The Simulation Addict

"Dave Pierce," he said. Handsome, with steely blue eyes, a square jaw, and a shock of rusty blonde hair starting to turn gray at the temples, he looked around forty.

In his prime.

When it was my turn, I gave the name, "Mary Kotarski."

"Welcome back, Mary," Mrs. Maples beamed. Somehow the old biddy had remembered me from about a year ago when I had attended one of these tiresome sessions.

That time, I had bagged Eddie Rogowski. He had just lost his wife, Emily, after fifty-eight years of marriage. The old guy was desperate to hold on to his old, boring life, especially all those years with his beloved Emily. So it was no surprise when he squandered his life savings in just four months on his way to becoming a first class sim addict.

With Rogowski near broke, I cut him off and had to temporarily move operations to a motel until I could find another apartment, chalking it up once more to the cost of doing business.

The dozen or so grieving spouses all got their chance to tell the others what they were going through. A fifty-something widow started balling and we had to wait an uncomfortable time for her to settle down and finish her boring story. She seemed to be regular, and for a second, I thought she might be a decent candidate. But as the meeting dragged on, I finally zeroed in on Pierce.

When it came his turn, Pierce was barely audible. He mumbled that his wife, Sarah, had died four months ago, ovarian cancer. They had been married twelve years. No kids. She had been a wonderful woman. His eyes welled up at that point, but he managed to shrug it off. Finally, Mrs. Maples got the hint and moved on to the next grieving spouse.

In truth, Pierce didn't seem to want to be there. Chances were that he had been pushed into coming by some well-meaning relative worried about the state of his psyche. Four months after Sarah Pierce's death, he was still wallowing in grief. For me, that was a good sign. He seemed a perfect mark.

When it was my turn, I was equally reticent, and almost forgot that I had formerly attended the class.

"I'm still fighting Don's death," I said with a sigh, flashing a fake smile to show them how hard I was fighting it.

"I thought his name was John?" Mrs. Maples interrupted.

I frowned. "No," I told her. "Don."

Mrs. Maples let the faux pas pass without further comment but held a quizzical frown as I informed the group how I was coping the last few months.

After my turn, I had to sit there and listen to the mundane sorrows of a few others. Then, Ms. Maples provided a mini-sermon, from the latest paperback she had picked up about surviving the loss of a loved one. She held it up for all to see, highly recommending it.

At long last, the session adjourned.

"Hope to see you all next week," Mrs. Maples chortled as we shuffled out of the classroom into a corridor which smelled of sawdust, chalk, and locker sweat.

I immediately caught up to Pierce.

"Glad that's over," I said, out of breath.

He stopped momentarily, offered a polite smile, and walked on.

Keeping pace, I laughed, "Don't know why I bother coming to these things."

"Sounds like you haven't in awhile," he said, walking.

"I've been feeling pretty down lately about John," I said. We were approaching the lobby. He didn't seem the slightest bit interested in me or what I had to offer.

"Thought it was Don," he said.

"What did I say?" I laughed.

He gave me a quizzical frown. Didn't miss a beat, this one.

"John," he said. "You said, ‘John.'"

"You busy right now?" I blurted.

We had reached the lobby when he stopped and faced me with a scowl.

"Busy?"

"Can I buy you a cup of coffee?" I asked.

He hesitated, of course.

"Ah, come on," I said, "I could sure use some company right now." I checked my watch. "It's only eight o'clock."

After a pause, with a shrug, he agreed.

"I don't have a dead spouse," I admitted right off.

We were in a booth at a Denny's about a mile from the high school. I had ordered a coffee, and a slice of apple pie. He had ordered hot tea and lemon.

"In fact," I went on, "I've never even been married."

The waitress came with our orders and I watched Pierce pour tea into a cup and squeeze some lemon in it. I took a sip of coffee, and cut into the pie.

"Then, what was the point of attending the class?"

"To find a customer."

"Customer?" He looked up, eyes all blue, bed-roomy, as he took a sip of his tea.

"I sell memories," I told him, and cut more pie. "Experiences, actually."

"How's that?" He was probably thinking it had been a mistake to come here with me. I must have seemed like a nut with this cryptic story line.

"I have a device in my apartment that can help you be with -- gee, I forgot her name. Your wife."

"Sarah," he said. Just saying her name caused his eyes to redden, revealing again the depth of his grief. That had a dual effect on me. On the one hand, I was glad -- his grief made him an easy mark. It would motivate him to drop a load of cash into my lap. But it also angered me. This was one attractive, intelligent, sensitive man. It confirmed once again that all the good men were always taken.

"It lets you be with her, with Sarah, again."

He did not seem the slightest bit amused.

"Is this some kind of joke or something?"

"No, joke," I said, and smiled. "It's capitalism."

I launched into the standard sales pitch, short version. Back in my apartment, there was a computer with a high resolution, simulator program, developed by the CIA. With the use of a wireless micro-neural implant, I could take him to a virtual world, complete with taste and sound and touch and sight -- where, I added, his Sarah could be made to become quite alive.

"Of course," I added, "the CIA doesn't know that their software was copied and is now being used in furtherance of a profit making enterprise."

Still scowling, Pierce took another sip of his tea and lemon.

"So," he said, "what you offer is illegal."

I shrugged.

"I am a mere salaried employee of the person or persons -- the entity let's call it -- which is running the show and reaping the profits."

"And this -- this program, what can it do?" I couldn't tell if he was really curious or doubted my sanity and was merely humoring me.

"Bottom line - it can make you be with Sarah," I told him. "Really be with her."

"That's impossible," he said, staring into his cup of tea. "She's dead."

"Not in the sim, she's not," I stated. "In the sim, she lives."

I asked him to take a chance and come back to my apartment for a demo and, after a pause, he agreed. Maybe he thought I was pitching some kind of kinky sex. Maybe he didn't care.

He followed me back to the apartment, an upper two-bedroom in a sprawling hundred year old clapboard house on Anderson Street in the old West Side. The downstairs was unoccupied. Like the upper, it had been rented by the Company. Pierce followed me into the driveway.

"It's the upstairs flat," He was waiting at the driver's door of his car with a sheepish look for having been talked into this. The engine was still running. Maybe now he was thinking that this was a con, that I had a couple of thugs upstairs waiting to roll him.

Nevertheless, he finally turned off the car, followed me up the narrow, dark stairway waiting silently while I fumbled for the right key.

The place wasn't furnished much. I didn't live there and only needed a wide, cheap couch where my customers could spread out and the desk where I could operate the PC used to create the sim. In one of the back bedrooms, there was a double bed and a dresser for those rare nights when I needed to sleep over. The kitchen had only a small table with a couple of plastic outdoor chairs. There was an old gas stove that I had never used. The other bedroom was empty.

Pierce's eyes narrowed as I led him into the parlor. It really did seem that the place's sole purpose was to run the sim program.

As instructed, Pierce sat on the couch with a quizzical expression. It was now time to give him the more detailed explanation as to how the sim process worked, the hard sell, if you will, before we continued on with the demonstration.

"Ever see the movie, The Matrix?" I asked him.

He nodded, scowled. "Sure."

"Well," I went on, "what we do here works something like that. I write a simulation program that directly accesses your brain -- a neural interactive sim -- sending you to a virtual existence where Sarah -- your Sarah - is alive. You interact with her and the sim program reacts to your actions and thoughts, and on and on it goes. That's it." I sighed. "By the way, do you have a photograph of Sarah that I can scan into the program?"

He nodded. "In my wallet."

"Good," I said.

"But won't I realize that it's just a program?" he asked. "Fake?"

I had powered up the PC and was waiting for the sim to load.

"You may, at first," I said. "But, trust me, it feels so damned real, that after a while -- and, I mean after only a little while, you will suspend your disbelief. I've never had a customer who hasn't."

He scowled, startled perhaps by the possibility of it all.

"So," I asked, "want to give it a try? A demonstration. Free of charge."

He drew in a breath, shrugged. "Why not?" That was it, he was hooked.

"Great." I took out the temporary, demonstration implant, not much bigger than a pinhead, and held it pinched between the thumb and index finger of my right hand.

"First," I told him, "I have to insert this."

He flinched. "Insert what? Where?" He frowned, trying to see what I was holding so gently between my fingertips. "What is it?"

"A temporary neural implant -- a wetware interface and wireless transceiver in a package smaller than a poppy seed," I said. "I just pop it in back here --" I pointed to the spinal column at the back of my neck -- "and it'll interface with your brainstem so that the sim program from the computer can stimulate your brain. Feed it, if you will, with some initial images and sensory impressions -- a construct, if you remember your Matrix -- that I develop in the program." I sighed. "Trust me. Your mind will take what I initially give it, and take you on the roll of your life. And your Sarah will be there as well."

He took a deep breath. "Okay," he said. "Why not? Let me try it."

I reached around for the insertion needle, a long syringe which looked worse than it felt going into the neural cortex. Seeing it, Pierce cringed, but he let me swab the back of his neck with an antiseptic wash and just sat there as I pricked his skin. I tapped the plunger and in went the temporary micro-implant without a hitch. I also mentioned that the temporary chip would automatically dissolve within a couple hours harmlessly.

I promptly scanned Sarah's photograph into the construct program. She was leaning against a tree in some park with an amused, loving smile. With a keystroke, I turned Sarah's image loose in the program. From that image, the program would create a digital sim of her with which Pierce could interact.

"Ready?"

Pierce nodded.

I pressed the Enter key. Then Pierce was off with his beloved Sarah.

The program lasted half an hour, the life of the demo implant. After it terminated, Pierce opened his eyes with the same wild expression of all first-timers. Wow! was written all over his face.

"She was there," he marveled. "I was with her."

I smiled at his boyish glee and found myself liking him more and more, his presence, his good looks. For the second time that night, I thought: all the best guys are taken.

"Amazing, isn't it?"

He nodded. And it was. I had taken many trips and knew how real the sim program made it seem. There was no other word for it than amazing, as real as real could be. Not all square boxes and bright colors, fake like the virtual reality programs they sold in stores or used in research labs. It was fluid as life.

I immediately gave him my rate. One hundred a session. Every session lasted an hour.

Pierce nodded, thinking. Probably wondering, too, whether this was really happening. After a minute or so, he asked when he could come back. I knew I was free until Thursday.

"Tomorrow," I told him.

He nodded, smiled. They all started out that way.

Before Pierce left, I told him it would help to bring more photographs, videos, even love letters, anything to help the computer make a more comprehensive version of his beloved Sarah.

"The more information," I told him, "the better the construct."

"She wrote poems," he gushed.

"That too," I said.

I found myself asking him to bring pictures, videos, of himself, and his love letters to her. "To complete the picture," I lied. As soon as I blurted that out, I knew I'd be using a sim in a way Pierce didn't have to know about.

And I went for it that very night. He happened to be in the photograph with Sarah that I had used to program his demo trip. After inserting the micro-implant, I tapped the Enter key and lay down on the couch.

Within minutes, Pierce was screwing me.

There was another old man I had to get rid of. Now that I had booked Pierce, I didn't mind. The old guy had become a mooch. He was an old time ballplayer and all he wanted to do was relive his glory years. Played left right field for the Dodgers in the fifties, before they moved to LA from Brooklyn. That was his life and he loved being out there in the stadium with Pee Wee Reese and Roy Campanella and yes, Jackie Robinson.

"Love the smell of grass and popcorn," he said in a voice gruff as gravel. His eyes were downright mischievous, cruel almost. "Even the piss smell in the old bathrooms of Ebbetts Field." He laughed. "Chasing down a fly ball is best. And the crack of the bat for a double. Better than doing double whores on 42nd Street."

When the team moved to LA, he stayed behind and went back to the minors for a few years, then retired right here in Buffalo.

I was letting him pay me ten bucks for a two hour ride. In many ways, the old coot reminded me of my father. An old drunk, full of regrets. Unlike the rest of us, it showed right through him.

After my sim with Pierce, I called "Lew", my contact with the Company, and told him my intentions.

"Sure," he said. "Go ahead. Cut off the ballplayer. Add the new guy."

It was late, almost midnight, and Lew didn't seem to give a crap what I did as long as it made money. He was a handsome, big-chested guy. I had slept with him a few times, fallen in love, I think, though he didn't seem to notice or care about that either. Every once in a while, when I was really down, I played his sim construct -- a bed in some indistinct motel room -- and let him make love to me.

"You got your quota?" he asked. "You were light last week."

"Yeah," I said. "I'm light. But with Pierce, I should be up there again."

That didn't seem to move Lew either way.

He set up a rendezvous, the usual place, for Friday morning. I grunted, computing in my mind how much I could give him. Three hundred was a good round figure to bring me up to speed, maybe even earn me a quick romp of real sex with him.

"Friday is good," I told him.

Pierce showed Thursday morning at ten sharp, with a large brown grocery bag. He handed it to me at the doorway. It contained a CD of about four hundred Kodak moments, digital shots, perfect for uploading, a box of photo albums, and a pile of loose pictures, the entire photographic record of their relationship. I almost gagged when he almost started balling as he sifted through them, picking out the loveliest photos of his darling Sarah. Of course, there were numerous pictures of Pierce as well, and for that, I was grateful.

The paper bag also contained several videos, home movies, that showed Sarah's lithe, precious body in motion. He remained stiff and silent while I played portions of the tapes on a special VCR attached to the computer and converted them to digital form for the sim program.

After I had uploaded the CD and videos, and scanned a sufficient number of the photographs, Pierce waited patiently while I typed in the commands that would enable the sim program to create a comprehensive world containing Sarah Pierce. At last, I was ready to take him there.

I had my share of customers who paid a hundred or more a week for nothing more than the sheer delight of screwing some movie or porno star, or their secret fantasy -- the secretary from the office, the next door neighbor's wife, or some little girl, a fantasy Lolita. I usually met these guys in bars or at the library.

"On the couch," I told him.

Once I had found a suitable entrance point at the back of his neck, I clicked the plunger and in went the implant while Pierce winced. I returned to my swivel chair at the computer and hit Enter, sending him into a sim with his darling Sarah. Per the agreement, the session lasted exactly one hour.

He came out disheveled, wanting more.

"Got another seventy-five?" I asked. He did, so I let him dream until the implant dissolved, another fifteen minutes or so.

That was it that week, a single session. But the following week, Pierce underwent two. After a month, he was already up to five. My best customer.

The more I saw him, the more I felt for the guy, despite the reason for his budding addition -- his precious Sarah. After the first month, I was simulating him as much as he was simulating her.

I let it go on like that for another month when one evening, just after another hour simulating life with Sarah, I told him I had to talk something over. He was out of it, exhausted from the trip. His eyes were puffy and sad, like all my customers hooked on sim.

"I need to get home," he told me. "Get some sleep. They're not too happy with me at the office these days. They think I got a drinking problem." He laughed. "The senior partner and a couple of buddies from the firm tried an intervention yesterday." Now, he got serious. "As you can see, it didn't work."

"Maybe you should listen to them," I told him. "If you run out of money, you won't be able to do this anymore."

He just shrugged, too exhausted to argue.

I came over to the couch and sat next to him and looked into his eyes.

"I want you to make love to me," I blurted.

Pierce frowned. "Now?"

"Yes," I said. "Now. I'm tired of just having you as a sim."

Whatever else he had become, however profound his grief for a dead wife, and however tired he was right then, he was still a man. The thrill of sex could literally override anything.

I led him into the back bedroom, sat him on the bed, took off his clothes, and tucked him under the covers. Then I stripped while he watched with tired eyes and no discernible interest. In the sim, he was all wolf, dominating me, having me, thrusting in and out and grunting with masculine satisfaction. But I could arrange for that in the program, make it predictable.

Naked, I stood before him. His eyes were heavy. Clearly, he was not up for sex.

Still, I crawled into bed and snuggled close. I started kissing him. Our tongues danced. He was a good kisser and seemed into it. But when I reached down under the sheets, he was limp. And remained limp no matter what I did.

"I'm sorry," he said. Then he yawned. "It's not you. I'm just tired."

After I had pushed myself away from him and out of bed, and started putting on my clothes, he admitted that once or twice he had fantasized going to bed with me.

I did not know whether I should thank him for that. I merely smiled.

On his way out, he tried more kindness. I told him not to worry about it. I was a big girl.

A month later, he lost his job.

I found out about it the next week when I asked him for the hundred dollars after another session.

He stuttered and mumbled before admitting he was broke.

I sighed. I had dreaded this ever since our failed lovemaking.

He started crying that he was a fool, that he knew he was being weak for being unable to live his life without Sarah. Was there anything I could do?

"Yeah," I told him.

That was the first night I let him have a freebie with his Sarah in exchange for sex with me.

Lew was furious at first, then amused.

"You make him fuck you," he said with a smirk on his lips that I could have slapped off, "and you pay his fee. Cute. Makes him something like a whore. A male prostitute." Then, he laughed at the thought of that.

I told him to fuck off as I handed him the money. Somehow, he had found out that Pierce had lost his job and figured what I was doing.

"You are treading on dangerous ground, lady," Lew admonished.

"Look," I replied, "as long as I pay your share, what I do with my customers in my own private time is none of your business."

Without counting it, Lew folded the cash into a billfold and tucked it into the inside pocket of his long cashmere coat.

"I just don't get you, Kate," he said. "What you pay for, you can get for free."

In a sim, yes. But in a sim, all I got was sex. The computer couldn't simulate Pierce falling in love with me. I was not that good a programmer, or it was not that good a program.

Sure, I also knew Pierce didn't love me in real life. But at least here, I had a chance of convincing him otherwise, of working my magic on his flesh and blood.

Not long after, Pierce moved into the apartment where I ran the sims. This made it easy for him to progress to a six day a week habit, resting only on Sundays. When he was out, back in reality, he was a despondent and morose. It pissed me off that it was obvious to both of us that he had sex with me solely to feed his habit.

He lived on fast food - pizza, McDonalds, chicken wings and donuts, and started to get flabby. Some days, he smelled, and took a shower only when I pulled him out of bed and pushed him into the bathroom. He'd occasionally get pissed off because the sim program wasn't available when I was servicing another customer. One time, he even came out of the bedroom in a soiled bathrobe during a session demanding to know when the "freak" getting simulated oral sex from a simulated movie star was gonna cum and get it over with.

"None of your goddamned business," I hushed him. "This is a paying customer."

Pierce glared at the figure on the couch, a man who appeared to be in a deep trance or dreaming that he was getting oral sex from a voluptuous blonde porno star. I feared he was going to do something stupid and interrupt the session. Wake the poor freak up. But he thought better of it and retreated into the back bedroom instead to wait his turn for a sim with his precious Sarah.

Lew laughed when I finally complained about him.

Getting over his amusement, he frowned and admonished that my situation with Pierce was an accident waiting to happen. His "superiors", whomever they might be, wouldn't like it either. But out of respect for me (translation: I was a good earner), he had kept my indiscretion to himself.

"You just gotta end it," he said wearily. "Close down the apartment and leave him for homeless."

Easier said than done, though I didn't confide my reluctance to Lew. Sooner or later, I would have to do something. Things were coming to a bad end all the way around.

Pierce was starting to annoy me anyway. How could I love a man who didn't even care to bathe as long as he could be with his dear dead wife?

One day, while he was sleeping off his grief and depression, I decided to make love to him in the sim rather than waking him up and putting up with his maudlin bullshit. I came out of the session in a real bad state, ready to slit my wrists and all that.

I was so down and at the end of my wits that I decided to take it out on poor, hapless Pierce. I'd fix the bastard. And after that, I'd let him go once and for all. Let him go homeless, as Lew had advised.

I played with the Sarah sim and added a third party: Lew. Pierce would enter the sim only to find her screwing him.

I was laughing as I designed the event. Lew was doing her up the rear, thrusting and humping as if she was a dog or better yet, a braying sheep. That was it, I'd make her howl in delight. If that didn't wake Pierce up to the reality of her death, nothing would. That would be my going away present, I decided. My gift of life to him.

It took me about an hour to get it right, then I fell asleep against the back of my chair. When I woke up, I found Pierce on the couch, experiencing the sim. He must have awakened and decided he couldn't wait for me to load him. He had somehow injected himself with the implant chip.

"Ah!" he suddenly bellowed.

I was laughing. He had come upon his beloved Sarah being screwed like a dog by Lew.

"You bitch!" he screamed.

But it wasn't her he was talking to. That was me.

I had to call Lew to get him out of the apartment. Lew dispatched a couple thugs on consignment. They made Pierce pay for slapping me in the face. After dragging him out of bed and roughing him up for a couple of minutes, they took him for a ride before depositing him battered and bloodied in a secluded corner of Olmstead Park.

Lew's thugs returned to the apartment and helped me pack my computer, sim program, and various accessories. In the morning, I'd have to contact my remaining customers and let them know where they could reach me the next couple of days until I found a new apartment.

Before going to bed, I hooked up the computer, and self-injected the implant chip. I downloaded the last sim I had given Pierce, went there, and entered into a wild, perverse threesome with his darling Sarah and Lew.

The following evening, I went to a different grieving spouses meeting at the local high school across town.

This time, I used my real name.

THE END

Bio: Mr. Scarsella's work has appeared in print in The Leading Edge, Aethlon: The Journal of Sport Literature, New Writings of the Fantastic (edited by John Grant), Fictitious Force, and Bound For Evil (edited by Tom English), and online in various webzines including, of course, Aphelion. His most recent Aphelion appearance was Meltdown, December 2007.

E-mail: Vincent L. Scarsella

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