Soul Bound

1        Soul Bound

1.1      Finding her Feet

1.1.1    An Unexpected Reunion

1.1.1.4  Calibration

She carefully lifted up the crown and, with a deep breath, gently settled it upon her damp hair. In a moment of whimsy, she thought:

I dub thee Nadine the First, Queen of Song!

and struck a proud pose.

A voice, seemingly inside her head, startled her:

[Neuro-kinetic activation phrase logged.]

“What? No!”

[Voice print matches registered sample. Identity confirmed.]

She felt the jewels gently pressing into position over her scalp as the crown minutely adjusted to her hairstyle.

[Please confirm when you are ready to have your body shape scanned in.]

She caught a glance in her mirror. She really did look quite spectacular in it. It would go rather well with her formal gown, the long dark red velvety one with flowing skirts and a V-shaped neck that she used to use for concerts. It disguised her thick waistline and stopped her breasts from sagging, while letting her move and breathe surprisingly well. In addition, it had embroidered designs from all the heritages of the Balkans, from Ottoman and Slavic, to those of the Sephardic Jews. She had had it custom made for her, back when she had had a good income from singing. She couldn’t afford indulgences like that now.

[An area free of clutter is recommended for the calibration exercises.]

The impertinence of the thing, judging her! Well, she’d not put up with that. The tone of the letter came to mind.

“Minion! I will let you know when you have the privilege of being allowed to take my measurements. Remain silent until then.”

Another stage, another role. And she would pick how that role was to be played. She put the crown back in its box and dressed in her gown; she took her time, adding accessories, even letting her hair dry and shaping it into a style worthy of any operatic queen.

When she was ready, and in her own time, she took the box downstairs to the courtyard, flicked the lighting onto its torch fire setting to give the place a flickering medieval look that emphasised the stonework, and placed the box at a table she knew to have a good view of the stage. Maybe the angle would fool the little pest into adding a few additional centimeters to her rather meager 1.60 meters.

“Minion, I am ready. You may start scanning now.”

She attempted to fill the stage with her presence, turning circles to display the flow of the skirts, imagining herself parading slowly through a court of admirers. Occasionally she deigned to acknowledge the implorings of the crown. Finally, she held up a hand:

“Enough. You may extrapolate the rest. Just bear in mind that I am flawless in my dignity, and do not embarrass me.”

Nadine suppressed a giggle. If she didn’t drive the little machine into conniptions with such orders, this role might be quite fun. She picked the crown up, and placed it back upon her head.

“Nadine the First, Queen of Song!”

[Device activated. Designation “Minion” accepted. Activating appropriate personality overlay.]

[Queen Nadine, I humbly request that you let your minion guide you through the calibration process necessary for ensuring that the motions of your avatar match the regal dignity of your motions in arlife.]

Over the next 30 minutes, they smoothed out their relationship. She told it to knock off 90% of the flattery, and just address her as Nadine; it learned not to sound like it was giving her orders. By the time they’d gone through the sight and sound tests, she was bantering with it like a customer, and it was responding naturally to her sarcasm and emotions. She knew the jewel sensors picked up readings directly from her brain, but this was the first time she’d ever got to spend a long period of time interacting with an expert system this modern and advanced. It spooked her, slightly.

She decided to keep its name as “Minion” to help remind herself that it wasn’t a person; it was just a bunch of code. It could simulate feelings, but it didn’t actually feel. It was like the masks worn by the chorus in Greek tragedies; just an additional means of communicating that had been added because humans interacted more efficiently with things their instincts could pigeonhole. You can put a frowny-face mask on a battery that is low on charge, and it makes it more natural for the human to grasp “something is wrong”, but that doesn’t mean batteries have feelings, right?

Taste and scent were handled differently. Rather than spray chemicals into her nose and onto her tongue, the crown generated micro targeted magnetic fields to gently stimulate specific nerves, asking her to word associate what each brief pulse reminded her of, and working backwards to assemble combinations reminiscent of specific foods and herbs.

As a cook this interested her. She knew that some companies specialised in offering package vacation trips designed to expose the tourists to as wide a range of sensory and emotional experiences as possible, in order to enhance the range of experiences they could later have in velife. But after a brief whiff of ammonia, half remembered from a school science experiment, she gave Minion a severe talking to and set a hard limit on how intensely any sensations could be induced that 25% or more of the population had categorised as unpleasant.

The final part of calibration used a fan of jewels positioned around the nape of her neck to sense and interact with signals coming from her body. Minion informed her that clothing would get in the way, and she grumpily removed her gown, hanging it back up and putting on more suitable sports clothes.

“Minion, you better be worth all this bother. I have to get up and open the bar in a few hours! I can’t afford to stay closed for a day.”

[Yes, my Queen. Conditions noted.]

She let the comment pass, just raising an eyebrow, which was a facial expression the crown had already mapped and could recognise. Calibrating movement involved standing in front of a mirror and trying to match the movements of a ghostly orglife mannequin, while the crown learned which sensations corresponded to which body, arm, hand and finger positions. Calibrating touch was a bit more fun. It started off as a game similar to “Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes” but extended onwards, with her patting the portion of her body indicated by the mannequin, then it trying to replicate the sensation, until she couldn’t tell the difference between her own pat and the stimulated one. She refused to let it calibrate any sensations between her legs, and threatened to melt it down into scrap if it ever tried to stimulate the sensation of her having a full bladder or anything else down there.

[Restriction added. Augmented Reality Calibration finished. Nadine, do you wish to carry out Immersive Virtual Reality Calibration now, or enter the Augmented Reality User Interface Mode now?]

More calibration? No way!

“Minion, engage orglife.”