Virtual Life Experience

Author's Note: This is part three of a multipart story. It is recommended that you read the first two parts before this one, so you have a better understanding of what is going on. Contrary to what I said in the author's note at the beginning of part 2, this is not the final part. As I started writing this chapter, it became clear that it would take at least one additional chapter to tell the full story. Hope you enjoy it.

Arizona State University, Earth

Mario came back from chemistry class to find Marcella in the dorm room looking a bit freaked out.

"What's up, babe?"

"Remember that guy from VLEC that testified about the computer simulations in front of Congress?"

Virtual Life Experience Corporation (VLEC) ran a virtual reality entertainment empire. Their most popular gaming experiences were based on feeds from sensors implanted in and on real subjects who had been convicted of crimes and deported to remote planets. VLEC had just weathered a massive scandal because they had been working with a corrupt justice system to manipulate court trials to get convictions and deportations for the subjects they wanted.

"Yeah, Leonard something. He was the one who determined who they should target for conviction and deportation."

"Leonard Latham. Well, he just called me."

"What? You're kidding. Why would he call you? . . . and why the fuck is he not in jail?"

"It's about the petition. VLEC actually wants to do it. They want me to help determine what they should send to Jason and Nikki."

Jason and Nikki were two of the most popular subjects in VLE gaming. They had been falsely convicted and deported to the remote planet of Antola.

Marcella was an avid VLE gamer with a profound affinity to Nikki. Once VLEC's wrong-doing became public, Marcella had started a petition to pressure them to send the deportees better equipment and supplies in hopes of improving their chances of survival. The idea had gone viral. VLEC latched onto it as a way to restore some public trust.

"That's awesome. Your petition worked."

"Yeah, but why would they want my help? What the fuck do I know about what they should send?"

Mario was quiet for a few moments, considering the meaning of this news. "It's all about public image. You are the face of the public on this issue. If they do it without you and you accuse them later of not doing enough, it will be another black eye for them. If you are involved in the decisions, it will be hard for you to criticize them later."

"If I screw this up, people are just going to think I sold out."

"Don't worry about what people think, just do your best."

"I don't think I can do this alone. Will you come with me?"

"Of course, sweetheart."

"What would I do without you?"

Mario slipped his arms around her petite waist and pulled her tight to him. Nuzzling her neck, he replied, "Make some other horny guy's dreams come true, I suppose."

VLEC World Headquarters, Earth

Leo was nervous. He told himself it was silly to be worked up about meeting a couple of college kids. Especially after he had stood in front of Congress and bared his sins to the entire world. In a way, though, these kids represented the wrath of the public and he presumed it would not be a pleasant to face them. The fact that he had always been socially awkward didn't help.

He walked into the corporate visitor's center. Waiting there was a petite Hispanic girl in a well-tailored business suit, accompanied by a broad shouldered young Italian guy wearing a sport-coat and tie and rumpled khakis.

"My god, she's hot,"

he thought. Actually, they were both very attractive. He felt a pang of jealousy. Oh, to be young and good-looking.

He cleared his throat. "Ms. Rodrigues and Mr. Corsetti, I presume? Hi, I'm Leo Latham. Pleased to meet you." He extended his hand.

"That's a fucking lie,"

he thought to himself, meeting them was the last thing he wanted to do, but the VP of Public Relations had insisted on it.

"Nice to meet you," said Mario, shaking his hand.

"What a fucking lie,"

he thought to himself, he would rather strangle this asshole.

Marcella surprised Mario by being brutally honest with Leo in her greeting. "I'm not going to pretend to like you. I think you are a criminal and deserve prison or worse. I'm willing to work with you for the sake of getting Jason and Nikki what they need."

If Leo was surprised, he didn't show it. "I don't expect you to believe me, but I truly am remorseful of what I have done and want to make amends."

Despite her distaste for Leo, Marcella was fascinated by the simulation capabilities of VLEC's powerful computer system, nicknamed "Violet". Leo started off by running an up to date simulation of Jason and Nikki. The sim came back showing a life expectancy (LE) for Nikki of 5 months and 6 months for Jason.

"What do all those other numbers mean?" asked Marcella.

"GII stands for gamer's interest index. It measures the level of user interest in gaming the subjects. 1370 is a very good score. Those two have always been real popular with our customers. If our goal is improving safety and well-being of our subjects, then we probably don't want to maximize GII. Danger makes the experience for the user more exciting and drives up GII.

STS is short term sales. It pretty much tracks close to GII. If people like the game, they're going to buy.

LTP is long term profit. This is normally what the company is trying to maximize. Sometimes real high GII and STS don't translate into good LTP because the subject doesn't live long enough."

Mario felt a twinge of anger at the casual way Leo brought up the effect of death of their subjects on profitability.

Leo demonstrated what happened to the sim if they sent a shipment of nonperishable food to Jason and Nikki. The LE values for each of them increased by about two months.

"I would have thought that would be more effective," said Marcella, looking disappointed.

"My guess is that there are greater risks to them than starvation. Let's think about this logically. What do you think the major risks are?"

Mario chimed in, "I'd say predation, disease and starvation."

"I think you got the major ones, and probably in that order," agreed Leo.

"What about poisoning? They are forced to try new foods so they don't starve. They could run into something highly toxic," suggested Marcella.

"Then there's random stuff like falling off a cliff, drowning, you know, some sort of accident," added Mario.

"The poisoning thing is easily solved. MedCorp came out with a real good hand-held tox scanner two years ago. Aside from that, I suggest we will get the most effect by working on the big three."

"So let's start with predation, how do we solve that? Better weapons?" asked Mario.

"With the laser pistols and laser swords, they already have pretty good ones. Maybe body armor?" suggested Leo.

"Safe shelter." As soon as Marcella said it, the other two felt silly for not having thought of it. It was the obvious answer.

"Funny thing is, they each have a perfectly safe shelter, and neither one of them is using it. The transport pods will repel just about any predator," said Leo.

"Yes, but they are barely big enough to squeeze in one person, and their two pods are 20 miles apart. They want to stick together. We need something large enough for both of them to actually live in."

"Fair enough, Ms. Rodrigues. Assuming for a moment we could actually transport such a thing, let's see how well the sims like it." Leo made the adjustments and programmed the sim to run 1000 times. A few minutes later, the results showed an average LE of three years for both of them.

"That helped," said Mario.

Marcella looked upset.

"What's wrong, baby?"

"I thought we could make a real difference. Three years is still shit. I want 30 years. More, even. I want them to grow old together." She burst into tears. Mario tried to console her but she pushed him away. She turned to Leo. "It's not fair! You fucking murderers sent them there to die! You should all be sent there to die with them." Marcella stormed to the bathroom adjoining the lab and slammed the door. Not satisfied, she opened it again and slammed it harder.

Leo said nothing, but turned back to Violet and began making alterations.

"What are you doing?" asked Mario angrily.

"She just gave me an idea. I'm adding 33 people to the sim."

"33? Why 33?" Mario was intrigued, in spite of his ire.

"32 VLEC employees were convicted. Ms. Rodrigues's comment made me wonder what would happen if they really had all been sentenced to deportation and were sent to Antola."

"And the last one?"

"Me. I deserve it as much as anyone who was convicted."

The bathroom door opened. "Add two more," said Marcella quietly.

Mario turned to her, "Two more?"

She stared back at him as though issuing a silent challenge, then said, "I'd do it, would you?"

Mario was taken aback by her suggestion. "For you, yes. I would never let you go without me. You know this is insane, right?"

"It's just a simulation. Let's see what happens."

Leo pulled out all of the stops. 35 people, weapons, extensive medical supplies, the material and tools to build safe structures for all of them and a year's supply of nonperishable food. The result was 26 years for Nikki and 24 for Jason.

"Strength in numbers, apparently that's the secret," said Leo.

"How realistic is it to make this happen?"

"That exact scenario would not be possible. The 32 convicted VLEC employees have already been sentenced. Some might volunteer to be deported to Antola in place of incarceration, but certainly not all of them. Still, the basic idea of starting a colony on Antola might be possible. If Corporate supports it and lets the Judicial System know we have openings for more off-world deportations, the courts could exercise that option for sentencing where appropriate. Whatever quota we needed could be filled eventually. Of course, you would likely be getting some nasty characters. The sims may show a lot worse results with the actual people you end up with."

Toward the end of the day, Leo brought up the weekly VLE release from Antola, which was due out at 7:00 that evening. "If you two want to stick around, you can use our chambers. We have a couple of prototype ES3000 chambers in separate stalls just off the lab. There are a lot of rumors flying around here about tonight's release. Something big is going to happen, but the boys in the editing department won't say what."

Around 6:45, Leo led Mario and Marcella down the hall to two small stalls. Mario entered his stall and undressed. He was startled when the door opened behind him. Mario was not particularly modest, so he was annoyed rather than embarrassed. His annoyance was immediately replaced with arousal when a naked Marcella was upon him in an instant and pinned him to the wall.

"We have 10 minutes," she whispered, "I need to be fucked."

"As you wish," Mario replied.

"God, I love it when she takes charge,"

he thought.

Marcella wrapped her arms around his neck, lifted her petite gymnast's body off the floor and wrapped her legs around his waist. Mario caught on, braced himself against the wall, grabbed her firm ass cheeks and steered her onto his waiting cock.

"Damn, I've missed your cock," Marcella gasped between moans.

"It's only been two days," said Mario. They had been too tired the night before from their flight.

"Way too long."

Mario marveled once again at Marcella's muscle control as the tight grip of her pussy worked up and down his rigid member.

"Faster," urged Marcella, "I need to cum before the show starts."

They picked up the pace and soon Mario felt the pressure building in his balls. Marcella put her lips to his ear and whispered, "Fuck me hard, baby . . . Oh, god yes . . . I'm going to cum . . . Cum with me!"

That was enough to set Mario off and he ejaculated deep inside her. Marcella cried out repeatedly as her own orgasm overwhelmed her.

She gave him a passionate kiss as she lifted herself off his softening cock and slid to the floor. She broke off the kiss and said, "gotta go," and slipped out the door.

A little shaky, Mario entered the VLE chamber and closed the door, just in time for the weekly release. A few seconds later, he was in Antola, virtually transported into the body of Jason Conrad by the input of the sensors.

He hadn't thought it was possible to get more realistic than the ES2000 chambers back at ASU owned by his friend Aziz. He was wrong. He was blown away by the tiny subtleties picked up by the ES3000 prototype. The gentlest of zephyrs registered on the hairs on his arms and brought the faintest sound of rustling foliage. The flavor of the rain-dragon meat contained complexities he had not appreciated previously.

He and Nikki traveled through the forest, laser pistols in hand and on the lookout for dangerous predators. Walking behind Nikki, he began to get aroused again watching her tight ass swaying in front of him, below the cascades of long red hair. "Red," was fucking hot as ever. Mario longed to virtually make love to her, as he had so many times before, but Jason and Nikki seemed focused on their exploration.

After about an hour and fifteen minutes of edited hiking, actually spanning four days in Antola, Mario/Jason gazed out over the breathtaking sight of the grassland stretching out before them. When Jason looked down over the cliff edge, Mario felt a little dizzy from the height.

He was startled by Nikki's exclamation and followed her pointing finger. Buildings. They may have been distant, but Mario was sure they couldn't be anything else. He was overwhelmed with questions as the session ended.

Back together in the lab, Mario, Marcella and Leo looked at each other in disbelief. Finally, Leo said, "This changes everything."

Antola

Jason and Nikki stood on top of the cliff and looked out past the vast grasslands of the valley below to the cluster of rectangular prism shapes far in the hazy distance.

"Could it be a mirage?" asked Nikki, "or a natural formation of rocks?"

"No way. That's real. I know buildings when I see them. There's intelligent life on this planet," replied Jason.

"Holy fuck."

They stood in silence for a few moments, trying to grasp the enormous significance of this. While a dozen planets had been explored that sustained life, nothing close to human intelligence had been found on any of them.

"Despite generations of NASA and SETI types, a couple of convicts are going to be the first humans to make contact with aliens," mused Jason.

"Not exactly," replied Nikki.

"OK, I know we were falsely convicted, but . . ."

"No, my point is, they're not aliens . . . we are. This is their planet."

"Good point."

"You know we are probably safer avoiding them. This could go very badly for us. They may very well shoot first and ask questions later," Nikki pointed out.

"Or poke and prod and dissect us in the name of science," added Jason. "Are you suggesting we shouldn't make contact?"

"No, we have to. This is bigger than us. This could be one of the most important moments in the history of mankind. I think it is our duty, our destiny to do this."

Jason turned and embraced her. "I agree."

They camped for the night and in the morning ate the last of their dried meat. They traveled north along the cliff for half the day before finding a location with a gradual enough slope to allow them to get down to the valley. It was nearly dark as they reached the valley floor.

Given that they didn't have any good shelter for protection, they agreed to take turns standing watch. Hours later, Jason was deep into a highly erotic dream, where a feral redheaded girl was giving him the best blowjob he'd ever had. He became conscious that it was a dream and tried to fight awakening, but it is always no use once that realization reaches you.

Still, the pleasure didn't stop. He opened his eyes to see the dark outline of Nikki's unruly mane of curls bobbing up and down between his legs. Somehow she had gotten his shorts off without awakening him. Now fully conscious, he was already at his limit, with no chance of holding back. He flooded her mouth with his orgasm.

In the dim light of the dual moons he could just make out her grinning face as she emerged from between his legs. A dribble of semen ran from the corner of her mouth. She caught it with her fingertip and licked it off.

"Hi Love. It's your turn to keep watch. You didn't react when I shook you, so I thought this would work."

"Hell yeah, it worked. God, Red, what a way to wake up."

"Now, if you'll pardon me, I desperately need some sleep."

Jason smiled as he settled down for his watch. He was already planning how he would return the favor later when Nikki's turn came.

Nikki tossed and turned beside him for a half an hour or so, then sighed and sat up. "I can't sleep."

"Why not?"

"Oh, I don't know, maybe the fact that we could be about to change the course of humanity forever is weighing on my mind a little." She paused a moment then added, "Plus, I'm so fucking horny."

"Well I will gladly take care of that, why didn't you say so?"

"No, you keep watch. I can take care of this myself."

Jason felt a bit put out. He was disappointed that she would rather masturbate than have sex with him. When she stood up in front of him and began rubbing herself all over through her tattered clothes he realized she just wanted to tease him.

She slipped one hand under her halter top and began pinching her nipple. She unbuttoned her shorts and slid the other hand between her legs and began fingering herself. She closed her eyes and moaned.

Jason pulled out his hard cock and stroked it as he watched her. After a few minutes, he decided he'd had enough of being a spectator. He reached up and yanked down her shorts around her ankles, then pulled on her arm so she lost her balance and fell on him. He caught her and rolled her onto the grass beneath him. He kissed her hard and hungrily and she responded in kind.

When he broke off the kiss, Nikki said, "It's about time. I wondered how long you'd let me tease you like that." Jason worked his way down her body, kissing, licking and sucking as he went. Nikki untied her top and surrendered her tender breasts to his mouth.

"Oh yes, suck on them. Oh baby, yes."

Nikki squirmed when Jason found the sensitive spots on the side of her ribcage. She giggled when he tongued her navel. By the time he reached her pussy, it was dripping in anticipation and she was breathing heavily. He alternated between licking her labia and tongue fucking her before finally taking her swollen clit between his lips and sucking on it. Nikki wrapped her legs around his head and cried out, exploding into orgasm.

"Oh my fucking god, yesss!

Jason rode her undulating motion, managing to stay latched onto her clit with his lips. As she began coming down from her orgasmic high, he teased the tip of her clit with his tongue, while the base of it remained firmly clamped between his lips. This unleashed another wave of orgasm.

While she was still whimpering from this climax, he mounted her. He gazed into her eyes in the moonlight as he copulated with her, slowly at first, then increasing in tempo. She pulled his head down so her eager mouth could find his. She rocked her hips to meet each thrust. Just as Jason reached the point of no return, Nikki reached down and clutched his ass and ground her hips against his, squirming in pleasure.

They set out the next morning across the grassland, with hunger gnawing at them.