Author's Note:
Hi all! Here's a super-quick, fun stroke piece I wrote a couple months back. I never originally intended to put this up, but eh? Why not. There's only a hair-thin premise as prelude to the down & dirty, so if you want a whole crazy plot, this may not be the submission for you. I wrote this in one sitting, and it's never s
een an editor so ... there's that.
Squick warnings: virtual reality gender swap (woman with a dick and dude with a pussy). You have been warned.
I had fun writing this silly thing—hope you have fun reading!
* * * *
Charlie's bag thumped down on the kitchen counter just after she came through the door of the apartment. Seth was deep in the couch, feet up on the coffee table, nursing a beer and zoning out to a wildlife documentary.
"Hey," she said, grabbing herself a matching bottle from the fridge.
"Hey you." He looked over at her. "You're home early."
"I know." The grin was starting, and he did a double take back in her direction.
"What's up with you?"
"I got you something." She tried to slow down her enthusiasm, but her teeth were starting to show. Charlie was never any good at surprises.
She had his attention now and he was wriggling his way upright and setting the beer back on the table, puzzled expectation on his face. Charlie dug down into the bulk of her purse and found what she wanted and sent it spinning across the room at him.
He caught the piece of flexiglass and held it up, turning over the blank, transparent surface with his fingers. "What is this?"
"Go on." She sipped at her beer, trying to loosen up the muscles in her face, which were already starting to hurt from the smile.
Seth waved the inside of his wrist over the flexi and his com activated the embedded message loop. A bright, thin-lettered holo floated up over the flexi.
Oooh, and it's that swanky new kind, too, that rotates. These people don't fuck around.
His mouth formed the words as he read the message to himself, and Charlie felt like she was holding back a brass band inside her chest, waiting for him to figure it out.
"Charlie," he said, still staring at the faint pulse of the glowing text, "What is this?"
She beamed at him, coming around the counter to lean on its edge and cross her arms in smug satisfaction. It was so hard to surprise him, so any time she succeeded was a huge victory.
"
Neuro
Sim," he said as though unwilling to digest what was in front of him. "Babe, what did you do?"
"Read it." This was too much. Fucking great already.
"NeuroSim Sex Swap Weekend Deluxe Getaway Package? What ..." His confusion warmed her to the tips of her extremities.
"You know how you always joke if you had a vagina you'd never leave the house because you'd be playing with it all day? And I always say if I had a dick I'd have to stick it into every damn thing I could find, just to see? Well ..." She nodded at the flexi and its crisp, high-end holo.
"Are you ... are you serious?" Seth was on the edge of the couch now, holding the flexi like it was made of real, old-fashioned glass. "Charlie, I ... NeuroSim? We can't afford this."
"We can now, Skipper." Something was going to need to rain on her parade and soon, because her face was about to split in half. "I got the promotion."
"Oh my god, you did?" His wrist flicked over the message display again and it winked out, the flexi set aside on the table as he turned his attention to the second piece of news. "The one that turd from the regional office kept trying to horn in on?"
"Yup." She was very pleased with herself.
"But that's in D.C.!"
"Yeah." At last, a bit of sheepishness to her grin. "But corporate's going to front an apartment until we can find our own place."
"Wow." The enormity of the news was settling on him. "Wow." And then back to more present matters. "Wait a minute, NeuroSim is in The Netherlands. That thing said it was for this weekend."
"I know it is." Smug, smug, smug. "Our plane leaves at 8:30. Pack your shit."
* * * *
A woman who looked way too perfect to be human checked them in at the sprawling, bare, illuminated front desk of the NeuroSim Resort. Charlie goggled up like the tourist she was at the wall of soaring glass facing rolling grass-covered hills and an overcast sky, the minimal, uncluttered lobby at least three stories high and wasting space in the way that only buildings designed by and for people with ungodly amounts of money can.
The blonde swiped her way through console menus as they stood there with their bags, and Seth elbowed Charlie and nodded over to a winding waterway with the flickering orange and white of koi finning their way along its currents.
Not bad.
"Your room is 5143, if you'd swipe your com, please," she said at last. Charlie waved her wrist over a green circle that appeared on the counter. Now they'd have her billing commit, and she'd have the door lock code. "Would you like assistance with your bags?"
"No, thank you."
"All right, you're all set, then." Perfect teeth and blue-grey eyes said that this person had never seen a spec of dirt in their life. "Enjoy your stay."
* * * *
"Have you seen these Sim chairs?" Seth was saying as Charlie came out of the bathroom. "This is the cleanest gel I've ever seen."
Their room was every unobtainable advertisement for a luxury modern hotel, from the clean, long lines of the furniture, to the greys and whites of the décor, to the solid wall of real glass, like the lobby's, with more expanses of grass on display outside to remind guests just how much NeuroSim was raking in for their services.
The only thing different from any other hotel room was the softly-lit niche for the two top-of-the-line Sim chairs where her boyfriend was standing.
"Seriously, stick your hands in it." Seth and his tactile obsessions. She went over to his side and did as he asked.
"Oooh, yeah. These are gonna be good," she said. "You know it's probably brand new. They probably change their gels out between guests. Fluids and stuff."
He made a face. "Yeah, that's actually kinda gross."
"Hey," she said, her tone becoming more intimate as she pulled him by his arm to wheel around and face her, "are you excited?"
"Huh. Yeah." His face was so cute when it got that self-conscious look. "I think so. I'm nervous, though."
"
Nerv
ous?" She ducked down enough to hook his eyes with hers. "Why?"
" 'Cause. I know how you're gonna be and I'm afraid I won't be able to handle it."
"Oh, come on," she said, sinking into tease mode, "I'll be gentle." His pupils dilated at this and Charlie brought him down for kiss that almost qualified as foreplay.
"So," she said as they came up for air, "do you want to do this now, or maybe get something to eat first?"
"Food!" He laughed. "Something tells me I'm going to need my energy."
* * * *
They stood beside their Sim chairs, clothes already folded up on the beds, naked and ready to hit the gel. Charlie's heartbeat was speeding up.
This shit better be so real, I swear. For what I paid ...
Seth had them logged into the menu and was waving his way through an options tree. "Here. Environments. What do we want to do?"
There were categories. Outdoor/Exotic. Historical. Fantasy. Other. He gestured at the Outdoor menu and a gallery of scenes spun up onto the holo.
"Natural Lagoon Waterfall," he said, going over their choices. "That sounds kinda cool. Aztec Ruins—that's a bit grandiose." They laughed.
"Oooh, Sahara Twilight. Look at this one." Charlie pointed to a scene in reds and oranges and purples with striated dunes beneath a starry sky and an open-sided tent full of pillows and opulence. "I like this one."
"All right," he agreed, "but let's see if there's anything else." Her knuckle was starting to wander down his side as he backed out and took them into the Historical menu. "OK, we've got Eighteenth Century Paris."
"Nope. Too revolutionary."
"Roman Bath House."
"Nuh-uh. Too Caligula."
"Wild West? Seriously?"
"Hahaha! I think we better move on."
"What's 'Other'?"
The Other menu sprang up and they scanned over its options.
"Heh. This is clearly where they put the weird shit that doesn't fit anywhere else. Music Festival—no. Airplane Lavatory? Why would you even bother?"
"Oh, they have Playtime Nursury," he said.
"OK, what the hell is wrong with people?" Charlie flipped the menu to a second page. "Ooooh! Abandoned Asylum! Oh my god, we
have
to."
Seth chuckled, shaking his head. "You are so creepy."
"Oh come on! How hot is that? I'm gonna restrain you to an exam table and do horrible things to you! Look," she said, excitement growing, "there's even an optional furniture package. Wow. There's some fucked up shit in here. We gotta do this one."
"Hmm. I don't know. I was thinking something more ... calm. It
is
my first time, you know." He favored her with a not totally unserious smirk.
"Well," she said, chewing her lower lip in thought, "we can do one today and do a different one tomorrow. How about Sahara tonight, but if you're up for it you let me do my kinky shit tomorrow?"
This seemed to satisfy him. "All right. Let's do it."
Yes!
"You ready for gel?"
"As ready as I'll ever be," he said, shaking his head. She knew he was over there wondering what the fuck she'd gotten them into this time.
Charlie levered her naked ass up onto the chair and Seth was doing the same. The cool, spongy neuro gel pillowed up around her as she sank into it, and she turned her right wrist to face down into the material and scrunched it firmly in so the sensors could pick up her com. She took a last glance over at Seth.
"Ready?"
He nodded.
"OK."
* * * *
There was dusk around them, and a warm breeze billowed the rear wall of the tent, the only one lowered to the surface of the sand. Tufted pillows of every shape and size, every color of embroidered silk with tassels like the factory was going out of business littered the carpeted floor. Heavily filigreed lanterns hung from the poles supporting the ceiling, and there was a sweetness on the air.
"This is crazy," he said, kneeling at the edge of the carpet. "Feel the sand! Every grain, I can feel."
"Hey," Charlie said, trying to bring him around to the entire point of their stay, "Have you checked yet?"
