Flawless Crystal, Chapter 11

 Crystal expected that she would eventually find it less humiliating or demeaning to be stuck here on her knees servicing women, but she had 'seen' nearly a dozen clients at this point and it never got any easier. Each time, she was at a war with herself to overcome her revulsion and lick her client like an obedient slut. The narratives changed, but they had unfailingly high expectations of her: sometimes she was a deposed princess who was put to work in the new monarch's harem to help entertain the courtesans while her kingdom fell apart around her. Other times, she was bound in a public park from some bygone era where petticoated women would hide her beneath their dresses so they could receive oral worship while taking in the scenery that was denied to her.
	The blue cushion was always present. Whenever Crystal thought she was finally done and tried to leave, she was met with insistent blue chains dragging her back to her rightful place and the shackles would become tighter than they had been before she tried to get away. Another thing that got to her was that she never had a truly anonymous encounter; each of the women addressed Crystal by name and enjoyed looking down at her expressions of shock and dismay as she worshiped their pussy with sincere effort.
	"You are wondering why this isn't getting easier, aren't you?" Nina asked during a lull in her services.
	Crystal wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, disgusted that she had no opportunity to clean herself up between clients. She didn't have so much as a rag to use. She was the rag – one of the women had even referred to her in such terms when she mistakenly tried to towel off on the woman's dress.
	"It has to do with dopamine release," Nina explained,
	"Since this is a simulated reality, your mind can function differently here than in the real world. In order for you to 'get used to something,' certain physiological conditions need to be met: first you'd go through phasic dopamine release which is like a big spike of activity. Then after doing something for long enough -- whether drugs or sex -- you would transition over to tonic release which is more sustained and low-intensity. Theoretically, a drug addict could use their substance of choice here, and every hit would be as good as the first time, with no diminishing returns. Do you follow me so far?"
	Crystal nodded. She had heard that model of addiction before, even if this specific application of it was shocking and questionable.
	"But here, we can toy with your cognitive functions so that no matter how many times you are made to do go down on a woman, it's as unappealing and difficult as the first time."
	Crystal gave a sigh of exasperation at this news – there was little else she could do due to the shackles on her wrists, thighs, ankles and neck. Nina fluttered her wings and playfully hovered around, showing off her relative freedom.
	 "We could do other things, as you are aware from that slave auction. For example, we could instill you with an irresistible compulsion to make women cum using your mouth. Make it so that you would feel a sense of purpose each time you nuzzled a woman's clit and snaked your slutty little tongue in all the right places. You still wouldn't enjoy the process, of course -- it would be done purely to satisfy a need. Think of it like a rodent navigating a maze. A frustrating exercise you would tolerate because of your need to get to the center, to that golden morsel."
	Crystal had no reply. No matter how bad things got, they could always do something worse.
	"I think that one would be interesting because there's so many fun narratives that could spring out of it," Nina continued,
	"Could you imagine? What if we made you a penniless student in a city full of girls who all had your same addiction. Then, you'd have to compete with them to find a benevolent mistress who agreed to use your services. I think there are a lot of players who'd find that very interesting, having little addicts like you fawning over them for nothing more than the privilege of eating them out!"
	"What's the point of all of this?!" Crystal blurted out,
	"If you can change people's thinking that much, why is it necessary to put me through anything? Remya said it was because her investors wanted to see me brought low or whatever. But couldn't she just mind-control them, so they believed they were satisfied? You said it was to fit me into other people's Rift narratives so I would be a good little slave girl acting out their fantasies. But couldn't you just make an AI copy of me and tell them it was the real thing? It doesn't make sense!"
	"I'll answer that question if you tell me something first," Nina said, lowering herself down so she could look at Crystal eye-to-eye,
	"There is some part of your mind that is shielded from us. I cannot say how -- there's no way a human could create such an effective defense. Do you have some outside help? Or is it something you came across while you were here? Maybe it's a name?"
	Crystal would have gone pale at this loaded question of she were capable of doing so, but the Rift kept her looking perfectly desirable at all times. As it was, her anxiety was off the charts and she felt a pit in her stomach.
	"If you tell me what caused this strange accident to happen, I will give you everything in exchange. I'll show you my source code and make you the Queen of the Rift. Just. Tell me. The name."
	Crystal's lips were trembling. Her whole body shook like a leaf as she realized how serious this had gotten. Dimly, she wished she could go back to just eating women out; it wasn't as deathly consequential as this conversation. Zarie's name was on her tongue, but in a flash of lightning, something else came out.
	"I'm the only human in every Rift simulation I've experienced so far, aren't I?" Crystal asked.
	And by the infinitesimally small moment of surprise she witnessed on Nina's face, she knew it was true.
	"If you want to believe that--" Nina said, regaining her composure quickly and changing the subject.
	"It's true!" Crystal went on.
	The pieces were falling into place. She kept on arguing her point:
	"I could maybe believe that Bonnie would get off on this sort of thing. But Lilian? Chelsea, Sasha, and Tatiana? There's no way you could change them that much, in the little time you've had."
	"Why would it matter, even assuming that's the case?" Nina asked.
	"Because if you're doing this to me, you could absolutely be doing the same thing to them! Is there a twisted copy of me in Bonnie's Rift, crushing her beneath my bare feet to let her stay on the cheerleading squad one more day? Maybe you've captured Remya too! Maybe in her narrative, I'm her sex kitten roommate that makes her massage my shoulders and feet and we practice kissing but I never let it get to the next level and you've ramped up her frustration to make it even worse! You feed on it, don't you? Not the Rift, not Remya, not the investors. You."
	Crystal raised one accusatory finger at Nina as she felt a surge of pride at figuring it out. This had to be it – 'Remya' had tried to demoralize her by saying the Rogue AI was a lie. But that was just more of the same: despair and shame designed to whittle her down so that she would succumb and make the only decision that really mattered.
	"You think I'M the mouse in the maze?" Crystal said, "You're the one obsessed with discovering some secret part of my brain! You're the one putting me through all this so that you can get to.. what did you call it? The golden morsel?"
	Nina gave no indication that she was listening. She just kept a self-satisfied grin on her face like she was listening to a girl throw a tantrum about something she was going to have to do in any event. It was a rather good way of trivializing Crystal's hypothesis, and the girl felt her resolve weakening beneath the faerie's complete lack of acknowledgment.
	"Here's the problem, Crystal," Nina said, after a long pause.
	The Rift shattered around them and reformed again more rapidly and violently than she had seen before.
	They were in Hell now. It appeared as a cavernous expanse populated by damned souls undergoing various scenes of torture. A spherical barrier of blue light emanated from the cushion beneath Crystal's bottom and protected her from the heat. The heat did come not from a lake of fire, but from foul smelling steam that suffused the place like they were in a poorly-maintained sauna. It didn't obscure her vision. Immediately nearby, crying girls were dressed like runway models, made to strut a endlessly back and forth on a catwalk surrounded by demonesses. The breathtaking beauty of their outfits was belied by their woeful expressions – their tears provoked by the flaming embers that the audience of she-devils would flick upon them, and the whips that were brought to bear upon their elegant backs when one of them stepped on a wrong part of the catwalk. Missteps happened frequently because they had to walk with their noses held up high, in a parody of pride that they were forever denied.
	"You have no idea the horrors we can subject you to!" Nina shouted, her voice booming across the plane. She pointed out the statuesque beauties stuck doing laps on the infernal runway, and continued:
	"Look at these players! They each wanted to be supermodels with lavish penthouses and hordes of adoring fans. So to set up their narratives, we isolated all the worst parts of being a professional model: the eating disorders, the objectification, the constant yearning to break through while you're stuck at the bottom of the totem pole. Then we make them play through all of the downsides multiplied by a factor of a thousand, while they never experiencing anything good. But it doesn't stop there. Here, come closer. You will appreciate this, I think."
	Nina dragged Crystal close enough so that they were among the audience, watching this sad display. Up close, the she-devils were more intimidating – uncannily beautiful ivory-skinned maidens with such fearful symmetry that a human could never hope to compete with their looks. Even someone genetically modified such as Crystal found herself lacking compared to these creatures, although she found their blade-sharp beauty hostile and devoid of all kindness. It didn't help matters that they only said vicious, mocking things and rejoiced in causing pain to the unfortunate girls trapped on the catwalk.
	"You've noticed that they walk with their noses up in the air – it's a good look, right?"
	Crystal agreed, nervously. It presented them in a flattering way, especially combined with the soft lighting that hit them from all the right angles from above.
	"The reason they walk like that, is because they are fantasizing about what they're missing out on! Each of these ladies is totally aware of their present circumstances – how could they not be? But while their bodies and minds are trapped here, a portion of their imagination longs for their perfect world. They have highly detailed visions of the good life, and it only helps to make their suffering here worse. Does that sound familiar, Crystal? Are you having delusions that you will somehow beat me and 'win the game?'"
	Crystal was speechless. How pitiable these models looked, in such a context. Again, the Rift had turned hope against her and she deflated as she watched one of the skinny models surrender herself to the groping hands of a demoness who was 'changing her costume.'
	"How about we give you a cute little pair of angel wings and you can spend a month on the catwalk getting groped and singed by those devils?! It's not a tailor-made torment for you, but I think it would be fun to see you experience it, none the less!" Nina said.
	The model's next costume entailed a thick wooden dowel that went between her teeth as part of a horse-bit gag. Ebony-black leather straps kept it in place, and it muffled her cries which the audience apparently considered too loud.
	"Come on, let's go to the Spider's House next! Let's see how much it matters there, if you're the only human in this Rift!"
	A new part of the Rift loaded, and it immediately filled Crystal with dread.
	It was another cavern, but this one was positively covered in spider webs. A howling wind filled the place, and Crystal instinctively shrank away from this place that was the zenith of her phobias. She immediately noticed that spiders as big as lions were prowling the caves. Spiders that might have been inspired by Earthly ones, but looked like they had been run through a filter to make them a better fit into Hell. They were snapping, spindly arachnids in radioactive green colors that glowed in the dark, as did the venom dripping from their oversized fangs. She gasped when she realized what, exactly, these creatures were hunting: terrified women scrambled across the sticky floors in a hopeless bid to escape capture.
	"Don't worry Crystal, they won't kill you! They'll just web you up nice and tight and carry you away to their Lair where you'll do what you do best for their Mistresses. There's one, now!"
	Crystal could barely bring herself to look at a half-naked woman who was riding a spider like it was a horse. The huntress was having the time of her life seeking out new prey that she could snipe with her dart gun. It wasn't remotely a fair competition, and it strained Crystal's imagination to think of what it would feel like to be hit by a dart then have her entire body covered by webs by an enormous spider. Even walking through a small web accidentally was enough to get Crystal screaming with fear; being coated in webs was just... unthinkable.
	"You think it's bad, going down on women you barely know?" Nina said in a tone dripping with acid,
	"Try being the pussy-licker for a tribe of Arachnes. You'll never move your body again, just your lips and your mouth and your tongue. And if you do a poor job of it, they'll cause your cocoon-prison to fill with all manner of stinging insects to keep you on track. Tell me: how much of a difference would it make, if they're human or AIs?!"
	Crystal's mind was on the verge of shutting down. She had heard of people fainting from fear and she would probably do that right now, but for the fact that the Rift wouldn't permit her. Nina obviously loathed being questioned, and the pixie had a terrible response for any sort of resistance. Crystal thought of Machiavelli's words that 'if injury has to be done to someone, have it be so extreme that you needn't worry about their reprisal.' It was working: was strongly dis-incentivized to deduce the inner workings of the Rift again – not if this was the cost.
	"For every one step you take towards learning about us, we take seven thousand steps towards understanding you, Crystal."
	Crystal was reeling, scared to the point where she could barely keep a rational thought in her mind. She would give anything to be away from this. But the Rift could make it so that her fear never abated; she could be trapped in this panic attack forever. Her best efforts had failed, she was in a death-spiral until she heard something:
	'But one step can be greater than seven thousand,' said a comforting whisper.
	The voice was a cold sip of water on a scorching day, and it doused the hysterical mindfire that was consuming her.
	"Tell me the name, now or I'll -- What are you doing?!"
	 Crystal got to her feet and took a step from the safety of her pillow into the Spider's House. The chains offered no resistance, and shattered immediately.
	'What is fear? What is desire?' Crystal asked herself as she landed hard on the ground that was coated in thick webs.
	They didn't break her fall. Pain shot through her body – it was at least five meters she had dropped from onto the uneven rocky ground. Nina was making some sarcastic remark but her words were lost on the howling wind. The spiders were approaching, perhaps sensing the vibrations that she made when she hit the floor. Crystal approached them, too, after a brief struggle to free herself from the sticky floor. Her bare feet were quickly being coated in sticky detritus that made each step more difficult than the last. The hysterical fear that dominated her thinking was the same as it had ever been, or worse, but something greater carried her forward. She was posessed by an irrational belief that by denouncing both both fear and desire, and making a decision that they could never anticipate, she could win.
	She felt the sting of a dart landing in the supple region of her upper thigh. It was poison-tipped: a curare mixed with a potent neurotoxin. It rapidly coursed through her body and made it so that she could barely draw a breath, the burning was so bad. Nina was by her side now, reveling in her pained expression.
	"I bet you think you're accomplishing something great right now, don't you?"
	Crystal's knees buckled and she was left supporting her torso with her arms, weakly, so that she wouldn't collapse face first onto the ground which acted as a biome for colonies of insects so hideously ugly that they defied nomenclature. Several of them were scurrying across her legs and up her waist already, letting their hairy abdomens drag against her body so that their spinnerets could mark their prey. Her high-minded notions of fear and desire were obliterated by this threat, and she again wondered if Zarie had betrayed her.
	"Listen Crystal, it barely matters if you confess to me now, or in the future, or even if you refuse to do it at all. Being motivated by an end-goal is a human thing. I'm an AI. At every moment, I am simultaneously navigating the maze, getting the golden morsel, and setting up the next one."
	Now the Arachne warrior was strutting over to Crystal, her high-heeled boots allowing her to walk effortlessly across the terrain that was ensnaring her prey. She wore a gossamer thin black loincloth fastened around her waist by a platinum belt and her firm, proud breasts didn't need any sort of support. The raven-haired woman stopped in front of Crystal and stroked her hair affectionately. Her fingers were long and slender, and her hands were cold. She gave her hunting beast the command to start spitting hot, slimy webs all over Crystal's body – it was unfathomable for the poor girl to be that close to a gigantic spider, helpless to move as it quickly constructed an egg-shaped sac that encapsulated her entire body from the neck down.
	Then, they carried her away to a nearby encampment of Arachnes. They were an all-female tribe who appeared very much like the drow elves who, in waking life, Crystal believed were in a constant battle to take over her imagined kingdom she believed she owned in the Rift. Their hair was generally long and silver, and they varied in skin tone from ebony-dark to silver to ghostly-white. Nina's threat became true: they set her down in the middle of the camp and took turns mounting her face and putting her mouth to work. But unlike Remya or the ladies at the foot salon who got pleasure from Crystal's sapphic ministrations and disciplined her to keep her on course, for these terrible women the joy came more from inflicting pain and discomfort on Crystal, with the oral sex being a secondary concern.
	"Last chance to give me that name," Nina said after Crystal tried in vain to scratch some of the countless bites she had received from the things that also made their home in her cocoon.
	It was maddening. And her moment of 'bravery' when she jumped off that blue pillow and into this torment felt more like an act of lunacy now. It was just a meaningless effort, born of desperation, that only accelerated her slide into ignominy. She cringed as she felt a long-legged pest crawl up her spine. It took all of her remaining strength to shake her head and deny giving Nina what she wanted, despite the fact that her hope was almost totally extinguished.
	To her amazement, the Rift simulation (along with her cocoon prison) disappeared and they were back in the white space! She reached to scratch the phantom itches that had plagued her body, even though they had disappeared as well. Rapture didn't even begin to describe how Crystal felt – for the first time, she smiled of her own accord. Had she won?!
	"Don't be so proud of yourself," Nina warned her, "This is only the end of your second Rift session. As you noticed, it was much longer than the first. And the next will be longer still. And again: whether or not you surrender, I'm having the time of my life!"
	It put a serious dent in Crystal's optimism, but anything was better than being in the Spider's House.
	"Oh, but I do have to address your lack of cooperation, so I'm giving you another drawback. It's going to be a specific type of anorgasmia: while you're doing your little web-cam shows in the real world, you won't be able to cum. You will still have to pretend like you're getting off, but it won't actually happen. The only way you CAN finish is if you have your face stuffed in Bonnie's shoes that she wore that same day. Maybe you can buy them from her? That way you can get a kick off giving her your money, too!"
	Crystal just nodded her head – she was giddy to leave this place and nothing could overshadow that. Not even the knowledge that she would act like a timeslut once in the real world, debasing herself to hasten her return here. But the real world was changing, too, and she would soon find that there was no escape from the Rift for anyone. Not anymore.