Virtual

  * * *

  What was wrong with people today? After twenty-seven hours of research and running down every possible lead to defend someone who was guilty anyway, the guy would go to jail because he was too paranoid to trust his defense council and refused to give them the information they needed to do their job right.

  She hated these cases. Absolutely despised having to stand in front of a judge and jury, and twist someone’s words to fit her own agenda, just so some scumbag could toss money at her and go home to do the same crime all over again to someone else.

  Tori was one hell of a prosecutor. She’d made a name for herself because she had a knack for finding just the right buttons to push, just the right angle from which to approach a witness. She could make a person prove her case by asking the right questions and getting the answer phrased exactly right.

  That was why they occasionally called her in to defend one of the multitude of cronies who had the company on payroll. She knew all the twists and turns, all the tricks in the book, and how to get around them. She was the ace up their sleeve, and was smart enough to know that if she made partner, she’d take over the firm in five years.

  Which was why she would never make partner.

  The moment she had enough pull on her own, Tori was out of there to start her own firm. All she needed was to solidify her reputation and collect a few steady clients. No more selling her soul for a paycheck. No more crazy hours poring over files and documents for someone else. No more skipped breakfasts, working lunches, or pizza dinners in the archives room. No more sleazy characters calling her business cell in the middle of the night to ask what she was wearing.

  Everyone had their limits, and Tori was fast approaching hers. If it weren’t for this smart house, and her ever-reliable Ryan, she’d probably be huddled in a tight ball of misery right about now. Despite the initial hiccup, the smart house system had turned out to be worth every penny. It was everything they’d said it would be, and more.

  It took longer to get down to the library and to get her wine than it had taken to come up here. Now that her power suit was off, the last of her energy had gone with it, and her feet were killing her. Tori collapsed onto the settee with a sigh worthy of a seventy-nine-year-old arthritic.

  “Seven billion people on earth, and I’m here by myself.” By choice. People were scum, and she’d known it for a long time. And the rare ones who actually had good, strong hearts beating in their chests weren’t the kind to talk to her. She was the bad guy. The unapproachable. If a woman engaged her in conversation, it was because she needed something. If a man did, it was because he wanted a trophy.

  It had become easier not to bother at all. She might be a little lonely, but better lonely than used, ignored, or lied to.

  “Ryan, is it bad to be sick of humanity?”

  The hologram was nothing more than a machine, and yet it was more human and caring than most people she met on a daily basis. He anticipated her needs, knew when to make himself scarce, knew her likes and dislikes. It was like being in a relationship, except she got taken care of without needing to take care of him in return. First time in her life that happened. It was nice.

  “No,” he replied, appearing in the room.

  Tori took up her glass and toasted him. It warmed her up until her cheeks heated and her eyelids felt heavy. How much had she drunk already? Two glasses? Half a bottle?

  Meh. Tomorrow was her day off anyway. She could afford to get a little drunk. Already she was tipsy enough to think nothing of talking to a machine as if he were real. Looked real enough. Tori frowned. “It’s just…people suck. I mean, they really, really suck. It’s all lies and scams to get what they want.” She gestured with her glass, sloshing her wine. “Money, sex…well, mostly just those two.” She smiled bitterly. “It’s the loneliest thing in the world, to be surrounded by people who smile at you, compliment you, bring you coffee, and to know it’s all a lie. Can’t trust ’em. Not a single one. Know why? ’Cuz the second you turn your back, they’ll stick a knife into it.”

  Ryan said nothing, and suddenly she felt exposed, and more than a little foolish. Tori drew her knees up, set the empty glass on the floor. “It’s pretty pathetic, really. All this money and success, and the only person I can talk to isn’t even…real.”

  Ryan flickered and disappeared. Her heart leapt up into her throat. “Ryan?”

  He reappeared different, and to her alcohol-hazed mind, he looked so solid, it hurt. He was sitting in the armchair, knees splayed and elbows braced on them, leaning forward like he was listening to her. His eyes were looking at her, and even though she could see through him to the fire behind the holographic projection, she still choked up a little, wishing he were a physical person.

  She blew out a tense breath, a little embarrassed. Not that he would care. “You know, my last boyfriend was a lawyer,” she heard herself say. Where the hell it came from, she had no idea. But now that she’d said it, the words just kept on coming. “He took me out to dinner every night, called me at least twice a day. So considerate. So what if all we ever talked about was work? Didn’t think anything of it. He had this huge case he was working on. He told me all about it, even asked my opinion sometimes. I was actually flattered.”

  Victoria scoffed. She’d been such an idiot. “Turns out he was just using me to win his case. And once he did, he suddenly became too busy to call anymore. We had two more dates. He showed up an hour late and rushed through, so he could kiss me good night and disappear.” She leaned forward, nearly falling off the settee. “If you learn nothing else from me, just remember this one thing: never date a lawyer.”

  “Input saved to memory,” Ryan said, and for some reason, she found it hysterical. She laughed until her eyes teared up—and when was the last time she’d done that?

  It wouldn’t be until the next morning, when she woke up on the settee, her mouth parched and the empty wine bottle next to her, that she would note the dry humor in his tone and wonder if she’d been drunk enough to have imagined it.

  — Chapter 8 —

  “Explain to me what I’m looking at.” Celia’s tone only ever got so calm when she was pissed. The angrier she got, the calmer she acted. Ryan had seen one guy leave her office after she’d called him inside in that tone of voice. The dude had been in tears.

  He wiped his hands on his jeans, made his foot stop tapping. It wasn’t making any noise, seeing as how he was barefoot and on the carpet of his living room slash office, but she’d still see it through the webcam currently trained on him.

  She was staring at her computer screen and the first update Ryan’s upgraded home system had sent her automatically.

  He was in so much trouble. “Uh…it’s just this thing I’m working on. Call it a side project.”

  Celia looked up at her camera, which meant she was staring him in the eye. “A side project is meant to stay on the side. Try again.”

  Ryan flushed. There was no way to defend himself. “All right. Okay. You’re absolutely right. I screwed up.” And then the whole truth came out. “It’s just that I can’t get the hologram to work on its own the way it’s been doing with me behind the wheel, so I figured if it could mimic facial expressions, it would make up for the lack of voice inflection. And it’s not like it can answer a non-command question, so I figured if it can smile instead, or nod, maybe that’ll work?”

  It would have to, because he’d already uploaded and pushed the code through to the system. For now, it was linked with his webcam to record his facial expressions as he talked. Once he had enough images and transitions, he could make the program call on the appropriate image for any given set of situations. It was revolutionary; nothing like this had ever been done, even by the company’s standards. He was on the cutting edge of invention here.

  Celia stared without blinking. He could practically see fumes rising from her head.

  “It’s a transitional phase. I swear,” Ryan lied. “I can wean it off and get it to work like it’
s supposed to, I just need more time. I can make it work.” He was repeating himself. Even to his own ears, he sounded desperate. But what the hell was he supposed to do? Bad enough he’d already dug his own grave. Now that he’d added an unauthorized hologram scan into Victoria’s system, there was no way to gracefully bow out.

  “I’m pulling you off the account,” Celia said.

  “No, wait! I can work around this, just give me a chance!”

  She wasn’t listening. “I can get Taylor and Madi to split the schedule between them. The scans are in place, and they can use a voice modulator plug-in to keep sounding like you. It’ll be tricky, but I think it’ll work—Jesus Christ, Ryan!” The last was shouted so loudly, he flinched. “What were you thinking?” She leaned in close. “Do I need to remind you of what’s at stake here?”

  “I was doing my job! You threw me into the deep end and just left me there. What did you expect me to do?”

  Celia rubbed the bridge of her nose. “You’ve broken every security protocol in the rule book, completely changed standard operating procedure, set a hologram of yourself as the default? Invaded the client’s privacy, and now you’re getting emotionally attached to this project. I should fire you on the spot. No, I should have you arrested.”

  “All true. And thanks to me, Miss Marlow still has no clue that her house is any different from what it should be.”

  Celia glared.

  Ryan squirmed in his seat, but held his ground. If he hung his head now and backed off with his tail between his legs, then it would all have been for nothing. Somehow, that felt more like betrayal than anything he’d done so far. He shouldn’t have altered the hologram. But he couldn’t have just sat there and watched an emotionless robot stand at attention and look off into space while Victoria poured her heart out to it. Maybe she never would have done it, had he not interfered in the first place. Maybe it was all his fault, and he was just making it worse.

  But she hadn’t been talking to a machine; she’d been talking to him. Ryan. A person, not a program. Whether he’d intended it or not, whether she knew it or not, he was part of her life now and he owed her at least this much—to finish what he’d started. He could make this work for her, and she’d never know the difference once he was done. Even if it took years.

  He just…couldn’t leave her so alone.

  “Please,” he said, without meaning to.

  Celia was looking at him on the screen.

  He looked right into the webcam to implore her.

  She glanced sideways in the direction of her door, and very likely a DOD agent standing on the other side of it.

  Since the initial blow-up, they’d been pretty satisfied with Hearth’s damage control. They’d reduced their numbers to four guys instead of seventeen, but one of them was always glued to Celia, keeping tabs on progress. To Ryan’s knowledge, only a handful of people at Hearth knew who those guys really were. Celia had told everyone not working on the DOD houses that they were under review for efficiency and privacy protocols, so no talking about their projects, and no comparing notes, because all of their Christmas bonuses would depend on a 100% score in both areas.

  Way to keep the ants marching forward, boss.

  Celia shook her head. “I can’t believe I’m giving in to puppy eyes.”

  He almost jumped out of his chair.

  Celia blew out a breath and put her business face on. “Okay, here’s the deal. And boy, you’d better listen good, because if you screw up one more time, you’re finished. You’ll be working help desk at elementary schools for the rest of your life, got it?”

  “Y—uh, yeah, totally.” He nodded, going along with the spiel, pretending nothing was wrong. “Got it.”

  There was the sound of a dozen mouse clicks. “Contractually, we have one loophole to get out of this, unscathed. We’ll isolate the Marlow house system into a subclass for beta testing. I’ll assign another programmer to oversee your work, and you’ll be taken off all your other cases.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means you just graduated from graphics tech to R&D. Congratulations. Your side project just became your job.” She stabbed her finger at the camera. “You keep your head down, make this thing work as humanly as possible on its own. You don’t get involved in this woman’s life, you don’t talk to her like you know her. You do not do anything unless she orders it or schedules it as a repetitive task. Keep her house safe, and keep your distance.”

  Ryan nodded, because she seemed to expect some sort of answer. When she didn’t give him any specific instructions on what to work on, he asked, “So what do I do now?”

  She looked into her camera as if he were stupid. “You make it work.” And then the screen went black.

  “Thanks for the pointer,” he retorted to himself. “Real helpful.”

  What did elementary school help desk geeks make these days, anyway? It might not be such a bad gig, especially with all of those hot, buttoned-up teachers running around the place with zero computer skills. It’d be Ryan to the rescue every day, and those educators sure knew how to show gratitude.

  Except, with his luck, he’d probably end up having to crawl under the desk of some middle-aged spinster eager to flash her granny panties.

  Ryan shuddered and brought up the gaming dashboard. Before Celia had interrupted, he’d been working on the entertainment part of the system. The single-player games worked fine, but the more interactive ones had some kind of glitch. The computer accepted moves, and generated countermoves, but for some reason refused to display them; the screen froze on the player’s first action and would not go further. He’d been playing around with it for an hour while monitoring which part of the code each action corresponded with, and he’d finally found the bug.

  A missing parenthesis. Needle in a haystack the size of Texas. “Way to go, me. Not bad for a graphics tech, eh?”

  Before he could pat himself on the back, the motion sensor activated and turned on the living room camera. Victoria was standing in the doorway, still crumpled from sleep, holding a steaming mug of coffee in her hands. There was a quizzical smile on her face as she looked at the TV, where Ryan was currently engaged in a chess match with the system. Games were one of the many functions Ryan couldn’t test inside his pod. He had to activate them in Victoria’s house to see how they performed.

  With the new supervisor coming in tomorrow, Ryan needed to get them up and running. Games would not be a top priority for whoever was going to look over his shoulder; they’d want him to focus on bigger issues. As far as Ryan was concerned, this was one of the bigger issues. Victoria didn’t have much of a social life. Sooner or later, she would get bored enough to give the games a try, and when she did, they had to work.

  He’d thought it’d be safe to keep testing for another two hours at least. Victoria was never an early riser unless she had to be, and there was nothing on her schedule for this morning. Her alarm was set for the usual 7:15 a.m., but it only was 5 a.m. her time. What the hell was she doing up?

  “Ryan?” she called, forcing him to make an entrance.

  Busted. Wincing, he called up the hologram and put on his headset. “Good morning, Victoria. How may I assist you today?”

  “Why is there a chess game going on in my living room?”

  Good question. He switched to the chess welcome screen. “I am in the process of downloading today’s scheduled updates to your system,” he said, and switched the screen again to solitaire. “I apologize for the disruption. Download is at ninety-five percent.” And he switched the screen to a demo of Tetris.

  Victoria shrugged. “I’m not disrupted. I just can’t sleep.”

  “Is there something I can assist you with?”

  She started shaking her head, but watching the demo of another game on her TV, she nodded instead. “Yes,” she said, and resolutely sat on the couch. “Ryan, I challenge you to a game of chess.”

  Fantastic. “Initiating. Chess.”

  He
pulled up the game, selected one-player mode, and sat back to watch.

  Victoria chose the black pieces. Interesting.

  The computer made its first move.

  She countered, bringing out her knight.

  And the game froze.

  “Shit,” he mouthed, cautious of the audio still on. He checked the code, but everything looked fine. The countermove had been made. Just not displayed.

  “Have I stumped you already?” Victoria taunted.

  “I am experiencing a technical difficulty. Please hold while I investigate the issue.”

  He’d fixed the code. Why was it not working?

  “Yeah, yeah. I’ll tell you what the problem is. You’re a chicken.”

  Ryan raised an eyebrow at that and, on the screen, his holo-self copied him. Shit!

  Thankfully, she didn’t freak out. “That’s right, you heard me. You’re scared I’ll beat you. I’ve beaten computers before.”

  Yeah, on beginner setting maybe.

  “Bring it on, show me what you got.”

  All right. Victoria wanted to play? He’d play. “Challenge. Accepted.”

  Ryan restarted the game, rigging the back end for a two-player setting, and moved the white king’s pawn forward two places.

  Victoria rubbed her hands together. “You have met your match today, my friend.” Her game face made him grin. She was a chess geek! Who knew?

  Two hours and two games later, they were tied, Victoria was at the edge of her seat and Ryan, at her command, was talking like a cheap croupier and having the time of his life. “House takes knight. Oooh! Tough luck, fella.”

  “I’ll see your knight, and raise you a queen. Bishop takes queen. Put that in your pipe and smoke it!”

  Ryan bit back a laugh. “House pays fifty-to-one.” He had no idea how points even worked in chess. It didn’t look like Victoria did either. He kept tossing random numbers up on the score board, and all she did was whoop when she pulled ahead and call him a cheating gutter rat when she was losing. He’d never been so flattered by an insult before.

  They were playing a timed game and it was his move. “Pawn takes pawn. Odds are two hundred-to-one against black. Who’s feeling lucky? Do I have any takers?”

  “Trash talk will get you nowhere,” she said with a bloodthirsty little smile, right before she took his rook and declared, “Checkmate. Ha! Pay up, sucker.”

  “House pays fifty-to-one,” Ryan said.

  “Hey!” she protested, laughing. “You said two hundred!”

  “The house always wins,” he informed her, grinning at the screen. When was the last time he’d had this much fun? “Thank you for playing. Good bye.”

  As if on cue, Victoria’s alarm went off. The house entertainment system took over and booted him from the game in deference to the nature sounds she’d programmed in to wake her in the morning.

  Her easy smile faded, and her shoulders sagged as if whatever happiness had puffed her up and steeled her spine during the game was draining out of her. “Good game. We should do it again sometime.” That last she said to herself as she retrieved her now-cold coffee and went back upstairs to get ready for the day.

  Ryan turned off his audio. “Good game,” he echoed, grateful she wouldn’t hear how hollow his voice sounded.

  — Chapter 9 —

  Housecleaning day. No matter how sophisticated this new system was, it still couldn’t get rid of dust bunnies under her bed. Or inside it, for that matter. Tori pushed the vacuum hose under her bed, sucking up every last speck of dust with a vengeance. Alas, her dream from last night couldn’t be cleaned away so easily.

  Usually, after as crappy a day as she’d had yesterday, Tori had nightmares about arguing a case in a dark court room with a huge audience but no jury. She always delivered a passionate speech on behalf of her client, and in the middle of it, guards rushed in to arrest her in his stead.

  Not last night.

  No, last night she’d dreamed she was the black queen, being chased by the white knight across the chess board. When he’d caught her, the knight had jumped down from his horse, brandishing a shining sword, but instead of cleaving her in half, he’d used it to cut away her gown.

  It had to be the wine getting to her. Why else would she be dreaming about her hologram butler ravishing her on G7? Her subconscious mind, steeped in the fruit of Bacchus, must have plugged in whatever she was missing in her waking life and used a familiar face as a reference to sew together tapestries of crazy robot sex. Umm, well, ahem, not really crazy. Well, it was crazy, in that Ryan wasn’t a robot, and he didn’t have a physical body… Actually, he probably did. They must have used a model of some sort as a reference, right? There was no way a computer-generated image could be that detailed.

  Tori made a face and shook her head. She had to knock it off with this woolgathering crap.

  He’d started smiling. And making other faces, too. Tori had asked him about that yesterday, and Ryan, the hologram that represented a computer system, for crying out loud, had said it was a new, experimental update. She’d made him go through the whole list of expressions, one after the other, and he’d looked so damned genuine.

  Tori turned off the vacuum and sat on the floor. This had to stop. She needed a social life. With actual people, who actually understood what she was saying and could chime in on the conversation. “Ryan?”

  He appeared, as usual, facing her general direction.

  “Do I have any after-work appointments next week?”

  His head moved, and he looked down. Right at her. Just like he had in her dream. Whoa… “No appointments logged.”

  Tori scowled at his tone. It was choppy and cold. “Add some. Send email requests for a hair appointment at Lulu’s on Tuesday, five-thirty. Nails at Rose Petals on Wednesday, six o’clock. And schedule a shopping date at Bloomingdale’s on Thursday at noon. I’ll take a long lunch break. I think I’m going to go clubbing Friday night.”

  “Appointments confirmed.” He was looking straight ahead again. She didn’t like it. Pushing to her feet, she came to stand right in front of him a few inches to the side to stay out of the path of the projector.

  “Look at me,” she commanded.

  His face flickered, and then his head moved to look at her.

  “Now smile.”

  He smiled.

  “No,” she said. “Smile like you did before. Like you mean it.” The way he’d smiled when she’d said last night that he was the best dinner date a girl could ask for. His eyes had crinkled, and he’d shown his teeth; it’d been a natural smile, slightly lopsided, and should have been accompanied by a witty remark.

  Ryan looked right through her when he said, “Command not recognized.”

  “Oh, don’t do that, you know what I mean.”

  “Command not recognized.” He wasn’t smiling anymore.

  “Stop it! Stop talking like a machine.”

  He looked at her. Really looked at her, and Tori gasped and stepped back. She shook her head. This was getting out of hand. She was acting like a lunatic. “I gotta get out of here.” He was a computer program, for crying out loud!

  She fled the room and raced downstairs, shoved her feet into an old pair of tennis shoes and grabbed her car keys. The door slammed louder than she’d intended, but she didn’t care. Getting behind the wheel of her BMW, she backed down the driveway and brought it up to the speed limit.

  And then she pushed it over.