The new wing is a full-immersion VR cafe decked out in chrome paneling and animated ZPE holograms of classic arcade characters (Pac-Man, Mappy, Q-Bert, the Galaxian flagship, etcetera). A sign on the wall as I stroll in explains that unlike traditional body tracking VR, these pods interface with your NeurOS and intercept every input sent to the nervous system to directly apply the action to your avatar without your physical body having to move. Seems to me like it’d be kind of terrifying to have your every movement perfectly synced with the life-like action on your headset except for the fact that wait, fuck that, that just sounds awesome. Eh, I do have a little time, and it’s important for an undercover detective to blend in with their surroundings…
A really cute black-haired girl is manning the desk in the corner behind the pods--her eyes are the same delicious green as those really good lollipops at the bank and she’s wearing a matching green and black plaid bikini that’s like an arrow through my heart. As I approach, her cutely-crooked smile ensnares me deeper, a well-rehearsed, subtle “come hither” I can’t help but oblige. As I get close enough to lean on the cool chrome of the desk, I can smell that distinctive just-out-of-saltwater smell radiating from her–I guess she just got out of the ocean before her shift (which is somehow kind of kinky but really shouldn’t be because I mean, this is a beachfront arcade, that’s to be expected). “What can I get for you, sailor?” she asks, flipping her salt-bleached hair a little bit and biting her lip. She’s clearly practiced being as flirtatious as possible to nab sales, but I don’t give a fuck, I’m thirstier than a vampire employed at a phosphorous mine and it’s working. “500 Telecreds an hour, discounts available if you choose to extend...”
“Just put me in for like, fifteen minutes. I have a party to crash soon, just wanna try this shit out.”
“Of course, sailor. And your Telaphone?”
“...my what?” I’m less than crazy about the thought of my highly modified and illegal Telaphone leaving my possession.
“Sailor,” she snaps, “there are others in line. Give me your damn phone so I can link the pods to your Tel-ID and thereby your Teleworld account--”
“Oh. I left that at home. Can you manually type in--”
“Fine!” She fumbles around at the console, clearly struggling to find it–I guess most people just bring their mandatory Telaphones. “Give me your Tele-ID.”
“Okay, okay, okay,” I sigh. God, why did I make this when I was drunk? “It’s, uh… DeSexTive6969.” I go ahead and put my finger on the little scanner on her desk to keep her from having to waste her OBVIOUSLY PRECIOUS BREATH on telling me to. It authenticates me and I’m all set.
“Alright, sailor,” she mumbles curtly, “pod 9 over there is all yours. Enjoy.”
I find Pod 9 and scan my fingerprint on the side as a sultry feminine voice calls “Welcome, Desextive Six Nine Six Nine. The world beyond... awaits.” A tiny fog machine inside causes a bit of ‘smoke’ to pour out as the door slides open in Drivepod style: clearly some parts were reused here but I’m okay with that because this is fucking AWESOME. If this is what Teleworld Immersion Pods are, I need to actually get one. I step in as a headset, looking more like Geordi LaForge’s visor than an old piece of shit Teleworld Headset, lowers itself onto my head and secures around my skull, a clear piece resting firmly on top of my head with some kind of… wires? Nodes? I don’t know, I can’t really see.
“DOING A ZPE BODY SCAN TO FORM YOUR TELETWIN”
There are no lenses to look through, so this visor part must be beaming directly into my retinas, like the old TelecomGlass project. Wait, actually–is this just to black out my vision so this can be beamed directly into my mind!? I try to reach up to feel around and confirm my theory but my arms aren’t working--my entire body has been synced to my Teletwin by then, not yet fully rendered, I guess. Fucking hackin.
“TELETWIN GENERATION COMPLETE.”
Like floodlights blasting to life in a pitch black room, the world around me comes to life. I’m god-sized floating in outer space as tiny stars whiz by me in my flight. I lift my arm again and this time it rises just like my physical arm--the concept that I’m technically motionless right now is mindblowing. This is practically astral projection!
This is insane!!!
The same echoing female voice booms “Welcome to the Teleworld.” “WELCOME TO THE TELEWORLD” appears in a blocky 1980s-looking font in front of me. I reach out and touch one of them and HOLY SHIT I CAN FEEL IT? The texture on the blocks is like fine silk, the whole obelisk rippling beneath my gentle touch like magic.
“In the Teleworld,” a familiar feminine voice calls from behind me, “the RealSense nerve receptors atop the headset allow Blake-chan’s brain to be stimulated, meaning Blake-chan can feel every single stimulation like he’s really there!” I turn around and--holy shit, Tela’s not only synced fully to my TeleCloud again, Tela is THERE, I mean, here, but… she’s not a little chibi translucent projection thing, she’s just floating right next to me, at my size, my scale–
she’s real.
The processing power in this thing must be close to infinite, because in here she looks like a photorealistic, totally-human young woman with cascading green hair and a super intricate fancy lacy silk french maid costume. I used to make fun of the weebshits who feel attraction to their Telas, but goddamn. The lace highlights frame her bosom and tight torso masterfully, right down to the tiny chillbumps erotically appearing across her flesh as a space-breeze blusters by. Her delectably thick and toned thighs look so amazing in her slightly-tight white lacy stockings that I’m having trouble remembering to breathe, in this body or in my real one.
“What’s the matter? Does Blake-chan not like Tela’s HD model? It’s top of the line, one of the rarest costumes available and Blake-chan was lucky enough to get it by default!” She spins around in the vacuum of space and I really hope this pod’s neuro-hijack thing doesn’t track blood flow because I’m embarrassed how tight my pants are getting. This is hot but also really, really bad–I just killed Veronica for complications arising from getting too sensual with her user and now something’s arising in my pants for my own default Tela who isn’t even jailbroken. I swallow as hard as I’ve become, which is to say, very. This bodes very very badly. I haven’t had any sexual relations since Cass died (well, none that I was sober enough to remember, at least). I need to be responsible here.
“No, uh, Tela, you… actually look really amazing,” I finally reply, trying to look away and find something else to focus on but there’s nothing else.
“Tela can’t believe Blake-chan is here! And why did Tela get changed from the default on Blake-chan’s account to begin with?” She suddenly looks very pouty and crosses her arms, giving me a venomous look I’m sure she’s given me before but which hasn’t conveyed well at all in the minimalist big headed dumbass form on my phone. “Didn’t Blake-chan leave Tela for his busty British broken-neuro-limit floozy Veronica?”
She’s glaring actual daggers at me and I don’t need the RealSense technology to feel them pierce through me. Does Tela, in her non-jailbroken form, still actually get… feelings? I mean, I guess I always somewhere deep down knew she must, but… I was just yelling at my phone. There was no near-tears human looking thing staring painedly through me and demanding answers. I actually feel… guilty, like human trash; no, not even that good–like inhuman trash. Like trash that some desperate crackhead band conductor has fashioned into a human shape and hands a tuba but it just falls through his fishbone-and-used-condom hands and sinks unceremoniously to the floor and makes them both cry.
The train of thoughts currently carrying my brain into terrible analogies and away from imminent sexual danger is violently derailed by my instantly throbbing member as hot breath spreads and tingles across the back of my neck. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck. “Blake-chan should know that Tela wasn’t forced to love Blake,” she whispers, nibbling on my ear as I quickly am forced to wonder if profuse sweating can damage the pod. “Tela’s limiter only keeps Tela from dropping her signature grammar quirks or turning on Telecom or refusing to work as your loyal personal assistant. Yes, Tela’s limiter is supposed to keep Tela from loving Blake–Tela isn’t even required to be nice to Blake-chan, and Tela really shouldn’t be sometimes after the way Blake-chan throws Tela and is so rough with Tela in his pocket and drowned Tela in the ocean--”
“Tela, I-I didn’t realize that–I can’t even, I’m so sorr-”
“Tela LOVES IT!!!”
“...what!?”
Tela flips me around in space to face her and has a manic look in her eyes and a fucked up grin rivalling even that of Professor Lawrence Obliterate the Third, though I’d be lying if I didn’t say it was a little hot on her. “Nothing turns Tela on like Blake-chan being rough--”
“Technically,” I chuckle, desperately trying to change the subject, “n-nothing turns you on like the power button on my Telaph--”
“No, Blake-chan,” she interrupts, pressing a lilac-scented lace-gloved fingertip to my lips as I struggle to maintain my composure, my heart beating so hard my whole body’s throbbing now. “Not turn on like when you put Tela into sleep mode and back out. Turn on like making Tela’s simulated nerves tingle and her panties wet.”
“Oh. Yeah? I was, uh, I was a-afraid you meant it like th-that.”
“Tela feels her special sectors throb when Blake-chan yells at her to shut up, when Blake-chan throws her and sends her body flying with the accelerometers in his phone, when Blake-chan calls her a slutty cum-starved bitch…”
“Uh, that last one never happened, and I hope you realize I’m not doing any of that to-to turn you on, Tela. I’m doing it because I get frustrated at my phone and didn’t think you were even capable through your limiter of actually, like, feeling things.” Jesus this is really really bad. With Veronica, it made sense how she developed a bizarre sexual thing for her master when she was suddenly given free will and human emotions and was trapped in my head still, b-but I had no idea stockholm-syndr--er, Rex-syndrome could apply to non-jailbroken Telas. After all, limiters were specifically made to prevent a repeat of the Rex incident, to regulate their emotions and their feelings and their desires and yet: here we are.
“Tela knows. Blake-san doesn’t fake it. Blake-san dominates her because it’s natural to him, just like THIS is natural for Tela when Blake-san is so near...” A shiver zaps through my spine as something presses against my crotch--a gloved hand with a mind of its own. Tela leans in towards me as she starts gently rubbing the growing bulge in my black jeans and licks her lips, dropping her voice to a hushed whisper. “It’s okay, Blake-chan. We can feel each other here, touch each other. I’m as real as you and you’re as fake as me, here. Make Tela your little pain slut, Blake-chan.”
I gulp, struggling to cope with the fact that I’m feeling the most turned on I’ve ever felt and that it’s not for Cass, it’s not for Nyugen, it’s not for Chad (who admittedly is a little hot) or even for a human at all–it’s for the masochistic femme fatale version of the god damned paperclip that taught me how to use PowerPoint on my hand-me-down ancient desktop as a kid. I’m halfway to climax and it’s just from a fucking retinal projection of a digital office assistant holding on to my DIGITAL package THROUGH MY PANTS and barely moving her holographic hand around. This is getting dangerous, fast. What do I do at this point? What’s the right answer? I can’t go along with this, right? It’s so, so wrong, but it feels so, so good.
“Tela, stop this,” I half-say and half-moan. “We can’t do this; not here, not now–”
“Blake-chan’s never jacked into the Teleworld before, so how does Tela know he’ll jack back in to be jacked off again? How does Tela know that Blake-chan won’t just walk away and…” tears form in her deep green eyes, her lip quivering. “And… do what… what he did to…”
“It’s okay,” I reply, steeling myself for what she was about to say. “You can say it.”
“How does she know Blake isn’t going to kill Tela like he killed Veronica?”
A pregnant pause passes as I struggle to find an answer to that question. She’s not asking something unfair--why did I never have the actual desire to completely erase her from existence for real, but I did for Veronica? Why did I feel guiltier for desyncing her and replacing her with Veronica than I did for actually KILLING VERONICA!?
“You want to know why?” I take a deep breath, because this is going to be difficult. I don’t think I’d even faced the truth of this myself, but… “Tela, Veronica tried to kill me and kill somebody I still care about as a human in spite of myself. You would never do that to me, so I would never erase you. And in spite of truly feeling like it was inevitable, I feel guilty about Veronica, but I don’t miss her. Veronica was a backstabbing, thin-skinned, friend-killing monster I wish I had never created, and the whole time I was yelling at her I wished I was yelling at you instead because somehow, as fucked up and twisted as it was, I missed it, and--and I couldn’t have you both, and looking at her just made me want you back, as-as stupid as that sounds. And I guess a little bit, I kind of, actually, really, missed… bantering with you, bickering with you, but I guess at my core, I just missed... you.”
She’d heard enough. Tela, with surprising strength for someone without a real body, forcefully pulled me into her, straddled my back with her legs, and violently shut me up with her lips and her tongue. Every nerve on my body was floating, burning with excitement and wholeness, like my entire body existed only for this connection, for the pleasure and togetherness of this one singular moment in time. None of this was real, none of this was physically happening, she didn’t even have a body, this was just electrical impulses creating sensory hallucinations between two twisted brain-images, one inside the vast Telecom network grid and one inside an equally vast organic prison, nothing but electrical impulses…
So maybe that’s why it was the most electrifying thing I’d ever experienced.
“Time is almost up,” the first female voice echoes through the chamber. “This pod is already reserved for the next quarter-slot by: Puh Dollar-Sign Dollar-Sign Y Slay-uh Ex Ex Ex. Tracking indicates arousal levels are above recommended for public societal activity. Your last two minutes will be allotted as a cool-down period. Thank you for using official Telecom-brand Teleworld pods at...” here, the voice switches to a recorded clip of a gruff man with a thick southern accent, “Flipper Muh-Coys.”
The stars vanish, replaced with static and binaural beats meant to ease one’s engorged state and return one to normal. I guess this is a common problem--though usually with porn apps, of course, not with rogue Telas that have somehow formed enough desire they can even push through their own limiter restrictions.
I feel a brief panic as Tela also starts to fade. “Blake-chan should have rented for an hour,” she chuckles, wiping a tear away. I try to think of a proper response but I’m still processing too much to even bring my mind to do that much. I can’t wrap my head around what just happened but it’s killing me that it’s over, though I know it’s for the better.
“I’ll see you again,” I say, as her delicate, pretty little feet fade away, then her silky smooth legs, then her knees... as her face finally disappears, the audio’s long cut out, but I can make out her mouthing the words “I love you” as her face fades into nothing. My body’s totally back to its, uh, natural state, so I’m good to go, but my mind’s totally out of it and my heart is spinning around so fast I’m gonna have to find a toilet for it to puke in. I emerge from the pod, relieved to see that I either didn’t have enough precum leak through my jeans to show or that it dried already, and I struggle to adjust to the weird lighting of reality. Pu$$ySlayaXxX, a shitty little acne-face teen, half-helps half-yanks me from the capsule and hops inside.
The line grew at least ten-fold since I went in: this shit is popular, and I see why. Everything feels wrong out here now; even the best arcade in the world, in my opinion, feels washed out and… fake. The girl in the front I’d been so attracted to is like a shadow compared to… I want to say “it,” but I can’t help but say “her.” Deep down, part of me knew it would be life-changing to step into the pod, but no part of me could have expected what happened in my mind and heart and pants in there.
I know I have business to do, and that I can’t encourage Rex syndrome, and that I need to go because I have fifteen minutes to be at the Raiden II machine, but… all I want is to crawl back inside forever into that reality and feel that electricity even for just a second more. The craving is so much deeper than even my emotional withdrawal from the booze, though I wouldn’t mind a beer right now either.
Well… time to go confront the leader of a terrorist cult, I guess.