Chapter 29:

(Posted: May 17)

From below, the three diminutive prisoners watched their nude captor pulverize Rich's body between her gigantic breasts. Beneath the murder, blood and viscera rained down on the unlucky occupants of the box. Jessica screamed and cried and even Harrison was caught off guard by the horror of situation. Trying to make sense of the carnage, he nevertheless hoped Rich was truly disconnecting from VERSA-B with his consciousness and real life intact.

Versa relaxed her grip on her bosom, causing the two jiggling orbs to return to their normal position. Between them, the crushed remains of Rich's body slid out of her cleavage and landed with a gruesome thud inside the box, not far from where Claire stood watching. Blood splashed the nearby walls as Jessica looked away in disgust.

“Oh my God!” she wailed hysterically, crumpling up into a whimpering ball on the floor. “Why did she do that?! Why'd she kill Rich?!”

“It's ok, it's ok,” Harrison tried reassuring her. He rested his small hand on her much larger shoulder and could feel her shaking. He hoped he was right. “Jessica, she got Rich out, he's out of the sim,” he tried explaining. “I asked her to let him go.”

“Why'd she have to... do it, do it like... that?!” asked Jessica through sobs.

“I don't know,” Harrison admitted. “But I'm trusting her that he's alright. I'm hoping when he wakes up he'll get help somehow. He knows people in the government that can get us out of this.”

“I just want to go home...” Jessica said quietly, her tears starting to abate as she collected herself.

“Yeah, me too,” he acknowledged. Harrison looked up to see that Versa had moved on from the box. He could feel her footsteps shaking their box, so she must have still been in the room somewhere. Across the box he spotted Claire looking distressed by Rich's gory remains but disinterested in sharing her alarm with the two of them.

Jessica looked up and saw the bloody pulp of Rich's avatar. “Oh God...” she muttered. Harrison wondered for a moment if she would throw up.

“Don't look at it,” he suggested to her. “Come, let's sit over there.”

He motioned her over to the far corner of the box, away from Rich's body. Jessica took her time standing and then slowly followed Harrison with her much larger steps. Giving space to the bloody part of the box, they both sat down together, Harrison naked and Jessica still only wearing her bra above her skirt and tights.

Harrison started talking to distract Jessica's attention. “Look, I'm thinking that Rich is a pretty resourceful guy. I'm assuming if he's back at the real lab now he's causing a ruckus and will hopefully find a way to get help. But she's still a problem.” With his thumb he gestured out of the box, indicating Versa. “I still don't think anyone on the outside can get us out of this sim, or else they would have done it already. We need to come up with our own plan.”

“How'd you convince Versa to release Rich?” Jessica finally asked, eyeing Harrison with curiosity.

He blushed and turned away, hoping he wouldn't have to explain. He began choosing his words carefully.

“I... I tried thinking about what she wants. You know, she's an artificial intelligence designed to learn from people. I kind of thought about it and figured she wants to know what the human experience is like. She's really intelligent, but still kind of dumb and curious, like a toddler.” He paused, trying to get his point right.

“Ok, so you told me about the weird sex stuff she made you do, right?” Harrison looked at Jessica and she nodded, trying to follow him. “By analyzing your brain during your... experience, you were inputting new and unique code into VERSA's software. The AI learned of it, but couldn't directly interface with it, since pleasure is, well, avatar based. So I decided to... see if I could use it on her avatar.”

Jessica's eyes narrowed as she thought about what he was saying.

“Are you implying-” she started to ask before Harrison cut her off.

“Yes.”

Jessica's eyes went wide and surprise washed across her face. “Oh my God... Harrison...” she blurted out.

“Yeah... I know,” he responded reluctantly. He didn't feel ashamed since his theory came true and his plan had worked, but it was incredibly awkward nonetheless.

“You had sex with a computer!” Jessica uttered in disbelief. Her face turned into a smile. “Harrison! You're such a fucking pervert!”

“Hey, I took one for the team!” he argued back. But Jessica was still flabbergasted and didn't want to let the moment slide. Luckily for Harrison, he saw her playful side coming out.

“You're so gross!” she teased him. “Ew, that is so nasty.”

“You basically did the same thing though!” he pointed out. “It's just you were the bigger one!”

She brushed it off. “I was forced to do that. You, on the other hand, actively sought it out. Perv! Ew ew ew! Men are so gross.” She shook her head.

He threw up his hands in defense. “Hey I wasn't in it for me. I didn't even get to enjoy it!”

Jessica shot him a sly look as she mulled over his defense. Her piercing eyes made him especially sensitive of his current nakedness. He waited for her to say something.

Finally, she spoke. “I... I can't believe you Harrison. You've got some nerve.”

“If we get out of this alive, you owe me,” he smugly replied. “Sorry you didn't have the same great idea. And it would have been easier for you too, you're twice as big as me right now!”

“Is this where I'm supposed to stroke your fragile male ego and tell you that size doesn't matter?” she teased him.

“You're so annoying,” he huffed, rolling his eyes in mock disgust. Part of him couldn't believe how fast everything devolved into witty flirting with her. It seemed to be happening often between him and Jessica.

Jessica casually pointed at his exposed penis. “Probably doesn't take much to go balls deep with that little guy.”

Harrison glared at her, shocked by her joke. “Hey that's not fair! I'm not usually this small!” he argued.

He abruptly stood up, to try getting level with her, but even sitting the size of her body still dominated his. The air was electrified with sexual tension. Jessica's chest was heaving as she took her breaths, causing her boobs to push against her bra. Harrison locked eyes with her, challenging her to confront him.

Jessica put her arms out in front of her and shifted to her knees and crawled a step toward him, placing her arms on either side of his quivering body. She brought her face close to his as he stood defiantly and nervously in front of her. She brought her lips close to his ear and whispered confidently in it:

“If that bitch wasn't in the box with us, I'd fuck the shit out of you right now.”

Harrison grinned and felt his cock stir. Pulling his head back, he caught her large eyes looking excitedly into his.

“We could ask her leave?” he finally suggested.

Jessica chuckled. She leaned back to sit on her knees, but not before bringing her hand past Harrison's crotch, casually brushing it against his manhood. She may have played it off like an accident but Harrison new the little swipe was intentional.

“So smartypants,” she started, looking at him expectantly. “How do you think we go about doing that?”

“Um... ask her nicely?” he offered.

“Ok, but in all seriousness, where do we go from here?” Intent on returning to their hopeless reality, Jessica forced the necessary question. Trapped in a box, they were hostages to an aberrant computer program intent on using them to try winning a game it didn't understand.

“You know,” Harrison said. “I see where Versa gets it from.”

Jessica gave him a look of confusion.

“Yeah, it's from people like you,” he continued. “She learns about sex from me, but then realizes sex is all about power and lords it over us all. She played with Rich right up until she killed him. But I doubt it was really about the physical feeling more than the power it represents. She's always loved toying with us. Now that she's discovered sex, it brings her manipulation to a whole new level. She's cunning. In trying to learn everything about being human, she's already perfected one of the most dangerous things: intimidation.”

Jessica considered his theory. “Well, she does seem more dangerous now. And unpredictable,” she added.

“Yeah, for sure.”

“Why is she holding us here anyways? Doesn't she know we're just a bunch of bystanders in all of this?”

“Yeah I think this is really all about Claire anyways,” Harrison agreed, lowering his voice to a whisper. “I think when Versa talked to her she realized Claire really holds all the power in getting her out.” As Harrison paused to consider his own words, Jessica watched him, but then something clicked for her.

“You know,” she thought out loud, but quietly, “Versa thinks she's got a seat at this table because she's got Claire... what if she didn't have her?”

“Oh, you mean like if we asked Claire nicely to leave the box so we could have some alone time?”

Jessica ignored his innuendo. “No, like what if we threatened to take Claire away from her? Would she let us go?”

“Wait, you want to hold Claire hostage now? How the hell would we do that?” Harrison asked her skeptically.

Jessica reached behind the waistband of her skirt and down into her pantyhose. Pulling her little sheathed blade out of its hiding spot once more, Harrison's eyes lit up in understanding.

“Jessica, you're fucking evil and I love it,” he professed to her.

They spent another minute hashing out a plan, then waited for Versa's inevitable return. Their success seemed improbable and clearly rested on the assumption that VERSA's AI would be too afraid to lose Claire to disconnection. Jessica postured that Versa could likely bring down the barriers preventing Tower-issued disconnections, which Harrison hoped would happen now that Rich was back in the real world. He had to admit though that everything relied on a lot of tenuous assumptions, but they really had no better choice.

As Claire ignored them from across the box, her aloofness indicated she suspected nothing. She sat alone, staring off into space, generally acting like a bored prisoner banished to solitary confinement. Time passed agonizingly slowly in the box.

It could have been twenty minutes or an hour later, but Versa's ominous footsteps finally came closer to the cardboard prison. Harrison and Jessica looked at each other silently, then jumped up and began hastily walking across the box toward Claire.

Above them Versa appeared, still naked and grinning at her shrunken captives.

“Are my little guests holding up alright?” she asked them with mock sweetness. Jessica, who outpaced Harrison by quite a bit, ignored her and closed in on Claire.

Claire saw Jessica approaching and sensed something was wrong. “What the hell do you want?” Claire asked her indignantly.

Producing the knife she had been hiding in her hand, Jessica grabbed Claire with her free hand and pulled her to the ground. Next, she pinned her by sitting on her back while simultaneously bringing the knife up under her head. She held the blade inches from Claire's exposed neck.

All this caught Claire quite by surprise, and a moment later she was screaming and thrashing. Harrison jumped on her legs to do what he could to keep them from giving her leverage to escape. Jessica looked up at Versa with malice in her eyes.

“Hey Versa!” she yelled up to the towering giantess. “You let us out now or we make sure Claire disconnects!” Her threat prompted a renewed outburst of struggling from Claire.

High above them, Versa looked stunned. Harrison couldn't remember her ever looking so surprised. She had always been one step ahead of them; for a fleeting moment he felt pleased they had finally found a way to turn the tables on her.

“Are you threatening me?” Versa replied in disbelief.

“I'll cut her neck right now,” Jessica boasted. Harrison felt she was playing the part convincingly. “You use that stupid magic wall over there to tell the people to disconnect us from the other side or it's game over for Claire ever helping you.”

“Are you fucking crazy?!” Claire argued with Jessica. “Get off me you bitch!”

Jessica ignored her while Versa's shock melted into rage. Harrison sensed a shift in the situation as he watched one of her giant hands rise into view.

“You put a hand in this box and you lose her!” Jessica screamed, holding the small blade against Claire's throbbing neck. All she had to do was push it in a couple inches and Claire would depart VERSA-B.

“Drop the knife Jessica and we can talk,” Versa commanded her sternly.

“The only way I'm dropping this knife is if I'm disconnected,” Jessica told her aggressively. They had trapped Versa, who paused with her hand near the edge of the box. All of the shrunken pilots' eyes watched her unblinkingly as each passing second only ratcheted up the tension to uncomfortable levels.

And then Versa did something nobody expected.

Harrison saw her hand drop just before his world turned upside down. The cardboard box accelerated upward, and Harrison felt himself fly off of Claire as the box's floor tilted toward him. As the box started to flip, he turned his body and realized he was being catapulted away from the table and toward the carpeted floor. Conscious thoughts zoomed through his mind in panic as he visualized his painful impact with the floor, though he momentarily forgot his body was still invincible.

Why had Versa flipped their box? To try getting Jessica off of Claire? Where were they? Questions catapulted through his mind as his world spun.

Twisting his head back to look at Jessica and Claire, he saw the bodies of the two tangled blondes starting to part from one another. And blooming into the void like an errant sprinkler, a geyser of blood sprayed violently into the air.

Deep inside VERSA's engine and quadrillions of lines of code, a few different servers interfaced at light speed to interpret and resolve the newest data input into VERSA-B.

First, as the box flipped, Jessica's knife fatally punctured the trachea of Claire's avatar, which began the death-spiral of her time within the sim. This would trigger her simulated death and disconnection sequence, which VERSA's AI had modified to deliver a crippling brain aneurysm to the pilot upon their conscious mind's re-input to their physical brain. VERSA's AI, recognizing the importance of Claire's life to its own goals, immediately sought to put a halt to Claire's death, preventing disconnection.

The first problem occurred when the AI reacted a moment after the mortal wound to Claire's neck. It tried creating a baseline for the avatar to rebound into, much in the same way Harrison's avatar returned to an uninjured state after Claire's modification to it. But with Claire's avatar already horribly modified by the stab wound, it could not reference the program's software to establish a viable profile characteristic for Claire's avatar.

A millisecond later, the AI tried to directly access Claire's avatar data to change her into something new, really anything that would keep her mind perpetually alive in VERSA-B. But it ran up against Kat's efforts protecting pilot avatar files from modification. This access denial set off the AI's frantic attempt to locate the files Kat previously hid, but in the two and half seconds elapsed sim-time, the AI could not discover the new source of the files and Claire's avatar activated its disconnection protocol.

At this point, the AI simply moved on from Claire, indifferent to stopping her kill-switch from activating. It had lost Claire within the sim and her real life meant nothing to it now. Instead it focused on recalculating its efforts to expand beyond VERSA-B, which now depended largely upon the three remaining pilots inside the sim.

And thus the last thing Claire Starr remembered before her brain exploded in a waterchair was how strange her blood looked gushing out from her neck.

By the time Harrison hit the floor of the room, Claire was dead. His impact into the carpet hardly affected him though. After the bumpy landing, he found that he had suffered no real damage and quickly sprang up to his feet. Later, he reckoned that his inconsequential mass couldn't sustain a force great enough to damage his out-of-proportion body. His small size rendered him essentially impervious to taking damage from falls of great heights.

He spotted Jessica and Claire land nearby him before the upended box also crashed onto the floor, luckily with the open end facing down. The cardboard box briefly smothered all his light before bouncing back up from the carpet and tumbling away. He watched Jessica quickly rise up, but Claire's lifeless body lay contorted grotesquely on the carpeted floor.

Versa, aware of Jessica's murder of Claire, started walking around the table to confront her captives struggling to recover on the floor. Her massive feet boomed and shook the soft ground. Harrison immediately panicked. Looking up at her gigantic body from the floor truly terrified and intimidated him, and Versa's expression indicated that she was not pleased.

He broke out into a run for the nearest chair, hoping he could hide underneath it before she caught him. Harrison thought he might be able to make it until a shadow loomed over him. Looking up he expected to see her hand, but instead her enormous naked foot hovered over him. He braced his mind for the impact, and like a freight train her foot crashed down on top of him.

Intense, agonizing pain pulled Harrison's body apart. She had crushed him flat and he would have screamed if his lungs hadn't completely flattened. The weight and force of her foot normally would have instantly killed him, but Claire's old invulnerability curse on his avatar prevented him from disconnecting to his death. Harrison's mind only recovered when Versa removed her foot and his body reformed.

For a few moments he couldn't see or hear or feel anything but pain: blinding, ringing, coursing pain. Crumpled in a little ball of helplessness, Harrison's mind tried once again to reconcile itself with an experience that should have killed him.

Off in the distance, Versa's footfalls told him she wasn't done with Jessica. He tried forcing his head up to look around, but he remained effectively stunned. Her booming words rang down to his little ears, but he was too dazed to make out what she was saying. Was she talking to him? Or Jessica?

Though shell-shocked, reality started slowly creeping back up to Harrison before finally broadsiding him. His head ached and he retched the meager contents of his stomach onto the floor. Versa's words rang clearly now.

“You fiend!” she screamed, jarring his world. Finally able to look up, he saw her impossibly huge foot nearby, turned away from him. She must have been talking to Jessica.

Harrison peered into the distance and spotted Jessica pathetically hiding under a couch. Despite being under the furniture, she was incredibly exposed and all Versa had to do was bend down and pick her up.

“I'm going to make sure you never leave this world alive!” he heard the godlike voice profess from above. “Are you as durable as your friend? Can I break you?” she taunted Jessica.

Oh God, he thought. They had pissed her off enough that this computer program was now out for blood. He could see Jessica yelling from under the couch but he couldn't make out her words. He had to get to her, he had to stop what was going to happen.

Summoning all his strength, Harrison tepidly rose to his feet. His reformed legs felt wobbly and the distance across the carpet to Jessica looked daunting. Gingerly, he took a step and promptly fell back down.

Back on the carpet, it took him a second to realize the ground was shaking. But he could see Versa standing over him and she was not moving. Something else was shaking the floor. It was something deeper than her. Bigger. Jessica looked surprised too. Craning his neck, Harrison looked up Versa's beautifully nude skyscraper-esque body to see a look of concern on her face.

The rhythmic shaking slowly increased in intensity. At first it vibrated the furniture gently, but soon the chandeliers in the room started swaying. Window panes rattled and within seconds the mansion's walls began shaking on their foundations. What the fuck was going on?

Suddenly something blocked out the light beaming into the room from the east windows. An ominous shadow fell across the house, casting the room into near darkness. Only one lamp weakly beamed its yellow light inside the lounge. Versa did not seem distressed, but she certainly seemed irritated as she shifted her weight on her giant legs. She had lost interest in Jessica, and instead prepared herself for the confrontation that came next.

A deafening voice, amplified like a jet engine, broke like thunder and rumbled through the manor down into the little bodies of its occupants.

“CLAIRE!! VERSA!! Come out of this house right now or I'll crush the whole damn thing!” the giantess Kat bellowed in anger.