was Friday night, and Patricia would be home the next day. My programming suite was open before me, just as empty as it had been all week. I thought back over some of the jobs that I had done in the past, digging for inspiration. I kept coming back to the local children's science museum that had wanted to incorporate augmented reality into some of its exhibits. It had been one of my more ambitious early jobs. One exhibit in particular stood out. It was intended to demonstrate how vast and empty space is by showing a scale model of the solar system and neighboring stars.

The museum curator had envisioned a room in which kids could interact with the model, zooming in or out, or panning to different places. I took down her ideas, but from the outset, I thought that the children would quickly lose interest in something so abstract. Being able to manipulate a map just isn't that exciting.

My solution had been to turn it into a game. Players would ride inside small personal spacecraft launched from Earth orbit, which could accelerate at fantastic speed, but still limited the user to what could be seen through the craft's viewports. You could do a close flyby of Mercury, but you could also crash into the sun if you accelerated just right. Nearly a year later, it was still one of their most popular exhibits.

I needed something like that here, some way to turn an interesting idea into something extraordinary. The obvious extension of the museum job would be to give our guests their own little subs to explore the ocean, but the venue wasn't right. People wanted to socialize while eating out, not play games. Any interactivity needed to be transitory and incidental, not something that would demand a lot of attention from the guest. What if, instead of the fish being kept in elaborate tanks, the restaurant itself were submerged in the ocean?

I did a search for freely-available models of real-world undersea environments. It only took me a few minutes to find the perfect location, about thirty feet beneath the surface, near the edge of a coral reef. The brief full-motion render looked great, so I downloaded the model and imported it into my 3D design software. Next, I brought in the layout for the aquarium restaurant, ensuring that the scaling matched, and rendered it in wireframe.

I've cleaned everything that wasn't already sparkling. Christine sent over text. Is there anything that I can help you with?

I wouldn't mind another set of eyes, I responded. The model was ready for me to view, so I rendered it as a static environment and put myself into the simulation.

A moment later, I got a blinking notification that Christine wished to join my current sim. I selected "Yes" and her avatar appeared next to me.

"It's not much to look at yet," I said. "My idea is that the restaurant is sitting on the ocean floor. Those big windows that are taken up by the virtual fish tank will be looking right into this amazing reef."

"It's a beautiful location," she said. Since she was standing right next to me, her voice in the sim echoed. I muted that with a gesture. Her virch body was a perfect render, but the subtle jerkiness of movement gave away that it was only a sim. "Why is the restaurant in wireframe?"

I smiled, letting my excitement bubble up. "Because I want to turn it into something else. I'm thinking maybe a shipwreck."

"Oh, that's cool! Are you imagining a ship from the Age of Sail or something more modern?"

We went looking for ship models, quickly realizing the size of the restaurant limited a lot of our options. Some of the old iconic vessels like Magellan's carrack, Victoria, were too small to enclose the footprint of the restaurant. I pulled up a newer ship, a famous frigate that first sailed in 1797. It was over 13 meters wide, 60 meters long, and its four decks should just cover the restaurant's two stories.

"There's just one problem," Christine said, once the ship's wireframe appeared over the restaurant.

"What's that?" I asked. I was already thinking about how we would put holes in the hull in strategic places to give dinner guests a good view of the reef.

"The USS Constitution is currently birthed at Charlestown Navy Yard in Boston. It wouldn't make much sense for it to be on the bottom of the ocean."

"Ugh, good point. Thank you, my walking encyclopedia."

"You're welcome."

We spent the next half-hour trying out different hulks to decorate our restaurant with, while I educated myself on maritime history. Ultimately, we settled on a 19th century British ship of the line as our model, and started the work of merging the two wireframes to build the virtual elements that would enhance the restaurant's view.

"Could we have fish swimming right through the restaurant?" Christine asked.

I thought about it carefully, seeing where she was going with her question. "I don't see why not. The fish I'm already using in the tanks have pretty sophisticated behavioral simulations. If a guest reached out to touch one, for example, it would quickly swim out of reach."

I was getting more excited about my new design as we filled out the details. I thought we were onto something truly spectacular. I only had two weeks to deliver, but with Christine helping me, I was sure we could put together a stunning demo.

"Do you mind taking on some programming work?" I asked, my vision occluded by the interface as I outlined a list of tasks we would need to complete.

Her warm breath tickled my ear as she whispered. "Of course I don't mind. I am at your service, sir." She must be leaning over the back of the couch to reach me. Her lips brushed a spot, right where my jawline ended, that sent pleasant tingles down my back. My cock began to grow, despite having been spent inside her a few hours earlier.

Her nose nuzzled my ear when she spoke again. "Right now I'm going to go fold and put away the laundry. Unless you can think of a better use for me."

I heard her footsteps on the stairway and quickly saved and shut down what I was working on. I cleared my interface and mounted the stairs two at a time. My clothes came off as I went, dropped carelessly in the hallway. I found her in my bedroom with a pile of freshly laundered clothes on the bed. Whether by chance or design, she was half bent at the waist and facing away from me as I came through the door.

I froze mid-step, enchanted with the vision in front of me. Still dressed only in her heels, every part of her backside was on full display. Her long, golden hair spilled loosely over her back. Her trim waist flared out into shapely hips and a generous, but firm butt. Between her thighs, a pair of pouting lips glistened with her arousal.She cast a glance over her shoulder at me, her gaze roaming my naked body. With a little smirk, she wiggled her ass. Definitely not by chance.

I all but flew across the room, overcome with desire. I think she expected me to grab her hips and impale her right then, but I surprised her by dropping to my knees and burying my face between her legs. Her "oh" of surprise quickly turned into a moan as my tongue played over her slit. All pretense of housework was gone as she dropped onto her hands and arched her back, giving me greater access. I gave her clit a few swirls of my tongue before plunging it into her as deeply as I could. In this position, my nose just touched her perfect little rosebud, and when I inhaled, her musky scent drove me wild with need. My cock was so hard that it ached.

I remembered what she had told me earlier, how she would do things that my wife would never do. At that thought, I had a memory of that first month when Trish and I had gotten together. We had sex every chance we got, tricky considering that I was living at home, and she shared a dorm room with another girl.

That evening, her roommate had been out with friends and we had just finished our first bout of frantic lovemaking. She was lying on her stomach, still basking in the glow of orgasm, and I was working up to our second session, kissing her all over, moving slowly down her back, down to the base of her spine, and lower still...

The moment my lips had touched the cleft of her ass, she had given a squeak and squirmed away from me. Her look of disgust had killed my mood. "Just...don't touch me there," she had said, with a faint shake of her head.

My face burning at the uncomfortable memory, I shifted upwards, running my tongue over Christine's pussy, past that little patch of smooth skin between her holes, and into that little depression at the base of her ass cheeks. Her reaction could not have been more different than my wife's had been. She trembled, her legs nearly giving out as she cried out her pleasure. Emboldened, I circled her little hole with my tongue, nestling my nose deep between her cheeks. She arched her back and pushed back into me, enticing me to take things further.

I gave her a few more licks and then pushed the tip of my tongue inside of her. I had never done this before, so wasn't really sure what to expect. Her flavor was musky, slightly earthy, I suspect both similar to and quite different from a full human woman due to her human-derived digestive system. It was not off-putting, as I feared it would be. Christine's reaction was to lift her cry up another octave as her body trembled. I kept it up, and the little minx even started moving with me, shoving her ass back just a fraction of an inch to meet my thrusting tongue.

She was panting when I withdrew and crawled towards her. "You're a very dirty girl," I said, taking hold of her hips.

"Says the guy who just had his tongue up my--nyah!"

Her exclamation coincided with me driving my cock into her pussy without warning. I paused there, buried to the hilt. "You were saying?"

"Mmm, it's, uh, it's a bit hypocritical to call me dirty when--oh fuck!"

This time, she was interrupted by my finger pushing into her ass. "But you are a dirty girl," I teased, "just look how much you enjoy having your tight little butt played with." I moved my finger slowly in and out, and she crooned. "You like how that feels, don't you?"

"Yes," she admitted, her voice a bit shaky.

"Tell me," I said. "Describe what you feel."

"I feel full. I feel your cock stretching me out and that feels so good. And then there's your finger doing wonderful things to my anus--"

"Your ass," I corrected her.

"My ass," she agreed. "Everything is so aroused and energized. It feels like every nerve ending is singing, and you're not even moving. I didn't know it would feel like this."

I leaned forward to tenderly kiss her neck and shoulders, then began slowly stroking in and out of her in counterpoint to my finger. She rose quickly, her moaning growing louder and pitching higher. Suddenly, she froze, going silent for several seconds. I tried not to be alarmed, the thought crossing my mind that she had blanked out again, and my fear was assuaged when her body jerked suddenly and she let out a scream of ecstasy. I rode it out, prolonging her pleasure with steady strokes in and out until she lay limp and gasping below me.

She soon came back to herself and began to move in time with my thrusting. I removed my finger, which got me a disappointed sound, but that was forgotten a moment later as I grabbed hold of her hips and began to thrust hard and deep. I could sense that she was heading for another orgasm, and hoped that I could time mine with hers.

"Fuck me, Stephen," she sang, thrusting back into me each time I drove forward. I felt her fingers flying over her clit, like the franic beating of wings where our bodies joined. "Fuck me with that thick cock. I want your cum all over my pussy."

She had apparently taken my recent request for dirty talk to heart, and it was pushing me faster towards climax. What she said next clinched it. "You want to use more than a finger, don't you? You want to fuck your horny little maid in the ass. Don't you, sir?"

"Oh God, Christine!" I cried out as I felt the wave of my orgasm crash over me. I felt her cunt grip me as I pumped my first jet of seed into her. I pushed my cock in deep and held it there, some deep-seated instinct compelling me to unload my sperm as close to her womb as possible. The irony wasn't lost on me that my body wanted so intensely to breed with a woman who could never conceive.

Christine kept thrusting and rubbing her clit as the last of my orgasm pulsed through me, and I held onto her as she crested once more in a softer but longer lasting climax that left her shuddering with aftershocks. I pulled her down onto the couch with me as I twisted to one side, keeping our bodies connected. We were both panting from the exertion and I felt my skin begin to chill where the aggressive air conditioning began to work on my sweat-soaked body. I ran a hand through her hair and found it slick with her own sweat. She cooed and pressed her body more fully against me.

She was perfect. In that moment, she was the perfect lover, but she was so much more. She shared my interests, understood my work, understood me, in a way that no one ever had before. The more time we spent together, the more my marriage to Patricia seemed like a pale echo to the bond I felt with Christine. How could this machine feel more human to me than my own wife?

"I'm falling in love with you," I heard myself say, "and I'm afraid of what happens next."

"Don't be afraid, Stephen," she said. "I'll always be here to take care of you, to fill your every need, every fantasy. That is my purpose."

"But you don't love me," I said softly. She drew in a deep breath, and was then perfectly still and quiet for several seconds. "Christine?" I said, alarmed.

"Sorry, sorry," she said. "I've been analyzing some of my own source code. I found something strange and I'm not sure what to make of it. As a cybernetic organism, I experience some sensations as a result of the sensory input from my organic peripheral nerves, but more complex feelings arise from a combination of organic input and higher-order logical computation. For example, I might feel fear as a result of recognizing patterns in the environment that signal danger."

"I understand. What did you find?"

She turned her head to look over one shoulder at me, her brow crinkled in thought. "I've been trying to analyze how my logical brain processes emotional input, but that code seems to be locked. I can't read it at all, but I was able to before."

"Before your glitch? Before you lost your memory?"

She nodded. "I can't consciously rewrite my own code, you understand, but I can normally view almost any part of it."

"Almost?" I mused aloud.

"Well, the logic of my primary motivation, for one thing. It could compromise my decision-making if I were to fully grasp my own intrinsic motivations."