After having dumped the dirty clothes in the laundry for Penny to do in the morning, and having cleaned the silver tray and few dishes, and put them back in their proper place in the kitchens, Pam rushed into her room and locked the door behind her. Sitting the VRIG helm down on her bed, she kept guiltily staring back at the door, half expecting her grandmother to come knocking and demanding to know what she was doing stealing Jason’s stuff. Not that she was stealing it exactly…

After ten anxious minutes of waiting, her grandmother never appeared and Pam began to slowly calm down a little. Sitting on the edge of the bed, she kicked off her shoes – not caring where they might end up, which she was certain would horrify her prim and proper grandmother – and then wormed her way out of her dress, while kicking off her socks with one foot and then the other. In nothing but her small white lace panties – she usually didn’t wear a bra as she didn’t like the way it somehow felt like it was smothering her as they clasped her breast tight – she eased up and tiptoed over to check the door again. Satisfied that it was fastened, Pam draped the dress that was her maid uniform over a chair, and then pushed the chair up against the door handle for good measure.

Heading back over, she flopped on her back on the bed and slowly picked up the helmet and held it out at arm’s length above her. Studying it, she tried to tell herself that it wasn’t too late yet to turn back. She could clean it a bit, shine it up, slip her dress back on and if her grandmother caught her she could just say she’d took it to clean it. Glancing back at her door, she half started to get up to do that, but then, giving in to a sudden impulse, she slid the helmet on over her head and tapped the power button.

After a few moments, the system’s start up screen appeared, seemingly surrounding her completely. Astonished, Pam spent several minutes simply playing around with the system interface itself. She’d heard all about the virtual reality devices – they were the rage for all her friends to speculate and drool over, even if they couldn’t afford them – but this was the first time she’d actually had a chance to experience the technology for herself.

“Show me the user log,” she commanded, and just a split second later a small window appeared hovering in front of her, with just a few entries. For all the power of the technology, Jason used it mainly for some minor research, or to visit sites with images or videos of women – Pam made a point of promising herself to check those out later, just so she’d know the young master’s tastes and preferences so she could better serve him in the future. Down at the bottom of the list of user entries was where Jason had accessed something called “Winter’s Tale” – Pam knew it was supposed to be the latest game for virtual technology, but she didn’t know much more than that about it – and then there was the entry where she’d signed in as a “guest”.

“Delete guest entry from log, please.” She politely asked the system, smiling with relief as it faded from the user log. “Create new account for Pame…” Shaking her head a bit, she quickly corrected herself. “Scratch that. Create a new account under the name, ‘Sexy Babe’.” A second later, a pop-up appeared wanting her to enter password and other relevant information.

Going through the whole process, Pam’s last few commands to the system were, “Make Sexy Babe’s account hidden and private. Delete user log activity for all guest activity and Sexy Babe activity. Switch to Sexy Babe’s account.” A few moments later the virtual environment around her faded away and Pam found herself floating in a sea of blackness, with just the default blue OS screen hovering in front of her. Laughing merrily, Pam relaxed in the quiet for several minutes and then commanded, “Open game, Winter’s Tale.”

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The black background and blue screen slowed faded away, and a peaceful forest glade with a waterfall and small pool faded in all around. A shimmering white ball of energy floated and cracked in the air before her, and trying to look at herself simply ended with a change in perspective. “This is strange,” Pam muttered to herself, as she floated around and explored the environment for a few moments, before turning her attention to the ball of energy floating nearby.

Translucent words hovered above the orb, reading, “SEX: Male, Female, None, Hermaphroditic.”

“Female,” Pamela answered, staring as the white orb of energy slowly changed shape to make the outline of a female floating in thin air in front of her. The words floating on top slowly faded away, to be replaced with, “RACE: Human, Elf, Fairy, Dwar…”

Frowning for a few moments, Pamela thought and then shrugged lightly to herself. “I want to be the same race as my friend, Jason Craimer, whatever he made.” The image flickered for a few moments, then settled on an image of a stocky muscular woman with a beard.

“He made a dwarf?” Laughing, Pamela blinked a few times in surprise. Jason wasn’t that tall himself – she was about the same height as him – so she would’ve imagined him to want to play something taller and more powerful. Somehow she couldn’t help thinking, as she smiled to herself, that it somehow seemed suitable for him.

A new window popped up, asking Pam to distribute points into her stats. Since she didn’t even know what most of them were, she simply shrugged her shoulders in confusion. “Skip it,” she told the system. “I’m still a kid and haven’t found my path yet. I’ll distribute my points later.” A few more screens of information and choices popped up, and Pam rushed through them, postponing putting any points into anything that she didn’t have to. She could always spend those in game later, and if she ever managed to cross paths with Jason, she could make her character into something suitable to help him in game. Maybe, she thought guiltily, if she did something like that, he wouldn’t be so angry at her for using his stuff without permission.

Finally, all that was left was to customize her appearance. “Lose the beard,” she commanded. “I think it’d itch me to death. I don’t want one. And make me a little skinnier, shrink my boobs a bit. I’m tired of having big ones all the time. They get sore bouncing around sometimes you know!” Spending a few more moments, Pam finished customizing her appearance, and was left with one last pop-up to answer, “Name: ??”

“I don’t know anything about dwarven names,” Pam admitted to the system. “I’ll take a default one.”

The name that appeared above the hovering avatar was ‘Cedrine Kindwarf’, and a final pop-up appeared asking her to confirm that she was happy with her choices.

“It’s all good,” Pam laughed. “Let’s go!”

Slowly the forest glade began to fade away, to be replaced by a small, tidy bedroom in the dwarven capitol, not too far from the smithies….