"Can I have'm, please, can I?" Heather practically begged as we sat down at the bar, an expression of pure desire splashed across her face. "I want him so bad!"
I just looked at her with a shocked expression. She maintained a puppy-dog look for a couple of seconds, then burst out laughing. Of course, I did the same, and we practically rolled on the floor for several moments.
"You enjoyed that, didn't you?" I said after I got control of myself. "You did that on purpose!"
"Oh, hell yeah!" she chuckled. "You already told me how he'd reacted t'ya. I just wanted t'play around with his mind a bit!"
"And mine!" I protested. "I thought you were gonna throw yourself at him there for a minute!"
"Nah, he's too old," replied Heather. "What, is he in his thirties? 'Sides, he's still yours, I think."
"Not exactly," I replied, shaking my head. "He and I broke up. He just comes by to make fun of me."
"Are you kiddin'? I saw the way he was lookin' at you! He wants ya, sister. Trust me on this!"
I frowned at that. She couldn't possibly be right, could she? Mark must have been play-acting to fool Heather, just to make sure we could get a chance to talk privately. "Not a chance," I replied, falling back on my original cover story. "I'm telling you, Mark and I are through. When I caught him with that other girl, I swore never again."
"Whatever," she replied doubtfully, "but I'm tellin' ya, he wants y'back. My advice is take 'im, or one of us'll pluck him up right now like!"
The bartender showed up and we placed our order, Heather selecting a margarita, and myself settling for one of the casino's microbrews, which I'd discovered were quite tasty. "Let's talk about something else, can we?" I asked after a moment. "Listen, I did something the other day that you might be interested in."
"What?" she asked curiously. "Some secret place in the casino?"
"No, nothing like that," I told her. "It was online, on the Internet."
"The Internet?" She looked dubious. "I don't go in there much. Mostly just research for school, y'know?"
"Really, you've never just sat back and surfed?" That seemed odd. Learning how to surf the Internet was something every kid was taught growing up.
"Well, sometimes," she admitted, "but I don't like t'waste too much time on it. I saw a coupla good friends get totally zonked by one of those online VR games."
I nodded, frowning. Ever since the early days of computer gaming, people had been getting addicted to online play. Virtual reality systems had the potential to completely supplant reality. The real world was a much harsher, dangerous place than some people could deal with, unfortunately, so some turned to make-believe sims on a permanent basis. There were already several clinics around the country set up specifically to deal with such cases, gradually returning their patients to a normal life, often with great difficulty.
The bartender brought us our drinks, and I sipped mine appreciatively, enjoying the smooth, sweet honey taste. "Well, I can understand your feelings about that," I said, "but this isn't a game, just a place where people meet. It's called the Virtual Shrinking Center."
"Oh?" I could tell Heather was leery of the idea, but was interested despite herself.
"Yeah, it's a whole community of people turned on by the shrinking fantasy," I told her. "Most of them are men, you know."
"Really?" Now she was really perking up. "I wouldn't mind meetin' some of them! No one I ever met got into this stuff, y'know? My boyfriends always thought I was crazy when I told 'em about it!"
"Well, just get online, and go to the VRC. Go into the generic shrinking woman room, and talk to a guy named Talon."
"Gotcha," she replied, sipping on her drink. "Hey, y'know, there's a VR room right here in the casino, don'tcha?"
That was news to me. "No," I replied. "Where is it?"
"Upstairs," she said. "It's mostly for kids, y'know, so their parents can leave 'em while they gamble, but I've seen adults usin' it, too. Hey, wanna go check it out?"
I shrugged. It couldn't hurt, and while I'd planned to go over to Mark's later, I wasn't in any real hurry. "What about these drinks?" I asked.
"Bring 'em along," she said with a shrug. "We're not employees for nothin', are we?"
That much was true, so I took my beer and followed along after her to the VR center. It wasn't all that impressive, really, just a series of cubicles with chairs and attached computer interfaces. The computers themselves were safely locked behind panels, and you had to rent the VR gear. Fortunately, as employees, we could check out a set for free, so long as we took responsibility for it with our tip accounts. If they got damaged, the cost would come out of our own funds.
Damn, I thought. I wish I'd known about this place before wasting all that money on a computer!
The VR suit was basically a pair of straps around the arms, legs, hands, feet, and head, with a thin mesh connecting it all together. A pair of goggles, set of earbugs, and a headset completed the ensemble. With all that stuff on, I looked like a cyberpunk netrunner.
Heather and I each got into adjacent cubicles and shut the privacy panels. After plugging in, I immediately saw a list of local connections and linked Heather's with mine. In a moment, she confirmed it, and a ghostly human-shaped image appeared in my vision. "Okay, you know where we're goin'," I heard her voice say. "Lead on!"
I virtually poked the "Web" button and logged in with my ID, waiting while Heather did the same on her end, and then chose the VRC from my list of recently visited sites. The entry screen popped up. "You need to pick an avatar," I explained.
"Okay," Heather answered. While I waited for her to do that, I made some changes to my own, allowing my own voice to supersede the computerized default, and adjusting my avatar so it looked a little bit more detailed. Since I'd chosen the online name of "Val," I dressed myself in a miniskirt and boots like Valerie's character on "Land of the Giants." While I couldn't make my face match Kristin Kreuk's exactly, I did at least give her the right hairstyle and got the image fairly close. When I was done, it actually looked a little bit like a cross between Kristin and myself.
I looked over at Heather, whose avatar was now taking shape, and recognized it immediately. She had apparently loaded up an image of herself from her private storage files, and dressed it up in the casino uniform. She looked exactly like a computerized Heather Andrews! "What's the matter, Ashley?" she asked. "Don't you wanna look like yourself?"
"Not particularly," I replied. "You never know what kind of people you'll meet online. I'd rather they NOT know who I am, thank you very much."
"Ah, c'mon, what can it hurt?" she said, with all the ignorance of youth. If only she knew the kind of things people were capable of! Things I'd seen all too often in my real job, unfortunately.
"You'd be surprised," I told her. Then I noticed she was actually putting down her real name on her avatar's title bar. "I really think you need an alias, Heather," I insisted. "Don't use your real name. Trust me. Besides, the people in this area go by screen handles anyway."
"Okay," she agreed without arguing. The "Heather Andrews" disappeared from her header, and her handle became "Dollgirl."
Which reminded me. I hadn't selected a handle for myself yet. I thought about it for a moment, and then set it as "Casino Girl," which Talon had dubbed me a couple of days ago. In the description field, I added, "Real-life worker at the SW Casino trying to get used to the idea of being shrunk."
Heather's description appeared a moment later. "Please shrink me!" it read. "I really like being small!"
I sighed. She and I really were total opposites, weren't we? "Are you ready now?" I asked.
"Sure, let's go in," she agreed excitedly.
On the screen, I opened the entry door and we stepped inside the SW Clubhouse.