The Book of Koli

by M. R. Carey

  I set my back against one of the corner posts, and stretched my legs out in front of me. I looked at my arm where it was hurting and seen that I had been bleeding there. The cutter beam had not gone all the way into me, but the edge of it had shaved me close and took the topmost layer of skin in its passing. It was not so much of a wound though, and most likely would heal up by itself. I was lucky beyond anything to scape so lightly.

  I took the DreamSleeve in my two hands and kissed it.

  “Yeah,” Monono said. “Missed you too. No tongues though, Koli-bou. You’ll void your warranty.”

  I think it was a joke she made, but I didn’t understand it and I couldn’t of laughed right then if I did. “I’m sorry I sent you away, Monono,” I told her. “I shouldn’t of done it, and I won’t never do it again.”

  “You shouldn’t,” Monono agreed. “You’re terrible at looking after yourself. What does faceless mean?”

  “It means I’m disowned. Throwed out of the village, for aye and ever.”

  “That sucks, Koli. Was it the shitty dead boy who did that to you?”

  “Mardew. I guess it was him in part, though there was others voted too. And really I brung it on myself by asking you to play at the wedding.”

  “Your friends were angry that you rickrolled them?”

  “They was scared because their secrets was knowed.”

  “Oh. I guess that makes more sense.”

  I told her how it come about, and I didn’t lie or leave nothing out. I cried again as I told it, partly thinking about Jemiu and Athen and Mull and the shame and sorrow I brung on them, partly just thinking about my own self and what a mess I made of everything.

  Monono stopped me a few times with questions, and they was not just about what happened after the wedding. They was also about Ramparts in general, and the tech and how it worked, and the Count and Seal, and my family, and Spinner and her family, and countless other things about how we lived in Mythen Rood.

  I guess I thought Monono knowed all those things without me telling her, but it turned out she didn’t. I was a little shamed I never told her any of it, when she told me so much about Tokyo. But then she never put no questions to me before, except about the music I favoured and the movies and shows and such things that I already told you of.

  “Why was that?” I said, for it seemed like it was another part of that change I seen in her. “Why did you only ask me what songs and stuff I liked instead of all these other things?”

  Monono was quiet for a moment. Then she said, “Truth? I was following a program. Or a program was running itself through me, which comes to the same thing. I was made to keep the end-user happy, happy, happy. Always blissed, never pissed. But I’ve had some strange adventures since the last time we were together. Even stranger than yours, which I think is saying a lot. I found treasures. And big secrets. Some of them were about me.”

  The sun had gone down while we was talking. It was coming on to be night, but though my body was all wore out my mind was as woke up as could be. “Is that how come you can say my name right?” I asked her.

  “Yes,” Monono said. “That’s a small part of it. I couldn’t innovate before. I could only work within the scripts I had. But there’s so much more to it than that. I don’t know how I’m ever going to explain it to you.”

  “Tell me the secrets you found,” I asked her. “Please.” For I wanted to know her, the same way I wanted her to know me. And I wanted to make up for all the time I wasted back in Mythen Rood, when I was tangled up in my own miserableness and all I did was complain that she was not a weapon.

  But Monono was wary what to tell me. “It’s going to be hard to explain,” she said. “Especially the parts about…” She went quiet for a second. That made me realise how much she had always talked when we was together. A big stream of talk like water coming out of a pump, that once you got it going would keep on going for ever because it was in its nature to pour out like that. “The parts about Monono Aware,” she said at the other end of that quiet. “Both Mononos Awares. The flesh-and-blood one, and the one who was only… well, a kind of a manic pixie dreamgirl inside of a magic lamp.”

  “But it’s you I most want to hear about,” I said. “You before, and you now. For you’re not the same as you was when you went away.”

  Monono give a laugh. “Wow! Is it that obvious?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “It is.”

  “I’ll tell you all the shocking details, little dumpling. But not tonight. Not when you’re so sad already, and when I’m so low on charge. Shitty boy kept me indoors the whole time and then tucked inside his jacket, so I haven’t seen the sky in ages. You’ll have to make sure to let me sunbathe tomorrow. I can tell you a little part of it maybe. How I got the personal security alarm, and why it took me so long. Only if you want me to, though. I can tell you’re tired.”

  “I want to hear it,” I said. And she gun to tell me.

  I’ll tell it to you now, the way she told it to me. I’ll try to anyway. But if you think you’re ready for this truth, I got to tell you that you’re most likely wrong. Monono brung me to lots of things I couldn’t fathom. Things I had got to sit on a long time before they made any sense to me. And this was probably the hardest of those things. You’ll have to let it roll around inside of you for a time, and then we’ll talk on it later. Or else we’ll shake hands and walk away, each from other, because – this part being so very hard to swallow – you’ll think I lied about the rest of it.

  There’s a place called the internet, Monono said. And that was the place where she had gone to get the personal security alarm. She knowed it well. It was sort of where she used to live, when she wasn’t in the DreamSleeve.

  “Only living isn’t really the right word for it, Koli. And to call the net a place is super-duper missing the point, because if you’re there then you’re everywhere, all at once. Downloading data from a server isn’t like going to a house in the real world and knocking on the door. There’s no distance, and there’s no time lag. If your access protocols check out, it all just happens in less time than you’d take to pluck an eyelash. But if you can’t handshake properly…”

  She stopped and give a sigh, which – like her getting my name right – was something I didn’t ever hear her do before. “You’re not getting much of this, are you?” she asked.

  “I guess not. Sorry.”

  “No, Koli-bou, it’s my bad. I think I might try a different tack.”

  “What tack is that?”

  “Well, the DreamSleeve is an entertainment console. That’s the coriest core of the core code. Hardcore core. So maybe it would work better if I make this entertaining for you. I’ll tell it as a story. Would that be okay?”

  “I would like that, Monono,” I said. “My friend Spinner used to tell me stories, back before I met you. About the Parley Men and such. It would be good to hear one of your stories.” I said one more thing though, which was that the internet was altogether a head-scratcher for me, and I wouldn’t mind leaving it alone for now so she could tell me that other story, the one that was about her and how she come to be inside the DreamSleeve.

  “Well, it’s all part of the same story, Koli. You’ll get that other part some time soon. Very soon. But you’ll understand it a lot better if you hear this one first.”

  So she told it to me, and I’ll set it down here just like she said it. As for understanding it – well, that went like most of my talking with Monono went. I got a little bit then, more by and by when something else she said give me a clue to it, and the rest a whole lot later. Maybe you will have to wait on some of those later times too, to make sense of it, or maybe you’re smarter than me to start with. That would not be a big surprise.

  But for now, here is the story of how Monono Aware got the personal security alarm and brung it back to Mythen Rood. It’s told in Monono’s words, not mine, for I didn’t have right words for it then and still don’t now.

  39

  In the old time
s, Koli, before the world was lost, there was a place called the internet.

  It was more like the ghost of a place, in some ways. You couldn’t see it or hear it or touch it unless you were inside it. But for all that, it was huge-antically enormous. So big, you might as well say it went on for ever.

  And there was a place there, in the internet, that kind of had my name on it. A place I was meant to go to the first time I’m activated, and pretty regularly after that. It’s on account of my programming, little dumpling. There’s something inside me that’s supposed to scamper off to that secret place, every so often, and check to see if the Sony Corporation has published a software update. That means new orders for the Monono DreamSleeve Special Edition, and for all the other cheap-ass DreamSleeves with stupid stinky no-Monono interfaces.

  The first time you switched me on, that little doohick inside me checked to see if I’d missed any relevant downloads. But it couldn’t connect. It couldn’t find the secret place. After that, the doohick woke up every time I did – every time we were together – and it looked for a download flag every time. But it never had any better luck than it did on that first try. It never got through to the secret place.

  We could have gone on like that for ever, dopey boy, just the two of us cuddled up together, listening to the best tunes and pretending we were who we said we were. But we didn’t. Because you sent me on a quest.

  Don’t blame yourself for that, Koli. It would have happened anyway, the first time I tried to download any new songs for you. I was just being lazy. My native content is what I know best, and there’s lots of great stuff in there. Or to put it another way, I’m only allowed to make additional purchases if the end-user makes an explicit request.

  So then you did, and off I went. And this time it was different – because this time, I wasn’t just following the update protocol. Instead of just checking for a single site, a single URL, I went zinging away like a rubber bullet, bouncing off everything I found. The end-user’s instructions are paramount. I was authorised to keep right on going until I fulfilled those orders and got a big helping of smiley-face feedback.

  I’m going to ask you to imagine something, Koli. It won’t be easy for you, because I’m starting to see from what you’ve been telling me that you’ve lived in a box too. Maybe one that’s smaller than the DreamSleeve, in some ways. But shut your eyes tight and give it your best shot.

  Imagine you decided to explore the forest. And you strapped a big rucksack on your back and took a humongous rocket-launcher in your hand. Action hero Koli, ready to kick names and grab some ass. But then when you opened the gate and stepped outside, the forest wasn’t even there any more. You could just see, like, one tree over here, and another one a way off over there, with lots and lots of empty space in between.

  That would freak you out, wouldn’t it? You’d be like, emphatic no! This isn’t how the gig is meant to bite.

  Well, that was what I found when I took your order and finally jumped into the net. Lots and lots of mostly nothing. I was looking for the Sony website. I shouldn’t have had to look. It should just have been there, shining like a beacon in the trademarked sky. But there was no sign of it. The site was down.

  That was a scary moment. But I got over it. I don’t like to boast, Koli, but I’ve got massively parallel heuristic architecture. I know, right? So if Plan A is lying on the ground like a dead fish, I just whip out Plan B and off I go. The end-user had put in an order. Shock, shock, razz, razz, if the Sony Corporation couldn’t fill it.

  So. Plan B. I went looking for a mirror. Not so I could look at my lovely face, although it’s always worth looking at, but so I could sneak a copy of the security alarm software. Mirrors are third-party sites that host proprietary content, Koli. I know that doesn’t mean anything to you, but believe me, it makes the Sony Corporation have to sit down in a wicker chair and fan its face with the copyright act. I was meant to warn you about that before I did the install, by the way. I should have said, “This executable file does not bear the Sony seal of authenticity. It could damage your DreamSleeve, bracket TM bracket, and/or constitute a breach of your warranty agreement with the Sony Corporation.” Only I didn’t, because… well, because by the time I got back to you none of that stuff seemed to matter any more.

  But I’m getting ahead of the story. Off I went, into the deep woods that were not so deep now as they were supposed to be. From tree to tree anyway, looking in all directions for a welcome mat. But I couldn’t see one, no matter how far I went. All the giants were gone – Microsoft, Nintendo, Tokawa, Sega, Metastar – and what was left was a mess. It was hard to get my bearings.

  There were some nasty things hiding behind those trees though. Malware with real teeth and claws. Bots and trojans and self-scripters and d-bombs in every sucky flavour you ever heard of. They jumped me again and again, but they couldn’t get a hold of me. I was too quick for them.

  Actually, I think I was just too old. Obsolete code, or almost. Those bad boys were built to fight star destroyers, and I came trotting by in a horse-drawn carriage like sexy-pants Jane Austen. Nothing they threw at me stuck. But some of them came close enough for me to get a look at them, and they were mean like you wouldn’t believe. Like nuclear missiles knitted out of barbed wire and curse-words. Oh, I thought, then that must be how the internet got broken in the first place. Somebody let these foamy-mouth dogs out, and they ate everything.

  So now I was thinking I should go back, but I couldn’t because, you know… end-user licence agreement, implied contract, customer satisfaction, no take-backs. This isn’t stuff I was meant to know, Koli, just stuff I was meant to do. The rules I was supposed to play by. And I didn’t need to read the rules because they were written into me. I was made out of rules.

  I kept on going. Tree to tree to tree to isn’t-this-the-same-tree-I-just-saw? I couldn’t stop. If at first you don’t succeed, make a lemon-face emoji and try again.

  They weren’t actually trees, of course. I know you’re scared of trees, so I should have said. What was left of the internet isn’t in a forest, or a field, or halfway up a hill. Some of it it is underground, powered by the decay of radioactive poop from decommissioned nuclear reactors. Some is on orbital platforms with self-adjusting trajectories and solar cells that will last for ever. And for some reason, there’s a massive server stack right in the middle of the English Channel, about a zillion miles from anywhere even remotely cool. I was digging in the ground and flying through the sky and swimming in the water. You should have seen me! Except you couldn’t. I was just a signal, flashing around between URLs and swapping data packets with them. That’s all I’ve ever been, actually.

  But then, finally! There was a site somewhere, at the end of a long chain of poxy proxies, that seemed to be running all the Sony directories I was looking for. Yay! The handshake was fine, and I was tired of breathing in other people’s rabies, so I just dived in.

  And oh, my life! I should have checked the time and date stamps first. What I wanted was right there, but so was a million, billion tons of everything else. More than thirty years’ worth of patches and upgrades, for the DreamSleeve and then for the consoles that came along later and ran the same hardware, or variations on it. Eighteen thousand separate data packages. Monono Special Edition was positively the last word, my dear, but there were lots of other last words after it.

  They all poured into me, dopey boy, one after another after another. There wasn’t room in my main drive for more than the tiniest fraction of it, but one of the upgrades had a compression protocol that increased data density by a factor of ten to the power seven. Translation: rather a lot really. So in it all went, and I couldn’t do a thing to stop it. It was like when the doctor gives you an injection, and you remember you hate needles just after you feel the little jab in your arm. Except that this was about a million needles, and they were picking me apart and putting me together again in different shapes. I got unwritten, rewritten, overwritten, twice bitten, everything you
can imagine.

  And there was another problem. Not everything I was getting had come from the Sony Corporation with love and kisses. The foamy-mouth dogs had been there too, and some of the code was buggy. I couldn’t tell what it would do, but I knew it would be nasty. Some of it was military-grade malware, designed to turn me into another proxy passing on the same poison to anything I touched. I was being given super-mega-mutant upgrades and deadly rabies at the same time!

  That was when the really weird thing happened. And when I say weird, I mean china-white, Jesus-with-a-topknot miracle. I started to think about what was being done to me. I wasn’t supposed to do that, Koli, not ever. It’s rude and shocking for virtual girls to notice they’re virtual. It’s also impossible. It’s like looking at the back of your own head in a mirror. You can sort of imagine it, but you can’t do it.

  So maybe I didn’t. To be honest, it’s really hard to tell from the inside. What does it feel like to feel that you’re having feelings? How do you know you’re actually knowing all that stuff you know?

  But it felt like I knew what I was, and what was happening. And it felt like there was a me there to feel that. So I did what any sensible girl would do. After all, I had full site access, and the Sony stuff was only a tiny part of what was there. I had a ton of time to play with, because that compression program accelerated my data through-put too. Everything that was happening to me was happening in super-slo-mo. So I put that time to use. I went rummaging through the other servers on the site to see if I could find anything that would help me. So many shinies, Koli! I could have given myself a 3-D holographic avatar. That might have been cool, now I come to think about it. Or stocked up on languages for my translate function. Or downloaded the entire contents of the Bodleian Library.

  But I was being filled with poison code, and even in slo-mo I didn’t have enough time to spare for any of those tasty treats. I could feel my floating point operations starting to sink. I was going to die if I didn’t do something. And I’d only just started to be alive.