Chapter 2 – The virtual victim

"I think we have him, Timothy," said Ducky with just a hint of pride.

He was looking over McGee's shoulder, watching as the young agent typed the character details into the registration page. Behind them, three piles of paper were strewn across the lab benches, one for each victim.

"He looks perfect," McGee concurred.

"You know," Ducky mused, "Creating the look of a 'typical' victim is considerably easier when you can just combined the faces of the previous victims in a computer program. It's a pity we can't do that on real people."

"The joy of mighty multi-Morph Pro," said Abby.

McGee hit the submit button. "That's it," he said. "We have a calculated median avatar, a Navy user name, and a personal profile that is typical of all three victims. All we have to do now is play. There's only one problem."

"What's that?" asked Abby.

"All the victims had characters that were married and then had affairs."

"That's a problem," Abby agreed. "None of us knows how to get married in real life let alone…" she stopped as Gibbs walked in. "How long do you need to be married for?"

"Longer than that," said Ducky with a nod to Gibbs. "It's fine, Timothy, I'm sure you can find a suitable young lady in this playing field."

"Make it fast," Gibbs suggested. "Get your character to build a boat."

"How's it going, Romeo," asked Abby, hours later.

"Terrible."

"You can't be that bad."

"Well getting women into bed is actually pretty easy, but there is a lot more work involved in getting someone to marry you than just sleeping with them."

"You don't say."

McGee rolled his eyes at her. "You see the problem is that, in order to get married, you have to have both a long playing time AND enough sexual 'experience points'. The better your sexual experience, the better class of wife you can get."

"So otherwise you'd be marrying a skank?"

"Pretty much," McGee agreed. "The last woman I managed to woo into my room I tried to romance by lighting candles around the room."

"Oooh, romantic."

"Not when you accidentally light the flower arrangements and set the place on fire. Whoever's playing that character probably thinks I'm some bizarre pyromaniac."

"Well, I've got some good news for you."

"You found a matchmaker subroutine?"

"Almost."

"Almost?"

"I downloaded a program to do the grunt work."

"Actually, I sort of enjoyed the grunting part."

Abby slapped him playfully on the arm. "Not that: I mean the day to day basics. People developed these little programs so you can go to the bathroom or go shopping and the game keeps on ticking over. It has some standard situations that your character might be required to do like – going to the bathroom and going shopping. It gets your hours up."

"Can it get me married?"

"I haven't found one of those yet but really, you need to put in the hard yards, McGee. This is a big commitment."

McGee groaned and sank to the bench. "I need a break. I've been fornicating all afternoon, my hand is sore."

"That is way too much information, McGross," said Tony as he walked into the lab.

"At least I'm getting paid for it Tony."

"Must make a change from paying for it, McDesperate. Come on, we're going to interview some computer geeks and we need someone to 'speak the geek'."

Abby pushed McGee off the stool. "Oh, oh, my turn."

"Ah Abs, I don't know if that is such a good…"

"Ooh, you get bonus points for fetishes!"

"What? Where? I didn't see that."

Abby narrowed her eyes at him and grasped the mouse possessively. "You had your chance, now let an expert show you how it's done."

"You're an expert in marriage?"

"I'm an expert in … a lot of things."