“Rich, you need to get laid.”

“I'm trying!” Rich bellowed back.

At least, he tried to bellow.

But as always, as ever, he knew it wouldn't matter. The noise threshold on the Sim would tone done his voice, cap it at a certain point. Just as it would amplify his whispers, raising them up to just being audible.

That was how his mom had set up the chatroom.

Rich's best friend in all the world, Norm, laughed his ass off. Then he made his avatar grow a pair of green pointy ears. “Yeah, well, do or do not, there is no try. Right? Right?”

“What?” Rich asked, blinking.

“Oh my god... you never saw that one? How the hell did you never see Star Wars?”

“I saw that one! Some episodes I mean. Is it something that Data guy said?”

“No! Oh man... I got another thing you gotta see now.” Leaving his pointy ears on his virtual head, Norm pulled a notebook out of nowhere and scribbled in it.

“Yeah. Good luck with that,” Rich felt his lip pulling into a pout, and suppressed it. He was thirteen, dammit! He wasn't a kid anymore.

“Good luck— wait, they're still reviewing your media?” Norm's green ears wiggled in exaggerated shock.

“Yeah,” Rich sighed.

“Didn't they say that they were gonna stop doing that when you hit thirteen?”

“They said that, yeah!” Rich felt heat bubble up in his belly. “They promised!” And maybe he was whining a bit now, but he didn't care.

“Gee, adults lie, film at eleven.”

“What's a film?”

“Nevermind. Look... about that getting laid thing, I might be able to help with that.”

Rich eyed Norm. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. There's this game. Fully enabled sim. Up to and including sex.”

“Yeah, right. Like anything like that would get through the Ministry.”

“It didn't go through the Ministry.” Norm grinned wider. “It's on the darknet.”

“Whoa.” Rich opened his eyes wide. The Ministry of Decency sanctioned everything that went on the US net. Nothing got on there without the approval of the President and his supporting clergy. Needless to say, anything to do with sex had zero chance of getting up there. But the darknet... that was dangerous. That was illegal. That was highly discouraged and cracked down upon wherever the police could find it.

Which meant it was pretty much everywhere. Everyone knew it, just about every hab had a private router set up to access the darknet. Even if you got caught, you only went to jail over it if you were black or if your state needed to fill its prison quota.

Rich knew that his parents had a darknet router He knew where it was. But touching that... that would be dangerous. That might get him noticed, and then?

“That's risky,” he said. “My parents—”

“Dude, your parents lied to you. Grow some balls! The game's all surfer-side—”

“Server-side,” Rich corrected.

“Nerd. Yeah, the game's all server-side. You don't need to download anything, so they won't know you're playing. Just hook up and go! I've played like three times, my Dad didn't notice a thing. And dude, I got the hot tamale...” Norm licked his lips. “I got it twice.”

“Yeah, right.”

“Dude! Straight up gospel! I started in like a port town and spent my money on hookers! Well, a hooker. They don't start you with much money.”

And something about his tone and words convinced Rich. Norm was telling the truth, Rich realized. This wasn't like that time he said he'd gone virtual to Canada, or when he'd lied about Becky Hotchkins. And that bit about money... Norm's family was pretty well off. Norm didn't usually care about money.

“Maybe you'd better tell me about this game,” Rich said. “I mean... I don't know if I could get past Mom, but this sounds pretty sweet.”

“It's good, dude. It's like a porn but I was in it! I could feel it! Well, I mean the game's not a porn, but it's got sex in it. And the sex... oh my god, man. Oh. My. God.” Norm grinned. “You gotta try it.”

“What kind of game are we talking about?” Rich asked.

“Sword and Sorcery. Like Neverquest, only with waaaaaaaaayyy more variety. Like they don't have classes, they have jobs. And none of them are just boring jobs like fighter, you can be a Knight or a Berserker or an Archer or stuff like that.”

“Okay...” Rich said. This did sound good. One of his problems with Neverquest was its lack of variety. And sex? Sex was too good to pass up. “Send me the details.”

“I dunno, man. You haven't even seen Star Wars. That takes priority. You need to see that first.”

“I can't see Star Wars first!” Rich said, throwing his hands up. “They're reviewing my media, I told you that! Even though they promised they wouldn't anymore!”

“You should guilt trip them on that.”

“Yeah, right. Dad doesn't give a shazz, and Mom would just guilt me back. She's like a ninja master of guilt. Like she might pretend to care, and then I'd think I won, but when I got back to my room I'd find a note on my bed listing all the times I fucked up.”

A red light flared at the corner of his vision, and Rich slapped his hand over his face. “Ah! Frakked up! I meant frakked up!”

But the red light stayed on, and Rich knew he was hosed. “Sorry, man, I didn't mean to get upset,” he lied, waving his free hand in the pre-arranged signal.

“Oh, it's all right!” Norm said. “We all lose our temper sometimes.” His voice sounded so, so damn fake, but Rich figured it wouldn't matter. Unless Mom took the time to review the logs she wouldn't catch the tones his friend was using.

And he knew for a fact she didn't have time for that.

The rest of their talk turned back to school and the coding lessons, and the stuff he was doing with the Peapod compiler. Norm asked for help looking over his scripts, and put them up in midair, while Rich looked them over. He didn't mind that. Peapod was easy. He was already up to the Chartreuse Plus suite, which most kids didn't get to until Senior year.

Norm was good enough, but he was sloppy, and Rich found a few places where he'd forgotten to clean his code up. “Yeah, you totally forgot to drop the first library before you called up the new one. It's trying to pull stuff from the old one instead of the new one and that's muddling up everything past... here.” Rich poked one of the floating strands.

“Son of a bit— biscuit,” Norm said, almost forgetting about the surveillance.

“Yeah. I mean, it's a good approach, but you got to tighten it up some. Kill old processes when you don't need them anymore.” Rich took one more look over things. It was a good approach. But it wasn't the best approach, which was why he'd tried going this way first then dumped it and started back over for his own script. But he wasn't going to share that with Norm, because that would get them both accused of cheating. If their code was too similar, then Mr. Tassle would raise a stink. He'd done it before. Mom had had to turn over the chatroom logs to get him to back down.

Mr. Tassle wasn't a dick, not like some of the other teachers that Rich had had, but he got a lot of dumbasses trying to cheat their way through coding 101. So it made sense that he was a little trigger-happy.

Once Norm had working code, he signed off. Rich didn't mind. With the recording active, they couldn't talk about fun things. Like sex, and that game. That darknet game that represented maybe his best chance to finally, finally get laid.

With that hopeful thought Rich closed his eyes, and with a thought, the chatroom was gone and reality was back.

Hot, sweaty, stupid reality.

He sat up, and a bolt of pain up his spine made him whimper. He lay still instead, waiting for it to subside, then risked turning his head.

Sure enough, the pillow he should have been bracing his back against was off to one side. He'd forgotten to tuck it in place, and now it hurt again.

With another sigh at the unfairness of it all, Rich struggled to his feet, feeling his bulk shift and trying to ignore the pain as he rose. Crooking his neck forward helped, and so he sat at the edge of the bed, breathing hard, watching his flabby gut rise and fall.

“I'm a mess,” Rich whispered, raising doughy arms and studying his hands instead.

Then he stood and got himself into gear. All two hundred pounds of his fleshy, too-big body. He rummaged around in the clothes pile, trying to move so his spine didn't scream too much. Eventually he found a shirt that fit, and struggled into it. Then he repeated the process for his pants.

The air in the room was close, far too close, and he felt sweat damp against the clothing as it slid on. He'd need a shower at some point, and hopefully there was enough in the water ration to handle that.

If not, then he'd escape back into his ECHO, and spend the night gaming. His homework was done, so he had no real responsibilities after dinner was done.

Hopefully Mom wouldn't say anything about his f-bomb at dinner. Hopefully he could eat and escape with minimal fuss.

Hope fell to pieces in very short order.

No sooner had he planted his butt in the plastic chair, than Mom looked up at him, shaking her head sadly. “That's five this week.”

“Sorry,” Rich muttered.

“Dickie, it's not that hard,” she said, and he raised his gaze, looking at her without making eye contact.

Mom was short and plump, but nowhere near as grotesque as he was. With her it was more of a comfy, lived-in look. Her braided hair was as dark brown as his own, but there were strands of silver woven into it, and when he finally dared to risk meeting her eyes, they were blue as the sky on a good day.

They were also, unfortunately, without any semblance of mercy. “We live in an age where everything is recorded, Dickie. You have to learn to watch your words. Because other people will.”

“Mom, I'm a kid. Nobody cares.”

“But someday you might run for office, or apply for a scholarship...”

“...or try to join the Ministry, or get accused of a crime, and people are gonna look,” Rich finished, rolling his eyes. “Mom, I don't want to do any of those things.”

“Even if you don't want any of those jobs, you could still be accused of a crime. And what's the jury going to think when they find out you're foul-mouthed?”

“Mom, we're poor,” Rich tried, even though he knew he was venturing into unsafe ground, here. “We can't afford a good lawyer anyway. I'd go to jail even if I didn't swear!”

His mother's eyes narrowed, softness disappearing as that old familiar ice started to creep in. Rich had fought back, and that couldn't be tolerated.

But the door slammed, and that derailed the no-win conversation.

There wasn't much to their hab. The kitchen was the dining room and the front room, and the man entering it filled the small space. He bore as much resemblance to Rich as a grizzly bear did to a dog. Not that there were any bears left any more, but he'd seen plenty of pictures, and the comparison was apt. Six foot three, three hundred pounds and with a black beard that enveloped his full neck, Rich's dad set aside his fedora and offered his wife a smile. “Hun.”

Then he looked over to Rich, and the smile smoothed out, vanished in the beard. “Son.”

“Dad,” Rich nodded, then looked down.

“Turn on the goddamn air, I'm fucking roasting here,” Dad said, making the chair groan as he flopped into it. The odor of his sweat filled the room, along with the harsh, chemical smell of oil.

Rich bit his tongue, as his mother nodded and her eyes went glazed for a second. With a whir, the ancient HVAC roared to life. “Check the oven, will you Dickie?” she asked, distracted. “The AC is doing the thing again, I'll have to stay on it.”

“Sure,” Rich said, just glad that the air was moving a bit.

His spine gave another spike of pain as he struggled to get up, and he couldn't quite suppress his gasp.

The air faltered as his mother's eyes focused on him. “Oh Dickie, are you okay?”

“Leave him be, Ruth,” Dad rumbled before he could respond. “Kid needs some incentive to lose weight.”

Rich felt himself flush. “It's glandular,” he muttered, and headed over to the oven. His dad didn't hear or didn't care.

“Worst thing they ever did was move to online schools,” Dad said to no one in particular. “Get you some PE, you'd be half your weight in no time.”

“He's just big, Dylan,” Mom said.

Rich tried his best to ignore the byplay, and opened the oven. The tray inside smelled... okay. They'd already used up their A stamps for the month, so it was the fourth day of bugyums. Ground up cricketloaf, ninety-percent protein and ninety-five percent insect parts.

He reached in, felt the tray, made sure it was cool. The brand Zero heatware was supposed to shed heat quickly and the meal had finished cooking minutes ago, but this tray was chipped and worn and didn't always work right.

Much like the rest of their hab.

Fortunately this time the dish worked like it was supposed to, and Rich put it on the counter, pulling a knife from the rack and slicing it like he'd been taught. “Do we have any ketchup left?” he asked.

“Your arms work, check the damn fridge. And get me a beer while you're at it,” Dad said.

Rich nodded and pulled the respective bottles out of their place in the slender fridge. The ketchup was low, really low. They'd need to order more the next time their stamps refreshed.

He brought the bugloaf over first, then went back for the two bottles. His parents were already slumped over, staring with empty eyes at nothing. His Mom was shepherding the AC system through, making sure the buggy system did its job without crashing. His Dad... God only knew. Probably catching up on his talk shows.

Rich settled back into his seat, and reached for the ketchup bottle. His Dad got there first, and squirted it onto his own plate. Then he tossed it back, moving with the careless, jerky motions of someone lost in his own Echo.

Rich blinked, and picked up the bottle, hoping that it hadn't been as empty as he'd thought a few minutes ago, but... no. No, the ketchup was gone.

With a sigh, he carved off some bugloaf and went to work. It wasn't that great when it was plain.

But he couldn't keep his eyes off his Dad's plate, or the slathered slice that his Dad was mechanically slicing up and devouring, one glazed-eyed chomp at a time.

“There,” Mom said, coming back to herself. “That's got it.” And indeed cool air was starting to filter into the hab. That was something at least. She dug into her own meal, eating without ketchup or complaint.

“Fuckin' libs,” Dad snarled. “Shooting's too good!”

Rich tensed up, then relaxed. It was only Dad's shows. He'd be like that for ten or twenty minutes. But it wasn't aimed at him, and that was what mattered.

And just like always, there was a hint of sadness in his Mom's eyes as she watched her husband twitch and mouth hate.

He was afraid that his Mom would come back to the swearing, but she didn't. The dishes went in the washer, and they both went to their rooms, leaving Dad at the table to rant at thin air and people he'd never meet.

Rich set up his bed again, moving the sweat-stained sheets over and making sure the pillow was prepared, this time. Then he hit the bathroom. Tonight was raid night, and there wouldn't be much time for breaks.

When he stepped out of the bathroom door, his Mom was there. “Hun?” She asked, her voice a quiet contrast to his Dad's random bellows. “Can we talk?”

“Ah... sure,” Rich said. This was odd. He wasn't sure how this was going to go, and that worried him.

Mom followed him into his room, her nostrils flaring as she took in the sheets, the clothes strewn on the floor, and the old toys that were pretty much dust collectors now. “Oh it's past time for a cleaning,” she declared.

“Sure, I'll get to it tomorrow after school,” Rich said, sitting on the bed. “Was there anything else?”

“That's not what I came in here to talk about,” his mother said, sitting down next to him.

And for a crazy moment, for a horrible moment, he knew that his mother knew about the darknet game. About his one good chance for having sex.

He felt the sweat start up under his armpits, and crossed his hands in his lap.

“Words matter,” Mom said. “Words matter, and I need you to watch yours very, very carefully.”

“I... I do,” Rich said. Relief washed over him, and some of it must have shown in his face, because his mother frowned.

“You don't,” she said simply. “You said fuck five times this week,”

Rich blinked. The word sounded alien on his mother's lips. It sounded wrong.

“Fuck all them SJW assholes!” Dad bellowed from the next room over.

His mother sighed, and dropped her gaze. “I know. He uses it a lot. And worse. But... I need you not to.”

“I... why? What does it matter?” Rich asked, feeling a momentary surge of boldness.

“We've got a shot at...” his mother closed her mouth. “No. No, I can't say anything more. Just please, trust me. It's important.”

“I... all right Mom. Okay,” Rich said, “I'll try.”

“Do or do not,” Mom smiled. “There is no try.”

“Ha! That's Star Wars, right? Norm told me that was a Star Wars thing!”

“It sure is...” Mom's smile spread... then snapped into a frown. “And before you ask, you can't watch it.”

“Why not? Does it have swearing in it?”

“Ah... no. It...” Mom leaned in, and whispered, so close that he could smell her breath and the bugloaf she'd just eaten. “It gets you on a Ministry watchlist.”

“Oh,” Rich said simply.

“Not a big one. Not one of the red ones. But... not right now, okay? Give it time, sweetie. Don't be in a hurry. You'll see it eventually, and more.” Mom leaned back, then got up. “And now you'd better be going. It's raid night, right?”

“Yeah,” Rich smiled. “We're running Hallowed Deep.”

“Have fun dear,” she smiled, and shut the door behind her.

Rich sat there for another minute, breathing hard. She hadn't read the full logs. She didn't know about the darknet game.

He still had a chance at losing his virginity.

With a smile, he lay back on the bed, and arranged the pillow carefully. Then he closed his eyes, and called up his Echo interface.

And when he opened his eyes again, he was in a much better world.