TheYearOfMyLifeVR.com Continuum Multiverse

Love Is... Complicated

This is the continuing story of the Continuum book TheYearOfMyLifeVR.com. Once the Wattpad story catches up with the Vella story, the two stories will diverge into entirely different plots. Readers of the Wattpad story will be able to influence the direction of the storyline. Text me with your input: (702) 799-9377‬. And now, back to the Continuum....

They started out by asking me where I was from. A young guy in a suit who's sitting in a hotel lounge after midnight, screams tourist. I told them I was a magazine feature writer in Los Angeles. They asked me what I wrote about. I told him my specialty was in-depth celebrity profiles.

It's a funny thing, I had never followed my buddies' rules for meeting women. They sat around figuring out the best pick-up lines. If I was in a bar or anywhere else, for that matter, and a girl sat down next to me, I always knew what the first or second question was going to be. It's the same question anyone asks when they meet someone new, "What do you do?" I was glad because, for one thing, I preferred the honest approach. Also, pretending to be someone you're not, is just too much damn effort. You have to remember all the things you've said and, eventually, it will all explode in your face. I've always liked my face just the way it is.

I should say that I had one more, very important, reason for telling the truth about what I did for a living. If you assume that I was good at what I did, which I was, you could also assume that I was very good at quickly sizing people up. This not only gave me the ability to determine whether I was being played but, more often than not, it stopped the person I was talking to from trying to play me in the first place. So, when these two working girls asked me what I did for a living, I told them the truth. Their reactions were exactly what I expected. Then they asked me if I was alone. I told them I was in town with a buddy who had gone up to the room to go to bed. They suggested that we all go up there. I told them that wasn't a very good idea because he wasn't in the mood to party anymore that night.

Now it was my turn to ask the questions. I was intrigued with the fact that they were dressed as if they were going to a formal cocktail party."

"Is that the way humans dress for this formal cocktail party you speak of?" Victoria asked as she gestured to the girl in skin-tight clothes, standing nearby."

"Not quite," I answered. "I'm getting to that."

"Maybe we should go to a formal cocktail party so I can observe them."

"I'll see what I can do. Anyway, it turned out that these working girls were freelancers. Apparently, the cops knew who they were and being that it was a Saturday night, the police were out in force. They decided to duck into the lounge until it cooled off outside. That girl is not a freelancer. She can't leave the street without her handler, her pimp, getting angry. She will sell her body several times tonight or the night won't end well. Hell, it probably won't know end well, anyway."

"Why does she sell her body?" I could see that Victoria was trying to make sense out of something that is totally illogical.

"That is hard to explain. Humans have a biological need for a physical connection with another person. Usually, that physical connection comes wrapped in the psychological emotion called love."

"My research has shown me that the love emotion is the central core of just about every human action. It is in your movies, criminal behavior, and familial interaction."

"You've done your research. This would probably fall under criminal behavior, at least in Clark County. That girl, as well as the two women I interacted with, don't deal with the emotional side of love. Those women, and millions of other women around the world, deal with the physical side of love. They are sex workers and love has absolutely nothing to do with it."

"Do they do this of their own free will?"

"Some do. For instance, just a little over an hour from here it's all legal."

"If what you are telling me is the truth, why is that person here?" Victoria asked, not seeing the logic in this situation.

"It goes deeper than what you can see. She could be a drug addict, a runaway, or some other reason."

"Then we should stop her from doing what she is doing."

"Again, it's not that simple. I love this town, but I don't have any addictions or emotional problems. I came here of my own free will. I wasn't running away from anything. If that's what you're doing when you come here, this town will eat you up and spit you out."