The journey to Delia's home site was via the navigation portal that always discreetly followed Selena around her own site. She had chosen the skin of a blue twentieth century telephone kiosk: one of the more commonly selected choices, although Selena had no idea of its significance. Angela selected a destination address which she carried as a bookmark inscribed on the back of her hand, and when the two of them exited the door of the navigation portal, they were in a world which from the first few glances appeared to be quite appropriate for what they knew of the woman.

Angela spun around, her slender girlish figure twirling almost innocently in the brilliance of the bright sun that shone on the well-tended lawns. "This place is a bit like yours, Selena sweetest!" she exclaimed.

"It's got more of a religious theme, though," remarked Selena, though recognising that there was indeed a similarity in the taste for gardens, trees and lawns. But then garden settings were statistically amongst the most commonly chosen site designs in cyberspace. She'd visited quite a few others like this, but not ones with so much marble statuary of the Blessed Virgin Mary and so empty of anthropomorphic avatars. There were a few frolicking lambs and swooping birds in the landscape. Fluffy clouds drifted overhead. There were fountains and flowerbeds and garden benches and other features. Selena suspected that Delia was probably a keen gardener in real life.

"Ooh! Can you hear that?" laughed Angela wandering over to one of the pious statues of the Virgin Mary. "There's some kind of tune coming from it."

"Oh yes! It's 'Miserere' by Allegri, I think."

"You what? I've never heard of that group before."

Selena didn't elaborate. She guessed that Angela might actually rather despise people with too much culture. "All these statues have tunes coming from them!" she commented, noting silently the Bach cantatas, the vocal works of Pergolesi, Palestrina and Pärt, and other devotional music emanating from the gathered marble figures.

"Nothing decent though. Nothing you could dance to," Angela complained. "Anyhow, I can't see any sign of Delia here. She might be in that little cottage there. What do you think?"

Selena nodded. The cottage was the only building in the landscape. Quite small and compact, with a puff of smoke emerging from the chimney above the thatched roof, and pebbledash around the pretty little windows. However, the cottage was empty when the two women got there. This was odd in a way, because most home sites were populated by the avatars of companions, servants or lovers. Only lambs and garden birds appeared to inhabit Delia's site.

"You'd have thought Delia'd have some angels or the like, wouldn't you?" Angela commented.

"Like cherubim and seraphim!" laughed Selena.

"Yeah! Those too!" Angela agreed. "This is one weird place. And hey! Would you believe it! The bitch has got shrines and altars all over the place. Just like a church or something. And here's a bible. And here's a kind of prayer book. And all those pictures. Rather a lot more Virgin Mary than Jesus Christ. 'Cept for him on the cross there. That's one real wicked image. I got one of my avatars to pose like that for a week. It looked really convincing. Blood and everything!"

Selena was rather less keen than Angela on these more extreme fantasies. "You wouldn't think Delia was the sort to go to lesbian chat rooms, would you?"

"I dunno. Some kind of repressed shit. You know. These nuns must be real weird to begin with. No sex or anything. And wearing those funny black outfits. I bet this Delia's just always wanted to fuck women in real life and just been too scared to do anything till she gets to be anonymous in cyberspace. Anyway, in real life, she's probably an ugly cow. No one, male or female, would probably want to touch her with anything shorter than a barge pole. And she spends all day worshipping the Virgin Mary. Well. It's only natural you'd want a taste of what's on offer."

Selena was sure that Angela was right, but she was uncomfortable talking about the real world. She probably wouldn't like Angela if she ever met her outside cyberspace. Not that it was very likely. It could be she was a mining engineer on the Moon. Or a shop assistant in Wellington. Or a customer services clerk in Denver. But she was sure she wouldn't be the sort to hang about with Chemistry professors.

"At least Delia's got a bed!" she said, jumping onto the huge mattress just by the window and with a view on the garden and a distant orchard. "And a pretty firm one, too!"

"It needs to be fucking firm when you're on it!" laughed Angela, crawling onto the bed: a pale, slender, sinuous figure. "The size of your fucking boobs!" She placed a hand on Selena's shoulder and her other cupped one of Selena's breasts while her lips pursed on Selena's nipple. The sensation rippled through Selena's body, heightened as always by the preset parameters, electrifying her nerves and making her gasp. However, unlike the avatars of her own creation, Angela's avatar had a mind of her own. It was always so much more delicious to have Angela make love to her, rather than an avatar. You never quite knew what she was going to do.

And in this case, Angela was feeling a little brutal. She bit quite hard on Selena's huge nipple, which would nearly have choked a corporeal mouth, while her hand first stroked, then fingered and, so soon, fisted her large welcoming vagina. However, Selena was not a sub by nature, although she quite enjoyed the femme role. She liked to give quite as much as she liked to take. In real life, of course, she mostly just took when her husband ever remembered that a woman had needs too which had to be satisfied. Which wasn't very often. But in cyberspace, as now, Selena reciprocated Angela's passion with as much force as her cyber lover. Her fingers gripped the inside of Angela's smooth vagina, so wet and sticky inside, and already giving off that strange musky perfume that her lover preferred around her groin. Her thumb slid into Angela's anus, which easily opened to take the violation, and was just as slippery and wet as her cunt, with none of that slightly unpleasant smell that Selena associated with her few real-life anal intrusions. She licked Selena's body from her long neck to her smooth vagina travelling over the flat terrain of her chest, the nipples the merest mounds on her childlike body.

All the while, she could feel Angela's tongue, teeth and fingers caress, cajole and worry her own virtual flesh. Tugging and pulling at her huge nipples. Soaking her clitoris in saliva. Probing deep inside her vagina. She knew that Angela had the whole of her fist inside her cunt. This was her friend's favourite activity, and she was glad that her avatar had the ability to take the strain, whilst the sensation of her pleasuring was transmitted risk-free to her corporeal senses. Her vagina was bubbling with liquid passion, which dripped down the inside of her large thighs and eased Angela's digital penetration. She twisted around to face Angela, whose perfect, blemish-free expression beamed at her, lost in the ecstasy of their lovemaking. At that moment, she felt a flush of emotion, almost of love, but she knew better than to express this to Angela. Her virtual lover was not someone who could be described as being at all romantic. In fact, she mostly sneered at any expression of passion that was not for pure physical gratification.

But that didn't prevent her from bursting out in cries of ecstasy that thankfully would not be audible to anyone near her in the real world. But they were certainly loud enough to anyone in the virtual world to hear, and they were mingled with Angela's own rather less full-throated and slightly wheezy cries of passion. And the vocal accompaniment reinforced the passion and pushed the two of them to liquid ecstasy, wet and sticky and urgent, shivering and trembling with the heightened, sharpened sensitivity of their virtual selves, somehow more real than reality itself.

And then Selena became aware that she and Angela were no longer the only ones in Delia's cottage. At first, Selena thought it was one of her avatars. Or even one of Angela's. But as her vision recovered from her passion, and the bits and bytes reorganised themselves with clarity, she could see that it was Delia, standing rather nervously by a leather armchair, her long golden tresses flowing down over her white gown, and a face expressive of so much where in cyberspace a face normally expressed so little.

Angela also became aware of Delia's presence, but she kept a fist inside Selena's vagina, and placed her weight on her elbow, as she turned round to face the mistress of the home site they had entered.

"What are you doing here?" Delia asked, her dialect-free voice expressing all too well as complicated a set of emotions as those on her face.

"What does it look like, Delia?" smiled Angela. "We took advantage of your kind invitation and came to visit your home site."

"And very nice it is too!" agreed Selena, putting a comforting arm around Angela's sharp angular shoulders. "A very pious tribute. I just love the music."

"That's not the point," Delia struggled to say. "It's not that you've visited my site. And, yes, when I gave Angela my address, I was quite happy for her to visit. And you too, Selena. It's what you're doing here. This is my home site. I didn't expect you to desecrate it with your... your... your... "

"'Fucking'?" Angela remarked. "Is that what you're trying to say, Delia? 'Fucking'. Or is it beyond your tight-assed prudishness to use words like that? I've been 'fisting' Delia's 'cunt'. And it's been fucking great! If there's nothing I don't like more, it's fucking. Do you want to join in? Is that what you want to do?"

"Mary Mother of God! What do you think I am? I didn't ask you over here so that you could insult my site. I know it's not very professional. And I'm sure it's not wholly to your taste. But I didn't expect you to come here and behave in such a... such a... disrespectful manner."

"'Disrespectful'? You hear that, Selena?"

"Yes. I heard it."

"If it's so fucking disrespectful two women making love with each other. Enjoying each other's company. Expressing the love they feel for each other." Angela kissed Selena tenderly on her cheek. "If it's such a 'disrespectful' thing, then why do you visit dyke chat rooms? What do you think dykes do when they're not chatting? Praising the lord? Singing hymns? Reading the fucking bible?"

"Really!" exclaimed Delia. "This is too much! I can't allow you to visit my site and behave like this. I'll just have to ask you to leave and I'll revoke your visiting rights. This isn't right. You shouldn't come into my site and talk to me like this and force me to question my values."

"But, Delia," remarked Selena, in a soft reassuring tone, "you surely understand that when you visit a lesbian chat room that you are advertising yourself as sort of being available to other women. That's what they're there for. This may not be what you've consciously asked for, but it must be what you secretly want. After all, why do you visit lesbian chat rooms?"

"Yeah, why?" chipped in Angela. "You some kind of peeking perv, Delia?"

Delia looked a little subdued as she regarded the naked bodies of her two visitors. "I don't know why I have to answer questions like that."

"But you do understand that it's a legitimate view," continued Selena who, despite herself was rather enjoying the discomfort she was inflicting on Delia. Would she have been so bold if she were talking to this nun in the real world? Very unlikely. But here in cyberspace, normal rules of etiquette could be so easily circumvented or ignored. Anonymity was such a wonderful thing. "You could visit plenty of chat rooms. There are very very many that do not concern themselves with lesbians or permit lesbians to meet each other. There are many more where women can meet men and men can meet women... "

Delia made a face: an expression that was curiously almost mirrored by the intensity of its disgust and aversion by that on Angela's face. Not for the first time, Selena felt sure that the Angela in the real world was just as much a lesbian as the Angela in cyberspace. Delia shook her head. "I couldn't go there. Not as a nun. My vows."

"What fucking difference is there in fucking women rather than men?" Angela spat out. "Your vows aren't that fucking gender-specific are they?"

Selena chose to ignore Angela's outburst. "But Delia. That's not the point. There are many chat rooms that have nothing to do with sex." Selena knew this was true. She'd even visited a few. But they weren't as popular as the sex or erotic chat rooms. And, as far as she was concerned, not nearly as much fun. And when she went to a chemistry or pedagogical chat room she had to select an avatar that wasn't as sexually explicit or freakish as the one she normally adopted. That would just be inappropriate. "You could have chosen to visit a religious chat room. Or a musical one. Or one for nuns. But you choose to visit lesbian chat rooms... "

"Yeah," agreed Angela. "Not just 'Women Who Love Women'. I've heard about the other ones."

"The other ones?" gasped Delia, with an expression akin to fright.

"Yeah, the others. You know the ones I mean."

"Honestly, I've only been to that one and 'Sapphic Literature' and... "

"And 'Radclyffe Hall' and 'Femme Fête' and God Knows what else! You can't shit us, Delia. You're a fucking whore for chat rooms!"

At this, Delia suddenly burst into tears. She leaned back against the armchair, supporting her weight by the length of her arm, while her face fractured into a look of total misery. This sight fascinated Selena. She'd never seen an avatar cry before. Well, not one that was guided by Real rather than Artificial Intelligence. When Angela's latex-dressed avatars burst into tears, Selena couldn't really feel sorry for them. They only existed for Angela's pleasure. And if suffering was part of her pleasure, then so be it. But here was Delia, crying and weeping in cyberspace.

Selena stood up and strode over to Delia. She put her arm around Delia's shoulder and let her tears drip onto her still hot and sweaty flesh. A lachrymal trickle made its way down her chest and flowed over the massively contorted contours of her bosom. It felt warm and strangely pleasant. But Selena wasn't just comforting Delia for the benefit of feeling the trickle of her tears on her flesh. She was also genuinely anxious to console her.

"Lay off, Angela!" Selena admonished her cyber lover. "You can see that Delia's upset."

Delia sobbed. "I guess you're right. I have been to other lesbian chat rooms. And I've watched the films. And watched other women. But honestly, I just haven't... I thought, it's one thing to watch and another thing to... "

"Don't worry, Delia," said Selena softly. "We've all had to start somewhere. It wasn't easy for me to begin with, you know." She looked at Angela whom she could see was about to contradict her, but she frowned at her to indicate that she should be silent. "But after a while, the watching isn't enough. Nor is the flirting. Then it's time to follow your feelings. And as you know, in cyberspace nobody can hear you scream in pleasure. It's all totally free of consequence. And therefore it's free of guilt."

"More's the pity!" Angela mumbled.

Delia put her head on Selena's shoulder. Clearly she was enjoying the heightened feelings that were available in the virtual world. Just as Selena could feel the enhanced warmth and passion of Delia's firm soft body rather better than had they met in reality. Who was to know what the real Delia was like? Nuns weren't necessarily pretty, but her avatar certainly was. And she was pleased to see Delia's resistance dissolve so very quickly as she slowly undressed the woman under Angela's prurient gaze. She watched her friend finger herself, her crotch already dripping with the juice of her earlier passion, while she let the gown fall off Delia's body to drop gently onto the thick rug. Delia was wearing no underwear, but in cyberspace this was the sort of detail that often didn't occur to people when they were designing their avatars. Especially when they weren't expecting to take their clothes off very often. But Selena wasn't convinced that in Delia's case this was simply to do with forgetfulness as Delia had taken some care in other aspects of her body design. No exaggerated contours like Selena's own, but rather the soft delicate lines of a Victorian nude. She had clearly enjoyed some pleasure in planning her body design. But just as clearly had no further agenda to pursue in taking the design to the extremes that Angela and Selena had with their bodies.

Selena pressed her lips on Delia's lips, which opened quite unresistingly but nervously, uncertain as to how wide she should open her jaws, while Selena's tongue gained access and slid across the perfect white ivories of her virtual teeth. Selena was almost disappointed to discover that Delia's body had the default smells and tastes of avatar design: very much like the real thing but heightened ever so slightly and also a little too pure. Not like Angela and Selena, who'd manipulated so many of their tastes and smells to fit the fantasies and desires they wanted to project. But Delia was quite innocent of the further refinements available to her.

Delia responded by running her hands down Selena's voluptuous frame, both wanting to, and frightened to, investigate Selena's crotch; but happy to explore Selena's nipples and breasts. Selena was delighted that Delia had so quickly cracked, but then it had almost certainly been something like this she'd been hoping for when she'd granted Angela permission to enter her site. And it was Angela now, seeing that all was going well, who appeared behind Delia and began licking her neck and shoulders with that oh! so flexible tongue of hers. Delia gasped with delight. And it was with even more delight she let the two friends guide her back onto her own bed, so firm and comfortable and large, and lay beside her, busy keeping her senses clouded with kisses, cuddles and caresses.

And it was Angela who first breached the crotch. Delia had already been emboldened by the two women's directions to run the palm of her hand over their crotches, so smooth and hot, and even tweaked the clitoris, with a sense of wonder and nervousness, while guided by Selena's own hand. Selena loved the feel of fingers on her clitoris, and Delia's were deliciously long and slender. If only her husband had ever shown as much attention to her real clitoris as her cyber lovers did to her virtual one. But Delia was clearly somewhat alarmed by the reciprocation, as Angela's tongue and fingers explored the contours and shape of Delia's own bare crotch. Selena wondered whether Delia had left her crotch bare because it was the default for the Victorian nude model that she had adopted. Or whether, like Angela and herself, she rather liked the sensitivity of a perfectly hairless vagina. Either way, her initial response to Angela's attentions was to sit up straight and pull herself away from Angela's grasp.

"This isn't right. This is a step too far. This is not only contravening my vows, but is also contravening the natural law of relations. Can the Lord God forgive me?"

Selena was startled by Delia's sudden change. She was also worried that Delia might suddenly choose to disconnect from cyberspace and at the same time throw Angela and her out of her site. This could be very disconcerting. She had several times been dumped in this very abrupt way, suddenly dropping into her default home site with none of the comforting intermediaries as a telephone kiosk portal. This was one of the hazards of cyber-seduction. If the other person changed her mind, it was much easier to disengage than in the real world. It took some skill to prevent this happening.

However, Angela had just that skill. Whatever she thought of Delia, she would be damned if she wasn't going to get what she thought were her just deserts after all the energy she'd put in to this endeavour.

"You have a very beautiful clitoris, you know," Angela said kindly, turning her face towards Delia, smiling in such a sweet angelic way that no one would ever suspect the way she maltreated her avatars. "My desire for you just got to be too much. I should have asked first. In my selfishness I was thinking only of my desire and not yours. Have I your permission to at least touch your clitoris?"

Delia relented, as Angela knew she would. "Just touch it. Nothing else. And then I really must be going. It must surely be time for matins."

'Matins'? Selena wondered in which time zone the real Delia must be. She watched as Angela returned to her duties. Her tongue lashed and inveigled itself on Delia's labia and clitoris. And soon Selena's lips and tongue were there too. And soon their fingers were in. And pushing. And stroking. And scratching. And all the while, as more and more barriers were broken, Selena wondered whether Delia would realise how far she was being taken. But clearly passion was getting a hold of her. She was slippery and sweaty and sticky, as the two lovers probed and insinuated and lubricated and incited her.

And not just in the bed. As the passion took hold, they moved about the room. They made love on the rug. On the sofa. In the bathroom. In the kitchen. Under a portrait of the Virgin Mary who looked down on the three lovers with her quiet gaze of spiritual peace. Angela studied the picture, while Delia licked the smoothness of her chest and Selena's fist pushed deeper into her anus.

"That Mary bitch set a piss poor example didn't she?"

Delia paused in her licking, while Selena's other hand pinched the labial folds of her crotch. "What do you mean? About the Blessed Virgin?"

Angela looked at Delia pityingly. She was about to pursue her argument further, as she'd often done when she had argued with Selena about anything which in any way differed from her view of the world, but Selena could see that this wouldn't be a very good time to push the issue further. Selena still wasn't done. And in any case, she wanted to see whether she'd be able to persuade Delia to open her arse as wide as she had already done her vagina.

"The Blessed Virgin Mary gives help and succour to those who need it," Selena argued. "Just as you do, Angela, in your own very different way."

Angela nodded. This was the sort of answer she liked. "Yeah," she said to Selena, kissing her affectionately on her cheek. "I guess in this world we're like Gods, aren't we? We can do what we like. And we can enjoy ourselves however we choose."

And just like Gods, Selena thought to herself, as she put her lips on one of Delia's pale pink nipples, we have responsibilities and duties to our creations and the others who inhabit this world. She glanced at Angela with a slight frown. Virtual space might be empowering, but it still doesn't absolve us of our moral and ethical liability.