Chapter Text
“Are you all alone?”
You looked up into a pair of glowing, golden eyes.
“Evening, Mr. Sorrento,” you said with a sigh, dropping your gaze to the table. “Yeah, it looks like I got stood up.”
You held up a holographic card with the OASIS user identity of the user you were supposed to meet, and then tucked it into a pocket on your jumpsuit.
“What are you doing here?”
The CEO seemed surprised and shrugged. “What are any of us doing? Escaping reality.”
You snorted. “Isn’t that the truth.”
He sat down opposite you in the booth. “Since you seem to know so much about me, who are you? What do you do?”
“Well, I’m (username). I used to be an electrical engineering student at OTech before I was kicked out.”
“OTech is the best school for electrical engineering in the country.”
“I know.”
“Why’d you get kicked out?”
“I was one of the founders of Dissident.”
He goggled at you. IOI, through him, had thrown a fit when there were OTech students who didn’t want to work at IOI and instead tried to start their own technology company - Dissident Technology. The nine of you had kind of meant the name as a “fuck you” to IOI, and the university had shut Dissident down with help from Ohio legislators. IOI had taken the nine of you to court, and though your defense attorney had argued trustbusting legislation the IOI lawyers were too good and you got barred from working in technology since.
But that didn’t mean that you hadn’t been doing tech work.
“But… why?”
You sighed. “There was a group of us who wanted to make good technology - ”
“Meaning IOI’s is bad?”
You snorted, putting your drink down. “No... just cheap and motivated by money. You’re putting out new products on a constant basis. Did you know six of my eight cofounders were coders?”
Sorrento looked guilty. “No.”
“We wanted to put out more software patches than hardware and fix products on the run. Completely different from IOI! Hell, in our early OTech days, we were mostly repairing your shit. I know your eighth-vers goggles better than your techs, I bet.”
Those eighth-vers goggles were more like what used to be called “virtual reality” - came about in the 2010s - and were much heavier than the lighter versions of today.
He said nothing, simply staring at you for a moment, before pulling you in quickly and kissing you hard.
You only wished you could actually feel it.
You supposed you could feel the kiss itself, and that was a lot considering that you’d made the mandibular sensors that you were wearing. You couldn’t feel a lot, but you knew that Sorrento was most likely wearing the most recent suit IOI had put out.
You reached out until you felt his waist and slid your hand down his jacket. He jerked at your touch and you chuckled into the kiss. Since your eyes were closed, you couldn’t tell if he responded to your teasing beyond what was under your hands.
You rested your hand on his thigh and he slid forward on the seat, putting him near you with you nearly straddling his other thigh. You slid your hand up his thigh and he pulled back for breath, breathing hard and eyes wide.
“What are you doing?”
You fluttered your eyelashes, trying to look as innocent as possible. “What do you mean?”
“Are you trying to seduce me?”
You threw your head back and laughed, taking a sip from your drink. “Hell no. You started the kiss, I was just having a little fun.” You snickered, the sound resounding inside the glass. “Plus, it’s not like you could change the Dissident decision anyway.”
You saw him puff out his chest as you downed the rest of your drink, and you knew you’d won.
“Meet me at IOI headquarters in a week, and if you can repair the technology I set in front of you I’ll allow Dissident Technology to reform.”
You nodded, a confident smile on your lips. You tugged him close by his tie, pressed a kiss to his lips, and then pulled off your visor in the real world.
~~~ Over at IOI headquarters
F’Nale and several other board members entered Sorrento’s office to see their boss on his “throne" - as he called it, anyway. Lights flashed across his suit, but it was curious that, instead of red lights indicating combat, light blue swirled across the dark suit.
And, F’Nale realized, the splotches of blue were vaguely hand-shaped.
One blue splotch appeared on his shoulder, and the other bloomed on his left thigh. She watched as it moved slowly up his thigh and whirled around towards the other board members.
“We’re obviously interrupting something. We should go, we can come back later.”
The other board members hurriedly nodded and the group left.
~~~
After pulling the visor off, you took a moment to consider what you’d just done. You laughed to yourself, not even believing your courage with the man who’d shut you and your friends down.
Speaking of which -
You pulled up the group chat you had with them in the OASIS, and once the others were all there, you smiled.
“Guys,” you said before anyone else could speak, “I think I just found a way to unfuck Dissident.”