Zendegi

by Greg Egan

  Haidar was a little taken aback, but his software could supply no sensible response, so he just bid them goodnight and left.

  ‘Have fun, pipsqueak,’ said Ahmed, brushing a pile of aubergine skins onto the floor.

  ‘I will!’ Javeed retorted.

  They were alone in the preparation room now. Martin helped Javeed finish sweeping the floor, but as they gathered up the last of the waste and carried most of it out to the dump, they kept one basket aside and filled it with the plucked feathers.

  They stood by the kitchen doorway, listening, Javeed still holding his broom in case someone chanced upon them. Finally, the assistant cooks started carrying some of the dishes through to the banquet hall. The cook himself went with them, to watch over the serving of the meal and bask in the king’s delighted praise.

  Martin peeked into the kitchen. ‘Okay, it’s empty! Quick!’

  Javeed carried the basket of feathers past the long row of stoves; it might have been weightless, but he struggled with the sheer size of the basket, which forced him to hold his arms uncomfortably wide. There were only two pots still sitting on the flames, at the far end of the room.

  Martin removed the lid from one of the pots and started scooping feathers into the stew. He felt them tickling his palm, and watched them sinking into the simmering liquid. ‘This is so disgusting,’ he enthused. It was almost impossible not to conjure up images of people pulling feathers from their mouths, grimacing with distaste. Maybe he and Javeed could sneak into the hall and actually witness that spectacle of discomfort. If no one was watching, Zendegi would gloss over all the details, which would be an awful shame.

  Javeed tapped his free hand urgently. ‘Baba, they’re coming back!’

  Martin hurriedly replaced the lid of the pot. The footsteps were close; the doorway through which they’d entered was too far away. He looked around and saw the entrance to a small room; the door was already half-open. He grabbed the basket with one hand and Javeed with the other and led him into the room.

  They stood behind the door. Beside them, metal pots and earthenware vessels were stacked on wooden shelves.

  Two of the assistants entered the kitchen, grumbling, and left again - presumably carrying the last of the pots. Martin stuck his head around the door, just in time to spot the shadow of someone else approaching. He withdrew quickly.

  ‘Zahhak, Zahhak, Zahhak!’ the cook sighed dreamily. ‘All I want in thanks is one royal embrace.’ Martin had read the story in Javeed’s book: when the king took the demon cook in his arms in gratitude for so fine a meal, his humble subject kissed him once on each shoulder - and from each shoulder, a snake grew out of the flesh. They were hacked off by the king’s surgeons, but rapidly re-grew. The only thing that would appease them was a regular meal of human brains.

  The cook whistled happily; from the sound of his footsteps he was practically waltzing around the room. Martin smiled down at Javeed. Soon there’d be shouts of outrage from the banquet hall, and a royal summons quite unlike the one Eblis had been expecting. No beheadings, though; Martin had even emailed Nasim to check that he’d ticked the right boxes to rule out that kind of violence. In the story, Eblis had simply vanished after conjuring up the snakes; confronted with failure, he could do the same.

  The whistling stopped abruptly.

  ‘What do I smell?’ the cook said. ‘Pheasant blood, raw? When everything’s well done?’ He made a brutish snuffling sound. Martin glanced at the basket; they hadn’t emptied it completely, and there was a residue of blood-caked feathers still sticking to the bottom. ‘The little pipsqueak left the floor clean, didn’t he? No mess in sight. And yet . . .’

  Three soft footsteps in their direction.

  ‘And yet . . .’

  Martin tensed, torn by conflicting urges. This was a fairground ride, a ghost train, nothing more. Did he want to smother Javeed, to cheat him of the brief, safe terror that every child craved?

  ‘When is a door,’ the cook asked, switching to English, ‘not a door?’ He’d lost his Arabic accent; now he sounded like James Mason in Salem’s Lot.

  Martin took Javeed’s hand and met his eyes, hoping Zendegi could infer and reconstruct his look of reassurance, despite the goggles. He needed Javeed to know that if he was afraid, it was all right to flee - it was all right to give this make-believe world the thumbs-down and simply banish the monster.

  ‘No takers? Really? But it’s so simple!’ Martin heard breathing just inches away, and a long-fingered hand appeared, clasping the side of the door.

  ‘When it’s ajar!’

  The cook stepped into view, tall, smiling, reaching down towards Javeed. Martin tried to punch him, but he ducked aside effortlessly; as he did, Javeed slipped around the door. ‘Run!’ Martin yelled after him, jubilant.

  The cook rose up to his full height again, smiling at Martin unpleasantly. He was clean-shaven, which seemed like an odd choice for a disguise here, but maybe demons couldn’t grow beards.

  ‘Never mind,’ the cook said. ‘The pipsqueak’s lost, but the father’s twice the meal.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah,’ Martin replied. ‘I’m just the chaperone here, don’t knock yourself out for my entertainment.’

  The cook’s skin turned jaundice-yellow, his face haggard, his eyes hollow. Martin felt the donkey-kick aching in recognition; for a second he was back in the hospital gym, staring into a virtual mirror tuned this time to guess-his-future.

  The demon’s smile grew into a forest of pointed fangs as it bent down towards his shoulder. Martin feinted at its head; it drew back hissing like an angry viper and he quickly squeezed past it and around the door, then picked up the basket of bloodied feathers and swiped the edge across the demon’s face. The yellow skin ruptured; maggots swarmed from the wound.

  Martin turned and fled. If the thing caught up with him, infected him, if Javeed saw snakes growing from his body—

  Lucky he’d already switched on his power boots.

  Javeed was waiting at the doorway, urging him on, holding out a trembling hand towards him. ‘Baba! Quick!’ Martin grabbed his hand and ran with him across the preparation room, the storeroom, never looking back, out into the light.

  They fell onto the ground side-by-side, laughing hysterically. Martin didn’t know when Eblis had given up the chase, but the ghost train hadn’t beaten them over the head with its plastic monster. The game was just a game; it knew when to stop.

  They rose to their feet and limped back towards the bazaar, cracking up again every few steps.

  ‘Did you see his teeth?’ Javeed asked.

  ‘Gross, huh?’

  ‘Worse than the man at the pizza shop. I wouldn’t let him cook my dinner.’

  Martin clutched his stomach. He’d put no effort into running, but he was winded from laughing so much.

  At the edge of the bazaar a crowd had gathered, watching a commotion in the distance. Dozens of finely dressed noblemen were streaming out of the palace and heading for their mounts. The banquet had been a disaster; the cook had been disgraced. Zahhak would not become the Serpent King who ruled over neighbouring Persia for a thousand years.

  ‘You changed the story,’ Martin said.

  ‘Yeah.’ Javeed sounded dazed now; they’d known all along what they’d hoped to achieve, but success had never been guaranteed.

  ‘Mubaarak, pesaram.’ Martin squatted down beside him, then remembered that he couldn’t hug or kiss him. ‘Well done! Let’s go tell Uncle Omar and Farshid.’

  Javeed gave the thumbs-down and vanished, taking the scenery with him. Martin flipped up his goggles and waited for the castles to release them.

  As they were coming down the stairs, Martin saw Omar and Farshid standing by the counter, staring intently down one of the aisles; when he’d taken a few more steps he could see the object of their interest for himself. A young woman dressed in brief shorts and a halter top was leaning against her boyfriend, one hand entwined in his, the other stroking his neck. Martin couldn’t blame
anyone for staring; to see a woman dressed like that, behaving like that, was still a rarity in Tehran - even if it could no longer bring fines or imprisonment. He remembered Mahnoosh elbowing him sharply a few times in response to his gawking when they’d visited Australia together; those public displays of skin to which he had once been perfectly accustomed had become alien, almost hypnotic.

  Omar addressed his son in a low voice, but not too softly for Martin to hear. ‘If you want to fuck something like that, go ahead, they’re begging for it. Just don’t bring the garbage home to shame your mother.’

  Martin glanced behind him, but if Javeed had heard anything he didn’t appear to have taken it in. Martin turned around and lifted his son up onto his shoulders; Javeed screamed and laughed, hardly believing it. Martin hadn’t given him a shoulder ride for at least three years; the last time would be lost in the fog of infant memories.

  The debt for the moment of joy was called in quickly; Martin sagged, the muscles of his lower back seizing up. Farshid rushed over to help Javeed down safely.

  As Javeed briefed Farshid on his adventure, Omar approached Martin. ‘I’ll get you a taxi.’

  Martin said, ‘We’re catching the bus.’

  ‘Are you crazy? Farshid will drive you home. Farshid—?’

  Martin raised a hand to cut him off. Omar got the message. ‘Okay, okay.’ He put a hand on Martin’s shoulder. ‘Khaste nabashi, baradaram.’ Literally, may you not be tired, brother - but it packed as much goodwill, encouragement and solidarity into three words as could possibly fit.

  As they parted, Martin couldn’t look Omar in the eye. He was ashamed of what he was thinking, but he couldn’t stop thinking it.

  I don’t want you raising my son.

  16

  Every day for a week, in two three-hour sessions, Ashkan Azimi, captain of the Iranian national football team, lay inside an MRI machine and daydreamed his way through a thousand fragmented matches. Some recapitulated highlights from his well-documented career; others anticipated games he’d yet to play, challenges he was yet to confront in reality. But whether the fragments struck old chords or required new improvisations, the chance to watch his brain making thousands of crucial split-second decisions illuminated Azimi’s talent in a way that no amount of match statistics, video footage or biomechanical analysis could ever have equalled.

  Caplan had sent five people from Eikonometrics’ Zürich office to operate the scanner and supervise the side-loading process. As it happened, Azimi spoke perfect German - having played for Club Hoffenheim for two years - but the boss had insisted that Nasim watch over everything and ensure that there were no ‘cultural misunderstandings’. Nasim didn’t follow football at all, so it was Bahador and three other Zendegi programmers who’d collaborated with the Eikonometrics people on the scenarios to feed into Azimi’s goggles as he lay in the machine. But maybe that was why she’d been chosen to babysit: she was the only member of Zendegi’s staff who wasn’t so star-struck that she’d spend the week begging the poor man for his autographed nail clippings.

  Nasim’s contribution had been to build a version of Blank Frank that focused on the cerebellum and visual and motor cortex, to act as a vessel for Azimi’s physical prowess. Of course she only had to whisper his name into a search engine to be drowned in paeans to his leadership, his tactical genius, his modesty, his generosity, his sense of fair play - but those more abstract qualities would have to remain locked inside his skull. Quite apart from the technical issues, Azimi’s management had drawn the lines very clearly: their client’s personality was not for sale. Nasim had actually sat down with a lawyer and a consultant neurologist and negotiated a schedule to his contract that included a list of approved brain regions.

  No matter. The prosaic truth was that in the context of a football match, conventional software could handle those ‘higher’ aspects of behaviour pretty well; human players might need to struggle with their egos in order to decide when to pass the ball to their team-mates, but for dumb software it was the easiest thing in the world to quantify and program. Nasim suspected that so long as the Proxy didn’t bite an opponent’s ear off or insult anyone’s mother or sister, most people would simply transfer their impression of the real Azimi to his imperfect clone. After all, their hero had volunteered to stick his head in a fancy machine for a week; the result would be judged inferior to the original, of course, but people would reason that something of the man would have had to rub off. Motor cortex, schmotor cortex; half the population thought a heart transplant could make you fall in love with a dead man’s widow.

  Given the nature of the talents they were extracting, it was a shame that Azimi couldn’t even stand on a treadmill and mime interacting with a ball. But no one had yet built an MRI scanner that could accommodate that, and after a seven-figure payment in Euros to their star, Caplan’s budget didn’t stretch to an attempt at being the first. Instead, they’d given Azimi an external view of a virtual body modelled on his own and he’d spent the first day just getting used to controlling its movements with his thoughts. Once that adjustment was complete, driving the puppet activated all of the brain regions they were trying to mimic. It no longer mattered that he was flat on his back; in his mind, he was there on the field.

  With Azimi mostly lost in his reverie or chatting in German with the MRI technicians, Nasim was free to watch the side-loading process unfold. Blank Frank had started out with even less hope of kicking a goal than she had; whatever the average donor’s talents had been, her reconstruction had been too crude to retain it. But with the MRI images as a guide, tweaking the connections between Frank’s virtual neurons to bring their collective behaviour into accord with Azimi’s was like reverse-engineering a set of incremental improvements to a known piece of machinery - not trivial, but never entirely baffling either. With Frank already wired up in a generically human fashion, once Nasim had seen activity flash across the two brains she could often guess for herself where the changes would need to be made. The side-loading software could do better than guess, and it could do it a million times faster.

  Gradually, out on the virtual playing field, Frank began imitating his mentor, clumsily and imperfectly at first, then with ever greater fidelity.

  Azimi could spend only so much time in the scanner or his body would start cramping up and his mind would turn to mush. But Frank could keep re-absorbing the same lessons overnight, letting the software whittle away his imperfections while all the humans had gone home to sleep. Every morning Nasim came in an hour before everyone else and sat and watched ‘before’ and ‘after’ clips, summarising her student’s progress.

  She remembered a story her father had told her - a story, or a joke; there was no sharp distinction. A famous actor and a famous singer had been invited to the same party, and people kept begging the singer to perform his best-known song. But he wasn’t feeling well, and he’d drunk too much wine, so he kept turning down their requests. Finally, the actor had taken pity on his colleague, and to spare him any further harassment had given the crowd his own rendition of the song - note-perfect, and indistinguishable from the singer’s best performance.

  The singer had turned to him in amazement and asked, ‘Where did you learn to sing like that?’

  The actor had replied modestly, ‘I can’t sing at all. But I have a talent for impersonation.’

  At the end of the week, Azimi and the boss gave a press conference in the boardroom. Nasim stood at the back and watched. Azimi wore his team uniform, adorned with sponsors’ logos, and enough bling to asphyxiate and dice him if he’d still been under the scanner’s magnets.

  The boss announced that Zendegi had sub-licensed Stadium Legends, a Korean developer, to write the first work to make use of Virtual Azimi. They were on a tight deadline; the release was to coincide with Iran hosting the Asian Cup in less than two months’ time.

  Most of the journalists were sports-gaming specialists, and they followed the line the PR people had steered them towards in their
press release, waxing lyrical about the joy Azimi’s fans would feel when they could put on their goggles and play a match under his virtual captaincy. But then Gita Razavi - a ‘cultural critic’ for Generation 2012 - managed to squeeze a question in, and she seemed to be getting her cues from somewhere else entirely.

  ‘Mr Azimi, of course you’ve already tasted fame, but I wonder how it feels to be the first person on Earth to achieve an entirely new kind of immortality: a century from now, people might still be playing football alongside your Proxy.’

  Azimi smiled. ‘Of course I’ll be honoured if I’m remembered in any way at all after I retire, but I wouldn’t call this computer game a form of “immortality”. I’m not just a football player - I wrote a dissertation on Hafez. I am a son, a husband, I hope to be a father. This game has nothing to do with any of those things.’

  ‘So how would you feel if a Proxy could capture all those other aspects of your life?’ Razavi persisted. ‘Do you think that might be a good thing - or do you think it should be prohibited?’