Chas: I don’t?
Chas was unaccountably disappointed.
Twist: No. If you want a penis you’re going to have to buy yourself one. I would recommend a multisized, tintable, with and without foreskin, and a side order of nipples. But that’s for another day. Now, come on, strip off.
Reluctantly Chas did as he was told and was soon stark naked, standing only in his shoes. It seemed odd to have nothing dangling between his legs. If he could have blushed, he would.
Twist: Right, now just drag and drop everything we have bought on to your AV. Body shape, skin, eyes, hair.
Chas watched in amazement as he transformed into a tanned, muscular young man with startling blue eyes, a shock of blond hair, and just the hint of a light goatee. He particularly liked his six-pack. No matter how much he worked out in RL, he had never managed to produce muscle tone like that.
Twist: Wow! Baby, you are HOT!
Chas blushed beyond his screen, quickly found his clothes in his Inventory, and put them back on.
Twist: Spoilsport. Oh, well, never mind. Time to get you a gun.
Chapter Twelve
Gunslinger Armaments, Ltd., was located in a seedy corner of SL called Excalibur. Twist and Chas teleported into a car park surrounded by a protective mesh fence topped with razor wire. Weeds poked up through cracks in the tarmac. Thick, black smoke rose from an oil drum filled with garbage in a corner piled high with discarded boxes and old packing cases. An empty Coke can rattled about in the wind, and green security laser beams tracked back and forth across the yard from the other side of smoked glass windows. Beyond the fence lay a few rundown houses in a copse of trees and a deserted-looking tower block.
A brown guard dog called Jaeger came out and sniffed around them. Jaeger and Twist seemed to be on speaking terms.
Twist: Hey, boy. Good dog.
Twist walked straight through the glass of the sliding door, and Chas followed.
A sandpit and target shooting area, with a bullseye transposed over the head of Osama Bin Laden, opened up on their left. A display of the five models of handgun created by Kurosawa presented themselves for sale on the wall in front of them. A staircase off to their right led up to his office. Chas followed Twist up the stairs.
Twist: He handcrafts these weapons himself you know. Faithful replicas of the Colt 911. Writes his own scripts, too. Ever want to know anything about guns, Gunslinger is the man to talk to.
Kurosawa sat behind a green glass-topped office desk, a cigarette burning between his middle and fourth fingers. An animated sketch of a Colt handgun fired relentlessly on the wall behind him. A huge metal safe stood in the corner and a digital counter on the wall charted sales. From his office Kurosawa had a panoramic view over the carpark. It didn’t quite match up, Chas thought, to his own RL view over Balboa Island.
Kurosawa himself was younger than Chas had been expecting. He had a shock of auburn hair with a pair of sunglasses pushed well up into it, and a half-grown beard. A leather holster belt hung across the shoulder of a black shirt. He wore blue jeans and boots with stirrups that chinked as he put both feet up on the desk, one crossed over the other.
Kurosawa: Hey, Twist. Howya doing?
Twist: I’m doing good, Kuro. This is my partner, Chas. We need to get him a gun, so I thought we’d ask your advice.
Kurosawa swivelled in his seat to take a look at Chas.
Kurosawa: Brad Pitt, huh? You been at Body Doubles?
Twist: LOL. How’d you guess, Kuro?
Gunslinger Kurosawa smiles.
Kurosawa: So you’ll be doing the same sort of work as Twist, then, Chas?
Chas: I guess I will.
Kurosawa: Well, you couldn’t do much better than the 1911A1 Custom. It’s got great detail. Hud-driven.
Twist turned to Chas.
Twist: That means a menu will come up on your screen.
Kurosawa: Oh, a newbie, huh? Well, all the better. The Custom’s idiot-proof.
Chas wasn’t certain that he enjoyed being called an idiot
Kurosawa: It’s got a speed holster, smoking shell casings, tracking smoke, an invisible trap, standard damage and push, and six shield-crushing bullets. A bargain at a mere 1000 lindens.
Chas glanced up at the green figure in the top right of his screen to see that he had just enough left to cover it.
Chas: Okay. Let’s do it.
So they went back down to the store and Chas made the purchase. He attached the holster to his right thigh, then dragged the gun to the holster. A red hud appeared at the top of his screen.
Kurosawa: Make your choice of bullet, and use mouselook to line up the sight with your target and shoot.
Chas: Mouselook?
Twist: Yeh. The whole screen becomes your POV. Moves with the mouse. Click and fire.
Kurosawa: Try it out on the shooting range. Get in a bit of practice.
Kurosawa headed for the sandpit to set it up for a practice session.
Twist: Hang on guys, I’m getting an IM.
Twist seemed lost for a few moments. Then,
Twist: Shit, sorry Kuro, we’ve gotta go. Harassment case I’ve been working on at a nightclub. The guy’s there now. Gotta go get him.
Twist turned to Chas.
Twist: Come on then, big boy. Your first job.
Chapter Thirteen
Sinful Seductions night club was a skybox 595 metres up above a mall and a small colony of houses on Lancelot Island. Access to the club was through a transparent image of a fiery dark-haired woman sporting a sword and pistol. Twist and Chas just breezed right through it. The blue velvet dance floor was crowded, AVs animated in dance by a central ball that hung from the ceiling. Exotic dancers were pole dancing on the stage. Four of them. Each with her own tip jar. Chas stood for a moment, watching them, open-mouthed, as they removed items of clothing in response to cash paid into their jars by salivating male customers. These were the most sophisticated AVs he had seen yet. Beautifully sculpted, with tanned, shiny skin and such fluid animation that he could almost believe they were real.
The predominant colour scheme of the club was blue and grey, punctuated by odd flashes of a fiery red. A sign behind the stage read Sin Is a Seduction of the Soul. A flight of stairs led up to a honeycomb of private rooms and a gallery that ran the length of the club. From here there was a view of the dance floor and the DJ’s podium on the opposite stage. Torches flamed in the dark, throwing shadows across the dancers, and Chas felt the beat of the music pounding through his AV.
The crowd parted as a large, bald-headed avatar, covered from head to foot with elaborate tattoos, ran through the crowd swinging an axe above his head. His name tag identified him, appropriately, as Tommy Tattoo. He had an enormously erect penis that was clearing a path ahead of him, and he left a trail of obscenities in his wake. Anyone who got in his way just seemed to vanish.
Twist: That’s our man, Chas. He’s got an orbiter.
Chas: A what?
Twist: It’s a gadget that sends anyone he targets flying into space. But it’s okay. I’m wearing a shield. He can’t do anything to me.
Chas: What are you going to do to him?