VRealWorld

Disclaimer: the following story is a purely fictional account. Any relationship to any real person living or dead is coincidental. The narrative contains semi-consensual male-on-male sex and pain. It is intended for mature readers who wish to view such material, and for whom it is legal to do so. The author in no way condones or promotes such acts in real life.

Copyright © 2020 by POW. For spam prevention, an animal name has been added to the author’s e-mail address. Remove the animal name to get the actual address: POWauthor zebra at yahoo dot com. This story may be freely copied and distributed so long as it is copied in its entirety, unchanged, including the author credit information and disclaimer. Other POW stories are available at https://powauthor.wordpress.com. The author welcomes feedback.

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Note: this story is a sequel to VRansomwear. It’s not essential to read VRansomwear first, but the story will make more sense if you do.

Table of Contents

1 – The Prisoner And The Picnicker
2 – Visitors
3 – Sipping On A Brick
4 – The Empty Apartment
5 – Hunter And His Handler
6 – The Dance Floor
7 – Into Wonderland
8 – Pocket Prison
9 – Film Festival
10 – The Nightmare
11 – Company Town
12 – Visiting Hours
13 – Hooray For Hollywood
14 – Owned

1: The Prisoner And The Picnicker

The prison cell is not large, maybe ten feet by twelve. There is a long extension at one corner, almost a hallway, at the end of which is a toilet and a sink. The walls are rough-cut stone, dank and dripping with moisture, spotted with lichen and streaked with mineral trails left behind by centuries of trickling water. The air seems like it should be clammy and cold, but instead it is clammy and hot and Bill often finds himself pressing himself up against the stone to try to have it suck some of the excess heat out of his body.

The lighting is dim. Any color that might exist is washed into formless shades of grey. The light comes from nowhere in particular, which is odd because the cell has no windows and there are no light fixtures anywhere that Bill can find. Yet somehow, he can see, though in a limited, gloomy, dismal way. Depressing as it is, at least he’s not stuck in complete blackness.

He has been locked in this cell for what he believes to be more than a week. It is hard to measure time, of course. He is fed occasionally, though on no schedule he can predict, and there is never any change in the light level to draw a distinction between day and night. The only thing keeping him from going insane from boredom and isolation is the occasional arrival of… well, call them “visitors”. Like the food, the visitors arrive at unpredictable intervals and for as long as they are there in the cell with him, boredom and isolation are very low down on his list of troubles. After the visitors leave, after an initial period where he appreciates and enjoys the restored peace and quiet, that’s when the boredom and isolation start to nag at him once more.

He has tried to find a way to escape, of course, but every attempt so far has been unsuccessful. His last serious effort was some unmeasurable amount of time ago. Perhaps two days, maybe three. Since that failure, he has been unable to think of anything to try next. There is one main reason for that:

Not only does his cell lack windows, it also has no door. The bare stone walls, floor, and ceiling form an unbroken shell that completely surrounds him on every side.

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As family get-togethers went, it was absolutely typical. Jeff’s Aunt Peggy had arranged for a spot in Rockaway for everyone to meet up at and his uncle had brought along his grill. There was no grilling on the beach, of course, but Uncle Kenny was able to find a spot in a nearby parking lot where he could operate tailgate-style out of the back of his van. He soon had a good bed of coals going and then there was a steady stream of burgers and dogs being ferried from the van to the beach where Jeff and forty-five cousins, aunts, uncles, in-laws, nieces, nephews and who-the-hell-knows-how-they’re-relateds downed them as fast as they came out. Potato salad and pasta salad and broccoli salad, baked ziti and garlic bread, chips and dips and sodas, pies and cookies and even some ice cream that someone had somehow managed to preserve from the July heat joined the burgers in the trip down hungry gullets. It was just like every other Carcarini family gathering, the kind that happened every summer and that everyone came to.

Everyone except his no-show brother, that is.

His being a no-show wasn’t entirely unusual. Jeff had lost count of the number of times he’d received a last-minute text message with some lame excuse for bailing out of a movie or a double date or a commitment to help a friend move. Half the time, there wasn’t even a text message, just a mumbled sorta-apology whenever they next saw each other. Jeff had long since accepted that his brother was a flake. A great guy with a great sense of humor who would do anything for you (if he was there when you asked him)… but a flake.

Still, to have missed the family picnic… that wasn’t like him. Back in June they had been both rhapsodizing about how much they were looking forward to Aunt Mary’s blueberry pie (which she had to start preparing for that far in advance, given the quantities that would be consumed a month later when the Carcarini clan and its numerous adolescent and young-adult males descended on the beach in a horde). For him to not show up without a word of explanation was, well, not totally out of character, but certainly unusual.

But such thoughts were banished to the back of Jeff’s mind when his sister Lynn pulled him into a game of kickball with the cousins, and soon he was scuffing about in the sand with Carcarinis aged 5 to 67 all hooting and running and laughing and shouting in a game where the rules were more like suggestions and no one cared who won.

---

A bag of food appeared in the cell. The food always arrived like this but Bill still found it unnerving every time. One moment, an empty patch of floor, the next: a delivery from a takeout place, usually Asian but sometimes Mexican or Italian. Since the meals appeared at unpredictable intervals, most of the time the food arrived without him noticing and might sit there for minutes or hours until he happened to spot it, although usually the aroma clued him in pretty quickly. Once before, though, and again just now, he happened to be looking right at a particular patch of floor at the moment when the bag materialized.

There was no Star Trek-style sound and light show, no whoosh of displaced air, no buzzing of some teleportation machine. One moment, the bag was not there; the next, it was. No fuss, no drama. If only the old bags could be magicked out of existence the same way. Instead there was a steadily-growing pile of them in one corner of the cell.

This time Bill knew what to do. He hurled himself to his feet, windmilling his arms and grasping at the empty air above and around where the bag appeared. He may be living in an illusion, but the real world was out there somewhere, and in the real world physical objects did not just appear from nowhere. There must be a person making these deliveries, a person who was being masked from his sight by the techno-magic of the VRealWorld interface he was wearing. If he could just grab hold of that person, he could maybe piggy-back a ride to the door that must exist somewhere even though he had so far been unable to find it. Or he could perhaps force that person to take him through.

But his arms encountered nothing but air. Either the VRealWorld programmers had figured out a way to make objects untouchable, or there was nobody there to touch.

As he sat and ate (Italian this time: chicken parm sandwich, fries), he figured out what must be happening. Someone – possibly his jailer or possibly just a random delivery guy – was entering his cell with the food, both of them edited out of the sights and sounds that the interface passed along to Bill. He set the bag down and left through the door that had to exist even though Bill could never find it and only then, once he was gone, did the VRealWorld allow Bill to see the bag.

If he could just get out of this damn suit, take off the hood with its complicated array of electronics that intercepted and controlled every bit of light that reached his eyes and every sound that reached his ears, even every touch that reached his skin, he’d be fine. He could walk out of here – wherever here was – without a backward glance.

But the suit was locked on. The only way to get it off was to get the little number that sometimes appeared at the top of his vision to climb all the way up to 1,000. He blinked it into view to see just how far away that milestone was.

The little yellow digits slid down into his field of view, three of them: 243. As he watched, taking his first bite of sandwich and trying not to smear tomato sauce on the rubber around his mouth, the number dropped by ten.

Goddammit.

---

Four days after the picnic, on Wednesday, Jeff happened to find himself making a delivery in Bushwick, only a few blocks from where his brother lived. He realized he still hadn’t heard a word of explanation about ditching the picnic and decided to stop in. He knocked, waited a few minutes, then let himself in with his key. He called out to announce his presence but got only silence in reply.

The place had its usual look of well-lived-in disarray. Nothing disastrous or unsanitary, just a few dirty dishes in the sink, some clothes tossed at random over various bits of furniture, an unmade bed in the apartment’s other room. With just the two rooms, it didn’t take long to search the place, and Jeff let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding as he reassured himself that the thing he had not been allowing himself to imagine he might find – a body lying blue in the bed or surrounded by dried bloodstains on the floor – was not here. No crime had occurred in this apartment, no horrible accident or sudden illness. His brother had not come to an untimely end, not here at least.

Although, as Jeff looked closer, he noticed a few other details. The dishes in the sink were not just yesterday-old, but food-bits-dried-on-for-days old. And the sheets on the bed actually had a thin film of dust on them. Likewise the shirts and pants draped over the chairs and piled on the floor. Even the tube of toothpaste in the tiny bathroom had clearly not been touched for a while. The conclusion was unavoidable, but it opened up a whole new set of uncomfortable possibilities.

No one had been inside these rooms for at least a week. So where the hell was Bill?

---

2: Visitors

Visitors. Three of them this time.

Bill felt the blood surging through his body and the adrenaline pumping into his veins. The familiar conflicting emotions raced through his head, just like every previous time. Excitement and delight that the long hours of boredom were about to be briefly relieved tinged with fear and dread about what might take their place. Some of the visitors played rougher than others.

The visitors materialized in the cell the same way the food did – one moment nothing, the next moment a trio of leathermen waiting for him to notice them and pay them the respect they were owed.

Bill did so, tagging each by gently grazing his hand across the front of each leatherman’s pants. As he did, thought balloons popped into view over each one’s head and Bill’s score number descended into his field of view and climbed up a total of seven points. He got two for the one whose thought balloon labeled him “Wrazzle78 Leatherman.” He was dressed in a WWF-style outfit, bright with vivid colors that Bill’s eyes almost didn’t know how to process after so long in this drab, dreary cell. The man was thickly built with a powerful torso and arms and legs to match.

He scored another two for “TMJRW45387 Leatherman” who wore the generic outfit of the game’s default avatar – leather pants, boots, gloves, jacket, and hat, studded with bits of chrome here and there but mostly plain black. This guy was either new to the game or didn’t care much about personalizing his appearance.

The third gained him three points. “NY_Yankers Leatherman” appeared as a leathered-up version of a baseball player complete with the trademark pinstripes. Crotchless baseball pants and a codpiece? Really? Bill snickered – silently, to himself – at the thought of anyone trying to actually play baseball in such a costume. Imagine trying to slide home in that! Then he took a second look at the balloon and noticed the spelling of “Yankers”. Suddenly the outfit made more sense.

As he had done with all the leathermen who had visited his cell before, he dropped to his knees and held his hands out, wrists together. It didn’t take long.

Wrazzle78 Leatherman wishes to control your suit. Permit this?
Yes   No

The pop-up appeared in Bill’s vision as an overlay, opaque enough to be visible over the background but not completely obstructing his vision. Bill blinked “Yes” and waited to see what would happen.

The stone walls of the cell faded away and the light brightened. The floor beneath them transformed into a mat, the ceiling flew up and away, and all around the walls were replaced with rope fences, beyond which were rows of seats filled with cheering, jeering fans. It was a scene straight out of a WWF match, very consistent with Wrazzle’s name and outfit. Bill glanced down – the rubber suit was gone and the body he wore (a much more bulked-up one than he actually possessed) was dressed in shiny, gauzy shorts and nothing more.

Wrazzle came at him and the two began grappling, genuine physical contact mostly unenhanced by any of the techo-tricks that the VRealWorld made possible. Bill was willing, but knew that this was not going to help his score much. Past experience had taught him that the more physical laws his tormentors violated, the more points he would earn from the ordeal. More pain also tended to translate to more points. This wasn’t going to be worth much – wrestling was something anyone could do any time, no need for goggles or a rubber suit. Bill carefully avoided looking at the yellow numbers that kept dropping into the top of his field of vision, not wanting to see how much this was or was not helping his cause. At least he was out of the cell for a while and into some bright light and a simulation of open space. It was nice to hear the voices of other people, even if they were only NPCs generated by the game engine. The crowd roared every time Wrazzle got Bill into a compromised position, which happened often. Wrazzle was evidently really into wrestling and Bill was only able to come close to bringing him down once. He spent much more time pinned and rendered helpless by his opponent’s superior skill.

There was quite a bit more crotch-grabbing than you’d see in a typical WWF match, but Bill was OK with that. Under normal conditions, the suit prevented him from touching his own dick and held it tightly confined in a space that prevented it from getting stiff. But that confining cage was wired up to simulate sensations on his skin the same way as the rest of the suit was. If his controller allowed him to have a virtual dick, as Wrazzle was doing now, that virtual dick could get hard and it felt enough like the real thing to be convincing. Even though he could feel his real dick locked away, soft and stifled in enforced chastity, he could also simultaneously feel the sensations from his rock-hard virtual cock. It was a real mind trip, and the ability to have a chastity hard-on was just one of the blurrings of the real/not-real, pain/pleasure boundary that Bill found so addictive about the game.

Of course, having a virtual hard-on was another thing that wouldn’t help his score much; things that brought you pleasure never brought you points. But it was what Wrazzle wanted from him, so it would help some. And the virtual chair that Wrazzle smashed over his prone victim’s body at the end of the scene – targeted right at that raging virtual hard-on – had to be good for some points, for sure. Damn, that hurt so much Bill had to remind himself it wasn’t real as he curled up on the floor clutching his crotch.

The wrestling arena faded away and the stone cell walls returned. Bill recovered enough to climb to his knees and hold up his wrists again. Somewhat to his surprise, NY_Yankers wanted a turn next. Usually higher tag values tended to correspond with higher status in the game, which in turn tended to correlate with higher status in real life. This guy should either have been first or last.

Yankers further surprised him by not taking them to a baseball-themed scene. Instead, they remained in the cell where this seemingly sports-minded average Joe revealed a brutally sadistic streak by delivering a fire-flogging. Yankers chained him up against one of the stone walls, magicking manacles into existence around Bill’s wrists and then lighting into him with a virtual whip that glowed with electric blue light and seared every point it touched on Bill’s back and shoulders. It hurt like hell at first, the combination of blunt impact and fiery heat, but the knowledge that it was all simulated and that he wouldn’t have any scars or third-degree burns afterward made it easier to sink into subspace. Soon his shouts of anguish turned into grunts and moans. It still hurt, but damn, it sure felt good to be utterly at the mercy of a sadistic stranger! He tugged at his wrists and was amazed at how securely the imaginary chains held his real body fixed to the wall. Best of all, this would really boost his score. He kept his eyes shut, focusing on the sensation of the sizzling hot whip crackling against his skin and resolutely not looking at the yellow numbers that would be visible if he opened them.

Not soon enough and yet all too soon, the flogging ended and Bill was released from the manacles, crumpling to his knees and gasping from the ordeal. To his relief, the third guy, the one with all the letters and numbers, didn’t take a turn – definitely either a newbie or just a cheapskate. Instead, Yankers kept control and the cocks came out. Bill’s arms were pinned to his sides, held in place by coils of rope that Yankers conjured into existence with a swirl of his hand. He was compelled to deliver blow jobs (not that he was objecting) to each of the two leathermen who had used him, accepting their loads with grateful lips. The third merely watched.

Sated, the three left, fading from Bill’s sight. Presumably, the real men beneath the digital costumes were now walking out through the door that Bill could never find, and he wouldn’t find it now because every time visitors left him he found himself blind, deaf, and immobilized for about half a minute. He waited, still kneeling, hoping his position was stable enough that he wouldn’t fall over and whack his head on the floor. When the thirty seconds were up, his senses turned back on and he was free to move once more.

Now it was time to check his score. He eyed the yellow numbers down into view: 763. That felt about right, a hundred-ish for each blow job plus the foreplay… that fire-flogging must have earned him a bunch.

But it wasn’t enough, not even close. He needed to get to 1,000 and at this rate, it was never going to happen. For whatever reason, a reason he couldn’t figure out, his score constantly dropped whenever he was sitting idle and not entertaining visiting leathermen. Even as he watched, the 3 morphed into a 2. The only way he was going to get out of this cell was if one of the visitors worked him over hard enough to him to lift him up to that thousand mark… but none of them ever did! It was like they were all in on some conspiracy to edge him, bringing him close enough to freedom to think it might happen this time but never actually letting him get there. Over and over and over. And because he was trapped here, he was at the mercy of his visitors and couldn’t go out seeking other leatherman to earn points from. He could only wait for them to come to him, and they never seemed to come in bunches so their points would accumulate. Instead, they left him alone for hours after each encounter, during which time the points he had earned steadily trickled away like sand in an hourglass.

Not to mention that he was horny as fuck and couldn’t do a single thing about it.

Well, shit.

Bill got up and went to the sink to rinse his mouth out, then lay down on the coolest part of the floor he could find and tried to will some of his excess body heat out through the suit.

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3: Sipping On A Brick

No one else in the family seemed to be worried. Well, except his mom, but “worry” was her baseline and “haven’t heard from Bill in a while” was soon bubbling in her mental stewpot along with “gotta remember to water the herbs on the porch” and “Sarah really needs to settle on a career” and the innumerable other things she spent her mental energy on, each just as critical as the last until the next came along. Bill had been known to disappear without notice before, taking off with some friends for a concert in Boston or a rafting trip in the Poconos or, once, to go all the way out to Burning Man. Still, as far as Jeff was concerned, more than a week seemed like a long time to go without a single word to anyone in the family.

But, you know, life. More appliances had to be delivered and installed, and then his buddy Carlos needed help with the ongoing project of his Thunderbird, and Lynn wanted him to watch the twins for the two hours between when she needed to leave for work and when Eric would get home, and all of a sudden it was Friday, almost a week after the picnic. That was when Jeff’s phone rang.

The call came from a number he didn’t recognize. Usually he let those go to voice mail, but this time, perhaps with Bill in the back of his mind, he decided to pick up.

“Hello, I’m trying to reach Jeff Carcarini,” the voice on the other end said.

“You got him,” Jeff replied.

“Jeff, my name is Martin and I got your contact information from a Bill Carcarini. Is he a relative of yours?”

That got Jeff’s attention. “Yeah, where is Bill? Is he OK?” The words tumbled out of him in a rush, even by Brooklyn standards.

“Bill is… fine. I’m sorry, you’re probably worried and I’m not helping. He’s alive and healthy but he’s, well, I guess ‘stuck’ might be the best way to describe it.”

That didn’t help ease Jeff’s mind at all. “Whaddaya mean he’s stuck? Where is he? Who are you and how do you know this? And why isn’t he calling me himself?”

“Whoa, slow down! Look, this is not something I want to talk about over a phone. I just… well, I happened to come across a guy who seemed like he might have gotten himself into something a little over his head and I thought I might, you know, be a good neighbor, try to put him in touch with someone who could help him. If that’s you, great. If not, I’ll try someone else.”

“Yeah, that’s me. Where can I find him?”

“Jeff, trust me, you don’t want to go rushing in to where he is unprepared. Come talk with me first. Meet me downtown. I’ll tell you where he is and a little about what to expect. Can you get to Chelsea by seven tonight?”

7:00 was three hours away – plenty of time to take a train into the city. Martin gave him an address on 16th street and, after several more questions about Bill’s status and reassurances that he faced no immediate threat to life or limb, they hung up.

All on the train ride Jeff’s mind ran in overdrive. Was this some kind of elaborate ransom demand? A white-glove kidnapping? Some kind of drug deal gone bad? Trouble with the law? Jeff found it hard to reconcile Martin’s assurances that Bill was fine with the fact that Bill hadn’t called himself and didn’t pick up any of the times Jeff had called him.

The address in Chelsea turned out to be a bar called Terra Nova. Martin was evidently watching for him because the moment Jeff walked in the door, while his eyes were still adjusting to the dimmer light inside, he felt a hand take hold of his elbow and guide him to a booth. Martin was tall, dressed in nondescript black clothing.

“So where is he? Where’s Bill?” Jeff asked as they were still in the process of sitting down.

“Queens,” Martin replied, getting himself settled. “Elmhurst. You want something to drink?”

“I want to find my brother.”

“And you will. But like I told you on the phone, you don’t want to go rushing in without all the facts. Which I am about to give to you, and it’s going to take a little time, so you might as well get ready to stay a while. You want something to drink?”

Jeff sat back and put his hands in his lap. “Sure. A beer. Whatever’s on tap.”

Martin signaled for a server and placed the order for Jeff’s beer and something called a brick for himself. “OK, drinks are on their way,” Jeff said the moment the server’s back was turned. He was not here for small talk. “So why isn’t Bill picking up his phone?”

“Bill is playing a game and it’s taking up all his attention right now. Like I told you, he’s fine. But while playing this game, he got himself in over his head. Think of it… think of it like poker. Anyone can play, but if you are a novice and you find yourself at a table of sharks, you’re going to find yourself skinned pretty quick. That, in a sense, is what I believe has happened to Bill.”

“Wait… you believe that’s what happened? You don’t know?”

“That’s right. I don’t know Bill at all, never spoke to him. I just happened to catch sight of something that caught my attention. Something didn’t feel quite right about it, so I investigated – discreetly – and learned enough to confirm my suspicions. Now, I’m not the kind to intervene unless someone asks for help, which Bill did not do. Grown adults are free to make their own choices in this life and live with the consequences of them. But I don’t mind passing word to someone who has a more vested interest than I do – you, in this case – and letting them make the decision whether an intervention is needed.”

“So what’s this game? He’s at a casino or something and they won’t let him leave?”

“Not quite. The game he’s involved in isn’t a card game. Have you heard of VRealWorld?” He pronounced the word with two syllables, the first sounding almost like the word “free” but with a “v” sound in place of the “f”.

Their drinks arrived. Jeff shook his head and took a swallow of his beer. Martin’s drink, true to its name, consisted of a glass containing what looked like a miniature brick, dark red with a rough and lumpy exterior doused in rich deep amber liquor. He made a show of poking at it with a thin plastic straw, dislodging tiny bits of the brick into the drink.

“The brick is frozen fruit puree and various other extracts and flavorings,” Martin explained. “It’s a unique experience to drink one. As time passes and the brick melts, it infuses the bourbon with amazing richness and depth and complexity that constantly changes. Every sip is different than the one before.”

“Are you trying to drive me nuts?” Jeff asked. “You know the only reason I’m here is to find Bill. You think you could maybe speed this up a bit?”

Martin lifted his glass to his lips, sniffed, and took a slow sip, letting the liquid bathe his tongue before swallowing it down. “Of course. So.” He resumed gently poking at the brick with his tiny straw. “VRealWorld is an augmented-reality game. You remember Pokemon Go from a while back? Much like that. There are all kinds of augmented reality games aimed at various audiences. Harry Potter fans, anime lovers, train spotters, bird watchers, you name it. This one is targeted at adults.”

He lifted the glass to his lips again and looked straight into Bill’s eyes. “Specifically, gay adults,” he said, then took a sip.

“Bill’s not gay,” Jeff said flatly.

Martin swirled the bourbon around in his mouth again and swallowed. “Well, you would know better than I would, of course. Nevertheless, that is the game Bill is involved in. Whatever his reasons may be are no business of mine.”

“This is nuts. No way.” Jeff’s beer sat forgotten on the table, icy droplets sliding down the sides and soaking into the napkin.

“If you say so. I only know what I saw.”

“Yeah? Why don’t you tell me what you saw, then?”

“What I saw was this: your brother was on his knees in an apartment in Elmhurst. He had, if you’ll pardon my bluntness, a stiff dick in his mouth and he was working very hard on it with his lips and tongue. He was under no duress. No one was forcing him to do what he was doing.”

Jeff’s hand came down on the table with a loud slam. “No way,” he said again. Then a thought crossed his mind and immediately came blurting out. “Was it yours? The dick in his mouth?”

“No,” Martin said, pausing to take another sensual draw from his brick. “It was not mine. I was only a spectator to the event.”

“You just get off on watching then, huh?”

“Jeff, please. Your hostility is misplaced. I’m the guy who is trying to help you help your brother, remember? I don’t have to do that. I’m under no obligation to you or to him. You might want to take a long pull on that beer and think about how pissing me off is not likely to work in your favor.”

Jeff closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He had been working on learning to control his temper lately, trying to compensate for a longstanding tendency to let it run out of control. The man was right – Jeff was letting his worry come out as anger and aggression. Martin’s story could be a pack of lies… or he could be telling the truth. Jeff didn’t have enough information yet, so for the time being, he could withhold judgement and take the man at his word. For now. If at some point he collected evidence that contradicted that assumption, well, at that point Martin would discover just how far Jeff would be willing to go to piss him off. For now, though, he needed to get himself under control. He took a gulp of the beer and apologized.

“You’re right. I’m sorry. I’m worried about him, and what you’re saying makes no sense to me. It doesn’t sound like the Bill I know at all. Look, I just want to get him out of wherever he is. What’s the address of this place in Elmhurst?”

“I told you already, you can’t just go rushing in there.”

“Yeah, you said that. But I think I can handle myself. What’s the address?”

“Don’t do this, Jeff. Hear me out first.”

“I was willing to do that when I came in here, but you keep not telling me anything helpful. The address.”

Martin sipped his brick again, savoring this mouthful for as much time as each of the previous sips. Jeff quietly ground his teeth. At last Martin swallowed. “Fine,” he said. He gave an address and an apartment number. “Please remember this,” he added as Jeff rose to go. “When you fail to retrieve him – and you will fail – come find me again. I’ll be here tomorrow night any time after 8:00.”

“Yeah, good to know. Thanks. And thanks for the beer.” He left the remaining two-thirds of the glass on the table as he headed out the door, barely registering the two men he passed on their way in, one dressed head-to-toe in leather with what looked like a motorcycle helmet over his head, the other completely encased, including his head, in thick black rubber.

---

4: The Empty Apartment

By the time Jeff got to Elmhurst it was after 9:00. The sky was deep purple and the streetlights were on. He found the building he was looking for and only then thought to wonder whether he would be able to get inside. The buildings in the seedier neighborhoods tended not to have the elaborate security systems of the better-off parts of town. Or if they did, the systems either didn’t work or the residents had deliberately disabled them, figuring that the increased risk of an intruder was more than offset by even the faint hint of a breeze through a propped-open door on a sticky summer evening.

In any event, Jeff was able to walk in without trouble. He climbed the steps to the fifth floor two at a time, breathing slightly more heavily at the top but still pumped with energy. 513 was a short walk down the hall and on the left. He knocked and waited.

Here, now, standing at a door when he had no idea what might be on the other side, he began to second-guess his decision not to bring a couple of friends along with him on this trip. He had considered it, but decided against recruiting any helpers under the reasoning that if Martin had been telling the truth – wildly improbable as that seemed – it would be best if he and Bill handled this without any other eyes watching. Not that it would be a problem if Bill was gay, even though he’d never dropped any hints along that line. But if he was, he probably wouldn’t want his “coming out party” to happen when Jeff and half a dozen friends came busting in on him mid-blow-job. So went Jeff’s thinking at the time, at least.

Now, in front of a silent door that no one was coming to open and that he would probably have to force his way through in another minute or two, he couldn’t help thinking that having a friend or two along for moral support sure would be welcome.

No. Can’t be helped. He knocked once again, more sharply this time. He let another minute pass and then started thinking about how difficult it would be to pick the lock and whether he might need to resort to the less-subtle, less-undoable approach of busting in the door. He gave the knob an exploratory turn and to his surprise, it spun easily and the door swung open.

The inside of the apartment was darker than the hall. Jeff closed the door and stood there for a few minutes to allow his eyes to adapt to the gloom. Better that than announcing his presence by flipping on the lights. The place was warm and stuffy, definitely not air-conditioned. Soon enough, his vision had adjusted and he could see well enough by the glow of the streetlights that filtered in from the windows in the next room.

He was in the kitchen, though there was no one in it. In fact, there was nothing in it at all, no appliances, no cookware, not even a table. He walked straight ahead to what looked to be a living room but again, there was no furniture. This place was empty.

One more room to check. At the far end of the room were two doors set opposite one another, both open, with a narrow spot too tiny to be called a “hall” separating them. Through the one on the left was a cramped bathroom. The one on the right led to what was presumably the apartment’s bedroom. Jeff walked in and thought at first that this third room was as empty as the first two.

Then he saw the dark figure lying on the floor.

Oh, god. “Bill?” he called, then again, louder. There was no response.

He stepped closer and knelt down next to the prone figure. “Bill, is that you?” The window here was covered in a shade, but enough light to see by still came in around the edges and from the living room. Bill nudged the figure on its arm and was somewhat surprised to feel rubber instead of fabric. There was no response; he pushed again. “Bill, c’mon wake up.” Just as Jeff was beginning to get nervous, the figure startled awake and sat up.

“Who’s there?” It was Bill’s voice. Jeff felt relief wash through his body. Whatever weirdness was going on, it was over now. Done.

“Aw, man, Bill, you gave me a scare, y’know? Let’s get…”

“I know you’re there,” Bill called out, not looking in Jeff’s direction. In fact… Jeff realized he couldn’t tell where Bill was looking. He couldn’t see Bill’s eyes, which were presumably open and should be visibly white even in the dimness of the room. But they weren’t, and Jeff realized that his brother looked more like a shadow than a person. Not just his eyes, but his entire head was black. So was his whole body.

Bill arms began to grope around. Though they brushed against Jeff’s arms and torso several times, Bill seemed not to notice. “Bill, dude, it’s OK. I’m right here,” Jeff said, but Bill continued to thrust blindly about as though he hadn’t heard. “Dude, what’s going…”

“GET OUT OF HERE!” Bill shouted with a blind flail of his fists, startling Jeff backward off his heels, sending him backward crab-style on his hands. “Bill, c’mon, it’s me!” Bill climbed unsteadily to his feet and Jeff did the same, fishing his phone out of his pocket and turning on the light. He shined it at his brother.

Bill was encased from head to toe in a black rubber suit that clung tightly to his body at every point. The only parts of his skin that were visible through the opaque covering were his lips. “What the hell…” Jeff mumbled. Bill continued to attempt to fight off one or more imaginary assailants, grunting and thrusting his fists in random directions.

Enough of this. “BILL,” Jeff shouted. “Knock it off! It’s me. It’s Jeff.”

“I know you’re in here,” Bill replied, still swinging. “Get the hell out, I’m tellin’ you.”

Jeff danced backward again, out of range of the flailing fists. “Dude, enough already! I’m trying to get you out of here!” The suit, that was the problem. Martin had said he was involved in a VR game… the suit must be showing him things that weren’t there. Jeff had no way of knowing what Bill was seeing and hearing, but it was pretty clearly not Jeff or the words he was saying.

The suit had to come off. Jeff set his phone down with the beam pointing at the ceiling and diffusing the light throughout the room. He walked around behind Bill and grabbed him from behind, tackling him to the floor. Bill exploded in a panic, thrashing and flailing and shouting. “Hang in there, man, I’m doing this for your own good.” He wrestled Bill into lying on his back and sat on his belly. “Lemme get this thing off you and you’ll be good as new… STOP FIGHTING ME!” But Bill’s efforts to fight Jeff off only intensified.

There. At the neck of the suit was a zipper. Jeff reached for it, got his hand batted away, grabbed for it again, and discovered that it was padlocked shut. He fumbled at it, fighting off Bill’s attempts to stop him, but there was no way to undo the zipper without removing the lock first. He yanked on it, hard, hoping to snap either the lock or the zipper handle. He tugged again, and a third time, and suddenly Bill shrieked in pain and went limp.

Jeff slid off him. “Bill? Bill, you OK? What happened?” Fuck, nothing about this was going right!

Bill stirred, rolled onto his side and folded up into a ball, hands tucked into his groin. He moaned while Jeff continued to fuss over him. “Please…” he whimpered. “Please just go away…”

Dammit, he had to get that suit off! He didn’t have any way to cut through the lock here, but he could do it at home. He was going to have to drag Bill home with him just as he was. The thought of trying to wrestle an unwilling, combative, rubber-clad brother through the subway system was not appealing. Maybe it was time to bring someone else into this? He could call Carlos or Lynn and ask for a lift home… but first, he needed to get Bill out of this creepy, sweltering apartment.

He took hold of Bill by the shoulders and began to drag him toward the door. Bill began struggling again, feebly at first but growing increasingly frantic as they neared the door. “Please, no… no, no, NO! Let me go!” He lunged and broke free of Jeff’s grip, lurching to his feet. He stood and faced a spot about two feet to the left of where Jeff was standing. “I swear to god,” he said, “I will find a way to kick your ass if you don’t get the hell out of here and leave me alone. Now beat it.”

Jeff sagged against the wall. “Bill,” he pleaded. “C’mon, man. Game’s over, ‘kay? Turn that thing off, huh? Please?”

And then he realized what Martin must have meant about Bill being stuck. It wasn’t a matter of being physically stuck – locked – in a room or even in the rubber suit. He was trapped in whatever virtual world he was in. And it was clear that he didn’t want to leave. Jeff had walked right into this empty apartment through an unlocked door; the door to the bedroom wasn’t even closed. Bill could walk out any time he wanted. But due to whatever fakery the suit was feeding him, he didn’t want to leave and would fight tooth and nail if Jeff continued trying to force him out.

Jeff sank down and sat on the bare floor, his back against the wall. He stayed silent and merely watched. Bill remained standing and alert for five, ten, long minutes, occasionally making groping motions in random directions. Then he made a circuit of the room, walking meticulously all around the perimeter, one hand brushing the wall and the other groping about to the front and side. At one point on his circuit he crossed the narrow gap into the tiny bathroom and came back, walking right past the open space that led to the other rooms of the apartment with his hand placed up against the empty air as if there were a wall there too. When he neared the spot where Jeff was sitting, Jeff scooted forward into the center of the room until he had passed, then slid back. When Bill had convinced himself that Jeff – or whoever he imagined Jeff to be – was gone, he sat down as well, returning to the exact spot in the room where Jeff had first found him. He sat cross-legged doing nothing at all while Jeff watched, desperate to help but unable to think how.

Jeff sat and thought for a long while. Eventually he stood up and explored the rest of the room, staying away from Bill and keeping quiet, though he suspected he could bring a brass marching band into this room and Bill would only notice if they stepped on him. There was a window, open, letting some air in but doing little to cool the room down. There were large metal panels riveted to two of the walls and a large section of the floor. These served no purpose he could guess at – why would a room need to be partially steel-plated? In one corner he found Bill’s phone, battery completely drained. He thought about taking it with him for safekeeping but then thought that if Bill – somehow – got himself out of this, he’d want to have his phone. In another corner there was a pile of takeout bags, at least a dozen of them. That wasn’t right, that was just going to attract rats.

He had to get Bill out of here.

He scooped the bags up, picked out the largest one and smooshed the others down inside it. At least he could do something to help Bill in the short term until he could figure out how to get him out of here for good. When he stood to go, Jeff had to blink back wetness in his eyes. It occurred to him that this was not too different from addiction. His brother needed help, needed an intervention, but could not ask for it and would fiercely resist any attempt to help him against his will. He was in over his head in this VRealWorld thing and so was Jeff. They were going to need help.

He was going to have to talk to Martin again.

---

Thank god. The intruder seemed to be gone. Damn, it was terrifying to be trapped inside this suit when something like that happened. It was one thing to be visited by random leathermen – there was a script for that. But when someone who wasn’t in the VRealWorld came by this place – wherever it was outside the game – there was no telling what could happen. Bill never had any way of knowing how much the suit was altering his perceptions, but sometimes something happened that the suit couldn’t completely hide – a hand shaking his body, grabbing him, dragging him. A voice shouting at him loud enough that the suit couldn’t completely cancel out the sound, could only mask it and distort it and muffle it.

The suit had conditioned him to never speak to leathermen. Groaning, shouting, screaming… those were all OK, but saying words was punished by an intense electric shock to his nuts. All communication had to take place through the game’s interface. He’d been wearing the suit long enough that it took an effort to overcome his conditioned aversion to speech, and it turned out OK this time – since the intruder wasn’t a leatherman, there was no penalty for talking to him, for pleading with him to leave Bill alone even though Bill was totally helpless. He couldn’t run away, couldn’t see the intruder, couldn’t hear anything he said, couldn’t touch him, not even when the guy was obviously sitting on top of Bill and yanking at the zipper on the suit hard enough to trigger the anti-tampering punishment: an even harsher zap to the balls.

The whole episode was disturbing and distressing and Bill sat awake and alert for long hours afterward, never wholly convinced that the intruder had really gone away even after searching the cell as best he could multiple times.

It wasn’t until hours later, after his next meal, that he noticed that the pile of old takeout bags was gone.

---

5: Hunter And His Handler

The bar was much busier when Jeff returned, unsurprising for 8:30 on a Saturday night. Jeff found Martin sitting at the same table as before talking with another man sitting across from him. Martin saw him and waved in greeting.

“Would you excuse me for a moment?” he said to the other at his table, who murmured a polite farewell and stood to go. It was at this point that Jeff noticed the third man at the table, who he had not seen before because he was down on all fours at the feet of the man who was rising to depart. Jeff, the son of generations of Brooklynites, was no stranger to other people engaging in odd behavior and had two stock responses in store for whenever he came across it. One was a blistering stream of profanity and the other was a carefully-blank expression and averted eyes. The first was generally reserved for behavior that affected Jeff in some way and so he was preparing to bring up the second response when something caught him off guard: the man on the floor, who was now rising up just like a dog about to follow in the footsteps of its master, was wearing a thick black rubber suit that looked exactly like the one he had seen Bill in yesterday. Jeff’s poker face crumbled and he gaped like a midwestern farm boy on his first trip to Times Square, only realizing he was doing it when Martin chuckled.

“Actually, Bernie, would you mind sticking around a few minutes longer? I was about to introduce my new friend to VRealWorld and I’d be grateful if you’d be willing to demo. Bernie, this is Jeff. Jeff, this is my friend Bernie and that’s Hunter.”

“Nice to meet you,” Bernie said, holding out a hand that Jeff reflexively took and shook. Meanwhile, Hunter – the man on the floor – put his face up to Jeff’s crotch and sniffed, then nuzzled at his dangling other hand and would have licked it had Jeff not noticed and pulled it up out of reach.

“OK, this… this is…” Words failed him and he sputtered to silence. Martin chuckled again, joined this time by Bernie.

“I know, this is all new to you. A bit of culture shock for a straight boy to be wandering into a gay bar, especially on VRealWorld night when half the guys you see aren’t even really here, they’re so focused on things that are invisible to you and me.”

“Oh, he’s straight?” Bernie asked. “How do you do it, Martin? You just amaze me, you really do.”

Of course this was a gay bar. Jeff would have noticed sooner based on the look of the clientele, but his mind had been focused on getting Bill out of his predicament.

“OK, Jeff, why don’t you sit down before you fall down,” Martin said. Jeff sat, sliding toward the wall to make room for Bernie to reclaim the spot he had just vacated. Suddenly there was a beer in his hand. He took a sip – it was cool and refreshing and the same kind that he had had yesterday. Martin had known he would be back tonight. He knew a lot, it seemed, about what was going on. After yesterday’s experience in Elmhurst, Jeff found himself more willing to sit through an explanation at whatever pace Martin wanted to deliver it, because the best idea he had been able to come up with on his own was to call the cops and try to persuade them to rescue a kidnap victim who was being held by nobody in an unlocked room. That didn’t seem like it would end well.

“So I told you that VRealWorld is an augmented reality game. Players use digital devices to modify the reality they are seeing, hearing, and feeling. At the low end, any phone or tablet can let you access the game, but serious players like to use headsets or gloves or vests or even full-coverage body suits like the one Hunter has on. The game is capable of altering sight, sound, and touch, so the the more senses you integrate with, the more real the experience feels.”

While Martin was speaking, Bernie had pulled out his phone and brought up an app. He handed it to Jeff. “Here, take a look at Hunter. Hunter, out and stay.” He gestured with his hand to illustrate to Hunter the movement he intended. Jeff held the phone up so that the camera was pointed at the crawling man…

… or rather, at the dog, because that’s what was visible on the screen. Jeff saw not a man in a black suit but an elegant dog of unknown breed, with a thick tan coat of medium-length fur, sharp, up-pointed ears, and a long upraised tail. The illusion was completely convincing. Jeff glanced around the phone to confirm that the creature on the floor really was a man in a black suit taking surprisingly-agile steps on his hands and knees, then looked back at the phone where the thick human arms and legs were displayed as slender furry legs that ended in strong, sure-footed paws. Every movement that Hunter-the-human made was replicated on the screen where Hunter-the-dog made a corresponding movement with the corresponding part of his anatomy.

“That’s… how does it… whoa…” Jeff breathed.

“Amazing, isn’t it?” Bernie said as Hunter paused, having reached the distance Bernie had indicated. “It’s even better with a headset because you can see the whole room. Now watch this.” He reached over, tapped the phone and said “Leash.” On the screen Jeff watched as a rope lead appeared between Bernie’s hand and Hunter’s neck. It was so real-looking that Jeff reached forward and tried to grab the imaginary line. His hand, of course, passed through empty space while on the screen it appeared to go right through the rope. It wasn’t just his hand, either – a trio of leather-clad men on their way to the bar walked right through the leash with neither the leash nor the men noticing each other.

“Ready?” Bernie said. Jeff wasn’t sure what he was supposed to be ready for. Bernie gave a flick of his gloved wrist, tugging it toward himself. On the screen, the rope lead tightened up and tugged on Hunter’s collar.

And Hunter turned around and returned to the table.

“How the…” Jeff gasped. “He was facing away from you! He couldn’t possibly have seen you do that!”

“I know, isn’t it amazing!” Bernie chortled. “It’s because of the glove.” He held up his right hand, which was encased in a glove that looked like ordinary black leather at first but which on closer inspection turned out to be laced with silver wires. “The glove is VRealWorld-linked so the system knows what to do when I move my hand.”

“And on Hunter’s end,” Martin said, “the suit generates a pressure at the collar region that Hunter perceives as a tug. And being the well-trained animal he is, he comes trotting right back to his master’s side. Isn’t that right, boy?” He reached down and scratched the rubber-clad head. Both Hunter-the-man and Hunter-the-dog leaned in to the attention and after a few moments reached out to give Martin an amiable lick, which Jeff found looked totally unremarkable on the screen but was deeply unsettling off it.

“With the suit on, everything Hunter sees, hears, and feels is 100% consistent with the role he has taken on. When he cocks his ears forward, he can feel it in the muscles of his scalp. When he wags his tail, he gets a sensation at the base of his spine that exactly simulates what he would feel if the tail was real. When he looks down at his arms, he sees the same paws you see on the screen. He sees a muzzle rather than a nose between his eyes. The colors are washed out to mimic a dog’s color perception range – dogs can’t distinguish between reds and greens so reds, oranges, and greens are all various shades of yellow to them.”

“It does sound too,” Bernie broke in. “We’re talking now and he can hear us, but he can’t understand the words. The suit parses the sounds that reach it and scrambles any voices it finds, then pipes the result to the headphones in his ears. What he hears are still recognizable as voices but with all meaning removed. It’s like listening to a foreign language – he can use tone of voice cues to tell whether the speaker is pleased or angry or curious, and after enough repetition he can learn to recognize certain combinations of sounds the way other dogs do, commands like ‘sit’, ‘stay’, or ‘back’, He recognizes his name as well. But there are no complicated sentences for him when he’s in dog mode.”

“When he’s in dog mode…” Jeff echoed faintly. “So he’s not always like this? He’s sometimes… jeez, I don’t know how else to say this… a normal person? If that’s offensive, I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be. This is all…” he gulped in a big breath of air. “… all very new to me.” He grabbed for his beer before he could say anything else.

“No problem, we get that question a lot,” Bernie replied. “Hunter has a conventional job on the weekdays. It’s actually a fairly high stress one and you’d recognize the name of his employer. He’s good at it, but it wears on him. Becoming a dog on the weekends helps him relax. Dogs have no stress at all, right? They live in the moment, they don’t care a hoot for tomorrow. Before we got into VRealWorld, we used to just pretend. We went the furry-costume route for a while, but this is so much better. It makes it so much easier to fully sink into the role. For him and for me.”

“And… if I can ask… what do you get out of it?”

“Ha! What do I get? Man’s best friend with benefits, that’s what I get out of it! No, seriously, I get what any other dog person gets – in exchange for feeding and exercising him, I get unconditional affection and undivided attention. When he’s being Hunter, he is constantly aware of me, paying attention to my state of mind, my mood, my well-being. He’s there for me, sometimes even before I know I need him. And best of all, I don’t have to scoop up after him. Find me any other dog that’s toilet trained!”

He laughed long and hard and Martin joined in. Jeff chuckled to be polite, then reached for his beer to cover up the fact that this was all more than a little weird, especially with the knowledge that even as he sat here, Bill was locked into a suit just like this one and Jeff had no idea what sort of lies it was feeding into his eyes, ears, and skin. He realized the beer was half gone already. When had that happened?

“Well,” Bernie said. “I get the feeling that Martin here is about to start getting all boring, explaining in excruciating detail how all the techno-mumbo-jumbo works. That is my cue to move along. Nice meeting you, Jeff.”

“You, too,” Jeff murmured, running very much on social autopilot. This was a lot to take in already and he had a feeling he was still only at the top of the rabbit hole. Martin thanked them for the demo they had provided and then the pair disappeared into the growing crowd.

“So this is what Bill is doing?” Jeff asked. “He’s pretending he’s a dog?”

“No,” Martin replied, “Bill is in a different game altogether. You saw the room that Bill is in, right? You were in there with him. A perfectly normal bedroom just like any of ten thousand others in this city. But that’s not what Bill is seeing.”

He fiddled with his phone for a bit, then handed it to Jeff. “That’s what Bill is experiencing.” Jeff saw stone walls and a figure pacing the floor. The lighting was dim and the black rubber of Bill’s suit soaked it up, making it hard to distinguish any details. It looked nothing like the room Jeff had been in earlier. Jeff tweezed his fingers on the screen to swing the view around… there was the wall where the window should be, only there was no window in this view. Over there was the door, but in this view he saw just a short hallway that led to the toilet and sink. The gap that led to the living room and kitchen didn’t exist. In its place was just more stone.

That was why Bill couldn’t get out. He couldn’t see the door. The suit probably prevented him from feeling it, too, making him think the stone wall completely surrounded him. As far as he could tell, the door didn’t even exist.

There was a number at the top right of the screen, 327. It changed to 326 while Jeff was watching.

“OK, I think I get it now,” he said, handing the phone back to Martin. “The suit prevents him from finding the exit. And he can’t unlock the suit. Catch-22. So I just have to go drag him out even if he doesn’t want to go —” Martin held up a hand and Jeff trailed to a halt.

“I know you’re eager to go get him, but you tried once already to pull him out of the VRealWorld from the outside and it didn’t work. Trying again would only have the same result. The only way you’re going to get Bill out is to do it from within the game. You’re going to have to go into the VRealWorld yourself.”

---

6: The Dance Floor

It took ten minutes to get the VRealWorld app installed on Bill’s phone and to set up a user account for him. He chose the name “AvengingTurtle” not because the term was special to him but because it wasn’t, and therefore was not something Bill would associate with him. Jeff was fairly sure – and was hoping – that Bill would welcome his rescuer with open arms and a hug of gratitude once he understood that he was being rescued, but after yesterday’s reaction Jeff could foresee possible outcomes where he might want to keep his involvement anonymous. Best to leave his options open.

For the next half hour Martin gave him an introductory tutorial on how to use the controls and the interface. He started with the phone and then tried on a headset and a pair of gloves, rented from a supply the bar kept available for guests. “For your purposes, a headset and gloves will be enough. Players who want a deeper, more realistic experience might add a vest or a pair of shorts or long pants, and the really committed players get those full-coverage suits like Hunter is wearing. Those are very expensive, but they provide the fullest, most satisfying experience possible.”

“Bill’s in one of those suits,” Jeff observed, trying to get the hang of how to pull the control interface into view and make selections from it. The headset worked by tracking eye movements and Jeff needed to train himself to be able to look and blink in a way that the system would be able to understand what he wanted. “Yes, he is” Martin agreed in a soft, neutral voice.

At last Jeff had mastered the interface well enough that Martin declared him ready to explore. “Now you’ll need to decide what you want to look like.”

“Can’t I just look like this?”

“You could, but I wouldn’t recommend it. You would be like an American tourist who goes to a foreign country and insists on speaking only English and eating only at McDonald’s. The signal you’d be sending to the locals is ‘I don’t belong here; please pick my pocket.’ I’d recommend going with the default avatar instead. That still says ‘I’m new’ but without the undercurrent of contempt. Wearing the default avatar says ‘I’m new but I’m trying; please be patient with me’, like a tourist who makes an effort to learn a few phrases in the local language. Or you could choose any of a million pre-made avatars or do what the serious players do and create your own. But I don’t think you want to invest that much effort.”

“Not really, no. That’s fine then. I’ll go with the default.” Martin reminded him which menu options to blink and Jeff made the selections.

The bar had grown crowded now and music was pumping in another room. “I know it’s going to be tough to do,” he said as Jeff was preparing to venture forth into the crowd, “but please: try to resist the urge to take off the headset. You’re going to want to. You’re going to want to see what’s quote-‘really’ going on. But doing that would be a mistake. The point of this exercise is for you to practice being in the game’s world. If you bail out every time you encounter something that makes you uncomfortable, you’ll never learn how to play by its rules. That’s the skill you need to learn before you return to where Bill is.

“So here’s what I suggest. Go around that corner into the next room over there – that’s usually the dance floor but on nights like tonight it becomes the VRealWorld hall – without any augmentation. No headset, no phone app. Walk around, see what it looks like. Spend ten, fifteen minutes, then come back here and put on the gear and go back in. Sound good?”

Jeff agreed and made his way through the crowd. This was only his second time in a gay bar… and come to think of it, the first time had been with Bill and a group of his friends. At the time Bill had said he was just tagging along with one of the others, who said she thought it would be fun to go see how the other half liked to hang out. Now he couldn’t help re-thinking that entire episode in light of what Martin had told him… what if it wasn’t that girl’s idea, but Bill’s?

No. Couldn’t be. Bill had never dropped any hints that he might be gay. Not that it would be a problem if he was, it just didn’t fit… unless…

… unless that’s exactly what that episode had been? Bill’s way of dropping a hint? If so, Jeff had totally not picked up on it.

He resolved to think about that later and for now kept weaving his way through the bodies. There was a full range of guys here, some normally dressed, some formally dressed, some barely dressed… more than a few were decked out in leather outfits and Jeff saw three of those full-body rubber suits on his way to the dance floor.

The dance floor – the VRealWorld hall – was not as full as he had expected it to be. It was strange to know that the air around him must be full of virtual add-ons that only existed in the VRealWorld, like Hunter’s invisible leash, and yet to not be able to detect any hint of them. It seemed like walking through stuff like that should leave some sort of trace, the way that passing through a ghost supposedly gave people the shivers. But Jeff felt nothing like that. This was just a room full of guys standing around, talking to one another, sipping their drinks, dancing.

There were lines of bright yellow tape on the floor and a sign at the door instructed unaugmented visitors to stay on the walkway defined by the lines. Perhaps he would be walking through someone’s imaginary wall or table or chair if he didn’t?

The tape lines made a rough circuit around the room, which Jeff followed. A few things caught Jeff’s attention as he walked. There were more, many more, of the the rubber-suited ones here and many of them were standing peculiarly still or were sitting or lying down on the floor while those around them were standing. One was leaning on a metal table, head and both hands on the table while the rest of him was bent at the waist. It did not look like a comfortable position. Others were dancing with odd, aimless motions; still others were sitting in chairs or at small tables making incomprehensible gestures. Presumably whatever all these people were doing made sense if you could see the augmentations but without them Jeff couldn’t even begin to guess what was going on.

One area he passed had bright spotlights shining down on it, though there was nothing happening at the point where the lights were focused, just two normally-dressed guys sitting on the floor and a suited one lying down. Not far past that he came across Hunter, down on all fours in his suit next to Bernie, who was laughing with a group of friends. In various places around the room some of the men were getting kinda handsy with one another in a way that struck Jeff as just fundamentally wrong, but he reminded himself that this was their space and he was the different one here. All in all, he encountered no real surprises on his tour. He made sure to cover every side of the room, then headed back to Martin’s table.

“Okay, now remember,” Martin said as he helped Jeff get the headset and gloves in place, “you are going to be tempted to take these off. Try to resist that temptation. You were just there, you saw what it looked like outside the game. The point is to learn how to work inside the game. So… you’re all logged in… try standing up. Now turn your head side to side. Any dizziness? Good. All right, off you go. Anything you want to ask questions about, I’ll be here whenever you get back.”

Jeff retraced his steps back to the other room. The headset was not heavy, but he was definitely aware of its presence. He looked down at himself. Apparently the default avatar was a black leather outfit with a few bits of shiny metal here and there. He put his hands on his chest and damned if he didn’t feel the leather through his gloved fingers! Freaky. It was very tempting to do exactly what Martin had told him not to do, to take off the headset and watch his fingers touching his cotton shirt and feeling a leather jacket. But no, if he was going to give in to temptation and peek, it wouldn’t be five seconds in and five steps away from his starting point.

He saw only a few sights on his way to the dance floor that were obviously virtual constructions – one man was sporting an enormous pair of viking horns that would have broken his neck had they been real; another had donned a nearly-naked body with body-builder muscles, cheese-grater-ripped abs, and a posing pouch stuffed so full that if it were real, the skimpy fabric would have long since torn apart under the strain. Other things caught his eye that were harder to peg as either real or fake. That guy in the cowboy costume with the hat, the boots and spurs, for instance… had Jeff just not noticed him before, or was the outfit a digital overlay? Jeff shook his head quickly back and forth, trying to overload the headset’s ability to adjust what he was seeing, but it made no difference – the cowboy looked just as solid as the guy in T-shirt and jeans next to him. If it was a fake, it was a darn good one. “Augmented reality” was a good way to describe this – reality plus a little bit more.

Then he turned the corner.

---

7: Into Wonderland

The dance floor – the same room that he had just walked through a few minutes ago – looked nothing at all like it did before. Impossible constructions filled far more of the space than actually existed. That castle in front of him, for instance, had to be an illusion and yet it looked as if he could cross the drawbridge, enter the gate, and explore the inside to his heart’s content. Or the palm trees whose crowns were poking up overhead… they would have broken through the roof. Or over to his right, those flames leaping up from the floor in violent explosions couldn’t possibly be real. Neither could the volcano puffing ominously impossibly far away.

He stood blinking at the Escher-scape for a moment and then decided it would be insane to try to take in everything at once. He would visit mini-scenes one at a time. Less overwhelming that way. The castle area was closest, so he headed in that direction first. He looked for the yellow tape lines to follow and realized they were gone. After a moment’s confusion, he realized the headset must be editing them out of his view – now that he could see the virtual constructions, he wouldn’t need any other visual cues to avoid walking through them. As he drew nearer to the castle, he stepped from hard floor onto soft grass… no, it was still hard floor under his feet, it just looked like soft grass and the expectation of his eyes led him to actually feel the softness underfoot for a moment. Someone in one of those full-immersion suits probably would feel grass on his feet. The thump of the music faded as he crossed the border and was replaced with the lilting sounds of pipes and lutes. All of a sudden, he had left Manhattan and had been transported to a miniature Renaissance Faire.

He turned around and, to his great surprise, the green lawn stretched out behind him until it disappeared into mist-shrouded forests and low mountains in the distance. Halfway to the forest, mounted knights were charging toward one another and when they struck, the wind carried the sound of clashing steel to his ears. He took a step toward the knights, back the way he had come, and immediately the VRealWorld hall faded back into view. He took a few steps back and forth over the border, seeing how the rules worked: once he was on the castle grounds, he existed wholly in that world. Only by stepping across a boundary that was invisible from inside could he get out of the illusion.

He crossed once more into the castle world and this time kept going. A half-dozen knights or squires or lords or whatever hung about, idly conversing. They were all dressed in the multi-colored, poofy-sleeved style of RenFaire reenactors. As he neared, one of them festooned in a purple hat broke away and took a few steps toward him.

“Hail and well met, good fellow,” he called. “I see by your raiment that you hail from a foreign land.” Jeff glanced down involuntarily at his T-shirt and… no, at his leather outfit. “Might I offer assistance in finding garb more befitting a gentlemen of your mien?”

“Thou presum’st much, Sir Andrew!” shouted another of the Renaissancers. “Mayhap yon traveler doth seek gainful employment, not idle fripperies!” This remark, while confusing, seemed innocuous enough to Jeff, but it sparked roars of laughter from the other men gathered around. They began making catcalls aimed not at Jeff but in another direction, beyond where the group was gathered.

“Harkest thou, boy? Belike thy replacement draws nigh!” said one.

“Aye, tend thou to thy labors, lest thou find thyself keeping company once more with knavish Darien!”

Jeff stepped forward and to the side, trying to peer around the group and wondering what these comments meant and who they were directed at. He was most definitely feeling lost, but was his lack of understanding due just to the old-timey mode of speech or was there something more?

Ah. Something more, definitely. On the far side of the group was a man sitting in a chair, dressed as splendidly as the others with near-knee-high boots propped up on a log in front of him. He looked relaxed, confident, and quite in his element in his archaic clothes in front of an imaginary castle.

There was another man in front of the one in the chair. This one was dressed in tattered rags, looking very much like a medieval peasant compared to the lords around him. The peasant was down on his hands and knees and was polishing the gleaming boots of the seated lord.

With his tongue.

Jeff stared, mesmerized, watching the peasant guy pull his tongue into his mouth, get it slick with saliva, then stick it out and lovingly slide it along the side of one of the lord’s boots for a bit, then repeat the process. He was seriously into it; this was not a punishment for him. He was going to town on that boot like it was the world’s rarest, tastiest, most extravagantly expensive ice cream flavor. Shit, I always thought boot-licker was just a metaphor… He realized suddenly that his Brooklyn poker face had failed him once more and closed his mouth with an audible snap.

“What say ye, good sir?” Purple Hat was standing right next to him. “Lord Henry would glad yield his seat to you should you wish’t, and we shall see whether yon boy Kent might yet be persuaded to do better than his customary piss-poor job on your tired feet.” Then the tenor of his voice changed. “Or was Sir Thomas correct in his assessment? Wouldst thou prefer to claim Kent’s spot as thine own and banish Kent to tarry a while with Darien?” He gestured off to the right and Jeff turned to look.

Darien was standing there, dressed in the same sort of colorless, shapeless tattered rags as Kent. He was bent over at the waist with his neck and wrists locked in a pillory. His face and the aged wood around it were dripping with the juices and pulpy splotches of rotten vegetables, the corpses of which littered the ground around his feet.

“Uh…” Jeff said. He had come in here expecting weirdness. But he realized now that he had been expecting cartoon weirdness. Video game weirdness, where you knew that what you were seeing was fake. But this… damn, this weirdness so freakin’ real.

Purple Hat flicked his fingers and a tomato appeared in his hand. “Or perhaps you would care to practice your toss? I fear Darien doth grow dry…” He held the tomato out to Jeff.

“You know guys, I, uh, verily, I was just passing through. Thanks, though.”

“No problem,” Purple Hat – Andrew? – said. “Hope you find what you’re looking for – there’s plenty here to choose from.”

“Yeah… uh… thanks,” Jeff repeated, taken aback for what felt like the tenth time in two minutes, this time by Andrew’s casual switch to modern-day English. He was suddenly glad that he had taken Martin’s suggestion to go with the “I’m new; be kind” costume rather than the “please pick my pocket” one he would have chosen without that guidance and wondered how this encounter might have gone if he had made the other choice.

He turned and left Kent to his boot-licking, Darien to his humiliation, and the rest of them to their camaraderie. As he was walking away, he heard the unmistakable splat of what could only be a very soft tomato making impact, followed by a muffled “a thousand thanks, m’lord”.

The green grass of the castle yard gave way to a techno-metallic floor and the music faded back on as he crossed over. Three men were… well, dancing was probably the best word for it, but it was like no dance Jeff had ever seen. Their limbs were moving in ways no human limbs could possibly move. Their arms and legs stretched to twice, three times their normal length, then shrank back. Heads rose up impossibly high on bendy necks and oscillated back and forth before returning to “normal”. Knees and elbows flexed in directions no human joints could manage. They would touch or stroke one another from too far apart when their arms were extended, not in a sexual way but definitely in a sensual one. It was graceful, but alien-looking.

Too weird. Jeff kept moving. He next encountered a foursome.

No, a fivesome. “Here, do you want to hold him?” one of the men asked as he neared, holding out a hand with something chipmunk-sized in it. Jeff lifted a hand and accepted the offering before he could think not to.

Holy shit. It was one of the rubber-suit guys, only he was four inches tall. He sat on Jeff’s outstretched palm, looking as if this sort of thing happened to him every day. Was he real or some kind of CGI creation? Jeff couldn’t tell.

“How the hell?” he said, afraid to move.

“Size fetish,” the man who had made the handoff said. He was dressed in a slightly-fancier version of what Jeff was wearing, the same leather but with a few more decorations. “He loves being tiny. Used to go to a hypnotist to get his fix; now he comes here instead.”

Apparently he was real, at least in some sense of that word, because there was no way a full-size man was sitting curled up on Jeff’s palm. “Uh, so what do I do with him?” Jeff asked, hoping the answer was “give him back”.

“Don’t have to do anything,” came the reply. The other three had already headed off elsewhere and the man who – it was clear now – had dumped his burden onto Jeff was hurrying to follow them. He called back as he went. “Carry him around with you until you don’t want him any more, then give him to someone else or just set him down somewhere he won’t get stepped on. You wearing a vest? Ah, shame. If you had a vest on you could put him in your pocket, let him ride around that way.”

Then he was gone and Jeff was alone with his pocket-sized companion. He peered in close. The level of detail was incredible. Five miniature fingers at the ends of two matchstick-sized arms, tiny and perfect and delicate like a doll made by a master craftsman. But it moved! As Jeff stood, a passerby jostled his arm. He closed his fingers slightly to make sure the miniature rubber figure didn’t fall off, and at the same time the guy reached out one of his Lilliputian arms and steadied himself against the pillar of Jeff’s index finger.

There was no way this could really be happening. Jeff was more tempted than ever to take off the headset and see the reality behind the illusion. But he resisted the urge. What would he see, after all? His empty, gloved hand and nothing more. He would learn nothing about where this guy actually was, if there even was a real human behind the character, or about how the trick was done. No. Just stay in the game. Roll with the weirdness as it came.

He brought his hand close to his lips. “Hey… dude… can you hear me?’ He wondered what his voice would sound like to a four-inch-tall person. Deep and booming, or normal? But the guy showed no sign that he had heard. Jeff lowered him down to about bely height and continued along.

The floor gave way to sand. Once again, the thumping music faded away and was replaced with the sounds of the shore – gulls, wind, breaking waves. Palm trees over head, the ones he had been able to see from the entrance. Beyond them lay a placid, iridescent blue sea, and beyond that, far off in the distance, was the smoking volcano he had seen. The stretch of beach was not large, but the sun gleamed down bright on the golden sand. Once again he was tricked by the sights and sounds of the environment into thinking that the surface beneath his feet was soft and pliant instead of the hard floor that he could actually feel if he focused on it. It actually felt warmer here, too, as if there really was a tropical sun beating down on his leather-encased skin.

He looked back. Like the castle, the beach was a three-sixty-degree illusion from the inside – sand and shore in all directions. It appeared he was on an island surrounded by sea on every side. He retraced his path for a few steps and sure enough, the hall re-appeared, so he reversed course once more and continued on to the beach.

A trio of men were relaxing on towels and a fourth was stretched out on the sand. All were dressed in swim trunks and looked nearly identical. “Welcome to paradise, Mr. Turtle!” one of them called as Jeff approached, raising his nearly-empty beer bottle in salute. Right, other players could query his name through their interface to the game. That had been included in Martin’s tutorial but there was no way Jeff would be able to remember how to do it and carry on a conversation at the same time. He’d have to figure that out later – it would be useful to know who the people around him were.

“So what are you seeking vengeance for?” another asked.

Maybe he should change that name. If that was possible to do once it had been chosen. Aw, screw it, he was only going to be in this game long enough to get Bill out of it. “Eh, a family matter,” he replied.

“Ooh, Machiavellian intrigue, I love it!”

“Or mafia stuff!”

“Yeah… gay mafia!”

“Breakin’ kneecaps and lookin’ faaaaah-bulous.”

Jeff stopped worrying about how to discreetly use the game interface to learn these guys’ names because it didn’t really seem to matter. All three looked alike, spoke alike, even sounded alike. They spoke rapid-fire, one starting the instant another had finished.

“Oh, look, he got stuck with Dougie!” one said.

“Oh, piffle,” said another. “I bet whoever gave him to you didn’t tell you much, did they?”

“Got that right,” Jeff answered. “Said I could put him in a pocket if I had one, which I don’t, or I could give him to someone else.”

“We’ll take him,” said the second. “So rude of them to dump him on a newbie! You are a newbie, right?”

“Of course he’s a newbie!”

“He simply must be!” All three were now looking at him with eyebrows raised questioningly.

Jeff nodded. “Yup. Brand spankin’ new.”

The triplets laughed at that. “Oh, for spanking you probably want the dungeon, not the beach!”

“Although if you ask nicely we might be willing to help you out!”

“Regular spanking only, not monkey spanking.”

“At least, not here.”

Then, in a low, conspiratorial voice: “Gotta go to one of the private rooms for that, y’know?”, followed by a broad wink.

Jeff face burned at the direction his thoughtless remark had sent the conversation in, but he’d lived through enough such teasings to know that if he tried to protest, he’d only make it worse. Better to just suck it up and change the subject as soon as possible, so he let them laugh and tried to laugh along with them. Joking was fine, just as long as everybody was clear that Jeff actually getting flipped over onto some gay guy’s knee and swatted on the ass was NOT going to happen.

“So what can I do with my li’l pal Doug here?” Jeff asked when he could get a word in.

“Oh, just set him on Mark. He won’t mind.” He pointed at the fourth man of the group, the one who was lying down and had not moved or spoken since Jeff arrived.

“Right on top of him?” Jeff asked to a chorus of “sure! Right there, yeah. It’s fine.” He set the tiny rubberman down on the prone man’s chest and straightened up. That’s when he discovered the reason why Mark hadn’t moved yet.

He wasn’t lying on the sand, he was staked out on the sand.

Jeff froze, his eyes tracing the rawhide straps that were tied around the man’s wrists and ankles. Each was stretched out to a stake that had been pounded into the ground. His skin was raw and red; sweat was beading and trickling all over his body. His limbs were stretched tight, his belly was a concave bowl, and his muscles quivered with the strain they were under. His eyes were closed and his breathing was shallow.

“Uh…” Jeff said, stepping back. “Hey, is this guy OK?”

“He’s fine,” a new voice said. Jeff spun around to see a new figure on the beach, this one a tanned California surfer type with shaggy blond hair and an aw-shucks expression on his face. He was wearing an unbuttoned Hawaiian print shirt and carrying two beers with him. He handed one to one of the triplets. “Sorry,” he said, “if I knew we’d be having company I’d have brought one more back from the bar.” His voice had an unexpected lilt to it, one that Jeff couldn’t place. It wasn’t quite an accent, more like a slightly different cadence to his speech. An unusual rhythm.

The more puzzling thing about what he said was his count of the number of beers. Presumably he would have been bringing four back, not two? But as Jeff watched, the triplet with the beer made a “cheers” gesture toward the other two, who echoed it with their empty hands. At the point where contact would have been made, there was a shower of colored sparks and when the hands pulled away, two more bottles had appeared. All three took long pulls from their identical drinks.

“Wait… only one of them gets a real beer?” Jeff spurted.

“Heh. Yah.” The newcomer took a long swallow from his own. “‘S ’cause only one of them is real.”

“That’s right,” one of the triplets said. “And that’s me!”

“You big faker. I’m the real Howie.”

“Don’t listen to them. I’m the real one. See?” He flicked his fingernail against the neck of his beer bottle, making a decisively solid tinging sound… but then the other two did the same to their own bottles. Then, adding to the confusion, each reached over to one of the others’ bottles and flicked it. Plinking sounds filled the air. Jeff gave up trying to follow and turned back to the recent arrival.

“He’s just showing off for you ’cause you haven’t seen his act before,” Hawaiian Shirt said. “He is good, though, gotta give him that, at controlling three bodies at once. Back in th’ other world, Howie has enough energy for three people. Trying to have a conversation with him is exhausting. The words, they just pour out of his mouth the way they did for Robin Williams. Believe it or not, he’s actually easier to follow in here, yah? You only have to listen to one-third of what he says!” All three Howies blew him wet raspberries.

“But this guy,” Jeff said. “Mark, is his name? You’re sure he’s… I dunno, not gonna die of heat stroke or something?”

“Nah, like I said, he’s fine.” He prodded the staked-out lump of sweating meat with his foot. “I’n’ that right, boy.” It was not a question.

“Mark here neglected to get his chores done three days over the last two weeks. He knows that means one hour of stakeout for each day missed. He’s only halfway through hour two now, so he’s still got a while to go. But don’t worry, he’ll be fine when I let him up. A little hot, a little stiff, a little sore, but OK. And maybe next week he’ll do a better job with his chores. But then, maybe not. Sometimes I think he slacks off on purpose.” He nudged Mark’s ribs with his foot again. “Whatchoo say, boy.”

God, what a place.

Jeff still couldn’t place the surfer’s accent. There wasn’t anything obvious about it, but every once in a while, it felt like the sounds coming out of his mouth just didn’t quite belong there. Like, not the sort of thing that a surf bum would be saying.

“Come to think of it, though, I’m getting a little warm. You guys mind if I call in a cloud?” The Howies chorused their approval and he gestured at the sky. Overhead, a tiny cloud blossomed into existence and rapidly expanded in billowing puffs. In seconds, it had grown large enough to cover the sun and filter its punishing rays down to a soft glow. Jeff immediately felt cooler, though once again that had to be a psychosomatic effect. Didn’t it?

Then he glanced down at Mark and saw that there was no relief to be had for him. The full glare of the sun was still shining down, creating a rectangular patch centered on his splayed body. Jeff tentatively stuck a hand in the beam area and it actually felt warmer. “How does it…” he started to say, then stopped himself.

Too late, though. “How does the trick work? ‘S nothing fancy,” Hawaiian Shirt said. “I could tell you how it’s done, but why not just live in the moment? Someone went to a lot of effort to make this beach believable – why you wanna go peek behind the curtain?”

“Now, let’s see what we can do with Dougie here…” Jeff watched as he and the tiny rubber figure stared at each other for a bit, then all of a sudden Dougie’s rubber suit disappeared and he was dressed in his own miniature pair of swim trunks. Hawaiian Shirt gently laid him down on the center of Mark’s chest and then stretched out his arms and legs until he was a tiny copy of the larger man beneath him.

Hawaiian Shirt made careful, delicate gestures with his hands and as Jeff watched, more rawhide ropes blinked into existence. Tiny leather threads appeared on Dougie’s left wrist, right wrist, left ankle, right. More gestures, and four tiny wooden stakes materialized, looking like toothpicks. Jeff suddenly knew what was about to happen but still gasped when it did. With firm pressure from his fingers, Hawaiian Shirt drove the toothpicks right through Mark’s skin, two of them an inch or two above the nipples and the other two into his abs. Mark moaned; thin trickles of blood seeped out of the wounds, then stopped. More gestures secured the rawhide to the stakes and then there were two splayed-out captives roasting in the blazing heat, one atop the other.

Jeff realized he was staring again.

“So, Turtle,” the blond surfer said. “Maybe I’m guessing wrong, but I’m thinking that not only are you new here, you are way out of your comfort zone. ‘Zat how it is?”

Jeff let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. “Yeah,” he sighed. “That’s for sure.”

“So why you here then? You don’t have to tell me details, but I’m curious what brings you here when it’s so obviously not your scene.”

How much to tell? The minimum was probably best. “You’re right, I don’t belong here. I’m only here to learn how VRealWorld works so I can help… someone.”

“Help someone. Help this someone do what?”

“Get out.”

“Huh. That’s interesting. Because in theory, anyone can get out any time. Like, if Mark here decided he really couldn’t take it any more, all he needs to do is tell his suit to stop letting me control it. Same goes for Doug. Of course, they lose all the points they gathered since I took over. And in Mark’s case, I’d just find some other way to punish him for screwing up his chores. But that’s the relationship we have. It’s not anything like what most straights would call a marriage, but it works for us.

“But now you… your case is different. You’re helping someone get out… why? Because he can’t get out on his own? Or because he won’t? It’s a he, yah?”

“Yeah.”

“And he’s a rubberlad?”

“I don’t know what that means. He’s in one of the rubber suits, and it’s locked on.”

“Yah, that’s a rubberlad. And which is it? Can’t or won’t?”

“I… that is… I’m not sure. I went to see him… outside the game, I mean, I didn’t know anything about VRealWorld then. He didn’t want to leave, but now I think the suit might have been hiding me from him. I just want to get the suit off and ask him for real whether he’s OK with what he’s doing.”

“Makes sense. The suit controls everything he sees and hears, for sure. Interesting.”

He paused a moment, looking up at the blue sky, thinking. A seagull cawed in the distance.

“OK, Turtle, here’s what you need to do. You need to transfer points to this guy, many as you can. Go find the prison – down the beach that way, just past Mos Eisley. They’ll teach you about points there. After the prison, you go visit the dungeon, down the far corner of the hall, opposite side from the door you came in. The dungeon is going to be crowded and you’ll probably find the people there have some pretty twisted tastes from your point of view, but they’ll show you effective ways to transfer points to someone else. Got it?”

“Yeah. Prison next, then dungeon. Got it.”

“Off you go then. Oh, hey, Turtle? I’m curious to hear how it turns out for you. Send me a message afterward, let me know?”

“Uh… how do I do that?”

“Heh, right. New guy. One sec.” His eyes lost focus for a few seconds and his lips moved slightly. Shortly afterward, an overlay appeared in Jeff’s vision. It said:

Message from KingstonTop Leatherman: Just reply to this message.

“OK, I see it,” Jeff said. “Hey… thanks, man. I appreciate the help.”

“No problem, man.”

Jeff turned and headed off down the beach.

---

8: Pocket Prison

Within a few steps, the sand turned back into floor, the thumping music returned full volume, and he found himself in the biggest freak show yet.

This stretch of the hall was decorated like a bar-within-a-bar with some patrons sitting on stools or chairs while others stood around them. Not a single one looked human.

There was a blue-skinned human-ish creature with a small trunk for a nose playing something that looked sort of like a saxophone. A four-armed drummer and a two-headed guitarist accompanied him. Other patrons were covered in fur, or scales, or feathers, or dressed in armor or… was that a stormtrooper uniform?

It was! And then recognition hit: Mos Eisley was the bar in the Star Wars movie, the “biggest den of scum and villainy in the galaxy” or something like that. These transitions were getting disorienting. At least he didn’t have to stay in this one. He squinted his eyes, focused on the floor, and sped through at as quick a walk as he could manage.

There. A concrete wall with barred windows. He headed for the door and walked inside. A corrections officer was seated at a desk in a crisp black leather uniform. He rose as Jeff entered.

“Evening, sir, you here for a cell?”

“Ah. No,” said Jeff. “At least, I don’t think so. A guy I met said I could learn about points here?”

“Got it. New guy, right? You came to the right place to earn points, but I have to say you’re not exactly dressed right for it.”

“No no… I’m not looking for points for myself. I’m trying to learn how to give points to someone else.”

“Hmm. Maybe I should ask you first, what do you already know about the scoring system? So I don’t waste your time explaining what you already know.”

“Nothing. Until about five minutes ago, I didn’t even know there was a scoring system.”

“Huh. OK, from the beginning then. VRealWorld points are the game’s currency. They’re very much like dollars in that they are both a status symbol by themselves, or they can be used to purchase things you want. Just like with dollars, there are guys with a lot of points who flaunt their wealth, and there are those who are more discreet about how much they have.

“Where points differ from dollars is that their value is much more fluid. A dollar is always a dollar, but a point’s value changes depending on who has it and what they want to do with it. There’s a whole complicated algorithm that makes the determination and it’s constantly changing with time. Based on lots of observation, I’ll tell you what I’ve been able to deduce about how the game’s designers made it work.

“They like to encourage people to mix things up and get out of their comfort zone. Let me give you an example. If you’re a guy who, say, is into being tied up, then you can give control of your suit to someone who’s willing do the tying and you’ll earn some points for that. Meanwhile, the guy controlling you will lose some points. In effect, he’s paying you for the right to control you. It’s set up so that you’ll gain more than he loses so if you have, say, a half-hour session with him, you’ll gain something like 50 points and it’ll cost him 20.”

“But then, if you go and do the exact same thing the next day, you’ll only gain maybe 40 points. And he’ll lose 22. And the more you repeat the same action, the less it’ll be worth for each of you, each time, until it’s hardly worth anything at all.”

“So what do you do? You could wait a week and that would nudge the rate back up a bit. Wait a month and it’ll nudge up even more. Better yet you could change up the activity a little. Instead of him tying you one way, he puts you in a different position. Maybe a hog-tie instead of a spread-eagle. Best of all is to change things up entirely. You tie him up instead, and suddenly we’re back up to the original rate so he gets 50 and you lose 20. You follow so far?”

Jeff nodded, pretty sure he didn’t understand everything yet but hoping he was getting enough of the gist to accomplish his purpose.

“You can also buy points, but you run into the same problem. The first time, you might spend twenty bucks to get 200 points, but the next time, that same twenty only buys you 150, then 100, and so on. And you can sell points too, but the rate is much worse going that direction. They used to pay a lot better. I heard that one of the first guys to use a suit was actually able to make a couple thousand bucks when he started out, earning points and then selling them in blocks of a thousand at a time. You could actually get paid a dollar a point then, if the rumors are to be believed. Of course, as more people signed up, the rate started to fall. The guy would make eight hundred, five… got to the point where it wasn’t worth his effort. These day the rate is more like a penny a point. If you’re selling, that is. If you’re buying, like I said, it’s more like ten cents a point, so if you’re thinking of getting rich through point arbitrage, there’s a million guys before you had the same thought, and it didn’t work for any of ’em.

“Anyway, in one oversimplified sentence, the point system works like this: if it’s something you do often, you won’t earn much from it. And the consequence of that is, the things you tend to do often are the things you like doing, right? So if you only do the things you enjoy, there’s no reward in it. The way to earn points is to step outside your comfort zone and experiment, try some things that you don’t really want to do. Now this causes a problem for those members of our community who consider themselves to be exclusively tops or exclusively bottoms. The tops in particular don’t much like giving control to someone else. The bottoms are on average a bit more agreeable about taking charge when they have to, but even then you can tell their heart’s not in it. But the tops… they’re in a real pickle, because the things they like to do generally cost them points, and you can only go so far into the red before you get into trouble.”

Jeff had almost interrupted to ask what “tops” and “bottoms” were but was glad he didn’t – the rest of the explanation had been detailed enough that he could figure it out for himself. Damn. Not only was Bill wrapped up in gay shit, he was wrapped up in gay S&M shit. In hindsight, Jeff could probably have figured that out from Bill’s rubber suit and the way it was locked on. Not to mention the castle with its boot-licker and its pillory, or the stakeout on the beach. Each instance by itself was just an isolated weirdness among all the rest of the weirdnesses, but taken together the pattern was distinctly visible.

He was beginning to get an uncomfortable idea of what he was going to have to do to set Bill free.

“Now points aren’t everything,” the CO continued. “If all you want to do is sit on a virtual beach or hang out with aliens, you can enjoy the game without worrying about points at all. But a lot of the fun of the VRealWorld is doing shit, right? Magic! Marvels! Wave your hand and anything you want to happen, you make it happen! Thing is, that costs points. Where are those points going to come from? You gotta bring ’em in somehow before you can spend ’em. That’s where this place comes in. You want a tour?”

“Sure,” said Jeff. It’s what he was here for.

The CO stood up. “Come on back.” He led Jeff a few paces along the concrete wall to a door made of steel bars. He placed his palm on a handplate next to the door. Jeff was expecting the clank of a bolt being drawn back, but instead, the bars shimmered out of existence entirely. They walked through into the cell block. It was not a large space and it was packed tight with naked bodies, three vertical, four seated. There was barely enough room for Jeff and the CO to stand without bumping into somebody. And… wait… were those feet sticking out of one of the walls?

“Welcome to the Pocket Prison, a bare-bones, no-nonsense facility where we distill the scoring system down to its essentials. To put it bluntly: the more you suffer, the faster your score goes up. But, obviously, not everyone’s capacity for suffering is the same, so we offer different confinement options for different tastes. That also helps with the variety, because the more you change things up, the higher your point accumulation rate. Now, all the naked prisoners you see are actually wearing full immersion suits. It’s the suits that enforce the confinement, but they present as nude because that bumps the score rate up just a bit. Let’s start here on the left.”

Three men were standing in cages barely large enough for their bodies to fit in. The cages were so tight there was no way for the men to move or even turn around. Two of them had their hands at their sides; the third’s were held up over his head.

“This is our ‘standing detention’ option. Comes with the standard sensory deprivation package – no sight, no sound. The earphones cancel every noise that reaches them so the inmate hears only the sound of his own blood pumping through his ears. Of course, that’s not perfect. Guys have told me they can still feel the beat of the club’s sound system right through their bodies. It’s good enough, though – it blocks voices completely and the visual blackout is likewise total. And the cages make sure these guys don’t move until their sentences are up.

“This one here is enjoying our deluxe experience. Check out the floor.”

Jeff looked down at the feet of the third man, the one with his arms over his head. His bare feet were standing on a metal grate covered in blunt-toothed ridges, the kind of surface you see on steps at outdoor construction areas. The metal was rough and uneven, designed to provide good traction for booted feet even when covered in ice and snow. To stand on that with bare feet? Damn, that had to hurt.

“His hands are up overhead holding a real-world bar to give him the option of lifting himself up when his feet get too sore. Of course, that tires out his arms so it’s a classic predicament bondage position. He’s got choices, but he loses no matter which choice he makes.”

Jeff was way far down the rabbit hole now. Surely no one could be desperate enough for points as to voluntarily undergo this torture? “And he’s there… as a punishment?” he asked.

“No, he volunteered! Every one of these guys is here because he asked for it. He picked his punishment and the duration of his sentence.”

“And this is earning them points,” Jeff said. It made sense, in an unpleasant and unsettling way. “They’re doing it because they believe the trade-off is worth it.”

“You got it. The standing detention cells earn you anywhere from 25 to 50 points an hour, maybe 10 more if you go with the deluxe option. Now over here” – they moved to the right to where the feet were: four pairs of them, bare, sticking out of eight holes in the concrete wall – “these guys are in ‘the hole’. I know it’s considered bad form to peek behind the scenes when you’re in the VRealWorld, but you’re here to learn so I’m going to turn off the overlay for a second to show you how we do this.”

The concrete wall disappeared and Jeff saw four rubber-suited men lying down next to one another. A long board had been propped up so that it covered their heads, maybe an inch away from their noses.. Each one’s arms were stretched out above his head. They all lay there, unmoving. One let out a soft groan and then the wall flickered back into being.

“You saw that board over their faces?” the CO asked. “That’s there because the mouth and nose are the one place that the suit doesn’t cover. The illusion we’re creating here is that these guys have been put into rectangular holes in the wall and sealed in with concrete. Only their feet are left sticking out. I’ve wondered sometimes if we couldn’t do this up off the floor so their feet would look like trophies, like those stuffed animal heads you see on the walls of hunting lodges. Might have to look into that, or else just fake it with VR. Anyway, they’re sealed in these concrete coffins and the board makes it so they can feel their breath lingering by their faces. Makes the illusion even more real. They’ve got their hands clenched into fists and embedded in the concrete wall, their ankles locked in more concrete, and concrete walls close around them on every side, so they’re not going anywhere. The rate for the hole is about 30 to 60 points an hour, so about the same as the deluxe standing detention. But again, variety matters. If you keep coming back to the hole over and over, eventually you get to the point where it hardly helps your score at all. You gotta mix things up.”

Jeff found himself wondering what it must feel like for those men in the suits, buried alive in solid stone with only your bare feet exposed to the air. It seemed horrifying and yet he couldn’t help wondering what it would be like to try it. Not for four hours, no, just a minute or two would be plenty. Just to see…

No. God, this bizarro-world was actually getting to him. He needed to stay focused.

The CO had moved on to the next set of prisoners. “And over here we’ve got the less-intense options. Two of them are in yardboxes. They’re transparent to us but opaque to the guys inside. Three feet by three feet by three feet, one cubic yard. They’ve got the same sensory deprivation as the others but a bit more freedom to move around.”

It didn’t seem like freedom to Jeff. A three-foot cube was still pretty cramped confinement. There was no way to stretch out, no way to unkink your neck when you got tired of holding it bent. Better than the other choices, sure, but still a punishment. Which, of course, was why they could earn points for enduring it.

“The rate for these is lower, something like 20 to 40 points an hour. And then there’s your basic stocks for 15 to 30.” The last two men were sitting with their legs flat on the ground, held in place by steel stocks around their ankles. “No sensory deprivation for these guys, so they can see and hear us but they know better than to try to say anything. They’ve got the most freedom to move but they still get pretty uncomfortable after a while.

“Worth mentioning, because everyone asks at some point: no, you can’t sleep through it. Lotsa guys come in here, think they can sign up for the hole and have a nice cozy nap while they rack up the points. It doesn’t work that way. We set the suits to monitor their occupants for signs of sleep and if it detects that you’re starting to doze off, you get a blast with what feels like a taser. The standing-up and sitting-down guys get it on the thigh or the calf; the ones in the hole get it right on the sole of the foot. Hurts like a son-of-a-bitch. Your muscles cramp up and there’s nothing you can do to uncramp them. However bad you thought you had it before, it just got ten times worse only your score doesn’t go up any faster. Believe me, you do not want to be drowsy when you start your sentence.

“So there you have it: the Pocket Prison. We offer one of the most space- and time-efficient ways of earning points in the whole VRealWorld. Sure, you can earn points faster in a one-on-one scene, but here we scale it up. Mass point production. We can fit a dozen men into the space of the average bedroom and none of them is even aware the others are there. Your privacy and anonymity are guaranteed. We offer one-, two-, and four-hour sentences, non-changeable once you start. So… you interested? It’s too late to start a four-hour term, but we could still get you into a one- or two-hour cell.” He gestured toward a spot next to the three standing men, a questioning invitation in his eyes.

“NO!” Jeff shouted abruptly, then softened it. “I mean, no, thanks. Really, I’m just looking around. But… what do you get out of this? I mean, if I understand what you said, it should be costing you points to keep these guys locked up like that, shouldn’t it?”

“You’re right, it does,” the CO said. “But not as much as you might think. See, I’m not actively doing anything to any of them the way they do over in the dungeon. I’m just sitting here bored, or at least I was until you came by and gave me an excuse to not be bored for a while. But I’m not touching these guys. I just locked them up and left them. I haven’t worked out the math, but eleven guys and a mix of two-hour and four-hour sentences… there’s going to be something north of a thousand points handed out here tonight, and it’s only going to cost me about fifty.”

“But still, that’s fifty points you’re giving up. Why?”

“Ah. My friend, I am building our community! Each of these prisoners is going to go out later and spread the points he earned here all around, indulging his own whims as well as fulfilling the fantasies of other guys he meets up with. It’s a big net positive. I don’t do this every time – there’s a half-dozen of us who take turns volunteering. In two weeks, on the next VRealWorld night, someone else will be CO and I’ll be free to do whatever I feel like doing. There’s plenty of ways I can make up the points. I could do a stint in the hole myself. Or go visit the dungeon and earn some points there from a guy who maybe happens to be in one of these cells right now. Plenty of options.”

Jeff mulled this over. “So… you’re a volunteer… imprisoning people… painfully… as a community service project?”

The CO beamed. “Ha! Yep, that’s it! Here, since I’m already doing community service, why don’t you take this.” He flicked his fingers and conjured a small orange card into existence. “We hand these out to visitors who decide not to stay.” He handed the card to Jeff, who reached out and took it. It felt real enough in his hand and looked very much like the ‘Get Out Of Jail Free’ card from Monopoly, right down to that exact wording. The only difference was that instead of a stripe-suited convict, the card held a sketch of a hooded rubber drone.

“Just in case you change your mind,” the CO continued. “If you ever decide to come back and commit to a four-hour sentence and then find after an hour that you just can’t stand it, this card lets you get out without forfeiting the points you earned in that hour. It lets you ease into the prison mindset, gives you an ‘undo’ if you need it. It’s honored at just about every prison, even the ones run by NPCs. But it’s only good once, so use it wisely.”

Jeff wasn’t quite sure what to do with the card. If he tried to put an imaginary card into the pocket of his real-world jeans, would it disappear? His puzzlement about what to do with it must have been visible on his face. “Put it in your inventory,” the CO said. “Either use the headset menu or double-tap the card and choose ‘Put in inventory’.” Jeff tapped and the card winked out.

The CO escorted Jeff back to the intake area of the prison. The barred door materialized back into place at the touch of the CO’s hand on the scanner. “Thanks for the tour,” Jeff said, trying not to think too hard about the men on the other side of that door, trapped together in a too-small space already but each further trapped in a much more confining private prison of his own. Just as he reached the door to the outside, a blood-curdling scream tore the air. Jeff spun around. The scream tapered off into a long, drawn-out moan. The CO looked at him and shrugged nonchalantly. “Somebody got drowsy. Happens at least once a shift.”

Jeff turned once more toward the door. The surfer guy had warned him that the dungeon would be unsettling, but apparently the prison didn’t rate a mention. Jeff hoped his stamina would last long enough at his next destination for him to get in, learn what he needed to learn, and get out.

---

9: Film Festival

Outside the prison Jeff paused to orient himself. He could see the Renaissance castle and the palm trees, which meant the entrance door had to be… there, on his left. He turned to his right, toward the far end of the room. The dungeon was impossible to miss; there was nothing else that the large, forbidding-looking stone wall with the gaping gate in it could possibly be. Jeff swallowed and headed for the gate.

There was a guard waiting at the gate, dressed in a style that wouldn’t be out of place back at the castle and propping up a large pike with a bored expression on his face. As Jeff neared, he lowered the pike, blocking Jeff’s path. “You are entering a private area. A waiver is required to proceed.” He flicked Jeff a piece of parchment that materialized in front of his face like a pop-up window. There were two pages of tiny text. Jeff tried to read it, but it was all legalese.

“What am I signing?” he asked.

“By passing through this door you are leaving the public area of Terra Nova Bar And Dance Club and entering a suite of private rooms regulations that apply to public spaces do not apply in private rooms by signing this form you affirm that you are of legal age and consent to forgo the protections that apply to public spaces within the City of New York.” It all came out in one breath, rapid-fire and toneless.

It took Jeff a moment to parse this. “You’re saying guys who want to get dirty with each other need to do it in here and not out there.”

The guard’s bored expression didn’t change. “Club management requires a signed waiver before you may proceed you may subvocalize your agreement or sign with a VRealWorld-linked digital device such as a phone glove or stylus.”

This was too much. Before he could stop himself, he lifted the headset and peered out from underneath. To his surprise, there was an actual person standing there dressed in a tight dark grey security T-shirt. Which, of course, made total sense – a virtual guard would be no use against an unaugmented visitor. He dropped the visor back down. “Shit. You’re real. I’m sorry.”

“I get that a lot,” the guard dead-panned. “You goin’ in or not?”

Jeff signed the form and flicked it back with a blink of his eyes. The guard lifted his pike, set the butt on the ground, and leaned on it, looking for all the world as if Jeff had never been there.

Passing through, Jeff found that like the castle and the beach, the dungeon was a full-immersion space. The music once more faded away and all he could see behind him was a dark passageway. He pressed on ahead through a corridor with doors on either side, most of them closed. From behind some, sounds emerged: voices or grunts; once, a shout that bordered on a scream. One door toward the end of the hall, however, was open with bright blue light pouring out of it. He edged near and peered inside.

Three men were flying in mid-air. The room had no floor, no walls, no ceiling. Standing at the threshold, Jeff saw puffy white clouds floating above, below, and around on all sides. Looking down he saw green fields and forests far, far below. He actually got a case of vertigo hovering at the edge of what looked to be a guaranteed-fatal drop and had to put his arm up against the door frame for support. In the center of the room, one man was lying… falling?… on his belly, arms and legs spread out as if skydiving with no parachute. Without any clothes at all, for that matter. The other two were naked as well, one standing… floating… upright in front of the horizontal one, the other behind, right between his spread legs…

Oh. With a sudden flash of understanding, Jeff realized what the group was doing. They had their own version of the Mile High Club going on, only without the airplane.

Before he could back away, one of the trio, the one being orally serviced, noticed him and beckoned him in. “Hey, you wanna take a flying fuck?”

Jeff didn’t trust his voice and just shook his head, holding up his free hand in what he hoped would come across as a “no thanks, I’m good” gesture.

“You sure? The rubberlad’s pretty good… needs some motivation from time to time, of course.” He held up an arm, squeezed his fist then threw his fingers open. A lightning bolt flared into being in his palm. He closed his fingers around it and gave Jeff a broad wink. Then he plunged the lightning bolt into his fellator’s bare back, where it dissolved into hissing, spitting sparks. A muffled shout emerged from around the fleshy plug in the victim’s mouth and he redoubled his efforts to please. Meanwhile, the man at the other end didn’t break his rhythm.

Jeff mumbled something that even he didn’t recognize as words and turned away, He continued down toward the end of the corridor, shaking his head, trying to erase the image that he had just seen from his brain. There was light and noise around a corner up ahead. He turned and found a fairly large crowd of men, twenty or thirty of them, all facing the same way. Jeff eased toward them and looked between the shoulders of two of the spectators.

In front of the crowd, in an area like a small stage, a naked blond man was tied to a chair that had had most of its seat cut away. Another man was standing a short distance away holding a long cord with a thick knot tied in the end. Jeff arrived just in time to watch him swing the cord with an underhand motion, sending the knot out and upward to collide with the seated man from beneath, emitting a sickening wet thud as it struck. The target jumped in his ropes, setting the chair bouncing. Veins and tendons popped on his face and neck as he clenched teeth and fought to not cry out. When he had calmed a bit, he said, in a voice far too confident for a man who had just had his nuts bashed, “A little more to the RIGHT!”

Suddenly Jeff recognized the scene. “Daniel Craig!” he blurted, for that’s exactly who the seated man looked like. And this was the torture scene from that James Bond movie… what was its name? Jeff couldn’t remember the title, but he knew he had seen it.

One of the two men in front of him chuckled and slowly turned toward Jeff. “Yeah, you got it, but you coulda just looked at… oh. New guy. Did you just get here?”

Jeff nodded.

“OK, the theme tonight is torture scenes from movies and TV, rewritten to suit our tastes. You know how in movies the scene always ends just as it’s starting to get good? The hero always finds a way to escape and somehow turns the tables on the bad guy? Or else they don’t even show the scene, they just imply it, leave it to your imagination. Such a waste, right? So tonight we’ve got eight groups who’ve rewritten various scenes and are playing them out. This is number four, Casino Royale. There’s the program up on the wall.” He gestured, then turned back to watch the show.

Jeff glanced up at the wall, where a poster read:

BROKEN HEROES
1. Rambo: First Blood – John Rambo vs. Viet Cong
2. The Empire Strikes Back – Darth Vader vs. Han Solo
3. The Princess Bride – Westley vs. The Machine
4. Casino Royale – Bond vs. Le Chiffre
5. Superman vs. Lex Luthor
6. Strike Back – Stonebridge and Scott vs. Cattle Prod
7. Proud Mary – Reluctant Informant vs. Nail Gun
8. The X-Files – Fox Mulder vs. Extra-Terrestrials

What, no Saw? No Hostel? How come those gore-fests didn’t make the cut? Then it dawned on him – those movies already showed plenty of what the guys here would think of as “the good parts”. No need to re-invent the wheel, as it were.

The rising volume of Bond’s screams brought Jeff’s gaze back to the stage area. Bond’s balls were taking solid hits, over and over and over. Jeff was pretty sure the original movie only showed one or two hits before something intervened to save Jimmy’s manhood from destruction, but not here. Here the punishment just kept coming. Bond’s nut sac swelled to the size of a grapefruit, hanging down like the globe of a lamp between his splayed knees while his face contorted with pain and his entire body convulsed with each blow. Jeff knew… he hoped… it was all just VRealWorld fakery, but like all the other fakery he had seen tonight, it was so damn believable. Bond’s agonized shrieks only added to the realism. Jeff felt like curling up and cupping his own nuts in his hands.

There was a brief pause to let Bond catch his breath, and then the guy with the cord took one more mighty windup and let fly. The knot sailed out and made contact… and Bond’s ball sac just exploded. Blood and bits flew everywhere, striking the inner ring of onlookers. Bond’s screams rose to a supersonic pitch and he flew backward to fall on the ground, still tied to the chair The lights went out; applause rose up from the ring of spectators. Jeff tried to keep the bile from rising in the back of his throat. These people were sick fuckers, absolutely twisted…

Then the lights came back up and both the torturer and James Bond – untied, fully dressed, and miraculously restored to good health and glandular intactness – took their bows, accepting the applause and accolades from the crowd.

His neighbor in front turned around again. “So wha’d you think?” he asked.

Jeff paused, wondering whether he should play along and pretend to have enjoyed it and, if so, what his reaction would be if he were actually into this sick crap, then realized that in pausing he had already conveyed his honest reaction and that it was now too late to say anything but the truth. No lie would be believable at this point. “Uh, to be honest, it wasn’t really my thing. I mean, they did a great job, the actors look just like the originals. But the, uh, explosion at the end?” Jeff trailed off, shaking his head.

“Yeah, I hear you. The really intense stuff isn’t for everyone. You’ll probably like the next one better, the Superman scene. I expect it’ll be less hardcore, more like a comic book. But then the one after that? That’s the one I’m most looking forward to – I saw the original when it was first released and it was HAWT just as it was. The two leads are shirtless and bloodied, tied back-to-back and then this Colombian guy just goes to town on them with a cattle prod. He zaps the one to try to persuade the other to give up whatever information he’s hiding and for a TV show it was good stuff. He even blasted the guy right in the crotch, but of course for the TV version it was pants on with a side view. I can’t wait to see what these guys do with it.”

The lights on the stage went on – Superman’s scene was about to begin. Jeff’s conversation partner turned back to face the stage.

A hand brushed across Jeff’s cock.

Casual contact in a crowd was to be expected. This was not casual. Jeff could tell by the way the fingers rubbed across the front of his pants that this was deliberate. He reacted immediately, instinctively, spinning toward the direction the touch had come from. “Dude, what the hell?” he said as he turned. There on his left was another of the rubber-suit guys. As Jeff glared at him, he sank down to his knees and held his hands up toward Jeff.

Jeff was already getting control of himself, though. This was a gay bar, and he was in the private section, having waived away the “protections” of the public areas. He wasn’t into guys, but everyone else here was, so unless he wore a sign that said “straight dude here, no touchie”, he had to accept that stuff like this might happen. Of course, wearing a sign like that would probably just bring even more attention down on him.

He could make clear that the attention was unwelcome, of course. “Dude, don’t do that again,” he said to the kneeling rubber guy. This prompted the man in front of him to turn around once more.

“He can’t hear you,” he said. “You might want to brush up on VRealWorld interactions. Check the manual for rubberlad.” He turned back to the stage. Dramatic music began playing.

Ignoring the still-kneeling rubber guy – or “rubberlad”, that was apparently the proper term – Jeff did as suggested, pulling down the help section in the headset’s menu. It only took about a minute of reading time to learn some useful pointers.

One, rubberlads – anyone wearing one of the full-body suits – could not speak to leathermen. Apparently Jeff counted as a leatherman. Maybe leatherman was just a general term for “any VRealWorld player who isn’t a rubberlad”?

Two, rubberlads could hear ordinary sounds, but the earphones in the suit cancelled out leathermen’s voices. All communication, both ways, must take place through the app.

Three, rubberlads could initiate contact with leatherman – and earn a small number of points in the process – by “tagging” them. Apparently the dick-grazing was just the rubberlad’s way of saying hello.

And four, when a rubberlad knelt and held his wrists up like that, he was inviting the leatherman to take control of his suit.

Well, that was not going to happen. Even if Jeff wanted a rent-a-slave, he couldn’t afford it. Anything he did to the rubberlad would cost him points, and as far as Jeff knew, he not only had none to spare, he had none at all. He could probably just ignore the guy long enough that he’d go away, but this seemed like a good opportunity to learn how to use the message system.

It was not hard. He first had to turn on the show-IDs toggle (which he should have done long ago) so he could get the rubberlad’s name, which turned out to be “4srvce rubberlad” as announced by a cartoon-style thought balloon that appeared over his head. Then Jeff dictated a message by sub-vocalizing, which was very similar to the speech-to-text feature on his phone, only he didn’t have to say the words fully out loud. All he had to do was move his mouth and throat as if he were speaking and the system was able to figure out what he would have said. He wrote a brief “not interested”, sent it, and was gratified to see 4srvce rise and wander off elsewhere.

He turned back to the front of the room, where the next movie scene was underway. Superman had somehow been captured by a super-villain who Jeff might have been able to identify if he had cared to watch comic book movies when he was younger, which he had not. He glanced up at the program listing again… ah, this must be “Lex Luthor”.

Superman had been rendered helpless by a glowing chunk of kryptonite that hung from a chain around his neck. His hands had been bound behind his back and he had sunk to his knees, strength depleted by proximity to the green mineral. (That much of the Superman mythology Jeff knew about.)

“Well, Superman,” Luthor said, “I must confess that when I first conceived of this trap, I envisioned myself giving you a choice: serve me or die. I so looked forward to watching you have to decide between two equally-unpalatable choices. But then, as I thought about it over the time it took to set the trap and wait for you to fall into it, as you have now so obligingly done, I realized that letting you make a choice was all wrong. You see, you are in my power now, and you no longer have the ability to make any choices. From this point on, I make all the choices for you. And I choose for you to serve me, whether you like it… or not.”

He reached down, grabbed the front of Superman’s costume, and yanked the feeble superhero to his feet. He pressed Superman up against the wall to hold him upright, then thrust his hands apart, still clutching the uniform fabric tightly, tearing a giant gash right down through the center of the red-and-gold letter S. Superman’s costume fell to bits as the villain continued shredding it until his powerfully-muscled chest and shoulders were fully exposed. Luthor next tore at the suit’s legs and soon the hero leaned against the wall completely bare-skinned.

Completely. An impossibly-large schlong was dangling down halfway to its owner’s knees, backed by a pendulous pair of bull balls sized to match. There was no way that package had been stuffed inside that outfit, no possible way.

Luthor grabbed him again and hurled him to a table, where he lay face-up with his crotch pointed toward the audience. From nowhere, the villain produced another chunk of green-glowing rock, this one long and slim, smooth and slightly curved, like a finger.

“I need to ensure your compliance long-term, and this will do the trick nicely,” he crooned. He squirted some liquid onto the kryptonite and then seized Superman’s fat, meaty dick. Oh no, Jeff thought. He’s not going to…

He was. He did. Jeff squinched up his eyes at the sight. Slowly, firmly, implacably, the kryptonite rod went up into the helpless hero’s cock until it had been completely swallowed. “Now to keep that in place,” the villain crowed as he locked a metal cage over the hero’s dick, confining it in a space that would have fit most men’s cocks with room to spare, but was a tight squeeze for the Supersnake.

“‘Man of Steel’ indeed,” Luthor sneered. “Now to make sure that stays put… permanently.” Superman’s formless groans turned briefly sharper as a nail-sized spike was driven through his cockhead and then spot-welded to the cage at both top and bottom. When he had finished, Luthor yanked the hero to his feet to show the result to the crowd, which roared its approval. Superman’s cock was completely encased in a metal cage. The skin of his dick pressed up against the bars of the cage and squeezed through in places, illuminated from within by a sickly green glow; the rock stuffed up his urethra shone brightly enough to be visible right through the skin and meat.

“Don’t worry, there’s a hole drilled through it so you can piss, though probably less comfortably than you are accustomed to. You’ll get used to it. Now for the other end.” A new piece of kryptonite appeared, similarly shaped to the last one but much larger, and Jeff had no doubt where it was going to go. With much grunting and moaning, Superman was able to take the entire green plug up his ass, whereupon it was fixed in place with a set of straps that were secured to his body with locks. Now his entire lower belly glowed faintly from the rock embedded in his bowels. Luthor then removed the kryptonite pendant from around Superman’s neck and shoved the hero down onto his knees.

“That should do nicely indeed. Be assured that I have done my research on this most useful of minerals. Over time, due to being in constant contact with soft, mucous membranes, the kryptonite is going to leach into your body and lodge in your cells, rendering you permanently weak, helpless, and mine to command. Naturally, the areas closest to the point of exposure will experience the highest concentrations. In your case, that would be your dick and your prostate gland, though your testicles will soak up a fair amount too. Within a week, you will find that your once-colossal cock has begun to shrink, starting down a path that ends with it becoming tiny, shriveled, and utterly useless. That condition will be permanent. Even if I were to take the cage off at that point, you would find that the ability to experience an erection – let alone an ejaculation – is no longer one of your superpowers.

“But the cage won’t be coming off. Well, no, that’s not quite true. In a month or so, I will indeed take it off, but only to replace it with something smaller, more appropriately sized for the shrunken nub that your cock will have become. I might even have to repeat the process again a few months after that. I suppose it’s possible that some day, your dick will be nothing more than a thin layer of skin over the rod that it’s impaled on. We’ll just have to wait and see.

“Meanwhile, your prostate and balls will be similarly atrophying. Now, I do like the way a full set of balls looks hanging fat and low in their sac. Once yours have shrunk to the size of peas and are no longer any use to either of us, can you guess what I intend to replace them with? No? Well, I suppose the kryptonite is too close to your brain, affecting your thinking. I plan to replace them with… these.”

He held up a pair of egg-sized kryptonite rocks, sized to match the stones currently occupying the hero’s scrotum. Superman’s eyes rolled in his head and he struggled to remain upright on his knees while the villain hovered over him and cackled. “Mwa-ha-ha-ha-haaaaaah!”

Jeez, what corny dialogue. Well, monologue – Superman didn’t have much of a speaking role. The crowd was loving it, though, cheering and clapping.

“Now, Superslave… suck my dick,” Luthor commanded.

“Nnghhh… nnnever…” Superman groaned.

“Perhaps not today, my pet. But one day… one day soon… you will. Oh, yes. You will.”

The lights went out and the scene ended. A moment later, they came back up and Superman (fully dressed once more in his skin-tight costume, grinning and waving) and his arch-nemesis stood side by side, arms on each other’s shoulders, taking their bows. His pelvis seemed completely normal, which made Jeff wonder… which parts of what he had just seen were real, and which were illusions? Did the bowing actor really have rods shoved up his dick and ass, a locked cage on his cock? They wouldn’t be glowing green, of course, but was the hardware really present, just hidden by a virtual superman costume? Or was it the reverse: the costume was real and the hardware had been faked? Or were both fake? There really was no way for Jeff to know.

At least this one was less disturbing than the previous scene. Even though the subject matter was still heavy on the gay S&M, it came across more as camp than horror. That was vaguely reassuring. It said that perhaps the guys here weren’t total sociopaths but just liked their fun on the rough side. As long as they kept it strictly virtual, Jeff supposed it wasn’t really a problem.

Nevertheless, he was pretty sure he’d seen enough now. It was clear, at least in general outline, what it was going to take to set his brother free. There was no reason to stick around and watch the next scene. (Not to mention the one after that. “Reluctant Informant vs. Nail Gun”? He definitely didn’t need that image stuck in his brain, no way.) It was time to get the heck out of here.

---

10: The Nightmare

Leaving the movie fans to their next showing, Jeff headed back down the hall. Sounds continued to slip out from behind the closed doors and Jeff really did not want to know what was making some of them. But as he passed one, it suddenly opened and a rubberlad emerged (“digitox rubberlad”, according to the bubble over his head), walking swiftly but unsteadily. He turned toward the exit and stumbled toward it, bouncing off one of the walls and barely keeping his balance on stiff, awkward legs.

Another man peered out from the door, facing the rubberlad and thus away from where Jeff was. Jeff tried to sidle around him and the man noticed him with a start.

“Oh! Sorry about that.”

“No trouble,” Jeff assured him, glancing at the hovering bubble to get a name, which turned out to be “Nightmare Leatherman”. Jeff nodded down the hall toward the retreating rubberlad. “Is that guy OK?”

“Mmm. Yeah. We just finished a scene. He left a little sooner than I’d have liked, but he’ll be fine. The one thing I wish I could change about the VRealWorld interface is the rule against talking with subs, because after what he’s been through, he could use a little aftercare. But… they built the app, so they get to make the rules, I guess.”

“A little aftercare…” Jeff echoed. “From what?”

Nightmare’s gaze swung around to meet Jeff’s. “You sure you want to know? I mean, I’m happy to answer, but I enjoy talking about this stuff so much that once I get going, it’s sometimes hard to stop!”

This might be of use – a way to learn what was going on in these private rooms without having to witness it firsthand. Fewer disturbing images to rise up and haunt him in his dreams later. “Nah, actually, that’s fine. I’ve gotta learn this stuff somehow, so anything you can teach me would be a great help.”

Nightmare gestured Jeff into the room he had just left. It was not large and mostly bare with only a table and a floor mat as furnishings. Nightmare sat down on the mat and rested his back against the wall. “Here, have a seat. Is there anything in particular you want to know, or should I just describe what I just did with digitox and you can ask any questions you think of?”

“I’m so new I don’t even know where to start, so that second option sounds good.”

“You got it. First thing is, I like to set my face so the rubberlad can’t see it. Like this.” As Jeff watched, the man’s face warped and distorted. Soon it was a pulsing, ominous-looking blur with no solid edges or fixed features, like a thundercloud or some kind of sci-fi space warp. Everything was in constant motion, a churning, bruise-colored mass of light and dark that almost hurt to look at. Jeff averted his eyes.

“Yeah, that’s the reaction I want them to have,” Nightmare said. He turned off the distortion and his face returned to normal. “So even before the scene starts, I’m this faceless, nightmare figure to them, something too terrifying to look at for long. Hence the name, yeah?”

“It’s effective,” Jeff had to agree.

“So we’re in here, he’s on his knees after offering me control of his suit, I’m circling around him like a pacing cat. A predator eying its prey. I let the rubberlad look-slash-not-look at me for a while until he’s starting to get tense, wondering what I’m going to do to him. I hit him with some sub-sonics through the earphones to get him even more on edge. Then, once he’s starting to really get tense, I ramp it up. I make this dramatic wind up gesture, point both hands straight at him and hit him with a flash of light, a thunderclap of sound, and a jolt to the chest from the suit. It usually knocks them off their feet when I do that so I have my avatar do it from where he thinks I’m standing while the real me goes behind him to catch him when he sags. Right as the jolt hits, I shut his world down, sight, sound and touch. Sight and sound are near-total wipes; touch is not quite 100% – if he bangs his hand into something, the suit can’t completely damp it out so he’ll still feel it a little. But all gentle touches are suppressed by the suit. If I rub his arm or he puts his hand on his own belly, there’s no sense of contact. I leave him like that for about ten minutes, and by then he’s starting to get really disoriented. It’s as if his whole body went away and he’s just a brain floating in a jar somewhere.

“So now he’s wondering… am I dead? Did the nightmare kill me for real? Eventually, he’ll start to try to stand. That’s my cue to turn on scene 1. Bit by bit, lights appear. Specks at first, then larger objects. He finds himself floating through space, no ground under his feet. Stars, nebulas, distant galaxies whirling around him. He’s spinning, flying totally out of control. I help by physically moving him around so it messes with his inner ear. He can’t feel me doing it, but his head is spinning to match what he’s seeing. No sense of up and down; no control over what’s happening to him. I have to hold him up at times because his sense of balance is totally shot.

“At some point, one of the dots around him starts to get bigger. He probably doesn’t notice at first, but soon it’s quarter-sized, then softball-sized, and soon he can’t help but notice it because it’s starting to look like a ball, not a disk, and he’s heading right for it. I adjust his orientation so that his spin stops and he’s facing this steadily-growing planet. It’s not earth; it’s totally alien. Blues and browns and greens and whites, but subtly wrong. The green has too much purple in it, the blue is too dark. He gets closer and closer and at some point the ball stops being a ball and becomes the ground and he’s falling, helpless, totally powerless to stop it.

“He’s over water and the surface comes up to meet him and he crashes through it and now he’s in scene 2. He’s still falling only now he’s underwater. What little light there was soon fades away and he’s alone in a thick black sea. Disorienting sparkles of luminescent sea life flicker in and out of his vision. I set the suit to squeeze him around the middle. Doesn’t stop him from breathing, but makes him work hard for every breath, like he’s pulling against resistance… kinda like trying to breathe water only without the inconvenient death-by-drowning that follows. He holds his breath as long as he can but eventually he has to give in and takes in a giant, shuddering gasp. Then another. As far as he’s concerned, he is breathing water and drowning without dying, which he thinks maybe can only happen if he’s already dead, and there’s still no up or down, he’s completely lost and I am basically tearing his mind down to atoms.

“After a while in the water, he finds himself washing up into a cave and we transition to scene 3. The water goes away, changing to air so gradually that he can’t perceive it happening. By now I’ve got him lying down on his back on that table and he is as limp as a dishrag, a dead fish, an empty vessel waiting to be filled. And now I give him light. Jets of red flame burst up from holes in the floor near the walls. He can see where he is if he opens his eyes and looks, and after a few seconds he does just that. He lifts his head. He looks around. And now he knows he knows the answer to the “am I dead?” question because this is what every pop-culture image of hell looks like.

“That’s when I make my entrance. More flames shoot up, a giant wall of them, roaring in his ears, and I step right through them into the cave with him. I’m fucking enormous, 20, 30 feet tall and I’ve got the body of a demon. I’m so big my horns scrape the rock ceiling overhead. I’ve got dark red, almost black skin, eyes that burn with flames inside, huge fangs that stick down outside my lips. Fingers that end in yellow claws, sharp-tipped tail slashing the air as I stalk toward him.

“He’s petrified, paralyzed. And of course, I’m helping that illusion because I’ve activated the magnets in the suit to glue him in place on the metal table. He tries to roll away and can’t, tries to get his legs under him, can’t do that either. I leave his arms free to move because his helpless flailings as he bats ineffectively at my gigantic paws are sooooo fucking hot.

“So in reality, he’s lying on that table with his ass right up against the edge. In the VRealWorld, I pick him up in my giant hand as if he weighed no more than a feather. He feels himself lifted up into the air; the walls of the cave move down in his vision, so he must be moving up, right? I lift him to my lips, open my mouth, stick out my enormous tongue between those two giant fangs, lick his body. He feels it all over, the coarse, raspy rubbing on his skin. I make sure to stick the tip right into his asshole while in reality, it’s my fingers lubing him up.

“Then I tip him down so he can see my cock. It’s gigantic, must be four feet long, longer than his body from ass to neck, and it’s almost as thick around as his waist. There’s no way that monster is going to fit inside him. Then a little trick I like to use. You noticed the suits cover everything except the mouth and nose, right? And the ass, of course, but that opening is not as obvious and can be zipped shut. But the mouth and nose are open, and so the rubberlads know that anything on or in their mouth is real. Some of them use that to remind themselves that it’s all an illusion, but I don’t want that. I want to make them enter my reality fully. So after giving him a long look at this giant dick, I lower his face down toward the tip of it and I put my arm over his mouth. This part, right here, a couple of inches up from the elbow on the inside. I’ve had a heating pad over it all while he was floating, so the skin is good and hot and there’s no hair on it. From his perspective? He can not only see that giant dick, he can taste it, and he can feel with his lips and tongue that it’s way bigger than his mouth, that it’s steaming hot, and that he’s only touching a tiny part of it. If he had any lingering idea that this was all faked, that’s gone because I just ‘proved’ to him that what he thought was his one remaining infallible reality-detector agrees with what the rest of his senses are telling him.

“So after letting him lick my elbow a bit, I lift his legs up with my thumb (in the real world, they’re propped up on my shoulders), and I line myself up. He’s got his head raised. He’s looking at me, at my demon eyes, the red skin of my hugely-muscled demon chest with tits the size of his face. And he’s looking at this gigantic cock that’s about to split him apart and that’s it: whatever thoughts his mind was thinking before this began, they’re gone now. His entire sense of self has been obliterated. I am all that’s left, I am his god, his demon, his avenging angel, and I am about to fill his emptiness up.

“And I do. I position the tip of my cock at his ass and I slowly, slowly force it inside him. And he watches as every single inch of that four-foot-long beast sinks into his asshole. It takes over a minute to get it all inside and as it goes, the suit squeezes down on him again, starting at the waist and working toward his neck, making him feel like it’s his body that’s swelling up from the monster inside it. Gets tough for him to breathe again. Then I’m sliding it back out and he feels the suit easing up the pressure bit by bit from his neck down to his waist. That keeps up with every thrust – the suit squeezes him to match whatever depth my real-life cock has penetrated him to, so he can easily believe it’s really filling him up all the way to his throat.

“So I thrust in once more and hold it a moment, and then I’m building up a rhythm, slow at first, then speeding up. By this time, I’m close anyway because I’ve been stroking myself while I’ve been tearing his mind apart. So the actual fucking doesn’t last long, maybe five minutes. Then I let loose with a roar, which he perceives as a bass rumble so deep that it rattles his bones, and I’m shooting into the condom. I sometimes wish I could let the rubberlad come too, but those suits make that impossible with that built-in chastity lock. Still, I make sure it gives him a nice, satisfying buzz the whole time while I’m building up to my own orgasm, and only let it fade away after I pull out.

“Here, this is what it looks like.”

Jeff’s interface dropped down to announce that he had been sent a link. He followed it and found a video clip that depicted exactly what Nightmare had described – a gigantic demon holding a limp, naked man in his huge hand and impaling him on an impossibly long, fat, thick, cock. If anything, the image was worse than what Jeff had been picturing – Nightmare hadn’t mentioned the velociraptor-like feet or the smoke curling up from the point where the thrusting penis made contact with the overstretched ass. Or the look of blank terror in the eyes of the victim. Well… no. It wasn’t exactly terror, or rather, it wasn’t merely terror. That look went beyond terror. It matched exactly what Nightmare had described. That was the look of a man who had reached a state of “I am nothing; you are everything; own me” and had gotten his wish. Jeff blinked the video out of sight.

“The only downside,” Nightmare continued, “is that after an experience like that, you really want to give the sub some aftercare. Bring him back to earth slowly, let him come back to himself, reassure him that everything’s OK. But the suit doesn’t let that happen. I do what I can – I let him lie there quietly for a while, fade the cave out and slowly bring this room up, exactly as it is, including me. No augmentations. I unlock the suit, release control of his eyes and ears, turn my face disguise off. But I can’t talk to him, so I just hold his hand a while, rub his chest, let his breathing and heart rate calm down. Sometimes it works, other times the sub bolts as soon as he’s free to go. This one was midway between – he left too soon, I think, but he wanted to go. I’ve been doing this for six years now, since the VRealWorld first came out, and experience tells me this one’s a little shell-shocked for the moment, but he’ll be OK. And he got a ton of points from the encounter, thanks in no small part to the mind games I played with him. I hope he found what he was looking for. I certainly got what I wanted from him.

“So… that’s how my evening went. Does that help you get any ideas?”

Jeff could only stare. For all that he had seen tonight, this topped it all put together. He sat trying to think of something to say for a long half-minute, opening and closing his mouth and finally asking “So… you do the same scene every time?”

Nightmare grinned. “Naw. I like to mix things up. I do have favorite scenes that I’ll come back to, and this is one of them, but part of the fun is thinking up something new to do. Pretty much the only thing I consistently do is, I fuck with the guy’s head at least as much as I fuck with his body. That’s my kink, that’s what gets me going.”

Jeff could certainly see that being the case with the scene that he had just heard described.

“OK, I can tell this was a bit heavy for you,” Nightmare said. “I understand. Very few people get off on the level of intensity that turns me on. But I’m not apologizing for that. I spent a lot of years feeling like I needed to apologize for being born gay until I realized that wasn’t something I needed to feel guilty about. Then I spent an even longer time feeling ashamed about being into kink. I finally got over that, too, and I’m a lot better off for it.

“If it makes you feel any better, I’m actually a decent human being. I have a stable job over in Jersey. Once a week I make deliveries for Meals On Wheels. I power-washed my 67-year-old mom’s patio for her this afternoon because she’s a stubborn old cuss and would have done it herself otherwise, and then we went out for dinner. Totally normal human stuff. And after dinner I came here to unwind and have some fun. I understand that the VRealWorld is a great big illusion and I use that illusion to satisfy itches in a way that would be criminally irresponsible in the mundane world. This is all fake, and I know it’s fake, and the guys I play with know it’s fake. No actual rubberlads were harmed in the fulfillment of this fantasy. You follow?”

Jeff digested that for a bit. “Okay,” he said at last. “Yeah, okay. I get it.”

Nightmare stood up and Jeff followed suit. “Best advice I can give you?” Nightmare said. “Set up your scenes as much as possible ahead of time. The interface is good, but you don’t want to be fiddling with it in the heat of the moment. Plan ahead. It’s much easier to say ‘cue scene 2’ than it is to say ‘I want a dark dungeon theme with this furniture and that light source and blah blah’. But don’t worry if your plans get screwed up at show time. They always do, so don’t get mad about it, just roll with it. Improv. Make sense?”

Jeff nodded.

“All right. Good luck, then.” He headed out the door and Jeff barely remembered to call out a “thank you” before he disappeared into the hall. Nightmare lifted an acknowledging hand in reply but didn’t stop walking.

---

11: Company Town

Jeff sat a while, digesting everything he had encountered since putting the headset on. There certainly was a lot of it. Hopefully enough to set Bill free. Speaking of which, it was time to get started on that.

Out the door, down the dark hallway, through the dungeon door and out into the main hall. He was almost bowled over by a trio racing past, one in the lead, two dressed in black SWAT uniforms in hot pursuit waving what might have been paintball guns. They disappeared up ahead while he made his way toward the entrance. It was tempting to take the headset off right away, be done with this whole Alice-In-Wonderland world, but Jeff made himself keep it on all the way to the door.

Past the prison, through Mos Eisley, there’s the beach over there, there’s the castle, almost out. Just before the door, he came upon the trio of runners again. The one who had been in the lead was now lying on the floor, blood spraying out of a severed artery in the side of his neck. Struck once more by how incredibly real these simulations were, Jeff almost stopped to reassure himself that it actually was just a simulation, but then he heard what could only be one of the Terra Nova security guys haranguing the three runners.

“I don’t care. You can’t do that in here.”

“Aw, c’mon, man! They’re smart bullets,” one of the two chasers protested. There was something comical about a burly, conspicuously-armed SWAT team member whining with a high-pitched, nasal voice like a thwarted three-year-old. “They pass right through anyone who isn’t their target. No one’s getting hurt.”

“It’s not the bullets, it’s the running. You want to play cops and robbers, take it outside. Go to a park or something.”

By this time, the bleeding man had stood up, blood still fountaining out of his neck (though not, Jeff noticed, puddling on the floor), and started trying to mediate between the bouncer and the friend who had just shot him. “Turn that off!” the bouncer snapped, referring to the spurting red stream. Jeff reached the door and passed through, removing the headset as he did, glad to be back in reality. What a place…

He felt as though he had been gone for days, but Martin was still sitting at the same table. Did the man ever leave that booth?

“Ah, you’ve returned,” he said as Jeff approached. “I hope you had an edifying time.”

“If ‘edifying’ is anything like ‘mystifying’ or ‘terrifying’ or ‘weirdifying’, then yeah. Question for you – when you showed me that view of Bill’s cell, there was a number on it. That number was his score in the game, wasn’t it?”

“Yes. That’s correct.”

“And while I was watching, that number changed. It dropped from 327 to 326. That makes no sense to me. From what I learned back there” – he jerked his thumb toward the dance floor – “someone is controlling his suit, keeping him in that prison. His score should be rising, not falling. And he should be able to set himself free once he gets to a thousand. So what’s going on?”

“A very astute observation,” Martin agreed. “That was what I found so intriguing about this arrangement when I first learned of it. You can find it yourself now that you have the app. Search for ‘Prisoner On The Edge’.”

Jeff did so. In a few moments, there was Bill on the screen of Jeff’s phone, lying down now and seemingly asleep. His score had fallen further and now stood at 298.

“The relationship between points, dollars, and value is a complicated and fluid one,” Martin said. “You are correct that when a rubberlad grants someone else the right to control his suit, he earns points for that on a scale that varies according to how long, what actions, and so on. But players can also be charged points for certain actions. It can cost points to use someone else’s space, for instance, or a virtual environment that someone else created. Here’s what I think is happening: someone convinced Bill to agree to be imprisoned until he earns enough points to get out. But he is being charged ‘rent’, as it were, for the use of the real-world space in which he is imprisoned. I would expect that he is also charged for the food that he eats, and possibly for the water he uses.

“In other words, Bill is stuck in the 21st century equivalent of the 19th century ‘company town’, where he gets paid for his service but has to turn around and pay his employer for his upkeep, and the upkeep costs as much as he can earn. He can’t leave until he pays his debt in full, but he can never earn enough to pay his debt. It’s actually a very clever abuse of the system.”

“Oh, yeah, very clever,” Jeff bit out. Maybe he’d be able to be more detached, to better appreciate the cunning and even artistry that went into thinking up such an arrangement if he didn’t have a personal stake in it. But he did, so to hell with artistry. “But Bill can revoke his consent, right? He could tell this guy to fuck off and just walk out? Why doesn’t he do that?”

“He could, yes, but there would be a big price if he did. If he revokes his consent, then he forfeits all the points he’s earned since granting consent, but he does not earn back all the points he paid out for room and board. After almost two weeks, he would be thousands of points in debt. The game does not take kindly to those who go that far in the red and he would need to work off what he owes in service.”

“Well, but so what? What can they do, try to get him to pay? I’d like to see them try that in court. ‘We’re suing you for 4,000 points.’ ‘Yeah, and I’m suing you back for kidnapping and unlawful imprisonment’.”

“Oh, I don’t think it would come to that.” He took a long sip of his drink – not a brick this time, Jeff noticed. “The VRealWorld designers wouldn’t take such a public approach, I don’t think. From what I’ve seen, they prefer to work more behind the scenes, and they sometimes play a little loose with the idea of consent. Bill’s situation is a perfect example of that, but it’s happened before. In fact, there’s a story going around that the very first rubberlad was a straight man who was either tricked or blackmailed into locking himself into one of the suits and then had to go find leathermen so he could earn enough points to set himself free.”

Blackmail. That was very, very believable.

“Of course, I never really believed that story,” Martin continued.

Jeff thought it through out loud. “So… they might threaten to send some photos or videos to Mom, for instance. Of the stuff he’s been doing over the past two weeks. If Bill’s straight, he’d be desperate to not let that happen… and if he’s gay, the same because she doesn’t know yet.”

Martin nodded. “The closet is not a healthy place to live.”

“How did he get locked into that suit in the first place, then? Don’t tell me he locked it on himself!”

“Actually,” Martin replied, “that is exactly what he did. You rented that headset and gloves, right? Those were expensive enough and they only give you a taste of what the VRealWorld can offer. To get the full experience, you really need to be wearing a full-body suit, and those are far, far more costly. Hunter can afford one, and if you noticed, his was not locked on. There are many people who want to play the game who can’t afford to buy or rent suits, but the game designers want people to be playing, so they offer the suits for free to anyone who is willing to lock themselves into one. The catch is that it costs a thousand points to request an unlock code.”

Ah-ha. There it was. That was the missing piece of the puzzle. That’s how Bill got himself stuck. He wanted to play this game so bad that he agreed to become a rubberlad, a faceless drone available for use by any of the other players. He probably figured he could make a thousand points in a couple of days and set himself free. But what would that get him? From what the Pocket Prison guy had said, there was no way to get rich quick by selling points, so Bill wasn’t doing this for money. Which implied that he was OK with getting himself locked into a pillory or forced to lick boots or staked out in the hot sun or raped up the ass by a giant demon.

Which implied that not only was he OK with those things, those things were probably exactly what he was looking for.

They were the reason he put the suit on in the first place.

His brother was gay.

Jeff shook his head. Gay or not, he still needed help. Jeff stood up to go. As he was rising, a pair of men passed by the table on their way out from the dance floor. The one in the lead was tall, dark-skinned with dreadlocks hanging down to his shoulders; the shorter one trailing behind was a rubberlad and therefore interchangeable with all the others. “Don’t forget, Turtle,” the leader called with the unmistakable lilt of Jamaica in his voice. “Let me know how it goes.”

Jeff boggled a bit, then thought to bring the phone up and point it at the pair’s retreating backs. Through the screen he could read “KingstonTop Leatherman” and “propertyofKT rubberlad”. He boggled even more. That was Hawaiian Shirt? Suddenly the surfer’s funny way of speaking made sense, but it was kind of scary that Jeff couldn’t recognize a Caribbean accent just because it came wrapped in a blond California package. Every time he turned around, the VRealWorld found a new way to knock his legs out from under him.

His thoughts must have been visible on his face once again. “Don’t read too much into that,” Martin said. “I suspect he carries no more deep-seated desire to really be whatever you saw him as than any of the aliens or medieval fops or superheroes do.”

“Yeah… right… it’s a game. They’re all acting, playing out roles. I’m definitely getting that now,” Jeff answered, once again getting up to go.

“One last suggestion, if I may?” Martin said. “Timing matters. Every now and then Bill receives visitors. I mentioned I was with a group of them some time back – it’s how I got your name from his phone. His score tends to go up during these visits, then starts steadily dropping again once they are gone. If you want to maximize your impact, you should go see him right after one of these other visitors departs. Just keep an eye on the app and you’ll know when.”

He held out a small bag. “Here. Some things you might need. Make sure you bring the headset and gloves back by next Saturday or they’ll charge you the full purchase price. Best of luck, Jeff.”

Jeff took the bag. “Yeah. Thanks. Hey, I appreciate you helping me out with this.”

“Oh, no problem. Happy to help.”

It was most definitely time to get the hell out of Terra Nova.

---

12: Visiting Hours

Jeff opened the bag from Martin while riding the train back to Brooklyn. It contained a pair of condoms and a small bottle of lube. He snorted. Thanks for the thought, Martin, but you have massively misjudged me if you think I’m going to need these. He stuffed the bag back into his backpack.

It was after 1 AM by the time he got home. Bill’s score continued to slowly drain away, which meant that he wasn’t “entertaining any visitors”, which Jeff had figured out was a very sophisticated-sounding euphemism for “being tortured and fucked by strangers”. That was probably for the best because Jeff was completely beat and wouldn’t have been able to stay awake long enough to go start his rescue attempt. Besides, according to Nightmare, he needed to plan… but that could wait until morning.

He woke up a little after 8, definitely earlier than he would on a typical Sunday. He checked in on Bill, who was up and pacing around his tiny cell again. His score had fallen to 204.

First thing he did was buy some points. The exchange rate was right about where the CO had said it would be – for $25 he bought 265 points. If the CO’s estimates had been right, Jeff should be able to transfer twice that amount and hopefully more to Bill, so if Bill’s next “visitor” left him with at least 500 points, Jeff should be able to get him up over the 1,000 mark. And if not, he’d happily shell out for more points. One way or another, this was going to end today.

The next thing he did was load up his backpack with the headset and gloves. He tossed in a set of clothes for Bill, who probably didn’t have any, with some money in the pocket of the pants. He added a charging cable for Bill’s phone – might as well charge it up while the scene was going on because he was going to need it once he was out of the suit. A couple of miscellaneous props for the various scenes he had planned.

Then he planned his strategy, which turned out to be easier than he had feared. He had been worried because he was not a gay sadist and therefore didn’t have a clue what sorts of gay-sadist activities the game would reward, but then he recalled the film festival down in the Terra Nova dungeon. That helped greatly because he didn’t have to come up with any original ideas on his own. People who made movies had plenty of ideas and it wasn’t too hard to borrow a few of them. Writing programs for the suit turned out to be not too difficult as well, and soon he had four scenes lined up and ready to go. Hopefully he wouldn’t need all four, but better to have them ready.

From time to time, he checked in on Bill. Food arrived (-10 points) and Bill ate. But no visitors yet. He fiddled around with his prepared scenes a bit, but there was really nothing else that needed to be done. He toyed with the idea of going for Bill now, but it would definitely be easier if he already had a higher score to begin with. Might as well wait. To pass the time, he read more about this “Prisoner On The Edge” VRealWorld site that was providing the video feed of Bill’s captivity.

That might have been a mistake because his blood pressure slowly crept up with every word he read. The site was dedicated to seeing how long Bill’s unnamed captors could hold him there in that grimy apartment dressed up as a stone prison cell, dangling freedom in front of him only to yank it away over and over. The site issued an open invitation for anyone at all to come by, let themselves in, and have their way with him. “Make sure you keep an eye on his score – don’t let him get to 1,000!” That was the “edge” that the prisoner was being kept on. The tantalizing promise of a thousand points that he could never reach.

Jeff visited the profiles of a few of the men who had visited the cell. No one else’s score was openly visible like this, as far as he could see. That must have been part of whatever agreement Bill had consented to, allowing them to publicize his score so that his torturers would know when they were pushing too close to the limit that would end their fun. And it let them plan their visits, spacing them out so that Bill wouldn’t accidentally be set free by two visits too close together.

Jeff felt his stomach twisting itself into knots. Not only were random strangers physically torturing and fucking his brother, they were fucking with his head by making him think, over and over, that maybe this time would be the last. But it never was. It was meta-torture, torture about being tortured. Oh, Bill…

There were videos of past scenes. Jeff scrolled through a few but found he didn’t have the stomach to watch them. The comments posted on the site were bad enough:

“me and a bud naled him to the wall then naled him from both ends 848 pts lol” – Kckz Leatherman

“turned my fingers into whips raked som nice canions on is back, got him to 870 but no exit 4 u :sad-tuba:” – Writcher Leatherman

“962 record!!!” – FurLuvr Leatherman

By the time he stopped reading, his blood pressure couldn’t possibly get any higher; he was more incensed than he had ever been. He could feel the blood pumping in his neck and his face flushing hot red. This was going to stop. This had to stop.

Right now.

He grabbed the backpack and headed for the door.

---

By the time he was sitting on the train and had time to check the app, he saw that Bill’s score had gone up and now stood at 313. Someone was there with him. There was no video – perhaps visiting leathermen got to decide whether they wanted to make the events of their visit public. Jeff couldn’t decide which was worse: being able to watch some dumbshit hurting his brother, or knowing it was happening and not being able to watch it. Every time the train stopped it was all he could do to not get out and push it, or just forget the train and run all the way to Elmhurst. But no, this was the fastest way to get there, even if it didn’t feel like it when he was just sitting still. He kept glancing at his phone: 378 points, then 430, then 489. He consoled himself with the thought that if the asshole was still there when he arrived, Jeff could at least have the satisfaction of beating the shit out of him.

Never mind that Jeff was about to do the same thing to his brother. That was for a completely different reason. The opposite reason, in fact. Jeff was going to hurt him to set him free, not keep him locked up. Both to take his mind off the frustration of not moving and to ensure that this private matter stayed private, he found the setting on the programs he had written that controlled their visibility to others. He locked them down completely so that no one else would be able see what he and Bill did. No sick fucks are gonna beat off to this scene, no way.

In the end, he missed his chance for some ass-kicking: Jeff took a last look at the app as the train neared his stop and watched Bill’s score drop from 526 to 525. His guest was very likely gone. Jeff ran the last few blocks and jogged up the stairs to number 513. Sure enough, it looked exactly like it had two days before – empty and silent. No one was here.

He ran to the bedroom and there was Bill, sitting with his back against the wall and his head resting in his arms. “Bill, oh man, c’mon let’s get out of… shit.” Right. Bill couldn’t hear him. Or see him. Time to go virtual.

Jeff pulled out the headset and put it on. Stone walls appeared around him, the same walls he had seen on the screen of his phone… right! The phone! He dug in his backpack for the charging cable, which had fallen under the package from Martin, fished the cable out and plugged it in to Bill’s phone, still lying forgotten in the same corner where he had last seen it.

OK, interface menu… messaging… there. Bill’s balloon label said “edgeprisoner rubberlad”. Message to edgeprisoner… “Bill, can you hear me? I’m going to get you out of here.”

No response. Bill never looked up from his knees.

“Bill! BILL!” Shouting evoked no response either. Jeff tried one more message: “AvengingTurtle requests control of edgeprisoner’s suit.” Still nothing. What was going wrong?

Time to get physical. He nudged Bill’s arms, then nudged a little harder until Bill was knocked off balance. Bill shot to his feet and it was just like the last time all over again. “Get out of here.” he called to no particular direction. “I mean it, get out, now.” He started reaching out blindly with his arms again, just like before.

“Dammit!” Jeff shouted. Bill still couldn’t see him. And apparently the interface wasn’t transferring his messages, either accidentally or on purpose. Why?

Time to get out and regroup. He tore the headset off and headed back out to the living room, leaving Bill to fumble around his now-empty cell.

OK, there had to be an explanation. He paced a bit and thought. Why wasn’t it working? The headset had worked flawlessly back at Terra Nova. Batteries? No, that couldn’t be it – it showed him the stone cell walls just fine. Some kind of connectivity problem? And yet Bill’s suit clearly had no trouble connecting. So what was different?

He put the headset back on and was startled to find someone standing right next to him. He jumped backward, took the headset off and looked – no one. Whoever it was was purely virtual. He put the headset back on and added the the earphones and gloves as well.

It was another prison guard, dressed in the same outfit as the CO from the Pocket Prison. He was standing, looking bored, staring down at a desk that didn’t exist anywhere else. Why would there need to be a guard here, when from Bill’s perspective there was no door to guard? That seemed pretty useless. Jeff glanced back toward the door to the bedroom. It was now covered by a solid stone slab. He walked toward it and put his hand up to it, wondering if he would be able to feel it through the glove. But before he could touch it…

“Visiting hours are over,” the CO droned. Jeff spun around.

“I need to get in there,” he said.

The CO didn’t even bother shrugging. “Come back later.”

Yeah, fine, maybe a fake stone wall could stop someone in a suit, but it couldn’t stop Jeff. He walked through it and found himself back with Bill, who was still searching the room for someone who wasn’t there, not noticing Jeff at all even though they were standing face to face about four feet apart.

And that’s when Jeff realized what the problem was: he still wasn’t there. Or rather, his body was physically present in the room, but as far as the game was concerned, his AvengingTurtle avatar was not. He could stand here all day and try to get Bill’s attention, but it wouldn’t work because he wasn’t playing by the game’s rules.

He stepped back out through the stone. “Visiting hours are over,” the CO droned in exactly the same tone as before, as though seeing Jeff for the first time.

Visiting hours. Of course. The previous visitor had just left. The point of the guard wasn’t to keep Bill in, it was to keep guests out, at least until Bill’s score had sunk to a suitably low level. He glanced at Bill’s score again: 519. Dammit.

Jeff walked over to the guard. “Hey, pal, what’ll it take to get in there?”

“Visiting hours are over. Come back later.”

“Yeah, I know they’re over. But isn’t there any way to, you know, make an exception for family? That’s my brother in there. I really need to see him now.”

“Visiting hours are over. Come back later.”

“Aw, come on, man. Please? I’ve gotta see him, and this is my only chance.”

“Visiting hours are over. Come back later.”

“I’ve got something he needs to have, his medication. His insulin. For his diabetes, you know? Come on, I really need to get in there and give it to him. Just two minutes, OK?” Lying to a prison guard, whether real or virtual, was not usually a good plan, but better ideas weren’t exactly springing up like daisies.

“Visiting hours are over. Come back later.”

Fuck. This was a bot, not a human. Trying to reason with a bot, even with lies, wasn’t going to get him anywhere. So what, then? Bust down the door? With what? How do you break open a door that doesn’t exist? A magic hammer? Maybe he could spend some of his VRealWorld points conjuring one of those up.

It turned out to be not too expensive: 2 points. He could spare that. A Thor-sized hammer shimmered into being. Jeff would have struggled to lift it had it been real, but his Turtle avatar hefted it with ease. It was weird – he could feel the handle in his gloved hands, but it had no weight at all. He headed for the cell door, mumbling “thanks anyway, asshole” under his breath. The guard either didn’t hear or didn’t care. He lined up, took a massive swing, and crashed the hammer into the stone. The vibration of the impact made his palm shudder. Nothing on the door appeared to change, so he lined up for a second swing, surreptitiously checking behind him to see if the guard was going to do anything to stop him. Nope – the bot stood at his desk, as bored as ever.

Jeff took a second swing, then a third. He must look like a nut, doing some sort of calisthenics in an empty apartment. It was very real to his eyes and hands, though. He pounded the door a fourth time, a fifth. Still nothing changed. He took a step back and then forward, adding the momentum of his body to the hammer for the most powerful blow yet.

The hammer struck the door… and shattered. The door was not even dinged.

Fuck.

He dropped the handle of the ruined hammer, furious. He was so close! Bill was right there just a few feet away and Jeff couldn’t figure out how to get to him. It wasn’t even a real door! Everything about it was fake, there was no reason he shouldn’t be able to get himself to the other side of it. And yet there it stood, thwarting him, blocking his path with no handle to open it, no keyhole… no hinges… no visible way at all for it to…

Well that was odd, come to think of it. How could this door ever open, even under “normal” circumstances? He looked more closely – it wasn’t really a door at all. It was more like a wall. It couldn’t open in any normal sense, so prying at it and banging on it would never do any good. The guard must open it somehow, just like the way the CO at the Pocket Prison had dissolved the bars by putting his hand on a scanner.

The CO at the Pocket Prison… who had given him…

Jeff stalked back to the guard’s desk, fiddling with his inventory as he did.

“Visiting hours are over. Come back later.”

“Yeah, fuckwit, I know. Here, does this open that door?” He snapped the Get Out Of Jail Free card out of his inventory and into his hand, holding it out to the guard, breath tight in his lungs. The guard reached out a hand and took it. He inspected the card, holding it close to his eyes and peering intently at both sides, then slid it into a slot in his desk.

With no change in expression, the guardbot said “Welcome to Prisoner On The Edge. When you’re ready to leave, simply message Warden@PrisonerOnTheEdge” – the address appeared in Jeff’s headset – “and request an exit door. Enjoy your visit.” Jeff looked over at the door to see that the stone had vanished.

Yesss!!! “Thanks, pal, it’s been a pleasure.” Jeff rushed through the door before it could seal shut again.

---

13: Hooray For Hollywood

It would have been too much to ask for Bill to be able to piggy-back off of Jeff’s Get Out Of Jail Free card and waltz out through the open door. Sure enough, the stone wall re-materialized into place behind Jeff as soon as he walked into the cell. Besides, even if Bill left the room, he’d still be locked in the suit. No change in the plan, then. It was time to get this film festival rolling.

And Bill could see him! As soon as Jeff had taken a few steps into the room, Bill turned toward him and did the dick-graze thing. Man, if Jeff hadn’t known to expect that, it would have been way too weird. Then Bill dropped to his knees and held up his hands just like the rubberlad in the dungeon had. Jeff blinked “Yes” to the prompt that came up in his headset asking if he wanted to take control of the suit. There needs to be a ‘Hell Yeah’ button. This was actually working!

According to Jeff’s thinking, Bill had been locked in the suit for something like two weeks straight. By now, he was probably pretty good at telling the difference between what was real and what wasn’t. He was probably getting a little bored, a little jaded even. For all the wonders the suit could perform, it was only capable of altering sight, sound, and touch. It could not alter gravity, or reshape Bill into a dog like Hunter, or change smells or tastes or affect the inside of his body. By now he knew what was and was not possible. As per the prison CO, repetition led to fewer points, and Jeff had been doing pretty much the same thing with variations for a lot of days in a row. It was time to change things up.

As Nightmare had demonstrated, there were ways to get the subject disoriented, to make him more receptive to suggestion. What reality and the suit couldn’t deliver, Bill’s own mind could. The trick was to get him disoriented as soon as possible, to make him undergo something that he knew the suit couldn’t possibly do. That would get him doubting himself, questioning his beliefs about what the VRealWorld was capable of doing to him, maybe even questioning whether what he was experiencing was VRealWorld-generated or not. And then he’d be more willing to believe whatever came next.

Jeff glanced at Bill’s score: 512. OK. This was doable. Time to cue up scene 1. If anything was going to cast doubt on the suit’s limits, this should do it.

---

AvengingTurtle Leatherman took control and Bill watched his score stop falling and start to rise again. Not that it would do any good. He’d get lifted to 700 or 800 or even 900, but then it would end and the points would start draining away again. But what other choice did he have?

The cave faded out. Wonder what it’s gonna be this time? Is an AvengingTurtle anything like a ninja turtle? Maybe I’m heading down into a sewer. But it was not a sewer that he found himself in. Instead, the dank stone walls were replaced with sleek lines and planes in white and black, grey and silver. Very futuristic-looking, though kind of industrial. Bill’s rubber suit was gone, replaced by a set of generic blue coveralls. He looked around to see what Turtle had become, but the leatherman had vanished altogether.

He walked around a bit, appreciating the light and the illusion of space. Unfortunately, the room he was in was just like the cell in that it had no door, but it was larger and brighter than his usual cell, so that was something to enjoy while it lasted. But where had Turtle gone?

He caught a glimpse of a flicker of movement out of the corner of his eye, but by the time he had turned to look more clearly at it, it was gone. Some kind of animal? Couldn’t have been an actual turtle, it moved way too fast. Maybe his eyes were playing tricks on him. Or maybe the tricks were coming from the suit’s optics.

Whatever. His score was going up. Great. Bill didn’t mind waiting.

There it was again, something moving, almost too fast to see. He went over to look behind a rack of shelves, where whatever it was had gone to hide. Here, turtle, turtle, he called, but only silently in his mind – he knew well what the penalty for speaking out loud to leathermen was. This guy wanted to play hide and seek? Sure, why not.

Bill reached the shelves and peered behind them. The light was dim back here and it was hard to make out what the vague shapes were. There was definitely movement, though… something clinging to one of the shelves… something that had waaaaay too many legs…

Bill had just started to back away with a growing sense of unease when the thing came flying toward him at incredible speed. He only had time to think Holy fuck! and then it was on him. It wrapped an arm or a leg or something around his throat and Bill felt it start squeezing, hard. The rest of its body was plastered right up against his face, covering his nose and mouth and – shit! – there was something in his mouth and it was blocking his air, both his nose and his mouth were covered. Bill stood up and started clawing at the thing on his face.

It was on his face! His mouth and nose were the only part of him not covered by the suit and they were blocked! Whatever this thing was, it was not VR, not digital trickery, it was real and it was preventing him from breathing. He thrashed around, trying to dislodge it, but the thing clung to him just like that face-hugger thing from…

Oh, god.

That’s what this was. This was the Alien, and it couldn’t possibly be real and yet it was. He could feel its multiple legs wrapped around his skull, squeezing tight just like its tail was squeezing his throat, and it was sticking some vile appendage down his throat, injecting him with some ghastly larval parasite that would eat his guts from the inside out. He bit down on it as hard as he could, but the thing had a hard shell, too tough for his teeth to crack, and meanwhile it was strangling him and clinging to his face with its horrible crab-like legs, and with the ferociously strong tail wrapped around his throat and the thing’s body smashed up against his nose and mouth he wasn’t getting enough air, not nearly enough.

He gave what he thought was a mighty heave, but he could tell his strength was ebbing. His arms were feeling heavy, far-off, distant. His legs didn’t want to hold him up any more.

He felt the room spinning, fading, going black…

---

Ha! It worked! Just like when they were kids horsing around. Stupid kids who didn’t know chokeholds were dangerous because they always recovered from it, didn’t they? Jeff had the suit squeeze Bill’s neck while he covered the mouth and nose openings with his hand, one gloved finger inserted between Bill’s teeth. Good thing he had brought that hard plastic tube to put over his finger – Bill had bitten down hard!

As soon as Bill stopped struggling, Jeff let him go and lowered his head to get the blood back into it. In the few seconds while Bill was out of it, Jeff laid him out on the ground and had the suit freeze him in place. (And now the steel plates on the walls and floor that had puzzled him on his first trip made sense – they were there to give the suit’s magnets something to latch on to.) In the VRealWorld, Bill was up off the floor on the surface of a table, but since there was no actual table present, the floor would have to do. Jeff got rid of the blue coveralls as well, the better to provide an unobstructed view of what was coming next, leaving Bill clad in just a pair of grey boxer shorts.

Bill woke up and gasped. Now it was time to just sit back and wait. One thing Nightmare had taught him: don’t underestimate the power of suggestion. Bill was now disoriented. Something that couldn’t exist had just made him pass out; who was to say what other impossible things might come true next? His rational mind would tell him that what was about to happen to him couldn’t possibly be happening… but a little bit of suit-induced churning in his belly would soon have him questioning himself. And time was on Jeff’s side – the longer it went on, the more opportunity Bill would have to doubt. After a while it wouldn’t be hard to nudge him into believing just about anything Jeff wanted him to believe.

And Jeff didn’t have to do much at all. Just like the Pocket Prison CO, he could sit back and let the points flow to Bill while conserving his own stash. If necessary, of course, he’d buy more, but it made sense to make effective use of the ones he had.

He kept Bill frozen for fifteen minutes. The suit would resist any movement he tried to make, and Bill definitely tried. Jeff saw a point when he succeeded in bending his legs a bit, but the relentless pressure of the suit forced him back in the position Jeff wanted him in. God, what a sense of power! He could definitely see the allure of this VRealWorld. If it weren’t for the whole gay thing, he could actually maybe get into this. Maybe.

The whole time Bill lay frozen, the suit would occasionally squeeze his waist or his chest. If a little squeezing worked to make Nightmare’s victim think he had a four-foot-long, 12-inch wide dick up his ass, it could probably make Bill think he had a little baby alien scooting around inside him. Sure enough, Bill moaned and tried to thrash more and more as time passed and the suit ramped up the sensations. His suit-enforced paralysis prevented him from moving, so all he could do was lie there, helpless, trying and hopefully failing to convince himself that all this really was just an illusion.

Jeff waited until Bill’s score reached the 600 mark – and a time when Bill’s attempts to struggle intensified – and then triggered the end stage of the scene. More squeezes around the belly, then a couple of electric shocks because when you’re primed to expect a creature eating its way through your abs, you’re going to convince yourself that any pain you feel is the pain of alien teeth shredding your guts and skin and muscles. And sure enough, Bill redoubled his thrashing and even choked out a muffled scream when he saw the fist-sized worm-like head emerge from beneath his ribs and poke its blood-soaked head out into the air.

Here’s where things diverged from the original film’s plot, but Jeff needed a way to transition to scene 2.

---

This can’t be happening. This isn’t happening, it isn’t real not real not real but as much as he repeated it, as much as he wanted to deny the evidence of his eyes and ears, he couldn’t deny the evidence from inside his belly. He caught one glimpse of the horrifying creature rising up from the bare skin at his waist, heard the ear-piercing shriek it let out as it emerged into the air all covered in his blood and intestines, then shut his eyes. Not real. He couldn’t shut his ears, though, but most of all, he couldn’t stop feeling the agonizing pain of his guts being ripped apart. This can’t be happening…

The high-pitched keening suddenly deepened in tone. Bill squeezed his eyes open, unable to resist the urge to see what was happening. No! What was NOT happening! The small, worm-like creature had grown in the few seconds since he had last looked at it, and was continuing to grow even as he watched. The head expanded, the body lengthened. Soon it loomed over him and leered down, its jaws dripping. It stretched its mouth open wide and suddenly Bill’s paralysis ended and he could move again… but it did him no good because the creature’s jaws came lunging down over his head. The world went black and he felt himself lifted to a standing position by the pull of the thing’s teeth lodged in his shoulders. Suddenly instead of the creature being inside him, he was inside it. There was no light, no sound but the rushing of his blood in his ears. He felt himself shifted from side to side as the thing that had eaten him moved around. He pressed against it, the fleshy walls of his prison giving way grudgingly to the force of his arms and legs and then returning to enclose him tightly again once he stopped pushing. Once again, his airway was blocked, though only partly this time, by warm flesh. He could turn his head to pull it away from the confining flexible wall around him, but it constantly reshaped itself to conform to his body’s contours. He fought to pull in every breath, clawing at the membranes around him and making no progress at escaping them.

There was a sudden searing pain over his entire body, taking his breath away. He stopped struggling for a moment, all his attention taken up by the sensation. Time stood still as he fought to pull air back into his paralyzed lungs. Then, at last, with a heave, his throat opened once more. When he had recovered a bit, he started pawing once again at the slick black walls that surrounded him on all sides.

This time his fist passed through the wall as if it were tissue paper. Light leaked into the darkness and he could see again. This was so unexpected he didn’t believe his eyes. Half-afraid the effect wouldn’t happen again, he dared to move his other hand out to the far side: same result. His hand tore the flimsy skin apart. The creature was falling apart around him. It emitted a high keening noise as it disintegrated… and he found he could breathe clearly again. What the fuck? There was no way the suit should be able to do that to him. So… maybe it wasn’t the suit? He no longer knew what to think, he could only react, running on instinct.

The alien collapsed further and Bill stepped out through a hole suddenly large enough to walk through. He spun around to watch it dissolve into grey mush and sink into the ground. Ground… there was ground underfoot, grass-covered soil. He was barefoot, wearing only the grey shorts from before, standing in a small sunlit green meadow surrounded by dark trees. OK, this was more VRealWorld-ish. Sudden changes of background scenery were to be expected… but that bit with his airway was too freaky.

He stood a moment, catching his breath. Then, without warning, a man appeared in front of him dressed like a samurai and armed with a huge sword. Bill had just enough time to put his hands up and step back from the surprise, but the sword was already in mid-swing. In less than a second, it had severed both hands at the wrist. They fell to the ground and lay there; the swordsman vanished.

What the fuck???

Blood was pumping out from the stumps at his wrists. He could feel it dripping down his bare arms… but he couldn’t feel his hands. Not real not real not real he repeated to himself as he sank down to his knees, but it was getting harder and harder to believe. He tried clenching his fists. Nothing happened to the hands lying on the ground, and he couldn’t be sure if he felt anything from his fingers. Were they still there? He was about to close his eyes to cut out the distracting illusions, but then he noticed that the ends of his arms were… changing…

As he watched, the severed stump grew skin, which quickly scabbed over, then bulged and swelled. His wrists itched… no, his fingers itched. He could feel them again because they were re-growing right in front of his eyes. In half a minute, there were two brand-new hands at the ends of his arms, looking just as real as the two lying on the ground. He laughed, a barking sound of relief. Okay… it’s okay… He climbed back to his feet.

The swordsman reappeared, metal blade already in motion. Bill had no time to scramble out of the way; he barely had time to blink. This time the target was his foot, which was cleanly separated from the rest of him. Once again, the sword wielder disappeared.

And Bill fell over. His “missing” foot refused to support his weight. That should not happen! There was NO WAY the suit could really take his foot off and make him actually fall down! But it sure did hurt… only at the ankle. He couldn’t feel his toes. Fuck, how was this possible???

Before he had a chance to think clearly about it, just like his hands had done, his foot began to regrow from its stump. A short time later, it was restored to perfect condition and he could feel it again. He climbed unsteadily to his feet, gingerly testing whether the rebuilt limb would support his weight. It did.

No way. No way, not possible, not happening. Bill looked around for a way to escape, but the trees surrounding the meadow were impenetrable. He raced around the edge of the clearing searching for any gap, even trying to will his way through where there was no gap, but he was trapped.

The samurai appeared a third time and took off his ear before vanishing once more. Bill felt the swing of the blade as it carved the air, felt the trickle of blood down the side of his neck. “STOP DOING THAT!” he shouted to the empty air, but the grass and trees sucked up his voice.

Over and over it happened. Bill lost hands, feet, arms, and legs repeatedly, occasionally his ears again and once, his nose. He reached a point where he stopped reacting, stopped trying to escape and simply lay there enduring as his tormentor flicked in and out of being, littering the small clearing with severed limbs that regrew on Bill’s body as fast as they were removed.

He curled up into a ball and whimpered.

---

God, it hurt to do this to his brother, but the increase in score was worth it. Jeff had gotten Bill up to 750 points now, halfway from where he started to his goal. This scene, a combination of Deadpool’s regeneration ability and an old samurai movie he saw years ago, was hopefully not something Bill would recognize. If Jeff stuck too closely to any given movie script, Bill might figure out what was going on.

All Jeff had to do was kick Bill’s foot out from under him whenever the samurai sliced it off, and even that wasn’t needed once Bill had collapsed in a heap. His own mind would supply the rest of the details, making this movie all too real for the actor starring in the show.

Unfortunately, the system’s “sameness detector” was already kicking in – Bill was getting fewer and fewer points for each limb lost. It was time to shift to the next scene. Hopefully Bill wouldn’t recognize this one either; the giant-spider segment wasn’t a huge part of the Lord Of The Rings films, so it wouldn’t be obvious where the next Halloween horrorfest creature had stemmed from.

While Bill was lying huddled in a ball, Jeff triggered the scene change. The result wasn’t too different from the original cell walls – dark grey stone walls and floor. There were a lot more pale silk strings lying around, though, and clinging to walls and dangling from the ceiling, enough that someone might start to wonder what had produced all those strings. Jeff waited for Bill to notice the difference and picked up his backpack to find the supplies he would need.

His hand landed first on the package that Martin had given him. Man, that thing kept pushing itself to the top of the heap somehow. Sorry, Martin. Not gonna happen. He pushed it to the side and found what he was looking for: a packet of waxed dental floss, unflavored. The simplest things…

There, Bill was stirring. He stood up shakily, checked his appendages to verify they were all there, and looked around. Nothing to see here… yet. Jeff watched as Bill looked around seeing only the cave and not the other person in it – how nice that Jeff could be the one to decide when to become visible to his brother!

There, a shadow on the wall. Bill didn’t see it yet – it was behind him. But he did see the web fragments lying around and bent to inspect some. He poked at the mass of strands with his fingers and the stuff came away clinging to his hands. He shook his hand to try to dislodge it, then must have caught a glimpse of movement. Jeff could see the spider clearly from where he was standing… what a monster. He might be having nightmares for weeks, and he wasn’t even the one it was going after! Bill spun around and the spider flicked across the ceiling far faster than anything that size could actually move. It would tease him for a bit, staying just out of his sight and plucking at his nerves until they were taut strings ready to snap.

Jeff backed away so Bill wouldn’t stumble into him. Nervous now, Bill was dodging back and forth, looking frantically over his shoulder. Somehow, the cave managed to always adjust itself so that Bill didn’t run into any of the walls of the room without making it obvious that he was still confined to a space the size of a bedroom. Whoever built this system did a good job, Jeff had to give them credit for that.

Suddenly, it was right above him, dangling an obscenely hairy black leg down. Bill shrieked and jumped, but the spider had a leg down behind him as well and he plowed right into it. Then it was on him. This was Jeff’s cue to get involved again. He grabbed Bill and tackled him to the floor, then rolled him over and over, back and forth, keeping his eyes shut while he was doing it because it was too distracting – OK, and too disturbing – to be seeing the spider’s legs passing near and even through his own body, not to mention knowing that its massive-though-virtual bulk was right over the back of his neck.

Jeez, if it was this bad for Jeff, what was Bill thinking?

Bill’s body was steadily disappearing under strands of silk, layer upon layer immobilizing him and shrouding him in formless grey-white. It saved the head for last, for when Bill had been rendered helpless. As soon as it started wrapping there, Jeff opened the packet of floss. He lifted Bill’s head, held one end of the sticky string in place, and started wrapping, just around the mouth and nose area. As soon as he got the second loop finished, there was enough tension that it could stay in place on its own. In less than a minute, Jeff’s mouth and nose were both covered, though not completely, by several strands of “spider silk”. One more little touch to keep him off balance.

Bill, for his part, had gone catatonic, not even whimpering now. Jeff watched as the spider hoisted him up to the ceiling, which meant that from Bill’s point of view – if he had his eyes open – the room sank around him. Jeff, who was standing on the floor next to Bill, had the odd sensation of floating in the air with his feet on solid ground. He glanced under the headset to confirm his feet were still firmly planted on the room’s dingy floor, as was Bill’s body, then went virtual again. There was no way to have it both ways – he couldn’t be standing next to Bill (though invisible to him) and standing on the floor of the virtual cave at the same time. Those “flying fuck” guys must have felt this same way, he mused. It was disorienting for him; how much worse must the enhanced illusion be for Bill?

The spider had disappeared, off in search of other prey, perhaps, or just waiting a bit until its fresh-caught meal was sufficiently tenderized… but actually to give time to let Bill stew in his bondage, immobilized by the suit and racking up the points. Jeff glanced at the display: 827. Not bad, but still a while to go. Gotta keep plugging away…

Perhaps ten minutes in, he checked on Bill. He was still lying there (of course), still covered in spider silk that pinned his limbs tightly to his body, legs together stretched out straight, one arm curled against his chest, the other down by his waist, where there was an odd-looking lump. It took Jeff far longer than it should have (though it was only a few seconds) to recognize the lump for what it was.

Holy shit. He’s got a hard-on.

The shape was unmistakable, the location conclusive. The only way the imaginary spider silk could be tenting out like that was if something was pressing it from inside the cocoon. And the only thing that could be pressing it from that spot on the inside was…

Well dang, bro. I guess you really do get off on this shit!

He checked reality once more, but all he saw was the black rubber of the suit, no lump to be seen. He checked closer, not really eager to but needing to know what was going on, and found that the crotch of the suit was a solid, hard cup, like an athletic protector. Nightmare had mentioned something to that effect, hadn’t he? Jeff had been absorbing a lot at the time and hadn’t really thought about it, but Nightmare had been talking about how he couldn’t get his rubberlads off during their sessions together. Because the suit wouldn’t allow it?

Damn. The suit trapped its wearer’s dick in a tiny space where it couldn’t grow, couldn’t get hard. That had to be awful! And Bill had been wearing this thing for two solid weeks. The only erections he had been permitted during all that time were virtual ones, rendered by the VRealWorld system while his real dick stayed locked up and soft.

Unless the erection was an illusion? Maybe the hard-on was system-generated and Bill wasn’t feeling a thing. How could he know?

Well, there was one way to find out, but…

Nah. He really didn’t want to do that. Not a bit.

But on the other hand, it was all fake. He wouldn’t really be…

OK, it had to be done. He had to know. He dropped the headset back in place and reached out with a gloved hand. He pressed down on the silk at Bill’s crotch and felt the unmistakable sensation of a blood-stuffed cock under his palm.

Bill moaned. It wasn’t a moan of discomfort. He thrust his hips upward, pressing the imaginary cock into Jeff’s hand. Jeff pulled it away; Bill continued to hump the air in frustration.

Well, then. Question answered. In a way, this made things easier. Jeff found it hard to inflict this kind of stress on someone he cared about without feeling guilty about it. It had to be done, there was no other way to get him out of the suit, but it was still tough to do. The fact that his brother was getting off on it? That sure helped ease the guilt. Man, to think he had known this guy for 23 years and had never once had a clue about this side of him…

A look at the score showed that it hadn’t changed much in the last few minutes… time to change things up again. He was about to cue the return of the spider, but was suddenly struck by an inspiration. The next scene was going to be the flogging scene from Mutiny On The Bounty, which would be fine, and which Bill would probably continue to sport wood from. But Jeff had a different idea of where he wanted to go next. Nightmare had said be willing to improv. Well. This would certainly count. He set about making the necessary alterations to the scene and writing a quick script. The VRealWorld interface wouldn’t allow him to speak real-time to a rubberlad, but it would let him dictate lines which the suit would then read aloud and play in his ears in a synthesized voice. That was good in that he wouldn’t have to worry about Bill recognizing him by sound. He definitely didn’t want Bill to know about his involvement now.

It was time to go meta.

He was about to restart the spider, then decided on one last tweak, altering the location where the returning spider would deliver its bite, the bite that would end this scene by making Bill’s world fade to black. Might as well go all in…

He restarted the spider. Bill’s view through the filmy webbing that surrounded his face would be of a dark, menacing mass growing larger as it neared. He began to twitch and writhe in the cocoon, seeking an escape that did not exist. The monster reared up, fangs the size of a forearm raised and dripping with venom and digestive juices… man, this had seemed so cheesy when Jeff had been composing the scene! He had expected the spider to look like something out of a black-and-white B movie from the 50s with clay-mation special effects. He had actually worried that Bill would laugh at what he had come up with. But this was not laughable, not corny at all. This was terrifying. This was fucking intense.

The fangs came down… right on Bill’s still-stiff cock. (Sure, if this were a physical spider, there’s no way fangs two and a half feet apart could both have plunged into one six-inch-long dick. But real-world physics didn’t matter here.) The suit delivered an electric jolt, the strongest one Jeff had given him so far. Bill exploded, his back arching and his limbs actually overpowering the suit’s restraint and tearing through the enclosing silk, so strong were his convulsions. Once more with the blackout and sound shutdown, and then Jeff used his pocketknife to quickly cut away the strands of floss from around Bill’s face.

A quick lift then… damn, it was tough to move a body that was totally limp, not cooperating at all. He pushed Bill up against the metal-covered portion of the wall, spread his arms and legs out, and activated the suit magnets to glue him in place. Even the back of his head got stuck to the wall. Jeff stood back and waited for Bill to come around.

---

14: Owned

God, the pain. He had never experienced anything like that, never. Even the suit’s anti-tamper jolt wasn’t that intense. He could still feel the aftershocks pulsing in his dick, making it twitch and spasm. He tried to move his hands down to cup himself. They didn’t move. Where were his hands, anyway? Did he even have hands? No, that was before… wait, was he still in… the spider had… hadn’t it… no, but… why couldn’t he see anything?

So confused… he was standing up… maybe… but how, he had no idea. He didn’t feel like he had enough strength to sit, let alone stand. Yet here he was. Somehow.

There was no light, no way to tell where he was. It felt like his arms and legs were stretched out, but again, that could be wildly wrong. Maybe he was lying down. Or maybe his body was curled up in a ball. Or maybe he didn’t have a body any more.

Bill didn’t have the strength to do anything but stand and wait. Lean and wait, hang and wait, whatever, there really wasn’t a clear distinction. If something was going to happen, it would happen. If not, well, he wasn’t actively hurting at the moment, and thinking about things was such hard work. Much easier to just… not.

White noise sounded in his ears, the faint carrier-wave sound of an open phone connection that no one was speaking on. It hummed faintly in his ears, pregnant with possibility. Then, a voice, low and soft, sounding halfway between human and synthesized.

“I have taken control of your suit.”

Bill floated, waiting. He had not been given any instructions, so there was no reason for him to respond. Better to just float. Besides, so what? He’d lost count of the number of guys who had taken control of the suit recently.

“No,” the voice continued. “Not like you’re thinking. I mean completely. Totally. Your suit has been hacked.”

This got Bill’s attention and was enough to pull him back from the comfortable floaty abyss that he so earnestly wanted to return to.

“I own you now.”

Bill forced himself to focus. He pulled the suit interface down, checked a few controls, looked at his score: 872. Tantalizingly close, as always, though after so many disappointments he didn’t even bother hoping he’d reach the 1,000 mark. Everything seemed to be working as it always had. What did the voice mean, “hacked”, then?

“Everything will appear as normal to you,” the voice continued after a pause. “But make no mistake: I have complete control, not only of your body. But also your mind. Using the sensors in the hood, I can read your thoughts.”

Bill relaxed a bit at this, though just a bit. This was somebody messing with him. Very effectively, but messing with him all the same.

“You will not believe this at first, so: a demonstration. Your name… ah, there, you see, I only have to say the words and you start thinking of the information I want. Your name is… Bill.”

No.

No fucking way.

The voice went on. “There, I see it now in full: William… Henry… Carcarini. Though you hate the ‘Henry’ and sometimes tell people the H doesn’t stand for anything.”

This was impossible. There was no way someone could be reading his mind!

Was there?

“Your birthday is…”

Even as the voice spoke, he couldn’t help but think of his birthday. It came to mind unbidden, reflexively.

“… March 8th, making you twenty-three years and a few months old.”

Bill felt the walls closing in around him. There was still no light and he still couldn’t move, but he felt them closing in all the same. How could this be happening?

Wait. His phone was here in the room somewhere. This AvengingTurtle guy had gotten hold of his phone, had gotten his name and other identifying information off of it and was now using that to fuck with his mind. Yes. That had to be it.

But then how had they known that he hated his middle name?

“You were brought up in…”

No. Don’t think it. But he couldn’t stop himself.

“… Bensonhurst. At your parents’ home on… 74th Street. Any brothers or sisters?”

Think of cows, think of daffodils, think of anything except…

“Yes, one of each, I see. Both older. A sister named Lynn and a brother named Jeff.”

OK, this was stretching the limit, but that was still searchable information, not impossible for someone to have looked up while Bill had been immobilized earlier.

“Any pets while you were growing up?”

The question was not one he had been expecting, and so of course he was unprepared to try to not think of the answer. An image and a name rose unbidden in his brain.

“Hmm, very unusual. Not the typical dog or cat but a bearded dragon named Spike. You had him from when you were six years old until he died when you were 13.”

No fucking way! No one could have looked that up about him! “How do —” he started to say, forgetting his weeks of training and speaking aloud. The suit immediately jolted his nuts and flashed red letters across his field of vision: DO NOT SPEAK TO THE LEATHERMAN! He fell silent.

“One more. Your best friend as a child was…”

Bill tried to make his mind a blank. It shouldn’t be hard, he was nearly a blank already.

“…Mark Holland. When you were ten, you and he went to a park where you found half a cigarette that some older kids had been smoking and had discarded. It was still lit. You and Mark hid and took turns puffing on it. It tasted terrible and you coughed every time you inhaled. Your parents never found out. Mark and his family moved to Colorado when you were 14. You traveled out to see him as an adult but found that the two of you had grown apart and there wasn’t much of a connection any more. You were sad about this for days after your return.”

Bill was beyond awed, beyond stunned. No one knew about that, no one except Mark. He felt naked, exposed, spread wide open not just in his splayed body but in his soul. He was an insect in a collector’s display, a dissected cadaver hanging in an anatomy classroom, bones and blood vessels and organs all visible, all neatly labeled. His very thoughts were laid out in the same way for his captor’s perusal, each one neatly cataloged and filed away and indexed for easy retrieval.

He felt more helpless than he had ever known was possible.

---

Jeff had to hope this was working. It seemed likely – the fact that Bill had tried to speak and had clearly been punished for it suggested that Jeff’s campaign to blow his brother’s mind was having the desired effect. The smoking-with-Mark story should really put him over the edge. Jeff – age twelve at the time – had overhead them talking about it afterward and had considered using the information for blackmail, getting Bill to take over a chore like bathroom cleaning, for instance, in exchange for not ratting him out. But time passed and Jeff could never decide what price he should demand for his silence, and then all of a sudden too much time had passed and the information lost its value.

Until now. As far as Jeff knew, Bill and Mark had never told another soul about the incident, which meant it should really be blowing his mind to be hearing about it now. Jeff smiled – what a power trip this was!

But the score wasn’t going up as fast as it needed to. He was going to have to break out some more pain.

Might as well play it up for all it was worth. He cued up the next line of the script. The voice sounded in his ear as well.

“You are probably wondering what it is I want from you, rubberslave. I think you can guess. I want you… to suffer.”

Jeff blasted him with a lightning bolt that caught him in the upper right arm. Bill flinched but did not cry out. The next one hit his left thigh and this one did cause him to shout, a quickly-bitten-off grunt. The next got him on the left palm at a moment when his fingers were spread wide. They instantly clenched in on themselves and Bill twitched again. Jeff found himself actually having to exert effort to keep control of himself. He had not expected that conjuring imaginary lightning bolts out of thin air and hurling them like some Greek god would be so much fun. He needed to keep reminding himself that that was Bill over there that he was using for target practice, and that there was a purpose behind all this. He checked the score. 920… 925… It kept climbing, but not enough. And the rate was leveling off! 928… 930… This needed to work, it had to…

After a while Jeff dropped down below 50 points. He needed to give Bill another 70, which should be doable, but clearly the system’s sameness-detector had decided that despite all his creativity in setting up the mind game that Bill was now swimming in, it wasn’t different enough. Maybe it could only recognize the physical stuff he did? But no, Nightmare had definitely said that the rubberlad’s mental state was a factor in his scenes. So… why wasn’t this working?

He was going to have to change things up again. But he was seriously running low on ideas. He could try the mutiny-flogging scene he had originally planned, maybe?

Or… maybe he could enlist Bill’s help. The moment he thought of the idea, he knew that was the way to go. Bill, after all, was much more likely to know what kinds of things would work, for two reasons. One, he’d been doing this for almost two weeks and two, hard as it was for Jeff to believe, he actually enjoyed this kinky shit.

Jeff released the suit magnets and Bill crumpled to the floor. He quickly composed another note to be read by the system’s not-quite-human voice.

“Now, rubberslave, time for you to try reading my mind. What is it you think I want from you now?”

Bill almost spoke again, then remembered not to. Jeff saw him subvocalizing for a few seconds, and then a message appeared in his display. It read:

The rubberlad requests permission to worship you.
Yes   No

Jeff found that to be an odd reply – it didn’t quite answer the question that was asked, but maybe the VRealWorld communication system didn’t allow for complex thoughts like “I think you want…” Maybe such thoughts had to be expressed more simply as “I want…”?

Whatever. He could work with that. He blinked “Yes”, waited a bit, wondering why Bill wasn’t doing anything, then realized Bill was still trapped in the dark. He brought up the room lights for him. Bill would be finding himself back in his original cell, just as dingy and depressing as ever. In the cell with him he would find Jeff, or rather AvengingTurtle, whose avatar was now no longer the default but a splendid specimen of Homo Leatherdude-icus that Jeff had dug out of the VRealWorld archives, tall and muscular and showing a whole lot of golden-bronze flesh studded with black leather trimmings. Jeff took a quick look at himself in his phone as Bill crawled toward him. Damn, if he actually looked like this, he’d be having to beat the rubberlads off him with a stick. Or maybe not – the sick fucks would probably enjoy that and swarm him all the more!

Bill crawled over to where Turtle was standing and lowered his face to Jeff’s feet. Only then did Jeff realize what “worship” meant in this context – Bill wanted to do the tongue-polishing thing from the Renaissance castle right here on Turtle’s already-perfectly-shined black boots. The only problem was, Turtle was wearing boots, but Jeff was wearing sneakers, and they were pretty grungy ones. “Punishing” Bill to give him points was something Jeff could grudgingly accept as necessary; letting his brother get a mouthful of Brooklyn street grit was going too far. He quickly drew his feet back. Bill, fortunately, didn’t chase them, which gave Jeff time to dictate his next lines.

“So close, but: no. Wrong guess. Try again.”

There was another pause while Bill thought up a reply. Jeff checked the score again… 928??? It had fallen by two since his last check. Dammit, was this going to be one of those impossible challenges, where it would let Bill get closer and closer to the limit but never let him actually reach it? What was it going to take?

The rubberlad requests permission to worship your cock.
Yes   No

Aw, shit. Here it was again, the central core of the gay thing. The peripheral gay stuff was tolerable: hanging out in a gay bar, talking with gay guys, even playing in this virtual game where half the bodies he saw were flawless hyper-masculine musclemen not unlike the costume he was wearing himself. That stuff was OK, even kind of fun. But all that stuff was trimmings, decoration. The real essence of gayness was dicks and what gay guys liked to do with them, and here it was, front and center, and Jeff was just not willing to take that step. How could he ever look his brother in the face again knowing that the same mouth he was talking to had once been wrapped around his cock?

So, no, that was a non-starter. He blinked the “No” button and told Bill to try again. But even as he did, a thought that had been circulating deep in his brain started edging its way to the surface.

You don’t seem to be able to push the score any higher with pain and restraint and mind games. So what’s left? It seemed Bill knew the answer and was feeding it to him. Jeff could pretty much predict what the next suggestion was going to be; he just didn’t want to accept it. And dammit, even Martin had known in advance, hours ago! He had sent him in prepared in a way Jeff would never, EVER have done himself.

Well, maybe it was time for him to get over his hangup. He would be able to look Bill in the face afterward without imagining his dick there if the mouth was not the hole that the dick had gone into. If the dick went somewhere else, somewhere neatly out of sight during casual conversations and future family get-togethers, Jeff wouldn’t have any reason to remember this incident at all. Besides, it wasn’t like anyone was ever going to find out – not even Bill. Especially not Bill.

The more he thought about it, the more it seemed to be the only way forward. Martin’s handy package more than anything else confirmed it. And then, as if in further confirmation, the next message from Bill came up.

The rubberlad requests permission to accept you into itself.
Yes   No

“Accept you into itself?” The game couldn’t just come out and say “fuck me up the ass?” Fine. Whatever. Jeff blinked yes and started digging around in the backpack.

As if it were drawn to his hand, the bag from Martin was the first thing he touched. He pulled out one of the condoms and opened it. He was most definitely not feeling even the slightest bit aroused, but if there’s one thing a 25-year-old body is good at, it’s getting an erection on short notice. A minute of gripping and squeezing and yanking had his cock standing upright enough to fit the latex sheath over it.

He looked at Bill again and saw that he was down on all fours on the metal plate, waiting. Jeff activated the suit magnets and then conjured some chains into existence around Bill’s wrists and ankles – might as well add some restraint, that could only help the score. Bill would find that his hands and knees were glued to the floor, but because there wasn’t much surface area for the magnets to grip with, he would be able to pull free, with effort. The moment he let his hand or leg touch the floor again, of course, it would re-stick itself. Loose chains seemed like a good visual to go with that arrangement; the feeling of having to force his hands to move would be similar to what heavy steel would feel like. Jeff decided to vanish Bill’s suit as well, leaving Bill’s avatar naked. If you’re gonna get fucked, you might as well dress for the part.

Jeff realized he was stalling. He knelt down behind and started exploring the ass area of the suit. Nightmare had said something about a zipper… ah, there. He pulled it open. The smell that emerged was of two-week-unwashed body and stale ass, but fortunately the opening was small and the odor wasn’t too overwhelming.

Jeff took some of the lube Martin had provided and slathered it over his dick, stroking it a few more times to keep it good and hard. He drizzled a bit into the target, trying not to touch it or think too much about what he was doing.

Then there was no further reason to postpone. Here goes…

Finding the hole was, surprisingly, a non-trivial task. The suit made it tough to see anything and Jeff did not want to explore with his hands any more than necessary. Once he found it, he then had more difficulty managing the insertion than he had expected to encounter. There was resistance. Even when he knew he was lined up at the right spot, he couldn’t seem to get the thing to go in. Bill seemed to be trying to help, but it was possible those were grunts of agony rather than ecstasy. He kept tossing his head back and shifting his hips around.

Oh! Right! Something else Nightmare had said, about giving the rubberlad a buzz. Jeff found the setting for that (once more distracting himself and losing a bit of his hard-on) and turned it on. Bill immediately began moaning even more, and these moans were definitely weighted more toward the “feels so good” side. Jeff stiffened himself back up and began probing again.

Then, at last, something gave way and Jeff’s cock sank in as deep as it could go. Bill resolved any lingering ambiguity as to whether he was enjoying this with a long, satisfied-sounding hmmmm coming from deep in his throat. If Jeff had had any doubts left about where Bill’s preferences in the romance department lay (which he did not), that sound all by itself would have dispelled them.

He pulled out, though not all the way, then pushed back in again. Soon he had a rhythm going. Not too different from what I’m used to. His dick didn’t seem to care much – it found itself enveloped by a tight, warm embrace and that was enough to keep it happy. He pumped a while, then thought to check Bill’s score.

965. Bingo. This was indeed the way to get the job done. But the brief distraction was enough to mess up his rhythm and he even found himself softening up just a bit. He needed to stay focused.

He looked down at Bill’s naked, chained virtual body. While the muscles and hair didn’t work for him, he found that the chains somehow did. The idea of being bound like that, of having heavy steel weighing down his limbs… that, for whatever reason, was appealing, even erotic. He had never known himself to have any interest in such stuff. Never…

… well…

… maybe not never. There was that visit to the Pocket Prison when he couldn’t help imagining what it would be like to be stretched out in “the hole”, hands and feet cemented in place, no escape, no relief…

OK, yeah, this was working for him. definitely. He risked a peek at Bill’s score once more – 979. Suddenly his major concern was not of being able to reach the end point at all, but of reaching the end point too quickly. He slowed his rhythm down because if he hit the peak and went over it too soon, then all of this effort would have been totally wasted. He could hang in there for 21 more points, definitely.

He let his mind wander, determinedly not looking at the steel shackles or the flesh secured by them. It was tough, though, because every time Bill shifted position, the chains made a very realistic jangling sound, which drew his attention back to them. And Bill was apparently not in a comfortable position because he kept shifting a lot, lifting his hands up against the weight of the steel and setting them back down with a heavy thud.

A little more… a little more…

Jeff kept his eyes mostly shut, trying to stretch the fucking out long enough to reach the prize. Every so often, he squeezed one open to peek at the number: 986, 993, 998. Getting close now, he could do this. Better to go up above 1,000 a bit because there was no telling how quickly the score would start dropping again once this was over.

There, one thousand. Keep going, just a bit longer…

His knees were starting to ache, which actually helped keep him from reaching the precipice and thus allowed the score to climb a bit more. 1,008… 1013… 1020.

That had to be good enough. Jeff opened his eyes and looked at the chains, the relentless, implacable way they gripped comparatively-frail human limbs, holding them in an iron-tight grasp. What would it be like to feel that grip, that unyielding weight for real? Ohhhh, oh yeah, something about that image was definitely working for him, very, very much so. How had he never known this about himself?

He lost the rhythm as the orgasm rose up and overwhelmed him, lost any sense of concern for Bill, of the ache in his knees on the hard metal floor, lost awareness of anything else at all but the wave after wave of pleasure shooting down his spine and out his dick. He just pressed himself there, buried deep in the warm fuckhole, savoring each jolt of his climax as it washed over him.

Then, at last, as it always did, the moment passed and the feeling started to fade. Bill’s score stood at 1,027… then dropped to 1,026 as Jeff pulled himself out. He released the suit magnets and vanished the chains. Bill collapsed onto the floor, pressing his crotch into the metal plate, no doubt desperate for an orgasm of his own but unable to reach it due to the suit’s enforced chastity. Come on, Bill, now’s the time, do it, do it…

But Bill didn’t seem to realize that freedom was within his reach. As Jeff watched, taking the condom off as he did, the number dropped again to 1,025. Bill was losing points at the rate of one every fifteen seconds or so. At that pace, it would take only five minutes and the window of opportunity would close. And all Bill seemed to want to do was grind his crotch into the floor, seeking release that he wouldn’t be able to get unless he unlocked the fucking suit come on, Bill!

Another point gone, and then another and Jeff was frantically trying to figure out a way to get through to his lust-consumed brother. Shouting didn’t work, as usual. He tried to pass a message through the interface, but was informed that his message “Unlock the suit!” had met with a delivery error. Down to 1,021.

As his own cock shuddered with a satisfied aftershock, he suddenly remembered: Bill’s buzz stimulation was still on. Jeff had gotten rid of the chains and the dick up Bill’s ass, but the suit was still sending a constant erotic rumble to his groin. Jeff couldn’t know what that felt like, but it was clearly enough to keep Bill’s mind from focusing on anything else. He navigated through the interface, found the setting, blinked it off.

Bill deflated like a punctured air mattress, sagging on the floor as all the energy drained out of him. C’mon, c’mon, c’mon… He lay there for half a minute until Jeff lost patience at the steadily-declining score – 1,016 – and nudged his brother with his foot. Bill stirred and sat up. Jeff had turned all enhancements off except the basic environment of the cell, so Bill appeared as a faceless, anonymous rubber creature with no eyes to read expressions in, no ears to feed instructions into, just a slack-jawed mouth.

He yanked on the lock – not too hard, just enough to draw attention to it. “OPEN THE LOCK,” he called out, enunciating each word as though that would let the sounds squeeze past the suit’s blockade and spark understanding in his brother’s brain. “Use the menu and request an unlock, come on Bill, you gotta do it, I can’t do it for you…”

And whether it was the words, the tugging, or something else entirely, it worked. Jeff felt the lock twitch in his hand and suddenly it was open. He flipped the headset up to make sure that what he felt was not just more VRealWorld trickery, an illusion in both his eyes and his gloved fingers. But there it was: real. The lock hung open. Quickly, before Bill could do something stupid, Jeff tugged the lock free of the zippers it was fastened around. Bill was starting to fumble with the hood.

Time for AvengingTurtle – and Jeff – to get the hell out of here. He grabbed his charging cable, noting that Bill’s phone was up to a healthy 55% now, and stuffed it into his backpack. Then he realized that the clothes he had brought for Bill were still in the pack, but he did not want to be in this room once Bill got that hood off his head, so he rushed out through the open door into the next room, quickly dumped out the shirt, pants, underwear, socks, and shoes, set the small black suit lock on top of them, and bolted out the door. If Bill needed to return the lock along with the suit, he’d find it… and if he wanted to lock it right back on, well, then Jeff had done everything he could do.

Down the stairs, out the door, down seven blocks to the train where – amazing for a Sunday – he was able to hop right on one that was just ready to depart, thus averting the situation where he was standing or sitting, waiting, waiting, and then Bill strolled in to spot him and wonder why he was there. Pulling out of the station, he breathed a sigh of relief at last.

Oh. Right. One more thing to do. He pulled the headset back on and called up the messaging interface. He found the note KingstonTop had sent him and blinked “Reply”.

Mission accomplished.

---

Epilogue 1

From his home on Staten Island, Martin Druizend called up his folder of archived scenes. There were nine sub-folders already, each organized by name and sequence number.

1 – Colin
2 – Raoul
3 – Peter
4 – Don
5 – Ahmed
6 – Jean-Paul
7 – Desmond
8 – Ezra
9 – Morris

Surely, this was one of the best yet… but how to categorize it? Up until now, his little puppet shows had only involved one victim, so the scene numbers and victim numbers corresponded one to one. Now… was this one scene, or two?

He decided it counted as a single episode. A long, convoluted, very involved one that had required a great deal of planning and research and logistics to set up, but that had been so, so worth it. He created a new folder and gave it a name:

10 – Bill and Jeff

He would definitely be reviewing the video of these scenes over and over, especially that deliciously piquant grand finale. To think – he had arranged for a straight guy to torture and rape his own brother… and the guy had actually come by and thanked him for it later when he returned the gear to the bar!

Although… was “rape” really the right term? Unlike other rapes, in this one it was the ass that was willing and eager and the dick that had to be… coaxed… into delivering a performance. Well, whatever the term, one thing was certain:

Damn, he was good.

When he had first come up with the idea for the VRealWorld, it was clear that most of the revenue was going to come from the gay players who would use it willingly. But it was never about the money, not for Martin. It was always about the world itself, the construction and population of a space where men like him could let their imaginations soar. The money was just a mechanism to make that construction possible.

As founding architect and developer, Martin had unlimited access and control over the system. It had been a fairly trivial task to include back doors in the programming years ago, back doors that would let him, for instance, adjust the point-awarding algorithm on the fly, adding or deducting points according to Martin’s whim. Or giving him the ability to charge virtual points for real-world rent and meals. Or to spy on and record supposedly private, offline scenes. Once things took off and he had hired on extra staff to handle the day-to-day work, those back doors remained, buried deep in the system’s core code where only he could take advantage of them.

He had to give Jeff props, though, for his inventiveness. For a straight neophyte, what he came up with very good. Martin had been expecting something more run-of-the-mill, a generic flogging or an immobilization or some such. He thought he would have to tilt the point algorithm toward the high end to get Bill’s score up enough to make it possible to reach the goal. Instead, Martin had found himself having to put his thumb on the scale in the other direction, keeping Bill under the threshold enough to nudge… OK, to force Jeff to take the only action that had any chance of succeeding.

Ah, good times. This was definitely one to remember. He closed the folder and sat back, arms behind his head.

Now what can I possibly do next to top that?

---

Epilogue 2

Early October, a bright but windy day at Aunt Joyce and Uncle Hugh’s place in Ronkonkoma, about halfway out Long Island. The Columbus Day weekend family gathering was usually smaller than the summer beach picnic or the Thanksgiving / Christmas / New Year’s get-togethers, but there were still over two dozen people packed into the house and spreading out into the yard.

Jeff had eased his way to a spot where he could take a break from the clamor of the kids. Lynn’s twins were 6 now, and his cousins’ kids were aged 5, 7, and 8, and when they all got together it felt like there were about fifty little imps running around, not five. The side of the house was a good hiding place, away from both the front porch where people kept shuffling in and out from their cars with more food and the back yard where the imps kept trying, in their high-pitched voices, to convince some adult or another to let them go into the above-ground pool even though temperatures were only in the 60s.

“Hey, Turtle.” Jeff started at the sound of his brother’s voice – he had not heard anyone coming up behind him. Then he did a second double-take at the name Bill had called him by.

“Wait… you… what did you say?” This had to be a coincidence, it had to be.

Bill sat down on the grass next to him. “I owe you a big, big thank you,” he said. “And until a couple of weeks ago, I didn’t know it was you I needed to thank. So… thank you.”

So it wasn’t a coincidence. Jeff sighed. “How did you find out?”

“Your phone. You left the app running. After I got out of the suit and saw that rathole I’d been stuck in, I found the clothes and the money and the charged-up phone – thank you for thinking of those along with everything else, by the way. I ran out hoping to find whoever it was who had done me such a huge, huge favor. But he was out of range. All I had was the name.

“Anyway, I kept an eye out for him every time I went back online – not in one of the suits again, don’t worry! A headset and gloves I can afford to rent every now and then, and the phone app is free. So one day in September I was in the old neighborhood and thought I’d see if there were any leathermen nearby, and bang, there was AvengingTurtle. I zoomed in to his location and was very surprised to see that he was in Mom and Dad’s house. So I headed on over there not knowing what I’d find, and I saw that it was just you and Dad hanging out in the living room, watching the Giants game. Remember that afternoon?”

Jeff had to admit, he did. It was the first time he had seen Bill face-to-face since setting him free and he had been expecting awkwardness. There had been surprisingly little – Bill didn’t say anything about his summer absence and neither did anyone else. Just another case of Bill flaking out again and then reappearing without a word of explanation. Jeff recalled keeping the conversation minimal, not trusting himself to say something stupid or unnecessarily revealing.

“So you may also remember me pulling my phone out at one point. You might have thought I was checking a news feed or texting with someone, but I was looking at you and Dad on the screen, because I still wasn’t completely sure which one of you it was. I mean, I had my guess, of course, but I had to know. And I was right. The phone showed Dad as his normal self, but it showed you sitting in the blue recliner, only you had your Turtle body on.”

He held his phone up. Jeff saw a screen-shot of his parents’ living room and an impossibly muscle-bound, leather-bedecked stud sitting in the well-worn chair, beer in hand.

“I gotta say,” Bill went on. “That Turtle is one hot brother-fucker.”

Jeff’s eyes expanded like saucers and he was rocking onto his ankles, preparing to stand and explode when Bill held up a calming hand. “Whoa, whoa! Come on, I’ve been saving that line up for three weeks, you gotta let me use it!”

Jeff’s outrage dissipated into amusement. It actually was a pretty good line, he had to admit.

“So you gotta realize… I was as mortified when I figured it out as you’re probably feeling right now. I’ve just had a couple more weeks to process it. And after I processed it, I realized: you went way out of your way to save me when I needed saving, but not only that, you hid your tracks so I wouldn’t feel like I owed you for it. I’m really, really grateful for that.”

“Ah. Well, you’re welcome,” Jeff said, finding his voice at last. “I’m glad it worked.”

“And if you want,” Bill continued, “we can never speak of this again after today. But I had to thank you. At the risk of making you uncomfortable, that scene with AvengingTurtle was by far, hands-down the best I had during my whole time there. Looking back, all you did were recycled movie scenes and cheap tricks and sleight-of-hand, but it was really, really effective. I was absolutely out of my mind, just blown away. That bit at the end when you convinced me you were reading my thoughts? Fuckin’ incredible, what a trip! And clearly the system thought it was worth points, too.”

“Yeah. Not enough of them to avoid the part at the very end though.”

“Ah. Yeah. On that topic, I’m planning on coming out to Mom and Dad soon. Before Thanksgiving.”

“That’s probably a good idea. From what I’ve heard, the closet isn’t a healthy place to live.”

Bill looked up quizzically, as though not expecting such words to come from his brother’s lips. “No, you’re right. It’s not,” he agreed, turning his gaze back down to the ground.

“Soon would be good,” Jeff said, aiming for an idle conversational tone and hoping he was hitting it. “Before Thanksgiving gets too close. You don’t want to get that news mixed up with the general holiday fuss. I’m sure they’ll be fine with it.”

“You think? I’m not so sure.”

“If they’re not, I’ll make sure they know I’m cool with it. They’ll come around.”

“Thanks.” Bill looked up from the ground sideways toward Jeff, not quite meeting his gaze. “I, uh, don’t suppose there’s any chance that Turtle, uh, might…?”

“No,” Jeff said flatly. “Absolutely not.”

“Yeah,” Bill nodded, appearing neither disappointed nor relieved. “I figured.”

“But.”

Bill cocked his head, looking toward Jeff in puzzled expectation.

“While there is no chance, ever, of Turtle wanting a repeat of the last bit of his adventure… there were… other parts… that he definitely enjoyed. The non-gay parts. He might be willing to do a few of those things again. Someday.”

Bill nodded, not speaking. Jeff continued, “After all, I’m your big brother, and one of a big brother’s jobs is whipping his little brother’s ass into shape!”

That got a smile from Bill. The sound of high-pitched voices started to increase in volume. Young Carcarinis were approaching from the direction of the backyard.

“But in the meantime,” Jeff went on. “There’s a bar you definitely want to check out. If you haven’t already. Terra Nova, it’s called. It’s in the city, in Chelsea.” He checked the calendar on his phone. “In fact, you should go… next Saturday. One week from today.”

Bill kept nodding, head slowly bobbing and down. “Hmm. Okay, I think I just might do that.”

“HERE THEY ARE!” a young voice shrieked, rounding the corner, followed by a hundred and seventy-two others. “UNCLE JEFF, UNCLE BILL, COME SEE WHAT ANDY FOUND it’s so cool do you think he still has it I wonder where it came from he better not drop it!”. It was like listening to Howie the Terra Novan Triplets, only Dougie-sized and with chipmunk voices. The two men were hauled to their feet and shepherded toward the backyard by several thousand tiny, grubby hands.

“One thing I haven’t been able to figure out,” Bill said above the clamor. “How did you know about the smoking thing? With Mark?”

Jeff took a moment to decide whether he wanted to answer honestly or continue messing with Bill’s head. He settled on the latter and was about to say, “What do you mean? I read your mind, that’s how!” hoping that since Bill was behind him, he wouldn’t be able to see the dopey grin he was wearing.

But instead Bill called out once more over the din. “You know what? Don’t answer that. I don’t want to know!”