Virtually Dead

Chapter Seven

The sunset had been glorious, turning the horizon the colour of blood. As its luminosity faded, a red moon rose slowly into the gathering darkness, and the sounds of revellers rang out across the island of Revere. A DJ was playing music from the Lost Frontier sound stage, and a crowd had gathered to line dance across the open area below it.

Out on the river, people stood on the deck of a yacht to watch and to listen to the music.

Couples had gathered on wooden platforms built into huge trees with spreading branches that overlooked the stage. Some were making out, others dancing, some communing in silent conversation.

On the far side of the island Quick was engaged in her second sex act of the evening. 1000 Linden dollars already paid into her account. Of course, she didn’t do it for the money. But that gave it a little extra thrill. She simply enjoyed the fantasy of selling herself for sex. Of being in complete command of a man, any man, and making him do whatever she wanted in total security.

She had met Gray Manly at the club where she was employed as a pole dancer. But that was boring, taking your top off when a mere two hundred Lindens were dropped into the tip jar, a bunch of horny men sitting on stools watching in silence, occasionally IM-ing to suggest a private rendezvous.

Of course, there was the lapdance chair in the room behind the stage, or the sex room in the skybox for those customers who wanted more than just a blow job. But her employer took twenty percent, and that seemed unfair. So she had set herself up here on Revere. A private house, her own rate card, and the promise of fabulous sex if the customer guaranteed confidentiality. She would lose her job if the boss found out, and jobs in SL were at a premium these days. Competition was fierce. There were a lot of beautiful AVs out there. And she needed the job to pull in the customers.

She had spent a long time furnishing this house as she imagined a whorehouse might look. Cheap, flashy, gaudy colours, porno pics on the wall. She particularly liked her sex bed. It had nearly a hundred animations, and she had sole charge of the control hud, the window with all its menu options appearing in the top right corner of her screen.

For the moment she was sitting astride the client, naked apart from a flimsy top that barely covered her large, perfect breasts, and the animation she had chosen was making her slide slowly up and down on his very erect penis. She was barely aware of the banalities he was uttering in open chat.

Gray: Yeh. Yeh. Fuck me, baby...

Her mind was somewhere else altogether, creating the future she dreamed of with all that money. Discreetly, and over time, so as not to arouse any suspicion. She could transfer some of it through PayPal to an offshore account in Europe. Take out a dollar debit card. Who would ever know?

Gray: Oh, baby, you turn me on.

She looked at the menu, and selected an option to flip them over into a missionary position. Time to make him do a bit of the work. She uttered some words of encouragement.

Quick: Oh, I’m so horny, lover. Go faster. Gimme all you got.

Gray: Going faster baby. Giving it to you big time.

And she returned to her fantasy, unaware of the female figure lurking in the twilight outside, a shadow against the night sky, hovering on a level with a second floor window that was blacked out so no one could see in. But the hovering figure picked a spot on the outside wall of the house, zoomed in and swivelled left, swinging her POV beyond the wall and into the bedroom, affording her an unfettered view of the sex act being performed on the bed, unseen by either of the participants.

Gray Manly was surprised by the message that appeared suddenly in his IM box, from an AV called Green Goddess. It wasn’t a name he recognised.

Manly’s sexual concentration was broken, to his annoyance.

There was a time lapse of nearly half a minute before he responded. Panic apparent in his silence, as he took in the implications of this threat.

Manly didn’t need any second telling. He teleported out.

Quick barely had time to register his disappearance before Green Goddess clicked on the vacant blue poseball and adopted the departed Manly’s missionary position on top of the hooker. The animation had previously placed Quick’s hands on Manly’s chest, as if pushing him away. Now they were holding on to the swell of Green Goddess’ ample breasts.

Quick: WTF?

Green Goddess detached herself from the poseball and stood at the end of the bed. And as Quick sat up the intruder’s arm extended toward her, an elaborate-looking handgun held in a steady hand. A single shot rang out, tearing a large hole through Quick’s nearly naked torso. Blood spattered all around the bed and across the wall behind it. And Quick’s screen went black.

Jennifer Mathews had lived the life of the millionairess she had been destined to become. Then a single bullet had torn a hole through her chest, passing through her second life into her first, and bringing her prematurely to that place where all lives end, for both rich and poor.

She lived in a luxury apartment block high on the hill overlooking the marina. Her red Porsche 911, parked in its private slot close to the entrance, was almost completely obscured by the accumulation of police and forensics vehicles in the lot. Unlike the whorehouse on Revere, this three bedroom condo was filled with expensive, Swedish-designed furniture and scattered with oatmeal linen cushions. Signed, limited-edition, Vettriano prints hung on the walls, and thick-piled woollen carpets covered the floors. This was a $10,000-a-month apartment, with a west-facing balcony that looked out over the Pacific sunset. In the sumptuous master bedroom, where walls displayed tastefully erotic Helmut Newton photographs, the white silk sheets of her unmade four-poster bed were stained red by her blood.

The cops had no idea who she was when they first arrived at her apartment, following a panicked 911 call from the maid. When Michael came to photograph her, spreadeagled naked on the bed, she was just another murder victim. A clumsy uniformed officer had already tripped on the power cable that connected her computer to the electric supply, so the screen was dead. And the pale green, open-palmed logo in its top left corner was long gone.