by Jim Stark
Lilly felt overwhelmed. She wanted to punch the air and shout “Yesssssss!” but she figured she was still being observed by Control—even with the Net down and the screen black. This was her shot, her chance to play in the “bigs,” and the only way to walk onto a major-league ball diamond for the first time was cool, composed, cocky. In her private thoughts, however, one aspect of all this still troubled her. It ... just doesn't figure that they'd pick me.
She retrieved her shoes and checked her appearance in the mirror by the front door. It was time for supper, time to get looked over and gawked at by the Evolutionary masses—a daunting prospect. Just before she closed the door, she threw a confident thumbs-up at the still-dark screen. “Thanks again,” she mouthed silently.
Chapter 8
PENALTY POINT
Tuesday, February 8, 2033—5:15 p.m.
Eyeball found it odd that he would be dressed in what appeared to be full football gear—helmet, shoulder pads, rib pads, kidney pads, jockstrap, and thigh pads. And he had two hockey-type shin pads on each calf, the front one with the rounded knee-cap protector on, and the one on the back of his legs with the knee-part hacked off. The two shin pads on each leg were bound together with silver duct tape.
He also had on what appeared to be short ski boots, though they were made of rusted steel. It was a mystery how one got those things on, until he looked down to check it out. Each boot was in two parts, hinged at the back and clamped together at the front with an old-fashioned padlock ... with the key still in it! He wore tubular pads on his biceps and forearms, something he never saw on other football players. And he wore hockey gloves made of leather, although they seemed to be covered with some sort of chain mail. In his right hand he held a wooden baseball bat, and in his left, the reins.
Reins? he wondered. Well yes! He was, after all, sitting on his very favorite horse ... whose name somehow escaped him, right at the moment. It was understandable that he might forget, what with all the hubbub and the dust. There were hundreds of other men, in similar regalia, all riding slowly up to an uneven starting line, drawn with lime on the sparse grass of the playing field. These other players were grunting and slobbering inside their helmets, like enraged pigs.
Eyeball couldn't help but notice that all these snorting men were wearing different team sweaters. By the looks of things, this competition was every man for himself. “Sure, I would certainly kill Adolf Hitler in 1938 if I knew in advance where he was going with his fuckin’ Nazi movement,” he insisted loudly.
"Who the fuck asked?” growled a new arrival on a gigantic, scarred-up, gray nag.
No one had asked, Eyeball realized, although someone probably should have. Oh ... yeah, he remembered. Someone had asked, but that was in first year philosophy ... how many decades ago was that? He had not answered the professor then. Better late than never. After further thought, he worried about the slippery slope problem, and whether he might kill Osama bin Laden, or George W. Bush, or both ... or any number of other bad guys, or arguably bad guys ... or half the human population ... the bad half.
He looked out across the bumpy field, and it seemed to go on forever. It was covered in August-high hay. Here and there, he saw barriers that were to be jumped—if you could fend off the other baseball bats and get a good run at the things. And there were scantily clad women beside each obstacle, on stilts, for better viewing. He looked closer, and saw that they weren't clad at all! They were totally naked and completely shaved ... head, pits and crotch. And they had these tiny striped bikinis painted on, black-and-white stripes, so all the players would understand that they were referees. And they all had little hand-held computers to record points, infractions ... and casualties, of course.
Eyeball knew the rules, somehow. All infractions stopped counting against you if the victim of your foul ended up dead, disabled or un-horsed. There were a series of rough-hewn wooden penalty boxes with tiny barred windows placed at strategic locations, but it seemed he couldn't remember the last time anyone had been incarcerated in one of those things ... or much else! he said to himself—his memory was failing in recent centuries. A point was scored by killing a competitor or otherwise knocking him out of the contest—or her, Eyeball supposed—everybody knew that—and of course you needed three points to qualify to take a run at the next jump.
It was considered bad form to peek at the finish line before the whistle blew. That, of course, was common knowledge too, but Eyeball just couldn't resist. He yanked his head around to the right, and gasped.
The last jump consisted of a row of eight nude women, painted a pale blue from head to foot, and all holding flaming torches in the air. If he got that far, he'd have to spur his trusty steed (what's his name anyway?) to a PB, a “personal best,” just to get over them. Above the torches, about fifteen feet off the ground, there was a “skyhook,” screwed into nothing but air, and from this skyhook was suspended a short length of string, and tied to the end of the string was a hard green candy, the kind with a yummy soft center of crème de menthe, wrapped in clear cellophane. That's ... it? he mused. That's ... what all this killing and maiming is for?
The ten blue women had their backs to the field, and when Eyeball moved his focus beyond the row of blue butts, he saw ... well, nothing at all! These women were standing on the edge of a cliff, it seemed ... no, that's the edge of the world! he realized. Even if I get the candy, I'd have to unwrap the thing and stuff it in my mouth as I fell, and I would probably hit bottom—if there is one—by the time I bit through and got to taste the crème de menthe! Bad planning, he felt.
"What about General Brampton?” asked the heavily bearded rider to his left.
Eyeball whipped his head back to see who had dared ask him such a curious question. The guy wasn't just old, he was downright ancient. “What about him?” Eyeball snorted.
"Would you have killed him twenty years ago if you knew he'd take all of humanity into an apparently permanent state of martial law?"
All the riders within earshot laughed, and Eyeball felt his face redden. The man who had taunted him unkindly had a white sweatshirt tugged over his bulky battle equipment. The number on the shoulders was 2033, and the slogan on the front read: “It's never too late for a happy childhood."
A naked referee scampered up beside the rude man, punching penalty points into her computer. Her face was all pinched in horror at the offense, but nobody noticed that. “No taunting,” she scolded, but the rude man kept on laughing, as if he knew he would soon dispatch those penalty points into oblivion, along with the object of his cruel derision.
"Yeah, I'd kill him!” blurted Eyeball, which caused another eruption of laughter, and earned him a penalty point of his own—in addition to the one he'd likely got for peeking at the finish line. Now he would have to murder this geriatric Neanderthal before he'd qualify to even try the first jump.
"What about Michael Whiteside, for making the LieDeck?” someone else shouted at him. “Would you kill him?"
"What about that fucking snitch Gil Henderson?” came another voice.
"What about Lester Connolly, for trying to unban the LieDeck?"
"What about Victor Helliwell, for inventing the thing?"
Eyeball awoke in a feverish sweat, rolled over and moaned audibly.
Chapter 9
PREGGERS
Tuesday, February 8, 2033—5:25 p.m.
For the millionth time in her twenty-eight years on Earth, Julia Whiteside found herself wondering why things were complicated and frustrating for her when they were so easy for everybody else. So what? she said for the millionth time as she checked her profile in the floor-length mirror. Their eyes always point at me, and they smile and say my body is beautiful. She threw her head back and watched her long blond hair flutter in the wash of her prized dresser-top fan.
She had her red bikini panties on because she had decided to wear the “whispery white sleeveless dress” again, the one that the guys could pretty well see right through ... and the girls
too, she thought. As she slipped it on over her head, she remembered those oh so generous summer days when the sun was in its blue glory, and there were brilliant windows in the restaurant to walk by, twirl by, perform in front of. “It's too bad it's so dark outside,” Julia said out loud. The sun went to bed early in Québec ... in February, anyway.
I love serving tables, she thought as she faced the mirror straight on, bent over and looked up, holding her hair to one side. The front of her whispery white dress fell just enough for any interested party to get a good look. “They really love it when I do that,” she said, snickering, and jiggling her shoulders, watching her nipples swing back and forth. “Maybe a nice boy will want to sleep with me tonight, and make me laugh and hoot."
There was a “bing” from her MIU. “Net, up, now,” she instructed.
"Sweet Julia,” came a male voice from the large Netscreen set into the south wall of her room. “It's your big brother here. Can we talk?"
"Mikey!” she squealed. “I miss you.” She was happy to see that he was at “home,” at the manor house north of Quyon, using the MIU in their father's old den. That was one of my favorite spots when I was a kid, she thought, but of course there was no MIU in those days.
Michael couldn't see his little sister because she wasn't on his screen, and she wasn't on his screen because she'd had her MIU programmed that way ... based on experience. “Can we go visual ... like ... both ways?” he asked gently. “Please."
"I really do want to,” Julia said sadly, “but my friends said I didn't have to, Mikey. Please don't make me, okay? If I let you see me, I get ... you know ... I get all mixed up and shy ... and scared."
A long period of silence followed. Michael could only wonder what was happening at the other end at times like these.
Julia raised her straight, bare arms at the mirror, and made her fingers stretch and reach as far up as possible. The hair in her underarms was as blonde as the hair on her head, but very fine and thin, almost invisible. As she postured, she was thinking all the things she would rather be saying out loud to Mikey, if only she could. I got this one boy, Donny, he's sixteen, and he always wants to lick me there, under my arms, and suck there. I like that a lot, better than almost everything else I let the boys do. And if it's the summertime I sometimes let a boy do it outside, even on the deck of the pool, or if we dance. Sometimes I even ask a boy to do it. “Oh, that feels so nice,” she said absently.
Michael rubbed his eyes when he heard this. He hated waiting for Julia's mind to refocus, waiting for her to speak sensibly. “I ... won't judge you,” he said, pleadingly, at his blank screen.
He means it, thought Julia, glancing at the handsome, earnest face of her wonderful brother on the screen. He always says that, and my friends told me he probably always means it too, at the time, but he can't not do it. It's too bad. I'd like my big brother to be able to see me.
"Is Venice at the house?” she asked as she sat on her bed and put on her favorite powder-blue slippers. “Can I talk to her? Is it okay for her like to come and visit again over here, like she did last summer? We had so fun, eh? We used to..."
Michael had heard all this before, so he tuned himself out. He wished he could have just one linear conversation with his sister.
Julia had inherited twelve percent of the family fortune when their father was killed, an enormous sum. Her shares in Whiteside Technologies were not for sale, and likely never would be, but that still left a boatload of cash. Her trustee, Mr. Wu, had protected her money from everyone ... including Michael. It was very conservatively invested, as her father would have wanted. As well, Randall Whiteside's will had been specific about Julia's life: she could live wherever and however she chose, as long as she was happy and healthy. She was decidedly both of these, and her tiny monthly allowance was all that she ever asked for—that and the quarterly reports on what the rest of her money was doing.
Not that she can read them, Michael thought. He didn't want to control her money, and he didn't even need to ask for her proxy votes to control Whiteside Technologies. He just didn't approve of Evolution. His problem was not with its economics, but with its blatant permissiveness, its ... promiscuity, was the word he always he settled on. She's retarded, he thought, as he did every time he dwelt on his sister's situation. She should be living with her family.
"She wants to, you know,” said Julia as she gave herself a final full once-over in the mirror. “Pretty soon Venice will be old enough to be like free, and then you can't judge her. Then she can come over here and visit me, and take off her clothes if she wants, and do some nice tingly things with the boys and girls and—"
Michael leaned back and rolled his eyes as his sister prattled on about her body, and then about bodies in general, and the joys of sex. Venice just turned twelve, for Christ's sake, he scolded his sister in his mind. It ... isn't right for you to push your Evolutionary attitudes on one so young because ... because...
A god would have come in handy at this point, or a law, but Michael knew he had no basis for complaint, no irrefutable authority to cite, no statistics proving that a creative or diverse sex life led to anything more unpleasant than a large collection of memories and tomorrows full of surprises. If things were like that when I was a kid, I would never have married Becky or had Venice or ... It wasn't a very long list, and it didn't seem to have the same clout since his wife had “graduated from the guilt-jealousy thing” and adopted what she liked to call “a more rounded way” of conducting her personal life. Michael was only thirty-seven years old, and already he felt that the generation of kids coming up had leapt out in front of him, left him behind in their cultural dust. I'm turning into a young fogey, he said to himself.
Sometimes, when he was in the back of his limo, he would take out his Sniffer and, using headphones for privacy, he would surf the SuperNet. Without really wanting or intending to, he'd end up checking out an Evolutionary chatroom, a group of up to nine people who would talk freely, and with brutal honesty, about literally anything. Being non-judgmental is one thing, he said to himself, but being empty-headed is quite another. He knew he was being unfair, and that this thought, spoken aloud, would alienate most people and earn him a verbal punch-up ... which I would lose, by consensus.
Julia was still there, even if not on his screen. She hadn't said anything for more than a minute. If the past was any teacher, he knew that she was taking the occasion to admire her reflection in the mirror and touch herself with more delight than was ... “normal,” he snorted under his breath. He knew that Evolutionaries called normal people “Normals,” with an upper case “N,” out of respect, but over the years it had begun to sound vaguely derisive, derogatory, like “square” had been for the hippies of the last century, to describe the un-groovy.
"Did you say something, Mikey?” asked Julia. “I wasn't looking."
Michael declined to inform his sister that she didn't even have to have her eyes open in order to hear. “Julia,” he said, straightening up in his chair, “I—uh—I have to ask you something."
"Like ... a question?” she twittered.
"Yes Julia, like a question. Can I ask you a question please?"
"I like it when people ask me questions,” she squealed as she twirled on one slippery toe, making almost a whole revolution before losing her balance. “If I don't know what the answer is, I just ask my Sniffer to tell me, and then I—"
"Mr. Wu told me that you were having a baby,” he said solemnly. “Is that—"
"Oh yes!” she yelped. “Isn't it just wonderful! And it's from one of the smartest boys, Mr. Wu told me, so my baby will be not like me, you know? Like ... not retarded?"
Mr. Wu was an old friend of the Whiteside family. He had faithfully handled all of Victor Helliwell's money for nineteen years, and he did a superb job as Julia's trustee as well, but Michael wanted to be sure that Julia was aware of the reality of her situation. He wasn't altogether sure if she knew what a pregnancy was. The possibility that she fully u
nderstood what she was doing wasn't even on the table, but ... as long as she knows the basics, he supposed. “Was it your decision?” he asked.
"Of course it was me,” said Julia defensively. “It's my body, Mikey. I wanted a baby ever since I was fifteen. And I saw lots of babies get born. They come out all gooey, with their little eyes all closed up, and with this snakey thing sticking out of their tummy ... I forget what the name is for that ... and they cut it off for the belly button, and then they get to suck on the milk nipple and grow big and get little teeth and they learn to walk and laugh and everything. I'm going to be a mom, just like my mom! I mean our mom! My friends here always want me to look after their babies, ‘cause I'm really good at that. And my friends say it doesn't matter if my baby gets to be a boy or if it's a girl instead, but I hope it's a girl, ‘cause being a girl is so fun, eh? Do you sometimes wish you were a girl instead of a boy, Mikey? But it's okay if it's a boy, ‘cause it's so fun being a boy too, I think. Do you like being a boy?"
"So you're ... happy ... about the baby?” he asked, ignoring all the non-sequiturs.
"I'm happy aaaall the time, Mikey,” she sang. “I'm like ... happy about everything! There's nothing not happy in my place where I live. I'm going to have a happy baby too. You'll see."
Again, there was a pregnant pause as Julia went back to striking poses in the mirror. Michael squirmed. He couldn't see her, but these odd pauses were jarring to him. They were abnormalities in the fabric of a Normal conversation. To Julia and her Evolutionary friends at Victor-E, random pauses seemed as natural as sleep.
Michael had called for two reasons—the other one being to say that Randy, his son and her nephew, had come home for a while. He decided to forego the second reason. She would find out from Randy soon enough. Those two get along famously, he thought distractedly, although God knows why.