The phone rang as I was getting out of the shower. The bathroom smelled strongly of sex just from it being washed off me. Wrapped in a towel from the waist down I walked into my mother's room to grab the cordless. Through the window I caught sight of Ms. Richards walking through her dining room, her own cordless held to her ear, and remembered I told her I would help move some things this afternoon. She was wearing a loose-fitting, pale blue dress, black pumps, and tan nylons. It was a safe assumption the nylons were thigh highs. The dress's hem was a little on the high side, the neckline a little low, and the light fabric clung to her petite body. It was probably bordering on scandalous for a bank teller to be wearing to work, but still acceptable. She sat against the edge of the table facing in my general direction, crossed her perfect legs, and dangled one of her pumps off her toe.
I clicked the phone on, and answered as though I didn't know who was calling. "Hello?"
"Johnny, hey."
"Hey, Ms. Richards. Still need some help?"
"Johnny, Linda, please." I watched in the window as she straightened a stray lock of her salt and pepper bob.
"Sorry. Linda." Even though this level of familiarity with her was something I had dreamed of in the real world, her first name still sounded weird in my mouth.
"It should be pretty quick, I just want to box up some of David's stuff and get it in the basement."
"Okay, I'm just back from the gym, but I'll get dressed and come right over." Her face turned abruptly to look directly at me in the window and I was half tempted to drop my towel and give her the same kind of show she had given me the night before but did not.
"No problem, Johnny. I'll leave the door open, just come up to David's room."
"See you soon, Linda." We both hung up, and I watched through the window for a moment as she walked away from me into the other room. I sighed heavy watching the suspender clips under the thin fabric of her dress. Even though all of the encounters the simulation had thrown at me were different, the outcome of going over there was clear, and there was a tinge of guilt about this one. It felt as if I was about to take advantage of my friend's mom. In my actual youth outside of the simulation, she had always effortlessly kept her distance, doubtlessly aware of my crush, and either actively or subconsciously avoided me because of it. Something about obliterating that unspoken boundary with her in the simulation seemed more wrong than the other situations, but I understood what the simulation was trying to do. It found a thing I felt bad about and was, "fixing," it. Just fixing it without the human understanding that treating others how they want to be treated feels better in the long run to most people than getting what they want regardless.
I cradled the phone handset, and repeated to myself the thing I'd been saying the entire time I had been stuck, "How many times have you jacked off thinking of her? This is no different. Right? She's not real, none of this is real. I'm the only one here." After getting dressed I walked next door, and before going in repeated to myself, "she's not real."
When I left the gym that afternoon my mind tried to race, but I kept the reigns on it. The simulation was changing the rules under me, and the lab seemed to be half panicked about it. I needed to get a full message from the lab to figure out how to get out of here, but every time one came in I was distracted part way through it. By my count I had been stuck for about 48 hours now. I wondered how I was eating out there. Did they put a feeding tube in me? A catheter? Maybe it was a situation where time passed faster in the simulation, and my two days had only been half an hour outside of my brain. I had to be honest with myself though. If I was really stuck in some perverted version of my memories of the 90's, and the lab could keep me alive still, if no harm was being done, would that be so bad?
At home I mulled about for a bit, looking for newspapers and magazines, hoping to catch a message from the lab in a calm moment. Nothing came up, and I eventually got in the shower, and now I was willingly putting myself on a path to potential distraction again all because I thought my neighbor was pretty 30 years ago.
I found her upstairs in her son's room, bent over at the waist putting magazines into a box on the floor. Pale, soft flesh was exposed between the top of her stockings and the hem of her skirt. "Hey, Linda," she jumped a little, stood up straight, and smoothed the front of her skirt down with a magazine still in her hand.
"Thanks for coming, Johnny." She gestured around the room, and said, "David took all of his clothes and things with him to school, but my sister is coming to stay for a while, and I wanted to make it comfortable as possible for her in here. Thought I would get rid of all the teenaged boy stuff." She held up the issue of Men's Workout in her hand to illustrate what she meant, opened it to a random page, and added under her breath, "She might appreciate this though." She pointed to a stack of folded boxes propped in a corner, and said, "I thought we could just fill these and see if that's enough."
"Sure. Anywhere I should start?"
"Well actually, yes." She blushed slightly, and eventually said, "I don't know if you would know, but if David had anything his mother maybe shouldn't see, I thought you could take care of that stuff first to save me the embarrassment?"
I chuckled. "Sure. Look away and I'll get that stuff out of here first."
She flashed me an embarrassed half smile, and said, "Thanks Johnny."
I got the shoebox of lingerie catalogs from under his bed and set them in the box she was filling. "All clear."