“I’m a person,” Joe choked out, but it didn’t even sound intelligible to him. He hadn’t even done the horse-trading yet, so his muddled mind didn’t know why they’d pulled him. Had it been the suicidal comment? How could he have been so stupid?

The last time he’d been pulled out of the VR environment, he’d been asleep inside and woken up outside. This time he hadn’t been spared the transition. He’d have endured the transition a dozen times, as miserable as it was, to avoid what was waiting for him in the cold eyes of a person he hated with every cell in his body and a few that he’d spewed out onto the floor of the prison warehouse.

The hose was cold water, but it was water that sluiced off the slippery gel that covered every ounce of him. VR was generally better than this. It would have to be, or no one would do it. Commercial VR units only caused minor transition effects that were mitigated by a flushing system that activated within the pods while the person inside was hopped up on an FDA-approved packet of drugs that used to be illegal before the drug-be-gone drug had been found that wiped all traces of any previously illegal drugs from a user’s system. Have a wild night? No problem. All a person had to do was pop a pill and wait fifteen minutes to be sober. New drivers were issued five complimentary doses upon passing their driving tests.

Joe spent fifteen minutes in a holding cell where he could use whatever was left in a “bin” where confiscated clothing and possessions like makeup and brushes had been tossed. He used an old flannel shirt as a towel, passed over the not-clean underwear, and settled on a pair of sweats that didn’t fall off him and a t-shirt that was too faded to make out some logo on it. At least it didn’t have holes. There was a sink where he rinsed off a comb and a mirror where he used said comb.

There was one good thing about the gel he’d been immersed in. His skin and hair had never been healthier. While the prison units didn’t use any of those niceties of commercial units or even the personal units, it couldn’t change the actual liquid used, which was pure aloe, a substance that couldn’t be faked as only natural aloe could coat every surface of a body without eventual toxicity. They might have used the cheapest gel on the market, but it was still natural aloe infused with oxygen that allowed a person to not only remain submerged in a VR tub forever, but also kept you breathing with it in your lungs. An old friend of Joe’s from high school had worked on an aloe farm, the largest of which stretched across Texas and half of Mexico.

Joe wasn’t presentable in any societal way by the time they came to pick him up from his cell, but it was as good as he was going to get from the “bin.” He didn’t have any fondness for the two brutish guards with dead eyes, but he didn’t harbor the same hatred for them as he did the turd who sat between two other people in the room he was shuffled into. There was a folding table in a cement-walled room with no windows. It hit Joe that he hadn’t seen real sunlight in weeks. He didn’t miss it as much as he might have thought he would.

The sign on the table said, “Parole Hearing.” The woman to the right of Dr. Prick pursed her lips like she really liked persimmons. The man on the left of Dr. Pussbucket tapped a pen against his clipboard and chewed gum. They were real people. The man was on the short side, polite, and snooty. The woman was lazily tipped back in her folding chair like she’d rather be playing video games. The affront to humanity in the middle curled his lip as his snake-eyes slid from Joe’s bare feet to his slicked hair.

“I swear to you that this man,” and he sneered the word like he was forced to say it, “has access to hundreds of thousands of privilege points and yet has never chosen to spend the mere 150 points it would take to buy a single stitch of clothing to appear before this hearing.”

“If I’d known I was coming, I’d have been better prepared,” Joe bit out the words, trying to remain polite through his grinding teeth.

“You received an email three hours ago,” the doctor/warden raised his eyebrows and looked down at a list on his own clipboard. “In the time since you received the email, you have had two hours of off-screen time to peruse said email, which was clearly labeled Pending Transition. It is also on record that you deleted that email half an hour ago. The email’s priority was set to highest and highlighted in red. What more could we do to gain your attention?” The sarcasm was just his normal tone. His partners to his left and right frowned right on cue. It was an effect Joe might have appreciated if he’d been on set, but he wasn’t, so he didn’t.

“You might have tried labeling it Parole Hearing and not hiding it under all the emails about other,” and Joe used his own sarcasm with air quotes for emphasis, “prison-system-provided upgrades and packages. And I’m pretty sure that transition package for only 150 points was for jeans and a t-shirt. The shoes cost 500, the sanitized brush another 200, and clean underwear was a premium of 350. For that, I could upgrade the VR for a new assistant that could have sorted all those email and showed me the important ones.”

“That’s the problem with this system if you ask me,” the Pussbucket shook his head sadly at Joe and his attitude that offended him so much. “They get on TV and end up with this mistaken sense of entitlement.”

“I should think I’d be entitled to basic humane treatment,” Joe countered, and he suddenly didn’t care if he was blowing the hearing. He’d rather be back in VR where AIs at least could pretend to be friends. “I suppose a cold firehose to,” air quote again, “rinse me off in the aisle of VR capsules is humane enough, but to yank me out of VR without any transition drugs feels a bit like being waterboarded, a torture that is listed as unusable even on prisoners of war.” Joe had always insisted that watching old documentaries would pay off someday.

“You’d think you’d be a little less rude when we are here to offer you parole,” the man on the right broke into their hate-stare-match. “The good news is that you qualify for early parole due to good behavior.”

“Based on what?” Joe asked, true confusion hitting him for the first time since he’d heard that Psychonut’s voice.

“Your experience and level are quite high, despite your attitude in the real world,” the woman on the left gave Joe a sympathetic look that belied the insult. Then again, was it truly insulting if it was true? Joe wasn’t on his best behavior. “We are seriously here to offer you an early release.”

“This is very sudden, and I just don’t have good memories of your colleague,” Joe said by way of apology as the only apology he could mean with the hell spawn who sat next to the nicer woman. “It’s difficult to be civil around someone who has tortured you.”

The hell spawn tsked at Joe, but his colleague continued with a practiced smile that Joe didn’t trust. “Then how about you focus on me, and we’ll see if we can come to an agreement. Sit,” and she motioned to a chair between the guards who had stayed as a bracket for Joe.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Joe got closer to the chair suspiciously, sure that it was a trap of some sort. He sat gingerly on the edge.

“My word, Gerald,” the man whispered as if Joe couldn’t hear him. “He’s like an abused animal.”

“Theatrics,” Pussmonster insisted, crossing his arms over his chest. “They all pull this sort of thing. You get used to it after a while. This one is in a nighttime drama for heaven’s sake. You should see the ones that come out of the game shows. They are almost incomprehensible at times. If he continues like this, I’ll put in for some anti-depressant medication for his tank.”

It was a warning that Assmonster still had control of Joe. Maybe. Or maybe not, if Joe could really get parole. Was it worth it? Joe’s mind was catching up.

“Focus on me, okay?” the nicer woman told Joe, and he tried to do as she asked.

“Okay,” Joe answered her, eyes darting from one to another as he blinked. This was just like the tarantulas. They were sneaky. This was a trap. He could feel it. Just because the woman looked and acted nice didn’t mean that any one of them wasn’t on the verge of crunching his bones while he watched.

“Our notes say that your show is doing very well,” she started out encouraging.

“Thanks?” Joe said, tucking his bare feet under the little folding chair.

“We think you may have found your vocation,” she nodded at Joe. “Something you’re pretty good at, and we want to encourage that. We just want to make sure you continue to do it under supervision until you’re good and solid. That seems fair, right?”

“More than fair, considering his current state,” Dr. Lobotomy muttered to the other man, who frowned.

“What kind of supervision?” Joe asked, seeing the catch and his drug-pushing idiocy.

“Your supervision could be negotiable,” the calmly slick woman said, and Joe was getting the picture. Her tone was modulated to be almost hypnotic.

“Just spell it out for me,” Joe stated, crossing his arms. He was flush with fury, but he wasn’t stupid. He didn’t get stupid-angry. He got smart-dead-quiet-angry. He was so smart right now that he could almost predict what was coming from the good cop with the hypnotic voice.

“We have a program for high achievers like yourself,” she was saying, but Dr. Asshole was rolling his eyes. “It’s an early release program where you get to live at home, but you can come check in for work every day just like a normal job. If you’d like, I could be your new supervisor.”

“You’re welcome to him,” Poopmachine said to the woman, who batted at his arm almost playfully. How did these people get deemed socially acceptable?

“And we would provide your equipment and AIs so that you could continue broadcasting,” the woman with the perfectly painted lips went on, oblivious to Joe's heavy sigh. “We could get you a better pod, if you don’t like this one. No more traumatic transitions that seem to leave you quite understandably grumpy.”

“Like a job,” Joe prodded him, keeping his face blank of the disdain that was building in his gut. “So, what would I make?”

“Technically,” and Joe was starting to hate that word, “you’d still be an out-prisoner instead of an in-prisoner and it would be on a trial basis while you prove that you’re ready to reintegrate with general society. I’m happy to help with that process. Maybe we could get you a real-life assistant. It’s all negotiable, including your salary, which would be in direct proportion to your show’s earnings.”

“Like the 1% I supposedly make now but is actually shunted off for expenses my incarceration has incurred,” Joe suggested as if he was stupid enough to be interested. He just wanted to see how low the offer was.

“I think we could adjust that rate since you’ll be needing a place to live nearby and you’d have reasonable expenses living outside the prison,” she smiled at Joe, and Joe noted that her teeth were as perfect as her artfully mussed blonde hair.

“So, what percent would I make?” Joe asked again. There was just something so slimy about the sales tactic that avoided revealing the actual cost of something.

“We could start you off with 5% of the revenue plus a living wage that might surprise you,” she lowballed. Maybe the skills did transfer a little because Joe could feel that she was lowballing him. At least Joe was feeling something low in his gut. Maybe it was indigestion. “It would be around what the stipend would have been for an unemployed artist, like you were trying to be an author, right?”

Ah, the trap of knowing just enough about Joe to make this personal. It was like she knew him. Of course she did. She had Joe’s file in her hand, just like that bombshell avatar of the agent on the beach had.

“Should my agent be here for this?” Joe asked, offhandedly.

“I wasn’t aware that you’d picked up an agent, but if you’d like one here, we can certainly send out for one,” she was ready for it, and Joe was impressed. Maybe his little show was bigger than he’d thought. What exactly about it had netting him this slick of a saleswoman? “I’ve got four on speed-dial who could be here in fifteen minutes. We could chat over burgers? What do you say? Sound good?”

Did Joe want a burger? He could milk it for the burger. The subsistence feed that they piped into him didn’t feel like enough. He’d lost some weight, but it was only what he could afford to lose.

“Not for 5%,” Joe shook his head at her. “I’m not even interested in getting rid of the Marquis de Sade next to you for less than 90%.”

She laughed, and then thought better of it with eyes that sparkled like Glenda when she’d been negotiating for the quality of diamonds in her tiara. Joe was oddly aroused. Not oddly. Disturbingly. Yes, that was the right word.

“I’m not authorized to up the offer past 10%, but nice try, kiddo,” she shook a finger at Joe. “Let’s bring in lunch and talk about it.”

“Lunch sounds good,” Joe nodded, pointing at the asshole in the middle. “Does he have to stay?”

“Are you content to leave your patient in my charge?” Ms. Slick turned to her colleague as if it wasn’t already planned out.

“I’m happy to take my leave,” Asshole rose to his feet, failing to hide a smug smile. Good cop to bad cop and they thought Joe was in the bag. Idiots. Joe didn’t care. It got the prick out of the room. “Can I take you to lunch, Denny?”

Denny agreed and Joe lounged over some so-so burgers brought in by the first agent to arrive. He listened and he ate. He interviewed agents like he believed they all cared for him. And through it all, Joe eeked the rest of the deal out of Ms. Slick. He worked him up to 40%, they owned the show and the AIs. Joe would be housed at a halfway house nearby and bused to and from the prison. They’d spring for a commercial VR pod and dock his pay for any running expenses he incurred in his day-to-day life as he reintegrated. He’d be expected to attend signings and social events to promote the show as a stipulation of his parole since they were trying to rehabilitate him from his social pariah-ness.

Honestly, the chocolate shake was watery, and Joe could tell that they’d used stale ice cream and cheap chocolate sauce that was better as blood in a black and white movie than a flavor enhancement. The agent and Ms. Slick (why should Joe bother to learn her name when she was dead to Joe as a human being due to lack of humanity) were chatting terms as if Joe had signed something, but Joe hadn’t. Joe hadn’t kicked the last agent out because he was set on finishing the less-than-appetizing shake. He let them bicker over the percentage that the agent would get out of his cut of the profits, as if Joe didn’t realize that they’d changed the terms by changing the deal from revenue to profits. They really did assume Joe was stupid.

“I’m saying I’ll take the 4% but only if it’s 4% of the profits and not 4% of his wage,” the agent was saying, not even a side-eye sent Joe’s way to see if he liked the terms.

“As long as that comes from his percentage of the profits, I don’t have a problem with that,” Ms. Slick was smiling too, but at least she was sending Joe sideways glances to check to see if he was really on board for all that.

“No,” Joe answered her, setting down the empty paper cup that had held the milkshake.

“See? I could have told you that he was too smart for that, Billy,” Ms. Slick chided Billy as if for Joe’s sake. “I won’t offer you more than 4% of his gross wages if it is coming out of our profit.”

“No,” Joe said again, content to let them misinterpret him again. What? His food had to settle.

“No what?” Ms. Slick was brighter than Billy. She caught on first.