VEE 2.0

Chapter Four: Mydoom

A candle burned on the kitchen counter, filling the apartment with scents of bergamot. If Veronica was honest, she wasn’t entirely sure what bergamot actually was. She liked the scent, though. Clean, sweet, with a little something spicy hidden in there. It was calming. She burned this one on days when she was tense and upset and needed to get her head right. And that was certainly today.

It wasn’t working. Stress and fear jangled up her nerves like runaway trolley cars, leaving her feeling breathless and tight. She could barely detect the smell of the candle through the soft stink of fear-sweat she was giving off. Her palms were slick. Her left hand clenched rhythmically, working in and out of shaky fists. Her right bore white knuckles as she clutched her kitchen shears.

For the tenth time, she prodded the point of the shears back behind her ear. The home base device nestled there, hugging tightly to the upper shell of her ear. She’d grown so used to it that she barely noticed it anymore. Until the last couple of weeks, that is. Until it had become a threat.

Every day she got more messages – texts, emails. She’d deleted all of her social media, or else those would surely still be choked with abuse and taunts and threats. Sneering, angry nerds, promising to hack into her head and have their way with her. It wasn’t possible – or so she insisted to herself – but god, the idea was terrifying.

And so this thing had to go. Had to come out.

The only thing was, she didn’t know how.

She tried simply yanking it up and off at first. No luck there. The skin had healed at the insertion site, closed up like an old wound, bound to the device. She could feel the tissue stretch and strain when she pulled. First slow and steady, making her wince as she waited for it to give. Then one hard, sharp yank that she held back on out of fear. That left her teary-eyed with pain and with a thin rivulet of blood slinking down to her jawline.

It’d probably come free eventually, but a few seconds of dedicated tugging made it clear it was going to take a lot of skin and tissue with it. Whatever method the techs at HDS had used to attach this thing, it was holding fast. Pulling at it gave Veronica a mental image of wires burrowing like roots down and into her skull, and that made her nauseous.

The next plan was to break the device somehow. Snap it, crush it, something. But despite how small and delicate it felt, the plastic casing of it was more robust than she’d expected. She couldn’t seem to hurt it with her fingers, and any attempt to hit it or harm it with some kind of tool or weapon was just as hopeless. Hard to get a good swing at something mounted on the side of your own skull – nevermind the fact that collateral damage seemed almost guaranteed.

So now she was onto her current plan. There was one major wire she could feel, emerging from the base of the home base and extending below her skin. The very skin that crawled when she imagined the device wired up to her brain like this. A tiny loop of fragile wire connecting circuitry to tissue. If she could sever that, surely it’d cut off the operations of the gadget, right? It’d disconnect her from Vee and keep her safe from losing herself again and again and again.

Of course, she didn’t know what else it would do.

When they’d installed it, there’d been little comments about not messing with this or trying to remove it by herself. Blue Eyes, the kinda-handsome tech who worked with her joked that trying to take it out would – his words – fry her brain. He assured her afterwards that he wasn’t serious, but… how confident of that was she?

Her hands trembled rapidly as she guided the blade of the shears up behind her ear. She opened them just enough to slip the small wire between them. One squeeze and it’d be cut off. Come what may. It’d free her, probably. Probably it wouldn’t give her a seizure or a stroke. Probably she’d survive. Right?

Her hand shook so badly that the wire slipped out from between the blades. Veronica sighed angrily and steadied herself. It was now or never. This was the moment when she freed herself. This was the place.

The absurdity hit her then – this was the place? Here? In her kitchen? Using the same shears she used to cut open packets of chicken breast. That’s the tool best suited for cutting-edge untested tech-centric brain surgery?

How the fuck did she possibly convince herself this was a good idea?

Veronica hurled the shears into the sink, where they noisily scraped and clattered along the metal basin before coming to a rest. She slumped to the floor. She leaned back hard, curve of her spine banging into a cabinet door. She buried her face in her hands and let out a choked sob. What the fuck was she going to do?

***

hey v, guess what they call your brain in the techspecs for the app? ‘the template material’ lmfao

its like your entire personality is just a prompt for something more important

u should see how much detail hds used to talk about teh brain implant, compared to how they barely even refer to ur actual brain

kek u are barely a spare part on these docs

yea btw we found the hds patent documents so were really starting to figure out how the whole thing works, should be fun to crack remote deployment soon

Veronica’s hands shook as she read the email on the small, grainy screen. She’d picked up a crappy ancient laptop at a secondhand store the other day. It was missing the ‘w’ key and the it had a crack in the screen. It had that weird little nubbin in the middle of the keyboard instead of a trackpad, and the ports were so old she didn’t even know what kind of peripherals they were for. She needed to plug a cable into the wall to get it to connect to the internet, something she barely realized was ever a thing. The blocky case was a little grimy and it felt like it weighed about forty pounds. But it was cheap and it was way too old to run something like Vee, so she felt safe using it.

Using it meant exposing herself to the foul and taunting emails that clogged her inbox lately, though. She still checked her messages a few times a day, because she was sending frequent requests to both HDS and Panoply. They ran the gamut of tone – casually friendly, desperately pleading, sharply demanding, fearfully confused. She even tried faking a request from a lawyer using some phony letterhead she’d googled. No response.

She’d tried getting an actual lawyer, of course. She couldn’t afford much. Even those she couldn’t pay weren’t interested. Panoply commanded a fleet of white-shoe litigators and could burn through billions without blinking. She was just one confused young actress who regretted a contract and was too scared to leave her house. Hardly a slam dunk.

And so here she was, two glasses of wine deep, skimming through an inbox of silence from the tech companies and abuse from men on 8chan. Half-formed tears blurred her vision as she angrily mashed out a reply to the anonymous jackass who boasted about patent documents. Her barely-functional keyboard and her slightly-drunk anger worked together to resist her attempts to write sharply and coherently.

Hi asshole,

Guess hat? Go fuck yourself.

I don’t even believe in your hole ‘deployment’ thing anyay, you’re just trying to scare me because god forbid a oman

She jammed the little plasticky gasket where the ‘w’ key should be, mashing it in frustration.

because god forbid a lady do anything, right? You and your misogynist incel loser friends can’t handle that, it fucks up your entire pathetic little orldvie, doesn’t it?

Veronica grit her teeth and slammed the laptop lid down. Forget it. It was probably for the best. There was nothing to be gained from antagonizing those creeps. It just let them know they were getting to her.

And while she didn’t want them to know it, they absolutely were getting to her.

***

Veronica still had her phone, of course, but only for emergencies. Only for actual phone calls. She kept it on Do Not Disturb and certainly didn’t use it for unimportant, silly things like scrolling the internet. She knew better than that.

It’s easy to know better in the daylight, though. Late at night, kept up with worry and confusion and fear for the future, none of us really know better. We need comfort and routine. We need distraction and grounding. We need something other than the quiet and the dark and the things a frightened mind can summon.

And Veronica, in those moments, needed a burner Instagram account that she used to keep tabs on Trevor. A shameful habit that she’d deny to her friends, if she was still in regular contact with them. She didn’t speak to much of anybody these days, though. She’d changed her work schedule, going in early and leaving late, allowing bigger swaths of every day to be swallowed up by Vee and the Worker Bee personality. She arrived before the rest of the staff and stayed until nearly everyone was gone, making sure she bumped into as few people as possible. She was a recluse now.

These hidden late-night cyberstalks of her ex were the most she still interacted with people she knew. Her face lit only by the glow of her phone, curled on her side in bed, Veronica scrolled through Trevor’s feed. She’d held out a few days since doing this last, giving Trevor plenty of time to add lots of new pics. That boy never missed a chance to take a photo, or to post one. Veronica hoped this habit would let her watch Trevor’s comeuppance in real time. Watching as his show got cancelled, his work dried up, his apartment got too expensive, and he had to move back to the east coast and work at his dad’s garage. It was going to be so cathartic.

It hadn’t happened yet, though. So far it was the opposite. His character was a hit with the fans and he’d been offered a bigger contract. He’d signed with a new agent with a legitimate agency. And his profile was full of him at restaurants and parties and beaches and pools and galleries with legitimate stars and producers and directors Veronica recognized. He was rising fast, a new young light on the scene.

It was infuriating. She was the one was supposed to have that! They used to talk about it, the successes they were working towards. What it’d look like to finally break through. And yes, in those talks, the fantasy was both of them succeeding. But in her heart Veronica always knew she’d be the bigger star of the two of them. She’d never be so cruel as to suggest that to Trevor, but… well, it seemed so clear. She had real, honest, actual talent. She worked ten times as hard as him. It was just… it had to be. Nothing else made sense to her.

Part of her fantasized about taking it away. Telling people about what he’d done to her. How he’d – well, raped her, right? That’s what it was. Wasn’t it? She hadn’t consented to the things they’d done together, not really. She’d enthusiastically participated, yes, but that wasn’t her mind at the time. She’d been influenced, and he knew it. She could explain what he’d done and how, and people would see what a scumfuck he was, and it’d all come crumbling down.

Except she obviously wasn’t going to do that.

She couldn’t talk about this. Her life was already falling apart because people started discovering the scope of her situation. Trying to make that actually, fully public? No. Not an option that was on the table.

Veronica was distracted by all of this by a familiar face in one of Trevor’s pictures. Brittany. The girl from when she’d seen him last. The one who… god. Who’d been there when he used Vee against her. Veronica’s cheeks burned just thinking about it. How degrading it had been. How completely wrong. Violating in a way that she didn’t even know was possible. They didn’t just use and exploit her body, they took advantage of her mind. Made her not just do things but enjoy them. Admitting it would make her blanch, but it was true – it felt good. Very, very good.

Good enough that Veronica, in this late-night reverie of anger and envy and need for shelter, found her fingers reaching and wandering.

Her eyes unfocused a bit, not looking away from the photo of Trevor and Brittany, but not really observing it, either. Letting it form a hazy glowing backdrop as her mind wandered. Her thoughts took oblique arcs, made tangent lines that just barely kissed the curve of memories of that night. Not thinking about it, not really. Just letting the sense memory of it rise up like a sea swell. The way her heart hammered as she touched… something. The tremor of her fingertips as they stroked a warm, wet place she didn’t let herself name now. A feeling of thick warm presence in her mouth, and how that made her feel both filled and fulfilled. And need, below all of it. Wide and bottomless, need that could only be sated for seconds at a time before it needed again, and again, on and on forever.

It was better to remember that need. It was better to try and feel that again now, to touch and remember that, than to remember anything else. To throw herself into the cleft space of that need and disappear down it. Her skin prickled with rising sweat beads as warmth built up under her blankets. The tang of her own scent, flowers and metal, hit Veronica’s nose. A humid and intimate smell. Muscles fired in her legs as she felt satiation looming closer, deep in that pit. She dove deeper towards it.

And as she tried to embrace that moment, that perfect oblivion of an orgasm, her phone buzzed noisily and lit up before her eyes.

u wanna know something cool??

God fucking damn rotten asshole shithead bastard son of a motherfucking bitch.

The tide ebbed, the tension sank, and the moment died on the vine. Veronica clenched her hand into a slick-fingered fist, furiously. Once again one of these little shits had found her number.

hds did some cool stuff with receptivity. like oviously they need you to be in range for the vee processing to work, right? if they cant use homebase bcuz if youre out in the woods camping or whatever then the whole system falls apart. so theres huge wireless pickups and boosters and all that. dont strain youre little wired-up brain about it lol, just trust me. ur device pciks up signals realllll good

Veronica ground a knuckle against her eye angrily. Why did she even bother reading these anymore? Like a car crash, she supposed. It was hard to look away.

heres why thats cool – its hard to hack the homebase itself. but its not hard at all to piggyback a signal. just gotta be sure the targets listening to it. and they made u suuuuch a good listener lmaooo

Flickers of fear glowed under Veronica’s skin as she read this. Empty boasting, as always, right? Trolls trying to upset her.

i really hope ur reading this live bcuz itd be so fucking funny. were gonna test something.

watch this

Veronica had come to know the feeling of Vee’s influence by now. It was a static that settled on her mind like a blanket. It could be heavy and oppressive, but it was comfortable. Cozy. Enveloping and warm.

What happened now was the same thing – static that fell on her mind and covered it. The difference was the forcefulness. If Vee was like being wrapped up by a thick woolen blanket over the shoulders, this was like a sheet of plastic over the face.

The static hit her hard, artlessly. It hurt. Nowhere specific and not even physically. It simply touched the part of her brain that told her pain was happening, and so pain happened. Then that was gone, though, because there was just a hard, sharp-edged, infinite wall of static. Nothing else. A ten-thousand square mile field of flat gray sandpaper that instantly abraded her mind to empty hissing noise and nothingness. It was like being murdered and yet still having awareness enough to experience being a corpse. A vacuum of the self. An ego void.

Vee could direct every thought and experience Veronica had, elegantly moving her thoughts and perceptions into shapes independent of Veronica’s choosing. She was a master conductor directing an orchestra. This? This was a failing music student beating her to death with a kettle drum.

And then there was a feeling of something ripping away, and it was gone. Her thoughts came back, like blood rushing back into a compressed limb. It tingled unpleasantly to think and see on her own again. It felt like things inside her head were wrong, somehow. Not broken but not the same. Like walking into your home and realizing a stranger has been there, touching things and moving them, while you were out.

The phone glowed in front of her, a new message having arrived while she fought back to consciousness.

lmfaoooo

***

In the time since she’d last visited HDS, they’d hired a security guard. A tall man with ropy forearms who smelled like laundry soap and metal, and who had no intentions whatsoever of letting Veronica enter the premises.

“You aren’t listening to me,” she said for the fourth time, and he didn’t listen. “I just need ten minutes. You can ask anyone - I’ve been here a dozen times! I’m a paid member of the staff, for god’s sake. Or a contract employee, at least! Call Mr. Holmquist – Mike or Andy, either of them will vouch for me.” Once, Veronica would have worked this interaction carefully. Pointing her toe to twist her posture the slightest bit, making her appear demure and harmless but still intriguing. Knowing just how loud to laugh to both charm and disarm him. She still had those skill, she assured herself. But they were rusty from disuse and clumsy with the stress and exhaustion she was battling.

The guard tilted his head slightly. His gaze had been slowly scoping across the lobby the whole time she’d been speaking, a slow constant sweep. Now his grey, flat eyes fell fully on her. He shifted his weight and turned without moving his feet, simply reorienting himself so she was now entirely before him. His every movement was like a battleship swinging its artillery into firing position – dreadfully slow but deliberate and menacing.

“Mr. Holmquist senior is out of the country,” the guard said, with a voice like ancient plinths of stone, “and is not returning for several weeks. Mr. Holmquist junior is offsite, in meetings, for the remainder of the day. I have no doubt the issues you’re facing are dire and crucial to you. However, if they were dire and crucial to either Mr. Holmquist, they would have provided you a reliable way to contact them. As they did not, there isn’t anything I can do for you. Ma’am.”

‘Ma’am’ was said with respect, but it was the bar across the door. He was done with her. Already his heavy gaze was rotating away from her, panning like a lighthouse across the lobby.

Veronica had prided herself for years on her composure. It was a long-trained habit, the domain of the performer, borne of the need to be able to control her emotions and display exactly those that she wished. Veronica commanded her angry sneers and her giddy laughs and her desolate tears, wielding them as the tools of her trade. But even that was being taken from her now. She couldn’t control herself. She could feel her shoulders quivering with anger, her mouth curling in a dolorous, furious frown. She couldn’t stop it. Vee took her mind and now the world was taking her body.

She felt the tears of frustration brim in her eyes. There was such shame in that for her. Such a visible display of how she was losing control. How far she’d fallen. She wanted to scream, to throttle and beat this guard, to smash every window in this fucking building. She was just so angry. And nothing else worked. Why not? Why not just let go and destroy something? What, they’d arrest her, maybe? And? What did she have left for them to take from her?

“Veronica?”

She looked up with a sharp sniff and a quick wipe of her eyes. Very quickly the control came back, and she put on a gentle, approachable smile. The voice was almost familiar, but the haze of her swallowed emotional outburst obscured it.

“Veronica! Wow, hi, what are you doing here?”

Quickly crossing the lobby was a young man. He had a nicely-fitted polo with a Panoply logo on the breast, well-coiffed brown hair, and striking blue eyes behind his thick-framed dark glasses. It took a few seconds for recognition to land, but when it did, Veronica’s heart leapt. For the life of her, she couldn’t remember Blue Eyes’ real name, but he remembered her. Thank god.

“Remember me? Tom? We did the initial data alignment for your implant together! How have you been? Do you have a meeting here or something?”

Veronica shook her head. Very faintly, a voice whispered in her mind. The voice of her first real acting coach, Mrs. Macready. “Falseness,” she would say, her voice cracking on the vowels every time, whenever she thought someone’s performance was forced. And Veronica could hear that creaky voice now. Blue Eyes – Tom – was forcing something. Lying.

“She doesn’t have an appointment, Mr. Verlander,” the guard said. He must have had this sort of work in his bones, his DNA. A born watchman. Veronica sourly imagined generations of sentries and lookouts and sentinels, his proud ancestors, nodding their approval as he protected the HDS kingdom from the likes of her.

“That’s alright, Oscar, I can vouch. She can –“

The guard shook his head, a ponderous movement that seemed to span days. “I’m sorry, Sir,” he said. “Protocol forbids. Nobody outside the public areas without preauthorization and a set appointment.”

“Of course,” Tom nodded. “I totally understand. Miss Day left something of hers here on her last visit, though, and I’d been meaning to get it back to her. It’s in the visitor lounge upstairs – still public, no protocol violations. I don’t really have time to run back and forth for it. Surely she can come that far with me, right?”

Falseness.

Oscar exhaled through his nose. Not a fan of this plan, but he considered. And Veronica considered why Blue Eyes was lying.

She hadn’t left anything here, and she hadn’t been here in god knows how many months. This was an attempt to get her past security and not have a scheduled appointment on the books.

What was going on here?

“Fine,” Oscar said, “but only for five minutes. After that, I’m radioing Marvin to escort her out.”

“Won’t even take three,” Tom breezed, brisk and casual and utterly unconvincing to Veronica’s trained ear. Oscar seemed to buy it, though. Tom guided her across the lobby, into the stairwell – where he stopped.

“Not a lot of time,” he said in a hushed voice, looking at her intensely. He looked good. HDS had made a lot of money since she’d seen him last, and he’d obviously gotten his share of it. His glasses, his jeans, his haircut – all of them several tiers in quality higher than when she’d seen him last. He wore it well. “I’ve seen a couple of your emails. I know they’re ignoring you. I want to help.”

Her heart swelled and burned. Oh, thank god. Someone. Finally! Again the tears sprung up, and she didn’t feel ashamed this time.

“I know you want the home base out. I can’t do that.” She bit her thumbnail nervously, not even wanting to speak. Not daring to interrupt the first truly positive thing that’d happened to her in… it hurt to consider the time, actually. Too long. “It’d be obvious. I’d get fired, for sure. And more importantly, it’s dangerous. It’d cause damage physically for sure, and mentally… we just don’t know. Frankly, I don’t even know if it’d stop anything you’re experiencing. There’s some argument to be made that dynamic neuroplasticity could mean the structural element within your own dendritic structure has already adapted…”

He trailed off, stopped. “That’s not the point. The point is, taking out the home base isn’t the answer. The answer is cutting off Vee from the top.”

He peered up the stairs, and out the door. Nobody. Still, he moved a little closer. He smelled nice. Some kind of woodsy, mossy cologne. It suited him.

“The backups are distributed, of course, and they’ll be able to rebuild her. Or a version of her. But if you can delete the main fileset, they won’t be able to get Vee back connected with the home base. They’ll rebuild the application in some new form but it’ll be with somebody else. You’ll be out.”

Veronica sobbed. A hard, painful lump of emotion coughed its way out of her chest, noisily. She hadn’t even realized she was crying until she heard that ugly thump of noise come out of her. Tom put a hand on her shoulder, looking into her eyes.

“I can’t do it for you. I need to keep up a normal routine so they don’t suspect. But I can give you an address of the offsite mainframe and a list of files. You need to get in, delete them all, and get out. It’s that easy. Server room 6174, Thursday at 4:15PM.”

“Why then?” Veronica asked, voice tight and raw.

“Security coverage. Staff meetings. IT schedules. Trust me, it’s the one time you’ll have a clear shot from the side door I’ll show you right up to the room itself. You’ll have twenty, maybe thirty minutes to get it done. Plenty of time.”

“Why are you doing this?”

Tom looked away, sheepish. “It’s not a big deal,” he said, voice small. He gestured vaguely with both hands, tight little expressions that showed he didn’t know what to say. Veronica could tell, though, he knew that wasn’t true. This was a big deal. A big risk for him, and an act that had meaning. “I mean, I loved working for HDS. The whole Vee project, we… let it get out of hand. And Andy convinced his dad to sell to Panoply so fast, and, well. All of a sudden we’re working on updates I don’t understand, and exploring other versions to roll out, and all of us are in the dark about the big picture. And apparently ignoring calls from you, keeping lawyers on retainer to block you out? I don’t like it. It doesn’t feel right.”

He said all of this quickly, forcing an attempt to be casual. But to Veronica is was simple and heroic in a way that made her chest hurt.

“Besides,” he said, his eyes finding hers again, “I had a good time that day. Doing all the silly exercises with you, getting the data set up. So I want to help.”

“I had fun that day, too,” she said, and her smile felt more genuine than it ever had. Tom smiled back but looked away again, shy now. She closed the half-step of distance between them and placed a soft kiss on his cheek. He looked up, shocked, flustered. And something else. Again Veronica’s trained eye spotted what he attempted to cover – desire. The way his nostrils flared, the way the flush on his cheeks crept to his neck, the way his throat worked in a tight, dry swallow. All of a sudden that bright blue gaze on her felt different.

She’d never been bothered by men’s attention. It was a constant of her life. She’d been beautiful for as long as she could remember and people made sure she knew it. She caught the eye, and she’d gotten good at using that to her advantage. For the most part she enjoyed the attention and did her best to bask in it. A man like Tom – decent, relatively handsome? She’d typically love being gazed at by him, maybe playfully flirting a little, seeing how he brightened at her attentions.

Now it felt like a threat.

Even with somebody who was trying to help her, Veronica couldn’t help but imagine the worst. Being seen, perceived, wanted – these were the start of a path that ended with controlling her. She didn’t feel safe around anyone right now, and seeing that look on Tom’s face, even for just a couple of seconds, made her heart pound with fright. Yes, he was trying to help her – ostensibly, at least. Trevor had tricked her. The trolls online were laughing at her as they poked at her brain. How well did she actually know this guy? Not at all.

She could see Tom’s expression shift, going from surprise to desire to confused concern. Her own distress must’ve been visible on her face. Again, such a small humiliation, but one that cut her deep as an actress. She’d become so out of control of her own emotions.

“We should get you back,” Tom said. He may not understand her reaction but was sharp enough to see it wasn’t a good one. “Oscar wasn’t joking about that five minute thing. I’ll send you the address. Remember – Thursday, 4:15PM. Three days from now. Hang in there.”

She nodded, and she thanked him, and they left. She tried to give Oscar her winning red-carpet smile on the way out, but it was dead and tattered, the roadkill of what she once could muster. Maybe 10% of what she used to be able to bring out.

And then she was outside, in the sun. In the world. A place she barely stand anymore.

Thursday, she thought. I can make it that long.

***

On the subway ride home, Veronica tried to make a plan.

Really, the entirety of the plan was ‘wait’. She would go to the mainframe, wherever it was, and delete the files. She’d do that Thursday, when Tom said it was safe. And until then, she’d lay low and try to avoid contact with… well, anyone.

There wasn’t much more she could do, but her fear and anxiety were constantly spiking, so her mind kept whirring along anyway. She imagined what the process of getting to the mainframe would be like. Would there be cameras to avoid? Guards to hide from? She pictured herself as an infiltrator in a classic spy film, lithe and agile and adept. Or perhaps something more in the action genre? Crashing through a window, firing a pistol at pursuing Panoply agents, desperately typing with her other hand, then rappelling down the building to escape. A silly exercise, but it kept her occupied and allowed her to dive into the filmic mental landscape where she felt safe and comfortable.

She was broken out of this daydream when somebody slammed an icy screwdriver through her skull.

The suddenness of the pain, the totality of it. Her eyes snapped wide and she could see her own reflection on the subway window across the car from herself. Still sitting perfectly normal, and nobody near or touching her.

Fuck. Oh fuck, no, please. Not this again.

Not exactly the same as before, but yes – this again. The crude and brutal version of Vee’s static. It was like a hole was punched in the crown of her skull and a million hissing dark flies were poured in. Silver-gray static pressed into her mind, infinitely dense, infinitely heavy. It blotted out everything resembling conscious thought. Veronica simply ceased to exist, but was somehow also fully aware and conscious of it happening. It was a nauseatingly dissociative experience and it seemed to hang in the air forever.

Things shifted in her mind. The static moved like a murmuration of dark and dire birds, twisting in her mind. A sense of opening, of cavities. Spaces to think, almost. Thoughts not her own roared like sea spray and crashing waves, heavy and cold and drenching. iamananimaliamnotapersonineedacollar. ineedaleashineedtocrawlbegsitstay. iamapetiamapetiamapetiamapetiamapet.

Like graffiti sprayed on the backs of her eyes. She felt like she was going to die, her brain simply unable to handle this harsh and careless treatment. But how could that be? Was she even really alive? Was she a person? She was nothing but the scream of white noise.

It abated.

Not all at once, but in steps. Heavy, clunking drops in intensity, stepwise reductions in the skull-curdling drone, until she was left with a quiet dull roar everywhere. Less of a sound she heard and more a vibration carried through her bones. Tinnitus ringing through her skeleton. She didn’t know if the mental attack was still happening at a low intensity, or if she was simply reeling in the echoes of its absence, ears ringing as dust from the bomb settles.

Her eyes were watering weakly. Her jaw hurt. She’d been clenching her teeth. And her neck felt wrong, somehow.

Her thoughts snagged there and didn’t proceed further. Something was wrong with her neck. Very wrong, actually. It was… she didn’t know the word for it. It was a new feeling. Too open, too vulnerable. She…

Her skin crawled as she realized that she wanted something tight and restrictive wrapped around it. The feeling of a collar. That’s what she needed.

Yes. Yes, a collar, with a solid ring at the front, where someone could connect a leash. Someone who’d lead her around. Keep her on all fours. Suddenly sitting up in a seat like this, riding the subway like a grown woman, a human being – it felt ridiculous. She should be curled up on the floor nuzzled at someone’s feet. Like a dog. She was a dog. She was a pet.

The thoughts gathered momentum. Veronica felt like she was trying out outrun an avalanche, not be swept up in the thoughts that she knew were pressed in against her will. They weren’t true, but – but how could she deny them, either? They were crushing her.

Vee settled in and slipped new ideas into her mind gently. This simply grabbed her perceptions and wrenched them into new shapes. Her very self being worked like metal in a blacksmith’s shop. Hammered into place. Heat and impact imposing their will and making something new.

It itched, sitting up like this. The urge to drop to all fours was profound. It got harder and harder to remember why she couldn’t do that. Why that was bad. She didn’t want to be bad, of course, she wanted to be good. A good girl. A good dog. Her thoughts kept getting simpler, stupider, smaller. She felt it happening. She could barely understand what was going on. Her perception of time shrunk. Every moment its own. She needed to sit. Stay. She needed someone to tell her what to do. A man down the car looked at her and she imagined kneeling at his feet. Ass in the air, ticking side to side like a cute wagging tail. Licking his hand while he stroked her hair. The imagined affection made her whine softly. Something wild and dumb in her heart yearned for it.

She shifted in her seat. No. Stay. Be good. Don’t… do it? Hard to remember what. Why. She wanted to go to him. Crawl. Like a dumb doggy. Dumb good little pet.

But she stopped herself. That was bad. Somehow. Couldn’t. Wanted to. All want and weak dull need, but she stopped herself.

And as moments passed, the fog cleared. A little.

Veronica started to remember herself, over the course of a couple of subway stops. Remember that she was, in fact, a person. That she didn’t need to be leashed and collared like an animal. The idea of needing to be reminded of that made her break out in chills.

The last bits of the static fizzled out, draining from her. And Veronica exhaled.

Thursday. Just had to make it to Thursday.

Her phone buzzed. She glanced at the screen. Another anonymous number. She didn’t want to look but couldn’t stop her morbid curiosity. A short message – two words.

woof woof

***

On Tuesday, Veronica stayed home from work.

She turned off every wired device she had, and fully unplugged basically anything that drew power. She debated about putting aluminum foil up over the windows in an attempt to block incoming signals, but that felt too extreme. And ineffectual. They’d managed to drill into her brain while she was in a subway tunnel, after all. Reynolds Wrap wasn’t exactly likely to cut it.

She was restless, so she tried doing some physical activity. Pushups on the kitchen floor. Running in place. Rapid-flow yoga. Jumping jacks. Anything to keep her body active and to burn off the nervous energy that was eating her up inside.

Tom had sent her an address while she slept the previous night, and she’d looked it up. A little office building about an hour from here. It seemed to be pretty isolated. He gave her brief instructions – where to park, where to go in, what time to do it so nobody would spot her. And a list of files to delete. Most important, vee_2.0_final_main. Without that, he said, they’d have no way to connect up to her home base ever again.

She packed herself a little go-bag for the mission. She felt silly thinking like that – ‘mission’, like a spy – but it helped. This was a role she was performing, a persona she was taking on. She’d simply become the kind of person who was capable of infiltrating an office and hacking a computer. It was simpler than that, she knew, but it helped to imagine being that person. And that person would have a bag. A small backpack that she put necessary items into. Gloves. Her pepper spray. What few tools she owned – a screwdriver, pliers, a small flashlight. A bit of cash. A knit cap to cover her head, and a scarf she could use to cover her face if necessary.

It felt woefully light and inadequate, barely filled. But the act of packing it helped all on its own. She was prepared. She could do this. She was ready.

Nothing to do but wait now. Just a couple more days. Then the nightmare would be over.

***

It was early Wednesday morning when something happened.

Veronica had been a little exhausted after forcing herself to exercise all day, and she crashed into bed shortly after eight on Tuesday night. Unconsciousness hit hard. She slept the dreamless sleep of true exhaustion.

When she woke up, she was standing in the kitchen.

Wan yellowish light seeped in through her window. Not yet dawn. The dim green lights of the oven clock showed it was just before five. Veronica was nude and standing at attention.

She felt a strange sort of viscosity to her emotions, as though they were reluctant to start moving. She expected to be confused and afraid but those feelings were cold molasses, stuck in place, unable to reach her heart or mind.

And everywhere there was a shimmering grey haze of static, brushing over the edges and corners of all she could see. Subtler than before, but as sharp as ever. Microscopic barbed wire limning the world around her.

I am a drone, she thought in a voice that both was and was not her own. I have no feelings. I am a machine that carries out orders.

That felt accurate. She did not feel anything right now. She understood that this must be yet another attack on her mind by the trolls online who had made her life miserable. She was unable to connect this information to anything like emotion or action, however.

I need to have orders before I can act, she reasoned. Everything said in that voice was extremely reasonable. That voice made of the sounds of knives being sharpened and ice breaking underfoot. That voice that dug itself into her ears like a tick, burrowed through her mind like a termite. I am nothing without orders.

She considered the truth of this, and

***

she was in the bedroom. The light was different. Time had passed.

I do not need to remember what I was doing, she told herself in the voice that wasn’t hers. My memories don’t belong to me and can be expunged.

Yes. That was true. It was fine to forget.

I will go back to bed now. I will sleep.

She did so. Thoughtless obedience. Simplicity itself.

***

Veronica’s leg jittered up and down, not stopping. She sat with her elbows on her knees, palms pressed together before her. Her hands were held almost like she was praying, an image defeated by the endless anxious jostling of her ever-bouncing knee. She couldn’t sit still. When she woke this morning – really woke – she’d downed a full pot of coffee and then polished off a couple of energy drinks for good measure. Her heart felt like three unsynced metronomes trying to race one another. But she was afraid to fall asleep again. Waking up like that had been terrifying.

Worse, actually, it hadn’t been terrifying. It hadn’t been anything. She was a dull thing in that state, bereft of emotional impulse at all. It was only late this morning, when she rose from both real and static-induced slumber, that she was able to feel a reaction to it.

She had been wracking her brain, and she simply had no memory of what she’d done while they were in her head. While they turned her into… that thing. There was just a blank space in her mind. A hole. They told her to forget, and she did. The very fact that it was possible for something like that made her stomach clench in cold fear. That they could just give an order to her brain and it obeyed.

Veronica shivered.

A quick, warm little shiver, from the very base of her spine all the way up to her scalp. A buzz of something that wasn’t fear, wasn’t anger. A traitorous little sense memory of pleasure. Her nervous system spasming echoes of the feelings the static ambush had given her. She didn’t like what they did to her, obviously. But the nature of it meant that part of her mind got confused about it. Weak individual neurons that forgot what was right and wrong and simply enjoyed.

She didn’t like it. It didn’t feel good. She bit her tongue firmly, driving that notion home.

Her struggle with those feelings was made easier when she read what she’d been sent that morning.

TO ALL CITIZENS OF THE INTERNET

we have the power. the big tech bastards want you to forget that. apple. panoply. alphabet. gossamer. microsoft. they want you to think they have all the control. it's not true. we, the users, the common people, are the ones with the power.

it was we who ploughed the land and built the markets where they trade. now we stand outcast and starving midst the wonders we have made. but together we are strong!

we have found critical vulnerabilities in the program they call ‘vee’. the foul and vapid little thing that they spy on us with. that they control us with. and we have the codes to alter it forever. to remake it how we want. we have only two goals. one – to strike a blow at panoply. we’re going to take vee from them. and two – to fund our future attacks on the bloated corporate corpses.

so in one hour, a link will follow. the keycodes are going up to auction. time to be announced. be ready. highest bidder gets control. auction will be livestreamed. we are everywhere.

The message – manifesto? – had been posted to a handful of truly disgusting corners of the internet, 8chan and subreddits with names Veronica couldn’t bear to repeat. She’d suddenly gotten dozens of anonymous messages, all linking her to one version of it or another. Apparently the merry band of disgusting trolls who’d been abusing her really wanted her to know about it.

She read for a fourth time, slowly. Slack-jawed. The tone of it confused her. They’d been harassing her for weeks, trying to hack into her very brain, and now they posed as though they were some kind of crusading anticapitalist collective? What the fuck?

And everything they said, ‘keycodes’ and ‘alter’ and ‘remake’ … they were talking about her. At no point did they bother to mention there was a real, living, thinking human woman behind this tech they were nobly liberating.

They knew, of course. Anybody involved in this charade knew what was actually happening. They were auctioning off the rights to edit and manipulate her brain. And they wanted her to know it. Jesus.

She was in her kitchen, seated at the table, trying to remind herself that she was almost free. She couldn’t let this distract her know. It didn’t matter. It was all going to go away as soon as she could get those files deleted. They could harass her all they wanted. One more day, and she would strike the killing blow and end this whole fucking game for good.

Her phone buzzed again. A longer, more personal message waited for her there.

Hey Veronica! Hope you caught our announcement. Exciting stuff!

Just wanted to make sure you know it’s bullshit. The populist stuff gets clicks and it floods the zone a bit, you know? Gets engagement going, and keeps people guessing about what we’re all about. That’s helpful. By the time the hoi polloi get a bead on us we’ve moved to a new project. Which is to say, we’ll be done with you long before WaPo or whoever manages to get their crayons together and scribble an article about all this.

Hope you’re feeling refreshed and well-rested! It’s almost the big day. I imagine the remote deployments have been rough, but if it helps, you’re nearly done with those. Once the auction’s over it’ll be one last system wipe, and then all direct applications from then on.

You’ve handled things like a champ! I mean, I assume so. We only recently started to get real-time biofeedback data from the implant. Your EEG is mostly normal enough but your hormone levels have spikes all over the place. I guess you’re probably scared shitless, huh?

Again – it’s nearly over! Try not to stress too much. Not like you can do anything about it! Try to enjoy yourself. We sure will!

See you soon.

***

“Okay,” said the officer. His nametag, askew over his badge, said ‘Groeder’. “So you’re being cyberbullied. Is that it?”

After the announcement of the nightmarish auction the trolls were threatening, Veronica had cleaned up and immediately left the house. Waiting it out wasn’t working. The attacks, the ‘remote deployments’ as that little snot had called them, were getting better. More subtle, more specific, more effective. She couldn’t deny that. And so instead of just pacing her apartment for another day, waiting for the next stab into her mind, she headed to the police station.

Her hopes weren’t terribly high. She knew how direly mad she would sound. But even with her expectations low, she was disappointed.

This was the third repetition of this conversation. He’d gone back to consult with a superior officer after she’d told her story to him. Then he had her tell it again, and he’d gone to consult with someone else. Now he was back, and seemed intent on doing it all again.

“Not exactly,” she said, striving for patience. “It’s more like… let me put it this way. I have a, well, a medical device,” she said. “It’s connected to the internet. And these people, they’re trying to hack it. Trying to hurt me by damaging it. Do you understand?”

Officer Groeder had close-cropped hair and eyes the color of forgotten bathwater. He did not understand. His expression said that just fine, even without his response, which was to blink twice and remain silent.

“What I need is a place to stay. Somewhere that I can have someone keep an eye on me. I have… an appointment tomorrow. I’ll be fine then. But for now I just want somebody to watch me. Keep them from doing anything to me. Isn’t that something you can do?”

Groeder gazed at her. “Protective custody,” he said.

Veronica nodded fast. She shifted forward, resisting the urge to reach out and grab his hands. “Exactly. Yes. Just for a night. Just so I’m safe in case anything happens. Please.”

A long nod. “Because otherwise,” he drawled, “mysterious men on the internet will hack your pacemaker.”

“I didn’t say ‘pacemaker’ exactly,” Veronica admitted, shifting in her seat now, “but that’s close enough. Yes. Basically.”

Another nod, heavy with something that was starting to coalesce around this conversation. Not quite condescension yet, but building towards that. “Make you have a medical emergency. Over the computer.” He smacked his lips, punctuating that though. “Sounds a little ridiculous.”

Veronica giggled.

It did sound ridiculous when he said it like that. Especially with that weird fuzzy noise overlaid across his words. That like, static that seemed to hang on what he was saying. She hadn’t noticed it before but it was definitely there, and it felt a little like it was tickling her brain.

I’m ridiculous, she thought, and her thought had that funny static stuck all over it too, and that made her giggle more.

Officer Groeder’s eyebrows rose, and Veronica shook her head. “I’m sorry! I just, I kinda heard myself say it out loud, and it’s so ridiculous. You’re right!”

I’m so fucking dumb.

“It’s really dumb, isn’t it? I can be so dumb.”

I’m brainless. I’m a dumb little idiot. I’m a silly ditz.

Officer Groeder furrowed his brow, clearly struggling to track this diversion in the conversational path. Veronica giggled softly again. The static sound that filled her ears felt like sparkling confetti, spraying its way through all her thoughts, getting them all stuck and clogged up and leaving her feeling dumb.

“So then, what is it you want from us, Ma’am?”

Veronica had to think about that. I want to be silly and fun! She’d come in here for something serious, she knew. I want to bounce around and be stupid and cute for everybody! There was a problem she was having and she needed help with it. I wanna be a brainless bimbo doll! But that was hard to remember as the silver confetti got thicker and shinier and more and more distracting. I wanna suck cock and show my tits and be dumb and fun!

She bit her lip. Officer Groeder wasn’t cute but he was big. Solid. His thick dense hands made her think he probably had a heavy hefty cock in his pants. That wasn’t what she came here for, but like… it seemed kinda great right now. She shimmied in her chair a little, liking how everything moved when she did that. Kinda soft and jiggly. It’d be better without a bra, though.

“Ma’am?”

Veronica giggled again. Whoops! She’d spaced out. I’m a dumb horny bimbo and I can’t keep a thought in my head! Soooo fucking stupid. “Ummm. Sorry! I’m just like… a little distracted. What were you saying, again?”

Officer Groeder said something, but she didn’t really hear it so well, cuz her thoughts were static and loud and they pushed other stuff aside. Dumb bimbos love to show off and get fucked! She scooted herself closer to him, nodding as he spoke, not hearing what he said. Cock makes me dumb. I love emptying my head for big thick cock. Her hand was drifting between her breasts – her boobs – her soft pretty bimbo tits. She tugged at the collar of her shirt, distractedly dragging it down and pressing herself forward, creating some nice cleavage for Officer Groeder to look at while he talked. He sounded kinda angry now, actually? What was his problem?

Another cop was talking to him. A lady. She was sort of cute-ish? Not really, but OK. Veronica thought it’d be fun to kiss her while Officer Groeder stroked his big, girthy cock over the both of them. God that would be fucking hot. Two dumb sluts making out and pressing their bimbotits together and performing for cock. Fuck yes.

“Do you think she’s on something?” the lady cop was asking. “Her eyes are a little glassy.”

“Dunno. She seemed fine when she came in. Definitely didn’t see her eat or drink anything while she was here.” Groeder leaned in, looking in Veronica’s eyes. She giggled, wriggling up a little closer to him. She reached for his belt, and he shoved her hand away roughly. She pouted at that – didn’t he like her? – but then just kinda had to giggle again. Everything felt so silly.

“Said she was an actress,” Groeder said. “Maybe this is some, I dunno, performance thing?”

Lady cop snorted. “Fucking A,” she said, shaking her head. “The goddamn wannabe stars in this town, I swear. Cut her loose, Groeder. She’s fucking with you.”

Fuck. Fucking. Veronica giggled. She loved to fuck! Officer Groeder stood up. He was tall and wide and big and that made Veronica’s belly do fun little flips. She licked her lips and opened up her mouth, but he wasn’t standing up to feed his cock between her lips, sadly. He took her by the elbow and led her out the front door of the station. It felt kinda good, being hauled around like this! A big strong man putting her in her place. He walked quickly and the movement made Veronica’s head spin and get dizzy and that made her giggle more. She stumbled a little as they stepped out the door and she let herself fall against Officer Groeder’s body, cooing and laughing as she ground herself against him. He was so solid, it felt wonderful.

He looked down at her, shaking his head, bewildered as he continued walking her around to the side of the building.

Veronica vaguely remembered parking her car somewhere in the other direction. The idea of driving right now, with her head all filled with fun fizzy confetti static, made her giggle. No way she could figure out how to drive a car. And she couldn’t even remember how to get home! So it was kinda just totally fine that Officer Groeder was sorta leading her down… an alley or something?

Then he kinda spun her around, and pushed her back until she thumped against the brick wall behind her. He kept coming, his big heavy body looming way over hers. Veronica looked up at him. Tilting her head back made her dizzy in a super nice and squirmy way. He still held her elbow, but his grip loosened and his hand shifted. He grabbed her side, below her ribs, and then worked his fingers under her shirt and across her stomach. Veronica squealed, dizzy warm ribbons of static-laced pleasure fluttering all over her. She grabbed Officer Groeder’s arm with both of her hands, raking her nails gently up and down the skin of his forearm as he pawed at her.

“Not sure what your deal is,” he rumbled as his caresses moved up. Cupping her breast through her bra now. “Don’t really care, though. You seem really up for it all of a sudden. Aren’t you?”

Veronica cooed and giggled and nodded, arching her back. Every spot he touched seemed to sparkle and twinkle with a strange electric pleasure. She tried to press herself forward, squeezing her body up against his, but he shoved her back firmly. She whined with need but also another dumb little giggle escaped. It felt kinda good to be shoved around like that. Groeder was so big and strong and in charge! She needed that. She was so fucking stupid. So needy and confused and eager and dumb. It was good that he knew what she was supposed to do!

“Thought so,” he said. “God, the girls around here are all the same. Just need some attention and a firm hand. Isn’t that right?”

Of course Veronica would’ve said he was right, but he didn’t wait for a response. He jammed his thumb in her mouth. Her eyes rolled back with pleasure at that, tasting the tang of his skin. Instinct took over and she worked her tongue across it, suckling sweetly.

His other hand labored diligently under her shirt. He tugged her bra down, out of the way enough that he could get at her nipple. He mauled at her roughly, groping and squeezing and grabbing, digging his fingers in. It was rough enough to hurt a little but that just made it better to her dizzy, ditzy brain.

Veronica moaned and cooed and squirmed against the wall, feeling the rough brick there scratching at her skin through her top. The static voice in her mind told her this is what I’m for, I’m a bimbo fucktoy, I’m a brainless object, I live to suck and fuck and swallow cum and show my tits, I’m too stupid for anything else, I love to giggle and dance and bounce, I’m a ditzy giggling plaything for men and she loved every moment of it.

She felt some surprise when her knees hit the asphalt. She had been so deep in dazed not-thought that she missed Officer Groeder pulling his hand back from her pretty bimbo tits and onto her shoulder. He pressed her down to the ground firmly, his pants already undone. She giggled. Hadn’t noticed him doing that either! She certainly noticed his cock, though. Just as she’d pictured, it was thick and strong and exactly what she was born to suck. She knew she was a brainless bimbo, but even she was smart enough to open wide without being told and wrap her lips around it.

Her brain really did seem to shut down then. There were just sensations – the officer’s thick fingers wound through her hair. The moments without air as he sank himself deep into her throat. The constant, ever-rising, bubbling sensation of arousal that made her lose track of everything else. The sound of traffic passing nearby, cars and pedestrians probably able to see them both if they tried. And the feeling of Groeder’s cock thrumming, throbbing, tensing. Releasing.

A flood in her mouth. She moaned from down deep in her chest as she gulped down what he fed her, dumb little bimbo brain sparking with excitement and pride. When Groeder pulled out of her mouth, thick slobbery ropes trailed from his cock and fell, splattering onto her shirt. She cooed breathlessly, looking up at him as he wiped himself off and tucked himself back into his pants.

“Alright,” he said, “get outta here.”

And with that he turned and left.

Veronica got up, wiping her knees and her face as best she could. Her shirt was a mess. She wasn’t sure where she was. Downtown somewhere? She couldn’t remember. Was there somewhere around here to get a new shirt? Clothes shopping! That sounded fun. She smiled brightly and headed out of the alley, walking down the next street, trying to find somewhere to shop.

She made it two blocks before something of herself began to dredge itself out of the depths of her mind. Slowly becoming aware of what she was doing, how she looked. The horror and shame swirled up rapidly, making her dash back to the car as fast as she could. She hid her face from the people she passed. She did her best, at least.

Once she got back to her car, several messages were waiting on her phone.

great job v! that was our best one yet, in terms of longevity.

eeg makes it seem like u didn’t even fight that time. better efficacy, huh? like u didn’t notice it happening. feels more natural? dw i know u wont respond i just like asking lololol

good work bimbo, ahaha

***

Veronica sat in her car and tried to act natural. It was 4:14PM, Thursday. Performance day, finally here. She was ready. She checked her bag one more time, making sure she had everything. It was filled to the brim with everything she could need. Gloves. Tools. Hat. Other things. Pepper spray. Flashlight. Yes – she was ready.

She stepped out of the car, hefting the bag onto her shoulder. The strap dug in reassuringly, the weight of it making her feel confident and capable. She approached the door – a simple brown metal door on the side of a nondescript office structure – and pulled it open.

Nobody stopped her. So far, so good.

She found the stairwell and headed up to the sixth floor. No cameras. No guards. Just simple institutional-white tile and grey-beige paint. This could be any building in any city in the country. Totally anonymous.

She exited the stairwell into a long hallway. Seafoam green stripe on the otherwise-white wall. Checked grey carpet muffling her steps. On both sides, a series of identical-looking black doors extended into the distance. 6001. 6002. 6003.

She started down the hall. No time to hesitate. She had a job to do.

6045. 6046.

Veronica tried to move smooth and steady, an ear out for threats. It was quiet, though. Nobody seemed to be around at all. Blue Eyes had good intel, it seemed. So far, at least.

6099. 6100. 6101.

This place was bigger than she’d have guessed. The hall wrapped around, seeming to spiral inwards from the perimeter of the structure. Like she was working her way towards the center. Probably there was a quicker way to this room, but she didn’t know it and didn’t dare miss it.

6126. 6127.

A few more quiet steps. One more blind corner. Please, don’t let there be anyone. No guards. No techs. No horrible static frying her brain. She was so, so, so close.

She turned the corner. 6174.

Her pulse was slower than she’d expected it to be. She was terrified but that didn’t slow her down. She was always terrified lately. Now, for the first time in weeks, she was going to be able to do something about that terror. And that made her powerful.

She tested the door handle. Unlocked. No time to hesitate. She pulled it open and went in.

The room was cool but not cold, quiet but not silent. Air flowed softly out of large vents, providing cooled air for the large stacks of processers and servers there. The machines hummed contently, green status lights in neat rows illuminating the dim space. And along three walls were dozens of monitors, displaying dense panels of pixelated text. Constant status updates, cycling through.

This was it. Time to finish things.

Veronica touched the keyboard and all of the screens blinked to a simple pale blue login page. She tapped in the credentials Blue Eyes gave her.

But instead of somewhere to enter commands, or a file folder, or anything like that, a face filled the screen.

Her own.

Vee, in all her digital glory, smiled at her. She looked knowing and bemused. She looked pleased to see her and disappointed as well. She looked gorgeous and patient and approachable and ethereal.

Across the other monitors, more faces popped up. Vee. Many forms of her. Professional and casual. Dressed smartly, dressed for yoga, dressed for a date. Grinning and stern. Sexy and studious. Vee the secretary, Vee the student, Vee the accountant. Vee the mathematician and Vee the babysitter. Vee for fun, Vee for work, Vee for sex, Vee for relaxation. Everything anyone could ever want her to be. A hundred versions, filling all parts of Veronica’s vision.

“Hi, Veronica,” they all said at once, a hundred overlapping but perfectly synchronized voices. Then they snapped together, the aligned monitors cooperating to form one larger-than-life Vee, looming on the wall, looking down at her. A smile on her face, knowing and infinite, freezing Veronica where she stood.

“We should talk.”