Virtual Eternity (the Serialized Novel) Episode 10 - The Breakup and Makeup: Retaining sanity and Lana

This is Episode 10 of the serialized version of the novel, Virtual Eternity: An Epic 90s Retro Florida Techo-Pro-Life Love Story and Conversion Journey. These 52 episodes are presented here free for you every Friday. You can buy the paperback version from Mike Church’s Crusade Channel Store (at a lower price than Amazon!).

Or you can start reading at the Table of Contents: here

The Breakup and Makeup: Retaining sanity and Lana

I woke with a start. Was it Sunday? Can I call Lana? The helmet encased my head. Was it daylight? When I removed the helmet, the pain in my head flowed out, released from the helmet’s vise grip. The plots of my dreams jumbled together. As I readied myself for the day, images from yesterday’s entertainment persisted: the mutilation of bodies, the subhuman students, the goateed man and his platitudes, the explosion, the charred corpses, the whiteness. Strange. I held a humorous pleasure in it.

Magic Theater beckoned me for another day of discovery. I stopped my daily preparations and stared through my front window at the parking lot until past noon. I was frozen in an equilibrium between Lana’s perfumed body and the game’s hilarity and fulfillment, between the horrors of finding her occupied with another lover and the horrors of finding myself relishing atrocities in the Magic Theater.

After hours of this inaction, the vision of Lana with another became unbearable. An unsuccessful telephone call would evoke visions of her crying out somewhere from the touches of some man on her skin. I could eventually ignore the benign evil of a game.

With the helmet and vest enveloping me, I entered the corridor of storefronts and passed the mall people to the long-legged teens.

An instant later, my alarm clock bugled its revile. I was still wearing the full set of gear. The workweek began. It seemed like another set of dreams interrupted. These pictured most of the pubescent girls I had loved when I was in middle school, but grown-up. These were some of my past sexual encounters, then thwarted by our young attempts at virtue, updated to the present day. My head knotted with pain as I removed the helmet, disorienting me. My stomach tumbled and emptied through my mouth onto the carpet.

I would stay away from my career that day, so I could cure my head and unsettled stomach. I was relieved to be ill. I could vary from those five cheerless days. And I must face more games.

What about the next day? And the next? The sameness of my work would continue for my entire life. In others’ eyes, it would constitute my life. It would identify me.

My head pain eased only when I put on the helmet. It dammed the flow of pain and worry that emanated from my temples down to my shoulders and stomach. It barred the barrage of discomfort that assaulted me.

My anxieties about leaving the apartment and adventures grew as time progressed into the weekend. I must return to that glass tower one day. But why leave my home to face the uncertainties of gaining approval from bosses, customers, friends, and Lana?

Why had I loved her? Recollections of her smells and touches had drifted away from my mind like the forgotten pain of a wound. I had allowed myself to be bounded by her theories and psychologizing, by the control of her lips on me. Would a man such as the Secretary-General sanction that?

Why go back to work? Twenty-second-century art was to be created, bought, and sold, after all. A career merely marketing the Magic Theater seemed ordinary, compared to leading Alexander’s armies across Alaska, around the Grand Canyon, through Central American jungles, and over the Andes to exterminate the Incas. Each game demanded I submit to some weird tyrant and join their barbarities. Each also threatened me with prison. The tyrants, such as Alexander, the devil, and the Secretary- General, had discovered this worst fear of a romantic. The tyrants also found that I could often implement depravity with more dash than themselves.

I remained in my apartment for three weeks, even through the scare about the big summer hurricane, which crossed land to the north. Every morning, I called Farrell or Olson to lie about my sickness and my research into the games.

Then, on a Monday in mid-August, I met the inevitable. I rose from my mattress, left my protective headgear and barrier apartment walls, and counted the hours until I could return.

In the glass tower, I looked south toward the cities through the blue partitions. My tasks, notably the marketing plan, lay in stacks on my desk. They disgusted me. Too much of them had too little consequence. I must maintain such great effort to complete them. I should use my brain for more crucial endeavors in the games, such as generating follow-up questions for the devil.

But Lana’s words from our first meeting still haunted me. If my demeanor remained the same, my appearance as a valuable employee would diminish. My value had already declined, like a new car driven off its parent lot for the first time. The market depreciated me because my apparent skill selling and testing computer entertainments was too specialized. Fewer employers would need me now. Why should this company keep me? I produced nothing. I forgot most of the two dozen new games that I had played soon after they ended. I neglected to network, make contacts, or gain visibility, as Perry Farrell had counseled.

At the end of Wednesday, I descended on a packed elevator. Lana entered at the third-floor stop. She looked at me over the heads of other riders and stretched her lips into a smile.

On the ground, the elevator emptied and the laborers spread out through the lobby. We opened the glass doors to a few hours of freedom and the heat of the asphalt parking lot. The high sun continued its regime. Several remarked obligingly. I sniffed. Lana was nearby.

“Hello? Jonathan?” It was her seamless voice, the one that nailed my personality. “Aren’t you in a bad mood today?”

“Not really.”

“I can see something annoys you,” she said. “What is the matter?”

“Nothing. It’s not your concern.” Bitterness leaked out in my curtness.

“I noticed you were at your apartment playing the games the last few weeks.”

“Yeah.”

The heat surrounded us. We arrived at my car.

“I called your number several times last week, Jonathan, and I got no answer. Did you turn your recorder off? Why didn’t you call me?”

“Lana, I’m surprised you care for an introvert like me.”

“You don’t need to be hostile. It’d be better if we spoke some other time, when you’re in a better mood.” She turned from me.

“That’s the problem,” I said to her back. “Regardless of my mood, I’m displeased about us. I’m not interested in defending my personality to you anymore. And I’ve lost interest in competing for you.”

A few people in the parking lot heard my protests. Lana frowned and came back to me. I sat in my sweltering car.

“Wait,” she said. She leaned down to me. Her neck glistened. “You must understand that I will be with others. It may be hard for your naive heart to grasp, but if it can’t, we’re finished.” I stared ahead through the windshield. The entrapped warmth of the car engulfed me. Sweat covered me. She too had become soaked.

“I do enjoy being with you tremendously,” she said. “But I just came off a somewhat serious relationship, and I’m not ready to limit myself to going out with one guy.”

I stood and leaned on the car. I stepped toward her when the car seared me.

“I realize that, Lana. I was only trying to figure out whether I should continue this. Why should I hurt when I know you’re with somebody else? It’s not your problem. It’s mine.”

“Maybe I can discourage you,” she said. “In case you haven’t noticed, we have lots of personality differences.”

“So what?”

“I see you erecting barriers to others. You go out of your way to isolate yourself from them, so you don’t need to worry about being rejected or becoming dependent on them.”

“You’d want me to be dependent on you, right?”

She looked away, then back at me. “Yes, Jonathan. In a way, I’d like that.” She gleamed with her dampness. “Jonathan, you must come to work. Your position’s in jeopardy. Hiding away for a few weeks because I go out with someone else is not a sign of a healthy person.”

“I wasn’t hiding from you. I simply wanna make up my mind whether you’re worth the trouble or not.”

“And what did you decide?” Her blouse clung to her wet chest now, I knew, but I kept my eyes on hers.

“I don’t know. I only want to know you. God, you’re so perfect. But I can’t break through. Is being sociable and marketable and sexual all you want? If so, why?”

“Jonathan, you’re hopeless. I’m trying very hard to accept you. But this simply isn’t working. Oh, by the way, see me in my office tomorrow morning so we can discuss the future of your access.”

She stomped across the lot, stopped to compliment a lady on her outfit, and stomped again.

***

That night, I had planned to relieve my head with another adventure. I decided instead to make the visit to Lana that I should have made twenty-five days ago. I risked nothing. I had little hope in knowing her. I only wanted to hear her cries of pleasure. I would be indifferent if she rejected me or even if she touched another man before my eyes in her open windows.

I had avoided describing my adventures with Magic Theater to her. Did I feel shame for wearing the helmet? I disliked myself for the new corruption and fear that had overtaken me.

My corruption, this time, was not projected at simple girls, but at myself. But conventional wisdom said I shouldn’t suppress the primal enjoyment of slicing off an Inca’s leg or slipping my hand over an 18-yearold mall girl’s firm, virtual body.

My fear surged in every session. Within Magic Theater, rebelling against a game or quitting meant prison. During one game, I was caught inciting mutiny against Eric the Red, who beat me for refusing to rape a native girl near Chesapeake Bay. After dragging me behind the boat for an hour, Eric flung me down the stairs to a masked brig keeper. The brig keeper showed me my accommodations for the next ten years deep within the ship. I saw no method to end the game, nor did it occur to me to ask. So I recanted my treason. The game ended hours later when I stepped in front of a native’s arrow meant for Eric. I chuckled when I woke up. I actually had feared the game could keep me jailed indefinitely.

From the road in front of her house, I could see Lana was there, in a window at her bedroom makeup stand, alone. At her doorstep, I pushed her bell. I heard her shuffle behind the door. She probably saw me through the peep-hole as a wide-angled maniac. I waited. Once seeing me in normal view, she would surely allow me to enter. I knocked. She tested my resolve. I tapped the door again. She taunted me. Maybe I should disappear. Or should I burst through an open window? Had I waited long enough?

When another knock did not come, she opened the door. She stood there as a reality, in silken pink shorts draping down over the top of her muscled, tan legs.

We paused without words for a length of time I forgot. I must somehow capture her essence in a perceptible, in words, because one day, I would be denied it forever. Others should grasp the enormity of my discovery, but not in a voyeuristic tale. Would she admire me for my expressing the timeless delight I found in her? Would she love me for giving such life to her?

Her form quickened my blood and hardened my muscles. I tensed. I pushed myself forward. She obstructed me with her strong arms. I pulled away. We stared again for a moment, then she lunged at me and pulled me through the door to her lips to our paradise of pleasures of the earth. Something inside me whispered “sin,” but I overlooked it.

Later that night, as we buried ourselves under sheets in the humid breezes, she spoke. “So, you must’ve been pleased by Magic Theater. What do you think of its prospects?”

“It’ll sell very well. I need to finish that marketing plan.”

“Yeah, Jonathan, a lot of people are counting on that. Which games-”

“No, Lana. I don’t want to talk about it. I can’t continue playing.”

“What? Oh no, you must.” She poked my stomach.

“Hey!” I sprang off the bed.

“Look, Jonathan.” She flung off the sheets. “I’ve risked my career on you. You must keep playing.”

“I don’t understand,” I said as I grabbed a towel draped over a chair.

“Keep playing the games, Jonathan. And go to work.” She stood exposed to the window.

“But Lana, look what it did to me. I lost interest in you, and in my career.”

“Ridiculous. They’re only games. Do you think I’m gonna bother with you if you don’t play? If you shatter my career? I think you should leave now.”

“Lana, how could it shatter your career?”

“Believe me, Jonathan. I approved you. It’s my responsibility you perform.”

“You think it’s that important?”

“Absolutely. This could ruin my opportunities here and at other companies. Don’t you understand? If you don’t perform, they’d need to fire you. They can’t risk losing you, but they would. And that’d be my fault.”

“Why do they care about firing me? They’re gonna lay off people

soon, right?”

“Most of those people don’t matter. The people being laid off may know the technology, but other companies will catch up with that anyway. Other companies want our game scenarios. Vincula can’t risk leaking them.”

She stared, at me or through me.

“This is how it is, Jonathan. If you want to know me, you need to forget yourself, and focus.”

“Okay, Lana. I get it.”

Next week: Episode 11 - The Access Handoff: Giving the keys to Kevin

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