Her apartment struck me as simple but tasteful. I might have called it minimalist, had I known whether she’d pared down by choice or by budget—but real estate downtown New York wasn’t exactly cheap. The place was a converted warehouse: exposed brick walls, soaring ceilings, steel-framed windows that bathed the room in light and gave it an expansive feel. I missed that openness in my own home. Sure, I could simulate it perfectly in Ultrahigh, but knowing it wasn’t real would spoil it. She, of course, never questioned it—it was simply her world.
Now she lay naked beside me, her head resting on my chest. One hand drifted across my stomach, teasing ever closer to my now-flaccid penis. We’d just fucked for what felt like hours, and both of us floated in that delicious afterglow. I told myself none of it was real—I’d slept with an avatar, flagrantly breaking the no-contact rule—and yet I felt myself falling for her. We’d barely exchanged a dozen words. Did she know who I truly was? Her avatar’s eyes seemed to pierce my soul—or maybe she was simply used to virtual hookups. At that moment I didn’t care. I wanted nothing more than her warm skin against mine, convinced there was a real woman beneath the code.
“Coffee and a smoke?” she asked, turning to face me, her hand still feathering my stomach.
“That sounds great,” I managed.
With that, she slipped from the bed—her nude silhouette fluid and confident—and drifted into the kitchen nook to grind fresh beans. I watched in quiet wonder as she moved: so utterly at ease with her life, her body, the intimacy we’d just shared. No embarrassment, no hesitation—just her.
She returned with two steaming mugs and a pair of lit cigarettes clenched between her teeth. She handed me one of each, and we lay there in companionable silence, sipping coffee and inhaling smoke. Eventually, when the cups were empty and the cigarette stubs burned down, she broke the quiet. “Want to get high and go again?”
I didn’t have to answer. She already knew I would.
She was incredible—perhaps the most captivating personality behind the avatar I’d ever met. I knew it was everything wasn’t real, but it felt to me, for the first time, that it was. We’d clicked even before the sex, back in the virtual café when we first talked. “I feel it too,” she murmured, pulling me back from my reverie.
“What was that?” I asked, shaking my head to clear it.
“You heard me,” she said, that familiar glint in her eye. “You like to make me repeat myself so you can think.” She was right, and I loved that she saw me so clearly—after only a few hours together. If this wasn’t the start of something like love, I didn’t know what was.
“There’s some kind of magic between us,” I confessed.
She grinned. “And that’s not because I’m about to put you in my mouth again, is it?” Then she did exactly that. After the high faded, she kissed my stomach, slipped her hand between my thighs, and we drifted off to sleep.
When I awoke, she was at the makeshift countertop, wearing only an oversized T-shirt that revealed everything else. I sat up, rubbing the sleep from my eyes, drinking in her graceful movements. She glanced over her shoulder. “Morning, sleepyhead. Breakfast?”
“Yeah,” I croaked. “Breakfast would be awesome.” I’d never fallen asleep inside Ultrahigh before, it always felt too dangerous. But this was feeling like a place I’d never want to leave.
“Eggs Benedict okay?”
“Perfect.” I thought of the devil. Even if I had wanted to stay I would have to return for some unfinished business, and to put in some safeguards so that once it was discovered at work that I was AWOL they wouldn’t be able to find and delete me.
She brought me coffee and an unlit cigarette, kissed me, and placed the smoke in my mouth. “Lighter’s on the bedside table,” she said, before turning back to the kitchen. All I could do was watch her nude form walk away. Would I really consider giving up trying to save the world for someone behind an avatar that I couldn’t save because she was out of my jurisdiction?
I lit the cigarette, straightened the pillows, and wondered what time it was—both there and in the real world. I’d stayed too long, breached every rule about contact. They’d notice: missed reports, skipped meetings, no office visits. They’d dispatch enforcers. My security would hold them off—maybe unleash a drone skirmish overhead while I lingered in this dream—but eventually they’d break in. What then? And what of her? Even hidden in a private pod or secure apartment, she’d be as vulnerable as I was. They’d track us, interrogate us, rewrite our realities for their own purposes. The thought was dizzying.
“I’m not scared, you know,” her voice cut through my spiral.
“What?” I said, squinting into the sunlight that lit her silhouette.
“I’m not afraid of what they might do—to me here or anywhere,” she repeated, dragging on her cigarette and resting a hand lightly on my leg.
I could only whisper, “Fuck.”
We spent the morning sharing eggs, fresh coffee, and another smoke on her metal fire escape—watching people stroll by. In Ultrahigh, ninety percent of those passersby were mere echoes, constructs to maintain the illusion of reality; the other ten percent, like her, were real humans inhabiting avatars. Every sensation—orgasmic bliss, caffeine jolts, nicotine rush—registered in our bodies as if it were genuine. Still, it wasn’t.
It struck me how much of “real” life is already our brain’s version of reality—an edited, survival-tuned feed of sights and sounds. We’ve lost so many senses our ancestors relied on: a sixth sense, an instinctual bond with nature’s whispers, the ability to perceive hidden energies. Some rare individuals retained such gifts, but most dismissed them until “the Awakening” made belief necessary again. If not a shadow of a memory for most.
There I was, smoking virtual cigarettes on a virtual balcony with an avatar of a woman I’d fallen for. It was a richer illusion than the one I’d voluntarily created and inhabited.
They wouldn’t let me stay. If I missed work and vanished from the grid, they’d send the drones—and if they did breach my defences, well, that would be a whole new war. I might survive; she might not. Or the other way round.
She must have sensed my tension. “I’m not scared,” she said again, voice steady, hand still warm on my leg. And all I could breathe was, “Fuck.”
