Kevin Guilfoile - Cast Of Shadows

Threading herself between the castaways on the sidewalk, Sally climbed the concrete steps and the bouncer opened the door with a big grin. “You look fine, honey.” She wondered if this was the same doorman she had interviewed in real life at the opening, and if he recognized her. Either possibility was a stretch.

Inside, patrons were packed into the most inconvenient places. The coat check was as difficult to get to as any of the bars. Fortunately, Sally’s avatar wasn’t thirsty and she’d left her coat in Justin’s car.

Not thirty seconds inside, a tall Asian man asked her to dance. She couldn’t even see the dance floor and the music was so loud she could barely understand the request in her headset. She turned him down and continued to push her way deeper into the Jungle.

The center of the club boasted a fifty-foot ceiling and an enormous skylight that would have revealed a brilliant display of stars if the sky were clear and the city not so lousy with light pollution, a detail Shadow World’s programmers had written into the Chicago code. When there were no clouds, you could make out a handful of the brightest planets and stars, but mostly you’d see the blinking lights of airplanes in holding patterns over O’Hare and Midway. Last month, during a meteor shower, the club – the real Jungle – had a party to celebrate. There had been little to see through the skylight but patrons partied on, soon forgetting the promotion that had brought them there in the first place.

Two more offers to dance followed in quick succession, along with a third suggestion that prompted Barwick to push away the propositioner with the heel of her palm. Disgusting. When yet another avatar asked if she wanted to join him for the next song – what were they, taking numbers? – she finally said yes. From the dance floor she could move around better and also get a decent look at all sides of the club.

Out in the middle of the room, under the big skylight, Sally loosened up. She felt self-conscious when she danced in real life, but in Shadow World she could relax. Let the music lead her. The motion of her fingers across the keyboard was a dance of its own, and the easy manner with which her avatar responded was much more satisfying than any real-life two-step. This was why she felt more alive in the game than she did in real life. This feeling of confidence and control was something she had tried to describe to her family but never could. They would just shrug and laugh and say they’d never understand this True-to-Life obsession of hers.

Tonight, though, even more than other nights she’d spent clubbing in Shadow World, Sally really had it going on. The motions of her new avatar were so fluid. So natural. Changing to third-person in the point-of-view window she could watch herself as others saw her, and what others were seeing was a sexy, sexy display. The way her hips rolled, the way her hair fell in front of her eyes, the fluid way her arms turned above her head as if she were undersea.

In the main panel of the screen, she saw her dance partner – dressed up, trying too hard, a good but not great dancer, handsome face, shaved head, broad shoulders under a ribbed turtleneck. He had a grin on his face and an empty, fixed stare that Sally recognized from thousands of hours in the game as lust.

Of course.

That was why she was getting all the attention. Most of these guys were in here for online sex, and she represented the newest technology. They were after some high-resolution in-and-out with her. She was both flattered and nauseated by the thought. Scanning the area around her, she found a lot of eyes on her body, men and women, some horny and some just curious. She counted a few others who had obviously upgraded, maybe one in twenty players at this point. TyroSoft predicted that in one month the penetration would be close to ninety percent.

It had been stupid to upgrade so early. She was here on surveillance, for crying out loud, trying to be stealthy, not sexy, and she stuck out like one incredibly desirable sore thumb.

On the other hand, maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing.

Winking at her dance partner, she spun away from him and began walking the perimeter of the club. She found an opening at the bar and ordered a vodka and tonic and then resumed her patrol, although she had to stop every ten feet or so to deny a request for dancing or sex or both. Sally was becoming irritated, waving away suitors like gnats.

There: dark blue shirt with a yellow stripe. He was standing three bodies out from the bar, talking with a couple of blondes. Coyne had made the upgrade as well, she noticed, and she wondered if he also had cheated on his looks a bit, chiseling those cheekbones and squaring that jaw when he redid his avatar. Her investigation hadn’t turned up a photo. The real Sam Coyne was probably a stereotypical fantasy player: short, fat, and bald.

She watched him from this safe distance, simply ignoring the propositions when they came now and taking small sips from her glass to make the drink last. She’d feel conspicuous standing here alone and without a drink, and she was afraid of losing sight of him if she had to go back to the bar.

He became focused on one of the girls now, his eyes boring into her. One blonde tried to inch her way into his line of sight, but he seemed more and more interested in her friend. They were too far away for Barwick to hear what they were saying (sound in the game carried about the same distance as it did in real life), but it seemed to her to be all smiling and flirting. Sam Coyne was a charming man, it seemed.

He looked up from between the two blonde heads and made eye contact with Sally. Not a casual glance, but a long, unbroken connection. Barwick was slow to look away, and then it was too late to do anything but return his gaze and look indifferent. She didn’t, apparently, seem indifferent enough.

In a matter of seconds he had excused himself from the blondes and they turned and pouted as Coyne made his way over to Sally. This wasn’t what she wanted, but she couldn’t run. And what did she expect would happen when she walked into this bar, anyway? Sally realized too late that she had no plan.

“Hello, I’m Sam,” he said. Sally noticed another benefit of the upgrade. The lip sync was almost perfect. Forget about flesh, she thought. Even dirty talk would be sexier in the new Shadow World.

“Sam, hi,” she said. “I’m Sally.”

If he was a TTL, and he looked anything like this in real life, Sam Coyne, attorney-at-law, was quite a catch. Wavy blond hair. A big white smile. Athletic waist and thighs. Coyne might be the Shadow World thrill killer, but she was finding it harder and harder to buy into Justin’s thinking. She’d met a lot of serious gamers and this guy was too good to be true.

“Sally, do you want to dance?” he asked.

Did she? Heck, it’s a crowded club. “Sam, sure,” she said.

Coyne was better than a decent dancer, although she acknowledged that dancing in the game was all fingers and wrists – a different skill set than dancing in a real club. It still took rhythm, though, and he had it. As he moved on her screen, she couldn’t help seeing in him something like what men had been seeing in her all night. Casual sex wasn’t Barwick’s thing, in Shadow World or in life, but she was attracted to him. Or to his avatar, anyway. Of course, the avatar was a real man as far as Shadow Sally was concerned, and whether or not danger had anything to do with it, Shadow Sally was turned on. And he was picking up on it.

After just one song, he leaned in next to her ear and said, “Sally, do you feel like going for a walk?” She had been playing the game long enough to know what that meant. She was scared. Excited and scared. She needed that plan now.