Control (Aurora Book 1)

Chapter 4 - Dressing Room

I KEPT CLOVER’Shand in mine as we spawned in to make sure she was alright as I fully expected her to still be somewhat disoriented from her ordeal. She did lose her balance, but was mostly fine. I placed my free hand firmly onto her shoulder to make sure she didn’t fall over as some jumps or teleports tend to be rougher than others, although I’m not exactly sure why.

“You’ll get used to the jumps,” I said, taking her arm in mine and leading her to a violet chair with black stitching that I often used when coming up with new makeup designs. “It took me a couple of days before I was able to do them without getting dizzy.”

“I hope so,” she said as she dropped down into the chair. “Maybe things are getting too real for me.”

“You’ll be fine,” I said as I pulled up another violet chair in front of her and sat down while placing my hands on her lap. “Just gotta learn to take things slow. Jumping into a game like this is unlike anything you’ve ever done before. You may be asleep in your bed, but your brain is reacting the same way it would if this were really happening. This isn’t like playing a VR game where you put on the goggles and let yourself be fooled into thinking things are a certain way. As far as your brain is concerned, you’re awake.” I moved my chair closer to her, taking a look at her makeup and realizing more and more that she really was in a rush to get started. “Don’t take this the wrong way dear, but…your avatar. You, in this case…you look like you just chose a preset makeup option and went with that.” Clover grinned, but was clearly embarrassed.

“Yeah,” she said through her clenched teeth. “I guess I just wanted to get in and see what it was like. You know how it is, right? You get that shiny new toy for Christmas and you just wanna play!”

“I understand,” I said as I took her chin in my hand and looked over her bone structure, trying to figure out how I could help her improve her appearance. “This body and face that you chose…are you married to it? Is it something you want to keep or are you open to ideas?”

“Is it bad?” she asked with doubt in her voice. “I didn’t even give it a second though. I just picked one of the options thats there when you first start.”

“Another preset,” I said. “They’re not bad, but there is so much more we could do with your look. You see, the thing about this place is if you pick all presets, you’re not gonna stand out. You’re gonna look like 50% of the population here. You don’t look bad per se, but you also don’t differentiate yourself from anyone else. Now if you want to mix in with the group, that’s fine. There’s nothing wrong with that. But things may be more exciting for you if you make yourself stand out, get yourself noticed.”

“I want to stand out!” Clover exclaimed, a huge smile coming across her face. “I want to…I want…to be someone I’m not in real life. Like really be something different.” A giddiness seemed to overtake Clover, perhaps sensing for the first time that I had a sincere interest in helping her.

“Well,” I said as I leaned forward and put my hands on her shoulders, “the first thing we need to do is nail down your look.” Still being paired to her, I brought up her HUD and projected it onto a white wall I had in my wardrobe so she could get a clean and precise image of what we were gonna do. I brought up her character data and focused in on her appearance. “This right here is how all of Aurora sees you. Your face, your makeup, body, clothing and all in extreme detail.”

“This is still so incredible to me,” she said while looking over her own avatar. “It still amazes me how real this all is.” After a moment of looking herself over, Clover added “Jesus…do I really look that unkempt?” I popped up out of my chair and moved beside her, nodding my head while offering a reassuring smile.

“I could tell you were in a hurry to see Aurora,” I said as I zoomed in to her avatar, focusing on her face. “Whenever a new player comes along, you can tell they’re new. Lots of rushed decisions and defaults applied. Everyone hears so much about how incredible the world here looks and feels that they just want in and don’t think twice about how they themselves appear to others.” I looked over her face a bit more and I could tell that there were virtually no changes made to it. I asked Clover how she wanted to appear to the world, how she wanted everyone to see her. While I had always chosen to appear very much as myself with a few enhancements, other players liked to look like someone completely different.

After a few moments of her thinking things over, Clover decided she wanted to look somewhat like herself, but different enough that she could live out her fantasies without things feeling overly realistic. I brought up user profile where all of her real life data was kept and had her enter her password to reveal the details, making sure to secure her permission to see more about her. She was surprisingly open, naively perhaps, making my choice to help her all the more justified. I know in my heart I would never take advantage of another player, but there are those out there that would do so in a heartbeat. I was so happy that I’d managed to see her first before the trolls did.

A detailed photo of Clover appeared before us and once again using her HUD, I had the game import all of the photo data. I then worked with her to make fine adjustments to her facial features, removing those she wasn’t crazy about in real life, but leaving enough there so she could still feel like herself. After finalizing the changes, I locked them in, and her facial features were set.

“You can always change these later,” I said to her. “What I’m gonna do here is save this face for you.” I created a save file for her avatar and named it simply Clover 1. After the save completed, I applied the changes for her. I pulled a small hand mirror from my ridiculously large and extravagant vanity and put it up to her so she could see her new self-image.

“Oh my God,” she said, putting her hands to her face. “This is…this is me now! Holy shit! It’s me now!” I smiled and nodded to her as she looked over to me, amazed and obviously pleased with the results.

“It sure is!” I said.

“And I didn’t even feel anything. Like it was just there.”

“Once applied you generally don’t feel anything if you’re modifying your body or face. When you change clothes though, you do feel the material changing on your garments. Kind of a strange feeling at first, but you get used to it. It feels very much like you’re just changing clothes.”

“Can we do clothes next?” Clover asked.

“Not quite,” I said as I set the mirror back down on the vanity. “First we need to make sure that your body is to your liking. If not, we can make adjustments.” I brought up the various body slides and values for her to look at as I zoomed out so we could see the body of her avatar. As with her face, she had the default body type which was the average of how all human females looked. It was perfectly acceptable, but some players, myself included, chose to alter it. In my case, I chose to look almost exactly as I did in real life, but Clover may have wanted something different.

As with her face, I used Clover’s personal data as a new base and we made adjustments from there. As is fairly common with new players, she wanted herself to appear thinner and slightly taller. We made fine adjustments to her neck, shoulders, breasts, waist, and virtually every other aspect of her body. Again, this sort of fine adjusting was not unheard of. After a good 20 minutes of fine tuning, Clover and I were able to lock in her newly adjusted features and as with her face, I saved the file for her just in case she made adjustments in the future, but wanted to go back to this particular look.

“So how often do you change your looks?” Clover asked as I had her stand up after applying her new body modifications. “Do you always change how you look?”

“No,” I said, having her lift her arms up so I could look over her nude body to see what type of outfits would look best on her. “I’ve not changed anything significant on my body for some time now.”

“Really,” she said, sounding somewhat shocked. “When was the last time you changed something?”

“Just today,” I said, realizing I was nodding to myself as my outfit ideas for her were becoming more and more solid. “I altered my hair color. Yesterday is was more of a blood red with black but today I’m a dark purple instead.”

“Oh,” she said as I had her drop her arms down to her sides. “Is that all you change?”

“For the most part,” I said as I continued to look her over. “My face and body I never change. They are set in stone for me. I make small changes like my hair color or style, and of course my makeup and clothes. Clothes especially. I wear something new every time I log in. Some people like to wear the same thing, but not me. I like to keep trying new things with my clothes. In a way, I guess you could say it’s how I make myself stand out.”

“Oh,” Clover said, her eyes refocusing on my name plate. “Your name though. That thing below it.” I could feel her eyes on my name even though I’d moved back in front of the white wall again to start putting together the outfit I’d thought of for her. Not wanting to make her stand nude in front of me for too long, I applied a bath towel to her to ensure she wasn’t feeling exposed. She’d stopped talking long enough for me to feel an awkward silence come over the room.

“You can ask,” I said, knowing what was coming. It was a conversation I’d had with probably a thousand other players since my title was awarded to me.

“That name,” she said. “The Lotus. What is that? Is that like some sort of guild or something?”

“No,” I said as I brought up various tops for her to try on onto the screen. “It’s a title.” I kept looking through the tops as she asked more about it.

“A title?” she said, apparently to herself. “Wait…oh shit! I remember now. When I was reading about the game a while back on this message board, people kept talking about how there was some sort of in game royalty.”

“There’s not,” I said, having chosen a top I felt worked best for her body type. “We’re not royalty.” I knew she was going to ask more so I picked the top I wanted to dress her in and looked back to her. “I know that’s the impression a lot of people get, but I assure you. We’re not royalty. But for some reason the greater community acts like we are sometimes.”

“How so?”

“Well, for starters…some players have taken to calling me ‘Queen.’”

“Why Queen?”

“I really don’t remember. I think someone started calling me that and it spread around and just sort of stuck.” I was lying to her, but did not want to get into the real reasons behind it.

“Does it bother you?” she asked. I could feel her eyes moving over me as she spoke. “It seems like….”

“It does,” I said as I sat back down in one of the violet chairs. Clover, perhaps sensing a longer conversation, also sat back down in her chair while still covered in the bath towel. “Look…the title. It’s not something I wanted or asked for. It’s not something you can buy or do anything in particular to get.”

“Then how did you get it?” she asked, leaning forward, spreading her legs and resting her forearms on her knees as a man often would. I took note of that behavior.

“Well,” I said after taking a deep breath. “I’d been playing for a few months. I logged in and was doing my thing which at the time was being an escort.” Clover’s eyes widened at this, obviously not knowing all that goes on in Aurora. “I was with some friends at a club and we were just hanging out, having a good time. I remember some guy was roughing up a girl so I went after him to break it up. Things got heated and….” I purposely let my voice trail off. “But yeah. It happened in public. I’m sure you’ve seen the videos. If not, they’re all over the internet. One moment I was there dealing with some jackass and the next the lights go out and it just happened.” Having been asked about it so many times, I’d grown tired of rehashing the story. I didn’t want Clover to feel she was annoying me so I did what I could to explain it to her. After all, she was new and a lot of new players are often curious about how it all went down. Even watching the video didn’t fully explain it.

“So you were the first?” Clover asked, her brow furrowing some. “The very first one.”

“Not the first,” I said. “Among them. The various videos of me and the others spread rather quickly. Apparently it happened to all 3 of us all at the same time. At first just here in Aurora, but then word started to spread on the internet too. I realized the the title was affixed to my nameplate by default and everyone could see it. Didn’t take long for me to realize everyone would stare at me no matter where I went. At first I thought I was just imagining things, but it got worse. After a while I wanted to take it off and when I brought up my HUD I saw in my nameplate settings that I had a new option called Display Title and it was set to on. It also gave me options to change the colors settings on the fly if I wanted. When it all happened, the colors were automatically applied so then I had the alternating purple, red, and blue colors you see which worked for me since those are the colors I like to dress in. I used to just be plain ol’ Ana, but after that I was ‘Ana, The Lotus.’ It basically changed my entire life here.”

“What happened?” Clover asked, the interest on her face piquing. “Did people treat you any differently?”

“Oh yes!” I said as I felt a light smile form across my dark, shimmering purple lips. “It started that day. After I left that room I was in, other people who didn’t see it happen to me saw the title and started asking questions. Then more and more saw it and before I knew it, an entire room was filling with people wanting to know who I was and why I got it. I tried to keep up but it got to be too much for me so I left. I went to my apartment and sat alone for a while, but then the messages started coming in.”

“A lot?”

“That night alone I think I got more messages than I’d gotten in my entire time playing the game. Thousands of them.”

“I bet that was awesome!” Clover’s naiveté was showing through as clear as day.

“It was a nightmare,” I said, shaking my head. “So many messages were from people who were just sincerely curious and then an onslaught from people claiming that I’d hacked the game and I was a hacker and they were going to get me banned. I was probably reported several hundred times. I never did get any sort of message from the devs about getting banned though. They obviously knew this was becoming a huge problem so…they released a statement, both in game and on their real life website.”

“I never saw that,” Clover said as she leaned back in her chair. “What did it say?”

“It explained enough to get people stop reporting me,” I replied. “Basically said that there were titles given out to only a select few that were chosen by the dev team. They didn’t give any sort of reasoning for why they chose the people they did, nor did they explain why those titles were used. All they said was that this ‘gift’ as they called it was bestowed upon those they felt were worthy of such a thing. I guess they felt awarding me the title was because of something I did or said. I’m not really sure.”

“How many did they choose?” Clover asked, crossing her arms.

“Three,” I answered back. “There were three of us the first time around. It was me and Mustafa; he’s huge man and they gave him the title The Beast so it made sense. And then there was Spell Caster. His title is The Wizard which is, again, fairly appropriate.”

“Why did they call you The Lotus?”

“I’m not really sure.”

“Do you like flowers?”

“Not any more or less than the average person, I guess.”

“And they never told you?”

“The devs never talk to players.” I was lying to her again, knowing full well that Jazz was more than a friendly moderator. He’d never told me who he was, but I was certain he was a member of the Dev team.

“Really?” she asked.

“As far as I know,” I said as I stood up again, bringing Clover’s HUD up so I could apply her top to her body so I could start to pick colors. “The only time they communicate with people is through release notes and messages that address the whole community like the one about the titles.” I could tell she wanted to ask more questions and I was fine with it if she did. But I also wanted to work on her outfit to get her ready to go back out into the Aurora.

“Do you think I can ever get a title?” Clover asked as I’d figured that green would work well with her pale skin and red hair.

“I doubt you would,” I stated, very matter-of-factly. Realizing I had come off as curt with her, I made myself clearer. “Not to say that you wouldn’t be worthy of one. It’s just the are so incredibly rare, most people will never get to have one.”

“How many are there in total?” She asked me. “How many have been given a title?”

“Five,” I said, applying a darker, grass-like green to her top. “I was among the three that were selected first as I mentioned before and then two additional players were given titles shortly after that. That was some time ago though and no other titles have been handed out since.”

“Who are the other two?”

“The others,” I said, applying neutral colors to Clover’s undergarments since I’d not quite made up my mind which colors to go with, “are Cris or Chrysanthemum.” I looked backed over to Clover for a moment and noticed her hair had fallen down in front of her face so and out of habit, I reached over and brushed it aside. “Her title is The Lookout. And then there’s Giff. He’s known as The Spinner. He’s the most popular DJ in the game. His room is always packed and he opens it virtually every night.”

“Do you know him?” Clover asked as I turned back around to her HUD display and began to apply the garments to her body. “Have you met him before?”

“Yes,” I said as I glanced back to Clover once more and motioned to her to stand up. “I’ve met all of them and while I can’t say all of us are close friends, we all share a mutual respect for one another.”

“Is Giff stuck up?” Clover looked almost worried.

“Not at all. In fact, he’s one of the kindest and purest souls you’ll ever meet. He may come across as someone that might act all high and mighty, but he’s got a soft heart. The man loves kittens after all!” I found myself smirking, thinking about Giff and his affections for kittens.

“Kittens?” Clover said with a gasp followed by a laugh. “Are you serious?”

“Very,” I offered back as I smoothed out the top I’d placed on Clover, running my hands lightly across the fabric and making sure the material I’d chosen was something that would work well for her. “He really is a sweet soul once you get to know him. He and I go way back. When I first started playing, he was the first person that really stuck out to me because he was so boisterous. I remember seeing him in a BDSM club and wondered if he might accidentally cause a riot and have someone get hurt!”

“You can hurt people here?” Clover asked, again showing that she didn’t read the game book.

“Well, yes. But not really.” I pulled up a massive selection of jeans and slacks in my wardrobe HUD that I wanted to try on Clover. “You see, there are safeguards in place that can prevent any real harm from coming to players. Most of the time anyway. Some of them work better than others. Like how I mentioned earlier that you were overloading…if you overload, as a precaution, the game will kick you and you’ll wake up in real life, but that doesn’t always mean you’re safe. It can still backfire. In here though, you can still feel everything you’d feel out in the real world. If someone touches you or pinches you, slaps you, spanks you, your mind will still think it’s real and so your brain will interpret the pain. For all intents and purposes, this really is a secondary world that works very much like the real one. Only here, we have the safeguards and so no one can be killed or seriously injured.”

“So can I break my arm?” she asked, clutching her forearm with her hand.

“No,” I said to Clover as I browsed through to some bell bottom jeans I felt might work for the outfit I was coming up with for her. “If someone strikes you, you will feel some pain, but not a momentous amount. It’s there simply to let you know you were struck. The level of pain can vary, but there is a limit.”

“Then why even have pain at all?” Clover asked. “Wouldn’t it be better to just not have it?”

“There’s a little more to it than that,” I offered back to Clover. “You see…well…Do you know about BDSM?” Clover shook her head. “BDSM means Bondage, Discipline or Dominance, Sadism, and Masochism. It’s a type of erotic role play that’s very popular here.” Within seconds, Clover’s eyes began to glaze over as I could tell this was well beyond her experience. “You’ve really never heard of this?” She shook her head again, the confusion becoming clearer. “Oh, my sweet summer child. How did they ever let you in to this game?”

“I just bought the headband and….” Without hesitation, I moved closer to Clover and leaned right into her face which caused her to recoil slightly. I stared at her a moment and smiled, and without her noticing, lifted my hand up to her face, stuck out my index finger and lightly touched the tip of her nose.

“Boop,” I said in a playful tone which took her by surprise and instantly caused her to smile back. I stepped back to give her more room and continued. “No, my dear. That’s not what I mean. I mean usually those that are allowed access to this game are screened to make sure they fully understand what can happen in this world. People are much more free to do whatever they want here, Clover. Especially when it comes to their sex lives.” Clover’s eyes moved away from mine as if I’d said something that embarrassed her. “There is a lot of sex here, dear. A lot of sex!” As quickly as Clover had averted her gaze, she just as quickly looked back to me.

“So is that why everyone’s here?” she asked in a softer voice as if this were the first time she’d ever really discussed sex so casually. “Just to screw people?” I openly sighed and stared at her a few seconds. “Wait, is that why you’re here too?”

“Clover,” I said, moving my attention back to her and away from the clothing and colors I was looking at. “People are here for all sorts of reasons. Some are here for the social aspects, to live out fantasies of being something more than we are. And sometimes that involves sex. When you consider the fact that you can have sex here as much as you like and not have to worry about things like condoms, STDs, contraceptives, it makes a lot of sense why people do it. And remember, your mind perceives it as real so having an orgasm here gives you the exact same sensation as you’d have in real life. And there is virtually no recovery time which is why men come here mostly for this reason.”

“Is that why you were an escort?” she asked, genuinely curious. “Did you want to have sex with a bunch of men?”

“Umm,” I said, my mouth slightly open and holding a smile. “No. I can safely say that isn’t why I started playing. The whole escort thing was more a matter of trying to carve out a place for myself and make some money. A lot of things here have a cost and I wanted to enjoy as much as I could and quickly found that if you were cute enough, men would be willing to pay for it. So, after giving it some thought, I figured why not? I was getting propositioned for sex anyway so why not try and make some money for it. I applied for an escort license, got approved, and something like 5 minutes after I added myself to the approved escorts list, I was getting asked…for my time.” Clover took a moment to realize what I was implying.

“Oh!” she said, having come to the realization. “By time you mean….”

“Yes, dear. I had sex with them for money. And the money was pretty good, too.”

“Was pretty good,” she asked. “So you don’t do that anymore? Escorting?”

“I mean…I can. I still have my license. I just don’t really need the money anymore which is why I started doing it in the first place. Once money wasn’t an issue for me, I didn’t really have to do it.”

“So no more escorting then?”

“Escorting, no. Not to say I wouldn’t do it for the right person, but I just don’t need to do it anymore. I’m financially secure here.” Clover took a moment to digest all I’d explained to her. As she did, I went back to working on her outfit. I’d selected some playful bell bottoms for her and coordinated the colors to match the green I placed on her shirt. She sat mostly quiet as I worked, occasionally smiling at me as I looked her over as I placed clothing on her.

After settling on her outfit and getting her fully dressed, I worked on her hair which was another default. We went through the various styles and settled on a shorter cut than kept her hair just below her chin, similar to a standard Bob but longer in the back. We went with a classic auburn red that contrasted beautifully with her pale skin. She decided she wanted green eyes which were different from the blue eyes she has in real life.

“Oh my God,” she said as I walked her in front of my vanity mirror. “I look…oh my God.”

“You look wonderful,” I said, happy with the way I’d managed to significantly improve her look and outfit. “Now you will stand out.” Standing beside her, I took her chin by my fingers and turned her toward me. “Now people will notice you.”

“How are you so good at this?” Clover asked with a gracious look on her face.

“It’s just one of those things I like to do,” I said. “For a time, all I did was sit in here and design things. Some entire sessions it’s all I did! I’d just mess around with all the materials, checking all their textures and seeing how they looked in certain lights and which colors worked best with them. Over time, I started saving all my outfits in case I ever wanted to wear them again.”

“How many have you made so far?” she asked, offering me a smile as she realized this was something I truly enjoyed.

“Oh gosh,” I said, closing my eyes and thinking of a ballpark figure. “At least a few thousand. I don’t remember for sure.” I could see her eyes glazing over again. “What can I say? It’s something I like to do!” I laughed a bit which drove her to laugh as well. We both smiled and went on discussing various facets about the game and I fully encouraged her to read the book that came along with her headband. I made sure to tell her that she could read it in Aurora if she wanted and directed her to where she could secure a copy of it for free.

After more explaining to her about how her HUD worked and what she could do with it, I offered to take her to another room so she could walk around and explore. She jumped at the idea so I brought up the room listings to see where I could take her that wasn’t going to cause her to overload again. I definitely didn’t want to expose her to anything too extreme or sexual. Given how we were dressed, I figured a nice, smaller club with a calmer atmosphere would work well.