Control (Aurora Book 1)

Chapter 7 - The House of Flies

I TOOK Asome time to look over the messages that had accumulated in my inbox as well as the gifts that were sent my way. I made sure to send back thank you notes for them all as I didn’t want to appear to be dismissive. Most of them were digital trinkets and gold from old clients that were hoping that I might one day return to escorting in some capacity. It probably wouldn”t happen unless something life altering changed how I operated within Aurora. One of them was from an old friend named Sylvio that I met back when the game was still in Alpha. He and I were among the first to get into the game which is why I was able to secure a simple three-letter name like Ana.

Back then, there were plenty of significant bugs and unfinished parts of the game so if we ran into a major problem, the game would automatically port us back to a central room that was stable. We’d run into each other there often as both of us loved to explore the various maps Aurora had back then and they’d often bug out. This was long before player created rooms were available. Those went live a few months after I started when the game moved into open Beta.

I knew going in to any room and asking questions with my title displayed wouldn’t be a good idea. I didn’t want to immediately be recognized so I went into my HUD and turned it off. There were plenty of places I’d never been to in the game since new rooms pop up every day, but my face was all over Aurora. With all the photos I’d taken with other players over the years, the videos post of me online, and my overall popularity, there was a chance that even though I’d not actually met someone that they could still recognize me. I knew I could always change my looks up enough to not be recognized by my face, but I couldn’t hide or change my name so they’d see through that ruse easily enough. Plus I was certain if I changed my looks and got found out, it would only make me appear as if I were doing something shady. The one alteration I chose to make to my outfit was to add a small hooded cloak to help conceal my high ponytail which had quickly become a signature style I was known to use most of the time. If I later felt this was unnecessary, I could always turn it off in my HUD and it would simply disappear from the view of other players completely.

I chose to check out a room called The House of Flies where people like to gossip and it doesn’t take long for rumors to spread from there. I knew a few people that liked to go there and figured I could also look around and listen for any random chatter that might be going on. Before heading out, I did check the World Chat Boards where people from all over the game can talk about any random things without being in the same location and I’d not seen any mention of a hack.

I teleported in at the rear spawn point where most people don’t hangout. Not all rooms have spawn locations in the back of the room but this one did, usually to avoid any mass grouping of people in a single area which can cause major pile ups of people trying to enter all at the same time. Once in, no one paid me any mind which was exactly what I wanted. I didn’t try hiding my face because I felt it would make me stand out even more so I just acted casual as I used to when I was out escorting and looking for a job. The cloak did enough to conceal most of my recognizable features.

Looking around I did see a few familiar faces, but didn’t really remember them unless I looked at their profile which, for a number of them, I did. I found a good spot by a table where it looked like a large group of people, perhaps 20, were all talking amongst themselves. I pantomimed going through my HUD with my fingers like so many other players do as to not seem out of place. After about ten minutes of listening, I didn’t hear of anything having to do with hacks or personal information so I moved on. I started walking over to another area of the room when I spotted someone in the crowd who I’d not thought to contact as we didn’t talk much anymore after a small clash of personalities.

Dutch was someone I met shortly after the game moved to Open Beta. While not among the first players like myself, he did manage to secure himself a simple and memorable single syllable name. He’d made a name for himself as a gifted and suave lady’s man, having managed to get a vast number of them to join him back at his apartment for a night of lustful action. To any other man, he was a stud while most others viewed him as a womanizer or a “Fuk Boi.” During my time as an escort I’d run into him various times and even stuck up for what I felt was a decent friendship with him. After finding out that he’d taken to convincing women to send him real world money, I lost a lot of respect for him and we eventually got into a heated argument.

He’d argued that they didn’t have to send him money if they didn’t want to, but he’d never turn it down if they offered. He also argued that it was no different than what I did as an escort. The problem I had with his approach was that while I made it very clear what service I was offering in exchange for their payment, he used manipulation, coercion, and even gaslighting to get them to give him money. We were absolutely not the same. Still, I knew he always kept his ears open and often stumbled upon various bits of information about certain individuals that I’d find in my orbit which is why I was willing to talk with him this time.

After a moment of hesitation, I decided to approach him since he was alone and having a drink at the edge of the short but well adorned bar the room had to offer. I carefully crossed the carpeted inner portion of the room which held several round tables where other groups were congregating to discuss the latest hot gossip from around Aurora. I took the barstool next to him and waved off the bartender when they approached me to take a drink order. I was certain the barkeep recognized my name, but in keeping with his profession said nothing and went about his business serving other customers. Dutch didn’t turn to me as I pulled myself up to the bar. Instead he took another sip of what looked like whiskey with a single cube of ice out of an unfrosted glass tumbler. After sipping, he clinked the ice around inside his glass as if looking for a way to amuse himself.

“You lost?” he said while still looking into his glass as he held it in his right hand, the ice still moving around inside. “We don’t get a lot of royalty down in these parts.”

“And you still don’t,” I said back to him, making sure to keep my voice low as to not draw any unwanted attention to us.

“I know it’ll piss you off if I call you Queen,” he spat back to me. “But you can’t deny most people treat you like one. At least to your face.”

“I don’t ask them to do that,” I said as I looked over his face from the side, his profile showing me his stern and strong nose that jutted out as far as his grizzled and scarred chin did. “And I’d strongly prefer if they’d stop but I’m not going to be a bitch about it.”

“Still Miss Considerate,” Dutch said as he took another sip. “Kind of crazy. In the real world if you were that nice you’d get your ass handed to you, but down here with all of us mental illness junkies, people just love you.”

“Being a decent person isn’t that hard,” I said to him, resting my fore arms on the edge of the bar. “But I guess you wouldn’t know much about that.” Hearing my words, he stopped clinking the ice around in his glass. He sat there motionless for a moment, after which he took the remaining amount of his whiskey down with one large gulp.

“I don’t do that shit anymore,” Dutch replied as he sat his glass back down on the bar. “Got to be too cumbersome. Too many people coming back and getting angry with me.”

“That tends to happen with you manipulate people.” Although I was there for other reasons, I couldn’t help but give Dutch a little hell for what he’d done.

“If you wanna talk shit to me about it I won’t stop you.” He tapped the side of his whiskey glass with his fingers as if somewhat nervous, motioning to the bartender that he’d like a refill. The barkeep strolled back over and refilled his glass with a couple of ounces and set it back down on the bar top over a napkin before sliding it back in front of Dutch. “If it makes you feel any better, that fight we had back then got me thinking.”

“About what?” I asked, wondering if I had made some sort of impact with the harsh and angry words I’d thrown at him at the time. I remember getting so worked up over it that I’d made sure to give him the full slate of points I’d thought of as to why what he was doing was not only unethical but also immoral.

“I thought about my sister,” he said, taking the refilled tumbler up into his hand. “Her ex husband…this real peace of shit named Todd. He worked her over real good. Got her thinking she was going crazy. She ended up on a bunch of pills and seeing a therapist every week.” Dutch ran his index finger over the lip of the glass, his eyes still not on me. Was he feeling shame?

“I’m sorry about your sister,” I said, knowing full well what she may have gone through as I’d had a very similar experience in my life. “People can be real assholes at times.”

“That piece of garbage did the same shit to her that I was doing to people down here.” Dutch dropped the glass from his hand onto the bar, a spritz of whiskey finding its’ way out and onto the napkin. “Really made me think about what I as doing.” Dutch finally turned to me and continued. “You were right to be angry with me.”

“Finally hit home for you,” I said, holding his gaze until he broke away and looked back down to his drink. “I’ve come to realize a lot of people are like that. It’s easy to laugh when it’s someone else suffering, but when it happens to you or your family, suddenly it’s different. It’s a shame your sister having to be a victim of that was what it took to get you to see what you were doing was wrong.”

“Yeah,” Dutch offered back, taking the glass back into his hands and sipping. I could tell what had happened to his sister had really taken a toll on him and his world view.

“I won’t gloat,” I said. “I’m just glad you finally saw what was I seeing from you back then. You can’t do that to people. It’s just not right.”

“I know,” he said, nodding his head. “That’s why I knocked that shit off. That and things were catching up to me.”

“People talk,” I said, my eyes still squarely on him. “You can only do that sort of thing for so long. What goes around comes around.”

“And it came around.” Dutch set the glass back down and pushed it away from himself, as if he knew he was having too much to drink.

“Is your sister OK now?” I asked. He turned his head and looked back to me, the stubble from his unshaven face much more clear.

“She’s a lot better,” he said, turning his head and nodding to me. “Off most of the harder anti-psychotic stuff now. She’s working again, doing pretty well. I see her at least 3 times a week to make sure she’s alright. She’s smiling again.”

“That’s good, Dutch. You’re doing right by her by being there as much as you can.”

“She needs a rock right now and I wanna be it.”

“I’m sure you’ll do a great job.” Dutch turned to me again and offered a slight smile, possibly all he could muster given the dreary topic.

“Thanks, Ana.” He paused for a moment and looked me up and down, noticing I’d turned my title banner off. “You trying to be incognito or something?”

“Something like that,” I said as I quickly glanced back out to the room and then back to him again. “Seems to be working for the most part.”

“Change your name color to something really dark,” he suggested. “Makes it less noticeable.” He was right and so I immediately changed it from the cycling purple, red, and blue to a very dark green which almost looked black. I also turned off the outline so those other players that played with their Display Names option turned on might not even notice it at all. Players could choose to display all other players names, display names only within a certain distance from them, or turn them off completely. It was hard to say which players chose which option so his suggestion made sense.

“So why the subterfuge?” Dutch asked, his voice still low, respecting my indirect request to keep my presence hidden.

“I need to know what’s going on with this thing I am hearing about,” I said. “A hack or possible hack happening. I’m hearing murmurs that something like this is going to happen or has happened and player data along with real world information could be leaked. You hear anything about that?” Dutch looked back out to the tables and people behind us and then back to me.

“That’s already made it here,” he said as he leaned closer to me. “People have been talking about it in some circles and some of them are scared. They think they’ll be outed.” His words turned my somewhat light concern into something much heavier.

“So this is a real thing then,” I said. I could feel the expression on my face twisting. “I’d thought maybe this was just so dumb rumor that was making the rounds. You think something like this has actually happened?”

“The hack you mean?”

“Yeah.”

“Hard to say. People trash talk about all sorts of stuff and you can never really tell what’s real and what’s made up bullshit. Somehow this place has managed to get a handful of very prolific online trolls in its player base. Even with all the checks the game publisher does some were bound to get through.”

“Like Ronnie,” I offered. “That guy is just a massive pain in the ass.”

“I can tell you,” Dutch said to me. “I know for a fact at least a dozen various rumors were started by him alone. That guy just feeds off negatively. He’s like that weird ooze from Ghostbusters II.”

“Never saw that movie,” I said with a smirk.

“He’s bad news,” Dutch said. “Guy needs a good ass kicking if you ask me.”

“You gotta remember though,” I said. “He’ll talk shit all day, but if it came to a real fight he’d find some reason to squirm out of it. People like him always do. He’s not like you and me.”

“Like you and me?” Dutch asked with sincere interest.

“From the old neighborhoods where people got taken to task if they started trouble.” Dutch knew about my background and how and where I grew up. In that respect, he and I weren’t so different.

“That guy is definitely some kind of French Canadian.” I held back a laugh as he said this. “Those dicks always talk shit and then scurry away the moment someone gets the upper hand on them.” Dutch redirected back to the reason I came to him. “As far as that leak, the main issue I’m hearing is people are afraid they’ll be outed as playing something here that they’re simply not in real life.”

“You mean like men playing as women?” I asked, turning in my stool so my body faced him.

“A lot more than that,” he replied. “Men playing as women, women playing as men, White men playing as black men, Black men playing as white men. The list goes on and on. There’s a whole subculture of people here who want nothing more than to see those players outed and shamed which is stupid. I thought the whole idea of this place was to play as whatever you wanted and screw the real world.”

“It is,” I said.

“I can tell you right now why those trolls want to out them all.” I could hear Dutch’s voice grow slightly louder only for him to temper it back down.

“Why?” I asked.

“Some guy here probably had sex with a female avatar and then found out the player is actually a guy and lost his shit. Some people think that makes them gay since they technically had sex with someone who’s a man in the real world. They feel like they were tricked into gay sex or some shit when in reality no one really cares about all that. They have this really deep hatred of homosexuals and they’re afraid to even associate with them because they think they’ll be seen as gay.”

“Sounds pretty stupid,” I said with a pained smirked on my face. “Some people really have no idea what the point of this place is.”

“Shit,” Dutch said with a smile. “You’re talking to a 56 year old Gulf War vet and even I think it’s stupid. People need to get over themselves. So you have sex with a woman here that has the mind of a man. No one even cares about all that except them.”

“Or a black avatar being controlled bay a white guy,” I said, matching Dutch’s smile. “You ever wonder why they do that? Play as a different race.”

“Beats me,” he said. “I’m about as white as they come and even I have no idea why. Maybe they think they’ll get more play that way. Some women around here have a thing for black guys. That’s all they’ll go out with. White guys around here…we’re a dime a dozen and unless they have an actual personality they might as well be NPCs.”

“So how did you manage to become such a lady’s man then?” I playfully asked.

“Got a big dick!” Dutch said back to me. I had to hold in my laugh as he smiled and nodded his head in jest. “But really. A lot of these younger guys…they have no idea how to talk to a woman. They go up to them and cold them and just say ‘sex? sex?’ like that’s how you pick up women. They’re probably bad at it in the real world too so they come here and continue to suck at it while never learning proper social skills.”

“That actually sounds spot on,” I said. Dutch was making an excellent point. A “Cold” in Aurora is when a user will request to partner with another player without properly speaking to them first and is often frowned upon in most places with the exception of rooms specifically marked for it.

“I know it is,” he said, continuing his point. “Why do you think all those ‘Cold’ rooms are so popular? They go in there, see a couple of decent looking avatars and can’t help but try pairing with them to see if they’ll have sex.”

“I noticed you said ‘Avatars,’” I said to Dutch. “Are you implying what I think you are?”

“Maybe,” he said. “I’m not saying there aren’t some women that just want to give it away like it’s nothing. But it’s definitely not a 1 to 1 ratio. I’d guess it’s closer to 30 to 1 so each guy has to hope some woman will say yes to him. Imagine 30 dudes all trying to screw this one poor woman in room. That’s either a wild time or a really bad one so why wouldn’t those guys switch over and change their avatar to women? It would guarantee they’d get attention and maybe that’s all they want. I think the pleasure centers in the brain work similarly so when you have sex or have an orgasm it still feels about the same.”

“I couldn’t really say,” I said to Dutch, enjoying his ideas on player choice. “I’ve heard when trans women start Hormone Replacement Therapy, the way their orgasms feel can sometimes change.”

“But hey,” Dutch said turning back to the bar. “I’m just some middle-aged white guy that never went to college so what the hell do I know about psychology and all that shit.”

“Your years count for something,” I said, knowing Dutch had a good 20 years on me. “You can read every book in the library, but you still need that real world experience to know what’s really going on.”

“Did I ever tell you the story about my trip to Thailand and the well-hung Lady Boy?”

“Jesus Christ, Dutch!” He and I both laughed hardily at his comment. We then sat silently for a few moments before I redirected back to what I was there for. “If there really was a hack and all our information got released…what do you think will happen?”

“Not really sure,” he said with a stoic look on his face. “All I know is I really don’t care who knows who I am in the real world. Hell, I’ll just tell them who I am. What are they gonna do? Come find me? And then what? Do they really wanna go to war with a Marine? To that I say good luck. I may be over the hill but I still got something in me.”

“I’m not a Marine though,” I said to Dutch which caused him to look my way again. “I do talk about my life here and some aspects of it, but I’ve worked hard to make sure no one knows who I am in real life. I’ve had some bad experiences with stalkers and given who I am here, if someone found out who I was things could get ugly for me. Really ugly.”

“I hear you,” Dutch said, the concern evident in his voice. “All I know is if there was a hack, we’d probably already know about it unless the publisher and developer wanted to torpedo their own company. Doesn’t mean someone isn’t looking for a way into their network though. Hacks can sometimes be stupidly easy to pull off from what I’ve read. An employee opens what they think is a PDF and just like that they have a virus or worm or whatever the hell they use to get into a network.”

“Do you think someone’s really trying to get in?” I asked. Dutch could tell I was sincerely worried.

“Given some of the psychotic shit heads I’ve met here,” Dutch said. “I’d have to say yeah. There’s no doubt in my mind that someone’s trying to get in. This is the most exclusive game in the world and at least half the players here actively hide their identity. For all we know, in this room alone we could have businessmen, world leaders, military strategists, multimillionaires. If that data got leaked or hacked, a lot of really important people would have a whole lot to lose. Can you imagine if someone like a world leader was attached to an avatar here that participates in some sort of wild sex acts? It would be all over the papers, the web, social media. It would turn into a circus and then they’d have to try and explain it. It’d be a shit show. Because of that possibility, that data is would be worth millions, if not tens of millions to the right buyer.”

“It could cause serious consequences in the real world,” I said out loud but mostly to myself. “People’s lives would be ruined.”

“Their reputations, their lives, their businesses.” Dutch went on. “If even one world leader had their data leaked and attached to a character here, that would be bad enough. Imagine now if every player here had their data leaked all at the same time. It’s be chaos. It would be like if everyone’s dirty laundry all got aired out at the same time. The stench would circle the globe and cause panic for countries, publicly traded companies and other business.”

“You really think it could get that bad?” I asked.

“As a group,” Dutch said. “People can be really stupid and panicky. That ‘end of the world’ mentality takes over and they scurry around like rats fleeing a sinking ship. That’s why I don’t trust ‘civis.’ All of the worst things that have happened to me in my life was because some civi got stupid. I’ve never had a fellow vet do me like that.”

“Retired but still about that life?” I asked Dutch with a smile. “There’s something to be said about that brotherhood.”

“Yeah,” Dutch said. “We don’t panic when the shit hits the fan.”

“Or when you’re waiting in line for your turn with a female avatar?” I said, referencing an old adventure of his that he felt the need to tell me about some time ago.

“Oh God,” Dutch said with a grin. “The last thing I need is another gang bang with a bunch of people on antidepressants!”

“Hey!” I said with a smile in my voice. “It’s not a gang bang. It’s…group therapy.” Dutch and I both laughed for a moment, our eyes locked until something pulled his away from mine.

“On the topic of wild times,” he said while looking past me. “You may not want to turn around.” My smile dropped from my face and was replaced with curiosity.

“Why?” I asked, uncertain of what he was asking me not turn to see. Dutch looked over my shoulder and then back to me, a look of worry on his face. “Dutch. What is it?” He looked back over my shoulder once more.

“She’s here,” he said. Hearing him say those words, I didn’t even have to turn around to know who he was talking about.

“Oh,” I said, my voice already beginning to shake. “Oh, God.” My heart already beating out of my chest, I turned around in the stool to looked back out to an open area in the room between a few tables where only a handful of people were standing.

There she was, her long dark hair pulled back in a ponytail as she always kept it and her top a cream colored white with yellow accents. She was wearing the short shorts she always liked to wear, the color matching those she used for her top, and her wrists were adored with white, furry cuffs that looked somewhat ridiculous but seemed to work for her and her overall look. She wore spike stilettos, white, with a braided accent and buckle just above her ankle. Her skin was a dark, chocolate brown which contrasted with her outfit. Her eyes were a swirl of brown and hazel and her lips thick, seductive, and covered in bright red lipstick which appeared as if it were dipped in glitter.

Without thinking, I stood up and stared at her, a cacophony of raw emotions suddenly rushing back to me as I watched her from the bar. She looked back and forth across the room as if looking for a place to sit with a group of her friends, many of whom I did not recognize. As she scanned the room, her eyes fell upon me and instantly locked on. She froze. She knew it was me and I know she felt those same emotions overtaking her in that instant. My hands began to shake and I struggled to keep myself from tearing up right then and there. I looked down to my hands a moment, squeezing them into fists before forcing myself to relax them again over and over, a practice I’d always done to try and calm myself when my anxiety piqued. Before I knew it, I was moving toward her, not even considering what seeing her again could mean for my mental wellbeing.

As my feet took me closer to her she also started walking, moving toward me with confident, yet delicate steps as if she were doing her best not to appear shaken. The closer she got to me, the more the people around me began to fade away, disappearing into the background of my vision. With each step, the space around me grew darker while the light which seemed to focus solely on her only got brighter. After several more steps and unconscious movements around a few chairs, we were standing before each other, still not having broken eye contact. I pulled the hood back from my head, revealing my own high pony tail and letting my long black and purple locks flow freely again. I unlatched my cloak and let it fall to the floor, not caring to conceal myself any longer.

We stared at each other for what felt like forever, not saying a single word. I could see her lips slightly quivering and I could feel a slight welling of tears in my eyes. Unconsciously, I lifted my right hand and before I knew it I was almost touching her cheek. Without warning, she took my hand in hers and pulled it down, letting it settle on her chest. I could feel her heart beating as quickly as mine was, it’s steady but powerful thump pulsing so hard that it felt as if she were barely holding it together.

I’d not seen her she left me all that time ago, yet I still found myself thinking of her everyday since. She’d removed me from her friend’s list not out of spite, but out of a need to protect me from the possible consequences of our friendship. She was there that night when I was awarded my title and it was shortly after that she broke my heart, leaving me shattered and broken on the floor of my old apartment.

I knew why she did it to me. She didn’t want to, but felt as if she had no other choice. She didn’t want to be a burden to me. She wanted to be the protector I might need given my situation and what she and I had gotten into, and the best way she thought she could to do that was to leave. She knew her lifestyle and well known kinks would be used to judge me by way of association. I ached for her for so long and thought that maybe I’d gotten over it all, but seeing her there in front of me made me very aware that I wasn’t over her, not even close. I turned my hand in hers, gripping her fingers, and carefully pulled her toward me.

“Ana,” she said to me in a light and almost brittle voice. After a tense few seconds, I mustered the only words I could in that moment.

“Hello, Reyna.”