SadisticalLer
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Hey guys,
I had a story idea, and it comes from my excitement for the new movie it references. Hopefully some of you will get the references, and hopefully those who don't still still be able to follow along regardless. I don't want to pour energy into it if it's boring or unentertaining, so please let me know if I should write the next chapters.
Thanks, and enjoy the read (I hope)!
Stephanie padded across the room on her bare, soft, size 7 feet, sitting her bare behind on the comforter of her bed in the dimlight of her computer screen across the room. She crossed her left ankle over her right knee, grabbed the bottle of lotion from the nightstand and applied the slippery white moisturizer all over her foot – rubbing it methodically into the skin of her sole, between her toes, around her heel, and everywhere else. She then repeated the same thing on the other foot, sighing with a distant sense of futility.
Her toes were painted the exact same color as her hair, “Dark Ruby,” the last pre-packaged, manufactured color she had left. Beauty products were hard to find in the post-apocalyptic, energy-crisis-strangled, Virtual Reality-obsessed world, especially since most people were only concerned with how their avatar looked in The Oasis. In spite of indulging in just as much gaming as every other 19 year old in the real world, Stephanie made absolutely sure to keep herself clean, maintained, and beautiful. She’d scavenged as many beauty products, lotions, soaps, and lipsticks from her grandmother’s possessions before she’d died, refusing to allow the dreary, grey, impoverished landscape outside to reflect in how she took care of herself.
“One day,” she thought to herself, years ago, “people are going to go outside again, and I’ll be the most beautiful, easily-employed person in the state.” Her grandmother said that to her on occasion, keeping hope alive in her little heart.
“Maybe I’ll even score one of those rich IOI employees,” she thought now, her eyes fixed on nothing in particular, her hand still pressed against her lotioned, pale sole. After a moment of gazing at the grey wallpaper, she shook her head, snapping out of it. “Or, the Gunter who finds the egg.”
That last thought is the only thing that scared off the overwhelming sense of helplessness. She fought back the rising depression, lotioning her shapely bare legs, then her arms. Once she was covered in a thin film of slippery lotion, she slid her naked, five-foot-eleven body into her favorite pair of silken pink pyjamas – well, it was her only pair of PJs, really – and tugged her velvet sleeping mask down over her eyes. She slid between the sheets of her bed and tugged the comforter up tight to her neck.
“Computer,” she said into the dark air, and a gentle, electronic chime rang back. “Lights out.”
The room was pitched into blackness as the computer and monitor across the room shut off, and the variable, in-window blinds blacked out the windows of her 59th floor room.
Columbus might be the busiest high-tech industrial capital of the world, but they sure know how to soundproof their hotel rooms. Stephanie was asleep in less than a minute.
The next morning, Stephanie awoke to the soft sounds of a thunderstorm rolling through her hotel room, and the air had a hint of humidity and lavender to it. Actual thunderstorms were a phenomena long-ago lost to the onset of climate change – now, any thunderstorm that comes to town brings acid rain and violent winds that send any people caught outside practically running for their lives. The rusted shells of old combustion engine vehicles withered away in the streets and driveways of what used to be the suburbs where she’d lived in the past, and the sounds and smells of a clean, refreshing storm every morning is something that helped her forget about the pitiful mess her once-great planet had become.
Stephanie climbed out of bed, padded over to her kitchenette, and made some oatmeal – a nutritional formality that VR couldn’t help with. Another long day or questing lay ahead of her, and her SnugSuit – the skin-tight, self-cleaning, haptic-hybrid Virtual Reality bodysuit that simulated things like heat, cold, pressure, pain, and moisture – hung sterile and waiting in it’s cleaning unit by her computer. Steph studied it absent-mindedly as she munched on her cold oatmeal, ignoring the chalky texture of the instant milk she’d poured into it.
After throwing away her IOI-branded paper bowl and plastic spoon, she brushed her teeth – another hygienic formality that she meticulously kept up on, if for no reason other than to avoid the Oral Surgeon. He was an IOI Licensed Dental Health Professional – the only one her job paid for fully, and Stephanie heard they had a tendency to find any excuse to drill into your teeth and implant GPS locators for employees like her who had a spotless record. Fortunately, this was a “voluntary” process – one which could be avoided as long as you kept yourself out of trouble.
Working for the giant, evil conglomerate that was spending every ounce of it’s vast resources in pursuit of Halliday’s Egg has it’s advantages, of course. Your room and board is covered, in a world where the homelessness rate is over seventy percent. You can choose what you want to eat, as long what you want is one of the options offered by IOI’s kitchen downstairs, or the small shop in the lobby, in an era when starvation was a more common cause of human death than heart disease, cancer, and murder combined. She was one of the twenty percent of all Americans who didn’t collect unemployment benefits, and she wasn’t an “Indent” – a member of the IOI Indentured Workforce.
Indents were slaves. If the company decided you were eligible for the Indentured Workforce Program, heavily armored jackboots show up at your door to take you into custody. You will do whatever the company tells you to do until you have earned enough money to pay off your debt. The company pays you a “fair, hourly rate” for your work – although they never really tell you what that rate is. After the cost of your room and board is paid for, all of your insurance, taxes, fees, and disposables taken care of, any remaining money goes not into your bank account, but towards your debt.
If there was any.
As the governments of the world collapsed during the Great Energy Crisis, there was a lot of money and power to be gained to help manage a country’s “human resources.” Most small countries simply didn’t exist anymore. Superpowers like China, Russia, France, even the United States, were forced to rely on IOI’s “way of doing things.”
Now, most crimes were punishable by having a debt added to your credit history, with IOI in charge of footing the bill, and the StormTroopers come knocking down your door. Fall behind on your IOI credit card for too long? Indented. Get caught trying to break into the IOI mainframe? Shit, indented forever, no matter what. Forget to cover your tracks while egg hunting and trying to undermine IOI’s monopoly on world power?
Sometimes, an individual Gunter would simply stop showing up to raids in the Oasis, the open-world, free-roam sandbox universe created by IOI’s sole competitor, Gregarious Simulation Systems. After a few days of the entire clan wondering what happened, suspicion would creep in that their friend had been discovered, attacked, and “eliminated” by the IOI strike teams. A few more days would usually pass before everyone’s fears were confirmed – an obituary with their friend’s avatar name would show up in the DigiPaper, usually mentioning something about suicide or a drug overdose.
Stephanie wasn’t going to fuck with that. She was a good girl – she was always ten minutes early to her shifts, every day. She often stayed late without question if she was ‘volunteered’ for a project. And she made damned sure to never risk uncovering her only hobby.
Being a Gunter herself.
She slid into her jet-black SnugSuit – which had earned the affectionate nickname, “Snuggie,” after she had realized that a thrice-a-week schedule of shaving her entire body bald and smooth kept the suit feeling remarkably soft and smooth against her skin. The only hair she had was the thick, dark red mop on her head, which she often kept in a tight bun while at work or gaming. The suit was tethered to an automatic, ratcheting cable that was wound into the wall, carrying data and feedback from the computer to the Snuggie.
After poking her bare feet through the ends of the legs, her small hands through the armholes, and zipping the suit up, she tugged on a pair of thick, white, nylon socks. The material was also soft and smooth, and form-fitted her feet perfectly, stretching ever-so-slightly. These let her soles and toes slip and slide on the glass, omni-directional treadmill surface of her VR rig, set into the floor, which tracked her movement via her footsteps. She buckled the suspended, hydraulic waistband about her hips, which kept her centered on the glass dish. She slid her haptic gloves on, and felt them initialize with a brief pulse of gentle heat as the built-in magnets guided their contacts to the ones in the wrists of her Snuggie. She then did a squat, writhing in a way that, if anyone ever saw her do it, would kill her with embarrassment. The slightly stretchy fabric conformed to her skin more closely as she stood back up, then repeated the gesture.
“This stuff has so much more potential,” she thought coyly to herself, feeling the soft fabric press between her legs, cradling her womanhood and every other crease of her body from neck to ankles with a uniform, nearly lover-like pressure. She grinned, wondering what the new, alternate models of Suits felt like – the ones sold by online sex stores.
Stephanie reached up and pulled down the Oasis headset, pushing the distracting thoughts from her mind. With purpose, she pulled the headband back and over her bun, lowered the sleek, blacked-out glass visor down over her eyes and nestled it against the bridge of her nose. Sensing this, the system logged her in, scanning her retinas and prompting her for the Vocal Key. She spoke her keyphrase – “Captain, incoming message.” – and the Oasis splash screen flashed in front of her.
“WELCOME, Maureena_Viglasi12!!” appeared on the screen, in blue Calibri font. Then, the visor faded into total blackness. Another string of white text, this time in blocky, digital font, a la Nintendo circa 1986, faded into
view against the endless, pitch backdrop.
“READY PLAYER ONE"
“Maurena_Viglasi12 logged off.”
Stephanie slid the padded visor up and let the arm suspending it from the ceiling slowly retract it away. For just a moment, the projected screen inside the visor made the inside of the headset glow, just before it went dark. On that screen had been a notification that IOI Recovery Agents, as they were called by the networked system, were arriving at the building. This caused every VR rig in the building to suddenly go into Maintenance Mode, which suspended your in-game character’s actions and made you invulnerable, no matter what you were doing, and logged everyone off. The building only restored services after the IOI agents had collected their new indent and cleared the building, at which point your avatar would unfreeze after you logged back in.
Steph huffed in frustration as she took off her gloves, waistband, and suit. She’d been right in the middle of a very important conversation with several other Gunters in her clan about the next clue in Halliday’s riddle – “What you seek lies hidden in the trash on the deepest level of Daggorath.” – when the notification popped up and her visor froze. She also really had to pee, so, while the interruption was annoying, it was also convenient.
Steph stopped by the window on the way to the bathroom, un-dimming the panes and peering down from her high window.
“I bet it’s that fucker from Trash Collection. He’s a douche,” she thought to herself, not one who minded using foul language when she felt the need, even during internal monologue. She dimmed the window to black again and dashed through the dark, her naked body moving lithely through the small rooms.
Steph hurriedly peed, washed up, and grabbed a bottle of water from the silvery mini-fridge. As she closed the refrigerator door and started to twist open the milky white plastic cap – with “IOI” embossed on the top – the lock bolt in her front door slid shut with an unceremonious “thunk.”
The redhead’s heart skipped a beat, and her eyes shot wide. That mean that the IOI agents were coming to her floor.
Stephanie’s mind raced as she thought about each person she had ever seen in her high-rise in the year she’d lived there. She, along with every other resident on the 59th floor, were locked in their rooms, and would remain that way until IOI was gone. Her panic built slowly as she heard the jackbooted thugs pounding down the hallway towards – and hopefully, past – her room. Without thinking about it, she grabbed the only clothes she could find – her silky, pink PJs – and tugged them on, not that it would matter. Either they weren’t here for her and would never know she was there, or they were, and…
“I covered my tracks,” she thought to herself, feeling a burst of confidence. “I proxied twice, I ran three scans before I logged into that Gunter chatroom, and I flew to the planet while cloaked!” There was no way they were here for her. She’d have seen something, heard something, or come across a rumor first.
She was sure of it.
Her heart beat faster and faster as the thunderous footfalls got louder and louder, closer and closer. The faint, lighter footsteps of someone in high heels were soon detectable underneath the racket. There was a sudden shuffle of rapid-fire steps, and the sounds came to a stop.
Right. Outside. Her door.
Stephanie’s left eyelid twitched in terror as her automated, 9-inch reception screen, mounted right next to the doorframe, came to life. Through the security system’s wide-angle lens on the other side of the locked door, she saw four black-clad, helmeted men, two with MagnaCuffs in hand, the others brandishing StunRifles. In the middle of the four stood a thin, impossibly beautiful black woman, her raven hair pulled into a tight bun, just like Stephanie’s. A pair of thin-rimmed reading glasses her perched on her sharp nose, and bright pink lipstick adorned her lips. Her pink fingernails tapped silently on the digital clipboard that illuminated the dank air in front of her. The woman also wore a sharp, perfectly-fitted black business suit with thin, pink pinstripes. Her matching pencil skirt clung to her thighs and stopped just above her knees, showing off the sheer black pantyhose she wore, with simple, black high heels adorning her feet. As Stephanie felt the color draining from her face, the two-way speaker crackled, and the woman’s voice pierced through Steph’s apartment…and her heart.
“Stephanie Anders, I am Holly Smith, with the IOI Credit Recovery department,” the woman’s voice professionally informed her. “Our records show that you are in arrears to your IOI Credit account in the amount of sixteen thousand, one hundred, fifty-two dollars and twelve cents, and you are now eligible for the Indentured Workforce program. I am here along with these officers to take you into custody and get you started on your path to becoming debt-free. Your door will now unlock and these officers will escort you from the building – all your possessions will be sold to help expedite your journey to completing the program. Please lay down on the floor with your palms down and out in front of you, cross your ankles, and await further instruction. You have seven seconds to comply.”
The woman, who weighed maybe one hundred forty five pounds, looked up at the lens of the camera with steely gray eyes, and smiled without emotion. She would have looked silly amongst the large, broad men in armor waiting to take her into custody, had they been there for someone else.
Stephanie couldn’t breathe. For a brief moment, her bravado fought for the floor, and she wanted to run, to fight, to hide, something, anything to avoid indenturement. But then she realized, they weren’t here for her because of her secret Gunter status – Ms. Smith even said so herself. So, there must be a mistake, right? Whatever this was, someone did something wrong, and if she behaved and was calm and cooperative, she could explain herself and whatever they were here about, and eventually be let go.
Right?
Steph refused to keep panicking. She kneeled on the thin carpet, and lowered herself to the floor, becoming suddenly aware of what she was wearing. Her soft, smooth tank top lowered away from her bare breasts and touched the carpet first, and she felt her cheeks beginning to burn at the thought of what was about to happen. She pressed her body to the floor, outstretched her arms in front of her and spread her fingers out along the carpet. She pressed her forehead to the rug as she crossed her left ankle over her right, her feet still covered in the thick nylon socks she wore during VR. Silently, she waited, listening to her heart thump like a war drum in her ear.
The bolt in her front door slid open and clicked out of the way, and the door was quietly pushed open. Stephanie kept her eyes closed and her head down, so she didn’t see the first two agents come in and point their StunRifles at her back, but she heard – and felt – them. More footsteps reverberated in her ears as two more came in behind them, and she felt rough, strong hands grab her wrists, tugging them roughly behind her back, and snapping the MagnaCuffs on her. They fused together with a magnetic lock, silently becoming inseparable, then she felt her ankles being forcefully uncrossed and secured together the same way. The jackboots lifted her roughly to her bound, nyloned feet, planting her down to support her own weight, her wrists crossed behind her.
She slowly opened her eyes after a moment of silence. Stephanie found herself face to face with the woman who was outside, and in the periperhy, she saw her door click shut behind Ms. Smith. Two of the guards – the ones with the StunRifles – stood behind her, the coercive devices trained on Stephanie’s chest. The woman herself was unabashedly giving her new prisoner a once over with her eyes, and Steph felt herself blush as the well-dressed woman’s gaze lazily slid from her ankles, up her legs and thighs, over her perky, barely-covered chest, and finally met her own.
“Well hello, Stephanie,” the woman said, her silvery gaze boring directly into the teen girl’s soul. “Did we interrupt something?”
“N-no,” Steph replied, “I was…this has to be a mistake, I don’t owe anything.” She struggled to get the words out through the throat-tightening panic swelling inside her, combined with the embarrassment of having her meticulously cared for body practically on display for this woman and her armed guards. “I don’t think –“
“What you think doesn’t matter anymore, dear,” Ms. Smith cut her off in a calm, professional tone. There was a look of hunger in the woman’s eyes that Stephanie did not appreciate. “I know who you are, Maureena. And you’re coming with us.”
Stephanie opened her mouth to protest, to scream at the bitch, to curse her and her organization. The fury and rage and resentment exploded inside her and rushed up to her awaiting lips –
But the only thing that her lips felt was a firm rubber ballgag, pushed into her mouth and between her teeth by one of the guards behind her. After all, can’t have the new prisoner causing any doubt in the minds of the sheep by yelling on the way downstairs. Before she could even react, it was buckled tightly behind her head, cutting off any protesting she’d planned to do, the leather straps pulling tight across her cheeks. The other guard stepped in front of her, caught her in his arms as she was pushed forward by the first, and quickly found herself in what amounted to a hogtie, her ankle and wrist restraints all locked together behind her back. An expandable baton was then extended by one of the guards and slid underneath her tightly bounds extremities, and she was carried, like a hog to a feast, down the hallway and into the elevator.
Tears formed in Stephanie’s eyes as her rage from earlier faded away. No one would miss her, no one would look for her, and her fellow Gunters would know in just a few minutes that she would never be heard from again. Her nylon-covered soles faced the ceiling of the hallway as she bobbed gently beneath the baton, her teeth digging into the ball that kept her quiet. Her tears fell silently to the carpet beneath her, then the floor of the elevator, and finally the floor of the Indentured Workforce Transport Vehicle she was slid into, the bar locking into place in a dark, windowless compartment, keeping her hips and shoulders resting on the floor of the cramped steel box, but keeping her ankles and wrists slightly raised to keep her off balance.
A small bubble of drool was between her lower lip and the ballgag, and she had left all her tears in the transport. Her cheeks were stained with their dry tracks, and her feet, resting flat on the floor in the nylon socks, tingled with the pins and needles of having fallen asleep. Her shoulders were sore and her head ached, and she knew her eyes were puffy, but with her arms held high over her head, she couldn’t even try to rub their ache away. She hung her head helplessly, staring at the floor and trying like hell to ignore the dreadful embarrassment of having to wear only her pink nightie this whole time. She could tell it was dirty and dusty from the ride in the transport, too, in the light of the single, dim, fluorescent rod of light, set flush into ceiling.
Several minutes passed before the door to the small, beige room she was seated in swung open. She’d almost fallen asleep, in fact, from sheer exhaustion. A string of her saliva hung from her lip as she looked up towards the door, her shoulders tense and aching. Her eyes moved more than her head, both from her arms being held up, and from a lack of energy.
“You poor little thing,” said Ms. Smith, as her heels clicked into the room. Her smart suit and skirt made her look devastatingly professional, and she knew it. The door latched behind her, and she stooped down in front of the nineteen-year-old redhead, matching her gaze again. Feebly, Stephanie moaned from behind the tight gag.
“It’s okay.” Ms. Smith cupped Stephanie’s chin gently with her ebony hand. Her sharp, pink nails gently rested against Steph’s cheek, as she wiped the dried tears from the other with her thumb. “I know you’re scared. But don’t worry, alright? If you behave, I am going to take very good care of you.” A stunted, choked sob made the bound girl’s body quiver. Holly couldn’t help but look down over the girl’s breasts, able to see her little nipples poking out underneath the thin material slightly. She grinned, then stood.
“I know who you are,” Ms. Smith continued, as she released the girl’s chin and turned, heels clicking across the tile floor. “You’re Maureena_Viglasi12, you’re a Gunter, and you work for IOI. That’s a serious conflict of interest, in case you weren’t aware.” She glanced back to see the firey look of rebellion in Stephanie’s eyes as the teen shot an invisible dagger at her, and smiled.
Holly made a gesture of putting one hand on her waist and cocking her hips to the side. She could move with incredible grace, and she used the talent as much as she could. She got off on it. She pointed one Tickle Me Pink nail at Stephanie and said, “That’s the attitude that make me sure I am going to have lots of fun with you.”
She walked over to the teen, towering over her. She straddled the teen’s legs, hiked up her skirt, and sat down in the girl’s lap, facing her. Stephanie’s eyes went wide with fear and surprise at the sudden closeness, and Holly could barely contain her excitement at taking ownership of her new, helpless toy. Holly’s nyloned legs slid against the girl’s smooth PJ pants as she nestled herself close to her captive little prisoner, lightly stroking her fingertips against Stephanie’s earlobe. She whispered her next words.
“We all get one,” Ms. Smith said as she pulled the glasses off of her nose, folding them closed and placing them gently on the floor next to Steph’s chair. “One choice of the prisoners to make our own. You might call it ‘serendipity’ – you joined the IOI workforce just about the same time I was promoted to VP, and you are exactly my type.” “The emphasis on the word “exactly” was dripping with intention, and Holly reveled in the delight of watching the look of horror on the perky teen’s face. “We get to keep you,” Ms. Smith continued with a sinister tone, “to keep you in our service for whatever we want or need, until your servitude comes to an end.”
Stephanie had begun to tremble underneath Holly’s weight. The chair creaked under it’s double-duty as Holly pressed closer to the girl, slowly and intentionally grinding her hips against the bound, helpless girl. Her pantyhosed legs slid effortlessly over Steph’s thighs as she not-so-subtly conveyed to the young woman how she intended to “use” her. The mewl of trepidation that leaked out from behind the ballgag was music to Holly’s ears.
“I have to know, since it’s one of the few pieces of information about you that’s not in your file,” Ms. Smith asked the trembling girl. “Are you…ticklish?”
I had a story idea, and it comes from my excitement for the new movie it references. Hopefully some of you will get the references, and hopefully those who don't still still be able to follow along regardless. I don't want to pour energy into it if it's boring or unentertaining, so please let me know if I should write the next chapters.
Thanks, and enjoy the read (I hope)!
1
Stephanie
As she stepped out of the shower, Stephanie’s dark red hair – dyed of course – flipped about between the folds of her towel, sending the occasional droplet across the small bathroom. Her green eyes almost glittered as she watched herself in the mirror, letting her damp, long hair fall over her firm, white breasts to barely hide her little pink nipples. She pushed her shoulders back, straightening her posture and standing up straight. Her cool, wet hair slid upwards over her chest as she nodded in satisfaction. The after-VR shower was always the most fulfilling, especially after such a long quest.Stephanie
Stephanie padded across the room on her bare, soft, size 7 feet, sitting her bare behind on the comforter of her bed in the dimlight of her computer screen across the room. She crossed her left ankle over her right knee, grabbed the bottle of lotion from the nightstand and applied the slippery white moisturizer all over her foot – rubbing it methodically into the skin of her sole, between her toes, around her heel, and everywhere else. She then repeated the same thing on the other foot, sighing with a distant sense of futility.
Her toes were painted the exact same color as her hair, “Dark Ruby,” the last pre-packaged, manufactured color she had left. Beauty products were hard to find in the post-apocalyptic, energy-crisis-strangled, Virtual Reality-obsessed world, especially since most people were only concerned with how their avatar looked in The Oasis. In spite of indulging in just as much gaming as every other 19 year old in the real world, Stephanie made absolutely sure to keep herself clean, maintained, and beautiful. She’d scavenged as many beauty products, lotions, soaps, and lipsticks from her grandmother’s possessions before she’d died, refusing to allow the dreary, grey, impoverished landscape outside to reflect in how she took care of herself.
“One day,” she thought to herself, years ago, “people are going to go outside again, and I’ll be the most beautiful, easily-employed person in the state.” Her grandmother said that to her on occasion, keeping hope alive in her little heart.
“Maybe I’ll even score one of those rich IOI employees,” she thought now, her eyes fixed on nothing in particular, her hand still pressed against her lotioned, pale sole. After a moment of gazing at the grey wallpaper, she shook her head, snapping out of it. “Or, the Gunter who finds the egg.”
That last thought is the only thing that scared off the overwhelming sense of helplessness. She fought back the rising depression, lotioning her shapely bare legs, then her arms. Once she was covered in a thin film of slippery lotion, she slid her naked, five-foot-eleven body into her favorite pair of silken pink pyjamas – well, it was her only pair of PJs, really – and tugged her velvet sleeping mask down over her eyes. She slid between the sheets of her bed and tugged the comforter up tight to her neck.
“Computer,” she said into the dark air, and a gentle, electronic chime rang back. “Lights out.”
The room was pitched into blackness as the computer and monitor across the room shut off, and the variable, in-window blinds blacked out the windows of her 59th floor room.
Columbus might be the busiest high-tech industrial capital of the world, but they sure know how to soundproof their hotel rooms. Stephanie was asleep in less than a minute.
***
The next morning, Stephanie awoke to the soft sounds of a thunderstorm rolling through her hotel room, and the air had a hint of humidity and lavender to it. Actual thunderstorms were a phenomena long-ago lost to the onset of climate change – now, any thunderstorm that comes to town brings acid rain and violent winds that send any people caught outside practically running for their lives. The rusted shells of old combustion engine vehicles withered away in the streets and driveways of what used to be the suburbs where she’d lived in the past, and the sounds and smells of a clean, refreshing storm every morning is something that helped her forget about the pitiful mess her once-great planet had become.
Stephanie climbed out of bed, padded over to her kitchenette, and made some oatmeal – a nutritional formality that VR couldn’t help with. Another long day or questing lay ahead of her, and her SnugSuit – the skin-tight, self-cleaning, haptic-hybrid Virtual Reality bodysuit that simulated things like heat, cold, pressure, pain, and moisture – hung sterile and waiting in it’s cleaning unit by her computer. Steph studied it absent-mindedly as she munched on her cold oatmeal, ignoring the chalky texture of the instant milk she’d poured into it.
After throwing away her IOI-branded paper bowl and plastic spoon, she brushed her teeth – another hygienic formality that she meticulously kept up on, if for no reason other than to avoid the Oral Surgeon. He was an IOI Licensed Dental Health Professional – the only one her job paid for fully, and Stephanie heard they had a tendency to find any excuse to drill into your teeth and implant GPS locators for employees like her who had a spotless record. Fortunately, this was a “voluntary” process – one which could be avoided as long as you kept yourself out of trouble.
Working for the giant, evil conglomerate that was spending every ounce of it’s vast resources in pursuit of Halliday’s Egg has it’s advantages, of course. Your room and board is covered, in a world where the homelessness rate is over seventy percent. You can choose what you want to eat, as long what you want is one of the options offered by IOI’s kitchen downstairs, or the small shop in the lobby, in an era when starvation was a more common cause of human death than heart disease, cancer, and murder combined. She was one of the twenty percent of all Americans who didn’t collect unemployment benefits, and she wasn’t an “Indent” – a member of the IOI Indentured Workforce.
Indents were slaves. If the company decided you were eligible for the Indentured Workforce Program, heavily armored jackboots show up at your door to take you into custody. You will do whatever the company tells you to do until you have earned enough money to pay off your debt. The company pays you a “fair, hourly rate” for your work – although they never really tell you what that rate is. After the cost of your room and board is paid for, all of your insurance, taxes, fees, and disposables taken care of, any remaining money goes not into your bank account, but towards your debt.
If there was any.
As the governments of the world collapsed during the Great Energy Crisis, there was a lot of money and power to be gained to help manage a country’s “human resources.” Most small countries simply didn’t exist anymore. Superpowers like China, Russia, France, even the United States, were forced to rely on IOI’s “way of doing things.”
Now, most crimes were punishable by having a debt added to your credit history, with IOI in charge of footing the bill, and the StormTroopers come knocking down your door. Fall behind on your IOI credit card for too long? Indented. Get caught trying to break into the IOI mainframe? Shit, indented forever, no matter what. Forget to cover your tracks while egg hunting and trying to undermine IOI’s monopoly on world power?
Sometimes, an individual Gunter would simply stop showing up to raids in the Oasis, the open-world, free-roam sandbox universe created by IOI’s sole competitor, Gregarious Simulation Systems. After a few days of the entire clan wondering what happened, suspicion would creep in that their friend had been discovered, attacked, and “eliminated” by the IOI strike teams. A few more days would usually pass before everyone’s fears were confirmed – an obituary with their friend’s avatar name would show up in the DigiPaper, usually mentioning something about suicide or a drug overdose.
Stephanie wasn’t going to fuck with that. She was a good girl – she was always ten minutes early to her shifts, every day. She often stayed late without question if she was ‘volunteered’ for a project. And she made damned sure to never risk uncovering her only hobby.
Being a Gunter herself.
She slid into her jet-black SnugSuit – which had earned the affectionate nickname, “Snuggie,” after she had realized that a thrice-a-week schedule of shaving her entire body bald and smooth kept the suit feeling remarkably soft and smooth against her skin. The only hair she had was the thick, dark red mop on her head, which she often kept in a tight bun while at work or gaming. The suit was tethered to an automatic, ratcheting cable that was wound into the wall, carrying data and feedback from the computer to the Snuggie.
After poking her bare feet through the ends of the legs, her small hands through the armholes, and zipping the suit up, she tugged on a pair of thick, white, nylon socks. The material was also soft and smooth, and form-fitted her feet perfectly, stretching ever-so-slightly. These let her soles and toes slip and slide on the glass, omni-directional treadmill surface of her VR rig, set into the floor, which tracked her movement via her footsteps. She buckled the suspended, hydraulic waistband about her hips, which kept her centered on the glass dish. She slid her haptic gloves on, and felt them initialize with a brief pulse of gentle heat as the built-in magnets guided their contacts to the ones in the wrists of her Snuggie. She then did a squat, writhing in a way that, if anyone ever saw her do it, would kill her with embarrassment. The slightly stretchy fabric conformed to her skin more closely as she stood back up, then repeated the gesture.
“This stuff has so much more potential,” she thought coyly to herself, feeling the soft fabric press between her legs, cradling her womanhood and every other crease of her body from neck to ankles with a uniform, nearly lover-like pressure. She grinned, wondering what the new, alternate models of Suits felt like – the ones sold by online sex stores.
Stephanie reached up and pulled down the Oasis headset, pushing the distracting thoughts from her mind. With purpose, she pulled the headband back and over her bun, lowered the sleek, blacked-out glass visor down over her eyes and nestled it against the bridge of her nose. Sensing this, the system logged her in, scanning her retinas and prompting her for the Vocal Key. She spoke her keyphrase – “Captain, incoming message.” – and the Oasis splash screen flashed in front of her.
“WELCOME, Maureena_Viglasi12!!” appeared on the screen, in blue Calibri font. Then, the visor faded into total blackness. Another string of white text, this time in blocky, digital font, a la Nintendo circa 1986, faded into
view against the endless, pitch backdrop.
“READY PLAYER ONE"
2
Last Day Gunting
Last Day Gunting
“Maurena_Viglasi12 logged off.”
Stephanie slid the padded visor up and let the arm suspending it from the ceiling slowly retract it away. For just a moment, the projected screen inside the visor made the inside of the headset glow, just before it went dark. On that screen had been a notification that IOI Recovery Agents, as they were called by the networked system, were arriving at the building. This caused every VR rig in the building to suddenly go into Maintenance Mode, which suspended your in-game character’s actions and made you invulnerable, no matter what you were doing, and logged everyone off. The building only restored services after the IOI agents had collected their new indent and cleared the building, at which point your avatar would unfreeze after you logged back in.
Steph huffed in frustration as she took off her gloves, waistband, and suit. She’d been right in the middle of a very important conversation with several other Gunters in her clan about the next clue in Halliday’s riddle – “What you seek lies hidden in the trash on the deepest level of Daggorath.” – when the notification popped up and her visor froze. She also really had to pee, so, while the interruption was annoying, it was also convenient.
Steph stopped by the window on the way to the bathroom, un-dimming the panes and peering down from her high window.
“I bet it’s that fucker from Trash Collection. He’s a douche,” she thought to herself, not one who minded using foul language when she felt the need, even during internal monologue. She dimmed the window to black again and dashed through the dark, her naked body moving lithely through the small rooms.
Steph hurriedly peed, washed up, and grabbed a bottle of water from the silvery mini-fridge. As she closed the refrigerator door and started to twist open the milky white plastic cap – with “IOI” embossed on the top – the lock bolt in her front door slid shut with an unceremonious “thunk.”
The redhead’s heart skipped a beat, and her eyes shot wide. That mean that the IOI agents were coming to her floor.
Stephanie’s mind raced as she thought about each person she had ever seen in her high-rise in the year she’d lived there. She, along with every other resident on the 59th floor, were locked in their rooms, and would remain that way until IOI was gone. Her panic built slowly as she heard the jackbooted thugs pounding down the hallway towards – and hopefully, past – her room. Without thinking about it, she grabbed the only clothes she could find – her silky, pink PJs – and tugged them on, not that it would matter. Either they weren’t here for her and would never know she was there, or they were, and…
“I covered my tracks,” she thought to herself, feeling a burst of confidence. “I proxied twice, I ran three scans before I logged into that Gunter chatroom, and I flew to the planet while cloaked!” There was no way they were here for her. She’d have seen something, heard something, or come across a rumor first.
She was sure of it.
Her heart beat faster and faster as the thunderous footfalls got louder and louder, closer and closer. The faint, lighter footsteps of someone in high heels were soon detectable underneath the racket. There was a sudden shuffle of rapid-fire steps, and the sounds came to a stop.
Right. Outside. Her door.
Stephanie’s left eyelid twitched in terror as her automated, 9-inch reception screen, mounted right next to the doorframe, came to life. Through the security system’s wide-angle lens on the other side of the locked door, she saw four black-clad, helmeted men, two with MagnaCuffs in hand, the others brandishing StunRifles. In the middle of the four stood a thin, impossibly beautiful black woman, her raven hair pulled into a tight bun, just like Stephanie’s. A pair of thin-rimmed reading glasses her perched on her sharp nose, and bright pink lipstick adorned her lips. Her pink fingernails tapped silently on the digital clipboard that illuminated the dank air in front of her. The woman also wore a sharp, perfectly-fitted black business suit with thin, pink pinstripes. Her matching pencil skirt clung to her thighs and stopped just above her knees, showing off the sheer black pantyhose she wore, with simple, black high heels adorning her feet. As Stephanie felt the color draining from her face, the two-way speaker crackled, and the woman’s voice pierced through Steph’s apartment…and her heart.
“Stephanie Anders, I am Holly Smith, with the IOI Credit Recovery department,” the woman’s voice professionally informed her. “Our records show that you are in arrears to your IOI Credit account in the amount of sixteen thousand, one hundred, fifty-two dollars and twelve cents, and you are now eligible for the Indentured Workforce program. I am here along with these officers to take you into custody and get you started on your path to becoming debt-free. Your door will now unlock and these officers will escort you from the building – all your possessions will be sold to help expedite your journey to completing the program. Please lay down on the floor with your palms down and out in front of you, cross your ankles, and await further instruction. You have seven seconds to comply.”
The woman, who weighed maybe one hundred forty five pounds, looked up at the lens of the camera with steely gray eyes, and smiled without emotion. She would have looked silly amongst the large, broad men in armor waiting to take her into custody, had they been there for someone else.
Stephanie couldn’t breathe. For a brief moment, her bravado fought for the floor, and she wanted to run, to fight, to hide, something, anything to avoid indenturement. But then she realized, they weren’t here for her because of her secret Gunter status – Ms. Smith even said so herself. So, there must be a mistake, right? Whatever this was, someone did something wrong, and if she behaved and was calm and cooperative, she could explain herself and whatever they were here about, and eventually be let go.
Right?
Steph refused to keep panicking. She kneeled on the thin carpet, and lowered herself to the floor, becoming suddenly aware of what she was wearing. Her soft, smooth tank top lowered away from her bare breasts and touched the carpet first, and she felt her cheeks beginning to burn at the thought of what was about to happen. She pressed her body to the floor, outstretched her arms in front of her and spread her fingers out along the carpet. She pressed her forehead to the rug as she crossed her left ankle over her right, her feet still covered in the thick nylon socks she wore during VR. Silently, she waited, listening to her heart thump like a war drum in her ear.
The bolt in her front door slid open and clicked out of the way, and the door was quietly pushed open. Stephanie kept her eyes closed and her head down, so she didn’t see the first two agents come in and point their StunRifles at her back, but she heard – and felt – them. More footsteps reverberated in her ears as two more came in behind them, and she felt rough, strong hands grab her wrists, tugging them roughly behind her back, and snapping the MagnaCuffs on her. They fused together with a magnetic lock, silently becoming inseparable, then she felt her ankles being forcefully uncrossed and secured together the same way. The jackboots lifted her roughly to her bound, nyloned feet, planting her down to support her own weight, her wrists crossed behind her.
She slowly opened her eyes after a moment of silence. Stephanie found herself face to face with the woman who was outside, and in the periperhy, she saw her door click shut behind Ms. Smith. Two of the guards – the ones with the StunRifles – stood behind her, the coercive devices trained on Stephanie’s chest. The woman herself was unabashedly giving her new prisoner a once over with her eyes, and Steph felt herself blush as the well-dressed woman’s gaze lazily slid from her ankles, up her legs and thighs, over her perky, barely-covered chest, and finally met her own.
“Well hello, Stephanie,” the woman said, her silvery gaze boring directly into the teen girl’s soul. “Did we interrupt something?”
“N-no,” Steph replied, “I was…this has to be a mistake, I don’t owe anything.” She struggled to get the words out through the throat-tightening panic swelling inside her, combined with the embarrassment of having her meticulously cared for body practically on display for this woman and her armed guards. “I don’t think –“
“What you think doesn’t matter anymore, dear,” Ms. Smith cut her off in a calm, professional tone. There was a look of hunger in the woman’s eyes that Stephanie did not appreciate. “I know who you are, Maureena. And you’re coming with us.”
Stephanie opened her mouth to protest, to scream at the bitch, to curse her and her organization. The fury and rage and resentment exploded inside her and rushed up to her awaiting lips –
But the only thing that her lips felt was a firm rubber ballgag, pushed into her mouth and between her teeth by one of the guards behind her. After all, can’t have the new prisoner causing any doubt in the minds of the sheep by yelling on the way downstairs. Before she could even react, it was buckled tightly behind her head, cutting off any protesting she’d planned to do, the leather straps pulling tight across her cheeks. The other guard stepped in front of her, caught her in his arms as she was pushed forward by the first, and quickly found herself in what amounted to a hogtie, her ankle and wrist restraints all locked together behind her back. An expandable baton was then extended by one of the guards and slid underneath her tightly bounds extremities, and she was carried, like a hog to a feast, down the hallway and into the elevator.
Tears formed in Stephanie’s eyes as her rage from earlier faded away. No one would miss her, no one would look for her, and her fellow Gunters would know in just a few minutes that she would never be heard from again. Her nylon-covered soles faced the ceiling of the hallway as she bobbed gently beneath the baton, her teeth digging into the ball that kept her quiet. Her tears fell silently to the carpet beneath her, then the floor of the elevator, and finally the floor of the Indentured Workforce Transport Vehicle she was slid into, the bar locking into place in a dark, windowless compartment, keeping her hips and shoulders resting on the floor of the cramped steel box, but keeping her ankles and wrists slightly raised to keep her off balance.
***
The twenty minute ride to the Indentured Workforce Processing Facility was much shorter than she’d expected – either there no other new recruits being picked up, or she was the only one on their list for the day. She was lifted and slid out of the compartment, marched down another long hallway, and disconnected from the bar to be sat down in a chair, in a small, unwindowed, wallpapered room with no other furniture inside. Her wrist restraints were clasped to a magnetic lock above her head on the wall, stretching her arms up and lifting the now dirty, pink tank top up.
A small bubble of drool was between her lower lip and the ballgag, and she had left all her tears in the transport. Her cheeks were stained with their dry tracks, and her feet, resting flat on the floor in the nylon socks, tingled with the pins and needles of having fallen asleep. Her shoulders were sore and her head ached, and she knew her eyes were puffy, but with her arms held high over her head, she couldn’t even try to rub their ache away. She hung her head helplessly, staring at the floor and trying like hell to ignore the dreadful embarrassment of having to wear only her pink nightie this whole time. She could tell it was dirty and dusty from the ride in the transport, too, in the light of the single, dim, fluorescent rod of light, set flush into ceiling.
Several minutes passed before the door to the small, beige room she was seated in swung open. She’d almost fallen asleep, in fact, from sheer exhaustion. A string of her saliva hung from her lip as she looked up towards the door, her shoulders tense and aching. Her eyes moved more than her head, both from her arms being held up, and from a lack of energy.
3
Under New Ownership
Under New Ownership
“You poor little thing,” said Ms. Smith, as her heels clicked into the room. Her smart suit and skirt made her look devastatingly professional, and she knew it. The door latched behind her, and she stooped down in front of the nineteen-year-old redhead, matching her gaze again. Feebly, Stephanie moaned from behind the tight gag.
“It’s okay.” Ms. Smith cupped Stephanie’s chin gently with her ebony hand. Her sharp, pink nails gently rested against Steph’s cheek, as she wiped the dried tears from the other with her thumb. “I know you’re scared. But don’t worry, alright? If you behave, I am going to take very good care of you.” A stunted, choked sob made the bound girl’s body quiver. Holly couldn’t help but look down over the girl’s breasts, able to see her little nipples poking out underneath the thin material slightly. She grinned, then stood.
“I know who you are,” Ms. Smith continued, as she released the girl’s chin and turned, heels clicking across the tile floor. “You’re Maureena_Viglasi12, you’re a Gunter, and you work for IOI. That’s a serious conflict of interest, in case you weren’t aware.” She glanced back to see the firey look of rebellion in Stephanie’s eyes as the teen shot an invisible dagger at her, and smiled.
Holly made a gesture of putting one hand on her waist and cocking her hips to the side. She could move with incredible grace, and she used the talent as much as she could. She got off on it. She pointed one Tickle Me Pink nail at Stephanie and said, “That’s the attitude that make me sure I am going to have lots of fun with you.”
She walked over to the teen, towering over her. She straddled the teen’s legs, hiked up her skirt, and sat down in the girl’s lap, facing her. Stephanie’s eyes went wide with fear and surprise at the sudden closeness, and Holly could barely contain her excitement at taking ownership of her new, helpless toy. Holly’s nyloned legs slid against the girl’s smooth PJ pants as she nestled herself close to her captive little prisoner, lightly stroking her fingertips against Stephanie’s earlobe. She whispered her next words.
“We all get one,” Ms. Smith said as she pulled the glasses off of her nose, folding them closed and placing them gently on the floor next to Steph’s chair. “One choice of the prisoners to make our own. You might call it ‘serendipity’ – you joined the IOI workforce just about the same time I was promoted to VP, and you are exactly my type.” “The emphasis on the word “exactly” was dripping with intention, and Holly reveled in the delight of watching the look of horror on the perky teen’s face. “We get to keep you,” Ms. Smith continued with a sinister tone, “to keep you in our service for whatever we want or need, until your servitude comes to an end.”
Stephanie had begun to tremble underneath Holly’s weight. The chair creaked under it’s double-duty as Holly pressed closer to the girl, slowly and intentionally grinding her hips against the bound, helpless girl. Her pantyhosed legs slid effortlessly over Steph’s thighs as she not-so-subtly conveyed to the young woman how she intended to “use” her. The mewl of trepidation that leaked out from behind the ballgag was music to Holly’s ears.
“I have to know, since it’s one of the few pieces of information about you that’s not in your file,” Ms. Smith asked the trembling girl. “Are you…ticklish?”
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