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pleasure, hand touching her knee. “Especially with beautiful women, someone like you, for instance.”
    “What a creep!” Genevieve yelled. She watched herself redden and twitch her leg out of his grasp. She remembered thinking that he was much better at this mind game shit than she was.
    His eyes twinkled and he went on, “So, what if you have a nightmare? You could have it for…well…weeks!”
    “It isn’t that simple. First of all, each crew member undergoes an extensive psychological examination that’s filed with the ship. The jack sensors monitor and guide our REM sessions.”
    “You mean they tell you what to dream?”
    “Not exactly. It’s like hypnosis. They can’t make you do anything you don’t want to do. But if you’re heading into a bad cycle, they can mediate and help you work your way out of it.” It was actually a lot more complicated than that, with many more levels of optional persuasion available to a jack dreamer, but she wasn’t about to tell him. She hadn’t exactly lied, either. What she’d told Jonathon Trip was essentially the truth — she just hadn’t shared all the details. For instance, that the nano-sensors could take her anywhere and provide her with any sensation. And she could order them up like a chocolate Sundae in a fast food take-out, “dial-a-dream”. It was still up to her to react, though. Of course, knowing her psychological makeup gave Zac an edge in manipulating her emotions during jack -dreams. An edge she counted on.
    “Hang on,” Trip waved a hand and pursed his lips thoughtfully. “Okay, so you say they can’t make you do anything you don’t want to do, but what’s stopping them from persuading you that you do want to do those things by preying on your weaknesses?”
    “I don’t think that’s possible,” she said. “Mainly because of the way AIs think. And the code of conduct they’ve been programmed with. They don’t think like humans, so they would never conceive of such an idea, to persuade us and use us to their advantage. They don’t have those kinds of ambitions.”
    Genevieve stiffened briefly as she listened to her confident, but naive explanation from a year ago. She hadn’t missed Cheryl’s oblique reference to the anthropogenic propensity of Genevieve’s programming and its implied potential for eroding Zac’s judgment. The newscaster had said as much, they were concerned about the mission. Would Zeta shut them down? They were so close to Eos! And so close to where Dan’s ship had met its mishap.
    Trip leaned back and stared through her as if he hadn’t listened to her response. When his eyes refocused, they gleamed. His finger pointed at her emphatically, “Didn’t they actually discontinue those virt suits because they were designed for x-rated experiences?” he pressed on. “Surely that isn’t what the jack suit does with your ship’s crew?”
    “I wouldn’t know about that,” she said, face burning again. Genevieve remembered telling herself that she didn’t know exactly what the rest of the crew dreamed, although she’d already had a good idea back then. “You’d have to ask them. Our dreams are unique to each of us.”
    He nodded with a sly smile. He hadn’t believed her for a moment and thrust from a different direction. “I recall that they discontinued those virt suits because of nasty and inappropriate side effects.” He paused for a moment, knife-sharp eyes interrogating her, and giving her a chance to elaborate. She remained silent. “If I remember correctly,” Trip went on, “the story goes that the users became intensely sensitive to any physical stimuli on their skin. The slightest touch after a virt experience of sufficient length could set them off into uncontrolled sexual arousal. Some claimed it hurt them to wear any clothing.”
    Genevieve glanced at Zac’s camera and shrugged with a stupid grin.
    “Very inappropriate incidents occurred, like kids leaving the rec centre naked,” Trip