kept his voice even. “I’m sure he didn’t mean it as a compliment.”
“No, he didn’t.” Her voice was neutral but her expression was cold.
“Then I’ll research the bug myself, on my own time. The others can start prepping the new project. By the time we’re ready to hit the ground running, I’m sure I’ll have it all worked out. Let’s make sure VIC is safe.”
A chilly silence. Then Bryce said, “All right, Sam, if that’s how you feel. When are you going to start?”
“Tonight.”
Bryce leaned back in the black leather chair and made a tent with her fingers. Just like Martin used to do. Maybe it was a CEO thing.
* * * *
That night, Sam slid into his simulation chair and maneuvered into his equipment. With the head-mounted display in place, he set the scenario to return to his previous game, still in Group Play mode. Inside the game, he could enter Developer mode and review the processes that had been called earlier.
On his screen appeared the code for the mansion scene where Martin died. He quickly found where Martin had entered the game in Group Play. Sam reviewed the code line by line until he noticed calls to an unfamiliar procedure. Sensate. Martin’s HMC had been hacked. “What the hell is Sensate?” he whispered, enlarging the phantom screen.
He focused so intently on searching VIC’s code for the rogue procedure that he almost didn’t hear the front door open. A new player had entered his game. Bryce. Sam wasn’t surprised to see her. He had begun to suspect that she had altered the HMC code, and she’d known he was studying it.
“You found it,” she said.
“Yeah, but what does it do?”
Bryce beamed. “Sensate will be fantastic in the new sim-sex game. I used medical theories behind the phenomenon of phantom limbs, where patients who’d lost limbs could still feel them, even years later. I’ve been able to recreate that effect through software. It fools the gamer’s brain into not only visualizing the action, but feeling it.”
Sam recoiled in horror. “You mean Martin felt everything that happened in our game last night?”
“I wanted to give him a taste of the pain that VIC had caused others. Teach him a lesson. I never meant for him to die.”
“VIC doesn’t cause pain, but your new coding does. And worse, it kills.”
“Martin’s death was—”
“Collateral damage?”
“I’d say an accident, maybe for the best. He would never have let us reduce the violence in VIC. Once we use the game to promote love instead of hate, crime rates will go down, and everyone wins in the long run.”
“You’re talking about lust, not love. You’re substituting one base impulse for another.”
“I wish you’d left this alone, Sam. I thought we were going to be great together, just like the old days.” She drew a 9 mm pistol from her jacket and pointed it at Sam. “Before I entered your game, I inserted Sensate into it. I’m sorry it’s come to this.”
Bryce’s hand shook as she squeezed the trigger and the bullet only grazed Sam’s shoulder. As he felt its bite turn into a slow burn, he was amazed. How was it possible that Sensate-enhanced VIC could trick his brain so completely, so convincingly? The pain was real. Agonizing.
But he was in control, in Developer mode. Before Bryce could fire again, Sam shut the game down. His pain vanished. Astonishing.
He had enough to take to the police. But what could they charge her with? Being a fucking genius? And a madwoman, who’d converted virtual death into murder.
As the game faded, his head-mounted display turned dark and a single message appeared. “GAME OVER. WOULD YOU LIKE TO RESTART?”
Maybe tomorrow, after Bryce was arrested. He was eager to tinker with VIC. If Sensate’s brain probes or stimulants—whatever they were—created actual pain in a gamer’s mind, what possibilities existed for pleasure!
Bryce was a genius. A realistic sim-sex game could take over the world. He smiled, realizing the irony. He’d have to test it with a different woman.
Computers weren’t allowed in prison.
WITCH HUNT, by Tamara Ward
The day after fire gutted The Pleasure Chest, the regulars at John’s Pub & Grill stopped by the bar for a witch hunt, though if John asked them they’d deny it and say they came for a celebration. But he knew it was a witch hunt, even though his patrons downed drinks and spread smiles and slapped each other’s backs like the time three years ago when the town’s high school football team beat the boys from the big city.
Breaking a sweat as he filled glasses from behind the bar, John knew he ought to feel grateful for the boost in revenue; spring business typically dragged. Instead of allowing his customers’ mood to buoy him, instead of soaking in the smell of draft beer and used dollar bills, he concentrated on maintaining his mask of benign indifference, on playing his role of aloof bartender. His jaw ached from clenching.
“So what do you think about the arson?” Nattie asked for the third time, still poking at him, trying to get the perfect opening quote for her article in the South Wake Herald, the local newspaper, which came out every Tuesday afternoon and consisted of exactly one section—usually eight pages, but on special occasions up to twelve. “What alerted you to the fire?” She pushed an incompliant curl behind her ear with a stubby finger. Everything about Nattie seemed stubby today—her double chin, her pale powdered nose, her muffin-top belly insufficiently contained by her skirt’s elastic waistband. “It’s my understanding the fire began at about 3:30 a.m.,” she said. “Don’t you think it’s miraculous Darrel wasn’t hurt?”
John stifled a groan. Nattie’s questions mirrored those repeated by everyone in the pub—“When did the fire start?” “How did you notice it?” “Who do you think started it?” Even the town’s one police detective dropped by John’s Pub & Grill, asking John more of the same questions, before ordering a diet coke and hunkering in a back corner. The detective was getting an earful, liquor loosening tongues as the townsfolk mined each other for information to determine who set the fire while pretending to celebrate the demolition of The Pleasure Chest. No one knew anything helpful, or if they did they kept it quiet. But somehow, they all knew it was arson and they all knew John had been the one to call in the fire.
Even though John’s customers claimed to disapprove of Darrel’s carnal merchandise, quite a few had shopped there. But admitting their patronage would ignite their own social lives and livelihoods. The Pleasure Chest was like a Venus fly trap. In a town where so much depended on image, no one could afford to be caught inside Darrel’s store, even as so many found it irresistible.
The Pleasure Chest had opened half a year ago, causing immediate uproar throughout the community, and not just because Darrel was the first man of color to open a business in the downtown strip. A sex shop in the historic downtown? How could the board of commissioners allow it to happen? And the store’s merchandise—was it even legal to sell?
It was, and the commissioners scrambled to add language to zoning ordinances effectively
