I felt my consciousness return to me but everything was still dark.

(hmm... Didn't I come back to reality?)

Soon my other senses started to return and I could feel the headgear on my head.

"Hey Yuko.. You there?"

"Took you a while to respond."

"Can you take the headgear off?"

"Headgear? Oh you mean this? Just wait a little more the checks are almost complete. You know, so there aren't any problems later on with your body."

"I see."

...............

"I'm gonna take it off now."

Yuko took off the headgear and the wires on my chest. I tried sitting up but....

"ahh.. My body is so stiff. How long was I gone?"

"2 hours and 4 minutes."

"what!? It felt like way more than that."

"Your brain can process information much faster in a dream like state, so that's understandable. But more importantly, what happened when you came back? I tried calling a few times but you didn't respond."

"Really? I didn't hear anything. As a matter of fact, I couldn't even feel anything."

"I see. So there's some delay........murmur.......murmur...." Yuko started thinking and I couldn't hear what he was saying in such a low voice.

"So what do you suppose happened?" I asked him when it seemed like he finished thinking.

"When you're in virtual reality, you experience a dream like state, but there's difference between the two. When you're dreaming, your brain can still send 'electrical pulses' or 'signals' to your body, though limited. But when you're in virtual reality, your brain activity increases since it feels like you're in the real world. So it continuously sends signals, but this time, its sending those signals to your body in the virtual space. So it just 'thinks' that its sending those signals but its not doing so actually. As this happens, the signals in the real world are cut off. You can say that your body is in a paralysed state now. That is why when you come back, there is a delay since your brain has to readjust to the body again. But this is limited to the senses you actually need in the virtual world, for example, the involuntary actions, like breathing, functioning of organs, control of hormones is not affected. This is important, because if it was, you'd die. And even your sense of taste and smell should not be affected since you're only using touch, sound and vision in the virtual world."

"That...went on for a while."

"You understand?"

"Nops."

While Yuko facepalmed, I got up, put on my clothes and started stretching my body. I could still remember the feeling of having wings and four sturdy legs.

"Now that this is done. Let me show you something else.", said Yuko "there is another thing I needed you here for."

"?"

"I feel like my explanations are wasted on you so I'll just cut to the chase."

"Well, sorry for being stupid."

"Yeah yeah.. Now stop glaring at me and get your ass over here."

Yuko had already gone over to another machine and started doing something. This was at least 6 feet long horizontally and 3 feet high. It was big enough to fit a small person and a line was running through the middle. It looked like it could open as a door. And open, it did! But what came out of it was..........

(another maid costume?)

But that wasn't all. It wasn't another one of the maid robots. It was a real girl this time! A REAL GIRL!

"I.I.I...knew it was only a matter of time! I knew your fetishes wouldn't be satisfied with those robots of yours! You've finally kidnapped someone!"

"What the hell are you going on about?" Yuko said while smacking me on the head, "And what do you mean, "finally'?"

"......" I continued shifting my gaze between the girl and my friend.

"haaaaaaah.. Look here.." saying that, he reached for the girl's skirt.

(Is he going to lift it up? No way, am I finally going to get a glance of the forbidden territory!?)

I shook my head.

(No! No! No! Go away evil thoughts! But now that I look at her closely, she is pretty cute.)

Though I am obviously not a paedophile, but I did find this girl with an appearance of a middle schooler really attractive. She had long black hair and a beautiful face like that of a doll. She was showing very little skin, only on her arms and face. Her legs were covered with the skirt upto her knees and the rest by long socks. As Yuko lifted her skirt up, I covered my eyes with my hands before I had a chance to look. But...

(umm... A little peak doesn't hurt anyone, does it?)

With that thought, I took a little peek through the crevice between my fingers and....

.........

.........

"YOU BASTARD! GIVE ME BACK MY HOPES AND DREAMS!!" I shouted and threw a punch at Yuko.

Yup, you know it. THERE WAS METAL INSIDE! She had metal legs!

Yuko easily dodged my punch and tripped me.

(Damn. This guy is also good at martial arts. I can't win in anything, can I?)

"This is Trichia, my newest piece.", Yuko started speaking without paying any concern to me who had fallen on the floor, "but she's quite different from the others. First and foremost, as you can see, I made special skin for her with synthetic fibre so she could resemble a human."

I got up and dusted off my clothes, which didn't have any dirt since the room was as clean as it could be.

Yuko continued, "Secondly, look at this."

Saying that, he started doing something on the computer again which was connected to Trichia's... resting place, I should call it?

"oh.. Even her eyes look like those of humans."

She opened her eyes (or more like Yuko opened her eyes from the computer). Her pupils had a beautiful greenish shade to them.

"This is just the start. Now look at this!"

(hmmm?)

"whoa! Awesome! That's soooo amazing!"

Just like I said, it was truly amazing! She was smiling! And her smile was so pure! It didn't look faked at all. Even the eyebrows curled in perfectly. After that, he showed me many other expressions like anger, pouting, surprise and most of all blushing!!! She looked soooo cute with her slightly red cheeks!!!

"Now for third and fourth, I don't have anything to show you, so you'll just have to listen to me again. As you know, for the other maids, they utilized a command recognition software and can only repeat preprogrammed dialogues but I built a completely new software for Trichia for the purpose of 'learning and adapting'. She can understand most of the stuff you say to her and if you explain whatever she doesn't, she'll remember it next time. For now, she can only comprehend our language, and I've input some of the basic etiquettes but everything else has to be learnt and adapted to. This is the main purpose of the experiment, to see how well the software does."