The tube in which the slumbering serpent stirred was   so much   larger than it sounded on paper.

 Three meters by three meters of rounded glass made for thousands  of liters of advanced suspension fluid. The design of the M.Sim had  required great feats of engineering; not the least of which was the  refinement of various processes needed to make such feats economically  feasible.

   They had withdrawn Violi from her simulation tube earlier that  day, so Phantom was running wild with only “bots'' in the simulation for  her to hunt. Latiff scratched his chin, running fingers through a  short, stubbly beard. The CEO suspended within the fluid was twitching  slightly. Then, a few moments later, she squirmed violently, stretching  her mouth open in a silent hiss and baring her canines as if they were  fangs. Latiff wondered privately how much trouble he’d get into if he  recorded any footage of his nude superior acting like a snake. Probably a  lot.

  He took a seat at the monitoring workstation nearby. Aside from  the soft glow of lights illuminating the tank, the computer and  desk-lamp were the only sources of real light in the dark room. At  first, he’d thought it was an ecologically-minded measure. He soon  realized that Phantom’s decree was mostly for show. The ivory skinned  woman in the tank certainly looked more imposing when lit from below.

From the computer, Latiff sought to sate his curiosity. The  brochure and accompanying nut graph scrolled by as he flicked the mouse  wheel.

THE MANSION

Fata Morgana* brings THE MANSION, the most advanced reality-bending project ever created.

Prisoners can be sustained for the    long-term    in homeostatic captivity. With the help of F-M’s dedicated  reality sculptors, you can create the ideal simulated-space prison for  your encased keepsakes. Other simulations only let you imagine the fun  they’re having.    THE MANSION    lets you observe remotely, and even plunge into the fun.

Reactive suspension gel, composed of non-assembler  nanomachines, allows victims and players alike to feel textures, scents,  sights, and sounds. If your captive is thrashing, you can use  MirageCorp storage solutions to keep them properly secluded while you  drop them in.

Imagine the fun of taunting and teasing your captive, hooking  up their headgear wheeling them to the edge, and kicking them in. Let  the suspension gel do the rest, so you can get to what you do best.

THE MANSION    setup gets its name from the pack-in simulspace. Guests can  come, but they can’t leave. Ominous, dark, and filled with surprises;  spooks and scares and clever little torments that will keep your  captives wobbling but unbroken. Living suits hunt visitors and victims  alike through darkened halls and shadowed paths. Imagine the fun of  plunging into this virtual reality to toy with a favored trophy or  partner. If you want, you can even let them get encased within a beastly  form like a snake or spider and let the hunted become the hunter.

*Fata Morgana imprint is a subsidiary of MirageCorp. Do not reveal this information under penalty of abduction.

Latiff squinted at the various outfits available. Bees, spiders,  wolves, snakes - quite a lot of statues - worms (which felt like a  snake, more or less) and a few more mechanical beasts as well. A cold  hand on his neck made him jump so high he knocked over the chair and  lamp at the same time.

Prathiba covered her mouth to avoid laughing. Latiff panted, pushing up his glasses before smiling at his co-worker.

“My hands were cold,” Prathiba said. “And you run hot.”

Latiff’s breathing returned to normal. “I said it was okay when you did it last time, but I also said to warn me first.”

Prathiba shrugged. Her outfit was quite a bit more elaborate  than Latiff’s casual wear; a black catsuit and white fabric sari. She  was from marketing after all.

“Eh, that would have made it worse. It’s like taking off a  band-aid.” She shoved her hands in her armpits as a substitute and  turned to stare at the tube. “Working on anything important? I hope it  won’t disrupt pushing our update tomorrow.”

Latiff shook his head. “Nah. Nothing interesting.” He’d forgotten why he had sat down in the first place.

“Good,” she said. The demo in the public facility went extremely  well, although the sim was quite a bit more tame. The suspension gel  also spits you out automatically after about two hours. Did I mention  that? It’s not really for a health reason, it’s mostly so you can ask  for another twenty-nine dollars. The higher-ups that tried it   really   liked it, though.  Aria found the ancient Egyptian setup  “interesting, but slightly appropriative, and not nearly tight enough.  She suggested maybe having the evil queen pour resin into the  sarcophagus… but ultimately, the Mansion simulspace is still better.”

The suspension room had three other tanks in it. He wasn’t sure who, but Latiff knew that tomorrow they’d be sticking three new   paying customers   into the Mansion simulation and taking Phantom out. He wasn’t  sure who’d take her place. He idly fantasized it being him… or maybe  Prathiba.

       “And Talyn said the rubber cult was very good. ‘Not as good as the real thing’, though. Whatever that meant.”      Latiff rubbed his temples and looked at his phone. He could have gone home almost an hour ago.      “Let’s discuss it all tomorrow, after we get our new guests into  the Mansion,” he said coyly. “We have one good product. We can worry  about other sims later.”

He shut off the desk lamp and walked towards the door. Prathiba  wished him a curt good-night and stepped into the lab’s hallway towards  the employee exit, already on her phone. Latiff threw on his loud,  crinkly windbreaker and stepped into the cold, envious of Phantom’s warm  enclosure and high-tech ultra-encasement.

===

Before being enclosed in the Mansion, Phantom had outlined the  Open Beta press conference in exquisite detail. Start at 13:09, not  13:00, because people needed time to log on and watch the live-stream.  She had dictated placement for the staff and technicians. Prathiba’s  sari had been chosen by the Analytics department; bright orange with  white trim to match her bindi.

 Latiff had to wear a white lab coat,  because “that’s what a scientist would wear,” however he also was to  wear jeans so as not to appear completely out of touch. The list went on  and on.

With all the lights on and the skylight open, the whole place  looked quite a bit more comfortable and welcoming. That was important if  they were going to give a presentation to the public. The marketing  team had an entirely different brochure, focusing on the fun of the  mansion without a single mention of the “long-term encasement prisoner”  utilities or “forcing the person inside to forget that they’re locked in  a simulation”. Different markets would get different ad reads, of  course.

There were a dozen non-staff visitors. Half of them had various  recording devices, and the other half were rich enough not to need them.  Three more   extremely   eager fans marched out from an adjacent processing room, ready  for their enclosure into a leisurely - if slightly spooky - immersive VR  experience.

“Well, I figure we get you three immersed as soon as we can, right?”

The three volunteers nodded and smiled, unsure if they were  supposed to speak. Prathiba felt a tiny twinge of relief. They were  pliable enough; superfans who had been brought on as reviewers and  influencers. Hopefully they’d be able to provide a lot of positive press  without needing to be pressured. And, if they did require a little  enticing… she licked her lips at the thought.

A series of ladders and racks allowed all three of them to get  disrobed and dropped into the suspension medium, with a bit of a show.  Prathiba made sure to extoll the virtues of MCI’s accessibility options,  with inexpensive ADA-compliant lifts and cranes for those with mobility  impairments. It got a good round of applause as they performed their  final task - getting Phantom out of the tube. The nanite suspension  liquid had been programmed to be murkier during the broadcast, so as to  preserve Phantom’s modesty, as well as those of the eager fans who were  up next. After this, they’d let the influencers   see   what was happening in The Mansion simulspace. They already had the polls ready, with social media integration ready to fire.

A yellow crane gently submerged into the vat, carefully and  gently gripping Phantom’s porcelain body and slowly decanting her from  the tube. Latiff had automated the process days ago. Attempting a “crane  game” while live on air was a recipe for disaster. He hadn’t bothered  to check the code since running a successful test, though. It was a  rookie mistake. If he had, he might have noticed a few extra lines added  here and there.

It picked her up gently, supporting her arms, legs, and head  with heavy cushioned grips. She was finally out of the suspension gel  and regaining consciousness at normal speed. The camera crews zoomed in  on her face, trying their best to crop out her bare breasts for the  broadcast. Phantom’s eyes flickered to cognizance for a moment before  going wide as a gushy wave of the nano-fluid swallowed her up to her  waist and dragged her back down into the vat.

“Whoops!” Prathiba leaned forward, laughing and slapping her  knees. She almost sounded genuine. “Looks like our team made a tiny  mistake. Sorry, sorry, we take responsibility -  I was never very good  at crane games.”

The audience giggled politely. Prathiba Prassad shot a side-eye  glare at Latiff without breaking her smile. He was at the controls, and  began to run a quick manual sequence to take control of the crane and  extricate Phantom properly.

He was staring at the basic UI when the fluid in the vat began  to bubble and churn. It became a witch’s cauldron; the fluid’s color  growing inky and black, spreading from somewhere in its benthic depths  before spreading higher. Phantom disappeared within the tar-like liquid.  The crowd didn’t gasp, but they audibly began to murmur. A few shouted  expletives; one pulled out their phone to start taping the incident.

Prathiba   ran   up the stairs to the edge of the vat, where another technician  had been waiting to pick up Phantom. “She’s fine and healthy, there’s no  doubt about that,” Prathiba said. “We’ve made sure that the occupants  of all of these are 110% safe. But it looks like we’re just having some  technical difficulties disengaging her from The Mansion.”

The crowd’s murmurs turned to gasps, and their eyes widened  dramatically. Prathiba lowered her head and raised her hands in a  gesture of goodwill. “This is why we have testers. I’m just glad that  Phantom volunteered her time inside The Mansion before-”

Prathiba hadn’t heard the stickly muffled yelp or noticed the  long, inky-black tentacle-like appendage behind her writhing around. The  gasps of the crowd weren’t at the color of the fluid, nor were they  surprised by Prathiba’s claims. It was solely due to the gigantic black  ichor taking shape behind her, shooting high into the air, and coiling  tightly around the technician and hauling her into the air. Prassad  turned her head to see just enough.

    The poor technician was kicking and flailing about in midair.  The latex dripping tail simply coiled further around her until she was  practically mummified by it. The technician could only release muffled  screams into the slimy appendage that was firmly coiled around her  mouth.     Prathiba almost stumbled down the stairs - the one part of the setup that   wasn’t   absolutely and completely safe.

Something predatory emerged from the churning black suspension fluid.

   Its ebony latex skin had a scaly, reptilian texture; it was all  sheen and filament, sensory micro-structures linking together to create a  rubbery beast. A wide mouth, angled snout, two decorative nostrils. A  pair of glowing jade eye lenses with slitted pupils through which the  eyes of their CEO could be seen. They had her mischievous malice; they  had her hunger.

The fluid dripped from her scaled form in rivulets,  nano-particles filling the tube as the creature emerged. Latiff looked  up, forgetting the crane but remembering what he’d been thinking of  yesterday. The size of the tank held more than enough nanomachines to  compress and solidify into something extremely physical, hard,  unbreakable, and dangerous. They were designed to simulate sensation  with the application of heat or pressure. Those movements were being  channeled in a highly unorthodox fashion - creating a physical object.

It was a snake, much like Phantom’s suit in the simulation.  Gigantic, with more than enough matter to make it larger than before. It  was more than just a curvy, fetishistic pet-suit. It was an apex  predator; a monstrous boss from a VR game made flesh.

Prathiba got to her feet and rushed down the stairs. She pulled  up her sari and turned to shout at her boss’s boss while making a break  for Latiff and control.

“Miss Phantom! Please remain calm. There seems to be an issue  with the suspension fluid. If you can hear me, please, stay relaxed.  There’s nothing you can do right now, we know you’re not controlling  this - we have it under-”

Latiff interrupted. “She’s the one controlling the suit.”

Prathiba gulped as she now realized that one month submerged in  the simulation and playing the role of a powerful latex serpent had  taken its toll on Phantom’s mental state, and conditioned her to play  that role perfectly. Now she’d awoken in the real world, presented with  an audience of meals she hungrily desired to encase and swallow...

 Prathiba winced as she shoved her way through the visiting  crowd, planting her fists on the workstation desk as Latiff began the  emergency shutdown procedure. It worked for exactly one second before  the nanomachines simply rebooted.

The brief shutdown was enough for the technician above to  wriggle out of Phantom’s limp coils, but the serpent became animate  immediately after. Phantom reared up out of the tube, growing even  larger now. With a squeaky, yet petrifying hiss , her massive, latex  dripping maw unhinged, and the nanite fluid coursed up her suit to form a  gigantic cobra hood that framed her salivating jaws. With her jaws  unhinged so wide, the frightened onlookers could see the outline of  Phantom’s body snugly encased to the roof of the serpent’s maw. A long  ivory tongue of latex extended from her jaws and flicked through the  air. Prathiba and Latiff stared at each other.

The hiss was followed by a massive glob of fluid erupting from deep within her gullet.      It splattered onto Prathiba’s chest, knocking her off her feet  and onto the ground with its immense force. She screamed in surprise  before continuing to yelp at the growing knowledge that thick, highly  advanced nano-rubber was rapidly cocooning her.

Latiff began to usher the panicking guests out of the room  through the exit before closing the doors behind him. “Sorry!” he  shouted. He wasn’t   quite   sure if he was sorry or not. Prathiba didn’t have any say in the matter, though.

    She wrestled against the liquid-like latex as it flowed over her  skin, but every time she managed to stretch it or made a minor tear, it  seemed to almost aggressively snap back into place even tighter than  before. As if its AI were adapting to her every struggle and squirm.

Her body was coated like candy; thin, silken, shining black  rubber that had consumed her MCI-manufactured clothing and cocooned her  from the neck down in a single stretch. Prathiba’s struggles elicited  lovely squeaking sounds as she flexed her arms away from her body, only  to feel the cocoon tighten once more to adapt to her. It cupped her  chest like thick bodypaint, sealed around her toes, and continued up to  the top of her neck. She managed a few perfunctory moans and groans as  the nearby serpent slithered fully out of her tube.

Phantom gave Prathiba a brief glance, flicking her tongue at  her, before turning her attention to the cowering technician who lay a  foot away from the serpent who had also been cocooned in a similar  fashion as Prathiba. The serpent’s cobra hood retracted, no longer  needing to intimidate her prey. Their fates were as tightly sealed as  the cocoons they were sealed helplessly within. She coiled the end of  her tail around the technician’s encased ankles and lifted her high into  the air, until she was in the perfect position to be swallowed.  Phantom’s jaws unhinged once more in preparation, and the technician let  out a shrill scream that Prathiba believed could’ve shattered glass.

The serpent hissed angrily in response to the crude noise, and  as if at her command, the nanites of the technician’s cocoon slithered  from her neck, up her chin and over her mouth, muffling the unpleasant  sound.

     Turning away and flopping onto her chest, Prathiba began  desperately inching and wriggling towards the doors. She could hear the  sickening squeaky and slimy noises accompanied by muffled screams as the  technician was likely swallowed whole in one gulp. Hearing a loud  splash however, caused her to turn around out of curiosity.

Prathiba let out a sharp gasp. Phantom had dipped her snout into  one of the other VR tubes, and promptly withdrew it, dragging out a  nude influencer whose body was tightly mummified in her long forked  tongue.

    The influencer regained consciousness just in time to shout a  series of vulgar expletives before the tongue reeled her into Phantom’s  jaws which snapped shut with a rubber slap. After a deep, gulping sound  that reverberated through the room, Prathiba watched the curvy nude form  of the woman pressed tight against the inner walls of Phantom’s  serpentine body as it descended through her and eventually joined the  others writhing and moaning against Phantom’s rubbery belly.

   As if sensing Prathiba’s stares, the serpent turned its predatory gaze towards her.     Looking down at herself as she blushed, Prathiba could see her  curves and body highlighted by her coating even more so than before, her  nipples having hardened into two obsidian peaks. She was by no means  into vore or anything of that nature. But between the advanced…  practically living skintight membranes that she and the others were  sentiently encased by, and the squeaky rubbery sounds of her cocoon and  the serpent’s form slithering slowly across the floor towards her…  Prathiba could feel herself moistening underneath the inescapable  membrane that had hungrily sheathed her body.

     As Phantom slithered closer, it dawned on her just how gigantic  she was from her worm’s eye view, helplessly trying to inchworm away on  the ground. There was nothing but danger, sexually predatory instincts  and sensual power in its every motion.

    It looked just as it did on the monitors that had displayed the  simulation, and acted the same way, too. Prathiba was promptly grabbed,  coiled, and compressed very very tightly.          Her mind wasn’t entirely overtaken by pleasure, and so she desperately attempted to plead with the beast.     “Miss Phantom, please! I’m begging you to contr-mmmpphhh!!!!!!”

  She didn’t get to finish before the membrane of her cocoon  slithered over her mouth to silence her. From the expression on  Phantom’s eyes behind those reptilian lenses, it was as if she were  angered to have been addressed by her name. Angered that Prathiba was  trying to snap her out of her latex predator fantasy, and refusing to  listen.

     Prathiba mewled into her gag pathetically as the massive latex  jaws unhinged before her. She shut her eyes, and felt the warm embrace  of Phantom’s gooey maw as she realized that she was going to join the  others in latex-encased bliss within the serpent’s latex stomach…