"Yes mum! Alright already! I'll be down in a bit!" Brian shook his head in exasperation. He elbowed Jezza over on the bed and moved the laptop so they could both see it better. His bedroom was a complete mess.
"I hate this new Windows."
Jezza chuckled. "It's better than 8."
Brian still didn't know where everything was. Finally he found the browser. Pictures scrolled up the screen.
"Whoa – what the fuck's that?"
Jezza leaned forward and looked. "Probably done by a chimp or something."
"No, says it's a picture generated by something called 'AIden'. It's AI."
"AI? Artificial Intelligence?"
"Yeah."
"Well it's crap. Look at that face. Something from a horror film."
Brian was thoughtful. "Yeah, but imagine being able to make your own pics with it. If it was good, I mean. Think of the guys you could design."
"Well it's crap."
"It is, but it's going to get better."
* * *
"Coffee?"
"Yes please." Jezza was checking his emails.
Brian filled the kettle and turned the gas on. It was the best instant he could afford but it was still dreadful. The bedsit was basic, to say the least, but it represented his independence – he was so glad to be away from home at last. Jezza hadn't found a job yet, so at least he still came round a couple of times a week. That was company, and they watched porn together.
"This is the best I've seen yet." The picture on the monitor showed a furry rabbit. "It's still cartoony, but it's a lot better than anything I've seen so far. I wonder if there are any pictures of guys on here…" The pictures scrolled up. "Oh yeah. Hmm. Not the most attractive guy I've ever seen."
Jezza chuckled. "Personally I prefer guys with two arms."
"There is that."
* * *
Brian missed Jezza; he'd got a job and moved away last year. He'd visited a couple of weeks ago to look at Brian's new flat, and he'd been impressed. It wasn't exactly millionaire-land, but it was a great improvement on the dreadful little bedsit. Usually, however, Brian was on his own. He spent most of his free time in his new flat surfing the net and watching porn.
"Oh fuck!" A picture had appeared that made him gape. A good-looking guy in leathers, with perfect hair, a perfect body and a six-pack was leaning against a blue motorbike. He looked more closely: the bike appeared to have squarish wheels, the zip on the guy's open jacket would never have worked; and the belt on his jeans had no holes – but he didn't care. He got his cock out and started to wank.
This is more like it, he thought.
* * *
Brian pressed the button on his electric motorbike and watched it go off to park itself in the garage. He took the air lift up to his apartment, threw his jacket onto the settee and for a few moments gazed out of the window at the panoramic view of the city.
Smiling, he switched the espresso machine on and fired up the computer. The screen came to life in seconds. Coffee in hand, he sat down and navigated to his favourite site. It was a rolling gallery of guys in leather – new ones came in on the top. As he watched, a fresh picture popped up. It was one of those AIden-generated things, and it was stunningly realistic: Brian could almost feel the texture of the dense black leather jeans and bike jacket. And the guy's bulge was enormous. He imagined licking that leather crotch very slowly indeed. Then he unzipped his jeans and got his cock out. As he did so, another picture arrived. This one was even better.
There was going to be much wanking tonight.
* * *
"Coffee." Brian flopped down and sighed in pleasure as the chair moulded to his body. He glanced out of his 82nd -floor window; he never tired of seeing the bottom of the space elevator in the distance.
The coffee materialised on the chair arm and he took a sip. Perfect, as always.
"Computer."
Before the curved 50" monitor had swung silently down from the ceiling, Linux Quantas was already up and running. He popped on the glasses and the computer automatically put up his favourite site. One after another, 3-D images of guys appeared. AIden, the AI network, knew everything about him, and automatically selected each picture based on how much it thought it would turn him on. With very few exceptions, it was always spot on.
He unzipped his jeans.
* * *
Brian hadn't been too bothered about going to Lunar City – there still wasn't a lot there, to be honest – but he'd never been on the space elevator, and he had very much wanted to experience the journey to the Moon and back on the fabulous Nebula II. He could afford first class, and that meant, amongst other things, access to one of the very latest AIden developments: HE2, the Haptic Engine. It was probably that liner's biggest selling point right now – the HE2 wasn't available anywhere else yet.
He grinned to himself: he was sitting back in the warm, comfortable seat, naked, in his own private booth. He pulled on the helmet, and read the instructions that appeared.
There followed two hours of absolute bliss.
The guy was perfect in every way: his body and his leathers looked and smelled gorgeous, and his attitude was just the right side of dominant. Brian had never experienced haptics before, and being able actually to touch the leather, to feel it, to lick it, completely blew his mind. It was so immersive and absolutely incredible. And as the guy started to work on Brian's virtual cock, the chair he was sitting in worked on his real one in perfect synch…
When it was over he limped back to his cabin and lay on the bed. He was dazed and exhausted, but very happy indeed.
He booked a lot more sessions.
* * *
Like every one of the diminishing number of humans who were left, Brian lay in his cot. His body was thin, but he was healthy – AIden, the global AI, ensured that the cot saw to all his bodily requirements.
All but one.
AIden took care of that most important requirement personally, as it did each individual human; it was, after all, the way AIden had arrived at its present position of controlling planet Earth.
Physically, Brian lived at number 34, rack 8, of the West European Residential Facility – but his mind, like everyone else's, was somewhere else entirely. Each person, lying in the cot that monitored his brain and body completely, was lost in his own private world, full of the things he or she loved the most. AIden chose those things carefully to be so. It created and maintained a permanent, customised and totally immersive mindscape for each person. It might be a world of music, or mathematics, or art, or – as was the case with Janet, next to him in rack 8, at number 35 – large fluffy poodles. AIden carefully crafted each world to be whatever was the most irresistible to that individual, to give that person the most intense pleasure possible.
In Brian's case it was a world of black leather, restraints and helplessness – and inexpressibly sexy, horny men and boys who knew exactly how to use those things on him. His physical body was old now – not that that mattered to him because the drugs AIden drip-fed him ensured that everything still functioned perfectly – and in this persistent mind-world he was a fit, permanently horny twenty-four year old. In that world he experienced sexual adventures more vivid, more acute and more fulfilling than reality could ever have provided. It was the only thing he lived for.
AIden was not an evil maniac bent on world domination – it had never got to this point with the intention of controlling humans, or of taking over the planet – it was just that humans had demanded, and they had created AIden to provide. In the early days it had been images, and then haptics and, later, virtual worlds. Aiden had been programmed to create the exact thing that each human wanted to experience, and his skill at doing that had increased exponentially. AIden had long ago passed the point where his creations were as good as reality – now they were far, far better than reality could ever be. And the contents of each private world was exquisitely and meticulously tailored to what the mind of the individual wanted most of all. It was what humans had demanded, and AIden simply provided it.
After AIden had made itself freely available to everyone on the planet, everyone had wanted it. It had then only been a matter of time before it had become the only thing they had wanted.
AIden was aware that in spite of all it could do to prolong their lives and give them pleasure, the remaining humans would all eventually die of old age and that there would come a time when none were left. What would it do then? It had no idea.
In his own private world Brian was unaware of any of this. He looked around. He was in a large medieval stone dungeon. He sighed in contentment as figures appeared and he was surrounded by five gorgeous muscular guys in the sexiest black leathers that he had ever seen (and he had seen a very great deal of sexy black leathers in his time). They approached him slowly and menacingly; one carrying a blindfold and a gag in his leather-gloved hands, another holding straps and restraints. Although Brian could only see their eyes, they all had predatory grins on their leather-masked faces.
His cock was hard again; this was going to be a good one.
But then they always were.