Audiences watched, used Nexus to tune in to the sensations they wanted to absorb. She passed offers to live out any fantasy she’d ever thought of here, and dozens more she hadn’t. She was given the option to ride any of these bodies, to put her mind in theirs, to steer the action if she paid the right price, to feel every single sensation that was happening on stage, from the point of view of either gender, without ever having to soil her own hands.

A sign let her know she could always tune in to ride a performer from anywhere in the world, if she liked.

Girls and boys approached her, offered themselves to her for her personal, physical use. Bargains at twice the price, they told her. They all came loaded with Nexus, so she could feel every bit of their pleasure as she had them, or experience their pain and humiliation in exquisite detail as she hurt or degraded them, if that was her kink. Sam thought of Sarai’s mother, of how that had scarred Sarai. She clenched her fists in anger and pushed through them.

Other alcoves offered her girls and boys ready to fall in love with her, to use Nexus to twist their own minds. No more tolerating pretend passion, here. Why not hire a whore that is truly attracted to you, aroused by you, insatiably hungry for your touch? Isn’t that what you really want?

Sam felt bile rising up inside her. This place embodied everything she hated about Nexus.

No, she corrected herself. Not Nexus. The people who use it this way.

It was a hard-won distinction, a hard-won realization, that technology could be used for good or bad, could be disgusting or sublime. She wouldn’t let the vileness of this place taint the beauty she felt when she touched the children’s minds.

The things happening in the alcoves became more and more unspeakable as she progressed. Perversions and debasements. Women – mostly women – doing things for money that no human being should be subjected to, voluntarily or not. Eager audience members tuning in to witness it, to relish it, from the standpoint of debased or debaser. Sam’s nausea rose and rose.

Then she was past the last of them, and into the curving hallway that led to Lo Prang.

The feel of sex and degradation left her mind as she rounded the corner. Lo Prang surely had another way to reach his inner sanctum, she realized. But this was the way he wanted his supplicants to come to him, walking through his domain, forced to experience it, to be aroused by it or disturbed by it. Either way, it set them off balance.

Sam held her head high. She had an agenda. Nothing else mattered.