Dreambox Junkies

by Richard Laymon

  “There's no need to be snide, Paul. You know as well as I do how important it is to Ruth's morale that you and I don't get along too comfortably. Perhaps if I were to give you a good hard slap in the face at some appropriate point, when Ruth's looking ... You see the trouble is, Paul, Ruth can tell that you still feel for me, and I you, and she doesn't like that. She forgets that I'll soon be ... dead.” Frances clutched at his sleeve. “Please, just a little more slowly. We're keeping Ruth in sight. She'll come to no harm."

  Paulie slackened his pace. He did feel anger, now. Contempt toward himself, for he had caught a tiny, secret part of Paulie Rayle that was enjoying this. And it would not have escaped Frances's notice. “Put yourself in Ruth's position,” he repeated, miserably. “Wondering what we're saying. I daren't even think what she's imagining. You really enjoy doing this to her, making her feel threatened, don't you?"

  “Do you?"

  Full of tight, acrid fury, he said, “What is this? Did your doctors suggest it would be good for you to get involved in emotional competition?"

  “You flatter yourself."

  “Well, that's what boxworlds are all about, isn't it?"

  “Boxworlds?” She looked genuinely perplexed. “What are they? I'm sorry, Paul, I don't understand what you're saying. Is this connected with what you were telling me earlier, about the unreality of things, that strange feeling you said you'd experienced?"

  “Either I'm going mad, or this world's not real."

  “So which of the two do you believe is actually the case?"

  This was a million miles away from the hard-headed Frances of old, and it took him aback. In fact, he realized, she seemed more like one of the GroundRuths in her willingness to listen.

  He confessed, “I don't know what to believe. When Sesha came and collected me, when we were in that verticar, all three of us, me and Sesha and the pilot, found ourselves forced into ... Call it inappropriate sexual behaviour. And then, just as suddenly, it had gone. If Sesha seems a bit upset, troubled by something, that's probably it. That's how I got the bruises ... the pilot couldn't handle his embarrassment, started hitting me. Yeah, I know, I'd be laughed out of court. You'd be well within your rights giving up on me."

  But as if to make amends by humouring him for having let slip hostile feelings toward Ruth, Frances showed no trace of scepticism. “It was as though you were under hypnosis?"

  “Or drugged. But I don't think so. I think it was something else."

  Frances regarded him quizzically.

  He said, “We behaved exactly like screen images do when manipulated by an erotoroutine, a pirate joke program that sends screen characters sex-mad, going at each other like rabbits."

  “A program similar to this Sick Nick you mentioned?"

  Paulie nodded. “Only sex, not violence."

  Frances frowned. “So this led you to suspect that we're none of us real people?” She made the assumption sound almost reasonable.

  “Each Dreambox makes an electronic copy of the real world ... the people, everything there's inf on. What happened to us in the verticar would make sense if we were not real people but copies of people, not originals but recordings. And someone's dreaming this world with a Dreambox. It could be me, someone else, I don't know. Alternatively, I could be rubber room material."

  “And you've told Ruth?"

  “Not about what happened in the verticar. The rest, though, yeah. I don't blame her if she thinks I'm just a stupid boxhead."

  “So, tell me how,” Frances asked him, “you came to start using a Dreambox? As I remember, you were always so scathing, so dismissive of escapist fantasies."

  “How did you ever put up with me? I must have been about as much fun as chronic dysentery."

  Paulie felt her squeeze his hand. He glanced at her. She said, earnestly, “Believe me, Paulie, I treasure those times.” And then she asked, again, “So why the Dreambox, I don't understand?"

  “I've been trying to turn the world into Heaven."

  “You've been doing what? I'm not sure I follow you."

  He thought, Follow me? You ought to be recoiling from me. He said, “I've been trying to dream up a better world, bring it into actual existence, make it more real than this one. See? I'm mad, fucking mad, I'm round the bend."

  “How on earth did you imagine you might set about achieving such a thing?” Frances gave a good impression of taking him seriously. She was, after all, a trained actress.

  “God, I don't know, just by thinking the right thoughts, before someone else hit on them and thought them. Like some teenage geek whose idea of Heaven would be closer to Hell.” It came pouring out of him; he couldn't stop it. “I'd like to say I was doing it for all the millions of people in the world still suffering and starving, but ... I just want a better world for Kali. And for Ruth. The kind of world she deserves. She can't live in this world as it is. She hates it so much. She belongs in a better world than this. I just want Ruth and Kali to be happy. But...” He shook his head, “I couldn't do it. I don't have the imagination. I don't have the talent. Ruth believed in me, but I couldn't come through for her."

  In silence they continued to pursue Ruth across the park. Paul was dimly aware of Felipe, creeping along in the car, trailing them, staying as close as the road would permit.

  Frances said, “So, if the whole world were to change, would we all be conscious of the change, or would..."

  “Don't humour me. Why do you humour me as well?” Misery drained him, brought him finally to a standstill. Anguish strangling his voice, he sobbed, “Why does Ruth humour me? Why don't you tell me to grow up? Why isn't there anyone to make me live in the real world?"

  “So Ruth knows what you're trying to do?"

  “Can't you see? The problem is what I'm doing to her."

  Ruth had given him such love, and he had taken it so casually and squandered it. He had left her alone, emotionally, in this world she so detested. Her complaints were justified, her appraisal of the situation spot-on; she had been having to look after two babies. He had exhausted her near-limitless capacity for giving. And all for what? The most patently ludicrous of dreams. A hopelessly naive delusion.

  Crushed down by despair, Paulie fell to his knees.

  “RUTH!” he shouted.

  She was a long way ahead of him, now. She didn't stop, she didn't slow down. She didn't even turn and look. Paulie was desolate. The woman beside him, his ex-wife, had revealed herself to be nothing more than a woman. Not the saviour his mind had built her up to be. Not what he needed. Not the world's wise mother, after all. And the Angel Syndrome? Maybe just a cunning ruse to get him back. Not that he could see how he was worth so much trouble.

  “RUTH!” Paulie shouted again.

  The trees had swallowed her up.

  “Paul?"

  He turned to find Frances on her stomach on the sand, trying to lift herself, having fallen on her face. Sand was sticking to her nose, to her lips, to the lenses of her costly designer shades. Blood trickled from her nostril. She looked old. He felt no pity for her, pulling this stunt at this time to stop him chasing after Ruth. All he felt was disgust.

  Unless, of course, he chose to be honest with himself.

  He bent and took her up into his arms, helped her to her feet.

  Frances clung to him, and he to her.

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  * * *

  Chapter 21

  It was just the two of them now. Herself and Kali against the world. Ruth looked back. Paulie and Frances were no longer coming after her. They'd given up. What more proof did you need that neither of them cared, that Paulie was back where he wanted to be? Well, she hoped he and Frances would be happy together. She wouldn't trouble them again. She would find her own way home and get on with life, hers and Kali's. That was it. The end. Why prolong it?

  Funny, Ruth thought, how suddenly the fog lifts, and you see things straight. Had he ever loved her? Had he—fuck. What a sucker he'd played her for. What a d
ope she'd been, putting up with his shit for so long. Living with a Dreambox junkie. What else was he cut out for? Selfish, a dreamer. And she, big dumb doormat, had actually gone and bought him the fucking box! And now, he'd had enough of even that game, having failed in it too, like he failed in everything, and had grabbed at this chance of getting back together with Frances. What a twisted, evil fucker he was. He had got her right out here to Seville so that he could parade around in front of her and show how much his ex-wife still wanted him. And Frances, the two-faced old hag, she probably wasn't ill at all—it was probably just a scheme to get him back. Well, Frances could have him. She was welcome to him. They belonged together. What a twisted, evil pair.

  Ruth kicked a fallen, rotten orange.

  Where would she go? What would she do? She had hardly any money. She had her transac ring, but it had already been used up to its limit. She knew a little bit of Spanish, just about enough to get by. She had no ticket home. That was why they had left her to wander off; they knew she would end up slinking back to them with her tail between her legs. They probably thought that, since she didn't have one of those mobe things, she would have to go to a phone box and either ask Tourinf for directions to Frances's house, although that would surely be private, secret information, never given out to tourists, or else contact Paulie through his borrowed mobe. They knew she wouldn't keep Kali out too long. They knew she knew she was stuck, and they were laughing at her.

  Ruth passed a little open-air cafe. Kids were running about with ice cream cones, dropping lumps and dripping trails of coloured ice cream. Parents were sitting drinking coffees. Everybody looked rich. Ruth knew that only well-heeled tourists were allowed into the real city. Any poorer people you saw were natives legally permitted to live there.

  A couple of the rich tourists were looking at her. What were they seeing? An unusual-looking poor peasant woman?

  In the window of a parked car Ruth caught her reflection, and she thought, An unusual-looking fat peasant woman, and hardly Spanish. White arms. Fat white thighs. Fat white bumpy wobbly thighs, and big backside.

  There was something very wrong with Paulie Rayle, the way he'd look at her body and seem to like what he saw, but wouldn't compliment her, not most of the time. Any compliment would have been a lie, but that wasn't the point. Most of his looks would be stolen ones, taken as though a man had a God-given right to look without having to give anything in return. And what a perve he was, going at her with his tongue while she rested her legs on his shoulders, or squatted over him. Getting her to clamp her thighs tight round his head while he'd be going at her, hugging her round the thighs, lapping happily away. Sometimes, it was like he was doing even that for himself, not for her, like it was just another private Paulie Rayle thing. Who else but a perve got turned on by big fat wobbly thighs and big tits like udders? And sometimes, when the sight of her thighs was making her uncomfortable, and he was going at her with too much roughness and madness, like a licking dog gone mental, she wouldn't be getting as much out of it as he'd obviously want her to be getting, so she'd make moans to please him. Sometimes. Other times, she really was off on a cloud. So, did he do that kind of stuff with Frances, even though she was old enough to be his mother? He probably even liked the mother thing. What a fucking perve he was. When you thought about it, all men were perverted.

  Ruth came to a road junction, crossed along with a bunch of other people. Wasn't that big building the old cigarette factory out of Carmen? She could have done with a smoke. She'd given up on becoming pregnant with Kali. It hadn't been so difficult. The taste of cigarettes had suddenly gone horrible, like her body had known what was best for her and had taken action. She could have done with one now, though, and if she hadn't had Kali on her in the sling she would have bought some.

  She followed a long, high wall. All along it were posters, the same poster over and over again. That dead singer, Janko Brauch. Greatest Hits.

  She came to shops. A touristy knick-knack shop full of tiles and garish majolica and frilly flamenco dresses. An Irish pub. An electrical shop, its window crammed with Dreamboxes. A sign urged in Spanish, ‘BUY BEFORE THE BAN!’ She felt like chucking a brick.

  A pony and trap clip-clopped past, carrying Oriental sightseers. Kali woke up, yawned her face half inside-out. Hoisting her up in the sling, Ruth kissed her baby's dandelion-clock head. “Just you and me, babes,” she murmured softly.

  A clean, clear, sweet and simple life was all she'd ever wanted. Paulie had given the impression that he was seeking the same thing, back when he'd come to the village looking for a quiet room. Only what she hadn't realized then was that his kind of simplicity was the simplicity of being looked after, of not having to work, earn money, bother about bills or care for children; of having somebody stupid enough to do all of that for you, and take your crank fantasies seriously. Better still, why not get your rich ex-wife to buy you simplicity? Why he'd left Frances in the first place was the biggest fucking mystery of all.

  Ruth looked round for some public toilets. Kali had just done another nappysworth. She stank to high heaven, poor little mite.

  * * * *

  Settling into a comfortable chair, Sesha donned her smartspecs and embarked upon a leisurely surf of the city's securicams; something she would often do when travelling. She found it an enjoyable way of getting her bearings, this literal overview of her environment. Even though less immersive an experience, it was nonetheless preferable to PseudoSeville; this was the real world she was looking out on, not the substitute stored on computer for the plebs.

  She had remained in her room, too embarrassed to risk bumping into Xabier. And she had needed a break from agonizing over Frances's job offer. Sitting back and observing the streetlife was a tried-and-trusted chillout tactic. She had no control over the cameras; it was like being an upstairs passenger on a double-decker bus, a flaneuse watching the world go by.

  She soon found a pleasurable rhythm, cutting from camera to camera to camera, from shopfronts to squares to public parks. She spotted the cafe where she had sat not two hours before. At one point she thought she saw Frances, Paul and Ruth, with the baby, in a park. But they failed to reappear on any other cameras, so perhaps they had walked out of range. From the securicams atop the Giralda tower she enjoyed spectacular views across the cityscape. Down in the streets, she spied plenty of cute guys, not potential seed-providers; she had fully recovered from that madness. She recalled hearing somewhere that, within the next two or three mobe generations, it should become possible to tap into a securicam feed, run an ident scan on any one of several billion earth inhabitants caught on vid and get a Korsch-Wrightson Potential Psychosis Report and a Semiotic Attire Assessment, plus a biog compiled from all harvestable inf. Great to be able to do that to others; scary to think of them doing it to you.

  Sesha noted three or four shops with cool clothes on display, and suffered an envy attack brought on by the sight of a young girl, killer gorgeous, in a Janko Brauch t-shirt. In fact, a good many of the Spanish girls on view had incredibly high levels of natural Congruence, although the majority would still have benefited from a PsyTri consultation. All in all, she spotted very few outright haircripples, female or male.

  She was looking down from the corner of a small square, a not especially riveting view, with little going on, and nothing much of architectural interest, when the gliding camera suddenly revealed, standing large as life on the cobblestones, none other than Sick Nick himself.

  Sesha started, heard her own gasp of horror, felt the familiar ice-cold shiver that always brought her out in goosebumps.

  Her heart was pounding audibly.

  Bizarrely, no one else down there seemed scared of him. Well, some passers-by were clearly startled to see him there, but as many, if not more, were incredibly blase, as though it were the most natural thing in the world, finding Sick Nick looming over you, standing stock-still like a statue.

  Someone bent and put some cash money into—what was it?—a box, a s
mall cardboard box on the cobbles nearby.

  With shocking suddenness, Sick Nick sprang into life.

  And bowed, very grandly.

  Only then did Sesha realize that he was a mime, a performance artist, a clever clown of a Sick Nick impersonator. And anyhow, she was forgetting: Sick Nick was strictly virtual. He couldn't appear in real life, on the street, in front of people. His stamping ground was the NeTV or cinema screen. He was nothing more than a cyberspook, a two-dimensional imagepirate who could turn any digitized movie or NeTV show into a bloodbath, wreaking untold audiovisual mayhem, but was forever confined to that less-than-real world of simulations, representations, sheer make-believe.

  Sick Nick was a mere computer program.

  The camera, meanwhile, was gliding on, leaving Sick Nick behind, and only after it had completed its arc and swung back did it reveal him again. He had reverted to his former, eerie stillness. People passed. One or two put money in the box. A young couple, holding hands, paused to laugh and admire. Sick Nick's tongue came shooting out and, forking into scissors, neatly snipped through their wrists, one after the other. The two joined hands fell, amputated, onto the cobbles. The view switched to that of another camera, sited in front of some imposing public building.

  Sesha felt nausea.

  “Last camera.” She could barely get the words out. “Hold."

  Her mobe returned her to the scene. All was chaos, anguish, terror, somehow all the more appalling in its soundlessness. The young guy was scrabbling frantically to retrieve the severed extremities, the two sets of fingers still grotesquely intertwined. The girl was catatonic, able to do nothing but stand there and watch the blood spray out from her handless arm and splash her face and soak her hair. The camera caught onlookers, wide-eyed, screaming silently.

  Sick Nick was laughing.

  People ran—everyone except for the catatonic girl and her fumbling boyfriend, both crimson-drenched, standing in widening pools of their own blood. Dark lines seeped out between the cobbles. The young guy, hugging the severed hands close against his chest, turned to the girl and attempted to comfort her. Sick Nick's tongue shot out again, snaked under her bloodstained frock and emerged from her mouth, the glistening tongue-tip wagging roguishly. In one smooth, fluid sweep, the wet pink razor tongue came up like a cheesewire, bisecting the girl before the boyfriend's numb gaze. The two limp halves of her body fell backward, separating, spilling viscera.