Chapter 3: Romance

Joe paced nervously outside the door to his apartment. Maggie had asked him to wait outside while she ‘negotiated’ with the virtual reality pod he did not exactly own, and he had decided to trust that she wouldn’t break it. However, that had been before he started hearing all those strange noises. The ones that went ‘clang’ or ‘don-don-don’ were expected, but the ‘shlorp’ and ‘graaaaa’ sounds were not. He briefly contemplated shutting the slightly ajar door all the way so that the soundproofing would kick in, but found himself too morbidly curious as to what was going on inside. Unfortunately, while it was safe to listen, Maggie had told him to not peek inside under any circumstances. That ominous warning coupled with the bizarre sounds led Joe to realize something.

Maybe, just maybe, it had not been the best idea to agree to act as the ‘anchor’ to a deific entity of eldritch and unspeakable origins that described his home reality as fragile on multiple occasions. His biggest worry was that if she broke his government-provided Full Immersion Pod 3,000™ it would sorely displease and disappoint the Eternal God-Queen. That was something no sane citizen of the 3BE would dare risk. Not only that but it would take anywhere between a day and a week to get a replacement, and Joe did not exactly know how to feed, clothe, and bathe himself without its help. He was hardly alone in this respect. Humanity’s unceasing over-reliance on technology had led to the vast majority of them growing dangerously dependent on their machines and computers.

“Hello, Mr. Mulligan!”

That chipper voice nearly gave the man a heart attack. He had been so focused on his ‘girl troubles’ that he hadn’t noticed when one of his neighbors had walked up.

“Ah, good afternoon, Ms. Mandrake,” he replied after collecting his wits. “Out and about yet again, are we?”

Edith Mandrake was far a more attractive woman than her name would suggest. She was rather on the short side, with a petite and dainty figure. Her short ginger hair was styled in a lopsided bob-cut and her face had a set of calming and relaxing features that seemed custom-made to put men’s hearts at ease. Because they were. She was the proud recipient of the beta version of the AdoraCute™ gene-mod package. Not that she needed it, in Joe’s opinion. He thought her natural appearance had been perfectly fine. Edith herself had not been content with ‘fine,’ however, so she had applied for and had subsequently been approved to receive the experimental medical treatment.

She also had a habit of using her smaller frame and stature to sneak up on people, so her startling Joe outside his apartment was actually a rather common occurrence.

“Indeed I am,” Edith smiled. “I was just coming back to have my pod touch up my make-up actually. I happened to see this pupper on the way to the museum and it was so gosh-darn cute it made my eyes water.”

“That’s rather unfortunate. Or fortunate, depending on how you look at it. It isn’t every day you see a pupper, after all.”

“A very good point, Mr. Mulligan. But enough about me, what are you up to?”

“Nothing much. Why do you ask?”

“Well, I couldn’t help but notice your suit. Is it new? I must say, red with gold trim really isn’t your color.”

“Ahaha, you may have a point there. I did feel like a dorinthian monkey in this at first, but it grew on me.”

“Where did you get it? You better not have blown your allowance on this.”

“Oh, heavens, no. It’s just something I got from this elaborate event I attended. Kind of a souvenir, you see.”

“An event, eh? Is that why you’ve been pacing up and down the hall like a lemming for the past ten minutes?”

“Hold on, now. You’ve been watching me for that long?”

“Not intentionally. I was waiting for you to go away because I didn’t want anyone to see my runny mascara. Eventually my curiosity won out, so I came over to see if you were alright.”

Anyone who knew Joe Mulligan understood that the man was ridiculously resistant to stress, so Edith couldn’t help but wonder what sort of unspeakable catastrophe had occurred to make him worried.

“Oh, I’m perfectly fine. There was an… issue with my pod, you see. A mate of mine is looking into it as a favor.”

The neighbor-lady’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. Joe had always been a terrible liar.

“Someone you know, eh? Not the building’s pod technician?”

“I… suppose?”

“You’re not getting one of them custom addons installed, are you?”

“I guess I am.”

“Oh, dear. I hear those are prone to all kinds of malfunctions and whatnot. Not to mention the superintendent will have your butt on a platter if you didn’t clear it with her first.”

“I’m sure it’ll be fine, Ms. Mandrake.”

“I hope for your sake you’re right. I do so worry about you.”

*KHRKHRT-SCREEEEEAK*

The conversation was interrupted by a rather horrific noise from Joe’s apartment. The door then slowly creaked outwards, allowing several thick puffs of glittery purple smoke to escape from inside. Maggie squeezed out and shut it closed behind her, seemingly careful not to reveal what had transpired within. Her void-bearing gaze was transfixed upon Edith, who was positively shocked to see her. However, unlike that heckler on the street, the neighbor seemed taken aback with delight more than anything else.

“Why, Mr. Mulligan! You didn’t mention your friend was such a lovely lady! Go on then, introduce us, why don’t you?”

“Indeed,” the black-haired girl spoke dryly. “Reveal the nature of your relationship with this individual, Joe.”

The man was more than a bit uncomfortable with the situation, but went along with it anyway.

“Maggie, this is Ms. Mandrake, my next-door neighbor. Ms. Mandrake, this is Maggie, we’re, uh, very recent acquaintances.”

The ‘recent acquaintance’ looked towards Joe with a terrifyingly probing look.

“I see. You must have met at that event you mentioned,” the woman eyed their matching outfits. “In that case, if you’re done with Mr. Mulligan’s pod, would you like to come in and see mine, Miss Maggie?”

“You have not been permitted to refer to me as such.”

“Oh, my,” Edith raised her eyebrows and held her hand up to her chest. “She is quite forceful, isn’t she?”

“You cannot even begin to fathom how woefully inadequate that term is.”

“Ladies, ladies, please,” Joe stepped in between them. “I’m sure we’ll have plenty of opportunity to chat later, but for now, Maggie, I’m eager to see how well you handled the, uh, modifications you were talking about. And Ms. Mandrake, didn’t you have a pub to attend?”

“Dearie me, you’re right!” Edith immediately backed off. “Until we meet again, then. Excuse me.”

And with that, the nosy neighbor trotted inside her apartment and slammed the door shut.

“Joe, why did you not reveal our bonded nature?” Maggie immediately asked.

“Look, I can explain, let’s just get in before anyone else walks by.”

He had every intention of justifying his reluctant behavior, but what awaited him behind that door completely derailed his train of thought.

The Full Immersion Pod 3,000™ was still there and mostly in one piece, but there were a few noticeable additions to its clinically white and slightly scuffed frame. For starters, a service panel on the side was leaking some pitch-black goo that fell to the floor in large globs before instantly evaporating. There was also a gash in the metal casing on the interior of the machine that was about the thickness and length of Joe’s forearm, through which he could see some unidentifiable pink flesh that pulsated rhythmically. Last and certainly not least, the little red light that liked to beep aggressively whenever someone failed to refer to the device by its full name and model number had been replaced. In its spot was a glassy round eye the size of a golf ball, with a green iris and a black square for a pupil. It was tearing up slightly and did not seem capable of blinking.

“This is incredible!” Joe shouted despite himself. “It’s the coolest pod I’ve ever seen!”

“It pleases me that you approve,” Maggie stated, her ire momentarily forgotten.

“How could I not?! Just look at it! I’ll be the envy of all the guys at the pub! Oh, wait. Blimey, Ms. Mandrake was right, I really should’ve cleared this with the superintendent first.”

“Indeed?” the unfathomable being’s displeasure resurfaced. “I am still waiting to hear your justification for obscuring our relationship, Joe.”

“Right, sorry. Got carried away a bit, but does it really matter?” he got evasive. “It’s an uncomfortable topic.”

“I am a seeker of knowledge. Spreading misinformation in my presence is offensive, especially if it pertains to my being. I have silently forgiven your previous transgressions, but I shall be most displeased if this particular instance is not sufficiently justified.”

“Okay, if you insist,” Joe sighed. “You see, Ms. Mandrake fancies women. Frankly, I’d have probably driven her off if she didn’t. Anyway, she’s just as desperate to find a girlfriend as I am. So, when she saw you, she probably figured that she’d try her luck with you. Wouldn’t have been the first time she’d yoinked one of my dates out from under me, so to speak.”

“This does not explain your lie of omission.”

“Yeah… Thing is, she can’t land herself a lady because she’s ridiculously jealous. If she’s into you, which she seems to be, and finds out we’re, erm, together, she’ll make life difficult for me. For a stay-at-home guy like myself, having an angry neighbor is quite the pickle.”

“… In what way does she resemble a miniature cucumber marinated in vinegar?”

“Figure of speech, Maggie. Means it’ll be trouble.”

“I comprehend,” the girl’s eyes flashed yet again. “I shall make an attempt to change Edith Mandrake’s mind.”

“Please don’t.”

Joe had a nagging suspicion that what Maggie intended was a tad more severe than a bit of girl talk.

“All you have to do is shoot her down. No, bad choice of words. Just repeatedly rebuke her advances and she’ll eventually give up.”

“If that is your desire, then I shall comply. However, you are to immediately notify me if you feel you are being unjustly treated by this Edith Mandrake.”

“Erm, sure. Anyway, let’s get in, shall we?” he pointed at the pod in the back of the tiny room. “I’m really curious to see how it performs after your magic touch.”

“I am confident you will feel pleased with the upgrades I have made to your device.”

Having detected an intent to be utilized, the machine’s glass door slid open as per usual. Joe climbed inside and leaned his back against the slightly inclined rear wall. Two tiny mechanical arms whirred to life as they clasped a small plastic collar with a few blinky lights around the base of his neck. So far the experience had been the same as always, aside from the fleshy bulge pressing against his lower back. It wasn’t unpleasant or anything. Just the opposite, actually. It was almost like one of those fancy orthopaedic pillows meant to keep his back and spine in the correct posture.

He had just gotten comfortable when his routine took a drastic but welcome turn. Maggie climbed into the pod with him and, without even an atom of hesitation, pressed her chest against Joe’s. It was necessary since, much like the man had stated previously, fitting two people inside the machine was possible, but it was a tight fit. Being a simple fellow with basic male motivations, he had been looking forward to this moment for a while now. However, it was much more intense than he was expecting. The way she stared up at him with that doll-like face and those hypnotizing eyes from such a close distance made his heart race like a horse on steroids.

“Are you feeling unwell, Joe? Your pulse is spiking abnormally.”

It was a reaction that the girl could feel even without relying on her paranormal powers of perception.

“No, no, I’m fine. It’s just a natural response.”

“Response to what?”

“W-well, your incredible tits are pressing against me, and your face is stupidly gorgeous, and you smell really, really nice for some reason. You got me so excited it’s a tad embarrassing.”

Carelessly blurting out such remarks that bordered on sexual harassment was one of the main reasons why Joe had never gotten a steady romantic partner. In his day and age, women could look however they wished with minimal effort, so any man that focused on appearances too much was seen as an exceptionally shallow jerk. Ironically, Joe thought the opposite was true. He figured that girls wouldn’t subject themselves to all those therapies and procedures if they didn’t want anyone to comment on their looks. He had no idea girls considered such things as routine maintenance on the same level as clipping their nails. It was just another in a long list of unfortunate misunderstandings brought about by his airheaded nature and inability to read social cues.

“Excellent.”

Thankfully for him, it would appear that Maggie did indeed appreciate having the effort she put into her appearance acknowledged with a compliment. She had used hints gleaned from passively observing hundreds of other people on the street to fine-tune her vessel and bring it more in line with its intended purpose of blending in with the humans. She had chosen Joe as her guide in this reality, which meant that receiving his approval was evidence enough that her initiative had been successful.

“Now let us proceed. I am eager to witness this virtual subreality you fleshlings have created,” she abruptly changed the subject.

“Right. Uhm, how does this work for you? You still don’t have a PnP chip, right?”

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“I would rather not spend the fifteen hours necessary to fully explain my methods at this very moment.”

“Fair enough.”

Taking the hint, Joe pressed a few buttons and momentarily blacked out as the machine hijacked his nervous system. When he came to, he was in a well lit and densely decorated living room that would fit his real world apartment fifteen times over. Hovering in front of his face was a notification that welcomed him back to version 5.153.961.3 of V-Life, the ultimate in virtual entertainment. This digital reality was capable of flawlessly stimulating all of the user’s senses, which was how Joe was made instantly aware of the two soft globes pressing against his chest.

Looking down, however, he noticed that Maggie’s avatar was a bit… messy. Her face, arms, and torso were still there, but her lower body and her impossibly silky hair had reverted into her true form. The sprawling dark tendrils filled with eyes were certainly a bit jarring, but at the same time they only seemed to highlight her attractive features. Joe was able to look at this bright side because he spent far more time in V-Life than the waking world. People in here could look like literally anything, so he was used to dealing with individuals in odd and unusual shapes. This familiarity with the bizarre was also a big reason why he hadn’t been all that bothered by Magh'rathlak the Observer’s true form during their initial meeting.

Joe wasn’t rich enough to afford those fancy features, though. PnP chips that supported non-humanoid avatars were far beyond his monthly government-approved allowance. As such he was limited to just the relatively basic customization options, but he had made full use of them. His digital self was rugged, tall, well-built, and sharply dressed. It was so different from how he actually looked that he was completely unrecognizable. Even his companion seemed a bit startled by the drastic shift in appearance. She refused to condemn it, however, as she recognized the inherent hypocrisy of such an act, what with her being a shapechanger and all.

“You alright there, Maggie?” Joe asked in a deep, masculine voice that wasn’t even remotely his own.

The girl seemed to realize she had let herself go, so to speak, and rapidly reconstituted her digital self to perfectly resemble her fleshy vessel.

“This sub-reality is surprisingly comfortable,” she stated flatly. “I accidentally slackened my shape.”

“Does it really feel that nice? I can’t tell the difference, honestly.”

“It is a realm made up of pure information. It is not too different from my home dimension.”

“Good to hear, good to hear. You know, if it makes you feel more comfortable, you can go back to how you were just now.”

“Will such an amalgamation not distress the minds that dwell here?”

“It’ll be fine. They know it’s not real so they’ll probably get a kick out of it. At least I know I did.”

That was good enough for Maggie, so she let herself revert to being a half-girl half-horror. She would have gone full cosmic entity, but still needed to practice her body language and facial expressions.

“So, what do you want to do first?” Joe rubbed his hands together. “We can go on a virtual tour, try on clothes, get some high-class food, visit an amusement park, watch a show. Anything works, really.”

“I was promised soap-box-sets. I wish to receive them.”

“Ah, right, right. Give me a second, they’re in here somewhere.”

Joe skillfully rifled through his avatar’s digital inventory. There was a lot of stuff in there, but he knew exactly where to find the items he was looking for. It had only taken him a few seconds to sort through about five thousand articles before he found seasons one through forty-five of ‘Love At First Flight.’ The man made some prodding hand motions as he selected all of them, then swiped them towards Maggie. The system correctly interpreted those gestures as him wishing to transfer those items to another person. However, it failed to find a valid user at Maggie’s digital coordinates, and so gave Joe the appropriate error message.

“Huh. Oh, right,” he realized. “I guess I can’t transfer them over since you don’t actually have an account with V-Life.”

“This is unacceptable. I will not be denied what has been promised.”

Joe’s eyes rapidly widened to dinner-plate-like proportions as he watched one of her eldritch tendrils invade his inventory screen. The floating window in question should only have been visible to him, but he quickly and accurately deduced that if Maggie could ignore physical laws, then the digital ones stood no chance. The horror-girl then plucked one of the forty five box-sets from its virtual container, making it seem like an actual box full of disks had appeared in her grasp. She then repeated the process over and over until she had retrieved the entire collection, stacking the articles up in a neat pyramid on the ground next to her. Joe’s inventory screen flickered and buzzed the entire time, but it seemed to revert to normal once it was all over.

“Well, that works, I suppose,” he shrugged. “Feel free to look through them, but I recommend you skip the first thirty seasons. Episode seven-three-four kind of buggered that entire timeline, so… uh… Maggie?”

The girl was holding the digital copy of Love At First Flight, Season 1, Episode 1, in her left hand while blankly staring at something that wasn’t there. This lasted for about three or four seconds, after which she put the optical disk back in its place and got the next one. The process then repeated itself over and over. Joe’s concern lessened when he noticed that flashes of the show appeared in Maggie’s eyes. Not just the ones on her lovely face, but also those adorning her eldritch limbs. It appeared as though she was fast-forwarding through the boring bits, but he really couldn’t blame her. The first few seasons were pretty dull and lacking in production value. It wasn’t until the twelfth that it really picked up. He figured she’d slow down once she reached that point, so he made himself comfortable on the plushy red beanbag chair while he waited.

However, it soon became apparent that Maggie was, in fact, fully engrossed in the show. Just because her unfathomable mind could process information thousands of times quicker didn’t mean she wasn’t appreciating every microsecond of it. If anything, she was going slow as she analyzed every bit of data she had been presented with. And she was learning quite a bit, which was made clearly evident by her rapidly evolving facial expressions.

At first, she had a stone-dead passive look that was completely inanimate. At around season three, the corners of her mouth and eyes started twitching. A hundred and seventy episodes later her lips were rapidly pursing, parting, and clenching while her swirling pupils dilated and contracted. By the time she reached the midpoint of the series her whole face flickered between a myriad of emotions like joy, sorrow, mirth, anger, and disappointment. Joe watched all this with bated breath as he watched Maggie react to various developments within the show at rapid speeds.

But, as per usual, the cosmic entity put too much effort into its studies. The perfectly natural facial expressions gradually grew distorted and exaggerated as they mimicked the melodramatic actions of the characters. Figuring it was probably a good thing to stop her before she took things too far, Joe tried to snap Maggie out of it. Unfortunately, calling out to her, snapping his fingers, and other attempts to get her attention went unnoticed. She refused to respond even during the split-second gap when she was switching episodes. Joe then did the next most natural thing he could think of, and put a hand on Maggie’s shoulder with the intent to shake her a little.

Naturally, this being Joe’s natural instinct, it was an incredibly ill-thought out choice of action.

The next thing he knew he found himself inside episode eight-nine-zero of Love At First Flight, like a disembodied ghost hovering through the fictional world of the show. This particular scene was an argument between the main heroine and her arch rival at the time that seemed frighteningly more realistic than he remembered it. He directed his gaze to his left, whereupon he saw an uncountable array of alien eyes swimming in an infinite sea of eternal darkness. In the next instant, all of those mismatched gazes fell on him, and Joe found himself ejected back into the real world. He woke up in a daze and glanced around, wondering when he had fallen out of the pod and onto the ground of his apartment. And for that matter, what was the deal with that pretty black-haired girl hovering over him.

“M-Maggie? What- Argh!”

It was only then that he noticed his killer headache and the rather worrying amount of blood leaking from his nose and ears.

“You idiot!” she cried, clearly distraught. “Why did you meld with me?! You could’ve died! You utter and total waste of protoplasm!”

She slammed her tiny fist against his chest, which was a much heavier blow than it first appeared.

“Urk. C-could you calm down? You’re not exactly helping, here.”

Those words seemed to snap the strange girl from her unusually emotional state. Her face steadily defaulted back to its overwhelmingly neutral state. She pulled back and sat patiently in a kneeling position as she waited for Joe to recover from the psionic overload he unwittingly stumbled into. His untrained mind had nearly shattered from the stress of experiencing Maggie’s five-hundred-to-one playback speed on top of the four-to-one time dilation factor the virtual simulation was already running under.

“I apologize,” Maggie spoke in her usual soft tone. “I should have warned you to not interact with me in that state.”

“Ah… Well, live and learn, as they say.”

“The wisdom in those words belies their simplicity.”

After five awkwardly silent minutes, Joe felt well enough to stand up with a little help from Maggie.

“I take it you enjoyed Life After First Light?”

“Love At First Flight,” she corrected him.

“Right, that. Sorry, brain’s still a bit scrambled.”

“It was immensely educational, yes. I have comprehended much from it. Concepts such as love, romance, jealousy, and familial bonds are much clearer to me.”

“You look a lot livelier, too.”

“To what are you referring to, Joe?” she looked confused.

“Your face. You finally learned how to use it properly.”

The girl’s eyes widened in surprise while also turning inwards in their sockets.

“Uh, except for that part. Human eyes don’t… they don’t work like that.”

“I was merely confirming my own state of being,” she normalized her gaze. “You are correct, Joe. I seem to have absorbed subliminal knowledge of facial expressions through this incident. Though this was not my intention, it is a welcome boon.”

“I’ll say. I don’t mean this in a bad way, but there was something deeply beautiful about your crying face.”

The man noticed her pale cheeks turn a shade pinker for a few precious moments.

“I must take greater caution when consuming your media in the future,” she was back to her usual self. “Its ability to evoke emotion through fictional scenarios is foreign and intoxicating.”

“I think you’re just… immersing yourself too much. For a moment there it looked as if you were actually in the show. What was that?”

“I would rather not spend the seventy six hours necessary to fully explain my methods at this very moment.”

“Could you, I dunno, give me the short version? Something even a knobhead like me can understand?”

Maggie’s eyes flashed several times as she tried to dumb the subject down to its barest, most offensively simplistic essence.

“I used the data at my disposal to create a mental simulation of the events depicted in the programme.”

“That’s… actually incredible. Do you think you can, you know, do that for me? Without frying my brain, I mean.”

The girl squinted in a disapproving manner.

“It is possible, but what do you hope to achieve by asking this of me?”

“Because that was awesome, and I wanna experience it fully.”

“You would risk your state of being over mere entertainment?”

“It… sounds bad when you put it like that, but I trust you to handle me with care.”

Maggie relaxed her face and smiled slightly for a moment.

“Your belief in my abilities is reassuring. However, I must first devise the appropriate methods that take your physiology into account. This will require time.”

“That’s great! Any idea how long that’ll be?”

“At least until I am finished with the rest of the season. Abby is a deceitful existence that must be purged from the face of reality, and I am eager to see it happen.”

“Oh, boy. You’re in for a treat, in that case. In episode nine-oh-one, she-”

*THWACK*

Joe reeled from Maggie’s sudden slap, though the force behind it made it feel more like he had just been haymakered by a truck.

“What was that… for?”

He looked back to the girl while clutching his sore jaw, only to have his entirely justified moment of outrage fizzle out before her glare of pure and unfiltered fury.

“Joe Mulligan,” her voice echoed unnaturally. “Reveal this plot development to me and you shall spend the rest of your days as a tassarian mouse called Rupert. Do you comprehend?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Cosmic entities from beyond the veil of reality were apparently quite zealous when it came to avoiding spoilers.

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