Page 15 of Control

“From the old neighborhoods where people got taken to task if they started trouble.” Dutch knew about my background and how and where I grew up. In that respect, he and I weren’t so different.

“That guy is definitely some kind of French Canadian.” I held back a laugh as he said this. “Those dicks always talk shit and then scurry away the moment someone gets the upper hand on them.” Dutch redirected back to the reason I came to him. “As far as that leak, the main issue I’m hearing is people are afraid they’ll be outed as playing something here that they’re simply not in real life.”

“You mean like men playing as women?” I asked, turning in my stool so my body faced him.

“A lot more than that,” he replied. “Men playing as women, women playing as men, White men playing as black men, Black men playing as white men. The list goes on and on. There’s a whole subculture of people here who want nothing more than to see those players outed and shamed which is stupid. I thought the whole idea of this place was to play as whatever you wanted and screw the real world.”

“It is,” I said.

“I can tell you right now why those trolls want to out them all.” I could hear Dutch’s voice grow slightly louder only for him to temper it back down.

“Why?” I asked.

“Some guy here probably had sex with a female avatar and then found out the player is actually a guy and lost his shit. Some people think that makes them gay since they technically had sex with someone who’s a man in the real world. They feel like they were tricked into gay sex or some shit when in reality no one really cares about all that. They have this really deep hatred of homosexuals and they’re afraid to even associate with them because they think they’ll be seen as gay.”

“Sounds pretty stupid,” I said with a pained smirked on my face. “Some people really have no idea what the point of this place is.”

“Shit,” Dutch said with a smile. “You’re talking to a 56 year old Gulf War vet and even I think it’s stupid. People need to get over themselves. So you have sex with a woman here that has the mind of a man. No one even cares about all that except them.”

“Or a black avatar being controlled bay a white guy,” I said, matching Dutch’s smile. “You ever wonder why they do that? Play as a different race.”

“Beats me,” he said. “I’m about as white as they come and even I have no idea why. Maybe they think they’ll get more play that way. Some women around here have a thing for black guys. That’s all they’ll go out with. White guys around here…we’re a dime a dozen and unless they have an actual personality they might as well be NPCs.”

“So how did you manage to become such a lady’s man then?” I playfully asked.

“Got a big dick!” Dutch said back to me. I had to hold in my laugh as he smiled and nodded his head in jest. “But really. A lot of these younger guys…they have no idea how to talk to a woman. They go up to them and cold them and just say ‘sex? sex?’ like that’s how you pick up women. They’re probably bad at it in the real world too so they come here and continue to suck at it while never learning proper social skills.”

“That actually sounds spot on,” I said. Dutch was making an excellent point. A “Cold” in Aurora is when a user will request to partner with another player without properly speaking to them first and is often frowned upon in most places with the exception of rooms specifically marked for it.

“I know it is,” he said, continuing his point. “Why do you think all those ‘Cold’ rooms are so popular? They go in there, see a couple of decent looking avatars and can’t help but try pairing with them to see if they’ll have sex.”

“I noticed you said ‘Avatars,’” I said to Dutch. “Are you implying what I think you are?”

“Maybe,” he said. “I’m not saying there aren’t some women that just want to give it away like it’s nothing. But it’s definitely not a 1 to 1 ratio. I’d guess it’s closer to 30 to 1 so each guy has to hope some woman will say yes to him. Imagine 30 dudes all trying to screw this one poor woman in room. That’s either a wild time or a really bad one so why wouldn’t those guys switch over and change their avatar to women? It would guarantee they’d get attention and maybe that’s all they want. I think the pleasure centers in the brain work similarly so when you have sex or have an orgasm it still feels about the same.”

“I couldn’t really say,” I said to Dutch, enjoying his ideas on player choice. “I’ve heard when trans women start Hormone Replacement Therapy, the way their orgasms feel can sometimes change.”

“But hey,” Dutch said turning back to the bar. “I’m just some middle-aged white guy that never went to college so what the hell do I know about psychology and all that shit.”

“Your years count for something,” I said, knowing Dutch had a good 20 years on me. “You can read every book in the library, but you still need that real world experience to know what’s really going on.”

“Did I ever tell you the story about my trip to Thailand and the well-hung Lady Boy?”

“Jesus Christ, Dutch!” He and I both laughed hardily at his comment. We then sat silently for a few moments before I redirected back to what I was there for. “If there really was a hack and all our information got released…what do you think will happen?”

“Not really sure,” he said with a stoic look on his face. “All I know is I really don’t care who knows who I am in the real world. Hell, I’ll just tell them who I am. What are they gonna do? Come find me? And then what? Do they really wanna go to war with a Marine? To that I say good luck. I may be over the hill but I still got something in me.”

“I’m not a Marine though,” I said to Dutch which caused him to look my way again. “I do talk about my life here and some aspects of it, but I’ve worked hard to make sure no one knows who I am in real life. I’ve had some bad experiences with stalkers and given who I am here, if someone found out who I was things could get ugly for me. Really ugly.”

“I hear you,” Dutch said, the concern evident in his voice. “All I know is if there was a hack, we’d probably already know about it unless the publisher and developer wanted to torpedo their own company. Doesn’t mean someone isn’t looking for a way into their network though. Hacks can sometimes be stupidly easy to pull off from what I’ve read. An employee opens what they think is a PDF and just like that they have a virus or worm or whatever the hell they use to get into a network.”

“Do you think someone’s really trying to get in?” I asked. Dutch could tell I was sincerely worried.

“Given some of the psychotic shit heads I’ve met here,” Dutch said. “I’d have to say yeah. There’s no doubt in my mind that someone’s trying to get in. This is the most exclusive game in the world and at least half the players here actively hide their identity. For all we know, in this room alone we could have businessmen, world leaders, military strategists, multimillionaires. If that data got leaked or hacked, a lot of really important people would have a whole lot to lose. Can you imagine if someone like a world leader was attached to an avatar here that participates in some sort of wild sex acts? It would be all over the papers, the web, social media. It would turn into a circus and then they’d have to try and explain it. It’d be a shit show. Because of that possibility, that data is would be worth millions, if not tens of millions to the right buyer.”

“It could cause serious consequences in the real world,” I said out loud but mostly to myself. “People’s lives would be ruined.”

“Their reputations, their lives, their businesses.” Dutch went on. “If even one world leader had their data leaked and attached to a character here, that would be bad enough. Imagine now if every player here had their data leaked all at the same time. It’s be chaos. It would be like if everyone’s dirty laundry all got aired out at the same time. The stench would circle the globe and cause panic for countries, publicly traded companies and other business.”

---