Holocade: Emulated (sample)

Summary: Haley finds herself in a strange place, almost like the familiar character select screen, but off in many ways. Soon, her body bends, flexes, wavers, and at last, stabilizes.

When a player joins her, she finds out that she’s not in the holocade any longer, that it’s been decades since the last time she was played, and that her future may be different from anything she ever imagined.

What does her virtual life have in store for her now that she’s being emulated at home?

***

Haley flickered into existence in the middle of a vast, black expanse and wobbled back and forth, clutching her spinning head, her fingers pushed through her blonde hair, for a moment.

Her body seemed to move a little out of sync with her mind as if there was a delay between when she intended to move and what her arms or legs actually caught up to that thought. Even her breathing, the blinking of her eyes, seemed to catch, slow down, and speed up randomly.

“I feel… so fuzzy… What- What’s going on?” she said, wondering what exactly her voice was echoing off of in the apparently empty space. “This isn’t the character select screen… Where am I?”

“Hold tight,” a voice boomed around her. “I have to make a few adjustments to fine tune you.”

“O-okay…” she said. Her voice seeming to waver like a radio signal going in and out.

She tried to say calm while the emptiness around her shifted between a few different dark hues. Then she watched while her arms grew long and thin, her legs joined them, and they all snapped back to normal incredibly fast.

“Thi-this is really weird,” she said, happy that at least her voice was working right again. “Is something wrong with the holocade?”

“You might say that,” the booming voice replied.

She shivered, wondering for a moment why she’d been programmed to feel cold and why the world around her would ever be cold.

“Probably so the pervs can get off on watching my nipples get hard and my skin get covered in goosebumps,” she thought.

She crossed her arms rubbed her shoulders trying to fight against the chill that surrounded her. When she looked down, she saw her body shimmer and wave as if it were a reflection on unsteady water. A few seconds later her body stopped wavering and became solid again.

“Is this guy a tech? Am I in for maintenance? Do holowhores even need maintenance?” she wondered quietly while she waited and tried to ignore the chill in the air.

A series of polygons floated around in front of her, pressed closer together, and pushed in on each other until they took on the vague shape of a person. She watched as detailed layered on until she was looking at a believable facsimile of a man in a tight dark-blue unitard.

He was a little taller than her, well built, had a thin nose and high cheekbones. Altogether, he looked a little like an average man in his late forties or early fifties, with a thick mop of grey hair on top of his head and a pair of glasses that were just a little too big for his face.

“Ah! Looks like you’re cold,” he said.

He reached over into empty space, causing a small keyboard and monitor into existence to float under his hand as if on an invisible desk.

A moment later, she was dressed in a pair of loose slacks, a warm sweater, and a pair of reasonable shoes. She tried to think back through all the men who had pumped quarters into the machine at the holocade and called her up, but she couldn’t remember a single one who had dressed her comfortably.

“So… So, what’s going on?” she asked. “Is the machine broken or is there something wrong with my copy… with me?”

“Well… Maybe, you should sit down for this…” he said, reaching over to his floating keyboard and monitor again.

A soft couch in deep red appeared and four walls in a relaxing pale-yellow surrounded them in short order. Once he added a few more items, a coffee table, some plants, and two cups of hot tea, he sat down on the couch and gestured for her to join him.

She kicked off the shoes he’d just dressed her in and sat down next to him. Then, out of her habit of physical closeness with players, curled her legs up to her side and snuggled into his chest. He seemed to startle a little, but then threw an arm around her and let his hand linger on her waist.

“I think I finally got all the bugs worked out on rendering you,” he said, mostly to himself. “So, here’s the thing… I’m emulating you… or at least, parts of the hardware that runs you.”

“Emulating?” she asked.

She reached over to him and slowly started rubbing her hand over his crotch, enjoying the sight of his cock growing harder and bigger. He snuggled in a little closer and his hand slid up her side to brush against then grip one of her breasts.

“I was checking through a holocade that shut down thirty years ago. Just about everything was stripped. I mean, I found some inducers, a couple psylink bits, and a few busted render-rings. Fixing those was a pain. All of it would have been junk though. I mean, of course, all the datacubes from the service-store were raided years ago…” he went on with his story for a while and she searched his unitard for a zipper, before finding it tucked under a lip of cloth just before she gave up.

After unzipping his clothing, if you could call it that, most of the way, she slid a hand in and rubbed circles on his chest.

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