'Smoke and Mirrors' Pt. 2

Here's the second installment of 'Smoke and Mirrors', where things start to get complicated for Domino...

The shadow Koralev had sent after her was tenacious; his dense bulk and clumsy gait looming large and obvious each time Domino checked her surroundings in one reflective surface or another.

It was time to ditch him; she had less than two hours to work with. Pull anything flashy and Koralev would know she was someone to be wary of. She needed fast and indirect.

Open flame table lamps at a nearby bistro offered an option to use her lighter as a small time delayed incendiary. No, too unpredictable. She considered pulling his comm code from the data-mine she'd run on Koralev, maybe use vocal synthesis to put in a call, tell the guy to get back to his post. Again she dismissed the option. The ruse would unfold too easily.

Then she saw a privacy capsule and the answer presented itself. A quick glance in a darkened window showed her tail to be twenty metres behind her, browsing a ramen auto vendor, all the while being non too discreet in his interest in her.

She left him to his menu and pressed her palm to the ID plate set in a recess in the front of the capsule. Ghostly blue light flashed between her fingers as the scanner read her biometrics. The scrambler program she was running would point the security routines to a log-in held in the name of a French-Vietnamese girl with a healthy corporate expense account in Zurich, a girl who was no more corporeal than the virtual idol whose songs were being piped through the holospeakers lining the street.

Seconds later and she was inside the cubicle; a two metre high tube with just enough space for a high speed data terminal and a reactive memory foam chair. In the relative hush of the capsule the terminal blinked into ready mode and Domino initiated a wireless link.

Brief amber data streams flashed in her peripheral vision as the system cycled through boot-up and then her view of the capsule interior was overlaid with the standard access screens.

“Give me the closest Dolldroid rental outlet,”

Dolldroid... for all your dreams and desires! Your very own out-of-body experience in the body you've always wanted! Have you ever wished you could look like your favourite idol but can't decide on a surgeon you can rely on? Dolldroid has the answer! (Actual unit may differ from illustration)

The mandatory sales ad washed into background noise as she sighed with relief when her query procured an address just around the corner. 'Puri-Puri Doll Loving' seemed to be a small but semi-pricey outfit running out of a unit above a maid café and Gachapon centre. Her funds confirmed and validated, Domino's fingertip glided through the centre's site, neural-haptic feedback confirming each movement and selection as full holographic previews of the Dolldroids available scanned through her heads-up feed.

She quickly located a match for her physique in order to minimise the 'learning phase'. The transition of consciousness into the vat-grown body of a Dolldroid was always disconcerting, even for experienced users and the practise of manipulating the 'so real, it's unreal!' body could take some time to perfect.

Her fingers tracing the uplink code, she braced herself for the imminent top-of-a-rollercoaster vertigo the transfer would bring. The website's graphics fell away and her every perception was thrust down a split-second funnel of disorientation terminating in a pinprick of white-hot light.

The wake-up process felt a lot like climbing out of an anaesthesia induced fog; lack of sensory input slowly giving way to nausea and uncertain movement. Vaseline filtered eyes showed her the door of her sterilisation coffin opening into a small room lit with muted hues of pink.

A few experimental steps confirmed she had made a good choice of body and as her new senses cleared, she quickly tested the limits of her new muscles.

“Show vanity display,”

The Dolldroid's voice was carefully modulated to sound kawaii and alluring, the syllables feeling alien as she uttered them.

A full body holomirror flickered into the space before her and revealed her new self; tumbling neon pink ringlets of hair, small, high breasts and an 'uncanny valley' face straight out of an otaku's fantasy. She cycled the display through several sexy but impractical outfits until she found one which would allow for freedom of movement.

She quickly pulled on the translucent mini dress and soft sole boots retrieved from the dispenser and left the pink overkill of the docking room. Moving as fast as the Dolldroid's systems would allow, she started down the stairs back to street level.

Domino found using Dolldroid bodies painfully slow and frustrating; after all, they were originally commercialised with a fairly singular purpose in mind. Despite the shortcomings of the model, she felt confident she would be able to do what was needed for the distraction to work. She grabbed a clear plastic illumi-glow umbrella from the foyer and started making her way back to the ramen stand.

The bouncer was still stood by the auto vendor, now with a bowl in hand, staring with dumb intensity at the privacy capsule. She wound her way through a jostling sea of umbrellas to within his line of sight and made a deliberate path for the noodle stand. His gaze wavered from his vigil for only the briefest of moments so he could glance at her breasts as she perused the menu. That was enough. He only needed to register her presence.

She carried her bowl over to the counter and moved to set it down next to his. A feigned stumble found her body pressed close into his for the briefest of moments. It proved to be all that was needed as the pheromone-enhanced perfume exuding from the Dolldroid's body started its non-too-subtle work in stirring the man's libido.

“I'm sorry,” she giggled at him, “this is my first time controlling one of these. I had no idea how clumsy I would be!”

“You're doing just fine,” he managed to mumble.

Within a few minutes, she had him following her to the nearest love hotel. They checked into the 'Warming Beach Feeling' suite and she fell back on a bed surrounded by a full-immersion holo of some remote Hawaiian resort as the bouncer fumbled with his belt.

She waited for him to reach for the 'Condomania' vendor by the bed before she said, “Magenta.”

There was a second's pause, followed by an uncertain beep.

The bouncer looked at his girlfriend for the night in confusion as her body shuddered into a rigid state.

“My safety word has been used and shut-down protocols activated. My operator is no longer present. Please wait for the next available Dolldroid retrieval crew to arrive.”

The slow realisation of his error cut through his pheromone stupor and tugged mockingly at his gut; his quarry had escaped.

Copyright © A. Flood 2010