I had went over the choices a hundred times in my head. What did I want to look like, smell like, how did I want to be interacted with? Everything sounded great, a dream come true, but said dreams came at a price. A literal price. If I wanted someone to treat me like a baseball and throw me around, that was like an extra five hundred dollars.

Maybe I should explain.

  A month ago, I had put in an order for a not-exactly-legal VR scenario. The tech behind virtual reality was getting wilder and wilder every year. My current rig had been expensive as hell, and it was only for those twenty one and up. Unlike old consoles of the past, this wasn’t a spherical harness device. There was no treadmill, gloves, nor goggles to put on. These consoles were implanted in your brain. Like I said, wild.

I had to use a fake id to get it, and my best friend Samantha had her cousin help me plug it in. It wasn’t exactly rocket science, but if installed incorrectly, it wouldn’t work at all. I’d just have a head wound. You’d think something like that would be off putting, but this was the only way to fulfill my passion.

Sam thought I was just really into video games. She herself had an illegal implant, which was how I got the idea. Some people played mmos on a keyboard, some used the harness and tread, but Sam? She would log in and just -be- in the games. She could surf tidal waves, climb mountains, kill aliens, win at mario kart, all while experiencing it as if it were real. Your brain -made- it real.

But there wasn’t a way to try it out, not like you could borrow someone’s console.

That’s not what I was going to use it for, though.  At least, not why I had lied about my age and location and had some ex employee install the thing. Sure, I would play games with it, who wouldn’t?

But also, I was going to make some impossible fantasies come true.

Ever since I was a little kid, I’ve had this thing. Being shrunk super tiny and wandering around a giant house. I used to play a game called ‘Animals’ with Sam, back when we were young. We would pretend to be just random animals, and I always picked things like squirrels or mice. Sam would get bored of pretending to live in trees, and sometimes she would just play as herself. So I would have to pretend to stare up at the clouds at her, waving at her.

She loved taking care of a tiny me.

But I wanted to be much smaller than mouse sized. I wanted to be an ant.

I wasn’t even old enough to ‘have’ a sexual experience back then, or at least I hadn’t thought so. Sam had been eating a donut with sprinkles on it, we couldn’t have been but ten or twelve. Puberty hadn’t hit me yet, but I knew what it was. We had been playing ‘animals’, maybe even the last such silly game like that we would ever play. This was before we grew too old to play outside.

Anyways, she had been eating that donut and taking a break from the game. I told her that she couldn’t eat it because I was a tiny ant trapped on it. ‘See, don’t you see me waving for your attention?’

She looked me in the eyes, then brought the donut to her crumby lips and took a huge bite.

“Mm. And you were delicious too. Sorry.”

That had done it for me. I had remembered and reimagined that scenario a thousand times since then. She wasn’t just my best friend, she was a beautiful goddess who would love nothing more than to munch on me, tormenting me.

We had talked about it before, but never on a very deep level. We got older, became teens, and now we were getting ready to graduate. Sam wasn’t into boys, which was a bummer, but it didn’t prevent her from being my best friend.

As for my own longings for her? They had faded. It wasn’t -her- exactly I had wanted. It was just that situation, that scenario.

Which brings me back to today. That scenario was going to happen in VR. I was going to experience every vibration, every drop in pressure or temperature. I wouldn’t die from trauma or anything, but I would -feel- stuff for sure. I didn’t really have a lot to go on, experience wise, besides diving in as a racoon tailed mario character and flying around. Flying had been fun in the Mushroom Kingdom, but falling down pits was.. Pretty terrible, actually. Like, legitatemly hurt. Not that I'd log out with bruises or anything, it was all mental.

And this particular scenario wasn’t the donut play-pretend from being kids. This was.. Illegal. There was this company I had read about long before getting my VR console installed. A robotics company. They were a pretty secretive group, and I had to use google translate to even understand their website. Basically, they could plug the VR into real life robots, and let you experience everything the robot experienced. Not that I was going to send a bot to Sam. I dunno how she would feel about that, but I’d never ask.

No, for everyone’s protection, I didn’t have a name or identity beyond what was on the paypal account I used to pay for everything. I also didn’t know where I would be going, probably diving into some little bot in Japan honestly. I didn’t know who I would be with, and the users wouldn’t reveal any information to me either.

It was easy work for them, apparently. They would get a box of tiny figures, as well as instructions one what to do with them. They were aware that they were artificial and had cameras in them, and this wasn’t a pornographic site. No nudity, no anything but what was requested on the forms. Otherwise they wouldn’t get paid.

As my phone beeped at me, I checked the app. It was time.

I was at Sam’s house while her parents were out. They were doing something for her little sister, and so that’s the room I was staying in. Sam was busy with her part-time job, so I wouldn't even see her until tomorrow morning. She knew I wanted to play some games without people at home interrupting me every few minutes, so she let me stay the weekend. The My Little Pony decor was cute, but definitely not my style. Regardless, I flipped the switch on my console, then confirmed it on the phone app as I layed in bed on top of the covers.

In the end, I couldn’t afford all the checkboxes I had wanted. The wealthy could write out their personal fantasies, and actresses would play the roles. As my eyes closed and the console began to take effect, my world went black. It was always so jarring, the startup screens. Well, I guess it wasn’t really a screen. Just an ocean of darkness. This time was different, though. Usually I could stretch, run around, get used to the ‘controls’ in a sense. This time I couldn’t move at all.

I felt the world around me vibrate, shaking me as if I was in an earthquake. Nothing was stable, but at least I could move again. By instinct I reached my hands out, feeling my arms, my chest, my face. It was completely smooth. Still pitch black, I couldn’t see a damned thing, but I could feel myself. I knew I wouldn’t look anything like me, just a basic human shaped robot, but I still had functioning fingers, toes, and everything else. It wasn’t that different from the VR games or real life for that matter. Except for the smoothness of everything, which was actually growing on me. Like, I was really slick, no blemishes, not pot belly, no scars or damage of any kind. Like a little action figure, kind of.

Then I heard it.

I thought it was thunder at first. That would have explained the shaking, if I was in the middle of a big storm or something. Knowing the situation I paid for, I tried to focus on the noise. Not thunder, laughter. I knew it would sound distorted, but had I just woken to this, I would have never placed it. It was like when you watched a slowed down video and the voices all seeed to get deeper, only this was playing at a fast pace. Just a deep ‘Hahahaha’. It was weird, but just the idea of being where I was sent shivers down my spine.

Already I was throbbing down there, ready for whatever would happen.Even if I was chased around by a vacuum or fallen into a floor vent, it would have been worth it just to hear the sound of that laughter. Damn this was hot.

And it was bound to get hotter...