The announcer turns toward two nondescript men sitting on right and left sides of the stage. Both are already wearing glasses that are connected via A/V wires to a hard drive that's connected to the projector screen. They both give thumbs up.
"Even the glasses look nearly identical," Brittney whines to herself.
She's right. The Illicit Escape looks like a slimmed down and futuristic version of single rimmed glasses. The Wicked Wear is a bit bulkier but has enough similarities that it's hard not to wonder what the fuck is going on.
"If all sides are ready, let's get this show on the road, and let's focus our attention to the projectors, to see what they see!" I hear the announcer say and the lights on the stage go dim. The projector screen goes black too.
Then both the right and left hand sides of the screen start flickering.
I turn to Brittney and hold her closer with one hand as I grab my phone on the coffee table with another.
This is the moment of fucking truth.
I unlock my phone and press the call button and hold it to my ear.
"Ready," a male voice answers me.
"Go," I respond back to the voice.
"Acknowledged," the man says back and I hang up.
Brittney turns to look at me.
"What was that?" she asks me.
I smile. "That was the number that Cheryl gave me to call when we want to activate the Trojan Horse built into the software," I tell her.
Brittney raises her eyes.
"What does it do?" she asks me suspiciously.
I shrug and don't answer. Instead I gesture to the television.
The opening credits have passed and both viewers are experiencing a virtual reality environment.
The screen shows that both of them are in a bedroom. They're free to look in any direction they want and the direction both people look is independent so on one hand of the screen you see the user looking all around the room while the other user is looking out the window.
Eventually, both users look toward the woman on the bed.
It's Brittney. She gasps, seeing herself on such a huge projector screen. On the video, she's wearing a lace white thong and a matching lace white bra.
"Hey baby," she says, getting on all fours on both split screens and crawling to the edge of the bed. "Is your father home?"
Both users shake their head no and it translates itself on the screen. The computer understands this gesture and Brittney smiles.
"Good," she says on the screen with a wicked smile. "I don't think he'd like the fact that his fiancée is dressed like this in front of his son, would he?"
Again both users shake their head.
"Why don't you come over here?" Brittney asks.
Both users use their eyes to signify they want to walk closer to the bed.
"That's a good boy," Brittney says as her hands brush over where a real person's cock would be if they were in the bedroom. "Looks like you're already excited, aren't you, you naughty boy."
The crowd begins to cheer and chant, clearly enjoying the show.
"Maybe we should do something about this," Brittney says to the users. "I mean, in a few months it'll be hard to do it when I marry your father. Now's the time, right?"
Both users enthusiastically nod.
The sound of zippers being unzipped occurs on both sides of the screen.
And it should be coming right about now.
There's a sudden flickering on the right side of the screen.
There it is.
So while the left side of the screen-the Illicit Escape side-continues to play and show Brittney slowly taking off her bra and squeezing her tits together, the right side of the screen starts to give the user a very different experience.
"Are you getting ready to jerk off?" Brittney asks, her face turning into a scowl. The Wicked Wear user is visibly startled and the picture shakes on the screen.
On the left hand side, Brittney leans forward and the user starts having his ocular nerves stimulated in such a way that his brain feels that Brittney has placed her hands on his cock. He starts to relax and squirm on his seat on stage.
On the right hand side, Brittney pulls back, and puts on a sweater.
On the left hand side, the user and screen show Brittney begin to bring her head toward the user's crotch. "I love how big your cock is," she purrs on camera. "So much bigger than your father's," she says as she begins to lick it. The user is clearly hard and the Today USA camera crew zooms in the massive erection tenting the man's trousers as he sits on stage.
On the right hand side, Brittney takes her phone and points it at the user and takes a picture. "I'm going to send this over to the National Database and register you as a fucking sex offender, you pervert!" she says on camera. "Don't you know how bad pornography is for you?"
And that's where on the right hand side of the screen, Brittney's on-camera avatar starts altering. Her face morphs into that of a rat, with whiskers. Her skin starts to become scaly and green. Her eyes become slits. Roaches start coming out of her mouth.
In the audience people are visibly upset and shaking at what they're seeing on one half of the giant 40-foot projection screen. People are visibly turning white.
On the other half, Brittney proceeds to start sucking and the user's body spasms as he finds himself not caring about the crowd and starts stroking his cock through his pants on national television.
On the right hand side, Wicked Wear is starting to scare it's users as Brittney starts speaking with the voice of a demon, "Porn is bad," she/he hisses. "I'm going to bite and eat your dick!"
Apparently this is even too much for the user who rips off his glasses and throws them on stage and stomps on them!
That picture-the user stomping on a Wicked Wear set of glasses is priceless. The split screen is frozen with a picture of a demon-rat-faced-snake-bodied Brittney looking out at the audience and the words ‘System Failure' flashing on screen.
"Well!" the announcer adds, clearly stunned at what happened. "I think we know who the real winner in this matchup is. And which company to never, ever buy adult entertainment from again!"
A technician manages to unplug the 40-foot screen from both devices as they go dark. The Illicit Escape user is still rocking back and forth and spasming when they reach over to take the glasses off. At first, he's upset but the announcer comes up to him.
"How would you rate it?" he asks.
The user is breathing heavily as the cameras zoom in. He's at a loss for words. All I hear is him say, "So real … "
That's when the cheers erupt from the audience at the ringing endorsement.
Brittney turns toward me.
"What's going on?" she asks me, her eyes narrowing. "How did … what just … what's going on?"
I love it.
"That," I say to the screen and pause. "Is what happens when people try to fucking play Ethan Kane."
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Brittney
"That," Ethan says, pointing to the screen and looking at me. "Is what happens when people try to fucking play Ethan Kane."
Oh my God.
What is he talking about?
But Ethan doesn't say anything else. He reaches over to the tablet on the coffee table and pushes some buttons and turns it toward me.
I get up, my knees on the couch supporting me.
I squint. It's closed circuit television and it takes me a minute to realize …
Oh. My. God.
It's Ethan's office.
And that's me. At his computer.
"Walter, his terminal looks similar to what we went through, but I'm going to need you to walk me through it," I hear myself saying on the video.
I don't know about you, hun, but I'm starting to get really worried every time I see myself on a screen. First it was whatever went on in Times Square. Taking a glance at the television, which is on mute right now; the crowds are chanting and celebrating and cheering and lining up to buy Illicit Escapes. Wicked Wear is most likely out of this market for a very, very long time.
It's almost as if this whole thing were …
"Planned?" Ethan asks me, and I snap out of my reverie.
"That's what you're thinking, isn't it?" he asks me with a smirk.
On his tablet, I look at myself furiously clicking at the keys and talking to Walter through my earpiece.
He knew!
He knew this whole time! And yet he kept me around. He knew I was betraying him as he made love to me. He knew my goal was to deceive him the entire time.
"Yeah, babe," Ethan says to me. "That day I left the prototype on the table … I thought you'd take it to Simon," he tells me.
"You played me?" I ask him, all my sorrow at deceiving him starting to melt away. "You've been fucking playing me the whole fucking time?!"
Yeah, I'm pissed. He's been lying to me the entire time. While I've been falling in love with him and feeling sorry for deceiving him!
My hand raises up and I know where it's going.
I'm going to slap that fucking smirk off his face right now.
And I would have too, if his hand hadn't raised up and caught mine. With the strength of ten men, he pulls me closer.