Love and/or Reality

By Elle Driver

What does it mean to fall in love in virtual reality?

Ayaan Bashir is a brilliant game designer, close to finishing her breakthrough dual-engine virtual reality interface, which provides a totally immersive experience. She's still figuring out some glitches, but she's got it under control. She certainly doesn't need the new colleague her boss has assigned to her.

Dara Lee has admired Ayaan for a long time, and is beyond excited to finally get to work with her on her groundbreaking VR project. First, though, he has to convince her that she needs help. She needs more sleep, for one thing, and regular meals...

But once Dara and Ayaan slip into virtual reality together, literally anything is possible, and they find themselves testing out Ayaan's project in unexpectedly steamy ways. The question is, can they make their connection work in the real world?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bryant Street Shorts
• Release date: Sep 23, 2021
• ISBN: 9781094418377

Elle Driver

Elle Driver is a mild-mannered civil servant who adores her husband and kid, and loves writing different romance tales to share with others when she can.

Book preview

Chapter One: Hotshot

Day 1

There was something about the beach that wasn’t quite right. Ayaan pushed the sand with her toes, staring down at it as she tried to pick out what was wrong. She retied the sheer little bathing suit cover around her hips and crouched, digging her hand into the sand. She lifted the sand in her palm. It was the fucking sand. It was shaped correctly. It even felt accurate, sliding against her palm, oddly cool despite the warm temperature.

But the color was wrong. It wasn’t varied enough. Ayaan brought the sand closer to her face. Correction: There was no variation at all. The color was so even, every grain literally the exact same. That wasn’t realistic. And if the experience was going to be the most authentic virtual reality anyone had seen, it had better be realistic.

Ayaan sifted through the sand, noting that everything else seemed to have worked out; the program and engines she was running told her brain it felt like sand. So where was the issue with its visual representation?

Hey, what are you doing here?

Ayaan startled, spinning around. There was a person behind her. There was a man behind her. And he absolutely shouldn’t be there. She wasn’t in a shared space or session that someone could just wander into.

Excuse me? she asked indignantly, almost hissing. "What are you doing here? Who the hell are you?"

Whoever designed you did a really amazing job, he said, completely ignoring what she had said.

If she hadn’t known that he had to be at least a little adept at engineering to just slip into her digital sandbox, she’d have thought him an idiot. Why would someone have created a deserted beach to drop an NPC or an AI construct into it?

Was he just acting dumb?

He wasn’t wearing anything except for gray swim trunks. His black hair was tapered short around the edges but long up top, long enough that he had to keep sweeping his fingers through it to resettle it after the gentle ocean breeze pushed it into his eyes. He had thick body hair but it looked soft, like it would feel good and smell good. It helped define his well-shaped arms and legs, made his chest and belly look very snuggle-worthy. Ayaan would have said he was attractive if he hadn’t broken into her work.

The perfect blue skies suddenly flickered and changed orange, and the chimes of her alarm filled the air.

Whoa, the stranger said, his face lighting up. His smile was so warm, she almost smiled back. This is… it’s entirely immersive. ‘I almost forgot that I am sitting in a mostly empty lab’ immersive. But I assume that’s a signal for you to disconnect?

You do realize you’re trespassing?

I’m not sure that would stand up in a real court of law. He gave a lopsided grin. Ayaan had thought he was pretty cute until he did that.

She didn’t have time for this. I’ll deal with you later.

I’m not sure if you sound more like a TV principal or a stereotypical mom. He laughed but covered his mouth, trying to stifle it.

She didn’t reply this time. She blinked slowly three times and pulled herself out of the session, her entire body jolting as if she had just fallen asleep.

Ouch, she grumbled, sliding off the visor-helmet and putting it into her lap. She was really going to have to figure out how to make the reentry to reality smoother. No one liked the electric-whip response of every nerve screaming, Wake up! Alert!

Ayaan pulled the VR gloves off her fingers and slid out of the stiff, padded recliner. It had been specifically designed for someone to lie in it for hours as comfortably as possible. In fact, everything Ayaan had chosen for this project, her project, was tailored — the ideas by her, the execution and design by experts she had sought, contracted, and paid. Everything about her project had been specifically designed, which is why it was that much more important to her. It wasn’t just her dream to design a ground-breaking gaming engine; it was her life. It had become her life.

She tried to uselessly straighten her clothes and then went to the small wardrobe she’d placed in her lab against all suggestions not to. She opened the door of the slick, standalone wardrobe and considered changing into something slightly less wrinkled but shrugged it off. For what? Their usual morning meeting where she had to pretend she cared about the temperature of how people felt about their company, Alpha Code, on Twitter or how the second-floor bathroom wasn’t being treated respectfully or how the kitchen was obviously for the use of all employees but also that it was everyone’s responsibility to keep it clean and manageable?

As far as Ayaan was concerned, as a video game/software developer, the company (and everyone who was a part of it) had to suck up the fact that it was entirely at the mercy of its mercurial fanbase. She was glad her lab was in the basement because only two other people shared the floor, and they were as antisocial and polite as she was, so really it was a match made in heaven. And she never, ever used the kitchen. She was on a strictly Grubhub diet, so it wasn’t really her battle to fight. She did wish the best for her comrades on the field, though.

Ayaan grabbed her brush and pulled out her black scrunchy, sliding it onto her wrist to run the brush through her thick, inky black hair. She had never really spent much effort as far as her appearance was concerned. She was lucky, though. She was fairly attractive — big, deep almond-shaped and -colored eyes, a wide mouth and full lips, brown skin with umber undertones and round cheekbones. But her hair was what really worked for her. Regardless of the bags under her eyes or the wrinkles in her clothes, with a quick brush and some touseling, she had runway hair. No makeup, no idea where even an eyeliner pen or tube of lipstick might be, but if she walked in with her hair swinging, it was good enough. She realized she was spending a lot of time smoothing edges instead of really taking care, and it was because she was too tired for more. All of the energy she had was allocated for getting to the finish line.

She tossed her brush back into a drawer and grabbed a black infinity scarf to toss over her Dolly Parton hoodie. Her phone started buzzing on the table, reminding her she was only growing later by the minute.

Well, fuck me, she mumbled, snatching a houndstooth blazer and Listerine strips. Really gotta brush my teeth, she said to her reflection, then lifted her arm and gave herself a quick sniff. And shower, she amended. Ayaan picked up her phone and said, Hey, Siri, remind me to go home in two hours and shower because it has been at least two days.

Okay, her phone said. I will remind you in two hours to go home and shower because it has been at least two days.

Ayaan dropped her phone into her jeans’ back pocket and patted it and her own ass. Attagirl.

***

The elevator walls were so shiny, they were mirror-like, which was great because it gave her one last chance to check out her appearance before she had to actively concentrate on minding her facial expression, tone, and body language. Ayaan was a lot of things, but rude was mostly not one of them, no matter how irritated she might be. She dug her hand into her pocket, trying to remember the last time she had reached out to the person who helped her develop how anyone who was hooked up to her dual engines rendered the things they saw. She was going to need to catch up with them again to figure out her sand and why it didn’t quite look right.

She was still combing her memory for the mental picture so she could search their email the moment she got a second when someone bumped into her, causing her to back up quickly. Despite the vaccination, COVID was still a very real and dangerous thing, so no one should be so close to her that they could even brush her, let alone bump into her.

Sorry, hotshot, the man said. It was Chet. And Chet lived up to his namesake in every way a Chet could. Ayaan honestly wasn’t sure why any well-meaning parents would name their child that in recent years, but here he was — trustfund-lite and overly bleached from too much sun.

"Chet, she bit out with a tight smile, well aware he couldn’t see it behind her mask. Didn’t see you there. Otherwise, I would have made a wider berth to avoid… well, this." She made sure she smiled with her eyes and tilted her head so her hair swung.

So you admit you’re trying to avoid me? He crossed his arms and arched his eyebrows arrogantly, kind of angling closer toward her so she slid back even further.

The room was filled with employees, from secretaries to programmers to testers to producers, almost everyone spaced out appropriately — masks in the correct place, firmly over both their noses and mouths. And then there was Chet. Braggart, pushy, insecure. The perfect recipe for a workplace loser. And he was her ex-partner, or rather, an ex-producer. The bad blood between them wasn’t just based on his winning personality. They had found, over the course of the longest two weeks she’d ever experienced, that Chet’s ideologies and management were nowhere near a match for Ayaan and her work, which didn’t sit well with Chet, of course.

Ayaan leaned back dramatically once he didn’t get the hint from the subtle adjustments, and he finally stopped advancing. She counted to ten before she spoke. I will admit I am avoiding everyone, if I can, she finally said. Don’t take it personally. Though it is entirely about who you are as a person that I specifically stay out of your sphere, she finished mentally. Outwardly, she gave a What can you do? kind of shrug.

Yeah, except you’re avoiding me specifically because of your project, he pointed out. Because you decided I couldn’t handle it.

She almost fumbled. Now, you know Johnny, she finally choked, clearing her throat. He gets the last word on these things, and the truth is he’s a little uptight about this whole thing. I’ve been promising a lot for a long time and… well, it’s just been really stressful. We tried it. We didn’t gel. That’s okay. And Johnny’s never mentioned anything negative about what you bring to the table. That was because he didn’t have anything to say about Chet at all. And that was because Chet was a decent manager, sure, but what he really brought to the table was capital, investors, visibility. Chet’s silver spoon was still dangling out of his mouth. And all of his mom’s associates wanted to help support a young entrepreneur, who really already had his own inheritance and kingdom, but his interest in Alpha Code meant a bevy of return on interest with not too high a level of effort.

Chet, however, didn’t play well with others. Didn’t mean he couldn’t do his job; just meant he wasn’t a really enjoyable person to work with, regardless of the timetable, resources, or chemistry.

Chet wasn’t patient. He didn’t learn from mistakes. As a result, he had to be worked around, which didn’t make him the most desirable cubicle partner. They gave it a go, though. Ayaan knew that Johnny, the company CEO, really was a bit stressed about her project, but he wasn’t pulling his hair out, wasn’t losing his mind and chasing his tail around in circles. And he was very clear about the fact that he didn’t want anything in the way of Ayaan reaching a point where she could reveal and demo the dual engines with an audience that was coming in swinging — no gloves, very little warning. So, in a way, she hadn’t lied to Chet. In a way.

Just then, the man of the hour — their CEO and company owner — raised his hand like a teacher to get everyone’s attention. And it worked.

Ayaan tried her best to look interested and engaged then, though she was not either one of those things and did not want to be standing there at all.

But whatever Johnny Cage wanted, he got. Yes, Johnny Cage, like the video game character, but no, no relation, unless you counted Johnny’s feeling that his name had been a sign to lead him to his destiny — the two loves of his life: video games and his company.

Something else Johnny loved a lot was the sound of his own voice. And he liked to make sure other people got the chance to hear it. There was a man she didn’t recognize standing off to the right of Johnny, as if waiting. He appeared to be Southeast Asian — lighter than her own bronzed, brown skin but not by much. He was shorter than Johnny, so not quite six feet, with short, black hair. He seemed familiar, but she couldn’t quite place him.

Ayaan’s mind wandered away much faster than normal, but the moment Johnny mentioned a press release, she clocked out. She understood the reason for such meetings, but it didn’t mean she had to buy into their frequency. Or length. And she felt like they should stick to Zoom meetings and announcements as much as possible.

Even with masks, with socially distanced spots marked with vinyl stickers of their company logo, even with vaccinations becoming more readily available, Ayaan just didn’t think there were many good reasons to hold in-person meetings, and certainly not a morning huddle type of thing. But Johnny didn’t agree. Something-something morale, something-something culture.

"So obviously, we have a lot of really exciting things going on around here lately, but one thing