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“He could be a genius, or he could be a hack,” Telengard had written to me, in an email this morning. He’d been the one who’d originally alerted me to the channel. He promised to look deeper into the creator and keep me updated on what he found, but I didn’t expect much. Other than the demonstrations seen within the videos, there was very little outside information
For the next half-hour I paced back and forth in my living room, trying every trick I knew to calm myself down. Maybe my ideas weren’t as new and cutting-edge as I thought. Could that be? Had I missed my window of opportunity, in taking too long to deliver a finished product?
Fuck!
I hurried to my development computer and looked over my entire project, top to bottom. It seemed like theft, but it could also be sheer coincidence. I wasn’t the only person working to improve the fledgling VR genre. Entire teams of programmers were working in all different directions to create new graphics, new experiences, and all new visual, physiological, and tactile sensations.
But shit, mine was the fucking best.
Up until now…
Shaking my head, I shoved the doubts away and made a cup of tea to quell the sick feeling in my stomach. Fuck it, I was still cutting edge. My system worked, and the haptics were so sharp, so incredible, they’d blow away whatever I was seeing on this random kid’s YouTube channel. Besides, how did I know his system even operated at all? Because it looked like it did? Was I supposed to trust his narration, his data, the return speeds he was reporting verbally, rather than showing on screen?
Rather than let it get me down, I used the video as a motivational tool. For the next several hours I channeled my energy, pounding out new code and sifting through errors until I’d rooted out some of the more long-standing problems that I’d been dreading having to fix. When my ass got tired I jumped on the treadmill and walked a fifteen-percent incline until my mind was clear again and my thighs were burning. Then I ate a little something, brewed some more tea, and pulled up enough code on three different computer screens to make Cypher from the Matrix look like a rank fucking amateur.
It was past midnight by the time I finally stopped. I was drained. Fried. Exhausted mentally, but physically hopped up on caffeine and still totally exhilarated. I felt like I could conquer the world. Right now though, with sleep an impossibility for a few more hours at the very least, I’d settle for watching a movie.
And that’s when my phone went off.
It hadn’t buzzed all night, which was fine by me. I picked it up curiously, wondering who was sending me a text message at this time of night. My heart picked up speed almost immediately as I saw Jax’s name:
Put on your hooker boots and meet me at the motel.
An electric shiver rocketed its way through my body, starting at the base of my neck. It shot down my arms, my legs, then bounced back up to gather in my lower belly, just below my navel. The warm, secret place where everything seemed to collide at once.
I glanced over to my boots, still sitting in the corner. All of a sudden I was very warm.
Which one?
I sent words without even thinking. It was almost like someone else typed them entirely.
You know which one.
I did, actually. Growing up together, we all knew the place well. And we all ended up there, at one time or another.
Leave now.
I’ll send you the room number before you get here.
My heart was a jackhammer, pounding against the walls of my chest. My mind screamed at me to stop. To put an end to this bullshit; to not even consider what I knew in my heart I was about to do.
But my body just felt so fucking alive.
Okay.
It was just one word. A single, solitary word that decided the difference between winding down with a movie on the couch, or winding up in a dirty, filthy, sordid place that rented exultation by the hour.
My eyes flitted from the couch, to the boots, and to the couch again. I could still say no. I could reply that I was simply too tired, or too drunk, or just plain not interested…
But fuck it, I’d seen just about every movie anyway.
~ 26 ~
HARPER
It wasn’t easy driving in thigh-high boots with three-inch heels on. But at this hour the roads were clearer than my conscience, and my conscience was pretty damn clear. There was no conflict this time, because I knew exactly what I was doing. I was driving to the cheapest motel in town, in the dead of night, for the oldest reason in the world.
Not a soul was around as I pulled in and rolled silently through the snow-shrouded parking lot. I pulled up beside Jax’s truck in front of room 121, killed the engine, and stepped out and into the biting cold. My breath left trails of white vapor in the frozen, midnight air.
