Page 48 of Control

Because of the move and my temporary status for a few days, I was unable to login to see everyone, but I did decide that since everyone knew who I was that I could post a video on social media to let them know what was going on. It hadn’t taken people long to find all of my various social media accounts from Instagram to Facebook and even Twitter or X or whatever the owner is calling it nowadays. The exposure sent my follower tallies, which had been quite tame, through the roof. Overnight, I went from having a mere 72 followers on Instagram to well over 4 million. Facebook was also similar as that count moved from 91 to 3 and a half million. Even Twitter was kind to me in that way as I managed to amass well over 6 million follows in less than 24 hours.

It was a whirlwind of activity on the social media front and while most people who contacted me were kind with their words of support and gratefulness for what I had done that night, there were, of course, trolls. I got your garden variety troll comments like “You’re ugly” and “You’re old” and of course the much more rare, but ever popular “I’m going to find you and rape you.” There really are people in this world that have nothing better to do with their lives than threaten others for their own amusement.

Still, all the troll posts and attention that my outing garnered in the mainstream media put a spotlight back on the various social media platforms to strengthen their defenses against threats of violence and bullying. Being so familiar with being barked at and told the worst things in Aurora, I was glad to see that my in game activity had a positive real world effect. I didn’t get my hopes up too high though. Far too many times have we seen statements being released by all these social media companies saying they will do more to curb this kind of heinous activity only for it continue. I wasn’t looking to become a spokesperson that would fight against this type of behavior, but sometimes we end up in positions we’d never thought we’d be in.

I’d also been contacted by several major media outlets that wanted to get an interview with me so they could get more inside information on all that transpired that night and why I felt I needed to do what I did. Some places even offered to put me up in very nice hotels and fly me out to them first class. As tempting as it all was, I felt it was better to let the game company handle all the media for me. After all, I wasn’t in a position to potentially speak on behalf of the developer. I wasn’t an employee nor was I ever directly asked to be one. I say that knowing that when I’d first gotten my title, that also granted me moderator powers which would allow me some control over in game activities. If I ever witnessed someone breaking any of the rules of conduct while I was out and about, I could act and put a stop to it all without anyone knowing it was me doing the moderating. I ended up using those powers only a handful of times though as I felt it wasn’t really my responsibility, at least at the time, to be the world’s police. I always wanted to give people the opportunity to correct their own behavior, opting to only step in when I saw they were seriously getting out of hand.

I could be out at a friend’s club or just out in the many cityscapes built around Aurora and may spot someone acting against another in an unruly fashion. If so, I usually gave them a chance to alter their behavior by simply sending them a message via the in game moderator system. It was me simply saying to them that we see what they are doing and are kindly asking that they stop. It was incredibly rare that I had to go further than that. Through my light moderation, they’d often think twice about the way they were acting and things would de-escalate. I’d often tell myself that I wasn’t an employee and wasn’t getting paid for this work, but in reality I also felt that people needed to be given a chance to recognize that they were crossing someone else’s boundaries with their actions and wanted them to do this on their own instead of having ‘Big Brother’ shoot them a message asking them to stop. In all my time as a moderator, I only actively silenced a player and put them in a time out where they would be placed in their room for a short time only once.

When I finally was able to relax that night and think about the fact that I had been granted Game Master permissions which far outranked moderator powers, I wasn’t really sure how to approach it. Any player could see my name or see in my profile that I was marked as a GM as it was made very clear and obvious. I’d realized that the GM tag wasn’t something I could turn off and figured the developers wanted it that way so everyone would be aware of what I was and what I could do. That bothered me and I sent in a message asking for them to change this as I didn’t want to be seen in the world as some sort of god figure. It wasn’t me and I didn’t want people to see that in my name and either be intimidated or afraid to interact with me. I didn’t want them to change their behavior because of it.

The following night, after all the night of insanity, when I logged in and before Reyna arrived, I set up a private room where I could play around with more of the GM powers just to see how it all worked. Jazz came by and his little sprite bounced around as I practiced doing more and more with them. We talked and chatted and he advised me on the best practices for using my new powers. For fun, I began stacking items on top of each other and creating complex towers using only my mind. Jazz said he was impressed with my acumen regarding my ability to not use the common hand gestures that most players used when navigating their HUD. I wasn’t having to use them to lift and manipulate entire rooms of furniture and other objects which he found, as he put it, “interesting.”

As a way to test my skills with Jazz still with me, I took an object and attempted to alter it’s entire form. After a few seconds of thinking it, a simple chair I’d lifted up and had floating in front of me became a coffee table. From there, I change it into a barstool and then a sofa. I went through every item I could think of and with each iteration, it got easier and easier for me. Unlike thinking of something like a bottle of water out in Aurora, I was, in a sense, not only able to conjure that water bottle but also change it into anything else I wanted. I was able to alter its’ mass and weight as well as it’s overall physical composition.

Out in Aurora, the physics rules of the game were virtually identical to those of the real world which was done specifically to make the game feel as real as possible. For some reason, I was able to not only bend the physics of the game world, but also completely break them. I could lift anything I wanted simply by thinking it, even myself. I could change the colors of all objects and their textures, patterns, and every physical aspect. Jazz seemed somewhat taken aback by what I was able to do, even at one point saying that the things I was doing must be some sort of software bug that I’d managed to uncover. He said he’d look into it for me and then promptly excused himself. After he did, I continued to hone my world altering abilities in that private room for the next hour before Reyna arrived. When she did, she looked over my little room of completely distorted and often times floating objects and smiled, and with a simple thought, I was able to return them all to their original shapes, sizes, and weights.

Reyna and I had become a couple, officially. Her face along with mine had ended up all over social media as well. We were often referred to as The Power Couple of Aurora, a moniker that I didn’t particularly care for, but Reyna thought was kind of funny. That same night Cris asked that we all meet in her brothel so we could go over all the happenings of the last couple of days. There, it was voted that Reyna would join the council given her new title as The Butterfly and I would still serve as chairperson which Caster said made logical sense. I had also told all of them that I would be lobbying to have them all granted moderator powers just in case things got out of hand. I went over how moderator powers worked with all of them, sharing my HUD and going through my own. I didn’t feel it was proper for me to pressure the developers to make them all GMs so I stuck with my first request, feeling that if Caster and the others could be trusted to be the faces of the player base, they could be trusted to serve as mods if the need arose.

Even after first getting my title all that time ago, I was surprised that I was granted moderator powers and the others weren’t. At first, I was confused at having them, thinking maybe it was some sort of mistake. Even after filing an in game ticket to have someone look over my account, all I got back was an email stating that my account was in good standing and that all of the applications available on my HUD were approved and I could use them as I saw fit. Even to this day, I still refer to them as apps I shouldn’t have had because, well, I had never asked for them. Yet, there they were and I quietly accepted that the developers wanted me to serve as a moderator. I never told anyone, not even Cris or Reyna, about my mod powers. I wasn’t sure why I was granted them at the time which is why I always avoided using them unless I really had to.

After the meeting that saw Reyna join the council, all of us breathed a sign of relief as it started to feel as if the worst was behind us, even though our data was still out there and we had no idea who had it. Caster and Cris, both of which were as concerned as I was, told me they felt a strange sense of relief when I purposely took the spotlight off of them and forced everyone to focus solely on me. It didn’t all happen the way I’d wanted it to, but it still worked.

Encouraged by my display that night, a few hundred other players decided to out themselves as well even though some of the things they’d done in Aurora might be considered deviant and even down right unacceptable to most in the rel world. To their amazement, very few of them were judged for the things they did in game, especially those of a sexual nature. I’d always been very open in Aurora with those who asked me about why I did the things I did, even those fantasies that were, by some measures, considered completely insane or counterintuitive. I would go over my own reasons for doing those things and told them each and every one of us had our own often very personal reasons for doing them.

Kinks, I’d come to find, weren’t simply something strange or perverted that someone suddenly got into. They could be that, but other times those kinks could be tied to other things. For me, virtually all of my kinks are tied to trauma. The common joke would be that I became a dancer because I had “daddy issues” when in reality the time I spent doing that was a very practical one. I hated “flipping burgers” and making very little money so I decided to go where they money was. For me, it wasn’t sexual and it wasn’t about making myself feel like more than I really was. For me, it was about making money, being able to eat, and keeping a roof over my head. Dancing kept me afloat financially and I had no problems with it. The reasons for doing it did shift some as the months passed. The money was still very good, but I found myself beginning to feel something for all the patrons that came through the club. Over time, I realized that a lot of the men and women that found themselves there were there not just for a good time, but also because something wasn’t quite right in their world.

I’d gotten used to having the oil workers come in after they got paid and just doing the normal sensual dances for them, but sometimes I’d get someone that I could tell wasn’t doing so great. Maybe they felt lonely or that they weren’t good enough. Maybe they were having problems in their marriage or had other family issues. It’s very easy to assume that people who visit strip clubs were only there for one thing, but that not always true. Sometimes my clients yearned for companionship. Sometimes they wanted or needed someone to talk to. Over time, I started to pick up on this and acted accordingly. Not every person that came into the club wanted me or one of the other girls to bounce on their lap. Sometimes they needed another human being to look them in the eye, even one they didn’t know, and tell them that everything was going to be OK.

I’ve never forgotten my time as a dancer and it remains one of the better times I can look back on in my life. I learned so much in those years not only from the other girls and the owners of the club where I worked, but also from the hundreds of men and a few woman who came in and looked to me for companionship. It’s very obvious that sometimes people just wanted to party and have a good time. But other times people need something else and I wanted to be the one to provide them with that. I’ve come to realized that sometimes talking to a complete stranger, someone who can give you an objective and unbiased response, can be incredibly helpful. I have never considered myself some sort of therapist. Obviously, I’m not. I just think of myself as a friend one might come to when they have something weighing on their heart. People talked to me, took solace in my company, and sometimes revealed their darkest secrets. The irony that this same thing was something I’d come to do in Aurora was not lost on me.

About three weeks after everything had happened, I was in a club with Reyna and a few other friends, mostly those that she and I knew from before she left. They were happy to see her and I back together not only as friends but as far more. Some of them were the men she and I would do our role play sessions with, but they’d not mentioned anything about picking back up where we left off. I was glad that they hadn’t asked us either. If that was something that Reyna and I choose to do again, we’d let them know. Admittedly, it was often fun to let go and do something wild like that, but other times I just enjoyed spending time with Reyna. Whether it was staying at my Aurora home, her place, at a park, or at a club or some other room, I loved the times she and I spend together.

People came by our table and offered us their congratulations not only on our coupling, but also on our ascensions. Some of them , I noticed, were a little nervous around me, probably because of my new status as a GM. It wasn’t normal for GMs to actively roam around the game as a regular player would since most of them were either developers or employees that specifically filled that role which was usually done at a computer and not as I do in my sleep. In a video I had released on one of my social media channels, I addressed any potential concerns regarding my status and encouraged people to continue to play as they normally did even if I was around. Even after my statements though, some players were still fidgety and I knew that only time could help them get past any uneasiness they felt over having a GM around.

That night was especially fun because of the type of club we were in. While most rooms focused on night life and dancing, Reyna and I had decided to visit a comedy club that often attracted real life comedians that used it as a place to try out new material. Some of the jokes were duds, but more often than not they were quite funny. Some of the comics were open about who they were in the real world so it was interesting to see how they navigated performing in Aurora as opposed to the waking world.

After spending some time there, Reyna and I ended up at one of the more popular rooms in the game world, Vicious D, where I’d met and assisted countless new players. She and I danced for some time as well as spent time with my old friend Z-One. We’d even managed to run into Clover Leaf who’d fallen in with a group of dancers who liked to tour the clubs and perform their routines. Z-One was doing his usual thing by dancing with everyone he locked eyes with and had his usual group of friends with him. I made sure to say hello to them before Reyna and I found a small spot for us to just be for the night.

Quiet times in clubs for Reyna and I were never quiet for long as once people realized we were there, they’d often make their way over to us. It was one thing when it was just me, but with Reyna and I both being council members the attention could be stifling at times. I’d recently found out that someone had started an unofficial Reyna The Butterfly fan club and that they’d post videos and picture of her on social media. Reyna was awestruck by the attention she was getting, but eventually adjusted to her new found fame. It wasn’t unusual for me to encourage her to spend time away from me and focus on the things she wanted to do in Aurora besides being with me.

In those times, she’d visit a few clubs her friends ran and did what she could to use her fame to help attract more visitors to those rooms, similar to what I occasionally do. She’d also have sessions with other players, sometimes of a sexual nature. She’d always tell me about them and at first would ask for my permission which I assured her wasn’t necessary. I trusted her completely and I knew that the two of us spending time apart and just doing for ourselves was a healthy way to approach our relationship. I knew Reyna was with me because she wanted to be and not because she felt any sort of obligation.

She’d go off and have her fun with whomever she pleased and I was and am perfectly fine with her doing it. She also encourages me to go and be with others, but I often find myself doing others things besides having sex. I did still call on old friends from time to time if I felt the urge to be with someone while Reyna was away and, as she did with me, I would let her know about it. There were also still times when Reyna would be off on her own and would contact me, asking me to go to her. When I’d get there, she’d often propose some sort of role play scenario or something else the two of us could do together with one, two, or sometimes several other people. In a lot of ways, it was like old times for her and I, and we always made sure to enjoy ourselves either just with each other or with others joining us.

It could, at times, become very erotic. In those more erotic sessions, I would ask that anyone who was joining us to please keep our session private which everyone did. Only a single time did I discover someone trying to covertly record and share the video which I quickly put a stop to using my GM powers. I did not like using my powers very often, but part of the limits Reyna and I set for ourselves was that any of our role plays would be kept between us and those present at the time. If any of them did not agreed to our limits, they were under no obligation to stay. If they attempted to violate those limits, they were asked to leave. In essence, we used common BDSM limit practices. Everyone has certain things they are alright with and other things they simply refuse to do and each of those limits should always be respected. Once we were all in agreement and we all knew each others limits, our role plays would commence and Reyna and I would have our fun not only with each other, but also with the others participating. As far as what kind of fun we had, well, that’s a story for another time.

It was getting close to waking time when I noticed Thaddeus sitting over at a table not far from Reyna and I as we danced in yet another club. I’d felt something in the room change which first got me looking around and sure enough, there he was, wearing the same outfit he was wearing when we’d first met. I looked over to him and he gave me that look, letting me know he wanted to talk. I leaned over to Reyna and told her I needed to speak to someone privately and she kissed me on my cheek and smiled before I headed off. I walked over to Thaddeus and took a seat across from him, leaning back and resting my hands in my lap as he stared across a dark, wooden table to me and smiled.

“Didn’t expect to see you here,” I said as I locked eyes with him. “I thought all I was gonna get from you was messages from some of your employees. Maybe something from Jazz.” I paused a moment and read his expression as best I could. He seemed calm, confident, and looked as if he’d been wanting to have the conversation we were about to have. I’d not spoken to him directly since the night everything went down. “I guess we have a lot to talk about.”

“We do” he said, looking back at me and resting his arms on the table. “A lot has happened over the last few weeks.”

“That’s an understatement,” I said as I arched my eyebrow. “We can start where ever you like. Or maybe I should. I have my own questions for you.”

“I know,” he said, his voice still calm and his smile still present. “I ended up making a lot of executive decisions that night.”

“You and I both,” I replied. “Only difference is no one knows who you are and everyone and their mother knows about me now.”

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