Free Another Life by Peter Anghelides

black trouser suit, with a Nehru jacket buttoned up to the neck. Owen pouted, and pointed to a martini glass and cocktail shaker on the kitchen counter beside her. ‘I see you haven’t finished the washing-up either.’
    ‘Don’t make me slap you,’ she warned him. ‘This was the nearest character I could use to interact with you. Unless you count him.’ She indicated the headless corpse. ‘I think I’d better tidy him up, don’t you? Nothing stays dead for very long in here.’ She typed in mid-air again, and Kvasir’s corpse snapped silently out of existence. ‘There, I’ve even mopped the floor. I’ll leave the dishwashing for you.’
    ‘This is just amazing, Tosh.’
    ‘Tell me I’m a genius.’
    ‘You’ve made your bum smaller, I notice. Are you glamming yourself up?’
    ‘You can talk,’ she retorted. ‘Have you seen yourself? I think you may have issues. “Glendower”, indeed!’
    He squared his broad virtual shoulders. ‘So what? It’s a computer game, not a psychology session. I have to admit, I am gobsmacked. This is fantastic, even for you.’
    ‘Did I mention that I’m a genius?’
    ‘You’re a genius.’ He stood up and stepped towards her, but banged his knee on an invisible desk. He could hear pencils and DVD cases scattering onto the floor, though he couldn’t see them.
    ‘Stop, stop,’ urged Toshiko. ‘You have to stay sitting at your desk. Don’t go wandering off! You’re still attached to your computer.’
    Owen fumbled behind himself for his office chair in the real world, and settled back into it as though it was the leather barber’s seat.
    Toshiko glided over to him with an unfamiliar sinuous grace. ‘Try gesturing with your data-gloves. They can move you about as though you’re using your keyboard.’
    Owen tried a few movements. At first he managed to upend himself, which had the disorienting effect of giving him an inverted view of the barber-shop while his body told him he was still the right way up. Soon he’d mastered the gestures, and was striding around the Lunatic Fringe as though he owned the place. Which, virtually speaking, he did.
    ‘When I get it sorted out,’ Toshiko explained, ‘it’ll be able to use positional info from the cameras and sensors here in the Hub. The tracking devices in our mobile phones. That kind of thing. And the resolution will be good enough to be close to real life.’
    ‘Fleshspace,’ he told her.
    ‘Eww. What?’
    ‘That’s what players of Second Reality call the real world.’
    ‘One day, I’ll be glad to welcome you to the real world, Owen.’
    ‘I don’t imagine I could do this in fleshspace.’ He reached out and fondled virtual Toshiko’s breast through the material of her Nehru jacket. The sensors in his gloves pressed softly against his fingers and the palm of his hand. A series of smacks on his real-world head made his ears ring. ‘Ouch! Come on Tosh! Stop slapping my helmet.’
    Toshiko’s attack ceased. ‘I bet you wouldn’t say that to Penny Pasteur if you made contact in fleshspace.’
    From outside the shop came the sound of a shrill whinnying. Owen wafted a gesture, and his virtual self walked to the front of the shop. A hunter was half-rearing up, snorting nervously, startled by something. A maid in a mob cap and a dusty overcoat was shying away from the creature.
    Owen grabbed for the door handle, in the hope of rushing out and pulling the maid to safety. Before he could seize it, the door wrenched itself open, and he was in the street. The maid leapt to one side with a cry of ‘Oh my Lord!’ and dropped her bundle of shopping. A large ham bounced out of its wrapping and onto the pavement. By the time the hunter’s rider had calmed the creature, the maid had recovered her composure and her ham. Owen watched her scurry away down the street.
    Toshiko peered at him through the shop doorway. ‘You must be Prince Charming,’ she told him. ‘Go on, slap your thigh for me.’
    Owen re-entered