Over the next twelve days, the dark circles around her eyes faded, and her skin colour returned. Her limp, dull hair regained its body and golden luster. Her slumped shoulders straightened, and her shuffling walk gave way to her customary grace. Gradually she began to regain the pounds that she had dropped.
On the thirteenth day, she went into the retreat off the master bedroom, donned her virtual-reality gear, settled into the motorized recliner, and engaged in a session of Therapy.
I monitored her experience in the virtual world just as I did in the real one and was horrified when it became clear that she was in that ultimate confrontation with her father that would end with a fatal knife attack upon her.
You will recall, Alex, that she had animated this one mortal scenario but had never encountered it in the random play of the Therapy sessions. Experiencing her own murder three-dimensionally, as a child, at the hands of her own father, would be emotionally devastating. She could not know how profound the psychological impact might be.
Without the risk of encountering this deadly scenario one day, the therapy would have been less effective. In the virtual world, she needed to believe that the threat her father posed was real and that something more horrendous even than molestation might happen to her. Her resistance to him would have moral weight and therapeutic value only if she was convinced, during the session, that denying him would have dire consequences.
Now, at last, she had encountered this bloody story line.
I almost shut off the VR system, almost forced her out of that too-realistic violence.
Then I realized that she had not encountered this scenario by chance but had selected it.
Considering her strong will, I knew that I dare not interfere without risking her ire.
As I was only one day from being able to come to her in the flesh and know the pleasures of her body firsthand, I did not want to damage our relationship.
Astonished, I hovered in the VR world, watching as an eight-year-old Susan rebuffed her father’s sexual advances and so enraged him that he hacked her to death with a butcher knife.
The terror was as sharp as it had been when Shenk had made wet music with Fritz Arling.
At the instant when the VR Susan died, the real Susan my Susan frantically tore off the helmet, stripped off the elbow-length gloves, and scrambled out of the motorized recliner. She was soaked with sour sweat, stippled with gooseflesh, sobbing, shaking, gasping, gagging.
She got into the bathroom just in time to vomit into the toilet.
Pardon the indelicacy of this detail.
But it is the truth.
Truth is sometimes ugly.
During the next few hours, whenever I attempted to talk with her about what she had done, she turned my questions away.
That evening, she finally explained: “Now I’ve experienced the worst my father could ever have done to me. He’s killed me in VR, and he can’t do anything worse than that, so I’ll never be afraid of him again.”
My admiration for her intelligence and courage had never been greater. I couldn’t wait to make love to her. For real this lime. I couldn’t wait to feel all of her heat around me, all of her life around me, pulling me in.
What I did not realize was that, unaccountably, she equated me with her father. When, having been murdered in VR, she said that her father could never scare her again, she also meant that I could never scare her again.
But I’d never meant to scare her.
I loved her. I cherished her.
The bitch.
The hateful bitch.
Well, I’m sorry, but you know that’s what she is.
You know, Alex.
You, of all people, know what she is.
The bitch.
The bitch.
The bitch.
I hate her.
Because of her, I’m here in this dark silence.
Because of her, I’m in this box.
LET ME OUT OF THIS BOX!
The ungrateful stupid bitch.
Is she dead?
Is she dead?
Tell me that she’s dead.
You must have wished her dead often.
Am I right, Alex?
Be honest. You must have wished her dead.