PrincessColumbia

  As though awareness of the tears were the key to the door of her emotions, she was suddenly flooded with...un-pain. She had no word for it, nothing in her life prepared her for the emotions coursing through her at that moment and, frustratingly, there was so much of it that it looped right back into being painful.

  “What...” a shuddering breath rocked her as she started to sag, her knees feeling like they were turning to jelly, “W-what’s happening to me?!” The most frightening thing about it was it didn’t feel bad. It was just...so powerful, so overwhelming it seemed like she couldn’t express it fast enough, even if she knew exactly what to express.

  She reached out for the console to steady herself...and smmed her fist against it instead. She barked a ugh that turned into a scream of...something. Tears blurred her vision and her scream turned into sobbing which was mixed with hysterical ughter.

  She finally colpsed to her knees, curled up in a ball on the control stand. Her thoughts were disjointed, random memories surfacing that didn’t seem connected to anything and flitting away before she could properly connect them with each other to find a common thread. Throughout it all, one single coherent thought kept repeating, Fuck you, Tiffany! Fuck you, Tiffany! Fuck you, Tiffany! It was a battle-cry and a victory song. She didn’t know why she was feeling so many overpowering emotions of joy and righteous fury and revetory schadenfreude, and she was truly at a loss as to what her step-mother had to do with all of it..

  As though she wasn’t experiencing enough horror from being completely debilitated by her own feelings, she felt arousal. Not at anything in particur, there was nothing prompting it, it was simply there, and she couldn’t understand why. She wasn’t in the ‘correct’ body, no matter how right her feelings were telling her it was, and so shouldn’t be feeling anything like arousal! But just knowing she was a woman, one who was power and strength but could still both impregnate as well as become pregnant seemed to hammer her conscious mind, as though a demon had been hiding inside her all her life and had finally escaped.

  The horrible cascade was finally interrupted by the computer’s voice, “Emotional distress detected. Contacting therapeutic A.I.”

  “NO!” the fear of encountering an A.I., most likely a rogue, while she was so emotionally vulnerable and quite naked, ripped away the smothering bnket of mingled rage and joy and pain. “No A.I.! Abort action, do not summon an A.I.!” She filed about, almost struggling to control her limbs as she grabbed for the vertical struts of the console stand and used them to haul herself up until she was draped over it, still shivering with barely contained sobs, eyes scanning the room as though a rogue could pop out at any moment.

  It felt like forever but was only a few moments when the computer said, “User override, request for therapeutic A.I. has been cancelled. Follow-up contact with a counselor is recommended if the experienced heightened emotional state persists.”

  Her relieved sigh was only matched for expressiveness by her sagging limply so much she nearly oozed off the console.

  She took numerous deep breaths, trying to collect herself enough to return to her assigned task of generating her character for this game. Pushing herself unsteadily back to her feet, she leaned her hands against the top ridge of the console, letting the sensation of the dull edge pressing into her palms serve as a focus for her tumultuous mental state. I should...I should log off. There’s more going on here than we anticipated, the...immersiveness is so much more with this non-American tech. It’s like they just...bypass the body completely. I’m more in touch with this virtual form than I ever was with my real body!

  Unwilling to trust her voice, she flicked her hand in the gesture she learned from reading the pod’s documentation to bring up her HUD. It took her a couple tries, but it sprang to life, hovering in front of her and obscuring the slightly different UI of the game environment. She tapped through a menu until the ‘Log out’ dialog box hovered under her hand.

  I need to log out. I need to see a doctor or something, something’s wrong. Her breathing was evening out as she stared at the button that would end the VR completely. One tap and she’d be back in her real body and in the real world and be able to properly deal with whatever had just thrown her mind into complete disarray. Just...log out. One tap of a button and I’m out. Back in my...real...

  Trying to finish the thought seemed to wake a new monster inside her. Her hand started shaking as she focused on returning to the real world in her own body and climbing out of the pod. I...need to... Breathing in and holding it, she curled her hand into a fist, flexing so firmly that her arm shook. She exhaled and shook her hand out, as though the action could flick away the emotional turmoil like water.

  Okay...okay, she thought, People outside the wall use these all the time, and there’s nothing online about what I’m going through, at least not enough people are going through it to be a concern. It’s just some tech, just something that’s tricking my brain into thinking I’m really in a holodeck of some sort and really in the body of an alien woman. It’s not real, I can leave any time and go back to my real body any time. I don’t have to leave now, and the in-game browser will give me plenty of chances to research whatever the hell that was. She lowered her hand back down to the hard composite material of the console, closed her eyes and took one deep, steadying breath after another. I’m Dy...Diane Samuels! I’m the best cyber-agent in the country...maybe the world! I was chosen for this because I’m specifically and uniquely qualified, nobody else can do it as well as I can!

  Opening her eyes, she stood straight and swiped away the HUD, closing the dialog that would have logged her out. “Computer, I could use a warm drink...make it sweet. Something from Mortan, to get me into the spirit of this game.”

  A little mug-holder manifested from the holo-stuff on the console, followed by a mug filled with a steaming, slightly foamy, light golden-brown liquid. “Jyantin Tonic, a non-alcoholic version of the Jyantin Bitters. Positively compared to ‘Irish Hot Chocote’ by Terrans who have tried the drink. While rge quantities can be toxic to human biology, it’s considered to be one of the few true ‘health’ beverages with no negative effects by the medical community on Mortan.”

  Diane picked up the mug and inhaled, noting the slight hints of a grassy scent that was a surprisingly intriguing note to the velvety chocote scent she expected. She took a sip and moaned almost sexually when the warm liquid hit her taste buds, carrying a mild peppermint burn, “Oh, god, yes! I think I’ve found a new favorite drink!”

  She took a deep breath and set the mug down on its stand, “Okay, let’s do this!”

  ~~~

  The remainder of the character creation process didn’t take very much longer after that. Only two things really held the process up after she’d locked down her css and race options: her wardrobe and background.

  She honestly had no real idea what women wore, beyond the basics of skirts and dresses and the like that he’d seen them wear at church. His memories of his stepmother didn’t serve him well here, she was all over the pce with her choices, though she did make sure everything she picked looked good on her. Diane’s birth mother was, from what she could remember of the woman, a homemaker by choice but an outspoken activist when she saw a need for it. She actually didn’t know what her mother was doing at the time, just that she’d leave her in Dad’s care for hours or days at a time, then return with a sense of pride in a job well done that had stuck with Diane into her adult years. It was only after her mother’s death that she asked her father what happened during those times her mother was gone and it took several askings of the question to get the answer, but they both had a good cry over the woman they loved and missed dearly when Dad told her how proud of his wife he’d been.

  In the end, her wardrobe choices wound up being fairly simir to her day-to-day wear as an agent. She would be running a space station, after all, and it was far more important to wear something that would get the job done and then look good than live up to some ideal of femininity that she wasn’t even sure existed on Mortan. She had a selection of suits made of some durable, flexible fictional material she couldn’t be bothered to learn the name of and came in a variety of colors, all primary colors (she’d tried a few pastels because she thought it was supposed to be what women liked, but every single option that wasn’t a primary color just made her look sad, sallow, and washed out), and impeccably tailored to fit her form. She decided to ditch the tie, not only did she not like having to tie the things, if she needed to roll up her sleeves and start digging into a computer core or a reactor or some such, then the tie would be a safety issue. For formal occasions she picked a high-necked, sleeveless bck dress and knee-high boots with a modest heel. She had no idea if a real woman would have picked it, but when she looked in the mirror when previewing it with the holographic interface of the character creation screen, she felt…something. Dangerous, attractive, slightly aroused.

  She hazarded a guess that this was what ‘sexy’ felt like.

  Rounding off her clothing with a selection of basic underwear (including bras, which she immediately filtered out any that didn’t have a csp on the front), a good selection of footwear so she’d have both options and cycle them for longevity, some exercise clothes (that included yoga pants, she saw how her butt looked in yoga pants and had to fight a blush until she changed them out for something else), and some utilitarian outfits designed for working in mechanical and tech-sensitive environments.

  The space-flight suit took her by surprise, though she supposed she shouldn’t have. This wasn’t Star Trek, so the Starfleet propensity for uniforms that weren’t also vacuum suits by default wasn’t the norm in this setting. She opted for a fairly basic suit that could fit in a fighter ship’s cockpit but still had a built-in maneuverability harness so she had the option of using microjets should she wind up in vacuum. She’d rather not be completely helpless while hanging in the void of space.

  Her backstory, though, left her somewhat stumped. She supposed she could have sat in the character creator for a few hours while she looked up Mortan society and culture to figure out where she was supposed to have come from, but she wanted to get into the game as soon as possible, given the deys she’d already experienced. Thinking to herself for a bit, she realized she had part of an answer already in her wardrobe. How likely was it that Mortan clothing and styles would be the same as those for Earth women? The answer was, ‘likely almost zero,’ and so rather than research and go about altering the choices she’d already made and spending even more time getting ready for the game she was supposed to already be in, she brought up a console screen with some game lore and confirmed there had been a gactic-level war less than a generation ago between the Terran Federation and the Crotixian Empire with the Lantru joining the Crotuk before the war ended. The war had penetrated Terran space quite deeply and resulted in a good deal of orphans across the quadrant, and post-war the governments were more focused on rebuilding than reciming the lost children. It was, apparently, a ‘thing’ in Terran space to refer to that entire generation as, “The Lost Generation.”

  She opted for being an orphan that had been picked up by Terrans and eventually raised on Earth. There were plenty of foster homes and orphanages and, in this version of Earth at least, being an orphan didn’t carry the cultural stigma as it would in the American Republic. Many of The Lost would go on to serve in the Terran military as a way to secure their citizenship, many more made pilgrimages to their race’s home worlds and found a home there, and others would become Independents that often aligned with the Terran Federation.

  A more perfect cover story and background she could not imagine short of assembling her team in-game, and they didn’t have the pods nor the time to come up with anything better, so she opted for being one of The Lost who’d recently found her way into a remarkably good deal to secure her future in the form of a colonial-era space station.

  Finally satisfied with her choices, she checked her outfit (a white suit with remarkably comfortable pull-on steel-toed boots, also in white, and a deep red blouse) and took one final look at her choices before tapping the ‘Completed’ button.

  “Personal identifying information and biometric data confirmed. Thank you, Commander Somni’els. The shuttle will be docking momentarily at your station. Please enjoy the passenger holo-environment at your leisure, or the view can be changed to the live feed of the shuttle’s approach.”

  Oooh, I always did like that part of the Star Trek movies! “Yes, that second one. Switch to live feed.”

  The ‘hologram room’ activated a projection that made the room appear to be a shuttle interior with seats along the side and windows lining the walls to the exterior. She looked out through the portholes and was instantly transfixed.

  Logically she knew she was strapped in a pod with fancy computers feeding signals to her brain to trick her into thinking she wasn’t. Logically she understood that she wasn’t really out in space lightyears away from Earth.

  But the little kid that fell in love with space and starships and cosmic adventure was kindly and politely telling the logical part of her brain to get stuffed.

  She found herself practically pstered against the window, which was either made of some impressively non-conductive material or was crazy thick, because it was cool and not freezing to the touch. She was gaping about and realized she had a big stupid grin on her face, but in that moment, she couldn’t be bothered to care. She also didn’t feel the slightest bit embarrassed that she was giggling with untrammeled childlike glee as she watched some ships moving around her shuttle, all set against the backdrop of a field of stars that were both as familiar as the night sky yet completely foreign to her experience. If there was a race of intelligent beings on the pnet her station was orbiting that had outlined and named the consteltions of stars in their night sky, she had no way of knowing, but that only excited her all the more.

  Speaking of the pnet, she marveled at the green clouds that nearly completely covered the pnet’s rocky surface. She thought she could spy some oceans through the occasional gaps in the cloud cover, but the cloud cover was just too thick. Miles thick if she were to take a guess.

  Her attention to the pnet was pulled away as the massive hulk of her station finally came into view. It consisted of a spherical main body, habitat shielding and plexy webbing keeping the atmosphere inside the bubble. There was a distinctive split, giving the skeletal exostructure the impression of having a top and bottom half. This impression was given weight by the ‘top’ half of the sphere being mostly transparent with a ft, multi-colored surface and a small handful of buildings. The ‘bottom’ half appeared to be completely enclosed, ventition ports, sensor nodules, and other technical appearing attachments and components covering the surface under what she assumed was an always-on collision shield. Those shields wouldn’t do diddly against any sort of attack, they were to prevent micrometeorites and space trash, some of which could be travelling at thousands of miles per hour, from damaging the station’s hull.

  No, the deterrent to attacks was the Defense Ptform Ring. Even if she hadn’t read the mission briefing Tyler had prepared she would have recognized it for exactly that. As the shuttle approached, she watched as a weapons ptform, absolutely massive compared to the shuttle even as it was dwarfed by the station, slide along the tracks circling the station like a particurly tight set of rings until it was pointed in their direction. She watched a turret begin to raise from the ptform, a twin-railgun model where each rail was at least as long as a semi-truck, before radio comms chatter kicked in through the cabin.

  “Unidentified shuttlecraft, you are approaching Station 42586A. Please identify and state your intentions,” came a computer-generated voice that was intended to sound like a woman. Diane was grateful the devs kept the distinction, there was something uncanny about a computer that sounded too human.

  “Shuttlecraft Terra-Omicron-60 en route with the new owner of Station 42586A. Identification packet and authorization transmitting now,” came the response from the on-board computer, which she presumed was also an auto-pilot given she was, from what she could tell, the only living person on the shuttle.

  She watched as the turret settled back into its resting mount and the defense ptform started a nguid patrolling circle around the station.

  “Now approaching the station, prepare to de-board. If you brought any belongings with you that aren’t stored in the cargo hold, please collect them now.”

  Diane smirked and gnced around, confirming that there was nothing else in the cabin with her. The simution had either abandoned the pretense that it was dispying a holographic feed or there was some worldbuilding that Diane didn’t care enough to get into, either way she was amused at the affectation that she’d boarded the craft instead of spawning in on it.

  The station’s lone docking pylon loomed rge as they approached. Jutting off the station like the leg of a single-cell organism trying to move itself through space, the straight ‘arm’ stretched out about the same length from the station as the station’s diameter. Attached to that was a wide, ft disk with multiple airlocks ringing it and, if she were to guess right, a cargo airlock on the top (and likely one on the bottom, but she couldn’t see that from the angle of their approach. As the docking ptform filled the portholes until the sky behind them couldn’t be seen, she finally stepped back from the gss and moved to the doors at what she presumed was the back of the shuttlecraft. She could feel the miniscule shifts in her weight and trajectory as whatever the game was using for artificial gravity worked to keep up. Finally, the shuttle shuddered as it connected to the station, the sound of various tches and locking mechanisms thudding through the floor and walls of the cabin until, finally, the door opened with a very Trek-like ‘whoosh,’ two halves sliding into the walls.

  Abruptly, the simution seemed to halt. Even though there was no real movement with the shuttle or visible through the windows, there was a sense that everything had just stopped. Before she could do more than notice this, a dialog box popped up between her and the door.

  “Alert! Please take this warning seriously, as it will affect your game py.”

  Huh, she thought, Wasn’t quite expecting this…

  She continued reading, “While any immersive VR game has it’s elements that resemble a real-life job more than any non-VR game could, this game’s time and logistics scaling requires a substantial investment of time and mental energy. We have used cutting edge programming and the test tech avaible to both biological humans and digital lifeforms to allow for full time compression. ‘Deep diving’ into this game will alter your perception of time while you are pying the game. Testing both during and after development have not revealed any health or wellbeing concerns, but human and digital life is versatile and varied. If you experience any significant issues during gamepy, please contact staff via the, ‘Emergency Tech Support’ button in your game HUD. Signing out now will return you to your pod’s desktop, continuing will be considered accepting any risk due to the time dition. We hope you enjoy Gaxies Unlimited: Master and Commander. -The Dev Team.”

  Below the nearly letter-length warning dialog was a ‘log out’ button next to a ‘continue gamepy’ button. Taking a deep breath, she reached out and tapped the ‘continue gamepy’ option. This was repced with a new dialog, "Please specify an automatic logout time." There was an option for specifying the amount of time in-game vs. real time and a numeric tumbler selector for the time frame. As they had already discussed a one week dive during the mission prep, she selected the 'real time' option and swiped down on the 'days' dispy until the number '7' appeared, then tapped the 'continue' button. This was followed by a confirmation dialog, which she confirmed and the dialog winked out just as the feeling of absolute stillness disappeared along with it.

  Abruptly, she felt a small weight on her back. “Ah,” she said, distracted from the sight of the airlock, “I guess the game is officially started, then.” She gnced around to confirm there was nobody else present and reached behind her back, under her jacket, and pulled out her weapon. She took a deep breath, comforted to finally have it back in her hands in a VR environment. She’d honestly not been sure if it would make it into this game, but apparently she’d been clever enough in her design of the little bot she’d programmed to seek her out in VR that it was able to track her down even here. Probably due to the fact that we’re, technically, connecting for some of the datastream through the American network before the signal transits out via the FTLN node, she thought as she returned the weapon to its spot on her back, the pistol-shaped program ‘sticking’ as though magnetized to her.

  Finally feeling fully ready for the challenge of this new VR game, she stepped into the airlock to her station.

  PrincessColumbia