I just looked around for a moment. Like at the casino, I was amazed at how big everything appeared. However, unlike at work, I wasn't afraid at all. Of course, I knew this was just a virtual experience and I could leave any time I wanted, and these people could do nothing to really hurt me, but still, I'd thought I would have felt something.
"What do you want to do next?" asked Talon. "We can take this experience as far as you want to go, Val."
"For now, I just want to practice being picked up," I told him.
"Okay, that's easy enough," he replied, and reached down to grasp me about the waist. Without much comment, he bore me up into the air, holding me so I faced him at eye level.
I raised my eyebrows. The sense of being borne aloft actually seemed real enough when I kept my eyes fixed on the screen. Of course, I didn't feel anything specific--it was all in my mind, and it wasn't scary at all.
Talon turned around and carried me over to a table, where he set me down easily. As he walked, my view seemed to bob up and down, as though he had taken real steps across the room. Whoever had designed this simulation had done a bang-up job, I thought!
"Here, let me pick her up next," said Trekker. He too grasped me and lifted me up, this time holding me well over his head.
"This is cool," I typed in. "I don't know if it's helping or not, but it's kind of fun."
"Good!" said Lorekeep. "Here, let me have her next."
Trekker looked at him and then, to my surprise, tossed me across the room! Despite myself, I let out a gasp as the view mimicked my experience of sailing through the air. Lorekeep caught me, causing the screen to jerk back and forth spasmodically. Damn, I thought, if someone did that in real life, I'd probably have a heart attack!
Lorekeep held me up for a moment and said, "Are you okay?"
"Sure," I replied. "I don't think I'd like that IRL, but here, it was fine." There, I'm already learning some of the jargon, I thought.
I was passed around to a couple of other people, although the fairy did some kind of magic zap on the giant Scot, causing him to get rid of me quickly. The two of them were obviously paired up already, I realized, watching him chase her around in mock anger. Were they connected in the real world? Maybe they had met here, I thought.
Come to think of it, this sort of place probably led to plenty of real-life romances. What a great way to find a partner who shared your fantasy! Of course, I had no interest in that sort of thing, but it might be something for Heather to think about.
Anyway, as I made the rounds, a couple of the lurkers took me, but never spoke. The rest of them simply stood there without so much as leaning in my direction, obviously content to just watch the fun. It was possible they weren't even there, of course, being away from their computer without bothering to log off. That wasn't the case for all of them, though. While this was going on, the one called Silent Bob gave up and walked out of the room, muttering something about this being boring. I suppose to someone used to more willing subjects, it probably was.
After a bit I was set back down on the table, and Talon stepped back up to me. "Is that enough, or should I shrink you more?" he asked.
I thought about that for a moment. Being picked up and held in the virtual world was nice and all, but I didn't think it had really done anything to help me with my problem. Still, it couldn't hurt to try becoming smaller. Maybe it would give me an idea of what it would be like when I had to work the roulette table. "All right," I told him. "In a few days they're going to make me about a foot tall. Can you do that?"
He adjusted the gun again. "All right, I'll halve your current size," he said, and blasted me with the green ray once more. As before, the world quickly grew on my screen, until everything had doubled from what I'd just become used to.
Again, I didn't feel the slightest bit of fear. Talon reached down and lifted me into the air, this time in only one hand, and held me up. "You look cute at that size," he told me. "I could hold you all day!"
Hmm, I thought. Was this guy coming on to me, or was this part of the roleplaying? Probably the latter. "This isn't so much different," I said. "Everything's twice as big, but it's still just another size change."
"Hey," he said, "would you mind coming up to one of the private rooms? I want to ask you a couple of questions."
I thought about it for a moment. He'd already told me those were generally for sexual encounters, and I wasn't really interested. "I don't think so," I answered. "Sorry, I'm just not ready for that."
"Ouch!" said Trekker, his avatar laughing. "Shot down, Talon!"
"Yeah, harsh!" agreed Cloudwalker.
"Yeah, yeah...you bunch of boneheads...Look, Val, don't worry, I just want to talk," Talon explained patiently, ignoring their jabs. "Remember, you can always disconnect if I try anything, right?"
"Okay," I agreed. "Take me up there, then."
He did, and the ride in his hand was pretty interesting. His arm swung back and forth as he walked, and I actually got the sensation that I was being carried for real. It was kind of disorienting, and I had to shake my eyes off the screen a couple of times. How would I have dealt like that in the real world, I wondered? Well, hopefully, I'd never have to find out.
When we got into one of the rooms, Talon closed the door and locked it behind him. Then he turned back to me. "Okay, I gotta know," he said quickly. "Are you for real, or is this a gag?"
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"I mean, do you really work for the casino? It's okay if you don't, and I won't tell anyone either way, I just want to know."
"Yeah, I work there," I answered. "I've been there for all of one whole week. Impressed?"
"Yeah," he replied. My sarcasm had not translated through my keyboard, obviously. "Y'know, I've been there half a dozen times, and just love it. I've never worked up the courage to talk to a real casino girl, though. I'd love to ask you some questions about what it's like to work there."
"All right," I agreed. He'd already done what he could to help me, after all, so I figured I owed him that much.
I won't bore you with the whole conversation. Basically, he just asked about what I did every day, and some of the problems I'd encountered. I didn't tell him every tiny detail, of course, but gave him the gist of it. I also avoided identifying myself by name, and he had the good sense not to ask me to describe myself or give out any personal information.
We talked for about an hour, and when we were finally worn out, he told me there was a story session in about half an hour. If nothing else, he suggested, it would give me a better idea of what the SW fantasy was all about. Then he adjusted his gun again and put me back to normal size, thanked me for answering his questions, and headed back out to the main room, presumably to strike up another conversation elsewhere. Whoever this Talon guy was IRL, I thought, he obviously enjoyed talking.
Or, on the other hand, I thought, perhaps he really didn't. He might be the shy sort, afraid to meet people or interact socially. This place might be his only way of breaking out of his shell. Well, it hardly mattered, I thought. I'd never meet the REAL Talon, or any of these other people, either. Their online personas were as close as I'd ever get to them, which of course was just as well.
I took a break from the computer, got some food, and relaxed for a bit, then came back for the story. The guy named Lorekeep told it, holding hands with lildolly all the while, and he turned out to be an excellent narrator, using a variety of special effects to enhance the experience.
The story he told was pretty erotic, and I didn't really get into those parts much, but it helped me get an idea of what these people were all about. In his tale, a group of college boys mixed up a shrinking potion and put it in the suntan lotion used by some of the sorority girls. Then, after watching them shrink out of their bathing suits, the guys gathered them up and took them back to the fraternity, where they played with their captives and used them for a variety of weird sexual games. The girls tried to escape and find a way to make an antidote, but as they discovered at the end, the effects were permanent. The main character, a girl who had banked everything on getting back to normal, couldn't handle that, and wound up committing suicide rather than remain a plaything for the rest of her life.
There was no happy ending here, which surprised me. The other girls were doomed to spend the rest of their lives as sex toys, unless they either escaped or killed themselves. Even if they got away, what kind of life could they have had?
It was a good, well-told story, but unfortunately, it didn't make me feel very good about my situation. When Talon asked me about it later, I admitted as much to him, and he told me not to worry about it. In the real world, there was no such thing as being permanently shrunk. The way the machine worked, it just held the body's molecules at a smaller size, until the stabilization field was released. As long as I stayed alive, there was always a chance I could get away and find my way to a restorer.
That was true, but what about what happened in the meantime? I didn't like thinking about that, and some of the things that the boys had done to their tiny captives had been downright frightening. Lorekeep certainly knew how to invoke THAT emotion in his storytelling, anyway. I was probably going to have nightmares tonight!
Speaking of sleeping, by this time I was getting tired, and when I looked up at the clock, I realized it was well after midnight. I'd been online the entire day! I quickly bade Talon and the others farewell and logged off the system, amazed that I'd managed to waste so much time on the computer.
When I got in bed, I lay there for a while, thinking about what I'd experienced. It was a mixed bag, really. The story was depressing and a bit scary, but the virtual shrinking had been completely agreeable and not at all the frightening ordeal it was at the casino. In fact, being a foot or so high hadn't seemed all that bad, actually. I knew, of course, that it had been all virtual, but still, I felt better about the whole thing.
Whether it had really helped me was something only time would tell.