I opened my eyes and was greeted with the crumbling and water-stained ceiling of my studio apartment. The smell hit me like a physical blow, and I crinkled my nose in disgust.
“Jesus, I gotta get that toilet unplugged,” I said to myself as I sat up. My body was stiff from a long session in the pod, and I pulled myself out with a groan.
My apartment was dominated by the full-body pod. There was a small kitchen in the corner - more like a kitchenette really. A futon that I had to roll up when I wasn’t sleeping in order to have any walking room. And a sliding door that led to the currently clogged toilet. I had tried unclogging it a dozen times, but no luck. I needed the plumbing equivalent of the jaws of life to get that shit flushed. My landlord had scheduled a plumber two weeks from now…so that was just great. I really enjoyed running down to the Quik-e mart whenever I had to take a shit.
I ambled over to the kitchen, pulling a frozen pizza out of the freezer. As I turned to the oven, my barefoot stepped on the edge of an empty Mountain Dew can. “Ow, fuck!” I exclaimed. I hopped on one foot, cradling my other foot in one hand. I threw the frozen pizza onto the counter and turned the oven to 425 before examining the injury.
There was a sharp cut on the sole of my foot, and blood began leaking from the wound. I grabbed a semi-clean dishrag and wrapped it around the wound. There was a box of crackers on the counter, so I started munching on them as I waited for the oven to preheat. I glanced at the time on the stove top and choked on my cracker.
“Oh, shit!”
I rushed back to my pod, ignoring the pain in my foot as I smeared blood all over the carpet. I slammed the last cracker into my mouth as I cycled up my pod for my shift with one minute to spare.
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A notification popped up in my vision.
Client BigSword69 (Level 24) has entered the instance
I suppressed a groan. I had only been working this job for 6 months, but that was an eternity when working as a damsel NPC. In that time, I’d more than gotten a feel for the type of customer I was about to receive based on their names. With a name like ‘BigSword69’, I knew exactly what I was in for.
Still, I couldn’t afford to be picky - I generally aimed for about 25 interactions a week in order to pay the bills, and Mr. ‘TinyDick12YearOld’ paid just like any other.
I wasted no time heading over to the window looking out over the courtyard below. It had been designed for just this purpose. I filled my lungs with air and shouted as loud as I could:
“BigSword69! Thank god you’re here. You’re my only hope!” I know, it was a little derivative, but most customers ate that shit up.
He looked up at me in the tower and shouted something back that I couldn’t catch. Then, with his hands, he mimed his finger going in and out of the hole he made with the other hand.
Jesus, what a tool.
But I was determined to be professional. The only way to climb out of the cesspool of damsel-ing was to rack up positive reviews. And the best way to do that was to grit your teeth, and embrace the sexual harassment.
Right on cue, a large roar shook the castle and I used the distraction to let out one more scream to amplify the ambiance before retreating back into the damsel room.
Now, it was a waiting game. This was just one of the dozens of scenarios a damsel actor could participate in, and the pay structure was based on how long the scenario usually ran. This being a full solo dungeon, most customers took an hour to two to make it to the end. Swords & Sorcery paid their actors an hourly rate based on role, with a rating bonus contingent on good reviews. There was also a quota bonus depending on how many customers you serviced that day. And no, I don’t mean that type of service. I’m not a sex worker, goddammit.
So, with an hour or two to kill, I opened my limited interface and started playing some Solitaire. I couldn’t log out of S&S while a customer was in my instance without losing my pay, and S&S didn’t provide much by way of free entertainment for their actors. It was Solitaire, or pay a subscription to my own employer for access to the Internet. I didn’t throw back any of my hard-earned money to S&S on simple principle - so Solitaire it was.
Every 10 minutes or so, I made sure to go to the window and scream out some form of distress, remind the customer what they were fighting for. It wasn’t strictly necessary in my employment contract, but I’d found through trial and error that it improved my ambiance scores - which directly improved my pay. Hard to bitch about screaming my throat hoarse when it meant hard cash.
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After about 90 minutes, a notification materialized in my vision.
Client has slain the Blood Mage, and chosen alternate path #2. Prepare for final battle scenario.
Alternate path #2 meant he had killed the optional boss, and was going to scale the exterior of the tower with a ready-made rope of bedsheets hanging out the window. It didn't really make sense why the dungeon mobs let a rope dangle out the tower window, but those kind of details were lost on most players.
As the notification cleared, an eight-foot tall silver knight spawned in the middle of the room. His nameplate read: The Silent Knight (Level 25) and he was the final boss for this dungeon. He wasn’t particularly challenging as far as final bosses went, and I’d rarely seen customers have issues dispatching him on the first try. The payday was in sight - just a few minutes of suffering with BigTwat, then onto the next customer. I had a moment to see the boss’s employee nameplate below the larger game nameplate which read Jeff Sodosky. Jeff was a boss-level actor - cleared for combat and an expert in boss mechanics. Pretty high above my pay grade, but he was a down-to-earth guy and didn’t mind chopping it up with the lower-tier actors.
“‘Sup, Jeff?”
The large knight turned awkwardly to glance at me.
“Yoooo! What’s crackin’ Ray?” the very large character said in a deep, gravely voice filled with hate and the desire for blood.
Or, at least, that’s what the game designers went for. It didn’t sound so scary with my friend Jeff playing the role. But he was good when he turned it on - had some minor roles in Hollywood before he gave up for the sure payday.
“Heads up,” I said. “Guy’s a real fuckhead.”
The knight nodded his helmet at me.
“Cool. What can you do, amirite?”
Client is approaching, to your marks.
We nodded to each other, then went to our marks.
My mark was the raised dais at the end of the room. I had to lay down like I was sleeping, the evil wizard having cast some sort of enchantment on the damsel that could only be lifted with a kiss, blah blah blah. Never mind I had just been screaming out the window a few minutes ago. Like I said, those were just details.
Jeff was fully in character now, his sword raised menacingly as he held the center of the room, angled towards the door leading up to the tower.
When a gauntleted hand appeared on the window sill with a clank, I closed my eyes and lay still. I heard Jeff whirl around, the sound like metal baking sheets banging together. With a start, I realized I had left the oven on. Fuck!
“You’re too late!” Jeff said as the Silent Knight, interrupting my thoughts. “She’s fully under the spell now and-”
“Skiiiippp,” BigSword said in an exasperated tone. “Not very silent for a silent knight, are ya?” Immediately, Jeff stopped and triggered a sequence that only he could see to begin the battle. Real easy payday for Jeff, but in general, his job was way tougher than mine.
I heard various sounds - grunts, metal on metal, and so on - but kept my eyes shut tight.
When the battle was over a few minutes later, a notification popped up in my vision, even with my eyes closed:
Kiss the damsel to break the spell and earn a companion for life!
I knew from experience that the customer and I were seeing the same prompt. I waited with patience - I was a pro by this point. I’d seen it all. My character had her tits groped about 50% of the time. The other 45% was various levels of sexual harassment. And maaayybbee 5% would actually give my character a romantic kiss as the prompt indicated.
None of it phased me. My character’s sense of touch was reduced dramatically, so with my eyes closed, I didn’t feel personally assaulted.
Plus, S&S had free weekly therapy for its actors, so there was that…
As I was waiting for BigSword, I definitely felt a light brushing against my chest - light to my senses, which meant he was full-on groping me. It didn’t surprise me in the least what side of the bell curve my client fell under. Thankfully, my character’s clothes didn’t come off by design, though I was sure he was giving it his best effort anyway.
After a minute or two of second-base, BigSword slapped my face, though it felt like a light caress. “Wake up big tits, I want my slave now.”
The prompt read out again in both of our visions:
Kiss the damsel to break the spell and earn a companion for life! (Say skip to immediately earn your new companion)
“Skip, for fuck’s sake.”
The spell has been broken. Welcome your new companion - Isabella. Isabella is an actor-enabled companion that will keep your gear clean and in pristine condition. If you have a player-owned home, she will also keep it tidy while you are off adventuring. For an extra 2 credits a month, one of our highly trained actors will take up permanent residence in Isabella’s body, allowing you to send her to shops where she can purchase items in your stead.
That was my cue to wake up. I slowly opened my eyes like I was waking from a deep sleep.
“Wha-what happened,” I said in my most brain-dead lilt. “Where am I?” I looked at BigSword who was looting the Silent Knight. “Do I have you to thank for my rescue, brave knight?”
“Cut the role play bullshit,” he said without looking up from the knight’s corpse. “You’re probably some 40-year-old virgin living in your mom’s basement, doing virtual tricks for Mountain Dew money.”
Fuck you too, buddy. Although, I tried not to think about the pile of Mountain Dew cans littering my apartment floor.
I didn’t say anything, because we weren’t allowed to break character - for any reason. So I kept my face docile and innocent, like I didn’t know who I was or what was happening. I lowered my feet off the dais and went to stand. This was the part where a prompt would appear for him to accept Isabella as a companion, and I could skip along to the next encounter.
But as I went to stand, a wave of dizziness hit me and I had to prop myself up on the dais.
“What the fuck,” BigSword shouted.
I assumed he was commenting on my swooning, but I was actually really fucking dizzy. The world shook beneath me like a quake, and a wave of darkness closed around me until my vision went black. I hit the ground, distantly noting my head crack against the stone floor.
Thank god for reduced pain sensors.