“No, of course not. I might have a physical response, but there’s much more I look for in a relationship than someone who chimes my bells,” I said, my eyebrows pulling a little frown of their own.
“As do I,” he answered, his hands on his hips now.
“Well, then, I guess we’re in agreement.” My eyes strayed to the bed as my brain decided to indulge in a little fantasizing about what it would be like to romp with him in it.
“If we were in agreement, you would be naked at this moment, and I would be resuscitating your other breast.”
Another shiver of excitement zipped through me at the image his words drew. I squelched it down, reminding myself that there was more at stake here than a fling with a handsome computer genius. “Look, Corbin, I appreciate the offer, and I’m sorry if I gave you the wrong idea about me, but I prefer some sort of emotional commitment before I jump into bed with someone. That said, I’d like to see you. In person, I mean. In real life. Maybe you could come over for dinner one night?”
His frown cleared as if by magic. “I would like that.”
I smiled, happy that I had taken charge of the situation and turned it around to one that was more reasonable. “Good. Now, if you’ll just tell me how to get out of this game, I will give my calendar a look-see, and we can pick a night.”
The look he gave me was an odd one. “Amy, all you have to do to log out of the game is to turn the glasses off. There’s a button near the hinge. Just press that, and the game will be saved, and you’ll be logged out.”
A horrible chill ran through me. “I don’t have the glasses anymore. There’s got to be another way out!”
He shook his head, holding his hand up to stop me. “No, I mean the real-life glasses, not ones you might be wearing in game.”
“That’s what I’m talking about!” I said, the chill growing.
“If you didn’t have the glasses, you wouldn’t be here,” he pointed out.
“Well, I am! Look, no glasses!” I ran my fingers around the eye region of my face. “Feel for yourself—there’s nothing there.”
“I wouldn’t be able to feel them,” he said, his eyes puzzled. “Reach up to your temple. You should feel the arm of the glasses, and follow it back to the hinge.”
“All I have here are temples,” I said, panic joining the chill as I felt the sides of my head. “Don’t tell me there’s no other way out?”
He frowned.Again. “This is impossible. You can’t be here without having the glasses on. Look, I’ll show you. I’ll log out and log back on, so you can see.
Now watch my hand. I follow the line of the arm to the hinge of the glasses…”
He put his hand to his head, an odd, confused expression flitting across his face. He tried the other side, the expression turning to one of deep concern.
“Oh, my God! You don’t have them, either, do you? We’re stuck here! Forever!
Aaaack!”
Chapter 8
The midnight hour is past,
And the chilly night-air is damp…
—Ibid, Act II
“Amy, you’re being irrational.”
“I’m being irrational?Iam? I’m not the one who failed to write a back door into the program. I’m not the one who wrote software so devious it traps innocent players in some sort of mental limbo. I’m not the one who created a world of murderous pirates so real that it was almost impossible to tell them from the real thing.”
Corbin glanced down to where I was holding his knife to his crotch. “No, but you are the one threatening to emasculate me if I don’t get you out. I’m doing my best, I assure you. And what do you meanalmostimpossible? Holder and I spent six months researching the history of piracy just so everything was accurate.”
“I don’t believe it,” I said straightening up from where I had been bent over Corbin in order to threaten him with the knife. “You trap us in a form of cyber-hell, and the only emotion you feel is to be insulted by the fact that I could tell reality from a virtual world?”
“If you didn’t know this was a VR game, you’d believe you were back in pirate days; it’s just that realistic,” Corbin argued.
“I’d also probably be insane.”
