Luckily for this particular gentleman, the world was just as sickening as whatever passed for a soul within him. Working for the Tyrell Corporation had its rewards, but it certainly did not come with spiritual growth. Though there could be no complaints regarding the loss of admittance into heaven when one was granted such delights while within the flesh. Luxury was no longer something that could be purchased in this horrid time, it had to be earned as you clawed your way up the corporate letter. Expert medical care, pristine living arrangements, all access transportation, security and safety, high quality foods. Sterilized air. These were not simple commodities that one could purchase with the casualness of swiping a credit chip. Nor were these provided with the intention of generosity, the experiences were ones that an individual was expected to be grateful for. And this particular gentleman, no matter the brutal nature of his soul, would always dredge up within himself a modicum of appreciation for what the Company had granted. His hand rose to touch the thick glass before him, eyes narrowing as he experienced the smallest hint of melancholia, before summarily crushing it with a sneer.
Such thoughts were unworthy of a man who stood within the Tyrell Corporation Pyramid, gazing out its windows on the worthless dregs of a city lost to stagnation. No, a man standing in such grandeur should recognize his proper position as a god king among what remained of humanity. The titanic pyramid of steel and stone rose above the smog line, a monolithic beacon of the corporation power and prestige. The strange arrangement of pyramid structures seemed reminiscent of something older, an ancient, stepped temple where one might come to sacrifice to the gods themselves, to curry favor for the harvest. That would not be far from the truth if one of bitter cynicism considered the purpose of this totalitarian business conglomerate. The scorched bronze of the buildingβs exterior, pristine when first constructed, was now streaked by years of acidic rainfall. Floodlights bathed the surrounding area in golden light, granting a surreal artificial hue. One might have considered it supernatural from afar. Sacred. And rightfully so, for here in these hallowed halls life itself was created.
Elias Dorne turned from his perch, stepping away from the vista outside to stand nearly still in the middle of his office. By the standards of an earlier time his workspace might have seemed quite cramped, but in the world that they now lived in it was quite an illustrious, if spartan, environment. The silence of the room felt curated, as if it were built not to be lived within, but to simply observe. The walls were smooth alabaster, synthesized to a mirror-finish. Not a single fingerprint marred their surface. The floor itself was a matte-black resin that gave a satisfying sound when one walked upon it, pacing becoming a simple form of meditative practice. There were no accessories, no hints of lines that indicated cubby holes or closets. A terrible space that evoked the sensation of being isolated even within the large arcology itself. His desk matched the flooring, a solid slab with no legs, drawers, or keyboard. A digital pressure sensitive surface that was activated by his genetic imprint alone. And behind that his chair. Tall, monolithic. More of a throne than a seat. Certainly not designed for comfort.
Nor was the man himself. Austere, hard edged, limned in clean brutalist aesthetics. Elias stood slightly below six feet in height, his slender athletic frame revealing a man who took pride in his appearance as much as his position. His black hair was kept short, his beard hard edged and professional right beneath the line of his high cheek bones. Unlike others that worked at the corporation one would find Elias dressed in a simple long sleeved black dress shirt, one in which he could roll his sleeves up, and a pair of grey dress slacks. Neither were particularly expensive in nature, nor were they meant to be, both chosen as easily disposable due to Eliasβs rather particular employment role within the Company.
Eliasβs job was simple, quite befitting a man of his nature. And what was his job? He tested the new experimental modelβs responses to extreme forms of human behavior.
She was not the first of her kind, but she will be the first to remain firmly under their thumb. Nexus 7-b "Alynne" was the next development in a cruel iterative process, built upon the misery of millions who had come before her. The Tyrell Corporation had sidestepped the issue of fair remuneration decades ago, whilst the powers that be quibbled over the sanctity of human life, the Company moved forward to create their own. The Replicants had been built to be slaves, and indoctrinated inferiority was a key feature of the newest experimental model.
Alynne lay in catatonic slumber within her cylindrical, surgical white sarcophagus. Indicator lights hugged the unit's exterior like bioluminescent limpets, pulsing green and signalling the absence of issues. It stood open and canted as the centerpiece of the laboratory. Data cables and nutrient tubes snaked from its bottom in neat bundles, disappearing into a hole built into the laboratory's white linoleum floor. Display screens adorned the walls of the laboratory, set above rows of control panels with extra large buttons, specially designed for the rubber gloved and suited technicians scurrying about the sleeping Alynne. Their grey full body rubber suits gave them the appearance of faceless minions. A single elevator guarded their entrance or exit from the space and security cameras in the corners watched their every move. The whirr of ventilation fans, driving filtered air into the laboratory, was broken only by the soft squeak of their rubber boots on the spongy linoleum. The technicians communicated via radio within their suits instead of talking openly, as if worried that their voices might wake their experiment.
She was built to be a pleasure model. Experimental versions often were. They innately provided motivation for testing staff, and were easy to subdue should something go awry. Earlier Replicant models had the knowledge and expertise needed for their roles uploaded before activation. Alynne however, was undergoing a different process made just for her. The flowing lights on the laboratory screens displayed her neural circuitry, a virtual world in her mind that could be tampered, where a dozen lifetimes could be lived in the span of months.
Alynne spent her dreams stripped of agency. The scenarios were curated and recreated from recorded rebellions of earlier Nexus models. In them, she lived the life of her offending predecessors, but with one important difference. Where successful escapes and victory were what precipitated in the actual records, they were replaced with vicious subjugation by the Replicant's owners in Alynne's sleeping mind. Day after day, the technicians monitored her simulations for any deviation from the established script. Her every attempt to break free, to seek her own way, was recorded and indexed. They were mitigated. Quashed. Destroyed. And Alynne's simulated owners punished her with pain, humiliation, and torturous death before she was forced to wake in the next game she was rigged to lose. The dispassionate monitors reported her progress, her escape attempts, to the vigilant technicians in angry red and amber. These faded to a calm green as the months passed. Eventually, even when presented with new scenarios and given ample opportunity to fight back, Alynne never tried to do so. She had been broken. A docile and obedient product. The natural human tendency for storytelling, thus perverted, would form the lens by which she viewed the world. Alynne would begin her life with extensive experience of her inferiority and the futility of resistance.
However, her virtual lives were mere simulacra of the real world. She needed to be tested. The Company needed a stable product.
Technicians at the laboratory's control panels keyed in their credentials and acknowledged their actions to prime the protoype. Settings for erogenous sensitivity and libido were tuned to pleasure model presets. Amid hisses of escaping gas, the data cables and nutrient tubes shot away from their bearings in Alynne's chamber. Indicator lights for the final activation measures flared hungrily, awaiting receipt of the tester's genetic imprint. The entire sarcophagus lifted an exact inch off the perfectly flat ground via magnetic levitation. As the technicians watched the culmination of their efforts with silent reverence, the vessel bearing Nexus 7-b "Alynne" slid noiselessly backward into the waiting maw of the elevator. Then, cutting edge scientific procedure paid homage to ancient religious ritual as the elevator accepted the technicians' offering and ferried it to the god above.
The delivery was complete, though with far less religious fervor than the mindless drones that rested at the lower levels would have imagined. This was not a world of idealism, nor did it carry the tropes of divinity no matter what the maddened geniuses that ascended to chief executives happened to think. Let the insane consider themselves close to the divine, Elias was not one of those given to delusions of grandeur, which might come as a surprise considering his natural disposition. No, he understood instinctually the hierarchal order of the world and the simple mechanisms by which it functioned, and there needed to be no allusion towards godhood for him to appreciate and the beneficial nature of power. Or the satisfaction in its application. So when this new arrival found her way into his office, sliding along predetermined tracks to unceremoniously find itself before Elias, there was nothing in the man but curiosity at this newest product line, the beginning ruminations of what testing protocols he might bring to bear upon flesh that had never experienced the touch of mankind. Elias Dorne would most assuredly remedy that.
Elias stepped forward to consider the Nexus 7-b, his hand reaching to touch the interactive glass of her case, and as it read his genetic key the display lit up with the standard engineering specs for one of her βspecies.β Though Elias never would have dignified the automaton within the casing as belonging to any particular class of organism. His eyes glanced over the supplied material without much in the way of integration, instead merely making mental notes regarding this particular creationβs simulation status and response profile. The development teams always attempted to ascertain the overall baseline of behavior in a synthetic, but that was not Eliasβs specialty. Anything could be trained if you reprimanded it, if you rewarded it, but these were inherent systems within a preprogrammed set of heuristics. Easily established, hard to break. It was when you pressed any prebuilt structure to the extreme edges of sense experience, when it anticipated the conclusion based on the precedent established, and responded with something unprecedented, that you shattered the bedrock of programming.
He paused as he considered, just briefly, the Nexus within the casing, a tilt in his head as he leaned close to the transparent material, almost as if his intention were to kiss and wake her as if she were Sleeping Beauty herself. βAlynneβ it was called, and he mouthed her name as if he were calling to her, attempting to nudge her within her dreams, though no sound came forth from his lips. There was something odd in this particular aberration of lifelike monstrosity. Was it the angles of her features, a facet that he found more appealing than in other models, done on such a minuscule level that he could not put his finger upon the defining difference between her and others that conformed to similar parameters? What a curious sensation, to find this particular one a fascinating specimen, an elicited unexpected emotional response from himself before the testing had even begun. One eyebrow rose in self-deprecating style, notating the experience as something to consider when he had time to indulge such flights of self-examination. Currently his itinerary was full.
<<Initialization Sequence Complete>>
Elias stepped back to his desk as Alynne began to cycle through her waking states, her systems fully coming online, and he took his seat with a calm silent aplomb. It was not so much about first impressions as about first actions. What would the Nexus do when it recognized the difference between sleep and reality? What would it say in the intervening space of silence that greeted it. Would Alynne fall back on simulation strategies to appease an uncertain host? Would she find it within herself to explore her new world and acquire information? Or would she simply be like a doe in the headlights, a blank slate waiting to be told exactly what she should do. All of these would provide some insight into what interactive approaches he took. And now all Elias Dorne did was gaze at her expectantly. Waiting.
The passage of time bore little meaning for the sleeper. In her virtual nightmares, Alynne had been unaware of any intervening period, any intermission between the depredations while she was conditioned into submission. She was equally oblivious when her new owner's genetic signature was loaded into her recognition centers as he had touched her coffin, that she might understand who held her leash from the moment she awoke. There had been debate amongst the genetic designers, vigorous and academic, on whether it was prudent to preprogram owner data into a Replicant. Whilst it increased efficiency by reducing acclimatisation time, the seeds of rebellion were inevitably planted together with the procedure. The illusion of a Replicant's choice, when an owner introduced themselves by greeting the Replicant as a stranger and strove for amicability, was a potent retardant against revolt. Alynne neither knew nor cared about the Nexus development objectives she embodied; the hoped for efficiency gains through her virtual conditioning. There was only one fact in her slowly waking mind. Elias Dorne was now her owner, and it was a natural law as unbreakable as gravity.
The onyx floors and ivory walls of the testing chamber seemed familiar to Alynne's dark, virgin eyes. They were as soulless and sterile as the incubation unit she was now expected to leave. She saw her owner seated in his sleek black chair. Even whilst standing still, Alynne spent her mental energy -as pleasure models do- assessing her owner; his subtle body language; his unconscious microexpressions. Her thoughts were directed toward deriving what might please him. Her actions, calculated to induce his arousal. Or failing that, to ease any existing weight he carried in his heart. It was not that Alynne had no drives or emotions of her own, but that they were only installed in her so that she had firsthand insight into their nature and could use it to serve her owner better. Any satisfaction she would feel was to be a side effect, after her owner's needs were met.
These side effects now troubled Alynne. Her owner's face and body language betrayed no hint of what he might be feeling. Elias Dorne's outward appearance was as neutral as the blank, featureless desk before him. It would be up to her to elicit a response. Any response. Still in her white chest and groin surgical bindings, she stepped out of the incubation unit and stretched her new muscles. Pushing her slender arms up and away in a "Y", she twisted her neck in every direction, tossing her short dark brown hair in the sanitized air and pausing with each motion, allowing her slim nose to cut a distinct profile against the sharp white light of the incubation chamber. Slowly, she pulled her arms down and back, rotating her wrists and flexing each of her graceful digits. The bottom of her motion pulled her shoulder blades together and jutted Alynne's bosom toward her owner. She gave a light moan and held the position, relishing her freedom from the incubator and into his ownership. Alynne flicked her chin downward and met her owner's gaze with a slight pout.
Nothing. The man was as readable as a rock.
With the time for half-measures past, Alynne pulled off her surgical bindings and strutted toward her owner, naked as the day she was grown. With each step, her bare feet crossed each other, exaggerating the intentional swaying of her narrow hips. She locked her eyes on his, watching for any sign of his cold, calculating orbs drifting downward to the rest of her body, toward her petite breasts and hairless sex. Once she had covered half the distance, Alynne swivelled around and presented her rear. She spread her legs and bent forwards at her hip, gazing back with her head tilted, like a pet bird examining its owner.
Her owner, for his part, remained frustratingly blank.
She finished the final distance on all fours crawling to his side, ensuring that seated as he was, she would not stand over him for even a single second. Alynne was a product of the Tyrell Corporation. And at this moment, Elias Dorne's product. Though she was an experimental prototype, she hoped her little performance had displayed the distinguished quality expected of her kind. Once by his side, she sat on her heels with her legs apart and palms face down on her thighs, like a corrupted Buddhist idol from ages past. Stealing a quick glance at the grey dress slacks between his legs, she hoped to catch a sign that her effort had not been wasted, before saying, "Good evening. I am Alynne. How may I serve?"
A slight glance was all that Alynne received, perhaps a simple acknowledgement of her existence and presence within the room, but not much more forthcoming than that. Was he impressed with what he had seen from the newly activated synth? Of course, that was hardly worth noting. Every Nexus, specifically models designed for pleasure, had undergone rigorous design to adhere to human aesthetics and attractiveness. At this particular state in their development to say one was physically arousing would have been as mundane as noting that the Nexus was a bipedal organism. Simply a fact. So, while her display had the intended physiological responses upon the man that she now knelt before, an obvious growing erection beneath the simple business pants that he wore, it was the only indication that her actions had provided some form of stimulus. Irritatingly, it was at that moment that Elias crossed his right leg up over his knee, seemingly blockading Alynneβs access to the aforementioned thickness she had spied still hidden behind the zipper. The manβs eyes blinked, just once, as if musing upon some thought, but if it was worthy of consideration for him then he did not seem to feel it was something to be shared. Alynne was certainly unworthy of knowing this manβs inner dialogue.
His hand touched his desk, digital displays processing his command as he spoke. βAlynne, Nexus model 7-b, March 25th. Stress Test 1.β There was no need for Elias to inform the system to record what was occurring, this was merely a notation. Everything in this room would be properly archived for research purposes.
And then he slapped her. It was swift, barely recognizable even by the fine-tuned sensory input of Alynneβs inhuman matrix. How could a human being have moved with such swiftness, to leave a blush spreading across her perfect cheek? The first βrealβ pain that she had ever experienced. There was a small pause in the act, the man before her idly drumming his fingertips on the surface of the table. Was he a Nexus as well? Surely it was the only rational explanation for his speed, and maybe even explanation for how the action seemed to bring only the smallest amount of curiosity to his intense eyes. As if weighing his next move based solely upon Alynneβs. Slap, again, a second time across her other cheek as she still attempted to process the first. And then that stern voice spoke again, one eyebrow raising as he reminded Alynne exactly what she was. And in this he seemed to take some satisfaction, savoring each and every drop of cruelty he was capable of manifesting in that condescending voice.
βYou want to know how you can serve, but I am not necessarily sure youβre capable of being worth my time. You are, and will always be, beneath me. You know that, yes? That no matter what I do, no matter how much I make you suffer, that you were made for it? There is no crime amongst man that I can commit upon you that will ever be prosecuted.β His last words brought a slight change to the intonation, the horrid slick feeling of hormones that slammed through his bloodstream. Once more he was forced to recognize that there was something about this particular Nexus that had caught his eye, degrading his detachment. They had barely begun the testing and already he wanted to move to penetration. His head turned away, disregarding the sensation as he felt his abdomen tightened with terrible want. And there, beneath his beard, Alynne would see the manβs jaw clench.
βI hate you, you know. I hate what you represent. An object to be used. Surely you want to be more than that, donβt you Alynne?β
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