Chapter 8

The next two months crawled. Life at school became a routine alternating between classes, sex, and doing research on their project. Cynthia and Shannon took most of his spare time, but Iris was always there, apologetic about her 'leaking', but full of enthusiasm, and full of insights that only came to someone with a little more experience in life.

He and Alex made slow progress, but when Cynthia and Shannon joined in—Martin found another girl that fascinated him more than Shannon, and she took to Alex in a shot—they began to get somewhere. They were sitting in the cafeteria, relaxing after lunch, when Cynthia put her finger on one of the things they'd been researching.

"I saw the tape of what life looks like here at Claiborne," she said. "It looks cartoonish. You know, like it was rendered purely by a CGI."

"The whole Construct is a CGI," Alex said.

"So why don't we see it that way?" Shannon asked.

"Because it filters through our minds," Cynthia said, "and our mind is wired to perceive things a certain way."

"That can't be all that's wired that way," Shannon said quietly. "Look at us. Fifteen minutes ago we were bunnies in heat. I'm still oozing semen, and the marks on my waist from where Jared was holding me are still there, though fading. But now that we have that out of our system, we're rational human beings. But just wait a couple of hours and we'll be hard at it again."

"With emphasis on the hard," Cynthia said.

Jared nodded. "Look at what happens when we get here in the morning. The very first thing we do is jump each other's bones. Then we have Home Room. It's like we have to get that morning lust out of our systems."

"Morning pride?" Shannon asked, a twinkle in her eyes. "I've seen you guys. You have erections as you're walking up the sidewalk from the buses."

"So do you," Jared countered. "Only with a girl it isn't hard and jutting straight out, it's wet and warm."

"And how do you know that?"

"Your panties make a wet sound when they land on the floor."

"Guilty as charged!" Shannon said, laughing. "So everyone starts out horny, and we have to periodically relieve the pressure."

"Did you experience it while you were getting ready for the dance a couple of months ago?" Alex asked. "Every guy here had to jack-off at least once, and sometimes more."

Shannon and Cynthia exchanged a look. "Not really," Cynthia finally said. "We were out of the Construct for a time, getting our hair and nails done. I don't think I felt any urges until we were getting dressed."

"And yet you show up at school as horny as the guys," Alex said.

"We've probably been thinking about it for an hour or two," Shannon replied. "Part of what a girl goes through is anticipating what's going to happen. I think a girl feels more with her body than a boy does."

"Girls have more sensitive skin," Cynthia added. "I think that figures into it. Our clothes can be very sensual, too. I've noticed that most of the girls at school wear very nice underwear when they arrive."

"Nice?" Jared asked. "In what way?"

"It's the fabrics," Cynthia said. "I'm doing it, and I know Shannon is, too. We have on clothes that constantly caress the skin. That gets me turned on."

"Even Iris?" Alex asked. "She's a cotton fanatic."

"Cotton can be that way," Shannon said. "Of course what Iris will tell you is that she needs pads for her boobs. I swear, that girl should express her milk as often as she can."

"She says she leaks only when she has sex," Jared said.

"Which is all of the time around here," Cynthia said.

"So you only began to 'feel the urge' when you got back to Claiborne," Jared said. "That means it's localized to Claiborne. It has nothing to do with our avatar here in the Construct."

"Oh, I'm sure it's in the programming," Cynthia said. "But the switch is only thrown when we're at Claiborne. Girls at the dance were interested in romance, not hot sex. And you guys..." She shrugged. "We could feel your erections, but that's normal for a dance."

"Not that we would have said no to it," Shannon laughed. "There's something about several inches of hard male muscle applied to a girl's insides that can't be beat."

"So we should start by comparing the avatar programming between Claiborne and the town," Alex said when everyone had stopped laughing. "Did they switch avatars, or is it really local programming? And if the latter, what happens if we bring a non-Claiborne idealized avatar here?"

"We'll have to research that," Shannon said. "Be interesting if they switched the avatar when we left the school grounds."

"Makes me wonder if it would be possible for a girl to experience what a boy feels, and vice versa," Jared said.

"Um, I don't think so," Shannon said. "Sure, there's the physical sensations, that could probably be communicated, though I have my doubts. I've tried it, and anal sex doesn't feel like vaginal sex. I thought they would, but there are different nerves involved."

"Don't forget the psychological element," Cynthia said.

Shannon nodded. "She's right. There's all of the cultural and psychological parts of the equation, too. Cynthia and I grew up female. Our culture and society, especially the psychological parts, make us receptive to certain things, and one of them is the completeness you feel when a guy slides his hardness into you is one of them. I'm not sure that's something that a guy can pick up."

"Maybe," Alex said, "and maybe not. The Construct draws on a lot of experiences, several million as a matter of fact. Look at us. We all know that none of us have had any sexual encounters outside of the Construct. We don't have first hand experience on what it's like. But thousands and thousands of people have left their recollections with the system. People aren't just receptors of the programming, they feed back into it."

"I tried it once with a hairbrush," Cynthia said quietly. "And my fingers. Heh, they get a workout. So I do have some real world idea of what's going on with my body."

"That's rather limited," Shannon said. "You're missing out on having the entire naked body in your arms. There's nothing like taking a guy in your arms and legs and trying to join your two bodies. You can't forget that."

"True. I didn't care for the hairbrush. It didn't feel the same."

"Ever think it might be what you experience in the real world?" Alex asked.

Cynthia shook her head. "Iris told me that it doesn't. She told me that she didn't used to climax before she came here. She'd get worked up, but she didn't have the release. She liked doing it, but it wasn't as emotionally satisfying as she thought it would be when she was younger and getting most of her ideas from a romance novel."

"Why did she do it, then?" Jared asked.

"There's something satisfying about making the guy you're with happy," Cynthia said. "It's something that's in the female psyche. I know I'll get blasted by the ultra-feminists about that, but—"

"There's something satisfying in making a woman happy," Jared interrupted. "And I don't mean just sexually, either."

Alex nodded. "So I think we can conclude that some form of it resides in both sexes. That figures. There are some important psychological and physical differences, but basically we're all just human beings."

"I especially like the physical differences," Cynthia said. "I'd play with one of them right now, but the bell is about to ring for our next class."

"So she climaxes now?" Alex asked. "Iris, I mean."

"Both here and outside. She told me that it feels pretty much the same, too."

"That's good to know," Shannon said. "When I finally get laid in the outside world I'll have some idea of what to expect. I am afraid that some of the habits I've acquired here will carry over in the outside world."

"You mean busting a nut with every boy in reach?" Cynthia asked, and Shannon nodded. "Yeah, I worry about that, too. We'll just have to make sure we're both on birth control." She gathered the trays together and got up. "Otherwise both of us will be pregnant in a hurry."

"You mean you aren't?" Shannon asked.

"You mean you are?" Cynthia countered. "My mother said that as long as I'm going to school in the Construct, I don't need it."

"My mother wanted me on it fairly quickly. I have some girlfriends in my old school who are pregnant right now."

"Being pregnant when you're so young isn't a good thing," Jared said. "Of course there's all of the fun of getting pregnant. Let's not forget that."

The others laughed again. "Yeah, and it is fun." The bell cut off any further rejoinder.

Jared thought about that as he worked out at the gym on his way home. He didn't want to bulk up, but he did want to be in shape. That meant circuit training rather than concentrating on one machine. That gave him plenty of time to think.

He was interested in what Cynthia and Shannon felt, Iris too, now that he thought about it, but he could see their arguments about the psychological aspects of it. The idea of taking someone into his body didn't appeal to him. He'd accidentally touched guys' erections when there'd been something going on in the shower after gym class, or in one of those impromptu things that happened after school, and it didn't bother him very much. Oh, he wasn't gay, far from it. He was just doing something necessary in an acceptable place to do it.

Iris had said something about how she felt when she'd nursed her baby. She didn't now, the kid was too old for that, but she said she'd felt womanly. Her baby needed her, and she'd been able to provide from her body. It was a psychological joining with her baby, not just a physical one.

He finished with the last machine, showered and changed, and caught the bus. When he got home, some of his former friends were waiting for him on the corner.

"It's the big brain," Tommy said with a sneer. "Seems we didn't teach you much of a lesson last time, you rat."

"Seems you had to jump me from behind to try to teach me that supposed lesson," Jared said. His arm began aching right where the break had been. "All you know is tossing a blanket over someone so they can't fight back."

"That sounds smart to me," Tommy said. "Best kind of fight is when they can't fight back."

"Best kind of fight never happens," Jared said in an even voice. He forced his shoulders to relax, and stepped forward, directly confronting Tommy, trying to stare him down. "Of course jumping someone from behind sounds like what guys do when they're afraid of fighting someone face-to-face."

"You calling me a coward?"

"If the shoe fits..."

Tommy swung, a roundhouse punch starting around his waist. Jared leaned slightly and just pushed the fist to one side.

"That the best you can do?"

"Why you..." Tommy swung again. Jared pushed this punch to one side, too.

Tommy screamed something and charged.

Jared stepped to one side, punching Tommy in the kidneys as he passed. The boy went down, holding his back and moaning.

Jared looked at the others. "Next?"

The others shuffled back a few steps, looking at each other. "Didn't expect this to happen," Niggy said.

"You mean that I could fight back?" Jared grabbed Tommy by the hair and yanked him to his feet. "Get out of here," he said, and shoved Tommy after the others. "Any of you come after me again, and I won't hold back."

They backed away a few more steps. Jared could see the others were shunning Tommy slightly. He'd probably only told them there'd be a verbal confrontation. He'd escalated it to violence, and it had ended with him face down on the sidewalk. Whatever standing he'd had with them was gone, at least for the time being.

"They won't be back," Jared said as they retreated. He walked the half-block to his house, but still kept an eye on them.

"You handled yourself pretty well," his father said when he got inside. "Have they been giving you martial arts training in school?"

"No, not really. I thought a lot of martial arts was muscle memory, and Claiborne isn't really set up for that." He shrugged. "To tell you the truth, I don't know how I did that. I just did." It was like he'd been on autopilot. Tommy had swung, and everything just sort of happened after that.

"I think the Construct has been teaching you more than just the topics in school."

"I guess." He filed that for another time. "I hope dinner isn't right away, I have a bunch of homework to do."

"Not for another couple of hours."

He mentioned it to Alex the next day just before lunch.

"You probably picked up something from some other part of the Construct," Alex said. "Look at all of those people who come into it for adventure. You probably have something in your subconscious from them."

"You mean I channeled some 12th Level Orc or something?" Jared laughed.

"Not in so many words, but yeah."

"So will I know how to act if some 14th Level Female Seductress approaches me?"

"Like the two we see approaching with gleams in their eyes?"

Cynthia knelt and took Jared's cock in her hand. "You know, a good meal requires protein. Is this protein supplier for me?"

"I'd thought to put it somewhere other than your mouth," Jared replied. His cock had stiffened when she'd touched it, and now that she was kissing it, it was rock hard.

"Um, I'd like it there, too," Cynthia said, her eyes twinkling up at him.

Jared drew her to her feet and led her into the atrium. He settled on the grass, propped up on his elbows while Cynthia sucked him off. Shannon had been doing the same thing with Alex, and now both girls kissed, sharing what had just filled their mouths.

"We'll be right back with lunch," Shannon said when they were done. "Don't go away."

"As if we would," Jared said, watching Shannon's ass as she walked away. "Man, I never get tired of that view."

"The front view is just as good," Alex said. "Hips swaying, tits wobbling ... good thing the girls are coming right back, I think I'm getting hard again."

"Me, too."

The girls returned with four sandwiches, but before anyone could start eating, Shannon stiffened slightly. "Outsider," she said. "Who is he? He's not a teacher."