Virtually Dead

Chapter Sixteen

Chas crouched for a moment and then stood up. Twist’s office began to rez slowly around him. He could see green text hovering above the Agency sign outside the door. Twist O’Lemon is offline. Click to leave an IM. A blue pop-up informed him that Doobie Littlething had offered him Inventory items in his absence. They were the LMs she had promised him, and when he accepted, they went automatically into his Landmark Folder. They were teleport links to various locations around SL, and one of them, he saw, would take him to Sinful Seductions Night Club.

He saw, too, that Doobie was online. He thought about sending her an IM, but decided instead to try out one of his new Landmarks. He double-clicked. His screen went black, and a sound like wind rushing through a tunnel transported him across Second Life continents to the walkway that ran around the exterior of Sinful Seductions Night Club. A rail prevented him from falling off. He peered over it to the tops of clouds far below, and the distant glitter of sun on sea. He walked through the woman with the sword and into the club. It was empty. Not a soul there. He checked the time next to his Lindens total. It was 7.32PM, SLT, which he knew to be the same as Pacific Daylight Time, and he wondered when things got going at the club. It was early for California, late for Europe, and he had no idea which nationality of clientele the club catered for.

Then he remembered the radar system that Doobie had made him buy the previous day. He found it in his Inventory and installed it on his screen. Two names immediately appeared. Doobie Littlething and Jackin Thebox. Both, apparently, exactly ninety meters away. But where? Not in the club, it seemed. He went back out on to the walkway. Twist had told him that the club was in a skybox 595 metres up. So the chances were that Doobie and Jackin were either somewhere above or below.

Chas craned to look up and saw the underside of another building floating some way above the club. He took off and soared skywards, arms pressed to his side, until he was on a level with the building he had seen from below. In fact, it was just a large, grey box. There appeared to be no doors or windows in it. But Doobie and Jackin now showed as being just eight metres away. So, somehow, they were inside it. They must have teleported in.

Chas recalled Twist’s first lesson in Second Life private investigation. He pointed at the nearest wall, zoomed in and then swivelled to the side so that he bypassed the wall altogether and suddenly had a view of the interior. Floor, walls, and ceiling appeared to be covered in thick-piled crimson plush. Lamps on the walls cast muted light around the room. Cushions were scattered across the floor, multicoloured, multisized. Among them pose balls offering any number of sexual activities, some odd-looking furniture, and some scarier-looking BDSM contraptions.

Two figures lay naked among the pillows. Doobie was on her back, her legs apart, while Jackin lay between them, his pink bottom rising and falling to a steady, rhythmic beat. Chas clicked among the cushions for a closer view, confident that he was quite invisible to them, and watched with a certain amount of horrified fascination, and an odd, distant, feeling of jealousy.

The dialogue of the sex partners was visible on his screen in open chat, and he was almost shocked by the mundane crudity of it.

Jackin: Yeh. Yeh. Fucking you, baby. Fucking you.

Doobie: Fuck me, Jack. Fuck me.

Jackin: Bite my nipples, you bitch. Bite them!

Doobie: Mmm. Biting your nipples, Jack. Sucking them hard.

Chas selected Doobie from his Friends List and sent her an IM. Watching her closely, as if he might actually be able to discern some visual reaction.

There was a long silence, during which Chas could almost feel Doobie absorbing the implications of that.

Doobie: Yeh, baby, gimme more. Yeh, that’s it.

Jackin Thebox’s bottom was still rising and falling between her legs.

He thought back to the names Hardy had rattled off from the file.

Jackin: I’m cumming, baby, I’m cumming.

Back at Twist’s office, Chas saw that his partner in crime was still offline, and he wasn’t quite sure what to do with himself. He wandered around, trying out different chairs and then the grand piano. He had never played a piano in his life, but suddenly he was a virtuoso.

He was distracted by the sound of a train hooting in the distance, and he went to the window as a miniature steam train hauling half a dozen open carriages chugged past. There were two passengers, who looked very much like giant pink dildos. They had name tags above them. DJ Rob and Mistie Hax. So they were clearly avatars. Chas frowned in confusion as the train dipped down under water, before emerging a minute later to follow the tracks up into the sky.

He turned around, then, and clicked to sit behind the desk in Twist’s chair, fish drifting past his head in the aquarium behind him. He had barely time to register the Third Life welcome page on the computer screen when a double ching alerted him to the arrival of an IM.

Chas supposed that since his name was now on the Group list, people would see he was online and assume he was indeed a private detective, and that he knew what he was doing.

Chas began to panic. He had no idea how to send a TP. He saw that Jamir’s full name was Jamir Jones and brought up his profile. Immediately he spotted an option to Offer Teleport. He clicked it and felt a certain amount of self-congratulatory satisfaction as he sent an invitation to Jamir to join him in the office on Jersey Island.

After several seconds, a flash of light cleared to reveal a grey shape that gradually rezzed into what looked like a small orange dragon on the floor in front of his desk. The tag above its head read, Pilot Jamir Jones. Chas looked at the creature in astonishment, and when he had regained some composure typed a greeting.

Chas cocked an eyebrow. Sandbox Island. That’s where Doobie had told him yesterday that she went griefer-hunting.

Chas was startled, dragging his eyes away from the dialogue box to see what appeared to be an identical creature on the floor beside Jamir, except that this one was blue. And was called Roger Showmun. Jamir, it seemed, had sent his friend a TP, and Chas hadn’t noticed his arrival. Chas had the sense that he had somehow slipped out of the real, or even virtual, world into some surreal netherworld beyond any horizon known to man.

Jamir passed Chas a Notecard, which opened up on his screen. It seemed to be a cut and pasted record of everything that had passed between the dragons and Nevar Telling. But made very little sense to him.

Chas was beginning to feel a sense of despair.

Chas shook his head. He was having a conversation with giant geckos.

He turned to the geckos.

Offers of friendship arrived from each of the geckos, and he added them to his Friends List. A cash register sounded, and Chas was notified that Jamir had just paid him five hundred Lindens.

And with that, the two geckos were gone, leaving Chas looking at the five hundred Lindens clocked up in green figures at the top of his screen. He had just earned his first fee as a private investigator. He sent a brief account of his meeting to Twist in an IM that would be waiting for him when he logged in. Then he remembered Angel.

A window appeared almost immediately on his screen offering him a teleport to The Blackhouse, Poison Island.