The Cough Conflict (Part 1)

It had been around three years since I’d last seen my friends in person. And tonight, finally, we’d all had our boosters for the latest variant, and the restrictions were ending. Officially, they ended at 19:00 hours. And the bars of the city would actually open their doors to in-person customers.

Insane. I couldn't believe it was finally happening.

That afternoon I had been finishing up some work — my boss had asked me at the last minute to take a look at a whole new problem with the latest AI upgrade. Always something just before the weekend, huh? And I was happily telling her that I was going out to a bar to meet up with my buddies. 

Of course, the news was on in the background, as it always was. It helped me feel connected or something. 

And then it came up on the bottom of my cornea screen: New Variant Detected. Lockdown Restrictions Continue.

So that put paid to the whole going out to a bar plan for the evening.

I fired off a message to Nessa, saying I can probably take a look at that AI upgrade now. Since the lockdown’s back on. 

I was flicking through the news a few minutes later, hoping to find out where they’d identified the new variant when there was an incoming call alarm. Nessa’s image appeared the moment I accepted. 

‘You know, you can probably claim overtime, doing this on a Friday night,’ she said. 

She had already changed into something comfortable for the evening. It wasn’t often that I saw her like this — gray hooded top, sweatpants, teal hair let down. Something about the unexpected informality of it all made her seem so very attractive to me at that moment. Perhaps it was just because her hologram was perched on the edge of my bed, which gave rise to a particular suggestion in my subconscious. Maybe it was because it had been three years since I’d had physical contact with another human being. 

‘So, what’s the problem?’ I asked her, trying not to seem like I was checking her out. 

Nessa grinned. ‘You’ll get a kick out of this one…’ There was a bugle sound as the documentation arrived in my in-box. ‘Some kind of conflict in the upgrade is causing AIs to twitch their noses whenever somebody coughs.’ 

Well, that made me laugh. Something had to, considering the grim news scrolling across my display screen. 

‘When somebody coughs?’

‘Yeah. You should see them. It’s like they’re pretending to be a damn bunny rabbit or something.’ 

Sitting on the bed, Nessa drew up one of the files and splashed it in the air in front of me to show some of the critical lines of code. She took me through areas that analysts had suggested might be linked to the conflict. 

‘Nobody’s found the actual line doing it, though,’ she pointed out. 

She shifted a little where she was sitting. Despite her baggy, comfortable attire, something about the shape of her legs and the curve of her hips really grabbed hold of my attention.

‘You’ll need a companion,’ she said, her words snapping me out of my momentary daze. 

‘Uh… I’m sorry?’ I said, flushing as I realized she’d caught me staring. 

‘The company can spring for a companion for the night if you like?’ 

I was a little surprised at that one. I replied, ‘I look that desperate, huh? Three years locked in my shoebox apartment.’ 

She smiled. ‘Honestly, when you’re working on this, the easiest way to test the conflict is to have one of them sitting in front of you and just cough.’ 

I chuckled. ‘My neighbors are going to think I have the damn virus.’ 

It was only half a joke. But what did I care? I didn’t even know my neighbors. It had been three years since I’d even seen one of them.

Nessa stood up and wandered over to my wall. My news feeds faded on the display screen, to be replaced by the unmistakable form of the Companions app.

‘Choose someone pretty,’ Nessa said, her voice taking on a softness I hadn’t heard before. She flicked through some of the suggested companions, and suddenly I was lusting after my boss in earnest. 

Damn. 

I reminded myself that she had also been confined to her apartment for three years without actual human contact. 

I said, ‘I seriously get to expense this?’ 

She smiled sweetly. ‘It’ll be good for the company if you can crack this one, Joel. It’s priority two.’

‘Priority two?’ I sucked air through my teeth. 

She wandered over to my front door as though her image needed to exit my apartment physically. I could tell at that moment that she was letting me watch her move, allowing my eyes to run down her enticing, if rather over-packaged, form. It excited me that she might be as desperate as I was. That she might be trying to draw my eye. 

Even if it was inappropriate for the workplace.

‘Well, good luck. I’ll check on you in the morning.’ 

When I turned back to the display screen on my wall, I found that the companion she’d left u there as my suggestion for the evening looked exactly like her.

*

It took 35 minutes for my companion to arrive. That gave me time to call my friends. 

I figured they must have thought there was at least a chance that yet another viral variant would come along and cancel our planned get-together. Well, we’d had 26 variants within this particular pandemic so far. Each time we seemed all vaccinated and ready to face the great outdoors, another variant came along to keep us in lockdown.

When I called, everyone seemed down-hearted that lockdown would continue. None of us were even in the mood for a virtual meet-up that evening.

And so I had ample opportunity to get some more work done that night — and soon enough, I was opening the door to Leo. 

*

I’d decided on a male companion despite the flirty suggestion from Nessa that I share my evening with a companion who resembled her. I thought someone who appeared completely unlike my supervisor might help me to better concentrate on the job at hand. 

‘Hello, Leo,’ I said, stepping back to allow him into my apartment. 

‘Good evening, Joel.’

He had a pleasant voice and a pleasant appearance. Of course he did, that’s why I chose him. 

I coughed. 

Leo twitched his nose like Bugs Bunny. It looked as though he was about to sneeze, but then his face returned to normal without the expected payoff. 

‘Can you sit on the bed, please?’ I asked him, and he dutifully complied. 

There wasn’t exactly anywhere else to sit in my three-meter by three-meter apartment, other than the slim chair I sat in at my desk. I suppose I could have left Leo to stand—he wouldn’t get tired—but it felt more comfortable for me to have him sit on the edge of my mattress.

‘You had a good day so far?’ I asked him. 

My small talk was as unnecessary as asking him to sit. Still, again it made me feel more comfortable as I logged into my work account. I launched the protocols that would isolate Leo from the cloud. This meant that none of my changes to his code would go directly into the public AI without being thoroughly tested and approved. 

‘I have had a good day so far, yes,’ Leo said, smiling warmly. ‘I spent time in Limehouse and in Ealing today.’ 

I knew he’d never reveal specifics about his day because of client confidentiality rules, but it tickled me to think that he’d likely been in Limehouse and Ealing for sexual encounters. 

Well, it was nearly the weekend. 

‘You enjoy your work, Leo?’ 

He smiled again. ‘Very much, yes. It’s never boring, always very stimulating.’ 

I laughed at the notion of an artificial person being genuinely stimulated.

I said, ‘I’m afraid what I have in mind this evening may not be so stimulating.’

He said, ‘I am receptive to your needs, Joel.’

I coughed again and saw him twitch. It was so weird. I wondered how it could possibly have arisen. 

Perhaps I’d find out when I took a look at Leo’s code.

*

It was midnight by the time I identified the lines of code that I firmly believed had caused the ‘cough conflict’.  

Two hours later, I was still sitting at my desk, asking Leo to cough after I changed anything. Three times I had managed to prevent him from twitching in response to the sound of a human cough—but various parts of his body had stopped working on each of those occasions. Once that night, I had accidentally fried his operating system and had had to reboot from a backup. 

It was frustrating. 

‘Perhaps we should take a break,’ Leo suggested, as the clock on my cornea clicked past 2 am. ‘You should get some sleep.’ 

I sighed. ‘I’m too awake. Too on edge.’ 

He smiled. ‘I know various ways to help you relax. Perhaps you would like a massage?’

Twenty minutes later, I was ready to call it a night. I was making mistakes by now. The conundrum was keeping me wide awake, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t tired. 

Leo was there, and my boss had told me to expense his services, so I was tempted to make a little more use of him. What can I say? He was an attractive companion, and his equipment was top-of-the-range. His skin was magnificent — so very realistic — at times, I could almost believe he was human.

‘Leo, take off your clothes.’ 

‘Sure. Are we done with work, Joel?’

‘Yeah, we’re done with work.’

He was, of course, a highly skilled lover. But for all the pleasure he gave me, when it came to reciprocating, it became a somewhat flat experience — like Champagne that has been left out in the open air for too long. 

 ‘You don’t have to, Joe,’ he said, and I’d expect no less of him. He didn’t need me to pleasure him — he was artificial. 

Yet it turned out that wasn’t what I was looking for. 

I said, ‘You know, when people have sex, part of the fun is making the other person feel good.’ 

‘You do make me feel very good,’ he insisted. 

But his answer, of course, was designed to try to please me; it wasn’t entirely true. Artificial people might have the Three Laws of Robotics at their core, but none of those laws prevented them from lying, for good or for ill. 

‘You can’t really feel good,’ I said. ‘You’re artificial.’

He smiled, taking absolutely no offense from my observation. Then he said, ‘I can grade you on how well you’re doing if you like?’ 

I laughed at that. ‘But your grades would be based on someone else’s experiences — a human being. You have to be programmed to tell what would feel good — you don’t actually feel good because of what I do to you.’ 

‘And that's an important part of your experience, Joel?' he asked.

‘Absolutely.’

I stroked his fine, perfectly-proportioned chest, and he quietly moaned as though he was actually enjoying it. 

He even said, ‘That’s nice.’ 

It was laughable, though, that he would try and persuade me that it felt in any way pleasurable for him. 

I sighed and sat up. It was no good — I had lost my desire for him. 

‘Perhaps I could call for a replacement companion?’ Leo suggested — again, without any offense taken that I might not desire him. ‘Someone you find more attractive?’

I shook my head. The truth was, I had felt this way about sex for a while now. I’d blamed it on stress because the lockdown had encouraged me to over-work for months. I even thought it might be depression, related to the continuing lockdowns, though I constantly tested negative for depression.

I had thought it was sex I was tired of having. 

Now, however, I considered the possibility that it was sex with AI companions that no longer thrilled me.

The latest AI systems were very good at synthesizing emotions — but I knew how they did it. I could recognize their emotional strategies. I wrote some of the damn code that did it.

Leo persuaded me to take another look at the Companions app—and we even mocked up a companion who looked almost exactly like Nessa. But it wasn’t Nessa. It — she — wasn’t human. Even without selecting ‘accept’ and then welcoming her into my apartment, I knew it. She wouldn’t stack up. 

She wouldn’t feel anything when she was with me. 

Leo was patient with me — of course he was, he was programmed to be. I had the strangest urge to fake some kind of sexual satisfaction just so that he would leave my apartment with data that suggested everything had been perfectly fine with his visit. But he was artificial, damn it. If I’m going to fake orgasm, it will be for someone real. 

So Leo left. And I lay there on my bed, head on my hands, awake. Unsatisfied. 

How long would it take to develop a vaccine for the Kamchatka Variant?

*

Eventually, I did get some sleep. I woke up late on Saturday morning to messages left by Nessa asking how I’d got on with the cough conflict. I decided not to reply straight away — and instead, fired up my avatar and used it to take a stroll down the Edgware Road before enjoying a circuit of Hyde Park. 

Well, it wasn’t exactly real, but it was a good simulation of a walk in the fresh air. And seeing other people walking around — even if I knew they were only avatars, too — was good for my unevolved social mentality.

The excursion was enough to fool my brain into feeling a little energized, at least. 

Then, after a quick shower and some food, I thought about getting back down to some overtime on Nessa’s priority two assignment. I was in the process of deciding on another companion to come and help me test the conflict when my boss called again. 

‘Hey, Joel,’ she said, seating herself on the edge of my bed once again. ‘You had fun last night?’ 

I laughed. ‘I was up until 2 am trying to fix this damn problem.’ 

She smiled. ‘And how far did you get?’

The way she was looking at me was surprisingly suggestive for Nessa. Did she still think I might have selected the companion she chose for me? The companion that had looked like her? 

I said, ‘I think I’ve found the code causing the problem.’

She nodded but seemed disappointed with my answer. ‘Well, that’s more than anyone else has managed.’ 

Was she arching her back a little to emphasize her shape? She was wearing tight clothing today, as though she’d just come back from the gym, and I’d caught her just before she changed into her typical weekend attire. I’d never seen her like this before.

‘You think you’ll be able to sort it out today?’ she asked, casually peering at her perfectly manicured hands as though to point them out to me.

 I said, ‘I think I have a chance.’ 

‘Okay,’ she said, standing up in such a way as to show off her trim figure in that tight clothing of hers. ‘Well, keep me updated. And if there’s anything you need, let me know…’ 

‘Will do. Thanks, Nessa.’ 

She seemed disappointed as she signed off. I got the idea I had not been sufficiently flirtatious with her. What can I say? It was surprising, and undoubtedly thrilling, to suspect that she might have a crush on me. It opened my eyes to her own attractiveness, sure.

As I ordered myself another companion to help me with the work, I pondered why Nessa would so suddenly start taking an interest in me in that way. She’d never shown interest before. Was it because of the news of the Kamchatka Variant? Was she responding to the latest extension of the lockdown by forming a crush on me because I was a genuine human, and at least I displayed real emotions?

I wondered if my feelings about the inadequacies of sexual relations with AI companions was a more widespread issue. The trouble was, even if the companions were incredibly realistic, ultimately everyone knew they were artificial. 

I snapped out of my procrastination and tried to focus on the task at hand: selecting a companion for today’s work. 

Bringing up the Companions app on my cornea, I scrolled through some of the different hair choices. I had the idea that I might choose a genuinely ugly companion — or, at the very least, plain — to avoid being distracted by my recent run of sexual dissatisfaction. I wasted a full 35 minutes trying to create a genuinely unattractive person. 

Kind of fun, though. 

I ended up with a companion who looked like a disgruntled pirate — and quickly decided he would probably turn out to be way too distracting for my work after all. 

Was there really a companion out there in the system who looked like this? I made myself laugh — because there had to be, in case someone ordered him. 

I was tempted to test out the possibility. 

Then I had a different idea. 

I scrolled through the dozens of hair options, eyes, noses, and mouths. I looked through different ears and chins and necks. I knew I was wasting my time to some degree, but after a while, it got so that I really wanted to get the look precisely right. 

With the Companions app, most people scrolled through a few hundred standard models, choosing from some of the most popular companions available. Or else they opted for a random selection. But if you spent time on it, you could just about create any kind of companion you liked from the individual feature choices. 

I was surprised I’d never thought of doing this before. I guess Nessa had planted the idea in my head when she had suggested a companion for me who looked a little like her. 

But now, 47 minutes after placing the order, there was a buzz on my door. 

I opened it to find an exact replica of myself standing out in the hallway.

Continue to Part 2 >>