Daphne didn’t reply, she merely shrugged and sipped her coffee.
“What strikes me as odd,” I went on, “is how we were killed next. Two innocent bystanders — ”
“Look,” she finally said. “I have no idea what happened yesterday, same as you. You know the police here have nothing to do with real police, right? It’s just an endless game of cops and robbers going on. Some kids dress up as gangsters, others play police. They chase, and shoot, and kill each other. They steal some pretend money from some pretend bank vault just to earn a few points, and then respawn and repeat. It’s everyday stuff. It’s nothing.”
“Us being shot though?” I leaned back, eyeing her. “We did nothing wrong. I wasn’t even armed, were you?”
Daphne shrugged again.
“Probably just a prank,” she said. “Some teenagers misbehaving in police uniforms. They were probably banned next, for shooting down civilians. So what?”
I thought for a while, then sighed.
“Look, Buff,” I said. “I know something’s going on here. Him going missing from the Web? No trace of his code anywhere? What’s that about? And please stop acting like nothing special happened yesterday. Right before we were shot, you told me this wasn’t accidental, remember? How we met, and how — ”
“Ben.” Daphne looked into my eyes for the first time, frowning like she was in pain. “Please don’t get me wrong. Yes, something is going on. I simply didn’t want to drag you into this mess. Okay?”
I found her warm little hand on the table and squeezed it gently as Daphne tried to remove it. She sighed and gave up, her fingers intertwining with mine instead.
“Sorry,” she said quietly. “I’m at a loss. We all are.”
“We?”
Daphne bit her lip, then said: “I’m with US/C. Okay? A federal agent.”
“Wow!” I said, eyes wide open. “You mean, like, a spy?”
This was so cool. I always knew my girl was special. But now, in this new light, Daphne seemed a hundred times more mysterious and desirable, even though it was probably just a game role, no more serious than this game of cops and robbers. Nothing is serious these days, not in the Wakeworld and especially not here, where even death results in respawn and little else.
“I’m a virtual resident of La Republique, which is in Clockworld. I don’t work here in New York. I come here to relax.”
“Clockworld,” I said. “Same as Baron Plunkett, huh?”
She nodded.
“It just suits my character best,” she said. “I always wanted to be French.”
“And in real life, you’re… ?”
She blushed under her pale goth makeup and sipped from her coffee mug again. A weakness for a spy, but OMG, how beautiful she was.
“In real life,” Daphne said, slowly, after she swallowed her coffee. “In real life I’m in charge of a missing person investigation on behalf of US/C, the only actual case in years, and Ben, I am so lost I don’t really know what to do.”
I squeezed her delicate fingers again.
“Look, Buff, I’m sure it’s nothing,” I told her. “You’re right, probably just a hoax of some kind. I’m sure our virtual Baron is out there somewhere, hunting as usual. He’ll turn up, you’ll see.”
“I think it was murder, Ben,” she said.
I fell silent. She looked at me, her dark eyes sad and attentive.
“The first murder in decades,” Daphne said. “And I must find out who did it.”
She was so beautiful, this girl. I smiled at her, then freed my fingers and patted her hand.
“Buff, you are so cool,” I said. “I’ve never met someone like you, a real spy, I mean federal agent, in charge of such an awesome investigation. You know? Whatever happens, just know that I think you’re the most amazing person I’ve met on the Web, totally. Ever. Right?”
Daphne sighed and pulled her hand away. “Yeah,” she said. “You’re right. No one really cares about this stuff anymore. So what if someone’s code was erased from the Web? So what if it was the last member of aristocracy remaining alive, huh? To hell with it. You are so cool, Buff. May the world go down the drain.”
I chewed my lips. This was not how I intended the compliment to play out, not at all. I said: “Look. The man was, in fact, dead for a while now, wasn’t he? It wasn’t the Baron himself, not him. Okay? It was just his digital copy. Right?”
That was the wrong thing to say. Again. Now I could see Daphne was really angry with me.
“So you mean what?” she asked. “You mean such a thing should go unpunished completely? That this doesn’t count as a real murder? That Digital Citizens are somehow not real people, not alive? You’re that kind of guy?”
“Metabolically different,” I said.
“What?”
“Metabolically different,” I repeated. “That was the politically correct way of referring to a DC back here, in this era: the Gangster Nineties. Not dead. Metabolically different.”
Daphne pondered on it for a while and then gave me a crooked smile, her distaste of me hopefully gone.
“Are you also earning by reciting all kinds of local trivia now?” she asked.
I laughed. “So what? Just earned me a couple cryptobucks. Let me pay for your coffee.”
“It’s on the house,” she said. “It’s the way diners work. Now I’m a couple bucks ahead of you.”
“We’re free to go then?” I asked.
She nodded, so I got up and helped her out of the booth and we went outside, her arm wrapped around mine.
The air outside smelled of fallen leaves and electricity. The metropolis towered all around us, except for the dark reaches of this big park right ahead. The Moon shone bright — the huge coin of tarnished gold hung up in place of the real Moon — and we walked hand-in-hand down Third Avenue hardly speaking at all, enjoying the autumn night, the hum of the late traffic nearby, and the multitude of lights of the old place and time, a hundred years gone in the world I would have to wake up to.
As soon as we reached the corner, Daphne pulled me away from the avenue, towards the quiet pedestrian alleys of the city interior. I followed her like I would follow her anywhere. The city lights were dimmer in here, and the echo of our footsteps rang high above, almost reaching the multitude of stars and galaxies scattered across the night sky.
“Isn’t it sad no one launches space rockets anymore?” Daphne asked all of a sudden.
“Hmm,” I said. Space rockets were an ancient thing. I’ve only seen them in old videos; most of them not even 3D. I admit these things must have looked fascinating. A true miracle of engineering, they were. Then again, in the Dreamweb, you don’t need rockets. In certain worlds of the Web, you can just board a spaceship and go and explore all kinds of asteroids and stars and planets, or even start a colony on one of them. I tried it once, but failed to understand the appeal, to be honest. All these alien worlds, the creatures found on them, and the adventures robots and AIs play out for you — it’s all random stuff, anyway. No real exploration, no discovery. You go from planet to planet, you meet one alien race after another, and soon you realize it’s just more and more random stuff without real meaning or purpose; pretty close to what the actual Wakeworld reality is.
“There was a time we wanted to get out of this place so bad,” Daphne said. “We wanted to keep on living as a species. Settle across the galaxy. Find out if we are alone in this world, or whether there are other beings like us, who understand they exist. And now…”
“Now we no longer understand,” I said.
Daphne nodded. “Yeah. And so we live now inside our collective fantasies, instead of reaching out. And we don’t really care anymore. Does it matter to you if in another hundred years we humans will be gone or not? We no longer seek anything or want anything. We just… hang out, huh? And that about says it.”
I hugged her and pressed her to my side. She hugged me as well, and we strolled further huggin
g each other, even though it wasn’t the most comfortable thing, to walk on in this manner.
“You know it’s not true, right?” I asked. “Me, for instance, I had no idea what I was looking for, but then I found you, and now I know.”
“Thank you,” she replied, and we walked in silence until another avenue filled with neon and honking traffic crossed our path.
“My place is a couple blocks that way,” Daphne said. “In Little Italy.”
“I thought you were French?” I asked.
“Well, sadly, there’s no Little France down here in New York.”
I laughed and let her lead the way. We walked past a hotdog stand, then a Chinese place, then a big retro movie theater, all spotlights and huge posters advertising Terminator 2: Judgment Day. The Dreamweb was now the only place where you could see an old 2D movie; the entire Hollywood industry had long been absorbed and gone from the real world.
Daphne was right though; this city never slept at all, even though the Dreamweb NYC version seemed to be a place of never-ending night.
“Wanna check out this picture?” I asked her.
She frowned at the poster. “I don’t like the idea. Not of us going to see it, but the idea of this movie.”
“Why?”
“It’s anti-AI,” she said. “Don’t we have enough of this robot phobia going on already?”
I shrugged. “Well, it’s demand and supply, no? People hate robots, so they want to see something like that, so they show it. Cater to the audience, isn’t that what the whole Web is about?”
“This is not a good thing.” Daphne shook her head. “Not these days.”
That made me laugh. “You government people always want to censor something,” I said. “So what if someone hates robots? They are just things; they have no feelings, and they won’t be offended.”
“We don’t,” she replied. “I’m not for censorship at all. I’m just for being sensible.”
“Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s kinda cute,” I said. “You’re so righteous, I mean. Whenever you look, you want to fix something, even when nothing is broken. It’s a fine movie, come on. There’s nothing bad about it. I wonder what made you go work for the government in the first place, your hatred for movies and ice cream as a kid?”
Well, I probably took it too far, for Daphne went silent and kept frowning as we walked down the block, and then down another block; then we crossed a street and found ourselves in Little Italy.
“Wow,” I said.
I had to admit she’d chosen the perfect spot to settle in, even if it was merely an entrance point. The street looked magical, all dressed in flower garlands and multicolored lanterns, its building entrances framed with columns and statues and amphorae and more flowers; the smell of cooking and a quiet Frank Sinatra song from the corner pizza place gave the scene a nice final touch. All of this was definitely something nice to wake up to, even compared to my underwater spawns and swimming for the Moon.
Daphne turned to face me, her eyes dark and attentive under the glow of streetlights and merry lanterns dancing above us in the autumn wind.
“I was with the American police first, okay?” she said. “The real police, back when it was still ninety percent human. Then, well, I retired, changed my place of residence, and forgot my earthly troubles. Still, I do care what happens in the world and the Web alike. You may laugh at me, Ben, but I’m deeply convinced this place is the last hope of humanity, for better or worse, same as robots or artificial wood or the genetically modified food everyone seems to hate so much, for no reason at all except some weird nostalgia. I told you I’m a retrograde as well, didn’t I?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I mean, who isn’t, right?”
“Exactly. So I may happen to hate robots too, so what? I know we need robots. I know our salvation, if we deserve any, lies in technology, not in rejecting it. The question is — how do we make it from here to space rockets again? How do we make our other dreams come true? Artificial bodies for DCs, perhaps? A chance for these people to see the real world again? Make it a better place?”
“What for?” I asked, feeling genuinely lost.
“What for?” she echoed. “Because the Wakeworld is still the only true reality out there, and all of this is not, no matter how pretty it may seem.”
I shrugged. “I mean, wow. You were with human police forces, really? Wooow.” I counted mentally, which took me some effort. “This makes you a bit old, no? Forty-something? Fifty? Not that I mind it, don’t get me wrong. I think you’re amazing, and I think we should meet there as well. In the real world.”
Daphne just kept looking at me, in all her pale lady-vamp gothic beauty.
“We will never meet in the real world, Ben,” she said finally.
I stood there for a while, eyeing her in response. Then I took a step towards Daphne and tried to kiss her, but she shied away from me and kept staring.
“You cannot look too different from what I see,” I said slowly. “If you’re older in the Wakeworld, I’m fine with that. So what’s the problem? Some decadent traditional marriage of yours?”
“Ben, my employment does not allow this.” Her face was firm, her eyes cold. “No Web contacts re-established in actual life. Okay? Yes, no?”
“What if I were to move to your Clockworld?” I asked.
“You’d be with Albion then,” she replied instantly. “I’d seek employment with the Royal Fusiliers if I were you. They pay best.”
“The army people?”
“Yes.” She nodded. “And UK bitpound is the most stable Web currency after all. Makes sense.”
I nodded and we walked further down the street, Daphne quiet and serious, me thinking real hard. Then she stopped next to one of the columned entrances.
“This is my place,” Daphne said, turning to face me again.
“Buff.” I chewed my lip, frowning. “I want to ask you a very serious question.”
“Go on.”
“This Baron Plunkett…” I said. “Who is he to you, really?”
She merely looked back, her eyebrows raised. “He’s my case,” Daphne said. “I told you already. Why does it even matter? He’s a human being, he’s missing, period.”
“You were also killed yesterday night,” I muttered. “Same as I. So I just woke up at my place… and you? Where did you wake up?”
She tried to keep calm, but I could swear her face twitched just a little. And it was in her eyes. I was sure now.
“You look scared,” I said. “What is it, Buff? Please tell me. Is this why we cannot meet in the real world?”
She remained silent for a while, and then started talking, slow and quiet. “I died,” she said. “And then I woke up just fine. At my place back at Clockworld. Is that what you wanted to hear?”
“You’re a DC.” I gasped. “And you were a cop. I take it that’s how you were ‘retired,’ then?”
“It was the Hollywood riots,” Daphne said, looking into the crown of a maple tree above us. “The day the movies were gone from the world.”
“You fought the LA uprising,” I muttered. “So the Americans resurrected you. As a hero.”
She snorted quietly. “A trusty lapdog, more like.”
“So you’re… I started; my face a painful grimace.
“Metabolically different,” Daphne replied, smiling at me under the orange sodium lights. “The politically correct way of saying it. Metabolically different.”
This was when I lost it, so I simply stepped up to Buff and kissed her despite her trying to escape. And she did kiss me back, and hugged me tight, and the streetlights swirled all around us, and there was this huge golden coin of the Moon above, and this maelstrom of autumn smells engulfing us, and Frank Sinatra’s song growing louder still, and the Moon, the Moon!
And then I woke up staring at the sonolight inside my sleeping nook, to the actual night and rain hissing behind my real-life window.
***
“Did this ever happen to you?” Ben asked, struggling hard with the reassembly of the gem of his father’s collection.
It was the classic Harley chopper, one of the two items they had to prepare for Mr. Reaper to pick up that day at noon. Ben rubbed his eyes and yawned. He’d spent the second half of the night sleepless and lost, his heart racing faster than his thoughts. He was in love, and his love had been suddenly taken from him; Ben’s Dreamweb session terminated abruptly when he kissed Daphne.
He stretched and yawned again. “I mean it, Diego. You’ve been to the Web, right? I’m not what you’d call a resident, I mean I don’t work there or anything, but I’ve been there a million times.”
Diego was happy and busy, crouched in front of his half-reassembled Triumph and whistling to the radio, which opened the new musical hour with yet another track by John Lennon, as deranged and disturbing as Strawberry Fields, if not more.
“Nah, couldn’t have been a million, if you go once a night, then…” Diego replied. “Well, man. You know, just. Turn off your mind. Yes? Relax, and… I mean, we’ve got work, we’ve got customers. Things are turning towards the better, no?”
“Not once,” Ben muttered, and he bit his lower lip. “Not once have I ever been disconnected this way, in the middle of the night, without warning.”
“Man,” Diego said. “Could be you just flipped out. I mean, you were there kissing this dead girl.”
“She’s NOT dead,” Ben interrupted him. “She’s the best girl I’ve ever met. Stop saying these things about her.”
“Please, man!” Diego shook his head. “I mean, I’m sorry she died. But yes, you said so yourself, the real Daphne died, a long time ago. Let’s just, you know, see things for what they are. I totally agree with you. Maybe she was this nice kind of woman, totally the best. I mean, before she kicked the bucket. Maybe she used to be an excellent girl. But this woman is gone. Right? And what you took for a woman yesterday was simply a… a code, a simulation, a computer program made to look and sound like this girl, made by someone in her loving memory. Yes? She’s like this elaborate 4D picture of a real woman. Who’s long gone in fact. No?”
Enter the Clockworld Page 4