God of the Game

I sat silent with Sharon next to me after a heavy brunch of bacon and sunny-side-ups. Her shoulders settled innocently on mine and I felt the impulsive currents of desire flow. Sharon was listening to music over her Walkman Cell, head bobbing in rhythm to the beat pounding as electrical signals directly in her brain. Simultaneously, she shopped and yakked with friends in a virtual parlour of clothes, shoes and costume jewellery.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Oh, some ancient stuff I’m digging out from the archives,” she answered. “Pretty cool.”

“Let me hear?”

She switched to share mode via Bluetooth Light Speed, and I received the song she was listening. It was quite loud, so I adjusted the volume by mental command. The drums sounded electronically flat, and cheesy keyboard melodies were playing over it.

“Ahh…songs from the birthdays of techno and electronica.” I recognized, knowing that it probably came somewhere from the 1980s even before all information about that tune flooded my vision and was downloaded into me. “Didn’t know you dug antique.”

“Oh, I’m just experimenting,” she replied.

Sharon’s hip and hot. She’s also punk attitude meets Japanese schoolgirl anime. Like many bubbly teens Sharon’s into self-exploration with all the tools of technology and magic we have.

I met her in a world created by a friend. The world in which I speak of was developed in a back alley of low-town Syurga. Syurga is a giant planet-city, the capital of the Milky Way, centre of all trade. In the deepest regions of Syurga, where denizens abound in cutting-edge cultures and societies, lived Jai-I (pronounced Jai-Ee), a madcap scientist bent on creating new dimensions of surreal fantasies. This came as no surprise as his father is Jahr (Zhahr), the famed artist whose name rings throughout the galaxies.

The back alley I mentioned is behind Club Utopia, a head-banging ecstasy parade for cool cats, hot dogs, cold chicks and bad cocks. Jai-I spends much of his time there with his paramour animus, DJ Trekz; and while the superstar DJ is up on his podium driving crowds into rapture, Jai-I is in his own bliss creating new worlds from Trekz’z private room while waiting for the spinner to finish so he can fuck up his ass.

Back at the alley, amidst the graffiti strewn walls and rubbish dumped, in accord with the miasma of decaying pizza nestling fat maggots and diseased rats, touch the gangsta street art, and in coded password find yourself suddenly transported to ZOOL.A.ND.

The cool element about ZOOL.A.ND that Jai-I incorporated was his anarchic style of programming. This allowed anyone to just do what they want, how they want, when they want. Unlike the case with the more regimented metaverses by megalomaniac authoritarian creators uncool about their property, intellectual or otherwise, being abused and pirated by others.

Sharon in ZOOL.A.ND was not the same Sharon listening to 80’s music on her Walkman Cell. In this of Jai-I’s world she was ageless, like a goddess, eternally beautiful with waters from the fountain of youth. Her skin, especially of her face, though not smooth as porcelain, was refined with fire, hard as jade, seen a million events, terrible; wisdom growing from her gaze. Sexy biker chic, ice princess, leather dominatrix, aloof lady boss in a symmetrical pantsuit, innocent cupcake sensualist, butterfly fairy, alchemic queen and femme fatale; qualities of hers all rolled in one as if a layer cake or cinnamon bun. Her image morphed random from character to character, and at times it was all at once. Her hair, apple green, then fiery red, sapphire blue, etcetera, floating as if in water, then as if in flames, then stiff in rigor mortis. Eyes cold, the colour changing, lashes in various hues, mascara and makeup in shifting tones to set different moods, like in constant restlessness finding hard an identity. It seems she were many persons at once, a legion, for much was in her.

There was a sensitive side behind her rock façade when I got to know her, one of vulnerability, softness and affection. I remember the day we met; of course I didn’t see her delicate countenance at once, for all that was on parade was the power chick portrait she portrayed.

We met in a pseudo bar, a makeshift arena for an underground fight club. In this arcade, angels battled demons; there were monsters on steroids, gods and demigods, tricksters, killer robots and superhumans, the incubus and succubus, devils with horns and halo-saints. They went at each other, battling to kill to the song of a drunken crowd. Heads were torn, bodies strewn, blood splattered, the incense of intoxication and sweat filled the air. Money was won and lost; brawls ensued among the audience. There was more death, more blood, more gore…all to the delight of the spirit of violence and doom.

Sharon didn’t come to wrestle, she came to watch, to check out the scene like the generation of voyeurs raised by TV. Insufficient cocks and lazy cunts.

She caught my attention from a distance. I was checking the whores out when my antenna captured her scent. We communicated by pheromones, sending perfumed IMs (instant messages) across air particles. Flirting. She laughed out loud to my last comment, which smelled like sex, and I walked towards her, simultaneously checking my avatar in my AI self. I was fucking gorgeous.

ZOOL.A.ND allows customization of props and attire. There is a costume wardrobe that highlights upon entering through the back alley, in the menu bar, seen at the top left corner of my sight. One can be as he is in Syurga, but I decided to spice things up on my body before venturing in the adventure of this animalistic sham.

I adorned my skin with surreptitious tattoos, surfacing subtlety, encoded to the environs of ZOOL.A.ND to express its arts – koi, dragon, skull, beautiful rotten faces, flower or merely tribal patterns of many subcultures and civilizations. Depending on where I am, or whom I’m interacting with, different shapes appear as conversational pieces. So if it’s a potential business associate who likes the koi fish I am to meet, the design will alter to his preference, while sending signals to his brain to hypnotize him to my favour. Of course this does not always work as he may have conjured some other magic to counteract that may even spellbind me. Therefore, when I laid my lust on a red she-devil who adores dragons, which my body art took form to impress to bed and bag, I ended up masturbating in front of her galfiends amidst their demonic laughter. When I realized my stupor, and that I had been thwarted by an imposing charm, I had already ejaculated, and my hand was slimy, while the banshee-screams hit an orgasmic soprano note.

Besides my misfiring tattoos, I designed my avatar as part machine, a cyborg with half silvery metal and half inked flesh. I was cool, my designer choice of clothing enough to cover and show the masculinity of my frame and the lean mechanics of the AI exoskeleton.

“I’m Sha-Rronne,” she said, switching from pheromone IM to audio as we moved within human earshot. Not that we could not have communicated by audio from a distance, it was just more tantalizing and teasingly playful this way, conversing via odours. I could faintly smell her past, zephyr of a blue-ocean lake.

Sha-Rronne was her original name before she shortened to Sharon when she moved back to Earth with me. I was attracted at that instant. Not just in my hydraulic enhanced cock, but in the deep matrix of my labyrinth heart. I saw her soft soul immediately, her contradicting thousands, confusion and loss complementing an arsenal of power and poise. It was as if Sha-Rronne walked in a thousand worlds with a thousand personalities, and yet, all is as one in ZOOL.A.ND, housed in Jai-I’s mainframe in the psychedelic shag-a-shack that is DJ Trekz’z powder room.