READ NOVEL ONLINE Chapter Seven: Euphoria & Elation
It was finally time. I looked nervously at the invite link that Alice had sent over just a few minutes ago, my finger hovering above the connection button with a slight quiver. I wasn’t sure why this made me so nervous. After all, it wasn’t like I was going to out myself as trans to her parents. Not even Alice knew I was trans, and I wasn’t even sure if I’d be accepted by her as such. I had no reason to think otherwise, but after hiding my identity for so long from the people who I knew would truly care about it, and after having had mainly negative or apathetic reactions from people I had met face to face…the one thing I knew was that the idea of exposing myself in such a vulnerable way was more frightening than reading an essay in front of my school peers.
I tabbed out of my inbox to double check that I had properly applied the skin I had brought earlier. I shouldn’t have been worried about that- the only thing that worked properly in my apartment was my headset, and it was a very capable model for when I bought it. It was probably the only possession I truly treasured. It was essentially my entire life, and my only escape from the abject dysphoria I felt in meatspace. The day it actually failed on me, and I was forced to buy one of the cheap, low-res bargain bin systems that I could buy with welfare credits would be the worst day of my life. I could only hope that I would escape my poverty-stricken existence by that point, and had begun living in the real world, if only as a corporate office drone or a low-level research assistant.
I reminded myself that Alice was gay. Her parents were clearly more accepting on at least that front, and the fact she had met me while attending a public school meant that they were probably at least conscious of the fact that I wasn’t wealthy. The fact that they approved of their daughter dating a penniless welfare rat like me was a green flag as far as I was concerned, and the fact that they didn’t give a fuck about their daughter going to a school filled with normies and lower middle class burbers was definitely a sign that they weren’t on the side of the elite that looked down on the world from their steel towers with disdain and contempt.
I decided that the best approach to overcoming my hesitation was boldness. I didn’t even delay to steel myself, and I pressed the connect button as soon as I had it in my field of vision. The world went white, and in an instant, I was once more connected to the digital world, unsure of what I would find on the other side of the link.
My vision cleared as I finished connecting to the telepresence network at Alice’s family home. As my vision cleared, the first thing I noticed was how nice it was. It was clearly the home of a corporate executive and their family. The apartment’s main room was open plan, going up at least two stories, with a glass walkway ringing the upper floor. The walls were made from bare concrete, polished to a sheen, and fitted with feature lighting in the gaps between the walls and the floor. The actual floor was spacious, and was either made from actual varnished wood, or a close enough substitute. I could hear the sound of trickling water from a indoor waterfall that was running against the back wall, a stream of water pouring into a glass reflecting pool filled with holographic Koi (for once I was sure that they weren’t real, as the last Koi fish died nearly half a century ago with the genetic samples that would have been able to restore the species via cloning having been wiped out in the Sino-American Offensive, which we had just been studying at school).
I was seated on a plush red sofa at the end of the apartment, part of a seating area tucked between the door and a large freestanding bookshelf filled with novels with both Japanese and English titles on their spines. A large bamboo plant grew in a glass case behind it, and the wall in front of me was fitted with a massive floor-to-ceiling flatscreen display that was currently pretending to be a window looking out at a large rolling grass field with a medieval castle in the distance, and (weirdly enough) some bizarre-looking steampunk robots dragging plowshares through the fields. I assumed that this was another one of Alice’s father’s projects.
The wooden coffee table in front of me was nearly stacked with a selection of books, as well as a few periodicals from some technical journals I had vaguely heard of, including the latest copy of the corporate newsletter for Atlas, emblazoned with their iconic logo, a pair of blue rectangles with their ends shaped like the fins of a shark, meeting diagonally to form a capital ‘A’. They had this logo longer than they’d been called Atlas, although their former name eluded me all the time. I vaguely recalled it was some sort of extinct dog breed that used to be popular as a pet, but I could have been thinking of another company like Dodo.
It was at this point that I realized something peculiar. When I connected to the telepresence system, I had expected to simply pop in as a digital phantom, only visible in the field of view offered by modern AR glasses. But unless I was mistaken, I could not only feel the couch underneath me, but I was actually sinking into the plush cushions. I raised my hand in front of my face, and waved it around. There were none of the typical ghosting that occurred when rapid movement was interpolated with a slight delay, one of the characteristic features of modern AR systems, and I could even feel the air swooshing between my splayed fingers, which was well beyond the sensory simulation capabilities of current AR tech.
My first thought was that Alice’s family had me telepresence into some kind of remote-operated android, like the sort used by professional sports players in contact sports. Those machines were compatible with the same telecommunications protocols used by my AR headset, but had the advantage of both physicality, accurate sensory feedback, and the ability to take a beating and not put a star athlete out of commission for several months and cost their sponsor a few million in sponsorship deals and ticket sales.
However, the arm I was looking at, if it was an android, was identical to the one I usually stared at whenever I wasn’t in meatspace. It even had the same nail polish I usually had my avatar’s nails textured with, a vibrant royal purple. Looking down, I wasn’t wearing the skin I had purchased earlier, and the clothing I was wearing was significantly more expensive. Experimentally, I poked the couch with one of my fingers, and jerked back as it actually reached to my touch.
“Hey, you made it!”
I turned around to face behind me, and looked up at the balcony towards the source of the voice. My breath seemed to catch in my throat, which again reminded me that I was somehow physically here- autonomic functions like breathing generally weren’t simulated in VR unless the user needed to perform them for psychosomatic reasons. There, at the top of the balcony, was Alice, wearing the same casual outfit I had seen her in that one day we had briefly met at the park. She looked even more beautiful in the flesh than she did in VR, and even more so when she wasn’t surrounded by grimy concrete streets at the bottom of a dense forest of steel and glass, and illuminated by the garish light of holographic billboards.
“Hey,” I croaked, my voice momentarily failing to function properly as she walked down the glass stairs at the other end of the room, the window behind her looking out at the entirety of the urban sprawl of the Sydney Metroplex. Right now, my focus was on her, and her alone. She sat gingerly next to me, smoothing out her skirt and crossing her legs at the knees. She leaned towards me, smiling and gently cupped my cheek with one of her slender hands. I raised a hand to touch it gingerly, the softness causing my chest to feel like it was being filled with fuzzy warm cotton, my heart almost singing as I touched her silky skin. I tried to find my voice.
“How…how are you…” I tried to say before she kissed my forehead, and I lost track of what I was about to say. “Kjaurweh?”
“Shush, you,” said Alice, looking me in the eyes mischievously. “My parents aren’t home yet, and I intend to take advantage of the fact that I can touch you for real right now. Assuming you’re up for-”
She was cut off when my tongue entered her mouth followed closely by my lips. It was some time before either of us came up for air. It was a while longer before the clothes began coming off. If I had any questions over whether or not the android body, I was using was fully functional or not, I didn’t by the time Alice’s bedroom door slid closed and locked behind us.
We lay there for some time afterwards, simply cuddling each other, and occasionally exploring the body of the other with gentle caresses. The entire experience had left me with a profound sense of satisfaction, but also had been possibly the most euphoric experience of my life. I wished this night could last forever, and more than anything, I knew I wanted to marry the girl who had given this experience to me, even if she couldn’t know how much it truly meant to me.
“So, I guess we’re officially an item now, Kara?” asked Alice, smiling, and kissing me again, another flock of butterflies exploding into life inside my chest. “I’ve…never gone this far before with a girl before. I’ve never actually dated before if we’re being honest. I hope I did alright?”
I smiled back, and pecked her on the cheek. “This has been the best night of my life. Also, a virgin here, no need to worry. And yes, my beautiful girl, I think it’s official now.”
I leaned in to kiss her when a knock on the door cut me off. A female voice, with a Japanese accent, spoke up on the other side.
“Alice? We’re home. Why don’t you and your girlfriend come and say hi, and I can finally meet the girl who’s got my daughter all bright and bubbly for once.”
Alice giggled, and got to her feet, reaching down to grab her bra off the floor.
“Well,” she said, smiling at me with obvious chagrin. “Time you met my mother, I guess. I should probably mention that the android body you’re using is capable of ingesting food, so don’t feel nervous about enjoying some of my Dad’s legendary calamari. Be warned, though. The chili dip is particularly…spicy.”
She picked up her panties, slipped them on, then paused, and looked around for her other clothes. “Oh crap. Where’s my skirt? Did we…leave our clothes…oh.”
We both looked at the door, and then back at each other.
“Crap,” we said in unison, before breaking out in giggles again. It was going to be one of those nights, it would seem.