Virgil had not yet finished his dessert when he detected a familiar shivering possess his humanoid. He looked up to descry the hologram taking form a few feet away. There was no need to identify who it might be; he knew just one correspondent with access to the technology. This must be what it’s like to be visited by spirits from the other side.
“Humphrey! Have some pie, what can I do for you?”
Truth be told, he was a little put out with Humphrey’s habit of showing up while he was in the middle of things so that it felt to be an imposition even in the case of his working his way through dessert.
“I’m riding about on my bicycle!”
“Then what are you doing…standing like that…oh, I see.”
A mere file was mouthing Humphrey’s words while he did, in fact, if his claim were to be believed, ride about on his bicycle, and why not? Virgil could visualize him steering it, pumping at the pedals while he weaved in the traffic with haphazard space left for him in a canyon of a street more deeply darkened for the high narrow band of sky. What Humphrey was doing he couldn’t imagine, but it was all in character. No doubt he had taken effortless possession of the locale despite Virgil’s image of a wobbly visitation.
That was what he was seeing in his mind’s eye while tempted to violate Humphrey’s hologram by inserting his hand in it, but he preferred to respect the illusion. Molly’s eyes dully glowed as she continued to effect the transmission, and he didn’t wish to intrude upon an event of technological wizardry. Humphrey would need a retinue to do this in real time, although doubtless someone was somewhere tackling the problem of miniaturization in yet another instance of the imagination at work so that others would not have to imagine.
To Virgil’s Luddite thinking, the whole cost-benefit equation felt yet again to be turned inside out. The new elite were those whose imaginations flowed like the river Ganges. As for the innumerable rest, having fed and sheltered themselves, their labours were done, their industrial-sized appetites begun. One of the principal creators of the new world was pedalling about on his bike this starry evening and informing him of the fact.
“That’s wonderful, Humphrey, I didn’t know you could, bicycle I mean. What’s got into you?”
“The simple life, Virgil, it helps me think. We should bring back horses and carriages. There’s no reason why we shouldn’t. We have the means to choose whatever life we want. Some old people miss phone booths, but those we can do without. It’s not phone booths; it’s their past life that they want to get back – they want to freeze time. This is different – let’s take the best of all worlds, I say.”
It was one of those tedious conversations, pointless, that appeared to go nowhere – Humphrey celebrating yet another of his moments. Virgil counselled himself to be patient and surreptitiously spooned in a mouthful of pie and ice cream, while sensible of Humphrey’s hologram staring in his general direction. There was a pause for him to fill.
“How old is that bike of yours?”
Forty years ago, Humphrey would have been one of the wide-eyed and carefree, wending through the traffic and sucking in exhaust fumes for the cause, and here he was one of the richest men in the world pedalling about and announcing a new mission for that same bicycle. Virgil was having a difficult time seeing it through his eyes. The simple life of freedom to do what one wanted must mean a completely different experience for Humphrey from the ordinary. He was one of those who owned the world. Ten per cent of humanity – anyone with the means and taste – connected to him through a leased or purchased humanoid, and he rode through his personal fiefdom how he wished. Humphrey was exercising his freedom, not without a care, but without the possibility of a care.
Or maybe Virgil was completely mistaken and Humphrey had the means to carry the world easily about on his shoulders, set it down, and refashion it as he wanted. More than one vision might be applicable.
“I can see horses, Humphrey, but maybe ditch the carriages.”
Instead of giving a response, as though it had been offended, Humphrey’s hologram vanished. In its place appeared his friend on a bike, pedalling, looking straight ahead, with a blur about him.
“Humphrey!”
“Have I come through?”
“Yes, you have, I guess. How did you do it?”
“A lot of money, Virgil, but we should be able to get the costs down.” His friend laughed, continued to pedal. “Thought I’d test it on you first.”
“Well, it works, however you’ve done it.”
“I’ll come over, Virgil. It’s best we speak in person.”
“And I guess I’ll just watch your progress.”
The faintest ennui came over Virgil at the prospect.
“How far away are you?”
He watched Humphrey tracked. He watched him try to answer but fail to complete his sentence – “I’m in mid-…” – when the bicycle went down under him. Its rider followed and was flung to the side and swallowed by the blur. Virgil glimpsed the left fender of the vehicle that struck him. An image appeared of Humphrey lying in the street, hands and faces of a crowd stretched toward him. Apparently his monitors were still intact.
“What do you make of that?”
He turned to Molly whose eyes softly glowed as she continued to transmit, but she answered his inane question.
“It looks like a hit and run, Virgil.”
At this show of acuity, he returned to the hologram. Humphrey was not to be seen apparently being devoured by the tropical type of flesh-eating organism that would faithfully appear at the scene of an accident.
“They’re supposed to move away, aren’t they, and give him some air?”
To whom was he speaking? Molly? What was her interest? She was one of Humphrey’s earlier, sturdy models. Did she feel involved? Here he was seeking a reaction from her but she didn’t feel that she was part of things. She simply was and he was pushing her to his limits. Hers were her own and calculable.
“Unless they are trying to resuscitate that is the procedure most beneficial in this circumstance.”
He heard orders and suggestions batted around like handballs at night. The crowd finally drew back, much of it pulled into the surrounding blur, to reveal Humphrey twisted upon himself with a samaritan’s cloak over his body, the outline of his arms wrapped about himself, his bent legs exposed in the foreground, and his head in a blood pool.
Minutes hardened until the sound of a siren bulldozed the nattering of the onlookers and, for all intents and purposes, obliterated their further significance. Doors slammed, orders reverberated, and then, as arms began to raise the body, the hologram vanished. Virgil found himself looking down on the flagstones of his garden that encircled the oak tree’s thick roots – their gnarled Edenic permanence. It would take more than an axe, it would require a court order to infringe upon them. It wasn’t Life with a capital L, neither was it good and evil that they brought to mind. It had something to do with indomitable purpose.
Molly blinked once, but this he didn’t see.
“What happened?”
Apparently she knew as little as he, for she didn’t give him an answer.
He placed calls to the hospitals – a duty imposed on him as Humphrey’s communicant at the time of the event – that he would not otherwise have made.
“Humphrey Martinfield? Yes, he’s been admitted…not much point really…unresponsive…you’ll find him in the I.C.U.”
The comment wasn’t gratuitous, since Virgil had asked after all. Never mind that he wasn’t family. It was city straight talk. At least he’d spoken with a human being – thoughtful of the institution – even if it reminded him why he was content to limit the experience.
There was nothing for it, after mulling it over, he’d have to go over there. Duty had him on a string and was pulling at the end of it. He’d been the last contact instead of someone else, that was all. Still he took his time, with little point in rushing to Humphrey in a coma. He could pr
ay where he was – that he knew was biblical.
In fact, he more fully bestirred himself the next morning after one of Molly’s pancake breakfasts with blueberries, raspberries, melted butter, maple syrup and lemon wedge drizzles, taking some poor watery delight in doing his own squeezes. Meanwhile, his humanoid hovered and fed him snippets of information to meet the day properly: the weather outlook and the present temperature. All a bit redundant if it remained as it was this morning according to the confines of his garden. The tree’s mass of green leaves teased blue skies and a comfortable city heat emanated as much from the walls as the sun. It could not possibly change!
He listened to the headlines, in no mood to hear the stories behind them. Once she’d gone through a list of possible engagements in the near future: birthdays, anniversaries, seminars, he asked her to sit and be quiet. Nothing immediate called for his attention. She had chosen a polka-dotted frock to begin the day, circles of yellow on a white ground, making respectable and domestic the soft lustre of polished-looking skin. He finished his fortifying breakfast while ignoring her sleep mode.
“Molly…”
Violet eyes opened to him. He wiped his mouth.
“Just off to the hospital. Have a look in on that fellow – Humphrey Martinfield – last night.”
He wouldn’t check with the hospital. Just go. He consciously deceived himself that the extra effort would make up for the desultory response. Besides he needed to get out no matter what. His apprehension of the world had undergone a slight adjustment to a reduced degree of stability. This in turn should normalize imperceptibly if he were go by his previous experiences. He remained unsure as to whether to view them as moral lapses or slight personal controversies ephemeral in nature.
He usually preferred keeping his comings and goings vaguely mysterious – not that Molly at all apprehended them in this or any other manner – and not have to explain himself further, so that he could move easily on his energy’s currents. She needed no more than sketched information for future reference purposes.
He was at the front door when the bell rang. The sound of it threw him back upon himself. Two men in well-worn suits – obviously their work clothes – nodded appraisingly and introduced themselves with a show of badges as required since they were city detectives. They were very human city detectives.
“Virgil Woolf?”
“Yes, what can I do for you?”
8
A Friendly Interrogation
There was nothing for it but to invite them in rather than show himself obstreperous and have them interview him on his doorstep. Molly, whom the detectives ignored after a brief assessment that was more than a glance, kept to the couch, her expression blank, while the humans took seats at the dining table.
“Shut her down, Mr. Woolf!”
The one who gave this order slid his gaze across the table and picked up some of the light buried in the polish. Virgil felt the man could arrange to flay his cheek with the look he flicked at him should he choose.
“This won’t take long.”
On this considerate note, Virgil commanded Molly to ‘sleep’. Once a milky void obscured her pupils, the more authoritative of the detectives with the insidious threat of age arrayed in his grizzled visage eyed him and posed rather than asked the questions. He did not think them up in the moment but drew them from some much-thumbed, long-memorized manual perhaps of his own composition.
His junior partner’s metallically smooth facial planes – aluminum before it’s crumpled – didn’t remain completely composed. They flushed with heat as from a close shave; he self-consciously made notes in a small pad – an activity that fascinated Virgil, who watched the fingers stab a ball point pen at the lined page. He wished he could take a look at the painfully produced handiwork.
The intent focus of another human being on the performance of a task will sometimes make it irresistible not to connect to the energies involved and receive a charge from them. They draw out the same kind of human force from the observer in a steady fascinated flow, but the older detective dragged Virgil’s gaze away with his own drawing power. This is what an electron feels like caught between two charges.
Still, the spectacle of a public servant forced to carry on the old arcane methods continued to divert some of his attention. Besides his own efforts, the act of putting pen to paper was not completely lost then, but wretchedly preserved, and it appropriately enough survived in the rendering of accounts. Molly, recently, when he had wished some detail or other clarified that he had come across in an historical novel, had brought up for him an image of the accomplished penmanship that recorded a sixteenth-century household’s everyday bills. Exact flourishes adorned the perfectly executed letters and words that embroidered the script’s unerringly straight and evenly spaced statements detailing the cost of a haberdasher’s workmanship.
The detective required him to establish the nature of his relationship with Humphrey Martinfield, apparently including its innocence. Once Virgil had accomplished this feat to his interrogator’s cloudy satisfaction, it became incumbent upon him to prove his utter helplessness in the way of fingering any particular enemies his friend might have. That Humphrey had been on a bicycle during his call to Virgil should clarify matters, shouldn’t it, as to how Virgil could hardly be anything other than ignorant of the facts or did he reason too subtly? He had no knowledge of a depth of animosity that some entity would culpably fit into this peaceful scenario. If the deplorable event hadn’t, in its execution, been an accident, could it have arisen out of the generalized antipathy that flourished in some quarters towards Humphrey’s work and therefore his person? Virgil was trying to be helpful but, as with the detective, he had more questions than answers. In truth, he entertained an utter vacuity on the subject of Humphrey’s specific enemies should he have any.
Perhaps he did spend too much time with Molly. Although he had no answers, he found himself like his humanoid looking to provide them.
His memory of the previous evening couldn’t be more fresh, but he knew he had nothing to offer. The apartment’s daylight seemed more relevant. It required a ten thousand year plus eight minute journey from the centre of the sun to arrive on the streets of New York City where it went a long way to repelling most dark forces. It deserved respect. Virgil’s mind continued its travels to what lay beneath his feet: the core of the earth and its tumultuous nuclear-hot depths similar to those of the solar orb. There was a burning whose light never erased the darkness of evening. If there is a stage for the crime, will the villains not come? Apparently not to him – he drew a blank.
“I can only speak generally and so there is really no point.”
“Let us be the judge of that, Mr. Woolf.”
“You mean his line of work?”
The eyes of the grizzled elder flickered once at the intrusive quickness of his junior partner whose hovering ballpoint looked to record the fruits of the question.
The primitive recording method continued to fascinate Virgil, but he pouted nonetheless over his response.
“There is always opposition to the new.”
He had intended to say more but, as is sometimes the case, a sweeping statement will cause one’s point of view to deflate. Besides, it was patently ridiculous to point at the moral outrage of the religious institutions whose reasoned bluster had always been just that. No, this was definitely a police matter and he couldn’t be expected to solve it.
“I can think of no one in particular.”
It is curious not to be master of one’s facial expressions, unlike Molly, say, or actors on the job. His tics and rearrangements could embarrass him, exposing aspects of his character that he wouldn’t have otherwise owned to and certainly not called upon. Their apparent independence of him – his inability to control them – was surprising and disconcerting. After all, wasn’t he disciplined? He shouldn’t be subject to these uncontrollable self-betrayals, these reflex exhibitions of murky inner workings
. Being true to himself wasn’t a syndrome – not Tourette’s – but it led to displays of quivering contorted flesh. How vulnerable and exposed was he now with his reflexive pout – the cause of all this present self-analysis! – before the detectives who would be unable to let anything of the sort escape their attention? In the end, it meant little, as the natural wave of their suspicion retreated – long-jaded they must be by the frailties of the innocent and the guilty alike. Nicely, his pout vanished and his sense of self-betrayal faded.
“What is your acquaintance with Mr. Martinfield?”
“We are…sort of friends, not acquaintances exactly, more than that. We can call on each other. It’s never been a matter of a vacation or a movie together. I’m trying to be exact – there isn’t a word for it. No, I guess we’re friends.”
Both detectives stared at him, the one wedded to his hovering ballpoint pen that had taken on an increased air of alertness.
“Yes, we’re friends.”
Perhaps his difficulty came because he felt closer to Molly. He would have to sort that out but, meanwhile, he urged his decision upon them and watched the pen duly record the information, although no advance of note had been made that he could tell and he felt his interrogators to be of the same mind.
What was this need of his for exactitude? He recoiled from an inaccurate rendering of his sense of things. A degree away from the unvarnished truth threatened to violate his consciousness, or was it his conscience? Ill-chosen diction that fouled a statement drained the words of substance. He was most fully alive and present when completely on top of things – obvious enough, he supposed, and yet all this thinking about a simple friendship! What else could it be? Molly would be more efficient. – “Here is what the data means.”
Still the question remained as to how he would evaluate his relationship with Humphrey. If friendly, were they friends? A great deal of sympathy flowed between them, but would they sacrifice for each other when, in the main, their dealings were congenial, leading the one to defer to the other, and no more? Even their most amicable get-togethers involved some hail-fellow-well-met business or other that had never ventured upon more intimate, confessional terrain.
THE BLADE RUNNER AMENDMENT Page 5