OPTIMIZED
10. Vital Signs
SIX WEEKS LATER
It is five p.m., and Kira is striding down the corridor towards the exit. The last classes are finished, and the corridor mills and buzzes with students. Her shoulders are back, her head held high, and her posture is precise in every detail. Her eyes are clear and as blue as a summer sky. Her skin is perfect. There is no inefficiency in her movements whatsoever; she is almost as close to an ergonomic ideal as she can be, she thinks. Her every movement is lithe and fluid. The leaderboard in her HeadsUP tells her that there’s only a small number of BodyClockers above her right now, all bumping against the frustrating glass ceiling of Excellent.
The board varies a little daily, depending on who’s hot and who’s not, but the consistent leader remains AlphaWoman, and she is always a small but significant margin ahead of the chasing pack. That gap will close today, thinks Kira. Miss Magic is coming for you.
She moves with the grace and intent of a predator.
She is forty meters from the exit. Very occasionally, a soft tone in her ear or a flashing message in her peripheral vision tells her to pick up that foot one fraction of an inch, or to align her hips that way on the down step, and she does.
She’s killed practice today, annihilated it in fact, and Coach Jeffries rates her on par with Mel. Some part of her thrills to hear this, but she isn’t done yet. She knows—fact!—she will win next week’s state finals with ease. It will be a triumph, but she’s already discounted that as a done deal. She is holding back in practice now. Some instinct tells her that it would be wise to keep her full capabilities discreetly hidden from these people. Although Coach Jeffries has vast experience and many merits, he isn’t in The Community. He isn’t one of us.
Messages scroll.
Awesome routine, Miss Magic. You continue to impress.
Check out the routines on this link…
Miss Magic, hi. New follower clocking in. Just wanted to say, your stats are totally awesome! Can’t wait to see more from you! Any tips for a new girl…?
She can work all the BodyClock commands perfectly now, she thinks. She subvocalizes a command: reply to message and quickly pings a thank you to her new admirer, and suggests she clock onto BodyCon at once. You’ll never look back, she adds. She feels the love of the Community, and she loves them back intensely.
She is thirty meters from the exit. She strides straight down the middle of the hall, looking neither right nor left. The students glance at her, get out of her way; all eyes follow her. Her buttocks are taut and shapely, and she knows they are attracting particular attention as she moves. Most of the girls in the corridor look flaccid and unhealthy to her, and she wonders why she ever used to find them pretty. She wonders what on earth they have done to themselves. How can they live like that? She will not enlighten them. It would be wrong to give such weaklings even the hope of BodyClock—let alone The Community.
She checks her endorphin levels and sees an almost imperceptible shortfall. A routine is triggered by this; flexing and tensing the right muscles in just the right rhythm, her body automatically brings her to a small orgasm, just enough to correct her biometrics to nominal.
This evening’s schedule requires a tight hour of exercises, thirty minutes preparing and eating a nutritious dinner, and probably another thirty minutes updating The Community whilst Kegeling and doing isometrics. Then, at eight p.m. she will meet a man. Not FastTracker, tonight, because their schedules don’t match. No, this is an entirely new man, prescribed as always by BodyMatch. His name is SuperFlyGuy. There have been several such men recently, as The Community has grown and improved. BodyMatch has become ever more popular, and at least twice a week on average the familiar icon will blink in her peripheral vision, and she’ll see the message:
MESSAGE FROM BODYMATCH.
You have a new match.
Click to view profile.
She always clicks through and replies when these messages come in. Not clicking through isn’t really an option; it would be rude, ungrateful, and there would be thumbs down galore, which might even set back her overall Community ratings. Anyway, she’s learned that there’s nothing at all to fear—BodyMatch is reassuringly good at what it does, and BodyClockers near her level are all in perfect health, of course. And The Community always has her best interests at heart.
SuperFlyGuy’s profile shows an impressive Very Good, trending into Excellent; all his vital signs are perfectly aligned to hers, and she looks forward to it. She knows there is no danger of the dreaded biochemical imbalance tonight, because BodyMatch always protects her from such blundering mistakes. She hopes he’s as good as he looks.
Click to connect.
Later, she will go to SuperFlyGuy’s apartment, they will synch activity feeds, clink their BodyClock watches together for good luck, and from there the routine will begin. Her pussy pulses in anticipation. She can almost feel the throb and slide of his cock inside her already. Miss Magic has acquired some complex new tantric positions, via a new (and quite expensive) app, and she will demonstrate them with him tonight, practicing the routine until it is perfect, and then sharing with The Community as always. She hopes the new moves will get many thumbs up. She thinks they will. She’ll search through for any thumbs down and note their comments, and she’ll reply to them all, promising she’ll do better next time round. Optimization is surely within reach, now.
Please rate your match now.
Afterwards, she will need to rate her match again, and he will rate her, before she heads off to Petra’s for the busy midnight shift. Treasured ratings from FlexiChick and the rest of the pole exercise group will be at stake. And all these ratings will be added to the aggregated benchmarks and then into her leaderboard scores. She will not let her scores drop tonight. Not when she is so close.
There is always a way to improve.
She is twenty meters from the exit now. All the college guys are staring at her openly, grinning, awestruck as she passes. She is pleased that they appreciate what they see, but she isn’t surprised. This is the way men always look at her now. How wonderful it is to be a BodyClocker, she thinks to herself. She does not think of her old self very often, but when she does she sees a poor little blind girl. An Ella-like thing, lumpen and damaged, stumbling at random through the world, broken and hopeless. A shard of glass, all grace and beauty lost. She shudders at the thought.
She distracts herself with a quick mental rehearsal of Miss Magic’s routine for tonight, and uploads a few enhanced moves to the BodyClock routine.
Check benchmarks, Kira says underneath her breath, and the HeadsUP responds. Her profile’s master chart looms large and translucent in her field of vision. She sees her pheromone count is particularly high, which may partly explain the intensity of some of the guys’ gazes. She dials down her body’s own arousal reactions. She will conserve her heat for later. In any case, she is certain the guys are all biochemically unsuitable, and none of these civilians would get past BodyClock’s wonderful protective screen. Besides, this is not the time or place to be thinking of such things.
Notwithstanding the brilliance of her routines, she still can’t break past Excellent. It is so frustrating. She promises herself that she will finally tip it to Optimized tomorrow, or next week at the latest. The Community expects and deserves no less. She will work harder. She will do whatever is demanded of her. She will not let The Community down. She will do whatever it takes, and she subvocally commands the system to give her a new routine for the morning, at a level of difficulty beyond imagination. She anticipates many thumbs up.
Be the first! If anyone can do it, you can…
You totally clocked it. Amazing. Is there anything you can’t do?
Double thumbs up! Keep on inmproving!
Even AlphaWoman herself messages occasionally, somehow finding time amidst whatever insane schedule has kept her at the top of the leaderboard for so long: So you’re finally starting to live up to your name, Miss Magic... Wink.
She is twelve meters from the exit. Behind her, a stage whisper, a civilian female voice: Hey Kira, do us a handstand. She does not pause or react in any way. She checks the HeadsUP just to be sure. All vital signs are nominal.
There is a message from tonight’s assignment. Her fellow BodyClocker has confirmed his exact address and geotagged it for her. Good. BodyClock doesn’t do late. He has also confirmed, per her request, that he has digital video already set up for their session. It’s important to get the feedback from her followers, or else how will she optimize?
Kira checks her vital signs once more, and discovers her endorphin level is high in the happy zone. The close embrace of The Community—her family, really!—always makes her happy. There is no tedious doubt or room for misunderstanding, here; none of her precious time is wasted in mismatched pursuit. BodyMatch always delivers.
The Community is always there, swelling in numbers daily: following, helping, supporting, cajoling, rating, suggesting, helping fulfill her every need. They are there for each other. BodyClockers are kind; they have her best interests at heart. They help each other in times of need. There is a decathlete named StormBreaker who is always willing to fly in for a night, schedule permitting, to keep her balance and endorphins at peak when the locals can’t. Miss Magic’s stats rise accordingly. One day, she knows, BodyMatch will find the one optimal BodyClocker for her.
The men at Petra’s sometimes literally beg Miss Magic to go upstairs with them. She never does; she will keep herself pure for The Community. She will not poison herself any more. Once—just once—when there were no BodyMatch assignments and she’d had a spare hour, Kira had gone back to the pickup bar across town. She didn’t quite know why. Out of misguided curiosity, perhaps; after all, there were only unattractive civilians to be had, the routine was mundane, and the ritual of bending her head to the test and the inevitable outcome brought no surprises. And she got her first thumbs down in weeks for that guilty little adventure. It will not happen again.
There is a message from the BodyClocker in San Francisco—ManOfTheWorld—wondering if she has any plans for spring break. She subvocally clocks into his profile again, and sees he is actually a few steps above her on the all-important BodyClock leaderboard. That could be very interesting, she thinks, and such a match might yield the final elusive ratings boost she needs.
Reminder: don’t forget to rate your Match!
With the state finals in the bag, she’s planning a win at the approaching spring national championships and wondering how to disguise her prowess until then. Coach Jeffries is certain that she’ll excel, she knows, although he is always careful to couch his encouragement in ways that do not imply favoritism or—worse—engender complacency. Mel, in her sunny and carefree way, has told her that she will sweep states, and Mel says she is glad for her. More importantly, her followers anticipate great things.
BodyClockers love you, Miss Magic! Please keep sharing!
The world is at your feet.
What next for Miss Magic, our lovely golden girl?
She is approaching the exit now. BodyClock tells her she will reach it exactly on schedule.
Ahead, at the front doors, Mel and Jack are standing, close and deep in conversation. A tone in her ear reminds her to correct her posture by some infinitesimal margin, and she unthinkingly complies. Kira sees Mel is smiling up at Jack; she has her hand on his arm as she whispers something to him. This might signify some kind of intimacy, Kira thinks. She wonders what they’ve been saying.
Sensing her approach, Mel glances up at Kira, and then Jack does the same. She nods at them in casual acknowledgement. As she passes, her trained eyes meet Jack’s for a second. She sees the minute imperfections in Jack’s handsome face, the little laugh lines where his character shows, the small asymmetries in his posture; she sees he’s lost a little weight, probably no more than half a pound, but it adds just a little more fetching ranginess to his lean frame. A soft tone in her ear warns her of potential stress signifiers, and she strides on.
There is always a way to improve, she recites. As she passes them, Kira sees that Jack is slouching slightly against the wall, as always holding his body in that way that is entirely relaxed and quite unique to him. It is the imperfect, indefinable, distinctive shape of Jack. She could always spot him at a distance that way, even in a crowd.
There is a tiny ache in her heart.