Virtually Dead

Chapter Thirteen

Sinful Seductions night club was a skybox 595 metres up above a mall and a small colony of houses on Lancelot Island. Access to the club was through a transparent image of a fiery dark-haired woman sporting a sword and pistol. Twist and Chas just breezed right through it. The blue velvet dance floor was crowded, AVs animated in dance by a central ball that hung from the ceiling. Exotic dancers were pole dancing on the stage. Four of them. Each with her own tip jar. Chas stood for a moment, watching them, open-mouthed, as they removed items of clothing in response to cash paid into their jars by salivating male customers. These were the most sophisticated AVs he had seen yet. Beautifully sculpted, with tanned, shiny skin and such fluid animation that he could almost believe they were real.

The predominant colour scheme of the club was blue and grey, punctuated by odd flashes of a fiery red. A sign behind the stage read Sin Is a Seduction of the Soul. A flight of stairs led up to a honeycomb of private rooms and a gallery that ran the length of the club. From here there was a view of the dance floor and the DJ’s podium on the opposite stage. Torches flamed in the dark, throwing shadows across the dancers, and Chas felt the beat of the music pounding through his AV.

The crowd parted as a large, bald-headed avatar, covered from head to foot with elaborate tattoos, ran through the crowd swinging an axe above his head. His name tag identified him, appropriately, as Tommy Tattoo. He had an enormously erect penis that was clearing a path ahead of him, and he left a trail of obscenities in his wake. Anyone who got in his way just seemed to vanish.

Twist: That’s our man, Chas. He’s got an orbiter.

Chas: A what?

Twist: It’s a gadget that sends anyone he targets flying into space. But it’s okay. I’m wearing a shield. He can’t do anything to me.

Chas: What are you going to do to him?

Twist: Cage him. Then fire him straight to the other end of SL, and file a report with Linden Lab to get him barred inworld. Come on. Get your gun out.

They drew their weapons and pushed through the dancers toward the advancing AV, and suddenly Twist stopped dead.

Twist: Oh, shit!

Chas: What is it?

Twist: I’m gonna crash.

Chas: Goddamnit, Twist, you pick your moments!

But Twist was already gone, in a twinkle of fading sparkles. Chas turned around to face Tommy Tattoo, gun swinging unsteadily in his direction. He fumbled to get into Mouselook. But before he could, Tommy took off. Lifting right up over his head. And as Chas turned, he saw him landing on the stage, next to one of the dancers. He immediately activated some dance animation and began circling her, gyrating his hips lewdly. Chas managed finally to get himself into Mouselook. A small gunsight appeared in the centre of his screen, and it immediately became apparent to him that lining it up with a moving target was a lot more difficult than it sounded. He swung left to right, overreacting, then under-reacting, until finally the tattooed man was in his sights. He pulled the trigger and somehow managed to shoot the dancer.

She let out a startled yell, and great clouds of black smoke started issuing from the hole that Chas had just shot through her middle, very quickly enveloping her entirely. He watched in horror as she started running about the stage, the smoke following her everywhere she went. Tommy Tattoo put his hands on his hips and roared with laughter.

Chas was aware of a figure materialising at his side. He turned to find a young woman standing there. She had long, dark hair, and an elfin face with rich, chocolate brown eyes which she fixed on him with a look of patent disbelief. Her name tag revealed her to be Sinful Sensations Dancer Doobie Littlething. Except that she wasn’t dressed like a dancer. She wore a low-cut grey camouflage top and shorts, a pistol strapped to her thigh, an equipment belt laden with tools and a water flask, and armoured pads protecting her hips and shins.

Doobie: Did you do that?

Chas: Do what?

Doobie: Shoot the dancer.

Chas was getting used to blushing by now.

Chas: It was an accident.

She looked at his tag.

Doobie: Private detective, huh? Are you with the Twist agency?

He nodded.

Doobie: Where’s Twist?

Chas: Crashed.

Doobie: Fucking useless!

For some reason Chas was shocked by her language. But she was already on the move. Striding toward the stage. She sprang up in a forward somersault, and landed right next to the tattooed troublemaker, her weapon drawn. And some dissociated part of Chas thought how incredibly attractive she looked: her hair swept back from her face, a slash of crimson cupid for her mouth, the tiny heart-shaped birthmark high on her cheek next to her right eye. He even noticed the streaks of red in her dark hair.

The dancer was still running around the stage, bleeding smoke. No one was dancing any more. The music had stopped, and everyone stood in silence waiting to see what would happen next.

Tommy Tattoo turned toward Doobie and leered at her.

Tommy: Orbit, you bitch!

A sprinkle of lights appeared and disappeared. But Doobie remained where she was, her handgun held up next to her head, pointed at the ceiling.

Tattoo: WTF?

Doobie: I’m shielded, shit-for-brains! Prepare to crash and burn in hell!

Her handgun was suddenly extended at arm’s length, pointed straight at Tommy, and Chas knew that she had gone into Mouselook. But before she could fire, Tommy Tattoo vanished in a flash of light.

Doobie: Shit!

And she too, vanished, leaving the stage empty, apart from the smoking dancer. Chas barely had time to resurrect his sense of guilt before an offer appeared on his screen. Doobie Littlething invites Chas Chesnokov to join her in Crack Town. He accepted, and in a whoosh his screen went black, before he found himself dropping to his knees on the decaying wooden porch of a grim derelict brick building in the heart of a dark, oppressive cityscape. He stood up and looked around. This condemned building had been fenced off. But one section of the fence had been broken down and the door of the building ripped open.

He was in a long, gloomy street. Immediately opposite, a police patrol car with flashing lights was drawn up in the entrance to a covered parking lot that seemed to be occupied by down-and-outs and prostitutes. A uniformed officer stood by a fluttering black and yellow Crime Scene tape, and watched him with casual indifference. Chas could hear static and a dispatcher’s voice coming across the police radio.

Further down the street, beneath a poster of a Rottweiler bearing the logo make my day, an AV sprawled in the street in a pool of fresh blood. A gun lay next to his head. A hooker stood, arms folded, outside the doors of the Carnal City Police Department. Some youths sat on a wall, dangling their legs, indulging in idle conversation. But there was no sign of Doobie or Tattoo Tommy.

Chas turned back to the derelict building and peered apprehensively inside before taking a few tentative steps into the semi-darkness.

To his left, a tattered settee and two old armchairs were gathered around a 1950s TV set. An old packing case served as a table. The space was littered with what Chas now recognised to be poseballs. They were everywhere in SL. Pink for females, blue for males. A right-click on a poseball attached you to it, and your AV would be animated by its script to do almost anything. Sit, chat, have sex, play a piano. And so much in SL seemed sex-oriented. Give blow job. Receive blow job. Wallfuck. Two poseballs that said Love seemed somehow incongruous. On the wall hung a painting of Jesus dressed as pirate.

The room to his left was a bathroom. Above the bath were two poseballs. Drowned and DrowningHold. Pornographic posters covered brick walls.

The next room along the corridor was a filthy kitchen with cockroaches running around the floor. Off to the left, a room with a mattress. Rats scuttled about the place, disturbing the drifts of litter that had accumulated there.

At the end of the corridor, Chas emerged into the gloom of a stretch of waste ground, where a pile of burning tires belched oily black smoke into the night sky. A hobo wrapped up in old newspapers huddled nearby for warmth. Graffiti on the wall opposite read, Religion is not the opium of the masses. Opium is.

Chas climbed a ramp to the street above. Next to a scarred blue tenement door opposite, a sign advertised apartments for rent. And he wondered who in their right minds would want to rent an apartment in a place like this. It was like the worst nightmare of social urban decay. In an alleyway further down the street, two poseballs against a colourfully graffitied wall read, Strangle and Strangled.

He turned left and crossed a bridge over a stream of chemical green sludge. He could hear the sound of distant traffic flashing past on the freeway, the constant wail of a police siren, before a shadow flashed across his screen. A startling explosion of light sent multicoloured particles flying in every direction. When they cleared, Tommy Tattoo was crouched in front of him in the middle of the road, a maniacal grin on his face. He stood up and seemed to tower over Chas as he raised his axe high above his head. Chas was rooted to the spot by fear, even though he was nearly certain that this avatar could do him no damage. All the same, he fumbled and clicked on the hud to activate his handgun. But too late. The axe was descending on him. No time to move, or to TP out.

But Tommy Tattoo froze in midstroke as the black bars of a tightly meshed cage closed around him, and held him immobile inside it.

Tommy: FUCK!

Doobie Littlething dropped out of the sky and landed beside them. She turned to Chas.

Doobie: So you decided to put in an appearance after all.

Chas: Well, with an invitation from a gun-toting dancer to join her and a tattooed maniac in a place called Crack Town, how could I resist?

Doobie stared at him for a moment, then burst out laughing.

Doobie: Well, you may be incompetent, but at least you have a sense of humour.

Tommy: I hate to break up this cosy little mutual admiration society, but would someone like to tell me exactly how long I’m going to be stuck in here?

Doobie turned around.

Doobie: Just as long as it takes to blow a hole in your brainless head, set your AV on fire, and crash you so hard it’ll take you a week to get back in.

Tommy: Yeh, right.

Doobie: Watch me.

She drew her weapon, cocked it, held it at arm’s length and fired twice into the cage, blowing holes right through Tommy’s head and chest. She recocked it and fired again, this time setting him on fire.

A stream of abuse and profanity issued like smoke from the stricken Tommy, before Doobie recocked again and shot AV and cage straight up into the sky. Chas swivelled to look up, but Tattoo Tommy had already gone.

Chas: Did you destroy him?

Doobie: No, Mr. Chesnokov. You can’t destroy an AV. You can damage him, make him crash. Nothing permanent. But he’ll think twice about messing with Doobs the next time.

Chas took a step back, sudden excitement rising through him, and drew his weapon again, this time selecting Damage from his menu. He spun around to point it at Doobie and went straight into Mouselook.

She was so startled she had no time to react.

Doobie: WTF!

Chas fired three times and Doobie spun out of the way, turning in time to see three AV’s running around with smoke escaping from huge holes blown straight through the chest of each.

Doobie: Great shooting, Chas!

Chas allowed himself a small smile of self-congratulation.

Chas: I know how to handle a gun, Doobie. I came first on the practice range in training.

Doobie: Good for you. Just one little thing. Why did you shoot these guys?

Chas: They were sneaking up on us, Doobie. Pretty unsavoury looking characters. I thought they could be friends of Tommy Tattoo.

Doobie threw her head back and roared with laughter.

Doobie: People like Tommy Tattoo don’t have friends, Chas. They were just three AVs out for a bit of fun. Role-playing probably. LOL. That’s the fourth innocent AV you’ve shot the fuck out of in the space of ten minutes. We’d better get you out of here before you get reported and Linden Lab ban you for life.

Before he could open his mouth to make excuses, Doobie was gone. And an invitation appeared to join her at the Armory Overstock in Shepherd. Chas accepted and glanced at the time. He had been in Second Life for less than two hours, and it felt like two days.