In a futuristic world where the Internet is an interactive virtual reality, morality laws have outlawed the existence of all sexual content on the net. When even the most innocent of pornography has been banished to the dark corners of the net, the pornography people share and seek has grown increasingly depraved. Marissa is a detective who is on the trail of Stratton, a man who runs a series of illegal sites where it's rumoured you can find far more than just pornography.
In this world, people are assigned only one online profile. It's theirs for life, and the avatar is an accurate projection of their real-world image. As part of her investigations, Marissa takes on a fake profile and avatar— Elle. Elle doesn't exist, she's just a fake profile, the narrative often refers to "Elle" when Marissa is using this fake profile.
Marissa entered the site through the homenode. The homenode was small, a circle perhaps two meters in diameter. Her invisibility status worked, which was something she had hoped for but not counted on. Marissa did a quick scan of the site beyond the node.
Generally, when a person enters a site, the homenode takes them to a central place, with clear signposts to direct them around the site, much like the homepages of the old text-based net. Not so here. The visuals showed a crossroad, but Marissa's scan showed only one of the roads was accessible. It was a plain dirt road, leading down an abandoned-looking street lined with derelict buildings. Her scan showed active users, but her eyes couldn't see any. Her scans also showed that she wouldn't be able to remain invisible once she'd left the safety of the homenode. Which she'd have to do. Sometime. But sometime soon.
Part of Marissa still couldn't believe she was here, despite the work it had taken. Months of investigating Stratton, hacking his account, watching, listening, following breadcrumbs. Then once they'd located this site in the dark web, they'd had to prepare an avatar to come. Marissa's Avatar was that of an eighteen-year-old girl named Elle. Yes it is, of course, illegal to use any other avatar or identity other than your own online, but law enforcement officers can break some laws in the course of their duty.
Marissa was stalling. She took a deep breath, changed her status from "invisible" to "online," and stepped out from the home node.
Nothing happened. Her fake avatar held. No alarms went off, or none that she could sense. She walked down the street, trying for all the world to look like just a naïve young woman investigating a naughty part of the net and not a detective investigating illicit activity of a sexual nature.
The street remained deserted. The buildings she passed had no doors or other apparent entry points. Marissa ran her hand along the side of a building. The tactile feedback was remarkable, it felt as though she was really running her hand along rough old wood with dry, peeling paint. A small fleck of paint flicked off, and she caught it in her fingers. Even something so small as a dry paint fleck was picked up. A combination of very good coding from whoever made this site, and of course the high-quality RJT her real body was lying in.
An RJT, or Responsive Jell Tank, might seem a surprising choice of VR tech to use for this mission, but it was required by the site for entry. The site also required the safety features to be turned off. Yes, jailbreaking a RJT to turn off the safeties was illegal, but it was also very dangerous. If, for example, Marissa was stabbed here on the net while her body was in an RJT with no safeties, the Responsive Jell in which she was encased would form the shape, hardness and sharpness of a blade and stab her. Marissa's crew had not turned off the safeties, not entirely. They'd lowered them as much as they could and had made up the gap between "lowered" and "off" with a fake status overlay. So far it appeared the site had been tricked. If Marissa was stabbed, she'd live. If she were punched in the face... well, she'd try not to get punched in the face.
A door caught her eye and a quick scan showed users in the room beyond. A lead! Might Stratton be inside? Perhaps, but that would be too fortunate. But from her knowledge of the site, any person here might be complicit in his activities, so Marissa turned towards the door. She took a few long strides. She paused. No, she was walking with too much confidence to be innocent young Elle. Marissa was bold and determined in her search. Elle would be cautious. Marissa pulled up her profile, or rather, Elle's profile to help her get back into character. No, her profile. She'd need to start thinking of herself as Elle, in this space. A deep breath and a moment later, Elle closed her profile and looked to the door. She tiptoed timidly to it, gently pushed it ajar and peered through.
Inside was a pub. A rather ratty-looking one at that. Not well lit, with shabby-looking tables marred with rings left by countless glasses put down without a coaster. There was a man behind the bar, wiping it with a dirty-looking cloth. It was like a caricature of a pub as one might be portrayed in a netflick or game, rather than an accurate depiction of a pub. There were some twenty-odd occupants. All male, but no sign of any naughty projections or behaviour or anything. Had she come to the wrong place? Should she go? A man inside caught her eye.
"Hello dear," he said. "Come in."
She couldn't refuse now, so she pushed the door open a tad more and slipped inside. The smell of cigarette smoke and old beer hit her nostrils. Or, at least, Marissa's brain thought it did. This was some good coding, but why waste it on a dingy little place like this? Well, she'd find out. Stepping back into her cover of Elle she stepped timidly towards the table the older man sat, taking a quick opportunity to get a closer glance around. Aside from the man who'd invited her in, no one so much as glanced her way. Marissa took a better count, twenty-three. Their ages were mixed, but the demographics appeared to skew older. She didn't see Stratton.
"Sit down," the man said when she reached his table. A quick glance at his profile showed his name as Craig Jack, age 42, the location of "WA" with no country listed suggested he was from the states, and his accent certainly didn't sound like he was from Warrington England or Western Australia. Marissa wondered if it was fake or not
"I think I'm a little lost." This was a far cry from the naughty-but-fun place Marissa was pretending Elle had been reeled in by.
"Then why not take some time for a chat? Or you got someplace to be?"
"No," Marissa sat Elle down next to Craig. "Nowhere to be. Got some free time."
"How nice. Nice RJT too. One sweet piece of tech there." It
was
a nice one. It needed to be for what they needed it to do, but not many eighteen-year-olds had access to tech like that.
"Oh, it's my dad's. Wish it was mine." Elle shrugged.
"Nice of him to let you borrow it."
"Oh... well... I didn't really ask..." Elle squirmed a little uncomfortably. "He's away, see."
"Ah," Craig chuckled. "Well, if he's not using it right now..."
"Exactly! It's just a waste sitting there, unused. He and mum are overseas, it's school holidays, but I'm not allowed to go out, or have a party or anything. They say I should just study and get ahead of the class, I'm at uni next year. I haven't even got this year's booklists yet." This all came out in a rush.
"Ah, typical Asian parents then? Study study study, no time off for good behaviour?"
"Something like that," Elle agreed.
"How long are they overseas for?"
"Three weeks altogether, they've been gone two. Only check in on me via message to make sure I'm being good, they can't be bothered even calling. I haven't even gone out drinking since I turned eighteen! What do they think I'm up to? Got so sick of it that I set an app to auto-reply how good I'm being. Nothing to do but sit at home and surf the net. Good thing I know how to put an IPM on that." Elle sighed. Typical dramatic teenager, but what Marissa was really saying was
I'm home alone. I don't have much life experience. No one's going to call or check what I'm up to. There's an IPM active which means nothing here is being recorded. You could get away with a lot.
"Ah, oh, yeah. Drinking age over there's eighteen, isn't it? It's twenty-one here."
"Didn't they change that?"
"Nah, big hoo-ha about changing it, but in the end kept it as is."
