By Tami (and Zhu)
Robert grabbed the magazine from his desk and flung it at the wall. Without strong aerodynamic properties, it tumbled end over end, pages fluttering until it struck the cheap paneling and fell to the floor, open to page 32 and the full page spread of the latest Faith Maxwell exhibit at the museum. He took a deep gulp of Pepsi, drinking straight from the two quart bottle, and let the warm fizzy liquid roll around his mouth, effervescing on his tongue. Disgusted and irritated he spat the liquid onto the magazine, as though he were a god showering black fetid rain upon the virtual landscapes within.
He had been wrestling with an LSL script for 2 weeks now. Code analysis had failed to reveal the noise function used to generate terrain ripples on cliff edges. He needed to match the terrain perfectly in order to overlay his sculptie cave dwellings on an existing cliff face. So far he had met with limited success. Time was running out and he was no closer to a solution.
In two days it would be his rezz day. He had wanted to have his creation ready in time to use as a present to himself, a place to lure willing (and not so willing) avies. Sordid and pleasing visions of pixellated cybersex ran through his head as he imagined their reactions to his creation of the perfect bachelor pad. While his profile indicated he was partnered (to a picture-perfect mesh duplicate of his real-world fantasy girl, Pamela Anderson, which had taken him almost two months to create!), no one knew that it his partner was actually his alt, put there for the sole purpose of making him seem both desirable and "safe".
Since he'd never be able to get an automated parcel mapper finished in time, he decided to resort to pure tedious manual labour. By careful manipulation of the surface shape in Blender, he could adjust a single node-point, upload the map, test-fit it against the terrain, and repeat the process one node at a time. He estimated he could create the map in about 7 to 8 hours of non-stop work.
Well, there would be time for that in a few minutes. For motivation he decided to log on and spend a few minutes looking for nubile and willing teenage avies on his favourite sim, Kinky-Dink Beach. A couple of minutes of debauchery would put him in the mood to spend the night editing a sculpt map. He watched his monitor as his avatar rezzed. Almost identical to how he looked in reality, HotStudley Resident was a 280 pound, 5 foot 6 inch babe-magnet. The Apple logo tattooed on his hairy chest was made from a scan of the one had had gotten on his 35th birthday in Cupertino, California and the Chicago Bull's uniform he wore matched the autographed picture of his hero, Dennis Rodman, on his basement wall.
He heard his mom walking around upstairs and cursed under his breath. How could he concentrate on seducing women for cybersex while she thumped around above him, probably going to the fridge for a can of Coors. He took another gulp of the warm Pepsi and swallowed it, waiting for her to go settle back on the couch and watch reruns of Jersey Shore on NetFlix. He had not had a night of peace since she had lost her job at Walmart for shoplifting a box of wine. He'd be glad when her boyfriend was out on parole and he could have the house to himself again.
Turning his attention back to the monitor, he waited while the scenery slowly appeared. A pair of grey untextured avatars were sitting on poseballs off to his left, engaged in a poorly animated Bits And Bobs Devotion kiss. Why the sim owners wasted so much money and space on all the lovey-dovey romance poses was always a mystery to him. Real men didn't waste a woman's time on meaningless foreplay. His daddy had taught him to always respect women by not bothering with hugging, kissing, romance, and other namby-pamby crap. You would never catch him lying to a woman and saying he loved her! He knew that a woman wanted nothing more than ... [Deleted for PG Compliance] .
Still frustrated from his earlier scripting debacle, he tapped his foot in irritation as the world seemed to rezz even slower than usual. The kissing couple was still grey, and many of the billboards were still blank as the compressed textures downloaded via HTTP into his computer. His mini-map showed that there were about a half dozen people about 50 meters behind him in what he knew was the area of the fire pit.
Hopefully TwoKute Skytower wasn't among the fire pit revellers. She had been downright insulting when he had shown her his manhood to woo her. After staring at his "Big Dog," as he affectionately called it, she had commented that it looked more like a "Little Noodle." He was livid and immediately muted her for those insolent and uncalled for remarks. It had taken him almost a week to create an exact mesh replica of his own organ, complete with the scars from the vacuum cleaner accident.
Unable to wait any longer for the world to finish its resolution, HotStudley strode, his John Wayne AO active, to the group of avies by the campfire. It took him only a few seconds to get there along a path he had walked many times before. But, as he approached the fire, he noticed that something was different. Where the flames normally flickered, above the logs was an eerie white glowing disk. And the closer he went, the brighter the disk became until his monitor lit the entire basement around him in an eerie pale light. His Bose Companion 20 MultiMedia speaker system crackled with static, clicking and squealing loudly with white noise. None of this really registered in his brain as his eyes fixated on the six busty blonde vixens dancing naked around the disk. His eyes were glued to their chests, gleefully observing their physics-driven jiggling.
*******
Robert didn't hear the latch of his basement window sliding open or notice the cool breeze on his back when the window swung inwards. He didn't notice that the white disk in the monitor was actually a reflection of the disk hovering behind him. He didn't comprehend that the static on his speakers was due to the electromagnetic influence of the apparation floating serenely over his left shoulder......
******
Norma-Rae went downstairs the next day to put the case of empty beer cans in the old root cellar. Why Robert had gone out so early and left the window open was a mystery to her. At this time of the day he was usually asleep on the threadbare green couch beside his computer desk. But, for some reason, he must have felt an urge to go somewhere. Maybe he needed new computer parts or something.
A few weeks later she put his Alienware desktop computer up for sale. She wasn't going to store it until he eventually came back and she figured she could get enough for a few cases of Bud. It was funny though, that when she went to pick it up and take it to the consignment shop, she swore that she could hear the muffled whimpering of her son, as though he were trapped in some sort of cage.
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