The Parodies Collection

by Adam Roberts

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Sleep tight,’ Tonkatoi grinned, pronouncing this last word to rhyme with his unique ‘all right’. ‘Hope the bugs don’t bite,’ he continued, in the same articulatory idiom.

  ‘Bugs?’

  ‘Electronic fleas,’ Tonkatoi explained dismissively. ‘Released by the EMIs to make life uncomfortable for us wide-awakers. They will bite you, a bit, but being machines they got no actual use for your blood, so they won’t really drain you.’

  ‘That’s a consolation.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it. See you in the morning.’

  :%)%

  Spending time in physical proximity to Thinity made Nemo realise how deeply in love with her he was becoming. It was impossible, he knew: but love is a thing that feeds on impossibility. Positively eats impossibility for breakfast. Snacks on it all through the day.

  On his second day aboard the Jeroboam he followed Thinity after breakfast, and hung about her forlornly as she serviced, tinkered with or otherwise mucked about with one of the machines on board.

  ‘I was wondering, Thinity,’ he said, as she busied herself at a control panel. ‘I was just wondering. I was just.’ He started to giggle nervously, but stopped himself almost as soon as he had begun, so that only a single gigg slipped out. ‘Ha! Wondering.’

  ‘Yes?’ She was not looking at him.

  ‘Well. Just to make conversation, you know? Just for something to talk about, and with no ulterior motive. Just for conversational purposes, I was wondering: what is it, would you say, that you look for in a man?’

  ‘Look for?’ she replied absently.

  ‘Yes. Yes. You know, sense of humour? Nice legs? That kind of thing.’

  Thinity shrugged. ‘I don’t know. A man who can take care of himself, I guess. A man with rugged good looks, strong arms, six pack.’

  ‘Right,’ said Nemo. ‘Excellent. Six of them, yes.’

  ‘A ruthless quality.’ She pulled three levers and opened a separate panel on the machine. ‘Ruthless but caring. Sensitive,’ she added. ‘Tender. With a brutal edge. Masterful. But ready to be ruled by me. I don’t want a bully, I don’t want someone who’s arrogant or overbearing. Somebody who’ll always do what I say. Except when I don’t really mean what I say. Someone who can tell the difference between me saying something but not meaning it, and saying something but meaning it. Tall. No split ends. Well endowed. Well travelled. Cosmopolitan.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Nemo, mentally noting all this down. ‘Right. Cosmopolitan. Yes.’

  He was silent for a while. Then, as if starting a wholly different conversation, he said, with a hopeful inflection in his voice: ‘My father was from Weston-Super-Mare, you know.’

  ‘England,’ she said derisively. ‘Only in England would you have a town with the word “super” in it. The most English word in the English language. Would you,’ she simpered, replacing her transatlantic drawl with an exaggeratedly aristocratic English accent, ‘like some tea, oh that would be soooper.’ She shook her head. ‘Like,’ she said, in her usual voice, ‘is that supposed to be a tourist draw or something? Come visit our town, it’s super? And “Staines” – what kind of a name is that for a town? “Slough”? That’s like something out of John Bunyan,’ She snorted in disgust.

  ‘And where,’ Gordon asked, gabbling a little in his eagerness to ingratiate himself with her, ‘are you from?’

  ‘Little town called Swinehog’s Pantihose,’ she said, ‘Missouri.’

  ‘Lovely,’ he said earnestly. ‘Anyway, I was meaning to ask you . . .’

  ‘This is done,’ she announced. ‘I’ve rigged the input so we can re-access it from the phase-radiator.’

  ‘Splendid,’ said Nemo. ‘Well done. Anyway, as I was saying—’

  But Thinity had got to her feet and left the compartment.

  Chapter 7

  Virtual Training

  The following morning Nemo was awakened not by Smurpheus, but by the bald-headed young man with the New Jersey accent.

  ‘Hi,’ said this individual. ‘My name is Judas.’

  ‘Ooh,’ said Nemo, impressed. ‘Great name.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘How do you get such a cool name?’ Nemo asked. ‘I seem to have been landed with this Nemo name, which kind of makes me think fish. You know? Can I change? Who do I have to talk to, to, you know, deed-poll it to something else?’

  Judas looked a little puzzled. ‘Hey, I’m not sure it works that way.’

  ‘What was your name before?’ Nemo asked. ‘When you were trapped and living in the McAtrix?’ But Judas shook his head.

  ‘We don’t tend to talk about dat,’ he said. ‘We make a new start here. Though I gotta tell you, it’s hard making the change. You’re gonna find it harder than most. I found it hard, even though my lifestyle in the – you know – even though it wasn’t that different from being a real-world warrior.’

  ‘What did you do?’ asked Nemo.

  ‘I was a New Jersey mobster, a captain in the cosa nostra, murder, drug-running, settin’ fire to racehorses. Dat sort of thing.’

  ‘Really,’ said Nemo, blinking. ‘I was a database coordinator for a small company in south London.’

  Judas smiled. It was an extraordinarily arresting and sinister smile. As his lips widened, lines crept up his face as if planning to ambush his eyes. His teeth were like the Ten Commandments, which is to say slab-like, mostly broken, and very, very old. Like that joke, in fact. ‘All I know,’ he said, ‘is that if Smurpheus is right about you then these are exciting times. Exciting and extraordinary times.’

  Nemo simpered. ‘Get away,’ he said.

  ‘The first thing we got to do,’ said Judas, ‘is train you. Now, that we will do by uploading some software into your brain. It’ll short-cut the training. Give you instantaneous skills.’

  ‘Spiffing,’ said Nemo.

  Judas pointed Nemo in the direction of one of the barber’s chairs. ‘Here you go. You sit in this, get yourself comfortable. We’ll insert the, eh, jack-plug into your – your portal.’

  ‘Ah, the chair. That’s how you guys gain access to the McAtrix, isn’t it?’ said Nemo.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Judas laconically. ‘Or the “oo!trix”, as I sometimes call it.’

  ‘The “oo!trix”?’ said Nemo. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘You will,’ he said darkly, ‘when you see where we insert the jack-plug.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Nemo. He thought about this for a moment. ‘And,’ he asked, eventually, ‘where’s that, exactly?’

  ‘The actual connections are internalised.’

  ‘And the actual portal,’ Nemo insisted, looking uncomfortably at the long stalactite-shaped prong in Judas’s hand, ‘would be located . . . ?’

  ‘Let’s just say,’ said Judas, ‘that it’s a fundamental part of the McAtrix experience.’ He smiled. If a flick-knife could smile, it would smile something like Judas.

  ‘Are you,’ Nemo asked, ‘quite sure about this?’

  ‘Where else?’ grumped Judas. ‘Up your nose?’ He snorted with laughter at the very idea. ‘Hey, don’t worry. It’s not too bad when you get used to it.’

  ‘Nevertheless . . .’ said Nemo.

  ‘You got to understand what’s going on here,’ said Judas, swapping the prong from hand to hand like a knife-fighter prior to a rumble. ‘I’m not uploading some facts and figures here, boy. This isn’t about higher brain function – it’s the limbic system, it’s gotta be instinctual. Capisce? The software goes into the hindbrain – that way it feels like second nature, that way it comes natural as breathing. And the hindbrain is really part of the spinal cord, a body of tissue extrusive to the cordata at the top. We find the upload goes best if we pass the data all the way up the spinal cord, so that the nerve tissue can retain the programmed material at the most basic level. All the way to the top,’ he said with relish, ‘from the bottom.’

  ‘But are you really really sure?’ Nemo pressed. ‘I mean, I don’t want
to be awkward, but . . .’

  ‘It’s how the McAtrix works,’ Judas assured him. ‘That’s just the way it is. OK? That’s where the connections that link into your nervous system, and your brain, are located – in that place. It’s a damn good arrangement, in fact.’

  ‘A good arrangement?’ Gordon (I mean Nemo) queried.

  ‘Efficient. The McAtrix not only uses the one probe to connect its subjects into the virtual reality, it also uses the same probe to squirt nutrient and fluid directly into the intestines, where it can be digested, and also to suck out the waste afterwards. No need for feeding via the mouth at all. One-stop shop.’

  ‘It doesn’t sound very hygienic,’ said Gordonemo, uh, just Nemo.

  ‘Hygienic,’ said Judas. ‘Hyschmenic.’

  Nemo had not previously come across this last word; but he didn’t think that now was exactly the right moment to press Judas for an exact definition.

  :- ·

  The probe went in. The whites of Nemo’s eyes became momentarily visible all the way round his pupils before he squeezed his eyelids tightly shut. For long seconds he twitched in the chair as billions of itty-bitty bytes of data were poured along the nerve pathways of his spine up into his hindbrain. Decades of practice and experience were power-jolted directly into the cells of Nemo’s nervous system, until his every last movement became instinctual, his command over his limbs absolute. Judas leaned over Nemo’s supine form, checked a screen filled with skittering graphs and bars. He looked again.

  The upload stopped. Nemo’s body stopped twitching. He opened his eyes and looked straight at Judas.

  ‘You OK, kid?’ Judas asked.

  When Nemo spoke his voice expressed surprise and even awe. ‘I know Come Dancing,’ he said, blinking.

  Judas smiled. ‘Ready for more?’ he said, holding up a second cassette.

  ‘Wait,’ Nemo said, as if struggling with a difficult concept. ‘Wait – Come Dancing? You’ve Joe-Ninety’d me with Come Dancing?’

  ‘Of course.’

  Nemo’s feet were moving despite himself, tracing out complex patterns on the footrest as if under their own volition, step shuffle-shuffle step tap twirl. ‘Why? Why Come Dancing?’

  Judas made a tut-tut sound by tapping the shoulder of his tongue against the roof of his mouth. ‘You’re not too smart, are you, feller? We can’t pump Kung Fu into you, just like dat.’ He clicked his fingers. ‘Man, you’d trip over your own ankles trying to land a punch. Before you can fight like that you need to be able to move your body with grace and precision; you need, in fact, bright-boy, to be able to dance. So we lay down some dance software, and when, and only when, we’re sure that’s in place, then we layer some punchee-punchee kickee-kickee on top.’ He grinned his checkerboard-toothed grin. ‘You got Saturday Night Fever, Morris, Fred Astaire Stylee and Moshpit to come yet. But first’ – he held up the cassette again – ‘synchronised swimming.’

  ‘ –’ronised swimming,’ repeated Nemo, nodding, only a syllable behind Judas. ‘Because?’

  ‘Oh you’d be surprised how often we gotta fight gents in waterlogged environments,’ said Judas, slotting the cassette into the machine.

  /^o

  For ten hours straight Nemo learnt, subliminally, the arts of dance. The data buzzed up and down his spine. He lay in the barber’s chair, eyes closed, twitching, electronically ingesting advanced-level tap. Thinity stepped into the cabin. ‘How’s he doing?’ she asked, looking down at Nemo’s supine body with what could even have been tenderness.

  ‘Ten hours straight,’ said Judas. ‘He’s like a machine.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Thinity. ‘Is that good?’

  ‘No, no,’ said Judas crossly. ‘I mean that even after all that time he dances like a machine. He tap dances like Robbie the Robot. His hip-hop looks like a washer-drier shaking itself to pieces on fast spin. He does not,’ he concluded emphatically, ‘got rhythm.’

  ‘He’s English,’ said Thinity, speaking as if that short phrase necessarily included and summarised everything Judas had said.

  Smurpheus came in. In fact he had come in at the same time as Thinity, but it took him the length of the above-recorded conversation to get his crew members to notice him. ‘Guys! Guys! Down here!’ he called, for the third time.

  Thinity and Judas looked down. ‘Oh,’ said Judas. ‘Hi there, skipper.’

  Smurpheus was already cross. ‘What you mean?’ he snapped. ‘High? What’s that supposed to mean – high? Being personal, is it? High?’

  ‘Supposed to mean,’ said Judas, looking awkwardly at Thinity. ‘Just – er, hello.’

  Smurpheus digested this. ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Hi in that sense. You should have said. But why don’t you pay me any attention? By the way, I am your captain.’

  ‘Sure thing, skipper,’ said Thinity.

  ‘Short thing?’ snapped Smurpheus. ‘I won’t stand for insubordination.’

  ‘Um,’ said Thinity. ‘The acoustics in here aren’t – aren’t – you know.’

  There was a silence.

  ‘Unplug Nemo from the thing,’ said Smurpheus. ‘We need to disengage him from the training system and take him into the real McAtrix, right away. Right away!’

  <:-/

  They pulled the jack from Nemo and helped him walk around. He could barely prevent his feet from tapping as he went. They gave him a sugar-based orange energy drink that definitely (he said) wasn’t Lucozade, oh no, and sat him down, which lowered his head to the level of the standing Smurpheus.

  ‘Nemo,’ said Smurpheus intently, ‘Judas has been training you up. Do you feel yourself to be ready?’

  ‘I’m ready,’ said Nemo boldly. ‘As long as there’s moonlight and music and you.’

  ‘Very well. We are going into the McAtrix. It is dangerous, because there are gents everywhere, but we have a window of opportunity and cannot wait.’

  ‘We can’t?’

  ‘We have to see the Orifice now,’ declared Smurpheus, looking intently at Nemo.

  ‘You do?’ he replied. ‘Oh. OK, if you must you must. Will it be just you, er, looking? Or is everybody going to?’ He coughed, embarrassedly. ‘I mean, Judas told me that . . .’

  ‘What?’ snapped Smurpheus, ‘Are You Talking About?’ Nemo could hear the capitalisation of the words in Smurpheus’s tone. It wasn’t a friendly capitalisation.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Nemo with miserable eagerness. ‘I – don’t know what I’m talking about. I just don’t know.’

  ‘Judas,’ said Smurpheus, looking up at his deputy. ‘I need to know if he’s ready to go into the McAtrix. The Orifice is open for business, but she’ll close soon and we need to take advantage now.’

  ‘When you gotta go,’ said Judas, ‘you gotta go.’

  ‘Is there more to upload?’

  ‘Yep,’ said Judas.

  ‘Well, we’ll have to finish the upload later. We can’t wait hours, or we’ll miss our chance to see the Orifice.’

  ‘The Orifice?’ asked Nemo. ‘What is that, exactly?’

  ‘She,’ said Thinity, admiring her own reflection in the polished steel of the Jeroboam’s walls and speaking over her shoulder. ‘She is a guide, a sort of prophet. She is the opening, if you will.’

  ‘She links,’ said Smurpheus, ‘our world with the world of the machine intelligences. She is our hope in these dark days.’

  ‘Illumination,’ said Thinity, ‘shines from her.’

  ‘And now,’ said Smurpheus, ‘we must take you to meet her.’

  Chapter 8

  The Orifice

  They all settled themselves in the barber’s chairs and Nemo once again suffered the indignity of the probe insertion. This time, however, he found himself projected not into the wooden chamber of the training programmes, but into a spacious apartment. There was a sort of internal whooshing noise as he relocated to this virtual environment, and, very distant, as if underlying the white noise, he heard once again the strange musical chanting. It sounded, eerily, as i
f a dozen young children were singing very far away, their words only just reaching Nemo’s ears by some acoustic freak. He heard: A Pizza Hut, a Pizza Hut, Kentucky Fried Chicken and a Pizza Hut.

  And then he was

  [a Pizza Hut, a Pizza Hut]

  in the McAtrix, wearing not the tattered rags but some smart designer gear. McDonalds! came the sound of the distant singing, pure as a wet finger run around the rim of a wine glass. Mc—

  ‘—Nemo?’ asked Thinity. Her voice banished the weird, distant singing. Suddenly he felt real. He took a deep breath.

  ‘I’m fine,’ he said. ‘That’s a strange – dislocation.’

  She nodded. ‘You get used to it.’

  ‘Hey, I’m not complaining. It’s quite nice, actually.’ He rubbed his eyes with his knuckles. ‘It feels, oddly, like coming home.’

  Thinity was in her plastic outfit, glistening and figure-grasping. She had her hand on his shoulder and was looking into his face. She was, once more, wearing the same bizarrely ornate Edna Everage sunglasses Nemo had seen once before. As before, she took them off and dropped them to the floor. Smurpheus was his virtual self, no longer diminutive but tall, powerfully built, massively virile. ‘Let’s go,’ he announced.

  When Nemo stood he realised that he was no longer wearing his tatty real-world clothes. Instead he sported black chinos, a smart black rollneck, and a long coat made out of black suede. ‘Nice,’ he thought. ‘Free coat.’

  }:-(

  They strode through the streets of London, past the usual crowds of pedestrians, through the usual traffic-occluded streets. The sky above was pencil grey.

  As he walked, Nemo felt a strange elation bubbling inside him. Despite the fact that his long coat kept tangling up his legs, and making a peculiar thwap-thwap noise as he walked, he felt that he looked cool. He knew how to dance – he could feel it in his very bones. As he walked alongside Thinity and Smurpheus he could barely contain himself; he skipped and backstepped, swirled about and showed happy hands. He tapped. He had happy feet. His feet were ecstatic. The only problem he had was that his long coat tended to obscure the twinkling agility of his happy feet.