The Virtual Man [The Virtual Reality 1] (Siren Publishing Classic) (7 page)

Tiana Weiss. A beautiful name to go with a beautiful woman
, he thought. He was trying to think down his erection, but it would not budge.

Knowing where the sadness he had read in her eyes had come from only made him want her more. What kind of a combination moron and monster could willfully hurt such a divine creature? The side of him that was every bit the alpha male, protector of the fairer sex, rose to the surface. He couldn’t remember the last time he had felt this way, if ever. Melinda had never needed his protection. By the same token, snakes in the grass are not known to need anyone’s protection.

* * * *

As she stepped out of her suite, Tiana activated her phone, conveniently housed in a pair of lenses implanted in her corneas. The set came with a matching communications chip implanted under the skin near her left ear, which, using her bone structure, served to both capture and transmit sound between her and the caller. Contact phones, as they were commonly referred to, were the latest thing on the market and had been a present from her now-ex-husband.

“Call Rita” she ordered. Two rings later, Rita answered, her image displaying in Tiana’s contacts.

“Well hey there, stranger,” Rita said. “I’m assuming you’re on board?”

“Made the flight by the skin of my teeth, but I did make it. What are you up to? Where’s your suite?”

“Top level, Suite 1052. Come on over.”

“I’m just down the hall from you in 1005. I’ll see you in a minute. End call.”

* * * *

As Tiana terminated the communication, Rita looked down at the head of her Personal Attendant, which had been quietly engaging in some rather ‘personal attendance’ to her before and during the conversation.

“Well, darlin’, I’m afraid we’ll have to finish this later,” Rita drawled in her very southern way. “Tiana is a little conservative and I just don’t want to make her little mind explode right now. Run along and synthesize us some chocolate truffles.”

* * * *

It would be so good to see Rita, thought Tiana as she knocked on Suite 1052’s door. The last couple of weeks, both she and Rita had been so busy packing and preparing for their tour of duty in the Omicron quadrant that they had not had much of a chance to see each other.

“Computer, open door,” Tiana heard Rita order, followed by the swish of the door sliding open.

As she stepped inside, Tiana glanced around. The suite was identical to hers. Rita, wearing just panties and a T-shirt that read ‘Eat G.R.I.T.S.,’ got up from the couch and greeted Tiana with a hug. On the back, the shirt explained what G.R.I.T.S. stood for: Girls Raised in the South.

“Darlin’, it’s so good to see ya. I’ve been so worried about you having to face that slimy hound dog of a husband of yours in court yesterday. Wait, that’s an insult to hound dogs, isn’t it? Tell me, how did it go? Are you doin’ okay?”

“Everything went well, stressed, but well. Tom didn’t even bother showing up, can you believe it? The court allowed me to finalize my side of the divorce and they’ll deal with him later. As of yesterday afternoon, however, I am a free woman.”

“Yeah, but how do you feel?”

Dang it! Rita could always see into her soul.

“I feel like hell. I should be happy to be rid of him, but instead, I’m just plain heartbroken. The feeling of failure and inadequacy color my days and hours.”

Rita embraced her.

“Darlin’, it’s going to be okay,” she said, her tone communicating the motherly love she felt for her younger friend. “You’ll see, pretty soon you’ll be dating some alien with five penises and Tom will shrivel up and be ancient history.”

Tiana laughed, “Rita, you have this unique ability, no matter what the circumstances, to make me laugh. On a more serious note, though, I’m done with dating! I’m done with men! I’m certainly done with marriage! I plan on avoiding the Y-chromosomally-challenged sector of the species like the plague from now on!”

“Chocolate truffles, ladies?” Rita’s holographic personal attendant interrupted presenting them with a tray of the mouth watering treats.

As she snagged a truffle off the tray, Tiana wondered why Rita’s suite still used the old-style holographic Personal Attendant. She hadn’t given it much thought, but such upgrades were typically systemwide across all the holographic suites. Strange, though for some inexplicable reason, she was glad at the thought that perhaps she was the only passenger with ‘Derek Erecticus’ in her suite.

Great, now she was feeling possessiveness and jealousy over the stupid program. Ah, damn good program.

“Tiana, I don’t know about this business of giving up men, though. There’s at least one man that I just know you are going to want to have a repeat performance from,” Rita teased with a wicked grin.

Tiana stared back at her with caution in her eyes. Rita was a bit wilder than she was, and there was no telling where the conversation was headed.

“And just who exactly is this paragon, Ms. Andrews? After that last debacle, you better not be thinking about fixing me up.” Tiana clearly remembered Rita’s attempts to take her mind off her troubles by fixing her up with a couple of her guy friends. All she had wanted to do at the time was hide from her mean, disappointing life and meeting new people did not meet this criteria. Besides, she was not planning on ever trusting another man with herself. Relationships of the heart only brought pain and new opportunities to be abused. It was a testament to the fairer sex’s incredibly stupid tendency to forgive and forget that any woman was still married.

“Though I still maintain that you should allow me to find you a good man, or at least an above-average one, no, that is not what I am doing, at least not this time. The one man I know you’ll let back into your body is none other than the smooth, hard and wet Jack Daniels.”

Having said so, she whipped out a bottle of the old Earth liquor she had brewed in her lab.

“This is one man that you don’t have to handle on your own. What do you say we share him later on tonight? Ya feelin’ kinky?”

“How much of that stuff did you bring?”

“Honey, I brought enough of this to last us the next two years if it has to. It gets lonely out here in space and a girl’s gotta have her a man to keep her warm at night.”

Tiana chuckled. “Rita, you’re developing a sexual attraction for an ancient Earth drink.”

“No, no, no,” she said with a sigh, putting on a sexy red dress that clung to her curves like a glove. “I just happen to think that every so often, it’s nice to kill a few excess brain cells and forget how sorry reality can actually be.”

A deep, heartfelt sadness shone through the blonde’s cool blue eyes. This was a side of Rita Tiana had never seen before. For the first time since knowing Rita, Tiana wondered why the other woman had never married, even though Rita was ten years her senior.

The two women headed out of Rita’s suite and soon found themselves walking down the ship’s Promenade Deck. On their left they had the best the luxury starship could offer in the way of restaurants, shops and nightclubs. To their right, however, was the stark opposite. On that side, the clear glass wall gave them a breathtaking view of space and the natural beauty that the Milky Way held in store for those who simply took the time to look.

As they leisurely strolled down the Promenade’s walkway past a gaming arcade, Tiana noticed Marcus Long, along with his kids, waiting in line with several other fighter pilot wannabes of various ages to use one of the holographic chambers that appeared to be running the popular Terrilian Assault Battle Simulation game.

Seeing her, Marcus waved. As Tiana waved back, Rita noticed the interplay.

“You know, darlin’, he’s available.”

“You never give up, do you? He’s got two kids, what makes you think he’s not married?”
Why couldn’t Rita leave her to her quiet, asexual existence, last night notwithstanding?

“He’s a widower.”

“Not that I’m looking, but if I were, I think he’s younger than me and besides, I’m his boss.”

“Don’t be such a prude. He’s not that much younger than you, he’s 28.”

“How do you know so much about this guy? What do you do, introduce yourself to men by saying, ‘Hi, my name is Rita, please state your name, age and marital status’.”

Winking, Rita replied, “No, of course not silly, that would be rude. When I meet a man I first explain to him that I have this friend who’s bound and determined to grow her hymen back like an Ambrosian lizard and that if she doesn’t get laid soon she is going to become a recluse and go live in a cave in the middle of an asteroid belt. Then I ask what his name, age and marital status is.”

Tiana blushed as she noticed that passersby were overhearing their conversation and beginning to stare.

“Girl, would you keep your voice down? People are staring.”

“What did I say?” Rita retorted with a chuckle and an innocence that Tiana knew did not exist within her eccentric friend.

“Actually, Rita, Marcus is another prime example for not getting involved in a relationship. He probably loved his wife very much and she died on him, leaving him brokenhearted to fend for himself and their two kids. That’s one man that I’ll bet would love to be able to go back in time and do things differently.”

Rita’s expression grew solemn, same as it had earlier at her suite.

“Tiana, darlin’, I know Tom hurt you and that he wasn’t worthy of your love, but please don’t let this gut-wrenching, life-challenging experience twist you all up for the rest of your life. When you meet that special someone and the two of you bond, truly, truly join the way men and women were meant to be together since the beginning of time, there is no amount of pain that can ever make you regret the time that you did have together. Tom clearly wasn’t for you, but I’ll bet your life mate is out there somewhere and you will eventually find each other.”

How dare she!
Tiana felt anger coursing through her veins, and before she knew it her anger had spilled forth from her mouth.

“Okay, Miss Smarty Pants, Miss Give Me a Jack Daniels Neat, what makes you such an expert on love? If you are so knowledgeable on the subject, then where the hell is your life mate? I haven’t seen you on that rosy garden path. Why aren’t you married?”

A soft, sad, regretful smile shaped the edges of Rita’s mouth as she quietly answered her friend’s question.

“What makes you think we never found each other? We were together for a little while. Life ripped him from me, but I tell you, I wouldn’t trade that time with him for eternity with any other man.”

Ashamed of her tirade, Tiana said, “Rita, I am so sorry. I didn’t know. You never told me.”

Her breath catching, Rita replied, “I didn’t mention it because it pains me to talk about it, but I treasure that man’s love in my heart. A simple brush of his lips across mine and the ground would shake and the stars would fall from the sky. His smile could warm me better than any bottle of whiskey ever could. Tiana, what I shared with him, the one man who was made and predestined exclusively for me, was precious beyond words. Any pain I feel at no longer having him with me pales when compared to the privilege of having known him and rejoiced in our union. The kind of love that I’m talking about is selfless to the point that even altering time for selfish gain is not an option if it means taking happiness away from the one you love.

“You ought to talk to Marcus sometime. He might surprise you and dissipate some of your bitterness.”

Several days into the flight, Captain John Maverick was livid. His strong and rugged six-foot-two frame stood straight and imposing. His normally gentle brown eyes focused on his Security Officer with an intense glare that could have breached the hull of a battle cruiser a light year away. Being a kind and fair man, he typically did not let his temper get the best of him, but this was not a typical situation.

He was tired of excuses. The safety of the 1,200 passengers on board and the ship’s crew rested upon his broad shoulders. To make matters worse, they were entering a sector of space that was not fully colonized by the Galactic Alliance. In many ways, the sector resembled the proverbial wild and lawless West of ancient American history. Protecting the people under his care was his job, his sworn duty, and he was not one to take the protection of his wards lightly.

“What do you mean you can’t locate its source?” Maverick demanded as he ran his fingers through his still-full head of thick brown hair lightly dusted with gray. “Someone has been tapping into our central computer, opening up a com link through the galactic-net, mind you, not just a com link, but a secured com link that we can’t intercept, and downloading information, and now we have an intermittent beacon sending out signals that a Chihuahua with a cold could follow and you can’t locate the source of any of it? Commander, maybe I need to offer your job to whoever is responsible for creating havoc with my communications!”

Commander Cathy Hollinger, an Amazon of a woman who could almost look at the captain eye to eye, understood her superior’s concern. She was an attractive woman in her mid-twenties, smart, tough and, having served her career to date under the captain’s tutelage, was fiercely devoted and loyal to her mentor.

“I’m sorry, sir,” she said, showing signs of a rarely seen nervousness, “but whoever is doing this is covering his or her tracks very well. We don’t know the origin, can’t decipher the message and have yet to identify the method.”

“Listen very carefully. I have a thousand alarms going off in my head, all telling me to be extraordinarily concerned. My gut is screaming at me and I’m listening. I want you to leave this room and do not come back until you know who’s doing this. Run background checks, check the logs on legitimate communications, hell, get dressed as a maid and run manual scans of each individual room and occupant, but find out where these transmissions are originating. Do I make myself clear?”

“Yes sir,” she barked, availing herself of the opportunity to leave the bridge.

As his Security Officer headed out the door with a new urgency to discover the source of the strange signals, Captain Maverick, a veteran of the Terrilian war and the recipient of multiple decorations, hoped he hadn’t been too rough on the younger officer. She was one of his best, just like the rest of his officers. They were all one of his best. He had no doubt she would get to the bottom of this. He just hoped it would be before anyone got hurt.