by E. M. Hardy
Ynnistoria: The pattern I am currently using is based on your previously specified settings. Would you like me to adopt a more personable speech pattern, Glenn?
“The fuck you zoning out for, you lazy scrub? I thought you were trying to get in touch with the dick responsible for talking weapons platforms and combat servos.”
Glenn schooled himself into stillness, remembering that he was still on the clock. He checked in on his message inboxes only to find that the military liaison for Immentrop-Reubens still wasn’t replying to his implant messages.
“My apologies, Mister Weinreb, but it seems that our military liaison is unavailable at the moment.”
“God DAMN this shitty waste of time,” replied the man, his blank-faced virtual avatar snorting in disgust. “Should have started with fucking Cybernex or Bulgarin Industries.”
“Our military liaison should be logging on soon, Mister Weinreb,” Glenn replied smoothly, attempting to salvage a potentially lucrative contract. “I can immediately alert you the moment he does so.”
Glenn coughed into his avatar’s balled fist, making a play at servility. “While I am not authorized to access the military information suites of Immentrop-Reubens, I am authorized to list down what you’re looking for.”
“You mean to say you expect me to spill my guts out, tell you everything I want and need, while you can’t even offer me jack-shit in return?”
“Not exactly complete jack-shit, Mister Weinreb. I can save you some time by condensing your requests into bullet-point format, pass it on to the relevant divisions so they can prepare the information in advance.”
Glenn leaned in with his avatar, lowering his voice to a near whisper. “Passing these queries on to the armaments and mechanized combat divisions of the company will also start spreading some buzz around. The military liaison, Mister Wessels, will have the final say in sharing the relevant information, but maybe he’ll log on to his virtual office just a little bit faster when the division heads start lighting a fire under his ass.”
Glenn wished that this man would have had the decency of using a faced avatar so he could read the expressions, but the blank avatar’s face gave nothing away. He instead spent his time observing the man’s bodily tells. A slight angling of the neck, the almost-imperceptible nod of approval, the loosening of the hand’s grip on the knees—all these and more told Martin that Eckard Weinreb was at least dialing down on the tension.
That, and the telepathic hints from Empathy confirmed his initial suspicions:
Eckard Weinreb
Mollified. Impressed. Curious.
Thoughtful. Distracted. Refocused.
Concerned. Irritated. Rushed.
“Huh. Looks like you’re not a complete waste of perfectly good oxygen after all,” the gruff man grudgingly admitted with a sour-faced nod.
Glenn straightened up, putting on the best innocent smile he could manage. “Thank you for the compliment, Mister Weinreb. Please excuse me a moment while I go ahead and ruffle a few feathers for you.”
***
Glenn sighed in relief after wrapping up his last client for the morning. He cricked his avatar’s neck, more for a sense of finality than to stretch out any sore muscles. He stepped out of his virtual office, the background shutting down behind him as he did so, when he spotted Lee’s avatar walking toward him.
“Hey there, boss. Going to log out now and… Lee, what’s wrong?”
Lee’s avatar was the picture of perfection, exuding calm confidence with a warm smile. Eyes crinkled in pleasant interest, shoulders hanging loose in complete relaxation. Its strides were even, properly measured, and full of poise as it approached him head-on.
And it was all fake, because Lee had his avatar on auto-pilot.
Lee did not pause to acknowledge Glenn’s remark. He just stepped past him, waved at Glenn’s office to turn the environment back on, and hastily stepped inside. Sensing something was terribly off, Glenn quietly followed suit and shut the door of his office—adjusting the privacy settings to screen out all audio and visuals.
“They’re dead, Glenn. All of them.”
Glenn’s avatar stood stock-still, taking in Lee’s shaky voice, tear-streaked face, and trembling limbs as his superior shut down the auto-pilot and took full control of his avatar.
“The landlord checked out Tiffany’s room this morning after complaints of a foul odor. They found the dried-out husk of her naked body. Police said someone broke in, raped her, and then killed her off with some weird chemical that instantly dries the body. No signs of forced entry though, and the CCTVs in her apartment complex caught nothing.
“Rob’s landlord found him with his heart literally exploded out of his chest. His apartment was a mess, broken furniture and shattered appliances everywhere. They even found scratches on his room where he tried to claw his way out, like he was terrified of something.
“Melanie, our shy office wallflower… she went all berserk and ran out of her apartment screaming and stabbing everyone she could find. Police had to shoot her down because Tasers and restraints couldn’t knock her out, like she was high on some kind of drug or something.
“And then there’s Marick.” Lee was visibly shuddering now, tears streaming down his face as his avatar reflected his body’s need to pour out his heart. “Good old Marick with a wife and two children, happiest man I ever met… and his family found him bled out in his bathtub from two slit wrists.”
Glenn was having a hard enough time processing everything that was happening to his co-workers, but that last one hit him hard. It sparked something in him, pulled something out of the foggy depths of his broken memory.
A familiar woman… one that hated him as much as he loved her. Mother… yeah, she was called Mother. Pointed fingers, screams of accusation, slaps and kicks and more screams followed by sobs of guilt. Him apologizing, not knowing what he did wrong, and clutching at the hem of her dress even as she continued hitting him over and over again. Mother sunk low in her tub, the water dyed deep, dark red. She—
(Good boys do what they’re told, forget what they’re told to forget. You’re a good boy, aren’t you?)
Glenn shook his avatar’s head, his brow crinkling in worry as Lee sat down on the ground to clutch his head.
“The cops said that a wave of violent assaults and mysterious suicides is hitting the city, and they’re doing everything they can to keep things under control. Shit, Glenn... what the fuck’s happening out there?”
Chapter 05
Glenn Olson
Life Points: 473/2,200
Warning! You are currently being affected by Infernal Hunger!
Glenn sighed as he closed the window in his HUD. A little under eight hours of life left—a quarter of his total capacity—and the cravings were starting up. The now-familiar hunger cramped his abdomen and pelvis, the unnatural desire for both food and flesh nagging away at the back of his mind.
He wanted sorely to follow up with Kristina, to send her a message. He needed to know ahead of time if her friends were willing to help him out or if he had to find some other way of recovering his life points.
He shuddered at the thought of losing control again, waking up to the act of looming over another sleeping woman in her home.
Glenn Olson: Hey there, Kristina. Sorry for being annoying, but are your friends interested in the deal we discussed earlier?
Message sent, Glenn tried his best to relax and wait for a reply. One minute, two minutes, five minutes… he realized she must still be busy with practice.
She explained to him that the life of an e-athlete wasn’t as glamorous as the videos suggested. They only showed the moments of victory or failure of a couple of matches. They didn’t show how the e-athletes spent most of their waking hours training, just like their phys-athlete counterparts. Where phys-athletes developed bone and sinew to excel at their sport, so did e-athletes hone their minds and
neurons.
What truly differentiated them, however, was the need to adapt.
The rules of phys-sports like football, MMA, and hoverball were often set in stone. Phys-athletes trained with the confidence that their knowledge would be relevant for years to come. E-athletes didn’t share that luxury.
Much like their earlier video-game equivalents, alt-game sports made minor changes at least once a year. E-athletes like Kristina needed to constantly relearn their chosen games, adjusting their strategies to compensate for modifications in the rules of the game. On the professional levels, something as insignificant as a half-second decrease in stun duration or a 10% increase in a skill’s area-of-effect could drastically change the way battles were fought.
That’s assuming the game they literally built their careers on remained relevant for years to come. It was an all-too common story for dedicated e-athletes to start from scratch because their chosen games weren’t popular enough to support an e-sports league anymore.
This is why Glenn didn’t press Kristina for an immediate answer, instead sending her a query and waiting patiently for her to reply at her own time.
He wanted to just relax after work, play his Bishop in Five Wars Online to chill and wind down. He instead decided to be more proactive about his need to feed.
“Ynnistoria, are you there?” he asked aloud within the sparse space of his alt-world lobby.
Ynnistoria: Yes, Glenn? How may I help you?
“Bring up a list of… erm… women offering paid sexual services within a ten-mile radius.”
Ynnistoria: Will do, Glenn. Searching now. Twenty-eight women advertising sexual services for money.
Glenn grimaced. “Only twenty-eight? Aren’t there like two million people in this sector of Nu Angeles?”
Ynnistoria: Query unclear, Glenn. Could you please rephrase the question?
Glenn was just about to say something when he snapped his mouth shut. All things considered, the fact that Ynnistoria found twenty-eight women still offering sex for money was a small miracle.
First off was virtual reality. Why bother with the risks and costs of real-world prostitution when you could fulfill your deepest, darkest secrets in the alt-world? Rape, snuff, pedophilia, bestiality… people turned a blind eye to the depravity since it was all locked away in the virtual confines of the alt-world.
And then there were the fembots. Glenn’s own company, Immentrop-Reubens, offered a line of companion robots with domestic protocols. That was the polite term for house servants with synthetic sexual organs. These were targeted specifically towards customers who didn’t spend as much time in the alt-world, those who installed implants that didn’t contain the neural connectors for full tactile immersion, and those whose nerve stems weren’t compatible with synaptic link technology.
Last but not least, there was the Universal Basic Income. People from a few decades ago used to scramble for whatever occupations they could get to make ends meet. With robots and e-commerce taking away a lot of those jobs, governments and mega-corporations around the world explored all options to contain the unrest that followed. Simply paying everyone a basic wage solved a lot of the headaches that came with the mass adoption of virtual reality and consumer robotics.
Nobody needed to find a job with the same urgency anymore, at least not if they were content with simply surviving.
Glenn was busy going through the twenty-eight women, coming up with a plausible cover for his incubus form, when his HUD pinged an alert.
Kristina: Sam and Haze are swinging by my place in about an hour for the meet-up. Get your ass over here so we can prepare.
Kristina: By the way, I got pulled by my coach early because my reflexes are all shot. Can’t aim for shit, can’t dodge for shit. He’s telling me to fuck off and try again after I get my head back into the game. Is this related to your magical dick powers? Because if yes, then we definitely need to talk about the consequences of getting laid with you.
Glenn gulped. He knew at the back of his mind that life points were more than just arbitrary points on a scale, but Kristina’s terse reply brought his dilemma back to his full attention.
***
“Sorry. I honestly didn’t know that… uh… draining life points would affect you that way.”
Kristina glared at Glenn across the table, crossing her arms and wearing a deep scowl on her face. She continued glaring a few moments longer before releasing a deep sigh and shaking her head.
“Yeah, no biggie. I should have known something like this might happen when an incubus literally drains some of my life away like some vampire… except less blood-sucking and more mind-blowing orgasms.”
Kristina chuckled after that little explanation, leaning back on her chair’s backrest for support. “I just didn’t expect to feel as fuzzy-headed after that.”
“Again, sorry about that,” Glenn replied with a guilty wince at the unspoken accusation.
She smiled ruefully upon seeing his reaction. “Right. Sorry for snapping at you as well. It’s not like I’m permanently disabled or anything, and last night was fun and all. I’m looking forward to doing that again… when my life points are topped back up and I’m not participating in any competitive events the next day.”
Glenn nodded, thankful for the reprieve, and examined Kristina.
Kristina
Life Points: 112/700 (approximate)
“You currently have 112 life points… that’s 10 up from the 102 you had this morning.”
10 life points in six hours… 40 points every 24 hours, if she continued recovering at the same pace. It would take her half a month to bring her life points up to their full capacity.
“Yikes,” she replied, suddenly worried. “Please don’t tell me I’m going to be all weird for the whole month. I can’t afford to go on vacation for that long, not if I want to stay competitive!”
“One second,” Glenn answered with a finger up in the air. “Let me ask my digital assistant. She might have an idea on what to do.”
Are you there, Ynnistoria?
Ynnistoria: Yes, Glenn? How may I help you?
Were you listening in on the conversation? Can you tell me anything about how Kristina can speed up her recovery?
Ynnistoria: Certainly, Glenn. Eating, drinking, sleeping, resting, staying physically fit—humans ought to continue recovering life points as long as they keep themselves healthy. At least this is how it works for mortals in the mundane realms.
Glenn slumped in sadness at Ynnistoria’s revelation, but then realized something a bit off about her assessment.
Wait a second. Wasn’t Kristina at around 500 life points when I first saw her? Shouldn’t those points be maxed out at 700 out of 700 or something?
His assistant seemed to freeze in thought for a few seconds before returning with a reply.
Ynnistoria: Mortals are in a constant state of flux, Glenn. Physical, emotional, spiritual—all these things change. Even something as simple as a blackened mood can reduce their vitality, making them more susceptible to illness and injury.
Ynnistoria: Demons, however, obtain the most life force from humans locked in a specific mental state. You are technically a Lust Demon, even if you are locked into your incubus form. As such, humans gripped by loneliness and despair give you the most vitality if you drain them. A victim hungry for intimacy and attention will be easier for a Lust Demon such as yourself to drain than one that is happy and content. These Marked targets would give you significantly more Life Points when drained, even if their total life point pool is lower than other healthier targets.
Glenn grimaced at his assistant’s revelation.
“Well? Is it that bad?” Kristina’s comments snapped Glenn out of his thoughts, and he suddenly remembered what he wanted to ask Ynnistoria in the first place.
“Eat, drink, sleep, rest… basically just do what you no
rmally do. Oh, and Ynnistoria says that your disposition plays a big role in affecting your recovery of life points. If you’re always pissed off or down in the dumps, those points will climb back slower. If you’re happy and content, they’ll go back up a lot faster.”
Kristina stared at Glenn for a few moments before raising an eyebrow in disbelief. “Wait… your digital assistant just so happens to know all this stuff? I mean, is there some secret website out there cataloging the ins and outs of demonic knowledge?”
Glenn shrugged. “Not sure how it works, but at least it gives me an idea about what’s going on.”
The two people just stared at one another before Kristina broke and chuckled. “Fine then, keep your secrets.”
“No, seriously! I have no idea where my assistant is getting all this!”
“Yeah, yeah. In any case, my friends Hazel and Samantha ought to be here in the next… thirty, forty minutes. You play SoulBound?”
Taken aback by the sudden shift in topic, Glenn could only dumbly shake his head as he gave his reply. “Um… not really. Too competitive for my tastes. That, and it’s subscription-based with rather expensive monthly rates. I prefer Five Wars Online.”
“Really? That game uses dumb AI, you know. The NPCs aren’t as realistic as the ones in SoulBound.” She tapped her chin in thought, then shrugged. “But whatever. It’s free-to-play right? Mind partying up with a scrub like me and teaching me the ropes?”
***