Mapping People

Another story by the late Laston Kirkland. Contains futuristic technology. Tidied up for punctuation.

~~~~~~

David sat beside Susan. People mapping.

He did this with Susan a lot. It helped pass the time. Susan was smiling in her impish way, following David’s line of sight. As soon as Susan spotted the girl David was looking at, she reported with a grin, “She’s got her clothing set for modest.”

David muttered quietly back, “Put her in a bustle.”

Susan giggled and her hands chopped the air, accessing the controls on the App she was sharing with David. Quickly she accessed the correct files, and the woman across the mall had her clothing transformed (or “altered”) from a simple dark pantsuit to a prim and proper 19th-century outfit, complete with a parasol and a round straw hat. As the lady moved about, it was comical to watch the parasol try to maintain its correct position in her hand. The bustle bounced around with a rhythm all its own. David smiled slightly at the sight.

“This outfit was in the modest file?”

Susan grinned while continuing to chuckle, “Sure was, Midwest PreMegafauna Cowboy Collection, from ‘Ayar Done Right.’”

As the suddenly school marmed woman stopped and adjusted her own Ayar controls, it looked like she was battling an invisible opponent with the bumbershoot. She had realized she’d been tagged and called up a virtual mirror; her Augmented Reality Glasses seamlessly merged networks with the thousands of cameras in the mall, to bitmap her image along with the shared virtual outfit that Susan had put her in. All of this displayed, of course, only on the insides of her own glasses and the glasses David and Susan wore. The lady nodded with a small smile, looking at herself and how she was mapped, and clearly decided to keep it. As she walked off, she held her hand so that the parasol twirled over one shoulder.

David had been doing this with Susan for a good twenty minutes. Not to everyone; some people set their profiles to “No” and Susan and David couldn’t play with their clothing or image at all. Some had specific Ayar designs, things they had paid for that, once set, could only be manipulated in predefined ways. But sometimes... sometimes people had their profiles turned all the way down to “anything goes.”

David particularly liked the people who weren’t wearing Ayar glasses and had no idea they were being mapped, but those were so rare he hadn’t seen any in months.

Susan let David dress her any way he wanted. She’d dance and spin in whatever he picked for her, showing off, no matter how revealing or risqué the outfit.

In the time they’d been there, they had accessed Ayar clothing maps and changed people into clowns, powdered-wig judges, dapper secret agents, stone Greek gods, Egyptian mummies, and a massive number of sexy suits, but only Susan was set low enough to model those.

David sighed. Susan was the only one he had seen today who was set to “anything.” He had seen a girl last week who had her profile set that low. She probably had forgotten to update her profile after a party.

He had put her in a catsuit, complete with anamorphic tail, silk teddy, and amazing cleavage. She had seen him watching her, however, and, after checking her glasses, was not too impressed. The girl had made quite a spectacle of jabbing the air as she selected from the menus in her own Ayar controls. She then glared at David before leaving in a bit of a huff.

As soon as Susan saw him, she began laughing so hard she fell to the ground and literally rolled around. When he checked his own profile’s history, he saw that the catgirl had not only set her own profile to a full “No” but had put him in a flasher’s overcoat, complete with oversized binoculars and no pants. The Ayar had deliberate pixelation hiding what would have been his privates - and the program was not kind with the size.

Susan had been buying all these Ayar outfits that she had picked out while they were sitting there. Twenty creds apiece. David paid for them all, He had given her a budget of ten bucks, ten sets of a hundred creds apiece. And Susan had gleefully found and purchased dozens of virtual outfits, giving them away to every passing shopper. The outfits each had an encryption tag, they would only map themselves to one image, if you wanted to put the Ayar map on someone else, you’d have to pay for it again. Or hack it, and for 20 creds, it wasn’t worth it. On the other hand, once you had applied it, it became a part of your profile. Those who were mapped could use them as much as they wanted, and anyone whose glasses could see your profile would see whatever it had as its current map.

David did this all the time with her. It was harmless and fun. Ayar cost almost nothing. Ten bucks could barely buy a meal from a food dispenser.

Besides, who could say no to Susan?

“Want me to change my dress again?”

“Sure,” said David.

“The creds you gave me are all used up.”

“Ok, then, tell you what, let’s just model a few of them on five-second bursts and I’ll only buy the ones I really like.”

Susan quickly clapped her hands five or six times together with glee and made the adjustments. For just a few seconds she was wearing only a tight white jumpsuit, made of something like nylon. David thought her baseline outfit had some appeal all by itself, but then it started cycling through all the things she had picked out from the demo stream.

“Let’s do red,” she said with a conspiratorial wink. Suddenly her dress was bathed in virtual flames, licking her body all over. A pair of virtual horns and a thin tail that ended in a spade completed the look. The flames teased and danced around her curves. Susan looked him straight in the eye and pretended she was about to pounce on him. David didn’t particularly like it when she did that.

Besides, he’d seen that sort of outfit many times, devil dresses were very much in, or they had been last week. Susan already had a dozen variations.

“No, it’s too devil. Go with music or nature.”

“How about blue?” Susan spun around, her virtual dress flaring out around her, the color changing from a deep crimson to a powder blue before she had finished her twirl. Tiny shapes danced around the bottom hem of the dress, forming into cartoonish musical notes that swelled into soap bubbles and popped in pure musical tones, just barely above conscious notice. It was a very pretty effect, although David found it a little more distracting than most.

“It’s fine,” David said. Susan had such a flair for this sort of thing.

“Maybe green?” Susan tapped out a command in the air around her, calling up another design. Her dress changed, in a top-down wipe, into a forest canopy of leaves, swaying in a non-existent wind. Caressing her all over, small and clustered at her waist and hips, larger with more space around her chest, showing just enough skin to make David crane a little with each simulated flutter. David caught himself and then grinned, the illusion had gotten him. Even though he knew the leaves weren’t real, he had felt his heart race a bit when he thought they would fall off or blow away. It also mapped her hair a bright green.

“I like that one.” David muttered, “It’s, um . . . very leafy.”

Susan looked up, her own glasses had screens on both the inside and outside, and so her eyes were enhanced a bit, slightly larger in the display than human. That was the style these days, almost everyone did the “manga look” big eyes, small mouth. It gave her a sheen of innocence that had gotten David’s attention in the first place.

“Do you?” she smiled in that flirty way she used, just before she asked him to buy something.

David sighed, "How much is it?"

Susan held her hand in front of her. David knew she was projecting the catalog information onto the inside of her wrist, as if she was holding a clipboard. “It’s a hundred creds, because it has several sub-menus with a lot of extra features—and it’s not a one-shot.” Her eyes looked up impishly at him.

“Oh, all right.” David slashed his fingers through the air in his command gesture and tapped a couple of icons that appeared. His account was accessed and the item he framed between his thumb and forefinger was selected. And now it was his. As long as Susan didn’t block him, he could put her in that dress any time he wanted. He was thinking about the catgirl, and wondered if she would have been less annoyed at him if he had put her in this.

Susan clapped her hands with glee. The virtual leaves of her dress shivered in delightful ways.

“I’m not buying any more dresses today,” said David. “Let’s walk to the Ayar environment store.” Susan gave a little pout, her hands held behind her back.

David definitely liked the leaf dress.

The store was nearby. David stumbled a little as he was entering the shop and his glasses slipped a bit. For just a brief second he saw the place as it really was, white geometric shapes on top of white rubber pads, a little stained and dirty since it had not been cleaned in a while. David quickly pushed his glasses back up, fumbling a little in his haste. When they were back in place, he noticed that Susan had come close, just a few inches away with her hands on her knees.

She asked him “Are you OK?”

David had trouble paying attention to anything but her cleavage for a second. She saw where he was looking and gave him a slow smile. David flushed and looked away...

...and this time he saw a forest glade, with trees that went up for miles, single shafts of light poking through the canopy, a willow tree in the center of a tiny island, which in turn was in a slightly larger crystal-clear pond with mossy banks. Rabbits, butterflies, and unicorns had been placed strategically by the designer, and the way they meandered around added a great deal to the image. David had not seen that particular design from the store before. He liked it. Idly he gestured and pinched the air and a menu of options appeared, Captain Nemo’s study, Dr. Seuss, Tarzan’s jungle, Retro Utopia, ah, here it was, Enchanted Grove.

“Which one are you looking at, David?” Said Susan “I’m looking at Wonderland myself”

“Wonderland’s nice,” said David mildly as he continued to fiddle with the settings, “but this Enchanted Grove skin is great! Aha, the menu has a dragon!” David jabbed the air with his finger, Susan had already dialed up the same overlay as well, and gave a little gasp as a fifty-foot dragon pushed aside a couple of the large trees to crane its neck at them and smile. David didn’t care for the dragon, “Meh” he said, and with a flick, it was gone.

“You should get this!” Susan said, spinning in circles as she gestured at the entire scene. “It would look so great mapping your living room!”

“Naw,” said David, “a full map skin is spendy, and I bought Captain Nemo’s Study already. I’m still loving the way all the fish in the window look, and how the water makes patterns on all my stuff.”

“Oh,” said Susan, a little disappointed. “Want to get a new game?”

“Actually, I’m going to go home. I have to get up early in the morning.”

“Are you sure? We haven’t gone into the entertainment store in a while. I heard some of your favorite movie productions have new endings…”At the end of the sentence her voice had gone all sing-song.

“No.”

“We could go into the print shop? There’s a new exercise exoskeleton that uses isometric haptics for resistance training. They have one printed out already that could fit you. We could try it out. It would help you lose some weight.

“No. I’ve spent enough money today, Susan. I might come back in a day or two.”

“Oh, all right,” Susan pouted, then grinned. “I’ll be waiting for you,” she said, and blew him a kiss.

David sighed as he walked away, knowing that if he turned around Susan would still be there. She’d be waiting for him. Waiting in that exact spot even if he didn’t come back for a year. Just like she’d be waiting for him, in the exact same spot at whatever store he went to.

He liked Susan, he really did. But sometimes the sex kitten stuff was a little too strong. Maybe he should change his sales avatar to something else for a while, maybe the English Butler or the Heavyset Grandmother.

Who was he kidding? He wouldn’t do that. He knew he’d never abandon Susan.

Not until he met a real girl.