eXistenZ by Christopher Priest

should he instead pretend not to notice, and let gravity and nature take their course?
    Before he had to decide, Geller suddenly came out of her trance. She opened her eyes, saw him there and leaned over her pod to make some final adjustment. As she did, two things happened at once: the towel finally worked completely loose and her hand came up and grabbed it just in time.
    She stared hard at the game-pod while she retied the knot under her arm.
    When she spoke, it was in vague terms, not directly addressing him.
    “The whole game world is in a kind of trance,” she said.
    “I remember you said something like that, back at the meeting.” He realized his voice sounded a tone or two higher than usual.
    “People are willing to accept so little,” she said. “They habitually sell themselves short. They’re trapped in a cage formed out of their own limited expectations. They think that what they see is everything they know, or everything they can ever know. They won’t imagine or dream or fantasize. To most people the limit of their horizon is a vacation every year, a trip away from home. Some people don’t even do as much as that. Yet the whole world is out there, waiting to be discovered. But now there’s more than just the world: virtual reality adds an extra dimension. You can explore the whole world, more than the whole world, simply by using your mind. The problem is a kind of courage. You need courage to throw off everything that’s familiar, to experiment. Very few people can conceive the amazing experiences that could be theirs were they only more daring.”
    She stared reflectively at the dark wallpaper opposite the beds. Part of it was peeling, to reveal dark plaster beneath. She seemed untroubled by their dingy surroundings, wrapped up in her own thoughts.
    Pikul said, “Just now with your game-pod . . . where were you? What were you doing?”
    “I was wandering through eXistenZ . . . the new system, I mean.”
    “Yeah. I could see that. But what were you actually doing?”
    She looked directly at him, and for a moment he could have sworn he saw her tongue flick with quick relish across her lips. Then she smiled shyly and glanced away from him.
    “Wandering,” she said. “I told you. That’s about all I can do on my own, all anyone can do. It’s kind of interesting, but only in the way a foreign country is interesting to a tourist. I was trapped in the cage of my own making. To get really involved you have to react to another player. It’s the old saying: it takes two. It can get pretty frustrating on your own.”
    As she finished saying this she looked directly into his eyes, and the invitation was unmistakable.
    “Would you like to play with me?” she asked. She turned toward him, her hand indicating the game-pod.
    “Me?” he said. “But I’ve never . . .” Pikul felt panic inexplicably rising in him. Everything in him urged him to keep her at a distance. “Let’s get this problem sorted out!” he said, allowing the words to run out of him uncontrollably. “Why won’t you let me contact Antenna? They’ll be going crazy wondering what’s happened to you. I mean, it’s not like we’ve done anything wrong. We just ran because we didn’t know how many of them there were. Right? I think we owe it to Antenna to let them know you’re all right, to get them to send somebody to help you who knows what he’s doing . . .”
    As he said all this Geller was unbuttoning his shirt, while continuing to stare invitingly into his eyes. When the last button was undone, she gently pulled the flaps out from his trousers and ran her arms around his waist. The tips of her breasts pressed softly through her thin towel against his bare chest, and he could smell her still-damp hair.
    He stopped speaking, and waited for heaven to erupt around him.
    Then she said, stepping back from him, “Where’s your bioport?”
    “My bioport?” he said stupidly.
    “Don’t tell me you were never fitted!”
    “I