Control (Aurora Book 1)

Chapter 13 - Outro

A FEW WEEKShad passed and nothing had come out as far as the personal data that had been stolen. No other statements had been released so everyone had started to become strangely comfortable with the fact that all their personal information could be released at any moment. In the real world, the hack had been major news for a couple of days, but even that eventually cooled off and things went mostly back to normal. As a society, we’ve grown so used to having our data stolen that most people had simply assumed it would or could be stolen at any moment.

Me releasing all my information on purpose did have negative consequences for me but nothing terribly concerning. A few people local to me did get curious and came by my apartment building, but thankfully the on site security took care of them. Apparently one person from out of state did attempt to make contact with me, but he was warned not to return which, from what I understand, he hasn’t. I wouldn’t know first hand because the day after it all went down, I was contacted by one of Thaddeus’s people and they arranged to have me moved immediately for my own safety. It was a hassle to have to pack up and go within a few hours, but I only took necessities as they advised me they’d have a moving company come and pack up my apartment for me. I wasn’t happy to have individuals I didn’t know going through all my things, but I did do this to myself. Thaddeus was just trying to help.

Because of the move and my temporary status for a few days, I was unable to login to see everyone, but I did decide that since everyone knew who I was that I could post a video on social media to let them know what was going on. It hadn’t taken people long to find all of my various social media accounts from Instagram to Facebook and even Twitter or X or whatever the owner is calling it nowadays. The exposure sent my follower tallies, which had been quite tame, through the roof. Overnight, I went from having a mere 72 followers on Instagram to well over 4 million. Facebook was also similar as that count moved from 91 to 3 and a half million. Even Twitter was kind to me in that way as I managed to amass well over 6 million follows in less than 24 hours.

It was a whirlwind of activity on the social media front and while most people who contacted me were kind with their words of support and gratefulness for what I had done that night, there were, of course, trolls. I got your garden variety troll comments like “You’re ugly” and “You’re old” and of course the much more rare, but ever popular “I’m going to find you and rape you.” There really are people in this world that have nothing better to do with their lives than threaten others for their own amusement.

Still, all the troll posts and attention that my outing garnered in the mainstream media put a spotlight back on the various social media platforms to strengthen their defenses against threats of violence and bullying. Being so familiar with being barked at and told the worst things in Aurora, I was glad to see that my in game activity had a positive real world effect. I didn’t get my hopes up too high though. Far too many times have we seen statements being released by all these social media companies saying they will do more to curb this kind of heinous activity only for it continue. I wasn’t looking to become a spokesperson that would fight against this type of behavior, but sometimes we end up in positions we’d never thought we’d be in.

I’d also been contacted by several major media outlets that wanted to get an interview with me so they could get more inside information on all that transpired that night and why I felt I needed to do what I did. Some places even offered to put me up in very nice hotels and fly me out to them first class. As tempting as it all was, I felt it was better to let the game company handle all the media for me. After all, I wasn’t in a position to potentially speak on behalf of the developer. I wasn’t an employee nor was I ever directly asked to be one. I say that knowing that when I’d first gotten my title, that also granted me moderator powers which would allow me some control over in game activities. If I ever witnessed someone breaking any of the rules of conduct while I was out and about, I could act and put a stop to it all without anyone knowing it was me doing the moderating. I ended up using those powers only a handful of times though as I felt it wasn’t really my responsibility, at least at the time, to be the world’s police. I always wanted to give people the opportunity to correct their own behavior, opting to only step in when I saw they were seriously getting out of hand.

I could be out at a friend’s club or just out in the many cityscapes built around Aurora and may spot someone acting against another in an unruly fashion. If so, I usually gave them a chance to alter their behavior by simply sending them a message via the in game moderator system. It was me simply saying to them that we see what they are doing and are kindly asking that they stop. It was incredibly rare that I had to go further than that. Through my light moderation, they’d often think twice about the way they were acting and things would de-escalate. I’d often tell myself that I wasn’t an employee and wasn’t getting paid for this work, but in reality I also felt that people needed to be given a chance to recognize that they were crossing someone else’s boundaries with their actions and wanted them to do this on their own instead of having ‘Big Brother’ shoot them a message asking them to stop. In all my time as a moderator, I only actively silenced a player and put them in a time out where they would be placed in their room for a short time only once.

When I finally was able to relax that night and think about the fact that I had been granted Game Master permissions which far outranked moderator powers, I wasn’t really sure how to approach it. Any player could see my name or see in my profile that I was marked as a GM as it was made very clear and obvious. I’d realized that the GM tag wasn’t something I could turn off and figured the developers wanted it that way so everyone would be aware of what I was and what I could do. That bothered me and I sent in a message asking for them to change this as I didn’t want to be seen in the world as some sort of god figure. It wasn’t me and I didn’t want people to see that in my name and either be intimidated or afraid to interact with me. I didn’t want them to change their behavior because of it.

The following night, after all the night of insanity, when I logged in and before Reyna arrived, I set up a private room where I could play around with more of the GM powers just to see how it all worked. Jazz came by and his little sprite bounced around as I practiced doing more and more with them. We talked and chatted and he advised me on the best practices for using my new powers. For fun, I began stacking items on top of each other and creating complex towers using only my mind. Jazz said he was impressed with my acumen regarding my ability to not use the common hand gestures that most players used when navigating their HUD. I wasn’t having to use them to lift and manipulate entire rooms of furniture and other objects which he found, as he put it, “interesting.”

As a way to test my skills with Jazz still with me, I took an object and attempted to alter it’s entire form. After a few seconds of thinking it, a simple chair I’d lifted up and had floating in front of me became a coffee table. From there, I change it into a barstool and then a sofa. I went through every item I could think of and with each iteration, it got easier and easier for me. Unlike thinking of something like a bottle of water out in Aurora, I was, in a sense, not only able to conjure that water bottle but also change it into anything else I wanted. I was able to alter its’ mass and weight as well as it’s overall physical composition.

Out in Aurora, the physics rules of the game were virtually identical to those of the real world which was done specifically to make the game feel as real as possible. For some reason, I was able to not only bend the physics of the game world, but also completely break them. I could lift anything I wanted simply by thinking it, even myself. I could change the colors of all objects and their textures, patterns, and every physical aspect. Jazz seemed somewhat taken aback by what I was able to do, even at one point saying that the things I was doing must be some sort of software bug that I’d managed to uncover. He said he’d look into it for me and then promptly excused himself. After he did, I continued to hone my world altering abilities in that private room for the next hour before Reyna arrived. When she did, she looked over my little room of completely distorted and often times floating objects and smiled, and with a simple thought, I was able to return them all to their original shapes, sizes, and weights.

Reyna and I had become a couple, officially. Her face along with mine had ended up all over social media as well. We were often referred to as The Power Couple of Aurora, a moniker that I didn’t particularly care for, but Reyna thought was kind of funny. That same night Cris asked that we all meet in her brothel so we could go over all the happenings of the last couple of days. There, it was voted that Reyna would join the council given her new title as The Butterfly and I would still serve as chairperson which Caster said made logical sense. I had also told all of them that I would be lobbying to have them all granted moderator powers just in case things got out of hand. I went over how moderator powers worked with all of them, sharing my HUD and going through my own. I didn’t feel it was proper for me to pressure the developers to make them all GMs so I stuck with my first request, feeling that if Caster and the others could be trusted to be the faces of the player base, they could be trusted to serve as mods if the need arose.

Even after first getting my title all that time ago, I was surprised that I was granted moderator powers and the others weren’t. At first, I was confused at having them, thinking maybe it was some sort of mistake. Even after filing an in game ticket to have someone look over my account, all I got back was an email stating that my account was in good standing and that all of the applications available on my HUD were approved and I could use them as I saw fit. Even to this day, I still refer to them as apps I shouldn’t have had because, well, I had never asked for them. Yet, there they were and I quietly accepted that the developers wanted me to serve as a moderator. I never told anyone, not even Cris or Reyna, about my mod powers. I wasn’t sure why I was granted them at the time which is why I always avoided using them unless I really had to.

After the meeting that saw Reyna join the council, all of us breathed a sign of relief as it started to feel as if the worst was behind us, even though our data was still out there and we had no idea who had it. Caster and Cris, both of which were as concerned as I was, told me they felt a strange sense of relief when I purposely took the spotlight off of them and forced everyone to focus solely on me. It didn’t all happen the way I’d wanted it to, but it still worked.

Encouraged by my display that night, a few hundred other players decided to out themselves as well even though some of the things they’d done in Aurora might be considered deviant and even down right unacceptable to most in the rel world. To their amazement, very few of them were judged for the things they did in game, especially those of a sexual nature. I’d always been very open in Aurora with those who asked me about why I did the things I did, even those fantasies that were, by some measures, considered completely insane or counterintuitive. I would go over my own reasons for doing those things and told them each and every one of us had our own often very personal reasons for doing them.

Kinks, I’d come to find, weren’t simply something strange or perverted that someone suddenly got into. They could be that, but other times those kinks could be tied to other things. For me, virtually all of my kinks are tied to trauma. The common joke would be that I became a dancer because I had “daddy issues” when in reality the time I spent doing that was a very practical one. I hated “flipping burgers” and making very little money so I decided to go where they money was. For me, it wasn’t sexual and it wasn’t about making myself feel like more than I really was. For me, it was about making money, being able to eat, and keeping a roof over my head. Dancing kept me afloat financially and I had no problems with it. The reasons for doing it did shift some as the months passed. The money was still very good, but I found myself beginning to feel something for all the patrons that came through the club. Over time, I realized that a lot of the men and women that found themselves there were there not just for a good time, but also because something wasn’t quite right in their world.

I’d gotten used to having the oil workers come in after they got paid and just doing the normal sensual dances for them, but sometimes I’d get someone that I could tell wasn’t doing so great. Maybe they felt lonely or that they weren’t good enough. Maybe they were having problems in their marriage or had other family issues. It’s very easy to assume that people who visit strip clubs were only there for one thing, but that not always true. Sometimes my clients yearned for companionship. Sometimes they wanted or needed someone to talk to. Over time, I started to pick up on this and acted accordingly. Not every person that came into the club wanted me or one of the other girls to bounce on their lap. Sometimes they needed another human being to look them in the eye, even one they didn’t know, and tell them that everything was going to be OK.

I’ve never forgotten my time as a dancer and it remains one of the better times I can look back on in my life. I learned so much in those years not only from the other girls and the owners of the club where I worked, but also from the hundreds of men and a few woman who came in and looked to me for companionship. It’s very obvious that sometimes people just wanted to party and have a good time. But other times people need something else and I wanted to be the one to provide them with that. I’ve come to realized that sometimes talking to a complete stranger, someone who can give you an objective and unbiased response, can be incredibly helpful. I have never considered myself some sort of therapist. Obviously, I’m not. I just think of myself as a friend one might come to when they have something weighing on their heart. People talked to me, took solace in my company, and sometimes revealed their darkest secrets. The irony that this same thing was something I’d come to do in Aurora was not lost on me.

About three weeks after everything had happened, I was in a club with Reyna and a few other friends, mostly those that she and I knew from before she left. They were happy to see her and I back together not only as friends but as far more. Some of them were the men she and I would do our role play sessions with, but they’d not mentioned anything about picking back up where we left off. I was glad that they hadn’t asked us either. If that was something that Reyna and I choose to do again, we’d let them know. Admittedly, it was often fun to let go and do something wild like that, but other times I just enjoyed spending time with Reyna. Whether it was staying at my Aurora home, her place, at a park, or at a club or some other room, I loved the times she and I spend together.

People came by our table and offered us their congratulations not only on our coupling, but also on our ascensions. Some of them , I noticed, were a little nervous around me, probably because of my new status as a GM. It wasn’t normal for GMs to actively roam around the game as a regular player would since most of them were either developers or employees that specifically filled that role which was usually done at a computer and not as I do in my sleep. In a video I had released on one of my social media channels, I addressed any potential concerns regarding my status and encouraged people to continue to play as they normally did even if I was around. Even after my statements though, some players were still fidgety and I knew that only time could help them get past any uneasiness they felt over having a GM around.

That night was especially fun because of the type of club we were in. While most rooms focused on night life and dancing, Reyna and I had decided to visit a comedy club that often attracted real life comedians that used it as a place to try out new material. Some of the jokes were duds, but more often than not they were quite funny. Some of the comics were open about who they were in the real world so it was interesting to see how they navigated performing in Aurora as opposed to the waking world.

After spending some time there, Reyna and I ended up at one of the more popular rooms in the game world, Vicious D, where I’d met and assisted countless new players. She and I danced for some time as well as spent time with my old friend Z-One. We’d even managed to run into Clover Leaf who’d fallen in with a group of dancers who liked to tour the clubs and perform their routines. Z-One was doing his usual thing by dancing with everyone he locked eyes with and had his usual group of friends with him. I made sure to say hello to them before Reyna and I found a small spot for us to just be for the night.

Quiet times in clubs for Reyna and I were never quiet for long as once people realized we were there, they’d often make their way over to us. It was one thing when it was just me, but with Reyna and I both being council members the attention could be stifling at times. I’d recently found out that someone had started an unofficial Reyna The Butterfly fan club and that they’d post videos and picture of her on social media. Reyna was awestruck by the attention she was getting, but eventually adjusted to her new found fame. It wasn’t unusual for me to encourage her to spend time away from me and focus on the things she wanted to do in Aurora besides being with me.

In those times, she’d visit a few clubs her friends ran and did what she could to use her fame to help attract more visitors to those rooms, similar to what I occasionally do. She’d also have sessions with other players, sometimes of a sexual nature. She’d always tell me about them and at first would ask for my permission which I assured her wasn’t necessary. I trusted her completely and I knew that the two of us spending time apart and just doing for ourselves was a healthy way to approach our relationship. I knew Reyna was with me because she wanted to be and not because she felt any sort of obligation.

She’d go off and have her fun with whomever she pleased and I was and am perfectly fine with her doing it. She also encourages me to go and be with others, but I often find myself doing others things besides having sex. I did still call on old friends from time to time if I felt the urge to be with someone while Reyna was away and, as she did with me, I would let her know about it. There were also still times when Reyna would be off on her own and would contact me, asking me to go to her. When I’d get there, she’d often propose some sort of role play scenario or something else the two of us could do together with one, two, or sometimes several other people. In a lot of ways, it was like old times for her and I, and we always made sure to enjoy ourselves either just with each other or with others joining us.

It could, at times, become very erotic. In those more erotic sessions, I would ask that anyone who was joining us to please keep our session private which everyone did. Only a single time did I discover someone trying to covertly record and share the video which I quickly put a stop to using my GM powers. I did not like using my powers very often, but part of the limits Reyna and I set for ourselves was that any of our role plays would be kept between us and those present at the time. If any of them did not agreed to our limits, they were under no obligation to stay. If they attempted to violate those limits, they were asked to leave. In essence, we used common BDSM limit practices. Everyone has certain things they are alright with and other things they simply refuse to do and each of those limits should always be respected. Once we were all in agreement and we all knew each others limits, our role plays would commence and Reyna and I would have our fun not only with each other, but also with the others participating. As far as what kind of fun we had, well, that’s a story for another time.

It was getting close to waking time when I noticed Thaddeus sitting over at a table not far from Reyna and I as we danced in yet another club. I’d felt something in the room change which first got me looking around and sure enough, there he was, wearing the same outfit he was wearing when we’d first met. I looked over to him and he gave me that look, letting me know he wanted to talk. I leaned over to Reyna and told her I needed to speak to someone privately and she kissed me on my cheek and smiled before I headed off. I walked over to Thaddeus and took a seat across from him, leaning back and resting my hands in my lap as he stared across a dark, wooden table to me and smiled.

“Didn’t expect to see you here,” I said as I locked eyes with him. “I thought all I was gonna get from you was messages from some of your employees. Maybe something from Jazz.” I paused a moment and read his expression as best I could. He seemed calm, confident, and looked as if he’d been wanting to have the conversation we were about to have. I’d not spoken to him directly since the night everything went down. “I guess we have a lot to talk about.”

“We do” he said, looking back at me and resting his arms on the table. “A lot has happened over the last few weeks.”

“That’s an understatement,” I said as I arched my eyebrow. “We can start where ever you like. Or maybe I should. I have my own questions for you.”

“I know,” he said, his voice still calm and his smile still present. “I ended up making a lot of executive decisions that night.”

“You and I both,” I replied. “Only difference is no one knows who you are and everyone and their mother knows about me now.”

“About that,” Thaddeus said, interrupting me. “I wanted to apologize about the temporary housing we has you in.”

“It’s actually a nice place,” I said, letting him know that I still appreciated his efforts to look after me after I’d exposed myself to the entire world. “A little extravagant, but it provides me with what I need.”

“I’m glad,” he said, stroking his chin and looking away for a moment. “I wanted to be the one to let you know we’ve secured a more permanent residence for you. In fact, let me….” Thaddeus proceeded to share his HUD with me and showed me several pictures and a video of what appeared to be an exceptionally beautiful home that took me by surprise. It had 5 bedrooms and 4 bathrooms along with a massive living room, study, office, and a library room where several shelves had already been installed. Most of the floors were hardwood with the exception of the kitchen and bathrooms which were covered in tile. The overall colors of the walls and shelves were a dark, rich brown with areas of burgundy and violet as well as traces of indigo. Outside was a yard bigger than I’d ever thought reasonable with several trees all lending shade to the single story home. The backyard was also large with a gorgeous wooden gazebo set in a rectangular shape and covered by a sturdy, shingle-covered roof.

“Thaddeus,” I said as I looked past my HUD and over to him. “This is too much. There’s no way I can accept this.”

“We’ve already purchased it for you,” he said with a smile. As part of an agreement I had reached with him and the development company, I was offered a substantial compensation package for all I’d done. I had, overnight, become the face of Aurora and had generated massive amounts of traffic to their website and interest in their game, even garnering talks of a potential multi billion dollar buyout attempt from a major software company, though that was only speculation. “The paperwork is already filed and the house is in your name. We’re already having the movers placing all your belongings in it. We also made sure to settle you in a new area of the country where you’d previously shown significant interest in living. Not only that, but the neighborhood is monitored and guarded 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. No one gets in or out of it without someone noticing. We feel you’ll be completely safe there so you don’t have to worry about….”

“Stop,” I said, cutting him off mid sentence. I looked him dead in the eye and watched his smile slowly drop away. I glared at him for a few seconds and he knew I wasn’t happy with how he and his company had gone about things. “Look, Thaddeus.” I sighed and took a deep breath. “Don’t think for a moment that I don’t appreciate all you’re doing for me. I do, sincerely. It’s just…I can’t have you making decisions for me like this. If I’m gonna have something major like this happening in my life, I need to be the one making that choice. I can’t have someone doing it for me.” Thaddeus stared back at me a moment, the discomfort in his face becoming apparent. “I really am grateful for you doing this for me and I always will be. Just…please. Let me make the choices from here going forward. I have no problem with working with you to make Aurora a safer place for everyone. It’s something I want to do, but when it comes to having the final say in how my life goes whether here or in the real world, I am the one in charge. No one else.”

Thaddeus took a moment and digested my words. I could tell he was realizing he had crossed a line with me and the remorse built up on his face. I wasn’t angry with him or even really disappointed. Given who he really was, and by this time I was certain of it, I didn’t fully understand why he would take the liberty of making such a massive decision for me. He was essentially moving me across the country and placing me into a home that, while absolutely gorgeous and fancier than anything I’d ever lived in before, was something he’d practically forced on me. I’d discussed moving to a new location with his people through calls, but not once did Thaddeus step in and say he was going to do this.

“Hey,” I said to him as he nodded his head as if realizing his error. “The house really is beautiful. It’s…more than I could have ever hoped for.”

“I just want you to be happy,” he said, the confidence in his voice lessening. “You really have done more for this game, the people here, this company, me…than you’ll ever realize. We owe you a great debt and I want to be able to say we took care of you.”

“And I know you will,” I said, offering a kinder, gentler voice. “I have faith that you’ll take care of me. Hell, I saw the compensation package paperwork and the amounts you all are offering me…kind of insane.”

“Is it not enough?” he asked me. “I can talk to the board and we can see about getting you more.”

“No,” I said with a smile.”The amount you all offered me is more than fair. In fact I could argue it’s too much.”

“I argued it wasn’t enough,” he said. “But they wanted to see if you were actually worth the amount that I wanted to give you.”

“You made me a millionaire!” I said with a smile and a small laugh. “That along with all the exposure and the videos and social media stuff and all these companies asking me to partner with them and the money they’re offering….”

I paused a moment and considered it all. It had only dawned on me in that moment that I had sudden become very in demand for who I was and very, very rich in the real world. As with the episodes in Aurora, my real life had suddenly become a whirlwind of activity. Along with being given this incredible new house, Thaddeus and his game company had offered to pay me over 10 million dollars for the work I had done in not only keeping the player base calm, but also for giving them the kind of positive media attention one could only dream of. Every news organization was talking about Aurora and while the interest in the game because of the exclusivity had always been high, my actions and the various videos online documenting the recent occurrences only pushed that interest into a frenzy with tens of millions more people applying to be allowed to be part of Aurora.

“My life,” I said, taking a moment to gather my thoughts. “My life should remain my own. I’m happy to work with you and your company and I’m happy to accept your offer as your spokesperson. Just…you need to know when to back off and let me do things for myself. I’m not a child anymore. I’m a big girl and I can take care of things on my own and if I ever need help, I will go looking for it.” I paused for a few seconds before going on to give Thaddeus some time to consider what I was saying to him.

“You’re right,” he said while nodding his head. “I’ll need to remind myself the next time something like this comes up. I’ve been the shot caller, so to speak, for so long that I often forget that certain people outside my managerial influence prefer to make their own choices. I apologize.”

“I accept,” I said, offering him a warm smile. “We’re OK. I just needed to make sure we’re on the same page with that kind of stuff.” He nodded his head once more and offered back a smile. “You say my things are already being moved in. When can I expect to be flown out to my new house?”

“Tomorrow,” he said. “We’ve already got you booked, first class of course. I…hope that’s OK with you.”

“It’s fine,” I said, offering him another playful laugh. “I figured you can’t go back and ask my permission for things already set in motion. I’ll just be glad to be out of a hotel suite and into an actual home I can call my own.”

“It’s a little better than an apartment,” he said with a smirk.

“It appears that way,” I said back to him while still looking over the photos of the house he’d shared with me. I glanced over to my right and noticed that several individuals were looking my way, but I didn’t wish to be disturbed while talking business with Thaddeus. Using my new GM powers, I thought of and conjured a small, wooden sign with a stand that had a message on it saying ‘Please Do Not Disturb; Private Meeting.’ Looking over the sign, virtually all of the players looking at me sitting with Thaddeus nodded their heads and moved on to other things.

“It’s concerning how good you are with that,” Thaddeus said to me while looking out to the people reading the sign and moving on.

“Why?” I asked as he looked back to me. “Thought Prompting is fairly standard, right? If you practice enough, you get pretty good at it.”

“That’s the thing,” he said to me. “It’s one thing to trigger a preprogrammed prompt in your HUD by thinking about it. You’re not doing that though. You’re generating objects directly from our data and manipulating them on the fly. We never programmed for that.”

“What?” I said, sincerely unsure of what he was telling me.

“The things you’re able to do,” he said. “It’s actually something we’re looking into. We never intended for people to be able to do such things. Even our old Game Masters can’t do what you’re doing and some of them actively participated in creating the GM modules that are used today.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, kind of seeing what he was getting at but I wanted him to say it so I could be sure.

“We’re calling it a ‘Matrix’ moment,” he said to me as he leaned forward. “The GM modules, the applications that we provide our GMs for them to use, don’t have those sorts of capabilities in them so to see you doing that is drawing a lot of attention. We really don’t know how you’re able to manipulate the data they way you’re doing it.” I leaned forward as well, genuinely surprised by what he’d said.

“This isn’t normal?” I said, lowering my voice even though I knew no one could hear us. Real world habit. “That’s not really possible though. I mean if it’s not in the code or the program to be able to do it, then how am I able to? It makes no sense.”

“It doesn’t,” he said to me, his hands finding their way under his chin and appearing to hold his head up. “I helped write almost all the code for the game itself and played a role in the development of our moderator and GM tools and this was not something we thought was possible. You should absolutely not be able to do these things.”

“So it’s a bug then,” I stated, knowing this was the only other explanation. “Maybe it’s just something you all overlooked or something’s not playing nice with something else.”

“We don’t know,” Thaddeus said, finally leaning back in his bench. “It’s one of the reasons why we really want to get you into our offices. We were gonna wait until you were settled into your new home, but since we’re talking about it now I figured I’d just tell you. We want to fly you out to headquarters and run a few tests. If that’s alright with you of course. We want to see what it is that’s happening with you when you sleep and how your mind interfaces with and reacts to the data being sent back and forth. We also want to see your headband and see if there’s something peculiar about it.”

“Sounds sort of like you want me to be your guinea pig,” I said, not terribly excited about being looked over, tested, and possibly probed by a group of people I’d never met.

“We’d like to do it sooner than later,” he said to me, keeping his voice soft as to not seem to eager, but I knew he really wanted me to come in as soon as possible. “We’re not planning on disabling your GM powers because you’ve proven to us that you can be trusted to not abuse them. We do need to get to the bottom of this though.” I sighed and sat back in my bench as he had done in his. After a few seconds of looking at the table, I looked back up to him and nodded my head, somewhat reluctantly agreeing to his proposal.

“Send me the email,” I said as I placed my forearm on top of my head and pressed my lips together, the thought of being looked at as a thing not at all appealing to me. “But the moment you all start talking about me like I’m not sitting there in front of you, I’m leaving. I will not be treated like a some test subject.”

“Agreed,” Thaddeus said.

“And I guess since we’re talking about GM Powers,” I said, redirecting the conversation. “I have to ask. How in the living hell did Four Buttons get access to them?” Thaddeus sighed, knowing I was going to ask this. “As far as I know, GM powers are the only way he could keep us from teleporting away. I get there was a room bug and you mentioned that, but being unable to leave?”

“I mentioned before that he had help,” he said matter-of-factly. “There was a rogue GM that we trusted and he was in cahoots with our would-be murderer and he’s been expelled.”

“Fired?” I asked.

“Fired,” he replied. “And we’re probably gonna sue him for breach of contract. That kind of thing can open us up to lawsuits. Can’t have that here.”

“Maybe I should sue you all,” I said with a straight face. Thaddeus smiled a moment, thinking I was joking but it was soon replaced with intense concern.

“Are you being serious?” he asked me, unsure if I had any intention of actually filing suit which, if I really wanted to, I could. We were, after all, promised a safe environment in which to live out our fantasies and having someone threaten to cut your heart out at knife point is hardly what most would consider safe.

“I have no plans to sue,” I said, my face still stoic. “I know this worries you and it should which is why I brought it up. I know you guys do your best to ensure our safety, but even then you still had a baddie in your midst. I think I’ve proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that you can trust me with what you’ve bestowed upon me. I do have concerns about some of your crew though.” I dropped my arm from the top of my head and set it back on my lap under the table. “You know…maybe I should let you fly me out there as soon as possible. At this point, I’d really like to get to know who’s pulling the strings behind the scenes besides you.”

“You’re serious,” Thaddeus said, my expression not wavering. He looked down to the table and began to think, about what exactly I’m not sure.

“I’m not going to sue you,” I said which caused him to look back up to me. “The thought never really crossed my mind until now. Just know that this sort of thing…if it happens once, it can happen again. I hope you know I would never do something like that. It’s simply not in my nature. But I really am concerned about the people around you. This GM that you fired, was he close to you? It would seem they’d have to be fairly high up to have you all miss something like what they did.” Thaddeus looked down and frowned, letting out a sigh and nodding.

“He was,” he said to me, looking up to me. “He’s someone that’s been involved with the company for several years. It was…heartbreaking to see what he’d been doing. I’m sorry I let someone like that get close to me.”

“It’s not your fault,” I said, offering him some comfort. “When you bring in new people you often have to take that leap of faith and trust them. It’s not your fault is they turn out to be horrible people. All we can do is chalk it up to another life lesson. You know that though, don’t you.” Thadeus smiled at me wryly and nodded his head. He knew what I was getting at.

“It does still amaze me though,” he said, leaning back once more and leaving his hands on the table, palms down. “After all the stuff you’ve had to deal with in your life, you still let people in. No one would blame you for cutting everyone off, especially men.”

“I choose to see the good side of things,” I said, offering him an explanation. “I know people think I’m an idiot for doing it, but I’m not being naive. It’s a strategy of mine and I feel it’s necessary. Being around people, bringing them into our lives…even when they betray us, it’s a lesson. It’s how I’ve learned to survive through everything.”

“And you have managed that,” he said to me. “After all these years, you still manage to surprise me. You really are a different species compared to the rest of us.” I felt a sadness come over me with those words, as if I’d rediscovered something inside me that I knew to be true, but had pushed deep down into my psyche. I knew what he meant when he said what he did. Through all the trials I’d been through in life, I’d always somehow managed to get through them all alive. Maybe not completely sane, but still breathing.

“You’ve not asked about Reyna,” I said, redirecting him once again. “I have to image you have at least a small interest in her wellbeing.” He looked at me expressionless without saying anything for several seconds. “Maybe not.”

“It’s not like that,” he said, finally breaking his short silence.

“Then what is it like?” I asked. I had a feeling there was something he wasn’t telling me. I didn’t want to push him, but his curtness almost forced me to.

“I really can’t say,” Thaddeus said to me as he looked over to Reyna. She was standing with a large crowd of people, including many of our friends. I didn’t turn my head to follow his eyes, instead holding my eyes on him.

“I know she has secrets,” I said without him prompting me to. He looked back to me with a somewhat surprised look. “I know there are things about her real life that she’s not told me about and I’m alright with that.”

“You have your suspicions,” he said with curiosity.

“I don’t suspect anything really,” I said. “I just know that everyone has their secrets and if they want to hold them close to their chest, that’s their decision. All I can do is let them know that I accept them for who they are. If they choose to tell me, that’s great. If they don’t, that’s also fine.”

“What if that secret would completely change how you look at them?” Thaddeus said to me. I knew what he was getting at, but I wanted to tactfully ask him not to tell me anything more.

“I can’t live my life being suspicious of people all the time,” I said. “I know people who do that and they’re miserable. Always having to dig up dirt on others and always wondering when the other shoe’s going to drop. They spend so much time going through all that crap that they never have as moment to simply stand there and enjoy the sunshine on their face. If and when things go sideways, I’ll deal with that then, but for right now I just want to smile a little and enjoy a few fleeting moments of happiness.”

“That’s reasonable,” he said to me. “I just hope nothing from out of the blue catches you by surprise.”

“It won’t,” I said, giving off the impression of confidence when I really did have a fear of someone betraying me. It was something I could never let go of, but I still chose to ignore it. I didn’t want to spoil any potential friendships. “I know you’re trying to tell me something, but I don’t want you violating any sort of privacy policies you have internally.”

“I may not have to,” he said. “You’re technically an employee now as far as I’m concerned. We have a contract. I know you’ve not signed it yet but part of that is you having access to a lot of the internal data we have. That includes all the personal data of all the players here.”

“I already have that,” I said, pointing out an apparent oversight. “I’ve been exploring all of the Gamer Master functions and I realized right away I have access to player information. Well, a limited amount anyway.”

“You don’t have what I’m offering you though,” he said, apparently wanting me to see that he was giving me the opportunity to look into the very personal details of any player I wanted. I knew he was speaking specifically about Reyna. “In fact I’ll do that as soon as we’re done here. I’ll add full access to your GM profile so if you feel you need to you can look into someone. As you see fit of course.” Any person would be tempted to delve into the mind and habits of others if given the chance, especially if that person you were wanting to know more about was your partner. Him laying this temptation out in front of me rubbed me the wrong way and I felt he was once more crossing a line, but I held my tongue.

“I can’t stop you from giving me access,” I said. “It’s your company and your call. Just do me a favor. Don’t ever treat me like I’m just another employee. I’m not here to be your puppet. I’m here for my friends and I’m here to help people. I’m not here to judge others or to act as some go between for you. It’s like I told your people when they contacted me with all this stuff. I don’t mind playing a role, but I get to choose that role. I won’t have someone dictate to me how I go about my life here. As long as you and your board of directors keep that in mind, then we’ll both get something positive out of all this. The day anyone starts pushing me to do things I find objectionable is the day I walk.”

“The board did agree to that generous compensation package,” Thaddeus said back to me, an attempt to get me to capitulate some.

“I don’t give a fuck about the money,” I shot back immediately. “If taking your money means I have to sell my soul then I’m fine with sticking with my old job and just playing videos games on my PC again. I won’t be your tool. I made that very clear to your people the other day before they sent over the paperwork. Don’t think for a second that I’m not having someone go over that contract with a fine toothed comb. You either take me for who I am and let me operate the same way I see fit or I walk.” I could feel myself getting aggravated with the conversation.

“Ana,” Thaddeus said, putting his hands up to try and assuage my concerns.

“Don’t,” I said, cutting him off again. “Just…don’t.” I shook my head and looked away a moment, scoffing at this attempt to manipulate me. “You really have changed, haven’t you.” I looked back at him and stared into his eyes. After a few seconds I noticed him sink in his seat some, intimidated. “I thought I knew who you were, but maybe I was wrong. Maybe you’re not the person I remember. Maybe you’re not the person who offered me what I thought was the greatest advice I’d ever heard. Maybe I lied to myself all these years, holding you in such high regard. Or maybe you’ve just been in the corporate world so long you let it change you.”

Thaddeus broke eye contact with me and looked down to his lap. His hands which were still on the table slid down and out of sight. I had grown tired of the facade he was showing me and I wanted him to talk to me the way he used to, back when he looked after me at Latchkey. Back when Thaddeus was Theresa and I used to call him Mrs. Montgomery and life felt simpler. I’d figured it out after giving it a lot of thought during the weeks since she first appeared to me as Thaddeus. I had never told anyone about the things Mrs Montgomery had said to me in all the years since. Not my mother, my brothers, or my ex spouse had any idea of the conversations she and I had when I was little. She was the only one who knew.

I remember when she had to leave and it burned me. To me, she was the big sister I never had or maybe a trustworthy aunt. Still, the days after school she spent with me and the other children were cherished memories of mine. When she told me she had to go away for school, I wasn’t really sure what she meant. At that time I figured once you got older you would just be done with school and then you’d work. What she really meant was that she was going away to graduate school so she could further her education. I knew she had been going to the University of Texas there in my home town, but I wasn’t aware that graduate school was a thing and that attending that could mean she had to move to a different city or even state.

“I always wondered what happened to you,” I said to her even though her Thaddeus avatar was in front of me. “I remember the day you left and wondering if what you told me was maybe a joke and that you’d be back on Monday. But you weren’t joking. You really never did come back. I remember going there and thinking you would. Every day I remember thinking you’d come back today, that maybe you were just on vacation or something. But that was it. You really never came back.”

“I wanted to,” she said to me, a spot of emotion breaking through. “Obviously I never forgot you. When I was at Cornell, I had to work my ass off to get what I wanted. Day in and day out was a nightmare. It was so hard for me. I had to work and attend classes until the day I graduated. I worked at a few companies, helped them get their game development teams up and going. Many, many times I wasn’t taken seriously because I’m a woman and that started to drive me crazy so I said screw it, I’m doing my own thing. And I did. I started working on something like Aurora. I guess you could say it was the precursor to this place. I worked…so hard on that damn project and it felt like I couldn’t quite get what I wanted from it. The world felt too small and sitting at a PC felt too confining.”

“So you built Aurora,” I said, interjecting. She’d told me this before in our previous meeting, but I felt it was something near and dear to her so I let her speak.

“Yes,” she said to me. “But even that wasn’t enough. I wanted it to feel real, just like the real world. I started looking into neural technology. The more I looked and explored, the more I knew it wasn’t something I could do on my own so I got in contact with an old friend from Cornell. They were working on a technology that you could use to potentially read data directly from your mind, even while you were asleep. I told him what I wanted to do and together we came up with something that would work in concert with the game.”

“The headband,” I said. “You had someone else build the technology behind the headband, but you developed the game world.” I was under the impression that she had created the headband on her own, but I was wrong.

“Right” she said. “It took almost a decade of money and research, testing, failing, testing again, over and over. And finally we got it. We’d come up with something that would work and when we paired it with a pre-alpha version of Aurora, it worked nearly flawlessly. It was finally coming together. I finally had a way to create a game that felt not only real to life, but also had an interface for which people could access it easily and while they slept. The amount of lag was virtually nonexistent and….”

“You sent me the headband,” I said, stopping her before she could go on a rant. Theresa stopped speaking and stared back at me, realizing that all of her long held secrets concerning me were on the table now. “You kept an eye on me all these years from afar. You looked into the things that happened to me. The shit with my ex-husband and my time dancing and before that when I was homeless. You knew all about that.”

“Yes,” she said, taking a moment to considering her words. “I’m aware of it all.”

“Did you know about it as it was happening?” I asked, feeling strangely calm about all this. “Did you know…that I went back to my ex and the abuse continued? Did you know it was a massive mistake and said nothing to me?” Theresa remained quiet. She knew what I was getting at and she rightly believed I would be upset, but strangely enough I wasn’t.

“I knew what he did,” she said to me. “I knew what he did and I knew you went back, but I only found out after the fact. Yes, I followed your posts on social media and I extrapolated from them that you had returned to Will.” I felt my hands beginning to shake.

“Did you ever consider saying something?” I asked, my voice still calm. I wasn’t trying to be accusatory with her. I was only hoping to know what it was she’d thought of the situation. I’d assumed she’d been covertly watching my social media and once I had mentioned on Facebook what had happened to me, I was certain she probably accessed the criminal case records on Will since all those filings are readily available to the public.

“Once,” she said, with hesitancy in her voice. “When I realized what you’d gone through and what you had gone back to, I wanted to come out and talk to you. But who was I to do that? I took care of you after school. I wasn’t your mother or family. I was just the person charged with your care for a little while.”

“Yet you brought me here,” I said. “Look, Theresa. I’m not upset with you for not saying anything. After all the years went by and no word from you, I figured you’d forgotten about me anyway and I knew at the end of the day, I was probably just another kid you took care of while you were working and going to college. I don’t know. I guess maybe I thought we had something more than we really had.”

“But we do,” she said to me. “I know why you might feel that way. You have to understand, Ana, that it’s not always someone’s place to inject themselves in someone else’s life. Sometimes you have to just let others make their own decisions.”

“I can taste the irony in that comment.” I said to her, taking her aback.

“You know what I mean,” she said. I nodded and let her continue. “How would it look? Me, suddenly coming back decades later and telling you what to do! How would you even take that? What would I even say?”

“You could have said it’s going to be OK,” I said to her, my calm voice breaking a little. The emotions of the moment were becoming too hard to ignore. “You probably don’t remember but a few days before you left, you and I took a picture together. We were in the cafeteria as usual and we’d just got done playing chess. The assistant principal was taking photos for the wall art we used to do. You put your arm around me and she snapped it. After you left, it got put up on the wall by the main office. I stole that picture and I kept it. And I still have it.” With that, Theresa’s face which had remained mostly emotionless through our more heated comments finally showed signs of distress.

“I remember,” she said, her male voice cracking and her eyes welling up. “I remember that day. I knew I was going to have to quit there because I was moving and when I saw them come with a camera I knew we needed to take at least one photo together.”

“I’ve never scanned the photo,” I said. “I have it framed, sitting on my dresser. It’s probably packed up now, but it was there. I’ve had it all these years in the same cheap wooden frame.” I laughed a little knowing that I didn’t even care that the frame was cheaply made. All that mattered to me was the photo. “It’s a little funny…I always meant to get a better one, but I was just happy to have the picture. The frame didn’t matter. All I wanted was that picture. So I could remember what you looked like. So I could remember everything you told me.” I began to fracture. “All the things you told me…about love and kindness. About how in the end, only kindness matters. I remember you holding my hands in yours and telling me that even though they were small, they they were still mine and that what I chose to do with them would define who I was.”

Without warning, her avatar slowly began to change from Thaddeus Mann into a female form. Her hair grew out and the beard disappeared. He masculine frame shrank and her fingernails grew some while her clothing and the rest of her appearance also morphed. Within a few seconds, Thaddeus was no more and there in front of me sat Theresa Montgomery, older, with streaks of gray running through her long brown hair. She wore what appeared to be a business suit, creme colored and pressed perfectly. Her thin lips were covered in light red lipstick and her cheeks ever so slightly taking on a reddish hue.

Theresa finally let her tears flow, knowing that the little girl she took care of all those years ago in an old, run down elementary school in San Antonio, Texas that was attended almost exclusively by minorities, remembered her and remembered all she had tried to teach her about love, compassion, empathy, and knowing ones’ self. She knew I remembered it all and I had never let go of what I learned from her. She quietly wept while looking at me, going over my face with her eyes and taking a moment to really see the woman I had become. Through all the pain and suffering I had endured in my life, there I was just across from her, still breathing, still living, and still pushing forward. She knew she’d had an impact on me and was part of the reason I was able to find the strength within me to get back up even after being forced down to my knees so many times. She knew she was the reason I was so persistent in not giving into what her company wanted and she knew the reasons why I would never relent. She knew I would never let any amount of money compromise my integrity. She knew I could not be bought and she knew no amount of threats from her board of directors would sway me. She smiled.

“You’ve become so much more than I could have hoped for,” she said to me, not bothering to wipe away her tears. “I still remember that little girl. Now I see who you are and how you got here, and it makes me…so proud of you.”

“I never forgot,” I said, allowing myself to cry for her. We stared across the table at each other for what felt like hours. I looked her over and imagined what her life had probably been like. From her time spent at Cornell University finishing her degree to maintaining a work-life balance and even her getting her first job out of college. I thought about how she must have worked so hard to start her own company and the struggles she’d must have gone through to make it work. The endless hours and the constant rejections from investors must have taken their toll. I knew that she didn’t have much of a choice but to become what she was now. She never meant to leave the kind, caring, and cheerful young woman that she used to be behind. She had to if she were to make it in the kind of work and life she’d chosen.

Time had changed her as it does all of us, and I couldn’t hold onto that anger. I knew time had also changed me. I wasn’t the little girl she played chess with or gave life lessons to anymore. I was a grown woman who, like her, was forced to adapt to her surroundings or faced getting left behind. We’d both suffered loss and heartache and were often looked over by some of our male coworkers simply for being women. While she had virtually all of my history memorized from my time in school to my time spent dancing for money in a club to me working a call center job and being married to a monster, she knew it all. I, on the other hand, knew little of her so I had to give her the benefit of the doubt. I had to believe that maybe somewhere along the way she lost that part of her that made her who she was back then. She had to evolve into something that maybe she wasn’t particularly fond on just so she could fulfill her dream of building Aurora. This place, this game, had become her baby and like any good mother, she sacrificed a part of herself to ensure its’ survival.

I finally pulled my eyes from her and stood up from the table, my face still wet with emotion. I looked down to my hands, a near replica of what they are in the real world, and remembered what she’d once told me about them. I looked back over to her and watched as she wasn’t sure if she should stand up. I stepped closer to her, reached over and took her hand from her lap and lightly pulled her up to her feet. I closed my eyes a moment to steady myself as the woman I felt shaped at least part of who I had become stood before me for the first time in 26 years. Theresa’s eyes had become red and the stress had built up on her face. Without her permission, I pulled her toward me and embraced her, the emotional impact of it causing me to fully let go and openly cry. I felt her wrap her arms around me as well, squeezing me and reminding me of the times she’d done this for me when I was so small I could barely reach her chest. We held each other for over a minute, letting the moment sink in and not caring about anything else.

“I still remember,” I said, lightly sobbing but doing all I could to maintain my composure. “I’ve never forgotten.” I slowly pulled back from her and held her hands in mine. She quickly reversed me, taking mine in hers like she used to, smiling at me through her tears. “I know my hands are small. But they’re my hands.” I carefully pulled away from her, taking a few steps back, causing her to let go of me. “And I am never broken.” I stepped back even further, using my thoughts to remove the sign I’d created earlier. “I am never broken.” I stared at her for a few more seconds, turned, and began walking away before pausing for a moment. With a smirk on my face and tears in my eyes, I did what I always did for others after moments like these - I sent Theresa a song as a gift - Outdo by M83.

If I could tell everyone in Aurora one thing, it would be that we’re all going to be OK. Even if the data does eventually get exposed and posted on the web for everyone to see, as long as we hold strong and not give in to the hate, judgment, and ridicule, we’re going to be just fine. We might lose a friend or a job or be ostracized by a family member, but as long as we stay true to ourselves and never lose our souls, we’ll find a way out of all this. All of us really are fighting a battle that no one else knows about, but there is no rule that says we have to continue to do it alone. In my years, I’ve gone through so many different things: heartache, death, misery, homelessness, depression, breaks from reality, panic attacks, being beaten, raped, cheated on, neglected, abandoned. I could go on. All these things, every single one of them…they don’t have to define me.

I find solace in my friends. Cris, Mustafa, Giff, Z-One, Clover and many others have helped me get through everything that’s been thrown at me. Reyna, having been there for me through so many of my moments of weakness, has also been a savior to me. I know she is hiding something from me, but I am letting her hold onto that for as long as she feels she needs to. If it’s forever, then so be it. What matters the most is that she is true and good to me. I have never forced her to reveal anything about herself that she didn’t want to. Even if her personal data is leaked and people find out who she is and possibly reveal a huge secret, I will not judge her and I will not walk out on her. That is a promise I make not only to her but to all of my other friends who may be keeping something from me.

We all have our own reasons for holding back. I do the same thing in some regards. People may well assume that the few things I’ve told them about me are the full picture, but it’s not. Far from it. We will always have those dark secrets that no one will ever know about and we all have our own reasons for never speaking of them. It could be the same reason why we end up like Reyna who has a very specific and often frowned upon fantasy. We all have them and we should never judge others for theirs. Some of us want to be rich and others want to be famous. Some want to have sex with a celebrity and others want to be dominated in bed by someone else. It could be the same reason why men login and play using female avatars or why women prefer to play as men. Maybe it’s the same reason why men who are outwardly straight in the real world come here and are openly gay and it’s probably the same reason why anyone and everyone is allowed to explore all of their wildest sexual fantasies in Aurora. We all look for a small piece of wonderment in our lives here so we can forget about the real world. The biggest thing is that here where we can be almost anything and everything we want, the most important thing is that we maintain what all of us feel we’ve lost in the real world: control.

I wiped away the tears from my eyes as I walked back to Reyna and our friends, letting the volume of the music steadily increase so I could resume having a good time with them. I looked back over to Theresa as she stood by the table. I gave her a nod and a light smile, letting her know that things between the two of us were OK. She did the same for me and within a second, vanished into nothingness, leaving no trace. I turned my attention back to Reyna and the others.

“Who was that?” Z-One asked as he was dancing. Reyna looked over to me as well with a slightly confused look.

“Yeah,” she said as she danced beside Z. “I thought you were talking to a man. Who was that woman?” I smiled at them both and let the music volume increase a little more, letting the song invade my ears and lighten my mood.

“Oh,” I said as I looked down to the dance floor. I began to move my hips, playfully bumping into Z as he stood by me. I could feel the crowd moving to the song as I joined in, my mind slowly stepping away from the past and back into the present. I looked back over to the now empty table one last time. “Just an old friend.”