The events you are about to read are true and told as they unfold from the point of view of the woman who is living them. Of course, all things being relative, depending on which of the infinite universes you may be reading this from, and at what point on that particular timeline you may have happened to come across this narrative, some of the historical details may differ slightly, or even drastically, from your perception. That doesn't make the following any less true for Ann.
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Chapter 1 recap (which you can find under the listing, Party Like It's 2099 - Pre-party)
We find Ann, alone and horny, masturbating with assistance from her bed's built-in SPA (Solo Pleasure Apparatus) device. The SPA, in conjunction with her apartments holo emitters, allow her to have virtual sex with friends from around the world, and while it's a great distraction, it can't compare to the physical sensations of actual sex which she desperately craves. But things are looking up when her friend, Clara, invites her to attend a pop-club later that night.
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I take a sip of DaterAide with the built-in straw in my mask and double-check the seals on my protective coveralls as I exit my apartment and head to the elevator. I don't usually drink this stuff but it's been a while since I've been to one of these "clubs" and I feel like I need a little something to take the edge off.
I pull up Lucy on my comms, "Lucy, activate. Please pull the car up to the front entrance. I'm on my way down. We're going out tonight."
As I wait for the elevator to arrive, my lips and tongue fiddle nervously with the straw. With all the recent news reports about how unsafe these pop-up parties are it's understandable that I'd be apprehensive, but I trust Clara. She has connections and I know she would never go to an event that didn't use testing equipment with an accuracy rating of 9.8 or higher.
Ironically, most of my trepidation is not related to any safety issues but revolves around the fact that it's been nine...no, ten months, since I've actually been face to face and in the flesh with another person, and even longer since I've had any intimate contact. Just the idea of being in a room with a bunch of strangers is scary and yet also very erotic.
It's one thing to meet someone online for virtual sex, but the real thing is just so much more...well, so much more everything! So much more intense. So much dirtier. So much more of a thrill!
The elevator arrives and its doors open like a set of chrome lips. I take a deep breath and step forward, allowing its mirrored interior to swallow me whole. Pressing the lobby button, I, as well as the infinite mirrored versions of my reflected self, drop silently and swiftly towards the ground.
I'm so nervous and excited by the thought of leaving my apartment and spending the night dancing, partying and having sex that my body is literally trembling.
Relax, girl. You know not only do you want this, you need this.
I can tell I'm desperately craving physical contact when I find myself doing things like trolling the Date-N-Mate database (or as we commonly call it in my circle, Mate-da-State), as I did the other night. Not that I would ever use it of course. But when I start feeling this isolated it helps to know there are other people out there also looking for a connection with someone.
The thing is such a large number of the State-run dating service enrollees are over 36 and survivors of the '63 pandemic. I know that some people my age have a fetish for the "Pre-'63's" but I'm not one of them. I don't find their enlarged and scared genitals sexy or their enhanced sexual aggression a turn on.
Of course, plastic surgery can usually repair most, if not all, the physical damage caused by the middle to late stages of the virus. Surprisingly though, I've heard a fair number of the inflicted choose not to go that route, as if erasing all physical evidence of their experiences somehow denies their trauma.
And while it's true that "Uncle" run dating sites only allow survivors that pass a psych evaluation to create an account, I'm not desperate enough to turn to these unfortunate victims with all their emotional baggage, for sex. Naturally, I feel sorry for the poor bastards, but I honestly have no desire to let those sex-crazed fucks get their hands on me, no offense.
I wonder if any of my friends in my VidCircle ever fantasize about fucking a Pre-'63. If they have, we've never spoken of it.
And to think these survivors are not nearly as aggressive as those that contradicted the disease and fully succumbed to it. What a nightmare it must have been to live during those times like my parents did.
Now there's talk that even those of us who never contracted the virus may have been altered by the monthly inoculations we receive to stay protected. The web is crawling with evidence that everyone's libido has been heightened since APDS-1 (Acute Psychosexual Distress Syndrome) and its numerous variants spread to most of the world's population.
Rumors and urban myths abound, claiming that an unforeseen side effect of the vaccines used to immunize us against the "love bug", or "sex fever", as it was dubbed in the early days of the pandemic, is to blame.
Some conspiracy theorists believe it isn't the vaccines themselves that are the cause, but a compound added to the serum by some covert government agency that has increased our sexual urges in an effort to boost population numbers. Of course, all the collective State governments and pharmaceutical companies deny these accusations.
Personally, I don't know and I don't care. Faced with the choice of a lifetime of increased horniness versus living with the threat of that horrific virus hanging over my head, it's a no-brainer what I would pick. Besides my libido, whatever level it's at, doesn't seem to have translated into me wanting to get married and have a whole gaggle of kids like the State wishes I would.
I take another sip of the legal alcohol and synthetic cocaine derivative blended drink hoping it will sedate the butterflies fluttering around in my stomach. My drink may be legal but the contraceptive I took an hour earlier most certainly was not and it worries me that it's getting more and more difficult to get my hands on those.
The elevator dings, letting me know I've arrived at the main level and I exit into the apartment building's lobby and head to the glass-walled airlock that serves as a buffer between the purified air of the building and the possibly contaminated outside atmosphere.
My apartment building, just like all buildings these days, is capable of becoming an impenetrable fortress at a moment's notice, but the architects have tried their best to disguise its defenses in an attempt to project a sense of hospitableness.
The lobby is bright and inviting. Indoor plants and a water feature hosting a few lethargic goldfish brings a bit of life to the otherwise sterile marble clad space, but despite any appearance of fragility the walls are made of steel reinforced concrete and shatterproof glass. Plus, as of five years ago, force field emitters are standing by, ready to be switched on at a moment's notice to protect the building's occupants against any infected hoard of rioters should they attempt to breach the entrance or to block random shifting radioactive winds.
And, just in case the power grid goes offline and the building's backup generators fail, concealed in the entrance's sidewalls are tempered steel plates waiting to be manually slid into place should the need arise. There is something very comforting in the knowledge that the solidity of inch-thick steel, which was such an integral part of my childhood, is always at the ready.
I step over to the room's main feature, its atmospheric testing unit, and swipe my hand in front of the "Run Sample Test" sensor, activating the panel. Even now, after all these years, every time I do this I say to myself,
"better safe than sorry"
