by Pat Cadigan
A damned good life, good enough to fool a mind-player, good enough to fool me—both of me, the way I’d been then and the way I was now. Most people thought artificial reality was just one of those fantastic environments manufactured by companies like Realityville and Mindscape, or some entertainment feature reformatted for the wannabee parlors. Sometimes it was, but sometimes, it was your life. My life—
Well, it hadn’t all been artificial. The life the cop had given me had been similar to hers in many ways; that was a little comforting, knowing that a lot of the memories I had weren’t completely false. I was what she would have been if she hadn’t chosen the Brain Police instead of the theatre. All I’d been doing was rearranging things to make them the way they should have been in the first place. The future was set long before I came into existence, it was only my past that changed.
I’d have my memory wiped and hope that I wouldn’t befool enough to want it back again.
I’m not the only fool to have remembered. She should have done what she said she was going to do, dump the memory of ever having been Brain Police. There wasn’t time, though, was there. What’s that old saying? Art is long but life is short. And memory is
my past that changed.
I don’t have time to even wonder who she is, this woman I’m standing at the edge of the cliff with, standing in the spot where the cop was before I threw her over. The grass around my feet is deep, luxurious, better than stuff you can get in lawn stores for your chip-sized terrace in the uptown high-rise.
Abruptly, I’m standing in the open window of a sky-island casino where, miles up, there is no wind at all and an old guy has decided to fly away himself rather than wait for progeria to eat him alive.
Yah, this is my memory, this is my turf we’re on now and I can tell the way she’s looking around that she’s lost. She tries to brazen it out, though, by going right to the roulette wheel. But I’ve got a little surprise for her there. This time, I’m not taking any chances—every number on it is double-zero. House number, everybody loses, everybody has already lost, and that includes her.
We outnumbered her this time. She knew how to play chicken on the edge of a cliff well enough, but the sky-island was something else. No matter what direction she moved in, it took her closer to the window; my doing. I
might have made a good Escort, too, or maybe that was just leak-through from Marceline. This wasn’t the life I’d have chosen, but the cop didn’t have a whole lot of options. It was Marceline or nothing at all.
How good an actor are you?
Well, I was a lot better when I knew what play I was in. And maybe improv wasn’t my strong suit, but I still knew how to pick up a cue and run with it—
Run at her—
My momentum was enough to carry us both right to the windowsill. I closed my eyes so I wouldn’t have to see her fall.
When I opened them again, we were teetering on the edge of the cliff.
You never lose your will to live or your fear of death. Wasn’t anyone listening to me? Did she think it was going to be that easy, just knock her out of the sky, surprise good’ bye? Pm the Escort here, I know better, even if I don’t know how to kill somebody who wasn’t planning to die. What does that make me now, a Bouncer instead of an Escort?
And like that, here we are in Davy Jones’ Locker.
I can sense her, but I can’t see her, the cop who grabbed the lifeline into me. I can sense the others, too, but can’t see them. But the place is full, holo fish and party fish, submarine noises, even a silly old oyster bed hatching pearls at the rate of one a minute per crusted shell. Yah, I was here, and now Pm back.
And I’m getting a rise, because this isn’t my memory of it. Oh, yah; this is a good one, like slipping on a soft, sweet glove that goes on and on and on until it covers me over altogether.
Now it’s really like being underwater; I’m weightless, true state of grace. Things get hazy right along with me and for a while, all I do is drift around as if there really were a current to flow with.
It wasn’t my memory, either; not quite. The Escort came up out of the back room that night a remnant of Marva’s imprint clinging to her—not me, Marva, but the new, improved Marva, the one who wanted to dump the cop so she could go on being Famous. Or maybe it had been clinging to me; personalities didn’t always split off nice and clean, there was bound to be a little of her in me and a little of me in her.
Em-Cate and Twill were right where I’d found them that night, animated doll images; I turned to see their reflections in the mirror and something blocked me.
Not yet.
It was like a window opening and then closing again quickly, a flash of the cop’s presence, gone before it could register. I let myself move away from the mirror, over to where I had met Sovay.
You want to check the line?
Not this time; I knew. A school of holo fish swam into me and took me with them. We made a complete circuit of Davy Jones’ before I broke away and sailed downward, toward a familiar face.
Hell of a thing to find coming after your bait …
I’m on the other side of that fine rise now, coming down easy and good, land on my feet with that life-is-good feeling, walk away from it all the better for having had the experience. There’s not much you can say that about these days.
But this is a hell of a thing to find coming after your bait. But I remember—I remember, and it’s not so bad that I remember it, her face on a glowing yellow holo fish. A fish with a human face and the water’s over my head; yah, it’s a karma-gram if ever there was one. But is it my karma-gram?
Now, there’s a lousy habit—wanting someone else’s habit … beg for the short end, why don’t you. But isn’t that what taking someone else’s memory is?
Something tells me not to worry about it, I didn’t ask to be this way. If I feel the need to be forgiven for something, it’s a done deal (myself, I think guilt’s a lousier habit than anything). And the fish is still waiting to swim through my head.
I want to dodge it just like I did when it really happened, but I can’t. It’s like my head’s clamped in an invisible vise and I have to—
—let her in.
Now I knew what the split-screen vision effect was, back at Bateau’s. She was there, trying to talk to Bateau. It’s more pronounced this time but not as awkward or uncomfortable. Maybe because we both know what it is. I can feel her presence and mine slipping around each other like two grades of oil that don’t mix; won’t mix.
She’s a rough blend, like a blanket sewed together out of scraps. All those lives lived vicariously, I’m surprised she’s hung on to so much of herself, that she didn’t just … dissolve, lose herself in a kaleidoscope-a-rama of other people’s lives.
But I guess she can’t. Instead, she just gets drunk on them. Nostalgia bender; somebody else’s nostalgia, her bender. Then the tide goes out and it’s just her again, stranded on the ragged edge.
That’s what this is all about … getting drunk?
* * *
She ain’t old enough to have much in the way of memory, and what she’s got is pretty damned spotty. Her twin sister didn’t leave her much when she split off and ran away to join the circus. What’s there is what I already know, more or less; no rise. I don’t even know if there’s going to be a rise in any of this, and that’s pretty goddam strange, because I’m only in it for the rise. Any of it, what’ ever it may turn out to be: if there’s a rise to be had, I’m interested, I’m there.
Because what else is there, anyway? What else has anybody got that’s just as good, that means anything? I’m just running loose here, what’s the world to me, or me to the world?
I’m scared because I can’t answer that question and until I can, we can’t stand together on this cliff against her.
And all she is, is another aspect of me—or I’m another aspect of her. If I understand things right, she was actually here first, and I came later, as the person some Brain cop couldn’t help wanting to b
e. But migod, it doesn’t feel that way to me. I feel true. The Escort remembers me; the cop remembers me, and she remembers me, so I must be true.
Sovay remembers me … and I remember him …
And now I remember him, too—nice rise with a nice rush on it. Not my memory, but Marva’s, the Marva Sovay wanted when they hooked in together mind-to-mind, the one he was hoping would be there for him. The Marva who wanted to stay at Sir Larry’s with him instead of running off to get Famous. And the cop couldn’t do a thing about that, because somebody else’s wants are somebody else’s.
And that’s all I ever wanted: somebody else’s. That’s right, I can look at that face on now. It never had to be a memory, memory was just always the most convenient package for it. I don’t even know what “it” is, exactly, just that if it belonged to somebody else, I wanted it. New start, second chance, and if the second went flat, a third, a fourth, and onward. Two mirrors, infinity of reflections; no waiting. I can go on forever.
The first time we went over this cliff, the cop saved us. This time—am I supposed to do it this time? Migod … I can’t. I need the mirror, there’ll be some other character in it better at this than I am.
You want to check the line?
Sovay. Migod, yes, I want to check the line.
It’s a dirty trick, but that’s how it happens sometimes. Sovay is the one thing they all agree on, and if one of them checks the line, they all will. They just won’t know that I’ve changed the line to read, Good-bye. (Exit.)
Curtain.
Exit now?
If that’s the line, then that’s the line. How good an actor am I? Good enough to play both parts. That’s the Method. I know her; I can be her.
And I’m still her when she goes over the cliff.
Uh-oh …
This isn’t supposed to be here. Or, there is supposed to be something here. Or I’m supposed to be—
Damn. I can’t remember how it’s supposed to look to me. This is somebody else’s, but the rise is over. Time to fall.
* * *
It was always disconcerting to come to sitting up. Then he slapped my face again, whoever he was.
“Come on, come on,” he growled, and pulled me off the bed onto my feet. “If you’re still here when he comes back, he’ll eat your brains with a spoon.”
He shoved me across the room to the open door. My eyes felt as loose as a couple of marbles. I caught myself on the jamb and tried not to pass out again.
“Hurry, goddammit—”
I’d have my memory wiped and hope I wasn’t fool enough to want it back again.
Who said that?
“You did. It’s the first smart thing I’ve heard you say since—” Anwar shook his head. “Since ever.”
No, that hadn’t been me. But if I could just sit and think long enough, it would come to me. Someone I knew, or had known once. It was important for me to remember.
You Must Remember This.
I blinked.
The déjà vu was like a physical blow. Empty waiting room, guy behind a desk—
I seemed to be struggling to get out all of a sudden without knowing why, Some old reflex, perhaps.
“Just for now,” he was saying, talking fast under his breath. “Just for now, just for now, I’ll find you again when it blows over but for now, good-bye and good luck and forget all about it, I’ll remember for both of us when the time comes—”
I was thinking what a fool he’d have been to do something like that. Forgive and forget and let it rest, that was the smart thing. Even smarter was to forget first and then there’d be nothing to forgive … now, who was it who told me that?
The IV cuff on my arm beeped empty, waking me from a confused and incoherent dream set in what might have been a multifaith church or a Far Eastern bazaar, in which some skinny woman had been arguing with another Brain Police officer as to who I was. The other officer, whom I couldn’t identify at all, kept insisting I was now somebody else. The skinny woman seemed to be arguing that due to widespread bodyplay, almost no one had any original tissue anymore so the biological didn’t count, but it was hard to tell since she was always talking with her mouth full and never seemed to swallow anything. At some point, a philosopher came in to settle the matter; he suggested that I be cut into two sections, one to be given to the Brain Police and the other to be thrown off a cliff.
Actually, I wasn’t completely sure it was me they were talking about, since I was just having the dream without being in it. Then the cuff had beeped and woke me up, and I knew it was just part of my reality-affixing hangover. The dreams you get after a major Overhaul are nowhere near as vivid or interesting as coma dreams.
I took the cuff off and set it on the nightstand beside the bed.
“You really don’t like food, do you?”
Skehan was standing at the foot of the bed, transferring some data from the monitoring system to his data-caddy. He looked like an albino Jesus. I knew I’d seen him before, but I couldn’t remember anything about it. There were lots of things I couldn’t remember.
“I like food just fine. Eating is another matter.”
Skehan made a sympathetic noise. “A desperation measure, but it worked. Salazar was the one person we were absolutely sure you’d recognize. You’d been out of touch three weeks, which corresponds to the time your Marva persona sold out to Some Very Nice People and jiggered you into a state of permanent suppression.”
Salazar; there was a hole in my memory exactly her size and shape, and I simply could not keep her from falling through it. When I did remember her, it was as something unfortunate that had happened to the Escort, not to me, but I didn’t tell Skehan that. He’d probably want to put me under again to have a look at it and I didn’t feel like going under anymore. It wasn’t going to make the reality affixing settle any more quickly.
“So,” Skehan said, disconnecting his caddy from the monitor and pulling over a chair for himself, “any questions today?”
“That all depends,” I said. “What did I ask yesterday, and are the answers any different?”
He consulted the caddy’s minuscule screen. “The usual: what happened to the Escort and Anwar and Bateau, did we make any important arrests as a result of your undercover work, and when can you get out of here.”
I nodded. Nothing provocative like Whose body am I wearing? or Who do you think I am?
“Well, here’s one you didn’t mention,” I said. “Why don’t I remember one day to another?”
A smile on an albino Jesus is a striking expression. “With your kind of trauma, continuity is the last thing to return.”
“But it does return?”
“More often than not.” He watched my face. “Make that, almost always. Better yet, it fails to return in such a small number of cases that we don’t really consider that a possibility. We conquered Korsakoff’s a long, long time ago. The only people who have it now are those who choose to have it.”
That gave me pause. I didn’t think that was a particularly desirable condition, but I could understand how someone might.
“All right,” I said. “I’ll trust you on that one. What about the rest? Until my continuity comes back.”
Skehan’s ruby eyes narrowed slightly. “We never managed to put together enough evidence for a case against Some Very Nice People for counterfeiting or bootlegging personas. And the business no longer exists. If you found anything while you were in deep undercover, it was lost when the Escort tried to kill you. We did get Bateau for that, and some of the people in his operation. All the Escorts had logged perfectly legal activity so we couldn’t touch them. Your Escort—Marceline no-last-name—is classified as missing.”
Missing. I ran my hands over my face and then examined them, finger by finger. “I take it the physical alteration occurred while I was under?”
He hesitated for a moment. “Restoration. It was restoration work. And of course, we had it taken care of right away. The physical stuffs always so easy.”
“Unless there’s been a purge I haven’t heard about, I imagine the original template is still in Wardrobe,” Skehan said, speaking slowly and carefully. “If you mean your imprint, that’s been wiped. Trauma will do that, you know.”
“You’re going to try to tell me you restored my original appearance to this body and you can’t find a trace of the Escort?” I laughed again. “You can put that story out as the official version if you want but I was there.”
Skehan scratched the corner of his eye, smiling at me professionally. “We don’t know where or when you had the bodyplay done. It was quality work, but anyone with a decent set of tools and enough tissue can turn out a job that would fool your own mother.”
I leaned forward. “The body had been altered?”
“Your body had been altered, yes.” The emphasis on your was just slightly more than subtle. “No original tissue at all, but that’s true for anyone who’s ever been in deep undercover. And what else would explain the change in your appearance? You just went and had your undercover wardrobe changed. The memory of that particular event happens to be among the permanently lost.” He did something to the caddy and watched the screen for a moment. “Permanently lost, yes. But if it ever does miraculously resurface, you will notify your supervisor, of course?”
“Come on,” I said, “isn’t there an unclaimed Jane Doe in the morgue who bears a rather striking resemblance to an actress named Marva?”
“There are quite a few Jane Does in the morgue. Or there were. But you’ve been here for two weeks. Anyone brought in during that time has long since been processed, tissues broken down—” He shrugged. “Anyone who went unclaimed, that is. I really wouldn’t know. The morgue isn’t my bailiwick.”