Manifestations

by David M Henley

  ‘But he —’

  ‘Knocked your files around, I know. Zach will be doing penance for that too. But you know the rules.’

  ‘Yes, Miz Patch,’ Bronwyn retreated. Zach smiled and bit into his toast, which all of a sudden seemed to have more flavour.

  They were quiet for a moment, Zach chewing, Bronwyn cutting and Miz Patch checking the loaves she had rising. The orphanage was quaintly naturalistic. Lily had lived on the outskirts of Andreas before taking on the orphanage and strongly believed in ‘real’ foods, things that she made herself.

  ‘What do you do in there all night anyway?’ Bronwyn asked him.

  ‘I’m scouting.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘It means I go on the Weave and look for problems,’ he answered and thanked Lily as she brought him some peppermint tea; home-grown and dried in the herbarium in the yard.

  ‘You know, Zach, Bronwyn has never immersed before. Perhaps you’d like to show her sometime?’ Lily said casually.

  ‘Never,’ he said.

  Lily tutted. ‘You owe me a penance, young man. And it would be good for Bronwyn to dive soon. You could show her the ropes.’

  ‘But I’m trying to get my badge. I don’t need her bratting me while I’m working.’

  ‘Zachary. Please remember our ways here. We help each other. Besides, Tom has already confirmed for me that there is a badge for introducing new people to the Weave.’

  ‘She’s too young.’

  ‘I’m only two years younger than you,’ Bronwyn said.

  ‘Then you’re two years too young,’ Zach replied.

  ‘You’d like to learn, wouldn’t you, Bronwyn?’ Lily asked, ignoring the pair of them.

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘You see, she doesn’t even want to.’

  ‘Zachary. Perhaps it was my mistake to have phrased this as a request, but I was only being polite. You don’t want me to tell Mister Lizney that you were too selfish to help one of the other children, do you?’ Lily asked sweetly, while sprinkling sugar on the warm loaves.

  ‘Fine. She can dive in with me, but she better not slow me down.’

  ‘Good, then. Tonight it is. Now you should get off to your classes. Bronwyn will clear your plates away.’

  ‘I’ll what?’

  ‘Bronwyn, every time you say that I have to come up with more chores for you to do. Speak in full sentences, please.’

  ‘Yes, Miz Patch.’

  ~ * ~

  Zach checked and saw that to earn a guide badge he only had to get a freshie to work up an avatar and take them on the Weave for thirty consecutive minutes. There were steps and guidelines he had to follow and she had to give him a positive report at the end of it. He would have to pretend to be nice to her.

  There was a knock at the door. He opened it and stood to one side. ‘Please come in.’

  Bronwyn was wearing a one-piece of flexy material and carrying her blankets. ‘I didn’t know what I should wear,’ she said.

  ‘It doesn’t matter. You will be lying down the whole time. Here, take a seat.’

  Bronwyn sat on the edge of the pallet that he’d put beside his.

  ‘Okay, now lie back,’ he said.

  ‘Don’t do anything to me.’

  ‘I’m not going to do anything, Bron. I’m trying to earn a badge. You just have to behave and try not to ruin it.’

  She poked her tongue out at him, but lay back.

  ‘Now, because it is your first time I have to strap you in. We don’t want you to roll off the couch and hurt yourself.’

  ‘I’m not letting you tie me up.’ Bronwyn snapped back to sitting position.

  ‘Don’t worry, it’s just webbing. Nothing you can’t get out of by yourself.’

  He got her to lie back down and he pulled two wings of webbing over her, clipping them on either side of the couch.

  ‘Are you comfortable?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Good, then. Now, in your right hand is a button. This is your emergency eject button. You can press it at any time and the program will demerse you instantly.’ She clicked the button in her hand. ‘It won’t do anything until you are actually in the Weave,’ he said patiently.

  ‘I was just testing.’

  ‘You can have it in your left hand if you prefer.’

  ‘Zach?’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Um, well. This is going to sound silly to you.’

  ‘There are no silly questions, only silly answers.’ He’d got that one from Mister Lizney.

  ‘What’s going to happen?’ she asked.

  ‘Next we put on the visor, or helmet, and run some checks. Then we dive in.’

  ‘No, I mean, what happens? What is immersion?’

  Zach looked at her. She looked confused and tense. ‘You don’t know?’

  ‘I know what I’ve heard about it. That I’ll be put on the Weave but I don’t know what that really means. I don’t know what immersing does.’

  Zach scratched his head. He’d never had to explain it before. He ran a scan in the background for an explanation he could use. ‘When you immerse, your natural senses are overridden and replaced with sensory information from the Weave.’

  ‘That sounds awful.’

  ‘It’s not ... it’s, it’s magical.’ She didn’t seem comforted. ‘Look, on the Weave you can do anything. And be anything. If you want to be a bird and fly over the city, we can do that. If you want to visit the wonders of the world, then we can do that.’

  ‘But I won’t really be there?’

  ‘It will feel like you are. The Weave has many levels to it, and a representation of the real world is only one of them. Then there are all the fictional places. We call them fabula, the made-up things, and that level is nearly infinite. And if you can’t find what you want, you can build it. Tell me one thing you’ve always wanted to do, but can’t.’

  Bronwyn bit her lip. ‘You won’t laugh?’

  ‘No promises. But I won’t tell.’

  ‘I want to dance in a palace.’

  ‘Done.’

  ‘Like in that show with the three princesses.’

  ‘I bet you we can find the exact castle.’

  ‘And I want a fabulous dress with lots of layers and ribbons.’ ‘Easy.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘I think I’ve found just the place.’ He smiled at her. ‘But first you actually have to dive in. Which means relaxing into the couch, getting comfortable and putting the helmet on.’ He held it up for her to look at.

  It was old and made of soft fabric straps with ferric bands sewn inside — they were what did the work of marrying the brain with foreign stimuli. And then there was a pair of goggles and earmuffs that blocked out external light and sound.

  ‘It’s ugly.’

  ‘It’s all I could get on short notice. It’s this or nothing, Bron.’

  ‘Okay, but don’t take any pictures of me in that thing.’

  ‘Of course not. Here, let me help you.’

  Zach gently adjusted the straps, reminding her that once the muffs were on she wouldn’t be able to hear anything until she was immersed. He was about to flip the goggles into place when she stopped him.

  ‘Why are you being nice to me?’ she asked.

  Zach shrugged. ‘Lily said I had to, so there’s no point making this worse than it has to be. Let’s have fun.’

  ‘Well, I like nice-Zach.’ She giggled and kicked her feet about. ‘Let’s go dancing.’ She was so keen and excited about her first dive Zach nearly felt bad for putting adhesive over the inside of the goggles.

  With Bron safely in the ganzfeld he pulled out his own helmet, which was not a hand-me-down. He had worked hard for the slick foldaways, which were simple unbridged mirror spectacles that hung down from the forehead lattice. He was advanced enough now not to need a full ganzfeld to immerse.

  ‘Okay, Bron. Can you hear m
e?’ He looked over at her but she didn’t move. ‘Just nod or something.’ She still didn’t move. That meant she must be in.

  Zach quickly lay on his own couch and dove in to find her stream, waiting in the blank space where she couldn’t escape until he said so.

  He saw her standing on an empty grey that stretched to a darker grey. There was no space here, only a sense of space.

  ‘Who are you?’ she asked. He was dressed as Musashi.

  ‘This is my avatar, Bron.’

  ‘Your what?’

  ‘My visual representation on the Weave.’

  ‘You look like some kind of samurai.’ She started laughing. ‘Is that how you see yourself?’ Her laugh rolled into a cackle and she bent over double.

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with it!’ he shouted at her. ‘You just look like your normal boring self, but in here I can be whoever I want. In here I am Musashi and if you don’t like it —’

  ‘Musashi? Is that your boffy name?’ she snorted.

  ‘Fine, I’ll leave you here.’ He turned to go and began fading from her vision, which was just a trick of making his avatar transparent.

  ‘No, I’m sorry. I’m sorry,’ she said hurriedly.

  ‘No, you’re not. You’re just a silly girl and you don’t understand anything.’

  ‘Zach, wait. Don’t leave me here. I don’t know what to do.’ Her amusement turned to panic as he disappeared.

  ‘Press the eject button. I don’t care.’ He made his voice thin and echoey.

  ‘Please, Zach. I’m sorry. I won’t laugh any more.’ He stayed silent. ‘I’ll call you Musashi.’

  He appeared behind her and made her jump when he spoke.

  ‘On the Weave people represent the selves they want to be. You have to respect that.’

  ‘I will. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.’

  ‘You didn’t. You’re just a silly girl.’

  ‘Zach, please — Musashi. I’m sorry. I’ll be good.’

  He looked at her and said it was okay.

  ‘I didn’t mean to laugh.’ She began looking around at the endless grey. ‘Where are we?’ Bron asked. ‘Is this it? Is this the Weave?’

  ‘This is the load space, or dressing room. Here we get you ready for going in. You can’t go on the visual Weave until we’ve sorted your avatar out.’

  ‘What should I wear?’

  ‘Didn’t you want to become a princess?’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Think of something. Form the words in your mind and then picture what you want them to look like.’

  ‘Nothing is happening.’

  ‘This is hard the first time, but once you’ve got it you’ve got it.’ He made a rack of dresses appear next to her, as well as a tall mirror. ‘Look in the mirror. Then look at one of the dresses.’

  ‘Oh!’ Her mirror image was wearing a long green dress with sparkly bits. She looked down and saw that she really was wearing it.

  ‘It’s that easy. The helmet can connect to what you think. You just have to be able to link those thoughts to how you look. In your mind.’

  He explained to her about the load space they were in, while she went through dress after dress, intoxicated with awe. ‘Here you can preview changes to your avatar and search for new things and information. When we go into the visual space you can also add things as you go along. And you can always pull back to the dressing room if you want to change up.’

  ‘Can I be older?’

  ‘As you wish. What age do you want to be?’

  ‘Eighteen.’

  He saw her body grow tall and form curves. Inside the sateen gown she had chosen she was beautiful. He couldn’t take his eyes off her.

  ‘Okay, I’m ready. Let’s go to the Weave.’

  ‘Bron, you’ve been on the Weave this whole time.’

  ‘I have?’

  ‘Yes. You are connected to the data network. That’s all the Weave is.’ The Weave was everything it drew information from. All connection was part of the Weave.

  ‘Oh, sure, but I meant the real Weave. Let’s go to the palace.’

  Zach found the castle she was after, the one from the show that was so popular with girls her age.

  He bowed before her and held out his arm. ‘May I have this dance?’

  Princess Bronwyn laid her gloved fingers on his arm and nodded.

  He loaded some dance steps into his stream and pulled her into the first position as they crossed to the location and the walls and floor faded into their vision. It was a fantasy castle, nothing that could ever have been built in the real world, on top of an impossibly thin mountain spire with stars bright and the moon gentle. In the ballroom, which was the only room constructed in the program, a standing orchestra played while couples in masquerade twirled on the polished marble floor.

  Bronwyn gasped and nearly stumbled as she twisted around to view it all at once.

  ‘Oh, I can feel the floor.’ She tapped her foot harder on the floor. ‘And when we spin, I can feel the wind in my hair. It’s so lovely. Is it real?’

  ‘Does it need to be?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know and I don’t care. What about these people? Are they real?’

  ‘Some of them,’ he said. Most were just programs dancing to fill the space, but there was no need to tell Bron that. ‘This is how most people join the Weave, so they can just act like normal without having to think.’ He explained how there were parallel representations of everything in the real world, how even now they could go to the study room in the home and be able to see themselves lying in the couches.

  ‘Everyone who is connected, or is in the WU, is part of the Weave. Their data is always being added to their stream.’

  ‘So we’re in two places at once?’

  He laughed. He remembered thinking that. ‘No. We are only where our bodies are, but our streams represent us. How we act in the physical world, what we are looking at on the Weave and what our avatars are doing.’

  ‘That is so odd,’ she said.

  ‘You get used to it. Everything has to be represented, to keep the data pure.’

  ‘But this castle isn’t real. It’s made up.’

  ‘That’s true. This is the fabula.’

  ‘Fabula?’

  ‘The fictional worlds that have been created. The fantasy places that don’t, or can’t, exist anywhere but here. Here you can just act and you don’t need to know anything about how the Weave works. In real life, would I be able to do this?’ Zach jumped into the air, spinning higher and higher until he was touching the ceiling, and then he dove suddenly down and landed comfortably on the balls of his feet. ‘This is better than the real world.’

  His avatar turned and pivoted, automatically. The older Bronwyn was laughing and clutching his shoulder.

  ‘Where did you learn to dance like this?’

  ‘I told you, Bron, here we can be whatever we want to be and do whatever we want to do.’

  They spun and turned and became dizzy in each other’s arms.

  As the half-hour mark passed, Zach received an automated message that he could end the session and receive his merit badge, but he let the dance continue. He still had to make his scouting quota though, so he left his avatar dancing while his stream flicked to code mode to check the background data of the palace.

  He found fifteen live streams, actual people, who had come to experience the ballroom scene of ‘Amazing Princess’. Two were from the Dome, five from Seaboard, one from Lima and seven who were accessing from outside the WU. These he found interesting. Non-Citizens didn’t have permanent access like real Citizens, and yet they had chosen to come to this girlish fantasy realm. The Weave was made by all kinds, Zach reflected.

  There was something odd in the room though. In the code level he could see a slow drift of data, tiny amounts from each stream, flowing towards an empty corner of the room. In visual mode there was nothing there, but something
was connecting to the visitors ... nothing of importance but information nonetheless.

  He watched it draw out details of where he lived and his life and then he sent a ping along with it, asking who it was. Zach didn’t even know why he did it. He shouldn’t have. He should have flagged it as a curiosity and left it for the trained scouts to look into.