Helpless
The Administration series, NC-17, ~2,850 words. Warrick/Toreth. Warning: breathplay.
Gothenburg was one of very few large European cities that hadn't been hit by the bombs. This, of course, made it a major tourist destination, and the cost of living there was the highest in the Administration. Only politicians and obscenely rich corporates could afford property in Gothenburg.
With the success SimTech had been enjoying lately, however, it wouldn't be long before Warrick was forced to acknowledge the obscenity of his wealth. He gazed out of the window of his temporary office, imagining what it would be like to have a vacation home here. There was no point in bothering yet, of course; he wouldn't have the time to come enjoy it until the initial stampede of sim sales died down. If it ever did.
The sim had been available for public purchase for two years, and the demand was higher than Asher's most optimistic models had ever predicted. Everyone wanted a personal virtual world, and nearly everyone was apparently willing to pay the price. Those who couldn't afford their own units were lined up at pay-per-minute kiosks, a franchise which was pulling in nearly as many euros as the sim sales. Predictably, the adult entertainment environments were the most popular, but virtual reality games were getting a lot of attention as well, and enough sim units were out there now that people were beginning to use them as glorified comms. SimTech was no longer a rising star. It had ballooned, adjusted, and settled comfortably into the role of a major corporation. Warrick had had to hire a second admin to deal with all the interview requests and dinner invitations.
It was excruciating. Of course he was overjoyed that the sim was successful, but the publicity was wearing him out. He never had any time to spend working on the sim itself anymore. He had a design team to come up with new ideas, a programming team to carry them out, and a marketing team to get them to the rest of the world. He'd done his part--created the code, put together the company, realized his technological vision--and now it seemed like he wasn't necessary to keep things going, except as a figurehead.
It was enough, sometimes, to make him consider leaving SimTech.
He might have done, too, except that the sim wasn't quite finished. The version they were shipping now was close, good enough for almost anyone, but not good enough for him. Warrick had never wanted the sim to be a toy or a tool. His goal had been the creation of new reality. He hadn't just wanted it to be impossible to tell the difference between the sim world and the real world; he wanted there to be no difference. And until he achieved that, he knew he would stay.
His comm buzzed. He picked it up. "Yes?"
"Dr. Warrick?" It was the admin he'd brought along, the new one. She had a habit of calling instead of taking three steps from her desk to knock on the door. "It's almost time for your meeting."
"Thank you, Tessa." He hadn't forgotten, of course. This meeting was the culmination of all the smaller meetings he'd been in throughout the week. This was the meeting in which a decision would, hopefully, be made. There would be programmers, ethics committee members, financial people, marketing people, and an Administration consultant, all in one place. He wasn't expecting it to end quickly.
The conference room was near the office he'd been given, as all of his meetings had been. He wondered if it was for his convenience, or if they were trying to keep him from wandering too much. He did not at all like feeling unwelcome in a SimTech-owned building.
Lenore Casprey, the head of his somatosensory programming team, stood up from her chair and hurried over the moment he entered the room. "I've just worked out the halting bug, Dr. Warrick. It's fixed now."
"Why didn't you message me?"
She ducked her head. "When I say 'just'..." She gestured to the screen on the table by her seat.
Warrick smiled. Lenore was exactly the kind of person he would have loved to have working on the sim back when it was just a mess of theory and potential. She was twenty-three and had never gone to college, opting instead to spend her adolescence performing bioprogramming experiments on her brother's cat. She wouldn't say what had happened to the creature in the end, but Warrick sometimes suspected that Bastard's kittenhood had been eventful. "Good work," he said. "I'll bring it up."
"Are we ready to begin?" asked one of the balding men in suits that comprised the bulk of the group around the conference table. Warrick nodded and took a seat.
"All right," said another of the balding men, who Warrick recognized from a particularly long and boring meeting with the ethics committee. His name was Coleman, he thought. "We're here to decide whether SimTech will go forward with this pre-programmed muscle movement software for the sim."
"The point may be moot if SimTech is unable to create functional software," said a third man, this one entirely bald. He was Paul Forvers, a consultant the Administration had somehow been allowed to stick in to help make the decision. Warrick had fought his presence tooth and nail, but the Administration had too much power, and the sim was too important to them.
"Ms. Casprey tells me that the issue has been resolved," said Warrick. "The programs have been in testing for three months, and no other technical problems have arisen. We can safely say that the endeavor is logistically feasible."
Coleman leaned forward onto his elbows. "The question we are asking then becomes not 'can,' but 'should.' It has not been decided whether the sale of this software is advisable."
"It's certainly financially advisable," said Clive Mendall, Asher's chosen proxy. "Every industry that requires physical skill of any sort in its workers will order in training programs. The aspiring athletes alone would make the venture worthwhile. And of course there's the porn."
There was a visual chorus of nods from all around the table. There was always the porn.
"Some specific programs would need to be restricted in availability," said Forvers. "Firearms operation, for one. We can't have gun training programs out there for resisters to use."
"Why not?" challenged Warrick. "We have shooting ranges out there for resisters to use."
"Not without the Administration's knowledge. People who use the ranges more often than is reasonable are tracked. Their files are tagged and we keep tabs on them. If a resister had a sim unit and a copy of this software, he could spend as much time as he liked running the program over and over again, drilling the motions into his mind, learning the skills to cause trouble completely without our knowledge. Now, if you would let us track sim usage..."
Warrick frowned at him. "Out of the question, as always."
Another ethics committee member, a grey-haired woman named Monda Thompson, spoke up. "This software is contrary to the purpose of the sim. It was designed to give users more control over their perceptions. This kind of passive, pre-programmed experience forces them to give up that control."
"No one is ever forced to enter the sim," said Warrick.
"Not now," Thompson pointed out. She shot a quick glance at Forvers. "It's possible that sometime in the future, people could be placed in the sim against their will. This technology could be used to put people through unpleasant experiences as well as productive training. It could be used, for example, for torture."
Warrick shook his head. "The cutout word. No one can enter the sim without having established a code word for emergencies. There's a provision in the pre-programmed muscle movement software--if a program engages the muscles required to speak, the user must be able to override it through intention alone. Safety is paramount. The code word is always an option."
********************************************************************
The decision wasn't made that day, unfortunately, but Warrick predicted tomorrow's continuation of the meeting would be brief. Coleman was the only one still digging in his heels, and Warrick was sure a night's pondering and the threat of another full day in the conference room would convince him. Forvers was the one he'd been worried about, but Thompson's arguments regarding potential torture seemed to have actually won him over. Warrick tried not to spend too much time considering what that meant about the Administration's plans for the sim.
He returned to find a message from Toreth, directing him to go to Gothenburg I&I that evening to meet him in the sim. He called Toreth back. "Why do I have to go to I&I?" he asked dubiously. "I'm in a SimTech building. There are plenty of units here. I think my hotel even has a sim room."
Toreth smiled mysteriously. "You'll see. I've got a surprise for you. I'm pretty sure you'll end up liking it."
That was worrying, to say the least, but Toreth wouldn't tell him anything else. Warrick finally agreed, as he knew Toreth had expected. If it had to do with the sim, Warrick had to know what it was.
The Gothenburg I&I building wasn't far away. The car deposited Warrick at a somewhat shady-looking side door that wouldn't open. Warrick was about to leave in exasperation when the door opened and an extremely attractive brunette woman leaned out. "Keir?" she asked.
Warrick blinked at the use of his first name. "Yes."
"Come on in." She held the door open for him. Inside, it was indistinguishable from New London I&I. "I'm Trish. You're lucky it's Para-investigator Toreth that asked, or you wouldn't be here. This is highly confidential, and I'm breaking a lot of rules."
Warrick followed her along the corridor. "I don't suppose you could clue me in as to what, exactly, is highly confidential? Toreth wouldn't say."
She grinned. "Don't worry, he'll show you. By the by, you are really his sub, right? I don't want to be involved in anything nonconsensual here."
Warrick couldn't believe Toreth had told her that, but there was no point denying it. "Yes."
"Good. Now, have you used a sim before?"
That must have been why she'd addressed him as Keir. If Toreth hadn't told her his last name, it was because he didn't want her to know who Warrick was. And if I&I was doing things with the sim that Toreth thought they wouldn't want him to know about, he was definitely glad he'd come. "Yes, many times."
"Then this will be weird for you, so be prepared." They arrived at a room that looked just like the rest of the sim rooms that were sprouting up all over the Administration. Trish strapped Warrick into one of the chairs. He relaxed into the familiar cushions. The visor went down, and...
...Toreth was rolling on top of him, kissing him harshly, grinding down against his suddenly alert cock. They were on a bed, probably in one of the preset bedrooms, but Warrick didn't waste time wondering about that when Toreth was right there, biting his lip.
"Missed you this week," mumbled Toreth into his mouth.
"I, mmph, I missed you too. Toreth, what's this all--"
One of Toreth's hands crept up between them, wrapping around Warrick's neck. Warrick moaned and gave up. They could talk about the surprise later, he supposed. The game didn't work in the sim, not really, but just sex with Toreth was quite pleasurable.
The hand on his throat tightened. Surprised, Warrick found that he actually couldn't breathe. Choking shouldn't work here. He relaxed into it like he did in the underwater environments, breathing without actually breathing.
It wasn't working.
His eyes flew open. Toreth was above him, grinning. Just before the need for oxygen became urgent, he let go of Warrick's neck.
"How did you do that?" gasped Warrick, sucking in air. "Did you find someone to program in altered perception of oxygen intake?"
"Nope," said Toreth. "I found someone to alter actual oxygen intake."
Warrick stared.
"We got rid of the safety controls."
"Impossible." Warrick pushed Toreth off him and stood up next to the bed. The room was, as he'd thought, one of the standard preset bedrooms, decorated in a modern blue-themed style. He barely noticed it. This could not be true. It couldn't. He believed that Toreth was crazy enough to do it, just as he had believed Toreth was crazy enough to slice Warrick up with a knife or fuck him with a loaded gun, but this wasn't just a question of Toreth being willing to do it. He couldn't do it. No one but Warrick had the technical capability.
Toreth sat up. "Remember during the Tanit investigation, when you didn't want to let Carl Knethen into the sim code?"
A sick fear descended over Warrick. "We searched every one of your people. They couldn't have taken the code."
"One of the men Knethen brought in there had a photographic memory. Not one of those really good memories that people call photographic, I mean a literal photographic memory. He took mental pictures of everything in there, and then he went back to I&I and typed it all out. It took him more than a year. A lot of code goes into one of these things, doesn't it?"
Warrick ran his fingers through his hair repeatedly, shaking his head, unable to speak.
"Go ahead," said Toreth. "Try to cut out. Say your code word."
Warrick already knew what would happen, but he said it anyway. Nothing happened. He was still in the sim.
"You can die," said Toreth quietly, dangerously. "I can kill you. From all the way in New London, I can imagine reaching out my hand and wrapping it around your neck, and you will die."
Toreth stood up behind Warrick, reached around him, and held a hand to his neck. Warrick swallowed.
"If I don't kill you," Toreth continued, "if I just leave a few... marks..." he squeezed Warrick's throat tightly enough to bruise, then relaxed to let him breathe, "they will stay there. Knethen took out the baseline restoration at the end of the session. If something happens to you in the sim, then as far as your brain is concerned, it happens to you in the real world."
Warrick stood stock-still, aware that this would have immense repercussions elsewhere, later, but more aware of Toreth's hand on his throat.
"Anything I can do in the real world, I can do here," Toreth whispered. He pressed his cock forward against Warrick's ass, and reached inside Warrick's trousers to take his erection in his other hand. "This is just like every other time you've ever wondered whether I'm about to go too far."
The hand on Warrick's cock was stroking rhythmically, and the hand on his throat was squeezing harder and harder. It was a race between his air supply and orgasm. He was already choking.
"Am I about to strangle you?" Toreth's lips were touching Warrick's ear. "Am I about to finally get lost in the moment enough to forget to keep you alive? You don't know. That's why it's good for you, isn't it? You have no fucking clue whether you're living your last seconds." His hand closed Warrick's airways completely, and he breathed, "And neither do I."
Warrick's eyes screwed shut, and he came.
********************************************************************
When he opened his eyes again, he was back in Gothenburg, sitting in the sim chair. Trish was unbuckling him. She grinned at him. "Can you see the come stain?"
He looked down. There was a wet spot on the front of his trousers.
"I can't see it," Trish said. "It only exists in your head. And in Toreth's, of course."
He should have asked more questions about how they'd done it while he had the chance. This was horrific news for SimTech. The sim could be used for all sorts of terrible things now, and he couldn't stop it. He should have tried to find out as much as possible.
He didn't. He stumbled out of the building in a daze. Trish deposited him in a car and gave it the address of his hotel, which Toreth had apparently provided to her. Somehow, he found his way back to his hotel room. He stood in front of the bathroom mirror, staring at the dark bruises around his neck.
This was it. This was what the sim had been lacking. Warrick hadn't seen it because it was completely counter to his basic concept of what the sim was. It had to be safe. That had always been the first priority. But safety was what kept it from being real. Reality wasn't safe.
Now the sim wasn't safe, either, and even though every fiber of his being screamed that this was the worst thing that could possibly have happened, the fact remained that these bruises were real. To him, they were real; to others, they weren't. From perception, he'd created a new reality.
He'd done it.
Gothenburg was one of very few large European cities that hadn't been hit by the bombs. This, of course, made it a major tourist destination, and the cost of living there was the highest in the Administration. Only politicians and obscenely rich corporates could afford property in Gothenburg.
With the success SimTech had been enjoying lately, however, it wouldn't be long before Warrick was forced to acknowledge the obscenity of his wealth. He gazed out of the window of his temporary office, imagining what it would be like to have a vacation home here. There was no point in bothering yet, of course; he wouldn't have the time to come enjoy it until the initial stampede of sim sales died down. If it ever did.
The sim had been available for public purchase for two years, and the demand was higher than Asher's most optimistic models had ever predicted. Everyone wanted a personal virtual world, and nearly everyone was apparently willing to pay the price. Those who couldn't afford their own units were lined up at pay-per-minute kiosks, a franchise which was pulling in nearly as many euros as the sim sales. Predictably, the adult entertainment environments were the most popular, but virtual reality games were getting a lot of attention as well, and enough sim units were out there now that people were beginning to use them as glorified comms. SimTech was no longer a rising star. It had ballooned, adjusted, and settled comfortably into the role of a major corporation. Warrick had had to hire a second admin to deal with all the interview requests and dinner invitations.
It was excruciating. Of course he was overjoyed that the sim was successful, but the publicity was wearing him out. He never had any time to spend working on the sim itself anymore. He had a design team to come up with new ideas, a programming team to carry them out, and a marketing team to get them to the rest of the world. He'd done his part--created the code, put together the company, realized his technological vision--and now it seemed like he wasn't necessary to keep things going, except as a figurehead.
It was enough, sometimes, to make him consider leaving SimTech.
He might have done, too, except that the sim wasn't quite finished. The version they were shipping now was close, good enough for almost anyone, but not good enough for him. Warrick had never wanted the sim to be a toy or a tool. His goal had been the creation of new reality. He hadn't just wanted it to be impossible to tell the difference between the sim world and the real world; he wanted there to be no difference. And until he achieved that, he knew he would stay.
His comm buzzed. He picked it up. "Yes?"
"Dr. Warrick?" It was the admin he'd brought along, the new one. She had a habit of calling instead of taking three steps from her desk to knock on the door. "It's almost time for your meeting."
"Thank you, Tessa." He hadn't forgotten, of course. This meeting was the culmination of all the smaller meetings he'd been in throughout the week. This was the meeting in which a decision would, hopefully, be made. There would be programmers, ethics committee members, financial people, marketing people, and an Administration consultant, all in one place. He wasn't expecting it to end quickly.
The conference room was near the office he'd been given, as all of his meetings had been. He wondered if it was for his convenience, or if they were trying to keep him from wandering too much. He did not at all like feeling unwelcome in a SimTech-owned building.
Lenore Casprey, the head of his somatosensory programming team, stood up from her chair and hurried over the moment he entered the room. "I've just worked out the halting bug, Dr. Warrick. It's fixed now."
"Why didn't you message me?"
She ducked her head. "When I say 'just'..." She gestured to the screen on the table by her seat.
Warrick smiled. Lenore was exactly the kind of person he would have loved to have working on the sim back when it was just a mess of theory and potential. She was twenty-three and had never gone to college, opting instead to spend her adolescence performing bioprogramming experiments on her brother's cat. She wouldn't say what had happened to the creature in the end, but Warrick sometimes suspected that Bastard's kittenhood had been eventful. "Good work," he said. "I'll bring it up."
"Are we ready to begin?" asked one of the balding men in suits that comprised the bulk of the group around the conference table. Warrick nodded and took a seat.
"All right," said another of the balding men, who Warrick recognized from a particularly long and boring meeting with the ethics committee. His name was Coleman, he thought. "We're here to decide whether SimTech will go forward with this pre-programmed muscle movement software for the sim."
"The point may be moot if SimTech is unable to create functional software," said a third man, this one entirely bald. He was Paul Forvers, a consultant the Administration had somehow been allowed to stick in to help make the decision. Warrick had fought his presence tooth and nail, but the Administration had too much power, and the sim was too important to them.
"Ms. Casprey tells me that the issue has been resolved," said Warrick. "The programs have been in testing for three months, and no other technical problems have arisen. We can safely say that the endeavor is logistically feasible."
Coleman leaned forward onto his elbows. "The question we are asking then becomes not 'can,' but 'should.' It has not been decided whether the sale of this software is advisable."
"It's certainly financially advisable," said Clive Mendall, Asher's chosen proxy. "Every industry that requires physical skill of any sort in its workers will order in training programs. The aspiring athletes alone would make the venture worthwhile. And of course there's the porn."
There was a visual chorus of nods from all around the table. There was always the porn.
"Some specific programs would need to be restricted in availability," said Forvers. "Firearms operation, for one. We can't have gun training programs out there for resisters to use."
"Why not?" challenged Warrick. "We have shooting ranges out there for resisters to use."
"Not without the Administration's knowledge. People who use the ranges more often than is reasonable are tracked. Their files are tagged and we keep tabs on them. If a resister had a sim unit and a copy of this software, he could spend as much time as he liked running the program over and over again, drilling the motions into his mind, learning the skills to cause trouble completely without our knowledge. Now, if you would let us track sim usage..."
Warrick frowned at him. "Out of the question, as always."
Another ethics committee member, a grey-haired woman named Monda Thompson, spoke up. "This software is contrary to the purpose of the sim. It was designed to give users more control over their perceptions. This kind of passive, pre-programmed experience forces them to give up that control."
"No one is ever forced to enter the sim," said Warrick.
"Not now," Thompson pointed out. She shot a quick glance at Forvers. "It's possible that sometime in the future, people could be placed in the sim against their will. This technology could be used to put people through unpleasant experiences as well as productive training. It could be used, for example, for torture."
Warrick shook his head. "The cutout word. No one can enter the sim without having established a code word for emergencies. There's a provision in the pre-programmed muscle movement software--if a program engages the muscles required to speak, the user must be able to override it through intention alone. Safety is paramount. The code word is always an option."
********************************************************************
The decision wasn't made that day, unfortunately, but Warrick predicted tomorrow's continuation of the meeting would be brief. Coleman was the only one still digging in his heels, and Warrick was sure a night's pondering and the threat of another full day in the conference room would convince him. Forvers was the one he'd been worried about, but Thompson's arguments regarding potential torture seemed to have actually won him over. Warrick tried not to spend too much time considering what that meant about the Administration's plans for the sim.
He returned to find a message from Toreth, directing him to go to Gothenburg I&I that evening to meet him in the sim. He called Toreth back. "Why do I have to go to I&I?" he asked dubiously. "I'm in a SimTech building. There are plenty of units here. I think my hotel even has a sim room."
Toreth smiled mysteriously. "You'll see. I've got a surprise for you. I'm pretty sure you'll end up liking it."
That was worrying, to say the least, but Toreth wouldn't tell him anything else. Warrick finally agreed, as he knew Toreth had expected. If it had to do with the sim, Warrick had to know what it was.
The Gothenburg I&I building wasn't far away. The car deposited Warrick at a somewhat shady-looking side door that wouldn't open. Warrick was about to leave in exasperation when the door opened and an extremely attractive brunette woman leaned out. "Keir?" she asked.
Warrick blinked at the use of his first name. "Yes."
"Come on in." She held the door open for him. Inside, it was indistinguishable from New London I&I. "I'm Trish. You're lucky it's Para-investigator Toreth that asked, or you wouldn't be here. This is highly confidential, and I'm breaking a lot of rules."
Warrick followed her along the corridor. "I don't suppose you could clue me in as to what, exactly, is highly confidential? Toreth wouldn't say."
She grinned. "Don't worry, he'll show you. By the by, you are really his sub, right? I don't want to be involved in anything nonconsensual here."
Warrick couldn't believe Toreth had told her that, but there was no point denying it. "Yes."
"Good. Now, have you used a sim before?"
That must have been why she'd addressed him as Keir. If Toreth hadn't told her his last name, it was because he didn't want her to know who Warrick was. And if I&I was doing things with the sim that Toreth thought they wouldn't want him to know about, he was definitely glad he'd come. "Yes, many times."
"Then this will be weird for you, so be prepared." They arrived at a room that looked just like the rest of the sim rooms that were sprouting up all over the Administration. Trish strapped Warrick into one of the chairs. He relaxed into the familiar cushions. The visor went down, and...
...Toreth was rolling on top of him, kissing him harshly, grinding down against his suddenly alert cock. They were on a bed, probably in one of the preset bedrooms, but Warrick didn't waste time wondering about that when Toreth was right there, biting his lip.
"Missed you this week," mumbled Toreth into his mouth.
"I, mmph, I missed you too. Toreth, what's this all--"
One of Toreth's hands crept up between them, wrapping around Warrick's neck. Warrick moaned and gave up. They could talk about the surprise later, he supposed. The game didn't work in the sim, not really, but just sex with Toreth was quite pleasurable.
The hand on his throat tightened. Surprised, Warrick found that he actually couldn't breathe. Choking shouldn't work here. He relaxed into it like he did in the underwater environments, breathing without actually breathing.
It wasn't working.
His eyes flew open. Toreth was above him, grinning. Just before the need for oxygen became urgent, he let go of Warrick's neck.
"How did you do that?" gasped Warrick, sucking in air. "Did you find someone to program in altered perception of oxygen intake?"
"Nope," said Toreth. "I found someone to alter actual oxygen intake."
Warrick stared.
"We got rid of the safety controls."
"Impossible." Warrick pushed Toreth off him and stood up next to the bed. The room was, as he'd thought, one of the standard preset bedrooms, decorated in a modern blue-themed style. He barely noticed it. This could not be true. It couldn't. He believed that Toreth was crazy enough to do it, just as he had believed Toreth was crazy enough to slice Warrick up with a knife or fuck him with a loaded gun, but this wasn't just a question of Toreth being willing to do it. He couldn't do it. No one but Warrick had the technical capability.
Toreth sat up. "Remember during the Tanit investigation, when you didn't want to let Carl Knethen into the sim code?"
A sick fear descended over Warrick. "We searched every one of your people. They couldn't have taken the code."
"One of the men Knethen brought in there had a photographic memory. Not one of those really good memories that people call photographic, I mean a literal photographic memory. He took mental pictures of everything in there, and then he went back to I&I and typed it all out. It took him more than a year. A lot of code goes into one of these things, doesn't it?"
Warrick ran his fingers through his hair repeatedly, shaking his head, unable to speak.
"Go ahead," said Toreth. "Try to cut out. Say your code word."
Warrick already knew what would happen, but he said it anyway. Nothing happened. He was still in the sim.
"You can die," said Toreth quietly, dangerously. "I can kill you. From all the way in New London, I can imagine reaching out my hand and wrapping it around your neck, and you will die."
Toreth stood up behind Warrick, reached around him, and held a hand to his neck. Warrick swallowed.
"If I don't kill you," Toreth continued, "if I just leave a few... marks..." he squeezed Warrick's throat tightly enough to bruise, then relaxed to let him breathe, "they will stay there. Knethen took out the baseline restoration at the end of the session. If something happens to you in the sim, then as far as your brain is concerned, it happens to you in the real world."
Warrick stood stock-still, aware that this would have immense repercussions elsewhere, later, but more aware of Toreth's hand on his throat.
"Anything I can do in the real world, I can do here," Toreth whispered. He pressed his cock forward against Warrick's ass, and reached inside Warrick's trousers to take his erection in his other hand. "This is just like every other time you've ever wondered whether I'm about to go too far."
The hand on Warrick's cock was stroking rhythmically, and the hand on his throat was squeezing harder and harder. It was a race between his air supply and orgasm. He was already choking.
"Am I about to strangle you?" Toreth's lips were touching Warrick's ear. "Am I about to finally get lost in the moment enough to forget to keep you alive? You don't know. That's why it's good for you, isn't it? You have no fucking clue whether you're living your last seconds." His hand closed Warrick's airways completely, and he breathed, "And neither do I."
Warrick's eyes screwed shut, and he came.
********************************************************************
When he opened his eyes again, he was back in Gothenburg, sitting in the sim chair. Trish was unbuckling him. She grinned at him. "Can you see the come stain?"
He looked down. There was a wet spot on the front of his trousers.
"I can't see it," Trish said. "It only exists in your head. And in Toreth's, of course."
He should have asked more questions about how they'd done it while he had the chance. This was horrific news for SimTech. The sim could be used for all sorts of terrible things now, and he couldn't stop it. He should have tried to find out as much as possible.
He didn't. He stumbled out of the building in a daze. Trish deposited him in a car and gave it the address of his hotel, which Toreth had apparently provided to her. Somehow, he found his way back to his hotel room. He stood in front of the bathroom mirror, staring at the dark bruises around his neck.
This was it. This was what the sim had been lacking. Warrick hadn't seen it because it was completely counter to his basic concept of what the sim was. It had to be safe. That had always been the first priority. But safety was what kept it from being real. Reality wasn't safe.
Now the sim wasn't safe, either, and even though every fiber of his being screamed that this was the worst thing that could possibly have happened, the fact remained that these bruises were real. To him, they were real; to others, they weren't. From perception, he'd created a new reality.
He'd done it.