THE CURE
FOR THE
COMMON LAY
Hot, vivid pink and glowing. That’s my first impression of the Simulsphere. Upon plugging in, the tunnel I find myself in is quite overtly vaginal, and I can’t help rolling my eyes at the heavy-handed symbolism here. So much for innovative virtual reality designers. Give someone the opportunity to create a virtual world and the most imaginative thing he can come up with is a giant enveloping pussy. That is some serious creative failure right there.
Then I remember that the doctors can see my thoughts, thanks to the machine that’s making this experience possible. This isn’t old-school virtual reality, when a simple visual and auditory environment was exciting, and you had to wear the awkward headsets and datagloves and boots just to plug in. (Not to mention that once you were in, latency could freeze or snag the environment at any time.) Omni Labs has taken virtual to the next level, with amplified processing power, image resolution, communication bandwidth and geospatial sensors—and now their new machines that use over a hundred magnetic field detectors to record and scan my brain waves.
The result: a cocreated, collaborative environment. The Simulsphere has defined parameters, but those of us plugging in have the power to create furniture, animals, our own clothes, just by thinking about it, until we consciously dismiss them. In the case of tonight, we’ll be creating a virtual orgy. Even though orgy is such a bestial-sounding word for such sophisticated technology.
Either way—the doctors back in the real world can see my thoughts, or guess at them at least, by monitoring my neurons through the machine. So I try to stop thinking about the ridiculousness of this soft, pink tunnel and instead think about my date tonight. Guaranteed to be gorgeous, anonymous and temporary: the perfect man.
I stop at the end of the tunnel, which opens into an enormous space that’s like a black aquarium of neon fish. A mass of beautiful people are before me. Most everyone here has a simself that is some type of sexual stereotype: centerfolds spread their legs for cavemen, violet-haired nymphs lick Amazonian warriors like kittens, pretty boys in corsets and fishnets strip down for uniformed firemen and next to me, a mermaid is sucking off a muscular and handsome pharaoh in a white kilt and Egyptian headdress. It’s like a kinky Halloween party where everyone has magic powers.
So this is what the gamut of human fantasies looks like, projected straight from the average tech worker’s brain. Because I know these have to be industry people in real life, possibly even other Omni Labs employees—most outsiders aren’t that comfortable with the new technological hedonism yet. Some of my coworkers might even be here. That’s a decidedly unsexy thought, but I can’t help mentally going through my team, thinking who’d be mostly likely to get their freak on virtually by rolling around in cake and having it licked off their nipples.
The video room from work begins to form in front of me. Shit.
Focus, Stacia, say the doctors in their unnerving god-like tech omniscience. It sounds like an echo inside my head. Stop thinking about work or that’s what you’ll see.
“Sorry.”
Back to thinking about him. My date. The unknown man who was assigned as my partner in this trial. His simself will have black hair, brown eyes and be dressed as a solider; that’s all I know. They wouldn’t tell me if this is his first time in the Simulsphere too. It’s actually my second, if you count last time, when I went into a private simulation designed to look like a beach. I’d plugged into plenty of regular virtual environments by then, of course, but this was my first time in a collaborative environment and it was intended to teach me the basics of directing the experience. It was also, I suspected, intended to help me get comfortable masturbating in front of the doctors, though they didn’t say that.
I hadn’t lasted long. The sand had that hot, baked feel under my feet and a breeze ruffled my hair—but then I realized I couldn’t smell the ocean. I tried playing with my pussy but I got so freaked out over how it wasn’t real that I unplugged. Just jolted right out.
That’s an option tonight. If it turns out I don’t really want to fuck a stranger as badly as I think, if it turns out I’d rather have it in real life—real human hands on my tits and a cock thrusting up my ass, the risk of rejection and the awkward conversation and the wet sheets and used condoms on the carpet—I can always unplug. If I can’t actually handle getting naked in a crowd, even though my simself, a vampy temptress in black leather, looks nothing like me, I can unplug for that reason too.
A bare-chested man walks up to me and smiles. “Are you male or female? In real life.”
“What does it matter?”
“I guess it doesn’t. Can I see your tits?”
My dress suddenly has a zipper down the front, so I unzip and take out my bare breasts for him—luscious, perfect, with the pinkest nipples. And suddenly there’s an old-fashioned chaise by my side, so I lie down and pull up my skirt to show him everything. He sits down between my legs and begins playing with my cunt. To my surprise, my clit and my labia—every millimeter of exposed skin—feel extra-sensitive and swollen. I spread my legs wider.
Stacia. Your agreement was to meet your date.
Right. Somewhere there’s a hot young solider wandering around, looking for the black-leathered temptress of his dreams. “Okay, okay. Next time, I don’t want a date.” I’d only signed up for one because I’d been afraid of not finding anyone here to have sex with me—a ridiculous concern, I see now. I shrug apologetically to the man and plunge back into the crowd.
This is a shared simulation. All of the guests around me are real people plugging in just like me. Virtual trials like this are somewhat exclusive; you have to know the right people to get invited to participate, after the bad press last year’s mind scanners got. Omni Labs developed the technology to record thoughts and memories from the cerebral cortex and a major controversy blew up over privacy, legal concerns and “the valid fears that technology may be outpacing us.” Ever since, Omni’s been covering their asses with a flurry of bland PR campaigns, like news segments on the virtual red velvet cake that tasted better than anything in real life, and virtual shoe shopping and decorating your virtual summer house.
But those of us here tonight don’t care about that. We’re all here to fuck in a way we never could in real life, come dripping down our faces, cock after cock, impossibly hot, wet, slapping sex. Softer, hotter, tighter than velvet, whatever we dream of, euphoric rushes that feel like narcotic stars shooting through our brains. Acting out the very dirtiest taboos, the ones that flood our faces with shame. Fucking past all barriers, searing and intense. I want you, and you, and you and you, and I want that, and that, I want it all, now, and you can have it, without consequence.
Or so I’ve heard.
I think about how beautiful I am tonight. Feline and feminine with a slinky grace. Not at all like my real self, an aging rebel turned programmer with a shock of black hair shaved on one side, average face, nice tits, and intense arm scars from a botched wireless wrist implant. (It was just before they developed corneal implants wired for the Internet—I’ve always been an early adopter.) But then my dress starts to waver; I’ve focused too much on my real looks. So I think hard about my black latex dress, the femme fatale I’m here to be, but then I picture a dominatrix in black rubber and my outfit continues to shift.
Stacia, you have to appear as agreed or he won’t recognize you.
“Right.” Maybe this is too much work; maybe it’s easier just to get laid the old-fashioned way. But then I think of the ambivalent flirting, the fussing with condoms and lube, the hookups that always seem to miss the mark. No. This is better.
I see women gathered around what looks like an electric garden. They lift their skirts as some kind of hot golden-apricot flower attaches itself between their legs. The women drop their heads and howl in ecstasy as the flower-mouths service them. One half faints onto the floor but urges “Try it,” before her friends drag her away.
I lift up my dress again. It’s not really a flower, it’s some kind of organic sex toy that slides over my pussy. I’m so sensitive that its mere touch is jolting. No different from using a vibrator, I tell myself, but then the flower turns warm and kind of buzzy and I gasp as an intensely erotic sensation sweeps up my skin, filling my breasts, electrifying my labia. It’s not like being licked or fucked or buzzed, it’s something different entirely. “Oh god,” I blurt out and the girl next to me meets my eyes and shakes her head right before she swoons into a faint.
“There you are.”
It’s my date. Dressed in a vaguely military uniform, twenty-five or so, black-haired and pretty. I open my mouth to say hello but my blood is singing with bliss and I’m about to swoon myself when he catches me around the waist. He peels my dress down and plays with my tits as I erupt in a thunderbolt of an orgasm.
“Oh god.” I sag against him, wave after wave of thunder rolling through me. The flower-toy finally retreats. But the young soldier holding me feels so good that I don’t want him to let go of me.
I straighten up in my black dress, leaving my breasts exposed. Now that we’re together, it doesn’t matter if my appearance morphs a bit, but suddenly I feel quite settled. I’m doing it. I’m mastering the “stay,” as the doctors put it.
I turn and look at him. Deep tan, cocky grin, almond-shaped dark eyes. The stiff cock protruding from his uniform pants looks huge.
“I’m Jack,” he says. “And you’re hot.”
“Let’s skip the small talk.” I take his hand and we set off to explore.
This is a place where time is meaningless and desire is accelerated. Where strangers reach for each other in the electric-lit dark and refusals and acceptances are equally serene. We parade through the garden of sex dreams that is the Simulsphere. A thousand personal aphrodisiacs linger in the air, smells of cigarette smoke and raspberry lip gloss and gin-and-tonics. Americana scenes of a girl in a white bikini and red nail polish watching a very handsome boy take off his baseball uniform. A seraglio of naked men on silk couches. People fucking in midair like naked acrobats. Images flicker in suspension: real scenes from porn movies and regular blockbuster movies where the characters strip down and turn to each other. There are some virtual pros here tonight who know exactly how to manifest and hold their desired scenes. And flickering in and out, half-consciously, a phantasmagoria of blurred memories and associations running through the minds of the bodies twisting and fucking around us.
Jack and I pass a brick alley where a woman in an eighteenth-century petticoat is being ravished by pirates. A redhead in a purple dress walking five leashed men, who crawl on all fours beside her. A gang bang in a bar. It’s never going to end.
You’re becoming overwhelmed. If you’d like to move from spectator to participant, we suggest finding one area of interest and focusing on it, says the overhead, but I ignore the doctors because Jack and I have already spotted something: a vibrant turquoise glow. It’s a pool. But from the people inside it, we know it’s not water so much as an aquatic substance moving as waves of light.
I wade into it in my dress. Despite being tight black leather, the dress now floats up around my waist like crinoline, showing off my legs, my pussy, all of which are perfect, and I begin to understand the possibilities. Forget physics and physical limitations, we’re all here to transcend. This is a world that collaborates.
I turn to Jack, only to find him dressed now in a white T-shirt and jeans. Just a normal guy, but a very good-looking one as he pushes back his wet black hair with a smile. He has waded in too, and his nipples show through his wet white shirt. I take his pants down by running two fingers down his hips.
The pool is wired with extra conductivity, begins the overhead.
“Shut up. Don’t talk to me again unless necessary.”
I pull Jack deeper into the pool by his cock.
Oh god. It’s like magic, like the best vibrator in the world is inside my skin and unleashing euphoria into my every cell. No sex is necessary, I think, but then Jack reaches for my breasts and my skin fills with fire for him.
We dive into the deep. There’s no oxygen here to bring us up to the surface, so we entwine like long-lost lovers, arms and legs holding each other in this weightless aquatic dream. His mouth is hot on me in the cool water, his hands touching my clit with electric intensity. Kissing a stranger underwater is endlessly absorbing. I wrap my hands around his cock and he pulls back to give in to the sensation, his black hair waving toward me in the water. Eyes closed, he looks like an ocean god. I make my hands hotter, change the texture of my fingertips, and he opens his mouth and howls in a primitive sound that travels through the pool.
This isn’t real, I think, but of course it is. My pounding heart is real. My stiff nipples, the ache in my pussy, the electric points of light in the water stimulating my skin, are real. Sensation and emotion are all that matters; I understand that now.
Fucking underwater is a kind of ballet, graceful and fluid between some of the couples around us and feverish and fast between others. We’re all sexual magicians here. Jack sinks down between my legs and licks my clit, his tongue a sorcerer that knows just how to work all of me over, sliding inside my pussy, biting my lips, sucking the hard and buzzing seed of my clit. My body is a delirious symphony of sensation—and then I realize there’s another man behind me, his tongue deep in my ass.
Don’t come yet, don’t come yet, I think, because I’m so afraid I’ll unplug, but the two tongues inside me are too dreamy and I come with a hot ecstatic gush that explodes like bubbles in the pool. The environment goes hazy and I panic; but then both men hold me between them, and the hot solidity of their muscles anchors me back in the moment.
We stay underwater like that, a trio, for a few moments. Jack is looking at the other guy, who I haven’t seen yet, so I slip to the side. The second man is the pharaoh who was getting his dick sucked earlier by the mermaid. They’re looking at each other, not at me, maybe assessing who they are in this situation. I slide my arms around their shoulders and guide them into a long kiss that begins with hesitation, and then loosens into real passion. Orientation is just another dissolving boundary in this nebulous, melting world. Jack kisses me next, pressing all of his hard body up against mine. Now that my latex dress has disintegrated, I think myself into someone softer, more voluptuous, a woman wrapping around him like an enveloping pillow of skin.
Something hard presses my ass: the other man’s dick. I push my hips back at him in invitation. He spreads my cheeks open and pushes his cock inside me, all the joy of anal with none of the caution because this pool is lube itself and everything here is smooth and painless. He holds me against him, fucking my ass hard now, making my breasts bounce up slowly in the water with every thrust.
Jack watches. He drifts down again to lick my clit, and the sensation of a soft tongue on my pussy and a hard dick in my ass make me want to drown in this white-hot glory. But if I’m going to come a third time, I know I’ll lose the connection, and I need to make it count. I grip his hair, pull him back up and open my legs for him.
Jack fucks me like he’s been waiting years for me. Hard, fast, relentless, just the way I like it. The other man matches his rhythm. Impossible, but we’re doing it, cocks in my pussy and ass, thrusting with bionic strength and speed despite the waves rocking our bodies. There’s no more question of veracity. The heat of their bodies is real, the grunts in my ear, the hairy legs abrading my thighs. The man behind me winds my hair around his fist, bites my neck hard. He comes as he does, a warm flood in my ass that washes through me like hot lava.
Jack’s dark eyes change as he sees my own incipient orgasm burning in my face and he says with real urgency, “Not yet, not yet,” words garbled underwater. Our connection is so intense that he knows I’m going to dissolve—and I do, a bomb of scarlet light and bliss that implodes in my pussy and then ricochets out in wave after wave through my entire body. The Simulsphere vanishes.
I unplug with that dizzying lurch. My brain feels like it was drop-kicked into my head, and a shudder of simulation sickness rolls through me. As the doctors liberate me from the machine, I think I might be caught between worlds. But no, I’m back. Firmly ensconced in this shivering body, as they help me stand. The room swims at me.
“Most people have trouble retaining the stay after they reach orgasm,” says Dr. Oliver. “The fact that you stayed plugged in after the first and second climax is impressive.”
I’m in a stupor. The naked woman in the mirror with the damp black hair and scarred arms doesn’t seem that relevant anymore. My physical body feels more like a heavy limitation than anything. Just a happenstance swirl of genes, no more reflective of my true personality than my simself was.
“I’m sorry I messed up. I don’t know why I kept picturing all those random things.”
“You did better than many of the other trial subjects,” says Dr. Helo. “It’s natural for the untrained mind to leap around. Maintaining the stay in a collaborative environment takes practice.”
“I would welcome the opportunity to practice, for as long as you’re running the trial.” All I can think of is how much money Omni Labs is going to make with this. Humanity will never be the same.
“You can participate on a weekly basis. Anything more frequent seems to be disorienting. That said…” They exchange a glance. “We have another experiment, another trial, if you’re interested.”
Dr. Oliver speaks to the conduit in his wrist and immediately a beautiful man walks into the room. Wavy blond hair, green eyes. His face is a combination of several beautiful actors.
I don’t ask if he’s real. That word no longer applies. The question is, is he organic, and the answer is no. That’s clear from the flawless complexion, the vivid eyes and—I see the outline clearly in his Omni Lab pants—the size of his cock. Otherwise he looks quite biological. I try not to seem shocked, even though I had no idea Omni Labs had this level of biobots in development.
I do have one question, though, because suddenly I’m thinking about my hot tub at home. “Is he waterproof?”
“I am,” the biobot says. “You can do anything with me you can do with a human. Although you might find I do it better.” He smiles and it’s actually a warm and sexy smile, not creepy or artificial at all.
No different than a vibrator, I remind myself. I turn to the doctors. “I’m interested.”