Prologue
Jeffie Wyatt was not in the mood to go to work. He was one of the lucky ones — he actually liked his job. Usually, he was perfectly happy to find a comfy spot on the couch in his tiny apartment, settle in and unfocus his eyes. His implanted connection to the everywherenet allowed him online access anywhere, everywhere, without any additional hardware. He just thought about what he wanted to do and he saw the screen overlaid on his vision.
Jeffie’s implants weren’t unusual. He didn’t know anyone without the implants — you couldn’t get any job without them and he wasn’t sure how you’d even be able to find your way around. He’d only ever seen a paper map in a museum, and to be honest it was a reproduction of a map in a virtual museum. But it was still the closest he’d ever come to seeing one.
Jeffie went online and logged into M City, and felt his virtual body materializing outside the door to his unimaginatively-named shop, “Discount Personalized Sexbots.” Jeffie designed individually tailored bot avatars for virtual sex which were, frankly, cheap in all meanings of the word. But enough people liked them that he made enough money to be able to afford a private apartment, which meant that this was his full time job. This was unusual, and Jeffie was mostly quite thankful for his good fortune.
But this morning, he just didn’t have any excitement for the sexbot business. He didn’t want to deal with the clients, didn’t want to talk up the various options available on the models, didn’t want to code the product. He just wanted to sleep and try to forget.
He’d known for weeks that his relationship with Vonnie wasn’t going anywhere good, but he still wasn’t ready for the drama that happened the previous night. Two hours of screaming was a record even for him and he had terrible luck with breakups. His head still hurt in the morning and work didn’t feel like a great distraction. But when you’re self-employed the boss is a real ball breaker and there are no sick days, so Jeffie flopped on the couch and logged into M City.
What he saw when he rezzed into the virtual street where his shop was located was actually enough to make him forget about Vonnie completely. Too bad it was a million times worse than just a bad breakup.
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