AFK, in Pursuit of Avengement

By Huckleberry Hax

The door opened, quickly. He was actually quite an attractive man. He was slim and muscular, he had a square jaw and delicate fingers. He was wearing a nearly open dressing gown. "Hello, Mica," I said. "My name is Thursday." I pushed the Taser into his abdomen and sent him jerking to the ground.

THE VIRTUAL WORLD IS CHANGING.

And Definitely Thursday is struggling to keep up. Once upon a time she tracked down metaverse cheats; now her job is to find the online criminals who would use the virtual world to con, rape and murder.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Huckleberry Hax
• Release date: Aug 26, 2015
• ISBN: 9781310675485

Huckleberry Hax

Huckleberry Hax writes novels set in and around virtual worlds. His best-known titles are the books of the AFK series set in Second Life®.A resident of Second Life since 2007, Huck also writes regularly on his blog about the metaverse and was a columnist for the acclaimed AVENUE magazine for over two years. His book, Second Life is a place we visit, collects together 42 of these articles.Huck is also an experienced voice performer in SL and has read aloud from his and other titles at a wide range of venues, including Milkwood, The Blue Angel, Bookstacks, Cookie, Nordan Art and Basilique.Huck's other interests include poetry (he has published a volume of his own poems called Old friend, learn to look behind you in the coffee queue and co-edited issue one of the poetry journal, 'Blue Angel Landing'), photography and machinima.

Book preview

AFK, IN PURSUIT OF AVENGEMENT

By Huckleberry Hax

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2015 by Huckleberry Hax

Huckleberry Hax is hereby identified as author of this work in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

Cover photography: Huckleberry Hax

Cover model and typography: Canary Beck

The terms 'Second Life,' and 'Linden' are copyright © Linden Research Inc.

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

For Stosh.

Chapter 1

The 3G signal was poor at street level, obstructed by four rows of concrete apartment blocks. I was connected to reflections. I’d reduced my draw distance down to 32 metres, but even so the streamed scene on my tablet periodically froze or dropped to a frame rate so low it might as well have been frozen. A man approached my car and I flipped quickly to Facebook, where a parade of cat images and mindless quotations about living life to the full begged for Likes and Shares. I Liked a picture of beagle in a bow tie. I elected to be part of the 99% of people who would not share a picture of a deceased war veteran. The man passed and I swiped my view back to Second Life and the inside view of Mica Borsec’s skybox.

Mica was arranging pink and blue pose balls above his bed. A stream of blood orange particles connected them to his outstretched hand as though he was commanding their presence from thin air. The skybox was a showcase of sculpted prim furniture from four years ago: a couch, a television, a kitchen with low lighting, a hot tub, a balcony, a view of New York at midnight. I could have been in a shop from those days when you actually had shops in SL. It was sterile. It was cold. It lacked meaningful clutter.

What Mica didn’t know was that I was just two blocks away from him in real life. If he’d looked out of his window he might just have been able to see me, sitting in the passenger seat (because that suggested there was probably a man nearby), my face lit by the glow of a virtual world in which his avatar was standing right next to mine.

Mica thought his luck was in tonight. In the next five minutes he’d be revising that opinion very extensively.

Pose balls arranged, he turned to face me. In a drag-and-drop instant, his clothes were gone. No piece at a time; no emoted, urgent strip: one minute his leather pants and boots and black tank top were there, the next they had vanished. He invited me into a hug and I accepted.

Mica Borsec: baby you smell so good

The words sneaked onto the bottom of my screen, little white pawns advancing things along a single, solitary, soulless square. But then, Mica Borsec’s intended checkmate had nothing to do with romantic strategy.

Sarah Sonnet buries her face against your huge chest, marvelling that you manage to stay upright at such proportions.

Mica Borsec: hmm?

Sarah Sonnet: I mean, mmmm so nice.

Mica Borsec: yes baby

Mica Borsec: take your clothes off for me

Mica Borsec: not just in SL

Mica Borsec: take them off in RL too

Sarah Sonnet: Ok baby. I will.

I contemplated another lengthy and privately sarcastic emote, but such compositions were tricky on the tablet keyboard and only satisfied my own vague pretensions to the art of my performance (though now that I was achieving an acclaim of sorts, I did occasionally fantasise about someone one day creating an unofficial biography about my exploits and drawing on my targets’ IM logs with me as source material, highlighting therein all my knowing winks at my future audience). Instead, I rolled down the window a few inches and lit a cigarette. Five minutes; possibly ten.

Sarah Sonnet: I took them off.

Mica Borsec: you are naked in real life?

Sarah Sonnet: Yes baby.

Mica Borsec: mmmm

Mica Borsec: I like that

Sarah Sonnet giggles.

Mica Borsec: baby…

Mica Borsec: I want to see you…

Mica Borsec: take a picture for me plz

Sarah Sonnet: In real life?

Mica Borsec: plz baby yes

Mica Borsec: just for me

Mica Borsec: email to me

Sarah Sonnet: I am shy.

Mica Borsec: don’t be shy baby

Mica Borsec: do it for me

Sarah Sonnet: Will you take one too? Just for me?

Mica Borsec: I will baby but I can’t now

Mica Borsec: my phone is broken

Mica Borsec: I buy a new one tomorrow

Mica Borsec: then I will take a picture for you

Mica Borsec: show you everything

Sarah Sonnet: But, baby, don’t you have a camera on your laptop?

Mica Borsec: no laptop, baby

Mica Borsec: I use desktop

Mica Borsec: no webcam

Sarah Sonnet: You asked me before if I used Skype.

Mica Borsec: you want to skype?

Mica Borsec: that would be nice

Sarah Sonnet: But I wouldn’t see you if we Skyped?

Mica Borsec: no baby I don’t have webcam

Mica Borsec: but I would like to see you

Mica Borsec: see your face

Mica Borsec: see you naked and beautiful

Sarah Sonnet: But I am shy.

Mica Borsec: don’t be shy baby

Mica Borsec: this is just for me

Mica Borsec: you want me to see you I think

Mica Borsec: do it baby

Mica Borsec: let me see you

Sarah Sonnet: Ok, baby.

Sarah Sonnet: Give me a minute to set up?

Mica Borsec: of course baby

I threw what was left of the cigarette out of the window and rolled it back up. I got out of the car. I switched off the tablet screen and tucked it under my arm. I walked the two blocks to Mica’s apartment, my three inch heels puncturing the night’s silence at a frequency of exactly two hertz. I like my art.

I wondered if he’d hear me on the concrete steps as I ascended to the third floor. I hoped he would. I stopped outside his door, waited until ten seconds had passed and then rapped loudly five times on it.

I heard silence, then the sound of a chair being pushed back. A shadow fell across the peep hole.

The door opened, quickly. He was actually quite an attractive man. He was slim and muscular, he had a square jaw and delicate fingers. He was wearing a nearly open dressing gown.

Hello, Mica, I said. My name is Thursday. I pushed the Taser into his abdomen and sent him jerking to the ground.

Whilst he was out, I handcuffed him to the radiator pipe in the room with his laptop, on which his avatar still stood with mine, awaiting a real life feed to devour (the desktop he’d insisted on having was, of course, absent). His screen capture software was loaded and ready; there was a ten second test clip already recorded in the top-left panel. I turned off the laptop, flipped it over, took a screwdriver out of my coat pocket and started undoing the case.

A thin voice from behind me asked, What are you doing? Mica shook his head slowly and eased himself into a sitting position.

Removing your hard disk, I replied. I don’t have the time right now to wipe it properly.

To wipe it?

Yes, Mica. To erase the collection of real life pictures and videos you’ve conned and extorted out of your victims.

Victims? he repeated.

Slowly, I span round in the chair to face him. Do you remember a woman called Spring Greenhill? You met her in Second Life about three months ago.

I meet a lot of women there, he replied.

Indeed you do. You seduce them with your scripted clichés and beg them for real life photographs or a Skype feed you can record, and when they comply you then upload what you get to revenge porn websites so you can ridicule their bodies and their character.

He shrugged.

I turned back to the laptop. In fact, Spring was a primary school teacher. She was in her forties and single. She’d been married for a while, but then her husband left her for a younger woman and Spring found – her real name was Elizabeth, by the way – Elizabeth found that her desire to be loved was not matched by her ability or energy to seek out a new partner. It left her feeling empty, but it wasn’t an emptiness she was unable to deal with. Men’s emptiness gets filled up with private rage, Mica, but women on the whole just learn to live with feeling empty.

Why are you telling me this? he asked. Why should I care?

It doesn’t matter to me whether you care or not, I replied, taking out the last screw, "but it is important that you know why this is happening.

Spring – Elizabeth – is dead, by the way. She killed herself after someone pointed out to her the video recording you made and posted. Her parents are paying for my time right now.

There was a short silence whilst I prised open the casing. Then he asked, How did she kill herself? I could hear barely suppressed relish in his words.

Sleeping tablets, Mica. No drama. Nothing for you to fantasise over.

Then, the information I’d just given him appeared to sink in. You are being paid for this? he asked. You are… a professional?

I turned to face him again and watched him mouth silently my name. He was frowning. Suddenly, his eyes opened wide."

Ah, I said, with satisfaction, "so you have heard of me."

He pulled urgently on the handcuffs. Please. You must not-

Calm yourself, Mica, I told him.

I will pay you.

I’m already being paid.

I will pay you more.

Even if that were possible – which I really doubt – I wouldn’t want any money that had spent time in your wallet.

I pulled out the hard drive and put it in the pocket of my greatcoat. How do you back-up? Sticks? Disks? External drive?

External drive. The voice was a helpless whisper. The second drawer.

Excellent, Mica. I found it straight away, a wallet-sized plastic box of two terabytes. There was a whole bunch of USB sticks scattered around in there; I took them as well.

My data, he said.

What of it?

Things from work. Family pictures.

Mine now, I told him. I took his phone too.

He rattled the cuffs again. Bitch.

I stood up and took a step towards him. Immediately, he shrank back into the wall. Now we get to the interesting part of the evening, Mica. I held out my camera for him to see. As I think you already know, I’m going to take some pictures of you. Some of these I’ll publish straight away; some I’ll keep back for if you do things in the future that I feel you should be punished for.

His eyes darted around the room, looking for a magical tool. You think I will just pose for you?

It’s funny you should say that, I told him, untying my belt. "People do wonder if I somehow stage or manipulate my images, but the truth is I hardly ever need to do anything to them. My subjects always end up ridiculously willing.

I’d love to meet a man who is actually a challenge, Mica; someone who thinks a little further ahead than four inches into the future. I hooked open his gown with the heel of my right boot. Three inches, I corrected myself.

I won’t co-operate, he said.

I won’t force you to do anything, I promised him. That’s the beauty of it. It wouldn’t be art if I did. Maybe you’ll succeed, Mica; maybe you’ll be that man that defies me.

I unbuttoned and opened my greatcoat.

Pretty quickly it was clear that he wouldn’t be.

I left the apartment a little less than an hour after I’d entered it. I lit another cigarette on the walk back to my car. I pulled out my phone.

All done, Thursday? he asked.

All done, I replied.

Any problems?

Nope. It was easy.

Good. When can you get the pictures uploaded?

Depends on the hotel connection. Give me thirty minutes. Maybe forty.

I’ll send out the tweets, then.

You do that, Stransky, I told him.

Chapter 2

Step Stransky. The man I thought I’d killed. The man I had killed, only it turned out I’d not done quite as complete a job as I thought I had.

I first met Stransky at a charity event in SL, a lagged out shuffle of avatars gathered for the cause of some library somewhere. I have no idea why I was there, nor indeed why I stayed for more than about five minutes, but in those days you tended to tolerate that sort of thing. It was 2005. Second Life was still new and fresh, and being a pioneer was part of your identity as a resident back then. So you put up with clunky environments of angular, low-prim furniture and you dealt with being rooted to the spot and unable to move due to lag half the time, and you did this because the fact that you were there in the first place was amazing, all by itself. In any case, everyone back then believed it would all improve soon enough. It wasn’t even a fantasy, because it did. These days, though, everyone’s so angry with everything that the improvements go unnoticed.

Stransky and I were the two guys at the bar without dance partners. I think I was camming around when he first spoke to me, probably examining an avatar I wouldn’t these days look twice at (other than to marvel at the fact that there really are still people about who think flexi-prim clothing makes them look good). Back then, I’d have been wearing a charcoal grey suit that looked like it had been painted onto me by a pre-schooler, but as far as I was concerned I was the sharpest pin in the venue.

Step Stransky: Thursday… is that a Scottish name?

Definitely Thursday: I believe so.

Definitely Thursday: One only has to say the word in a strong Scottish accent to know that it belongs there.

Step Stransky: Exactly what I was thinking.

Step Stransky: It’s a strong word. It has a burr all of its own.

Step Stransky: And – you’re quite right – it’s very… definite.

Definitely Thursday: Say my *full* name in a Scottish accent, however, and you’ll hear something slightly different.

Step Stransky: Hmm.

Step Stransky: I don’t know about you, but I’m hearing alcohol.

Definitely Thursday: Exactly.

Step Stransky: I can actually picture the stereotyped facial movements that would accompany those two words.

Definitely Thursday: Do you see a pointed finger?

Step Stransky: I do! I do see a pointed finger!

Definitely Thursday: Pointing upwards, yes?

Step Stransky: Right again.

Definitely Thursday: Doing a little circle in the air thing.

Step Stransky: I can see you’ve put a lot of thought into this.

Definitely Thursday: You won’t believe this, but absolutely none of this even occurred to me until you brought the subject up.

Step Stransky: That’s amazing.

Definitely Thursday: I know, right?

Step Stransky: I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Art creates itself.

Definitely Thursday: Wow. Profound.

Definitely Thursday: Just out of interest, when *did* you say it before?

Step Stransky: Funnily enough, about 27 minutes ago.

Step Stransky: According to my chat log.

Step Stransky: To a brunette I met at an art event just before I came here.

Step Stransky: I was saying how SL resembles the paintings of L S Lowry.

Step Stransky: Sadly, she wasn’t convinced.

Step Stransky: Even the beautiful serendipity of his initials didn’t help.

Definitely Thursday: Hence, I guess, you being here.

Step Stransky: Well actually, I know the DJ here.

Step Stransky: Though he would have understood if I’d had to cancel.

Definitely Thursday: You have a place of your own in SL?

Step Stransky: You mean, do I have somewhere I could have taken her for sex? A little forward, considering I’ve known you for all of fifteen minutes, but yes.

Step Stransky: Well, actually, no.

Step Stransky: I have a place, but it’s not, shall we say, ‘equipped’.

Definitely Thursday: I’ve found that forward works in here.

Definitely Thursday: Let’s face it, the graphics aren’t exactly exhilarating.

Definitely Thursday: You might as well be bold in text.

Step Stransky: I couldn’t agree more.

Definitely Thursday: So where would you have taken her if not your place?

Step Stransky: You’re assuming a lot about my intentions!

Definitely Thursday: I’m assuming nothing, buddy.

Definitely Thursday: All I did was conversationally ask if you had a place of your own; you’re the one who brought up sex in a way you think enabled you to project your dirty mind onto me without my noticing.

Step Stransky laughs.

Step Stransky: Clever.

Step Stransky: Is that how you bed women in SL? By making them think it’s their idea?

Definitely Thursday: I have no idea what you’re talking about.

Definitely Thursday: Please don’t say you’d have taken her to one of those dreadful sex halls.

Step Stransky: Can we get off this subject?

Step Stransky: Shouldn’t we be talking about this library we’re here to support?

Definitely Thursday: Actually, I think they did just accumulate enough to buy a whole new book.

Definitely Thursday: The next target is to purchase the hardback version.

Step Stransky: lol

Step Stransky: You just gave yourself away as British, by the way.

Definitely Thursday: Oh?

Step Stransky: ‘Hardback’ instead of ‘Hardcover’.

Definitely Thursday: Ah.

Definitely Thursday: And you just gave yourself away as a detail watcher.

Step Stransky: Yep.

Step Stransky: Of sorts.

Stransky didn’t out himself as a Second Life private detective until the fourth time we met, and he did so then only to ask me to join his agency. Right before he made me this offer, we had a long chat about the concept of romantic partnership in SL.

Definitely Thursday: It has occurred to me that the whole SL partnership thing might be a sort of 'plot device' from Linden's point of view.

Step Stransky: A what?

Definitely Thursday: A plot device. Something that adds plot.

Step Stransky: Okaaaaay...

Definitely Thursday: The two main objectives of Linden from a business survival point of view must be 1) get people here, and 2) keep people here. Right?

Step Stransky: Ok. And?

Definitely Thursday: And. You come here in the first place out of curiosity, but you stay for the relationships you discover you can have.

Definitely Thursday: Without partnering there'd be no structure to that. No format. So it'd be less likely that you'd discover it.

Definitely Thursday: People would have had to think 'out of the box' with respect to relationships... But people are generally very bad at that.

Definitely Thursday: Why have bran flakes when you can eat anything? Because you understand bran flakes. Because they don't scare you.

Definitely Thursday: 'Partnering' is the imposition of an RL structure where it's not actually needed.

Definitely Thursday: It's only purpose can be to make the virtual world make better sense to the numbers of people Linden need to attract if SL is going to succeed financially.

Definitely Thursday: I mean you can't steal things here. You can't kill people. People can't get sick. Where's the drama? Where are the storylines?

Definitely Thursday: People need storylines.

Step Stransky: I see. Hence 'plot device.' Right.

Step Stransky: The soapification of Second Life, then?

Definitely Thursday: Right! Exactly!

Step Stransky: In fairness, if Linden hadn't included partnering in the first place I suspect the residents would probably have demanded it anyway.

Step Stransky: And either Linden would have given in or the residents would have found some unofficial way of doing it amongst themselves.

Step Stransky: One way or another we would still have had partnering.

For some reason – perhaps because the utter flimsiness of SL partnerships were the very bread and butter of our subsequent business together – I assumed that Stransky wasn’t the partnering type. He was that odd mix of detached, compassionate, clinical, philosophical, often brilliantly clever and frequently ridiculously absent-minded. I couldn’t imagine him for one moment in an actual relationship.

Oh, how wrong I was. Months later, he took from me in a single night’s worth of acquaintance a woman I truly thought was the love of my life.

Step Stransky: Guess what?

Definitely