Chapter 1

Mark slowly tapped the lengthy URL into his computer’s browser. He wasn’t a speedy typist under the best of circumstances, but the address—a seemingly random series of letters, numbers, and symbols—had no connecting thread to help him remember more than a character or two at a time.

Can’t be good for business, Mark thought, as he pivoted between the keyboard and the domain name sprawled across the bottom of the neon yellow flyer on his desk.

As Mark entered the last few characters, his hunt-and-pecking slowed to a crawl. He felt he’d made a mistake. Not with the domain name itself. He was certain he had entered it correctly. His concern lay with whether he should be visiting the site at all.

The circumstances in which the flyer had come into his possession were mysterious—he’d discovered it in the front pocket of his backpack when he’d arrived home from school. That was the first red flag. Then there was the address itself. What kind of web address was comprised entirely of disjointed numbers and symbols? If it weren’t for the “.net” suffix, he would never have guessed it to be a web domain at all.

It reminded Mark of those old-fashioned Nintendo save codes his father had scribbled down back in the day. Mark inherited the archaic console from his pops when he was nine, and on the backs of several of the games’ manuals were cryptic chicken-scratches that looked like hieroglyphics. When he inquired about them, Dad explained their purpose and mused that it sometimes took longer to enter the code than it did to play the game. Mark’s own experience with the gaming system confirmed that statement. Though, as with many things, he’d had it easier than his forty-something father. Whenever Mark played, he would simply take a screenshot of the code with his phone. He’d still need to enter it manually, but at least it saved a step and made it easier to discern I’s from L’s and zeros from O’s.

After inputting the final character, Mark’s finger hovered above the “enter” key. Was he about to visit the Dark Web? His friends had whispered about the perverted goings on there—that it was where you hired hit men, coordinated drug deals, and watched graphic videos of people getting crushed by combines and sucked into jet engines—but Mark had no idea how to get there. He hadn’t wanted to know until now, if, indeed, that was where he was headed.

It was the crude flyer on his desk that compelled him. “Feed Your Fantasy” screamed the old-fashioned font, below which an assortment of clipart foodstuffs: burgers, fries, pizzas, hot dogs, and candy bars surrounded a cartoonish line-drawing of a fat girl. At the bottom of the page was a URL. The one Mark was now a single keystroke from visiting.

Mark winced as his finger pressed the key. He expected his screen to fill with pornographic spam and his anti-virus software to erupt with alerts from a malware invasion. Neither happened. Instead, the browser went black, save for a single prompt.

Name:

Mark typed his first name. There was no way he was going to provide his last name to a website that probably wanted to harvest his organs. He tickled his pinky against the ‘enter’ key, and the first prompt was replaced by a second.

Age:

His fingers found the 1 and 8 keys. It always surprised him how many websites asked for your age or made you click a box that you were over 18, but basically took your word for it.

This site was no exception.

After tapping ‘enter,’ the prompts disappeared and were replaced by a large spinning hourglass at the center of the screen. As Mark watched the hourglass spin, he worried his Internet connection wouldn’t be strong enough for whatever the site had in store. His folks had Wi-Fi, but living at the edge of town, their service was definitely more “Why?” than Fi.

As Mark continued to stare at the rotating timepiece, his worry intensified. Why was he doing this? Why was he tempting fate on a homemade flyer that looked like it was made on an 80s-era Apple? He checked the time in the lower-right corner of the screen. 9:05. He could still catch the end of Monday Night Football. He would forget about the flyer. Forget about the website. Forget about the whole shitty day.

Mark dragged the arrow to the X in the upper-right corner of the browser, but he didn’t click it. His index finger hesitated on the mouse button as if it were the trigger of a gun that he couldn’t bring himself to shoot. And, before he could put the perpetually loading page out of its misery, the screen went white.

Oh, no. He’d waited too long. Curiosity had killed his computer.

Then something materialized at the center of the screen. No, not something. Someone. They faded in like an apparition formed from the ether. As the figure took shape, however, Mark realized that it was no ghost...

It was an angel.

“Dawn?”

Could it be? Could the heavenly body emerging from the bed of electronic clouds really be his ex-girlfriend? It looked just like her. Lustrous blonde hair. Piercing blue eyes. Radiant, heart-hitching smile. And the gold, white, and black cheerleading outfit she was clad in certainly looked like one Dawn wore on gamedays in the Fall. Only sexier. Much sexier. If Dawn tried to wear this version to school, she’d get sent to the principal’s office for violating the dress code.

“Hi Mark.”

Hearing his name through the speakers startled him. Especially since the voice belonged to someone who, two days earlier, had dumped him and called him a creeper.

Mark squinted at the screen. The gorgeous face smiling back had an ethereal glow that seemed to come entirely from within, and its features had an airbrushed sharpness that was ever-so-slightly artificial. It was as if Dawn had been fed into a computer and came out processed and filtered, like the Kardashians, on the other side.

“H-how do you know my name?”

There was no reply. Cyber Dawn just sat there. Staring at him. Staring into his soul. After a few seconds, she lifted her hands and wiggled her fingers as if playing an invisible piano.

Duh, Mark thought. There was no camera or microphone on his computer. He dropped his gaze from the beautiful blonde and typed...

‘How do you know my name?’

“You typed it in, remember?”

Mark hunt-and-pecked his way across the keyboard, ‘Who are you?’

“I’m whoever you want me to be.”

‘You look just like someone I know.’

“That’s by design.”

‘Whose design?’

“The program.”

‘What program?’

Cyber Dawn sighed. “Listen, Mark. It’s late, and you’ve got school tomorrow. Do you want to play Twenty Questions?” She leaned forward as if to share a secret. “Or do you want to do something more…productive?”

Mark began typing, ‘How do you know so much about me?’ but then he glimpsed the on-screen cleavage. He banged the ‘back’ button and clacked out a new message—

‘How much does this cost?’

Cyber Dawn winked. “The first 15 minutes are free.”

Mark wasn’t sure if she was serious, but didn’t want to risk it. He’d wasted several minutes already.

‘Can I see your tits?’ he typed tentatively. He’d only been on a few dates with the real Dawn and had never reached 2nd base.

Dawn’s double looked bored but not surprised. She grasped the spandex bodice of her uniform, and her plunging neckline plunged lower, revealing more and more of her milky white mounds until they finally tumbled forth onto the screen. “What do you think?” she said, giving them a playful shake.

Mark watched, hypnotized, as they wobbled gently back and forth before shifting his gaze back to the keyboard. Why in God’s name hadn’t he taken that Keyboarding class back in 7th grade?

‘They’re perfect,’ he hunt-and-pecked.

“Thank you.” Cyber Dawn smiled, dimples forming at her cheeks. “What about the rest of me?”

Mark typed ‘You’re perfect,’ but didn’t send it. Not because it wasn’t true. It was definitely true. Dawn was the most beautiful girl Mark had ever seen, and her tits were just two in a long line of perfections the sexy high school senior sported. Her face was flawless, with prominent cheekbones and a delicately dimpled chin that—when paired with cheek dimples that emerged like stars whenever she flashed her perfect smile—formed the consummate constellation within a rich galaxy of milky-white skin. And her figure? Talk about Divine Proportions. If Leonardo Da Vinci had met Dawn, he wouldn’t have bothered with the Vitruvian Man.

But that wasn’t enough for Mark. And if it wasn’t enough with the real Dawn, it certainly wasn’t enough for her foxy facsimile.

Mark deleted his original message and typed a new one: ‘You’re a little skinny for my tastes.’ He again winced as he hit ‘enter,’ expecting an explosion that never came.

Instead, Cyber Dawn’s dimples deepened. “I am?” she said, running her hands along her taut stomach. “You think I could use some meat on my bones?”

Mark swallowed hard. ‘Y-E-S.’

“Then why don’t you do something about it, big boy?”

‘What can I do?’

The cyber sexpot stretched her arms out toward Mark, to an area just off-screen, and pulled back a box of donuts. “My mom picked these up today.” She lifted the lid, revealing a dozen perfect circles shimmering with glaze. “They sure look good.”

‘Have one.’

“I can’t. Mom’s taking them to work.”

‘No one will miss just one.’

Mark’s suggestion was ludicrous. Anyone with eyes would notice a donut missing from a set of three perfectly symmetrical rows. Nevertheless, the virtual vixen flirtfully diddled her bottom lip with her index finger. “You think so?”

‘I know so.’

“Well….” She carefully removed a donut as if it were evidence from a crime scene. “If you think it’s OK.”

‘I do.’

Granted permission, she took a bite. Not an exploratory nibble, but a sinfully large chomp that caused a third of the donut to disappear.

“Mmmmmm.”

Mark’s fingers hovered above the keyboard, but his eyes remained glued to the screen. Two more bites and the donut was gone for good, the sticky residue the ersatz cheerleader licked from the tips of her delicate fingers all that remained of the sugary treat.

‘Have another.’

“No,” Cyber Dawn said, shaking her head. “Mom will kill me.”

‘She won’t kill you. Come on, live a little.’

“It was really good,” she admitted with a guilty giggle. After a moment’s hesitation, she selected a second donut from the box. It disappeared even faster than the first.

This set off a cycle of eating and regret, followed by Mark's enabling. ‘Might as well finish off the row,’ he typed after the simulated siren ate her third donut. ‘People will just think it was a half-dozen,’ he wrote before her sixth. His excuses grew increasingly contrived and desperate, but Dawn’s double swallowed them all, just like she did the rings of fried dough. Before long, there was nothing left in the box but a massacre of icing, crumbs, and greasy stains where the pastries had been.

“Do you think anyone will notice now?” Cyber Dawn pouted.

The ridiculousness of her question made Mark laugh. ‘Nah,’ he typed.

“Mom’s going to think I’m such a pig.”

Mark continued his enabling. ‘Tell her you took them to school.’

He watched Cyber Dawn lick the vestiges of the donut feast from her fingers. Flecks of glaze dotted her cheeks and chin. A few even dangled from her hair like fat snowflakes, while others clung to her cleavage like climbers on the precipice of delicious disaster.

She was a mess. A perfect mess.

How many donuts would it take for that perfection to wane?

Cyber Dawn seemed to sense Mark’s thoughts, muttering a quiet lament as she sucked the last of her dirty digits clean—

“I’m going to get so fat.”

KNOCK! KNOCK!

“Mark?”

Mark stabbed the X in the corner of the screen, dumping it to desktop just as his mother entered.

“What are you still doing up?”

The clock in the lower-right corner of the screen read 11:45 PM. He was usually in bed by eleven on school nights.

His mom’s eyes darted around the room. “I thought I heard a girl’s voice.”

“Just watching YouTube videos, mom.”

“Mmm-hmm.” The matronly woman folded her arms in the doorway as if to say, ‘Your mind tricks won’t work on me, boy.’ Nevertheless, she eventually retreated into the hall. “Get some sleep,” she said, closing his door. “Dawn will be here before you know it.”

Mark rose from his desk chair and collapsed into bed, not bothering to brush his teeth. As he replayed the night’s events in his mind, his right hand slid beneath his boxers as he yanked a sheet over his body with his left. He couldn’t take chances with a suspicious mother prone to surprise inspections.

But something besides the threat of maternal intrusion kept him from reaching full mast. Something he’d glimpsed as he’d leaned forward to hide the computer screen from his meddling mom before the browser dumped to desktop…

A tear streaming down Cyber Dawn’s crumb-covered cheek.