Chapter 32:

　　I had been busy as Mayor recently overseeing and officially sealing many of my children's weddings. As they graduated from high school they felt like there was no reason left to wait and embarked upon their adult lives together. (Which less meant work these days -- there was Siri for that -- and more often meant snowboarding)

　　Only the eldest of my firstborns, the very first crop of kids in Eden, had reached this landmark so far, but from here on it would become more and more frequent. It wouldn't be long now before I had my first grandchildren. Just as with my kids, I had no intention to be a good grandparent either. There would be far too many for me to keep track of them all. All I could do was set up a good society for them to grow up in as Mayor, and lead them to a deep appreciation of the good things in life as their teacher. As a grandfather I planned on being in absentia.

　　However, when Kuon knocked on the door and then opened it to introduce Mira carrying a helmet, I felt something unusual stirring in the wind.

　　Mira put the helmet carefully down on my thick oaken desk. "If you thought Siri was something, take a gander at this."

　　"You want me to put it on?" I asked gingerly.

　　"Go ahead. Here's the power switch. Once it's snug say 'link start.' Oh, and be sure your body is in a comfortable position because it won't be moving for a while." Mira advised.

　　I did as was instructed and entered the world of virtual reality. Looking down at myself, I saw that I looked and felt exactly the same. This was no mere pair of goggles with a high definition screen able to project images, all my senses were equally immersed. I touched my penis and sure enough a pleasant feedback transpired. Virtual reality porn was possible. I wasn't sure I would need it, since I was already a porn star in real life, but for boys who couldn't land girls this should be a welcome relief. As good or better than the real thing, as much as they liked, with as many different imagined partners as they liked. This should be a powerful deterrent to suicidal thoughts.

　　I looked around at the beach, felt the sea breeze tickle my skin, the warmth of the sun beating down on me, and smelled the salt in the air. It was all real. I couldn't tell anything apart from the real deal. I pinched my skin and sure enough there was pain. Wait, wouldn't this make for an ideal torture device? We could put people through endless virtual disembowelments and yet their body in the real world would still be untouched, so the damage could stretch on and on. I hoped there was some mode where pain was turned off, but I guess the virtual world Mira sent me to for the demo was here to show me its full capabilities.

　　As I searched around for something to do, I came across four of my wives playing beach volleyball. The breast physics as they jumped and ran about were perfect. It looked exactly like what had transpired at our recent barbeque cookout. I blinked with disbelief. How much processing power would it take to so minutely calculate all the ray tracing of the light, the collision detection of each grain of sand with their skin, each follicle of hair's separate motion and collision with each other follicle, all in real time? Was this really computing power anymore or relying on some other method?

　　"Christopher!" Iris waved at me, jumping up and down, her ample breasts bouncing in incredible fashion. I was shocked, frightened, that the virtual reality girls had so much independence that they had even initiated our encounter.

　　I waved back, trying to keep a straight face. Iris in her white bikini was paired with Mitsuki in her black as they faced off against the equally warrior-honed adult mode Nanoha in white and Fate in black. Iris approached me after apologizing to the other girls and leaned over dangerously, exposing her perfect curves with an inquisitive tilt of her head.

　　"What are you doing here? Shouldn't you still be working at City Hall? It's no good to ditch everything and leave it to Kuon you know." Iris advised.

　　She knew everything about me? And she passed the Turing test? Wait, is this really a simulation? Was Iris connected with another helmet and just straight talking to me right now? Panic welled up in my breast as I could no longer tell what was happening.

　　"Iris, what's 35 x 7,497?" I asked.

　　"Umm. . ." Iris tried holding out her hands and looking at her fingers, and then got an angry face and puffed out her cheek. "Gomakasunaide, I was asking you a question first."

　　"Then what if a rabbit passed a road?" I asked again.

　　". . . Are you okay?" Iris put a hand on my forehead to see if I were suffering from heatstroke. The concerned look in her purple eyes made me feel bad for trying to throw the AI off its pre-set script.

　　"Are you wearing a headset?" I finally asked in desperation.

　　"Does it look like I am?" Iris pointed at her head.

　　"Logout!" I shouted. The world blinked out and suddenly I was trapped in the darkness of the helmet's visor. I scrabbled at the chin strap, pulled it off and took a deep breath like I'd almost suffocated. The comforting environs of my office reappeared with Mira sitting across from me in the visitor's padded chair.

　　My hands shook as I carefully placed the invention on top of the desk and let go of it. "What is this? This isn't virtual reality. That was just reality."

　　"It was virtual reality." Mira assured me, putting a hand on my shaking arm. "What happened? I set the demo to something I knew you'd love. Were you attacked by sharks or something?"

　　"I was attacked by Iris acting exactly like Iris as far as I could possibly tell." I snapped in response. "What. . .on Eden. . .in Cute-sama's name. . ."

　　"Siri's AI was used to analyze everyone's mannerisms and conversational habits. It's listening in and watching everything we say and do so it wasn't hard for it to extrapolate what we'd do next in any given situation. If we feed it enough data about a non-existent person, Siri can fill in the gaps with guesswork in their persona too. We could create a horde of goblins or Chaos Marines just as easily." Mira explained.

　　"So Siri was the breakthrough." I sighed.

　　"One breakthrough." Mira corrected me. "The mental block so that people wouldn't sense anything from the real world or send any signals to their bodies required a separate breakthrough. The real time physics engine was a third breakthrough. The electrical signals sending the exact right sensory information to the brain was a fourth. The mind-machine interface interpreting your thoughts into actions in the virtual world was a fifth."

　　"How? Even with Kaname's whispers we could never figure it out." I asked. That's why virtual reality had been at a standstill for so long. The difficulties had been insurmountable.

　　"I entered Dimension W, scoured every possibility in the Research Institute's present, and found the only one where we had invented a working virtual reality headset. Then I memorized the exact blueprints for it and came back to our dimensional axis. I wrote it out for Mitsuki to dark matter up, and here is our prototype. Sakura Kinomoto was kind enough to use the Mirror card to produce thousands of copies, so that everyone in Eden can have their personal VR machine. But we don't have much software to go with it yet, so there's no real point in distributing the hardware." Mira said.

　　"Then how did they make all those breakthroughs?" I asked, still not satisfied.

　　"With enough monkeys on enough typewriters eventually by pure chance one will churn out the collected works of Shakespeare. Now imagine Mitsuki's instead of monkeys and there you go." Mira explained succinctly the infinitudes she'd traversed.

　　"Even though I've warned you so many times about the dangers of Dimension W, you went anyway?" I finally got around to my real objection.

　　"Dimension W depletion destroys the world. And every time I leave my body I may not come back. But it would take a lot more usage of Dimension W to deplete it, and my life is well worth this invention. Virtual reality is more important than me. Plus, as you can see, I did it perfectly and came back fine." Mira flexed her arm in a sign of full strength. "I'm not just the tonkatsu you always say I am. In a pinch I can come through."

　　"It's not about whether I have faith in you or not, it's about how much you mean to me." A sigh of resignation went through me. Mira was always quick to sacrifice herself for the good of others. As a machine she had always discounted her own value compared to human beings.

　　"This isn't the first time I've used Dimension W either." Mira confessed. "When you said you wanted to start having children, I surfed the worlds of possibility for the nanite structure which could answer your dream, and rebuilt myself along those lines too."

　　I blushed. I had asked the impossible of her and she had selflessly, without any complaint or even mention, delivered. And after all these years I had never even realized the risk she had taken for me.

　　"Was that too something worth dying for?" I asked, knowing the answer.

　　"Yes. Having children together was my dream." Mira's green eyes looked into mine unwaveringly.

　　"Anything else I should know?" I asked.

　　"Nope, it was only those two times, so far." Mira's tail swished back and forth innocently.

　　"Well, if you decide to wander off again, please come back to me like you have the last two times. I don't want anyone to die. My wish was 100 wives, not 99 wives and a VR headset." I said.

　　"But now everyone can enjoy anything we can imagine for the rest of time." Mira put her finger on this helmet which represented a solidification of dreams into matter.

　　"With Siri to help with the coding, how fast did it take you to build that demo?" I asked.

　　"I think the Research Institute all working together took a week to build that?" Mira put a finger on her lip, thinking back. "They all agreed it was my right to present it to you today once we had finished." She gave a happy smile like a pet who had received praise.

　　"Well, I want a prominent menu option for people to logout with, from here on, and make it always appear in our vision, so we know none of this is real. And of course a pain filter in any type of game that could lead to taking damage." I instructed. Even though it had been a beach volleyball game with Iris in a bikini, I can't say I had very much enjoyed my first time down the rabbit hole.

　　"As you command, my lord." Mira saluted me. Shouldn't that have been a curtsy then? A salute would have been to a general. . . oh well, not that it mattered.

　　"Tell Aoba I'm looking forward to her game." I said, handing the precious helmet back into Mira's waiting hands.

　　"Everyone at the Research Institute and the Studio is pouring their all into it, sir. You won't be disappointed." Mira assured me.

　　I hoped I could play a character other than the 100-penised lolicon Goat Demon. . .

* * *

　　My 100 wives and I were all laying down in a line of futons together in a specially prepared gaming room, wearing identical virtual reality headsets. Siri maids looked after our bodies while we were away.

　　In the virtual world Aoba was giving us a tutorial. The real Aoba, not a simulacrum. Everyone here was a real wife who had dived in with me.

　　"Your abilities are the same as what you could do in your source work, but we've calibrated the damage and healing outputs to your moves so that they're all game balanced. If you blow up the solar system with an amazing summon attack, you'll still do 5 damage at level one. Kirino's slap also does 5 damage." Aoba explained, and everyone laughed.

　　"So everyone fight naturally like you're used to, the game is designed to make the fights challenging but not impossible. If you use your ingrained battle knowledge it should go well, and there are only slimes and goblins outside the starting town anyway, so you can get used to things and level up." Aoba advised.

　　"The premise of this game is that a Maou has unleashed his demonic armies from the north upon the human realm, and multiple countries have already fallen to their evil reign. Our job is a quest campaign that starts at the center of human power and then counterattacks into the north, where we'll topple the No Life King, the Skaven underworld, the Orc Chieftan, the Beastmen, the Dark Elves, the legions of Chaos, and finally the Maou's personal domain with all of his evil human collaborators. We call them the Fallen." Aoba said excitedly.

　　"Those filthy traitors." Shana called out in disgust, apparently already fully in character.

　　"There's a huuuuuuuge plot twist waiting for us at the Maou's castle. But maybe I should just reveal it now? I really want to reveal it now." Aoba put on an evil grin.

　　"Stop!" Some in the crowd shouted, while others encouraged her with "Go ahead!"

　　"Okay, here it is!" Aoba's arms stretched wide. "The Maou's chosen royal guard are none other than -- dark versions of us! The Dark Harem that serves his infinite unbridled lust. We have to defeat ourselves if we want to win the game!"

　　"Let's show the AI who can best use our own powers." Mikoto got revved up at the thought.

　　"Are there any variable fighters I could pilot, like, by unlocking after some quest?" Mylene asked hopefully, lacking the direct superpowers of her compatriots.

　　"Unfortunately this is a fantasy game." Aoba replied. "But for the pilot inclined there is magitek armor."

　　"Magitek armor!" Lots of powerless girls exclaimed excitedly, suddenly seeing a path forward.

　　"You can play the game solo if you want, or we can all work together, the raid encounters scale in difficulty with the number of players who enter the instance together. So play whenever you want, with whomever you want. There's no real death penalty, you just reappear at the nearest town, so it's okay to take risks. But it's risky to stay in the game for over three hours so you automatically log out if you don't manually do so before then. We still need to eat, shower, eliminate waste and so on in Paradise, so don't forget who you truly are." Aoba held up a warning finger.

　　"Silica, Asuna, Leafa." I called out to my SAO wives. "We invented this machine for you three. I'd be greatly honored if you formed a party with me and we won this game together."

　　Asuna looked to the other wives to see if they would get jealous over her monopolizing me, but they all nodded and gestured approvingly. "Why do I have the sinking feeling that not only can you not pull off a Starburst Stream, you're going to be completely useless at everything?" Asuna asked me with her chestnut colored eyes narrowing.

　　"Isn't that the sort of handicap VRMMO pros need to keep things exciting?" I countered confidently.

　　"Aoba, can we use all our sword arts here? What about the magic from Alfheim Online?" Leafa asked.

　　"Anything you mastered over there is a skill you can use here." Aoba replied. "This is your world, of course we matched it to your online selves, not your real world capabilities."

　　Pina perched on Silica's shoulder as she fed it a small brownie. "I want to play with Christopher, if you two wouldn't mind." She said bashfully.

　　"Then it's settled." Asuna nodded and passed me a party invite. "We'll play the whole game as a 4-man party. No cheating and leveling up while we're away."

　　"It took 22 years to get back here." Leafa lovingly ran her fingers down the cut of her clothes, along the hilt of her sword, and then floated into the air with faerie wings. "I was starting to miss it." She smiled happily.

　　"First things first," I whispered into Silica's ear. "Don't you want to try out sex in the virtual world?"

　　Her face turned beet red, and then she quietly nodded.

　　"So there you have it." I took Silica's hand in mine. "We'll be investigating the graphics at the nearest inn. You two can go ahead and buy all the equipment and items you think we'll be needing."

　　"Ah, zurui!" Suguha complained, watching Silica sneaking away with me.

　　Asuna put a hand on her arm and smiled, shaking her head. Now that Silica was looking forward to her unfinished dream, which had been an unrequited love last time she had shared this world with me, it wouldn't do to interrupt.

　　"Well I'm going next." Suguha muttered to herself, landing back on the ground.