In Over Her Head by Elsie Russell - Parnasse.com

used in a dance piece, not to mention receiving a check."
Alessandro looked up from his seat. "Check?" he asked
innocently.
"Huh? I told you, I don't have more than a couple measures on
the web, I don't know where she got this from, but it stinks."
"Yes, the video also, after the intro, it is not Max's, his work is
exquisite, but she has changed her content, I dunno. I am analog man,"
he said, shaking his head.
Meanwhile a lithe figure moved across the screen, undulating
like the letters. Layers of chiffon obeyed the slow motions of her body
almost like an after image or ghost photography. The video zoomed in.
Her hair floated like kelp in underwater currents, its tendrils unaffected
by gravity.
That's when Penny realized this was not a video. This was all
virtual. If his FX guy was exquisite, this new guy at least was on the
pulse, really had the anime thing down. The nose had lost its sharpness,
the neck was even longer, had a couple extra vertebrae, and the limbs
were stretched to the limits of believability. A cheap trick, but it
worked.
Virtual Ula lowered her lash-less lids and caressed her virtual
face with long crease-less virtual fingers that were tipped with jagged
angular nails, lacking both cuticles and moons. Writhing strands of kelp
streamed through, mingling with hair and hand. Her lips parted
suggestively. The teeth weren't quite right either, and her tongue was
too spherical, hard and almost phallic. Then there were the eyes, when
she opened them. Technology still had its limits and Alessandro was
staring into it, into the eyes of his zombie girlfriend.
"Okay, I think I've seen enough. I'll come with you, but not
because I want to help you, either of you. You'd have to have hacked
into my system and my files are encrypted! This is a major breach of IP
rights and you don't know what you're doing. I'm all for file sharing, I
do it myself. The postmodern world is by its very nature cleptocratic,
there's nothing new under the sun. Everything is up for grabs. Fine,
that's nothing new. It's not like I'm an IP Nazi. I'm all for artistic
freedom of expression, the dissemination of ideas. A healthy dose of
anarchy keeps things kicking, but this stuff is still in beta stage and it's
unknown territory. Um, I need some privacy, okay, so I can call my
lawyer." (Not that she had a lawyer, or that they would even help her if
they knew who they were dealing with, but she had to do this right, or
at least make it look that way.)
20