by Matt Ruff
The Men nerded as hard as they could, but none of the vagina-recognition schemes they came up with was close to foolproof. They did manage to make the software so bloated and cumbersome as to be essentially unusable, even for gay sex—so in that limited sense, they were successful. But the project was a bust.
It was a Berkeley grad named Martha Hollenbeck who wrote the first practical cybersex software. She called her creation PPML: Polymorphous Perverse Markup Language. One version fit all genders, which made sense from a technical perspective. Whether designed for men or women, the vast majority of computerized sex toys are simple vibrators, with the same limited set of functions: Speed up. Slow down. Buzz. Pulse. Hollenbeck wrote a standardized command code that allowed different devices to communicate, and added modular support for more advanced sex toys.
PPML combined an intuitive and newbie-friendly interface with a wealth of customization options. Say you’d decided to give a blow job to someone halfway around the world. If sucking on a sensor-equipped dildo was really your thing, PPML would of course allow you to do that. But you could also use a cyberglove, a game pad, a keyboard, a microphone, or some other input device. Or if you were feeling lazy and just wanted to phone it in, you could activate PPML’s “white noise” feature and have it convert any handy string of ones and zeroes—an MP3 of your favorite Stones track, say, or a PDF of the Song of Solomon—into blow job commands.
The software also enabled a unique form of faceting. In the real world, if Alice gives Bob a blow job, Bob receives a blow job. But because PPML used the same code for different sex acts, a receiver in cyberspace could, if they wanted, turn the blow job inside-out, and experience it as an act of penetration. With larger groups of people and a bit of imagination, much wilder combinations were possible: Alice gives a blow job simultaneously to Bob, Carol, Donna, and Edgar; Bob receives a blow job, while Carol, Donna, and Edgar are licked, fisted, and fucked, respectively, and the combined bucking of their hips feeds back to Alice as anal. The accompanying sounds and visuals could be faceted too, of course: While Alice, Carol, and Donna share a prison rape fantasy, Bob sees himself as part of a living, breathing Rubens painting, and Edgar indulges in some hot furry action.
No surprise, this offended some people: Spectacle ensued. And to those inclined to be outraged by PPML, the fact that Martha Hollenbeck was trans just added fuel to the fire. For mainstream pundits, she became a metaphor for whatever they thought was wrong with contemporary cyberculture. Conservative feminists damned her as a not-so-secret agent of the patriarchy. To homophobic Men on the Internet, she was a gay guy in drag, trying to put one over on the vagina detector.
She got a lot of death threats. She stopped appearing in public early on, after San Francisco SWAT responded to a hoax 911 call by driving a tank through the wall of the auditorium where she was speaking. But her software was popular, even among people who publicly wished her dead, and by the time PPML 2.0 was released, it had become a de facto standard, the lingua franca of cybersex.
I was an early adopter, thanks to my girlfriend, Wendy Williams. Wendy was a Zero Day kid, and she was gear queer. Late one night we met up in an empty server room to fool around, and she told me about this new software suite she’d downloaded that she wanted to try out. She asked if I was up for being a guinea pig. I said that I was.
We were stationed in Osaka at the time. We went to a special computer store in Tobita Shinchi, the red light district. While Wendy chatted with the women behind the counter, I stood with my arms folded and tried to project an air of mature sophistication. My attention was drawn to a display case full of vibrators shaped like brightly colored animals. Their English-language names read like the product of an excitable machine translator: SURPRISE FANTASY CAT! TORRID HEDGEHOG! BACK DOOR MONKEY! INEXHAUSTIBLE PRICKLY HORSE!
We spent around forty thousand yen on toys—including a SURPRISE FANTASY CAT!—and went back to base. There was a delay while Wendy configured PPML’s encryption. Once she was satisfied that our parents probably couldn’t spy on us, we put on the gear and booted up the software.
It was a little strange, but a lot of fun. Which, at that early point in my sexual history, is also how I would have described regular fucking. And though with time and experience my tastes have become more refined, even now, if you ask me which is better, real sex or virtual sex, I’ll tell you it’s a question of what you’re in the mood for.
It was the late New York Times columnist David Brooks who famously observed that “you can’t kiss in cyberspace.” Like a lot of declarative statements made by old people, this isn’t strictly true: If you and your partner are in the same physical space, you can kiss all you like, though you do need to be careful not to smash your headsets together in the heat of passion. At long distance, your tactile options are more limited. There are full-body haptic suits, but they are very expensive and have a tendency to overheat. More likely, the sense of touch will be focused on your genitals, or whatever other part of your anatomy the vibrator is attached to. This strikes some people as cold and emotionless, but it’s worth remembering that vibrators are a nineteenth-century invention, and Victorians probably used them while reading steamy love letters. So the concept isn’t exactly new.
The store in Tobita Shinchi sold a “smell synthesizer” that looked like a piece of medical fetish gear. I thought about buying it, but I didn’t really believe it could mimic Wendy’s scent, and I wasn’t going to spend fifteen thousand yen to have patchouli blown up my nose. Not even the Japanese make a sex toy that can reproduce taste, so if that’s important to you, you’ll want to stick to doing it in the flesh.
It’s in the realm of sight and sound that cybersex really gets interesting. People have always fantasized during sex, but computers do the heavy lifting for you, and let you keep your eyes wide open. You can look like anyone or anything, anywhere. And the soundtrack can be dynamic, reacting to what you are doing: Marvin Gaye into Led Zeppelin IV into the climax of the 1812 Overture.
Which brings me back to the subject of bullets. You can knock out a no-frills blow job in a couple of minutes, but crafting a polished fantasy with 3D visuals and surround sound is a much bigger undertaking. Thanks to Wendy, I know a lot of programming tricks and shortcuts, and of course PPML has tools that can help, but still, I worked my ass off on Darla’s bullet.
One decision I had to make was whether to use my default avatar. Playing yourself in a bullet shows confidence, but it also risks embarrassment if the bullet’s recipient decides to share it with the rest of the internet. The alternative is to use a stand-in avatar: Celebrity look-alikes are popular.
In Darla’s case, I could think of two strong arguments against using a stand-in. First, she would rightly regard it as a sign that I didn’t trust her, which in turn would make it less likely that she’d choose to hook up with me. And second, it might not actually protect me from being publicly humiliated. With PPML, you can also edit bullets that people send you, so even if I did use some other avatar, Darla could always reskin it to look like me before uploading to a revenge porn site.
Since being chicken wouldn’t save me, I decided I might as well be bold—at least that would allow me to pick the most flattering version of myself. I set to work, creating a ten-minute scenario that I thought Darla would enjoy, based on various things she’d said and other little hints that she’d dropped. It took me three days to put together, and another couple days to polish. Once I had it just the way I wanted it, I encrypted the bullet and attached it to an email.
Then I paused, before hitting send, and asked myself whether I really wanted to do this. But the question was rhetorical: I’d made up my mind the moment Darla had asked for the bullet. And while I understood I might not be happy with the consequences of my actions, I didn’t for an instant believe that I’d be sorry.
“WHO WOULD YOU HAVE PICKED AS A STAND-IN?” DARLA asked me, afterwards. “If you’d decided to pussy out?”
“I don’t know. Keanu Reeves, maybe?”
“Keanu Reeves?” She made a gagging expression. “He’s older than my grandfather.”
“Real Keanu is older than your grandfather. Fantasy Keanu is whatever age you decide to skin him as. I’d have cloned the avatar from Point Break footage if I’d decided to go that way.”
“Yeah, well. I’m glad you had the balls to play yourself.”
So was I—although, all things considered, I was surprised that it had worked. After I’d sent her the bullet, I didn’t hear from Darla for two days, and when she reappeared, she immediately picked another fight with Ray. I arrived in the middle of that, so I wasn’t even sure what it was about, but for Ray it was the last straw. “Either she goes, or I do,” he told me, before logging out.
It was then that I read Darla the riot act. Or tried to—it’s hard to effectively chastise someone when you’re waiting to find out if they’ll sleep with you. Darla took full advantage of the situation and proceeded to tease the shit out of me, even as I insisted that no, really, I was serious: Whatever I might wish for, if she forced me to choose between her and the business, I’d pick the business. In the end, I did get the point across—or maybe Darla, having had her fill of fun, got tired of hearing me repeat myself. Fine, she said, if Ray’s going to be such a huge pussy about it, I’ll leave him alone. And Anja. And the customers.
I was still deciding whether to believe this when Darla grinned and asked me if I wanted to go someplace more private. She gave me the IP address of a mystery website and a password I’d need to get into it. And so now here we were, wherever here was.
It was a barren rock in outer space, the pronounced curve of the horizon making me think of the planetoids in The Little Prince. Someone had built a love nest inside a shallow crater, tucking a four-poster bed and a heart-shaped jacuzzi under a geodesic dome. UV lights in the dome struts made the naked skins of our avatars glow, and when I came, a supernova flared in the sky.
“So I’ve been thinking more about what I’d want in a dream game,” Darla said, stretched out beside me on the bed.
“And?”
“What about something like this?”
“You mean a science-fiction setting?”
“No, genius.” Darla turned towards me and propped herself up on an elbow. “I’m talking about fucking.”
“There already are games about fucking. There are even games about fucking that won’t download malware onto your computer.”
“Not about fucking,” she said. “With fucking. Like, what if you did a quality MMORPG like Call to Wizardry, and included an option for players to hook up between dungeon runs?” She considered. “Or during dungeon runs?”
It sounded like a terrible idea. But I remembered how our last discussion about game design had ended, and since I wanted this hookup to be more than a one-time deal, I kept my mouth shut and pretended to think it over.
Darla burst out laughing.
“What?” I said.
“What’s the name of that mod you use, to keep your eyes focused on the person you’re talking to? ‘You So Interesting’?”
“Yeah. Why?”
“You should call up the ex-girlfriend who wrote it and ask her to code another one for the rest of your face,” Darla said. “Because for someone who wants to get ahead in business, you are way too easy to read.”
Wendy had made a similar observation, on more than one occasion; the last time was on the day we broke up. “I don’t know if I’d want a mod like that.”
“Why not?”
I shrugged. “Because I’m selfish but not a sociopath? Or maybe it’s a pride thing.”
“What, like, ‘Real men should be able to lie without help?’”
“When it really matters, yeah.”
“That’s a retarded way to think,” Darla said, leaning hard on “retarded.” But I didn’t rise to the bait, and after a moment she sighed and said, “So tell me why my idea about putting fucking in an MMORPG is stupid. It’s OK, I promise I won’t get pissed. You’ve got me in a good mood.”
That was nice to hear, but I thought I’d better proceed cautiously anyway. “It’s not stupid,” I said, “just complicated. An Adults Only rating on a game makes everything ten times more difficult. Investment money is a lot harder to come by, and there are lots of companies that won’t do business with you. PayPal, for example.”
“Fuck PayPal.”
“What about Superego? You know, the guys who did the physics engine for Reign in Hell and Camp Blood Killing Spree?”
“Duh, I know who Superego is.”
“Do you know about their new terms of service? As part of the settlement for the sexual harassment lawsuit against their CEO, they added a new rider to their standard contract. If you want to license their software, you have to promise you won’t use it to make a game that promotes sexism or misogyny.”
“Oh, Jesus Christ!” Darla said. “Fucking is not sexist!”
“I agree,” I said, putting my hands up. “But it doesn’t matter what we think. What matters is what Superego thinks. What their lawyers think, and what their lawyers think the plaintiffs in the settlement will think. That’s what an AO rating gets you. You can have the purest heart and the best intentions in the world, and other companies will still treat you like a leper.
“And that’s before you finish the game,” I continued. “Once you’re ready to start marketing, you’ve got advertising restrictions. A lot of game sites won’t review you, and the ones that do will tend to be stupid about it, because nerds and sex.”
“Stupid reviews are fine, as long as they mention the sex part,” Darla countered. “That’s enough to get people interested. And there are other ways to get the word out. I mean, think of the hot takes.”
“Yeah, you could probably gin up a controversy. Of course, Spectacle attracts politicians . . .”
“More free advertising.”
“Lawyers to defend you from obscenity charges aren’t free. But you’re right, that could work as a guerrilla marketing strategy. Once you’ve got people’s attention, though, you need to deliver. And to make up for the extra hassle, the game would need to be really popular.”
“Well, why wouldn’t it be? MMORPGs are popular. Fucking is insanely popular. And two great tastes . . .”
“Don’t necessarily go together,” I said, as gently as I could. “You’re thinking chocolate and peanut butter, but what if this is more like chocolate and shrimp? And that leads me to one more point, which is that even people who are into that particular combination don’t really need new software. I mean, right now, if you want to spice up your raid on Zuul’titlan with an orgy, all you have to do is find a quiet spot between fights and fire up PPML.”
“Yeah, but that takes two different programs.”
“Is that a problem, though? It might be, if PPML didn’t play well with other VR software—but it does. And if you’re into cybersex, you have PPML, so integrating its features directly into an MMORPG doesn’t add anything. But if you’re not into cybersex, the last thing you want is to give griefers the ability to literally fuck with you.”
Despite her promise, Darla had been starting to get pissed off again, but this last remark struck her funny. “I suppose that would be pretty bad for business,” she acknowledged. Then, smirking: “Chocolate and shrimp.”
“I’m not saying it couldn’t work. But there’s got to be some kind of synergy, something extra you get from putting the two things together. We can brainstorm it if you like, try to come up with an angle . . .”
“No, that’s OK,” she said. “It’s just an idea I pulled out of my ass. But you’re right, it’s dumb.”
“We can still talk about it.”
“No, it’s all right. I told you, you’ve got me in a good mood.” All smiles again, she tilted her head back and gestured at the dome and the dark sky above us. “So what do you think of this?”
“I like the lighting effects,” I said, staying focused on her avatar.
“Perv.”<
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“Where are we, anyway?” I asked. “Is this your site, or some secret online club I don’t know about?”
“You’ve got the IP address. Look it up.”
I opened a pop-up window. The IP address was registered to a company in southern California called Cumulonimbus. I didn’t recognize the name, but guessed it was a reference to cloud storage. “Are you renting space on a server farm in L.A.?”
“It’s in Los Angeles, but it’s got nothing to do with me. Keep looking.”
I ran the company name through BusinessTrak. Cumulonimbus turned out to be a subsidiary. It was a data center, and it did rent out storage space to other companies, but most of its servers were reserved for use by its parent corporation: Tempest.
Darla laughed as she watched me put it together. “This is one of Tempest’s servers?” I said. “We’re inside . . . We just . . .”
“We fucked in their corporate data core,” Darla confirmed.
Staring at her under the lights a few moments ago, I’d started to get hard again, but now my erection shriveled away to nothing. I nervously scanned the horizon, imagining an army of blue-gloved EULA cops converging on us from all directions. Though of course that was wishful thinking. Breaking into a private corporate server isn’t a EULA violation—it’s a felony.
“Relax,” Darla said. “We didn’t break in. We used a password.”
“News flash, it’s still burglary if you use a stolen key.”
“There’s no reason for the sysadmin to think we don’t belong here. And even if they did get suspicious, it’s not like they can trace . . . Wait. You are using the PPML proxy server setting, right?”