Love's DoMINion

Excerpt

Connie Raymond looked up from the magazine she was reading, frowning at her friend. “You want me to hit your button?” she asked, and hoped the request did not have some perverted, hidden meaning.

Darla Bingham laughed, then nodded to the PC tower unit resting on the floor by her home office desk. “Hit that button and open the tray. My hands are full,” she said, illustrating her point by holding up a large clamshell case.

With a perfectly manicured fingertip, Darla pressed the center button holding the disk in its place. “I can’t wait for you to see this!”

Connie sighed, slid off the couch and did as her friend asked. Darla’s newly applied manicure was threatened enough having to deal with the CD-ROM, so it made sense not to risk chipping it on the tower button. The CD-ROM drawer whirred open, like the tower unit was sticking out its tongue. She smiled down at the gaping hole. “Did you ever hear the joke about the guy who thought his CD-ROM tray was a drink holder?” Connie chuckled.

“Oh, about a million times. I think everybody and her mother has forwarded that urban legend to my e-mail.” Darla pursed her lips, her gaze fixed on the disk. Extracting it from the case with such ceremony, she might have held some kind of ancient Bible code important to mankind’s survival pinched between her fingerpads, rather than a simple computer program.

Connie pulled a chair closer to the desk, careful not to disrupt the small piles of test papers and manila folders arranged in an arc on the area rug in the tiny room. Darla desperately needed a file cabinet, she decided.

Of course, she’d need another spare room in which to put a filing cabinet, Connie thought. She also knew she was certainly not being any help taking up the other bedroom in Darla’s condo. The second she got back on her feet, Connie was determined to repay Darla’s hospitality with an expensive dinner and lots of margaritas.

“How do you keep track of everything?” Connie asked with a gesture to the papered rug.

Darla cast a sharp glance at the wheeled feet of Connie’s chair and pointed the disc at them. “I have a system, and I’ll thank you not to wrinkle any of those papers underneath your chair. I spent most of last night grading them, and they don’t need to be mixed up, either. You ever sort a stack of essays from two hundred students into their proper classes? Especially when half of them don’t even bother to put their names on the papers, and you have to rely on your memory to discern whose handwriting belongs to whom?”

“Uh, hello, Darla? My classroom is two doors down from yours. And I teach English, too, lest you forget.”

“Yeah, but you’re lucky,” she grumbled, though the lighthearted tone to her voice negated any sour grapes. A day had yet to pass where Darla did not allude to Connie’s good fortune—having been promoted at the beginning to the year to teach the Advanced Placement English classes. Connie got the college bound, the leaders of tomorrow, but she knew even the most fastidious of her students could be as forgetful and lazy as Darla’s standard classes.

Connie sighed. She didn’t feel lucky, and the promotion didn’t come with a large boost in pay, just the standard cost of living increase. Maybe if her soon-to-be-ex husband were shacking up with a buddy, as she was, instead of sleeping in their nice home, in their comfortable bed, like she wished she was doing every night since she left...

“You all right, Con?”

“Hm?” Connie’s head snapped up as the computer whirred and clicked, reading the disc. “I’m fine. We’re both lucky,” she said, reaching to brush aside a long lock of Darla’s titian hair. “We have our health, good jobs, and a roof over our heads. What more could we need?”

“Two men.”

“Each?” Connie raised her eyebrows.

Darla’s green eyes flashed with mischief, noncommittal. Connie waited for the inevitable saucy retort from her friend. Why not two? she imagined Darla saying. That way, if conversation breaks out, I don’t have to be involved. Insert drum rim shot. Thank you, she’s here the whole week. Tip your server.

“I wouldn’t mind having the roof over Aaron’s head,” Darla goaded instead.

“Me, too.” Connie sighed deeply again, thinking about her house—a two-story town home with garage overlooking the beach. She and Aaron fell in love with the place at first showing, and Connie had hoped they would remain there through retirement, rocking on the back patio and holding hands. Now, Connie doubted she could ever return, given the indelible image in her mind of the last time she came home.

There she found Aaron, naked and twisted around his curvy blonde secretary in the bed they had shared for ten years, with his long nose imbedded between two identical, silicone-bloated breasts. Suzy, short for slut, had squealed in pleasure, a sound so high-pitched every dog in the neighborhood probably winced at that moment. Connie still heard it in her worst dreams.

Yes, she loved that house, and though Aaron had offered to leave, Connie found she just could not stay. All the same, she didn’t look forward to negotiating its sale during the divorce proceedings, assuming Aaron was on board.

Shaking away the memory, Connie unfolded herself from her chair and quick-stepped into the galley kitchen. “Would you settle for some wine instead?” she called, ducking the hanging industrial pot rack.

“Got a bottle of Chardonnay chilling in the fridge,” came the answer amid more computerized whirring. “Ooh, and get out the sweet potato chips, too. The program should be installed by the time you get everything.”

Ah yes, the mystery computer program for which Darla insisted she set aside her life to come see. Not that she had much of a life right now to set aside.

Connie sighed and wished for the wherewithal to pour herself into a skimpy outfit and strut with confidence and purpose to the nearest bar for a wild night out. Flirting with handsome young men, dancing and drinking, perhaps getting someone to take her home and slam his cock into her waiting, wet pussy the way Aaron had done to a woman that was not her, the way he was likely doing to that woman right now.

The way Aaron hadn’t done to her in a long time. Connie sighed again and padded back to the computer with the wine and snacks.

Darla steered the mouse’s pointer around the screen and clicked fervently as Connie handed her a filled balloon glass. “It’s loading now,” she said, giddy. “You’re going to love this. Ginny loaned it me.”

“What is it? I swear, Darla, if I see a giant yellow cheese wedge gobbling glow-in-the-dark pellets I am going to bed.”

“It’s called DoMINion. It’s a real-life simulation game. Ginny says she and the other Home Ec teachers use it in their classes to help teach kids about household budgeting,” Darla explained as her screen turned a bright red. The DoMINion logo, a series of bold, black letters superimposed over what Connie assumed were screenshots of the game, flashed for a few seconds before fading into a control panel screen.

“Real-life simulation. Isn’t that a contradiction of terms?” Connie scolded. “We are English teachers, you know. We should know better.”

Darla ignored her. “You can create entire neighborhoods and people, give them specific interests, control their every movement...”

“In other words, you’re playing God. Wouldn’t this game be more useful in the hands of the Comparative Religions classes?”

Darla cast Connie an amused look. “I wouldn’t go that far. It’s really no different from when we played Barbies when we were little. The only difference here is that Barbie is on screen, and she moves.”

Connie leaned into the screen to watch the activity. In the space of her friend’s explanation, Darla had not only set up housekeeping in her imaginary neighborhood, but she had employed a rather attractive decor of pastel walls and art deco furniture in the split level home with stucco siding that she chose. It looked much nicer than Connie’s place, nicer than anything in their Virginia Beach neighborhood.

“I get it now,” Connie said. “DoMINion. The MIN part stands for miniature.”

“Now you’re getting into it.” Darla’s fingers flew across the keyboard. “Let’s move in.”

Their point of view switched to the people factory. Darla created a miniature version of herself—a Min woman of slender build, long red hair, and fair skin. The attention to detail in this computer game amazed Connie; though the characters created stood no taller than two inches, she could still see polished nails, shirt pockets, and even the occasional facial twitch. The being on the screen was a near perfect, scaled replica of her creator.

“She’s so cute,” Connie cooed watching Min Darla, as her namesake christened her, amble through her new home. An inset box at the top right-hand corner of the screen displayed Min Darla’s current emotions and net worth, which had fast dwindled with the purchase of her home and furniture. “Too bad we can’t get her some nicer stuff. I suppose she’ll have to get a Min job, huh? Working in the salt mins?”

“Yeah. Or,” Darla giggled. “I downloaded some cheat codes from the Internet which would add to her income, so we can make her a millionaire if we want.”

“Darla,” Connie chided with a playful slap to her shoulder, then paused. “Why stop at just one million?”