Jean finally got her drink at the spa, where she turned her nose up at the champagne in favor of shots, which the staff provided without a single sniff of disdain. Glenda and Tam were just as happy to participate in the shots as they’d been to sip their champagne. You know that cheap whiskey they sell? It’s the one with peach flavoring in it that is specifically designed to appeal to women who don’t know that the flavoring will also enhance the hangover. This stuff wasn’t like that at all. We had two rounds of cheap straight whiskey in salute to their origins before we moved on to pina coladas that were stronger than the straight whiskey.
The joys of VR drinking and eating had entered the realm of gastronomical artistry in the late 2100s. It’s all programming anyway. Your goop got a shot of “I feel dizzy,” and it turned out that even those had flavors. There’s the “I feel dizzy from a rollercoaster drop,” and “I feel dizzy from spinning in circles with my arms out” and a ton of other things. Once they’d broken the code of amino acid balancing for hormonal health, they’d not only gotten rid of depression and PTSD, but they’d also started enhancing food and drinks for optimal emotional responses. This allowed the whiskey to taste like peach cobbler while kicking like a ride on a fast horse.
Not that I got any of that. My goop was regulated to maintain perfect amino acid balance so that I wouldn’t suffer from any chemically induced mental health issues. I wasn’t allowed the mood-enhancing goop. I just got motion-sickness nausea instead. I tasted the liquor, but I didn’t imbibe like they did. The AIs did a passable job of imitating tipsy people, but it was clear to me that they didn’t understand the basic concept. I wondered if my perfectly modulated goop was keeping at least some of my trauma at bay.
This is what my mind could contemplate when forced to sit naked in a tub of bright green mud so silky it felt like silk sheets. I wasn’t sure how I was going to get out of the stuff, but it did almost make me feel like I was in a womblike setting, something that disconcerted more than relaxed me. My mind was just delving into the inanity of VR spa treatments when our real-world pores would not be enhanced by them when we were finally rudely interrupted by Hex.
“Hey!” Jean squawked into the silence I’d been afraid to break.
“What?” Tam snapped out as we all pulled the cucumber off our eyes to look.
“When did Hex learn that trick?” Jean asked.
Hex stood near Jean’s face, one slightly muddy paw gently laid on Jean’s cheek. That was cute, but the fact that she stood on the very liquidy green mud was what made me do a double-take. Pet tricks like snickering around their hands and blowing kisses were the ones I’d expected. This was something a little more sophisticated as I noted that she was actually hovering slightly above the mud with a look on her furry face that said, “What? I’ve always been able to do this.”
“Why, Miss Remmington, look at you,” Glenda reached between the tubs to wipe the smear of green from Jean’s cheek. “You’re beautiful.”
“I have to go,” Jean sputtered at the attention, using the lip of the tub to wrench her body up out of the mud with a disconcerting slurp. “I’ve had more than enough of being green with you all.”
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“Aren’t you full of tricks?” I smiled at Hex, and she gave me a slow blink in response. “I’d give you a treat, but it looks like you can get one for yourself.”
As if waiting for my permission, Hex deigned to float-walk over to the bag I’d hung up on the wall next to the fluffy white robes they’d given us. Podo popped her head up out of the bag and handed a treat to Hex. I took the opportunity to look around for Kodo but his little black form was either deep in the bag or off up to mischief somewhere. I had a moment of panic, but then I remembered that the AIs were more on my side since I’d spent my upgrades on them. Once Hex had daintily eaten her treat, she settled herself into the cutest little bundle of fur, her purple sparkles winking at me with every breath she took.
“If I’ve been tortured enough by your makeover attempts, can I finally have my room key?” Jean walked with unselfconscious ease to the shower stalls to rinse off. I suppose it was still PG considering that the green stuff covered her so thickly that she might as well have been wearing a padded pantsuit.
“Oh, all right,” Glenda capitulated reluctantly. “Your room number is Suite 114. It’s already keyed to know you, so you’ll be able to just walk in.”
“If I’m going to hit the kitchen with enough time for tweaks, I’ve got to get going too,” Tami followed Jean’s example even more dexterously than Jean had. “Come on, Janet. Let’s hit the showers.”
I got out of my tub much less gracefully, but followed feeling the cameras on what I felt was my naked body. I managed to shuffle my way to the shower stall that Jean was exiting, her fluffy white robe speckled with the green mud here and there.
“Oh, all right,” Glenda sighed again. “But I expect you all to be at the salon in time for makeup half an hour before the rehearsal. I’ve marked all the times on your itineraries, and I’ve booby-trapped them so that you’ll be sorry if you miss your appointment time.
“What ever happened to the trust?” Jean grunted in offense.
“You’ve stood me up before,” Glenda gave the stink eye to Jean, and I wondered how she still had so much regalness while soaking in a pot of mud, but she sure pulled it off.
“That’s why I’m your favorite,” Tam called out through the steam of her shower. “I’m your loyal, royal subject forever and ever and ever and ever. We’ll all be back at the appointed time. We love you.”
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“When push comes to shove, I will send a fully armed battalion to remind you of your love,” Glenda purred with a glint in her eyes that penetrated the steam of my own shower. “You see the extent of what I’ll go through for your love, for your praise. I’ll love you till my dying days.”
“You’d better,” Tami flirted, hanging over her shower door to flutter her eyelashes at Glenda. “After what poor Jean has endured on this day of girlie madness.” Tam’s upper body was pressed against the frosted glass in a way that left little to the imagination. Did special effects cover nude oopsies? “Look at how she’s positively drained!”
“And I can’t go on,” Jean complained. “I need a nap and some sanity.”
“Are you sure you can’t just stay for one more cup of tea?” Glenda teased.
“Careful or she’ll dump that tea in your mud pit,” Tam laughed at them.
“You’ll be complaining when I’m gone,” Glenda purred. “You know you love me, and I think perhaps you secretly love these little episodes of girlie stuff. Who else would subject you to all this?”
“No one else I’d do it for,” Jean gave a smile, but it looked suspiciously rebellious.
“Just be back here by 3:30pm or else,” Glenda threatened Jean’s retreating wave as she took her bundle of clothes and sauntered out the door with a glass of champagne.
I accessed our digital itineraries with a swipe of screens in the shower. Somehow it was only noon, which was impossible given that it had been nearly noon before our four-hour drive from the north. Set magic, I supposed. I let it go. It wasn’t like I could do much about it. As much as a part of me wanted to hold onto reality, I just needed to fly with it. Reality hadn’t been all that kind to me anyway. I’d lived my life being good and quiet and perfectly mouselike. I guess I needed to let that go too.
“Hey Glenda,” Tam called out over her shower stall door. “Think you could transport us straight to our room? I need some shortcuts to get everything done in time. I need a real shower.”
“Sure,” Glenda shrugged, slithering out of her mud bath with admirable aplomb. “You want a ride too, little one?”
“Yeah, sure,” I agreed, eyeing my puddle of clothes too far away to reach. Unlike Jean, I hadn’t taken my fluffy towel-like robe with me.
“I booked your suite next to theirs,” Glenda grinned at me as Tam dissolved with a mild eep. “I figured you and your entourage could use the extra room. It’s got an adjoining door to Tam and Jean’s suite.”
“Wow, thanks!” I gushed with what was surprisingly real gratitude. “You’ve done so…”
My words were cut off as Glenda’s grin faded on what sounded like, “You’re worth it, kid.”
Shower to shower is what happened. I materialized in the shower stall of my own room in a hotel so posh that my company couldn’t afford the VR version of it. Kodo and Podo were deposited onto the sink, their little bag leaning up against the vanity mirror. Considering that Kodo had materialized with a pawful of caviar on a cracker, I didn’t think he’d been in the bottom of the bag when Podo had handed Hex her treat. Hex was curled up on the vanity chair’s lush velvet cushion. Even the shower was the exact temperature I’d left downstairs.
After washing my hair with the most foamy golden shampoo I’d ever imagined, I dried off with snow-white towels that kissed my VR skin. I knew I didn’t need the shampoo, but it was a brand, and my new skill knew that if I used it and someone clicked on it in my show, I’d get a kickback, so I washed my hair like I was in a shampoo commercial. In my mind I compared the psychologist’s slime-covered slippery chair and its threadbare blanket exactly like my linens at home. They were sandpaper compared to this. If this was what came from donating all my xp to the AIs progress, it was certainly the key to this adventure. And it was an adventure. This whole fiasco was some magnificent adventure and I’d been holding onto reality like it was where I really belonged, like it was better.
My toes curled into the carpet at my feet, and I considered my rebellious folly. What had I been holding onto in my kingdom of isolation out there in the real world? My glance fell on the “casual clothes” that the girls had flung into my bag as afterthoughts so that I’d have something clean to wear to the rehearsal. And the rehearsal was three outfits in and of itself. There was one casual outfit for the rehearsal, then another casual one for the rehearsal dinner, and then we’d change clothes yet again for the ball that came after the rehearsal. The underwear had cost more than my RW (real world) rent for a month. Why had I been so adamant about not letting them in? Why hadn’t I wanted to be seen? I’d always been so good at hiding.
Noting the time and that we had several hours before we had to be at makeup, I skipped to the attached bedroom of the suite with the intent of diving toward the safe and my quest rewards. The view stopped me dead in my tracks. I stood agape, towel clutched around me, staring at the expanse of Florida beach complete with gently lapping waves against that pale sandy shore. Palm trees fronds swayed gently like jazz hands in a cheerleading competition. Who even was I to be standing here in the lap of luxury, surrounded by beauty I could never afford? I stood there in a towel and nothing else and I wasn’t even worried about being seen by the little dots of people on the beach. It’s funny how some distance makes everything seem so small.
And I let it go. I let go of the idea of going back to my dingy apartment. I let go of my derelict life that was in shambles before I’d had a chance to really live. I turned away from the windows and knelt at the safe, punching in the quest code. There it was. My catsuit. And I changed right there, confident that the windows would hide my nudity and special effects would blur out the rest because PG was PG. I had time. It was time to see what I could do, test the limits, break through my inhibitions about how I should or shouldn’t act. Were there any right and wrong rules in here? I knew there were, but for two precious hours, I was free to see if I could let go of my old fears and be someone new.
Skill gained: Acrobatic Stealth
Skill gained: Lockpicking
Skill gained: Safe Cracking
“Kodo, Podo, Hex,” I gave a giggle as I called them. I sat on the bed in a catsuit that would make Catwoman jealous. “We have some schematics to steal.” I figured that I couldn’t keep the skills outside of this scenario, but I wanted a chance to play with them while I could. This was a fantasy of mine, and I was going to go for it.
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Two chitters and a little meow answered me as they scamped around me. I gave Hex a ramp up into my hair, but she stopped near Kodo, who took the time to take off her collar and put it in the safe with the rest of their accoutrements. I lifted the flap on my new, smaller and more compact, knapsack. Was it wrong to want to stay in prison for the rest of my life? I thought on that, as I shut the door to the safe with a little click, my own earrings having joined the furballs’ jewels. I came to a conclusion on my knees there on the carpet, my pets looking up at me expectantly. I was never going back. The past was in the past. Whatever came next, I was never going back to that dingy apartment. I’d use these two years and get enough of a following so that I could leave my past behind me for good.
I’d done the right thing in feeding my xp into the AIs and now they were going to help me build a whole new world for myself, and them, because we’d find a way. Oh, shit. Was that hope? Determination? Foolishness? I didn’t care anymore. I let go of my fears, even the new spider ones. I let go of my doubts, even the smart ones. I just let it go.