The Simulation

The Simulation

Jason sat in the waiting room at MASC, tapping his foot and waiting impatiently for his name to be called. Standing for Machine Accentuated Synergistic Connection, MASC was a state of the art simulator that allowed the user to be placed into a computer generated world that was virtually indistinguishable from reality. As with any technology, it wasn't perfect; for example, the AI used to power the simulator could reproduce every possible physical sensation a human body could experience, but it had difficulty with sounds, smells, and tastes. The sound of a car horn or music coming from a stereo would warble slightly, and a rose would smell like an orange. Otherwise, the system was nearly perfect, and the users quickly learned to disregard such irregularities from real-life; in fact, it was something of a comfort.

Clients of MASC were predominately senior citizens looking to explore places they'd never been in bodies that were no longer failing them, and men like Jason; men looking to experience things that were forbidden in the real world: crimes like robbery, murder, and sexual depravities of the worst kind.

Jason had been a sexual deviant for as long as he could remember, and while erectile dysfunction paired with his age--he was 62--all but crippled his ability to partake in his sadistic fetishes, MASC had given him a second chance at life. Not only could he be endowed well beyond his mere 5-inch reality, he could get hard instantly. His now-aged and sagging body was replaced by that of an athlete, towering at a foot taller than his actual mere 5'4", his face was a replication of his own, taken from a photograph taken of him when he was in his prime, back when he was young and handsome. What was more, he was able to inflict a cruelty to his partners that held dire consequences in the real world. Inside MASC, he could beat, choke and slap them with impunity, and he did--frequently.

At MASC you were first asked to choose a landscape; Jason had tried out several before deciding on a city with a park, based mainly on NYC, where the streets were nearly abandoned and it was always night time. His "sessions" ranged from a few hours to the maximum of a full 24, and it was always night time. He disliked that particular limitation and had complained on multiple occasions that he should be able to stay as long as he wanted. The problem, apparently, was that the human necessity to eat and all the other associated bodily functions attached to that continued in the real-world, even though they'd been eliminated from the simulation. In short, the team at MASC were responsible for your physical body for as long as you were inside, and their legal team had recommended that no session should exceed 24 hours. That said, Jason often found that a 24 session sometimes felt as long as 2 or 3 days; not nearly long enough considering the 20K price tag.

Jason was especially looking forward to today's session, and the reason was simple. A month ago he'd delivered a flash-drive to MASC containing images and video of a young woman named Krissy with whom he'd become infatuated. Obsessed, actually. She was the waitress at his favorite watering hole, and he'd been trying to buy his way into her panties for over a year with no success. He'd tipped her hundreds of dollars over and over again, pretended to listen to her stupid stories and smiled as though interested, and finally even offered to pay her rent if she'd spend the night with him. She'd laughed in his face, and when he corrected her behavior with a little slap to the face, the bouncer had dragged him out of the bar and tossed him into the gutter like a common drunk. That's when the rage inside of him had begun to burn white hot.

She'd blocked him a few hours later on social media, but he'd already downloaded several hundred photos of her as well as several short videos of her including one of her at the beach in a bikini. This was the material he'd delivered to the MASC team, along with the scenario he wanted programmed into his next simulation. They agreed to do it at a cost of 50k, and to Jason it was worth every penny. He even went as far as picking out the outfit he wanted her in: skin tight red spandex, skin tight... black stiletto heeled boots, a black halter top and a red leather motorcycle jacket. Her eye makeup was to be excessively heavy around the eyes, and her lips painted red. In short, he wanted her to look like the polar opposite of who she actually was: he wanted her to look like a sex worker.

His intention was to punish the simulation-version of Krissy in all the ways he would have liked to inflict upon the real-life version of her, ways in which he was more than happy to describe to the women who took his pre-session assessment, one of which was attractive enough that he offered her $100 to "clean his pipes" before his session, an offer which seemed to repulse her.

As a result, when Jason's name was finally called and he was led into the preparation area, he was surprised to find a man in a suit waiting for him rather than one of the women he was accustomed to.

Jason threw his hands up in a here we go again motion and then stood with his hands on his hips, "What? What is it this time, huh? Let me guess, you couldn't do what I asked... AGAIN, and you're dreadfully sorry, blah, blah, blah."

The man, by whose dress and demeanor Jason immediately identified as management, smiled and approached him with his right hand extended, ignoring the outburst completely. "Jason? I'm Karl, nice to meet you." Jason reluctantly shook the man's hand and then resumed his posture of frustration over the delay. "I realize you're a loyal and frequent client, and I wanted to come down here in person."

Jason caught the implication; "down here in person," which meant he was somebody. But whether he was somebody or nobody, the preparation process before a session often took an hour or more, and this was adding to the inconvenience. "Great, well thanks for coming down," Jason said curtly. "You run a fine business and I wish you all the success."

"I'm curious," Karl said, leaning against a counter and looking up towards the ceiling, deep in thought, "the young woman you asked us to integrate into your usual simulation..."

"What about her?" he challenged.

"Is she a friend of yours, do you know her personally?"

Jason became even more defensive, "That's none of your business and you know it. Item number six on the list of terms and conditions specifically says that I can upload whoever I want into the simulation as long as they're not under age or a family member... "

Karl nodded emphatically, "All true."

"Then what's the problem?!?" he snapped.

Karl smiled once again, the slick smile of a company man who'd made a living out of smiling and talking over boardroom tables. Jason knew the type; up until about ten years ago he'd been the CEO of a cable television network, so he regarded Karl the way one shark in a tank of sharks regards another as they swim together in endless circles. His ability to see three steps ahead had made him a tough adversary, and it'd made him millions. The problem was that he still couldn't wrap his head around why the CEO was speaking to him. "There's no problem, I was just curious," he said, approaching him for another handshake. "I just wanted to meet you in person, and I hope you enjoy your session."

Jason shook his hand once again and watched him leave the room, replaced almost immediately by Tina and Sarah who were there to get him suited up.

A trip inside of the MASC required the user to FEEL as though they were inside as well as THINK that they were, and this was achieved by use of a haptic suit that practically encased the wearer and provided the mass majority of physical sensations felt during a session; a hot sun, rain, a blizzard, physical touch, and even a slap. When paired with the wearer's belief in what they were seeing before them inside the simulation, it became real or at least as real as the real world seemed to be. In addition to the suit there were sensors to be placed and probes to be inserted, and all of that took a great deal of time, so upon seeing the two women he immediately began to strip off his clothes.

"It's about fucking time," he muttered.

Once they'd suited him up and asked him all the pesky questions about his heart and mental state, he was finally led into one of the pods where a plush recliner awaited him. He'd been through the process so many times by this point that he quickly laid down on it and waited for the helmet, which was visible hanging from its cord at the top of the pod. A male technician came in and asked him if he was comfortable to which Jason answered, "Yeah, yeah... let's go."

The helmet was lowered within reach and then placed on Jason's head, instantly blocking external light and sounds from the outside. Finally, he thought to himself in those final moments--he'd been counting the hours leading up to this for weeks now, and he couldn't wait to teach that bitch, Krissy, a lesson. She'd be a simulated version of her, naturally, but that only meant that he could be particularly brutal, a desire which he'd expressed to the egg-heads at MASC ad nauseum. As the mask was finally placed over his face and Jason's world turned to black, he felt himself getting hard for the first time in months, and it made him smile.

* * *

He awoke inside the virtual world, and at first everything seemed to be going as planned; as with all of his previous trips, he was dropped onto a park bench in the middle of the massive park located in the center of the 32 block city he'd created. But when he opened his eyes and instinctively reached for the tablet that was always located in his left-side inner jacket pocket, he realized something was very wrong. His hand brushed across a pair of small but perfectly round breasts covered by a black halter top, and the jacket he'd reached into with tiny feminine hands capped with long red nails found no inner pockets whatsoever. Looking down, he saw two skinny legs poking out from beneath the breasts, and they were clad in skintight shiny red spandex, and his now size six feet were clad in ankle high black vinyl stiletto boots, with laces in the front and a zipper down the inner side. As he looked down at the boots, locks of shoulder length blonde hair fell against his cheeks which he grasped only to find out the hair was attached to his scalp.

"No!" he screamed in anger, but his anger turned to shock at the sound of his own voice, which was now high-pitched, and obviously feminine. He clasped his hands over his mouth to silence the sound before saying it once more, much more quietly, "No."

The outfit, the voice, the blonde... the idiots at MASC had fucked up and put him into the body of his prey, an upgrade he'd spent 50K on.

He tilted his head back, and with his feminine voice he cried out to the heavens the command that was supposed to bring him back should anything go wrong: they called it the chicken door. "Exit simulation!"

Nothing happened.

He took a deep breath into his now-tiny lungs and yelled it even louder, "EXIT SIMULATION!"

Still, nothing.

He yelled it a third time, yelling so loud that his voice cracked mid-sentence making his plea nearly unintelligible: "EXIT SIMULATION!!!"

He'd only used this method of prematurely exiting a simulation once before, but the response had been immediate. All he'd done was say the words, and within what seemed like three seconds he was back in his pod at MASC with a technician standing over him.

Not wishing to continue drawing attention by screaming, he began saying it over and over again, "Exit simulation, exit simulation, exit simulation, exit simulation, exit simulation, exit simulation!"

Nothing.

Don't panic, he thought to himself. He patted down the motorcycle jacket and found it only had 2 pockets, both of which were empty; no tablet. That left only one other option, actually it left four; the city-scape he'd designed for his playground was only four blocks deep and eight blocks in length. He imagined it in his head at that moment, picturing a big rectangle with the park in the center. The park bench he was sitting on was dead center of the city. Located on the four farthest points of the rectangle, he knew there was an emergency exit station. A kiosk that acted as the tablet that was supposed to be located in the inner-left pocket of the jacket he wasn't wearing. In an emergency, clients were supposed to be able to use their palm print for identification and exit back to the safety of the MASC facility. He'd never seven seen these stations let alone used one, but he knew they were there. It didn't matter if your world was built like ancient Rome or the top of Mount Everest, it was contained in the same sized rectangle, and there was an exit station on each of the four outside corners.

From his current position in the very center of the rectangle, it was an even distance to each of the exits, South West, North West, North East or South East... it was all the same, so as Jason rose from the park bench in this tiny feminine body, faltering on the heels strapped to his little feet, he turned to the North West, and began following the paved trail leading in that direction. He fell almost immediately, and returning to the park bench he decided to remove the boots and walk barefoot only to find that the laces could not be undone, and the zippers were locked in the up position and couldn't be moved using the muscles of the skinny little body he found himself in.

He smashed his fists down on his thighs in frustration to no avail before resigning himself to the fact that he was stuck wearing the heels, and would simply have to learn to walk in them, and fast. After all, he only had to walk about six city blocks to the kiosk, after which he planned to find Karl and feed him his balls for breakfast.

He began to walk in short awkward steps, pointing out with his toe and following with the heel, which quickly exhausted his now stick-like stems. He felt more exposed than if he'd been naked and he yearned for a longer jacket that would provide him both warmth from the late night air and exposure of the little ass and the camel-toe resulting from the tight spandex riding up in his crotch. His shins were on fire after a dozen steps, and his calves had begun to spasm. He stopped, bending over and resting on his palms planted on his spandex clad thighs, and quickly realized that this was going to be the longest walk in his life.

Surely, this couldn't be realistic in terms of difficulty. If it was this hard to walk then women wouldn't ever go anywhere, right? Perhaps this was part of the glitch? It couldn't possibly be this hard to walk in heels? However, since the boots he'd chosen for Krissy to wear were permanently attached to his feet, he had no other choice than to push forward, expending massive amounts of energy to walk in short little steps.

He felt like he'd been walking for a long time before the next park bench came into view, lit by a black iron light standard, and he practically collapsed onto it when he finally reached it. He laid down on it and pulled himself into the fetal position, rubbing his shins and calves through clenched teeth. Just then, he heard footsteps approaching out of the dark and a middle-aged man in a tracksuit wearing an elastic headband appeared before him. The man peered down at him through a pair of sports goggles which were streaked with beads of sweat running from his forehead like a faucet.

"Hey," the man said, approaching the bench, one hand dropping down to his crotch and massaging the lump permeating through his sweatpants. "You okay?" he asked, "You need something?"

Jason bolted upright on the bench, and the man's eyes dropped downwards and stayed there, and it wasn't until Jason looked down at himself before he realized what the jogger was looking at: he was sitting with his knees far apart, exposing the little spandex clam between his legs, and looking at it was giving the jogger a major hard-on.

Jason slammed his knees together but the jogger already had one hand down the front of his pants and he was jerking himself off furiously while looking him directly in the eye--it was probably the most fucked up thing Jason had ever seen.

"Jesus, man," he said in Krissy's familiar voice, "get the fuck away from me!"

The man ignored him, continuing to pump away, his face growing redder and sweatier by the second. Jason could only look away as he began to grunt and moan, his sweatpants looking as though a pair of wild animals were engaged in mortal combat beneath the fabric until he finally let out a loud exaltation accompanied by the appearance of a large wet stain on his tracksuit as he climaxed.

He didn't look up until after he'd heard the man jog away, presumably to find his next victim. That's when it occurred to Jason that he'd never seen that kind of deviance from the AI generated inhabitants of MASC. What he'd just witnessed seemed more like what one would expect from a client like Jason than the characters he was used to encountering. First of all, people he encountered in a session never looked at him, certainly never spoke to him unless their role required it--normally limited to service-industry types--let alone ran up to him and the park and jerked off in front of him.

Maybe this was all part of a massive failure within the MASC's system and other clients were in here with him, and this jogger was some sort of exhibitionist who didn't realize Jason was a client, not part of the scenery.

"Exit simulation!" he tried, feeling tears well up in his eyes, which he pawed away like a winged-annoyance at a summer picnic. "Damn it," he said to himself, rising from the bench and resuming his journey.

A long while and several park benches later, Jason reached the north-west exit of the park and saw the orangish glow of the street lights. There were cars parked sporadically on both sides of every street, but there was no traffic, vehicular or otherwise. Normally there would have been cars blaring music, people coming and going from all the bars and nightclubs Jason had insisted upon in his design. It was eerie.

He stumbled out of the park and headed West, the clomping of his heels echoing around him. He tried walking heel-to-toe rather than toe-to-heel; it probably looked ridiculous but it relieved some of the strain from his lower legs and after a couple of blocks he began to fall into a regular gait. Still, he had a distance of about six city blocks ahead of him, and every block felt miles apart. The thing that kept him moving forward with the revenge he intended to inflict upon that pompous son-of-a-bitch, Karl, in the form of a lawsuit that would last decades and drain him of everything, right down to the fillings in his teeth and the groceries in his fridge.

The night was cooler than he was accustomed to, and the spandex tights offered little in the way of protection from the breeze. He zipped up the motorcycle jacket and thrust his hands into the pockets for warmth, but after a few blocks his teeth had begun to chatter and he stepped off the sidewalk into the alcove of a suit store to rest and get a brief reprieve from the cold. He removed his hands from his pockets and began rubbing his thighs vigorously, trying to generate some heat. As he did, one of his hands inadvertently brushed the little V where his cock normally would have been located, and he stood frozen at the sensation it caused.

Standing there like a statue, he did it again, this time on purpose, and for a few seconds.

His brain registered what his fingers were touching--he'd been groping vulvas since he was 14--but there was a new sensation accompanying it, one he had never felt before, something completely alien to him. His entire body was tingling, and his face and chest suddenly got warm. He ran his hands up his thighs and then back to his ass. Turning, he looked back over his shoulder and glimpsed what he looked like in the reflection of the darkened entrance to the store.