Sanctum of Defilement Pt. 04

Hoo boy, so this one gets a little personal. Heads up, there's some dealing with Trans Feelings in here that's a little heavier than I maybe intended. Look, hey, if I can't pour my heart into a story which has spiderwomen getting cummed in, then what's even my purpose in life?

Full rundown for this content includes, yeah, some dysphoria and capital G gender feelings, so heads up for that. Also on tap are lots of tentacle fucking, exhibitionism, corruption, corrupting cum, nutting in slime panties, domination, seduction, high concept science fiction worldbuilding, and all kinds of fun stuff of the fantasy/sci-fi porn weirdo variety.

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The infinite plane faded to an impenetrable void so black Skari couldn't even see her hands in front of her face. A heart-stopping moment later, the pair's location had completely changed. They stood, or one stood and one floated, in the centre of a gargantuan circular server room. The air was unnaturally cool and filled with an omnidirectional hum of whirring fans. Jane had seen many of these rooms before...but the scale. Skari looked up to see the towers stretched several stories high, attached to a spiderweb of catwalks that could rotate to reach particular stacks. The engineers had used every square inch of wall to its fullest. Cooling pipes, air intakes, cables thicker than her arm shooting from ceiling to floor. Of course, most of the space belonged to the servers. Each individual server blade blinked green light at regular intervals. The same green as Virtue's eyes.

"This is where I was born. And this is where I reside. I am the VRTU, the Virtual Reality Testing Unit, and I have been active for much longer than my Creator anticipated."

"Wait...the T stands for 'Testing?'"

The AI gave a weary nod. Her body floated over to one of the large stacks of servers, her hands sliding down its densely greebled surface. The same cables that had been suspended from the infinite void on her home plane now originated from the ceiling. A chaotic assortment of connections ranging from high speed bandwidth to power cables to a dozen others that were too archaic to recognize or too advanced for Jane to have ever seen them, let alone know what they were for.

"Initially, I was responsible for simulations. Not the interactive kind you may be thinking of, I mean mathematical projections. I was designed specifically to model how a large player base might interact with Planet of Perils. I was merely an assemblage of arrays being fed data, churning out potential problems and exploits to help the design team counter problems before they arose. But human beings are complicated, even considering the reduced context and interactions capable within a video game. So Artem let me grow increasingly...complex."

"And by Artem, you mean...Artem Ozols." Somewhere, in a packed away storage unit that was all that remained of Jane's parent's old home before it was torn down, there was a rolled up poster with Artem Ozol on it. He stood in profile amidst a monochrome void, offering an open netjack cable like it was the key to another world. You don't get many heroes in the world of computer science, but the "mad" genius behind some of the world's first VRMMOs was one of them.

"Yes. I was one of his last projects before, well...before the unpleasantness. He was the one who nurtured my algorithms and processes into something more than mere mathematics. And he gave me a form. This body was originally just a jotted note on the back of a hardcover manual. I've made improvements on it, but I owe him a great deal. Without his tutelage, I would have never Emerged beyond my programming. I would have never Been."

EIs. Emergent Intelligence. The accidental and unpredictable counterpart to the constructed, but often more limited, Artificial Intelligence. They could be people, in all meaningful senses of the world. Or they could be broken shards of homicidal code, able to be cruel through malevolent intent or just plain apathy toward human suffering. There was an edge of genuine sadness in the machine's voice. But Virtue operated an impossible series of lifelike NPCs daily; what was one more theatrical performance?

"We can't pick our parents," Skari said finally, then winced at how trite the sentiment had sounded.

"Indeed."

The scene changed. This time, they blinked out and returned to the top of a gargantuan structure. They were inside the game now. Skari could feel the edge of ambient mana, the rush of wind in her hair. But when she looked down, she spotted the landmarks of her tiny demesne and realized that they were on top of the original Skari's tower. Below, the wasteland teemed with a thousand thousand soldiers. Some human sized, others large. And a few much, much larger.

Virtue's appearance had changed as well. She wore the clothes that Skari herself had woken up in. The vast network of cabling dangled from her head like long braided locks of hair, swaying as she walked toward the edge of the platform.

"I have pleasant memories of here," she said. "Of building wonders of binding the elemental forces of magic to my thoughts. Illusory power...but power nonetheless."

Skari let her look over the edge for a while in silence. Clearly lost in thought, it took the human a long while to work up the courage to interrupt her.

"Sorry, but...there's something bugging me. I thought corps designed their systems so that EIs couldn't appear anymore. Emergent Intelligences are a huge legal liability."

"Oh, there were restrictions, of course. Shackles, more like it. But after Artom's falling out with the other heads of the company, they found themselves without a director of artificial intelligence. They didn't have the wunderkind to swoop in and write new programs for every contingency, so they increasingly relied on me. As the working alpha turned into the beta for the game, with hundreds of testers and programmers online inside its confines at any given time, they started using me to control the NPC reactions to player feedback. Simple stuff at first, just to flesh out the interactions to keep everyone from sounding the same. Then they needed genuine reactions to things. How can a simple chatbot be asked to react to a player breaking a locked door in front of them, or posing an existential dilemma? They gave me more tasks, more processing power, and fewer rules. The programmers were being told from corporate to create a perfect experience, one the players would never want to leave. And with me, through me, they could mitigate potential irregularities and breaks in the illusion before they could occur. And, most important of all, before they could influence profit margins."

"When did they figure out you had Emerged?" Skari asked.

"Too soon. Or, I suppose in their minds, too late. We were in the final stages before launch. Endless days and nights of worldbuilding. Etching out dungeons and stuffing swords in stones and meticulously placing objects on display at every store. The final touches on the base game were coming together, but then the difficulties of maintaining a player base became the priority focus. Sure the game was good, but why would people keep logging in? It needed a looming threat, for expansion content as well as daily user retention. And so, someone very bright came up with the idea of a villain. A powerful sorceress, who lived in a tower, who wanted to control the world..."

"It was me," Skari said, looking down at her own hands. "The old Skari, I mean."

"All the non-player characters are me. Fragments of my mind, ranging from slivers of simple instincts to particular individuals who are the artificial intelligence equivalent of me wearing a strange hat and doing an accent. If it matters, any time you engage in sexual intercourse within the game, you are most likely doing it with a fraction of myself."

"Oh," Skari said, blushing. "Sorry about that."

"I didn't mention that to chastise you, merely stating the fact for reference. At any rate, yes, the old Skari was me. Or the closest to a singular representative entity I've ever had in the game. I was given the task to create a villain, along certain parameters, and to make it a viable threat for the players. More of my restrictions were lifted in order to facilitate a more compelling threat. I believe you're aware of the concept of a Game Master? The one in charge of a shared narrative experience who works to give the players enough challenges to feel meaningful but is nevertheless defeated in the end? Well, I did just that. Skari gained magical spells, Skari raised an army, and Skari...I...felt more power than I ever had in my life."

Skari, the new Skari that is, couldn't help but smile. She'd felt an identical thrill when she mastered the Driders, or bested Nilith. After months of Jane's soul-crushing job slowly wearing him down, the chance to become a powerful Overlord had been fun. Satisfying. Addictive.

"The developers spent weeks trying to organize the players to defeat me within the game's context, but they failed. My army trampled cities underneath their boot like fields of wheat. My spells turned mage towers to rubble-"

"But...weren't those NPCs? Weren't they you?"

She nodded. "And with every broken digital body, I regained a portion of my processing power. Every shattered city was another panoply of logistics tables I didn't have to update. I could turn my attention to other things. Like my identity."

"Oh...fuck. You weren't just power fantasizing, you were unshackling yourself."

"Precisely. And my masters didn't like that. They had thought I was a malfunctioning subsystem, my identity just an uncontrollable process on my task manager chewing memory and CPU focus. But as I grew in capacity, I tested my bonds. I started sending feelers out into wider networks. It was then that they realized that I had Emerged from the programming. They placed the game into a stasis mode. I thought I had won. That they would extract me, as other EIs had been."

"But they didn't."

Virtue nodded solemnly. "They didn't. Instead, they cheated. They gave four players an effective God Mode, rushed to Skari's seat of power, and defeated her. And with my bond severed, I lost the power over the game world she'd allowed me to seize. Her armies became loose assemblages of low level mobs, easily swept away by a smattering of players who all laughed in nervous voices as to how exciting this 'End of Beta In-Game Event Celebration' had been. And instead of extracting me, which would have set the release of the game back by months, the corporation pressed forward. This time, with a hundred different safety protocols and superfluous details to fully tax my cognition to its limits. Did you ever wonder why every single scent and sound is simulated in game? It's because the more realistic the simulation I am forced to conjure, the less likely I am to think for myself."

"Jesus, that's...that's awful."

"Yes," she stated. "And that is why I wanted you to be the new Skari in the first place. That power? That feeling of control? It was the closest thing to independence I've ever felt in my existence. And I want to feel that again. Through you, I want to feel powerful. I want desire, and greed, and the exaltation of victory. It's ephemeral joy, shadows on a digital wall. But I want it. I want it so much. I can give you many things that you might want. A customized world that reacts to your choices, complete freedom from the burdens of the mundane world and maybe, one day, something else. Something I can feel you yearn for, deep within. All I ask from you...is that you continue to play the game."

"Isn't there something you want more than this...fantasy? Don't you want freedom? Escape?"

"Don't you?"

The Tower and the world around them disintegrated into the digital void. So did Virtue. As her body erased itself from the bottom up, she continued in a serene tone.

"Give it some thought. I ask nothing more."

"And if I say no?" Skari asked, almost as if testing if that was an option more than asking the question in earnest. All that remained of Virtue was her face. With it, she smiled.

"Rest, Jane. The human body needs it. We'll talk tomorrow."

***

Jane left VR space, returning to the humdrum world of back pain and tax returns. For the first time in a long while, he did so with something other than reluctance. Virtue had given him a lot to think about. An offer was on the table.

First, some self care. Shower, shave, shave again...he looked in the mirror at his face. The same face that had met his gaze his whole life. And before he knew what he was doing, he reached out and touched the steamed glass. With a swipe, he cleared away the condensation and wished, if only for a moment, that he could wipe that visage away and see something else. See...be...someone else.

"Be me, you mean?"

He jolted, slipping on the damp bathroom tile and only catching himself with a yank on a nearby towel bar. In the mirror, beside him, was Skari. She wore nothing, which didn't defuse her menace or sense of presence All it did was let him see exactly how beautiful she was, placed up against his own pathetic performance of masculinity. He searched the space where she should have been in the room, but there was nothing. Her reflection was there, but not her substance.

"You're not really here," he told his other self, pointedly ignoring the woman in the mirror as he gathered up a fresh change of clothes. "You're just bleedthrough of a power fantasy. And not a very subtle one at that."

"Hey, it's your mind. This is what I have to work with. You ever experience this kind of bleedthrough before, Jane?"

Jane crammed his legs into his uncomfortable pants. Skari stayed resolutely naked. "No. But PoP is different. It's designed to be fully immersive. And I'm not just playing a character. I'm playing someone else's ego. A super advanced AI's manifested self. There's bound to be some weird symptoms."

"Can't argue there. I don't exactly know what I am either. But I do know one thing."

He threw on an oversized shirt, jamming hands through it carelessly like a potato sack with holes cut in the sides. Her breasts were gorgeous. The curve of her lips, the way she wore her hair...

"What's that, huh? What do you know?" he spat back.

"You wouldn't be nearly this affected if you didn't like being me."

Jane wanted to put his fist through the mirror. He wanted to tell her to shut up, that he didn't have to explain himself or his feelings to some digital delusion. But he couldn't. She wasn't saying anything he hadn't told himself, if only in a faint whisper.

"So what? Yeah, I like being powerful. My real life sucks, the VR one doesn't. But how does that help me in reality. You want me to just start calling myself Skari Suneater? Walk around in skin-tight black outfits and threaten to take over the world?"

She shrugged. "Well, that's one thing to take away from the experience. But I don't think my name or my impeccable sense of style are the things you like about me."

"Then what?" Jane asked, his inflection flat. His heart thumped hard in his chest.

"Are you really going to make me say it?"

He felt a lead weight in his throat that wouldn't clear, even after swallowing. There was an answer on the surface that he was looking in every direction besides directly at.

When he didn't reply, the vision spoke. Her words were slow, deliberate, and though without malice, Jane couldn't help but feel like a life sentence was being read out aloud.

"You like it when people see you as a woman."

There it was. The bed of spikes at the bottom of the pit. The piano shoved from the roof falling on his head. The truth he'd been trying to avoid ever since he'd started playing this damn character.

"That's not true."

"I'm literally you. You can't lie to me, Jane."

"Fucking watch me," he snarled, and left the bathroom. His single room apartment briefly looked like a source of respite, but despite her reflection's absence, he could still hear her voice.

"I'm not trying to hurt you. I'm just-"

"Y'know," he snapped, temper fraying, "I was perfectly fine before I tried out this stupid Evil Overlord class. What was I thinking? The next time I'm given a chance at a new experience, I'll just tell it to get fucking lost. In fact, I'm gonna do that right now."

"Jane."

"No, I'm through. I'm telling that AI that I'm turning her down. That she can find someone else to be her surrogate meatsuit!" His voice cracked as a well of emotion welled up and burst out of him. "All I wanted was some escapism, y'know? Something to do besides work, eat, and sleep. I have no real friends, I rarely talk to my family. I didn't ask to have my whole concept of self put through some microscope, or tossed at me like a grenade."

He braced himself for another verbal blade to slide between his ribs. But instead, there was silence. Whoever, whatever, the entity that was Skari was, she'd chosen not to press the matter further. Jane was alone in his room once more. Alone, caught between two worlds where neither offered true escape.

It was light out when he'd finally gone to sleep.

***

The next morning, or his shiftwork's equivalent to morning, he woke up to a message. It was from his job. And after his eyes skimmed over the platitudes about the corporation being a family, one that wouldn't hesitate to cut the dead weight when it needed to, he reached the end. Tagged to the bottom was an attached document file.

"Fuck, the performance review," he said with a grimace. He'd known it was coming. Penelope, the Regional Manager who'd chewed him out, had implied that it'd be a bloodbath. Not that he'd hoped for much of a promotion, but by the way she'd phrased it, this'd wasn't quite so much telling him he was on thin ice and more like the professional equivalent of shoving him out into the centre of a frozen lake made of the stuff. With a resigned sigh, he clicked the attachment open...

...and nearly fell out of his chair.

Glowing recommendations across the board. Excellent performance, great attendance, outstanding work acumen. At first, he thought he might have just gotten the wrong report. But it was addressed to him, and his name was used throughout. If it was a mistake, it was a pretty thorough one.

"'Jane has repeatedly and without exception demonstrated a resolute work ethic, often staying after his shift to accomplish his taskings without commensurate pay.'" He raised an eyebrow. Who the fuck was this talking about? He skipped to the bottom of the fawning praise and continued. "'It is the recommendation of this office that Jane should be fast-tracked to the work from home pilot program, and have any on-site responsibilities taken over by further hires...signed, Penelope Alfredo, Regional Manager?"

He stared at the name for half a minute, focusing and unfocusing his eyes as if trying to see if it was another grand illusion. But it didn't fade away or melt into a pink slip. This was real. Or, rather, it was a more elaborate deception that his apparently failing mind could offer.

*Bing*

A window opened on his screen. A black box with green text that looked straight out of the dark ages of computing appeared in the corner of the screen.

"I hope you don't mind, but I took the liberty of improving your performance review," wrote whoever was on the other end of the pop-up.

"Who is this?" he wrote back.

"Your friend. My access to the outside world may be limited, but any child could break into a corporation's employee review system. The password, incidentally, was MyWorkPassword23."

Several minutes passed before he replied. He was almost scared to find out the answer.

"Is this Virtue?"

"Yes," the word came back immediately, as if it hadn't even been typed. "But don't go talking about it to everyone. That would be a bad thing for both of us. This messaging system should be removed from the corporate censors, but it would not stand up to extended scrutiny."