by Ginger Booth
Copeland sighed. His attempt to freeze out the kid since his transgression hadn’t worked. For one thing, the engineer was actually rather pleased at how the baths turned out. The Roman hillside was a nice break from the cargo hold, and staring at the same 9 faces day after day, getting on each other’s nerves.
“I really am sorry,” Ben murmured. “And I really didn’t share any of your confidences. I wouldn’t. I just wanted to see the baths.”
They ducked through the curtain into their private grotto. On the outside it looked like a marble pool-house. This door should have led to a windowless chamber. Such literalism was unnecessary in a virtual environment. Copeland instead selected a graveled glade in a pretty green woodland. Each alcove led to an identical private copy of the same. The Roman couches came equipped with a more recent-vintage extension to lay your face down into a padded opening, the better to massage the neck. Hot rocks and steamed towels and warm scented oils lay at the ready on a lichen-covered stone table hoary with age. The little couch-side drink tables were the same texture but shaped like the ubiquitous Mahina mushroom footstool. The mechanic had no strong decorator opinions regarding which accessories went together.
He lay face down, enjoying the closeup of delicate violets growing through the white gravel. “And do you like the baths?”
“Oh, yeah! I could almost get addicted to VR again,” Ben breathed.
Copeland squeezed his eyes shut. “Wrong answer, Ben.”
“Not all the time, but…” Ben attempted.
“It’s not real, Ben. Just enjoy your massage, OK?”
Eli Rasmussen accepted a goblet of wine from a slave shaped like a Grecian goddess. She smiled at him vapidly. He ducked his head and strolled onward to the far end of the pool.
He regarded the chaotic plant life. There were no bananas in ancient Rome. None of these flowers bore blooms this large. For some reason the marching rows of apples and coconut palms particularly annoyed him. That and the Japanese volcano.
This is silly.
He sighed. He should at least sample the baths before logging out, to appreciate Copeland’s efforts, and observe the sunset rites. It wasn’t as though his experiments actually required his attention every minute of every day. His new seeds would be ready this evening when he got back to them, whether it was this hour or tomorrow.
The modern Japanese onsen section of the ancient Roman baths appealed to him, possibly because the fake girls were diminutive. He sat to dangle his feet in.
And he immediately yanked his feet back out. That water was hot! So he sat cross-legged on the stone and watched the people – the real ones – and tried to ignore the utterly ridiculous botany that surrounded him.
Problem was, they were the exact same 9 people he studied every sunset over drinks. And sunset was only slightly better attended than lunch and supper. By this point, better than half the time he could accurately predict what each member of the Thrive was about to say before they opened their mouths.
And he didn’t care. They weren’t his kind. Oh, he enjoyed them, Sass more than the rest because they shared a love of plants. But Eli exulted in having these many months of sabbatical for his research. He wasn’t here to socialize.
When Copeland led the way into the alcoves, Eli logged out.
“Crowd’s thinning,” Clay observed, as Sass caught up to him taking a ‘breather’ at the end of the ‘lap pool’ section. He enjoyed watching her tidy crawl stroke. This past lap he’d done butterfly. The simulation was utterly unlike real butterfly – no gasping for air. But he had fun.
“Anyone else logged out?” Sass inquired, wiping water from her face.
“Just Eli. The others went into the alcoves.” Abel and Jules were still experiencing for the first time the childlike joy of jumping into the water, over and over again. Clay trusted Sass got over that before age 10, as he had. Growing up in the Northeast of what was once America, one thing they’d never lacked for was water.
This was the opposite of the settlers bound for Denali. The dead West was bone-dry at the end, its refugees relying on sweat recyclers and a liter a day water rations in brutal heat. Funny how the Adirondacks refugees went to the dust of Mahina, and the desert dwellers to ocean-swathed Denali.
Sass hopped onto the side of the pool. She hooked him with a foot to draw him between her legs. “And are we going into the alcoves? And – separately or together?” She wagged her eyebrows.
Clay considered this an IQ test for the truly dim. “If Cortez and Wilder, or Jules and Abel, headed into separate alcoves –”
“I’d tackle them, the fools,” Sass agreed. “Or not. Maybe I should have forbidden this.” He companionably blinked at her. “No. You’re right. They need to choose and learn.”
He pulled in closer, hands on her waist. “You wanted to exit the simulation first. Eli already beat you to it. And you can’t watch them in the alcoves. I will demand a full massage and sexual favors after your watch.”
“Deal. Logging out – now.”
“Should we try the alcoves next?” Jules asked Abel, as Kassidy disappeared behind a sumptuous silk curtain, patterned in elephants, giraffes, and zebras.
“Next pool first, I think,” Abel differed. He slipped over an underwater wall into the next temperature. The physics of this weren’t constrained by reality. They’d been in a deeper cool pool. Keeping his hand below the surface, he could poke a finger into the transition to a waist-deep medium-warm bath next door. The incongruity amused him.
Jules grinned and did a somersault over the unnecessary low dividing wall. She came up, shaking water out of her hair. She paused in awe to watch Sass swim, a skill no settler on Mahina had opportunity to learn. Their idea of open water was a children’s splash pool. Even a bathtub was rare – people were afraid they’d drown. But Kassidy and Clay dove in as well.
She clambered to stand on the sub-wall. “Think I can jump like they did?” she asked her husband.
“Um, they said we couldn’t hurt ourselves,” he allowed. He planted his hands and hopped up beside her. “I don’t know about that overhead-arms thing. Sass! Could you teach us how you…?” He didn’t know what it was called. He just held his hands up as though in surrender.
“Cannonball,” Sass suggested, and explained what that looked like.
“Pencil dive,” Clay countered beside her. He described the art of jumping up, then coming down feet-first, hands by your sides.
“You can just jump in and splash,” Kassidy opined. But of course they’d done that in the first place.
“Let’s try pencil!” Jules urged her husband. It never occurred to her to close her eyes. The simulation supplied no chlorine burn, or even breathing or consequences to not breathing. Abel lurched back up to the surface while Jules marveled at watching the underwater ends of people, and blew bubbles. After a moment, Abel dropped back down to join her. Playing patty-cake underwater and blowing billows of bubbles was good fun.
The game engine did prevent underwater conversation.
They tried every sub-pool, and must have jumped in a hundred times. She feared Abel was starting to get bored. By now, the couple were the last people left in the shared instance between the colonnades.
At last Abel allowed her to draw them into an alcove, with a quartet of masseuses. Jules thought it was really nice how even going last, the selection of slaves was the same as the first. As someone ducked through their choice of curtains with some slaves, identical ones ventured out from behind columns to replace them.
Inside the grotto, completely alone except for NPC servants, she leaned close to Abel’s wet ear to murmur, “I want to peek inside his bathing suit.”
“No, don’t do that!” Abel groaned as Jules tiptoed over to their giant ruddy-skinned slave. He had high cheek-bones and straight black hair, braided back with a feather. “Jules, they’re artwork. Real people don’t look like that. I don’t want you to compare me with that. How would you feel?”
This argument gave Jul
es pause. Their lady slaves had a lot more curves than Jules’ own rather gangly frame. Gorgeous faces, too. But she hesitated only a moment before pulling open the red man’s bulging wet bikini. “Jealous, Abel?” she teased.
Then she looked down in consternation. Why, no, Abel didn’t look like that. “Huh.”
Abel defensively strode up beside her and took a look. “No way. Jules, guys see each other’s equipment all the time in the bathroom. Nobody is that big.”
“Really?” Jules teased him.
“You little vixen.” Abel grabbed her from behind, pinning both her arms and thereby making her let go of the slave’s bikini. He turned her to point at the slave women, both beaming at them. “But I have seen women with boobs or butts that big.”
“Ooh, Abel Greer, fighting words!”
His mouth tickled her ear even in the simulation. “And I don’t want them. They’re fake pictures. Not my wife. You want a massage?”
“Hm. I want to see what they do with the stuff. And then we can try it back in our cabin,” Jules decided practically. “I want my real muscles to feel better.”
“OK, deal,” Abel agreed. “So we each get a male and a female slave?”
When he put it that way… “Let’s just log out,” Jules decided.
Cortez drifted into the grotto behind Wilder. She was relieved he wanted to tackle this together. She’d been afraid he’d suggest separate alcoves.
“Wilder,” she interrupted him, as he hopped onto his massage couch. “Ben showed me how to hack the system. We can change our appearance inside the game.” She shyly cycled through some variations, and added padding to her spare and muscular compact form. “You like? Or…what would you like?”
His eyes and grin tracked the transformations. “That looks great, baby! Oh. Do you want me to change anything?” Doubt began to pinch his brow.
“I like you just the way you are,” she claimed, exactly what she wished he’d say to her. She kissed his bicep. She couldn’t reach much higher.
“Cool, then!” He grinned lasciviously, and flopped down face up for his massage. “You!” He pointed to a pair of dainty Asian slave girls. “Gimme the works.”
Cortez sighed and lay face-down. Her pair of blond Viking hunks started in, rubbing virtual hot oil into her virtual shoulders and ankles. She had to admit, it felt pretty good. And if she closed her eyes, she could imagine the huge hands were Wilder’s.
Kassidy chose a half dozen male slaves and two female to accompany her. And in a spirit of scientific exploration, she tried every menu option on offer.
Ben left his alcove with Copeland to fetch another pair of masseuses, only to find that he couldn’t re-enter the engineer’s private instance. On return to the alcove, he got his own copy of the grotto to himself.
Well, himself and an identical pair of slaves to the ones Cope picked. He felt bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, unlike the others. Ben normally went to bed at 05:00 after his lonely midnight watch, but his day off began at midnight. He settled into enjoying the possibilities to the max on his own.
He’d hoped Copeland might be willing to get…adventurous. But the engineer had warned him not to expect that. The secret he wasn’t supposed to tell anyone was that the simulation allowed asymmetric experience. It was possible to have two guys go in, and each see and feel the other as a woman, and themselves as men.
Clearly Copeland rued the day he’d ever confided that. Ben was less inhibited. And when he got bored with these slaves, he could pop back out to the pools, take a dip, and collect some more. However many he wanted.
Sass waited at the dining table. Abel and Jules lingered inside the VR a little longer. Eli and Clay were already back in their rooms.
Sass was never concerned about them. She collected their VR headsets in a box anyway.
Copeland emerged next, alone, and was all too eager to relinquish his headset.
“Ben?” Sass asked.
He shook his head and traced the grain of the table with a finger. “Don’t make me rat on him, cap. But like we thought.”
“You gave us a pretty evening, John,” Sass murmured. “This is no criticism of you. And we can do it again on the way back maybe, a single night. When we celebrate halfway, maybe.” Their halfway celebration toward Denali had been a reprise of Clay’s popular sunset piano bar act. The crew was amazed that he played the keyboard well enough that he’d brought one along.
Copeland nodded and sighed. “I hope my safeguards work to keep them out of VR. They’re going to hate me.”
She shook her head minutely. “My call. You recommended it, but it’s still my choice. Did you enjoy yourself at all?”
“Not really,” he confessed. “I like Ben’s neck-rubs better. When he’s with me instead of ogling pretty people. Did it look like ancient Rome?”
No. “Never been to ancient Rome,” she quipped. “It was pretty. I’m sorry if this brought up bad memories for you.” He hadn’t said much. But he’d been loyal to the Schuyler mobster Josiah ever since, for bailing him out of the custom VR porn business. Hell of a job for a 15-year-old boy.
“I’m alright. Good night, cap.”
Morale truly sucked the following week. Half the crew attempted to bypass the pattern lockout and print new VR headsets to replace the ones Sass locked away. Even if they’d printed them, it would have done them no good, because she locked away the master processor and its programs, too.
“What harm does it do?” Ben demanded, among others.
“It’s the opportunity cost,” Sass explained doggedly. “Of living a fake life instead of your real one. You’re on probably the greatest adventure of your lifetime. Don’t waste it on escapism. I need you here.”
“On the most boring, do-nothing trip ever?” Ben countered. “Sass, we’re climbing the walls here!”
Daily, in fact, Sass quipped to herself. She led them up the walls on workouts. Though half the time Ben joined Clay’s afternoon exercise session instead of Sass’s morning drill.
“You’ll be close to graduation by the time you get home,” she encouraged patiently. “Who knows, maybe even started on a master’s degree if you focus.”
That kind of focus was not Ben’s strong suit. He’d settled on life support engineering as a major simply because he got plenty of practical experience on the Thrive, and loved to work with Copeland. The engineer suggested that the kid’s vocation was skyship officer, not mechanics.
Sass stuck to her guns, and fell back on Clay in private for moral support. And in time, the crew grumpily recovered their morale from their evening in the Garden of Eden.
15
Day 115 outbound from Mahina
38 days to Denali
Disaster struck on toga day.
“Sass!” Ben cried out, entering to disrupt her morning coffee in the galley. “Where is thine toga-toga?” He wore his own wound sheet lovingly draped and edged with the painted purple of authority as guest morale officer for this sunset. His arms bore a neatly folded pile of linens.
Sass trusted the costumes would come clean in the wash. Tired from a late night discussing ex-lovers with Clay, she dubiously took in his winding sheeting.
“Do I get to wear purple too?” Apparently the ancient Romans reserved this royal hue, derived from a rare seashell, for some kind of military officer. As sole captain in umpty million miles, she felt she ought to qualify.
“No, I only made one purple edge,” Ben confirmed, setting his pile on the table. “The ancient Romans were sexist.” He offered her a choice of white or pink sheet. Some featured blood red edges.
“Who uses pink sheets?” Sass wasn’t sure she wanted to know.
“Abel and Jules,” Ben replied. “Pink is Jules’ favorite color.”
“Huh. She never wears pink.” Sass selected the white without enthusiasm, sure she’d spill something on it within the hour. “Are there folding instructions?”
“Just wing it,” Ben advised. “Part of the fun of the day! Oh, we don’t know i
f Roman men wore underwear beneath their togas. Women wore leather panties and tied a strap around their breasts. Probably.” He pumped a fist. “If you want to truly embrace –”
“I don’t,” she assured him. Though the sheer fabric would surely showcase her choice of underwear.
“Be sure you’re in toga before morning workout!” Ben exhorted. He plucked up his sheets and departed to spread his ray of morning sunshine to the rest of the crew.
Sass sighed and took her coffee back to her cabin to change before 07:00 workout, sparing a bleary eye at Clay’s door across the catwalk. He slept in, this morning as every morning. Clay led the afternoon workout shift.
Some of her ideas truly sucked, she reflected. Yet they were almost four months from Mahina now, and no one had killed each other yet. She was doing something right.
That something didn’t include toga draping. After several iterations, she elected sarong style over her a flesh-colored workout bra and panties. She no sooner stepped out of her cabin than Kassidy emerged from hers for the exercise session.
The urb chose to meet the toga challenge with a lacy camisole for a foundation. She’d folded the sheet like an accordion length-wise, bound it across the middle with a hair tie, then secured that clump at one shoulder. The flowing semi-pleated ends were bound with a filmy peach scarf about the hips, leaving one breast camisole-clad but toga-bare.
Kassidy explained in detail how to accomplish her look. Sass was soon followed by Jules in studying her handiwork with dismay.
Yes, come to think of it, Ben had worn a T-shirt under his toga, and belted it. Sass was just too groggy to notice.
She turned back to her cabin for a re-match with this challenge. She spilled her first black coffee on her toga mid-yawn as she banged into her door.