Chapter 124

It took Adam a few minutes, but he finally wondered where everyone else had gone. Walt, Trinity and Rebecca didn't arrive on the deck with Shelly and Erin. He had been told that Meredith, Leslie and Tyanna had wandered off for some girl play but they didn't return either. Leslie was taking a two-credit-hour class and had Tuesday afternoons free.

Finally, figuring (correctly) that he would be the last person to know anything, he asked.

"Rebecca and Leslie are having their chat sessions now," Erin explained. "Walt suggested that one of them do an open session while the other does a private show. It is a good idea, really."

Adam knew that "open" meant non-members and no nudity. "Closed" meant members-only and included any number of things – dildo play and masturbation, some sex (restricted to girl-girl only at this point) and even member dares (although the more ridiculous were ignored).

"So that explains Rebecca and Leslie," Adam said. "What about the others?"

"Have you ever seen how these are done?" Erin asked. She was looking at Adam like he was an idiot so he admitted that he hadn't.

"Trinity and Tyanna are working the cameras," Shelly explained as if she were talking to a child. "A lot of girls use web cams, but we went with something higher quality. We use hand-held mini-cams that not only stream the video but record it, too."

Adam answered the only way he could.

"Oh," he said.

"Walt and Meredith are serving as mods," Erin continued, using the exact same tone that Shelly had used. Adam simply nodded, refusing to show his ignorance by asking what a "mod" was. Shelly told him anyway.

"'Mod' is short for 'moderator, '" she said. "They monitor the comments and the number of viewers. Rebecca is doing the open show, so she won't be using much bandwidth. Leslie is doing a members show. It's an awkward time but it works well for our foreign members. We usually try to do one show per week at a time that works best for Europe and one for Asia."

"You have Asian members?" Adam wondered before he could stop himself.

"We each have a few Asian members," Shelly continued. "Outside of the U.S. and Canada, Japan is our largest contingency. There are about 3,000 people from Asia, Australia and India. We also have a lot of soldiers serving over there."

"Do we give them a discount?" Adam asked.

"We do if they can prove they are an active member of the U.S. Armed Forces," Shelly said with a smile. "About the only way to do that, though, is for them to send a copy of their military ID via e-mail. We've only had a couple who have done that. We give them access to all of our sites for the cost of two."

"That's cool," Adam said, nodding. Almost half of his graduating class had joined the military in one form or fashion.

"Sarah has the most members from Japan," Shelly said. "She has almost 350 members with credit cards that bill back to that country. It seems they like busty blondes there, although Rebecca does well over there, too. Allie and Leslie are hits with the Brits and the French. They have about 40 members from each of those countries. Karlie and I seem to do best with people from the U.S. Almost all of our members pay via banks that bill here."

"Are you doing well?" Adam asked. He was embarrassed that he had not made inquiries along this line before.

"Karlie and I are doing well," Shelly said with a smile. "Sarah, Allie, Leslie and Rebecca are doing really well. I have about 3,800 members. Karlie is up to about 4,500. The thing is, Allie and Sarah are actually outselling Leslie and Rebecca right now. Sarah has more than 11,000 members. Allie has about 10,000 and Leslie and Rebecca are about 8,000."

"Jesus Christ!" Adam said. He was trying to do math in his head and it wasn't working. Even at $15 a person, 11,000 members was an enormous number -- $165,000 a month – just for Sarah.

Shelly was nodding her head.

"We're selling more and more multi-site packages, too," Shelly continued. "The live chats are a huge hit. I had almost 900 people on my last one. Erin had to close registrations. The best part, I got almost 200 people who joined that day. That is my biggest day so far."

"So you moderate Shelly's chats?" Adam asked Erin.

"I did that one," Erin said. "It's usually whoever is around. Mary and Trinity do most of the members' chats. I did that one for Shelly because they were both busy."

"Why haven't I been asked?" Adam wondered.

Shelly rolled her eyes toward the sky.

"You barely have two minutes to yourself," she said. "Or, at least you didn't before today. The chat sessions take at least an hour. We didn't want to pull you away from studying or working or resting for something anyone could do."

Adam was befuddled. He didn't understand how he could have missed noticing that three or four people just wandered off at random. He wondered how he got so lost in his own thoughts.

"It's usually just whoever is doing the chat and Erin and Mary," Shelly said, answering his unasked question. "We go on anytime from 5 p.m. to 1 a.m. Once or twice a week, it's afternoon. Like right now, its 2:20 p.m. here but its 10:20 p.m. in Berlin and just past midnight in Moscow."

"OK," Adam said. He had no idea why anyone would know that but he'd take her word for it. "So you try to alter the times so you aren't attracting the same viewers every time. That makes sense."

"It's part of it," Shelly said. "But we also do it to broaden our memberships. We're not going to get $30 American from Third World countries. But most Europeans, Asians and North Americans can afford it. And the people viewing our web sites are the ones who are likely to head over to 'Naughty Newbies' or 'Frisky First Timers' or 'Sensual Sessions.' We're not only helping ourselves by doing this, we're helping the companies we work with."

"Do you think they'd mind if I wandered down to watch?" Adam asked. He wanted to be useful and help out when he could, but he didn't want to be a distraction. "By the way, where do they do the chats?"

He still couldn't figure out how he'd entirely missed them.

"In our upstairs bedrooms," Erin said. She was smiling broadly, amazed that Adam hadn't recognized the changes in the rooms. Then she realized he probably hadn't been there since they moved in. The basement had its own bathing facilities. The living rooms and common areas were on the first floor. The top floor consisted of two bedrooms and a bath.

"Huh," he responded.

"I would say it's almost finished," Shelly said. "But come in here and you can see what we do. We record all of our chat sessions, open and closed. Members can still see them even if they're working or something. It's why we use higher-quality cameras to stream them."

Mary, of course, had a computer still in her room. It took only 30 seconds for Shelly to retrieve it and to point the browsers toward "Sweet Things." The "Chat In Progress!" bar was still flashing, so Shelly clicked on it. Rebecca – or rather, Rita – filled the laptop's screen.

She was wearing a turquoise bikini and lying on her side on a bed. Adam listened as she discussed some of her recent projects and plugged the sites where she would soon be working. She also plugged Cassie's "closed" session and urged people to join any of the sites to see her. Adam finally understood why having a tame session at the same time as a more adventurous one could prove to be a good idea.

Shelly opened a new Mozilla tab and used her own password to enter the site. "Chat Live With Cassie Charms" flashed across the top of the screen. When Shelly clicked on the link, it was Cassie's image. She was nude (of course) and she was masturbating with a sex toy while soft music played in the background. The only thing Adam found disconcerting was that he could plainly hear Rita's voice talking about living in Las Vegas as Cassie moaned.

"We'll have to do something about soundproofing," Adam said. "It sounds like they're in the same bed."

Erin chuckled and rolled her eyes. Shelly, however, simply patted Adam's hand. She moved to the tab with Rita and muted the sound. Cassie's loud exhortations were all that was left. She muted Cassie and turned the sound back on Rita's side.

"You can't even hear Cassie getting off," Erin said. "That house is solidly built and there is a bathroom between the bedrooms. Have you been upstairs lately?"

"Uh, well, no," Adam said sheepishly. "I haven't had much of a reason."

"Everything he wants is downstairs in the basement," Shelly laughed. Humor aside, Adam thought she might be correct.

"The beds are on opposite walls and we put up what are known as 'Blackout Curtains, '" Erin said. She and Shelly had been the ones responsible for setting the lighting conditions, courtesy of some tips from Ben and Renaldo. "It's completely dark in there even during the day if we close the curtains. Walt's dad put in studio lighting. They redid the electricity before we moved in, remember? So each room has two sets of wall-mounted and ceiling-mounted lights on a row of dimmer switches. We took a gamble that if we ever resell the place, it will be to someone who wants to tear it down."

Adam nodded. He knew studio lighting was easy to remove and the row of switches could be patched.

"Sounds like a really good plan," he said.

"We sort of decided to use the upstairs room while you were studying for your chemistry final," Shelly said. "We had already decided to live in the basement. We weren't sure if the upstairs was going to be someone's room, but we doubted both would be occupied. Even if they were, no one had a problem with it – so long as we changed the sheets and stuff. I honestly didn't realize you were in the dark. It wasn't meant as a secret."

Adam smiled at Shelly and gave her a wink.

"Sounds like a perfect plan to me," he said. "How much longer will the chats go?"

"Cassie will finish up in five minutes," Shelly said, relieved Adam wasn't upset that he didn't get a say on how a third of the house was used. "Rita might go longer, depending. She might continue chatting for 10 or 15 minutes more. It's funny. Some of the people would rather chat with us while we're dressed than see us play with ourselves or with others."

This was one concept Adam could agree with.

"I think it's a great idea," he said. "Let's go back to Rita's. Can we log in?"

"Sure, just pick a screen name," Shelly said. "We do that. I mean, log in ourselves if the chat is lagging or if the guys are really shy about asking things. It usually only takes one or two opening questions to get things moving."

Shelly punched in "ddriller731" as the screen name and laughed.

"So I just type a question?" Adam asked. Shelly nodded, interested in seeing what Adam had in mind.

"Why did you move your site to 'Sweet Things?' Is it working out?" he typed. Shelly laughed because Adam used correct capitalization and punctuation. He obviously hadn't been to many chat rooms.

"Hi, ddriller731," Rebecca said. "You picked the nickname of my favorite guy and that's a good question."

"So she can see who logs in?" Adam asked. "I figured the mod would point her in the right direction somehow?"

"There are two widescreen TVs attached to the laptops," Erin said. "Mary configured them so they are off screen and zoomed in on the chat console. She can see every question."

Rita was still answering the question when a flushed-faced Cassie – dressed in black bra and panties – came in and joined her. Cassie offered her insights as well and Adam saw the number in the chat room expand when Cassie's members chat ended. It went from 230 people to almost 500 in the space of two minutes.

"With the added people in the room, she might stay until three o'clock," Shelly said. "It depends on the questions. Some of the guys wander back to see what the topic is. You can have some really good ideas come from these."

Adam didn't type another question but simply sat and watched Rita and Cassie answer the questions of others.

"Nice idea," he said when the chat ended shortly before 3 p.m. "Let me know when you want me to help."

"Oh, we have plans to introduce you to the members soon enough," Shelly said with a giggle.

"I mean as a moderator or even with the cameras," Adam replied. "I did OK with filming the shoot in Vegas, didn't I?"

"You did really well," Erin told him. She had helped Rebecca go through and edit it into six 15-minute segments – one to be posted on each girl's site in the coming weeks. The entire shoot would be posted on Dazzle's and Daystar's sites two weeks later.

"You'll need to watch someone do the moderating," Shelly said. She frowned slightly. She was glad Adam hadn't wanted to view Leslie's chat for long. He would have been pissed off quickly at some of the comments. "Look, you probably want to stick with working with the open chats. The closed chats can get, uh..."

She searched for a word that Erin supplied.

"Rude," Erin said. "Some of the guys are total dickheads. We have a rule. If you're banned from chat twice, we cancel your membership and refund the remaining portion. We haven't had to do it yet, but the moderators have total discretion. In the members' area, the person's username is logged along with their screen name. We've booted a half dozen or so from chat sessions when their comments went beyond decency."

Adam tilted his head questioningly.

"One asked Jenny if she liked dogs," Shelly said. Her face was calmer than her voice. "She said she did because it seemed like an innocent question. Then he asked if she liked to blow the dog when she was a little girl and if she still did it. Leslie booted him from the chat room and deleted the question before it scrolled on the screen. There is about a four-second delay from what the moderator sees to what the performer and the other chatters see. Jenny simply saw the guy had left the room."

"You have to supply an e-mail address when you sign up," Erin said, picking up the story. Something similar had happened to Shelly – where someone had mentioned her real name and her hometown. That was in open chat and the e-mail address was fake. Mary was working on a solution but hadn't come up with one yet. "So the guy got an e-mail telling him – with the name on his credit card – that he had violated our TOS and he would be banned from the site if it happened again. He didn't renew and we logged his credit card number to block him if he tries again."