Polis Kyiv, Polytechnic Institute campus
Daria Vasilevskaya, August 12, 2049, 6:26 AM
Protective screens emerged from the walls, transforming the bathtub into a large shower cubicle. Jets of water and shampoo sprayed out, filling the bathroom with the scent of fresh pine. A niche opened behind Dasha’s head, and a flexible “trunk” with finger-like attachments began washing and massaging her scalp.
“Mmmmmmmmm!”
Foam shot from the nozzles, followed by water, then conditioner, and more water. The entire process took just four minutes. Finally, air massage tubes extended, drying and massaging her with firm jets of air.
“Oh my Goddess, feels so damn good! Woke me right up!” Dasha jumped up and down in delight. “Azumi! Bring fresh underwear, please.”
Climbing out of the jacuzzi, she headed back to the “medkit,” which had closed automatically due to the increased humidity. To reach the top shelf, the girl stood on her tiptoes. She retrieved a dispenser tube of quick-acting healing gel and carefully applied it around her eyes.
After this “quick fix,” Dasha habitually patted her thigh, looking for a pocket. But her hand met only freshly washed, slightly damp skin.
“Oh. Right. No pants. Took them off yesterday… I think. Alright! Stay awake, stay awake! No slacking!” she laughed, as she left the bathroom. At the door waited a home bot, resembling a droid from the classic but once-cult “Star Wars” series. As she passed, she grabbed the white briefs from its manipulator and quickly put them on.
“Pants… pants… Where did I throw them?” She approached the chair. “Oh! Commander, this is Red-1, confirming visual contact with the target, ha-ha!”
Bending down, the girl picked up the “target” and took out a flat black vape box with a large screen and an animated “Robiks” hologram sticker.
“What do we have here? Coconut cappuccino? Quite the exotic flavor! Is this even my vape?” Dasha mused aloud as she walked to the open window, throwing the pants back on the floor. “Looks good outside! Gotta love summer.” Looking out, she tapped the sensor on the balcony door. With a soft “whoosh,” the door slid open, and she stepped onto the balcony.
It was 6:20 AM in Kyiv, and the city was waking up. Smart cars moved along the streets, drones buzzed in the air, but only a handful of pedestrians were about. It was still cool, but the sun was beginning to warm the day — it was going to be hot.
“Man, I’m losing it…” Dasha leaned against the transparent railing, enjoying a deep drag. She smiled and exhaled, releasing four thick streams of vapor from her nostrils and the corners of her mouth.
“Mom, I really don’t remember vaping this flavor last night, or where it came from.”
Suddenly, she stood straight, snapping to attention — a somewhat comical sight given that her only clothing was a white strip of fabric on her hips and a vape box in her left hand. Standing tall, she began a mock speech:
“I am Daria Vasilevskaya, studying in my third year at Polytechnic, and yes, I’m a freaking genius because I finished compiling that damn Godzilla overnight! And I remember nothing else because abusing drugs is bad!” she declared in a squeaky voice, looking out at the city, and climbed onto the wide window sill, resting her feet on the railing.
A soft laugh, like a sigh of relief.
“A mild form of schizophrenia is compensated by minor social dysfunction!” Dasha smiled crookedly, taking a deep drag and releasing a cloud of vapor. “Sir, I’m actually normal, it’s just that I just haven’t slept much for three days! My eyes hurt… I’m so… tired…”
Taking another drag, she tossed the vape onto the window sill and started braiding her hair, even though she didn’t have a hair tie.
“Who put this flavor in here, I wonder? Good taste. And we stay away from dope; got enough of our own folly, no need any more… Time to go to uni soon, while Max is at the competition. Wish I could go there… But it’s safer to prep everything for the update myself – who knows what Alisa might do…”
She abandoned her unfinished braid and stretched luxuriously, cat-like.
“And then sleep for two days straight… Or even three… Good thing it’s Friday tomorrow: weekends are always great. I wonder what Max will say about the new evolution…”
A melodic trill of an incoming call interrupted her musings. Surprised, she tapped the virtual “answer voice” icon. A small video call window opened in her field of vision. On screen was a dark-haired man in his early forties with a pleasant face and a slightly worried expression.
“Daddy?”
“Hey, kiddo! Why voice only?”
“Because,” Dasha responded, jumping down from the window sill and running into the room, “let me at least put a tee on!”
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“I’m sorry, did I wake you?”
“No, it’s fine,” the girl said, scanning the room for something suitable to wear. Remembering she’d thrown her T-shirt on the bed, she hurried over, “I’m already up. Just got out of the bath. What’s up with the sudden call?”
“Well, we haven’t talked in a while, and I had a free moment, so I thought I’d call...”
Dasha, now dressed, quickly shoved the vape she’d taken from the balcony under her pillow. She then leaped over the bed to her desk, buried under a mountain of electronic junk, cables, various packages, and soda cans. Among these “treasures” were even two partially disassembled professional VR headsets and a large pizza box.
Quickly flicking through the necessary mediaglyphs, she launched a program to locate her mediaphone, as finding it in this mess without strong magic was impossible. The sought object was successfully highlighted in the corner of the desk, under a box from an AI accelerator board.
“Got it, found the phone. Video’s coming up,” Dasha set the camera on a relatively clean spot. Plastering a broad smile on her face, she switched on the video feed.
“Dasha, what’s with those bags under your eyes?!” her father immediately reacted.
“The same as yours at the end of a workweek,” the daughter retorted, quickly switching to an offensive strategy. “And anyway, that’s not important right now. Are you calling to convince me to move to Massachusetts again? Find yourself a woman already and stop bugging me! You’re handsome, not too old, well-off, and a professor at MIT, for crying out loud!”
“Dasha, why are you so stubborn?” The father clearly wasn’t pleased but held back. “No one stopped you when you decided to drop out of high school at fifteen and enroll in a university! But why Kyiv Polytechnic?! And don’t change the subject! Since you brought it up, I insist you move. You can live on campus if you don’t like my house.”
“Dad, enough. We’ve discussed this a hundred times already,” Dasha sighed. “It’s not about your house!”
“You’re a smart, capable girl, and you deserve the best education!”
“Well, Kyiv’s Polytech is in the top 25 globally, even including corporate universities. What more do you want?!” She started to get heated.
“MIT tops that ranking, kiddo. Studying here would earn you an excellent reputation as a scientist. And I’ll support you financially.”
“Thanks a bunch,” sarcastically replied Dasha. “Where was this support two years ago, I wonder?”
“You were being bullheaded about not moving to America! And I knew you were getting scholarship, research grants, and UBI payments for your citizenship. It’s just that you’re stubborn as a thousand devils!”
“Well,” she said, shrugging, “I had my reasons – and still have them – to stay here. And you knew it was pointless to try to blackmail me… Yeah! Even with money!”
“Oh, Dasha, I still can’t believe it…” her father heaved a sigh. “You turned down an internship at Watson CyberTech, the chance to get corporate citizenship after graduation, and a promising career…”
“So that’s what they bought you with!” The girl sprang up, angrily pointing her finger at the mediaphone’s camera.
“What did that idiotic robotics club buy you with?” her father snapped, hitting the table with his fist. “You’re just infatuated with that Maksim of yours and chasing after him instead of building a decent career!”
“Stop talking about this, Aleksander Vasilevskiy! Or I’ll block your contact again!” Daria stood before the camera, hands on her hips, glaring. “I! Have! A dream! And in the team I’m in now, I have the best conditions to achieve my goals.”
“When you call me that, I feel guilty…” The father raised his arms conciliatorily. “Okay, I got it. Enough. You know I only want what’s best for you.”
Dasha simply shrugged as if saying, “sorry, Daddy, I am what I am.”
“You know what, kiddo?” Aleksander said. “How about I visit you in a couple of days? Are you really too busy with work right now? Can you spare a week for your old man? We could go to Kharkiv, our hometown, relax a bit? I’ll make sure you eat properly! And we can do something about those dreadful circles under your eyes.”
“Dad, they’re not dreadful! But what about your work?”
“The academic year starts on September 12th, and everything is ready. If I’m urgently needed in the dean’s office, there’s the extranet. And I can take a week off from Watson’s.”
“You know what?” Dasha smiled. “Let’s do that! I really don’t want to fight with you. You’re very important and close to me.”
“I’m glad, Orca. I just bought a plane ticket, will arrive in Kyiv on Saturday at 9:45 AM. See you then? Love you.”
“Love you too, Dad. Bye!”
Ending the call, Dasha flopped onto her back on the bed, arms spread wide.
“Ah… if only you knew what we’re really up to…”
Reaching under the pillow for her hidden vape, Dasha took a drag and absentmindedly blew a cloud of vapor at the ceiling.
“If only I knew… how an innocent business-card and an invitation to see an interesting AI, written specifically for a double-circuit AI cluster, would turn out. It was promising a complex project that would surely interest me…”
“It seemed funny back then – I thought, how could he know what would interest me when we're hardly acquainted? We had just met five minutes earlier, after the presentation…”
“…The ‘Applied Robotics’ club and its leader. And its only member. Maksim…”
Dasha relaxed, setting aside the vape, placing her hand behind her head, and staring at the ceiling.
“I remember the first meeting when I had my only argument with Max. Damn, I couldn’t even believe such a thing was possible! But when he stood up and, with the words ‘you’re a stubborn dumbass,’ plopped a VR helmet on my head, and I saw everything, I almost went mad with excitement. And had no idea that this was just the tip of the iceberg! A Dream!”
With her right hand’s middle and index fingers, Dasha began to caress absentmindedly her inner thigh, seemingly unaware of what she was doing as she sank deeper into her thoughts and memories.
“I threw myself into the work, even slept at the club. Then money started coming in — student startups are common practice. Besides the Project, we worked on robotics for the ‘Robot Battles’ show. And Max was participating in it too, as I later found out,” her hand had risen quite high by now, with a flushed face, as she closed her eyes. “He’s really good at it... We recorded videos for analysis... Mmm... The best ones, where Max is in close-up, are my... precious. Have a lot of them… now...”
“When did I realize it was more than an academic interest in a complex and appealing project? Why does the profit from commercial developments of the ‘club’ not seem important anymore? And my attraction to Max overshadowed the Dream along with the interesting work…”
“Max…” She sighed, her hand slipped upward, and her middle and ring fingers habitually dove in.
With a soft moan, she gave in to the sensation but suddenly stopped, pulling her hand away.
“Dashka, stop!” The profusely blushing girl sprang to her feet. “What the hell was that just now?! Azumi, start the jacuzzi! But don’t fill it too much. And breakfast… in half an hour, I guess… The usual! Not too heavy!”
“Executing,” Azumi replied, as Dasha pulled a pink vibrator from the drawer and disappeared into the bathroom.
In Kyiv, it was 7:12 AM.