Chapter 1

It wouldn’t quite be accurate to say that Nora Smith was born when Ariel handed over her one gold and registered as the first immortal Whore trainee. For one thing, it was actually a tenth of a second later when an independent cognition structure was initialized and Nora Smith was allocated her first tick of thought. That was the first moment when Nora Smith had the potential to influence the world rather than simply being shaped by it.

It would be more accurate to say that Ariel registering as a trainee caused Nora Smith to be born. Of course, it wasn’t quite so simple as that. Ariel’s actions set a lot of things in motion. If there was going to be a whore training class, it seemed like there needed to be trainees. Whore training had never happened before, so figuring out how training worked was a top priority. Mind, the world was filled with Whores, and they had all been trained. It was just that no one had ever looked into the training itself enough that the training needed to actually happen. Trainees for a trainee class seemed obvious enough, and besides that meant Ariel couldn’t start her training until all the trainees were assembled. Delay was good: there were a lot of decisions to be made and lives to be lived before Ariel could be trained, and so that first decision was made. There would be trainees.

That led to the question of who and how many. And that was the question that ultimately led to Nora Smith being born. As is often the case when many decisions are being made, short cuts were taken. For example, a mage, Nathan Ledford, was selected to join Nora in the trainee class. He had originally been born to hold in reserve in case an adventurer wanted to hire a mage companion. Adapting Nathan to be a whore trainee would take work, but less than many of the alternatives. However, this is not yet Nathan’s story.

Not all the trainees could be adapted from ephemerals held in reserve. And so Nora Smith was one of the more complicated answers to the question of who the trainees would be. She had no back story to speak of. That was good in some ways: her back story could entirely fit her new role. Finding that back story before the training class convened would not be easy though.

When we say that Nora was born a tenth of a second after Ariel registered as a trainee, one might get the impression she entered the world at that point. That of course is not true. Nora first entered the world years before. Her father’s forge was a common stop for those seeking well-crafted weapons. In due time, the question arose as to whether he had a wife or lover. It seemed that he would, and eventually it was fixed in reality that he did. That nudged forward the question of whether they had any children. Soon after, Nora made her first appearance as scenery, walking next to her mother as an adventurer turned into the yard.

Later, a quest line required her father make a trip away from Berg’s Keep, and Nora took her turn filling in for her father. She might have been born that day. Several immortals—or players as they were sometimes insultingly called, presumably because of their tendency to treat the world as if it was there for their amusement—came to buy daggers. One even talked about ordering a sword. If even one of them had asked a complicated question of Nora, doubtless independent cognition would have started then. Some of her mannerisms were sketched out that day, but selling the daggers was simple enough that what thoughts Nora had took place in another’s context.

If Nora were asked about her birth, she would have assumed she was guided into the world screaming and wet by a Whore midwife, just like all the other mammalian races. If someone asked her father, he would have agreed. After all, by the time he was done remembering the back story, he would have been there standing next to the whore, holding his wife’s hand as their daughter made her first appearance. Perhaps later, he would have held out his arms as his wife placed their child into them, giving their daughter the name Nora. Or perhaps not. It is unlikely that a simple question about Nora’s birth would have fixed the naming into reality. After all fixing the naming ceremony would narrow down the Smith’s religion; that could cascade to questions about whether their religion fit into their community or whether they traveled from somewhere else. Each of those answers would remove flexibility if they were fixed. What if that flexibility were needed? Besides, asking Nora’s father to think that far into his back story would already be expensive. Fixing more than was necessary would only make that more costly.

Phoenix Rising is a strange enough place that both of these stories can be true at the same time: Nora born shortly after Ariel registered as a trainee, and Nora born years before with her father in attendance. After all, Phoenix Rising is the ultimate in full experiential mode gaming. The details of how the ephemerals like Nora Smith work are a proprietary secret. But thinking of her as a fragment of an artificial intelligence would be a good starting point. Phoenix Rising tries to run three times faster than the immortal world that houses its hardware. The brute force approach is impossible. There isn’t enough processing power or memory to run a physics model for every cubic millimeter of the world. Embedding artificial intelligences in that model for each of the ephemerals and dungeon mobs would make an intractable problem completely preposterous. Even if those resources were available, and even if the physics model could run three times faster than reality at that level of detail, things still wouldn’t work. How would new ephemerals get quickly introduced to replace those who were killed off? Finding game mechanics for the introduction itself was simple, but those ephemerals would need their own life experiences. Even at three times compression, an adult’s worth of life experience would require years of time. No, the brute force approach was unworkable even before considering world expansions and new content.

So ephemerals like Nora did not live in linear time. Like other ephemerals, her meta mind focused on living in the now, remembering as much back story as she needed to face the world before her. From the view of her experiential self, life progressed one day to the next, similar to how life progressed for the immortals that her experiential self interacted with. That was all an illusion: her meta mind was there remembering a past, and even pre-living potential futures, all so that the experiential self was who she needed to be in the now, fully realized and realistic. Many factors influenced who her experiential self would be: the requirements of quest lines and even the needs of other ephemerals as they remembered their back stories. Ultimately though, Nora was her own person, and she would figure out who that was for herself, even if she did it in a different order and in a different way than the immortals who shared her world.

Ephemerals needed every trick in the book to make Phoenix Rising work. When spare capacity was available, ephemerals filled in back story they’d likely need. Sometimes they even pre-lived future aspects of their life, so that if that future came to pass, it could take up less processing. But when resources were constrained, the real tricks came into play as ephemerals cut down on how much of their lives were actually experienced, answering only the most critical questions about what they would do. They were very good at filling in the gaps and producing a reality that was seamless from the outside.

Nora wondered why she wanted to be a Whore. It seemed like she might get asked that, and it would influence what kind of whore she became. She didn’t find it odd that the desire to be a whore came well before the reason. Effect often preceded cause in her world.

Her desire to be a whore was almost certainly influenced by some positive interaction with whores in the past. Had she hired a whore and enjoyed herself? Probably not. At least so far, her family had not been involved in any adult quests. That might change, but it seemed likely that she’d spent most of her time training to be a smith to follow in her pa’s footsteps. Although now that she was an artisan smith—she was, wasn’t she? Yes, definitely an artisan; she insisted on fixing that, and reality had no objection. Perhaps she had celebrated becoming an artisan by hiring a whore. Perhaps, but that didn’t feel right.

So was it just the obvious reason that brought her to the Whores Guild? The guild provided near ironclad protection from rape. She’d like that certainly, but it didn’t seem like that would be the deciding factor for her. While she was manning the forge for her pa, an immortal had commented that she looked strong. “Aye, half as strong as an ox,” she’d said. She didn’t think a woman that strong would run off to the guild for protection. Certainly not any woman who enjoyed sex enough to make a life as a whore. Although was she making a life as a whore or just going through training to join the guild? She clearly enjoyed sex; no point in whore training if she didn’t. As for how much whoring she would do long term ... she could figure that out later.

Well, if it wasn’t hiring a whore, and wasn’t for guild protection, there was one likely way she had a positive interaction with a whore. She must have been at the community service center. Remembering that trip fit well.

Scene firstwhoreinteraction Take 1

Needed Approvals before Fixation: Nora Smith

Action!

It had been a couple days after she first had sex. No, that wasn’t right; Nora didn’t do things by halves. So it had been the morning after. She had walked her lover out to the back entrance of the forge, thanked him, and headed on to the community service center. She didn’t feel bad about last night; she liked sex after all. But she wasn’t ready for a child, and the community service centers helped with that. She strutted into the center with a smile on her face. She waited her turn. Eventually, a woman, a few years older than Nora, beckoned her into a room. “What ya wantin help with today?”

“I ain’t done this before. But I got fucked last night, an I’m thinkin I’m not like to be wantin to be pregnant any time soon.”

“Your first time?”

Nora nodded. “Aye.”

The whore helping Nora hesitated. “Is there anything ya need to talk about? Anything ya are uncomfortable with?”

Nora began to tell all about her experience. The whore stopped her. Apparently, she was concerned Nora might have been forced or traumatized somehow. “Not like that! It was right good,” Nora said.

“Aye, good enough. I’m gonna cast Remove Pregnancy and Cure Disease for ya. Not likely ya have any disease, but it’s cheap enough so as not to matter.

“Ya know we’re gonna need a sexual connection for me to do that.”

“Ain’t never been with a woman. What’s ya wantin me to do?” Nora couldn’t have been with a girl after all: her first time was last night.

“Normally I’d ask ya to give me pleasure since ya’re getting services right cheap. Seeing as how it’s your first time, I can masturbate ya until ya come. Then I cast.”

“I’m right happy to give ya pleasure,” Nora said. “I’m like to jump in with both feet. Just tell me how.”

“Right enough. Ya lay down there on the bed.” Nora complied. The whore continued, “I’m gonna spread my legs around your head and give ya a nice good lick at my cunt. I’ll give ya any hints you need.”

The whore’s crotch filled Nora’s face. She reached out and grabbed the globes of the other woman’s ass. The whore’s musk was intoxicating. Nora took her first tentative lick.

“Yeah, like that.”

Nora continued, emboldened. She loved how responsive her lover was. Every twitch that her tongue and fingers elicited was proof that she was doing something right. Nora was strong enough that she had control of the other woman even though she was humping Nora’s face. Soon enough, the whore was excited enough she lost any desire to hold back on account of Nora’s inexperience. Nora was a natural at this, and her lover was soon pressing herself against Nora, begging for just a little more sensation. Nora felt the tension building up in her lover. Her cries became more strident, and the natural rhythm increased. Nora was so proud of herself when those cries merged into a scream of ecstasy. She had gotten another woman off on her first try.

Cut!

Yes, that was a good memory. Nora could see how an encounter like that could get her thinking about being a whore: that nameless whore had reaffirmed the pleasure Nora found in her first sexual encounter. She had created a space that would have been safe if Nora had needed it. Then she gave Nora an opportunity to try something new—start building up skills. Whoring was like smithing in that regard. There was a lot of repetition and skill, but you put a little of yourself into every project. They were never quite the same. Some day she would be the one working community service shifts, going from one client to the next, accepting pleasure in exchange for helping with those things whores gave to the larger community.