Ever been in love? Really in love? I mean, totally in love? So in love you just could not live without it, and would do anything to keep it?

Well I have. Let me tell you about it.

Some background first. Only the specialist trade mags will give you any clue, but there's been some changes in the character of the post-millennial corporate organization. Corporations now consist of a hard core of permanent personnel, some expensive proprietorial software, and everything else is out-sourced. General Motors currently has eighty-three permanent employees, AT&T Global ninety-one, Sony one hundred and seventeen, Siemens two hundred and two, and so on. The only real exceptions are the soft houses, but even they're heading that way.

So this means the perms are really important. They design and run the all-important corporate systems, and they know the company secrets. And these secrets are enough to gain or lose that crucial competitive edge in the electronic maelstrom that is today's global commerce. Now, if those secrets should fall into the wrong hands...

So the corporations do anything to keep their perms, and their secrets. Money by the container load, plush health benefits, generous children's education assistance, completely landscaped houses in the best suburbs, and anything else that might work to gain the advantage in a cutthroat bidding war for someone's services.

On the other hand, of course, it's hard to become a perm. Very hard.

I know; I'd worked seven years as a contractor before they offered me a spot as a perm. Then six months of rigorous psychological testing - covering everything from my childhood experiences to my sexual preferences - before I was even put on probation. But eventually I made it and I've been with the firm a little over four years now. I'm pretty good too, know my stuff, effective, achieve my profit targets. I am, I think, the best VR jockey in the company; except maybe for Jenny Ling, who is very good indeed.

Funny, when virtual reality stuff was first invented, they saw it as entertainment, and it is of course, but like every other high tech development, it has become an integral part of big business in the global age. It lets you go anywhere, see anything, talk to anyone, while staying right in the same place. In your office, with all your resources immediately to hand. It lets you keep total control.

Anyway, like most perms I spend my days in a VR tank. I might be writing microcode, utilising the special symbolic programming tools VR provides, or I might be travelling around the world checking up on something or other, all as my VR alter ego. I'll stroll through a subcontractor's plant in Calcutta , maybe, dealing with a quality control problem; or meet with a supplier in Shanghai to squeeze out a little extra margin; or travel in a prototype roadster to check out the interior decor in a simulated road test. VR tech is so good now you just cannot tell it's not for real.

Some perms have the VR tanks installed in their apartments or houses or ranches or whatever, but I'm old fashioned. I commute most days the fifteen kays to the industrial park that hold's the firm's head office. I like to keep to a routine - start around eight, finish by six - but this is not always possible if the work demands more time.

Not long ago, at about six fifteen in the evening, I closed down VR contact by verbalising the code word, and found myself back in the elaborate skin harness that made the VR illusion possible. First time visitors always say it looks like a spider-web body suit. I climbed out of the tank, one of ten state-of-the-art machines in the basement of the building, showered the harness contact lube off my body in the nearby washroom, dressed, and walked through empty corridors till I came to the building exit. There I spoke to the only human I saw that day, Andrej, the security guy. Then I went out into the car park, enjoying the balmy early evening weather, and climbed into my brand new silver Nissan Spiker.

I was half way up the pleasant, winding, tree-lined road to my house when I saw two cars parked on the side of the road ahead of me. One was a new hot-pink Hyundai Lady, and behind it was a battered Ford pick up. Two people stood next to the cars. One was a woman, long black hair, slim, red dress, and she was arguing with a hefty guy in a baseball cap, flannel shirt and dirty jeans. As I approached, she turned and made a move to run but he lunged forward and grabbed her by the arm. She batted at him with her fists, but couldn't break free.

Well, I'm no tough guy. A couple of racquet ball games a week in the VR tank keeps the flab down, but the last fight I won was against my brother when I was maybe thirteen. He was ten. But I had to do something, so I braked, did a U-turn and came around. They were still struggling and yelling at each other, and so I leaned out the window and said as casual as possible, "Are you okay, lady?"

"No," she said, agitated, "this asshole seems to think I owe him an apology. I evidently offended his macho pride by passing him, or something like that."

"Butt out, shitbrain," the guy said, simply.

"Look," I said, "I'll call my security."

He suddenly growls and whips her around, throwing a brawny tattooed arm round her neck. "Help me!" she yelps.

I punch my personal security alarm - armed response within seven minutes, they promise. And then I set the hand brake and climb out of the car.

He stares at me like some small, irritating animal has challenged him. Then he let's her go, and starts toward me. "Okay shithead," he says grimly, "you asked for it."

Then he kind of stumbles, his big work boots snagging on something, but he throws a looping right hook at the same time and I just dodge a little and it sails past my ear. He goes past me, falling, smacks into the side of his pick up, and slumps to the ground.

"Drunk," I say, staring at his ugly, bearded face. Blood is trickling from a nostril, his eyes are closed, he seems spent.

"Oh God, thank you," she says breathily, and I get the first good look at her.

I have been through enough matchmaker soft to know what I like in a woman, and here she is. Long dark wavy hair, huge brown eyes, Russian cheekbones, Persian lips, and a long body that just sings to me...

"Uh, uh," I said. I dealt with gorgeous women all the time in VR, although the cosmetic programs shifted us all up a grade in the looks department; it was part of the game. But I felt pretty inadequate in front of this particular woman.

Behind me, the meathead mumbled something, and she snarled, took a step and slung one perfect leg back and kicked him in the ribs. It was just so sexual.

My security arrived then, a sleek black helicopter descending on us like shuddering doom, and bundled up the moaning redneck. Two black clad guys with shaved heads and lots of muscles gave me an admiring look, and I signed the chit. And then they were gone.

"You really saved my ass there," she said, not really needing to remind me about that piece of her anatomy. She looked at me like I could be eaten and she might be hungry.

"Not really," I managed. "I think he was fighting out of his weight already."

She laughed, and it was good. "Modest too, huh?"

"No, just honest," I said, starting to feel silly. "Er, look, Paul Fenwick." I stuck out a slightly shaky hand.

"Shana Beddoes." Her hand was long and cool. "Can I buy you dinner, Sir Paul?"

"Well, I don't know how my microwave will like being stood up, but sure."

That night was like something out of a romantic vid. She was yin to my yang, bright pink to my grey. She was an art student, hoping to be an interior decorator. She was artistic and well informed and sexy as hell, and she made me feel so good I started acting with the confidence I only ever usually felt during working hours. We ate seafood at this little place she knew with red and white checked tablecloths, and drank local beer. We went for a walk under a full, yellow moon, and actually found a playground and did the whole swing thing. We wound up at my place, and made love until four in the morning.

Next morning I asked her to move in with me. She said she'd think it over, but she moved in that night.

I cannot tell you how good things were. On every level, it was like I was whole, complete.

And she totally supported my work. She said she knew it was important to me, and was the basis of our material affluence. And she was a material girl; I loved to buy her things. She'd send me off to work each day, and I'd work like a maniac, bursting with that ineffable confidence that comes from being loved by the one you love. My work got better and better.

Then one night, driving home, just about where I'd met Shana I saw someone lying on the road in front of me. Watchful, I got out, walked over and rolled the body over. It was the redneck; he was conscious and staring up at me.

I leapt back, hands bunching. "It's okay," he said, getting to his feet. "I just wanted to talk to you."

"What about?" I asked warily.

"Shana. She's a set up. I was in on it-"

The cool night was suddenly alive with the noise of engines and sirens. "Oh shit!" the redneck yelled, looking up at the descending helicopter. "She's not what she seems!" he yelled, but then the noise drowned him out, and three security guys emerged from the chopper and grabbed him. Then, and despite my perhaps feeble protests, they dragged him away.

"Escaped from our lockup," one security guy told me. "Had it in for you. Lucky we tracked him down before he hurt you."

When I got home I told Shana about it. She wept, said it was all her fault I'd ever met him. I soothed her, then we made very slow, tender love for a long time, and sat up watching late night vid rubbish and eating pizza.

The next night, for the first time since we'd met, she was not there to meet me when I came home from work. She came in about eleven, teary, her clothes rumpled. She ran from my questions, showered, ate something, and went to sleep.

Next night, on a hunch, I stopped in at the restaurant we'd first had dinner in. She was there. She was picking at a salad with her right hand, deep in conversation with a good looking bearded man in a black leather jacket who held her left hand. I left without them seeing me.

When she came home, there was a scene. I accused, she wept, she begged for forgiveness, I forgave and we made desperate love.

But there were further incidents of that kind. Each time she'd express abject sorrow, and then we'd have passionate sex.

I still loved her, but I was in agony, on a knife-edge of hope and despair.

Then, just a couple of nights ago, arriving to an empty house again, there was in the mail an envelope that contained a piece of paper with one word printed on it: ARGOSY.

I was just considering what this meant when she came home. "Where have you been?" I asked.

"Oh hoooonnneeeyyy-"

I stared in pure horror. Shana's voice was coming out like some tape slowing down, descending into grinding base. And then, even as she reached for me, her face flushed and colours coruscated across her perfect features.

"Oh God! Oh no!" I screamed.

And then I yelled, "PENTANGLE!"

This was the code word that should have got me out of the VR program.

Nothing happened. Shana began to glow.

And then I said, suddenly very tired, "Argosy."

Sobbing, wiping the tears from my eyes and smearing harness lube, I climbed out of the harness and exited the tank. My wristcomm was sitting on a desk. The contact light pulsed. "Yes?" I said.

"It's me, Jenny Ling. Thank God you're out. She's a construct, Paul, microcode. They got her from those psychological assessment tests you did. I was part of it, but I changed my mind. Not even you deserve that sort of shit. I tried to warn you with the redneck, but they got onto my intervention. So, I went after her, made her unfaithful. But the program kept her coming back and you kept taking her back. So I eventually managed to degrade her visuals program. Know how hard that is?"

"But why, Jenny? Why did they do it?"

"You, Pauly. You were the perfect employee, locked in and happy. The psycho-profile said you might one day get a little unstable, worrying about an unsuccessful love life. Shana was the answer." Her voice over the wristcomm was cold and clinical. "So they inserted the program into your VR to make you think you were going home at night. To her."

"I've been sitting here all the time? Two months?"

"They sedate and wash you, empty your bladder and bowels - had you on a low residue diet."

"But how... the tastes and smells?"

"They added some chemicals that stimulate the thalamus. With the visual cues, it made you sort of hallucinate tastes and smells. But it wouldn't have worked if your own sensorium wasn't so compromised by all the time you spent in the VR tanks. You're body has kinda lost the capacity to tell the difference between real and virtual, Pauly boy."

I looked around me at the cold antiseptic technology of sensual replication, the mute row of plastic and steel VR tanks jammed with nanotech chips and circuitry, and considered my position.

"Just a minute, Jenny," I said.

I went into the nearby washroom, and there in the corner was a mobile bath and some other gear. Stuff for keeping an unconscious person alive. I turned and caught myself in the mirror: I looked pale and very thin, sickly. "Jenny," I said then into my wristcomm, "you've gotta help me."

"Okay," she said matter-of-factly. "I know a good lawyer. He'll get you out of this."

"No no, not that! You've gotta make Shana give up those other guys."

END