Eidolon

Warning! (PG18)

This episode contains adult themes. Reader discretion recommended.

Eidolon Experienced

Another promotional meeting wrapped up discreetly. Takumi’s pitch for Eidolon went down perfectly. Rei had portrayed the embodiment of the fantasy demurely beside him; her simmering rage fueling her charisma, empowering her presence while she stood strategically employed to highlight his proprietorship.

The meeting room was now empty except for Rei and Takumi, the panoramic windows framing Mirage City’s chrome-and-neon twilight horizon behind them. With one flat hand on the desk, Takumi stood concentrated while finishing some notes on his data slate.

Looking absentmindedly into the vacuum of the vacant office, Rei pictured the past weeks; the moans, the stares, the staff whisking away champagne glasses. She imagined the patrons back home in their penthouses, plugging into their private SD-halos for another taste. Rei couldn’t shake it. The way they gasped, sighed her name while wearing their halos. The way some had glanced at her with flushed faces afterward, as if she were both the performer and the reward.

Rei hadn’t witnessed the Eidolon Synapse Encounter, as Takumi favored calling it. She has only seen the glossy promotional cut on the screen still glowing on the room’s far wall; her digital double laughing, reaching, beckoning into fantasy. That wasn’t the part that haunted her most; it was what she hadn’t seen.

“I want to try it,” Rei said, her voice quiet, but steady. Takumi, who had only just put the data slate down and started pouring a glass of Yamazaki, paused mid-motion. His grey eyes flicked up, catching her with that mercilessly assessing look that always seemed to daze her. Slowly, he smirked, “You want to experience yourself?” He finished pouring the drink evenly, then set the decanter down with precision, the amber liquid sloshing gracefully.

“I need to know”, Rei clasped her hands behind her back to hide the tremor in her fingers, “If I’m going to stand there while men use the likeness of me, I should know what they’re seeing. What they’re feeling.” He studied her for a long moment, sipping unhurriedly. His silence stretched, meant to make her second-guess the audacity of her request. Then he gave a short, amused laugh. “You’re remarkable,” he noted, moving to the sleek SD-rig and control console at the center of the room, “Most would run from their doppelganger. You want to stare it down? Very well.” He keyed in a sequence. The room’s lights dimmed into a soft glow.

Rei slipped into the reclining chair. The halo settled around her temples, humming faintly. Her breath accelerated, but she forced herself to appear relaxed as Takumi leaned down, fastening the last connector. His fingers brushed her hair back with a caress that lingered. “Remember, it’s the fantasy of you”, he said softly, his lips close to her ear, “Eidolon is not a mirror – it’s a dream.” Then he stepped back, folded his arms and watched.

The world dropped away. She opened her eyes inside, and there she was. Smiling, perfect and draped in silk and warm light. Digital-Rei’s lips parted in laughter, her gaze locked on the viewer with molten promise. The simulation surged forward; her digital double’s body arching, sighing, whispering words she never imagined saying.

Rei’s stomach clenched. The cadence of her voice, the tilt of her head; it was like watching a twin raised in an isolated cage, cared for by only an algorithm; one who had never known hunger or fear, only the prescribed art of seduction. A distilled her; condensed and reduced to a single purpose.

Digital-Rei leaned closer, whispering promises into her ear, asking for commands, suggestions. Her smile was flawless, her body gracious in ways Rei could never completely compare or see herself; was this how others saw her? Heat flooded to her face. Shame, fascination and a twisted arousal she hated herself for surfacing.

The scene climaxed; her ghost gasping, writhing with perfect timing. The world snapped back into focus with a violent, silent jolt. The smell of expensive whiskey, the plush leather of the SD-rig, the cool air of the meeting room and the faint hum of the city beyond the glass reemerging without warning. Rei’s hands were shaky as she peeled the SD-halo from her head.

The silken whispers, the arching back, the promises murmured in her voice all echoed in the hollowed-out space behind her eyes. She was breathing shallowly and a cold sweat prickled on her skin beneath the elegant dress. Humiliation burned through her, hot and acidic.

It was one thing to know it intellectually; it was another to experience it. To feel the phantasm of her own digital hands, to hear her own voice purr things she would never say. And beneath the shame, was a twisted fascination at seeing herself through the eyes of an enthralled stranger. Was this how Takumi saw her? The thought was a violation in itself.

Takumi was leaning against the chair, observing her with an annoyingly detached analytical expression. He took a slow sip of his drink, arms crossed, eyes glinting. “Well?” he asked, his voice a rumble in the quiet room. Rei stayed seated, her hands clutching the armrests. She pushed herself out of the chair, unsteady initially, but forcing her legs to carry her upward. Refusing to let him see her stumble. She turned to face him and the wrath she summoned was a welcome combustion to burn away the embarrassment. “It’s definitely not me,” she declared, surprised at the force in her own voice, “It’s a convoluted me. A perfectly crystallized obscenity.”

Takumi’s smile faltered for a millisecond then widened, cruel and tender all at once. He stepped closer and tilted her chin up with two fingers. “Is it?” he mused, setting his glass down on a side table nearby. He leaned even closer, not with threat, but with the air of an instructor examining a particularly interesting specimen, “Or is it simply amplification? Eidolon takes your natural allure and removes the… complications. The risk, the hesitation, all the inconvenient moral boundaries.” He stepped around her, his gaze sweeping over her flushed face, her heaving chest, “It is the you they all wish they could have – the one they actually could.”

Rei’s mind, still reeling, latched onto his words. Amplification. Complications. Her eyes narrowed. The ardent calculating part of her that had survived so much, began to override the humiliated woman. “You’re right,” she said, her voice dropping, losing its agitated edge and gaining a new, dangerous chill, “It does remove the complications.” She turned to face him and took a step closer to him, so fully into his space that they were nearly touching. She saw a flicker of surprise in his grey eyes. This wasn’t the reaction he’d expected; perhaps tears, or more righteous anger, not challenge wrapped in calm.

“Exactly,” Takumi stated, “That’s the point. Reality is flawed. But Eidolon? Eidolon gives them you without disadvantage, a perfect Rei without fatigue. You’re not diminished by it, you’re immortalized.” Rei’s throat tightened. She wanted to spit in his face, to yell; but the truth was worse: part of her believed him. Part of her understood the appeal of an idealized, indestructible variation of her. A version already out there, pleasing people she’d never have to meet, living in dreams she could never control anyway.

Considering the looks and whispers of certain customers at the Den, their private fantasies of her might be even wilder than what Eidolon Rei performed for the sweaty execs. Other people’s fantasies were really none of her business. Still, the likeness, the scan of her used this way; it made her stomach churn. Despite all that, she had enjoyed Eidolon more than she would ever admit to anyone. Takumi saw it. Saw the flicker of fascination in her eyes, and it delighted him. “Do you see now?” he murmured, brushing his thumb across her lower lip, “You’re no longer a hostess, no longer Karasu’s doll. You’re the first goddess in a new pantheon.”

Rei tensed, goosebumps spreading, and leaned away instinctively. She retreated without a word. The silk hem of her dress whooshing across the marble as she crossed the room to the vast windows, alive with shimmering veins and holographic ads. The city stretched endlessly beneath her; plaza towers glowing like cathedrals, the undercity pulsing like a wound. In the glass, the city lights mixed with the flicker of the promo screen that was still running. Her digital double looping, dancing with seamless poise, flawless curves and a chuckle tuned to the frequency of desire.

Rei let out a slow, humorless chuckle. “Perfect,” she murmured, “Perfect is boring.” Takumi’s face twitched and he started moving towards her. “Uncertainty in the risk of a ‘no’,” she continued, her gaze moving to his reflection in the window as he walked up behind her, “That’s the main complication, isn’t it? That’s what makes genuine desire so frustrating. You can’t program a rejection or simulate true resistance. You can only simulate submission or arranged defiance.“

She reached out to pick up her glass from the desk and held it in front of her, turning it in her hands, a prop of something real, “That digital doll… she’ll always say yes. She’ll always want what they want.” Rei’s lips curved into a smile that didn’t reach her eyes, “She’s predictability personified. Life’s not. I’m not.”

Takumi’s reflection in the window drew closer behind her, a dark figure of tailored menace. “Boring?”, his voice cut like glass dragged across steel. Rei turned then, her posture deliberately calm, though her eyes fumed like embers. “That thing—”, she gestured toward her spectral twin on the screen, “—isn’t me. It’s a simplified slave-creature, wrapped in my likeness. Seduction reduced to obedience. Is that really what you think keeps people coming back?”

Takumi’s expression tightened, a flicker of cold fury beneath the smooth mask as he stopped in his tracks. She closed the last space between them, her heels clicking softly on the polished floor. Stepping close enough to feel his hot rage, her voice cutting, “Even the most power-hungry execs, the ones rotting from boredom in their towers, will tire of it. Tire of the illusion of resistance, when they can no longer ignore that its only code responding to their prompt. Tire of complete control, where there’s no real danger, no real fight to win”, she tilted her chin, her voice soft but merciless, “You think this will immortalize me? I wage it will vanish faster than a new flavor of soda once the novelty wears off.”

The silence that followed vibrated with discord. Rei had been brutal, but she knew her logic was sound. Holding her ground while embroiled by veritable anger. She wasn’t flinching, wasn’t apologizing, she was playing his game of reasoning. Although her crude directness was a risk, she had also experienced Takumi commending her for it. His jaw flexed, his control thinning, his grey glare pinning her. She saw the storm behind it; the insult, the rage at being opposed; and beneath that, something hotter and more dangerous: pleasure. Pleasure at her audacity, her wit, her refusal to bend when anyone else would grovel.

Sensing the shift, Rei softened her expression, letting a placid smile touch her lips. She lifted a hand, the barest whisper of her fingers hovering near the lapel of his blazer; close enough to be intimate, but not quite a touch. A calculated almost. “It would be an understatement,” she said quietly, “to say I’m only casually invested in Eidolon.” Her eyes held his, gentle yet unyielding, “I have an interest in its success as much as anyone in this tower. I may not be a giant like you, but…”, she let her eyes drop humbly for a heartbeat, then rise again with disarming charm, “…I’m only offering perspective, in hope it will help the project.” Takumi inhaled audibly, a slow breath to steady himself. His stare was still glacial, but his lips curved into a smile that could mean murder, admiration or both.

Without moving away Takumi let her words linger in the air, his gaze never wavering. Then, he exhaled through his nose, his composure sliding back into place like a blade sheathed. “You presume much,” he said, his voice dangerously low. But the words lacked finality. “Nonetheless, you’re right,” he said, each syllable considered, “Prompted rebellion, simulated resistance – that’s still obedience, and obedience gets dull.” The admission startled Rei. It was rare for him to concede anything. The glint in his grey eyes warned her it was no surrender.

He stepped past her, closer to the window, his reflection meeting with hers in the glass. “That is why this—”, he gestured to the looping image of her digital double on the screen, “—is only the beginning. A beta. A scaffold. A way to refine the architecture, to perfect the code. The real thrill…”, his lips stretched into something wolfish, “…will come from the freedom to scan and insert anyone the user desires. For the right price.”

Rei’s pulse skipped as she turned her head abruptly toward him. Takumi’s gaze slid back to hers, dark with something between hunger and cruelty, “Your favorite actor. A pop-star. Your rival’s wife…”, he let that hang, savoring it, “Anyone can be possessed, perfected, preserved. The only limit is what someone is willing to pay.”

Anger and awe clashed in her chest; revulsion and a reluctant amazement for the sheer brutal scale of his vision. He was always a step ahead, always several moves past the board she thought she was playing on. “But,” he continued smoothly, “we can’t debut with someone famous or someone’s arbitrary wife. The optics would be… difficult”, he turned toward her fully now, eyes focusing dully, as if determining her worth, “To promote the tech, we needed someone neutral, someone charming and someone… dispensable.”

The word landed like a slap. Rei’s lips parted, her fire flickering against the chill of the insult. He closed the space between them in one unhurried step, his presence filling her lungs like smoke. “You see Rei, your reputation is nothing. You’re no starlet, no heiress. You’re a girl from the gutter. A hostess plucked from obscurity. Which means…”, his voice tempered, yet stabbing deeper, “…that even being the face of a digital slave is an upgrade.”

It was merciless, vicious, and yet something hollow rang beneath the polished malice. Rei saw it in the heat behind his steel eyes, the craving that betrayed his careful armor. He wanted her; not just the idea of her, not just the construct, her. Takumi always staged himself as the savior, the man lifting her from the dirt. Yet, the longer his eyes lingered on her mouth, the line of her neck, the more naked the truth became. He was no savior; he was circling prey he could not quite bring himself to consume. Rei glimpsed it and the realization thrilled and terrified her all at once.