Vignettes from a Corporate Family

Vignettes from a Corporate Family

Chapter 1 - A Gilded Cage

It certainly didn't seem like the place to start any sort of corporate dissent. Just a summer pool that converted into skate rink for a few weeks every winter. Somewhere in the middle were three men and a lady, seemingly enjoying the sun.

A lanky old Hispanic spoke up first. "They got you huh" A rotund Chinese man snapped back. "You're one to talk, Rodrigo. They got you too."

"Lighten up, Francis." A Dominican built like a monk and even named Monk tweaked his sunglasses down to stare at his bickering friends. "They got us all good. And anyway where IS Chen?"

Francis (for that was what the chubby 40ish guy called himself) shrugged. "Too busy pounding the streets with Lipkinski. Some young dood he picked up from... I mean, in... logistics. Sent us his wife to apologise and accompany us again. Honestly, Monk... a corporate town this big is still hard to stay discreet in."

The brunette smiled dazedly, sloshing the waters near the edges of her swim bed. "I did think it was a good day for sunbathing. So I figured I'd come for the occasion."

Monk dropped his sunglasses and gazed upon Sheila's form... tanned Amazonian goddess.... then put his glasses back on. "Yeah, Chen was one of the first generation that put its backs into building this town up. I'd say he's entitled to that."

Rodrigo piped up. "Well, the pay is good..."

Francis yelped. "But it's in Arendtcoins! Sheila, would you kindly tell this gentleman what Arendtcoins are?"

Sheila's started whirring faintly for a few seconds... "Arendtcoins are a corporate currency used to facilitate assignments of resources within the Arendtcore family both as a corporate entity as well as within the corporate town of Little Sanctuary, Minnesota. This information is credited to Wikipedia."

Rodrigo deadpans. "Sheila, would you kindly tell this gentleman what 1000 Arendtcoins goes for currently in US dollars and where that roughly puts Arendtcore as a employer?

Sheila took a few more seconds to process this... "the current exchange rate at the Arendtcore Corporate Store for employees is 1000 Arendtcoin to 175 point 33 US dollars. Based on 2080 comparisons across the New United States of America, Arendtcore pays its employees better than 99% of other companies of similar size."

Francis stuttered "but they probably expect us to keep buying stuff from them. Isn't that the point of a corporate store?"

Rodrigo deadpanned. "Everything is designed to Lighten your wallet faster if that were the case. I'm still wearing shirts I bought decades ago and boots that still sing lullabies to my feet after years of weekend and holiday hikes. That's not cheap corporate crap is it?"

Francis whimpered. "But that Arendtcore logo from the early days was so cringe... I saw it on the corporate store when they reissued it on our free 60th anniversary kit and it looked so archaic."

Martin sighed. "Resorting to emotion when you've lost on fact is the defence of a debate loser. Besides, most of us wear ours with pride! Now can we ease up on the lookup tennis before we have to explain to Chen exactly why we're buying him dinner tonight?"

Chapter 2 - This much effort for jack shit?

Somewhere deep in Little Sanctuary, an interloper popped open a hatch and gently bounced into the entry lobby of a server... the hacker had scanned a few thousand Little Sanctuary servers and lucked into this particularly odd group of servers that connected deep into Arendtcore. possibly a top honcho's home workstation or external fileshares lazily added to the company's systems either behind the back of or over the heads of the IT security staff. This would be so profitable, he mused, wondering what could be had once he broke into Arendtcore proper.

the first sign he should have been more careful was when he crashed into the initial entry layer, He had sworn that the port was going to stay open... what he hadn't accounted for was how it kept randomizing across the surface he was trying to pass through. no, not just pseudorandomly... there was almost a strange sort of.... true randomness in whatever the heck was calling the shots, like an actual unbiased bingo game set.... it took several painful slams into ports closing at the last moment before he'd wiggled his way in.

What kind of devious maniac could have have done this?

The butterfly was a beautiful purple and black as it fluttered across Elliot's closed eyes, his body casting ripples of shadows across the lawn alongside splashes of torn grass. On his ears, he wore a chunky pair of headphones, designed to somehow incorporate a music player within it. Mother Ammi had calmly handed him a music cartridge she had personally burnt and cracked the writeprotect tab on, along with the headphones, after their second dance practice session.

He suddenly opened his eyes right as the butterfly flew around, right in front of his face.

The Gdanzeland people did not follow many of the scales, beats or even sensibilities of Western or African music. They had slowly come up with forms the same way they always had, just sampling from mother nature and coming as close to it as they could in their art... their music, their dance, their sculptures.

It was beautifully ethereal. It was also wickedly random. A watcher process could do terrible things eavesdropping on the motion data from a little boy doing the Y'tole Lemme basic forms for practice... seed a random number generator that breathed down the neck of true randomness, for example. And that could be used for other nefarious deeds like...

He did not like it. The server map had promised a straight short route from here into Arendtcore. So why had it come to this? He was now running on some sort of hexagonal patterned carpet that already felt all wrong just from its look, having opened a door that for some inexplicable reason had become a sort of wooden elevator door.

"No problem, I'll just turn around and choose-" the interloper paused.

The elevator call buttons were gummies. No, not the soft smooshy type of switches they used on some throwaway cheap modern consumer stuff - actual soft candy rounds of jelly carefully tossed in sugar...

As if to emphasise something or other, the interloper stared as a pair of lips appeared around then started chewing on the gummies, making a soft set of purring noises, before burping... "What are you looking at, perv? Show's over. Get going before I call the Groo on you!"

As if on cue, the other lift doors opened, revealing... something indescribable, standing in a dark hallway, lit dimly and occasionally by bursts of erratic electrical lighting.

The interloper couldn't even begin to describe what it was. What he knew was that he didn't want to be right next to it. And as the distance between the doorway and the Indescribable grew smaller with each flash of lighting, he realised he could do only one reasonable thing.

He started running. This was going to start eating at his neural coherence if he over did it and was usually just reserved for emergency... well this was an emergency.

He kept going and going... perhaps he may have gone too far. He collapsed just an inch or two from the door at the end of the hallway he'd been trying to reach. Only the safeties in his gear had cut him off before he'd burnt the last embers of his NC...

He was going to have one hell of a vacation with the proceeds of this heist. Somewhere away from the dour Scottish gloom. Provencal, perhaps... he'd always wanted to try real wine and real food from a people who hadn't ruined their own farming...

That silly thought stabilised him as he grabbed the doorknob and pushed himself through and into the next room

The interloper blinked again. And again. No. This room had forced a monochrome filter over his eyes and for some reason it disrespected even the emergency releases these virtualizations had normally. Still, it seemed safe... just a dark room, with a warm comforting sofa in front of a older pre-Despotic Years ... television set, that was what his pawpaw had always called them was it?...

He sat down on the sofa and as if on cue the TV started playing an old toy commercial for some doll named "Build It Bailey". It was oddly comforting as the singsong cheerfully announced the special qualities of the toy: a near-authentic overalls and shirt like those worn by construction workers of the era, right down to the mud stains. Several varieties of doll hair color. A very basic AI that did two things: it dispensed random construction-themed sweets if you told Bailey he was "neat", and launched into an animated song and dance about whichever tool the doll came packed with out of a possible 7.

As the interloper stretched a little, feeling better after a few loops of the ad had given way back to white noise, he noticed three things:

1. The door he had come in through was gone. 2. There was no other obvious way out. 3. There was a brand new condition Build It Bailey doll next to where he was sitting

The interloper considered his options, slowly deciding that he would take the L it needed by getting ejected automatically by the server's own timeout detection, in about 2 minutes. He looked at the doll... then decided to just have fun anyway. "I think you're pretty neat, Mr Bailey..."

"Thanks mate, have sweet. My dear mama freshly made." The doll fished in its overalls and handed the interloper a small cake of sorts shaped like a toy screw.

The interloper eyed the cake suspiciously - everything in this system was a representation of something. This could be a trap, or it could be... delicious? He blinked as he realised his body had just bit down on it without much pause. The faint texture of cranberry sauce on buttered shortbread lingered on his breath and fingers, crumbs on the sofa.

He wept... then bawled as the server finally called time and kicked him out totally. All that work for just a cranberry shortbread biscuit!?

.... it had been the best biscuit he'd ever tasted, real or virtualized, mind.

Chapter 4 - A Directed, Soundtracked and narrated past

Stephan Alberg gritted his teeth furiously as he re-read the judicial judgement that had signalled only the beginning of his reputational downslide. He had managed to prove that the allegations of him being too handy with had been fabricated - he was free of the lie... or rather he should have been. In Hallerwood, lies like that had a habit of forever fouling one's career, even when one had proven themselves genuinely innocent by alibi, kept evidence and even investigative work that had placed the director's wife far far away from him when it had supposedly happened. She had continued the lie, and it would take time to litigate her out of his misery, even with the lower standards imposed in a civic trial (that he clearly could pass when it had been a criminal court case held against him by bribed officials)

Stephan sighed and sat down in his trailer. It had seen better days, but he had redirected craft and food services fees towards fighting what many had thought was a losing defence. The conditions reflected that neglect - he had piled up dirty laundry, and he had been living on food that had been far from healthy. Stephan had counted on the return of people to his door, begging him to produce their vidflix once again, even just short half-hour flix intended for the home streamer. He would NOT lower himself any further to doing nasty little five-minute or two-minute shorts...

Stephan opened another small bag of chips and wept. Perhaps he should just give up altogether, resettle in another place with a good film industry. Europe had several smaller but thriving places. India was rising. the Zealands had their own share of the home video and theater pies... Or even worse, he could just sell this trailer, walk out for good, and vanish into some other career. He'd always wanted to try his hand at book illustration. The earlier he decided, the more resources he had left over even after his hard won fight for justice that he could throw at his choices. And the clock was ticking - the later he'd left it, the less room he'd have to maneuver and refuse offers...

There was a knock on the door. The Craftwerks trailer park had a base level of services onto which various services could be tacked. It was all he could do to afford the basic rental which gave him the trailer space, a sparse amount of power, water and basic sanitation, and a listing by which others could find him in the filmography trades. That listing also doubled as a way to reach him with physical mail. In this case, a slightly thick handwritten letter. The envelope was pale blue, and a monogrammed logo had been stamped on it with a cursive "M.K." into a blob of dark blue satin wax, denoting it had been sealed somewhere, and delivered all the way to his doorstep. The M.K. could only belong to one actor he'd helped out a lot ages ago, back when he could afford to be generous with his advice and even his seed funding. Some of it had backfired, some of it had paid off... Martin Krauffer was a little autistic, but he had become a great director and kept his name up in lights for over three decades...

Then the little crazed man had suddenly announced he had a major new project that would change things, and fell right off the face of the earth. many had fondly remembered his lunacy, but in this town, they forgot you mostly after a matter of months. You vanished for almost everyone but the connoisseurs of fine film after a year or two.. Oh sure you could maybe have a comeback in the right circumstances - this was a weird town, but if you didn't keep your name up in visibility somehow, walking off the set was tantamount to a sort of suicide. It really hadn't been his own choice to commit said suicide, but he'd been so stressed gathering everything he needed to set the record straight, that his reputation had clearly withered away anyway from neglect even if he hadn't become vilified.

So what, really, was Martin Krauffer doing, summoning him? The director had suddenly written this letter with the wax seals and all... even spent extra postage on just writing his name and general state location down and leaving it to the postals to look up the local trades and find his name somewhere in the listings. Stephan hadn't exactly made himself very easy to find... Dear Stephan,

It delights me so very much to hear that you have beaten the nasty and unfounded allegations. It has been a year since the judgement, I understand. You must be wallowing in so much work right now, the world now embracing you without the stench of those odious claims...

Or maybe you aren't exactly that fortunate. I do recall how many such good people fortunate to clear their names still don't clear the air enough to return to employability, or they may remain in a continued vendetta by those who got them into unemployment in the first place. Or perhaps... you aren't really as innocent as they claim, and only the high standards of criminal prosecution have spared you a prison term or fines... but not the continued opprobium of your peers.

I refuse to make such judgements. What I remember is a dazzling producer who could put together a great movie on the budget given, the people given, and the sets allowed. A man who lifted me up back in the good old days. It was such a shame we never got to work together before I left for Brazil.

I'd like to change that. I appreciate I'm not really helping much with the luggage allowances and the class of plane I've booked, but nobody has business or first class seats on the routes to Raijin Cove but the extremely monied on private flights... still, if you would kindly give me at least a few days of your time, I'd like to meet you on the set of that strange endeavor I once prided myself on joining. I am still lacking in regrets, and I want to share my good fortune with you, if you'll only let me.

Tickets attached on the next weekly flight path from California to Brazil and onwards to Raijin Cove. I look forward to your favorable reply, that is to say, meeting you in person. It is the least I can do for you now after all that you have done for me.

Yours in anticipation, Martin Krauffer Arendtcore HC Studios - Raijin Cove - Unit 3 Stephan Alberg blinked, then checked and found a slowliner ticket. Lacking in luxury, Martin had said. This was clearly bullshit - there were three reasons you took a slowliner into the skies - the high quality of services during the prolonged flights, the ability to reach places that could never host a Boeing takeoff or landing in any size airliner, and the immense economy of such a flight relative to a powered airliner.

Twelve days later, a slowliner touched down in the strange Chinajapese protectorate of Raijin Cove... home to a peculiar strain of creativity simultaneously embraced and yet also terrifying those who would take in its productions. He shrugged as he walked out of the lift that carried passengers into and out of the slowliner. Stephan's luggage contained several days of clothing that he'd managed to get laundered in the skies (part of the room service even at inner stateroom level), as well as a few favors.

It was time to see why Martin Krauffer had dragged his beaten down posterior all the way to this strange take on Casablanca. Hopefully it wasn't drugs.

He would soon find out it was something far better. And far worse.

Just as he always had done before committing, Stephan had arrived a day ahead of his announced date of arrival, in order to case the joint that he would potentially be working at. He walked around, spoke to the locals, bought several rounds of the local main brew of choice Tsingtao Jiazui - a German style pilsner, flavored with a few legal but questionable additivies for an added kick.

To his credit, Stephan had stopped drinking it after the effects of his first draft, and now stuck to chilled chrysanthenum tea, which was known as a cheat that lacked the mule's kick of the brew, but not its warm yellow color when properly brewed and iced overnight. But that brew had loosened tongues, and he was impressed by what he'd put together.

The studio was constantly utilized most hours of most days. Aside from a few big sound stages, most production was done in the same trailers as in Hollywood, except upmodded to keep things dry and cool in them despite the heat and moistness of Raijin Cove. The compound was of similar size as other classic studios he'd worked at, but slightly larger to support a bigger pre- and post-production phase.

Much like the rest of the cove, they used a mix of English, Chinese, Japanese and Brazilian dialects to communicate their work needs and activities - if you knew at least one of those languages, there was possibly a place for you within its hallowed fencing. Some productions would call for other languages as well, and there was also always room for linguists in several other European and Asian languages specifically within the compounds of HC Studios...

The tech level was also bumped up several notches relative to most of Brazil - this was a sort of tech corridor as well - your modern smartdevice would do comms properly to the rest of the world, the water and sanitation were world-class, though the power occasionally cycled into brief moments of outage, Endeavors requiring more stable power were advised to pack a UPS in the middle to smooth out said glitches for durations of up to a day or two. The Chinajapese Empire was assisting the Brazil government to fix this small black mark on what was proving to be a very promising Free City governed away from the strictures of Brazilian law mostly. There was even talk of building actual apartments and purely-for-living homes at scale through a larger piece of the Cove.

The sky was the limit. And Stephan felt like he'd walked into a good place. Enough delays. Time to let Martin know he'd availed himself of his offer.

The gate guard had called for a cloth-roofed jalopy as soon as he'd produced the letter Martin had sent him. As they traversed a myriad of trailers, Location Houses, and various types of set houses, Stephan marvelled at how especially busy the studios were. Every street had at least some cargo transferring, gear being prepped, or even a sleepy FX artist tired from too many hours trying to make a effect work either on computer or as a practically deployed trick.

Eventually the jalopy dropped him in front of a subcompound of sorts filled with lots of the same things, just enclosed and in smaller numbers compared to the outside of the chain fencing. Just how big was Martin Krauffer in this town, Stephan had wondered... He took a deep breath and rang the bell button on the large gate in front of him, noting the use of "M.K - Unit 3" on a placard on one of the gate bollards.

He would get in. but getting out would eventually prove to be much harder. Not necessarily for unpleasant reasons, mind you....

Chapter 5 - The good Director And The Doctor of Unit 3

Martin Krauffer was playing a lute to a very young woman. She couldn't have been more than 18. In fact, given her gamine, youthful looks, it was quite possible her existence was on the wrong side of those tracks. Martin didn't care, he'd looked very fulfilled.

Stephan Alberg stumbled into this peaceful picture on an emptied out set, closed apparently for lunch - when these people had leisure they really went hard. A normal set would always have quite a few folks working at any time even during lunchtime except on special occasions. Here, it was just the director who had demanded his presence enough to pay for his slowliner fare both ways, in case Stephan found out that he did not want to be part of Unit 3 and wanted back home to Hallywood to slowly die in silence, and a short-haired brunette minx in workout pants and a sleeveless, collarless T-shirt. The girl turned her head to look at Stephan... "Martin, dear? we have visitors."

Martin stopped in mid lute riff, putting it back in its case. "Oh, do we now, Minnie? Why, it's Stephan Alberg. The man who helped make me all those years ago... here to see if he has a life in the Cove with us..." He got up and clapped hands on Stephan's arms, beaming happily. "We will make you a happier man than those bastards in Hallywood ever have. But where are my manners? you must meet the man who keeps us all healthy in this tropical hotzone... Doctor Selmuhng? Doctor Selmuhng... we have a visitor who needs your innoculations!" A tired old man shuffled out of a nearby trailer in a worn doctor's coat, smiling. "And I keep telling you never to wake me up at lunchtime. a lot of us do want our siestas." Doctor Selmuhng paused to take stock of Stephan, before nodding. "Ah... just a word of advice, newcomer, I need you to visit my trailer during work hours at least once during the next few days. Raijin Cove has been mostly domesticated but we still get the occasional nasty in our veins and... well, it's a pain in the ass to have to medevac anyone out of this town when we only have two copters to fly people out of here immediately to the nearest hospital... three hours away."

Stephan looked relaxedly at the doctor. "And I don't suppose you have some... shot that can help keep us safe?" He asked, the heat and moistness of the local climate sapping most of his ability to worry.

Doctor Selmuhg nodded. "I do, but it has a pretty narrow window between being effective and being potentially deadly to half the crew here on top of the local pathogens. So they couldn't just plonk a bunch of syringes in a box and tell us to look after ourselves... That is why I'm here: to titrate the shots into an effective level for each and every unique individual in this little camp. I also act as your local GP as well... you can't be entirely sure you can trust the doctors outside this studio not to bilk your insurer with ineffective treatments or oversized bills your insurer will balk at for one reason or another."

as if on cue, misters opened up for a minute, spraying the air as if to bring down the humidity and the temperature to a slightly more comfortable level.

Stephan shook the Doctor's hand. "I'll visit your trailer after 2pm then?"

Selmuhg nodded. "Certainly, I have no appointments today at that time slot. Get it done, then get to work in this camp."

Stephan accompanied Martin as he showed off the facilities around his share of the studio compound - a few key sets for some commonly shot types of scene, a lightbox that dynamically glowed and provided keying data for post production for certain shots, one or two very large classic sound stages that could be converted into one of the other kinds of set if necessary. the usual lighting and crew support facilities... Stephan had noticed quite a lot of people walking around were accompanied each by fair maidens, none of who could possibly be older than 40, and most were probably half that age or even less.

Perhaps Raijin Cove had discovered how to fight back the demographic disaster that the world was facing... He needed to get some of that himself... He was a gentleman, but even he had needs himself, Stephan had mused.

Martin finally came to a cargo lift lodged in a shaft entirely on its own, shaded in its waiting area. "Now you'll notice some weird shit in this place..." Martin noted as he ushered Stephan into the lift. "We do keep a few normal camera drones around, but none of the bigger rigs... we seem to be exceptionally light on acting crew, and we don't have a union representative office." Martin pulled the manual shutter across the front of the lift and punched a call button that sent the ceiling-less cargo lift travelling down the shaft.

Stephan nodded slowly as the lift descended with a surprising alacrity. "I had noticed. Is that due to the permissive environment this Cove seems to have for many odder... behaviors?"

Martin shook his head as the lift stopped three basement floors down, motioning Stephan to follow him along the cool, dry corridors, kept somehow that way despite being deep in the dirt of a tropical jungle, like some sort of secret military base. He walked up to a set of double doors. "that's the root of it, yes, but the answer in detail lies behind these doors... And with that he threw open the door to a bizarre place.

Stephan had been in prop storerooms before, and this had seemed to be one partly... but he also noticed lots of very lightly dressed people of various ages and genders and ethnicities lining the walls and lying down in racks, all of them individually tarped with transclucent plastic, each of them tagged up with various sorts of data. Two technicians were at one of the myriad of tables down the middle of the long corridor, discussing something over a naked brunette woman. It was not a living breathing human woman- her lungs had halted completely, and a small sliver of flesh had retracted away beneath her large-areolae 32DD breasts, exposing a series of memory cards and circuitry.

"And you say they only sent us two of these?" "I'm afraid so, the client was a cheapskate." "We can't take the bigger risks on the shoots for this particular client. Tell the Unit manager that we don't recommend the lion fight scene number 353 or the mega orgy scene number 662 on this since we have less spares for damages and more downtime for repairs projected."

Stephan blinked hard, these people were discussing shoot scheduling over... something that was not entirely human... "What the hell, Mr Krauffer.... what is all this stuff? I've produced many films over the years, but I've never seen such sophisticated props..."

Martin chuckled. "That's our dirty little secret, Stephan... we make memories for premium androids. Our upper subsidiary sends three or four of a unique robot, and a Psychoanalysis from their programmers, and we stage the scenes they specify with some room for creative uniqueness in each take... then we take the surround footage and run it through the premium androids and send back the two with the most response and neural generation from the shoots... and the rest become either spares or bit actors in other shoots...."

Martin watched as two techs with smart tablets carefully tapped away, watching a young boy carefully lick a lollipop while sitting in a sort of generic bodysuit. After a short while, the boy suddenly stood at attention and froze, allowing the techs to carefully relieve his lollipop before stuffing him into a container box labelled "Shoot: MARV-00430-Unit 02 - Shoot In Progress, do not ship out of Studios" and having a carrier drone slowly cart him away further into the rows of storage racks.

Martin smiled a little. "It's an interesting challenge turning out this much quality footage on a first-person view basis... yes, we wire them up to act as the very cameras in our productions rather than trying to approximate stuff with careful camera drone placement. But they never tire as long as we keep them charged, they'll never complain about taking 200+ retakes in our quest for the perfect memory, and more often than not we're surrounded by beautiful people and creatures of all kinds. When you're spending enough on a custom android to request this level of memory forging, it's usually never with visual beauty as an afterthought."

Stephan wanted to start yelling "what the hell" and storm out of this room and even out of Raijin Cove proper, but something seemed to be restraining him besides mere decorum and politeness... He rubbed his head briefly and then he saw it - two of the androids that had been set aside for bit acting or future use. He approached them slowly, murmuring a name...

"Cecilia..." But it couldn't be her. Her hair was almost the same prussian blue as the director's wife who had almost ensnared him. that same feminine beesting nose, those thin but rounded lips... her sybaritic face framed in a bob haircut that went from the top of her head to the edges where her arms and shoulders met.... her hips, her breasts, the same approximate size as Cecilia's had been. The moles were missing of course, and her belly was more washboard... but it was very much the same woman he'd been accused of molesting, even though he'd tried his hardest not to give in and get his paws all over, he had loved her so very much before he'd discovered that she was going to only hurt him again...

Stephan shook his head after a minute and continued walking and examining the rest of the storeroom, pretending the brunette in particular held no special interest for him... but he wasn't fooling Martin, who had briefly stopped to scribble some notes in his communicator. After a while, he decided the cavern was becoming too claustrophobic and had Martin escort him back up to ground level to leave the cargo lift shaft, watching as an extra set of doors swung up as a preventative measure against flooding in these jungles.

He felt oddly dizzy, and upset as well. Perhaps a visit to the doctor would be in order, aside from the recommended vaccine, he mused as he lurched away towards the doctor's offices

The two techs looked on in envy at their new work. They had both been through this phase before weeks or months ago. In fact, everyone in the studio who wasn't lucky enough to be in love with a real woman had been through it with satisfying results in virtually all cases.

One of the brunettes that Stephan had taken a fancy to had been stood up at attention, a panel retracted beneath her breasts. They had figured out bits of his past, drawn from one that had been a source of both pleasure and pain to him, and were now reprogramming the brunette to function as his adoring, truly loyal Cecilia, not the grubbing beauty trap harridian who had ruined his career in Hallywood.

Everyone in here was a badly damaged man in the film industry. Everyone was an incredible creative. This was the gift Arendt HistoryCreate Studios had set aside to specially bait all these hurt vidflix teamsters into producing the best first-person footage ever, and only one person would see the finished footage ever on each campaign of shots.

The ersatz brunette twitched a little. "Stephan, you seem tense tense tense tense tense-" Her voice slowly oscillated up through several octaves until one of the techs sighed and cut her power, causing her eyes to flicker as she fell silent again in mid-test. These people were all earnest, but they were not exactly anywhere near Bellamy Arendt in terms of competence with android programming. Still, they hoped their earnest well-wishes would fill the gaps in their knowledge...

The nurse had been nice to look at, Stephan would admit. it made the prophylaxis and basic doctor's visit easier, as he nursed the rawness of his freshly administed monthly vaccine while clutching a small bottle of rum. It didn't seem quite like the sort of thing a doctor ought to be prescribing in this day and age, but Doctor Selmuhg assured him that it had surprising medicinal qualities as a product of Raijin Cove's pharma and brewing microindustries. He would take the doctor at his word and drink it, especially as the Doctor had promised he would get another bottle every time he came in for a valid re-up on his prophylactic vaccine. It was one way to keep people from dying of whatever nasties this climate harbored, Stephan mused.

He walked into what had been designated as both the daily canteen as well as the mess on weekends, looking for a bite to eat. He had heard good things about the Thursday night buffet that was laid out for staffers and special visitors to this little studio, certainly a safer alternative than whatever random experiments were out there in the stalls and cafes... He helped himself to his usual of one handful of potatoes, one handful of chilled fruit, and one handful of some meat that was definitely real beef, plus some matching cutlery. He skipped the mulligawtny soup, it had seemed like overkill on top of the roast beef.

Stephan sat down and began to eat alone... but he would not be left alone. A voice he had long grown to associate with disaster in a courtroom after a whirlwind few weeks of torrid romance spoke up next to him."Mind if I join you?" Stephan looked up and down at the brunette who had accosted her with his own plate. "Certainly, Miss...?" "Cecilia Adams."

Stephan closed his eyes... the Director's wife who had ruined him was a Cecilia, but not an Adams. Still, old feelings began to simmer as the lady sat down next to her in her floral minidress and straw hat, removing the hat had in turn caused a small head of black hair to spill out. "Cat got your tongue?" She suddenly asked...

Stephan shook his head quickly. The Cecilia-Not-Adams lass continued eating, occasionally making conversation with him and him alone, making him feel once again like the centre of the universe. What had been a planned done-in-thirty-minutes-with careful chewing meal slowly became an hour long mix of talking and sharing their meal. It had seemed like a tragedy when it finally had to end.

"So uhm... when will I see you again, Cecilia?" Stephan had been a little too forward and honest about how he felt about this lass who had slammed headlong into his loneliness and put the first of what would become many holes into its hull.

She massaged her jet black hair a little with her finger tips. "I don't know... I just arrived three months ago at Unit 3. Today was my tenth shoot since."

"Newcomer, just arrived in the Cove only yesterday," Stephan had blurted out. He had hoped he would get a producer spot in Unit 3 so that he could work under Martin Krauffer as if entranced by a mix of loyalty and appreciation for getting him this possible source of income and even a way back into the credits of some new production. Sadly for Martin, Stephan had mused in a warm buzzy feeling, it was now just as likely he would root to get into Unit 3 for this... Cecilia...He shook his head again, a slight throbbing from what he assumed was the recent prophylaxis he'd gotten. Hopefully it would not recur next month...

Cecilia version 2 stood at attention as one of the techs unbuttoned the front of her dress and carefully eased her bra open from the front, slowly mouthing the words he needed to say. "Cecilia 2. Would you kindly expose your control panel?"

The soft flesh beneath Cecilia 2's pert modest breasts slid in and upwards into the recesses of her chest, exposing her electronics without any sign that she was aware of her true nature. The tech typed at an adjacent computer, setting it up to take some audio input. Then he entered a command into the console.

Cecilia's panel flashed lights briefly, before she started chanting a seemingly random series of numbers. These were actually the sequences of vocal patterning and motions she had made in front of Stephan, as well as codified values of how he had responded. As she recited the numbers without any emotion at an even clip, the computer slowly built up a profile of Stephan, and a matrix of possible and ideal responses that Cecilia could offer to Stephan in future interactions...

"There's got to be an easier way to build these personalities," one of the techs lamented.

"A larger dataset informs a larger set of possibilities. It's not quite up to what our coding God all the way up there in Minnesota does, but I think this is pretty decent as emulations go..."

"we NEED to automate this stuff more. I don't care what you say about it needing to remain artisanal, there is no way we can scale it up." "well, do you anticipate a regular flood of lonely young men into our offices?" "..." "I thought not. Real love is something they've waited a long time for. They can wait another few days." This final response had been pushed over with a startling lack of irony or self-awareness, given what they were doing in this deeper basement beneath the props storeroom.

After half an hour of droning about nothing but numbers, Cecilia fell silent as the computer finished determining how best to satisfy Stephan Alberg in Cecilia 2's future interactions with him, spitting out a few data slats that would replace the generic testing program that had been run against him in the cafeteria. The technicians got to work, ripping out the test program's slats and replacing them with the new customised personality, as well as replacing her battery with a new 30-day power cell and making sure her new digester system was working properly. Then they sealed up Cecilia 2's control panel with a custom hard-to-see sealant designed to make her fully water-proof down to an unreasonable depth that would never possibly happen when the only river and beach waters accessible in this region only went to about a hundred metres at most.

They would only need to open her back up every so often to fetch detailed logs, maybe once a month. The techs took a deep breath and... punched the final sequence of commands to cut her off completely from the project mainframe, and make her come alive in a few minutes... for a few more minutes, Cecila 2 behaved robotically, grabbing her assigned luggage and walking in a sinuous manner to the lift that would take her from this secret basement floor to the ground level, before following a preprogrammed path in the middle of the night without actual sight, into a newly set out and furnished trailer, which had been nothing but an empty spot only two hours ago. There in the trailer, she halted, taking no further actions until about 6.43am the next morning. She whirred down slowly, awaiting her new life in the studios as Stephan Alberg's new assistant and lover...

Stephan had a pleasant surprise as he got out of the visitor's trailer he'd been assigned for at least the duration of his visit to Arendtcore HC Studios. Standing somewhere in the godrays of the morning sun, a bob-haired woman had stood out in the open, carefully brushing her teeth with a mug of water. She was wearing only a half-buttoned T-shirt and a pair of pale pink panties.

Stephan was truly grateful for the view, but at the same time, a little uneasy too. He rubbed his own eyes, and blinked again.

The girl suddenly noticed him and stopped brushing, toothbrush still in her mouth and foam dripping out of her slightly opened mouth. It was Cecila. The Cecilia Stephan had had such a oddly lovely time with over dinner the night before, not the wretch who had threatened him to step aside on a project and hit him with the rape allegations when he had refused...

This Cecilia still offered violence, though, as the mug went flying into his face hard before splashing its contents across the concrete flooring of the pathway connecting the trailers here in Unit 3... Cecila ran back inside without reclaiming the simple blue plastic mug.

Stephan picked it up, feeling embarassed, but that woman had been so womanly without attempting the usual shortcut of being an hourglass or a major sexpot. She was... a breath of fresh air... also, someone he would need to apologise to later on and return a mug to. Right now he had to prepare for his first day under Martin Krauffer and whichever producer he'd worked with all this time.

AWKWAAARD. Martin had introduced Stephan, and then Stephan paled as he'd realised Cecilia Adams was the other producer he would be understudying with.

Martin continued on matter of factly, ignoring the tension between them that had formed when Martin had lucked into Cecilia Adams while she was practically naked in morning prep outside her trailer, right next to his. Finally he left the two of them to their devices.

Stephan Alberg paled and looked away from Cecilia like a naughty little boy caught doing the bad things. "I erm... you left your brushing mug at my trailer this morning."

Cecilia surprisingly didn't seem to be holding much animosity. "It's on me, I got too relaxed and forgot I was living in a village, not some isolated boondocks spot. Why don't you bring it back to me after work, I'll be at my trailer... now let's focus on getting you up to speed here."

The rest of the day went by in a blur, with nothing else said about the morning's mugging incident. Again, the misters fired up briefly around lunch, a faintly minty smell filling the air around the studio. The food was just as lovely, so was Cecilia's company. She had seemed more animated today, like an entirely different person. Perhaps the previous day had tired her out, Stephan mused, as Cecilia enunciated the differences between the works of Paddy Almtree and his younger twin brother Ashburne Almtree.

The day of them as professionals ended at 5.30pm, with no overnight shoots planned by any of the directors in Unit 3. Stephan quickly returned to his trailer and grabbed Cecilia's mug. It would probably be just a quick walk down, handing her the mug, and that would be the end of things for the night.

Funny shit, life. You make plans, and then the vicissitudes of fate butt in, and you wind up fighting a rearguard action based on some plan you probably did not have laid out.

Cecilia had greeted him while dressed in a tight sleeveless shirt proclaiming that Paddy Almtree was awesome and that Ashburne Almtree was pretty good too in directing films, paired with a dark blue miniskirt covered in white polkadots, a pair of warm pink thigh-high stockings and a pair of sneakers, But she wasn't going out, just hanging back in her trailer for a quiet night watching a movie by Ashburne Almtree on her old video player/TV combo.

And soon, Stephan was inside the trailer as well, sharing in her popcorn and watching her laugh ever so often at Ashburne's brand of comedy, as a black cowboy taunted some racists by asking them where the white women were at. Cecilia had this strangely lovable laugh, not hoarsely ugly, not maniacal, just the soft girlish giggle of someone half her apparent age. She was revelling in the moment, enjoying everything absurdist the movie had to offer, including the oddly playing scene where the protagonists were talking to a librarian as she magically threw up each book into a slot in the shelf, occasionally huffing to get dust on a book as if it looked too new.

Cecilia pointed that bit out.... "You see, they shot the entire scene backwards, that means the lines were delivered in the exact opposite direction of how you'd expect that discussion would go in reality..."

Stephan smiled, but said nothing, simply appreciating Cecilia's infectious enthusiasm. He began to hope that nothing else about her was infectious but the good things....

Eventually the movie ended, and they just sat there amongst the cushions that covered the couches. it was only about 8pm at this point. way too early to just turn in and sleep. "So... what should we do next?" Cecilia Adams asked aloud.

"I dunno... maybe we kiss?" Stephan Alberg offered absentmindedly... then freaked out as he realised what the heck he was proposing.

"Kissing? In my trailer?" Cecilia yelped. Oh no, she was not pleased, surely! What happened next shocked Stephan, as Cecilia crashed herself into Stephan, parking herself between his legs and smiling, leaning backwards to share a small kiss with the producer. That was... totally unexpected... still Stephan started kissing back... he reached for the zip on the back of her shirt unconsciously, disrobing her and revealing a pair of pert feeders wrapped in warm pink lace bra, one that matched the panties Cecilia was wearing beneath her skirt. Oh, what a naughty girl this seemingly mousy producer was, Stephan mused, as they got friskier and friskier, Stephan's groping of her tits met with Cecilia's mischevious teasing of his erect cock with the denim of his trousers and the floral lace of her panties. Soon, actual penetration was a thing, Stephan's member riding upwards into Cecilia's wet pussy without much in the way of protection besides a condom Stephan had always kept refreshed in his pocket monthly in case of safe sex. Cecilia could no longer speak, her eyes closed as she let Stephan grab her wrists and slowly pump into her warm, wetting pussy, breath almost as warm and damp and deep as she moaned.

Stephan was so happy... This girl had been his first real lay since the night before he'd been trapped by the director's wife.... He was going to enjoy it... and so he did, for what seemed like a whole hour.

It eventually ended of course... Cecilia lingering in a kiss as they stood on the porch of her trailer, her skirt making a weak effort to conceal that she was still pants-less and riding on the high Stephan had given him. "Don't be late for work tomorrow, Stephy..." Cecilia had farewelled Stephan, before closing the door to her trailer tightly.

Stephan turned around and walked to his trailer, pausing only briefly to watch the lights burning in the glazed windows of Cecilia's trailer, before going into his own. He had a mess of his own to clean up, and if he was not careful, he might have to redo all that cleaning... He giggled at the thought.

Cecilia had turned into a different creature as soon as Stephan had gone out of earshot, her warm dazed post-coital smile fading suddenly as she disrobed entirely, before twisting the handle to her onboard shower in a different direction from what she normally would have turned it in to open it up. This caused a small glass wall to fold in from the floor into a watertight tube, into which she entered.

A set of robotic arms slid out from slots in the walls and ceiling with various cleaning implements as the glass cage slammed shut around Cecilia. She remained soulless as the arms parted her legs and started slamming warm soapy water into her vaginal cavity to clean it out, with more arms easing cleaning pumps into her mouth and grinding towelled implements around her entire body. Cecilia remaind silent,whirring only occasionally as the auto-cleaner did its job of keeping her hygienic at the end of the day. She felt nothing as her vagina was pummelled, the reflexes that made her moan and come earlier on Stephan's body being purely personality responses that no longer existed at the moment.

The autocleaner whirred up as it sent drying warm air all over and inside of her, before the glass cage parted open to let Cecilia out. She proceeded to walk to her clothing cupboard and opening the underwear drawer, randomly selecting a set in black cotton with carefully lined out curves along her breasts, half-exposed ass cheek,sand pudenda in key lime green. She was deriving no pleasure from any aspect of this dressing whatsoever. It was merely in place to ensure that she did not blindly stumble out of her trailer totally naked if an emergency ensued. The stiffness of her nipples as they ran against the cotton fabric of her sports top were a involuntary reflex animation curve...

Cecilia turned out the lights of the trailer and slowly lowered herself across one of the couches, finding her way in the dimness with her night vision module. There was a sequence of beeps and whirrs as she triggered her shutdown programming for the night, setting herself up to wake at 6.42am the next morning. She had a certain quota of power use not to exceed in order to last the full 30 days on the label of her power cell without earlier recharging, and she was about 5% shy of exceeding it today...

She felt nothing about this - the power she had used was within the set limit. Her eyes focused briefly and then slowly unfocused into blindness as her mechanical body shut down for the night.

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