A N.I.C.E. Boy, by Ganymede

WARNING: This story contains graphic descriptions of sexual acts between men and MINOR boys. It is not true! The story is not intended to promote illegal acts against minors. I do not condone child abuse, however the love of boys is a different matter. Despite the prevalent attitudes of western society, men have loved boys throughout recorded history. It is my goal to help readers appreciate that love can exist between men and boys. If the subject of man/boy love offends you, if this material is illegal in your place of residence, or if you are under the legal age for such material, do not read further!


By downloading this story: "... you implicitly declare and affirm under penalties of perjury that you are not a minor or in the company of a minor and are entitled to have access to material intended for mature, responsible members of society capable of making decisions about the content of documents they wish to read...."

Any similarity to individuals, living or dead, is entirely accidental. The sexual acts described in the story are the result of my imagination. I have not performed these acts, and I do not encourage others to perform them with minors.

The story is copyrighted under the pseudonym, Ganymede. Copies have been placed in the Nifty archives for your enjoyment. The story cannot be used to derive monetary gain. The story cannot be placed in archives that require payment for access, or printed and distributed in any form that requires payment either directly or indirectly.


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FINAL WARNING: If you are under the age of 18, if this material is illegal in your place of residence, or if man-boy relationships aren't your thing, then exit now and save yourself from a life of sin!


A N.I.C.E. Boy, Part 9


Feds Raid Humdinger Gay Story Archive

New York Free Press April 23th 2005


Armed with search warrants, more than a dozen FBI agents invaded the home and office of David Swift early this morning. Swift, long time moderator and archivist of the Humdinger Archive of homosexual stories, said that several items were examined. "The FBI was interested only in the stories involving minors," Swift said. "The archive is still largely intact and will be back online as soon as our mirror sites are updated." The U.S. Attorney General's Office said that such stories are in violation of the recently passed Clean Up Net Traffic Act, the Federal statute to prevent the sexual exploitation of minors on the Internet. Since 1993, Swift has spent most of his free time developing the Humdinger Archive into the world's largest repository of sexually themed stories. He has also achieved national recognition as an advocate of freedom of speech. "This is nothing short of appalling. Personally, I find many of the stories to be abhorrent, but this does not mean that people should not be allowed to read them. The stories are fiction, and stories harm no one. If anything, stories broaden the mind and help to eliminate prejudices," Swift said. "We have formulated strict guidelines over the years so that the archive has always complied with the law. We have been especially careful when stories involve minors. While our policies have offended some authors and readers, all of the stories in the archive can be defended as legitimate literary works. What happened this morning is far worse than censorship. The FBI installed and ran software on the archive's computers that was able to identify people who have visited certain stories in the archive over the last three months. I fear that this country, which has traditionally placed a very high value on personal freedoms, has fallen to an all-time low."

Roger McCarthy, spokesman for the FBI, said that charges of pandering child pornography will not be filed against Swift. "Instead, we will be keeping the archive under close surveillance. We are interested only in identifying pedophiles who have been breaking the law by downloading child pornography. We expect to be making arrests very shortly."

Swift was particularly annoyed that some items were removed from the premises, including computer hard drives and DVD backup disks of the archive contents. "A large of the archive is gone forever," Swift said. "This is a sad day for America."


Chapter 9. Lane's Bookstop, Liberty Street, Champain. April 23rd 2005


Lane was enjoying his one hour of sovereignty when Daniele entered the store. That afternoon, almost all of the talk in the two private online chat rooms he frequented had been about the FBI raid on the Humdinger Archive. It was generally agreed that 23rd of April would be remembered as a day of infamy. He heard the front door open and close, the sound of Daniele's feet crossing the floor, walking on the polished wood floor until he reached the rug.

"Hi Bookworm," he said over his shoulder. "What's up?"

Daniele came closer, approaching until he was behind Lane. It was difficult to see what was on the computer monitor.

"Nothing you'd be interested in."

"Don't be too sure of that." He turned slightly, overtly casting his eyes down. There was a small lump in the front of Daniele's jeans.

"So nothing is up. I find that hard to believe with my favorite Book-boy?" he teased.

"Yeah, well it's the only toy I've got to play with," Daniele said boldly. He smirked. He enjoyed the innuendo. "What are you doing? Isn't that a V-R chat?"

"Uh huh. It's based on Real-TYME."

Lane glanced back at Daniele, wondering if he should shut the program down. It had been innocuous so far, but it was possible that one of the other players might say or do something obscene. Daniele moved to the side so that he could see the monitor without craning his neck.

"Which one are you?"

"Um,... him," Lane answered, pointing to a small fair-haired boy.

He used the mouse to turn the boy-avatar around so that his face could be seen.

"Cool. He's sure great looking. What's his name?"

"Tybee," Lane answered. "I grew up in Georgia. We used to spend summers on Tybee Island."

"So he's a magician," Daniele observed, seeing the customary insignia on the boy's clothing.

"He's also a changeling. His other character is a wizard."

"I thought he might be because he's got a mohawk." Daniele moved closer to watch the game in progress. "Who's that?" he asked pointing at a figure dressed in black.

"That's Saint Xavier. He just came on," Lane added reluctantly. Again he thought about switching the program to icon-mode, or shutting it down altogether.

He watched as the figure sidled up to Tybee and began to talk after giving the boy-avatar a meaningful glance. The other players began to leave. One man-boy couple disappeared into the garden. Lane would have liked to follow, and would have it he was at the computer by himself.

"I've always admired you from a distance, Tybee. Up close you're even better good-looking," came a deep masculine voice from the speakers.

Lane glanced at Daniele who grinned. "So he likes boys too, huh?" Daniele observed.

"Um, yes, you could say that. This is a place we call Arcadia. It's a boy-lovescape," Lane explained. "Mostly men play, but sometimes boys come online to flirt."

He typed in `Perhaps you should keep your distance.' It took only a second before the computer had translated the typed words into a boy's soprano complete with L.A. accent. Daniele giggled.

"Cute. Can we go inside him?"

"Perhaps we should get to know each other." The deep voice sounded very real. "I'm really very nice."

Lane hesitated. He had no idea who he was playing with. What he did know, at least by rumor, was that Saint Xavier was definitely not nice. Saint X, as he was called, could quickly become obscene. It was a dangerous game to play with a ten-year-old boy, but it was the world that Daniele was about to enter. He rubbed his chin fretfully.

"I don't know, Dani."

"Pleasssseeeee?"

Lane would never be able to resist any boy who said `please' like that, especially not Daniele Webster. It took only two keystrokes to exit `bird's eye' mode and enter `real view'. The virtual world changed spontaneously. It was not fully three-dimensional, and it was considerably harder to navigate with a wand than with the mouse, but it was close enough to reality to be unsettling. Lane and Daniele gazed out through a twelve-year-old boy's eyes at a world that looked as if it had been created by Maxfield Parrish. The setting was classical, a Doric colonnade around a splashing marble fountain, mountains coming down into a crystal-clear lake, a garden that could have come from paradise. It looked idyllic.

"Nice," Daniele muttered. "Your computer is way faster than mine."

"The main program is part of a drone. It's running on a university supercomputer," Lane admitted. "Mine is just doing the local imaging."

"Did anyone ever tell you how cute you are, Ty? You could be Mai Tai?" Again that man's gravelly voice, only it sounded closer than before.

Lane glanced at Daniele, who grinned back at him. "Well?"

"Tell him he needs to shave," Daniele suggested.

`You need to shave', Lane typed.

They heard sudden laughter. "You're sexy as well as cute. Don't you like hairy men?"

Again, Lane looked to Daniele.

"Um,... Okay, how about,... `It depends where the hair is'?"

Lane laughed as he entered the words for Tybee to say. In `real-view' he missed hearing the boy's voice. It was a trade-off.

"You're going to get him excited."

Daniele shrugged nonchalantly. "It's only a game."

"Where would you like the hair to be?" replied the voice.

"Not in your nose," Daniele giggled. "No, no don't type that."

Lane did anyway. There was a moment before the other player guffawed loudly.

"Let me revise that `sexy' to `very sexy'."

"Only if you shave," Daniele laughed. "Everywhere," he added in a burst of confidence as he watched Lane enter the words exactly as he had said them.

A few seconds later. "Every where? Oooooh, yes, I would do that for you. My, but you are a hot little thing, aren't you?"

"Sometimes I'm very hot," Daniele instructed with glee, although only a moment later he found it impossible to believe that he had said that. He waited until Lane had typed it. "Are you hot too?" he added in a teasing sing-song voice that sounded less lewd than funny the way he said it.

"Yes, I'm hot for you, sexy boy. I'd really like to play with your privates."

Daniele gulped loud enough for Lane to hear him. Hearing the strange voice say that, almost as if he was in the same room apparently sent a thrill through both of them. He glanced surreptitiously at the boy. He had a peculiar expression, somewhere between meek and bold, certainly experiencing a rush of adrenaline as he was consumed by nervous excitement. The situation was quickly getting out of control, but Lane had no desire to rein it in. He had always believed in sovereignty of the individual. It was the fundamental principle of his existence. Daniele could stop any time he wanted to. As far as Lane was concerned, Daniele was more than intelligent enough to be able to make his own choices. It all came down to freedom of choice, to make one's decisions based on one's values and desires.

"Are you sure you want to keep playing?" he asked. Daniele nodded abruptly, his eyes never leaving the monitor. "It'll probably get a lot worse before he's done."

"It's fun, okay?"

"I bet you're hard." The voice had suddenly become raspy, teasing with intonation. It was a tone that was easy to achieve, F8 and then holding down `R' and a number key to adjust the volume.

Instinctively, Daniele started to move his hand towards his crotch. Not that he needed to validate the condition of his penis. He could feel his stiffness being uncomfortably constrained by his briefs. He stopped midway, realizing that he had was being watched although he had been seen doing it often enough that he had no reason to be embarrassed about it. Still, he blushed. Lane shrugged ambivalently.

"Yeah, me too, Daniele. It happens to all of us guys. Don't worry about it."

"What should I say now?" Daniele asked, suddenly insecure.

He wondered how both men knew his penis was erect. It wasn't that Mr. Lane could even see anything. It wasn't so big that it stuck out very far, not like some boys who shamelessly exhibited themselves in the shower after swim practice. And it was impossible for St. X, whoever he was, to know that, unless of course he was talking to Tybee. Daniele smiled slightly. There was a noticeable bulge between the boy-avatars thighs that could only mean one thing. He was amused that he had not noticed it before.

"How did he get that?" he smirked and pointed at the all-too-obvious bulge that seemed to be sticking out at a 45 degree angle.

"Blood pressure," Lane joked. "Actually I gave it to him by hitting `E' `5' and `/'."

"The `E' s for erection right?" Then, Daniele giggled. "It's really five inches long? What if you typed like `10' or something?"

"It would tear a hole through his pants," Lane laughed. "You get the angle by typing `/', `--`, `\' or `|''," he added. "I've always been partial to boys whose stiffies are at an angle."

Daniele laughed. "Hence the forward-slash. Can you make it bend by using a curved bracket?"

"Absolutely. Actually, I know the man who wrote this part of the program," Lane explained. "He must have included every possible alternative. You can make it become even harder by typing `!'. Just about every key has some sort of meaning. Let's see if I remember. I know you get pre-cum with a dot, and semen is `~', which is supposed to resemble sperm I think. I don't use those with Tybee because he's too young. He still shoots blanks, like you," he added boldly. Too boldly for comfort. He turned back to the monitor. Entering `>' twice made the boy- avatar's penis jerk twice.

Daniele giggled. "This is so cool. He's almost like a real person. Now what?"

"Hm,... Well it more or less depends on what you want to do, Dani. You can keep leading him on, or you can walk away. Sometimes it's easy just to move on. There's always someone else to talk with in Arcadia. It's all about having fun."

`What will happen if we keep talking?"

"I've run into Saint X a few times before. Unless I'm mistaken he's a cop out to catch child abusers. I'd be surprised if he doesn't say that he wants to have sex with you."

"A policeman?" Daniele shivered and stepped back from the monitor.

Surprisingly, Lane had not realized that Daniele was wearing sweat pants and a tee-shirt emblazed with `Dolphins Swim Team' for the simple reason that was how he was usually dressed when he came to the store after swim practice. Whoever had done the graphics on the tee-shirt knew something about design. The careful use of pattern made the colorful image ambiguous. It shifted puzzlingly from an arching stylized dolphin to a diving androgynous human child, either form being the archetype of streamlining. Daniele's hair was still wet because he had come directly from swim practice. He was visibly tired after spending nearly two hours of continuous swimming, but his excitement seemed limitless.

Lane laughed. "Don't worry, it's safe. Nothing is real here except the two of us. I'm only guessing that he's a policeman, Dani. He could just as easily be a lonely old man who needs to get off. Besides, it doesn't matter if he is a cop, not when there's a dozen proxies between him and us, and they're all anonymous. The worst that he can do is to try to find out something about you for his files. Like where you're from. He might try to direct-copy some pictures to you. If you're smart enough to say no, you're safe."

"Oh!" Daniele breathed a sigh of relief. "Never take pictures from a stranger, huh?"

"Yeah, something like that," Lane said, thinking of his own vast collection of boy-pictures that he had collected over the years. He had been foolhardy then, not even encrypting his directories. At last count, he was up to 35,370 pictures and over a 1,000 video files.

"What's up? Are you too busy playing with your boy toy to talk to me?"

Reasoning that his penis was his `boy-toy', Daniele giggled. "He means masturbating, doesn't he?"

Lane nodded in response, still anxious about whether he was doing the right thing.

"What if I say I am?" Daniele asked coyly.

"Well you're not," Lane laughed, "But it you said that, he'd probably ask to see it."

"Okay."

"Okay?"

"Say it. Tell him I'm playing with my dick."

"You want me to lie for you?" Lane teased. He regretted the words as soon as they left his mouth. He quickly typed in, `Okay, I'm playing with my dick now.'

"Oh wow. I bet it's real big, and it's hot too, isn't it?" the voice crooned. "Nice and hard. Do you like playing with it?"

"Um," Daniele glanced at Lane for suggestions. Lane merely shrugged.

"It's not that big," Daniele said, responding truthfully but defensively, for he had long accepted the unfortunate yet undeniable reality that his penis was smaller than the other ten-year- old boys in his swim team group.

"Does it get messy when you jack off?"

"Huh?"

Lane smirked and tried to imagine what `St. X' would say if he knew he was online with a real ten-year-old boy and not a middle-aged pervert who was pretending to be a boy. On Daniele's behalf, he typed `not yet'.

"Oh yeah., but you can still cum, right? Only they're dry ones. Are you close? Yeah, I bet you are, horn-puppy. Boys like you always do it fast."

The voice was breathy, strained. The man was probably masturbating himself, holding down the F-4 key while he typed.

"I don't want you to waste it jackin'. Slow down for a while."

Lane entered. `Okay'. F-7 was a nervous tone of voice. Although he couldn't hear what Tybee said, it had the appropriate effect on the other end.

"Oh yeah. You are so fucking hot. `Okay', indeed. Anything you want to do is okay by me. Man-oh-man you're sexy. You want to play around, don't you cutie? You want to have some fun?"

Daniele trembled, not understanding everything, but comprehending enough to be filled with excitement. He nodded slightly, controlling himself.

"He'll want you to do stuff," Lane warned.

"But it isn't real," Daniele reminded him.

"You want to show me what you've got down there, cutie?"

"He wants you to get naked," Lane clarified.

Daniele reddened. "You mean,...Oh,... How?"

Lane demonstrated how the three-dimensional wand worked, moving from `real-view' back to `bird's eye' so that he could see what he was doing. It took a lot of skill to make the motions on the screen appear natural. He made the boy-avatar move away a few steps until his back was against one of the white marble columns. The view on the monitor changed. Tybee was facing towards the mountains, to a spectacular computer-generated fractal-view that had no equal on planet Earth. He was looking away from Saint X, yet his every movement was being observed by at least three pairs of human eyes.

"Man," Daniele muttered. "This is so cool, Mr. Lane. How do you take his clothes off?"

The idea of seeing the virtual boy undressing himself energized him even more than anything that had happened already. He felt like the rabbit in the battery commercials. Nothing could stop him. His eyes were glued to the monitor as Lane began the difficult task of manipulating keys and mouse to gracefully remove the opaque layers that represented clothes.

"Wow, he's nice," Daniele murmured appreciatively as Lane zoomed in for a closer look at his creation.

Without the clothing layers, the boy-avatar was nothing less than spectacular. Every detail of the underlying form was as perfect as 3-D modeling software and computer hardware allowed. There was no sign of misshapen surfaces, no distorted pixels, every curve properly aligned. Texture mapping, color selection, reflections, tonal modulation, even the highlights in his blond hair, everything was professionally done. It was like looking at a real boy, exposed in his natural state.

Lane nodded. "He's based on a movie star from the 1990s. David Gallagher was his name. You don't hear much about him now. He was doing a soap for a while, and then he got a part on a anti-terrorist series for a few years. I don't know who digitized him, but it must have taken days unless they got their hands on a 3-D scan of his body. Which is very unlikely because there weren't many of those back then."

"He's really beautiful," Daniele said without thinking. "If I didn't know he wasn't real...."

"Me too," Lane agreed. "I think I fell in love with him the first time I saw him," he added, glancing quickly at the real boy beside him and thinking that Daniele Webster was every bit as good-looking as David Gallagher had been when he was a boy. "Other times, I guess I think of him as the son I would have liked to have had."

"Oh man!" The voice from the speaker interrupted them. "I'd heard Tybee was awesome, but Jesus, he's fucking incredible. Sorry."

`Tanks for the compliment,' Lane typed. `Oops. Thanks! You're pretty good yourself.'

"Nothing compared to you. He's gorgeous. He must have taken forever to build. Let me get St. X naked so we can have some fun. Oh man, and he's got a nice big stiffie too. What is it? Five inches? I don't know about you, but I'm ready to cum."

Daniele smirked. "I think he likes Tybee," he said offhandedly.

"He's not the only one," Lane observed. "I think everyone who sees him naked, gets a hard-on."

Daniele blushed again. He could not help but glance down. It wasn't very large, not compared to the other boys who he'd seen in the shower, but now in the position he was in it stuck out far enough that it was noticeable. Lane shifted the view again so they saw the world through Tybee's eyes.

Teasingly, Lane rotated the head so that Tybee was looking down towards his feet. His penis was scaled from one of Lane's favorite pictures. In the original, it was a four-inch ideal, dead straight, enough foreskin that the pronounced bulb on the end was still covered, a taut knot of wrinkles underneath. Daniele stared and gulped again as the penis jerked, flexing as if alive and eager to be touched. He licked his lips and took a quick breath.

"What's wrong?" Lane asked offhandedly.

"It's like looking at myself," Daniele admitted. "Only he's a lot bigger."

Lane laughed. "He's a magician, remember? Wait until you see it at eight or nine inches. He's all dick."

It was Daniele's turn to laugh. "You can even see little hairs on his legs," he observed critically.

The boy-avatar's belly rippled as if there were real muscles underneath. His penis bounced up and down, slapping loudly as Lane manipulated the keyboard for Daniele's amusement.

"Oh man, just look at that hot beautiful boy-cock. You sure are one sexy kid. I could suck that dick forever and not get tired."

Daniele's eyes widened in disbelief. He watched as the man approached Tybee. The man's voice became louder. He was naked, hirsute. From head to toe and from front to back, he covered with thick dark hair that was more appropriate for a gorilla than a man.

"Yuck," Daniele murmured.

"Don't you like furry men?" Lane joked.

"If you have to have it then a little bit is okay, I suppose, but that's gross," Daniele said adamantly, gesturing at the monitor. "There's no way I'd ever want him to touch me."

"Ditto," Lane agreed. "However, I suspect it would be different for boys who are attracted to men. They would probably say that Tybee is gross. Maybe it's a just matter of opinion, but I think young boys are the most beautiful things ever created."

Daniele looked away quickly. His expression was sullen, silently resenting that his feelings were so transparent. It was as if Lane could see right through him.

"You know, when I created him, I tried to include everything that I thought was sexy in a boy." He hesitated to finish the thought. "But now I've seen you, I realize I got it completely wrong. He's beautiful and sexy all right, but he lacks your spirit."

Daniele smiled weakly, unconvinced. By the time his attention returned to the monitor, the man was standing in front of Tybee. Looking through another boy's eyes, he watched the man's huge penis come closer and closer to the boy's much smaller organ. By comparison with the refined technology and artistry that had been used to create the boy-avatar, St. Xavier was the result of ineptness on the part of the creator. Daniele could even make out the polygons that were used to form the man's thick penis since it had a faceted angular appearance.

"I wish we could be inside the man instead," Daniele murmured dreamily, although he knew it was not possible.

Absently, his hand moved to his crotch. He ached there, almost hurting every time he looked at Tybee. The image wasn't real, yet he yearned to touch and to be touched by the smooth-skinned over-sexed boy. It seemed as if all of his dreams could come true with just a single touch. Instead, he had to watch a clumsy hairy man doing the things that he wanted so much to do. He watched as a bulky hairy hand settled over the boy's shoulder and pushed him back into the column. Then, another hand cupped the boy's diminutive genitals and began to fondle him. Lane typed in the appropriate sounds for Tybee and tried to avoid glancing sideways as Daniele began to fondle his own genitals. He was oblivious to everything except what he could see on the monitor.

"Yeah, you like that, don't you Tybee. Yor're some boy, you know that don't you? You want me to suck you? You have a hot little dick that's just begging to be in my mouth."

For a few seconds, Lane wondered if he was making a mistake. The entranced expression on Daniele's face convinced him that he was doing the correct thing. He ignored the risk even though the consequences of being caught `pandering obscenity to a minor' or `conveying sexual fantasies concerning a child' were devastating. It did not matter that no child was hurt, that Daniele wanted to watch. For a pedophile, two such convictions automatically resulted in life imprisonment. He watched as the man knelt and began to lick Tybee's lower abdomen, working his way nearer to the boy-avatar's jutting maleness. It was almost like watching a video except that Lane had complete control over one character.

Daniele's fingers plucked at the increasingly evident bulge that now stuck out between his slender thighs. It seemed that every time he rearranged his clothing, it took longer to do it. That small, very hard part of his body demanded to be touched. Smiling at the thought that persisted in his mind despite his best efforts to do otherwise, Lane leaned back in his seat to watch the scene unfold.

From Daniele's perspective, it was surreal, gazing down a boy's flat abdomen, across skin that was smooth and brown. It was believably real. Too real. It was impossible to watch and remain detached. He licked his lips, breathing deeply. The boy-avatar inhaled as well. Its penis protruded straight out from a glistening wet base, bobbing slightly as if there was a heart beating within its chest. The digital model had peach fuzz on its arms and legs and a scattering even there, but no more than that. There was no pubic hair to get in the way, to impair the perfection of pre-pubescent youth. His pubis was rounded yet still a prominent ridge, a mathematical masterpiece of spline curves. It drew attention to the boy's genitals much as a pedestal drew attention to a sculpture.

The man's lips left wet spots wherever they went, the result of the interactiuon of two computers and the university supercomputer. Lane could feel the tension building in him, in Daniele, even in the man who played St. Xavier. He used keystrokes, pressing letter `E' and holding down the `!' key until the boy-avatar's penis became so hard and swollen that the surface was shiny. The voice through the speakers was filled with lust.

"Wow,...Enough already. Man, much more of this and I'm going to have a stroke. I could get off just by looking at that boy-dick"

Lane chuckled. He glanced at Daniele, still trying to manipulate his penis while keeping it hidden. Sooner or later it had to come out into the open.

"There's no way you're going to be able to hide that from me, Wormster. I think you trust me by now and there's no reason to be ashamed of me seeing what's in your underpants, , so you might as well take it out, Dani," he said quietly, yet very distinctly so that there could be no mistake.

Daniele furrowed his brows and pretended to glare at him. He wanted to be angry but he also wanted relief. He wished his erection would go away, but it wouldn't. not while he was looking at Tybee and what was happening on the monitor. Lane chuckled.

"It's entirely up to you, Bookworm, but getting a hard-on is nothing to be bashful about. Every guy gets erections. I know what I'd do if I was you." He waited for a response. "I've always said that dicks are like dogs. If it's acting up it probably needs to be taken out for some fresh air."

"Ha, ha," Daniele mocked. He wrinkled his nose to show distaste. "You're a pedo! All you want to do is see my thing, Mr. Lane," he fired off thoughtlessly.

It was the standard schoolboy response, practiced among boys until it was automatic. Even a sideways glance in the toilets instantly earned a boy the title of `pedo'. An instant later, Daniele smirked lewdly, if uncharacteristically for him. The game had taken its hold on him. Lane did not respond, he merely continued to look at the boy next to him, wondering what was going through his head and why he had been so stupid as to say what he had just said.

""Okay, I'm sorry,..." Daniele said apologetically. "I mean to say boy-lover. Is that better? Not it changes anything because you're still a pervert, Mr. Lane," he added with a smirk.

"Ah, now that's better. But look who's the pot calling the kettle black. I'm not the one who's playing grab-dick, am I?" Lane laughed. "Maybe you're a boy-lover too?"

"So what if I am."

Daniele tensed. It was too late. They gazed at each other. Again, it was out in the open.

Lane gave him a reassuring smile. It was difficult to admit, even to oneself.

"You know, I was about your age when I realized," he said calmly.

Daniele turned back to the monitor, his face flushed. He watched the man's lips part, his tongue extending as he licked along Tybee's quivering reddened penis. He trembled. It was hard to believe it was happening, that he was watching a man actually lick a boy's penis. But it wasn't actual, it wasn't happening. It was only two people manipulating keyboards and 3-D wands, and powerful computers were doing the rest. It seemed illogical that it would be illegal. It wasn't as if a real boy was involved.

"Hm, that's good," came the guttural voice. "This is the best boy-toy I've ever sucked."

`Watch your teeth', Lane typed.

The man laughed. "Are you jacking off?"

Lane glanced at Daniele who quickly looked away. `Not yet'.

"Damn this is the hottest V-R I've ever done."

"Can I?" Daniele whispered nervously.

Lane winked meaningfully. "It's no secret that's why its there, Dani. So you can make yourself feel good."

"I don't want you to make fun of me,...Promise?...

Lane nodded. Already it was more than he had ever hoped for. Again, he worried if he was going too far. All it would take was for Daniele to say something to someone.... Yet, Daniele would never do that, not accidentally, and never willingly. He averted his eyes, keeping them on the monitor so that the boy would have some privacy. He heard the unmistakable rustle of clothing. It was all he could to resist the impulse to see what Daniele was doing.

`Yeah, suck me,' he typed, then changing the tone to a husky whisper by hitting F-8 followed by 3, added, `I like to be sucked.'

There was nothing in response, but he really did not expect a reaction. It was hard to use the wand and type at the same time with only one hand. Instead, Lane heard a muted sigh from right beside him. It was more than he could stand. Even with peripheral vision, he had to turn his head slightly. Daniele had pushed the front of his sweat pants down far enough to expose his crotch. He was masturbating, although not in the fashion that Lane expected. Daniele used a similar technique to the one that he had used as a child, although he could not remember ever doing it standing up except in the shower. For Daniele, masturbating involved alternating between rubbing his short rigid shaft between two fingers and his thumb and using one finger and his thumb to pinch the tip where it was covered by his foreskin. His hand moved slowly, yet rhythmically, building up the sensations slowly. As curiously exciting as his apparently well-practiced technique was, the fact that Lane was seeing his penis for the first time sent a thrill through him that was as strong as anything he could remember. Not even being with Jeff, having anal sex with a real live boy for the first time in his life, could compare to what he was watching. Then, he realized that he could see the insides of Daniele's slender brown thighs. That he was not wearing underpants was even more arousing.

"I see we're going bare today?" Lane asked quizzically.

It took a few moments for Daniele to realize that Lane was talking about him not wearing anything under his sweat pants. He suddenly stopped doing what he was doing. The man was staring at him, seeing him there, looking at the place where it was supposed to be private. At lot of men had seen him in the shower after swim practice, but he could not remember any man ever looking at his private parts in quite the same way that Mr. Lane was. He did not feel uncomfortable, although his father must have told him a great many times before to be very careful whenever he was naked. There were pedophiles everywhere!

"My Speedo was wet, okay?" he replied curtly.

Lane raised his eyebrows, hoping his perplexed expression conveyed disbelief, if only because it was nice to think that Daniele had come to the store deliberately dressed like that. His desire was ravenous and he feasted his eyes, trying to memorize every detail for later on when he could do for himself what Daniele was now doing. When he had created Tybee, he had tried to embody the boy-avatar with his version of perfection. He had studied a thousand pictures before finally deciding on the shape and size of the boy-parts. The boy-parts were the parts that he was most proud of, yet now, as he gazed at Daniele, those virtual genitals, suddenly seemed less than perfect. Perfection was but a few feet away.

He wondered where he had gotten the idea that thick was better than thin, than a fat wedge was better than a straight tube. Somewhere along the way he had fallen into the common yet mistaken belief that big was always preferable to small. To a discriminating observer, Daniele's genitals were nothing short of exquisite. His penis was small, yet sublime in form. Like Lane's own penis, the boy's penis was perfectly straight. The thin shaft was crowned by a tiny glans that barely distended the covering of skin, yet its helmet-shape was still distinct underneath. Lane had deliberately endowed Tybee with a mushroom headed penis and a thick tapered stalk. When the foreskin was retracted, it made the over-sized glans balloon out even more. And where the boy- avatar was equipped with a large rounded pouch to reflect puberty-swollen testicles that suggested his first ejaculation was imminent, Daniele had a little bump underneath his hose-like penis, the darkened skin so wrinkled that it was difficult to see what was inside.

"You have a very nice body," Lane said in awe.

Daniele gave him an unimpressed look. "Yeah? Except you can hardly see it. He's the one with the nice body."

He nodded at the monitor. There was not a lot to been seen of the boy-avatar's penis since most of it was inside St. Xavier's mouth. It appeared abruptly, and then just as abruptly, disappeared again.

Lane laughed. "Not if he bites."

Daniele giggled. "He would do that. He wouldn't, would he?"

"Hey, sweet thing, you want some anal?" The man's voice was distorted since the wrong keys had been pressed in his agitated state.

Lane grinned. He was no longer worried about Daniele's reaction. He noticed the boy's eyes more than anything. They were wide-open and gazing shamelessly at the monitor, contentedly stroking his penis, keeping it erect while holding himself back from orgasm.

"Well?" he asked meaningfully.

Daniele blushed. "You mean like in the book?" he asked nervously, referring to the chapter on anal intercourse in the `Joy of Gay Sex'.

"Yes."

Daniele nodded very slightly.

`I don't know. It's my first time,' Lane typed. F7, followed by F-3, and `4'. Nervous but excited.

Every man liked to think he was having sex with a virgin. What was it about the loss of innocence that was so arousing? The response was exactly as he had anticipated.

"Really? Man! I can't believe this. You are one hot boy, Tybee. You know what I want to do to your ass, don't you?"

The voice had changed yet again. Not to outright disbelief, but to incredulous excitement. Lane knew exactly how the man was feeling, or pretending to feel. It was impossible to tell fact from fiction on the Internet. He sensed Daniele's excitement too, although he kept his eyes averted. Overpowering excitement. Excitement that defied logic and took away the ability to reason. He felt the same way, before with Jeff, and now, only even more intensely, with Daniele.

`You won't hurt me, will you?' he typed on Daniele's behalf because by that point the boy was incapable to responding.

"Oh wow! What a be-autiful butt. Man oh man! No, of course not. I promise I'll be gentle."

"What's it like?" Daniele asked timidly.

He glanced at Lane, then at the boy on the monitor, then quickly looked away again. Somehow, he wasn't quite sure how it was done, but Lane had made the boy's facial expression change again. Now the rapture that had been there earlier was gone. Instead, his expression was less bold. It had become submissive, demure, and like himself, full of nervous anticipation. It was exhilarating, as if something had been released inside his body that now was out of control.

"It depends on which one you're talking about. The man or the boy?" Lane joked.

"Both, I guess."

Daniele had learned the mechanics from the book, learned what to do, and what not do, but it was not enough to satisfy his constant quest for knowledge. He knew that anal sex was all about giving and receiving pleasure, but that was as far as the book went in describing the sensations. He wanted to know more than what was provided on page 325--the `placement of the head of the penis in the region of the prostate gland can produce very intense sensations'.

"Hm,..." Lane pondered.

He knew what the man would feel because he had felt it for himself. It had only been a few hours, but he would always remember the sublime sensations that came from being inside a young boy's body. Sensations that were simply unbelievable in their intensity, overpowering his sanity as he thrust back and forth inside Jeff's slender body, enclosed by a tube of succulent flesh, gripped by a remarkably strong muscle. The heat, the slipperiness, the incredible pressure, the spasms when the tight sphincter contracted, each breath a frenzied gasp becoming increasingly erratic with every thrust. A few hours that could last a lifetime.

But what was it like for a boy? There was no doubt that Jeff wanted to have sex with men, even if he was not doing it willingly with Lane. Not for the first time, Lane wondered how the boy had been drafted in service. Although the sound had been removed from the video, the fact was that Jeff had begged for it, and even pleaded. Everything he had done conveyed unequivocal signals that he enjoyed it, yet there had always been a question in Lane's mind. Forcing something so large into something so small had to hurt. At times, Jeff had groaned and whimpered, but it was impossible to tell whether it was from pain, or pleasure so great that it bordered on being painful.

As he tried to decide what to say, he watched as the man moved into position. He guided Tybee to lean forward, bracing him against one of the conveniently placed columns. The man stepped up behind him. He was clumsy in his movements, trying to part the boy-avatar's buttocks at the same time as he guided his massive penis forward. It would have been amusing were it not for the fact that he had not answered Daniele's question.

"For the man, it's nice, Dani. Being inside is very nice. It feels,... well it's a bit like holding your penis very tightly in your fist." That did not even begin to explain how it had felt to be inside Jeff's body. "It's very hot," he added.

He glanced at Daniele. He was playing with it, not really masturbating. His fingers seemed to flutter up and down, barely touching the skin.

"Make that very, very hot. So hot that you think your dick's going to melt off," he joked.

Daniele smiled.

"It's tight too, especially at the start. It's gets looser after a while."

"How long does it take?" Daniele asked curiously. The book had mentioned that happening as well--the dilation of the inner sphincter muscle that facilitated anal intercourse. The outer sphincter was never a problem. It opened very easily. All it took was a little rubbing to get it to open up. It was the inner muscle that was hard to get past, but it was supposed to relax once the penis was inside. The possibility that a boy's body did that, that the place he pooped from could also be the source of sexual satisfaction, fascinated him.

Lane shrugged. "A couple of minutes, I guess. Then, when it's loose it gets really slippery."

At the time, he had supposed the increased lubricity came from his pre-seminal fluid leaking out, but there was never that much of it when he masturbated. The inside of Jeff's body seemed to full of slick slime, far more than the amount of lubricant he had used. It had sucked loudly every time his penis pulled back and squelched when he pushed in. It was a sound that was unforgettable. And the feeling too, surging back and forth, drawing the juices out from inside, until it covered his pubis and matted his pubic hair and trickled down between the boy's buttocks. He was glad that Jeff had insisted on putting a towel underneath them.

"Um, okay. How about the boy?" Daniele asked, when Lane seemed reluctant to continue.

Lane shrugged again. "I never did that when I was a boy. I did other things, but not that. From what I've read, it's nice once you get used to it. The first couple of times are supposed to be pretty painful. I imagine it's sore afterwards as well."

Daniele nodded thoughtfully, still watching the monitor intently. The man's penis was beginning to go inside. The voice was making grunting noises so it was realistic, yet it also looked rather funny, he decided. The man's penis was so large that it was obvious there was no way it was going to fit inside Tybee. It was a bit like trying to stick a square peg into a round hole.

"That sort of makes sense," Daniele observed remotely. His hand was moving of its own accord, sliding gently up and down, making full use of the additional skin that was denied to circumcised boys.

"You might even be hurt," Lane cautioned. He pointed at the monitor. "Especially with something that big in your butt."

"I guess. But it feels good eventually, right?" Daniele countered. "Least that's what the book says. It was talking about grown-ups, but it stands the reason it'd be the same for a boy, only I think it would take longer."

Lane nodded. He was no longer surprised by the things that Daniele said. The boy had a remarkable, even uncanny ability, to understand things that should have been beyond his grasp. It was not that he was precocious, because he was not, at least not like a child with worldly experiences beyond his capacity to understand. Daniele was intelligent in a way that only a man like Lane could appreciate.

"Anyway, if you remember, the book talked about the gland that's inside you."

"The prostate? Your mean the gland where semen stuff is made?" Daniele ascertained.

Although he had read about it, and Lane had assured him that he too, would start to produce semen within a few years, the concept of semen was still remote. It was supposed to be white and thick in consistency, which he expected was why other boys sometimes referred to it as `cream'. He doubted whether their claims could be substantiated, although he knew a few boys on the swim team who were old enough. Of course, there were boys in his class who could. It only to stood to reason since most of them were twelve years old and puberty started around that age. The only problem was that he was two years younger and he had nothing in common with them. They ignored him and he ignored them.

Lane smiled, thinking about `semen stuff' and all the fun that Daniele had to look forward to as he grew up and made that wonderful discovery for himself. For a boy, that first emission was a rite of passage, the difference between a man and a boy that was celebrated again and again, whenever the opportunity arose.

"That's where the good feelings come from, at least for the guy in front."

Daniele nodded gravely. The book had said much the same thing. "But like, well what does it feel like? I mean after it stops hurting."

Not for the first time, Lane wondered how much of a burden he was placing on Daniele. Life was difficult enough for a pedophile without the pressures of growing up. The intense desire was something that a person had no control over. Even though the need to love boys was undesirable there was no way to avoid it. Was he adding to Daniele's confusion, the awful frustration that accompanied being a boy-lover? Knowing more did not make the situation any better, or any worse for that matter, he decided.

To answer Daniele's question, he relied as much as on what he had read as what he had observed with Jeff. Jeff, writhing, wailing in shameless ecstasy, thrusting himself back as hard as he could as he begged for more. He could still hear Jeff's frantic voice. He wanted it harder, always faster, and as deep as possible. It was almost frightening as Jeff approached orgasm. There were outward signs of pleasure so great that it was.... He hated to think that it was painful. The last thing he wanted to do was to hurt a boy. But the question had been with him ever since. What was Jeff feeling as he shuddered and gasped and pleaded for Lane not to stop?

"After a while it's like something is going to explode inside you," Lane said despite his limited personal knowledge.

Again, Daniele nodded, this time thoughtfully. Lane hesitated, giving the impression that he was finished. He glanced back at the monitor, feeling vaguely sorry for Tybee who was struggling to accommodate a greatly oversized penis. Despite what he had told `St. Xavier', his Tybee was not a virgin. His friend, Cal Brewster had deflowered the avatar, and there had been others since who were eager to engage in virtual sex with the beautiful virtual boy. Lane smiled. There had even been an ongoing, though surreal romance, between Tybee and Brewster's character, a teenage stud who went by the name of `Twinkie'.

"That's it?" Daniele asked abruptly.

Lane smiled. "In the book, doesn't it talk about using your finger to prepare the muscles?"

"Yeah?" Daniele replied suspiciously.

"Well, maybe you should try that to find out what it feels like. Even if you don't plan on having some guy stick his cock up you, it wouldn't hurt to find out what it's like. If you're worried about it being dirty, do it in the shower, or use something that's about the same size as your finger."

Daniele swallowed. Only the previous night, he had rubbed around his anus with his fingertip. It was not the first time, but it was the first time that he had persisted until it began to feel strange. The foreign sensations were not unpleasant. Indeed, if he used soap, the feelings were far from unpleasant.

"Maybe I will," Daniele replied insipidly.

Lane laughed. "Okay, I get the message... It's none of my business, but that's what I'd do to find out. Look, if you must know I really don't know what it's like for the guy in front."

Daniele avoided the obvious. "Then how do you know what to do with Tybee?"

"Hm, good question," said Lane gratefully. "I think once a boy is used to it, the feelings are so good that it almost drives him insane. So I make Tybee act the same way."

Daniele did not overlook the reference to `boy'. It sent a surge of excitement through him, yet outwardly his expression was reflective.

"That's why Tybee will act wild at the end," Lane explained. "I'll make him shake and cry out. I know a boy can have orgasms from doing it in his butt that are a lot stronger than he gets from masturbating. I think that's why boys still do it despite the initial pain. I think of it sort of as something that is being unleashed inside him, some incredible pressure that has to escape from inside him, and the only way to get it out is to,..."

"Is to what?"

"That's strange."

"What's strange?"

"That," Lane answered, pointing to the monitor.

The man-avatar had ceased moving, his enormous penis no longer inserted but protruding towards Tybee as if it knew where to go but was not at all certain of how to get there. He had not moved for nearly a minute. It was entirely possible that there was a logical explanation such as the man cleaning up his ejaculation, but even then, amid a handful of tissues, it had been Lane's experience that most men continued to communicate.

"Hey man, I got to show you something awesome, man."

The voice was back, now hoarse with excitement. Lane's eyes narrowed. The tone did not suit the words. He resented the appellation, `man'. It was an unwritten rule that communication was always in character, and his character was a twelve-year-old boy, albeit with magical powers.

`Show me what?' Lane typed.

"This video, Man. I made it myself. Just last weekend with my nephew. He's eight, but man, that boy fucks like a teenager. You're giving me such a good time, I just got to share it with you. It's hot! Man oh man is it hot. I fucked the little guy for nearly an hour before I filled his guts with cum. I lost count of how many times he got off. It seemed like it was just only long one cum from the time I started in his ass."

Lane shuddered. He breathed out and then glanced at Daniele. The boy nodded hesitantly. Then, as if some spark was ignited, he smiled and nodded more vigorously. There was no doubt about his eagerness. His hand gripped tighter, tight enough to make his now-exposed glans flare out and take on the color if not the size and shape of a cherry. Sometime in the last few seconds, his breathing had become ragged, and there was a familiar look in his eyes. Daniele had the appearance of someone who had stumbled onto the mother lode of boy-pornography and did not know what to look at first.

"Please,...." Daniele implored.

There were some things that it was better to learn by making mistakes, and caution was one of them, particularly on the Internet. It could be a dangerous place for a man, but for a boy, it was almost always perilous. From Lane's experience, there were but a few people who could be trusted, particularly after the great `pedophile inquisition' of 2003 that was so inappropriately codenamed, `Free Will'. Danger lurked everywhere, not only in the unseemly private chat rooms where men congregated to engage in perverted yet harmless activities, but in the `dot-kid' areas supposedly designated for children. And throughout, law officials trolled with bait that had been specifically designed by psychologists to lure pedophiles into making mistakes.

"Okay," Lane began. "I suppose this is as good a time as any for you to get started, Bookworm."

"Huh?" Daniele's eyes brightened.

His lust was palpable. He started at the monitor overtly, waiting, his heart beginning to pound. Lane appreciated what he was feeling. He had often felt the same way. Dreams could come true.

"You really want to see it, don't you?" he asked, referring to the illicit video.

He was met with an abrupt nod. Daniele had not stopped masturbating. Now he used long slow strokes, pulling the skin down all the way until it formed tiny rippled folds under the bloated glans. There was so much skin that it seemed to get in the way, that was until the boy's fingers edged higher and began to squeeze the reddened tiny tip.

Lane smiled, thinking of himself, the long nights he spent in front of his computer trying to satisfy a need that would never be satisfied with pictures, stories, or virtual reality games. It would be no different for Daniele. He was younger so he had longer to suffer.

"I used to call it `feeding the beast'," Lane mused.

Daniele regarded him silently, showing no indication that he had heard or understood. His hand continued to move, relentlessly extracting pleasure from his penis.

"Daniele, I want you to watch very carefully. I want you to see how dangerous it is for people like us." Lane said as he used the control panel to activate a computer program.

"What's that?"

"It's a program called `Assassin'. A couple of Internet friends helped me to put it together," he explained. "A year or so ago. We had to do something when our friends were being arrested."

"I've played Assassin before," Daniele commented. "It's okay,...."

"This is a different program," Lane said dryly. "It isn't a game, Daniele. Despite what you might think, none of this is a game, at least not like any of the games you've played before. It can be fun, but it's also very risky."

"What does it do?"

"Right now, it's hunting down the man we've been chatting with."

"But you said that's not possible," Daniele interjected. "You said there were a dozen proxy servers and other stuff, so both sides are anonymous."

"That's true, except for Assassin. What it does is convince the Internet routers that it was the last proxy server in the chain and the data it received was incomplete. So it has to re-send the packets."

"Like a byte count?"

"Uh huh. There it goes. The last proxy in the chain is,...."

"Proxy.canweb.net," Daniele read. "And the next one is,...."

Once the program had exposed the last proxy the task became simpler, and much faster. Within seconds a list of servers and their IP addresses had appeared on the screen.

"And the lucky winner is,...." Lane said cynically. "The last step is difficult because the originating computer is reluctant to talk, even to the first proxy in chain. There it goes. We're home."

"Xtc.pdg.gsp.gov.us. Oh shit," Daniele read. His face paled. His hand stopped moving. He glanced at Lane nervously. "Who is it? I mean other than someone in the US government who can't spell `ecstasy'."

Lane deferred with a smile. "You're quick, Dani. Don't worry. They can't see us. `Pdg.gsp'? Hm, I think that's Georgia State Police's Pedophile Detection group. All the state's have them nowadays."

"Shit!"

Lane laughed.

"It isn't funny! They could be,..."

Daniele stopped. His eyes widened as an image appeared on the monitor. A man's thick penis was almost entirely impaled inside a small bottom. From the perfectly formed but shriveled genitals, Daniele realized it was a boy's bottom. The little cheeks were distorted, forced back by the stake that had been forced into him. It was real, insofar as it had been taken with a digital camera. The detail was explicit and very unlike the simulation of human bodies in V-R. Daniele could see where there was some sort of liquid, a yellowish ooze, leaking out from the distended hole. And he could see the glistening flesh leading into hole, the boy's crack split open to reveal the oily smears of lubricant that the book said was necessary for anal penetration.

"Oh God," Daniele whispered in awe. "It's,... it's in,... That's incredible."

"Ah, but it's also funny," Lane said dryly as he instructed the Assassin program to go to the next phase. "Actually, it's very funny. It's time us boy-lovers started to fight back. Pedophiles are supposed to be depraved disgusting people, but they're no better using images like that to catch us."

He stalled for time. `That is some hot stuff', he typed. `I wouldn't mind some of that pretty little boy-butt for myself.'

"Yes, it is, isn't it?" The voice was still excited. "I took that just after I filled him up the second time."

`I don't mind sloppy seconds. Or thirds for that matter. Do you have some face shots?'

"There's no way that can feel nice," Daniele thought aloud. "That would have to hurt something awful?" he added softly.

"Sure I do. How about I send them through the proxy chain and then if you like him, we can direct connect to send the video. It's nearly a gigabyte." The tone had not changed.

`Awesome. I might be interested in a swap meet. I have a 10-y-o who likes to dress up,' Lane typed. That was guaranteed to get attention. Pedophiles were supposedly entranced by preteen transvestites.

Lane stopped typing and nodded in affirmation. "It probably did hurt him at first, Dani, but I bet that by the time this photo was taken his anus had became so loose that it felt nice. It gets like that after a while," he said hopefully.

He was thinking of Jeff, how his sphincter had become slack, so slippery and relaxed that it glided up and down his penis. Suddenly, St. Xavier disappeared from the monitor. It was as if he had never been there.

"What happened to him?" Daniele asked.

"Ah, I guess you might say he was assassinated." Lane shrugged. He smiled vaguely. "I'm afraid it's a very destructive program. About now, he's starting to panic I imagine. His computer is losing functionality and there is no way he can stop it. In fact, he can't even shut it down. After Assassin is finished, all his hard disk will be good for is for scrap."

"That isn't very nice," Daniele grinned, thinking of his own computer and how long it had been since he last backed up his files.

"True, but what he wanted to do to us wasn't very nice either," Lane said. "Not nice at all."

"I get the point," Daniele said obliquely. "You have to be very careful."

"Let's say it pays to be cautious. Where would you like to go to now?" Lane asked. "There's a lot of places in Arcadia that are fun. One of my favorites is The Virgin's Tears. It's a waterfall. It's based on a part of the South Island of New Zealand. It's incredibly beautiful although I don't think most people had any idea that such a place existed until they made the Lord of the Rings movies there a few years back. Anyway, boys go there to skinny dip and have fun. It's a standing rule that grown-up avatars aren't allowed to enter so they watch from the woods. Or we could go to Sir Polymer's. It's a nightclub for boys and their teenage friends. If we're lucky," Lane consulted his watch, "we might even run in Twinkie."

"Twinkie?" Daniele asked.

"Twinkie is Cal's avatar,... You remember Professor Brewster?" Lane explained. "Twinkie is gay-slang for a teenage boy with a lot of cream."

Daniele smirked. "As in cream equals semen?"

"That's the idea. Cal generally hangs out there after his afternoon lecture. He's supposed to do office hours, but if no students make appointments, he's on-line. Tybee and Twinkie have been,... er friends, for a while now."

Daniele shrugged ambivalently. "Um, whatever. It's cool."

"Okay, out with it," Lane demanded. "What's the problem?"

"Huh? Nothing's bugging me." Daniele slowly looked up from the monitor. "Is it difficult to build one?"

"Huh?" Lane replied.

Daniele gestured at the high-resolution flat-panel screen in front of him. For a few seconds Lane thought that the boy was talking about building a monitor.

"Ah,... you mean an avatar?"

Daniele nodded. "Yes. One like yours."

"Um,... I guess it depends on what you want and how much is readily available. If we have to start from scratch, it could take weeks. Now, if I remember correctly, Tybee took about four days from go to whoa, but I found a lot of data on the net because I used David Gallagher as the basis."

"Oh."

"How about we do it like this? We start out by identifying what you want and go from there," Lane suggested. "I know a lot of short-cuts. Maybe we could build your character in a few days if we cut some corners and get lucky."

He found himself wondering what Daniele would say, if only because most people tended to identify characteristics of their personal `ideal' when generating an avatar to represent themselves. For Lane, Tybee had been that ideal, a perfect boy with blond hair and blue eyes and a `body to die for'. He regarded Tybee dispassionately, still bending over, braced against the column where he had been placed earlier. At least, he had created what he had thought to be his ideal boy until Daniele had entered his life. His avatar was not just in the likeness of David Gallagher, but Jeff as well, and the more than thousand boys over the years who he had gazed at with lust-filled eyes and dreamed of taking to his bedroom. He wondered whether he would ever feel the need to look at another boy again now that he was friends with Daniele.

"Um,... yeah, we could do that," Daniele replied hesitantly. "Could it, um,... be a,... um, a boy like you have?"

"Of course."

"Cool."

"You want him to be a changeling like Tybee?" Lane asked.

"Does it have to be?"

"No. It can be whatever you want."

"I want it to be a boy. I want it to look like him. Only,... only I want him to be younger."

Lane almost smiled at that insight into the workings of Daniele's mind. The amusing thing was that in creating Tybee, he had avoided the one quality that defined him as a boy-lover. Tybee should have been younger. He nodded, trying to remain calm.

"How young?"

The boy shrugged nonchalantly, or what he hoped was nonchalantly. He felt a surge of excitement that made his penis begin to harden once again. He swallowed nervously, entering that mindful if fitful state where he had always gone when he had to confront that part of him that had to be hidden from others.

"Tybee's supposed to be twelve," Lane said lightheartedly. "So if that's too old,... would you like your boy to be eleven?" Daniele shrugged slightly. "Ten?" Still, no response, at least not affirming ten as the desirable age. "Nine?" Lane asked hopefully.

Daniele suddenly seemed more interested. He tensed, waiting,

"Eight?"

Daniele nodded abruptly. Then, visibly deep in thought, he absently licked his lips, "It's not too young, is it?" he asked nervously.

"That depends on what you want him to do."

"I want him to be able to do it,... you know,...what Tybee did with that man."

"Hm,..." Lane pretended to ponder the possibility of an eight-year-old boy having anal intercourse with a well-endowed man.

Of course, all things were possible in virtual reality, but the curious thing was that he had often wondered the same thing himself. Was it even physically possible for a young boy to have sex with an adult male? That was why he had selected twelve as Tybee's age, because he believed that it was possible for a boy to engage in anal sex at twelve, because he knew that Jeff had enjoyed it. Jeff had said that he was twelve years old. Perhaps he had lied like he had lied about other things. He might well have been a year younger than he claimed. Not that it mattered any more. He was perfectly happy with Tybee. However, when he fantasized, his fantasies were sometimes of younger boys, sometimes boys who were eight or nine years old.

"I don't see why not," Lane answered with a trembling voice.

"Then he could do stuff?"

"If he really wanted to, I suppose all things are possible. He'd have to be very careful and take it slowly, but I imagine his hole could stretch far enough, unless the man was very large of course."

"So that would mean that he could do it with other boys pretty easily," Daniele thought aloud.

"It would be just like going to the bathroom, except in reverse," Lane joked.

Daniele looked as if he had just been given the keys to the city, except that it was Boytown, USA, and every boy was eight years old.

"Does that happen in Arcadia?" Daniele asked timidly. He hesitated when he became aware of Lane's questioning look. "You know. Boys doing it with other boys? I mean with boys that age,... like eight?"

"Oh, sure. There are a few boys that age who hang out at The Virgin's Tears. I've even had Tybee in a few situations there," Lane replied with fondness.

Daniele smiled shyly. "So if I was a boy-avatar, would Tybee do it with me?"

Lane laughed. "Let's create your avatar and find out. Okay so far we have an eight year old boy. Tell me more about what turns Daniele Webster on?"

Daniele smirked. "The boy I have in mind, well, he's really cute."

Lane chuckled. "Every boy is cute at that age. You have to be more precise. Does he look like you?"

Daniele shook his head. "He's really sexy," he murmured. His fingers casually moved back to his penis, standing straight and stiff, protruding horizontally outward from his lean body.

"So then, he does look like you?" Lane teased. Daniele rolled his eyes. "Is there someone who looks like him?"

"Um, yeah,... Kind of, I guess." Daniele paused. "You know that boy who lives on the schooner in `Adventures in Paradise'?"

Lane nodded. The television series was a remake of an earlier version of James A. Michener's tale that began showing in 1959 and ran through 1962. The script and characters had been modernized to the 21st century, although the locations from Hawaii to New Zealand, and the wooden sailing vessel, the Tiki, were little different to the original. Unlike the original, a young boy had been added to the cast to expand the ratings possibilities. On the new show, the curly- headed free-spirited youngster was as much the star as Gardner McKay had been to the original series. The eight-year-old heart-throb was called Lachlan Troy and was the son of Captain Adam Troy. He was the result of a failed marriage and he was always getting into trouble, although he usually ended up on top by the end of each show.

"The kid with the killer-tan?" Lane laughed. "You think he's sexy?"

"Uh huh." Daniele was bashful when it came to talking about his favorite actor.

"So do I," Lane agreed daringly. "Did you see the episode where he fell off the ship at night?"

Daniele giggled. "And when he managed to climb back on, you could see his thing under his `jamas `cause they were wet and kind of sticking to him."

They both laughed. "Man, I wonder how that got past the censors," Lane commented. "You know, the kid who plays him has a cool website."

"Yeah, I know," Daniele smirked. "That's who I want my boy to be. I want him to look exactly like Jason King. And I'm going to call him Lachlan."

"You have great taste in boys, Bookworm!" Lane agreed. "And he's a good choice too, because it's easy to find data on him. He's very popular with boy-lovers. I can't imagine why, except for that beautiful brown body he has." He smirked at Daniele who blushed slightly. "Actually, I think I've even got a face-scan and some other data for him somewhere on my hard disk."

He did not explain further for the simple reason was that it was embarrassing to admit that he was sexually aroused by a boy who had yet to graduate from the second grade. In fact, he had intended to create another avatar, one that came closer to his innermost fantasies. It was the project that he had been upstairs working on when Daniele first came into the store. Since then, his interest had faded to the point where he had even considered deleting the files. Instead, he had begun to develop data on Daniele Webster, although he had yet to decide what he was going to do with it. The last thing he wanted to do was to violate their friendship.

"Really? That would be so awesome."

Daniele's eyes met his. His eyes were always intense, deep, dark, magnetic. They had the ability to brood, to compel attention, to be alluring, or to sparkle with boundless joy. It depended on his mood at the time. At that moment, they were captivating, and Lane was imprisoned by unrequited desire. He would do whatever Daniele wanted him to do. Hurriedly, he quit the virtual reality environment and started `Human Form', software considered to be the pre-eminent modeling package. He barely avoided automatically opening D-W-1, which represented his ongoing effort to create a virtual `Daniele Webster'. Instead, he changed directories and loaded J-K-3, the most recent files for Jason King, a.k.a. Lachlan Troy, the bronzed boy-god of the South Pacific.

"Wow," Daniele gasped when he saw the image appear in the display window. "He's really cool, Mr. Lane!"

"He would be nice if he was finished, Dani," Lane chuckled.

It seemed strange that Daniele continued to call him Mr. Lane given the closeness of their relationship, yet Daniele seemed reluctant to call him by anything other than his surname.

"Well, he looks great to me."

"There's still a lot of work to do. All I've done so far is to take Jason's face-scan from his website and patch it onto a 3-D body-scan of an eight-year-old boy that I found at New Orleans Children's Hospital."

"But he looks exactly like the boy who plays Lachlan Troy," Daniele said in awe. "Not just his face either. I mean all of him."

"So on a scale of one to ten, where one is butt-ugly and ten is drop-dead gorgeous, how would you rank Master Troy, or should I say Jason King?"

Daniele's answer was instantaneous. "He's a ten."

Lane laughed. "Yes, I guess he is, if you like pretty-faced blond blue-eyed boys."

"He's not beautiful?"

"I didn't say that. I think it depends on what you're looking for."

"I think he's beautiful,... I mean for a boy," Daniele added hastily.

"Yes, he is," Lane agreed. "But there's more to a person than a pretty face."

"He had a nice body."

Lane laughed. "Yes, that too. But I was thinking of something else."

Daniele motioned to the monitor. "I realize what's inside is important too, only I can't see it. That's because I don't know him. Even in real life, he might as well be an avatar."

"That's very true. Of course, there's something to be said for dark-haired, brown eyed boys," Lane said suggestively. "I know one who's a perfect 10. And I know what's inside him as well."

Daniele shrugged impassively. He was certain that Mr. Lane was referring to him. It made him feel self-conscious. How could he possibly be a `10' when Jason king was a `10'? It didn't make any sense when Jason had curly blond hair and Pacific-blue eyes, and a suntan to die for, when Daniele considered himself ugly in comparison.

 

Although the surfaces that formed the model had yet to be textured and rendered, the proportions of the child whose body-scan had formed the basis for the model might have been Jason King's twin. The detail was amazing, yet as Lane zoomed closer, `amazing' barely began to describe the quality. Well over two million individually controlled tiny polygons alone had been used to create the boy-avatar, with a hundred thousand alone used for its belly and groin. The navel was a perfect whorl, sculpting inwards for a full turn until the knot was completed. The penis and scrotum were similarly startling in their accuracy, balanced in scale and curvature to the rest of the body so that the avatar appeared perfect. All that was needed was the mapping of skin texture and the model would be as lifelike as digital technology would allow.

"I haven't finished doing the connections from the surface polygons to the structure and movement routines," Lane explained. "They're flexible in that the dimensions can change independently but they need motivation," he added proudly.

Flexible polygons achieved the reality of virtual reality. It was the difference between an avatar whose body was puppet-like when he moved, and one whose flesh gave the appearance of being alive.

Daniele nodded. "Okay, so he can't move yet. He can sit in the corner and look cute."

Lane laughed. "My, but you're anxious to play with him, aren't you?"

Daniele shrugged with the same feigned nonchalance that Lane had observed whenever he was interested in something but did not want to appear that way. Lane rotated the avatar on the monitor and began the slow process of connecting the polygons. It was not unlike connecting the dots, since some polygons, even at full magnification, were no larger than one or two pixels. He found it difficult to concentrate, not only because Daniele was very close to him, but he was so intensely aroused that his erect penis was throbbing before Lane's eyes.

Of course, it had help from its young master in it effort to maintain the apex of ecstasy. Daniele's masturbatory technique had changed yet again, ever reflecting the creativity that was common to da Vinci-dominant boys. He had inserted his left forefinger into the opening of his foreskin, using his fingernail to stimulate his glans by lightly scratching it. At the same time, he gave the appearance of studying the monitor avidly as Lane proceeded to educate him in the use of `Geppetto'. For a long while he was content to watch, his small rigid penis twitching frequently as the pleasure ebbed and flowed from the tender tip. From Lane's perspective, albeit distracted, it was amusing as the boy struggled to exert control over his desires. Finally, Daniele succumbed.

"Um,... Mr. Lane?" be began cautiously.

"Yes, Bookworm."

"Um,... well,... do you think Lachlan,... I mean Jason,... do you think, um,... he,... um,... Do you think he has a big one?"

Lane managed to avoid laughing. "I really don't know. Why?"

"No reason,...." Daniele fell silent.

"Well, this one came with the data from New Orleans," Lane explained. "It's probably about average size for a boy his age."

He had been connecting polygons at the junction of the avatar's thigh and lower belly so that the image on the monitor was almost entirely of the groin area. Up close, the detail of the model was awe-inspiring, but it was made even more incredible by the use of concave and convex polygons. That alone appeared to quadruple the number of polygons. It was a technique that had not been available when Lane had constructed Tybee.

"Would you rather he wasn't circumcised?" Lane asked with a smirk. "That way his dick would look more like yours?"

Daniele shrugged. "No, I like that it's different. It's cute how the end looks like a little ice-cream cone."

"Well, I think yours is a lot nicer," Lane commented honestly. "I've always preferred the natural look."

"Um,...Would it be hard,... ah,... for you to,... um,.... Could you change it?"

"To put a foreskin on it?"

"No,... I was thinking of something else. Could you like change its size without a lot of work?"

"You want him to have a bigger dick?" Lane teased. "How big a dick do you think he should he have? Of course, it's a little hard to tell when it's limp. Perhaps we'd better give him a hard-on and see how big it gets."

As he spoke, he used the mouse to navigate to the menu sub-panels that activated the avatar's functions. It was intended for demonstration purposes only because in virtual reality it was far too slow to be realistic. He selected the "turn on motion" option.

"This won't be very good because most of the polygons are still inert," he explained. "But I've already done his dick and balls, so you can see what he looks like with an erection," he added jovially.

In motion-mode, it was a relatively simply matter to activate the subroutine for sexual arousal. The half-formed boy-avatar responded as a real boy would respond. Within seconds his penis began to inflate. Polygons stretched and became more convex, expanding to simulate the increase in size that came with erection. It grew noticeably longer and thicker, but it was still not much larger than the size of his middle finger.

"It'll get a tad bigger with penile stimulation," Lane explained. "But this is his basic stiff- dick mode. I think it's a shade under three inches long. So how big would you like it to be? Four inches? Much larger than that and it will look like it belongs on a teenager."

Daniele's eyes were downcast. "Uh,... well I was kind of wondering,... um,... if it could be smaller," he finished in a rush.

"Smaller?"

"Yeah."

Lane gave in and laughed. Suddenly, he regarded Daniele with serious interest. "You're not joking, are you?"

"I really, really like him a lot," Daniele explained, "He's nice, except for that. I don't know why, but,.... well I'd like it to be smaller. Not his balls, they're cool,.... I just want his dick to be smaller."

Lane nodded. `We could shrink it proportionately, I suppose, but it would lose something in the process. If we're going to do it, I think it should be shorter rather than thinner," he said.

Daniele's penis was like that. It was shorter than normal, so that it appeared to be squat. It was a thumb rather than a finger, a fat little boy-sausage that adorned his body in that most important place.

"Do you like boys with small dicks?" Lane asked boldly, but for no other reason than that was also increasingly his preference since he had seen Daniele's naked body.

Daniele reddened. "Yeah, I guess."

"Me too," Lane remarked with a meaningful glance at Daniele's exposed sex organs. "I've always thought that boys should look like boys, not half-grown men." Daniele was all boy, but not an over-endowed boy, a perfect boy. `Then why did I put a five-inch cock on Tybee?' he asked himself.

Daniele smiled at the obvious parallel to his own sex organs, wondering if it was the truth. Everything he had ever heard suggested that bigger was better when it came to penis size.

"Bigger doesn't mean better, despite what most people think." Lane continued quietly, almost as if he had heard what Daniele was thinking. "Or more beautiful for that matter. Actually, the ancient Greeks apparently understood that aesthetic better than we do. I've never seen a statue or vase from that era that shows a boy with a big one. They're always small."

"Except for Priapus or whatever his name is. The guy who was half-man, half-goat. There's a stature of him at the Art Gallery. His thing is huge. It even had warts on it, and the skin on the end was this long," Daniele smirked as he held his thumb and forefinger two inches apart.

Lane smiled. "I think they must have had some way of stretching the foreskin because all of the men had skin over the end too, like boys do."

Lane realized that he was staring at Daniele's penis, enraptured. His foreskin came well past his glans, forming a little wrinkled nozzle. In his view, the boy's genitals were ideally shaped. He would change nothing about them. It was as if the boy's essence had been concentrated there, as if some magical magnificent process of nature had been able to achieve divine perfection. Lane did not believe in God.

"Don't laugh, okay, but I pretend Jason's is small like mine when I dream about him," Daniele divulged hesitantly.

"You fantasize about Jason King?" Lane asked gleefully.

"Yeah," Daniele admitted. He tweaked his penis playfully then took his foreskin between his fingers and thumb, stretching it out so that it was elongated, a thin pencil-like tube of boy- flesh.

"Really?"

"Yes, really," Daniele answered boldly.

"I dare you to tell me about it," Lane taunted.

Daniele blushed a darker shade. "Sometimes, when I'm lying in bed, I pretend I'm on the `Tiki' with him. It's night and we're sharing a bed,... a berth, I guess it's called on a ship."

He breathed out with growing relief. For the first time in his life he was able to talk about his dreams and desires and not be condemned for being different. Mr. Lane smiled back at him, but not with amusement. It was a reassuring, appreciative smile.

"We do stuff," Daniele confided.

"Such as?"

"I kiss my pillow and pretend it's him."

Lane nodded understandingly.

"I have a picture of him that I got from one of my mom's magazines," Daniele added. "It's a photo of him playing on a beach on one of the Fiji Islands. He's so beautiful," he said wistfully. "Sometimes I kiss that too." He looked nervously at Lane, hoping to find acceptance.

"He is beautiful," Lane agreed in wonder. He had gazed into Daniele's soul. It was only a few seconds but it seemed like a lifetime. "Like you," he whispered.

Daniele's eyes flickered momentarily, then darted away to find safety by gazing at the monitor. They were silent as Lane re-entered the model-construction part of the program and began to adjust the data that described the avatar's body. It would have been simple to add a proportioning factor of 80 or 90 percent to the collection of polygons that represented the virtual penis. Instead, like God forming Adam, he reshaped the artificial organ, carefully sculpting the polygons with minute adjustments until the tiny penis resembled Daniele's. It took almost an hour before he was satisfied. By then, Daniele had long since lost interest in playing with his own penis and had allowed it to subside.

"Well, what do you think?" Lane asked proudly.

"It's nice," Daniele giggled. "Do you think it's too small now?"

Lane glanced down, seeing Daniele's shriveled penis. "No, it's perfect for you." He hesitated to say more, but the words came out before he had a chance to reconsider. "It makes him look younger than eight."

Daniele did not respond for a long while, not until after Lane had gone back to connecting the polygons. He had difficulty in formulating the question, yet he desperately needed an answer. It was as if his entire future depended on the answer.

"Mr. Lane?"

"Yes."

"Um,... Mr. Lane,... see there's ah, something,... um,... that I want to know."

"Okay. Fire away."

"It's,... well it's sort of,... you know,... it's about boys."

"Cool. I like questions about boys," Lane laughed.

"Remember when you said that Lachlan could have sex,... even though he's only eight?"

"Yes. But I also said he'd have to be very careful."

"Um,... well how young could he be,... and you know,... still do that?" Daniele paused, swallowing dryly yet feeling great relief that he had finally managed to ask the question that had been on his mind for as long as he could remember. Certainly, it had been there since he had seen Grey's tiny anus and contemplated the possibility of putting something other than his finger inside it.

"Hm, I've never given it a lot of thought..." Lane began as he wondered where Daniele was going to. "Actually, I think there are really two issues involved when a boy has sex."

"Huh?"

"Well, for one thing, there's the question of when a boy becomes interested in doing sexual things. A lot of boys have no interest in sex until they reach puberty. The sex urge is partially driven by hormones," he explained. "But desire is also up here," he added, touching his head. "So a young boy might be inclined to have sex even though he's still years away from starting puberty."

"Like how young?" Daniele blurted out, thinking of Grey and how the little boy had touched him with willing hands. Even though Grey did not get an erection, it was clearly something that the little boy had enjoyed doing. It was a single incident certainly, yet it had taken over his thoughts.

Lane laughed. "Well, you're ten and you're interested, aren't you?"

Daniele barely nodded. "What about younger boys?" he asked, knowing the answer in Grey's case.

"Some of them probably are I expect."

"So how young?" Daniele persisted.

"I don't know. I'm sure there are lots of young boys who are sexually precocious. There are probably quite a few boys who start getting interested in sex when they're eight or so, like Lachlan," Lane added to make Daniele feel comfortable

The only explanation for Daniele's interest that he could come up was that the boy had difficulty accepting that he was attracted to boys who were a year or two younger than he was. The possibility that Daniele's attraction extended to boys even younger than eight years old never occurred to him.

"What if they were like five or six?"

Lane realized that his mouth was gaping open and he made a conscious effort to close it. "Five or six?" he asked awkwardly.

Daniele moved his head slightly. He was visibly embarrassed, readying himself for ridicule. He had often tormented himself with the fear of that shameful secret being found out. For good reason, he had never told anyone about what happened with Grey. It had changed him forever.

"Well, I suppose it's possible for a boy that young to be interested in sex," Lane clarified, hoping that he was mistaken, that he had somehow misheard what Daniele had asked.

Again, Daniele did not show any indication that he had heard, not until a minute had passed and he had become bored with watching Lane connect polygons.

"So like what about the other part?" he asked clumsily. "You said there were two issues."

"So I did. Um,... Well then, there's the question of physical capability. Even if a boy is interested in having sex, there may be a limit on what he can do. Like putting it inside his butt," Lane acknowledged, intuitively realizing that was what Daniele was after.

"I'm not sure I would do that," Daniele thought aloud. He stopped suddenly. "So could he do it or not?"

"What?... Oh, you mean the anal part. Hm,... a boy that young? Five or six? Dani, I don't know. Some of them might be able to,... I'm sure he could with a boy who hadn't reached puberty, but after that, well, it would depend on how large it was I imagine."

He hesitated to say more for the simple reason that the motive for Daniele's curiosity had descended on him like the weight that Atlas had to carry through eternity. The explanation was both disturbing and depressing. Until then, he had thought that like himself, Daniele was attracted to boys who were close to his own age. As far as Lane was concerned, boys were safely at their peak of desirability between the ages of ten and twelve. There were a few younger boys, like Jason King, who possessed that certain something that affected him, but his desire was constrained by the knowledge that they were incapable of reciprocating. He was perturbed by his sudden realization that Daniele desired even younger boys, boys who were in kindergarten or first grade, boys who were barely out of diapers.

"Have you,... er?..." Lane took a deep breath, barely believing what he was about to ask. "Dani, I don't want to pry into something that isn't my business. And I know I shouldn't ask, but, I think I probably need to know for your sake more than mine...."

"So ask," Daniele said abruptly. "I know what you're going to ask anyway."

"Have you? Have you done anything with a boy that young?" Lane realized that he sounded nervous.

Daniele nodded meekly. It was time that he told someone about what had happened with Grey. Lane listened as a friend, without making judgments, although he found it increasingly difficult to remain objective as the story of Daniele's obsession unfolded. It was not that he had engaged in sex play with a younger boy, but the manner in which he spoke that bothered him. Daniele talked without shame or guilt, expressing his emotions, how he had felt inside. It was almost impossible to believe that Daniele was sexually aroused by little boys. However, by the time he finished it was believable, for as he finally opened up that part of him that had always been carefully concealed, there was no room left for doubt in Lane's mind. Daniele Gordon Webster, at just ten years old, was what everyone referred to as a pedophile.