When I got up in the morning, I checked my account for the delivery status. My unit had been on order for months and once it shipped, I watched it crawl across the country to my home. Today was the day. The SIRUS unit was the latest and greatest when it came to Virtual Reality Simulation. Where most VR rigs used some sort of helmet or goggles for the viewer and a hand controller for movement and interaction SIRUS was completely different. Better rigs might have a higher quality viewer or more intuitive handsets. SIRUS had none of that, in fact, it had no controls at all.
The SIRUS rig wasn't just VR. It was actual commercial cyber tech for the masses. Cyber had been a thing in the military and high-end corporate world for over a decade. Some projects were simply too complex or too dangerous to do in the meatworld. They were just easier to visualize in an immersive virtual environment. Cyber made that immersion possible. Military and corp rigs were huge affairs requiring sensory deprivation tanks and extreme amounts of hardware. Even the most recent ones on the bleeding edge of cybertech required a full helmet and body suit arrangement. With the equipment you could fly a jet without worrying about G or control a construction bot in hard vacuum. Cyber let you do amazing feats of computer aided calculation and design, but it wasn't really practical for the consumer market.
Then came the 'jack. Jacks augmented your reality without replacing it. Plug your car fob into your 'jack and you got closer to the machine and the road than you every thought possible. All the HUD displays of the car were suddenly glowing data in your mind. Gear ratios and shift patterns became second nature. You didn't become the car but the 'jack helped you to understand the car on an instinctive level. The 'jack was a small dataport implanted behind the ear. It allowed that car fob to interface with the user and to mainline information directly into the user's brain.
I had my 'jack implanted almost three years ago. I'm kind of an early adopter and a gear head. Now I guess I'm literally a tech head. I let somebody drill a small hole in my skull and stick in a lump of molycirc and plastic under my skin with sense-leads burrowing into my brainstem to set up the 'jack connection.
Leave it up to a skin company to get cyber into the hands of consumers. A cyber engineer named Travis Hawt (don't laugh, I didn't make it up) figured out a way to transcend normal VR using a 'jack. He incorporated SenseTek and took the market by storm. Hawt's market capitalization went through the roof and overnight he became one of the biggest skin content providers on the planet. His stuff was amazing. It started as better than average VR, then came SIRUS.
The Sexual Interface Reality User Simulator (ugh, what a mouthful) took regular VR and put it directly into the user's head. Remember the car? Yeah, now imagine that was skin content. Now you know why I was so excited to get my SIRUS rig.
I checked my SenseTek account again and saw that my SIRUS was out for delivery and slated to show up in the early afternoon. There wasn't anything to do but wait so I went out to run some errands, planning to come back an hour or two after lunch and hopefully SIRUS would be at my door.
When I got back, there was a small plastic case waiting by my apartment door. The Snake and Tree SenseTek logo was embossed on the top. SIRUS had arrived. I brought the box into my apartment and set it on the table. The box was keyed to my DNA imprint so no one could open it but me. I thumbed the ID pad on the top of the case and heard a click as the internal locking mechanism let go. When I opened the box I saw that there was a main unit about the size of the Nintendo Wii that I read about in a history book and a smaller 'jack fob. The main unit communicated directly with the fob via a wireless signal. I pulled the main unit out of its padded box and found a power cord and small instruction manual underneath. I set the manual to the side, resolving to read it later if I ran into problems and then carried the main unit and power cable over to my entertainment shelf. After plugging the unit into the power supply, I retrieved the 'jack fob and sank into my favorite chair.
Fobs were how 'jacks worked with external systems. If you didn't have the fob you couldn't access whatever device that fob would have gone too. Some fobs were universal so that anyone could pick it up and use it. I still thought that was kind of gross. The interface end of the fob was inserted into the 'jack in your skull. I don't know about you, but I wasn't thrilled about putting an interface into my skull after it had been in someone elses. Ick. The fob itself was small, the size of your thumbnail with the interface protruding from the flat side so when it was jacked in the fob would lay flat against the skin behind your ear. A smaller version of the SenseTek logo was printed on the black plastic in silver ink. No time like the present. I reached behind my ear and inserted the interface into my 'jack.
I saw the power light on the main unit light up and heard the internal power-supply whir up to speed. Then the fob picked up the broadcast signal and the 'jack kicked in. Holy shit.
The SenseTek logo popped into view before my eyes. But it wasn't just the logo, and it wasn't just my eyes. Normally VR required a headset of some sort. SIRUS was putting the image directly in my field of view, and into my consciousness. The snake in the logo writhed sinuously and I could pick out each individual leaf from the tree. It was more than that though. I could hear the wind whispering through the tree branches and the dry sound of snake scales. I reached out for the snake and I swore I could feel the scales under my outstretched hand.
Regular VR couldn't even begin to touch this. The logo expanded in my view and from behind the tree stepped a naked woman. Her long brown hair reached down to her waist. Flowing locks covered her full breasts, leaving only curves to the imagination and her hand rested lightly over her mound.
"Hello, I'm Eve. Welcome to SIRUS. What's your name?" I heard what Eve said, inside my head.
"It's okay, you can just talk to me like you would a normal person. I promise, I'll hear you." Eve brushed the hand not covering her pussy across a lock of hair covering one breast. I saw a hint of brown nipple.
"Umm, my name is Greg."
"Hello Greg. I'm so happy to meet you. Let me teach you all about SIRUS. First, let's get rid of this logo and get to the menu. How does that sound?" Eve turned and with a dismissive wave brushed away the SenseTek logo. In its place, hovering infront of my view was the main loading screen for SIRUS, along with my personal tutor.
"This is the menu, but I'm sure you figured that out. There's lots that you can do here. Let's go look at settings first, shall we?"
"Okay Eve, that sounds great."
Eve reached up and tapped an icon across the top of my field of view. It expanded into a larger set of options.
"Well Greg, the first thing to do is decide how big you want me to be." Eve giggled and held her hands to her breasts. "Not like that silly, though we can talk about that in a little bit. I mean me. Right now, I am mostly in your mind but SIRUS can make it so I appear to be in the room with you. Would you like that?"
"Umm, yes, that would be excellent."
As soon as I agreed Eve changed. Instead of being like a computer screen helper Eve was suddenly standing in my living room. Out of curiosity I reached out a hand and tried to pat her on one well rounded hip. I swear I could feel her flesh under my hand. I felt the silky strands of hair, the well-muscled hip, all of it. If they hadn't already, SenseTek was going to make a fortune beyond the dreams of Croesus.
"There, that's out of the way. Things are so much better now that I'm here in your room instead of stuck in the menu. Now that I'm here, I want you to know that I am here for you, in every way that you want, however you want. I am here to satisfy your every need and desire as long as we are together. You can never hurt or injure me since I am merely a virtual projection. I am excited about getting to know you. I am programmed to learn to anticipate your needs and desires the longer we spend together."
"Eve, you said something about me deciding how big you would be? What did you mean?"
"I am so glad that you asked that Greg. I am fully customizable. Every physical feature can be fine-tuned to your desire. You can even adjust my personality to suit you. I can be anything you want..."
Eve snapped her fingers. The naked brunette disappeared to be replaced by a young Japanese woman in a school-girl costume.
She snapped again, a zaftig blond with breasts spilling out of her polka-dot dress.
Again, a redhead with peaches and cream skin and a dapple of freckles across her nose.
Again, Cleopatra
Again, a dominatrix, her hair pulled back into a long black ponytail.
Over and over Eve's form changed.
"Okay Eve, enough I understand. Can you change back to your default form and we can do some fine tuning?"
"Certainly, Greg." She snapped her fingers and the little person with neon pink hair disappeared and the original Eve reappeared.
"So how do I go about changing you Eve?"
"Well, there are a couple of different ways Greg. I can bring up a set of sliders that will let you change what I look like. Kind of like old RPG games. It is fun doing it that way, I think the changes tickle when the sliders are adjusted. Or you can simply describe what you want, and I will adjust that way. The other way, if you trust me is to let me interface more closely with your mind through the SIRUS fob and I will be able to adapt to your deepest desires."
"I don't know if I'm ready for that quite yet Eve. Can we try the sliders for today?"