Kittul tried to blink, but her eyes wouldn’t work. Her head felt muzzy; she hadn't felt this out of sorts since she wound up hiding in the alley for days on end. Her eyelids gummed shut, her whiskers tingled, and her stomach readied itself to sick up. That last could have been from eating her fill as a Neko then shifting to cat before she could digest, but she didn't think so. The sterile smell of cold steel mixed with the naphthalene reek of sedatives, each making her want to empty her stomach. Something was happening, and she didn't know what. Whatever made her muzzy kept her from panic as well. She fought it.

She heard a pitiful mewling noise, realized a moment later that it came from her. A familiar smell washed over her, damping her fear and setting off a purr before she consciously recognized it. Zed’s voice came from somewhere above her head.

"Is it okay if I pick her up?"

Someone else replied, his voice cold, yet professional. "Not right now. She's sedated, but she’s coming out of it quickly. If you're sure on everything, we need to finish up now. She's recovering fast, but I don't want to risk another dose of anesthetic so soon."

Zed's sigh had more than a trace of whimper in it, as if he felt her confusion and fear. "Okay. I can hold her once you're done?"

"If you like. Just make sure you don't smother her and bring her back to us if you notice anything out of the ordinary."

"Okay. Get it done. As quickly as you can, please."

Zed's warm presence moved away, but his scent, laced as it was with worry and fear, lingered. Something pinched the back of her neck and slid under her skin. Whatever it was slid back out, but something remained. Immediately thereafter, someone gathered up the skin at the nape of her neck. Her gathering worry dispersed as her body went slack. The veterinarian's next words gathered some of it back together.

"This is most unusual."

"I understand. Are you going to finish, or are you done?"

The vet didn't reply. Something pinched her nape, cold steel slid straight through. When the vet released her, she slumped to the table. Whatever it was through the nape of her neck, kept her relaxed, waiting for mother to carry her to safety. A few moments later, Zed's warm, careful hands scooped her up.

"You'll be fine, Kittul. Just let poppa Zed take care of you."

Surrounded by the smell of him, she relaxed into true sleep. The moment before the game dragged her under, Karin forced herself to disconnect.

***

Karin's eyes flew open. She shoved herself out of her VR rig, trying to get clear of the machine before she lost control. The left ear bud slipped free as she fell to the floor. Kneeling beside the reclining couch she vomited what remained of her earlier tea onto the floor. When the tea was gone, she knelt there on hands and knees, retching and wretched. Her hair hung limp and greasy with sweat. The overly sweet smell of cotton candy mixed nauseatingly with the disgusting reek of tannins and pepsins.

After a while, her stomach settled enough for her to think about standing. Halfway to her feet, she tried to shift, hoping that the change would clear her head, or at least make the stench more bearable.

She froze, half kneeling and half standing, when she realized what she was doing.

Slowly, carefully, afraid she would fly apart at any moment, she reached for her phone implant. Hesitantly, she selected Vivian's connection information. While she waited for the phone to connect, she straightened until she was standing, leaning against her VR rig. For once, she regretted not having a better setup in her apartment. It would have taken up more space, but right now she wanted to communicate with people, but was afraid of what would happen if she sat back down.

Moving like an invalid, Karin walked the few steps from her tiny home office to her bath. When she got to the shower, she slid the door closed and hit the water without bothering to strip. Water warmed to just above skin temperature sluiced over her, washing away the sweat and vomit and the stench of fear. She had no idea how long she stood there with the phone ringing in her head and the cascade rushing over her body.

One of Vivian's unusual quirks was her refusal to get an answering machine. Normally Karin got annoyed by that, but this time she counted it as a blessing. She wasn't sure she could deal with a message machine just now. Eventually Vivian answered her phone.

"Hallo, Karin! What's up? Can't sleep?"

Belatedly Karin realized she hadn't checked the time. With a start she realized she'd been gaming for hours, and it was just after three in the morning.

"Uh, no. I'm sorry. I just needed something… I needed to connect to something real for a minute. Talk to someone real. Vi, I think I've got a problem."

Vivian's voice lost its forced veneer of perkiness, its underlying coat of sleepiness. In the space between one breath and the next, she was the competent confidant Karin depended on. "What's wrong, Karin. You didn't go back to work, did you?"

"No… No, I didn't, not really. I pulled some files to look at, but I didn't really do anything with them."

"God, Karie. You. Need. A. Break. Do you not get this? You spent this whole time working, didn't you?"

Vivian's acerbic tone shook Karin out of her fugue. With a rueful shake of her head, she stripped out of her clothes, dropping them to one side of the shower. When she stood naked under the pounding water, she finally replied. "No, I really didn't, Vi. I… I kinda took your suggestion about a VR spa."

"Okay, so you went and got a massage and a wrap or something, right? Listened to a water garden? Wait, did you hit one of the 'happy ending' spas? Oh, god. You did, didn't you? What have I told you about those places, Karie?"

Despite herself, Karin smiled. It didn't matter what was happening, she could rely on Vivian to come up with a far more lurid imagined situation. She soaped herself up, cleaning away the leftover stench. As she did, she cut off Vivian's ever more sordid speculations.

"No, Vi. I logged into Cat's Paw."

She practically heard Vivian's moue of distaste, almost saw her shrug one shoulder in dismissal of her friend's fetish. "Okay. Not where I'd wander if I were VR slumming, but to each her own. Wait!" An indrawn hiss of breath announced Vivian’s launch into another speculation bender. "Are you a furry? Do you get off on the idea of some fuzzy dude riding you like a horse? Wait, can you play a horse? Was he hung like a horse? Oh, god, my best friend is doing a horse-man."

This time Karin couldn't help it, she laughed out loud. She laughed so hard she slipped and landed on her butt. She might be bruised in the morning, but physical bruises were something she learned to deal with long ago. Whenever she needed a dose of reality, Vivian provided her with a scenario that proved to her that no matter how far into academia or dream worlds she wandered, Vivian was one step ahead of her. One step toward the gutter, but one step further nonetheless.

"No, Vi. I wasn't doing anything so sordid. I just got really wrapped up in it. My avatar in the game got tranquilized, and I went under along with her. It was bad enough that I think I had a reaction to the drugs."

"Yeah, must have been a psychopathic reaction or something."

"Psychosomatic, you Philistine."

"Hey, I'm not even a little bit Middle Eastern."

"Uh, yeah. Ok. Anyhow, I didn't realize how deep they could pull me in. I… God, this is gonna sound like I need an intervention."

This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

Vi filled her voice with calculated impatience, which Karin appreciated endlessly. "Look, just spit it out already. We both already know I'm the crazy one, so I’m not about to turn you in. Besides, what are they going to do to you? Put you in a VR cell somewhere? Go ahead, spit it out."

Vi started repeating herself when she got impatient. Karin braced herself and spoke. "When I got out, I was still thinking like I was my character."

"Um, ok. Psychosomatic. Deep VR immersion. Not unknown. I'm not going to tell you who, but one of my male clients has me run his sheets to the cleaners for him."

"Huh?"

"He spends a lot of time at VR brothels. He needs to change his sheets every damn day. Sometimes twice a day."

Karin couldn't help it. She wanted to stay serious, but she found the dry humor in Vivian's voice irresistible. She spoke through her giggles, "Vi! That's disgusting! Why do you do it?"

"He's got agoraphobia, worse than you. He's got a few other weirder phobias too, but he's hell on wheels as a voice actor. Every set of sheets I launder for him is another few thousand words of pure auditory gold."

"God, Vi, you're such a mercenary."

"Yep. Just don't tell anyone, or I'll have to get my guns and come lay a lead smackdown on you."

"Look, Vi, I think you're missing the point. I tried to shapeshift, for God's sake."

"Yeah? Did you spurt nasty bodily fluids all over the room?"

Thinking of the mess of vomit and tea on her office floor, Karin blushed. "I threw up coming out of my VR rig."

"Ew. I'm not cleaning your floor."

"What? My time isn't as valuable as your actor friend?"

"He's not my friend, Karie. He's my client. You're not working on anything right now. Besides, cleaning up vomit is as real as it gets. You call me asking for a dose of reality, I get you a dose of reality. He calls me looking to have reality removed, I remove the evidence of reality for him." Vivian broke off, as if a thought had occurred to her. "Wait, you're not working on anything at the moment, are you?"

Karin thought of the project that had her stymied at work. If it worked, it might have some commercial applications, but if it didn't, it was just another failed attempt. She tried to redirect her agent, "Did you find me something all of a sudden?"

Vivian wasn't easy to redirect. "No, but you wouldn't have that tone if you weren't working on something. Out with it, Karie."

Karin explained. When Vivian took that tone, it was easiest to just give in. "Look, I'm stuck on a part of it, but I've been trying to do biological energy manipulation on a macro scale."

Vi's voice took on a long-suffering tone. "Oh, Karie. I don't know much about your field, but I know that's one of the bigger wild geese out there. I mean, if I had to bet on someone pulling it off, I'd bet on you, but only because I'd get a cut of it if you did, and double dipping appeals to me."

Karin had recovered enough to take the opening her friend left, "That's because you're a skanky ho-bag who can't resist a second round if it's..." She broke off. Inspiration struck her, leaving her speechless.

Vivian cut into her thoughts, "Ho-bag, am I? Look, Karie sweetie, you've…" Vivian stopped, realizing her friend had gone silent in mid-sentence. "Karin? Are you still there? Are you all right?"

"Oh, yeah. Look, Vivian, I don't know how I forgot this, or didn't see it, but I just remembered what I was looking for in game when they drugged me. In game they've got a bunch of weird stuff, but one bit of weird stuff they've got are energy manipulators."

Vivian, good friend that she was, helped Karin's inspiration along with a simple "And?"

"I found something that implied the abilities were genetic. I want to go back in and see what they've got in terms of genetic research on those abilities."

Vivian kept her voice patient, as if talking to a precocious but naïve child. "Karie, you're looking for research material in a videogame. You realize that?"

"Well, yeah, I know, but everything I've seen so far is phenomenally detailed. I mean, they managed to knock me out and make me sick from psychosomatic side effects. At worst, I'll find out that they're just faking everything, but I've been too far out of my element to tell. At best, they'll have some ideas professionals like me have overlooked."

"Okay, so you're hoping for an answer or some closure. What if you get neither?"

"Eh. It still might inspire me if their research turned up something I didn't. This place is really detailed, Vi." An impish impulse ran away with Karin's mouth, "You ought to try it. I mean, there aren't any horse shifters allowed as player characters, but I'm pretty sure you could get an NPC to do you with a little effort."

Vivian's laugh said without words that she thought Karin was okay.

"Okay, Vi. I'm going to clean up, then I think I'll go back in. I'm still a little worried that I'm addicted to the damn game, but if ever someone deserved a three-day addiction bender…"

Vivian still chuckled faintly, but her laughter had a speculative tone that Karin suspected Vi hadn’t entirely faked. "Sure, Karie. Just call me any time you need a connection to reality, ok?"

"Sure, Vi. And thanks."

Karin cut the connection, turned off the shower, and opened the door. She flipped open the washer/dryer and tossed her sopping clothes into the machine. She started it up and then turned to the sink to brush her teeth. If she was going to clean up vomit, she wanted the taste of mint filling her senses before she stepped back in the room.

***

Half an hour later, she appreciated her own precaution. The room no longer stank of fear-sweat and vomit, but only due to the massive stink of citrus and mint from her cleaning bucket. She hated pine scent, always had. The citrus and mint didn't kill odors quite as well, but it worked well enough.

She thought for a bit about getting food, but if she went back under she would want her stomach empty. Karin had no reason to believe her next exit would be any less unpleasant than the last. Instead, she chugged a pitcher of filtered water, tossed back a few vitamin tablets, and moved a solid sided wastebasket to within reach of her VR couch.

Prepared, she dropped back into her VR rig. Before she logged into Cat's Paw, she ran a few quick searches. First, she went looking for the information she intended to go in-game to find. After all, it was an MMVRRPG. Those first two letters, as they had since the earliest games, stood for Massively Multiplayer. There were millions, maybe even billions of people who played Cat's Paw if you included the casual players. It was possible someone had already done the Agency area of the game and ferreted out the information she sought.

The fan sites had plenty of stuff about the Agency. Some of it came from players who identified themselves as the Cat's Paw guild 'Anarchy'. According to them, The Agency was absolutely the toughest part of the game to crack. As proof, they'd posted sketches of other government agencies from inside the game. The CIA, the NSA, the White House, the Pentagon, they’d infiltrated all of them and mapped them out in-game. Oddly, not even the most persistent and talented crackers were able to get digital data out. Instead, they had to draw the maps from memory.

That hadn't prevented an outcry from the various intelligence services. Apparently, the sketches came too close to reality for comfort. Ongoing online wars, both flame wars and more serious hacking contests, raged over whether the information should be public or not. The gamers insisted everything in their possession came from within the game. The intelligence agencies insisted someone had leaked their floor plans and defensive measures. The makers of Cat's Paw remained conspicuously silent on the matter. As a measure that pleased no one, they provided a free account for any government employee with a legitimate intelligence agency email address. The crackers said the spooks couldn't crack Cat's Paw's servers. The spooks very publicly posted they hadn't tried, because that would be illegal.

The day the free account offer was made, several thousand new accounts launched, and the defenses of the in-game agencies got a lot tougher. Oddly, most of the new security was seconded from the Agency. The only completely fictional government entity Karin could find. The one Zed Silver used to work for. The one his sisters still worked for.

The whole nasty business gave Karin new hope and a new challenge. If the developers did enough research on floor plans to upset real world agencies, they might have some insights into her gene coding dilemma. The challenge was getting the data out. Her memory was good, but nowhere near good enough to memorize the number of codons she was likely to need.

Karin disconnected from the Wider World and connected remotely to the office. The translation of her new compiler was done. Her work on the new translator and the energy manipulation coding was where she'd left it. No mystical coding elves had visited in the night to solve her problems for her. She pulled down her code libraries and got to work.

Artificial mechanical memory was so cheap that no one had ever seriously looked into large scale biological memory augmentation, but there were any number of school projects on just that subject. She grabbed a few of the open-source ones and examined the code. No one had made any great strides since she was apprenticed.

Time to change the status quo again.

She started with enhancement of PKMZeta production. That was pretty standard; it improved general memory retention. Few of the online projects went past that step. She needed more than a perfect memory. She needed something she could upload onto. She tinkered with sight and hearing mods, trying to determine which one had the higher bandwidth. After a few hours, she was frustrated to the point of yelling at the walls.

"Dammit, why the hell can't I get more information transfer than this? Thirty frames per second is just too damn slow, and I can't count on a human eye to… see…"

In mid-sentence Karin realized what she was saying. Inspired, she brought up the information on felis catus. The visual frame rate was higher, just like she remembered. The auditory discernment was higher too. Finally, the data transfer rate for smells just dwarfed that of humans. It wasn't as good as, say, a blood hound, but it was better than anything hominid.

Karin pulled up some old work on data recovery after a drive failure. It was, she remembered, possible to take two or three incomplete copies of the same data and interweave them to restore the original data. Inspired, she tossed together a converter from PKMZ to USB. She slugged a copy of that to Vivian with the tag 'sell this' and set the entirety of the data extraction, restoration, and conversion module to compiling. With that in motion, she shut down her VR rig, lay down on the couch, and fell promptly asleep.