The box on the bed in front of Gillian had a premium look. Matt black with a gloss black and hot pink logo emblazoned upon it, and covered in subtle floral patterns that caught the light, giving the sense of a decadent bedroom with velvet pillows and soft cotton duvets. She slid the outer insert off the box, to gain access to the black box within - which she carefully unsealed and flipped open.
There inside she saw her new investment in virtual pleasure presented to her. To one side, a black bralette, the inside of which was covered with tiny metal contacts embedded in a soft non-slip fabric surface. Two circular pads, each with another set of tiny contacts, with their own short wires connected to a thin plastic box between the cups.
To the other side, a pair of panties - adjustable with elastic straps - inside which two plastic devices were mounted. At the rear, a small nub protruded inwards with a box behind it - clearly containing a vibration motor - and at the front a more complex device. A flexible piece with a flat connector at the top and towards the bottom what looked like a black rubber protrusion, only an inch or so long. In a plastic bag next to the panties there was a flexible fabric piece with a flat connector at the top and covered in tiny metal contacts in an elliptical pattern, with a hole in the lower bottom - the same pattern as the front device inside the panties. The bag was had a label on it, with a bar code and the text: VIU-GL-02Z06W12H. This part was made to measure.
In the center of the box, a small connection box with a snake of thin, flat wires were carefully wrapped - two of which had corresponding connections on the bralette and panties.
It had been nearly 8 weeks since she had ordered her the GenuineTouch Female Intimate Interface - and Gill's heart was racing with excitement. For the first time, she would be able to jump into her favorite virtual worlds and let people touch not just vague areas on her arms, stomach, back and legs - but caress her most intimate areas in the finest detail imaginable - if they were permitted by her filters.
Her new interface - and the rest of the suit she already owned - works on two principles. For larger physical movements, to simulate the resistance of touching another object, a cleverly engineered nano-material used in the joints of the suit has a specific frequency of electrical pulses applied to it which makes it stiffer - so bending a joint, for example, becomes harder. If a different combinations of pulses are applied to the material in a different place, it can even deflect inwards slightly - pressing against your skin to simulate something touching you.
This wasn't all, though. The inside of the suit was covered in electrical contacts - which the suit's computer could use to directly stimulate nerve endings in combinations to simulate all kinds of sensations - from a roughness, to a wetness, to hot, cold, wind blowing across the skin. With the suit, it was now possible to virtually jump into a Jacuzzi and feel the warm water rushing around you.
Due to the nature of the sexual organs - the high density of nerve endings, the diversity in their shapes which can even change during a play session, that they can make themselves physically wet at short notice - these were often skipped over due to the technical complexity. Gill lamented this limitation - as one of her favorite activities in virtual reality was visiting fetish clubs and engaging in "erotic role play" - or ERP - effectively, virtual sex. But in those circumstances, when the sexual stimulation started, each player had to stimulate themselves when they saw the other player doing this to them virtually. In some cases, remotely controlled sex toys could be used to turn on and off vibrations by the opposite player - but even here the player receiving would need to ensure that the toy was positioned correctly to get the right experience - and some sensations beyond what is reasonably possible with a vibrating toy - for example inserting and removing the toy - still had to be performed manually.
Gill enjoyed these ERP sessions immensely, and especially loved to see another players avatar close to her own as she received bursts of pleasure from their interactions. But when she wanted to take it further and reach orgasm together with her partner - or partners - she still had to take control of her toy herself - which broke the immersion for her slightly. In her mind, it went from someone having sex with you, to them watching you masturbate. Both were a turn on for her - before she got into VR she liked to connect with random guys and sometimes girls and masturbate together with them through her webcam - but she wanted to know what it felt like to go completely hands free, fully giving herself up with her arms available to grab the duvet below her as her partner brings her to orgasm.
GenuineTouch had announced at their annual conference that they had finally achieved both a male and female intimate expansion for their full body haptic suits. The new expansions used subtly different techniques than the rest of their suit - and would need to contain made to measure parts for each individual to work correctly.
When the announcement was made, Gill was eagerly following the live stream of the conference - on a floating video window together with her virtual friends in their favorite fetish club world. Before the stream had ended she had already placed a pre-order - much to the delight of her friends.
A few days later, she received an email with a fitting pack - a measurement guide PDF which she had to print and cut out. There were several measurements to take - one guide needed to be held over her breasts to check the diameter of her areola on each side, and the diameter and protrusion of the nipple itself - when she was warm or cold. Taking the cold measurement was a bit awkward - she had to use her shower to spray herself with cold water for a few seconds - but her skin now being covered in water the paper went soggy as soon as it touched her. So she had to figure out how to quickly spray herself with water, dry herself off and take the measurement all before she warmed up again. Eventually, she managed it - noting a eight millimeter difference between the warm and cold measurements.
The other measurement was for her genitals - and was much trickier. She had to hold the template up to herself when sitting with her legs slightly apart so that her thighs did not touch at all - and find an oval that encircled her whole vulva. Next, it had requested parting the labia slightly to measure the distance from the clitoris to the top of the vulva, to the urethra and to the perineum. To get each measurement consistently, she spent quite some time trying to position herself such that none of the area was stretched, and she was able to easily take the measurements consistently. In the end, lying on her back with a cushion under her butt with legs a bit apart seemed to work the best, as she could locate each point on the scale, marking them off with a felt tip marker on the paper gauge, without moving it at all.
Finally, she had to pick a maximum penetration size for the insertion attachment. She picked a size that was similar to her favorite toys - in diameter and length. She had tried bigger toys before, which were exciting for a moment but she quickly regretted it. The modest size reassured her that nobody could accidentally hurt her when they touched her through the virtual world.
She had recorded the measurements into the form and sent it off - there was an 8 week lead time - but she kept remembering that it was on the way occasionally and got butterflies in her stomach each time. And today, she'd finally be able to try it on.
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Gill's play space was a bare room with gray walls and a flat looking engineered wood floor, a single small frosted window and a bed on castors in the center and an office chair in one corner, a hook with her haptic suit hanging from it, a virtual reality headset alongside it, and a laundry basket below in the other corner - and it was the largest room in her apartment. There were two other rooms: small galley kitchen; and a bathroom. The basic accommodation was exclusively designed for people who valued virtual reality conveniences over physical comfort - and the relatively low rent allowed tenants to invest in their hardware. The block that her apartment was in Gill remembered was close to a motorway, but the exact location in the world was largely irrelevant. She hadn't left the building, or even her apartment, for several months at this point - there was just no need.
It used to be that the salary of a job was proportional to the amount of value that job delivered. But, gradually over time, that measure became different. Now, your salary was directly related to the cost of the software required to automate it. This meant a very strange shift in the job market: complex jobs involving making decisions based on hundreds of factors at once - were easily automated. Even creative jobs like advertising design were now easily replicated, and even improved, by machine generated artwork designed to optimize conversions based on millions of data points from past campaigns. But jobs like delivering physical goods in the real world were still frustratingly difficult to automate efficiently. There were certainly robots capable of performing this task, but they were expensive to maintain and build, and more prone to errors than humans. It was therefore difficult to justify automating these jobs just for the sake of it at this particular moment in time. But the release of a new machine could change all of that - cutting the salaries of thousands of workers or putting them out of work.
One of the few industries which remained relatively stable was customer service - which was usually the kinds of jobs Gill had worked in. This wasn't because customer service couldn't be automated - quite the contrary, it could and it was extremely effective - but instead because the customers rejected the automation. These kinds of jobs varied from text based chat, to audio only calls, to virtual reality stores or even physical stores in the megacities around the world through use of tele-presence robots. But none required leaving your home.