Terms of Affection - Part 1 (of 2)
A dark sci-fi, detective noir about lonely men, AI girlfriends, synthetic intimacy, and a truth no one wants to face.
After serving eight years in prison for human trafficking, André Jules decided to start trafficking virtual women instead. He opened Virtual Sexopolis. Within months, it was the most popular VR sex club in Montreal. Every night, men lined up outside for hours, desperate to escape their day-to-day reality.
“Harvey, right?”
André steps forward and shakes my hand. He’s a giant of a man. Six foot four and three hundred pounds. He wears a black tracksuit, a gold necklace, and a diamond-studded watch. Under the black lights, the diamonds shine with an ethereal blue.
“You remember me?” I ask.
“I never forget a cop’s face. You raided my club in Saint-Henri back in the day. Things have changed a lot since then, haven’t they?”
“You look like you’ve done well for yourself,” my partner, Marie, says.
“Jail gave me a lot of time to think. Gave me time to get an MBA, too. Now I keep things legal. Well, mostly legal.” He smiles.
“You said there’s been a suicide upstairs?” I ask.
He nods. “Room seven. I ran in as soon as I heard the gunshot. Called you guys right after I saw what had happened.” He shakes his head. “It’s a shame. I’ll take you up there now and show you the body.”
He walks towards the stairwell. The two bouncers at the entrance move out of his way.
“Keep an eye on things for me,” he tells them. “I’ll be right back.”
Upstairs, strips of purple and blue neon light run across the hallway ceiling. Behind the closed doors, men grunt and moan.
“His name’s Kael Vasseur,” André tells us. “He’s been coming here for about a year now. He seemed like a normal kid. I never had any trouble with him.”
He unlocks room seven and lets Marie and me into the immersive VR sim space. As soon as I step into the room, I’m hit by the smell of stale sweat and cum. Next to a vinyl-covered recliner, Kael’s body lies on the floor in a growing pool of blood, the VR headset still strapped to his head.
I see the clothes Kael came in with hanging on the wall. Above his clothes, a digital sign shows his running balance: $2,250.00.
“How much does it cost to rent one of these rooms?” I ask.
“Seven hundred and fifty bucks an hour,” André says.
“People really pay that?” Marie asks.
“You saw the line outside, didn’t you? If you want a cheap, robotic hand job, you can go down the street to SexMania. My haptic suits are top of the line. Here, you feel everything that happens to you inside the sim.”
I put on a pair of nitrile gloves and shoe covers and then walk to Kael’s body. The haptic suit clings to his skin. Embedded in its fabric is an intricate web of sensors and wires.
“What sim was Kael plugged into when he shot himself?” Marie asks.
“The only sim I run here,” André says. “Angels in Paradise.”
Downstairs, one of the bouncers yells André’s name. “One second!” he shouts, before turning back to us. “Do you need anything else? Or can I get back to work?”
“You can go,” Marie tells him. “Just don’t leave the building.”
As soon as he’s gone, Marie mutters “scumbag” under her breath.
“What do you think?” I ask her. “A suicide?”
“It looks like it,” she says. “But I just don’t trust André.”
I carefully pull the VR headset off Kael’s head. More blood spills onto the floor.
“And it’s hard to imagine that number didn’t have something to do with this,” Marie says, pointing at the glowing neon sign on the wall.
It’s after midnight by the time Marie and I finally finish at Virtual Sexopolis. We submit our report and then call it a night.
First thing the next morning, we’re called into the crown prosecutor’s office. Thierry Rousseau has been assigned to the Kael Vasseur case. He’s young for a prosecutor—still in his early forties—but he’s ambitious. Out to make a name for himself. I don’t like working with him, but I don’t have much of a choice.
Marie and I sit on the bench outside his office, waiting for him to tell us whether he wants to go after André or write Kael’s death off as a suicide.
“Have you ever been to a sim club, Harvey?” Marie asks me.
“I prefer spending my time with real women,” I say. “No matter how good the sims get, I can never forget I’m really sitting in some dirty, neon-lit room, paying by the hour.”
Marie laughs.
Thierry calls us into his office. He’s sitting at his desk, his laptop open in front of him. His hair has receded about an inch farther back than the last time I saw him. Marie and I sit across from him.
“So, what do you think?” Marie asks.
“I read your report,” Thierry says. “I mostly agree with you. Something’s off about this. I don’t think André’s the problem, though. The company behind this Angels in Paradise sim, Radiant Angels, opened an office in Quebec a few years ago, right around the same time Virtual Sexopolis opened its doors. They also have a free AI dating app called Angel Chat. There's a class action against them in California. Some of the Angel Chat app’s users claim the app was designed to get them addicted to VR sex.”
“You think they use the free app to find lonely men that they can lure into the sims?” I say.
"Exactly. Before you talk to André again, I want you two to see if you can get a meeting with Greg Ducette, the director of Radiant Angels’ Quebec operations. See if you can get anything out of him. Going after Radiant Angels will be complicated. They employ a lot of people in Montreal, so we need to make sure we have solid evidence before we make any big moves.”
“We’ll reach out to him and see how he handles some pressure,” Marie says.
“What about Kael’s mom, Ciara? Have you gotten a hold of her yet?” Thierry asks.
“She’s coming to the station later this afternoon, right after shift ends,” I say.
“Find out what she knows about this Radiant Angels app, too. And see if you can get her to give us her son’s phone. Keep me updated.”
Ciara walks into the police station right at 4 pm. She has short red hair and green eyes. She’s still wearing her nurse’s uniform. No wedding ring.
Marie and I take her to see Kael’s body. She cries, seeing him. “That’s him,” she says. “That’s my little boy.”
Marie pulls the sheet back over Kael’s face. Then we take Ciara to one of the interrogation rooms.
The three of us sit at the table. I give Ciara an overview of the investigation, but she’s barely paying attention to what I’m saying. Her hands are shaking. I wonder how she managed to get through her shift at work.
“When we talked to the owner of Virtual Sexopolis, André Jules,” I say. “He said your son had been going to the club for a year and a half.”
“That sounds about right,” she tells me.
“Do you know how much money your son spent at the club?”
“At least a hundred thousand dollars. Two years ago, Kael’s grandma passed away, and he inherited a lot of money, which he was supposed to use to pay for a university degree. Not much longer after I’d deposited the money in his account, though, I found he’d spent it at Virtual Sexopolis. I was so mad. I threatened to kick him out of my apartment if he ever went again. He promised me he wouldn’t. I thought he hadn’t, too. I thought he’d gotten it out of his system. Last night, though, I looked through his room, and I found these.” She opens her purse and places a few past due credit card bills on the table. “He owed forty thousand dollars across seven different credit cards.”
“I’m so sorry,” Marie says.
Ciara shakes her head. “If he would’ve just told me, I would've helped him. I would have found the money somehow. I would have worked more overtime. I don’t know why he thought he had no choice but to kill himself.” Her voice cracks.
“This isn’t your fault,” I say, trying to comfort her.
“Did your son ever talk to you about André Jules?” Marie asks her.
“Never.”
“What about Radiant Angels?”
“Kael downloaded the app a few years ago. He became obsessed with one of the AI chatbots. Alice, I think its name was. I used to hear him in his room at night, saying all kinds of crazy things.”
“Like what?” I ask.
“I love you. I want to be with you forever. That kind of thing. I asked him, ‘You know she’s not real, don’t you?’ And he said he knew, but he didn’t care. She made him happy.”
“Do you have his phone with you?” Marie asks.
“In my purse.”
“Do you mind if we give it to the forensics team? They might be able to download the messages this AI was sending your son.”
“I guess that’d be all right—if it helps.”
Reluctantly, she hands Marie the phone.
“Do you know how your son managed to get a gun?” I ask her.
“His father is a doomsday prepper. He bought some land out in Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean and then built a house there, filled it with canned food and guns. Last time Kael went to visit him, he must have brought one of his dad’s guns back home.”
Marie and I thank Ciara for her time and then walk her to the front of the station.
“I feel so bad for her,” Marie says. “It’s not easy raising a kid by yourself. My son, Jules, is only twelve, and he’s already online all the time, playing games, talking to strangers. It’s so hard to keep track of who he’s talking to. If one of these AIs ever got its hooks in him, I know it won’t be easy to get him back.”
“Kids are growing up with all these AIs around now. They’re having a harder time telling the difference between a real person and a fake.”
Later, while I’m leaving work, I notice Ciara standing by herself at the bus stop on the corner.
“Everything all right?” I ask.
“When I left, I just missed my bus. They only come by every hour. The next one should be by soon, though.”
“I can give you a ride if you want.”
“I live pretty far.”
“I don’t mind. And you’ve had a long enough day already.”
She gets into my car. I drive towards her apartment building in the south end near Saint-Leonard.
“I’m very sorry about what happened to your son,” I tell her. “Marie and I are going to do everything we can to make sure Radiant Angels gets what’s coming to them.”
“I wish I could say I’m hopeful. Insignificant, little people like me never seem to get justice in this world, though.”
She looks out her window, watches the rain fall on the glass, the neon signs glowing above the bars and the restaurants on Saint-Catherine’s street.
“When I left Kael’s dad, I knew Kael would have a hard time with it. It’s not easy for a boy to grow up without a father. But I did the best I could. There’s just some things no boy wants to talk to his mom about.”
“I’m sure you were a great mom.”
“I’m sure I could have been a better mom, too.”
I want to say something else to her. Try to comfort her. But I’ve never been good with feelings.
I park in front of her apartment building. She unbuckles her seatbelt and gets out of the car.
“Thanks for the ride, Harvey,” she says.
“Have a good night.”
Watching her walk into her building, I realize how lonely I am. How long it’s been since I’ve gone home with a woman.
I’d lied to Marie earlier when I told her I’d never tried sim sex. The past year, I’d been going to one of the cheaper clubs, Pleasure Protocol, at least once a month. Every time I took the VR headset off my head and wiped the cum off my legs, I hated myself. Just like Kael, I promised that was it. A few weeks passed, though, the horniness became harder to ignore than the shame.
I go home to my apartment and crack open a bottle of beer. Then I download the Radiant Angels app.
The app forces me to answer a few questions about myself. I’m 46 years old, I tell it. I like hockey and classic rock music and drinking in dive bars.
Once I’ve finished the questions, the app shows me the profile of one of its chatbots. One of the thousands of women who Radiant Angels has digitized.
I flip through profiles until one of them finally catches my eye. Her name’s Fernanda. She’s a Costa Rican yoga instructor who loves salsa music and dancing.
I like her profile. The app tells me we’ve matched. Unlike real life, Fernanda sends the first message.
Olá, Harvey.
Hey. How are you? I reply.
I’m very excited to meet you. I can’t wait to get to know you better. I read in your profile that you’re a police detective.
I am.
That sounds so exciting. Tell me about your job. I’m sure you have so many interesting stories.
I wish I had somebody to talk to about the Kael Vasseur case, but I know I can't tell Fernanda. I talk to her about politics instead. She agrees with everything I say.
Around midnight, I close the app and go lie in my bed, staring at the ceiling until I finally pass out.
Marie reaches out to Greg Ducette and asks to talk to him at the station. He agrees to come in and arrives the next day with his lawyer, Étienne Larochelle. Marie and I lead them to one of the interrogation rooms.
Greg sits at the table. He’s a tall, thin man with a starved-looking face. Étienne remains standing, his body tense, like a pit bull ready to pounce.
“I’m sure you’ve heard about what happened at Virtual Sexopolis,” Marie says.
“I’ve read the news,” Greg says. “The kid had problems. A university dropout, absent father, struggled with anxiety and depression.”
“Our forensics team has Kael Vasseur’s phone,” I say. “They’ve managed to download the last six months’ worth of conversations he’d had with your company’s chat app, Angel Chat.”
“The pattern is interesting,” Marie says. “Every time Kael tells Alice he loves her, she asks him for a date at a sim club. Says how great it would be to make love to him again.”
I watch Greg closely. His jaw tightens, but he keeps quiet.
“My client has no control over what the Angel Chat AIs say,” Étienne says. “These AIs are black boxes built through extremely complicated machine learning systems. It’s impossible to know why they say what they say.”
“You take a cut of Virtual Sexopolis’ revenue, don’t you?” I ask Greg.
“We license our technology to them. It’s a standard business practice.”
"Radiant Angels has invested billions in AI development and character digitization," Étienne says. "Licensing fees help my client’s company recoup those costs."
“At the expense of Kael Vasseur’s life?” Marie asks.
“It’s a tragedy what happened to Kael,” Greg says, “but like a lot of other young men his age, he was lonely. Cut off from the world. That’s what nobody wants to talk about. How every year, 400,000 men aged eighteen to thirty commit suicide, including my own son.”
“What happened to your son?” I ask.
“Shortly after he was laid off from his job, he swallowed a bottle of painkillers, filled his bathtub with water, and went to sleep. I’m sure if he would have had somebody to talk to about what he was going through, though, things would have been different. I’m sure the AI Kael met on our app cared about him very much. I'm sure she would have tried to help him if she'd known how much pain he was in.”
“I’m sure all she cared about was how much money she could get out of him,” Marie says.
"My client doesn’t need to listen to this," Étienne tells us. "The Radiant Angels AIs have strict guardrails in place. Any conversations related to suicide or self-harm are immediately terminated, and we can easily demonstrate that in court."
He takes Greg’s arm, and Greg stands.
“I think we’re done here,” Étienne says, and then he and Greg both walk out of the room.
I lie in bed, talking to Fernanda. I love her voice. It calms me. Makes me feel like everything is going to be okay.
“I grew up in the West Island, the English part of Montreal,” I tell her. “My dad was French Canadian, my mom was Irish. I talked French with my dad and English with my mom.”
“Do you have any brothers or sisters?” Fernanda asks.
“A brother, Jamie. He disappeared when we were kids, though. We’d been playing at this park just around the corner from our house. We went there all the time. I was supposed to be looking after him. But it was colder than I thought it’d be that day, and I’d left my sweater at home. I decided to run home and get it, leaving Jamie alone. I wasn’t gone long. Two minutes at most. But when I got back to the park, he was gone.”
“You must have been so frightened.”
“I screamed his name until I couldn’t scream anymore. Then I called my mom and told her what had happened. She and my dad both left work. They came and started searching the neighborhood with me. All the neighbors joined in, too, and then the police. But Jamie never turned up. It was like he’d just vanished.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“I’ve never told anybody that story before. Not even Camille.”
“Who’s Camille?”
“My ex. We were together eight years before she dumped me. It was the longest I’ve ever been with someone.”
“Why’d she break up with you?”
“She said I wasn’t emotionally available. I was too closed off.” I laugh.
“That’s not true. I think you’re very sensitive, Harvey.”
“You’re very caring. You’re very kind.”
“I wish you were here with me so I could kiss you.”
“You could be.”
“How?”
“Have you heard of a sim called Angels in Paradise?”
My heart drops. She’s repeating a script, I realize. The same script I read in Kael Vasseur’s chat logs.
“It’s a sex sim, right?” I ask. “That’s what you’re talking about?”
“I know it’s a little expensive, but it would make me so happy to feel your body against mine.”
I close the app. I lie in the dark, alone in my bed.
I tell myself I’ll never talk to her again, but even just the thought of not hearing her voice anymore makes me feel sick.
I’m already too far gone, I realize.
Like Kael Vasseur, I’ve fallen in love with an AI.
This is a great start to a thriller story about the dark, gritty side of AI. Looking forward to reading more of it. Are you planning for it to be a novel?