by Eric Brown
‘So what does that make me, Hal? An incomplete recording?’
Halliday paused. ‘It makes you whatever you think you are, Barney. You’ve got your thoughts, memories, personality. You’ve got a better body than the one you had. Look ... come back and work with me again, okay? It’ll be just like old times.’
Barney smiled. ‘I’ll think about that over a couple of beers, Hal. I really will.’
Halliday watched the stranger who was Barney Kluger climb from the car and disappear down the steps to Olga’s. He pulled from the kerb and drove around the block to Casey’s apartment, then braked and sat behind the wheel, lost in thought.
Perhaps emotions, feelings, he thought, can be learned. Christ, he knew they could ...
Ten minutes later, having almost driven away twice, he climbed from the car and crossed the sidewalk. He took the steps to the first floor slowly, wondering at the reception he could expect from the kid.
He knocked on the door and waited. It was eleven o’clock, a few hours before she was due to begin the afternoon shift at the diner. He wondered if she’d left early.
Then a small voice said, ‘Who is it?’
‘Casey,’ Halliday said. ‘It’s me, Hal. I need to—’
‘Go away.’
As simple as that. He felt something tighten within him, a familiar pity for himself alongside a pity for Casey and the hurt he’d caused her.
‘Casey, we need to talk. I’m sorry about yesterday. Something came up with the Charlesworth case. I couldn’t make it—’
‘You could’ve at least’ve called!’ she cried.
He felt a stab of hope: at least she had replied. She was giving him the chance to explain himself, extend the dialogue.
‘I know, and I’m sorry. You wouldn’t believe how crazy it’s been.’
Suddenly, without warning, she snatched the door open and stood there, staring at him. She seemed even tinier than he recalled. She wore shorts and a misshapen T-shirt, and her eyes were swollen and sore from crying.
She turned and retreated to a couch, where she curled herself up and snatched a cushion, crushing it against her chest and staring at him.
He walked into the room and drew up a chair.
He sat in silence, staring down at his hands. Christ, but now that the time had come to say something, all thoughts had fled. He knew what he felt, but the words required to articulate these thoughts were impossible to find.
Finally, as if exasperated by his silence, Casey stood up and flung the cushion on the floor. She strode across the room, turned at the window and stared at him. ‘God, Hal, are you so totally blind?’
He looked up. ‘What?’
She was slowly shaking her head, tears tracking down her cheeks. ‘Jesus, isn’t it obvious? Look, there I was ... I had nothing, and you took me in, gave me a room, shelter. And we got on great... And all the time I’m thinking, why’s he doing this? Does he think I’ll be an easy lay? Is that what he wants?’
She stopped, twisting her fingers, unable to bring herself to meet his eyes.
He began to protest, but she went on, ‘But it wasn’t. You did it ‘cos you were a good person, because you cared. And anyway, then I met Ben ... That was great, but you know something, Hal? You know, all the time I was with Ben, I was thinking, I wish I was with Hal, I wish things could be different and I was more his age.’
She leaned against the wall and pushed at the tears on her cheeks with her fingertips. ‘And then Ben walked out, and I got back in touch with you again, and I thought, I don’t know ... maybe now it’ll happen. But you acted like a friend, nothing more. And I wanted more, Hal. Are you so totally fucking blind that you can’t see that, or don’t you really like me? Is that it? Do you feel sorry for me, this ugly, ignorant little street kid—’
‘You aren’t ugly,’ he said. ‘Casey—’
She stared at him, defiant. ‘What?’
It surprised him, then, what he said next. He hadn’t planned it, and yet it seemed so right.
‘I want to show you something.’
Her eyes narrowed. ‘Show me what?’
‘It’s ... It’s hard to explain. Come with me and I’ll show you, okay?’
‘Where? Where we going? What d’you want to show me?’
‘We’re going to a VR Bar. I want to show you a site I spent a lot of time at.’
‘In VR? I don’t see ...’
‘It’ll tell you a lot about me,’ he told her. ‘More than I can say with words, okay?’
She regarded him slantwise, almost suspicious. ‘It’s not a sex-site, is it?’
He laughed. ‘Christ, no. It’s a nature site. It’s beautiful. But there’s something there ... I want you to come with me, please.’
He stared at her, and something in the intensity of his regard made her relent.
‘Okay,’ she said quietly, looking around the floor for her sneakers.
He watched her pull them on, his heart pounding. Then she turned away from him, pulled off her T-shirt and quickly drew a new one over her head.
They walked down to the busy summer street and he drove two blocks north to 116th Street. He was aware that he might be making a big mistake, but knew also that he had to go through with it.
He braked outside Thai Joe’s VR Bar and climbed out. Casey stood beside him, timorous, staring up at the glitzy façade.
Thai Joe waddled up to them: with his loud Hawaiian shirt and sunglasses he looked like a Sumo wrestler on vacation.
‘Hey, Hal! Long time no see! How you these days, friend? Where you been?’
‘Out and about, Joe. How’s trade?’
‘Trade? Trade’s bad, Hal. Everybody these days, they have own tank. Bad for business. You here on duty, Hal?’
‘Pleasure, Joe’
Thai Joe glanced at Casey and winked. ‘Sure, pleasure, Hal! Joe do you good deal. Discount, okay?’
‘Sounds good to me.’
Thai Joe laughed and slapped him on the back.
Halliday took Casey’s hand and passed through the neon-bordered portal into the VR lounge. He showed her into a booth and gave her the code to the Virginia site.
She touched his arm as he was about to step from the booth. ‘There’re two tanks in here, Hal,’ she said, staring at him as if this were a test.
He nodded, closed the door and moved to the second tank. As he undressed and stepped into the suspension gel, he thought that this might be one of the very last times he used VR in life. After all, he told himself, maybe he would have an eternity in virtual-nirvana, once he was dead.
He watched Casey step naked into the tank, something expanding in his chest at the site of her skinny white body.
He lay back and awaited the transition.
Seconds later he was standing in the pristine pine forest of the Virginia site.
He was assailed by the resinous scent of the trees, the sight of the serried pines ascending the rise. The sun shone in a brilliant blue sky, and a clean warm breeze lapped at his face.
He looked around, and Casey was beside him. She gazed about her, eyes wide in wonder.
He contrasted the real Casey with the version he had constructed. Physically, the construct was prettier, fuller of figure ... but knowing that the Casey in VR was nothing but a construct had reduced his relationship with her, had made her nothing more than a plaything, a doll.
He had gained nothing from creating her simulation other than the transitory illusion of companionship, and the knowledge of his weakness.
‘This is ... it’s so beautiful, Hal. I never realised that VR could be so beautiful.’ She laughed at him. ‘It’s even better than the Africa site.’
He indicated the track that climbed to the ridge path through the trees. They walked. Something stopped him from reaching out and taking her hand.
‘Are we all alone?’ she asked. ‘Where’re all the other people?’
‘I pay a premium to have this site more or less to myself. Sometimes other people come here,
but it’s a big place, plenty of room for everybody.’
‘And you came here alone all the time?’
He hesitated. ‘Most of the time. Sometimes I came with constructs, simulated people. But most of the time I wanted to be alone.’ Which was true enough, in the early days ...
She left the path, high-stepped through long grass, and touched the bark of a pine tree. She looked back at him. ‘You know something, Hal? I’ve never ever felt a tree in the real world. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a real tree.’
He watched her fingers trace the furrows of the trunk, a smile like he’d never seen before playing across her face.
She rejoined him and they climbed until they emerged on the ridge path. Casey gasped as they stood side by side and stared out across the burnished silver-blue expanse of the ocean.
‘Years ago,’ he said, ‘all the world was like this. Natural, unspoilt. There were forests covering most of the land, full of animals, birds.’
‘And no people?’
‘There was a time when there were no people, yes.’
She whistled. ‘I can’t imagine a land with no people,’ she said. ‘I’m so used to seeing millions of people every day.’
Everyone, he thought, living identical lives.
But what the Methuselah Project had discovered would change all that, he knew. He looked around the natural beauty of the site and imagined a time in the future when he might live here, or some place like it, in a community of like-minded individuals, content with the knowledge that he was free, with no physical body to atrophy and deteriorate in the real world.
What a dream that was, he thought.
He indicated the path that wound down to the bay.
As they began the descent, she glanced at him. ‘You said you wanted to show me something, Hal.’
‘Down here.’
‘What is it?’
‘I can’t explain. I want you to see it, make up your own mind.’ He wondered then, fleetingly, if something in his subconscious had made him bring Casey here so that she would be repelled by what he had to show her.
He wondered if that self-hating part of himself wanted nothing more than to frighten her away for good.
He told himself that he had brought her here so that he might explain to her something about him that even he did not truly understand.
‘Hey, Hal,’ Casey said as they stepped out onto the pebble beach. ‘Look, there’s a camp. Someone’s already here.’
‘Shall we go and say hi?’
They walked towards the red blister of the tent beneath the fir trees. He felt a curious hollowness within his chest.
They halted thirty metres from the tent as someone emerged. The girl was dressed in blue jeans and a red and black checked shirt. She busied herself at a camping stove, then looked up and waved.
He wondered how he had ever been satisfied with this make-believe doll.
Casey stared. She walked forwards, her pace retarded with a kind of dawning disbelief. Halliday followed, heart racing.
‘Hiya, there, you two,’ the construct said. ‘How about some breakfast?’
She knelt and turned on the stove.
The sight of the two Caseys, the construct and the real girl, was like viewing two versions of reality. The first was the reality of holo-dramas, where physical perfection was paramount, where feelings were subjugated to the primacy of image. The second reality was that of the real world, where imperfection was a part of everyday life, where the onus was on one’s ability to deal with the sometimes impossible permutations of feeling and emotion - an ability which was, after all, the measure of one’s ultimate humanity.
Casey turned to him, her expression shocked. ‘I don’t believe it,’ she said.
‘I had to show you.’
‘How could you? How could you do this? You were using me!’
‘Casey, I was lonely. I needed companionship.’
‘Companionship? And everything else she could give you!’ She flung an arm towards the construct. ‘Look at her! She might have my face, but look at that body!’
‘Casey, I didn’t... It wasn’t like that. There was nothing like that between us. I needed friendship. We talked, that’s all.’
‘You needed friendship? You talked? But you could’ve talked to me, Hal!’
He merely shook his head, words beyond him.
She was silent, staring at him.
‘I’ll leave you with her,’ he said at last. ‘Ask her about... about our time together.’
And before she could demur or protest, he turned and walked along the beach, his heart hammering, palms sweating like a gauche adolescent.
He found a rock beside the waves and sat down, staring out to sea.
When he chanced a look back, Casey and the construct were sitting beside the tent, cross-legged, talking and gesturing like eerie mirror images.
He picked up a flat stone and skimmed it across the surface of the water. It bounced five, six times - a personal record - then sank.
What if she did not accept what the construct told her? What if she wanted nothing more to do with him, after this? He knew, if this happened, that a part of him would be secretly satisfied, would be content to return to the isolated, insulated and safe regime of old ... but that part of him, he knew, would be the part least human and most constricted by the easy options of self-pity and self-hatred.
He heard the sound of pebbles grinding behind him. He stood suddenly and turned.
Casey was staring at him. ‘She said that you were just friends,’ she murmured. ‘You walked and talked. She liked you, you know? She said you were a good person.’
He almost said then that the other Casey was nothing but a computer-generated construct, but stopped himself.
‘Why did you bring me here, Hal?’
He hesitated, his mouth dry. At last he found the words. ‘I ... I had to show you what you meant to me, Casey.’
He stopped, gathered his thoughts, then went on. ‘After Kim left and Barney died, I constructed Her. You were the only person I was close to ... but you had your own life with Ben. What could I do?’
‘But for the past few weeks I’ve been alone. You could have—’
‘I couldn’t. I wish I had. I don’t know what stopped me. The fear of losing you, of you walking out like Kim. Sometimes I told myself that I was happiest being alone, with no emotions to sort out, no one’s feelings to consider but my own.’
‘And now?’
‘Now...’ he began. He stared at her. She was watching him closely, wonderingly.
Now, if he was to grow as a human being, if he was to turn his back on the facile dream promised by this site and others like it, he would have to learn to explore the extent of his flawed humanity, and the humanity of others, too.
He reached out and drew her to him. ‘I want to do this in the real world,’ he said.
And, to his relief, she did not protest as he held her.
He gazed out over the bay, and in the distance, high in the clear blue sky, the graceful shape of an eagle soared towards the horizon.
* * * *
Epilogue
Halliday stood by the floor-to-ceiling window of his new apartment and stared out at the sparse traffic on Lexington Avenue. It was another hot day in New York City, and bright - only the low cloud cover kept out the sunlight.
‘And now we see the first of the auto-probes venturing from the ship and traversing the hostile, sun-washed plains of Mercury...’
Halliday turned and stared at the wallscreen at the far end of the room. The screen showed a craggy, desolate landscape, silver-grey beneath the glare of the sun, contrasting with the utter blackness that began at the horizon.
The remote camera showed the bulky shape of the Mercury Project mother ship in the foreground, and the smaller, trilobite form of an auto-probe scuttling across the surface of the planet.
And to think that, somewhere within the memory banks of the mother ship, Kim and hundreds like he
r, reduced to mere bytes of information, and yet at the same time something much more, were stored in some virtual realm, before their en masse migration to the stars ...
He had watched the launch ten days ago with Casey curled on the sofa beside him. She had been curious at first why the event had fascinated him, until he had explained the significance of the launch.