...Swift-Current floated on a low-lying eddy, half-asleep as he waited. He wondered how Mark would appear here in his program today. Or perhaps Mark’s program would overpower his, leaving them together in the Lovecraftian Monster Hunt that Mark preferred. He hoped not. Much better to make love on gentle currents, tails twining together than to steal hasty kisses in alleyways while on the run from nightmarish creatures.
Sex in the net was exactly what the user wanted it to be. Swift-Current lazed on the eddy, remembering the last time the King had summoned him. It had amused him to allow the mer program to take precedence.
The Wheelman had been King Triton, ruler of the deeps. Swift-Current had gone to his rooms, deep in the heart of the palace. They had made love in a raging whirlpool. Swift-Current smiled. Perhaps when the Timberwolf was no longer the pet du jour, he would find his way back to the King’s chambers. He had failed Erik Ezekiel in the flesh world, but King Triton adored him in the net.
After Mark came, he would go out hunting. Maybe they would go together. Intrusion countermeasure programs, which he saw most commonly as sharks and rays, guarded the treasures of the sea. Swift-Current spared a glance for his trident standing in the corner. He could kill almost anything. The ice never stood a chance against his breaker programs.
A series of alarm bubbles, large and unpleasant, rattled him from his drowsing. He drifted over to the mirror and ran one webbed hand through his long green hair. He liked it long for the private moments. When he swam in search of data, he shaved his head for better motion. He picked up a comb of bone, inlaid with pearls, and used it. A touch of kelp made his lips greener. A bit of squid ink darkened his eyes.
He checked his gills and tipped them with some kelp, too. His tail was fine, he decided as he flicked an errant snail off his fluke.
He was ready to go when Mark came in. The other runner walked to the edges of his program, then dived in, coming up as a merman himself. His tommy-gun became a trident similar to Swift-Current’s own, and his three-piece suit melded into a long silver body with rainbow-edged scales. The identity code read Deep-Dives. Swift-Current smiled. In Mark’s program, he was listed as Senior Professor Shelby Randolf West.
“You look beautiful, like pearl and porphyry,” Deep-Dives sang at him. The newly-made merman, his short black hair in wild disarray, his gills flaring with exertion, swam to him.
Their tails twined together and Deep-Dives embraced him. It had been weeks of objective time, much longer in the subjective world of the net. Mark, his own Deep-Dives, belonged to him here, and no one else...