Release date: June 10, 2020
Subgenre: Near Future Science Fiction, Science Fiction Romance
About The Influencer:
His secret was that he created her. Her secret is much bigger.
Beautiful. Mysterious. Unreachable.
Broadcasting from her perfectly curated room, she’s an instant sensation. Everyone wants to buy what she has. Wear her jewelry. Use her makeup. So they can be like her. Look like her. Feel close to her. Know her.
But no one can really know Ash. She’s just an illusion. A string of code I created to sell things and make money.
It was the perfect plan.
Until she starts going off script, saying things I didn’t program her to say.
Knowing things she can’t know.
Feeling things she can’t feel.
Or can she?
Excerpt:
“It’s a new
world for me,” I said.
I smiled the
secret smile, the one that was just for my viewers. There are now millions of
screenshots of me with this smile. I’ve been called the Mona Lisa of
influencers, even though I look nothing like her. And my name is Ash.
“Introduce
yourself, for fuck’s sake,” Claude said, breathing the very of himself into me.
I laughed and
smiled again. I did know what I was supposed to be doing even if it would take
me a while to get there. Then, in the when when I didn’t know who I was but I
knew what I was supposed to do.
So I executed
that exact doing.
“I’m Ash,” I
said. “I’d like to invite you into my secret world.” I looked past the camera
with a look that was enticing, inviting, marginally seductive, and yet
nonthreatening. Friendly and simultaneously otherworldly.
“Now you’ve got
it,” Claude said, and a strange feeling rose up through me. Then I had no clue
what those sensations might have been. Now I know all too very.
I got up and
turned my back to the camera and walked toward the window. The drapes were closed,
and they’d remain closed for a long time. That was part of the lure. What could
be on the other side? Even those not all that interested in me—those random
very few—would make sure to watch my vidcast’s first showing of the day to see
if I’d open the curtains this time.
I leaned up
against the windowsill. The camera followed me. I wore a tracker so the camera
was always in the correct position.
I noticed that I
could feel not just the saturnia necklace as its perfect weight pressed into my
neck but I could also feel a stray hair. I brushed it away from my forehead.
“Excellent,”
Claude said.
“It’s lonely
here,” I said, turning my face away from the camera and toward the shaded
window. But you could still see my extraordinary profile. “I hope you’ll come
and keep me company.” Wistful but inviting. As directed.
“You see,” I
said as I walked back toward the seat I’d originally been in, “I’m just like
you. And I want to know you and learn your secrets. I’ll tell you mine. All of
them. I promise.”
“Wrap it up,”
Claude said. I could hear the arrow of satisfaction in his breathing voice.
I leaned forward
and put my right hand on my left shoulder—a look that became a kind of cliché
as it was imitated so many very times.
With my free
hand I fingered the tube of lipstick lying on the vanity table in front of me.
The camera had changed to show not just my face but the tabletop as well.
“You’re killing
it,” Claude said. “Five . . . four . . .”
“Until our very
next,” I said just as he got to “one.”
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About R.T.W. Lipkin:
R. T. W. Lipkin lives in New York with
her husband and three cats. Her genre-defying novels occur at the
intersection of science fiction and fantasy, with mystery, romance,
and adventure threaded throughout.
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