Tyro Vogel - Tyro Vogel's Extatica

Victor did. They were in Victor’s laboratory, where the orphan brothers, he and Mark, sat cross-legged on the floor, surrounded by stacks of paper, pizza slices, coffee cups, an electric synthesizer, and Mark’s entire chemistry kit. A ray of light shone through the open dome, painting the young men in stripes of gold.

“We did what our civilization couldn’t do in ten thousand years: we found a way to dive into the dreamweb.”

Irina slid her hand down Victor’s chest and rested it on his crotch, breathing heavily in his ear. “Then you met me,” she said.

“And then you met her.”

The laboratory morphed into Margaret Island. Irina walked along a running lane by the river, head bowed, lips tight from the philosophical musings of a twenty-three-year-old diagnosed with cancer. Victor watched her approach his bench, where they started small talk, shared a joint. He was dressed in that ridiculous monkey suit Mark had forced him on a bet to wear for a day. Irina didn’t seem to mind.

Scenes of what had come next flashed one after the other: Irina’s upload; the suicide; Irina inside the dreamweb, helping Victor run the company; Linda; Mark, starting an activist group to ban the dreamweb; the plane; Linda again, crushed against the ceiling; Gabor, a balding young man in a pair of shorts and a tight yellow T-shirt.

“Ah yes, Gabor,” Mark said. “Gabor… Did you know Gabor made a dreamweb dive every day to be with Irina, after she’d died in the physical world? What I did for him at Bogazici was his dream come true.”

“You? It was you?”

“It was us,” Irina whispered into his ear. “I was so lonely. I begged Mark to help.” She nibbled on the ear before continuing. “Your brother lied. What he did wasn’t help; what he did was murder. ”

“Not murder,” Mark said. “He did that all on his own. I just gave him the drugs, the booze, and the razor blade.”

“Why, Mark?”

“Because it was the only way, brother. I needed at least one more neo-human inside the dreamweb.” Mark crossed his hands. “The dreamweb was never made to handle human input; our minds simply aren’t on that level. Every worldspace somebody built was like surgery performed with a chainsaw on the fabric of the web’s reality. Finally, time came when it could no longer handle the twisted minds of us mortal fuckers, and it started sucking parts of our world into itself. Irina even gave it a nudge in your direction. Enter missing pilots and a falling plane. Hello, and welcome to the afterlife.”

“What does this have to do with Gabor?”

“Shhh…” Irina whispered. “Let him finish.”

“Everything. The dreamweb is not a piece of technology; it’s a living thing that self-regulates. It had adjusted itself to Irina’s presence, but it’d had a hard time. I figured if I introduced another neo-human to it — the more unstable the better — it would do what any living system would do in such case: it would severe the connection with our world entirely.”

“You based this all on guesswork?”

“It was very scientific guesswork.”

“And?”

“It worked. The world’s no longer disappearing, but… well, the damage is permanent. The dreamweb’s rearranging itself. In a few minutes, there will be no more dreamweb for the people of Earth. We won’t be able to feel it at all, to feel the world around us, the auras of one another, much less dive into it. No more premonitions, no more déjà vu. Trees would die, and probably most of the animals. And when our time comes, the essence of who we are will never touch the dreamweb; we will be forever gone. It was a compromise I was willing to make. If not for this, our world would have simply ceased to be.”

Victor lowered his head. “Because of us,” he said.

“Yes. Because of us.”

“What now?”

The room rippled into a meadow by a roaring waterfall crashing into rock. A catamaran with a retracted sail stood on shore where the rocks gave way to grass.

“There’s only one more thing,” Mark said. “I don’t know how much time I have here, but it’s not long. We won’t meet again.”

“And so I said we’d make this special.” Irina walked around Victor to face him. She kissed him, her lips against his like butterfly wings, then got to her knees and pulled down his pants. Victor looked at Mark, thinking that if sex was the gateway to hell, the three of them would dance with devil. Mark removed his shirt.

Irina gently wrapped her fingers around Victor’s balls, licking him between kisses. He closed his eyes, his head clearing as his body reacted. Sex, he thought. The union of bodies and minds. First comes the mind, then comes the body. He looked down. Irina had spread her legs wider and was helping herself with her fingers, her tongue running along the length of his dick. Victor took her by the hair and slid deeper down her throat. Mark came closer, naked and ready. He got on his knees behind her, licked two fingers, and put them between Irina’s legs. She almost choked. Victor released her, and the moment the edge of his cock left her lips, Mark grabbed her by the hair and pulled her head up.

Victor caught a glimpse of Irina’s green eyes as Mark entered her, before Mark pushed her head back down onto Victor’s cock. She grabbed onto his hips as Mark entered her from behind, fucking her hard and fast, and Victor had to lock her elbows to hold her in place as he slid along her throat — all the way in, and all the way out. His mind was empty. Only body remained — instinct, pleasure, desire. He wasn’t sure how long that went on, but when he finally finished, when his body finally spasmed and he came into Irina’s mouth, for that one moment, Victor felt more alive than he’d ever remembered. Or, at any rate, being dead could have been worse. We’re far from done, my friend, he thought, pulling out to give her some room to breathe.

Mark pulled out as well, then lay on his back.

“Sit on him,” Victor told Irina, as she wiped cum from her chin with her forearm. Head bowed, she crawled over to Mark and did as she was told, mounting him, freckled shoulders and pale back stark against the cascading blue waters before them. Victor watched Irina twist her body on Mark’s cock for a while, before coming closer and pushing her head down to Mark’s.

“Spread your ass.”

She did, and Victor entered her, feeling his brother through the thin layer of skin. Irina groaned. Mark put his hand on her throat, and Victor slid deeper into her ass.

They fucked like wild animals, bringing each other from tenderness to violence and back again, sweat rolling down their bodies, mouths open in screams of lust.

They continued until they were satisfied, until all of Irina’s holes had been explored, until the three of them lay expended on the grass, watching the waterfall hit the stones and explode into millions of droplets at a time.

“I love you,” Mark said.

Victor looked to his side, but his brother was no longer there.

He took Irina’s hand in his and breathed in, inhaling as much air as his lungs would hold. The water continued to fall. He squeezed Irina’s fingers. They had all the time in the world.

Tyro Vogel Copyright 2014

Smashwords Edition

Edited by Kimberly Grenfell

Cover art by Yvan Quinet

With thanks to Dee Xia Long for sound advice and good music, and to Creative Reality (Neil Dodwell, David Dew) for the 1994 adventure video game DreamWeb.