Page 6 of Control

“It sure is!” I said.

“And I didn’t even feel anything. Like it was just there.”

“Once applied you generally don’t feel anything if you’re modifying your body or face. When you change clothes though, you do feel the material changing on your garments. Kind of a strange feeling at first, but you get used to it. It feels very much like you’re just changing clothes.”

“Can we do clothes next?” Clover asked.

“Not quite,” I said as I set the mirror back down on the vanity. “First we need to make sure that your body is to your liking. If not, we can make adjustments.” I brought up the various body slides and values for her to look at as I zoomed out so we could see the body of her avatar. As with her face, she had the default body type which was the average of how all human females looked. It was perfectly acceptable, but some players, myself included, chose to alter it. In my case, I chose to look almost exactly as I did in real life, but Clover may have wanted something different.

As with her face, I used Clover’s personal data as a new base and we made adjustments from there. As is fairly common with new players, she wanted herself to appear thinner and slightly taller. We made fine adjustments to her neck, shoulders, breasts, waist, and virtually every other aspect of her body. Again, this sort of fine adjusting was not unheard of. After a good 20 minutes of fine tuning, Clover and I were able to lock in her newly adjusted features and as with her face, I saved the file for her just in case she made adjustments in the future, but wanted to go back to this particular look.

“So how often do you change your looks?” Clover asked as I had her stand up after applying her new body modifications. “Do you always change how you look?”

“No,” I said, having her lift her arms up so I could look over her nude body to see what type of outfits would look best on her. “I’ve not changed anything significant on my body for some time now.”

“Really,” she said, sounding somewhat shocked. “When was the last time you changed something?”

“Just today,” I said, realizing I was nodding to myself as my outfit ideas for her were becoming more and more solid. “I altered my hair color. Yesterday is was more of a blood red with black but today I’m a dark purple instead.”

“Oh,” she said as I had her drop her arms down to her sides. “Is that all you change?”

“For the most part,” I said as I continued to look her over. “My face and body I never change. They are set in stone for me. I make small changes like my hair color or style, and of course my makeup and clothes. Clothes especially. I wear something new every time I log in. Some people like to wear the same thing, but not me. I like to keep trying new things with my clothes. In a way, I guess you could say it’s how I make myself stand out.”

“Oh,” Clover said, her eyes refocusing on my name plate. “Your name though. That thing below it.” I could feel her eyes on my name even though I’d moved back in front of the white wall again to start putting together the outfit I’d thought of for her. Not wanting to make her stand nude in front of me for too long, I applied a bath towel to her to ensure she wasn’t feeling exposed. She’d stopped talking long enough for me to feel an awkward silence come over the room.

“You can ask,” I said, knowing what was coming. It was a conversation I’d had with probably a thousand other players since my title was awarded to me.

“That name,” she said. “The Lotus. What is that? Is that like some sort of guild or something?”

“No,” I said as I brought up various tops for her to try on onto the screen. “It’s a title.” I kept looking through the tops as she asked more about it.

“A title?” she said, apparently to herself. “Wait…oh shit! I remember now. When I was reading about the game a while back on this message board, people kept talking about how there was some sort of in game royalty.”

“There’s not,” I said, having chosen a top I felt worked best for her body type. “We’re not royalty.” I knew she was going to ask more so I picked the top I wanted to dress her in and looked back to her. “I know that’s the impression a lot of people get, but I assure you. We’re not royalty. But for some reason the greater community acts like we are sometimes.”

“How so?”

“Well, for starters…some players have taken to calling me ‘Queen.’”

“Why Queen?”

“I really don’t remember. I think someone started calling me that and it spread around and just sort of stuck.” I was lying to her, but did not want to get into the real reasons behind it.

“Does it bother you?” she asked. I could feel her eyes moving over me as she spoke. “It seems like….”

“It does,” I said as I sat back down in one of the violet chairs. Clover, perhaps sensing a longer conversation, also sat back down in her chair while still covered in the bath towel. “Look…the title. It’s not something I wanted or asked for. It’s not something you can buy or do anything in particular to get.”

“Then how did you get it?” she asked, leaning forward, spreading her legs and resting her forearms on her knees as a man often would. I took note of that behavior.

“Well,” I said after taking a deep breath. “I’d been playing for a few months. I logged in and was doing my thing which at the time was being an escort.” Clover’s eyes widened at this, obviously not knowing all that goes on in Aurora. “I was with some friends at a club and we were just hanging out, having a good time. I remember some guy was roughing up a girl so I went after him to break it up. Things got heated and….” I purposely let my voice trail off. “But yeah. It happened in public. I’m sure you’ve seen the videos. If not, they’re all over the internet. One moment I was there dealing with some jackass and the next the lights go out and it just happened.” Having been asked about it so many times, I’d grown tired of rehashing the story. I didn’t want Clover to feel she was annoying me so I did what I could to explain it to her. After all, she was new and a lot of new players are often curious about how it all went down. Even watching the video didn’t fully explain it.

“So you were the first?” Clover asked, her brow furrowing some. “The very first one.”

“Not the first,” I said. “Among them. The various videos of me and the others spread rather quickly. Apparently it happened to all 3 of us all at the same time. At first just here in Aurora, but then word started to spread on the internet too. I realized the the title was affixed to my nameplate by default and everyone could see it. Didn’t take long for me to realize everyone would stare at me no matter where I went. At first I thought I was just imagining things, but it got worse. After a while I wanted to take it off and when I brought up my HUD I saw in my nameplate settings that I had a new option called Display Title and it was set to on. It also gave me options to change the colors settings on the fly if I wanted. When it all happened, the colors were automatically applied so then I had the alternating purple, red, and blue colors you see which worked for me since those are the colors I like to dress in. I used to just be plain ol’ Ana, but after that I was ‘Ana, The Lotus.’ It basically changed my entire life here.”

“What happened?” Clover asked, the interest on her face piquing. “Did people treat you any differently?”

“Oh yes!” I said as I felt a light smile form across my dark, shimmering purple lips. “It started that day. After I left that room I was in, other people who didn’t see it happen to me saw the title and started asking questions. Then more and more saw it and before I knew it, an entire room was filling with people wanting to know who I was and why I got it. I tried to keep up but it got to be too much for me so I left. I went to my apartment and sat alone for a while, but then the messages started coming in.”

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