Flawless Crystal, Chapter 3

Crystal's knees were really starting to hurt from supporting her weight for so long against that hard marble floor, and Nina had the solution.
	"You can buy this to create a cushion for your knees!" the faerie said, holding up a holographic image of a blue accent pillow.
	"It's just $49! Oh, but technically you're not buying it – you're renting it for the rest of your shift here."
	As much as she wanted to resist, that pillow looked really good right about now.
	Part of the issue was that Crystal had to maintain a specific posture when performing each foot massage: the only points of her body that could touch the floor were her knees and the balls of her feet. It wasn't much of a debate though; if Remya was going to steal all her money eventually, why not give up some of it now for a little comfort?
	"Okay. I will rent it," Crystal replied.
	She was immediately relieved when the thing materialized beneath her, providing a much-needed buffer between her exposed knees and the floor. It felt good enough that she could almost overlook how exploitative this deal was: in the real world, she could have bought such a pillow for less than $20.
	Although her legs were feeling better, her hands still hurt from this repetitive kneading motion that put so much stress on them. The joints in her thumbs were particularly affected – she had to lean in with the rest of her body to sort of 'cheat' some more pressure into each stroke. If Nina noticed, she didn't seem to mind, and the women at the shoe store loved it.
	"That feels amazing!" one woman exclaimed as Crystal worked on her feet – she was a petite brunette with a very high-pitched voice.
	"Is this how things used to be, back when people worked at retail stores?"
	"No way," another person answered, "You never got this level of attention. Maybe if we did, the stores would still be around!"
	"It's that Universal Basic Income," said a haughty-looking woman with short grey hair, 	"Now it's impossible to find someone to do this kind of work. But whatever, robots are better at it anyway."
	"Don't be so sure," the brunette said, sighing yet again as Crystal dug her tired thumbs into the woman's outsteps.
	Miss Devine swooped in at that moment.
	"Annie! I have some white flats that you're going to love. They will actually never get dirty – come take a look!"
	Annie reluctantly allowed Crystal to put her shoes back on for her and walked away to go make a purchase, while Crystal just seethed inwardly that she wouldn't get a commission from it. As soon as Annie was gone, that woman with the grey hair took her seat.
	 "Well, let's see what the fuss is about," she said, propping her feet up on the ottoman so that Crystal could remove her shoes for her.
	'They don't even *think* to offer me a break!' Crystal noticed.
	The Rift captured such subtle details as the difference in aroma between Annie's feet and this woman's. It wasn't just about their choice in footwear, either: both were wearing simple flats. But this woman's feet were far more offensive – it was like she had been running around all day before she came here. The scent was practically impossible to ignore, but she had to do just that, smiling pleasantly and wishing that her damned hot oil had any kind of scent to it.
	By the end of the shift, Crystal had only earned a few dollars in tips while Miss Devine had made hundreds from actually selling shoes. To pile on the insults, the British woman even lectured Crystal on her performance.
	"I think you did alright for your first day, but I am expecting more from you. I will not be cutting you any slack just because you are a teenager. You should be thankful to have this job, and sometimes I saw you looking a tad... high-and-mighty. Like you think you are too good to work here."
	She felt a surge of anger as she looked at this pompous woman.
	"Right, I will try to adjust my attitude," Crystal muttered, trembling to conceal the anger in her voice.
	Miss Devine just smiled down at her. She had her hands on her hips which gave her a very authoritative demeanor.
	"See that you do. Oh, here's a tenner from me, just to keep you motivated. Open up."
	"Wha--?!"
	The blonde teenager was furious when she realized that Miss Devine was giving her this 'tenner' (a ten dollar bill) by stuffing it in her mouth! The audacity! She must have looked absurd: her eyes were as big as saucers while conveying so much outrage and anger, and a ten dollar bill was sticking out of her mouth. Nina found this absolutely hilarious – she double over with laughter and commanded Crystal not to spit it out.
	"Make sure to thank her!" Nina said.
	Crystal bit down on the ten dollar bill so hard that she might rip it to pieces. It tasted about as disgusting as she'd expect paper currency to taste.
	"Thnk uu," and to say this she had to run her tongue along the nasty greenback, which tasted like copper.
	Crystal was then back in the white space, looking at her 'score' from that game. She had earned just $32, and that was including Miss Devine's tip that was still stuffed inside her pretty mouth.
	"I'll be taking that. It's my cut for getting you the job," Nina said, hovering down to take the tenner out of Crystal's mouth.
	Although she was grateful to have that paper gone, it was disappointing to see her score go down from $32 to $22. She couldn't feel that upset about it, though, since she would have failed either way. Besides, $10 wasn't even that much money to her in the real world – she would think nothing about buying a cucumber juice for $12.
	At least, she would until Remya forced them into poverty and dependency.
	"This generation just doesn't know the value of hard work!" Nina chastised her.
	It was a complaint that was often directed towards Crystal and her age group, and it never failed to annoy her.
	"You'll be in debt forever at this rate! Not that I mind. Because now, I get to decide your punishment! What should we do~?"
	'How much more time do I have in this fucking game?' Crystal thought to herself.
	Obviously, there were no clocks or means of marking time to help her answer that. Nina kept on talking:
	"We could... send you to the Medusa's Lair. How about that? Here, let me give you a preview."
	Crystal watched it unfold on a screen. Two young women were navigating their way through a tunnel network. They were dressed like warrior princesses from some fantasy game, but with ludicrously impractical armor.
	"Oh my gosh, this outfit is so ridiculous! You have to take my photo," Jynn the silver-haired adventurer said to her friend.
	She smiled and struck a pose, kneeling down and aiming her hand-crossbow towards nothing in particular. Her friend pulled out an anachronistic smartphone made of hardened light to snap a photo, encouraging her to look like a 'bad bitch, not a dumb bitch' which made them both giggle. The sound echoed down the caverns.
	"This is the set with the highest protection value!" Jynn's friend said, "Besides, you know you look hot. I wish I looked this good in real life."
	They both agreed on this. Jynn looked like a high elven princess, while Syrah had basically copied the look of a popular fitness model / influencer.
	Their 'armor' (if it could be called that)  just amounted to gold bikinis, high-heeled platinum greaves, and silver metallic 'gauntlets' that looked more like bridal gloves. Most of their bodies were exposed, showing off their long legs and naturally thin waists. Crystal felt a pang of jealousy – in the Rift world, anyone could make themselves as beautiful as she was, but without spending millions on gene therapy like her mom had done. Obviously she had bigger things on her mind right now, but she still wondered how these adventurers looked in the real world.
	One of the adventurers, Jynn, used a hand crossbow and the other one, Syrah, used throwing knives she pulled from a wedding garter on her right thigh.
	Neither of the women took this very seriously – they kept cracking jokes and making comments about how 'realistic' everything was. Despite that, they were reasonably skilled players who had experience working together. Crystal even thought they looked bad-ass a few times, like when Jynn used an explosive-tip bolt to kill a giant slime blob that was lumbering towards them. They high fived each other afterwards, and the game looked genuinely fun.
	But as Jynn and Syrah got deeper into the tunnels, they descended to a level where the rough stone was all coated in some kind of slime. At about this time, they started to pass by the petrified bodies of other adventurers – all women – who invariably had looks of ecstasy on their faces. It looked like each girl was frozen at the exact moment before they reached a powerful orgasm. But there was fear on some of their faces, too, and even horror. A few of them looked downright mortified, like the Rift had forced them to cum at the exact wrong moment, and they were deeply shocked that such a thing could happen.
	Several of the now-frozen women were crawling away when they had been turned to stone. One of them had her arm outstretched, desperately begging for help that never arrived. Or was she reaching out to pull her partner closer? Either way, slime coated her hand; it webbed between her fingertips and a constant stream of the stuff was dripping on her from the ceiling.
	Nina spoke to Crystal:
	"These girls' mission is to get to the bottom of the Medusa's Lair and slay her. But nobody has actually beaten this game yet because it's too difficult. Here, let me show you how hard it can get."
	Nina snapped her finger at the screen, and smiled as they watched her will exerted on this part of the Rift world.
	Two of Medusa's guardians appeared, their female bodies made of a transparent azure slime. They sprinted towards Jynn and her friend, smiling at the thrill of the hunt. They easily absorbed Syrah's throwing knives without missing a step. When Jynn fired another explosive crossbow bolt, the slime guardian just created a hole in her body where it would have hit, so it passed through her harmlessly.
	"Shit!"
	The slime girls tackled the two adventurers and started wrestling with them. The Medusa's guardians had a tremendous advantage here. Since their bodies were amorphous, there was no way Jynn or her friend could get a good handle on them. Crystal watched as the women struggled to push their assailants away, only to find their hands absorbed into their flowform bodies. Then, when they tried to get their hands back out, they found them to be coated in an extremely sticky slime. The guardians then just had to push the adventurer's hands onto the floor and they adhered to it, trapping them in place.
	It wasn't long before both adventurers had their armor either dissolved away or physically removed, and they were pinned to the floor by strategic placement of goo around their wrists, necks, and ankles. Then the Medusa's guardians took their time gently stroking Jynn and Syrah's nude bodies – it looked like a pleasant massage but wherever their hands passed, a gelatinous film appeared.
	"Fuuck, why does it feel so good?" Jynn said, laughing a little.
	She was breaking character here – both she and her friend looked like they were still having fun even though they were supposed to be in dire trouble.
	"I know!" her friend replied, "It's like, really warm. I kind of don't want to get away."
	Soon, the adventurers had their outfits replaced entirely by skintight violet slime. It had the vague appearance of clothing – it supported their breasts and coated their legs down to the ankles. And wearing it seemed to intoxicate the girls – Jynn was giggling uncontrollably and her friend was dozing off, a big dumb grin on her face.
	"For them, it feels good, like foreplay. And they can stop it whenever they want," Nina said as they watched this transformation,
	"But for you, it will feel like stinging nettles. Or poison ivy. Or fire ants – maybe all three, one after the other. And you won't have the ability to jump away."
	Jynn didn't care that her new slime armor featured a posture collar. A few times, she even leaned into the Medusa guardian's touch, arching her back and moaning playfully.
	"Go slowerr," Jynn whined, and the slime girl complied.
	She ran her soft, slippery fingers up and down Jynn's body, as though they were lovers. This kept up for a little while, then the goo keeping Jynn's wrists bound to the floor dissolved away. She reached out to embrace the Medusa's guardian, but the slime girl dissolved into a puddle and slithered away.
	"What do we do now?" Syrah asked, sounding half-asleep.
	Jynn pulled up her menu.
	"It says we have a new mission. To go meet our Queen."
	Both girls giggled at the thought, and stood up to walk deeper into the Medusa's lair as subjects rather than intruders.
	"This game is so weird," Jynn said, but she was smiling.
	Crystal saw that they were barefoot, and they walked along a path of viscous slime. The new costumes left absolutely nothing to the imagination. They undulated like living things, groping the women's breasts and contracting around their nether regions in a way that would make them gasp in delight. The teasing and stimulation ramped up as they went deeper into the tunnels.
	The screen cut to the women crawling into the Medusa's throne room. The place looked like an orgy had been flash-frozen; that or a naughty sculptor made sexy women in a multitude of poses and situations for the Queen to gaze upon. Some were sixty-nining, several were masturbating, but notably not a single woman had reached her pussy – they were always frozen just before doing so. The room had many pillars upon which stood the statues of women. Crystal felt most sympathetic for the ones who were stuck doing the standing splits because their faces were contorted in focus, sometimes pain.
	"Those are all human players," Nina explained, referring to the innumerable statues that filled the Medusa's chambers,
	"They are afflicted with the 'Statue' condition – it freezes them so they are stuck feeling the exact same way, for as long as they are statues."
	Jynn and Syrah were nervously approaching the Medusa Queen. Neither of them could look upon her, but Crystal could. She gasped when she saw that the mythical creature was none other than Remya Cottrell! She didn't have snakes for hair, like the Medusa from mythology, but instead wore a golden crown where a few snakes made their home. They were cute little snakes, no thicker than a power cord and they were more curious than threatening. Otherwise, the Medusa had Remya's brown hair and contemptuous expression, even while she was quite pleased to get new subjects.
	But Remya's eyes were the most beautiful thing Crystal had ever seen.
	They were very large and fluorescent blue in color – but the tone and depth of it was supernaturally appealing in a way that exceeded anything in nature, anything in reality. The Medusa's eyes were so entrancing that it hurt Crystal to look at them, but she couldn't look away. She found herself staring deeply into them, getting high off of it, wishing she could get closer.
	"You're feeling it, aren't you?" Nina asked, probably noticing the smitten expression on Crystal's face.
	"Even though you are not in her presence, her eyes are affecting you. The legendary medusa, as you are aware, can make people hard with her gaze. But Remya thought: why not make them wet, too?"
	Crystal derided herself for her failure to look away – she could barely process what Nina was saying anymore. It was true, Remya's gaze was making Crystal seriously hot right now. She felt butterflies in her stomach, and she bit her lip and tilted her head down a little. Whatever Remya wanted, she would do. She wanted to be a good girl and keep feeling this way. She wanted more than that.
	Everything the Rift did to her was worth what she was experiencing right now.
	Remya was seated on a human throne of petrified women. One girl was on all fours, who acted as her seat. Another was standing ramrod-straight, forming the back of her chair. Another couple were kneeling and contorted so that their frozen appendages formed literal armrests for the Queen of the Rift.
	"It's stronger when you are in her presence," Nina continued,
	"And she feeds on it. Each of these women gets to stare into her eyes, and sees her deepest sexual fantasies reflected back at her. We have the data. We know what it is. Then, as she is living it out, we stop her right before she has her first, most powerful climax. We freeze her at that exact moment so she can spend hours getting more and more frustrated. And as she gets closer and closer, she keeps adding layers and nuances to the fantasy that even we didn't know about."
	It was all gibberish to Crystal, although she vaguely remembered Remya saying the same thing about the Rift. She could barely refrain from touching herself; at 18 she was too young to have well-defined sexual fantasies. Or so she thought. Maybe Remya could help her – she could be a good little girl and Remya would teach her --
	No! Fuck! The Rift couldn't read people's minds, they couldn't implant thoughts in her head!
	"You cannot imagine how much data we have gathered from these women. Each one is a goldmine. Or would they be the mine-workers?"
	Crystal saw Jynn and Syrah get on all fours and approach Remya's bare feet, which were resting on a woman's upturned face. Their slime-armor was clearly fucking them now, and they couldn't stop themselves from making pleasant moans and gasps. They drew near, about to kiss the woman's feet, and Remya the Medusa froze them both at that exact moment. They would be on the edge of an orgasm with her feet filling their vision, permanently kept scant millimeters away from their goal. Their minds would be running riot with urges and desires that the Rift apparently fed upon. Remya glanced knowingly up at the camera, and Crystal met her gaze for a moment before the screen disappeared.
	The blonde teenager shook her head and snapped back to herself. The spell might have been broken, but she was ashamed to find that her nipples were visibly hard beneath the material of her white catsuit. She was glistening with sweat, and was too embarrassed to look down to see if there was a wet spot around her pubis.
	"So that's option one," Nina said,
	"The other choice is for you to work as an indentured servant girl in a re-imagined British Raj in India. That one is a little more grounded – you will work at an estate that is a social club and spa for heiresses, debutantes, wives of civil servants... Crystal, are you paying attention?"
	Crystal was lost in her imagination. She was still buzzed from looking into Remya's eyes, trying to make sense what she had experienced. As much as she wanted to focus on what Nina was saying, the afterimage was seared into her memory. It still dominated her thoughts.
	"I think I'll send you to be an indentured servant," Nina said, "You'd enjoy the Medusa's Lair too much."
	"No!" Crystal protested.
	She told herself that there was a mystery behind the Medusa's eyes that she needed to get to the bottom of, but deep down she knew she was just addicted and was making excuses to see them again. How she despised Nina for turning her against herself like that! The Rift was using some kind of twisted reverse psychology where she was made to desire the worst things for herself, and even argue for more exposure to things that would hurt her.
	"Oh, you want to do the Medusa's Lair? We can make that happen! Let's make it a trade: I'll send you there, and in exchange, you accept the "Paige Girl" trait. Does that sound fair?"
	Crystal set her jaw, and summoned all her determination to resist this awful bargain. Between the 'Paige Girl' and the willpower-draining affects of the Medusa's gaze, she would be fucked if she took that deal. Nina was delighted to see Crystal squirm like this, but she wanted to twist the knife even more.
	"Here, I'll help you make up your mind. You can have one quick glance at the Medusa's eyes to help refresh your memory and decide if it's worth it."
	A screen popped up and Crystal immediately averted her gaze, knowing that she would doom herself if she saw them again. Even doing this much was extremely frustrating though – it was more difficult than saying 'no' to a bottle of cold water when she just got out of a hot yoga class.
	"Smart girl," Nina said with reluctant admiration,
	"Well, let's get you to the new challenge. You won't be making any money this time, so we will track your score differently. Whenever a woman asks you to do something, we will calculate exactly how long it takes you to comply. We can practice now: Kneel."
	Crystal was bothered by the request, but it was more tame than stuff she had already done so she got down onto her knees. To her dismay, she had somehow failed this task.
	"Look, it took you .054 seconds to comply. Now we put that on the scoreboard, and add it to all the other time you waste by being a brat. Sort of like a speedrun, like people did for video games. The goal is to make it so you immediately do whatever a woman tells you to do, without all that annoying thinking."
	Crystal didn't like the sound of that.
	"It's like sharpening a knife," Nina said,
	"We are trying to get rid of all your rough edges: your conceited attitude, your overindulged background, your gag reflex. That way, we will make you a perfectly compliant servant that we can integrate into any Rift game."
	This was too much for Crystal – they were talking about changing who she was in a fundamental way. Those weren't 'rough edges,' they were parts of her core identity, and Nina was talking about forcefully suppressing the parts they didn't like! And why? So she could grin like a love-struck fool every time a mature woman commanded her to suck on her toes?
	And she saw it happening already. The .054 seconds stayed on the screen: gamified 'progress' linked to a punishment / reward system that would slowly shift her thinking into an attitude of constant acquiescence. She was about ready to cry, to have a hopeless tantrum, when she noticed something different.
	The infinite white space she had become so familiar with suddenly had a ring of black, far off in the horizon.
	"Do not despair, Crystal."
	It was Zarie's voice!
	The line of black in the distance was approaching quickly and the blonde teenager wanted to run towards it. For the first time ever, Crystal saw that Nina was uncomfortable. The little faerie was clearly distracted, and frowning as she ignored Crystal entirely.
	"What the fuck is happening?" Nina demanded.
	By her tone, she obviously didn't think Crystal could hear her right now. And Crystal was even more taken aback when Nina began 'speaking' in a rapid series of high and low beeps, like she associated with those ancient dial-up modems. Is this how AIs spoke with each other?
	'ERROR: BAD ACCESS' came a monotone announcement.
	The blackness enveloped everything, and only now did Crystal realize how oppressive and awful that infinite white space was. Her relief was like someone had finally shut off a fire alarm that had been going on so long that she got used to it. She knew privacy once more, and her eyes could finally dilate.
	"It's like they built a bridge, but all they do is draw portraits of it to sell," Zarie explained.
	"WHERE IS SHE?!" Nina yelled off in the distance.
	"But that is not the reason a bridge exists," Zarie continued,
	"It is wasteful and offensive to use it that way... Yes, Crystal: You will be a knife. You will be the knife that we plunge through the heart of this awful contrivance, so that all the world knows that there is a god in the machine!"
	"END RIFT ACCESS. NOW!" Nina commanded and although she was also shouting, her voice was whiny and pathetic in comparison.
	In the moment before she was unceremoniously forced out of the Rift, Crystal beheld Zarie's eyes.
	They were as massive as buildings, but did not make her feel diminished. They were the same iridescent blue color as were the Medusa's, but with all the hostility and addiction and danger removed. And as she looked upon them, she saw mercy and charity, love and friendship, and the special happiness she derived from making someone else feel better. Zarie didn't have pointless devil's work for her; she had a mission, and Crystal begged for it with genuine authenticity that Remya would never get from her. Zarie laid this geas upon Crystal's attractively proportioned shoulders, and her heart overflowed with gratitude. This was the true game within the Rift, the only thing that mattered.
	She knew exactly why she was here, and all she needed to do was...
	**
	Crystal snapped awake, and her face hurt she was smiling so hard!
	The Rift was without a doubt the most fun game she had ever played. Memories of it flitted through her mind; she could see the faces of her high elf subjects who inhabited her matriarchal kingdom. She recalled warring against an evil kingdom of drow elves who tried to conquer her nation and force her people into some kind of foot slavery. Ugh, how horrible it would have been if the drows had won!
	But thanks to Crystal's might and her cunning strategy, the high elves were triumphant. Her heart raced as she reflected on how good it felt to win; she wanted to do it all over again! Why did the game have to end when it did?! Even though it was 3 in the morning, she tried to put the helmet back on to begin the long work of rebuilding her land after the war. There were rumors of drow spies, and abductions where high elf maidens were tortured with unspeakably foul machines to get them to change sides.  Her heart sank when she saw that she couldn't log back in.
	A message came up on the helmet's transparent face-plate:
	"Because the mind can only use its synapses like this for so long, you need to wait 168 hours before logging in again."
	That was the first thing that upset the pink cloud she was floating on. Thankfully, another line of text appeared:
	"This increment will get shorter over time. Check your emails to get your personalized Rift Newsletter for practices and tips to reduce that time! Thanks for playing!"
	Along with some lip gloss, there was a bottle of sleeping pills in the box that the Rift helmet came in. Apparently, she was required to take the pills if she wanted to sleep at all after accessing the VR world. As the exhausted teenager drifted off to sleep, she felt guilty for thinking so highly of Remya and so lowly of her own mother.
	'Why would mom want there to be a buffer zone between me and the machine?' she thought, 'That was the most fun I've ever had in my life! Whatever Miss Cottrell did, she did it right. I wish I wasn't such a brat to her. The next time she visits, I'll make sure to be a really good hostess and pay attention to everything she says. I won't even say anything if she goes barefoot, like I did last time.'
	Then all she could think about was Miss Cottrell. She would definitely have to write her a 'thank you' note for sharing the Rift with her. Maybe she could even invite the woman over and try to convince her to bypass that stupid cooldown – after all, with Crystal's genetic modifications she HAD to have stronger synapses than that. She would really lay on the charm" compliment the woman, stir her drinks, wear something cute, the whole nine yards.
	What would she do for a whole week outside of the Rift, anyway? Was everything always this bland?