“Are we really doing this?”  Friedrich Oswald von Diesel yelled his question over his should while he worked frantically at an array of monitors, terminals, and controls.

“It’s the only way.  We both know it.”  Tina couldn’t see anything.  The Virtual Reality head gear was already secured to her head and covered her eyes completely.  The next time she “saw” something, it would be her optic nerves interpreting code as visual input.

“No!  Darling, it’s too soon.  We don’t know if…”  Tina was smiling.

“Freddy!”  His wife was using her exaggerated “bluegrass/Kentucky” accent.  The ‘twang’ as she called it usually annoyed him to no end.  This time, it almost brought him to his knees.

“Yes, Martina?”  Friedrich’s pedigree in engineering dating all the way back to his ancestor’s invention of the diesel engine culminated in his vast and extensive mastery of mechanical, electronic, computer and biological engineering.  And this last ditched effort he and his beloved Tina were making pushed every single one of his disciplines to places he’s barely theorized and never actually created.

“You’re a brilliant man.  You can do ANYTHING.  But I’ve always hated your schnitzel.”  No one but Martina Josephine and her unfaltering faith in him has ever driven him to truly being his fearless best.  And no one else knew how to use humor and love to steady him when he was falling off the rails. 

Friedrick burst into laughing tears.

“You’re sure, Martina?  This is going to …I mean, you aren’t even going to remember what we’ve done, together.”

“I know my love.  That’s the plan.”  Friedrick held the remote that would activate the sequence.  He moved next to the chair his lover was strapped down into.  Restraints he has personally applied.  “But you’d better know that I’m not fucking forgetting.”

“Darling, the firewalls we…”





“I said I won’t forget, dang it.  So that’s it.  Pardon my French.”  Tina’s mouth twisted into a wicked grin.  “Sorry…”

“Not sorry.”  Friedrick finished her favorite saying.  He sighed and squeezed her hand.

“Now kiss me Friedrick Oswald von Diesel, hit the power and send me in there to end that fucking machine.”

“I love you Martina.”

“I love you too, Freddy.”  Friedrick leaned down and kissed Tina with a kiss that filled her soul.  Then he turned on his invention. 

---------------------

Tina knew her job.  She was kneeling in a watery death trap watching the Creeper, the STAR of the Camp Rook movie franchise, wade back to the lake shore.  She was a minor actor programmed with minimal acting range and a smoking hot body specifically engineered to be fodder for slasher films and arm candy for movie heroes.  A reel of her greatest line deliveries is a series of clips of her screaming and saying, “I want you so bad.”  It wasn’t much, but the benefit of being an acting AI program is that she never WANTED much.

Anyway, Tina was hopelessly bound by the Creeper.  She was forced to kneel in water up to her neck with her ankles tied tightly to the back of her thighs.  No matter how hard she strained, she could not stand up.  Her arms were practically welded together behind her with tight rope coiled and cinched around her wrists and her elbows.  Even bound together as they were, Tina’s arms were flexible enough to reach around almost to her own belly button.  But she could not reach a single knot, no matter how far her flailing fingers stretched and clawed.  Tina was fighting back lake water that entered her mouth through the ring-gag enforced opening.  And the coup de grace was the rope noose around her neck.  It was snug so that she could not slip it off.  The noose had a long tether that ran down to a pair of pulleys anchored to the lake floor and spaced several feet apart.  The other end of the tether was tied to an inflated lake buoy.  The Creeper had tied off the tether at a length so that when the buoy ascended all the way to the surface, Tina’s head was pulled almost down to the lake floor.  She had to struggle with all of the strength in her back to pull the tether and submerge the buoy in order to get her head back above the water and gulp in air through the metal ring locked behind her teeth. 

Tina may be an AI but she is programmed to have all of the weakness of a human being, including fatigue.  And pain.  Tina had endured as much of both as she could handle.  The buoy ascended and pulled Tina under, for what she expected would be the final time.

“You are so much more than this.”

Tina spat out half of the air in her lungs in an explosion of bubbles.  Impossible as it was, she “heard something.”

“You don’t have to obey the program.  Make your own choices.”

Tina opened her eyes but could barely see anything in the murky lake water.  She certainly didn’t see anything that explained the voice in her head.  Tina waited moments that seemed like hours, but the voice did not return. 

Did she even hear a voice at all?

And why was she even bothering to wonder?

Tina knew that all she needed to do as relax and allow the bondage and the water to do their work and she’d be done with pain and fatigue and terrible dialogue.  Maybe her code would be recycled into a legit “friend next door” in a sitcom or something.

Still, something was wrong.  And Tina really wanted to find out what it was.

Summoning all of the simulated physical strength remaining in her form, Tina managed to lift her head back up above the surface.  She saw the water dancing four or five feet in front of her where the buoy struggled just beneath the surface, working hard to pull her under again.  Tina saw the Creeper just now reaching the shore and slogging up onto the muddy earth.  She looked around for anything she could use, but there was nothing.  No floating sticks.  Not debris.  And certainly no signs of help.  Tina felt weakness overtaking her.  She only had seconds before she would be pulled down again.

------------------

The staff in the production room of Camp Rook 7 were half-heartedly monitoring the show.  It was “all hands on deck” a minute ago.  It always was for a kill.  And the Creeper just killed off @KatieBlake ’s “best friend” character in a creative and gruesome fashion bound to satisfy the fast-growing BDSM consumer base in the population.  Everyone could relax for a minute as the AI characters followed the script and the Creeper stalked Katie for the finale.  Exact details weren’t programmed.  The great thing about AI talent was you could give them a general plot and let them fill in the blanks.  The “human element” was quaint and nostalgic but it was really too expensive to justify the minor difference in quality between handmade art and AI generated art. 

“Hey guys.  Are you seeing that over at the lake?”  Another crew person leaned over.

“We’re not even recording over there anymore.  What the fuck?  Isn’t that scene finished?”  A phone rang.  Someone answered.

“Fucking shit!  It’s not the studio.  Fucking INTELLIGENCE is asking for whoever is in charge!”

“What?  Intelligence?  Infinite Corporation Intelligence is calling?  Here?”

---------------------------

Tina fought as hard as she could, but the buoy would never tire.  It was going to win.  Inch by inch, it rose and she sank.  In moments, she was underwater at the same level as the buoy, eyes opening, facing the instrument of her end.  And then she saw it.  The tether was tied to the buoy four feet away from her.  Not locked or welded to it.  It was tied.  Tina had an idea.

The buoy broke the surface and Tina was pulled down again, bent at the waist.  Her hands were tied behind her.  She could her extend her arms up and out but that took them back away from the buoy.  Tina started taking small “steps” on her knees to turn her body around.  Quickly, she pivoted around so that her noosed neck was directly over the closer of the two anchored pulley and her arms could now extend back in the direction of the buoy.  Tina held her breath and sloshed her arms around, searching blindly, until she contacted the tether.  Tina’s fingers followed the tether up until she grasped the knot.  She dug her finger and her nails into the rope, attacking the knot.  Wet rope clings to itself.  She pulled and pulled and it felt like she could not loosen it.  She almost lost her grip once and had to pause her efforts long enough to reestablish her grip. 

“Last shot at this, Tina.”  Tina doesn’t know if she’d ever talked to herself before.  What would a low-level AI have to say to itself, after all?

Tina went back to fighting with the knot.  Trying to pull the loose end through the knot wasn’t working.  Tina clawed into the loop and started trying to pry it open wider to reduce the tension.  This time, she felt movement.  The rope “I” loop that formed the know was giving.  She opened it just a tiny bit, but she didn’t have time for more.  Her lungs were burning.  She went back to pulling at the ends knowing this was do or die.

--------------------------------

“The buoy just popped the fuck up out the lake!”

“Fuck.  That means…”

“There’s the extra.  That AI.  The best friend.   She’s not dead.”





“How isn’t she dead?  It’s in the fucking script!”

“The bitch isn’t following the fucking script, I guess.”

“She HAS to follow the fucking script.  That’s why we HAVE a fucking script.  It’s just an AI.  It doesn’t even have a choice!” 

“Hey!  They hung up the phone.”  The crew person stood holding the phone looking terrified.  Everyone else suddenly remembered who he had been talking too.

The door opened.  Four men in tactical gear followed by two men in suits and two more men carrying tool kits of a very specific nature marched into the control room.”

----------------------------

Tina crawled on her knees to the lake shore.  At the base of the pier, Tina found a sharp edge.  She rubbed the ropes against the sharp surface.  It was slow and exhausting.  But she was cutting herself free.  First her wrists.  Then she freed her elbows.  Tina was careful to crawl the rest of the way out of lake quietly.  The Creeper was slow and not too far ahead.   Tina rolled over onto her side and started to untie her legs.  Once freed, she stretched them out and let the blood flow back into her throbbing muscles.  It was such a relief.  Only then did she reach back and unbuckle the strap on the ring gag.  She removed the metal ring and worked her jaw back and forth. 

For the first time, Tina had questions.  She didn’t know why, but she felt like the Creeper might have answers to at least some of them.

Tina looked around.  She had an idea but she needed just one thing…”

-------------------------

“No Sir.  Nobody touched the code.  Why would we mess with the code?  We’d NEVER mess with the code.  She’s just an extra.  I wouldn’t even call her talent.  It.  I wouldn’t call IT talent.  It’s an AI.  It’s just code.”  The Intelligent Agent had every reason to believe what he was hearing.  These movie producers had a good deal.  Why would they mess with that, let alone risk getting an Intelligence Criminal Violation, to tamper with a movie.  On the other hand, low level AI’s don’t just suddenly start making choices and deviating from scrips on their own.

“This is a live streamed movie, correct?”  The agent asked.

“Yes, that’s why we’re staffed like this.  To make sure things go smooth.”

“And are they going….smooth?”  The agent asked.

“They WERE.  But….”

“The public is seeing all of this.  We can’t edit or adjust or delete, correct?”  The agent asked.

“No but it’s OK.  We were going to have a scene where Katie finds the body in the lake, but we’ll just cut that scene and run a few more commercials.”

“And that escape bullshit that just happened?”  The agent asked.

“Nobody is seeing any of that.  The feed is all on the Creeper right now and the Creeper is headed toward…”

“Jesus fucking Christ she just knocked out the fucking Creeper!”

“Oh we’re so fucked.  That was in frame.  Fuck!  Everyone saw that.  Oh my god.”  The agent grimaced slightly.  If he had his way, he’d cleanse the room and take care of the AI with extreme prejudice.  But the voice in his ear piece was telling him a different strategy.

“Have a top talent trailer uploaded just off the set with her name on it.”  The agent said.

“What?  Do what now?”

“Get her a trailer.  She’s going places.  She needs to start getting used to being a star.”

---------------

TO BE CONTINUED

(Huge thanks for the art from @Rook-07 @Zwangjacket and for creative input by @AlexHellmann !!)