Interlude Nine

Despite Livia’s cocky declarations that she wanted to take my new equipment for a test drive, which hadn’t sounded as alien to me while I was in that form as it did when I was in my natural body, aside from some kisses and some caressing nothing had happened when we piled into the bed. As big as Livia’s playground-sized mattress was, to fit seven people, we needed some piling. At least Wynter slept soundly on the couch, only waking up every now and then to eat a bite. Gamma had promised to keep an eye on her and on Alessandra, who slept soundly in Gamma’s bed.

“We need more space,” I mumbled when I woke up at 5:03 again. I was so woven into girl parts (and Paul, who wouldn’t like to be called one of the girls, even though I put him into the same category as the others) that I feared more than once I wouldn’t manage to free myself in time. Yet, liberal application of brute force managed to free me.

The living room was dark and empty, so I assumed Gamma had taken Wynter into her room to get some sleep herself. Even an AI in a digital copy of a body needed some sleep. The bathroom was a mess of dirty clothes and used towels thrown everywhere, the hamper long full. I walked over the mess carefully in case someone had forgotten their cell, then put my arse where it belonged this time of night.

“I hereby call the daily meeting of the committee on commenting on the absurdity of our lives into session. Our first speaker is Jane. Please take the throne,” I joked with myself. “Thank you, speaker Jane. I only have one short remark. Bonkers.”

To be honest, there wasn’t much to go over after I already had a session during the time my body was out of order. I more and more felt a certain disconnect from it, like it was just a piece of clothing, something I could easily replace, even if I had gotten attached to it over time. And in a sense, that wasn’t objectively wrong either. If I believed the “outer layer” story, my body had died last week, and what I was currently sporting was just a digital facsimile.

I blocked out the reality-descriptive sub-feed and touched myself. I touched my leg, I meant. I wouldn’t go down there with my fingers before wiping. The skin felt rubbery, and when I pressed in with my fingers, it felt like a solid sponge with no definition inside at all. It was just a digital shell. I let the RDSF come back slowly, marvelling at the feel of muscles and the tickling of tiny hairs it told me to feel. It wasn’t so much that it gave me those impressions as it tricked my brain into remembering them.

I let go of my leg and pulled the system pad out of my back pocket to go over today’s quests, only remembering I was sitting on the toilet in the natural state of things—naked—after I had turned it on and had to wait for the screen to slowly be drawn. That was…not as surprising as it should have been. I had told people time and again it wasn’t a real object, just a representation of the system interface, so why would I be surprised by that?

The quests were more of the usual, and as expected there now was a new section for the dungeon. Our group was at the top of the leaderboard in all categories except two. Chloe, who didn’t show up in most other categories, held the top (and only) spot in the “Permanent Changes to the Dungeon” category, and Cecilia was immortalised in the “Fallen” category, her “Level 1, Room 1” ranking hard to beat.

Getting more used to the slowness of the device, I pulled up the member list. Thankfully, it was sorted by joining order, newest first by default, so it didn’t take a long wait for me to see what I was interested in. We had indeed gained a new group of four people yesterday. An all-boys group, judging by the names. What were the odds of them all being gay? 80 or 90%, I’d say, from my experience with what the system had given us so far. Yeah, call me cynical, I don’t care.

The list didn’t show classes or races, I’d have to tap each name and wait for the details screen to see if Kinasteria had written something into the remarks field, but I wasn’t curious enough to do that. Charlie and Wynter weren’t yet members, I’d have to ask them later to join up. I needed to talk to Wynter anyway. She’d already been out of it when I got to the point where I could think more than “foooooodzzz”.

I also needed to have a word with Charlie, preferably in private. She was married, after all, but nothing in her behaviour yesterday showed that. For a girl who was so possessive that her wife openly complained about it, that was strange. Had the system messed with her mind? Or even wiped the marriage out of existence altogether?

But what if it did? I could not put it back. Should I send off Charlie, kick her out into the cold, so to say, for something that was no longer part of her, because she would not be here if it still were? In one way, this would be like restraining a drunk person to prevent them from jumping off a bridge. But then, a drunk person would sober up again and regret waking up dead. Um, or paralysed. If the system really had messed with Charlie, was there any likelihood of rolling that back?

It was the same conundrum all over again. Of all the people in my bed, the only one I knew for a fact had completely voluntarily and with no mind fuckery gotten into it was Livia. It was her bed, after all, and she had invited me into it. Everyone else could conceivably be mind-controlled to do so. And even if not, I was sure the system at least dropped their inhibitions.

Morally, what I was doing with them was wrong, in my opinion. There was only one redeeming factor—I was under the same influence and could not think about that during the day. All I could do was try to feel guilty at night based on the assumption that the system influence went above what could be considered “non-personality altering”. I did not subscribe to the opinion that someone who was only influenced by their own emotions and hormones could claim “non-consensual” a week later, like, for example, Sweden did.

But again, just like everything I was racking my brains about in these sessions, this led nowhere. “Action item number one is now up for vote. Wipe, swipe, pull and back into the knot. All in favour, raise your hands. Motion has passed unopposed, session is now closed.”