VR Interactive Game Worlds

Book 1 : The Notorious Mutant

Contents

Chapter 1 : VR - Innovation in interactive computers

Chapter 2 : It's so real, the audience can feel you breath

Chapter 3 : Visiting the mall

Chapter 4 : Doctor Frankenstein, a body please!

Chapter 5 : The mother of all smells

Chapter 6 : Interlude of the punisher

Chapter 7 : An interactive story

Chapter 8 : The open deck, and the blue water

Chapter 9 : To confuse the issue further

Chapter 10 : An epic voyage

Chapter 11 : World wide disruptions...

Chapter 12 : High society

Chapter 13 : Island paradise

Chapter 14 : The viper within

Chapter 15 :Paradise lost

Chapter 16 : Waiting for help

Chapter 17 : A bigger playground

Chapter 18 : Introduction to the Mutant world

Chapter 19 : Creating an expedition team

Chapter 20 : Crazy stunts and new abilities

Chapter 21 : The new order of defenders

Chapter 22 : A wild goose chase, maybe...

Chapter 23 : Catch 22

Chapter 24 : The beginning of the end

Chapter 25 : Ant attack

Chapter 26 : Truth and dare

Chapter 27 : Epilogue

Chapter 1 : VR - Innovation in interactive computers

Kate was in a hurry to get home from work this particular day. On the back seat of the car, were a couple of boxes, containing the latest, and possibly the greatest innovation ever for computers. Not that there weren't new things been developed every week in the computing field, but in the commercial market, this had only been out in Australia for two weeks.

Kate had watched the news with some interest a few years back, as on-line VR providers started up all over the world. They weren't as big as or had the infrastructure of the Internet, as the providers didn't connect with each other. Several went national in America and other counties as interest grew, allowing users to interact with people on the other side of the country, but never grew as popular as the Internet.

At one stage, Kate had read that some kid had hacked into one of the big gaming systems, nearly killing some people by locking them into their VR environments, and hacking into personal and financial records, to discredit them when they finally escaped the VR system.

Kate had tried some of the systems out at the main offices of the providers, working out the better systems from the not so good ones. Kate couldn't afford one at the time, as they had been very expensive, and the charges for going on-line were beyond her current earnings.

After reading about the hacker, Kate had dropped the thought about buying a system. Then recently, she found out about the newer generation of VR systems. Apparently several companies had contended for a US government defence contract, to develop new human controlled guidance systems with VR. A particular company had lost its bid to another, but went ahead after receiving funding from a number of private sources who had heard the details of the systems they already had working. From there they had, developed the VR4 system, while the contractor for the government had wasted its time, working from current weapons system which were totally out of date.

Kate honked her horn at a car making an illegal turn, blocking her in. It was frustrating, as most drivers seemed to act like total idiots. She also didn't like the fact the most of the ones she had seen were also female. But men designed most cars and road systems. What could they have been thinking, developing the world's number one killer of people?

News reports she had read recently, showed the introduction of VR4 at the World E-Trade Fair and was been claimed as the most real and involving experience by the exhibitors and customers that had forked out the $500 dollars to try it for 15 minutes. They claimed that existing systems supporting the Internet could easily be changed to allow users across the globe to interact, and also have them access information usually accessible on the Internet. Apparently they had demonstrated this, with one of their systems located back in the States logging on-line, and playing games with whoever was in the World E-Trade Fair, and allowing them to browse information on the Internet.

Kate had followed the progress of the VR4 on every source she could find, until several weeks ago when it had been released to the general market. As soon as she could, she tried out one of the VR4 systems at the first place that had it available. As it happened, it was at in the biggest shopping complex in the city. She had waited for two hours, spending a long lunch break waiting in a line just to try out the system for 5 minutes. When she opened her eyes again, she was hooked. The VR4 was much cheaper than the old systems Kate had tried, now given the title of VR3. Kate spent more than a week after that, trying to find a shop that could sell her the VR4 components rather than a whole system.

The VR4 had been designed to work with the commercial parts in personal computers. Kate already had a reasonable computer at home, and could plug the VR4 parts straight in almost.

Paying for the VR4 components up front, had worried Kate, but the shop had her notarise a couple of documents, for bill of sale but allowing her to cancel the bill of sale an get her money back at any time up to thirty days after delivery.

So eleven days later, just after 10 in the morning, Kate had three boxes delivered to her personally at work. She opened the boxes and confirmed the contents before signing the special delivery form. All day she worked at her desk, with the boxes underneath where she knew where they were. The news the night before had reported people breaking into neighbour's houses to steal the VR4 systems they had seen their neighbour being home. So Kate was conscious of the boxes against her right leg all day.

Kate had quit a bit earlier in her rush to get home as soon as possible, ending up in the worst part of the rush hour traffic in Perth.

It was a relief to finally pull up in front of her flat and back the car into the garage.

Kate walked into her flat with her arms full. She shucked her shoes which had been cramping her feet all day, and let the soft carpeting relax her feet making her way upstairs to her study. She unpacked the boxes planning to put it together immediately, but found a big ugly red and green striped envelope, marked "Read This First, Before You Plug Your VR4 OS Chip Into Anything."

The envelope had a Digital Versatile Disc, or DVD, and a document that detailed instructions for converting a PC into a stand-alone or on-line VR4 system. Kate ran the DVD in her computer, as the instructions were also made available in full voice and sound, with helper programs for examining the system to remove unnecessary files.

Kate let the disc play, turning up the volume and listening to it as she changed out of her office clothes and slipped something more comfortable on. The voice rattled on about the features, capabilities, and uses already been made of VR4 systems. Kate prepared her dinner and let it sit in the fridge ready to heat in the microwave.

Kate returned to the computer when she heard the voice stop. It had examined the system settings as it had played the instructions, and concluded that Kate's system was quite capable of running the VR4 system, but lacked memory for the larger, more dynamic environments. Otherwise the program was ready to prepare the data one the system for the VR4 OS chip.

Kate already knew about the need for lots of memory in the VR4 systems, and had thoughtfully purchased some at the same time. This resided in the third box along with some additional components.

Kate hit a button and let the program whirr away on an automatic setting. She had no information on the computer she hadn't already backed up on DVD's.

It was now a matter of waiting while it pruned down non-essential applications and data. Kate spent the time in the lounge room, working out on a rowing machine she had inherited from a friend who moved interstate after getting married.

Finishing with the rowing machine, Kate checked on the progress of the computer but found it was only 20% complete. She was getting hungry now, so returned to the kitchen downstairs to cook her dinner. Letting it take care of itself, Kate prowled around her flat, checking both the microwave and the computer before settling down in front of the TV.

Waiting was unnerving, so she watched some new show she had no interest in trying to understand what it was about. Finally she heard the microwave, and broke away from the TV long enough to spread her dinner on a plate and grab a drink before returning to the TV. It wasn't that good a show, but she had seen the climatic start, and she was curious as to how it would end.

Kate forced herself to eat slowly. Several times she thought she had heard the computer, and dashed upstairs to find the it hadn't finished so returned to the sofa in front of the TV. After checking the computer once more and dispensing with the dishes Kate started to watch the next show.

During the first commercial break, she heard the distinctive repetitive tones of the computer. Kate jumped up from the sofa, knocking it back to hit the wall with a thud. She ignored it and rushed back to the study. The computer was now ready to be converted. The program displayed a few more instructions for some components to be removed as they were no longer necessary, but could be retained if the user required certain functions.

Kate was sure she didn't need them as she let the computer shut down. Kate had spent enough time with computers to know enough to put one together or pull one apart. They were easy enough these days. All the parts were pretty much modular. The side panel popped off, and she removed the Operating System chip. This was the first thing that went, and Kate pushed in the VR4 OS chip. It looked good with its fancy hologram. Kate pulled out the removable floppy drive, and the sound and video mini boards. Next she put the new memory in, expanding it out to 4 gigabytes. It could handle more, but she really couldn't afford it. Last of all was the interface module and connector for the head set. Off came the keyboard and mouse, as the VR4 system didn't use these for anything.

Now the computer looked quite strange. All it had left was two sockets. One for the power cable and the other for the digital net cable. The supplied instructions had specified moving the system to a location where you could relax comfortably. There were only two locations in her flat with the digital net cable sockets, so unplugging the computer, she carried it downstairs into the lounge room with the cables. The socket was close enough to the sofa, where she plugged it back in. The small LCD display on the front of the computer lit up with diagnostic information even with the computer turned off. It showed sufficient power levels and indicated an active connection to a network provider.

Kate retuned to the study to grab the headset with its 5-metre cable, and a Sampler soft-pack for the VR4 system.

It was now a simple mater of plugging in the VR4 system. The last part of the instructions had stated to put on the headset before turning on the system, otherwise it wouldn't be able to adjust its sensors when you put it on, and to start the system first time by itself with any packages of the soft-packs.

Kate slipped the headset on over her neck, under her hair, and adjusted the receptors in the metallic net that ran from the carbon fibre frame from the neck clasp up either side of her face. It didn't sit firmly, so she secured the chinstrap.

Now came the final moment. Kate switched on the computer and sat down on the sofa, shifting the headset's cable out of the way.

Unlike the system Kate had tried at the shopping centre, which was set up for demonstration purposes, first time users on any VR4 system were introduced to the system's capabilities slowly. It allowed the user to go down though the levels of complexity without the feeling of been overwhelmed.

Chapter 2 : It's so real, the audience can feel you breath

Initially Kate heard a voice speaking, it wasn't readily identifiable, but she could hear what it was saying, "Please don't move you head while the VR4 system attunes itself with you the first time. As the system functions come on-line, it will test each portion accordingly. Currently the sound test is running, providing aural input."

The voice continued, but the source started moving, from what sounded like having been in front to moving around her head. "Your auditory responses react quite well with the system, as it now tests the input characteristics. If you have a sound source located nearby please turn it on now."

Kate had the TV control near her hand so she switched it on, and turned the volume up a bit.

She heard disembodied voice continued over the TV sound at an increased level, "The audio levels have increased sufficiently. Now the system will test audio blanking."

Kate heard the TV go dead. She looked up, and could still see the picture but there was no sound. Kate clicked her fingers in front of her face, and couldn't hear a thing.

She was starting to get worried when she heard voice continue. "The auditory system responds perfectly." Slowly, the TV volume returned, "Please turn off your sound source now."

Kate switched off the TV, leaving her with the feeling of been half deaf. She clicked her fingers again, and clearly heard the sound.

"Now the VR4 will test visual systems. The standard method of entering a VR4 environment is to close you eyes briefly and opening them again. Please do so now."

Kate didn't close her eyes, wonder what the system would do if she didn't. After about half a minute the voice came back "This system didn't detect a sufficient drop in light levels. If you did close your eyes as requested, then this VR4 system may be faulty. If you cannot close you eyes you can bypass this test by clapping your hands loudly or making a similar noise. You can try this test again, otherwise this system recommends you contact your nearest VR4 service centre."

The system was well integrated, allowing for faults to be automatically detected and resolved. The older VR systems didn't have their own diagnostics, but this made Kate feel much better. She closed her eyes now, and slowly opened them to see a static picture of countryside. "Visual input systems are working fine. Please do not disregard the directives during the testing procedure."

It at least knew when it was been fobbed off during a test. Slowly the scene changed, taking on a visual depth. Kate moved her eyes about, as the scene now looked realistic, except it didn't move. Then in one heartbeat, it came alive. The trees close by were moving and she could hear wind. Just in front of her a bird dropped down onto a small bush, and chirped at her.

"Visual responses responded successful. This system will now test for visual overlay." Slowly the picture contracted back into a 2D picture focused on the moving bird. Now Kate saw the image reduce down into a square, and she could see her room around the sides of the square image. The image reduced down to a small square, but she could still focus on the bird within the square and set it clearly as it poked at an insect on the bush.

"Please look away from the visual overlay." Kate moved her eye away from the bird, and the square image stayed exactly where it was. She looked over to her far left, leaving the image out of sight.

"Visual responses reacted successfully. This system will now test for visual overlay." Slowly the picture contracted back into a 2D picture focused on the moving bird. Now Kate saw the image reduce down into a square, and she could see her room around the sides of the square image. The image reduced down to a small square, but she could still focus on the bird within the square and set it clearly as it poked at an insect on the bush.

"Please look away from the visual overlay." Kate moved her eyes away from the bird, and the square image stayed exactly where it was. She looked over to her far left, leaving the image out of sight.

"Visual system responses successful."

The VR4 system now ran though system tests for the smell and taste. Its test weren't as complex as for the sight and sound, but Kate got the full treatment by smelling various objects represented by boxed symbols that floated past her in the air. The taste tests were much the same but less foul then some of the smells.

"The VR4 will test nerve, tactile and pressure sensation, using neural feedback for responses. Please just lay still and let your body respond normally."

Kate relaxed her body, lying very still. Slowly she felt all body sensations cease. She couldn't feel the weight of her body on the sofa, the texture of the sofa under her hands, her hair on the back of her neck, or feel the light pressure of elastics in her clothing. It all just drifted away.

She still had the sensation of gravity, but slowly even that faded, leaving her with a weightless feeling. Gradually she felt gravity returning, but from above. It increased gradually, until Kate felt like she was going to tip over as it kept increasing. To Kate it felt like a truck was squashing her, then the sensation of gravity abated leaving her weightless again.

Next she felt her hands slowly get warn, and the sensation extended along her arms, and flowed down the rest of her body, then up to her head, making her feel like she was bathing in warm water. Then her hands went cold, and this extended along her arms also, and spread into her body, like someone had just turned the hot water off, leaving her with just cold water.

The coldness evaporated quickly, before Kate felt pin pricks on her body. They moved across her skin making her feel like an army of ants had just swarmed over her pinching her as they went.

Slowly Kate feeling return to normal. "All senses test are complete." The voice said.

Kate felt relived, and ran her hands over her face and down her body, checking her to see if she could feel herself again. All body parts seemed to check out.

After a short time the voice continued, "The VR4 system will now complete final tests with user interaction. Please close you eyes momentarily to start the VR4 environment."

Finally Kate knew she was nearing completion of the system tests. She complied with the request and closed her eyes. When she opened them, she found herself sitting in a small room. It looked like her dentists waiting room, small plain, with a couple of chairs, a small table in the centre with magazines, and two doors, one on either end of the room.

Nothing seemed to be happening at the moment so Kate waited patiently, looking around at the room. It looked quite plain actually, and the textures of one wall were the same on each wall. Kate picked a magazine off the table to look at it. The magazine felt new, and as she leafed through it, it felt like she was the first person to open the magazine since it was printed.

It wasn't a common magazine, as Kate browsed through it, as it contained a collection of stories, publications and articles written about the VR4 system. Some of it detailed how the system worked, and how it affected the human brain. Other parts covered the information on how the VR4 systems will be upgraded in the future. Kate skipped the complex parts, and skip read though facts she hadn't known before, like the previous generation of VR systems were found to be dangerous to people with pace makers, and Haemophiliacs often started bleeding from electrical impulses received from the wraparounds they used to simulate tactile sensation.

Kate had just closed the magazine, as one of the doors opened, and a man poked his head out.

"Hello." he said.

Kate recognised the voice as the same as the one during the sense tests.

"I'm your guide, if you'll just follow me I'll show you around as you get used to interacting with the VR4 system."

Kate dropped the magazine on the table as she got up, and followed him through the door into a corridor.

"At this stage, the VR4 system is starting to interpret how you interact with your environment, and will adjust accordingly so it will be as natural as possible."

Kate remained silent listening to the guide.

"For instance, you haven't spoken a single word since activation of the VR4 system, and it's unsure whether you can speak." He said.

"Oh, I can speak." Kate said, not realising the system could react to people who couldn't speak. It made sense to make the system respond to all people, including those who couldn't speak. "I just didn't know you... I mean I didn't know the system would respond."

"As I said, the system has to learn how you interact with your environment. The main part of the system is designed to respond to voice commands. If not, you can think your commands and it will respond just as well." He said.

So it can read thoughts! Kate was astounded with that development, but the system could read almost everything else from her brain, like the environment and the clothing she was wearing, so why not her thoughts as well?

"Yes it can read thoughts. And only thoughts directed as commands are interpreted." He said.

"But what about other users on-line?" Kate asked.

"Only the local system, the one you are attached to can read your thoughts." He said, "All other information it interprets is disregarded. It was one of the security issues during development. This came up as a problem during the development as several of the testers tried some of the higher level functions for reading information about other on-line users, and they were able to listen to the other testers thoughts. Some people left the program because of that incident. That unfortunate incident is listed in one of the magazines in the waiting room."

It made sense to Kate, otherwise people's personal lives would be destroyed, and the using it as a way to steal information would be invaluable to any government.

"The system is about ready for you to use now. The VR4 system has many settings and options you can change, to make the system easier to use." He said.

They came to a door in the end of the straight corridor, and the guide opened it up and stepped through. Kate followed, and they were back in the waiting room, exactly as she'd left it through the opposite door.

"At any time you can command for help, and I will appear." He said, "A menu of options can be called up as a screen, and you can direct them to appear as any surface." The guide gestured, and one wall changed to appear as a big screen menu. "Most of the options can be called as verbal or thought commands. Almost all-environmental settings can be adjusted through this menu, including the appearance of your guide. If there's nothing else, I shall leave you now."

"Nothing right now thanks." Kate replied, and the guide stepped back through a door, and closed it behind him.

Kate studied the menu. Most of the command options looked common enough. Some might say they were copied from some of the TV series that made use of voice operated computers.

Kate wasn't getting anywhere now, so she directed the thought listed on the screen "Computer, quit." Kate blinked her eyes, and found herself back in her lounge room, on the sofa.

All was well, except it was getting late. Playing with the Sampler soft-pack would have to wait until tomorrow evening.

Kate was a little conscious of someone breaking into her flat to steal the VR4 system. Sure she had an alarm, but it wouldn't take much to break in, pull two cables, and run out carrying the thing. So Kate pushed it behind the sofa, and carefully stacked the headset and cable on top, before covering both with a cloth.

At least this way, nobody would find it quickly.

Kate cleaned up the study, which she'd left with computer parts and boxes all over it. The room didn't have much use now, as she'd only used it as it was the biggest room in the flat apart from her own bedroom. Perfect to hold a large desk for a computer. Even the desk didn't have much use now, so she just stacked the computer parts on top. Maybe someone would be interested in buying the parts and desk second hand. The boxes went out into the recycling, as Kate chucked the packing material into the bin.

Kate took a shower before going to bed. She was restless and thinking about the VR4, before she finally fell asleep.

Chapter 3 : Visiting the mall

Kate left for work at the usual time, eyeing the covered box behind the sofa as she stepped out the front door.

It was a long day at work, so as soon as Kate got home that evening she put dinner on to cook in the microwave on automatic. Before Kate sat down on the sofa, she took a moment to slip out of her office clothes, folding them on a chair so they wouldn't get crinkled.

Not bothering to go upstairs to put something else on, she went and pulled the cover off the computer, and put the headset on. From there Kate turned the computer on, and pushed the Sampler soft-pack DVD into the slot.

Kate relaxed back on the sofa, after closing her eyes momentarily she found herself standing at the entrance of a brightly-lit shopping mall. There were people bustling about inside but not coming near her, leaving a wide area about her, enough to see the facades of the shops along each side displaying their warez and services.

Kate stepped though the open doorway, feeling the slight chilly air blowing down from above from the air curtain. She felt the air blow across her whole body. Wondering at the sensation, she looked down, realising she was standing only in her underwear.

The VR4 system had automatically modelled whatever clothing Kate wore, into the VR environment. She put her hands over her bra, feeling exposed to the people inside. It took a moment for it to sink in that all the people milling about were just moving aimlessly, not really interacting with each other or even taking notice of her in her lingerie.

Kate thought she was been foolish by reacting to the computer generated people, and lowered her hands to her sides. The air was warm enough that she felt comfortable enough in the mall in just her underwear. She didn't know how to change her VR clothing yet, but she didn't think it was significant what she wore, as no one could see her and it was kind of kinky to be walking about a public place in just her underwear.

Kate stepped forward, hearing the doors swish shut behind her. She looked behind her, at the glass doors. She could see her reflection in the glass doors, wearing bra, underpants and stockings. Not a good look, but she wasn't going to change it now. Outside, all she could see was a broad road and a high brick wall on the other side, with a bus terminus on this side of the road. Kate turned back to look at the shops on the left as she walked.

Some of them were just window displays, advertising VR4 programs and games available. Kate stopped in front of a display advertising holidays. It showed on-line holidays like riding bikes along the Great Wall of China, or catching the surf on any beach in the world as it happens in real time. The advertising also had fictional holiday settings pre-packaged on a soft-pack, so you could select a different holiday every weekend.

Kate moved on, seeing normal commercial advertising for VR books and TV show rewrites. Several had open doors, permitting Kate to enter and look about. Kate stepped into one for an old film called "Water World". Through the arch she found a rickety dock like structure, with water all around. A large wall with objects floated around her on the waters surface. A large gate opened in the wall, and a sleek sailing vessel glided in silently under the control of a single person who brought it into a nearby dock with grace. She'd been in for no more than a couple of minutes, before she could feel the hot sun on uncovered arms and back, so retreated back through the arch to look further on. Maybe she could find a rendition of one of her favourite movies.

The mall broadened out, into an open area over looking several levels both above and below. Kate walked up to the railing and leaned on it as she looked about at the large expanse of the mall. "Gee, there must be hundreds of displays." She whispered.

"There are in fact one thousand, two hundred and thirty five displays."

Kate was startled by the voice, recognising it as she turned about to see the familiar form of her guide.

"Only two hundred and six of the displays have walk in samples available. The rest have displays with visual, sound and olfactory sense for advertising." The guide said.

Kate glanced at the people in the background moving about with seeming purpose, but not looking at displays or doing anything. "What are all the people for?" Kate asked.

"The description given from the program is: Humanoid simulacrum's to emulate the physical environment of a mall with milling people."

"Can you get rid of them? It kind of irritates me that they aren't doing anything except walking about."

The guide didn't say a thing for a moment, just standing there. Kate was about to rephrase the request thinking either the Guide or the system didn't understand, when all the people just vanished, the mall sounding quiet now without the sound of their footsteps. The guide said, "Done."

"You said I could change the settings of my guide, could you make a gesture like this..." Kate clicked the fingers of her right hand, "when you perform a command like that?"

"Yes I can." The guide imitated her gesture closely, making a different sound with his larger fingers.

"Good. Now you can give me a run down on what sort of stuff this sampler has."

The guide clicked his fingers and a list appeared mid air. He read off each item one at a time. Kate glanced through the list of items, ignoring the guide's voice. There were VR stories which were just books and movies made available in 3D. The VR interactive stories were more interesting to Kate, as you could choose to play one of the characters in the stories, or play your own part and change the story however you wanted. VR games were a big item, with multiple listings for on-line adventures, simulations, and re-releases of well-known games from the PC and arcade. The remaining items were world tours and VR service programs and enhanced functions.

Kate had an understanding of the tours, games and stories, but didn't know what the service programs consisted of. She interrupted the guide from his oration, "What's in the service programs?"

The guide clicked his fingers, and the mall changed. They were on the lowest level now. "Most service programs are free additions to your VR4 system which you can download. They consist of programs for enhancing routines and features used within any environment. Here is a listing of all services available and those already in use on your system."

The guide clicked his fingers and up appeared a large list, of dozens of items. Kate noted the ones with a check mark next to them. VR phone service, interactive guide, V-mail program, and general programs. Kate browsed through the other items, glancing at the Body editor momentarily with interest, but stopping immediately after at the item called Clothes emporium.

"How do I change my clothes?" Kate asked the guide.

"The system can make available any form of attire you wish to wear. Unfortunately individual computer systems have a limited capacity storing a selection of clothing, so the VR4 system only comes available with a limited selection of clothes. Most programs make available their own selection of clothes for use. You may of course bring in you own clothes and store them for later use in another environment if the particular program allows the use of you own selection of clothes. An on-line service called Clothes emporium is available to download a large selection of clothes for use."

Kate was impressed. "I think I'll..."

The guide suddenly spoke out "There is an external audio alarm active."

Kate thought for a moment, and realised that he must mean the microwave cooking dinner. "Computer, quit!" she called out, and closed her eyes. She heard the beeping as she opened her eyes, and pulled off the headset.

Kate ran upstairs and grabbed a tracksuit from her room and pulled it on before sitting down to eat her dinner. She ate it a bit faster than usual, in a hurry to get back to the computer.

Kate was back on the sofa a moment after rinsing the dishes down and leaving them on the sink. A brief moment later, she was back in the mall right where she had left.

Chapter 4 : Doctor Frankenstein, a body please!

Kate looked at the list, focusing back on the Clothes emporium. "I don't know what clothes I want to use just yet so I'll leave the emporium alone for the moment."

The guide just stood there without making a comment.

Kate looked down at her clothes, feeling they were more suitable to exploring the system in, except she didn't have any footwear on. "Do you have any white sneakers available?"

"These are part of the standard system." The guide said clicking his fingers.

Kate didn't feel a thing, but looking down she saw the sneakers on the floor, not on her feet. She bent down and pulled them on, tying the laces.

Kate was satisfied with her appearance now. "Could I save this set of clothes?" she asked her guide.

The list of items dissolved to be replaced by an image of the clothes she was wearing layed out, including her underwear, watch and jewellery. "Do you wish a description saved also?" He said.

"Just..." Kate thought for a moment, "a plain tracksuit." She said.

The guide clicked his fingers as the image vanished, replaced by the list once more.

"Can you, um make it the standard clothes I wear when I start up?" Kate asked.

"Default VR environment clothes on initialisation." Her guide stated, using the technical names, and clicked his fingers.

Kate's curiosity got the better of her. "What's the body editor?"

"A program for modifying body shapes. Either a body shape you wish to use, or for your guide, or it can be used in building your own VR environment with characters you have made or modified from existing ones."

"Sounds good, I'd like that one." Kate said.

"Your authorisation is needed before this system can connect to the VR Internet. It will send a copy of personal details and your body profile to the main system." the guide said bringing up a screen of details, some already filled out.

Kate looked through the items, only thinking out the details then seeing the results pop up in the appropriate box. Kate noted details were lists in different colours, specifying details that were only transmitted to the VR4 secure home site and others that were made available to other systems on the Internet, and various others depending on the security level needed to connect to a specific site.

Kate finished several screens of details before completing the final authorisation and granting connection to the Internet. It was a long process, but the details were only filled out once, and authorisation only needed to be granted once for each secure site.

"Details have been sent, and access granted." The guide said. "Down loading the body editor now."

Kate continued looking through the lists of programs, skipping a lot of the ones designed for kids, and disabled people.

The list shifted for a moment, and she realised the Body editor was now at the top with a check mark beside it.

Kate had seen enough of the list, dismissing it with a hand gesture that made it disappear.

"Load the body editor." Kate said.

The guide clicked his fingers and the mall faded away, like a fog clearing to reveal a small artist's studio with a big golem like body standing in the centre, and a screen full of settings on one wall.

"I want to change my body." Kate said.

Kate watched the golem morph into the naked form of a woman. Looking up at the face, she was slightly shocked as she realised it was her body.

Kate looked down at her body before looking up again at the model. Well it was a body editor after all, she thought.

It felt strange looking over her body from a separate perspective, even naked, the perspective seemed confusing somehow, "Let's see your body." She said to the guide.

The guide clicked his fingers, and Kate's form was replaced by form of the guide, also nude. It was a bit erotic to Kate to look at this naked man, but he wasn't moving. Stiff as a statue in fact. Kate walked around it, thinking a moment. "This thing isn't moving, can you animate it, like get it breathing for starters, and oh, walking on the spot."

Kate's guide clicked his fingers, and the form started walking along, but not moving forward.

Kate said, "I think those clicking fingers a getting on my nerves, just blink your eyes when performing a command."

Kate stepped up next to the screen, looking at the main details. "Hmm, let's experiment a bit. You need a bit of a tan." She said, point with her finger at the skin colour, and dragging her finger down as she looked at the model. The skin colour darkened slightly.

"That's good, now the hair colour." Kate dragged her finger across a large rectangle, shifting the colour from a black to a light blonde.

"Can we get rid of the body hair too?" Kate saw the display change. She applied her finger dragging it down as she looked at the model. The body hair disappeared when her finger reached the bottom. Kate moved her finger sideways and gasped when the model lost all of its pubic hair. It looked unnatural, like a little boy, so Kate shifted her finger back until the pubic hair reappeared, but in slightly less proportion than before.

"Okay, I want to adjust the body dimensions a bit." The screen adjusted to show a representation, and Kate moved portions of the body, broadening the chest, and waist, and making him a bit taller.

"Nice but he looks a bit thin. Can I sculpt the muscles on the model?"

The guide replied, "Yes. Simple apply your hands to model to adjust these physical parameters."

The model stopped walking when Kate approached it, but it kept breathing.

Kate poked at the chest with a finger, expecting to feel the muscular body, but instead the chest shrunk back, making it look skeletal. Kate felt sick looking at it, and made a pinching motion at the skin, and pulled it back out. She got the feel of it then, pulling parts of legs and arms out, sometimes pushing and pulling simultaneously to create a funny bulged effect, but finally fixing it to look approximately normal.

Kate was after a totally new look, but the facial features still looked the same. She worked a bit more delicately adjusting the face, making it look somewhat like an old boyfriend, but definitely different from what it was.

She didn't dare touch the anatomy, for fear of making it unrealistically big or too small. Overall Kate was happy with her efforts. She looked back at her guide, "What's the designation for your body?"

"Human Guide Male one." he replied.

"Okay, can I have this saved as Male one?"

She saw him blink clearly, confirming her command.

"How many bodies are predefined for guides?" She asked.

"Two." The guide replied. "One male, one female. Both can be adjusted to look older and younger depending on the user's age."

"Cool. Bring my body back up." When Kate was looking at her body once again. She adjusted the age, making it look older, turning the hair grey, wrinkling skin, and making the breasts sag. "Ooohh, I'll look like that when I'm old! Disgusting." Kate pushed it back the other way too quickly, turning the model into a child. "Wow. I suppose if I ever need to play a child in an interactive story, I could fit right in."

Kate slowly cycled the model older, stopping at when she was approximately 16 years old. Kate made some finer manipulations, making the hair a bit longer, smoothing out skin blemishes, and making the bust bigger. "There. Save that as Female one."

Kate looked from the model to the guide for a moment, getting an inspiration, "Can we switch bodies?" she asked.

The guide replied, "Yes, but the purpose of changing the body of the guide is for make you feel more comfortable in the VR environment. Only a user can perceive their guide. And when you feel competent enough, you can dispense with your guide."

"Just do it." Kate said.

She watched as the guide blinked, then found she was looking over the guide's head. Kate looked down at herself, or rather at the guide, seeing the guide in the similar clothing as before, but obviously adjusted for the different body size and gender. He had been wearing casual white trousers, a shirt, and shoes, but now as a female, she was in a plain white sleeveless knee length dress and white dress shoes.

Kate spoke for the first time, "Nice selection of clothes." Kate realised her voice sounded completed different, just like the guide's in fact.

"You have my voice now?" Kate asked.

The guide replied with her voice "Of course. Your body profile is about 88 percent complete. The more you use the system, the more it will understand how you react as an individual, making interaction much smoother and realistic."

Kate had looked enough at her own body, and was interested in the one she was using now. She was wearing a version of the tracksuit she had put on, so she pulled the collar out, thinking to see a bra on the male body but couldn't see a thing down the dark top. Kate resorted to pulling the top completely off, to see a plain flat chest.

Kate had heard and seen all the stories of breast cancer and seen the graphic results of some women missing a breast, but this was almost as distressing, to have grown up with two firm breasts, to now have a flat chest.

Kate saw the nipples, and poked at them with her oversized hands, reassured that they hadn't been surgically removed. She examined her hands and arms, and chest down to the belly button, looking all over.

In Kate's age, sexually transmitted diseases were pretty common so it became the common thing to stay a virgin until finding a permanent partner. Kate was the sort of person to follow this unsaid rule, but she did have some experiences to say otherwise, providing a real education to the sexuality of humans, especially of some men. That, and had seen plenty pictures of dicks and of them been used on the Internet, but she was still wanted to see how it would operate in VR. So she pulled the tracksuit pants down, letting them slide around her ankles. The legs looked like legs, just larger with some hair, it was what the red underpants covered which interested her.

She pulled the front on the underpants forward, peeking in at the smallish mass surrounded by a growth of pubic hair. Getting over the dissatisfaction of not seeing it erect, she let the underpants go and received a shock as the elastic snapped back. "Ouch!" Kate cried out.

Kate rubbed the smarting skin with a hand as she addressed her guide, "How do get this thing to operate?" she said poking the underpants.

"When making use of a body of the opposite gender, sexual functions are activated by making contact with any sense of predefined areas of the opposite gender." the guide said.

Kate heard it, but wasn't sure she got it straight, "You mean, I have to look at either the tits or cunt of a women?"

"Effectively, yes."

Kate didn't feel particularly interested using a male body if it wouldn't react normally, and only under certain conditions. "Give me female one." She said.

In a moment, Kate was back in a female body. Looking down, she confirmed that she had two breasts supported by a bra, and panties without the bulge behind them. She pulled the tracksuit pants up, securing them around her waist.

"Okay, enough playing with myself. What games can I access on-line right now?"

The guide made to answer Kate's question "There is a vast variety of on-line games, including sport..."

Kate cut in, "Sport? People get on-line to play sport?"

"Quite often, users can join in sports events played world wide. Also when they are used in conjunction with the physical exercise extension program, it can stimulate the muscles of your real body, allowing you to have a physical exercise while performing another activity in VR."

"I think I've already read about that, give your body an aerobic work out while your relaxing on a sunny beach on Mars." Kate was saying, "I must have missed that in the programs, download that would you?"

The guide blinked at Kate before continuing, "Also recreation, computer games, adventures, simulations, action, and various others."

Kate thought for a moment, realising that there must be a massive selection of on-line games she could just join in. "Can you just get me into anything free, where there is already one other person playing, on-line locally, that is also within Australia?"

"There are five such games running." The guide said, as a list appeared.

Kate scanned through the items, discounting the golf, adventure skydiving, and the NASCAR racing. The two remaining people were playing in replicated games of the 3D-style shoot 'em ups. Kate was about to select the second one, when she noticed the amount of time the game had been running, over four hours already. Kate didn't want to be playing with someone who'd already been though most of the game, so she selected the other which had only been running for 11 minutes.

Kate pressed the join game button, and the scene changed around her. She was strapped in what appeared to be the back of a small aircraft. She could hear the droning of the engines, and the slight bumpy motion like and aircraft as she looked about and saw another guy standing in the doorway to the cockpit. He turned about and started to speak to her.

"I'm Major Price. Private, this mission is of utmost importance, we have sent several squads into this hell hole already, and only one unit has responded with confirmed deployment..." The Major talked to Kate, describing the outline of the game. It sounded pretty similar to most she had seen on the market and played herself. Go in, shoot lots of ugly looking creatures, collect items for weapons and health, and reach the objectives.

Kate looked about as the Major talked, noting her clothing. She was in green camouflaged pants, a camouflage crop top and matching green boots. Any bare skin was also coloured, with black and green paints. Also, she could feel a headphone and microphone attachment on her head. And last of all she had several weapons hanging from her body, and an assault rifle between he legs, pointed at the ceiling.

As the Major was saying good luck, the aircraft was suddenly struck hard. Kate felt lucky to be strapped in as she was thrown violently about.

The craft was still shaking violently, as Kate was able look about once more and saw the Major's body lying on the floor at an odd angle.

Probably broke his neck, Kate thought.

A voice from the cockpit started calling out, "Mayday, this is flight Foxtrot Sierra Five. We have been hit by enemy fire, and have lost flight control. We are going to attempt to land in sector 78-35. I repeat..."

Kate listened as the voice repeated several times, until she heard over the intercom, "If we still have any passengers alive back there, secure for impact, we're about to crash."

"Great, good bloody way to start a game, get killed in the first five minutes without been able to lift a finger." Kate said for her own benefit, since she doubted the pilot would respond.

Kate had been able to hold onto the assault rifle with her legs when they were hit, and now hooked the strap over her arms as she braced the harness that secured her.

"Hold on back there, here we go." The pilot called back.

All Kate heard was a massive booming sound as the craft hit the ground followed by crumpling as everything seemed to spin about before she blacked out.

Chapter 5 : The mother of all smells

Tony had got gotten plastered by several enemy units who'd set up an ambush, and barely gotten away when he heard the Mayday call on his radio.

After that the radio beeped, informing of a change of mission objectives. Tony glanced at the screen on his wrist, pressing the button it illuminate it briefly. Friendly squad inbound. Intercept at landing site before enemy units do, and regroup with any survivors.

Tony pressed another button for the map, seeing the location just east of his current position. It wasn't too far out of the way, but he had no idea what was between here and there as he'd been progressing north until the recent encounter. East looked as good as way as any.

There was no resistance as Tony headed towards the landing site, and found it odd. Usually he found one, or two enemies patrolling some area. He stopped at the corner of a building, and double-checked his map for the landing coordinates. It should be coming down just around the corner.

Tony had a bad feeling as he poked his head around the corner, and drew it back quickly as he heard bullets and energy weapons sizzle off the masonry.

He'd just found all the enemy units that he had been wondering about. They must have used their own source to track the aircraft and gathered ground units to take out anyone who disembarked from the descending aircraft.

Well, he'd just have to take care of that. Tony pulled a grenade off his vest, and pulled the pin from the striker leaver. He heard a metallic ping as he tossed the grenade around the building at knee height above the ground. Just after it went off, Tony sprang from the corner spraying bullets at any enemy unit that was still standing.

Two were further back and hadn't been hit by the explosion, and Tony had to duck down into the gutter as they fired at him. Tony was about to jump up as the ground shook heavily, followed by the heavy boom, and a long crunching sound like truck been dragged along a road on its side.

Slowly, Tony raised his head up, expecting to see the two guys about to blow his head away. Instead he was rewarded with the sight of the damaged hull of VTOL transport rolling along until it hit a building and settled on its side.

Tony could see the crash path from the left, where went straight through a small red patch where the two enemy units had been standing.

He moved quickly to see who survived the wreck before the enemy sent reinforcements. He picked up some intact ammo and items from the corpses he'd cut down after the grenade exploded, as he ran over to the aircraft.

Moving around the wreck, he was able to make out the crumpled nose that had been bashed in as the craft had rolled. It looked a real mess, but the fuselage was all that was left from the impact. Thoughtfully, engineers put a hatch in the bottom of the craft as Tony opened a small plate and punched a few buttons, before hearing the locks release the hatch. Tony had to push hard to open the hatch up enough before he could stick his head in.

"Come any further, and I blow your head away." A voice said, as Tony felt the cold metal press against the side of his face causing him to freeze.

Tony said slowly, so he wouldn't frighten the other player "Private Tony Osborne, I'm here to rescue you."

The voice responded, "Anybody else with you?"

"Nope, just me." Tony said with some confidence. "But if you keep that thing to my head much longer, I'll probably have my arse blown away by anyone who decided come looking. You didn't exactly land quietly."

The pressure withdrew from Tony's face, "Just back out real slowly, and keep your weapon pointed away from me."

Tony pulled back out of the hatch as directed, and watched as the form followed the rifle out, resolving into a girl, or a young women. It was hard to tell, but she seemed to act older.

She stumbled on a piece of masonry, falling towards Tony. He released his rifle, letting the strap keep it from the ground, as he caught the women before she fell headfirst into the rubble.

The woman spoke as Tony lifted her up, getting his right arm under her arms. "Great bloody way to start, getting dropped like a rock, beaten around like a egg in a blender, and take on a group of strange looking grey dudes as soon as your on the ground."

Tony looked about, seeing the enemy units. He couldn't reach his rifle stuck behind him, with the woman next to him. He had to reach around to her rifle, holding it up with one hand as he pulled the trigger. As it spat empty shell casings out the side, the rifle started swinging around without support, forcing him to reach around the woman with his left arm to steady the rifle.

He had to switch between firing, and dragging the woman along so they didn't present a stationary target.

Figuring he was safe enough around another building, Tony let the women down with her rifle and pulled his own rifle up before moving back around the corner to pick off the grey men he hadn't hit.

The grey guys were easy enough. It was the red striped ones that were a pain because they were a lot more nimble, making them harder to hit.

After Tony had got them all, he returned to the women. "Anybody else in the crate you come down in?"

She shook her head "The Major bought it when we were hit. It was just the pilot and me, but I couldn't see the cockpit when I came to. I didn't have time to search when I head the hatch opening, thinking someone had come to finish the job of killing me."

"It looks like the pilot bought it on impact. We had better move too, cause the enemy will keep sending units in here until it's secured your craft, or what's left of it." He said.

"Give me a hand, I still don't feel too good." She said.

Tony shifted his rifle to his left shoulder before helping her up.

He was more aware of her body against his this time without his attention on the rifle and been shot at. He had to ignore this as he concentrated on where they were going, and looking around every so often in case they were spotted.

"My name's Kate." She said as they moved across an open area into a tunnel.

"Nice to meet you Kate. I'm Tony, from Melbourne." He said, and added "Under the circumstances. We better stop here a moment, and use one of these nifty medical packs."

Kate leaned against the tunnel wall, and Tony pulled out a small black packet with a white cross on green on it and applied it to Kate's arms.

It made a few beeping sounds, and Kate sighed. "Oh! That is much better."

Tony put the pack away noting the charge left in it. "Wonderful device. Better than aspirin."

Kate said, "Uh, huh. Well I feel much better now. What are we supposed to be doing down here."

Tony had completed the current objective, by regrouping with Kate, so he looked at his wrist screen.

Kate noted his action, and looked at her own wrist noting the device for the first time. She pressed a button and was rewarded with screen listing the next objective.

"We have to proceed into the East River tunnel, and cut across to secure a subway platform." Tony said.

Kate read out sign on the opposite wall, "East River tunnel, this looks like the right place."

Tony proceeded into the tunnel, with Kate a short distance to one side. There were burnt out cars, some intact but with holes and scorch marks on them, none of it looked recent. The tunnel was almost pitch black with only a few lights working at distant intervals, leaving Tony to turn on the torch attached to his rifle to give some light to their footsteps.

There wasn't any sound except the occasional drip of water somewhere, and their own footsteps on the road surface. Tony thought it was the best time to make conversation with his new companion. "So, Kate. This your first time in VR?"

"Not quite." Kate replied, "I've sampled a few of the VR systems, but I just got my own yesterday, and this is my first time on-line."

"Well, at least you have some experience, I just jumped straight in today." Tony said.

"You don't act like it. They way you dragged me out, shooting those grey guys was pretty good."

Tony put in, "You might say I had some practice. I used to play the computer games like this. Never did quite like it, because they didn't have the player realism of leaning around corners and such. When they released the advanced VR system's a few years back, I found myself too busy to try them out. But now I have some time and just jumped at the chance."

Kate took a step, and something squealed from under her foot. She jumped back, ready to shoot bullets into it as Tony shone his torch at it.

"Rats! "Kate exclaimed, "Damn thing frightened me, I ought to blow it away."

"It's not worth the bullets, and something is bound to hear the gun fire."

"Yeah." Kate agreed, and took a swipe at it with her foot, barely missing as it scuttled away. Kate turned her torch on, so she wouldn't step on any more rats.

She hadn't had the time before to look at Tony, and her torch gave enough light to make out his features. He was clean-shaven, not over muscled. Looked older, but then players could appear to be any age.

"Tony?" she said.

"Yeah?"

"How old are you?" Kate asked.

"Oh, my appearance? I made it older. I'm actually 25, and less well built." He answered. "You don't act you age either you know."

"You noticed? I suppose it's a bit hard for me to act like a teenager again. I even tried out a male body just to get the feel, but it didn't, well, feel right." She turned about, hearing him sniffing. "What is it?"

"Can't you smell it?"

Kate sniffed the air, noting a slight odour. A few steps further it smelled distinctly worse, "Something does stink, and rotten too." She said.

The smell got worse as they progressed, and Tony held his free arm and sleeve over his mouth and nose.

Kate didn't have a sleeve, so she had to tear some material off her top to hold it to her nose. She kept her mouth shut as the progressed, swinging her weapon about to shine the torch on her surroundings when she picked out something.

"What's that?"

Tony moved across to Kate, shining his torch onto the pulsing object. It seemed to withdraw from the light. "Don't know. Maybe it's what the rats eat down here."

They kept moving forward. Kate took a look behind them, but could no longer see the light from the tunnel entrance.

Eventually they had to stop, because the stench was almost choking as they drew in each breath. Tony heard it first, pointing his rifle into the darkness ahead before Kate heard a squishing sound.

Kate raised her rifle up also, before a large something moved into the light, with a pulsing mush like surface.

It kept coming closer and Kate felt an overwhelming cloying stench wash over her, causing her to start coughing.

"Fire! Fire!"

She barely made out Tony's words over her coughing, and pulled the trigger, letting the weapon spray back and forth with one hand trying to regain her breath.

They weren't having any affect on the creature, so Kate pulled on one of the grenades hanging from the strap on her chest. She gave Tony a warning, before she hurled it at the creature. Both of them turned about and dived to the ground for lack of cover.

Tony caught the flash of light from behind his eyelids, then heard the eerie scream. Turning back around, he caught sight of the blob moving away, back into the darkness, some of its surface looking blackened and burnt. "What'd you throw?"

"I don't know!" Kate said.

"Must have been a phosphors grenade, and gave our blobby friend a sun burn."

Kate got up from the ground, feeling her arms for non-existent scrapes. "Blobby?"

"What would you call it?" he retorted.

"The mother of thing from the tunnel that stank!" she said.

"A stink blob." Tony said.

Kate gave a short snort of a laugh at the pun. "We had better find that cross tunnel soon, because that blob may just come back."

Not much further, there was a dim red light on a wall next to a closed steel door. Kate shone her torch across a sign marked, Railway Access - Railway Personnel Only. "I think this is it."

Tony tried the door hopefully, but it was locked. He stepped back for a moment, thinking.

When Kate saw he was standing back clear of the door, she pointed her weapon at lock and pulled the trigger for a moment, sending bullets bouncing off the steel plate and ricocheting about the tunnel.

Tony ducked down as he yelled "Hey! What are you trying to do?" When he realised she had stopped he lowered his voice, "Kill us?"

"Sorry." Kate rubbed the side of her face, thinking one of the ricocheting bullets had just missed her head. "Seen too many TV shows where they shoot the door out. Usually they weren't steel plate."

"I like your enthusiasm, but I was hoping to open the door without damaging it. That blob may just follow us in there." Tony slung his rifle onto his back and bent down, running his hands and fingers around the frame of the doorway.

Kate put the safety on and shone her light down as he worked. Tony went right around the frame without finding a thing, and checked the housing for the light too. He almost gave up before he noticed the shadow within the light itself. "Bingo."

Tony used the butt of his rifle, and smashed the light in. It took a moment to locate the key on the ground within the fallen glass. He didn't realise he was holding his breath until after the key clicked over in the lock, and the door swung in at a push.

"I wouldn't have figured that out." Kate said. "I probably would have tried a grenade next, and maybe gassed myself."

Tony let Kate go in first, and pushed the door shut locking it with the key, before slipping the key into a pocket. The tunnel was well lit and the air was easier to breathe, and they both relaxed as they turned their torches off.

"See, that's what I like. Not the normal running around shooting everything games. You can get through it with some thinking..." Tony laughed for a moment, "Or luck when you pick a phosphors grenade."

Kate was in front as they walked along the narrow tunnel, and flicked the safety off in case something came at them. "No luck." Kate said. "That one's been annoying me by bouncing between my breasts, so it was first to go. The one on my hip goes next."

Tony looked down at the grenade in question, seeing it bounce out dangerously. He looked from the grenade to the hip, and was distracted enough to stumble into Kate as she stopped suddenly.

"Hey! You watching where you're going?" Kate said, as she flicked on her torch and looked down the barrel at something.

"Sorry, I was distracted by your hips!" he said just before Kate let loose with a few rounds, making the tunnel echo loudly.

Tony pulled his fingers from his ears, hearing the tinkle of shell casings hit the concrete, or the maybe it was just his ears ringing.

Kate turned about to face Tony, "What did you say?" she said a little loudly.

"I was distracted." He said in a raised voice.

Kate turned back, to continue down the tunnel, evidently happy that she had hit what she had been aiming for. Kate lowered her voice, "And I thought you said you were distracted by my hips."

Tony followed at a further distance. He hadn't been lucky with women, either not doing the right thing or not saying the right thing. This time he was thinking he had done both things wrong.

He saw Kate stop a moment to poke her foot at something. "Another rat." She said before continuing along the tunnel.

It wasn't much further until they reached another door. Tony passed the key to Kate to unlock the door.

She stepped out into a small alcove next to a railway track, and stuck her head out looking both ways as Tony locked the door behind them. It looked like any normal subway tunnel. Plain concrete with lights at regular intervals. "Which way?"

Tony consulted his map. The railway led off the map to the left, but a small square was located along to the right. "I think it's to the right."

Kate stepped out onto the track feeling nervous about what could be coming along the track. "Any idea if any trains still run along here?" she asked Tony.

"None, but the track looks pretty clean. Let's not stay too long down here." He replied.

"Good idea." Kate moved off at a jog, putting her feet down on the concrete sleepers on either side of the left rail. Tony stuck to the right rail, stopping occasionally to look back in case there was something coming from behind them.

At one stage they heard the distinct sound of a train, but it wasn't in their tunnel. Finally they saw the light of the subway station lighting the tunnel in front, before hearing the grunting and shuffling movement. They had a good view from the wall further down the tunnel of many enemy soldiers, carrying and loading unmarked crates. Several blue ones could bee seen directing them about, but Tony and Kate couldn't see enough of the platform to see what they were loading or unloading.

Tony whispered to Kate, "You stay at this end of the platform, and I'll crawl down to the other end. I'll flash my light to you when I'm in position. Flash your light back three times then we'll pop up simultaneously to catch them in our crossfire. And keep your rifle angled up with so don't catch each other ricochets." Tony gave a wide grin, "Throw a grenade if you want, but stay away from the phosphorus ones."

Kate nodded back, as Tony moved along under the edge of the platform. She saw a few of the enemies' move to the edge of the platform near Tony, she whispered "Don't move." Thinking he wouldn't have heard her, but he stopped dead still. When they moved away she whispered again "They're gone now." and saw Tony start moving again.

When he reached the other side, she heard his voice in her headset "Thanks for the warning."

"Your welcome. You still want to flash at me?"

"Nah, if your ready, well go on the count of zero." He said.

Kate moved up under the edge of the platform, kneeling over. "Ready."

"Three... Two... One... Zero!"

Kate stood up, opening fire on those closest first, seeing them drop she swung about catching a blue guy who was waving his arms frantically. Letting one hand handle the rifle, she pulled the grenade from her hip. After yelling grenade into her headset, she tossed it into a cluster of units hiding behind some of the crates.

Tony saw the crates explode outwards, showering the area with bodies, bits of wood, and packing material.

They cleaned up quick after that, picking them off without much resistance.

"Looks clear." Kate said.

"Meet you on the platform." She heard back.

She put her rifle up, and climbed up an access ladder on the edge of the platform. It was quite a mess, with coloured bodies everywhere. She looked at the crates she had blown open with her grenade and found weapons.

Kate gave a whistle looking the weapons over. She heard the beeping in her headset as Tony came over looking at the open crates. Looking at the screen on her wrist for the new objective. "Jeez." Kate said.

"What now?"

Kate read off the screen "Enemy units are utilising the subway for troop transport. A fully loaded train is due through this station at 11:15. Use any means to stop it."

"Hell." Tony said, looking around. He saw a working clock reading 11:07. "Bloody Hell!"

Kate looked at it, recognising the problem. She saw the weapons on the ground, and only looked at the other crates momentary, before she reversed her rifle and started pounding at the boards, breaking it open before pulling out some unusual looking rifles.

Tony moved quickly to another box, breaking it open. It held containers of grey plasticine, probably C4 or something similar. Useless without a detonator, he thought, and moved on, finding equally useless stuff.

"What are these?" Kate asked holding one up for Tony to see.

"If that's a detonator, then we're saved. Bring a dozen over."

Tony went back to the explosives, and started pulling out several containers. The crate was way too much, and they only needed to blow up a train, not the whole subway.

Kate stuffed several of the digital timers with short wires into pockets, and carried a handful over to Tony.

Tony took one, playing with it a moment. It was really simple, almost like a cooking timer. There wasn't much time to figure it out, so he pinched a small amount of plasticine, sticking it on the wires, and pasting it to the back of the clock. He set it for 15 seconds, and threw it hard into the opposite tunnel.

There was a loud pop, as dust floated back up onto the platform. "Perfect."

Tony looked up at the clock, reading 11:11. Tony took two more from Kate. "Let's hope they're running on time. Set those for 4 minutes, and I'll set these for 6 minutes. Okay? Start."

Tony jammed the wires and timers into four blocks. "Take those to that end of the platform, and put them next to the rails." Tony took his to the other end, the direction the train should be coming from, and put one between the rails, and one nearer to the platform, before returning.

He pulled out a few more blocks of explosive before setting one timer for 15 minutes and shoved it back into the crate with all plastic explosive.

Kate could hear the familiar rumble of an approaching train, as she carried some of the explosive with Tony to the subway stairs.

Tony dropped his bundles, "Give me a timer." He said.

Kate passed him one, and he jammed it into a block, and set 20 seconds but didn't start the timer yet.

There was a loud concussive boom as the explosives Kate had placed, blew at the end of the platform, sending bricks and concrete flying with a cloud of dust. There was a rumble of part of the tunnel collapsing before it was replaced with the screech of metal on metal brakes of the train stopping.

As the train ground to a halt, Tony started the timer on the explosive charge in his hand, and threw the package along the floor, sending it sliding towards the middle of the train.

"Time to get out." Kate said, seeing the multitude of forms in the windows and retreated up the platform stairs.

"No doubt about it." Tony picked the unused containers of explosive and followed Kate, taking the steps three and four at a time. He stumbled when the steps shook, then heard the rumbling behind him, but kept moving.

Almost at the top, the ground shook once more with the other explosives. They emerged from the stairway into the subway entrance proper. Kate knew they didn't have long, and had seen many soldiers on the train that wouldn't have been touched by the explosives. Their only route of escape would be up these stairs, which she was about to block as she planted explosives, pushing a timer in set for one minute.

"This should contain them until that big crate blows." She said.

"Time to leave then." Tony led off, leaping the ticketing gates, and running for the doorway. The large room echoed with the explosion that seemed to continue like rolling thunder.

Kate just kept following Tony, out the front doors into the city proper, complete with high rise buildings.

It looked deserted, but they kept moving, putting more distance between them and the subway. Up ahead they saw some moving figures. Rather than risk confrontation in the open street, he turned up a side street, still moving away from the subway.

They were half a dozen blocks away when the ground shook. Kate missed a step, almost twisting her ankle as the ground shifted underneath. The rumbling sound reached them, as it echoed around the buildings.

They slowed to a stop, seeing they were far enough away. Simultaneously, the headsets chimed and they both looked at the screens on their wrists.

"Mission complete." Tony said.

"Extraction craft has been deployed. Board it at designated LZ, on top of an office block." Kate continued.

Tony switched his map on, "Two blocks in this direction, and three to the left."

"Not much further then." Kate commented.

They turned left, rounding the office building. Kate stopped, putting a hand out to stop Tony.

Tony turned back to question her, but she held a finger to her lips then pointed ahead. Tony peered though the glass windows on the corner, moving his head slightly to see around window frames, before he made out rows of road works signs blocking the roadway, and layers of sandbags hidden behind them.

The streets they'd walked along were littered with rubbish, cars and various other items. The road works signs were a deceptive camouflage that he would have walked right into if Kate hadn't stopped him.

He couldn't see any opposition, but that didn't mean there wasn't any, or what sort of armaments they had hidden around the corner. There was no other way, but back around the other side of the building.

Kate led the way back, moving around the building. She moved more cautiously approaching the second corner, and saw exactly the same arrangement with the road work signs.

She shook her head at Tony, as they backed away to converse. "Same thing." She said.

He turned on his map to look at it. "That's two sites. They might as well have the whole area blocked."

"Except we don't know what's behind the sand bags." She said.

"We'll have to chance it and find out somehow. Look we can try though here." He said, indicating on the map, "It's the closest point to the LZ building, so we don't have as far to go."

After making their way back a couple of blocks, and going over the three blocks, they made their way cautiously forward to another barricade. It could be seen clearly now, as well as an armoured emplacement sitting in the centre of the road behind the barricade.

"Nut's." Tony said. "I'm glad we didn't just walk around that other corner."

"But what is it?" Kate asked.

"I think it's a flame thrower. Can you see that small flame at the end of the turret?" Tony said as he pointed.

Kate could see what he meant. It also looked blackened with use. Maybe not recently, as the surrounding walls and the barricade weren't blackened.

"I guessing it's also automated." Tony said. "It's not pointing in out general direction, but at the wall. Any sane person would have the turret pointed towards the obvious direction of approach."

"That's pretty good." Kate said.

"Well, that's what I'd do if I had control of that thing. Except we still have to get past it."

Kate looked around on the ground until she found what she was looking for. A big chunk of asphalt, that had broken off of the road somewhere. She hefted it for a moment, before tossing it in a big arc to land on the ground behind the barricade, on the opposite the side of the turret.

Tony watched as the emplacement turned about swiftly to orient on the rock before a long flame lanced out at the piece of asphalt. He could feel the backwash of heat from the hot flame before it died down.

The turret didn't move after it's impressive display, still pointing towards the burning pavement. "It's definitely automated." Kate said. "Can we blow the thing up?"

"I wouldn't want to try." Tony said, sitting down on the ground. "It turned quick enough to fry the rock. It'd do the same to a container of explosives. Not to mention, it would make a big mess if it blew up with whatever it's using for fuel."

"Let's just go around it then. Go up this building and across to the other, or something." Kate said, shrugging her shoulders like jumping from one building to the next would be a walk in the park.

"That's it!" Tony said, jumping up.

"What! What's it?" Kate asked.

"Go around it! These are just buildings. We can just walk through the building, one side to another. I must have been blind not to think of it."

"Well, obviously they didn't think of it either. Otherwise they'd put those things at the intersections, instead of between buildings."

Tony led the way cautiously around to the side of the building, until they were blocked from view of the flame thrower emplacement by the building itself.

It was a simple matter of pushing through the doors, and walking though. There weren't any normal doors leading out the opposite side of the building away from the emplacements, but Tony found the emergency fire exit, which led out between shop fronts on the side they wanted.

After re-consulting the map, Kate led across to their destination, entering the main entrance. Kate pressed one of the buttons for the lifts expecting it to light up, but it remained dim after pressing it a few more times.

"No power." Tony said.

Kate looked about; realising the lights in the lobby also weren't lit. "Guess we have to take he stairs then."

Tony pushed on the door, holding open, "Ladies first."

"Thank you." Kate said. "Does this mean I get be shot first if there's something up there?"

"If we're been followed, I probably get shot in the butt." He replied.

"How many floors are there?"

"I think the signs said about forty." He said.

"Good, we'll switch around at the twentieth floor, and I'll watch your butt for a while." She said, smiling to herself.

Instead they took a break when they reach the twentieth floor. It was hard going, walking up stairs with packs and weapons.

"You know. When we reach the aircraft, it's the end of this game." Tony said.

"Yeah?"

"I was wondering, if we could have another game together some time?"

"I'm not sure..." Kate said, "that I want to play this particular game again."

"There's heaps of free access games on-line." Tony commented.

"You're a good player. I'd love to join you for another game sometime. How would I find you again?"

"You should be able to apply a Friends tag to me, and just do a search later for any friend's that are on line." Tony started up the stairs again, letting Kate follow. He was sure she wouldn't see much, as he didn't see much of her butt on the way up, covered as it was by the loose fitting camouflage pants.

They reached the roof in due course, to find the VTOL transport waiting with it engines running. The side door opened as they approached. Tony waited a moment for Kate to climb in, then got in. He barely had his feet in, before the craft started rising away from the rooftop. He had a good look of the flame throwing turrets on the ground before the door slid closed.

"Welcome back grunts." Tony turned about to look at a voice, but noted it was just the pilot speaking from his seat at the front. "You guy's made a hell of a mess down there I hear. Should be promotions waiting for you back at base. You up for another mission?"

Kate took the question to mean if she wanted to continue playing. It was probably late enough as it was, and she had to work tomorrow. "No thanks. Just save whatever settings there are. I better go. Thanks for the game Tony. I'll see you tomorrow perhaps?" She gave a wave, but the system determined she'd finished, and she faded from Tony's view.

He was left sitting there, staring at the blank space on the floor, before he remembered, "Computer, tag that last player as a friend, and tell me whenever she logs on or off the network."

He ignored the reply before hearing the pilot cut in, "So hot shot, you want to go another round with the Freak patrol?"

"Uh, no thanks. Is there some place where I can meet other people on line?"

He was asking the pilot, but his guide took the question directly, answering in its disembodied female voice, "The airport lounge. There are several such areas operating. All are interconnected together."

"Then take me to the most populated." Tony said before been gripped by a field.

He'd made changes to his settings, to allow himself to move from one scene to another using the style of a transporter from Star Trek. It was something he always wanted to try, as the area around him sparkled and shifted before he found himself standing in a stylised Airport.

He was garbed in the natural attire he'd selected for this body, something he was comfortable wearing, jeans and t-shirt. The air temperature was just right, comfortable, even though he could see some people getting around with a lot less on, and some others with more.

The lounge area was large, and less defined, with many people sitting on chairs or standing and talking. This was where he noticed most of the standing people were at the departure points, where an aircraft would usually be waiting, except he didn't see aircraft behind the very open looking glass windows surrounding each departure arch.

One particular window extended from the departure door a lunar landscape. Tony surmised this lounge also provided starting points into numerous VR simulations. He looked up, at the signs seeing they had all sorts of names and figures under different groupings.

Tony watched for a while, looking at the people queuing for particular simulations. He was distracted by some of the scantily clad girls walking about. There were some guys with them, obviously some group. He hadn't seen any people going about completely naked yet, but there were sure to be some in another airport lounge.

His guide interrupted him, as it said, "Kate Phillips has added you to her Friend's list, and has logged off the network." He took note, realising that she would have received a similar message from his system. She would know his last name now. Not that he cared who knew it. What's in a name anyhow, other than the label that defines you to society. Just another Fred Smith to gum up the white pages.

He caught sight of a short line of people disappearing into one arch as it closed after them, before the scene changed in the windows and the door opened again. Obviously they had many more simulations running then what was currently accessible.

When he'd seen enough, Tony quit the system, logging off the network simultaneously. He might not have been working at the moment, but at least he wasn't sitting around the house all day doing nothing. Actually, he was looking through newspapers for permanent jobs, and glancing though housing looking for that special place he could call his own home, and not have to live with his parents any longer than necessary.

The house was quiet as he settled himself to sleep with the faint sound of dogs barking in the distance at nothing in particular, before dragging the pillow over his head to deaden the intruding sound.

Chapter 6 : Interlude of the punisher

The lounge area was quietening down somewhat, sort of a low period this early in the morning for most people on-line. It was the right time, and place to leave his message. These new systems were infuriatingly simple to hack past with the right equipment, and know how.

A shudder ran down his body, thinking about what he had to do to his real body to log into these new linked VR systems. Technology was getting much too easy for any individual to use, let alone businesses, corporations, or governments.

In his eyes, it was destroying the world. Mankind, or rather, Humankind was leaving its dirty imprint all over the planet, as well as around it. The sky was literally filled with satellites and garbage of various sorts.

Every time he thought about it, he was back there again; the fiery trail imprinted on his eyes as it struck the ground not far ahead of him, where his parents had been. Then he would realise where he was, with his hands shaking, and skin all sweaty. Even here in VR, he couldn't stop it. He closed his eyes, and cleared his mind thinking about the greenness of the trees around his cabin in daytime.

When he was ready again, he opened his eyes, and mouthed the words to leave his special package. It wasn't much, a small routine to make the lounge program think there are too many users already in the lounge system, so any people trying to get in are bounced back to where ever they came from.

He didn't log off right away, but ran a secondary program to lead history sniffer programs away, and onto whoever logged onto the system right after him, and keep jumping form user to user, at random intervals to confuse on-line diagnostic programs.

It was a simple way to loose any pursuit, but they would be quick enough to bypass this next time. He closed down his system and pulled the head set off quickly. He'd had it on longer this time and felt nauseated from using the thing.

He ran to across to the small sink feeling his stomach cramp up prior to heaving up the contents of his stomach, but held it down by will power, with only a slight taste reaching his mouth.

After drinking down some water, he returned to sit down in front of the fire under the light of an oil lamp, and picked up a piece of wood and the knife next to it.

It didn't look much at the moment as he whittled it, but eventually it would look like the great buffalo that once roamed these parts, that humankind had extinguished. It would be one more for the collection he was slowly creating.

The ones on the shelf were very detailed. He'd sold a few of the first once he'd made, because they weren't part of the collection, just of people and places. Things that other people had considered more important than the endangered plant and wildlife.

It made enough money to keep the so-called government happy, but not enough to bring justice to his parents. That was his goal in life now. And the reason for making use of little money he had to purchase the computer and equipment necessary to run it.

It may take time, but he would make humanity pay for what it has done to the planet, and to himself. He spent the time, trying to relax himself before returning to the computer.

Chapter 7 : An interactive story

Tony's Friday was full of unending routines; Sleeping in later than usual, looking through on-line news articles for jobs, doing odd little jobs about the house for himself or his family.

He was relived when as he got away in the evening from the bickering between his parents about something trivial, and let the VR system separate himself from the reality.

It became a shield to him, blocking off all sound, light and feeling but left him with his troubled thoughts. These were harder to dissipate by just jacking in. He needed a distraction, something he'd done once in reality, but had to find out how good it was in VR. He called up the free sporting programs, and found what he wanted.

It wasn't the same as before, as he'd only done static line parachuting. This time he was going for accelerated free fall, without going through the training routines attached to the program. He just wanted to get straight into it.

He climbed into the aircraft, wearing a black free fall suit, with a rig strapped across his back and chest. He wasn't up on aircraft design, but recognised it as one of the common craft used by free fall parachutists.

His felt his heart beating rapidly as the craft ascended to drop height, a little more than 10 thousand feet. The sky was perfectly clear, which was another good reason to use the VR program, as it gave perfect weather conditions every time, as compared to reality.

This was his first free fall jump, and the federated parachute authorities don't condone unassisted jumps, but since VR put this program on-line, they really couldn't do a thing.

Tony nerved himself to approach the door, getting ready to jump when the signal from the pilot came on, indicating they were at 10,000 feet and over the drop zone. The door opened by all itself, letting the sound of rushing air fill the cabin, then he heard rather than felt the engines throttle down as the second signal light came on. He heaved himself out keeping the arch he learnt long ago whilst doing training for static line jumping.

It was a thrill, with the almost weightless feeling. He wasn't up to doing somersaults so looked about at the view through the goggles. It was impressive. The altimeter was strapped to his wrist, and he checked this every so often, before reaching around to pull the cord at four and half thousand feet.

The jerk as the drogue chute caught and pulled the main chute out, pulled the breath out of him momentarily, before he checked the lines and the integrity of the chute. He'd specified random conditions for the chute, so anything could have happened, but as luck or random probability would go, his chute opened successfully.

It was almost quiet now, without the rush of air during free fall, as he pulled on the cords to turn about to locate the landing field. It was marked off with big red circles of a target, making it easy to see at this altitude. Now that he knew where it was, he pulled on the cords, making the chute spin about, or come to a sudden stop and drop before releasing the cords.

He was lining up with the target again when the serene quiet was broken by the voice of his guide; "Kate Phillips is now on-line."

He brought the chute down to the target. He was pretty novice at this, but the lack of strong wind made it easy enough to land near the bull's eye. He was still following the procedures that he could remember as reeled in the chute and gathered it up in a neat bundle before wandering to the edge of the field.

The free fall was a real thrill, but to have feet firmly back on the ground after hanging around in the harness for the few minutes was a relief.

"Tell me, where is Kate Phillips currently?" he asked his guide.

His guide started to answer "Kate Phillips is currently..."

"Right behind you." He heard a voice cut in.

Tony turned about to find Kate standing there, with hand on hips looking first at him then up at the blue sky.

"So how was it? You made a jump didn't you?" She asked.

"It's a real rush, hard to put into words really. You have to try it, to understand It." he answered, pulling off the goggles with one hand. "You want to go up?" he asked her.

"Ah, no thanks." Her hands shifted from her hips, sweeping them side to side like to give emphasis. "I don't think so. Definitely not in real life, and not in VR. I'm not fond of heights." She said.

"You sure? We could jump together, maybe tandem."

"I'm sure." She said. "No jumping from aircraft."

Tony called up his casual clothes, and the parachute faded from his arms leaving them empty. "You seen the airport lounge yet?" She shook her head. "It's pretty impressive, lots of people. Follow my lead." Tony readdressed his guide, "Take me to the most populated lounge." He said.

For a moment he started to disappear, and reappeared. Tony was confused, thinking his request wasn't being understood, so repeated it clearly and slowly, and again he reappeared.

Kate didn't understand what was happening and was about to question Tony about it as he spoke up asking his guide, "Why do I keep returning here?"

"The specified lounge area currently has too many users in its bounds." The voice replied.

Tony shook his head; "There's too many users? How many is too many?" he asked.

"Unknown. The system is unable to get a specific number."

"Well, then let's try somewhere not so populated. How many people in the main airport lounge for Australia?" he asked.

"As of this second, six hundred and thirty eight."

"Well, take me there then." He said.

Kate suppressed a grin seeing the half aborted effect of before, now take full hold of Tony, breaking him down into light particles, and separating into twin beams of light that separated with that unforgettable sound as he disappeared.

"Cool." She said to nobody in particular, although she knew her guide was always listening. "Too abrupt for me. What was that show of the two guys travelling in a telephone box? Get me one of those, and let me follow Tony."

It took a few moments for the computer to find the necessary records, and establish the request. But the outline of a box glittered on the ground, and the phone box pushed up out of the ground, with arcs of glowing light before it stopped at ground level. Kate opened the door and stepped in, closing it behind it. The box didn't move, so she spoke into the receiver up, "Follow Tony Shaw." And hung it up.

The phone box shot up into the air, but the scenery change quickly as she saw the box raising itself through a floor. When it came to a stop, she opened the door.

"Nice entrance." Tony said standing there as she stepped out. The phone box leapt from the ground, and disappeared, leaving an outline of a box of light in the air, which faded quickly. "I think everyone saw your entrance."

Kate looked about at the faces looking her way before they turned away to resume their conversations. "I didn't feel like just popping in. I remembered this from some old movie. Just lucky I didn't end up with Doctor Who's Tardis when I asked for a phone box the travels."

Kate took more notice of her surroundings now as she looked about at the people sitting and talking, those passing though terminals into simulations and other recreated adventures, and the large animated signs both above terminals and in the main lounge area.

Tony saw her looking up at the signs, "From what my guide tells me, the signs show simulations that can be joined, with the number of character slots available, and time left until it begins, and when a new simulation will start. Also you can make requests for special simulations not usually available."

Tony hadn't looked through the entire airport lounge he'd visited before, so he followed when Kate walked about exploring the lounge. There were some things he hadn't seen yet, like the wall-sized screens, showing live scenes from simulations. Tony thoughts drifted on algorithms to track the action, as each screen always showed people in action. From ancient galleons shooting at each other with bows and miniature catapults, groups of people fencing Musketeer style, sports cars racing along highways, and images Tony would have thought came straight from recent movies, except the characters where replaced by people Tony had never seen before.

They walked around the entire lounge, and Tony was glad he didn't have sore feet, because it was fairly big.

"So, see anything you want to try?" Kate asked.

"I don't think so. There's so many, I wouldn't be able to make a decision." He said.

Kate let it hang for a moment, before probing him again "Come on, there must be something! Something you've always wanted to do, dreamt about, thought about at odd moments."

"Ohhh, you don't want to try my dreams." Tony said.

"What?" Kate asked, playfully hitting him across the shoulder. They hadn't so much as shaken hands with each other, but she felt as if she knew Tony well enough not to be intimidated at getting physical with him. "Spit it out, it can't hurt."

Tony looked indecisive, looking about to avoid the issue with Kate.

Kate stepped up in front of Tony, to stare him in the face. She had to tip her head up to look straight in his face "Look at me, and tell me." She said.

Tony turned his head slowly back to Kate. She was standing quite close. Closer then he was accustomed to with women, except when in an elevator, when, well it couldn't be helped. But Kate was standing close on purpose.

Tony moved his eye's down to look Kate in the face, but he found his eye's drifting down further. One of those unconscious moves a guy couldn't help sometimes. Kate was wearing a tracksuit with a zipper front that was down slightly. But from Tony's perspective, he saw little of the tracksuit itself and more of the cleavage that Kate's bra partially visible bra held.

He wouldn't have swallowed, but his throat felt dry. It didn't take much effort to move his eye's back up, but it took will power to keep them up, and then try to form a reply.

"I... don't think I should tell you... It's kind of... personal." He said.

Maybe Kate didn't realise what Tony could see, as his eye's shifted now and then, but she understood that Tony didn't want to discuss it.

They'd known each other now for what... more than a day? She shouldn't expect this kind of thing from Tony. "Okay." she said, "I'll choose something."

Tony was more relieved then disappointed as Kate turned about. His past relationships with women were all failed, right from the beginning. He didn't understand why. Maybe he was only attractive to a small percent of the female population, and he hadn't found any of them yet. He knew for sure that he wasn't homosexual, having no feelings or inclinations towards men, or boys. The thought of anyone sexually interested in boys disgusted him, unless it was girl or course. So he knew for sure he was straight.

Sure, the recorded rate for teenagers having sex by the age of 18 was about 70%! He was 25 now. So why hadn't he been so lucky?

Now here was Kate, and they barely knew each other. What did he know about her really? Her name, that she lives in the same country, and she approximately 21 years old. He knew he was attracted to her. Well sure her body was younger then it appeared, but she exhibited this personality he was attracted to and liked. Tony always knew for sure if he liked a person or not, by their personality. What other way was there?

You can't say you like Sarah Michelle Geller just by looking at a picture of her, or watching any of her films on TV. You had to know a person, their likes, and their dislikes. Like Kate doesn't like heights and aircraft.

While Tony had been thinking, Kate meanwhile had been looking about, deciding on what she wanted to do. She had been waiting for ages to try an interactive story. It was just a matter of picking an appropriate one. She found one that she liked, and wanted to experience for some time. The Titanic. It wasn't to be the real account from events, but from the big movie made almost two decades ago.

"I've got one I've been wanting to try for ages." She said, stepping away from Tony towards an archway marked for interactive stories.

Tony half heard what she said, realising she had made a decision. She was halfway there before he made an effort to follow.

There was a display panel set next to the arch, that Kate finished speaking to, and tapping a few items on the screen as Tony walked up.

"The interactive story is ready, you may now enter." A voice spoke from the panel.

"Come on in." Kate said, grabbing Tony's arm and leading him through the arch. Tony was able to make out the words "Titanic - James Cameron's director's cut." on the panel before he disappeared.

Chapter 8 : The open deck, and the blue water

Stepping through the doorway, he found himself on the outside of a wooden building, on a very large dock. Across from him was an impressive sight. Sure he'd seen a few ships in his time, both passenger liners, and naval vessels including several nuclear powered aircraft carriers that were bigger, but the RMS Titanic held it's own awe. It was new, with the paint still glistening, and the crowds of people, dock workers, passengers and those waving goodbye lent an air of thrill.

He wasn't too sure what he was meant to be doing, standing there, looking at this large ship. He became aware of someone now, shouting his name. Some guy he didn't recognise was over towards the ship, waving his hands and shouting his name. Well, it was appropriate that he use his own name, and not a character's name. It was easy to get confused otherwise.

He walked on over, still looking up at the ship, as it loomed up larger as he approached.

"About time, Tony. If you be much longer, they won't be allowing us on board, with or without a ticket." He said.

"I'm sorry..." he started to say. Even if the guy knew Tony's name, Tony realised he didn't know his. "I was sort of awed by its size."

"Yah, tis an impressive sight." He grabbed Tony's pulling him along.

They were running towards the ship, into the lee of the 7-story high hull, headed towards 3rd class gangway aft. Tony felt the crunching of something in his hand. He glanced at the object in his hand, finding the ticket for passage on the famous ship.

The Officer was preparing to close the hatch at the top of the ramp.

"Hey, we're passengers!" Tony called, waving the ticket in his hand.

"Have you been through the inspection queue?" he asks.

Tony gave a justified lie to the officer, "Sure, that's why we're late!"

"Right, come aboard." The Officer said.

It was a quick trip up the ramp; to then get their tickets inspected by another officer. He eyed the tickets then Tony and his colleague in turn.

They made their way from the suspicious Officer with tickets in hand, towards upper decks. It seemed the right thing to do, to get a perspective of the ship from above.

When Tony reached the deck, the Titanic had already started moving, as several tugs pulled it out of the dock. He had an impressive view of the dock area off one side, and the water out on the other side, as it stretched out from the docks of Southampton, out to the ocean in the distance.

The view was more then impressive, with the many small dots of people on the docks waving to passengers on the departing ship.

Time moves more rapidly now as the, simulation adjusts to the important points in the film, and Tony finds himself at the front of the bow, as the huge vessel makes it's way out to sea proper.

The wind streaming in his face. Leaning on the rail he can see dolphins playing in the ships' bow wave, diving across the front of the sharp edged bow.

Turning his back now on the sea, he looks across the ship itself. It was masterful piece of engineering, he thought. But his eye's caught something familiar. Leaning against the railing of an upper deck, he saw her. She was an image, but unmistakable in the large dress and wide hat. She was looking his way, with a big smile.

Kate stood upon the B deck of first class, staring back at Tony. She was happy that she'd found Tony finally. He looked a little younger, but she had adjusted the settings on the story for variation, and their bodies to make it work more to the storyline.

She'd put them into the lead characters of the story, but adjusted their own characteristics, so Kate was looking 3 years younger at 19, and Tony was looking more like 23.

She'd also kept their own names, rather then the character's names. Actually she found it hard to remember the character's names, as the last time she'd watched the movie had been a couple of years ago, when it was last re-run on cable.

As to the story itself, she'd adjusted it to put some leeway in the story, so they could affect the outcome. Like hijacking the ship to avert the iceberg, or stealing one of the life rafts. Basically so they didn't have to go through the experience of freezing in the Atlantic Ocean if the ship did go through with the sinking.

The characters themselves were adjusted to keep with the storyline where possible, but still keep the story going in whatever direction that may be, and assist the players where they could get away with it.

The only thing she skipped from the original story, were the sequences from the future and all the intervening parts that really didn't involve both of them. Otherwise it didn't hold too well as an experience.

She pretty much had Tony's attention now. On with the story, Kate thought, hearing the footsteps of Cal, the fiancé of her character, and a pain in the ass.

Chapter 9 : To confuse the issue further

It was no more than two hours ago, when he'd left the package, which would now have the attention of the VR4 Internet data security.

Slowly he scrolled through the massive screen fulls of code, tracing out FNP addresses of Internet sites providing VR4 access.

The old IP addresses made more sense to him. But ever since it was realised all known IP address would be all used up in a matter of years, there was a scramble to develop a new system for all the current and all the future connections been made to the Internet daily.

The Flex Net Protocol addressing was similar to Internet Protocol addressing, but hardware manufactures had gotten coy, and integrated part of it into all the new CPU's, making it necessary to broadcast your CPU ID to receive an FNP address.

It was confusing for a short while, as people were more or less forced to move over to new systems, discarding the old IP addresses, but it was all made their worthwhile for added encryption and security for the access to the expanded Internet.

It almost became a disaster actually. The biggest since the Y2K scare. Even that was a shallow let down. The world didn't blow up.

Sometimes he wished it had. Like a nuke been launched because of the "Millennium Bug". All issues would be resolved then, but it would have left the planet devastated. This wasn't part of his plan, but one of his objectives to stop.

He was drifting again. This always happened when he was making use of technology. Making his brain do weird things, like thinking of blowing the world up. He blamed this all on technology.

He dispelled the notions, focusing on the characters and letters, and tracing out the path of data for several of the main VR4 servers.

They weren't exactly protected, as they constantly had data going in and out of them, but they had a habit of tracing back any connections made and logging them.

It just so happened that they wouldn't be able to log his FNP address, as it habitually changed as often as the water in the bowl of a public toilet.

It was a bad association he agreed, but accurate to what he was going to do to the servers. Flush them away.

He picked up the statistics of approximately 50,000 games and other things currently dependent on the servers for data.

His last effort at disruption was localised, and wouldn't be fixed until all applications on a particular servers have all been shut down, and the servers re-started. It would cause a complete outage for many services, if albeit temporarily.

He was going a bit larger in scope now. He fed in data packets that had been routed through several hundred nodes, and every now and then, exposing a Trojan horse data packet, that continued the journey so it looked as if the data had originated from that source and not from somewhere else.

This effort was designed not to disrupt players this time, but the simulations themselves. The problem he found when researching, before implementing this was that he couldn't actually adjust any simulation already running, as the program constrains were already set to a point. Maybe later he would figure out how to get around this.

But for now, there was a loophole, or rather an easy way to change the data streams for programs, by mixing up the pointers where each program pulled its data. These pointers designated where a particular object was stored, both on the network and on what server.

This produced an amazing effect of having robots appear in Jurassic Park, dinosaurs wandering through downtown New York in the 1920's, gangsters shooting up Indians, and the cavalry riding to the rescue of star ships.

This was simplistic explanation, but the effects of mixed items would grow, and the simulations would try their best to integrate them into the games and stories. The simulations would end up pulling data from too many varying sources, and eventually cause the servers to lock up, or at least slow down so dramatically they wide scale disruptions would occur to any computers connected to the servers in question.

It was sheer brilliance he thought, as the last data packet loaded into the server, and the first changes started to occur.

Chapter 10 : An epic voyage

Quite a lot had happened, in so short a time then Tony had anticipated. It was late in real time, but not very late.

And from what Tony could remember of the movie, they had progressed far. Several days had passed in fact, since leaving England on a Wednesday. He'd gotten to be with Kate several times including the dinner in first class last evening, in a penguin suit he had borrowed from joyful Molly Brown, and elicited the attention of the boyfriend, Cal.

His words to Tony had been blunt, but as Tony had control of his character, much of that he turned back on the poor fool.

Right now however, they were both walking slowly along the deck in the late afternoon, and approaching the bow. The sun edging slowly to the sea in front of them.

"The sunset is so beautiful." Kate said.

"Umm." Tony said. "I wish I could draw like..." he stopped a moment trying to remember his character's name.

"Jack." Kate said.

"Yeah, like Jack." He continued. "This would make a wonderful background to any of his drawings."

"Not that the drawings would need much improvement." Kate said, thinking of the drawings that Tony had in a sketchbook that his character Jack had drawn. Various human portraits, many were well rendered female nudes.

Kate had been half thrilled by the images captured, sort of erotic in a way. Now she was enraptured by the sunset.

The air was chilly, as it came in off the cold ocean and she shook a little. She could feel goose bumps on her arms as she hugged herself.

"You're getting cold." Tony said, pulling off the jacket he'd acquired from who knows where and slipping it on Kate's shoulders.

She accepted Tony's efforts to keep her warm as they watched the sky slowly darkening. He wrapped his arms around her, to help keep her warm, and maybe himself also.

It was a hell of a feeling, standing there holding a beautiful and intelligent woman, and watching one of the most beautiful natural phenomena to be ever simulated.

Tony hoped for the moment to continue forever, but knew it would get dark eventually and they would both freeze to death first. Not literally, but cold enough to wish they were.

He was to be entirely wrong, as a buzzing sound slowly overtook the sound of the wind and ocean below.

The effect was broken as sound of propellers broke the air, as two aircraft flew over the ship from behind them, then slowly banked about in the dimming light.

"Jeez, where did they come from?" Tony asked, coming out of rapture.

Kate heard the dinging of a bell from behind her, as the ships' crew became aware of the two aircraft. "I don't know, but they looked like Messerschmitts. German fighters."

"Do you what you're saying?" Tony asked. As they both tracked the black images of the aircraft.

"Yeah, we have two aircraft from the Second World War flying over a ship in 1912." She replied.

"Yeah, two German aircraft who see a English passenger liner."

"Shit." She said. "But... how did they get in here? This is supposed to be a locked simulation!"

"I don't know, and I don't much care about it at the moment." Tony said, "But they're coming back."

The two silhouettes came in low now, before lighting up as both let loose on their wing mounted machine guns, sweeping up the side of the ship with a hail of bullets marked by the intermittent rounds of tracer.

Tony was at a loss for words.

Kate had something to say. "This ship doesn't stand a chance. It'll be ripped to shreds."

It was too dark to see either aircraft now, but the ship was well lit by lights on most of the decks. Kate knew the captain would be very ignorant of the situation. But that was just it. It was all a computer simulation.

"Computer." The called out. "Please explain why there are two aircraft in this story."

She heard her guide's voice start to speak to her, "The..."

She interrupted the guide, "Computer, make my guide audible to all players."

"...Two aircraft of the German Luftwaffe struck the RMS Titanic at 2:30 in the morning of Monday April 15, 1912. With the prevailing conditions within the current interactive story, both aircraft stuck the ship 10 hours earlier than expected, causing massive damage to the Titanic's upper structure, and burning out 60% of the bow section."

Tony heard all of it. "That time sounds right, except it was an iceberg that hit the ship, not two aircraft. Something's really weird here."

"That's an understatement." Kate said. "Computer, restore story to default settings."

"The interactive story is already at default parameters." The guide said.

"Bull crap it is!" Kate exclaimed.

Tony was still embracing her as they had watched the progress of the two intruders in the sky, and felt the vehemence in her words through the jacket. Kate continued. "Computer, replace the two aircraft with an iceberg, now!"

"That operation cannot be carried out at this time." The guide said.

"Why?" Tony asked. There was no reply until he realised it was Kate's guide, and it didn't respond to him. "Ask it why."

"Why?" She said.

"That object cannot be found."

"This is the Atlantic, for Christ's sake. It's supposed to have icebergs, not aircraft!" Kate was fuming now. The story had gone so well until now. She and Tony had established a relationship in the time they'd spent, getting to know each other better.

And now what? Even in the dark, you couldn't mistake the shifting sound of the aircraft's engines, as they came back. "We've got to warn the crew." She said. "Get them to turn all the lights off."

She went to step forward, but Tony was still holding her. "Come on."

"No." He said. "There's too much light from the stars. They'll just keep shooting until she starts burning. Maybe we should just leave now."

"No." It's was Kate's turn to get angry, as she turned about in Tony's grip. "I want to see this voyage out, and not have some stupid computer glitch ruin it."

"Okay." He said, to her face. "As we can make changes to the story. How about we order some factory made aircraft repellent?"

"Like what?" she asked.

"Computer, please mount a computer automated AA battery on the starboard side of the poop deck. And have it fire at any air targets within the vicinity."

Almost instantly, there was the familiar sound of a high-speed gun. Not the anti aircraft batteries of old days, but a fully automated radar operated 40mm cannon. The sort used on the modern AEGIS guided missile cruisers for the express purpose of shooting down light aircraft.

No tracer lit the sky from its muzzles, as only human operators required the phosphor laden shells to help in aiming, but the sudden explosion of one aircraft showed that it was working efficiently.

Tracer flashed from the other Messerschmitt as it retaliated. Although the AA pod didn't user tracer, its muzzle flashes were quite visible, identifying it as a target for the aircraft.

A rain of bullets ricocheted around the metal super structure and penetrated the wooden decking around the AA pod, but never quite hitting it. Several passengers on the lower deck were given a fright as holes appeared both in the ceiling and the floor in the dining area of the ship.

The AA pod had difficulty in tracking the incoming aircraft; unable to track it effectively as the aircraft bobbed a slewed as the pilot adjusted his aim.

Only as the aircraft now came in too close, did it start to pull up and the AA pod was able to get a reasonable fix on the aircraft's path before filling it with 40mm rounds.

It exploded as it came across the Titanic, leaving a fiery arc as it hit the sea on the other side of the ship.

"Wow." Kate said. "Which I had one of those on my roof, to keep the seagulls away."

"You live by the sea? You never told me." Tony said.

"Not by the sea." Kate said, still watching the burning hulk of the aircraft sink into the depths. "A few kilometres away. It's a lot more expensive to live near the beach. But the seagulls go almost anywhere."

Everything was quiet for the moment, except the sound of the sea and the wind. Tony remembered feeling cold now. "Let's head inside. I think my butt's frozen to the rail."

They headed for her cabin in the first class area, and sat on the divan, surrounded by paintings decorating Kate's suite.

"You've got to wonder how an iceberg turns into two aircraft." Tony said. "And if all other icebergs have suffered the same fate."

"Well, if they have, it'll be smooth sailing all the way to New York." Kate said, relaxing now.

"You know, I like been with you Kate." Tony said suddenly. "I mean..."

"I know what you mean." Kate said, for Tony's abrupt silence. "I enjoy your company too. I don't think there's anyone else I rather have with me on the maiden voyage of the Titanic."

"Yeah, even if I can't draw you in the nude." Tony said, and instantly regretted making the mark.

He didn't have a chance to withdraw the comment, as a noise at the door had both of their attention.

Almost in imitation of the movie, Kate led Tony through the bedrooms. She opened the door to the corridor, as a male voice called out "Miss Kate? Hello?"

Tony eased the door closed, relaxing the handle back quietly. Together they walked slowly away, until they reached some distance away, then broke into a run, frightening a few of the other passengers.

By some luck they ended up at the elevators. Kate took a short moment to compose herself before requesting the operator to take them down.

As they started to descend, Tony saw the Cal's muscle man come out of Kate's suite looking about for them.

They headed down, away from possible pursuit through F-deck, leading though areas they hadn't seen during their voyage.

Down in the boiler room, Tony can't resist himself, and yells out. "Carry on! Just be glad we won't hit any icebergs!"

"You're incorrigible." Kate said, as they passed into the next boiler room.

"And you look beautiful in this light." Tony replied, with the glow from the boilers flickering across both of them.

They end up in the recognisable cargo area, with the all too familiar Renault strapped down to its pallet.

Both of them were cooling down rapidly as their skin hit the cool night air. They looked at each other a moment, seeing the other getting cold and answering the unvoiced question of getting into the car to warm up.

They both climbed into the back seat, at first holding each other, but realising they were still getting cold.

As a result, they ended up embraced to keep each other warm. It seemed a natural progression then, to end up together they same way as it was in the movie. Perhaps the simulation had other influences upon them to keep the story going, raising emotions in both of them that wouldn't have expected in real life, but it felt so real to both of them.

They lay together after their exertions, half-naked, within the fogged windows of the car.

"This was my first time." Tony said, with his face near hers.

"Mine too." She said.

"No. I mean, this was my very first time." He said, adding emphasis.

"You mean, you hadn't..." she started.

"Never before slept with a woman." He said, and added to make sure he was 100% clear, "In reality or virtual reality."

"I didn't know." Kate said. "If you'd said something..."

"We still would have done it." Tony said. "It was just the moment."

"And such a great moment too. Reality has nothing on this." Kate said.

"So this is better then the real thing?" Tony asked, probing for her past relationships, and probing with his lips on her cheek.

"Let's just say, that VR is the best contraceptive a woman can have." She answered.

"Nothing more?"

"The past is the past, and the present is..." Kate shifted herself feeling the jacket slip off them, "getting cold again."

"Then maybe we need to warm ourselves up again." Tony said, tracing sliding a still warm hand up her thigh.

Kate was bemused. She'd spent most of the night, and the morning with Tony on the Titanic to finally have it arrive in New York. A whole 7 day voyage compressed into just as many hours.

Strangely the ship arrived on the Wednesday morning of April 17th, and not on the Tuesday as many would have historically hoped, where they disembarked the Titanic together, before logging off.

The time they had spent together was well imprinted upon her consciousness, as her dreams had informed her after getting to sleep that late night, or early morning as it turned out.

The episode with the aircraft had been disturbing, as they had heard the AA pod shooting again the day before arriving into New York.

So they parted each other on the pier 54, promising to see each other again on Sunday. The real Sunday, as they had already used up part of Saturday and they more than likely needed sleep after spending seven days without a wink of it.

She had been grateful for the comfort of her own bed, but half wishing Tony was there also, when she fell asleep.

Chapter 11 : World wide disruptions...

The volume of news coverage on the outages world wide of Internet and VR services was astounding. From the closing of minor business dependant on moving information, to several international financial institutions which depended on the Internet for exchanging electronic funds.

How it had spread so far, he didn't care. That it had spread, he was happy. So much so that he could almost manage a smile. Almost he thought, as he resumed his state of emotional detachment.

It was a clear win by any count, that there had been a major disruption on a worldwide scale.

He had no newspapers to read this, or a TV to watch the comments of well dressed news presenters. The computer read it from an anonymous e-mail account, which had subscribed several news services to send news reports to. He listened to this as we worked on the near complete buffalo.

"Disruptions world wide over the weekend, caused enormous havoc with most major information centres. The effects which seem to have resulted from the VR four Internet which went on-line several months ago, has let loose speculation that the systems aren't as capable as originally thought. That the new systems were so loaded down on last Friday that the information flow leaked out onto other systems causing entire failures..."

The other reports sounded similar, or talked about what businesses were affected and how. A couple news articles followed back upon the story of VR4's development, citing the benefits.

The main thing was, there was nothing reported in any way that a hacker or hackers had been involved. It wasn't his way to leave a calling card, as it was tantamount to leaving a fingerprint for hounds to follow. But he now wished that he'd a tag or something. Like, "Kilroy was 'ere", or something from the Bible.

People always thought you were nuts if you quoted from the Bible. To him it didn't mean a thing, other than having a good memory.

It didn't matter now. If whoever investigating the problem at VR4 was efficient, they'd notice in the logs the irregular data traffic that came in just before the first problems started. It was amazing enough to have received the e-mailed news articles.

He'd heard enough from the synthesised voice of the computer and turned it off. The batteries could do with a charge, letting the sun do the work it was meant to, rather then using a generator that polluted the atmosphere.

He took the carving outside, where he could relax in the sunlight. It was a little cool, as it was this time of year. The snow would be deeper again, as weather patterns were disrupted by pollution from the human population. He'd gotten his small crop of vegetables in, with the small necessary supplement of preserved foods from a nearby town.

It would be a small wait before resuming his attack on the technology of human society. It would be pointless making an advance while the server's were still inactive. They would be up and running again soon enough.

So he used the time to prepare himself mentally and physically to return into the artificial realm, this time for a lot longer as he had much to accomplish.

Chapter 12 : High society

The phone rang several times as Tony ran to grab it before the answering machine took it.

"Hello?"

"Am I speaking to Tony Shaw?" the voice asked.

"Yes."

"Mr Shaw. My name is Jeffrey Devereaux, and I'm calling from the VR4 Data security centre. Before I continue, I must inform you that this conversation is been recorded for security purposes. Are you happy to continue speaking with me?"

"Ah sure." Tony said. This was the first time he'd been aware of been recorded on the phone.

"Are you aware of the system outages that occurred last weekend?" Jeffrey asked.

"Yes. I was meant to meet a friend on-line on Sunday, but I got a system message about system resources not been accessible."

"That is true Mr Shaw." Tony listened intently to Jeffrey as he talked on. "We've been following up on that and a number of other irregularities on the network that occurred just before that on Friday morning. That would be approximately 7 in the evening your time. Did you log onto the VR4 Internet last Friday evening Mr Shaw?"

"Yeah." Tony was a little nervous now, wondering about the direction of the conversation, if they were implying he was involved. "I logged on a little earlier then 7 though. More like 6:40."

He knew much about the VR4 system, and got enough confidence back to direct the answer back. "You should be able to tell when I logged on, as it's supposed to log that data."

"That is the problem. We've detected some tampering with the system records. We've been backtracking the records, and you are the last one we could identify as the earliest to log on."

"W