I'm standing in a dingy apartment that has the same layout as the house I grew up in. The first floor had a narrow kitchen that exited on to a living room.  This apartment belongs to a Chinese man, and he's showing me his operation. I politely walk alongside him as he explains all the broadcast and routing gear stacked against the far wall.

The man runs a high-tech brothel. His second in command - a guy who looks like John Leguizamo - shows me the rest of the operation as the Chinese guy leaves to attend to something. The sky outside is the color of grey static, and a constant high-pitched ringing noise pervades the room.

The 'lieutenant' pours me a drink, and tells me to make myself at home. I sit down on a sofa, watching a live feed of random interfaces - mostly Asian women having sex with guys through some kind of body mapping tele-presence. The guy sits on the arm of the sofa, and leans toward me. 'You wanna try?' I feel really uncomfortable, but also intrigued. It's virtual reality after all, and lacking any memory of where I came from, or where I was going - it seemed like a good idea.

I connect up, and experience a welcome/warmup that transitions into something more elaborate. The high-pitched ringing is getting louder, drowning out all other sounds - I yank the VR helmet and electrodes off my head, interrupting the broadcast.  Leguizamo-guy spits out his drink, and shouts 'Oh, shit, that's not good.', looking at one of the monitors. Since I was connected directly into the core system, my disconnect caused a hiccup in the VR data was handled - and displayed.
 
The telepresence feed streams from somewhere in Asia, with an actual woman starting the process. However, once the sequence is initiated -- the avatar/appearance remains the same, but the person controlling the motions shunts to Russia, where a man takes over.

I realize then how the Chinese guy makes his money, and why there's no much routing hardware in this place. By paying a smaller number of women, and passing off the control to lower paid men in Russia, my host made his money.

I just glance at the screens, and back to Leguizamo-guy, looking for an explanation. He shrugs, and says ' Hey, it's all virtual, right?', downs his drink and leaves the room. One of the Chinese man's  daughters enters the room to bring me some tea, then goes to work fixing the hardware malfunction I caused. I just sit there, listening to the high-pitched ringing noise as my tea goes cold.