by Lia Laserre
“Hey, watch it. I’m right in the middle of a hot tub…with some nymphs…warm fingers massaging my back.”
I shake my head. “Yeah, right.”
“Your turn, Miss Skeptic.”
Hesitation has my hand trembling. It’s as if my fingers are pulled back by strings. Joey reaches out to patiently fit the haloband over my head. The visor dims the light. Two black ear pads cover my ears.
Odd. Amazing. I can hear Joey saying garbled underwater words to me while at the same time I can hear a whooshing sound like waves washing up on a shore. A deep blue calm sea slowly materializes in the foggy wash.
A menu of three options appears, each their own 3D floating cube: a flaxen-haired queen with a silver crown and wand in hand beckoning me, a pine tree dusted with snow at whose base lies a nearly-frozen pool. A merman is stuck in the ice with striking golden eyes and ice-blue beard. The last’s a pirate’s skull and crossbones over a smoking ember fire pit. None of this is like Joey’s fantasy. Somehow the device has already identified me as different user. My fingers curl into fists. How does it do it? Hair? Head and ear size? Body heat? Pheromones? Some on-board hi-tech sensor? My head spins as I try to figure the mechanics out.
As my gaze lingers on the merman, with magical slowness a wash of coalescing light dissolves the screen and everything around me. A surround-sound like a psychedelic symphony grows in volume. A seascape materializes. I can only stare in wonder. Its hypnotic grandeur is eerily reminiscent of the opening night’s halloband rollout. Can this be real? I feel calmed, bathed in a tingling warmth that rises from my toes to the rest of my body. Okay…weird, but weird in a titillating way. I’m swept up in a reality so powerful it overcomes me as I crest a wave, swimming now in the warm water with dolphins over to a beach of snow-white sand where a gorgeous merman sits on a rock, bearing a trident in hand.
Mesmerized by the play of light, sound and sensation, I swim faster.
Now I’ve become a character in a kaleidoscope of scenes. I’m a mermaid, with fins for legs that help me kick faster. Impossibly I’m wearing a wreath of white gardenias and coat of coin-sized fish scales that tinkle with every thrust.
The dreamboat merman is closer now and I see his long, flowing hair, dark lashes and welcoming smile. He points his trident at an option menu which features a cruise ship or a golden palace. I blink, then feel my cheeks heat up. My gaze dwells on the glittering white ship, the Queen Annabella. Immediately I’m on board. The wreath is gone and I’m a mermaid no longer. I’ve never been on a cruise ship before and I don’t like it. It’s too big, too crowded and far too noisy. Instantly a magic carpet with golden wings transports me to a wooden ship with three masts tossing on a blue sea, like something out of antiquity. It creaks with dozens of high billowing sails, lost in time. I’ve never seen such a vessel before, so I conclude the device must have sensed I’d like this ship better. Is that possible—
A whistling sound grows in my ears. It’s like a teapot boiling. There’s a strange warp in the air and Joey suddenly appears on the aft deck in the form of the merman. He’s flopped on his belly looking up at me, but I know it’s him from his unmistakable almond eyes and Mediterranean complexion but yet with a gleaming, fish-scaled body. I shake my head in bewilderment. What—? Has his VR device overlapped with mine? How can he be in the same experience as me? I’m tense with excitement to the point of giggling like an overstimulated child.
Now we find ourselves in an exotic court adorned with golden statues, attended by half-naked bronze-skinned men and women waving fans of peacock feathers around us and offering libations. The scent of jasmine and rose petals is heady in our nostrils. We’re to be married or something. As soon as the ice-cold nectar touches my lips, we time travel. No longer princess and merman, but dancers at a rave.
A part of my mind must conclude that this is nutso, all this jumping about, regardless of how real it feels. We’re in a familiar environment. Nord’s place. Hot and dry-ice hazed with the dampness of exertion. Fast heavy beats synched to the strobe lights. Joey’s there. Gilsen, Karie, Zandra, and others. It’s all too fantastical to believe. Our halobands, in proximity, must be picking up each other’s signals and morphing the scenes. But is such possible? Can the device tap into our memories, pick up signatures of our secret desires and morph the scenes?
No, some trick. Either I’m hallucinating or these bayludes are tripping me out.
And yet, here on the dance floor, everything seems perfectly normal when nothing is.
I give myself over to the dance and the music like I always do. My tension eases up as I start to surrender to the universal language of rhythm. The sweat and the humidity and the tribal sense of belonging. At first the music starts off heavy like The Bor Angels, then moves into a series of trance beats in hypnotic procession, as if the haloband knows exactly what turns me on. But then maybe I’m subtly picking the music by my body reactions when the unit gauges my reaction at each tonal beat? I’m moving in and out around the others like a wax idol as is my style.
I don’t know how it does it, but the circuitry seems to know. My likes, dislikes, my moment-to-moment desires. It’s uncanny, almost disturbing. As if it knows my next move, my next thought. It’s as if some invisible avatar watches me from above while I blink, stare, take a trembling breath, every move I make, no matter how minute. Each choice I make narrows down my other options, perfecting my profile. That’s it! That’s how it does it. But how can it do it so fast?
All this passes in my mind in a flash of a few seconds. Joey is beside me. We dance, we twine. We’re back to back, doing a funky move, moving to the ground low then back up again. Then we face each other. He’s in his tie dye shirt and cargo pants. Real or simulated? I shake my head, blink, confusing reality with VR, but I’m feeling good, as if buzzed on some pleasant drug. The setup almost mirrors Nord’s place, before the fight. A bunch of us, like Karie and Leta and Zandra and others, are pulling on pipes, drinking, dancing…
A fight breaks out. A real one with blood and broken teeth then it’s over and the blood is mopped up and Torv and Vin are hauled off in a C-Sec van.
Joey sidles up beside me. He grabs me and we twirl and we start a contorted, erotic, sexual dance. My heat rises, a flutter of pleasure from loins to breasts. I pick up the tempo. We jive forward so our body heat radiates off each other. Joey makes a sound of rapture, the strong line of his jaw dropping, lips parted. He leans in; he slides his tongue into my mouth. I push him away but come back for more, as if this time following a deeper primal urge, egging him on, daring him to try something bolder.
I’m shocked because part of me, the one not in haloband, realizes how starved for affection and the physical act I am.
Joey, in a fit of mischievousness, reaches past the blur of the smoky, exotic clamor to hit the XR rating button along the side on the panel that controls the scene. I see this out of the corner of my eye, semi-stunned.
“Hey, what are you doing?” I scream at him.
“Relax, it’s all make believe.”
“It’s not make believe.”
“It’s called shadow-bingeing.”
“Whatever the hell. No way.”
My voice drops to a fierce whisper. Is this part of the script? I’m overcome by a wave of passion. We’re back to the dance. His hands slide under my shirt, my slender fingers probe his bare ribs, while his hands cup my breasts. “Ahh.” A soft sigh of pleasure escapes my lips.
We are buck naked now. Sweat is pouring off our skins. Twined, like ancient gods and goddesses. Locked in intimate embrace.
Wow! I can’t believe this. My heart is hammering, going a mile a minute. We are just about to engage in an irreversible, carnal act when I hear a tinny sound, like some faraway ring or buzz, and feel a vibration.
Another reality intrudes upon my fantasy…my communicator wristlet vibrating. My eyes close. I slump, knocked out of the moment’s illusion.
I fling off the visor. My chest is heaving. Sweat pools at the
base of my throat.
It’s Mom, more pissed than ever. She wonders where I am.
Joey pushes up his glasses onto his brow, his skin and cheeks flushed. “What the hell?”
“Hi Mom, what’s up?”
“Great timing. Blow her off, Jesus,” hisses Joey.
My mom’s angry voice floods through the receiver. “Where in Christ’s name are you? You were supposed to be back hours ago.”
“No worries, Mom. I’m over at Joey’s.”
“Well, get your ass back here.”
There’re more angry and hurtful words with threats of being grounded and I sign off, still in a semi-euphoric daze. I lay back on my side, feeling like a person split in two. One in this world, one in the world of the haloband.
The moment’s lost, and I’m kinda glad it is, as I didn’t want to commit to anything, even though my heart is still racing. I squirm away from the visor as if it’s a poisonous asp. I both hate it and marvel at it. I stare at the blue shiny plastic for a long moment. How can something so innocuous-looking create that much sensuality? The thing looks as if it has no electronics in it all. But I know different.
Joey’s baffled at my hesitation. “What’s wrong?”
He’s totally not getting it. I’ve been skeptical of this thing right from the start. I want to know how it works and what it does.
A sudden realization hits me. The device somehow interfaces wirelessly to our wristlets. So, it can cross-reference our Citizen IDs and access any profile data already stored there. That’s what the engineer, Liz, was hinting at back at the rollout night. I’d missed it the first time.
Joey’s cozying over to me, stroking my hair. “Come on, Ellan. Let’s try it once more…we were interrupted rudely from a beautiful moment.” He wraps sweaty arms around me in a sloppy embrace.
I squirm out of his grasp. “I don’t think we should use that thing, Joey. I get a bad feeling about it. What it’s doing to our bodies? Our brains? I mean, like, it’s an all-encompassing turn on, but—”
“Huh?” He levels me a blank stare. “What do you think that stuff June fed us back at Nord’s is doing to our brains? Can it be all that different?”
“No—well, yes. Just some little voice in the back of my head says we should be wary.”
“Nah, you’re just being paranoid.”
“Maybe. But I can’t just blow off my intuition.” The darkweb has given me no less reason to be skeptical.
He nods, reluctant to stop twiddling with his visor. “Sure. Let’s watch a flick or something.”
“Nah, have to get home.”
Joey gives a grumbling nod.
A wave of relief washes over me. But there’s still a thrill lingering in the pit of my stomach—for a brief replay sometime in the near future.
I don’t like that urge. It rides the crest of a darker feeling, one at the cusp of a bad dream.
* * *
Thanks for reading!
DARKWEB continues
…in the 200-page technothriller, HALOBAND. Read free in Kindle Unlimited. Click below.
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