Men Seeking Women Page 9

  “Well,” I said, “I was visiting one of your sites. And I—”

  The ads were distracting, because now a curvaceous brunette in a skimpy black leather vest over a sheer animal print, stretch mesh, black babydoll lace chemise opened a window and said, “I’m Eurydice, please meet me in the Carnal Delights Online Shopping Boutique and see me model my Underworld lingerie. Don’t look back on your way over or you won’t be seeing me, Eurydice, Inferno Media’s Private Pleasure Partner of the Year, modeling Inferno Media’s hot, hot, hot selection of Underworld lingerie.”

  “It’s okay to look at the ads,” Beatrice said. “That’s why we put them there. Cool pixel technology, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Nice ads.”

  “You were visiting one of our sites,” she said, kind of singsong teasing me, like she knew most Inferno Media sites were naughty, but sometimes people like to get naughty, and so what? “Were you trying to click on the Beatrice Portinari hot chat link?”

  How did she know that?

  “May I assume control of your front end?” she asked.

  “My what?”

  I was a little embarrassed telling a female tech-support person that I had been looking for hot chat with Beatrice Portinari. I’m married, and with the aggregated consumer data banks the Web retailers access these days, she probably knew that and a lot more about me. She probably had my profile open on her screen: what sites I visit, what magazines and books I read, what music I listen to.

  “Your machine, your desktop. It’s just like LapLink or PCAnywhere,” she said. “You just allow me to assume control of your operating system. I diagnose and inventory everything for you, then test any repairs by showing you a few more samples of our new line of Beatrice merchandise. Kind of a fun way to check your image quality. You and I can watch clips of Beatrice Portinari together, and I will adjust the flesh tone palettes until she looks just the way you like her. We can install add-ons or plug-ins together. Do you use an Inferno Media Gigapixel Beyond True Color webcam?”

  “No,” I said. “I don’t have one.”

  “That’s a shame,” she said. “You have a nice voice. If you had an Inferno Media Gigapixel Beyond True Color webcam I could see you.”

  A window opened in the upper right-hand corner of my screen, and there she was. The video was even better than the audio. She sounded like she was in a red velvet sound booth, because she was, sitting right there in some burgundy-colored sound chamber, her skin glowing in the light of her eighteen-inch flat-panel monitor. Her face came nowhere near the perfection of Beatrice Portinari, but she was plenty good-looking everywhere else, all dolled up in a silk kimono, sitting in a Hermann Moeller chair at a desk and keyboard tray, just like I was. She was mousing away, steering the webcam so that it angled down the neckline of the kimono where her shadow-dappled cleavage filled out a scarlet lace bra.

  “You can assume control of the webcam,” she said. “Try out some of the new giga-resolutions on these Beyond True Color reds.”

  A cartoon console appeared on my screen, with a kind of virtual toggle stick. I could tilt and swivel, zoom in and out. I angled back up until I had a headshot of her in the video window. She looked up from her typing and said, “Hi, Dante. I’m Beatrice with Inferno Media’s Online Technical-Support Forum, and I can help you.”

  Maybe it was in her job description to be warm and sincere, and if so she was the best in the business.

  “See me?” she asked. Then her face collapsed into a pout. “But I can’t see you, because you don’t have an Inferno Media Gigapixel webcam on your machine. We have a special on them right now. Let me show you how mine works,” she said. “Enlarge your video-player window and increase your pixel density.”

  I clicked on the control, and the window doubled in size. She came back into breathtaking focus, movie-quality stuff, but it was right there on my screen, and I could see those lean curves moving under her kimono. She put her hand on her mouse and made the camera zoom in on her mouth. Then she opened a vial of Inferno Media’s Nude Bloom Bavarian Gentian Lip Gloss and smeared some on for me.

  She mashed her lips together and showed me the spectacular digital video effects of the soft lights on her moist lips. “All Inferno Media lip products are designed to enhance online video effects,” she added. “Free shipping if you order it before we get off.” She slipped in a low laugh. “I mean, before you log off. If you were a good husband you’d buy some of this for your wife.”

  I knew she knew!

  “Well, that’s really why I came to the site,” I said. “I was looking for something to buy for her.”

  Beatrice looked down at her screen and tapped something on the keyboard.

  “It’s okay if we chat while I’m checking your system,” she said. “Most of the tests run automatically. Do you think your wife would like a sheer animal print, stretch mesh, black babydoll lace chemise, like the one you saw Eurydice wearing?”

  “Maybe,” I said. “Can I see it again?”

  She assumed control of the webcam and found her own face. She smiled into the camera and said, “I can send you over to the Carnal Delights Online Shopping Boutique where you can watch Eurydice model it, or I can model it for you right here.”

  “You mean, you can just . . .”

  She pulled back on the webcam to reveal a folding screen, backlit by candlelight, and a rack of flimsy lingerie.

  “I’ll be right back,” she said, and ducked behind the screen.

  The banner ads started churning, and I heard a damned soul scream far off somewhere down in the lower circles.

  “!!!Click Here If You Want Violence Before Sex!!!

  “According to our online surveys, many of our users report heightened sexual experiences following exposure to simulated online violence. !!!Click Here!!!—if you want to see a 3-D streaming video of Count Ugolino gnawing the scalp of Archbishop Ruggieri in the Ninth Circle of Hell, while the violent and the bestial scald their skins in a river of boiling blood. Customized stock ticker included.”

  I watched Beatrice’s silhouette stooping and slipping into the chemise behind the screen, then she said, “Here I come!”

  “!!!Visit HarmLessLust.com!!!”

  She did a turn for me and shimmied around underneath all those animal print mesh holes. Then she sauntered up close to the camera and sat down again at her keyboard.

  “If you had an Inferno Media AromaMaster Olfactory add-in you could smell my Bavarian Gentian perfume.”

  “I could smell you?”

  “You like?” she asked, smiling right at me. She ran the webcam over the chemise for me, slithering herself against the texture of it. “Made with the latest nanotechnology fabrics. It’s fitted with over two million teledildonically controlled microscopic tongues, which you could operate for me and stimulate every nerve in my skin using TotalTouch technology.”

  More banner ads:

  “!!!Members Only! Click Here If You Want More Violence Before Sex!!!”

  “!!!Warning! You Must Be 19 Years Old to Enter the Ninth Circle of Hell!!!”

  “!!!Click Here!!! if want to see Bertrand de Born, Sower of Discord Between Kinsmen, holding his own decapitated head by the hair and swinging it like a lantern!!!”

  “!!!HotHotHot Chat! Right Here on Concupiscence.com!!!”

  “I’ll take the chemise,” I said, and I clicked on the one-click order button because it kept drifting over and blocking my view of the shadow between her legs where the chemise ended and the world began.

  “I fixed your video drivers,” she said. “You want me to test them for you?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  I had the video-player window wide open on my desktop, and she moved the webcam from her lips down her throat to where her chest was draped in black lace. She slipped off her right shoulder strap, and let the fabric fall away. She cupped her breast in her hand, and showed it to me.

  “You like girls named Beatrice, and you like large nipples, right? Do you
have an Inferno Media RoboSuck unit I can operate remotely for you?”

  “A what?”

  She giggled. “You are such a babe in the dark wood of error.” The muzzy singsong came back into her voice. “You want me to tell you about the birds and the bees? Guys use a Millennium 2000 Customized Velvet Silicon RoboSuck unit and girls use one of these.”

  She pulled the webcam back for me and put a flesh-colored leather saddle on the seat of her chair, with an anatomically correct vibrator mounted on it that she said came with interchangeable heads, and a separately controlled silicone tickler at the base.

  “An Inferno Media RoboThrust Satin Pleasure Saddle.”

  She straddled it and settled herself onto it, her sighs resounding in Surround Palpable 3-D inside my headphones. Every breath she took sounded different and more interesting than the one before it, and all I could do was listen.

  “The best thing about our webcam special,” she said, “is that if you order it from me, then I’m the one who helps you set it up and shows you how to use it. And right now we’re offering free FedEx Next Day Delivery on all webcams if you order a RoboSuck unit or a RoboThrust Satin Pleasure Saddle for you or your partner.”

  She moaned softly and got comfortable on the saddle. Then she pouted in the camera and said, “I’m mad because I can’t see you, or touch you. I wish we could go peer-to-peer. My ports are open, uncorrupted, and reserved for you.”

  “I’ll take the webcam and the RoboSuck unit,” I said, and clicked on the one-click order button that kept drifting into the frame and obscuring my view of her breasts. “And you’ll help me set it up tomorrow night?”

  She licked her lips, tilted her pelvis into the saddle, and said, “If I can wait that long.”

  A stylish console opened under the video-player that said, “Remote RoboThrust Satin Pleasure Saddle Dual Action Controls,” and underneath were twin panels: one called “Organ Controls” (circumference, length, circumcised, uncircumcised) and the other called “Tickler Controls” (sliding scales in each column for slow-fast, soft-hard).

  “Tickler frequency,” she said, closing her eyes and thrusting herself against the saddle.

  I clicked and dragged the sliding slow-fast control in the Tickler column.

  “Now harder,” she said, as she started moving herself rhythmically against it.

  I slid the soft-hard control from 50 to 65.

  “Yes,” she said. “Like that.”

  Meatspace

  Then I heard the baby crying.

  Hell! I’d been hearing it for a while, but I thought it was just another bereft soul on hold, or the violent and the bestial scalding their skins in moats of boiling blood, but it wasn’t. It was Maddy, my five-month-old daughter, and if she’d been crying for long it meant my wife, Michelle, was probably up too. I minimized all open windows, and listened for anybody moving around upstairs. Then I took the front stairs two at time without making a sound.

  Michelle was asleep, the TV on with no sound. 1:34 A.M. on the digital. And Maddy had stopped crying. She cooed a few times, and I stood outside her door until I heard the rhythmic baby breaths reform themselves to the patterns of sleep.

  I peeked in on Michelle again. Still out. Then I charged back downstairs and maximized the Inferno Media site window. Beatrice was gone. I was back at Inferno Media’s homepage, where I saw the same button under the Beatrice Portinari video that said, “!!!Click Here for Real-Time Hot Chat with Beatrice!!!”

  The only other difference on my screen was an Inferno Media Invoice and Virtual Receipt:

  !!!THANK YOU FOR VISITING INFERNO MEDIA!!!

  1 Millennium 2000 Customized Velvet Silicon RoboSuck unit $79.99

  1 Inferno Media Gigapixel Webcam $299.00

  1 sheer animal print, stretch mesh, black babydoll lace chemise (size = wife 1) $49.00

  1 Inferno Media Nude Bloom Bavarian Gentian Lip Gloss $19.99

  1.5 oz Inferno Media Bavarian Gentian Perfume $34.99

  1 Inferno Media AromaMaster Olfactory Add-In $59.99

  Hey! I never ordered the lip gloss! I never clicked the one-click button on the lip gloss! Nor on the AromaMaster or the perfume either!

  But that wasn’t the worst. $2.95 per minute for Personal Online Technical Support totaling twenty-nine minutes for $85.55! Add tax and shipping! The harlot vixen! FedEx First Overnight to the tune of $62.75 for 17.5 pounds of Inferno Media merchandise. The chat-room strumpet! For a grand total of $691.26 and 8 percent sales tax of $50.29 equals $741.55!

  I tasted bile and my throat burned with rage. I clicked on Beatrice’s !!!HOT CHAT!!! button again, and up jumped the login box asking for my username and password. I have two Inferno Media accounts in two different user profiles on my machine and I couldn’t remember which one I’d used. I went with dante86 instead of dante69, and whoosh, the webcam window opened, and I was back in the burgundy sound booth with—was it Beatrice?

  Beatrice 2

  Instead of Beatrice, a virtual mannequin occupied her chair. Her torso, breasts, limbs, legs, hair, and face were tagged with schematics and file names: 36DD-breastanimated.gif or longlegs.jpg. She looked like a working model of Ananova, the virtual newscaster, or Lara Croft of Tomb Raider fame.

  “Welcome to Inferno Media Technical Support,” she said. “My name is Beatrice, and I can help you.”

  There was the same stunning audio, but the voice was different. It wasn’t the voice of my first Beatrice.

  “I just placed an online order with another Beatrice,” I said, “and I need to talk to her right away.”

  “Please wait,” she said, “while I search your user profile and history for a prior Inferno Media Pleasure Partner or Agent.”

  Her voice was almost as interesting as the voice of the other Beatrice, but I had a score to settle with Beatrice 1. Lip gloss! Perfume! And shipping!

  “I’m sorry,” Beatrice said, “you must have either logged in before under a different username, or you have never been assigned to an Inferno Media Pleasure Partner or Agent. I can assign you to a new Inferno Media Pleasure Partner now, or you may log out and reenter with a different username. Which would you like?”

  I almost told her to log me out, so I could find the other Beatrice and demand my money back. Then I wondered, why not see what another Beatrice looked like first?

  “Go ahead and reassign me, and I’ll see if it’s her,” I said.

  “Okay,” she said. “I’ll examine your live-update profiles for suggested features and preferred characteristics.”

  The figure filled itself in before my eyes in stunning Beyond True Color detail. Maybe the other Beatrice had indeed tuned up my machine, for in the webcam window was a moving, breathing image of Beatrice Portinari. It was her, every inch of her in all of her splendid carnality. It was no look-alike or actress, nobody else looked like her.

  “Welcome to Inferno Media Technical Support,” she said. “My name is Beatrice, and I can help you.”

  It was her voice, too, none other; it sounded just like the audio clips from the Sports Illustrated Maui shoot.

  “Hi, Dante. My name’s Beatrice. Do you use an Inferno Media Gigapixel Beyond True Color webcam?”

  “No,” I said. “I don’t have one. That’s—”

  “That’s a shame,” she said. “You have a nice voice. If you had an Inferno Media Gigapixel Beyond True Color webcam I could see you. We have a special on them right now. Let me show you how mine works.”

  CODE

  Bruce Sterling

  Even in death, Louis’s bulk had wedged him firmly into his work chair.

  Van felt swift, unthinking rage. How could Louis do this to him? Van had been working on a software patch all week, code that only Louis would appreciate.

  But Louis’s bearded face had gone slack, and his waxy hide was mottled and bluish. The little office—with its scrawled whiteboards, pinned wallboards, a host of colored Post-Its—held the reek of a large dead animal. Van had entered a room with a corpse.
/>
  Van leaned across the body and punched up www.google.com on Louis’s glowing screen.

  <>

  The search engine spat up results. An exhumation carried out in Argentina by a human rights commission. A treatise on Jewish funerals. Frantic paranoia about the Global Traffic in Human Organs.

  Van required immediate relevance. He surfed to www.AskJeeves.com.

  <>

  The response was broadband-swift.

  “Where can I buy furniture for my office?” Jeeves said, proffering an e-commerce button.

  Louis’s office door opened and Julie the receptionist stepped in with a clipboard. “Hey, Louis, I need you to . . .” She stopped, and looked at the two of them, Van standing and fitfully typing, Louis fatally slumped. “What’s wrong?”

  “Louis is dead.”

  Julie raised her brows behind her rimless glasses. “No! Really?”

  “Yeah. Really.”

  “So what are you doing?”

  “I’m asking Jeeves.”

  “Oh. Okay.” Julie stepped closer, quietly shutting the door. Although Van saw Julie the receptionist without fail every working day, he did not know her last name. Julie seemed to have a ready smile for him, for pretty much every male geek infesting the building, really, but Van had merely managed a polite nod, the occasional howdy hey y’all. Since Julie didn’t write code, there was no real reason for her to ever register in Van’s awareness.

  “Has Vintelix ever had a workplace fatality before?” Van asked her. “You should know that, right?”

  “Who, me?” said Julie, clutching the clipboard to her shallow, floppy-tied chest. She stared at the looming white cotton of Louis’s XXXL T-shirt. “I’ve never even seen a dead guy! I mean, not all close and intimate.”

  “Well, we’ve got to take steps to deal with this.”

  “Oh, sure,” she said gamely, “I mean yeah, okay, whatever.”