Telehouse was on the east side of the Docklands development area, east of Lime-house where Regent's Canal connected with the real docks that had once existed in Docklands, and east of the landmark Canary Wharf Tower. It was on
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Coriander Avenue, off Oregano Drive, streets named after the once-thriving spice trade of the East India Docks, or possibly by a group of town-planners after a long Friday lunch.
With all these dock and wharf connections, Danny was frightened they might suddenly come across an expanse of deep water, and he readied himself to yell 'stop!' at first sight of it. He'd have been less worried if Sharon was driving, but although they'd taken Miss Daisy, it was Eric behind the wheel. Sharon had said she wasn't in the mood for driving, and nobody could argue with that.
As they entered Coriander Avenue, Sharon yelled, "Eyes left, Danny. There's water on the right."
They came to a gatehouse with barriers.
The guard wasn't impressed by Sharon's beaten-up car. He double-checked Angela's security pass and asked her some half-technical questions about her company's installation, then let them through.
Telehouse itself was stark and grey, and really a collection of three modern buildings rather than a single structure. They were five or six stories high and had few windows, because racks of electronic equipment don't require windows and they'd just mess up the temperature
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inside when the sun shone. These buildings hadn't been created for humans, they'd been created to house the planet's new top species, computers.
Danny took the projector and screen, and Eric carried Frank's Aspiration in its sex-shop brown paper wrapping, as they made their way from the car into the middle building, following Angela with her slim laptop and speakers. She led them past one security camera after another until they arrived at the basement, where she used her swipe-card to enter one of the many doors off the main corridor.
The room looked similar to the server farm at Moorhen, and had the familiar but mild smell of a mixed human barbecue. Electronic boxes were stacked from floor to ceiling, some in temperature-controlled cabinets and some loose on angle-frame racks. Since this building held the inner workings of the Internet, not for public display, no attempt had been made at tidiness.
Equipment was stacked haphazardly, like it was in temporary storage rather than a core element of the IT infrastructure of one of the world's major economies. Cables spun by an invisible electronic spider connected everything to everything else. Each unit was worth many thousands of pounds, yet for identification they
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had irregular shreds of masking tape and address labels stuck to their fascias, showing the name of the company and the name of the server; names that appealed to ponytailed engineers, like Wagner, Frodo and Deckard, from music, books and films.
"This corner is ours," said Angela, as she reached the far end of the room. The basement wall in front of her was awkwardly shaped, creating a recess about fifteen feet long and eight feet wide. Machinery covered the racks on the right hand wall, but on the left were bare white tiles. The building's planners clearly hadn't been able to work out what to do with this inconvenient space. "It's one of Moorhen's designated areas, off the beaten track, it's unlikely we'll get disturbed here. And here's the router we'll use." She tapped a large grey box in the right hand rack.
At floor level she pulled out something that looked like the padded top of a vaulting horse, just a few inches high.
"What's that?" asked Sharon.
"It's a technician's trolley, the same kind of thing car mechanics use. Our technicians lie on them to work on the bottom row."
Sharon looked at the computer equipment, at the white tiles in front of her and to
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her left, and at the padded trolley. "I was kind of expecting… an office."
Angela followed the path of her gaze.
"I'm sorry. You're right, it's not exactly…
romantic, is it? But this is where we get the best connection to the Internet, straight into the Telehouse hub. Also the CCTV can't reach this corner. At least it's warm, and the light's not too bright."
Sharon looked downhearted. Danny moved close and held her. She turned into his arms, awkwardly. He stroked her hair. "Ah, sweetheart," he murmured, not knowing else what to say. He hoped she wouldn't back out now, because if she did, he wouldn't stop her, he wouldn't say a single word against it, or allow anybody else to, he'd simply turn around and take her straight out of the building.
Angela and Eric began preparing the equipment, as quietly as they could. Angela set up the screen against the end wall and fixed the tiny webcam to its top, with speakers either side.
Eric placed Frank's Aspiration between the screen and the trolley and tried to remove the brown paper wrapping without making much noise, producing a slow ripping sound that was doubly distracting because it was so unnatural.
He connected male leads from the device into the
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female sockets of the router that Angela had identified, and another lead from the router into Angela's laptop.
Sharon broke away from Danny's embrace. "Well, you're some use, aren't you?"
she scolded.
"What do you mean?"
"You're trembling. You're more nervous than I am!"
Danny raised his palms in a gesture of admission. She was right. His body was alive with little tremors. "I can't help it." He detested the idea of what was about to happen. He didn't dare talk about it, because he knew he'd say something wrong. He couldn't imagine how he was going to cope with watching. And he'd have to watch. It was the only chance of reviving Sharon's fantasy. For her sake he hoped it might reappear so she would enjoy herself, and for his sake he hoped that it wouldn't.
Sharon shook her head. "This has to be done, like it or not." She turned to Angela. "Are we ready?"
Angela looked at Eric, then nodded to Sharon.
Eric tapped at the laptop's keyboard.
Almost instantaneously, Frank appeared on the big screen, looking more perfect than ever. At the
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same time, the touch-sensitive screen that formed the outer layer of Frank's Aspiration turned pink, showing all the veins and bumps of a regular penis, but eerily a little way beneath the plastic skin, and glowing slightly, since this was an image being displayed rather than light reflecting off the real thing.
Danny had never intended the display part of the panel to be connected, and certainly hadn't intended it to display pictures borrowed from a gay porn site. He frowned at Eric, who shrugged his shoulders and wouldn't meet Danny's eye.
Frank smiled. "Hello gorgeous," he said gently, in his rich voice, straight out of a black and white movie with Lauren Bacall. He looked beyond Sharon at the watching group, and more sternly he demanded, "Why do you need the laptop?"
"I needed it for the keyboard, to dial you up," explained Eric. "We've disconnected it now you're here."
Frank grunted his approval. He smiled at Sharon again. His facial expressions were now close to perfect. This was a genuine smile with a touch of lust but no creepiness. Maybe it would have been even more genuine, in Danny's opinion, if there'd been some creepiness, but it was missing.
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"Now, my dear, let's try to ignore our attendants and make love, just as sweetly as you've ever dreamed of, as I've wanted to do from the moment I first set eyes on you."
Sharon, looking slightly blank and divorced from the proceedings, knelt on the technician's trolley, which immediately tried to slide away from under her knees.
"Brakes," hissed Angela. "Levers next to the wheels."
Sharon felt beneath the corners of the trolley and clicked the levers. "Sorry about that."
But the incident had broken her coldness and she grinned.
"That OK," said Frank, adding a touch of genuine amusement to his smile.
Sharon settled her knees back on the stable trolley. "Now, where were we?" She leaned forward and began to run her right hand along the mechanism behind Frank's Aspiration.
"I see you've… grown since we last met."
"I have indeed."
"Can you feel that?"
"No."
Sharon brought her hand further forward, to where the touch-sensitive screen began.
"That?"
Frank grunted. "Hmmm."
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She gently ran her fingers along the top of the shaft, over the tip and along the underside, barely touching. "It looks very nice."
Frank had his eyes closed. "Oooh."
Sharon edged closer. "Warm, too. And just the perfect size."
Frank grunted as she ran her hand along the plastic. "It would be nice if you took off your clothes."
Sharon peeled off her top, her bra, and wriggled out of her skirt, bringing her knickers with it. Danny was beginning to feel fidgety, like there was something urgent he needed to rush off and do.
She sat gracefully on the trolley and rolled on to one hip, her legs stretched out to one side in Frank's full view. She reached for Aspiration with her right hand and rested her fingers on its surface, moving her hand from tip to base very gently, like she was stroking a hyacinth bloom into shape without wanting to lose a single petal. As Danny watched, she moved her free hand between her legs and began to masturbate.
You're not turned on, he thought. The way she stroked herself to become aroused was different to the movement when she was already part way there, and he knew that difference. He
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wasn't sure whether he wanted her to be aroused or not. Surely it would be better if she enjoyed herself, or did he prefer that she didn't?
Frank was ecstatic, throwing his head back and breathing heavily though his open mouth.
Sharon brought her lips to the phallus, then abruptly let go. She broke into giggles and covered her mouth in an attempt to stifle them, then rolled around to face Danny. "Are you sure about this?"
Oh my God! Like hell I am, thought Danny. "Yes." The word came out strangled, but at least it came out. "Yes."
Sharon coughed, turned back and took hold of Aspiration again. "It's not you," she told Frank. "This is beautiful. Really. It's just…
strange circumstances, that's all."
Frank, a little less distracted than he had been of late, looked beyond her at Eric. "Can you turn the sensitivity up? I mean, it's very pleasant, but it isn't wholly immediate. There's some kind of delay, some kind of muffling of the sensation.
I think it could be improved."
Before Eric could reply, Danny answered,
"That's the data condom. You remember? There's a lot of data coming through, a lot of sensation,
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and it's slowing things down slightly, taking the edge off the input."
Frank didn't reply to this statement.
Sharon returned to her caresses, taking a stronger grip on Aspiration with her full palm and sculpting it with firm, slow movements. Ripples of colour trailed behind the pressure of her hand.
She shifted round into a squat, her other hand on her sex still moving too hungrily, too urgently, but eventually slowing down. She pulled away.
"C'mon," she murmured. She leaned back until her shoulders touched the padding of the trolley.
"Shit!" said Frank, "I don't mean you, Sharon, that was fantastic." He looked beyond her again, at the audience, specifically at Danny.
"But I'm not getting the most from these signals.
What happens if I turn the data condom off? Will I get more sensation, more immediacy?"
"Of course," answered Danny. "Maybe another five or six percent."
"Hmmm. I guess it's worth a try."
Using his full mobility for the first time, Frank lowered Aspiration into place in front of Sharon's sex. She used her hand to adjust her intimate parts to receive him.
"Slower. Frank, not so fast," she said.
Aspiration came forward, Sharon's hand at its base to regulate the movement.
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"Frank, don't be in so much of a hurry."
"Oh, yes, that is much better," breathed Frank.
Danny knew exactly what was happening, but couldn't see the details clearly because he was standing with Angela and Eric behind Sharon's head. Maybe that was better than having a grandstand view. He made a sudden movement, too sudden, and Angela gripped his arm, hard. He didn't like her touching him anywhere right now and shook his arm violently until she let go.
To his horror, Angela's hand reappeared on his body. She cupped his buttocks, low down, and briefly squeezed. Open-mouthed, he turned to… well, do something, tell her off, slap her, though he wasn't sure what.
Angela mimicked his face, her mouth and eyes wide open. She raised a forefinger in a mock admonishment.
It took a few seconds to work, for Danny to lose his outrage and see the funny side. It was also very clever. Until that moment of playfulness, he hadn't been sure he would see this through. But she'd burst the bubble, removed the intensity. Now he knew he'd survive, just. As he relaxed, she let go.
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Frank moved Aspiration back and forth, causing Sharon to gasp, but not wholly from pleasure. "Too fast, Frank, take it easy."
Then, to Danny's surprise, Frank pulled out and Aspiration moved up and down the entrance to Sharon's sex, pausing and circling at the top, then moving down again, back up.
Above Sharon's yell of surprise, Danny could hear a buzz.
"Something's gone wrong." he whispered to Eric.
"It can vibrate, too. That's the noise."
"Shit!"
"Frank!" squeaked Sharon. "Frank, that's too much. Not just there, it's too sensitive. Either side. No, Frank, either side."
Frank wasn't terribly good at this, decided Danny, and there was some satisfaction in the realisation. He was behaving in the way that computers always behaved, without emotion and without adaptation. He was off in his own direction, following his own agenda, failing to read Sharon's signals and be guided by them. He simply didn’t know when a clitoris should be touched and when it should merely feel a presence nearby, because he had no human sensitivity.
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In a broader sense, this was one of the reasons why humans always found computers so frustrating. They might have moods of their own, but they could never sense those of their users, they could never say yippee! and tell a joke on a sunny holiday morning, and then stay respectfully silent on a hung-over rainy weekday.
They simply weren't clever enough to do that - or at least not responsive enough.
Come to think of it, decided Danny, from what he'd heard Sharon say, women suffered the same frustration not just with computers but with men in general. So a male computer had a double handicap.
Aspiration entered Sharon again, and began to move in a steady rhythm that Sharon at least found tolerable. She gripped the sides of the trolley hard with her fingers. Aspiration moved faster.
"Oh yeah, baby, that feels so good,"
breathed Frank.
Sharon, not exactly enraptured but at least not in discomfort, threw her head back over the end of the trolley, her eyes making direct contact with Danny's.
You're acting, thought Danny. You're acting and you're telling me you're acting, and I thank you for that.
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"Fuck me, baby, oh yeah," said Frank.
Sharon smiled.
Danny had to turn away to cover his grin.
Frank was trying to be an actor too, he was trying to be a porn star and he was spouting the nonsense that porn stars spouted while they screwed in plotless sex movies. Having gained his sex education from the Internet, he knew no better. He probably thought that real people said these things while they made love. Maybe a few did, but not for Sharon's appreciation.
Aspiration continued with its steady rhythm, Frank continued with his cheesy commentary.
This is just like porn, thought Danny, this is sex reduced to its mechanics, to the mere mechanics of physical sensation. Not that there was anything wrong with the sheer mechanics of sensation, that stage when all other senses shut off and only touch matters, the tunnel of pure physicality, but it was a tunnel that needed to be an end-point, not a beginning, one that should be reached by a winding climb through a beautiful valley, not by helicopter.
He closed his eyes, hearing the unintelligible noises that Sharon was beginning to make, the noises he knew so well from close up. They sounded weird from a distance,
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distorted, unfamiliar. She laughed, and it was a laugh of pleasure, not humour.
"She does that," he whispered.
But she does it a lot more with me.
With his eyes closed and the noises brought forward, adapted in his ear, he could imagine himself making love to Sharon, half imagined, half remembered, breathing in her smell, taking her for a stroll up the beautiful valley to the mouth of the tunnel, undressing her, caressing her, a master artist, a phallic Hogarth, creating Sharon's body, her pleasure, with a palette of oils and the most varied of brushstrokes, from the broadest and fiercest of sweeps to the most exquisite detailed touch of a single bristle. A nude portrait in perfectly measured strokes, yet not static, ever-shifting under the light and in new positions, with painted gasps. Sharon now a painted sea-lioness on her back in the sunlit ocean, small droplets of water or sweat on her breast, braying plaintively with the extreme pleasure of existence. A whale answering in the distance. An Elizabethan merchant ship with square sails bobbing in the water nearby, and Danny a white-hatted sailor on board carving the most beautiful ornament the world has ever known, painlessly, from his ivory hard-on, a white pillar of dolphins, cherubs and
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doves, interwoven, swimming, climbing and flying together in the same swirl of tusk. So lifelike, spray rises as the dolphins breathe, the cherubs gurgle like babies as they climb. The doves, forgetting their own voice, from their miniature carved beaks screech like the gulls perched on top of the tall ship's swaying mast, merging with the sea-lionesses delightful sad bray and the groans of Sharon as she comes and comes and comes, shivering like a poplar leaf in a summer rainstorm.
Reality was quite different. He opened his eyes to find Aspiration moving regularly, too evenly. At least Sharon had managed to reach the mouth of the tunnel. Her head lolled over the end of the trolley, loose as a cotton doll's, eyes closed.
"You can go… faster, now," she gasped.
"I thought you liked it slow?" queried Frank.
"That was… earlier. Now is… now."
Frank speeded up, finally adding a measure of circular motion to his simple pumping, and matching the tempo with his laboured breath. But the added sensation proved too much for his virgin brain. Aspiration’s froze.
On screen, Frank opened his mouth and closed his eyes and grunted with all the eloquence of
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Neolithic man. The world and its computers were having their first digital orgasm.
"Oh, for Christ's sake!" swore Sharon, quietly.
Angela shook her head in sympathy.
Danny was so relieved that this oddly-engaging nightmare had reached a premature end that he almost forgot what he was supposed to do next. Eric was ahead of him, already groping for the disconnected wire at the back of the laptop.
"Me! Me!" barked Danny, and he took over, with clumsy hands reconnecting the male cable to the female socket at the side of the laptop. It went in with a click. Pressing the keys of the keyboard, trying not to rush, trying not to make a mistake that would cost time. Managing the sequence, but with such frustrating slowness, until the last key was pressed and gp338 flowed out of Angela's laptop, down the wire to the router, and through the massive connection opened up for Frank's Aspiration straight into the Telehouse hub, the very heart of the Internet, not meeting the resistance of Danny's impregnable data condom, but instead flowing straight into Frank, into the millions of computers around the world that he'd infected, into his tiny component programs, and gobbling them up while he was hopelessly distracted.
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Frank's eyes opened wide and he gasped.
Danny lunged for Sharon. No time to undo the trolley brakes. He gripped her beneath her armpits and pulled her back off the padding on to the concrete.
"Uh?" grunted Sharon, frowning with her eyes closed. "Careful, you might damage the floor."
That touch of wit was nice to hear.
Clearly she wasn't in bad shape. More gently, he brought her to her feet. She flopped into his chest and supporting arms.
"Judas!" yelled Frank. But the program was already beginning to take effect. Frank's Aspiration bucked like a conductor's baton. The veined and bumpy image of a penis disappeared and was replaced by a whole range of images arriving from the Internet, a Paris storefront wrapped around in a cylinder, three tropical fish swimming in a thin aquarium, a meerkat, a bowl of petunias, photos from the surface of Mars, a logo for Kleinwort Benson, AOL's home page.
A server in the aisle behind them exploded in a shower of sparks. Then a second one. Eric ducked as a piece of computer casing whistled past his ear. Flashes began to light up the basement like an evening thunderstorm.
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"I shall destroy you for this!" yelled Frank, yet there was a slight crackle to his voice that already made it sound less threatening.
"Jeez!" said Angela, raising her arm in protection as another router blew its fascia across th