by A. J. Markam
“…yeah…” I said, though I would have preferred just sticking to my filet mignon and not having the side dishes quite as often.
“Speakin’ of succubi, how’s the quality on yours, ese?”
“Uh… she’s great.”
“Fine as hell?” Robert asked, a big grin on his face.
“Uh… yeah, she’s pretty damn hot.”
“How’s that ass?”
“Pretty spectacular.”
“And the rack?”
“Even more spectacular.”
“Hot DAMN I love this job. Fuckin’ love it. ‘Scuse my French.” Robert laughed, then settled back in his chair. “All right, muchacho, why don’t you tell me about these here lady problems you got.”
I hesitated. “Well… we’re kind of in an open relationship.”
Robert cocked an eyebrow. “‘Relationship’?”
He said it like he couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
“Yeah.”
“Why the hell are you callin’ it a relationship? What are you, a chick?”
I frowned. “NO, but I care about her…”
“Care about her? No, no, no, no, no. You may be in lust with her, amigo. You may loooove fondlin’ those fine-as-hell knockers and tappin’ that sweet, sweet ass, but you ain’t in no relationship. You’re a damn Warlock, and she’s your succubus. That’s why you got problems, ese – cuz you got a screw loose up here.” He tapped his temple with his finger. “You’re thinkin’ ‘relationship’ when what you should be thinkin’ is ‘penetrationship.’ ‘Side piece.’ ‘Fuck buddy.’ You feelin’ me, ese? If you’re havin’ problems, just man up and order her to stop bein’ a bitch. Case closed.”
Oh yeah. I’d forgotten why I thought Robert was kind of a douchebag.
Nice of him to remind me.
“It’s not quite that simple,” I said, irritated.
“What, don’t tell me you freed her, too,” he said flippantly.
I just sat there and didn’t say anything.
He stared at me. “…you didn’t.”
“Yup,” Stig said.
“Why the hell would you do that?!” Robert exploded.
“I told you I didn’t feel comfortable having a slave – ”
“Well no wonder you got problems, dumbass!” Robert said, then smacked me lightly on the back of the head. “You don’t got a succubus anymore, you got a regular chick on your hands! And DAMN, son – why the hell would you give up a succubus for a regular chick?!”
“She’s still a succubus,” I growled.
“No she’s not, or you wouldn’t be havin’ problems! Whether you like it or not, you got a bitch on your hands now, and bitches be crazy, ese!”
Stig perked up like he was listening more carefully.
“She’s not a bitch,” I protested.
“Maybe she ain’t. Maybe you’re the bitch now. Her little prison bitch.”
Stig just snickered. “Yup.”
“Hey!” I snapped.
Robert pointed at Stig. “The imp knows what’s what. You got yourself a situation now, and you got to fix it, compadre. And pronto.”
“And how am I supposed to do that, exactly?”
“You got to reach deep inside you and get in touch with your inner Samuel L. Jackson, my man. When she’s actin’ up, you gotta be like, ‘CHILL, bitch!’ Tell that bitch to CHILL!”
Oh God.
He was giving me relationship advice straight out of Pulp Fiction.
“And if that don’t do it?” Robert said rhetorically as he raised his flat hand up in the air. “Then you got to keep the pimp hand strong.”
“I’M NOT GOING TO HIT HER!” I yelled, incensed.
At that very moment, the elf waitress showed up, looking incredibly uncomfortable.
“…awkward…” Stig muttered.
Robert smiled tightly at her as she put down our drinks. “Thank you, darlin’.”
She didn’t flirt with him again. In fact, she beat a pretty hasty retreat.
Robert leaned over the table towards me and hissed, “I ain’t sayin’ you literally go all Dolemite on her ass – ”
“Dolemite?” I asked, confused.
“Pimp, son, pimp! I’m sayin’ you got to have the mindset.” Robert tapped his temple again. “Big swingin’ dick, my man. BIG swingin’ dick. No chick’ll fuck with Samuel L. Jackson. They’ll fuck him, sure, but they won’t fuck with him.”
I groaned inwardly.
This had been a bad idea.
“I see you rollin’ your eyes, amigo,” Robert said as he pointed at me. “But you’re the one goin’ without the poon, not me.”
“I’m getting plenty of… ‘poon,’” I said distastefully.
“Uh-huh. What, does she suck your pecker whenever you order her to?” Robert asked mockingly.
“I don’t have to order her.”
Robert paused, then frowned. “…really.”
“No. She likes doing it. A lot.”
Robert leaned forward. “Really.”
“Yes, really.”
“Does she do… you know…”
He silently mouthed Anal?
“We haven’t gone there yet,” I said.
Robert settled back in his chair, a smug look on his face. “Well, we can’t all get everything we want in life.”
I glowered at him.
Douchebag!
“So if you’re gettin’ your horn tooted and all the poon you want, what’s the problem, cabron?”
I blushed. “She, uh…”
“Spit it out.”
“…she’s kind of sleeping around behind my back,” I muttered.
Robert sat up like somebody had just fired off a shotgun.
“Unh-unh. Oh HELL no. No Bueno, muchacho, no bueno. That bitch has got to go. How’d you find out?”
“Well, I keep coming home and finding her in bed with other people.”
Robert stared at me like I was insane. “And you ain’t kicked her to the curb yet?!”
“Well… I mean, sometimes I like joining in…”
Robert put his hand to his mouth and puffed out his cheeks, like he was trying to stop himself from vomiting.
“What?” I snapped, offended.
He held out a finger, like Hold on a minute. His cheeks went back to normal, and he quickly took a sip from his coffee.
“Sorry, I kind of threw up in mouth a little,” he said.
“What?!”
“Look, ese, you can do whatever you want – no judgment here, I just don’t swing that way. And whenever I say ‘Big swingin’ dick,’ don’t go gettin’ pictures in your head and shit, alright?”
“What the hell are you talking about?!”
“I’m sayin’ if you wanna go wadin’ in the penis pond, then you do you, hombre. Meanwhile I’m gonna be hangin’ out at the pussy pool.”
“The what?!”
“I think I see your problem now, vato. You don’t need a succubus… you need an incubus.”
I stared at him, uncomprehending –
And then I finally got it.
“YOU THINK I’M DOING THREESOMES WITH GUYS?!” I shouted.
The elf waitress had just come up to our table again.
She froze…
…then turned around and walked away without saying anything.
“So awkward,” Stig muttered.
“Could you keep it down?” Robert hissed. “I mean, no offense, you can do what you want, but I don’t need the ladies thinkin’ I keep your kind of company down at the pickle ranch, you know what I’m sayin’?”
“She’s sleeping with women,” I snapped.
Robert froze. “Say what now?”
“Women. Alaria’s sleeping with women.”
Robert narrowed his eyes. “Like… women women? With tits and shit?”
“Yes! A different woman every night! Actually, more like three times a day!”
Robert just sat there, still as a statue.
Finally he sa
id, “And you’ve got a problem with this?”
“Well – yeah.”
He reached out and smacked me on the back of the head again – this time a lot harder.
“Ow!” I yelled.
“What are you, a damn Mormon?” he said accusingly.
“No! What’s that got to do with anything?!”
“So your woman’s playin’ naked Twister with hot chicks. If that’s a problem – and I would highly contest that fact – then they are quality problems, amigo. HIGH quality problems.”
“I guess, but – ”
“Hell, I take it back about you bein’ a Mormon. Mormons got sister wives – I’m sure they all get freaky from time to time and don’t act like prissy little bitches about it.”
Stig snickered again.
“But it’s ALL THE TIME,” I protested.
“Well get in on that action, tonto! Get some of that sweet threesome lovin’!”
“I have!”
Robert froze again. “Say what?”
“I’ve had lots of threesomes with her. With women,” I added hastily.
Robert acted like he couldn’t exactly process what I was saying. “Say what now?”
“How much clearer do I have to make it?” I fumed. “I’ve had lots of threesomes with Alaria and other women.”
Robert just sat there in stunned silence.
When he finally spoke, he asked, “Is there some kind of threesome patch I missed out on? Did I miss out on the threesome patch?”
A ‘patch’ being a change the company made to OtherWorld’s computer code.
“I don’t know,” I said angrily.
“Why didn’t I get the threesome patch?” he muttered to himself, then thought of something else. “Hold up – you said ‘lots of threesomes.’ How many is ‘lots’?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know – dozens, maybe. It depends on how you count them.”
“What do you mean, ‘how you count them’?”
“Well, if we have sex with twenty other women, is that twenty threesomes, or is it just one orgy?”
Robert smiled smugly, like he’d finally figured out I was bullshitting him. “It’s only an orgy if you do all twenty in the same room at the same time, compadre.”
“Yeah, I know that.’
Robert’s smile faded. “Wait… so you’re sayin’ you’ve had an orgy with your succubus and… twenty other women?”
“Frost elves. Yeah.”
Robert leaned back in his chair and looked both stunned and sick, like you might if you found out the ex-girlfriend you dumped last week just won the lottery.
“Why didn’t I get the orgy patch?” he muttered to himself again, then launched back at me. “These frost elves – they were, like, dogs, right? Like, threes and fours?”
“Three and four at a time?”
“No, dummy, threes and fours on a ten-point scale.”
“No, they were all hot.”
“…sevens?”
“What’s a seven, exactly?”
“A girl you say, ‘Hell yeah, I’d tap that’ based just on looks alone. A six has gotta have at least a good personality.”
I shrugged. “Then they were eights and nines, at the very least. And a couple of tens.”
Robert looked like somebody had gut-punched him. “Twenty 8’s and 9’s… at one time.”
“Yes.”
“Bitches be bangin’, is what you’re sayin’.”
I squinted in confusion. “Are you talking about them having sex, or – ”
“They were attractive.”
“Oh. Yeah.” I nodded and raised my eyebrows. “OHHH yeah.”
“And you… you and them…”
Stig made the OK sign and poked his finger through the hole rapidly.
fwap fwap fwap fwap fwap
Robert looked sick as he pointed at Stig. “You did that with all of them?”
“Only some of them.”
“Oh,” Robert said, smiling in relief.
“Yeah. Frost elves have really small vaginas, so I was too big for most of them.”
“Too… big,” Robert repeated.
“Yeah. The ones who like that sort of thing, though, they can’t get enough of you. I got laid like a rock star while I was there.”
Robert was looking a little green around the gills. “…rock star…”
“With the rest of them it was just oral and handjobs, mainly. A lot of oral, actually.”
Robert looked incredibly unhappy. “So… these frost elves… was that all the threesomes you had, or – ”
“No, that was just while we were up north. Then there were dryads, an undine, a forest elf, a pirate – ”
“A pirate?!” Robert snapped. “I thought you said this was all girl-girl-guy shit!”
“It is. She’s a sexy MILF pirate.”
“…sexy… MILF pirate?”
“Yeah.”
Robert looked like his dog had just died. “…I love sexy MILF pirates…”
“Haven’t you and Kilara had a threesome yet?” I asked.
“…no…”
I just sat there in silence, looking at his long face.
“Sad,” Stig said, and slurped down some coffee.
I could see this wasn’t really going anywhere, so I stood up from my chair. “Look, I should really be getting back. Alaria’s probably doing somebody else right now – ”
Robert got a look on his face like a man possessed, then jumped up and forced me back down in my seat.
“Nope,” he said, and pulled out a piece of paper and a quill from his jacket.
“What do you mean, ‘nope’?”
“You ain’t goin’ anywhere till you tell me every goddamn thing you ever did that led up to a trio, amigo. Alright – start at the very beginnin’.”
I tried to bow out again, but he was adamant. In fact, he had a distinctly unhinged look in his eye – so I stayed and told him everything I could remember.
We were there awhile.
8
“And how does that make you feel?”
I was lying down on a couch in the office of the company psychologist, Dr. Warner. She was a 40-ish woman with short hair and glasses.
John had sent me to her when Robert the QC Warlock hadn’t done me any good. In fact, John was a little pissed because now all Robert talked about was ‘Why didn’t I get the orgy patch?’
“I keep telling him there isn’t an orgy patch, but he won’t believe me,” John griped.
Anyway, when Robert proved fruitless, my boss sent me to Dr. Warner.
Which was another whole barrel of irritating crap.
“When you find this… ‘Alaria’ with another woman, that is,” Dr. Warner clarified. “How does that make you feel?”
“I don’t know,” I said crossly.
I’d always disliked therapists. I had to go see one when I was eight, after my parents got divorced and I started getting in fights at school.
I always felt like therapists were judging you. Looking at you like a bug under a microscope or something.
“Well, are you angry?” Dr. Warner prodded.
“Yeah, of course.”
“Why ‘of course’?”
“She shouldn’t be doing that behind my back.”
“It doesn’t sound like she’s doing it behind your back at all.”
I gritted my teeth. “You know what I mean.”
“No, I don’t, actually. You agreed to this arrangement, did you not?”
“…yes, but…”
“But what?”
“People in love aren’t supposed to sleep with other people!” I snapped.
Then I winced.
Shit.
I shouldn’t have said that.
Now here comes the Freudian bullshit.
Dr. Warner’s eyebrows shot up. “So you’re in love with this woman?”
I sighed. “…yes.”
“Fascinating,” she said, and wrote down something on her notepad – ju
st like you would if you were describing a bug under a microscope. “You do realize she’s a computer program, don’t you?”
“Yes, but – ”
“She’s not real, Ian.”
“I know that, but – ”
“We’re almost out of time for today, but I want you to tell your supervisor to put you in touch with the programmer responsible for creating this ‘Alaria.’ I want him to show you the actual code that makes her up. I want you to see that she’s nothing but a computer file made of zeroes and ones.”
“How’s that going to help?”
“OtherWorld is an elaborate fantasy, and the brain can’t tell the difference between it and reality. However, if you are armed with the undeniable knowledge that what you’re seeing is not real, then I think it will lessen your emotional attachment to things inside the game.”
“Like when Neo sees the Matrix,” I murmured.
“More or less. We should probably go into your issues with communication and relationships at some point, but the priority as I understand it is to get you back to work. And I think your issues will clear up immediately once you see with your own eyes that Alaria is not real.”
9
“Of COURSE she’s real.”
I stood there and stared at the computer programmer. His name was Desmond, though he looked a lot like Gilfoyle from Silicon Valley.
Long greasy hair? Check.
Scruffy beard? Check.
Plaid flannel shirt over a Led Zeppelin shirt? Check.
Permanent scowl? Check.
Isolated from the rest of humanity by walls of CPUs, like a troll in a plastic castle? Check.
The only thing different was his glasses, which were round, John Lennon-style spectacles. But otherwise, Desmond looked like a carbon copy of the HBO show’s snarky, deadpan a-hole.
“What do you mean, ‘she’s real’?” I asked in disbelief.
Gilfoyle – sorry, Desmond – rolled his eyes. “This stupid shrink of yours wouldn’t know the first thing about AI if it bit her in her ass. Look, you know the Turing test, right?”
“Yeah, what about it?”
The Turing test was developed by the pioneering computer scientist Alan Turing back in the 20th century. The idea was, once a computer could exhibit intelligent behavior indistinguishable from a human’s, then for all intents and purposes the computer could ‘think.’ It might not be self-aware – but as they said on the show Westworld, if you can’t tell the difference, what does it matter?
