Chapter 6

"These last two days have been pretty bad," Jared told the nurse at the Construct offices.

"I understand," she replied. "Your broken arm should mend just fine. I can have the doctor take a look at it if you want."

"He saw me just a few minutes ago," Jared said. He sighed. "I guess when I'm done with school I'll head home, not that I want to."

"We can have someone accompany you." She looked at the chart in front of her. "That might be for the best."

"I ... yeah, sure, if they can be unobtrusive about it. Have you heard about what happened to the guys who attacked me?"

"Just that they're in police custody. I wouldn't worry about them."

"Until they make bail." He rubbed his cast and sighed. "After that, who knows what'll happen? They'll probably try to finish the job."

"We'll think of something," the nurse said. She lowered the helmet over his head and slipped the pulse monitor on his fingertip. "There you go, you should be all set. When you're done, I'll have someone meet you in the lobby."

Jared gave her a hesitant smile, and pressed the button that started the connection process.

As he'd told her, it had been a hell of a couple of days.

He'd been on his way home from the Construct offices when somebody threw a blanket over him. The next couple of minutes were kind of blank, except that somebody kept punching and kicking him. They broke his arm somewhere in there. He heard somebody shout, and then a shot. That stopped the punching, and he was able to fight free of the blanket.

There was a man standing nearby with a pistol in his hand. He had a leather jacket on, and the jacket was slashed. Niggy, Tim and Josh were standing against the wall, and Josh had a knife between his feet.

"You all right?" the man asked.

"I guess so." Jared felt a pain shoot up his right arm. "No, maybe not."

"I've called the police," the man said. "Why don't you just have a seat and rest for a bit."

The police showed up a few minutes later, and after checking his arm, called an ambulance. Over the next hour he gradually pieced together what had happened. His three former friends had decided to punish him for not supporting Elrod's alibi. They had thrown the blanket over him so he couldn't fight back. A passerby had attempted to stop them, and Josh had threatened the man with a knife. He'd slashed the man's coat, at which point the man had pulled his concealed gun and threatened them with it. When Josh had started for the man anyway, the man had fired a warning shot.

The doctor at the Emergency Room reset his arm and gave him a splint. The doctor sent him home, where he managed to get most of his homework done with one hand. He'd also let Cynthia, Shannon, and school officials know what happened.

Stubbornly, he decided to go to school the next day. The doctor at the Construct had confirmed that only one bone in his lower arm was broken.

"You can skip school today," the doctor added.

"No, I don't want to fall behind."

"This isn't about proving your toughness. A day of rest would be good for you."

"Can you ... I'd read that you could set things so I don't have a broken arm when I'm in school. Is that possible?"

"Normally the biometric data takes what you have and goes with that, but let me make a call." He came back moments later. "All right, we'll make the necessary changes so your arm won't be broken. We'll also get rid of the black eye and other bruises. It's only a temporary fix, though. You still need to heal."

"If you can, sure."

"I'll have the adjustments made."

He'd pressed the button, and, just like always, emerged out of the mist on the school bus.

He felt his arm; it didn't hurt, and neither did the places on his face where they'd hit him. When he got in the building, Cynthia and Shannon were both concerned.

"I had them fix me up," he said as he undressed. As if reminded, they both began to disrobe.

Cynthia insisted on helping with his clothes, even though he didn't need it. But the feeling of her soft breasts against his arm and side, the way she gave his cock a friendly kiss when she pulled down his shorts, and the way she melted into his arms for a hello kiss afterward made his head spin.

Shannon had been right behind her, running her hands up and down his body as if making sure all of the parts were still there. They both accompanied him across the hall, and that's where Cynthia gave him an apologetic smile.

"I have to finish a paper for my second period class. I'd love to hear all about what happened, but that'll have to wait for later."

"Are you getting caught up?" he asked.

"I'm nearly there, now that my cousins are banned from my room. They were looking at dirty pictures on my computer! And a couple of the sites they went to are just full of viruses and other things."

"I'll see he's taken care of," Shannon said. "Astrid and Genevieve said they'd help."

Cynthia's face had hardened slightly, but at the mention of the other two girls, she smiled. "All right, I'll see you guys later."

Jared smiled, watching her ass bounce as she hurried toward the library. Then he turned back to Shannon.

"I'm glad you're all right, at least in here," she said before he could speak. "I really enjoy how they can make some things disappear. For instance, back home, I'm about to have my period, and today I woke up with a bad case of cramps."

"Ouch."

"But in here, I can ignore them. As you can guess, I'm not looking forward to going home." She ran her hand down his body, caressing his cock. "Instead I can get what's good for me."

He squeezed her breast, and bent to lick the nipple. "What's good for both of us."

They'd had their usual fun, and he stared at the look on her face as she came only seconds before he did. They'd relaxed together afterward, drifting in that warm haze that followed good sex. Reluctantly they'd pulled themselves apart and headed for the bathroom.

"It's a good thing we can't get pregnant in here," Shannon said as she twirled under the shower. "We'd all have had lots of kids by now."

"Do you know how they do that?"

"They made the change in the girls' bodies. Our avatars don't have fallopian tubes or a womb, well, not as most people think of them. I originally wished they'd fixed guys, but then we'd still have our periods, so I guess it works out."

He'd wondered about whether a guy really produced semen, but he'd learned the answer in Science Lab a couple of days before. Linda, his partner in class, had jacked him off, and they'd scooped some of his come from her tits and looked at it under the microscope. And there they were, his sperm, his little wigglers.

"Eewww!" Linda had screwed up her face. "You mean those things are wiggling around inside of me?"

"They are if you had sex with anyone today."

She looked doubtful, and her fingers explored between her legs. "I thought I'd washed up properly."

"You probably did," another girl said, "but you never get all of them. That's why douching didn't always work. And all it takes is just one. I like this," the girl added. "Science is more fun when you can study what really happens, not just the theory."

Linda had still seemed upset, but between classes he did his best to make it up to her with his tongue. He liked watching how her own tongue darted in and out and moved as if she was trying to guide him.

She came, and afterwards they spent the rest of the break with his cock and her pussy getting acquainted. As they'd walked to the showers she'd kept stopping and using her fingers to scoop up some of his come as it dribbled out of her and look at it. When she noticed him watching, she smiled and licked her fingers clean.

Shannon washed his back, and he washed hers. Like Linda, she washed her pussy, using her fingers to clean out some of his semen. He'd never watched a girl clean up after sex; now that he thought about it he'd never even thought about them doing it, but he could see why. There wasn't any mention of it in the books he'd read, but that was fiction, and you could take liberties in fiction.

Classes seemed to be over far too soon. Before he knew it he had to get dressed and head for the bus. He felt exhausted. Shannon had introduced him to two different girls, and Cynthia had joined him for lunch. Any guy who thought he was a stud should have sex with four different girls in one day. He wasn't sure he could get it up even if his life depended on it.

The bus faded, and he was back in the office. He pushed the helmet away, stripped the contacts from his fingers, and sat up. He felt stiff, and his arm hurt. Somehow they'd made it all go away, and he was curious how.

"Mr. Saunders wants to see you," the nurse said when he left the room.

"Mr. Saunders?"

"He's the Director of our office. He wants to make sure you're all right."

"Ah." Jared looked around. "Where do I find him?"

"Straight down that hall to your right," the nurse said, pointing. "At the first cross corridor, turn left. His office is the last one on the left."

Jared repeated the instructions, thanked her, and started down the hall. After a couple of minutes he knocked on the door bearing the nameplate Ed Saunders.

"You must be Jared," a tall man in dark slacks and a rumpled white shirt said. He came around his desk, gesturing at the chair across the desk from him. "I'm Ed Saunders. I'd shake your hand, but..."

"That's all right." Jared took the offered seat. "What did you want to see me about?"

Mr. Saunders settled in his chair, leaning back and steepling his fingers. "You were mugged," he said. "I wanted to make sure you were all right."

"The doctors said the arm will heal without a problem."

"Good to hear." He paused and rubbed at something on his hand. "I don't often get to meet our customers, but I've made it a point to get to know those who are in the education program. I feel a special responsibility for them, and if there's anything I can do to help, let me know."

"I have some questions about the Construct," he said.

Mr. Saunders nodded. "A lot of people do. Have you looked at our FAQ?"

"These aren't the kind of questions most people would ask," Jared said. He held up his injured arm. "You made the pain go away today. How did you do that?"

"Ah!" Mr. Saunders smiled and shifted, making himself more comfortable. "Good question. The sensations your brain receives are electrical in nature. We can alter some of those waves to bypass the pain. We do this by substituting the feelings from those we've copied from your body. Take today, for instance. We copied the sensations from an earlier you, and fed them to your brain."

"Do you do it with other things? I noticed that my bruises were still there, but they were faded."

"Pretty much. We draw on a great body of knowledge about how the brain perceives the body, and use that."

"So that's why we can experience ... sex ... even though none of us have had it in the outside world."

Mr. Saunders continued to smile, but his eyes narrowed slightly. "In a word, yes. That was an artifact of the first programmer on Claiborne."

"I heard it was some girl who lived a horribly repressed life at home."

"She did, and her subconscious built Claiborne as a reaction. She has a lot more control over what her mind does now, which was something we had to teach her. We do that to everyone at Claiborne and the other two top-flight schools, whether the kids realize it or not. It makes them learn faster, and able to process and use the information a lot more rapidly than the average person."

"Even outside the Construct?"

"We're training the mind, so yes, outside of the Construct."

Jared thought about that for a few seconds. "So we're lab rats."

"Not really. Lab rats have their physical environment changed repeatedly on them to see how they adapt. At Claiborne the environment we're interested in is the psychological one."

"I'm surprised you admit it so freely."

"I will, to a student at Claiborne. I was there too, you know."

"You were there? But ... how? You don't look that old, and I thought the place had only been open a few years."

"I didn't teach there, if that's what you mean." He smiled, rubbing the back of his neck. "Six months after it was created we had a chance to take the place apart down to the basic programming, and I was part of that. We later ran a pilot program, six teacher and 12 volunteer students."

"Did you get involved with the students?"

"Not really. By then we were more concerned with the company's liability than anything else, and we had to develop some guidelines and procedures for the place."

"Are you spying on us?" Jared asked. He could see how they could do it, too. They'd just have to insert probes into the program, and—

"We did when the school was first created," Mr. Saunders said, cutting in with a chop of his hand, "but we don't any more, not even if something critical comes up. I'm sure we could activate the monitoring program if we needed to, but the corporate lawyers advised against it. Truth to tell, after a bit watching all of that flesh gets kind of boring."

"Well, yeah, you get so you hardly notice it," Jared chuckled. "That's not the answer I would have given you last year when I was at Jackson High."

"You were in a different culture. People can get used to anything. As you probably suspect, there's a part of the program that helps people adapt. Girls are the toughest; we're battling an entire culture that dictates their behavior. When you have some time, ask one of the girls about her orientation."

"That reminds me," Jared said. "One of the girls told me that the Construct changed her. Is that true?"

"Part of the appeal of the Construct for a girl is the body shape changes we can let her try out. Probably 80% of the girls at Claiborne have had some help, mostly minor things. We don't make changes, however, that the body would not do on its own. For example, we'll change hair color, hair length, and bust size, but we won't make them taller than we project they'd grow as adults."