‘And if the planet doesn’t have water?’
‘Don’t go there. Anyway, in your case, this is irrelevant. You could live indefinitely, as long as the Noles® don’t give out. You could continue on our mission. It would take you approximately twenty-thousand of your Earth years and you would have significant difficulty decelerating but you would eventually get to the MacGoughin Sequester and, unless you’d collected a huge amount of ballast along the way, far beyond it. ’
‘Are these things ready to go?’
‘Of course. They are accessible by tube and even by tens of kilometres of zero-grav ladders in the event of a total system collapse.’
‘And you could emti me into one instantaneously and launch it?’
‘Yes, just say the word and Slab would be a footnote in your databanks.’
‘And I in yours.’
‘Affirmative.’
‘Then put my name on one of those babies,’ said Louie. ‘In fact, cancel the guest lounge and move this privacy sphere into an escape ship right away, and if we come under attack by aliens and it looks like all is lost, you are authorised to zap me into it and spit me out like a lemon seed.’
‘It would be an absolute pleasure.’
four
By the time Kiki had finished her meetings, Dielle had played the Boogie-Woogie Glad-Rag twenty five times. His wrists were sore and his fingers were throbbing but he didn’t care.
‘Want to hear my new tune?’ he said after she’d kissed him hello.
‘S’OK,’ she said, stripping off her formal jacket and skirt and heading for the bedroom. ‘I put one of your performances on the feeds earlier and sumed it then. Had a couple hundred thou hits already. Trending on a three-point curve.’
Dielle shrugged. He had no idea whether what she’d just said was good or bad but so far every time he’d questioned her business decisions he’d wound up feeling stupid. Anyway, he had other things on his mind. He followed her into the bedroom, and put his arms around her sculptured waist.
‘You’re looking especially sexy today,’ he said, enjoying the feel of her glowing skin against his raw finger tips.
‘Yes, I should be. I dropped into a BodyShop on the way home.’ A wall panel slid open to reveal two outfits hanging side by side. Kiki moved Dielle’s hands off her breasts. ‘I wanted to trim up for tonight’s party.’
{[BodyShop?]}
[[BodyShops employ highly skilled and sought-after bodyworkers to tailor compact workouts specific for each of their clientele using specialised intensive deep-muscle stimulators known as BodiCons. For example, a top bodyworker working with a regular client can compress the equivalent of an hour’s track and weights workout followed by a three-set tennis match, a half-hour swim and a full body massage, into less than 20 minutes including exfo-shower and cell repair]]
Kiki shook her head and the outfits were emtied away and replaced by two more. ‘Nope,’ she said. They changed again. And again. And again. Dielle’s physical explorations were getting nowhere so he asked Sis if there was anything she could do to ease his aching hands.
[[Put them in the emti by the bed]]
The emti cabinet in the wall glowed orange. He hesitated. Along with delivering everything you asked for, emties also made things disappear. No matter how many times he’d been told that Sis was there to serve and protect the citizenry, he couldn’t completely dispel his unease at trusting something he couldn’t see, hide from or turn into molten slag. Trust, he thought, is something you earn, not something you assume. Being a wimp, however, seems to be something you are reset with. He placed his hands in the emti and shut his eyes. A few seconds of mild tingling later, the light dimmed. He flexed his pain-free fingers.
{[Cool. What did you do?]}
[[Accelerated sub-dermal cell regrowth, targeted pain killers and anti-inflammatories]]
{[Well, thanks]}
[[••]]
He watched Kiki bend over to pull on some thigh-high boots. Now another part of him was aching, but he thought better of asking Sis for relief.
‘I haven’t got a thing to wear.’ She sounded frustrated. She wasn’t the only one. ‘I’ll have to go shopping.’
‘Can I come?’ asked Dielle.
‘What? No, of course not.’
‘Why not?’
‘According to your genotype and all recent evidence, darling, you’re a heterosexual male.’ She strode towards the vexit, naked but for the boots. ‘I’ll be as quick as I can. There’s a sponsored outfit for you but you don’t have to wear it if you don’t like it. Tonight’s event is going to be sub-rosa so there’s almost no sumecast value. Bye darling, see you at the party!’
Dielle stared at the wall Kiki had just walked through and wondered.
{[Do you know if Faith Sincere will be at the party tonight?]}
[[Probability tends towards zero]]
{[~?]}
[[There is a significant number of citizens onSlab who disapprove of Ms Van Darwin’s profession and many of her most vocal critics tend to live in The Spin. It is unlikely she would attend even if she were invited, which she has not been]]
Pity, thought Dielle, guiltily.
{[What did Kiki mean about not going shopping because I’m heterosexual?]}
[[By current convention, female SlabCitizens only go shopping for clothes with other women or homosexual men. It’s for your own good]]
{[Current convention? How long has this been current?]}
[[Pre-departure]]
{[What the hell goes on that’s so secretive?]}
[[Statistical analysis of time spent shopping by typical female SlabCitizen: 40% trying on things they already know they won’t like, 40% deciding not to try on things they know they would like but are too similar to something they already own and 20% complaining about the lack of suitable choice. Although 85% of shopping activity results in zero acquisition, 90% of shopping activity produces feelings of satisfaction in the shopper, 65% of acquisitions are never worn, 30% of acquisitions are worn once only, 4% are worn more than once but never when the same people are involved in the same social occasion, and 1% are worn until they wear out, then lamented over despite the fact that identical replacements are available]]
{[Where are these shops? Can anyone go?]}
[[Shops are not location specific. Because the purpose of a shop is to bring a superfluity of options together in one place in order to simultaneously compare and contrast, and all non-sentient matter can be instantly transported via emti to any location onSlab, shops are created spontaneously in locations where shoppers desire to meet. For females, shopping is a social experience and one they often use as a form of therapeutic activity. There are many closed shops that are invitation only but throughout all of the most densely populated regions extemporaneous communal spaces will be created where females will tangentially interact by observing each other’s choices and demands. The dynamic is a complex one and considerable effort has been put into pattern and behavioural analysis by academics, clothing designers and manufacturers in order to optimise the experience and tune it to supplying a non-static demand]]
{[So I could go to observe this shopping behaviour if Kiki has gone to one of these communal setups?]}
[[In theory yes, although you would probably not be welcomed. In this case, however, Ms Pundechan has formed a closed group of nearby available friends and has full privacy enabled. Also 100% of heterosexual males describe the experience of accompanying shopping females in non-favourable terms]]
{[I bet]}
[[Do you wish to make your clothing selection for the evening now?]]
Dielle sighed. {[Whatever Kiki’s negotiated is fine, but I want the same soft-soled shoes as yesterday - they’re comfortable]}
[[••]]
It took thirty minutes to get from Kiki’s uptown DownSide Seacombe apartment to the Westend Spin anchor. The first part of the journey was through the city of floating towers, platforms, bridges and curving tendrils of tubeways that made up
the perma-day business districts and up-market residential sections of Slab. Dielle chose to travel in a privacy field but asked Sis to open the roof so he could take in the city views and look up at UpSideDown, the subtly different, slightly more industrial version of DownSideUp that hung from the opposite side of Slab, fourteen kilometres above. The Uppie’s down was the opposite of the Sider’s down but that was the least of the differences between the two cultures. In the middle, where down turned to up, was a membrane of zero gravity called the interface where fun and games were had by all.
The ability to control gravity hadn’t only been responsible for allowing humans to escape their tiny lump of rock and travel to the stars, it had revolutionised transport and architecture, doubled the living space and opened the door to completely new art forms and recreational sports. And sex, of course. Whenever a new technology was invented, it was a fairly safe bet that somebody would find a way of applying it to sex. He’d heard about zero-G sex from one of Fencer’s mates during an alpine drinking session a few days ago but so far, that was all he’d done – heard about it. Once again, thoughts of a certain platinum-haired ego massage therapist stimulated Dielle’s limbic system.
The Wall loomed ahead, a patchwork of apartments, businesses and civic facilities embedded into the Natalite bulkhead that separated the first two day sections of Slab. The roof dimmed and his privacy bubble entered an upSlab surge buried under the slabscape of Mitchell DownSide.
{[Sume please]}
[[Choice?]]
{[Something light. You choose]}
[[••]]
Semi-clothed women with large breasts appeared before him. They were running through shallow water on a sun-lit beach. Perfect, thought Dielle.
The sume came to a satisfactory, if somewhat predictable, conclusion at the exact moment Sis pinged Dielle to tell him he had arrived at his destination. This was not a coincidence. Sis had modified his journey routing and speed to ensure that his entertainment ended simultaneously with his and Kiki’s arrival at the reception area without clashing with any of the other high sumer-interest invitees. It was this type of finesse that gave the largest and most sophisticated A.I. in the known universe a quantum of digital pleasure. Dielle was oblivious.
Kiki took his arm as he stepped through the vex into the public area and smiled when she saw he was wearing the earners. A well known celebrity gosscaster had crashed the red carpet and was intercepting the partygoers on their way to the location scramblers.
‘Must be some pretty big waves breaking tonight,’ she said to Dielle while negotiating a deal with the gosscaster’s sume distributor via her media channel. ‘It was dark to our sources. I wonder how this crew found out… No, they don’t know any more than I do, they’re just on a fishing expedition.’
Dielle didn’t even bother asking Sis to interpret what Kiki had just said. He was mesmerised. Her lustrous black hair was pulled back and splayed out at the back in the shape of an oriental fan and she was wearing a one-piece made from horizontal strips of material that cycled from reflective to opaque to transparent. The dress undulated in sensual, choreographed sequences of pulsating hoops that rippled from the tops of her thigh-length boots to the collar at her neck. It played tricks on Dielle’s eyes. It seemed as though she wasn’t wearing anything underneath. ‘Is it made from that Reveal stuff?’ he asked.
‘Not exactly. It’s another Woodham Grey. I couldn’t find anything I liked at the shop so I gave him a ping to see if he had anything he wanted to premier. Do you like it?’
‘It’s stunning. Can everyone see it like that or is it only tuned to reveal to my eyes?’
‘Oh, I see what you mean,’ said Kiki, dragging him over to the sumecaster for the interview she had just confirmed. ‘No, it’s public. Everyone can enjoy it if they want to.’
Everyone did.
They glad-handed the over-smiley interviewer and waved to the growing crowd of rubber-neckers. Dielle couldn’t help noticing that Kiki was getting more attention than he was. They skipped through a permission-only vex and were tubed, via a series of random switch-backs, to a private platform on the edge of the burgeoning hive-city that had been growing around the Westend anchor during the last two days.
Gravity direction throughout The Spin was informal and often perverse. One neighbourhood’s down might be the next one’s up, sideways or anyways. There could even be opposing downs inside an apartment. This was common among the struggling artists, musicians, actors, writers, designers, dancers and performers who made up a large percentage of the locals. For many who couldn’t afford spacious accommodation, living on the ceiling was commonplace.
However, now that more than half of the seventy or so cities that were usually strung out along the Spin axis had converged for the course change, it had been decided that there would be one Hive-wide down for the duration. The agreed down was in the direction of the wall-turned-floor that housed the triple helix anchor from which the tangle of cities, suburbs and townships spread like an expanding fractal. While they were prepared to concede the down, no one was prepared to give up their right to light so The Spin still span.
The Slabsection that housed The Spin had been the first to have a variable day/night rhythm. A narrow sunstrip ran from west to east along the forward bulkhead, parallel to the spin-axis. It was currently in full moon phase, coolly tracing the Slabscape in blue-grey. Lakes, forests and sculptured terrain lined the curved walls of a fourteen-kilometre diameter tube that was over 350 kilometres long. This was The Valley. This was where the rich and famous lived and where almost everyone who lived and worked in The Spin would regularly look up, or down, on and promise themselves they would have a place of their own up/down there some day.
Dielle bent his neck back to look up at the gigantic triple helix that housed the express tubes. It seemed to converge with the dimmed sunstrip far above his head but he knew that was just an illusion.
‘Parallel lines never meet,’ he muttered. That was odd, he thought, how do I know that?
{[Did you just feed me that?]}
[[Negative. Must have been an organic memory]]
{[I thought I didn’t have any memories]}
[[••]]
Only a few days ago he’d been involved in a cat-fight in the streets and canals of Spinsterdam which was just one of the disparate cultural centres that had hung off the axis, stretched out like filigrees of jewels on a slowly turning chain. Now, Spinsterdam had been subsumed into The Hive and the helix above was almost bare, casting a skeletal shadow against the valley floor. A tiny ring of lights came into view high up the axis. It was expanding.
{[What’s that?]}
[[Incoming. Spingapore. Should be here in just over an hour. They’d better get a move on, Mum-high is right behind it]]
Kiki was helping herself to the complimentary bar in the waiting stretch-bug.
‘Come on star-gazer,’ she said, ‘Sis says it’s a twenty minute ride. Must be very exclusive.’
‘Twenty minutes eh?’ Said Dielle. ‘You know that dress really is something.’
For some reason he couldn’t put his finger on, he couldn’t put his fingers on what he wanted to put them on. As the bug rose into the moonlight and accelerated to cruising speed, Kiki managed to deflect his advances without directly saying no but making it very clear she wasn’t in the mood for what he was in the mood for. He stared out of the smoked-tranilinium windows at the patches of private sunlight that illuminated the stately homes and modern mansions scattered around the valley floor like shining oases in a steel-blue desert.
Fencer’s voice came from the sensurround: ‘Hi Guys, sorry about the runaround but there’s a very special guest attending tonight and it was necessary to be a bit clandestine about it all. See you in a few minutes. Oh, and don’t worry about the crash, you’ll be fine.’
‘Crash? What crash?’ said Dielle as the bug dived into a pitch-black lake. The inertial dampers absorbed most of the impact but there was still a bone-jarring jolt
as they transitioned from air to water and dived.
Kiki was delighted. ‘I wonder who we’re going to meet?’ she said, as a morphit popped out from under the seat to mop up the spill. ‘Oh, we’ve already entered sub-rosa I can’t even tell my own people where we are. How exciting!’
{[Where are we?]}
[[In a lake in The Valley]]
{[I knew that]}
[[••]]
Kiki, looking out into the inky blackness. ‘I think I know where we are,’ she said. ‘Slab’s course correction means there are only a couple of places in The Valley that could still have water in their lakes.’
Dielle had heard about this. All the lakes and rivers onSlab were being either drained or frozen.
‘This is one of the deep-sea simulators. It has extra-high-power localised gravity fields so they don’t have to worry about causing a flood when we change course. Look! There’s a monster!’
Dielle looked out into a skeletal face with huge translucent globes for eyes and a broad mouth lined with multiple rows of razor-sharp teeth. It looked more like a kinetic sculpture than a living thing. It even carried its own lantern.
‘What the Dice is that’? he said.
‘You’ll have to ask Sis. She just told me but I don’t think I can say it. It’s not a mech, it’s a genuine fish from the deepest part of the Earth’s oceans. Cool huh?’
Ugly as sin more like, thought Dielle. The roof of the bug-turned-sub creaked. ‘Can’t say I’d like to hang around long enough to find out what it eats,’ he said.
Slabscape: Dammit Page 4