“No offense,” he said, “but he’s kind of a dick.”
“Tell me about it.”
Five minutes later, Michelle bounced to the bar with her makeup freshened up and her hair back to normal, as if what I had caught her doing never happened. She slipped onto a stool next to me. “So, what’d you want to talk about? Business, you said?”
“I’ve been working on a virtual reality experience for sex workers, porn stars, and people in the industry,” I said, opening up my laptop bag and tugging out the small equipment to show her, if she requested it.
“A VR experience?” she hummed. “Sounds fun. So, basically, immersive VR porn.”
I half shrugged. “Kinda. You already have an established brand, and a partnership will benefit both of us. Your users receive a new experience, and you can find new and interested members of your company. And I can get this off the ground.”
“Stop being so formal with me,” she said. “Business is personal. Always.”
“Sorry,” I said, scratching the back of my head and opening the laptop.
Michelle followed my gaze to my screen, then to the small pieces of equipment in my hands. She called for Abdul to get her favorite drink and leaned forward. “How’s Athena feel about this?”
“She’s known what it is for a while,” I said. “She’s fine with it.”
Besides, it wasn’t like I was going out and fucking women, and neither was she. While I’d still worked in porn, I had hired a few developers to code the project, and I had tested it. It was really, really, really close to becoming fully immersive too.
Not just wearing a bulky headset.
“All right, well, I want to try it,” Michelle said. “Where’s the headset?”
I placed the small equipment in her hands.
“What’s this?” Michelle asked.
“VR,” I said. “You attach the dots to your temple.”
“Who created it?”
“I did.”
“I’ve never seen anything like this before,” she said, placing the dots on her temple. They stuck to her skin, and I loaded the experience on the computer. “Usually, it’s a huge headset or glasses. Nothing so … slim and sleek.”
“Close your eyes,” I said.
She sat back in the seat and closed her eyes for a handful of minutes, and then she tugged the dots off her temples and looked at me through wide eyes. “Charlie, this is the best VR that I’ve used.”
I offered a smile. “Thanks.”
“I’m serious,” she said, handing me the equipment. “Why are you just using this for porn? You could sell this hardware and software for ten billion dollars to any big company trying to break into the space.”
“It’s important to me that they allow not-safe-for-work content,” I said. “If I sell it to a big company, they’ll most likely ban it from any type of adult content. All these companies and banks have a problem with it.”
“Who created it?” she asked. “Did you hire someone?”
“Well, sorta,” I said. “I created the hardware and the connection to the brain.”
“You really created this yourself?” she asked.
“The hardware, yes. But I had the porn experience developed by software engineers.”
“Yeah, but you created the VR … I can’t even call this a headset. You created this?”
It was almost as if she didn’t believe it.
